Penning Feedback

[Rolf 3,563]

I received this PM today and wonder what you think about the situation and if we should do something about it

<mib_nd83zy> i got 2 fps when passing this place today

<mib_nd83zy> pictures for you

<mib_nd83zy> http://imageshack.us/a/img203/6261/wurm201303220625.png

<mib_nd83zy> http://imageshack.us/a/img18/8706/wurm2013032206252.png

<mib_nd83zy> http://imageshack.us/a/img171/5655/wurm2013032206251.png

<mib_nd83zy> excessive animal hoarding is really driving hunting in to the ground, plus causing lag issues i noticed

[Flyingkiwi 20]

Thats MSkb ranch on exodus owned by Kins, she breeds and looks after them all, i dont think you should do anything at all, except tell the person to get a better PC, i never lag around there, theres a perfectly great hunting spot 2 mins behind there in the S exodus desert full of critters, its not effecting hunting at all

Edited March 22, 2013 by Flyingkiwi

[shakys 526]

a lot of people play just for there pets, even though I don't. but I think it would be a bad idea to make them into food best to leave as is. and let person get a better pc.

[vinius 1,487]

That is nothing.

Should have gone to Whitestone when they still had all of their hell horses

[3dSquareMan 146]

- Game needs better optimization to allow a variety of PC's to play the game

- Server needs to be able to handle more animals (Higher Cap for Non-Agro and Agro Animals)

- Server needs better optimization to support the above.

(And that person probably needs to tone down there settings or upgrade there PC)

[Aetherwalker 1,863]

That seems pretty excessive to me, seeing as no person ever needs more than a half dozen horses each, two carts of two horses each, a steed and a backup. But tbh rather than punishing people who hoard animals, I'd rather the Bred in Captivity trait strip animals of their pathing altogether and just make them into interactive furniture. Less pathing = less lag = less problems.

[rixk 830]

When I sometimes play on my laptop, I also get bad framerates near many animals.. but in no way I can hold someone else responsible for my choice to play on a computer which lacks the power.

[Pryath 181]

That is a little excessive, but this is a sandbox game, designed to let you play the way you want to.

If their fps drops when walking past such a place they should use the advice here - http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/63471-configuring-the-client-looking-nice-while-running-on-low-settings/

If they don't want to compromise on those settings, they should consider upgrading their PC if possible

(of course we should continue to optimize the server/client performance though!!)

[Luniraen 142]

I don't play on that server, but I've seen far worse and not had that much lag passing through.

Shaky's right a lot of people - including myself - play the game for the animals. The new bred in captivity trait will stop people hoarding the best hunting animals, special traits like greenish, raging etc

I think it would be better if bred animals didn't count towards the overall server count for that animal so that new animals were spawning for the people who do want to hunt them or get their own to start breeding. But I don't make the games I just play them, no idea what you'd have to do to solve the problems extra animals on server would cause to lag etc

[Rasu 561]

That person needs to upgrade there PC if they get 2fps near that deed.

[Liari 26]

Stripping the pathing would be good and bad - good as it would stop the clusterbuilding tendences of animals (whole lot of farm tiles, but gathering always either together on grass tiles to get packed dirt or none grass tiles which cannot feed them) but standing on the spot would lead to packed dirt even more.

But I'm breeding as much as I can myself, to get a future stock of neverending leather etc.

And I don't know what excessive breeding has to do with hunting. Those who wants to hunt go out hunting.

Though hunting is difficult for beginners like me, as I still haven't met any lower FS mobs like rats, wild cats, only met spiders, lions, cave bugs, boars and trolls, followed by bears and few wolves.

But even around FM or Southernland Shire I never had significant drop on FPS on my 5 or 6 yrs. old computer, only when using the still older machine with internet access at work on lunch breaks with substandard ATI graphics I had lots of problems with FPS and constant hard disk access due to too few RAM.

[Manny 380]

And I don't know what excessive breeding has to do with hunting. Those who wants to hunt go out hunting.

There's only a limited number of creatures a server can support, so 10 creatures in captivity, is 10 creatures less in the wild.

[Keldun 335]

Aetherwalker is right in that most people don't need more than a handfull of horses, for carts and riding. However those few people that want to run a horse farm will need one or two dozen at least and probably more if they want.

This place does not look overcrowded or neglected in any way though, so i see no issue there.

Also the screenshots seem to be of pretty good quality, if the person doesn't have the PC to handle that quality they should lower it.

However, I do have a moderate labtop I used to run 2-3 clients on two years ago, now I have trouble running one client on minimum settings when being close to a similar farm deed.

But once again that is no reason to limit gameplay, but rather an incentive to check why the requirements increased that drastically and whether there can be anything done about it.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Keldun

[Protunia 735]

Basically to much crowding is diseased and dies.

Not groomed and feed properly is diseased and dies.

Too much crowding will not breed anymore.

Limit Breeding age and amount of times it can bred in its lifetime.

Limit Time of breeding again after one gives birth.

Get rid of Care For lives Forever.

There are lots of things you can do to trim down herds, but if they have a way of making more and more really easy they will continue to do so. You will have to limit them like the items thing per tile.

[MrGARY 12,421]

Regardless of if that is excessive or not, the repercussions of punishing the "abusers" on the "legit" players are often painful and frustrating - look at the drama over enchanted grass and disease.

Don't ruin the game for everyone because of a select few.

[Kamikazifly 70]

Allow a person to only breed 1 new offspring per 2 Animal Husbandry. Have their "bred" count diminish if their offspring is culled, and if another player takes "ownership" of that animal. This would make 50 the max a person could breed. Not the thousands in that picture.

My AH is 41. Rounded up, this would allow me to own a total of 21 babies. This way I could keep my favorite horses, my favorite bulls, and sell the remainder. (Personally, I dont breed a lot of animals. And when i did, 20 seemed to be very small in consideration of the large sized deed they were located on.)

hm... Also include that only 1 animal per 20 tiles is possible to breed on a deed. Make the animals get sick faster if more than this are brought on a deed. This would allow a base 11x11 deed to have 6 animals. And an 81x41 deed to have 165 animals.

Lastly, put the trait of "This horse was bred by KamikaziFly." On all horses. This would allow a breeder to know this animal counts towards their allowed maximum. ... Hm... additionally, make the trait state the current owner. "This horse is owned by Horsebuyer." And make that count towards the max bred count for the new owner. This would allow a non-breeder to have only a few horses/animals for use. (Besides, how could a horse owner own a horse if they can't take care of it with a few Animal Husbandry points).

These changes would force a breeder to cull their herd from not perfect horses. They would be forced to make decisions, instead of keeping everything alive. This would force someone from letting their horses go into the wild (cause they think its a real living horse and do not wish to kill it), would make them kill the horse, freeing up a slot to be bred again.

Make it so a person can not un-own a horse. If it exists, and it was taken from them, then they can type /kill Silverbear and it gets sick and dies within 20minutes. Unless the player who took the horse right clicks the horse/animal and selects ->ChallengeOwnership. Which would then give them the horse and it would no longer be sick from being unowned. Which would add this "new horse" to the "new owner's" "owned animals count".

Force an ownership to be taken of all current bred animals. If ownership is not resolved within "2 weeks" of the day the code is implemented, all those horses/animals get sick and die in "2 months". This will imediatly tell the horse owners that they need to do something. This will give players time who have been away, sick, or in the hospital. Hm... just make them all sick when the code is implemented, but don't cause them to die until 2 months have passed. Replace my word "sick" with "sad". On mouse hover, the horse will display "Sad venerable fat Happyjolly" until an owner is taken.

Furthering the idea of an unowned horse being "Sad", have them display the level of taming bond when it is kept as a pet. "Loyal venerable fat Happyrolf"

• 0-10 Upset
  
• 10-20 Nervous
  
• 20-30 Submissive
  
• 30-40 Calm
  
• 40-50 Tame
  
• 50-60 Loyal
  
• 60-70 Trusting
  
• 70-99 Extremely loyal
  

With these 'new rules' players will understand and accept their limitations, instead of having their few animals to just randomly get sick and die and not understand why.

I believe I kept every player's point of interest in mind while thinking this through.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Kamikazifly

[Protunia 735]

Oh I agree completely limited the amount of times someone can breed based on skill is a good Idea as well.

People will have to be more selective and not just insta spam breed every time something drops.

The problem is that anyone can breed unlimited amount of times as fast as they can as long as they are not pregnant.

There Must be a timer after birth that the animal must rest before allowed to breed again.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Protunia

[Heroic 30]

My opinion is there no change needed, the problem is not with the breeding system.

The problem is with animations and rendering, which should detect excessive framerate drop and automatically lower or stop a set of features, based on the detected fps value. Games often set the graphics settings to recommended set of values, based on a quick benchmark.

[Protunia 735]

My opinion is there no change needed, the problem is not with the breeding system.

The problem is with animations and rendering, which should detect excessive framerate drop and automatically lower or stop a set of features, based on the detected fps value. Games often set the graphics settings to recommended set of values, based on a quick benchmark.

I disagree animals have gestation cycles and cannot be bred constantly right after birth.

They also have a 20-30 day cycle if you fail to breed.

If you do not breed at the right time you have less chance of success

Understanding the Foal Heat Cycle – After giving birth, most mares will have the first ovulation in about half the time of a normal heat cycle. The onset of this “foal heat†can vary with each mare from 5 to 16 days. The mare most commonly ovulates on or about the ninth day post foaling. The mare’s postpartum uterus undergoes significant changes. Placental fluid and lochia (debris) is expelled, and the tissue lining of the uterus regenerates while the size of the uterus decreases. During this process, the mare’s muscles are contracting in the walls of the uterus, directing the contents toward the cervix and outside. Mares may lie down and roll on the day of and after foaling due to the strong contractions and discomfort.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Protunia

[Xandra 353]

Hi,

I received this PM today and wonder what you think about the situation and if we should do something about it

I agree that both lag and the lack of certain wild critters are problems, and that something should be done about it. But it should be something that helps, not something "just to do something".

As for lag, the number of penned animals hasn't changed significantly. But the lag has increased significantly - so it has to have another reason, this much is safe to say. Is it the animations, is it the new models, is it anything else?

Up to the Dev's to find out. It's not penned critters, because there's lag as well where no single penned animal is in the local.

(Remark: The numbers of animals needed for breeding could be reduced if there'd be no more danger of trolls releasing the whole breeding herd, and the number of animals needed for riding could be reduced if aggressive animals would stop to kill them ...)

As for the spawning in the wild, and hunting:

2 different areas here, non-aggressive animals (blue outline) and aggressive critters (red outline). Both of them are spawning constantly, and, as the mrtg shows, the number of both is rather constant - at the respective cap I assume.

Let's have a look at them:

• Non-aggressive animals (blues):
  People are complaining they don't find any horses nor cattle. Instead unicorns are spawning, in great numbers! Or dogs, or deer, whatever lair is in the area.
  It seems lair spawns have precedence over area spawns, and the lairs are producing this much creatures that there's close to no "slot" left for the area spawns ...
  (A unicorn spawn in our area can easily produce 9 unicorns or more, in 1 RL day!)
  .
  
• Aggressive animals (reds):
  Main problem here is, IMHO, the templars. Where there are deeds, a large number of freshly spawned reds are killed within minutes by the ghostly butchers. (They kill all and anything on deed as default)
  When one gets killed another one spawns. And gets killed within minutes. Repeat ... Until it spawns in a caved-in mine, falls into an off-deed mine, or spawns somewhere far out in the wilderness.
  It might even be possible that the slaughtered corpses still count to the cap - not long ago we didn't find a single animal (alive) near our deeds, but when we buried the 30+ corpses littering the limits of the nearby deeds within a very short time a serious number of reds spawned nearby ...
  

These are the reasons for the problems, in my opinion. Of these problems the lag problem should have a high priority, because it's the most hindering one, for all and everyone.

I hope it's addressed with all power and professionalism, without actionism, and without band-aid patches.

Hunt down 'em bugs, squish 'em, don't forget to bury 'em after. Libila might come to raise 'em again, else ...

Have fun!

[Void 75]

- Game needs better optimization to allow a variety of PC's to play the game

- Server needs to be able to handle more animals (Higher Cap for Non-Agro and Agro Animals)

- Server needs better optimization to support the above.

(And that person probably needs to tone down there settings or upgrade there PC)

This.

+ if someone got lag with the animals on the screenshots he should play the game on a pc instead of a toaster.

[Aariez 87]

That's not excessive in my honest opinion. It is a pity for those with computers that can't handle the performance requirements, but having a cattle ranch or horse farm should not be something players should be penalised for.

[McGarnicle 1,463]

If you want to blow 5h of sleep bonus on Animal Husbandry then you need a lot of animals. It takes almost 30s to groom one which is 2 per minute or 120 per hour. Since you can't groom the same animal for 1h after it has been groomed, then you need this many to cycle back to the first one after the first hour. One solution would be to remove the 1 hour cool down.

[Kamikazifly 70]

I agree with Xandra, that my RAM that Wurm takes has doubled since last year. Are we not releasing memory properly?

I'm fine with the amount of RAM that Wurm does take, if its due to the new graphics. I am totally fine with more and improved gaming.

But... its well known that the deed Kyara has much lag on it. I don't know why, but you being the creator, you could go look at Kyara and decide what is causing all that lag. If you figure it out, you might be able to come to a happy resolution.

[Corwen 164]

Why limit people because someone has a crappy computer?

Why limit people to avoid animal counts?

Why tell anyone in a sandbox game what they can and cant do if they are playing within the rules,

All these limits are putting "lipstick on a pig" so to speak. Instead of implementing limits, the game should be expanded. Im not talking about adding server after server after server. Im talking about building the game to fit players, not restricting players to fit the game.

This game has limits due to the platform it is on. If you want a real mainstream mmo, then get away from this overgrown browser game and build a real one.