Update on the Reinforcements situation, spells and favour.

[Flycat 9]

Hello everyone

 

As sudden as this all was, I just wanted to grab your attention for a couple of minutes and tell you what brought this about.

 

There are currently several changes going on which are being debated so lets spread some more light on the situation.

 

First of is the direct intervention in a PVP situation where a bug was keeping the victorious party from claiming their rightful loot.

This bug has been around for quite some time at this point, to the extent where deeds are built around it and believed to be completely safe.

That has never been the intention. Especially in relation to non deeded territory which should never be untouchable.

We have the same issue with abusing the enclosures on PVE servers where there is also going to be a change in the future.

That is a separate debate in itself and the GM team and us devs have been talking it over for quite some time to especially give the new players another form of viable safe place.

Everyone will be given time to adapt to the new change.

But as we did not announce the change before taking action on this specific event, we feel a compensation is in place.

 

Secondly is the distribution of spells to balance out the ability to get into deeds, especially on the pvp servers.

We are giving the Disintegrate spell to all pvp priests but not on freedom cluster.

The spell will be twice as hard to do for non Magranon priests.

BL has had a strong disadvantage and will also get the Strongwall spell.

There has also been a separate suggestion to be able to mine through reinforced walls, be it with extreme effort.

And that is also key word here, it will not be easy and give people time to react to the situation.

 

Third is the question of balancing gaining favor as a Libila follower, where after a recent change for example garlic would give you a too easy alternative compared to other faiths.

This is being balanced down quite drastically and is being changed right now.

 

We would love to hear your feedback on the topics here as long as you keep it constructive Wurmians.

There is a suggestions committee in the making for better handling these type of situations and getting the top suggestions addressed but also getting effective feedback going quicker between you and us.

 

Thank you for your time!

 

"First of is the direct intervention in a PVP situation where a bug was keeping the victorious party from claiming their rightful loot."

"But as we did not announce the change before taking action on this specific event, we feel a compensation is in place."

 

    A game changing patch such as this should have been announced at least a week ahead of time to give players a chance to react.  The idea of compensation is complete bull.  Either the ninja patch was hasty and wrong or it was correct and the outcome should stand as it is.  A GM snapping their fingers and giving anyone free items is wrong.  Other changes have negatively impacted me and I received nothing, nor did I expect to.

 

"Secondly is the distribution of spells to balance out the ability to get into deeds, especially on the pvp servers."

 

    So this was just a bug that was preventing one faction from have a huge pvp advantage and it is now fixed for that faction and will be made equal for other factions soon?  An example of how disintegrate works suggests that it NEVER has a 100% success chance so how was it proven that it was bugged?  How do we know that the party/s casting in this incident weren't just unlucky?

 

"Everyone will be given time to adapt to the new change."

 

    This is how every game changing patch / bug fix / update needs to be handled.

 

From everything I've read, I fall into the camp that says Sparta got screwed here.  Sorry guys. 

 

All this drama highlights some of the bigger problems with Wurm.  Every time a major update hits us the players take it upon themselves to post an "Undocumented Changes" thread.  This should never be necessary.  There is also no place to go look at how most of the mechanics are supposed to officially work.  Perhaps the Wurm staff could designate pages from the Wurm Wiki as official mechanics when they are in line with the game.  Having to follow the forums and IRC and Facebook and Twitter just to stay informed is too much.  If the Devs don't have time to scribble something into the official patch notes then they should leave it out until they can inform the players properly.  I understand that Wurm is an Indy game with a small staff doing big things and I'm ok with content rolling out a little slower if that's what it takes.

 

As far as these new priest mechanics impacting pve mines, deed it or lose it.  So what if people can now tunnel into your mine that expands off deed.  Set your permissions and don't leave anything valuable off deed or expand your deed to cover it.

 

All in all this patch is for the better.  There should not be impenetrable areas on a pvp server or on undeeded pve areas.  The way this "ninja" patch was handled was less than exceptional in my opinion.

 

edit: Almost forgot.  I would like to nominate myself as part of this player base made suggestion panel.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Flycat

[Oreo 5,793]

Wow buddy calm down metal o.o

[Jarosz 189]

Fsbkun, I opened up multiple mines around the area, and when you have high ql texture detail inside a mine on, you can see through the walls (everyone knows this).

Here is one from your other boatmine that wasnt fully reinforced:

The 'R' was me marking out where the reinforced tile was made to prevent loot being accessible, you also collapsed one down by your safe'boat'mine, but wasn't a big deal.

 

As for reimbursements... Rolf had his word on it, and its probably best to stay that way, be grateful any reimbursement was given at all.

 

what will cost Rolf more in these two scenarios:

 

1. Gives Raiding party Moon material because he wouldn't bust down the wall because the defending team didn't know of any changes coming down from the Devs of Safe Vaults

2. Gives Defending party Moon Material because he did bust down the wall, and felt like he made a mistake later. (Damage control more than anything)

Pretty sure none of the Raiding party would be considering never paying for premium or extra deeds or any monetary value investment into wurm again...

[Umbranik 54]

If there is a bug that has been around for years and has been accepted by the players as just how the game is to the point that they rely on it, I have a very hard time even imagining why it would be the best possible time to give in to a group of people's nonstop whining and change it DURING a raid.  That's just very bad form.  Shame.

[wasntme 156]

As much as i like the change's  all sides should have known in  advance. 

I have played for around 13 years on and off and i never knew about this till the last year or so that people could have safe mines.

the change is way over due but not right to interfere the way Rolf did.

And no compensation is gonna make the people that lost what they did happy unless there loot is returned.

But we all know most updates are put in no one actually knows what was done till it is used or abused.

[Oreo 5,793]

"Wurm Online is a 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Code Club AB (formerly known as Onetoofree AB) in Motala, Sweden. Development started in 2003 by friends Markus Persson^[1] and Rolf Jansson, and it was released for personal computers in 2006."

 

HES FROM THE FUTURE!!!!1

[vinius 1,487]

Guys, who wants to trade a drake jacket on epic for like 3kg of glimmer (must be rare lumps tho)

[RomaN 890]

For the amount of times JK failed to attend HOTA in the past year let alone win it, i'd say the amount of moon metals they got is reasonable compensation.

That compensation is for Sparta anyway. Not the entire JK kingdom.

[Weponsmith 36]

Hey, the can use all the moon metal and make Another  rare glimmersteel carving knife 

[tobaul 28]

This was wrong on so many levels. Yes there was a problem but instead of compromising priests, bl'ers and freedom security revert the disintegrate change and add an underground siege machine similar to a catapault. Make it an item usable by all factions that destroys a reinforced tile after x man hrs, and is buildable only on pvp servers.  Wurm in the last year or so is heading in a direction im finding harder and harder to follow.  More decay, more silly busy work, trolls in mines,  and freedom security and play nice policy are both being butchered.  The added features are wonderful but if play is destroyed in the process, and long time everyday bugs like stam failing to regen while riding uphill even after stopping are unaddressed I have a hard time seeing that things are improving.

[fencejumper 491]

Can we get an official response regarding lib priests getting strongwall and it's relation to this irc chat logs from last night?

 

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/98343-a-comment-on-the-reinforcements-situation/page-8#entry993674

[Tryfaen 709]

Where are these fully reinforced off-deed mega-mines?

[JockII 338]

 

With Rolf removing reinforced tiles during the middle of a raid on another kingdom and going against his own rules for the PVP servers that no GM intervention would come during a PVP event. The owner of this game has shown he does not care about any of his subscribers by saying comments like "[02:35:41] <Rolf> no i have other important things to do in my life besides listening to upset players that do not agree with a ruling".Thing about it is you really don't have anything more important to do than listen to players that are upset they pay for your game every 2 months. Saying that it was a known bug is spitting in the face of the people you screwed over, if it was a known bug then you should have fixed it not waited until someone was getting raided and the issue came up then. "Everyone will be given time to adapt to the new change." this comment is laughable, obviously Sparta(The Deed that was raided) didn't get any time to adapt to the change. Then to make it even worse Rolf decided to give the ones who got raided some moon metals very little moon metals nothing that even came close to the amount of items that they lost from this whole ordeal. You seem to show a lot of favoritism to a certain select group of people (hope that works out for you in the end!) but for me I am done with Wurm the amount of abuse from you and your GM team has finally hit me like a truck full of trucks. The entire GM team is not all bad there seems to be a certain few that have the loudest voice and the others tend to fall in and do as they say, but I could be wrong but the way its looking now it is 100% correct.

 

This entire thread will probably be deleted and I will be banned because this GM team cant swallow the truth and wont allow anyone else to see when they are in the wrong. 

 

[Mojo 2,095]

I really would like a response from you Johan, seeing you're the one actually responding to the community here.

 

1. First of is the direct intervention in a PVP situation where a bug was keeping the victorious party from claiming their rightful loot. This bug has been around for quite some time at this point, to the extent where deeds are built around it and believed to be completely safe. That has never been the intention. Especially in relation to non deeded territory which should never be untouchable. We have the same issue with abusing the enclosures on PVE servers where there is also going to be a change in the future. That is a separate debate in itself and the GM team and us devs have been talking it over for quite some time to especially give the new players another form of viable safe place. Everyone will be given time to adapt to the new change. But as we did not announce the change before taking action on this specific event, we feel a compensation is in place.
   
2. Secondly is the distribution of spells to balance out the ability to get into deeds, especially on the pvp servers. We are giving the Disintegrate spell to all pvp priests but not on freedom cluster. The spell will be twice as hard to do for non Magranon priests. BL has had a strong disadvantage and will also get the Strongwall spell. There has also been a separate suggestion to be able to mine through reinforced walls, be it with extreme effort. And that is also key word here, it will not be easy and give people time to react to the situation.
   

 

Going to touch on these points you made, you wanted comments and criticism right?

1. I always thought there was a golden rule with PvP that the staff doesn't involve themselves when kingdoms are fighting each other.  To be honest, I've abused this bug on Elevation for the past few months, made a 4 tile reinforced cave with knarr in it.  One tile empty so I could strongwall my things in.  As a mag priest for the past two years I've tried to disintegrate reinforced tiles, but I knew it never worked.  I get that items shouldn't be completely safe, but at the same time I didn't really understand how you could make such a game altering change without announcing to the public what you're doing.  Usually things that effect people's money gets some type of announcement.
   
2. Instead of Strongwall for Libila priests, why not give them a spell that can just collapse tiles with a different name and longer timer? Giving them a carbon copy of my spell as a Magranon priest just makes me sour.  Why take something that made Magranon unique and just hand it over to Libila priests? I get it, they needed a spell like this too, but be a little more creative with how you handle the new addition.
   

As for the committee thing, when people are apart of kingdoms - they cant look at things objectively.  Instead of hearing the few, why not actually sift though the suggestions forum and pick the popular ideas, bringing them to the community and seeing if anyone could improve these ideas. 

 

The way that the Sparta raid issue was handled cannot be described as anything but extremely poorly. 

 

To the people saying "They got compensation", you have to be joking right, I'm 100% sure if the roles of the situation were reversed, we would be hearing the same ruckus. Just because they were your opponents, you should understand where they're coming from - a lightning fast change that no one knows about, its quite unfair.

 

Rolf really needs to stop joining IRC, the logs I've seen from Oreo just makes him look really, really unprofessional.

[Hussars 511]

Instead of a second helping of "The Council" debacle, how about that In-Game voting system?  Then you can do a "vote topics" poll, the winning topic then gets a second (or more) vote of what aspects to look at.

 

Streamline the process a bit, post the generalized topic(s) for the next round on the forum, and use the feedback from the players to define the top X items to vote on.

 

(For those paying attention, yes, this is basically a system like was outlined elsewhere)

 

A bit more work for the dev team (actually just for the poor fool who is given the job of sorting the vote results), but everyone has a chance to provide feedback.  As an added benefit, the players might actually feel like they are part of the improvement process and not just along for the ride, and everyone has an equal chance at knowing about changes before they are made or used by select players.

 

And before anyone brings in the alt spam argument, as a counter argument, while I'd like to believe in the integrity in anyone sitting on "The Council", by the very nature of the selection criteria presented, there is too much of a chance for a personal agenda being pushed.

 

At least with the vote system, any skewing of the data is done directly by staff, and much easier to track back to a source in the case of a need for accountability.

 

::Edit Insert::

For those implying (or outright stating) that Rolf, or other members of the team are playing favorites, I think it is more that most of the dev team are engineers and think like engineers.  This means they tend to look at immediate solutions for the problem in front of them, without always considering the longer reaching impact.

 

This is a good thing for fixing issues, but a PR nightmare (as witnessed in several cases now).

Edited March 26, 2014 by Hussars

[RomaN 890]

 

a lightning fast change that no one knows about, its quite unfair.

 

Rolf really needs to stop joining IRC, the logs I've seen from Oreo just makes him look really, really unprofessional.

But Ezalor, it was always possible to disintegrate reinforced walls. No code or mechanic was changed.

Nobody knew it was possible to remove the reinforcement because nobody until the Sparta raid was able to successfully cast it due to the extreme difficulty of succeeding it. 10% Chance of success with a 100 power cast at the time. We therefore all assumed that it was not possible this entire time when in fact, it was.

Coincidently, it was bugged when you did succeed hence why Rolf destroyed the wall when it was discovered.

When the reinforcement was removed, a few JK players stormed into IRC and berated Rolf for what he had done. You can't expect anyone to react pleasantly if you openly lambaste someone publicly in such a way. If anyone is to blame for the lack of professionalism, it would be the manner in which JK brought their grievances to him, barging into IRC, swearing and flaming.

[Oreo 5,793]

Well maybe he shouldn't have done it then, Roman.  It wasn't our choice to make the decision in PvP on the spot, as GMs are never supposed to do, let alone Rolf.

 

The players are supposed to be professional?  The players don't need to be.  They don't run the game, they don't make those decisions.  

It's obvious why we are mad at him.  If you can't see it, like I said before, I don't know what you're thinking.

 

Sure it may have been bugged, then fix it later AFTER the raid.  Add it to the change logs so people have a chance to adjust.  ( Don't just tell a select few people from 1 Kingdom...)

If having 'safe mines' are 'exploits' or were never supposed to be 'allowed', then why have they been able to be used for countless years?

Edited March 26, 2014 by Oreo

[RomaN 890]

Sure it may have been bugged, then fix it later AFTER the raid.  

 

Oreo, the weekend raid on Sparta was well and truly over after JK withdrew several hours after it started on the 23rd of March. Not one JK returned to the settlement to rebuild or reinforce it. It stills stands in ruins today.

When MR turned up to disintegrate it, not one JK turned up to defend it except for alts running about scouting us.

The raid was finished long ago. Sparta is gone.

[MrGARY 12,421]

 

This is my spell list on an altar, disintegrate clearly only states destroys rock, while strongwall clearly adds in reinforce, it seems confusing, maybe we should update this to avoid mistaking what does what in the future

[Oreo 5,793]

But you're not against the fact that he should have told somebody other than a select few people?  And it still does not change the fact that Rolf interfered in a raid and only told a select few people of the 'fix'.

 

Or am I wrong?

[RomaN 890]

@Oreo

It wasn't a select few that Rolf told. It was one person from MR who then passed it on to their villagers and kingdom.

Somebody lodged a /support to query safe vaults either before or early during the Sparta raid on the 23rd of March. The support was escalated and Rolf responded about 24 hours later revealing that it should have always been possible to destroy reinforced walls with Disintegrate though chances would be extremely low. Hence why no change of code, mechanics or restart of server was necessary to make it work.

As soon as enough MR were informed of this through whoever made the /support call, we rounded up as many priests and fighters as possible and returned to Sparta to break into the safe vault, saccing over 10k favour and spending a couple of hours casting over and over again until one of us got lucky and received the success message. The bug was that despite succeeding to destroy it, the reinforced wall was still there and that was the bug that Rolf was trying to resolve.

It's unfortunate what has happened and even I didn't know that reinforcements could be destroyed until that day but Rolf has stated that it's a bug, that safe vaults are unintended and he even called it an exploit on IRC. It's his game, he doesn't need to tell anyone if he feels that he needs to take immediate action.

As for Rolf interfering during a raid. I guess he would only be guilty of that if you define raiding as players turning up to a destroyed, abandoned, undefended and completely open enemy deed. Especially one where not one JK showed up to defend or rebuild it in over 24 hours.

The only JK who turned up when MR were disintegrating the safe vault were a couple of free alts they logged in which were used to scout out MR. Surely they would've seen a bunch of priests casting disintegrate on the cave tile and told the rest of JK but not one JK fighter turned up to stop MR. Not even one!




MR used EVERYTHING available to them within the game mechanics to destroy that reinforced wall and they finally got the succeed message in the end. The only thing that stopped MR was a bug that didn't remove the reinforcement when they succeeded.

What more do you want??

Edited March 26, 2014 by RomaN

[Hussars 511]

@Oreo

It wasn't a select few that Rolf told. It was one person from MR who then passed it on to their villagers and kingdom.

Somebody lodged a /support to query safe vaults either before or early during the Sparta raid on the 23rd of March. The support was escalated and Rolf responded about 24 hours later revealing that it should have always been possible to destroy reinforced walls with Disintegrate though chances would be extremely low. Hence why no change of code, mechanics or restart of server was necessary to make it work.

As soon as enough MR were informed of this through whoever made the /support call, we rounded up as many priests and fighters as possible and returned to Sparta to break into the safe vault, saccing over 10k favour and spending a couple of hours casting over and over again until one of us got lucky and received the success message. The bug was that despite succeeding to destroy it, the reinforced wall was still there and that was the bug that Rolf was trying to resolve.

It's unfortunate what has happened and even I didn't know that reinforcements could be destroyed until that day but Rolf has stated that it's a bug, that safe vaults are unintended and he even called it an exploit on IRC. It's his game, he doesn't need to anyone if he feels that he needs to take immediate action.

As for Rolf interfering during a raid. I guess he would only be guilty of that if you define raiding as players turning up to a destroyed, abandoned, undefended and completely open enemy deed. Especially one where not one JK showed up to defend or rebuild it in over 24 hours.

The only JK who turned up when MR were disintegrating the safe vault were a couple of free alts they logged in which were used to scout out MR. Surely they would've seen a bunch of priests casting disintegrate on the cave tile and told the rest of JK but not one JK fighter turned up to stop MR. Not even one!

MR used EVERYTHING available to them within the game mechanics to destroy that reinforced wall and got the succeed message. The only thing that stopped MR was a bug that didn't remove the reinforcement.

What more do you want??

Quick question to clarify..

 

Are you saying the raiding team knew that disintegrate was supposed to remove the wall, but was not doing so correctly before they got to the "vault"?

 

I ask because your statement could be seen as to imply this, and just want make sure no one is reading into/assuming it as such.

 

::edit insert::

As a side note, how much less difficult is it to cast strongwall/collapse for the same Mag priest?  I've had about two dozen tiles collapsed by Mag, and have never seen a "fail".  So I'm curious since the target difficulty is "only" 10 higher, do those same priests have issue casting collapse/strongwall?

Edited March 26, 2014 by Hussars

[Oreo 5,793]

I do think I've explained this various times, Roman.  

I'm not sure if you've noticed.

 

Rolf should have never handled it like he did.

 

Say I was a locksmith, hypothetically.

I makes locks.  One of them is made wrong, I later find this out.

I don't tell anybody except one person.

I remove the lock from the buyers house/possession, without telling him, cause that's how it works in this hypothetical world.

That one person tells his friends.

They later steal from the customer because he was never told that his lock was 'recalled' to be 'fixed'.

I even assisted them, weird isn't it?

 

Who's fault is it?

 

@Hussars, its not possible to fail Strongwall, iirc.. someone who actually plays on their Mag Priest could probably tell you more though.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Oreo

[RomaN 890]

@Hussars

When we raided and destroyed Sparta on the 23rd of March. None of us knew that disintegrate could destroy reinforced walls. Had we known at that time, we would've focused our efforts on breaking into their safe vault first rather than catapulting every building and digging down their walls.

On the 24th of March, we learned that disintegrate was meant to be able to destroy reinforced walls and so we returned to Sparta to get into their safe vault. We were even talking about asking Rolf to spectate us to ensure it was working as intended.

[Oreo 5,793]

Is the Test Server even viable anymore then?

Edited March 26, 2014 by Oreo