Wurm Culture

[Eyesgood 2134]

Lately I have been wrestling with myself over a few issues.  For lack of a better phrase, I want to label it issues with Wurm Culture.  Here are my issues.  Maybe some can relate or maybe not.

 

1. Lack of willingness to explain development decisions and direction.  Frankly, I am really getting tired of the cryptic updates to this game.  I know the PR guy is trying to overcome the lack of visibility, but the problem stems from the top - an overall lack of consideration for the impacts that code changes have on the players and an unwillingness to explain said changes.  I have long had the impression that Rolf truly does not care to divulge reasons for his decisions nor does he care to provide enough solid game mechanic data to allow players to appreciate the changes that are made. He either does not care or he does not realize the impact of these business decisions.
   
2. Lack of appreciation and overall respect for each other in the forums, especially with Suggestions.  I know this is just a pure human-nature issue, but I really wish forum dwellers would be more like their in-game counterparts.  The rudeness, condescending remarks, negative personal attacks, and arrogance that are a daily diet for anyone on the forum could be replaced with some common courtesy and respect for the ideas of others - even if we disagree.  Ideas are the birthplace of innovation and everyone should feel that contributing on the forum is appreciated rather than scorned.
   
3. The incredible guessing game and how it fuels confusion.  To be honest, the wiki is NOT our friend as much as we love to say it.  The only real information that is accurate are recipes and lists. The raw numbers are guesses by the players because Rolf refuses to release information that most other games happily provide.  Lately, rares are all the rage in the Sale and Auction forums, but not a single player can tell you emphatically what the rare will give you except a glowing hole in your bank account.  And because there are no official stats available, players are left to the whims of other players to GUESS what something is worth or how something works.  Frankly, I am getting quite sick of the guessing.  In my opinion, half the fun of a sandbox is knowing WHAT you can do and HOW your decisions affect results at the most numerical level.
   

I will just stop there.  This is a Wood Scrap post so take it for what it is.  But I am starting to think about Wurm Online a little less and less each week, and that actually concerns me - though I know it shouldn't.

[Alec 732]

I agree with you, and I  only have been here for almost a year.

[Ayes 3715]

#1: The mysterious veiled intentions of the god (Creator, just read his forum tag) of Wurm, Rolf. I suppose it is fun to speculate upon what may be his reasonings for not bothering to make known to the Wurm inhabitants his various objectives in the directions he chooses to shape our fond worlds. Still, do the various gods that others put their faith in bother to explain with any precise details what their intent is in their future dealings with their believers. In this way do I view and temper my expectations in what the god of Wurm will make known of his plans for the future and hardly expect any justifications to be forthcoming for doing so.

 

This is not to say that I will give worship to or put faith within any gods that have the remote possibility of some altered form of existence but rather that I exist within the framework of what is offered and deal with the circumstances that arise from those constraints. The fact that Rolf has maintained these worlds of Wurm for an extensive period of time and progress is being made in the directions that appeal to me is substantive enough to encourage me onward enjoying what is offered without expecting explanations that the god of Wurm has shown to not be capable of providing. To try to shape this god into ones own image is a futile exercise that will only lead to the frustration of those who have the temerity of being so bold to make the attempt.

 

When much is made of nothing the results are no less the same void; thus, my choice is to leave well enough alone and enjoy the journey for what is offered. Although I may at times offer a peep of discontent, I expect not much to come from the thoughts attempted to be conveyed, as no doubt this post will be another example of those unreasoned expectations. 

 

Happy Trails

=Ayes=

Edited February 14, 2014 by Ayes

[Jberg 3071]

I accept the complaints regarding the sometimes low standards on the forums - we as a moderative team are ramping up and hiring more moderators to get it all under control. This will be a cooperation between team and community to getting this forum a friendly place to visit, for we as a team can not do it alone.

There are some work being done behind the scenes to straighten up and straighten out what happens where and when, in some cases getting a more strict moderative style, in other a more lenient. There are a planned change coming to the PvP forums Soon™ that I hope will help keep the forums a nicer place.

I request of you, the community, to report what you think is completely out of line (of course, against the forum rules ) instead of just thinking "why isn't anyone doing anything about that in particular!". We're a voluntary moderative team, and do not have time to read every thread in every forum section to scan for violations.

Be proactive, help keep the forum a nicer place for us all!

Regards,

Jberg (Lead Forum Moderator)

P.S.

Keep this thread to constructive criticism. Any flaming or dev bashing will not be tolerated.

D.S.

[LorenaMontana 3044]

Ur not the only one losing his wurm drive and spirit

[silakka 2360]

Everytime someone is unhappy ingame and starts to complain about a certain thing, I always advice them to go in the forums and make a thread about it in suggestions/bug sections.

It's no use complaining if you arent doing anything to make a change [plural, not pointing fingers] And best way to make a change is the forums

If your best response to that is - 'they dont even care', 'nah im too lazy', 'why would i waste my time doing their job' Then it makes no sense to complain if you cant move your finger to make a change.

 

Sometimes it's also best to just PM GMs/devs and ask their opinion on some things and if they are going to do something about the matter.

 

To eyesgood:

Wurm still has the best community ive ever seen [compared to every other game ive played]

There is always space for improvement, but we shouldnt be too hard on them when they already do their best

 

When I saw the title Wurm Culture, I only thought of positive things like helping new players to get started, and offering your advice to every other player.

[FreeTineen 430]

I would say the wurm community is one of the strongest ones i've seen online, no other MMO has ever interested me. Most players are friendly, communicative and pleasent and I wouldn't have them any other way.

 

Don't let a few bad eggs get you down, we still have one of the best communities online =D

[Webbler 64]

My comments are as follows. Take them for what you will as they are only *my* opinions and based on my own assumptions. Incoming TL:DR wall.

 

1. Lack of willingness to explain development decisions and direction: I tend to agree that often times I think the Players, Mods, CA, GMs, and Devs for this game care more than it's "almighty" creator. I understand that the people in charge of giving us any information often times have to shoot in the dark similar to us, the players but maybe with a very tiny bit more information. So basically they are semi-educated guesses. I personally believe that even without divulging too much info on exactly how systems and mechanics will work, good, informed, and informative communication from Rolf and team would go a *very* long way. Not to try and advertise another game here, but if you want a *great* example of Dev-team to community communication, go peruse the Everquest Next:Landmark Alpha forums. The amount of communication from that team is the best I've seen.
   
2. Lack of appreciation and overall respect for each other in the forums, especially with suggestions: I haven't looked a lot at the suggestions forum for quite some time. But suggested changes can always turn into a very heated debate. And aside from "name calling" posts, I like to think the vast majority of posts can be helpful in such a thread. I will say however that replies tend to be more constructive if the original post is a well thought out, constructive post and not just a "x, y, z, sucks and should be like this." I will also say that even though I don't converse with a large amount of the Wurm community, the players of Wurm and the vast majority that I have dealt with are the reason why I am still here. The community is also the reason why even if I take a break from the game, I still come back.
   
3. The incredible guessing game and how it fuels confusion: I agree here as well. The wiki is a great resource for many things, but without much in the way of info about certain mechanics and systems, it's all a guessing game. Even "testing" from a player perspective can be near impossible to get accurate and concise data. I see both pros and cons to giving out some of the internal systems information. Sometimes I feel "less is more". But there are some times where the opposite is true. It is quite the balancing act for sure.
   

 

@Silakka - I agree with the suggestions/bug forums, but often times I think that due to the vast lack of communication from Rolf and team on many, many subjects. Players start to become disheartened and start to feel as though anything they say or do falls on deaf ears. A perfect example is the many times servers have crashed and even the GMs have no update on when they might be up again, etc. They are stuck "guessing" just as we are by judging the current time of day, etc. that it is where Rolf lives. Add to that, the couple times Rolf did pop into IRC during those times, said *maybe* 3 words not including a "should be up now" type comment before disappearing (logging off) before making sure that not only the servers are up, but they are functioning normally. Had he (to my knowledge the only one with access to said servers) stuck around for another 5-10 minutes he'd have caught the fact that some of them did *not* come up normally and reduced hours of downtime after said "restart" to minutes.

 

It is situations like above with the server outages that have helped create a decent amount of discontent with the game. More than I think some people are willing to see or acknowledge. This could lead into a completely different topic though.

 

Anyway, that is my opinion on a couple things in regards to this thread.

[Tryfaen 713]

The players themselves are just as guilty in this. There's been countless suggestions/requests to remove unnecessary and obnoxious hurdles in the game that serve no real purpose or the purpose they do serve is far lesser than the burden they impose on the playerbase as a whole. These suggestions constantly get bombarded with negative comments saying to 'suck it up' and such. A personal example of this would be my request to increase stat gains from leveling. Flattening is more mindless/afkable and provides like 10x the amount of stat gains compared to leveling which requires constant attention and is absolute garbage for stat gains over the same period of time.

[Judicator 539]

The suggestion board is often cruel because people are very protective over wurm. It's a unique hardcore game, possibly unchallenged in the history of online gaming. On the suggestion board people are always making suggestions to water it down to your typical 13 in a dozen mmo's. Try to suggest easier features, and generally reducing the gameplay quality to suit the needs of the lazy. If wurm ever gives in, there won't be anymore hardcore games in the world, so you have to protect this unicorn with your life.

 

EDIT: It's also well known that rolf listens to the players a lot. Most of the game features are direct player recommendations. If people come up with stupid suggestions and nobody shoots them down, there is always the risk of them actually being put in.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Judicator

[AnarchistRise 320]

 

 

EDIT: It's also well known that rolf listens to the players a lot. Most of the game features are direct player recommendations. If people come up with stupid suggestions and nobody shoots them down, there is always the risk of them actually being put in.

 

Rolf does listen, when people contact him in IRC, through email ect, and then changes that have NOT been argued and hypothesized by the community get added in.

[BrQQQ 2854]

Rolf does listen, when people contact him in IRC, through email ect, and then changes that have NOT been argued and hypothesized by the community get added in.

Because the community doesn't always know what's best. Imagine you breed rare types of animals and it earns you a lot of money. Then one day a change is proposed to make these rare animals less rare, so that more people can get them.

You wouldn't want to see that change because it will have negative consequences for you. Another guy might really want that rare animal, so he would love to see that change.

In the end most people aren't arguing what's best for the game, they're just arguing whatever is best for them. Which is totally normal, but is also the reason why you can't rely on the community for everything.

[Oreo 5793]

I wanna go on a vacation.. every other month.  

[atazs 966]

I wanna go on a vacation.. every other month.  

Now we know why notch likes to take so much vacations. 

[Gaeron 551]

@Eyesgood,  good post.

 

#2 is a mixed bag of nuts but its by no means a Wurm issue, its seen in many games and in some of the pure PvP ones the vitriol can be.... off-putting.

 

#1 and #3 I've always seen as sort of the same issue. Even when the game was in alpha and genuine beta the dev attitude was for us to explore, experiment and learn, to that end all the documentation was and pretty much still is player derived. The problem with this is for an alpha/beta you need to understand what you are testing and we did not. We had a rough understanding of what would happen but there was nothing to say you could do X, you could not do Y and we are re-working Z. In that sense I have never considered this game in alpha or beta as we were treated as if we were playing a finished product. We could ask questions but answers were generally vague at best.

 

Everything was down to interpretation which is why we are in the place where we are now. Is an action a bug/exploit/issue? maybe, maybe not. This has helped fuel windows of opportunity, suspicion against fellow players whether deserved or not and generally some really negative emotions, especially on the competitive servers.  Even when rulings came out about certain issues they were rarely broadcast but instead communicated to the people who asked. What didn't help was on the competitive servers knowing that something was not a bug was used in mind games against opposing kingdoms to try and keep them off balance. Seen it happen both ways. Dis-information has been used as a weapon and at times pretty successfully.

 

I would also say calling it Wurm Culture is a good way of describing it as its been behaviour thats developed and grown for over a decade. To change this, it has to start at the top and that means with the Dev team. Going forwards wouldn't be too much trouble, but going back over existing code? thats a lot of work!

[Elen 1013]

I rather like items #1 and 3; I enjoy that not everything is spelled out down to giving me a window explaining how two pieces of armor will affect my dps with fancy little icons.

 

#2 I will agree on. We should all try our best to treat each other well. >_>  even someone else posts another gunpowder suggestion which i will +1

[LorenaMontana 3044]

Because the community doesn't always know what's best. Imagine you breed rare types of animals and it earns you a lot of money. Then one day a change is proposed to make these rare animals less rare, so that more people can get them.

You wouldn't want to see that change because it will have negative consequences for you. Another guy might really want that rare animal, so he would love to see that change.

In the end most people aren't arguing what's best for the game, they're just arguing whatever is best for them. Which is totally normal, but is also the reason why you can't rely on the community for everything.

That doesn't include valrei tho, everyone wants that fixed

[Alec 732]

Because the community doesn't always know what's best.

 

Neither devs knows. As a matter of fact, no one does, thats why you have to balance between the two parts.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Alec

[Markcrow 107]

Two things I've come to understand, after many decades of playing various games: 1. Every little change to the mechanics affects ten other things that may or may not be desirable. It also requires balancing other similar things to keep the game fair for all. Some games take months of fixes to stabilize a new feature or change in the games. 2. No matter how small or large a change is made to a game, there will be very vocal groups arguing for and against it. More often than not, more time is spent in discussion with these groups than in actual improvement of the game.

[AnarchistRise 320]

Because the community doesn't always know what's best. Imagine you breed rare types of animals and it earns you a lot of money. Then one day a change is proposed to make these rare animals less rare, so that more people can get them.

You wouldn't want to see that change because it will have negative consequences for you. Another guy might really want that rare animal, so he would love to see that change.

In the end most people aren't arguing what's best for the game, they're just arguing whatever is best for them. Which is totally normal, but is also the reason why you can't rely on the community for everything.

So, you're saying because people will act selfish regardless, It is better to go behind everyone's backs with only one side of a story? Cause I was being sarcastic, you sound like you really think its better that its done that way.

[BrQQQ 2854]

So, you're saying because people will act selfish regardless, It is better to go behind everyone's backs with only one side of a story? Cause I was being sarcastic, you sound like you really think its better that its done that way.

No? That's not what I said at all.

After so many years, devs are fully aware how people will try to feed them one sided stories. That's why they do their own research. An example is the staff nerf. One group might insist their enemies whispered in Rolf's ear how staves are totally OP and need a nerf. In reality, there was just a report about the staves, Rolf decided to look in to it, decided himself that it's not how it's supposed to be and changed it.

That won't stop people from saying it was the enemy who fed Rolf stupid stories to get what they want.

Neither devs knows. As a matter of fact, no one does, thats why you have to balance between the two parts.

Yeah, probably. That's how it goes sometimes, but in a slightly different way. Usually we just get an update, people make comments about it and it often gets tweaked a bit. Every now and then, devs also ask for player input about certain things, so that affects things too.

[Klaa 4871]

One-sided stories can come from even benevolent sources, let alone subconscious suspicion tainting matters. A viewpoint from one side of an argument is by definition naturally-biased.

[Bullbrand 63]

One of the worst things about Wurm that has been on-going since the first day, is a total lack of visibility about any changes Effective communication and full patch transparency is something that Rolf & the  Devs need to put into practice - I've said this in the past and I'll very probably say it again in the future - letting the players know everything that is happening in an update, and not just a few tit-bits and let people work out the rest, will win the Staff team many many smiles

[Zwei 210]

To be very honest, I don't even think many people noticed the bridle buff, and 4-ropes due to wagon's update...

This needs to be addressed, lots of these things can confuse, and completely disorient some players. Transparency would be great, just throw a forum post up about everything you did, and take a poll if certain mechanics should be thoroughly explained.

[Aeris 3927]

I've never liked the non-disclosed updates and added features. Apart from the fact that they lead to a lot of "factual arguments" between players, both in-game and on the forums, they also lead to a lot of elitist ostracism. If someone manages to make guesses about the mechanisms that are a lot better than the guesswork others have made they often don't update the wiki with their findings. Instead they are perfectly content with others shooting in the dark while they themselves hint that they know of a better way which they won't share.