Happy New Year!

[Amadee 1,543]

Happy New Year!

On the subject of new people feeling they can make a home in Wurm, I think back to my own starting experience. I started end of July or early Aug, and was fortunate to have a long-time player friend who talked me into trying it. What she did was let me stay in her guest house, told me how to start a small cart, showed me where to cut some trees, and gave me a temp spot to build a small house so I could get my feet wet. I built the cart and a couple walls of the house, and that's all it took to convince me I wanted to prem and get my own deed. I now have two prem accts and two deeds.

But not everyone has the luxury of already knowing someone in game. So, to my mind, something that would somewhat recreate the experience I had would be nice. Something like Brash_Endeavors orphanage but that is "official" and right in their faces when they leave the tutorial so they know it exists. I don't think anyone could expect Brash to stand around the start point trying to herd newbies to the orphanage, and I applaud her for making it available.

I've read about the "starter" towns, but have no idea how they work other than that they evidently don't. Maybe an improvement on those? Maybe give newbies a small spot for a week to show what they can do when they're ready to head off on their own, and like others have mentioned, make a sort of achievement goal of making a cart, starting a house, etc?

[Maroonhawk 7]

I think that it is better idea to make post-tutorial server big as deliverance, exo there players are capped to 20 level and can stay (or instantly get into freedom cluster servers) until they feel that game is for them and they know goals etc. Less abandoned shacks and so on.

A golden valley-like server would be cool. As long as we don't make the other servers premium-only.

It's funny that you guys mention that, because Golden Valley used to be exactly this. It was open and after completing the tutorial you stayed on GV and got a feel for the game until you decided to move on to one of the "real" servers. Of course, all servers except GV were also premium-only at the time, but I seem to recall that being generally well-received...altough that was ages ago, so perhaps my recollection is a bit hazy

[gbelcik 116]

why are all these post coming up on the client explaining how great wurm is?? look heres a chart showing how great wurm is that we are making money.

1.0 sucks, i have to turn off all the graphical features of it in order to even play it

FIX BUGS THAT MAKE GAME UNPLAYABLE

im sure new players LOVE reconnecting 11 times before they can finally play

or crossing their fingers that they dont crash EVERY time they walk through a minedoor

and why lie about the traders? people have these traders locked up so that they can drain them for themselves.... not the public, and who is going to buy something from the trader and not instantly redrain the 20% back from it? i dont know of anyone who does that.

here let me make a chart for you
/>http://i.imgur.com/0nDKu.jpg

[Guest Docterchese]

About missions, for me it was very much: build a house house, then boat, then travel everywhere + enjoy the scenery, then have a better house (moved to a village by that point,) then skills, then a bit of game profit.

If I had to give a new player 5 "initial tasks" it would be:

- Build a house.

- Feed & sustain yourself. (Through farming, hunting, whatever.)

- Build a sailboat/rowing boat (depends how soon they prem )

- Travel around, lets say a total of 30km from the first day you played.

- Make some money (maybe something low like 10c, don't want it to be too high because a new player's introduction to the game shouldn't be "spam 500 dirts.")

Those four goals introduce 5 major game concepts:

- Housing

- Survival +/or farming.

- Boats/vehicles and skills.

- The landscape and sheer beauty of Wurm.

- Economy.

I think that new player retention could be better if people were better introduced to everything. I was lucky in that I quickly understood the sandbox concept and quickly set myself goals (with some Wiki help.) I also had about 2 weeks of free time to play and learn about the game a lot. Getting new players to directly try a lot of the major game concepts post-tutorial and "learning extreme basics like how to walk" would really help. I was again fortunate that having built a ship I found I liked shipbuilding, which kept me in the game for a few months which ended up being a few months enough to get me hooked!

Wurm has survived on luck of the right player to come along every time and get settled well into the game. It'd be nice if the "maybes" could get pointed in the right direction more and more consistently than a 30 minute tutorial. Wurm's community is fantastic but it will not and has not ever stretched out to every new player to help them along. I'd love to see a missions system to help more new players along

Oh and happy new year too

[shadowblasta 142]

. Maybe having a Freedom mission system might help out with that some?

You can make your own missions XD its what i do, wander around- find someone who needs help, Viola mission

Escort mission - help someone reach a certain village

Hunting mission - Clear out mine filled with monster

Gathering mission - Get materials they need for a favor, mount or money

I do this from time to time when im bored, even help lost noobs

[Sklo:D 2,210]

Referring to the premium player problem.

@Rolf: I just say the keywords EVENTs and EMs

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Happy new year and pls test updates first on the test server

Edited January 2, 2013 by Sklo:D

[Suntzu 644]

Stay away from my traders!

[yarnevk 257]

I think having a list of achievements, that's visible to the player (make it obvious early on in the tutorial how they can find the window with achiements so they can't miss it), could help with the "what to do now" problem.

That list of achievements is already there on the menu but a bit buried to turn it on, it would be simple to make it a list of possible achievements with the ones that they have not done yet greyed out, rather than just listing those you have done.

The hover description needs to go in a text field though, as some of the names are intentionally silly and meaningless. Even then the description is also sometime silly and that is OK. that it does not spell exactly what you need to do.

That is automatically a list of goals to go do that exists in game already, and would give the new player a sense of how massively huge the game is beyond build a shack and a cart. We do not need to lead them around with wild goose chase quests and missions (as does come up but is not part of Freedom), just a list of things that they can do is all some will need to inspire them.

If tying into Steam distribution then these achievements also tie to their Steam profile, and all their friends lists on Steam can see it and ask their friends what they did to get the latest achievements. It could also be tied to facebook, as long as it is defaulted off as not everyone wants all friends to know how geeky they really are.

Edited January 2, 2013 by yarnevk

[yarnevk 257]

As an elder of Silent Hill on that server, we took in a large number of new players. Because of the help and advice they recieved, about 70% of them bough premium time and have kept it up. Some now with skills in the 80's and higher, which can only serve as a welcome note to other new players wanting to try Wurm.

Indeed, this is exactly why there should never be a new player only server (Release and Pristine are new alts, which includes old players) How would they ever learn what is possible if they are surrounded by others like themselves that have no clue? Like lemmings they would all quit in two weeks after making their shack.

Edited January 2, 2013 by yarnevk

[yarnevk 257]

and why lie about the traders? people have these traders locked up so that they can drain them for themselves...

This.

Locked up drained traders do nothing to help new players wurk in wurm. Nerf the price and have the king pay the owner directly with their cut, but keep the owners hands out of the kingdom coin that needs to be in the till for players to sell stuff to the trader, and prohibit locking them up. There is no haggling, so finding a barter that exactly matches is impossible without coins. Traders are not serving the intended purpose of promoting middle man trade of piece goods, thus the only actual traders are those that use meta-game communications (forum, irc) for bulk goods.

Edited January 2, 2013 by yarnevk