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whereami

My suggestions for the next "Big Update"

The next "Big Update"  

67 members have voted

  1. 1. Should we focus on fixing existing content, rather than adding more?

    • Yes, there are too many bugs.
      46
    • No, more content trumps broken content!
      16
    • I don't care.
      5


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At the time of this writing, we have these nice orange messages flashing at us in event every 30 minutes. "There's an exploit with this mechanic, don't use it or you'll be banned", "This mechanic could delete everything you own, don't use it for now" etc etc. This made me re-think something I've been pondering for a long time now, and it's not just about these new mechanics that have been recently introduced. It may be a bit early to start thinking about "1.3", especially with the dev's hands so full working out bugs with 1.2, but I think now is as good a time as ever if anyone really wishes to get this through.


 


I have seen some really nice improvements to Wurm from the devs in the last couple months, and I really have to hand it to them. But In my honest opinion, the improvements are not being focused where they are truly, desperately needed. I am a programmer myself, I know there will always be bugs and little quirks that can never be fully worked out, only worked around. But there are bugs in the game still to this day, that have existed for months, even years prior, and have not yet been fixed. Instead we are now seeing entire mechanics get removed from the game, which in my opinion is poor practice and should never be done except in the most dire of circumstances.


 


My suggestion; Let's stop adding new content, and focus on fixing and balancing existing content, rather than removing it and adding more frill. I'll bring up the wrapping system, which was recently found to be a bit unstable (it was causing items to be deleted). So what did we do? We removed it entirely, rather than fixing it. This is just one of many examples.


 


Here is the list of things I propose get fixed and reworked, I'll be taking additions from the community, and add them to this list as I see fit;



1. The wrapping system. It was a very nice mechanic to have and shouldn't have been removed. Fix the bug with it if possible, and if not, let us know why. If you're concerned about it being used in conjunction with mailing, refer to suggestion 2.


2. The Mailing System. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I can mail a mast, but not a longsword. If it fits, it should send. This should include all 2h weapons and maybe bows. There's no purpose I see in restricting it.


3. Embarking on a horse and getting stuck teleporting in a tree. Enough said. Easy to avoid with common sense, but come on.


4. Certain spells and actions (Ex; Light token) can be started while another action is going and causes stamina not to drain.


5. Embarking on vehicles randomly freezing your client and forcing you to relog.


6. Names getting stuck in your local box.


7. Occasionally, when a player leaves local their model will stay there. You can highlight them and everything, just not interact.


8. Players can cause you to un-target them in PVP by repeatedly moving in and out of a mine entrance.


9. Occasionally, embarking a large cart and attempting to disembark on a tile after moving some distance, will give the message "That is too high."


10. There are at least 30-50 items in game that neither have icons nor have models. Maybe this counts as adding content but it really would be graphically pleasing to a lot of players.


11. The age-old Focus-shieldbashing bug. If you attempt to shieldbash while another timer is going you get the message "You are too busy" and can no longer shieldbash until you exit combat. This is a bug with the most major mechanic in the game; Combat, it should never have been allowed to exist this long.


12. Bracelets apparently fit into the arm slot, disallowing you from wearing a sleeve with it, a vital piece of armor. Should be reworked to fit in the ring slot if possible, since they are now useless.


13. A building plan can have a single brick and mortar attached to it (no walls completed) and it will still take 3 or 4 shots from a catapult to destroy, even more if bashing. This is used as a (piss-poor) tactic in PVP to prevent catapulting amongst other things. Needs a bit of tweaking.


14. Gods do not move properly around the Valrei board, along with many other problems involving Epic Scenarios not working as intended if at all.


15. Sorcery and more use for Karma, was never introduced to freedom.


16. If the terrain changes underneath you (dig or drop a dirt) while commanding a large cart, you appear to float in front of the cart while moving.


17. More of a rumor, but apparently it is impossible to create new Path of Hate tiles, something to do with them requiring mycelium tiles.


18. Reconnecting or re-embarking a boat causes you to stop leading creatures. Don't know if this is a bug but it certainly feels like one.


19. Failing an action after the timer has started still drains fatigue.


20. Crossing a server border sometimes give the "Teleporting..." bug, and disallows you to re-embark without a relog.


21. Picking up or dropping items from boats can cause the boat to de-sync with your character causing you to float in front of it while moving.



 


Feel free to add opinions and additions, if you agree, tell me why, if you disagree, tell us why.


Edited by whereami
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+1 to fixing old annoying bugs. Though I'm sure they're doing it already in their own time while other devs work on new content.


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The problem is not that adding content is blocking the devs from fixing bugs it is that the people set on fixing the bugs do not have a set priority list that complies with people who play the game. They have their priorities and every time I suggest some game breaking bugs for certain things I need to do daily they are always insisted as low to lowest priority. New content keeps the majority crowd here so that the team can afford to keep working on the game at all.


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New content keeps the majority crowd here so that the team can afford to keep working on the game at all.

But does it, does it really? When half the content that exists in the game is so bugged, that there is some way that you can't do almost everything, without some sort of unintended consequence, I think that is a good flag that you need to step back and fix some #### instead of adding more ####.

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Last night my friend said he could not equip a bracelet properly, that bug has been around since when we got the paper doll iirc.


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Last I knew bracelets were equipped in the .. Hand slot? Either Hand or Arm slot, so you either cannot wear a glove with it, or a sleeve. I cannot remember. I will test it and add it to the list with whatever I find.


 


EDIT: Made one, it is the sleeve slot, so this is a vital piece of armor you'd be missing out on, just to equip a bracelet. however I am able to use the equip bind with it just fine. Needs reworking so that it maybe fits the ring slot instead, but nothing I can see immediately as bugged.


Edited by whereami

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Make sure players can fully test features as they would when they go live, as in play with it without gaining any unfair advantages.


 


Plenty of people use test to play with new features or are willing to, capitalize on this, and take their feedback.  The 'big' combat change recently was an attempt, need more of this.


 


Just make sure test gets reset often or something to prevent people playing test instead of live.


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I think honestly that the most bugs are found from people playing with features as they would playing on a normal server. There should maybe be a separate "test" realm that players are allowed to play on, given they will not have a cornucopia or the ability to buff skills. Many games capitalize on this, it's what allows them to release bug-free updates. Maybe restrict the server to known accounts (the way people are given the Clairvoyant title on regular servers, for example) who are devoted to finding bugs.


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This is why Notch quit. Rolf focuses on adding new content instead of fixing the existing content. There are bugs that have existed for years and the best you can hope for is the feature being removed entirely.

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A "lets finish stuff and fix bugs" update?


 


 


Yes please.

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IMO


 


big update => 1.3 => new features


smaller updates => bug fixes and smaller things


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+1 to the OP.


 


But I wanted to ask about this one:


 


1. The wrapping system. It was a very nice mechanic to have and shouldn't have been removed. Fix the bug with it if possible, and if not, let us know why. If you're concerned about it being used in conjunction with mailing, refer to suggestion 2.


 


Agree that is shouldn't have been removed, but I don't recall seeing it said anywhere that this was removed because of a bug.  The only thing I saw on it was Rolf posting that it was "not being used as intended."  No bug, although I've seen other things get changed or removed and blamed on a "bug" even though they'd been that way since forever, no one had apparently ever complained about it, and no one understood why it was suddenly considered a bug.  


 


Basically, my understanding is that we can no longer wrap things because people were using it to prevent decay on certain items and using it to mail others.  So as you said, rather than fix the problem that pushes people to have to use a workaround, they just say Hey, we don't like you using it like that so we're taking it away from you.


 


edit:  just wanted to add that if the "intended" use was that we could wrap only cheap, un-gift-worthy items to give away as gifts, then I'll agree it wasn't being used as intended.  We were unable to wrap anything of value that would actually be gift worthy.  Same with mailing. Either too valuable or restricted for some other nebulous, unfathomable reason.  In some cases even worthless items that would be fun to mail can't be mailed. I once had a friend jokingly comment 'you never send flowers."  So I tried to send him a rose.  Guess what.  No can do.  lol. Go figure.


Edited by Amadee

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A nice concept in theory. Except the vast majority of time in the classic software development cycle is debugging.

Sure something could be launched nearly bug free... after most of us are long dead. By "nearly bug free" I mean it runs most of the time for most people across most systems, perhaps ninety percent bug free.

 

Its unreasonable to assume even most of the bugs have been ferreted out by the time something goes live. Big difference between a "lab" environment and a "live" environment (aka the wilds and the uncontrolled internet in general). Not even getting into the whole more-design-time-and-more-funding vs lets-finally-gain-some-coin-back struggle.

 

On another related point, theres different people now working on different aspects of Wurm. One feature isnt taking away from debugging on another feature persay. It depends on who is working on what.

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I agree with that Klaa but I'm more or less proposing that the entire team, would work on fixing, improving, and reworking content that already exists, so that it is further enjoyable by the players, rather than adding more. As said in the OP, there are hundreds of items that have no icons or models, bugs in major aspects of the game (like combat) that have been around for years, and things that just flat out aren't working or are missing entirely.


 


As I also stated, I am a programmer myself, I know that it is impossible to create a program that's 100% bug-free. But at the moment the bug-to-game ratio is like 5:1, and that's unacceptable in my opinion. Sure, one person developing a new feature doesn't take away from debugging, but I don't see much debugging going on in relation to what I have posted. This is, again, a proposition that all efforts be directed at fixing (and improving) existing content, and not creating more.


Edited by whereami
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My question is, Rolf said that the new servers are a lot faster. How much faster? Enough for a mount and blade combat system? Could the game ticks be sped up?of do, this should become a priority, along with fixing bugs.done, like the Valerei ones, are ridiculous.I have a feeling, though, that the next big update is going to be focused on bridges.

This is the problem when a small game studio like code club tries to take on a huge project like wurm.so much has to be done, but the company has limited resources to do it.

I wish this game got a sudden exploded off new players, like what happened to minecraft. Then, the game could explode with icon ne, ash vs the developers could add all the features they dream of I a heartbeat. Perhaps getting this to happen should buffer choice clubs next goal.wurm has the potential to explode, the devs just have to play their cards right.

Get the game on steam asap. Have video contests, so YouTube gets flushed with free advertising. Start a Kickstarter campaign. Ask Mojang to lend a helping hand for a bit too develop something.

Those are just some ideas.

EDIT: I just read over this and saw the typos. Dan phone.

EDIT 2: *Damn :P

Edited by Ganken

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I think they do good enough job slowly fixing bugs over time. I like new things too, game gets boring if everything stays the same for ever.


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Fix moving stuff bug and flattening bug → wagons are nearly useless now.

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Could you elaborate on these? Not sure I know exactly what you're referring to, but I'd be happy to include them on this list


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gawd yes please, PLEASE ROLF update 1.3 needs to be a crazy amount of focus on fixing all the buggy stuff already in game


 


NO NEW FEATURES UNTIL THE OLD ONES WORK PROPERLY!!!!!!!!!


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Could you elaborate on these? Not sure I know exactly what you're referring to, but I'd be happy to include them on this list

 

Wagons were not able to go through any kind of door, fixed today tho.

 

R1806

——2014-02-28——-

  • Fix for carts collision

  • Fixed right arm leather sleeve on female

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I disagree with the focus on this topic; What you're talking about is the desire for a bugfix session, or bugfix patch, not a 'major update'...  Yes, we all want bugs fixed, we want our game to run as smooth as possible, and it would be nice if the devs put some effort into focusing on some of the more annoying ones that are happening right now, but I think it is also important for them to showcase new content they are working on too, like bridges, a new combat system, and some of the other teasers that were dangled in front of us. 

I know, personally, I'm far more excited about new content, than bugfixes. Why? Because I've learned to work around many of the bugs, to deal with them, to not let them significantly affect my gameplay, but new content has made my gameplaying experience MUCH more streamlined, and less clicky.

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