Declining Players? Perhaps Offering Different Experiences Would Help!

[joedobo 1,187]

Declining players? Perhaps offing different types of experiences would help!

 

Please Wurm, diversify your offerings so players can, "look for true adventure and real glory [by experiencing Wurm which] offers a world without [imposed play styles]".

 

Note, I'm asking for an option to play a different way, not removing any existent paths. Unless someone can produce a unbiased well supported return on investment report for this we otherwise can only guess if it would be financially beneficial. A small test run could be used to test it out. I can't see how this wouldn't be profitable.

 

Here are two examples:

-- No-aggro server. Aggro cap 0, domestic cap max and prevent lair spawn. Need to add furs to a peaceful creature.

-- Hunting server (aggro cap 90%, domestic cap 10%). Change deed creatures per a tile ratio so its normalized, if 15 works for 10k creatures than 75 would work for 2k. Try to skew the lair creation more towards difficult creatures. All mobs bash fences/house walls and strong creatures like trolls can do significant damage.

 

[thenewcndo 528]

-10

[Nicrolis 980]

-10

 

 

Because the first reply was so helpful... I will reply lol.

 

This could work out, but I don't think having a non-agro server would be worth it. It would just turn into a place to farm leather and other things that only non agros drop. The hunting server on the other hand, has had alot of mixed replies. Alot are for it, alot are against it. I personally would love a hunting server. More ideas for different server types would be best. Im not sure what kind Id personally like to see added though.

 

Edit: Wanted to post more on the differences of farming an agro vs a non agro. Non agro items like hide are harder to come by on normal servers, while meat, fur, and HC components are not. From what I was seeing in other threads about hunting servers, adding one would not affect the economy very much. Adding a non agro server will cause hide to become readily available, as most hides come from non agros.

 

+0? Ill change this to a +1 if I can see some other ideas =D

Edited October 7, 2013 by Nicrolis

[Shiraek 464]

ATM more servers (for any reason) would mean spreading an already thin population even more thinly, probably leading to further decline. Once we've got more population, I totally support the notion of some variety in server rulesets.

 

The focus on the first five hours of play is exactly where I'd be if it was my game, so hats off! Just the no-agro-for-first-24-hours should make a noticeable difference to retention rate. Maybe a tiny one like 5% but still measurable - and such a simple change. You want to impart as much knowledge to the player in the first 5 hours as possible, but in an interactive, rewarding and fun way. Ideally they should end that tutorial experience with survival knowledge, skills and equipment. Things like a fishing rod and a sickle...

 

Medium term I'd work to invert the learning curve (impossible at first, easy later at the moment, ideally you want to start easy and scale relatively smoothly up to impossible, or scale faster at player's option with more reward for more risk)

 

And then I'd probably focus on adding NPC content to PVE servers. But Rolf loves his PVP (don't know why, especially after this latest fiasco where the Epic population seems utterly determined to torpedo a publicity stunt AND blame Rolf for it)

[Aetherwalker 1,863]

Different experience? Just go play a different game. The problem atm is that we've had a price hike with no increase in quality of service, so people are not bothering to keep their alts prem, and less new players are getting prem as it's more expensive. Either give us reason to justify the price hike, or suffer.

[Klaa 4,872]

Hey now don't be lumping together the entire Epic/PvP population as being out to torpedo publicity stunts and blame Rolf.

 

In fact to avoid any other implicit lumping together, I shall explicitly state I am not speaking as a CA, CM, GM, or some other alphabetical soup of Wurm staff; though, I still have to keep in mind there's a large visible graphic slapped under my user ID (downside of volunteering is one cant be as much of a free speaking ###### as per usual), but I knew full well what I was getting into.

 

Nay, I speak as one of the aforementioned PvP population in Wurm, formerly of Chaos, currently of Epic atm...

 

Lumping us all together at all is a stretch at best. PvP by its very nature is competitive, and even good-natured competition gives birth to divides. The competition goes on long enough for all kinds of history and bad blood to unfold: dirty tricks, back-stabbing, side-stabbing, front-stabbing, and the occasional bludgeoning (Mmm good times  ).

 

Anyways I digress. The point is the population agreeing on any common agenda (aside from the desire to yank the rug out from under each other) would be nothing short of a miracle. Now granted there will be a spoiled few as in any group, making the rest smell... fingers will fly on that one (see PvP).

 

Just do not make the mistake of assuming some homogenized political agenda.

 

Personally I could have cared less about the Bashur name change, and felt the entire affair was blown waaaay out of proportion.

 

EDIT: OP-wise... Eh I dunno. Wurm is a fairly diverse sandbox experience for different playstyles already, so hard to say how to "offer different experiences" more so.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Klaa

[Gronkh 15]

we have a hunting server already. it is called Affliction  . But seriously i want a non pvp affliction style server. but a non-aggro server? once you get to 20fs there is no more danger in wurm. by then you can ride horses and run away from trolls. the only "danger" for higher fs folks. what i would really like to see is a premium member only server

[Void 75]

-1

 

They can´t even maintain the game in a stable form like it is now.

[Dextrome 123]

There's too many servers already imo >_>

[joedobo 1,187]

spreading the population thing......Players who are quitting are not contributing to population in the first place. The point of offering a different experience is to try and retrain players who quit. Multiple servers bave been proven to be a good thing. Many folks on Indy didn't want to see the new sever cluster out of fear of how it would affect the community. Other then maybe a little hassle involved with trade its been a good thing.

 

 

Different experience? Just go play a different game. The problem atm is that we've had a price hike with no increase in quality of service, so people are not bothering to keep their alts prem, and less new players are getting prem as it's more expensive. Either give us reason to justify the price hike, or suffer.

A perfect example of the type of player who, mo, is hurting Wurm. So essentially, "Hey!, play wurm the way I say and if you don't like it, quite, yea, leave looser"

Its a proven strategy to diversify and target different groups of people. Rolf had to increase prices, he didn't want to do it. There arn't enough Dev resources to add lots of justification features. It would be a better plan to try and retain a larger portion of the player who quite. In order to retain these quitters you have to offer different products/experiences.

[Marshlander 188]

While I do agree - very generally - that catering to differing flavours of the general Wurm experience might be a good idea, I think that separating these into different servers is highly problematic. New players are constantly asking the question in the first few hours: "what server am I on? How do I get to <insert any server name here>?" Often the only realistic answer is: restart the tutorial! (or wait until the servers are connected and build your ship until then...)

 

Why not roll these features into one server? Don't let all creatures spawn everywhere. Have areas that never spawn anything other than rats, wolves, lions, bears and goblins. Then have areas where you always have a lot of spiders, or where there's a constant influx of trolls. I like how you get certain types of critters more than others (spiders seem to be a constant in my area, and currently we also have angry trolls visiting), but it's perhaps too random over time.

 

I don't see the point in a non-aggro server... wouldn't it be extremely boring and remove more features from the already reduced freedom experience (like weapon & armorsmithing, and fighting)? I think low-aggro areas would suffice even for the most timid player. Protection is a strong factor in working together - remove the danger and you're just left with competition over space and resources and a smaller market (because of no incentive to sell or buy weapons, shields and armor).

[zorako 178]

All games see an exit of players after they have played 3 to 5 years to go play something different. No dev team can make enough new content to keep everyone interested forever. Those leaving need to be replaced by many new players.

 

I made an alt yesterday and found the tutorial server was still as laggey as 6 months ago and maybe even worse. When the new player numbers reached 17 there were lots of resyncs teleporting people back to where they were several minutes before and having trouble moving at all sometimes.

 

I  do not think you need more servers on Epic, I think they need a better server for the starting tutorial. First impressions are important.

[Shiraek 464]

Hey now don't be lumping together the entire Epic/PvP population as being out to torpedo publicity stunts and blame Rolf.

 

In fact to avoid any other implicit lumping together, I shall explicitly state I am not speaking as a CA, CM, GM, or some other alphabetical soup of Wurm staff; though, I still have to keep in mind there's a large visible graphic slapped under my user ID (downside of volunteering is one cant be as much of a free speaking ###### as per usual), but I knew full well what I was getting into.

 

Nay, I speak as one of the aforementioned PvP population in Wurm, formerly of Chaos, currently of Epic atm...

 

Lumping us all together at all is a stretch at best. PvP by its very nature is competitive, and even good-natured competition gives birth to divides. The competition goes on long enough for all kinds of history and bad blood to unfold: dirty tricks, back-stabbing, side-stabbing, front-stabbing, and the occasional bludgeoning (Mmm good times  ).

 

Anyways I digress. The point is the population agreeing on any common agenda (aside from the desire to yank the rug out from under each other) would be nothing short of a miracle. Now granted there will be a spoiled few as in any group, making the rest smell... fingers will fly on that one (see PvP).

 

Just do not make the mistake of assuming some homogenized political agenda.

 

Personally I could have cared less about the Bashur name change, and felt the entire affair was blown waaaay out of proportion.

 

EDIT: OP-wise... Eh I dunno. Wurm is a fairly diverse sandbox experience for different playstyles already, so hard to say how to "offer different experiences" more so.

 

I'm sure it's not a completely homogenised political agenda - honestly I was *very surprised* to hear about what happened - that's not the wurm player population I know and love for sure. But tell me, what do you think Bashur's experience on, say, Deliverance would have been if he showed up with the same goals, minus the PVP?

[Wulfgar 1,127]

Why not roll these features into one server? Don't let all creatures spawn everywhere. Have areas that never spawn anything other than rats, wolves, lions, bears and goblins. Then have areas where you always have a lot of spiders, or where there's a constant influx of trolls.

 

This is a very good suggestion. Instead of spreading the population across more and smaller servers, we should aim for bigger servers. Deliverance, Exodus and Celebration should be merged (with a new landmass) to one server, so it is the same size of Independence and Chaos.

Dedicated servers for items and animals should be looked into, to combat some of the lag issues related to larger maps.

Increasing the minimum speed of large ships, combined with better bulk transportation methods (and perhaps slight increase in cart speed as well) for inland transportation would make the maps seem smaller and at the same time provide more space to settle. There should also be clay spots in-land, again to encourage more people to settle away from the coasts.

 

We need to tighten the community, not spread it out.

One saturday a few weeks ago I spend the whole day doing corpse runs and travelling 1/4th of Deliverance. I encountered 1 group of people in local for the entire time. Lets populate the existing servers before we look into more servers...

[Elen 1,013]

-1

[MaurizioAM 919]

I do not agree with most of the threads as of late about the state of the game...

Since I've been back the active player count on a daily basis has been around 1k OK so there has been a few times its been down to 800 or so bit for the most part its still the same just about.

About those of you looking for some changes like new maps with no agro, I just don't see a point in playing if that is the case. Adventure which wurm has lots of is very interesting if you were to try it. Heck for those of you who have never been to chaos or epic why not give them a look? You can jump a portal or sail back if you don't like it. And what is there really to lose? A few pixels a few skills in worst case. But chaos for example can be fun and not everyone is looking to kill every new player to the server. Don't get me wrong there are people who might try but find out a head of time which group you can hang out with to where you will be protected.

And lastly I just want to say the influx of new players on chaos has been great. Not only that but the retention rate my group has been able to have and the amount of new players that have I fact premiumed up and some with multi accounts I cannot agree with the lack of players going premium at least not the ones who have joined with us.

[Torgrim 403]

-1

 

No more servers unless it's needed for the game to run smooth. Focus should be on making the game better for everyone, not making up new rule sets that only apply if you move to some new server.

 

I don't see any problems with aggro creatures, fighting is easy in this game, too easy most of the time (not counting PvP). Aggressive creatures are only a problem to new players, so, please solve that problem if anything. Having new players starting out on separate servers with less hostile mobs is not a good idea because once they become more experienced they will get bored and have to move to the original servers.

 

The ideas about more regional spawns, easier mobs around starter areas is not bad, that would help newcomers alot. I'd like to see the world divided into sometihng like zones with different creatures and types of tiles. Somehow these zones must be influenced by player action though, like if you plant trees it becomes a forest rather than a desert etc. in terms of creatures,

 

I know there was code in place for tile type  specific spawns but I have a feeling it doesn't affect the creature spawns as much anymore?  

[Lancelot 765]

The population is already too thinly spread on too many servers already.

[joedobo 1,187]

As usual, this idea is met with lots of people applying their own personal opinion on how other people should think and play. People, some players don't like combat. Sure you may not understand them but I hope you can at least respect that they have a different opinion on what's fun.

 

For whats its worth, I been plaything this game for like 6 years (Qex is my original toon), Joe's time > [06:32:23] You have played 644 days, 23 hours and 28 minutes.,  and have enough fighting related skills to pretty much ignore mobs ( I don't even bother wearing armor anymore). Not once in my 6 years of play time have I enjoyed combat. I love to build, craft, and grind skills!

 

Now I don't know how many other people out there are like me. I also can't say for sure how many new customers Wurm has lost out on because it won't offer a peaceful building/crafting server. Even after taking this uncertainty under consideration I can't see how it would end up be unprofitable for Wurm. Even if it did end up being unprofitable, Wurm could delete it, but first offer refunds on deeds and a free ride to another server of the players choosing.

 

One big server is a bad idea ...... We have significant historical evidence supporting this. The simple lesson I hope we learned from Indy is that if you pack players too close together problems arise, period. I'd support infinite use, no cost, magic portal at all the spawn towns for traveling to other servers, but that's another story.

[joedobo 1,187]

spreading population too thin......AGAIN the point is to retain new players who would otherwise quit. To offer a different experience for players who don't like combat and wouldn't stick around based on how current servers work. These players where never part of the population to begin with. Sure some will leave but I'm pretty sure most existent players will stay where they are at.

[Wulfgar 1,127]

AGAIN the point is to retain new players who would otherwise quit.

 

Not really. The point is not to waste resources retaining players that don't fit within the game.

Lets say Rolf adds a 3rd group of servers, called non-aggro. As it is now we already have the constant PvP vs PvE discussions whenever something gets changed or added. Just imagine if we had a 3rd group.

"Non-aggro": QQQ you just made a new crocodile model, WHEN DO WE GET SOMETHING???!!!!!

"PvP": Flowerbeds!!?!?!?? WE WANT BETTER COMBAT AND SIEGE WEAPONS!!!

"PvE": YOU NERFED TAMING QQQQ WE WANT SEPERATE CODE AND MORE PINK UNICORNS

 

As Marshlander pointed out, the Non-aggro's will be bored much faster, because there is no challenge, so they will be more demanding, and feel that most development goes towards the other 2 groups. It will just divide the community more.

 

Rolf has a vision for this game, and he should follow it. He wants PvP, challenge and "survival feel" (just saying something random here). What you are asking for is basically the same as playing a Zombie MMO and wanting a server without zombies...Why should the developer focus resources on that? If they wanted to make a non-zombie game they would make a new game. To take it back to Wurm, wouldn't it make more sense for Rolf to spend resources on improving the parts of the game he likes? If he wanted quick cash he could have done that years ago, by removing timers and skills.

[Elen 1,013]

One big server is a bad idea ...... We have significant historical evidence supporting this.

 

I choose to not understand you, now lets implement a megamap.

 

 

On a serious note though, what about a no-progression server where all skills are unlocked and act as if at 100 ? It would be great for the pure creationists.

[Rathgar 959]

-1  No need to spread the population even thinner.

 

OP, I know you really like this idea, but you cant ignore how the majority thinks that this would be an issue with the current player base.  Maybe this will be a good suggestion 6 months down the line, or maybe in 1 year (or maybe never, depending on growth of the game).

 

I would find no use for the non-aggro server, but I would definitely visit a hunting server.  I also understand how some players are not attracted to combat, since I know a couple that would love to have a peacefull server te tend their crops, and breed animals, and focus on keeping a nice looking farm going.   Catering to them would would definitely improve the experience for some established players, and maybe even gather some new wurm players..... however, is it justifiable ?   I mean, wurm barely runs as is, and with how convoluted things have been since the price hike, I dont think that Wurm can support more servers with its current resources. (by resources I mean hardware and paying playerbase)

[Judicator 539]

No.

[Marshlander 188]

People, some players don't like combat.

I respect and understand that, even if I enjoy combat to some extent. But you don't need a whole server without aggroes to avoid combat! Just run, employ a templar, or work together with others that do. We cannot have an extra server for each type of interest in the game. If you don't like making bricks and mortar, would you like a server without rock shards and stone houses?

 

Even when I didn't enjoy combat (because of lack of skills, equip, and having other priorities), I enjoyed the surprise of having my plans foiled by some critter popping up (that was before the aggro spawn increase btw). Aggroes fulfill an important role as the most dynamic part of the environment, otherwise you'd just be playing versus decay.