Upcoming Changes To Diseases You May Want To Act Upon

[Joanavon 553]

Hmm perhaps reserving or partitioning a portion of the cap for wild spawns and reducing the success chances per skill for breeding and/or increasing the likelihood of miscarriages dramatically when the breed portion of the cap is at or near it's limit could be an intermediate stop gap. It would encourage people to cull unneeded horses in order to increase the likelihood that a pregnancy will be successful producing a presumably better horse.

[Gorwst 129]

Animals don't represent things, objects - not even in pixelform - for most who enjoy the AH-skill. Stuff them in bins or make them into pictures, and that enjoyment will simply vanish - might as well scrap the whole AH then.

How exactly are they more than pictures right now? ... You can't do much more with an animal than the tiniest bit of leading, taming, grooming, breeding, and feeding; all these things would still be possible without the thing having AI (much like you can interact with other objects ingame).

Even as someone who dislikes large numbers of animals on a deed, I can see where Alyeska is coming from. There is a large human perception difference between a horse wandering around in a pen and a horse as a line item in some sort of bulk storage bin type barn.

Would people really care about building stone versus wooden houses if they all looked the same visually? If the only difference were what you see on mouseover, I doubt people would care enough to make the more difficult structure (barring some game mechanic advantage). Would you want to decorate your house with weapon racks, coffins, pennants, and statutes if they all just looked like a grey box?

Ultimately, everything is just 1s and 0s in a database to the computer. But to the typical player, having a visual representation of the object makes it far more meaningful and therefore more "fun" than just having a list like a spreadsheet.

[MrGARY 12,421]

Hmm perhaps reserving or partitioning a portion of the cap for wild spawns and reducing the success chances per skill for breeding and/or increasing the likelihood of miscarriages dramatically when the breed portion of the cap is at or near it's limit could be an intermediate stop gap. It would encourage people to cull unneeded horses in order to increase the likelihood that a pregnancy will be successful producing a presumably better horse.

No, because you'll still get a-holes that will abuse that and still constantly breed a ton of horses maxing the cap out.

[Kadore 926]

No, because you'll still get a-holes that will abuse that and still constantly breed a ton of horses maxing the cap out.

Why is playing a different playstyle always abuse, figures are always tossed around, how people that may keep more animals than another player is automatically a hoarder.

The last time we argued about this very few " tons of animals " were really found, perhaps if the issue is too many animals are making it hard to raise fight skill the way fight skill and weapon skill is gained per mob needs looked at, I know this is tough to believe but the game does not revolve around hunting and pvp related gains anymore than it does around breeding my little pony, perhaps both the methods in which gains by hunting are gained as well as milking, AH and breeding should all be taken into consideration before Rolf goes changing more things for better or worse.

[Crovak 3]

Oh man *chuckles* now we are a-holes. This just keeps getting better. Do you realize, my eloquent fellow player, that until this thread I did not even know there was a cap on types of animals? Yep, you’re right I am a “insert any derogatory name you wish here†noob that did not read anything about caps on any Wiki article that I referenced about AH. I have just done my best to work with the game mechanics to achieve a goal. Now so far there has only been one person that has been kind enough to respond to what “hoarding†is. Using his numbers I am assuming since two of us are involved we are within the “respectable†range of animals on a deed. But even with that I find myself feeling like Alyeska, “but much less do I enjoy the idea of my enjoyment directly affecting everyone elses.†So once again let me ask a question if I may.

Mr. Developer, what was your original idea about numbers of non-aggro animals per person? How many horses did you expect players to work with considering the random nature of breeding? I have heard all sorts of numbers tossed around, and seen many in game examples but I have yet to find anything in print, as a new player, about what is expected or proper. So before I kill off all my breeding stock and close our second deed in a fit of remorse. Please tell us what the original number per person was conceptually, or what the modified numbers are now. It would be very helpful to know. Just as it would have been, by the way, for a new player just starting out in game that decided they wanted to “Capture and breed animals from the environment.†I personally think 95% of the players in this community would have no trouble complying in order to ensure a fun environment for all.

But for me it really does boil down to what many have said in this thread. Fix the underlying mechanics to work as intended please. Please do not just layer on more variables that may, or may not, fix the problem.

[Joanavon 553]

No, because you'll still get a-holes that will abuse that and still constantly breed a ton of horses maxing the cap out.

well if you made it so that once at or near the breeding cap animals would miscarry 99.9% of the time until the pressure on the cap is reduced the only real option is for people to cull some horses and try to breed again for success until they actually managed to get a foal.

[Stacia 0]

well if you made it so that once at or near the breeding cap animals would miscarry 99.9% of the time until the pressure on the cap is reduced the only real option is for people to cull some horses and try to breed again for success until they actually managed to get a foal.

This was done about a year ago on Indy. It lasted about 9 weeks. Not a non agro was born anywhere on Indy. you could not buy a non agro from anyone and no one killed any of their animals. People who lost animals for whatever reason were screaming because now they could not pull there carts or ride etc. Rolf introduced animals starving to death and dying of old age and the care for system. Many people lost their cared for animals anyway.

It was not the active players causing the problem. Rolf also institued a non agro percentage spawn so there would always be some wild spawn. On Deli there is non agro spawn, but its dogs, deer and unicorns. Plenty of agro too so I have no idea why there is anything to fix.

I also hear the term "hoarder" and dislike it as there has never been a reasonable explanation for what that is and how someones animals are effecting anyone elses game play.

[Pingpong 1,070]

One of the main points is that it's "fun" to keep animals, it's one of the draws in wurm. Taming needs some help as the value/effort is non existant (98% effort). I don't want to see AH end up the same way "i gotta get on and sow 50 fields to keep my horses alive". AH IS fun. Lets keep it that way!

[Wulfgar 1,119]

It is obvious that the livestock cap is not high enough, and griefing paying customers by forcing them to log in daily to groom horses won't solve that. The non-aggro cap on Deli was 7k last I checked, lets just say that the livestock cap is 3k of that, that makes it around 2 livestock per player. Either raise the cap significantly or just remove traits and animal conditions so people won't try to breed 5-speed horses or keep zoo's of 5 different colours of each animal.

Maybe try to ask new players what do they think? I am sure new players are pretty tired of being chased down by 10+ aggros everytime they go outside their house for 5 minutes, and being unable to find livestock wandering around in the wild.

If you really want to go down this path of forcing people to log in daily to maintain even a few animals, you will just lose more players. And remember to bring back the skill decay too. If I have to groom my horses to keep them alive, people should also have to use their skills actively for them not to decay.

[Uberknot 327]

Just limit the number you can breed to the ones you have Cared For....that would at least put a cap on the amount of foals someone could produce.

[rixk 830]

If this thing goes live, I think only fair thing to do is to give one free change from love path to something else(without having to start from scratch). Enchant is, what makes love path so desireable.

[darthryan 588]

How about...

1. Animals age more quickly(Reach breeding age faster, die of old age faster if not cared for)

2. Pregnancies are shorter

3. Remove 'Care For' from non premium players

[Alyeska 2,621]

Even as someone who dislikes large numbers of animals on a deed, I can see where Alyeska is coming from. There is a large human perception difference between a horse wandering around in a pen and a horse as a line item in some sort of bulk storage bin type barn.

Ultimately, everything is just 1s and 0s in a database to the computer. But to the typical player, having a visual representation of the object makes it far more meaningful and therefore more "fun" than just having a list like a spreadsheet.

This is the idea; you wouldn't notice it at all in your gameplay except the animals wouldn't move on their own. They already are numbers in a database; right now they are numbers that take up a lot of server space and a part of a server wide cap to allow them a small amount of intelligence. I completely understand keeping horses is more that just pixels, I breed horses ingame for fun, becuase I enjoy how they look on my deed, I enjoy seeing new ones born, etc etc.

But I don't think i would notice any difference if the AI on bred animals was removed (to be fair, AI in wurm means very little to nothing, sometimes a horse won't even properly move to a food source but rather stay still and starve to death). All interactions with the animal can remain, but for the people who do like to keep animals it means they can without their fun affecting someone elses in a negative way)

The real question I have is if the devs are willing to spend a lot of time adressing this issue and not do the first thing that comes to mind (and is easy) - instead of putting an annoying bandaid to cover up the wound.

[Uberknot 327]

This is the idea; you wouldn't notice it at all in your gameplay except the animals wouldn't move on their own. They already are numbers in a database; right now they are numbers that take up a lot of server space and a part of a server wide cap to allow them a small amount of intelligence. I completely understand keeping horses is more that just pixels, I breed horses ingame for fun, becuase I enjoy how they look on my deed, I enjoy seeing new ones born, etc etc.

But I don't think i would notice any difference if the AI on bred animals was removed (to be fair, AI in wurm means very little to nothing, sometimes a horse won't even properly move to a food source but rather stay still and starve to death). All interactions with the animal can remain, but for the people who do like to keep animals it means they can without their fun affecting someone elses in a negative way)

The real question I have is if the devs are willing to spend a lot of time adressing this issue and not do the first thing that comes to mind (and is easy) - instead of putting an annoying bandaid to cover up the wound.

Hell no, I don't want poster child animals I would rather see massive disease wipe them all out again and start over.

Edited May 30, 2012 by Uberknot

[Lumbro 3]

Making diease hit harder would be fine with me. What isn't fine is making me log in every day to do chores.

At this time I have a premium character but I don't log in every day. It's currently about once every other week. I have set up my deed so my small number of horses (8-12) don't die off again (they did once before due to a long absence when I didn't have enchanted grass). It's a pain restarting a herd from scratch. I use enchanted grass so I don't have to check for packed earth every day. I have currently stopped farming because the crops were dying before I could harvest them (I'm living on stockpiled food). Timescales of decay and destruction that obliterate something in less than a week are very bad for me because of the limited time I have for the game at the moment.

Any change that could kill off my animals in the time between my logins is a game breaker for me. I don't expect disease actually to be the issue because the only time my animals share a tile is after birth. However if enchanted grass disappears too easily and the horse then starves to death in less then 2 weeks, that will be an issue for me.

At the moment the balance of time I have to spend doing stuff the game forces on me (chores) compared to spending time doing stuff I want to do (skilling up and building) is about okay. If instead the game changes this so my limited time logged in is completely absorbed with chores, I will wonder why I bother logging in.

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

Making diease hit harder would be fine with me. What isn't fine is making me log in every day to do chores.

At this time I have a premium character but I don't log in every day. It's currently about once every other week. I have set up my deed so my small number of horses (8-12) don't die off again (they did once before due to a long absence when I didn't have enchanted grass). It's a pain restarting a herd from scratch. I use enchanted grass so I don't have to check for packed earth every day. I have currently stopped farming because the crops were dying before I could harvest them (I'm living on stockpiled food). Timescales of decay and destruction that obliterate something in less than a week are very bad for me because of the limited time I have for the game at the moment.

Any change that could kill off my animals in the time between my logins is a game breaker for me. I don't expect disease actually to be the issue because the only time my animals share a tile is after birth. However if enchanted grass disappears too easily and the horse then starves to death in less then 2 weeks, that will be an issue for me.

At the moment the balance of time I have to spend doing stuff the game forces on me (chores) compared to spending time doing stuff I want to do (skilling up and building) is about okay. If instead the game changes this so my limited time logged in is completely absorbed with chores, I will wonder why I bother logging in.

I do not mean to offend, but if you are only coming in to play once every 2 weeks then this is not the game for you. Making allowances for folks that play as 'casual' as you are what is dragging this game down. You really should play a lot more often, or just drop it and go find a more 'casual' game.

[Amber 337]

I agree. I play Wurm to have fun & I deeply resent the idea of being forced to log in more frequently just to do chores to keep my animals alive. Something I think hasn't really been mentioned strongly enough is that for someone who's either grinding AH or producing animals to sell our animals are no different to us than decent iron veins & loads of lumps are to a smith. They are the raw material we need for our chosen skill. With that in mind, if you want to force us to do chores on a regular basis just to be able to keep our mats then it's only fair that you do the same thing all across the board for every skill. I see smiths needing to work with their lumps every day to stop them from decaying rapidly away or needing to mine their ore veins frequently to stop them from disappearing.

Oh, the screaming & rage quitting that would cause but here Rolf is purposing to do the same thing to breeders & it raises hardly a wimper from the majority of players who should be smart enough to see how totally unfair this is even if it doesn't directly effect their game play.

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

I agree. I play Wurm to have fun & I deeply resent the idea of being forced to log in more frequently just to do chores to keep my animals alive. Something I think hasn't really been mentioned strongly enough is that for someone who's either grinding AH or producing animals to sell our animals are no different to us than decent iron veins & loads of lumps are to a smith. They are the raw material we need for our chosen skill. With that in mind, if you want to force us to do chores on a regular basis just to be able to keep our mats then it's only fair that you do the same thing all across the board for every skill. I see smiths needing to work with their lumps every day to stop them from decaying rapidly away or needing to mine their ore veins frequently to stop them from disappearing.

Oh, the screaming & rage quitting that would cause but here Rolf is purposing to do the same thing to breeders & it raises hardly a wimper from the majority of players who should be smart enough to see how totally unfair this is even if it doesn't directly effect their game play.

We used to have everything decay, it's been only 2 years or so that we were given an option to counter it. It was causing massive problems with the tons of raw materials setting around taking up computer cycles to decay and generally slowing the game to a halt. So bsbs and fsbs were created to give you a way to store things without so much decay. Ore, metal, wood, rocks, they do all still decay, but you don't notice it so much because you use a bsb.

Unfortunately horses and other livestock are not items like ore or wood. They are NPCs, they move, fight can take damage, etc. As such they take up much more computer resources and have to have a much lower limit than ore, wood or rock. Horses are 'living' creatures in Wurm and must take more time and effort on your part to keep. If you are unwilling or unable to do that yourself, I suggest joining a village where there may be others to help out. If you insist on living alone and playing only occasionally, then don't plan on keeping animals.

This is not a casual game, time keeps going in the game even after you log out. You need to play regularly to keep everything, both livestock and equipment, in good condition. If you don't want to play regularly, then I again suggest finding a different game. I personally feel that all the nerfs to accommodate casual players is hurting this game. Rolf would not feel the need to change Enchanted tiles if they weren't being used and abused everywhere.

[joedobo 1,187]

Unfortunately horses and other livestock are not items like ore or wood. They are NPCs, they move, fight can take damage, etc. As such they take up much more computer resources and have to have a much lower limit than ore, wood or rock. Horses are 'living' creatures in Wurm and must take more time and effort on your part to keep. If you are unwilling or unable to do that yourself, I suggest joining a village where there may be others to help out. If you insist on living alone and playing only occasionally, then don't plan on keeping animals.

This is not a casual game, time keeps going in the game even after you log out. You need to play regularly to keep everything, both livestock and equipment, in good condition. If you don't want to play regularly, then I again suggest finding a different game. I personally feel that all the nerfs to accommodate casual players is hurting this game. Rolf would not feel the need to change Enchanted tiles if they weren't being used and abused everywhere.

There are so many wrong things in this post. The one I'll write about is your idea on resource consumption for animals. The problem is with the AI the server has to do, to make the animal do its thing. Bulk bins made it so the server doesn't have to apply decay logic or processes to huge quantities of items. The same principle could work with animals and that is why the Barn idea came about. Animals do appear to be more complicated; although, by analogy, $10 is a lot more then a penny but its still a small amount.

Unfortunately Wurm has players like you that like to tell others how to play. Its perfectly possible to be a casual player with a no decay deed and patience. Its also possible to design a breeding/animal system that would fit Amber's needs. CodeClub wouldn't need to nerf enchanted tiles if the breeding system was designed so a player can achieve maximum benefits with around 5 animals.

[Alyeska 2,621]

Hell no, I don't want poster child animals I would rather see massive disease wipe them all out again and start over.

Oh my, it's a useful suggestion with no downsides that would make playing more enjoyable for everyone, better disagree with no arguments!

Don't forget to also make a suggestion post to bring skill decay back.

[Alyeska 2,621]

If you don't want to play regularly, then I again suggest finding a different game.

Thank you for telling people how to play the game. We need more people like this, they make the best suggestions to Rolf that everyone surely will enjoy.

[Amber 337]

Just to clear it up. I am not a casual or infrequent player. I play Wurm for 6 or more hours a day, everyday. I spend a small portion of that time tending my fields & my animals but the bulk of my playing time I spend doing whatever I feel like doing that day be it hunting, just wandering, working on some other skills, terraforming & building, or helping friends out with their projects. Forcing someone to spend the bulk of their playing time doing needless chores in order to simply keep the things they need to have to advance their chosen skill is just wrong. You'd be screaming bloody murder if Rolf was throwing that kind of change on you & I'd be right beside you because it's unfair.

Personally I'm not opposed to the barn idea if I can keep a few animals out for looks. Perhaps the number of outside animals could be determined by deed size?

Seems to all be a moot point now since he's already implemented these stupid changes. We'll see how it goes I guess but personally I'm thinking that if this doesn't drive me out of the game it will allow me to downsize my deeds by a large amount. Who needs big deeds when they have no animals to feed & house? 11x 11 or maybe no deeds at all. I can just pound out 70ql fences & houses so decay really won't be much of an issue for me. Rolf wants to remove the source of my ingame income but that's cool since I can just eliminate the upkeep on my deeds. WTG Rolf!

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

There are so many wrong things in this post. The one I'll write about is your idea on resource consumption for animals. The problem is with the AI the server has to do, to make the animal do its thing. Bulk bins made it so the server doesn't have to apply decay logic or processes to huge quantities of items. The same principle could work with animals and that is why the Barn idea came about. Animals do appear to be more complicated; although, by analogy, $10 is a lot more then a penny but its still a small amount.

Unfortunately Wurm has players like you that like to tell others how to play. Its perfectly possible to be a casual player with a no decay deed and patience. Its also possible to design a breeding/animal system that would fit Amber's needs. CodeClub wouldn't need to nerf enchanted tiles if the breeding system was designed so a player can achieve maximum benefits with around 5 animals.

Ok, if resource consumtion is not an issue for animals, then why is there a cap at all? Animals are MUCH more complicated than items, because they have characteristics and skills just like we do. That's why you can use enchanted weapons on them to steal life or knowledge. That is why there have been a lot of suggestions about barns but they have not been implemented. Can't go having the characteristics and skills of all the animals get averaged in barns like items in bsbs. You would quickly have players screaming about losing their 5 trait horse due to averaging by the barn. This isn't a difference of a penny vs ten dollars, it's more of an apples and oranges difference.

And new players do seem to need help understanding how this game should be played. Yes, you can be a casual player, but you have to accept that there are some skills and items that will not be available to you if you are not willing to spend the time playing properly. A casual player cannot expect to have everything. We also have the players out there abusing enchanted grass, which is why this change took place today. I don't want my enchanted grass to get packed down either, I worked a long time to get the skill and it took me almost a year after that to enchant all my pastures. But now I have to put up with the fact they may get packed down, because some players came around saying you can't tell me how to play and proceeded to fill pens with as many animals they could find. So yes, I will continue to 'tell others how to play' when they are so far off from what they should be doing in the game that they end up affecting my gameplay.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Vroomfondel

[Schwanke 32]

, which is why this change took place today.

I'm confused. Is this on the live server? Or just on test server? Can they be packed now on the live server and I should start re organizing my horses? Or are we waiting a 'final decision' from test before it moves to live?

[darthryan 588]

It's live.... several people have lost tiles already.