Epic Council.

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

In other words you'll listen to your old pals from Wild. Typical Posteh.

But that's just it isn't it? Epic is dying and since you're the only ones left you deserve to call the shots. If it hasn't sunk in by now I don't think there's any future left for Epic.

Have to agree with Kral. Postes, do you really want to remain on a dying server, alone, wondering why we stay away? Or do you think it's time you actually READ the suggestions made by us Freedomers? We actually do make good suggestions, not just rants. The PVP system as it is designed is what is keeping others away. Simply tweaking it to suit your needs is not enough, it needs a major overhaul, or it will never be a success. And that means getting as much input as possible to design a new system. Any businessman would look at his non-customers and find out what they want, so he can turn them into customers. Your attitude is "We play PVP, not you, so only we can make good suggestions" and that is quite arrogant of you. It is the equivalent of saying you are better than me, and I will not tolerate that from anyone. Get over yourself.

[Postes 5,282]

Do I really want to read suggestions from Freedomers about changes to a server that they don't actively play on or ever played on? No, no I don't. Thanks for your question.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Postes

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

Do I really want to read suggestions from Freedomers about changes to a server that they don't actively play on or ever played on? No, no I don't. Thanks for your question.

Then you can remain alone and ignorant on a dying server. Hope you enjoy playing with yourself all day.

[Ruger 610]

Get some reading skills Posteh.

This. I never said -1 to anything. What I said was no I do not like your suggestion and this is why. You really do need to get some reading skills. Their is more to reading then just reading "The dog ran across the road." You might of read it but do you comprehend it? This entire thread here, I think you have read it but I do not believe you are fully comprehending what people are saying.

Do I really want to read suggestions from Freedomers about changes to a server that they don't actively play on or ever played on? No, no I don't. Thanks for your question.

If the server is dead but people are showing and have showed interest in it but their are certain things that drive them away. Then it is for the best of the server for all players to be able to suggest something for it. Not 6 players who actively play on it, who have been there since day one. But an even shorter response to that question: Then do not post suggestions if you do not want to hear what everyone has to say.

[Postes 5,282]

If the server is dead I would rather hear from the people on Epic how to fix it and revise it, but not from people who don't play on it. You seem to just have a lot of trouble accepting that one person (myself) doesn't value your opinion, we aren't always going to agree on here. We all have different opinions, but you two seem deeply upset that I don't want to hear from you.

Spoilers: I don't really read your posts because you don't play on Epic, lol. I just don't want to bother with people who are clueless like yourself. if you open your post with the sentence of, "I don't play on Epic, but.." you can probably bet I just scrolled down and ignored it.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Postes

[Kadore 926]

Do I really want to read suggestions from Freedomers about changes to a server that they don't actively play on or ever played on? No, no I don't. Thanks for your question.

You might want to figure out reasons why a bunch, myself included played on Epic 3-4 months then left.

The biggest thing Epic seems to need at the moment is players to play a game designed for a large number of players, insight to why we're back on Freedom and not there when all it takes is a portal click might be something to explore.

[Postes 5,282]

Sure, Kadore, I would listen to you because you WERE on Epic, that's different, but I won't really take much thought into players who have never tried, stepped foot, or associated with Epic at all. You tried and it didn't like it and I agree you insight would be heavily useful, but only because you actually experienced it. Others have not yet still wish to talk for the sake of talking. There is a difference.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Postes

[Kraljtatov 34]

I think you're the one having difficulties getting past that as most if not all of us have heard it already and explained why we disagree.

You also seem fairly confident that most of Freedom has never tried Epic. I think your fancy little graph says otherwise.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Kraljtatov

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

Sure, Kadore, I would listen to you because you WERE on Epic, that's different, but I won't really take much thought into players who have never tried, stepped foot, or associated with Epic at all. You tried and it didn't like it and I agree you insight would be heavily useful, but only because you actually experienced it. Others have not yet still wish to talk for the sake of talking. There is a difference.

Just because you've never seen Vroom on Epic does not mean I haven't tried it.

[Klaa 4,872]

Just because a player has not played on Epic does not mean the input has no merit. Aside from changes affecting both clusters, how else is one to gather feedback on why people dont play Epic to name just one possible use. Especially when someone believes people are leaving Epic in droves.

[Postes 5,282]

And I never said their input were unwelcomed or wouldn't be used, I never said they couldn't make suggestions or ideas -- they read what they want, as I said.

All I said the council would do would TAKE threads proposed (even by Freedomers) and discuss them if they would be suitable for Epic for crafters, pvpers, home server players, and elevation players, and bring the warranted ones up to Rolf's attention first rather than them all getting lost in a sea of threads and archives. Again, people read what they want, people want to make it out to be an elitist group that only they can make any suggestions at all. It's not, but you can't really make people realize that. I am not saying people's input from Freedom, aren't welcomed -- I am saying that I think they need to be agreed upon by Epic players, not Freedom players.

Yes Freedomers may have "good" ideas, but I don't think they will always understand the underlining problems of Epic without actually playing on it. I would much rather proposed suggestions being chosen by actual players on Epic than Rolf who doesn't play.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Postes

[Klaa 4,872]

Aside from people having a hard time agreeing to what a solution may be...let alone agreeing to what exactly is an underlying problem to begin with.

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

Several problems with your way to run a council. First, sorting out good ideas from bad: who's criteria is to be used to decide good ideas from bad? Same goes for your idea that only Epic players should agree on suggestions, not Freedomers. Your are being exclusive, not inclusive in your planning, and you will end up with another Epic that only you guys will want to play. I mean, you want to exclude us from the decision process, so we can only expect more of that behavior playing the game under rules you set up. Also, you are expecting Epic players to be able to come to an agreement on a game change. That really makes me laugh. So few ideas would ever come out of the council it would soon disband because it took up too much time and came to no conclusions. Having Freedom players on the council would not change that, which is why I keep saying let us ALL make suggestions, let Rolf make the decisions, and we will cry out loud when he really gets it wrong. It may be a sloppy way to get things done, but things are getting done.

And everyone needs to remember this: Just because Rolf never says anything on the suggestion forums does NOT mean he doesn't read them. I've seen many suggestions from both sides that did get implemented, even a minor one of my own. I've also made many suggestions that went nowhere, but I never decided that Rolf never listens just because he did not listen to me. THAT is arrogance.

[Xianruflux 59]

Firstly, let me state that I played on Epic for several months under the character name Jerriatrix. Now that I have established credentials I will begin.

Epic's biggest problem appears to be population. A server's population needs two conditions to grow. Firstly it needs new players to visit the server and secondly it needs to retain a portion of those players. To only focus on one condition ie retention is tunnel vision. Further, doing it in the manner that certain Posters do is off-putting to many potential Epic players at it smacks of the acerbic elitism that certain established members of the PvP community wear as a mantle of their seniority. If as a community, and individually, you refuse to examine how your own behaviour has contributed to the current state of the Epic cluster you will never create an attractive PvP scenario in this game and no one can help you.

A suggestion: Take some of the mystery out of PvP grinding. Each of you has the secrets but you all refuse to share them with the wider community due to a mistaken fear that your enemy may not know about that specific secret grind and you somehow will lose an advantage over them. Or possibly you fear some of your grinding secrets may be considered exploits and you fear losing them. If they are exploits then that is another problem that needs to be fixed before people are asked to join a game that is broken. I dare you to make a sticky on the Epic Forum titled "How to Grind for PvP" and fill it with your secrets. That may just take enough of the mystery out of your game to make it inviting for Freedomites to visit and perhaps even stick around and play with the big boys.

I was around for the demise of Wild. The same conditions have now developed on Epic. The same community is trying to solve the same issues in the same way. The same result is inevitable. The PvP community has to look outside of itself as well as inside itself to find solutions.

One last thing - after the reset: no uniques or artifacts.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Xianruflux

[Vroomfondel 1,128]

Firstly, let me state that I played on Epic for several months under the character name Jerriatrix. Now that I have established credentials I will begin.

Epic's biggest problem appears to be population. A server's population needs two conditions to grow. Firstly it needs new players to visit the server and secondly it needs to retain a portion of those players. To only focus on one condition ie retention is tunnel vision. Further, doing it in the manner that certain Posters do is off-putting to many potential Epic players at it smacks of the acerbic elitism that certain established members of the PvP community wear as a mantle of their seniority. If as a community, and individually, you refuse to examine how your own behaviour has contributed to the current state of the Epic cluster you will never create an attractive PvP scenario in this game and no one can help you.

A suggestion: Take some of the mystery out of PvP grinding. Each of you has the secrets but you all refuse to share them with the wider community due to a mistaken fear that your enemy may not know about that specific secret grind and you somehow will lose an advantage over them. Or possibly you fear some of your grinding secrets may be considered exploits and you fear losing them. If they are exploits then that is another problem that needs to be fixed before people are asked to join a game that is broken. I dare you to make a sticky on the Epic Forum titled "How to Grind for PvP" and fill it with your secrets. That may just take enough of the mystery out of your game to make it inviting for Freedomites to visit and perhaps even stick around and play with the big boys.

I was around for the demise of Wild. The same conditions have now developed on Epic. The same community is trying to solve the same issues in the same way. The same result is inevitable. The PvP community has to look outside of itself as well as inside itself to find solutions.

One last thing - after the reset: no uniques or artifacts.

Thank you, that was very well put.

[Postes 5,282]

Didn't I make a thread similar to that giving a ton of PvP tips? o_O

I think some are missing my bigger point was that I think Epic is dying because no updates go in, and regardless if they're from an Elevation player, Home player, or Freedom player they don't seem to go in at all. There's no voting system, and I rarely see any posts from Rolf in suggestion threads, or any developers. I think most just get swept under the rug. This was just a way to help bring ideas to Rolf more directly.

Epic has been up for months and I can't think of any real updates in past months aside from lamps (which was a freedom code), and .. Karma, which I don't know who suggested. Nothing seems to change, the development is very slow and I think it's difficult for Rolf to go through 10+ pages of Suggestions and find which is good and which isn't for 8+ servers.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Postes

[ashoof 43]

As a former epic player, and have been following threads like these, I honestly think an epic council is good in theory, but the positions will just be held by elitist players that seems are becoming a common sight in this game.

I detest elitists but it seems some of the players on elic currently dont want to hear the ideas of their freedom counter parts....after all if you listened to what we have to say (especially us former epic players) you can realize what needs to be done to bring us back over to epic

The main problem I see is a very vocal epic players minority trying to make rule changes that will better effect their playstyle in the long term.

Now the council is good in theory, but will be hijacked by said minority....

So sadly -1 from me

[ashoof 43]

However, building on my last post. If you added in some former epic players in, and perhaps some potential freedomites who are considering taking the plunge I would have to reconsider my last vote.

[Gaeron 551]

I have read about the chaos council, it failed. From what I understand they were put together under the same reasoning this epic council to be put together. So Im unsure of how the epic council will succeed when the proof is in the pudding, councils in this game fail.

Creating a council takes away the voice of every other player in the game and leaves it to a select group to come up with the best ideas for all the people. Crusader, I am not saying you would or would not do this, but real life history has even shown that councils create there own agenda and make things worse instead of making things better.

This is incorrect. The aim of the chaos council was to gather and funnel ideas from the player base. I actively polled the MR population at the time and put forwards idea whether I liked them or not. What I could do was gather together several similar ideas and present them as a bundle. The other members had the same remit for their kingdom. Rather than take away players voices we were supposed to be the means by which their voices reached Rolf. We did try.

With any council you can only discuss so much at a time, if you want something to reach completion you need to limit how many discussions run concurrently. Things get queued and some players don't like it if their ideas are sitting with a ticket waiting for their number to come up.

Also, as this thread has shown, the Wurm forum population is vocal and often lacking in restraint. Not the worst I've seen but well... on some subjects bad enough. The members of the chaos council were generally agreed as being some of the most suitable choices but even so there were still plenty of accusations flying, some shouted loud, some whispered, in game, in forums, in Irc and as far as I could tell on all counts unsustainable.

Any council in Wurm is going to be the target of a lot of partisan suspicion, negativity and harassment. The moment that any change, no matter how small that appears to favour one side or another then the it won't hit the fan it will bury it. This is why I was pushing Zculs suggestion system on uservoice. The ideas are recorded, voting is anonymous and you will get feed back, this idea is being looked into, this was rejected because, implementing this one. Maybe there needs to be three separate suggestion stacks client / PvP Server / Non PvP Server

[GravityDog 41]

Didn't I make a thread similar to that giving a ton of PvP tips? o_O

.......

If that thread is still available, could you link to it please?

[Suntzu 644]

-1 simply because you lie in your op about player count continualy dropping. Not to mention you have caused people to quit since the map started so if anything you are the one who should have nothing to do with this.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Suntzu

[Postes 5,282]

The player count dropped since the very opening days of Epic:

You can see after the start of the January it was a huge drop (people likely bought 2 months premium at start of October, it ran out December, and they didn't reprem). Mongols were creatured in February, and you'll see there's no big drop off because we formed.

Home servers have done somewhat better, but they never really grew. They stayed about the same with no influx of new players really staying:

The numbers (least on Elevation) dropped from day one. its biggest peek was the first month it opened because people like new servers, and people likely thought Epic would be more different in gamestyle, which it wasn't.

Again, you all like to read what you want. I never said I was in the council. I never said I would head it. I never said I'd do anything even Council-related, I just think Rolf needs to appoint a select few members from the kingdoms and servers to help directly bring forth agreed suggestions to him and get insight/discussion on what can help fix Epic server.

GravityDog - http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/54562-tips-tricks-and-advice-for-pvp/

I can't really go around to each kingdom teaching them to PvP or release a guide, I think you should just rely on your kingdom mates to tell you how to.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Postes

[Protunia 735]

Doing Stuff.....

You and I both know how it went down Postes and it was from the very beginning regardless of what you called your Kingdom at the time.

Tossing up charts really shows many people wanted to give it a try and it ended up being the same ole same ole so they left after a 2-3 months.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Protunia

[Postes 5,282]

Tossing up charts really shows many people wanted to give it a try and it ended up being the same ole same ole so they left after a 2-3 months.

Sure, people likely wanted a better bigger change from Wild or Freedom, but that doesn't mean you still can't save or revise it now. I don't really think you can save Chaos (personal opinion), but I do think Epic still has a bigger chance of success if more changes and suggested were added in from the players and from players who have left Epic. The trouble is if Rolf will really ever get around to it. I am not trying to call Rolf lazy, I think he is just too busy and has too much on his plate to manage so many servers and know what updates/suggestions are best and liked by their respective community.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Postes

[Xianruflux 59]

I wasn't going to respond again to this thread but a couple of things needed saying:

I can't really go around to each kingdom teaching them to PvP or release a guide, I think you should just rely on your kingdom mates to tell you how to.

This was not a request made of you personally but of your community. Nor was it suggested it be done on the Epic servers as this in no way fulfils the purpose of making the information available to non-Epic players in order to take some of the mystery out of your community and make it more tempting to visit. The fact that you and the community are unable to see this makes it clear to me that you are not willing to play on a level field and that alone makes venturing there unappealing to anyone with a sense of fair play.

Lastly, this: http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/65308-looking-for-protunias-or-kraljtatovs-deed-on-epic/, and you wonder why no one wants to come an play with you. Not one of you has spoken out against this post. As long as this type of behaviour continues to be tolerated and encouraged you will not have an attractive community.

Chew on them thoughts and tell me how input from that community wether it be in a council format, or on this forum, is going to help save Epic.

Good Luck with it though