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RedBaron_Johan

News Update: Work And Progress. Week 13

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WOW!!! The new assets in the tutorial zone are wonderful and I cannot wait for some of the new things to be implemented like the vines growing on the stands. YAY!!!


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seems like we gona have bigest update ever soon ... with bridges and all crazy staff


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New cobble stone! I may get that 90 in paving yet.


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The cobblestone variations and chain link fence look very nice. Good work! :)


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Great work on features and assets as always.


 


I thought I'd chime in on the player interaction - I think it is a good idea and can, if implemented well, work well. But if not implemented well, it can probably do more harm than good. The main requirements for success, as I see it, are trust in the group (both from the devs and from the players) and transparency.


 


Devs trusting the group - They are putting trust in other players already GM/CA etc, so I think they can handle themselves


 


Players trusting the group - This is an interesting one. I trust my in-game neighbours and allies, and this trust is based on interacting with them and observing their interaction with others. But I may interact very little with a reviewer especially so one on a different server, so how can I build up trust with them? The answer to that is, I think, ...


 


Transparency - At minimum, I should be able to read the "refined suggestion". Better yet, I should be able to make comment on it - this would allow me to interact and/or observe interactions, and I can build up a trust that their summaries will, in general, be fair.


 


One way this could work, would be to use the forums. Create two new publicly viewable boards, S&I Reviews and S&I Summaries.


In S&I Reviews, the only the reviewer group can create new posts, and will post new summaries with a poll - where the options are something like "Good to go" and "Needs amending [see below]" and comments enabled. Discussion should be limited to the review vs original thread(s), and the fairness/balance of the review, the extent to which it captures the views in the original discussion etc, but not the subject matter of the original thread. Of course the review should not be edited when the poll is active, the reviewer(s) could make a judgment call on whether to restart the poll (lots of significant amendments) or just amend the review without further review (none/few/insignificant amendments).


In S&I Summaries, the reviewer group posts summaries (possibly with amendments) that meet set criteria (e.g. X % "Good to go" votes)


 


As someone else said, the devil is in the detail, and I've omitted some further thoughts for the sake of brevity  


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... 

We will no longer be taking any suggestions through IRC. Everything will need to go through the proper channels.

...

If this will really work, it will be, perhaps, best wurm improvement of last years. thanks

that new timber walls, chain link fence and new cobblestone roads, wow, looks beautifull

I have problem now, my head just exploded by ideas for new projects :rolleyes:(I will have to go to shop to buy new head)

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Great work on features and assets as always.

 

I thought I'd chime in on the player interaction - I think it is a good idea and can, if implemented well, work well. But if not implemented well, it can probably do more harm than good. The main requirements for success, as I see it, are trust in the group (both from the devs and from the players) and transparency.

 

Devs trusting the group - They are putting trust in other players already GM/CA etc, so I think they can handle themselves

 

Players trusting the group - This is an interesting one. I trust my in-game neighbours and allies, and this trust is based on interacting with them and observing their interaction with others. But I may interact very little with a reviewer especially so one on a different server, so how can I build up trust with them? The answer to that is, I think, ...

 

Transparency - At minimum, I should be able to read the "refined suggestion". Better yet, I should be able to make comment on it - this would allow me to interact and/or observe interactions, and I can build up a trust that their summaries will, in general, be fair.

 

One way this could work, would be to use the forums. Create two new publicly viewable boards, S&I Reviews and S&I Summaries.

In S&I Reviews, the only the reviewer group can create new posts, and will post new summaries with a poll - where the options are something like "Good to go" and "Needs amending [see below]" and comments enabled. Discussion should be limited to the review vs original thread(s), and the fairness/balance of the review, the extent to which it captures the views in the original discussion etc, but not the subject matter of the original thread. Of course the review should not be edited when the poll is active, the reviewer(s) could make a judgment call on whether to restart the poll (lots of significant amendments) or just amend the review without further review (none/few/insignificant amendments).

In S&I Summaries, the reviewer group posts summaries (possibly with amendments) that meet set criteria (e.g. X % "Good to go" votes)

 

As someone else said, the devil is in the detail, and I've omitted some further thoughts for the sake of brevity  

This is good point. Without trust from players the committee will be another group of "IRC buddies" who will direct the game, at least from other players perspective.

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This is good point. Without trust from players the committee will be another group of "IRC buddies" who will direct the game, at least from other players perspective.

Yes and no. If that committe will be fair mix from all kind of servers and gameplay styles. There is good chance changes will be balanced with minimized bad influences to all. Sure, there can be results what you or me or orhers will not like. But there should be less things biased to favor only limited groups of wurmians at the expense of others.

And I think, this is step forward.

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As long as the committee is not biased, I like the whole post.  Including the chain link fences others seem to think look bad.  

But removing bias from humans is easier said than done.  I've made several suggestions on the forum that got "HOT" status but eventually fell down the post list and disappeared.  How is the "appeal" of a topic to be measured?  And what kind of safeguards are in place to prevent players from manipulating the situation so that certain suggestions they personally like are brought up instead of the actual popular ones?

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As long as the committee is not biased, 

 

Regardless of bias, say between PVE and PVP, there is a core problem with this idea. You are filtering ideas through players.

 

Obviously, they will have vested interests. They might try and suppress them, however, the main problem I see is all the good ideas to make the game "easier and more fun to play." This is something that takes extensive training. If you make the game too easy and keep going that way, it is not long before you are playing Progress Quest - Wurm edition. 

What is fun? To whom? 

Players usually want the powerful things, those that will give them an advantage. It is natural to seek ways to open their options, to give themselves more abilities. "Oh, flying might a good idea!" they rush that through and you can see the possible ramifications. 

 

There won't be a balance of challenge. Those ideas that make the game more difficult, bit more annoying, such as adding steps to making meals. Everyone makes their own meals now, however, if it being a cook was a proper profession, with some sort of decay reduction, then a villager might take that up as something they enjoy doing. 

This is a multi-player game. That there are so many skills, that we do have to inter-rely upon each other is a key factor.

 

Inherently, this is a bad idea because inside nearly all players is a solo hero.

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Love new updates but can we please get the Drake helm colors fixed and the black drake gloves to actually show and not be bugged. or half the other stuff you guys showed us like a year ago. Anyone remember the Sheep model from a year ago :P


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Regardless of bias, say between PVE and PVP, there is a core problem with this idea. You are filtering ideas through players.

 

Obviously, they will have vested interests. They might try and suppress them, however, the main problem I see is all the good ideas to make the game "easier and more fun to play." This is something that takes extensive training. If you make the game too easy and keep going that way, it is not long before you are playing Progress Quest - Wurm edition. 

What is fun? To whom? 

Players usually want the powerful things, those that will give them an advantage. It is natural to seek ways to open their options, to give themselves more abilities. "Oh, flying might a good idea!" they rush that through and you can see the possible ramifications. 

 

There won't be a balance of challenge. Those ideas that make the game more difficult, bit more annoying, such as adding steps to making meals. Everyone makes their own meals now, however, if it being a cook was a proper profession, with some sort of decay reduction, then a villager might take that up as something they enjoy doing. 

This is a multi-player game. That there are so many skills, that we do have to inter-rely upon each other is a key factor.

 

Inherently, this is a bad idea because inside nearly all players is a solo hero.

 

I agree with much of what you say, but not everything. In particular that filtering through players is a core problem and that this whole thing is inherently a bad idea.

Where you see a problem, I see a design challenge of the review process. End users, players in our case, are often very well place to come up with new ideas that can improve a product - yet at the same time they can be reluctant to change. As I read Johan's post, the aim is for the committee to summarise what discussion goes on in the forums already - to condense multiple forum pages worth of discussion, flamewar and tangents into an executive summary. Which I think is good - The options are to ignore or pay little attention to the S&I forum; or to have a non-player paid staff member do the summarising. In the latter case, I'd rather another coder or artist was hired...

 

Also bear in mind that the devs are under no obligation to implement any suggestion made by players - in the forums or otherwise. And certainly won't be if the suggestions are ignored altogether, or if the devs don't read the suggestions in the forums because of low signal to noise ratio. A brief, balanced summary however, can provide high enough SNR that it's productive to read it, think about it, respond to it. Which brings me back to a design challenge of the review process. The devs probably already have an idea of how they would set this up.

 

If the committee is tasked with providing a summary of a suggestion and the alternatives offered in the thread, along with views for and against, this can work, but as I said before, transparency is a key. Going by what I described in my previous post, there won't be filtering in the sense of someone sitting there picking the suggestions they like and ignoring the ones they don't like. A summary proposal would be submitted with a poll - you can pipe up there saying "you haven't captured point X made by Y" if you think the summary isn't a fair representation of the original thread.

 

Ultimately, though, the summary could be completely ignored because the devs don't have to listen to us - But if this committee, however it works, leads to the devs being better informed on a the views of a large cross-section of the playerbase when making a decision, I think this is a good idea.

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I think that with a lot of what Aldaturo (along with others) suggests, plus the idea, brought up some posts back, of having the possibility to petition where players see something not being taken along which they really really do want to see reviewed by the devs, put together, should lead to a fair process in which the posting, not-in-committee, player can still have the feeling of being able to be a meaningful part in the process. And being able to feel trust in that process.

 

I do feel a bit of worry when I see how Johan, understandable but still, quickly went for 'we will form / have formed a committee of well-experienced players'. For my feeling, that categorizes the members of such a committee perhaps a bit too much into just one section of the players (not speaking of pvp or non-pvp here, this is over the whole of all players). A large category no doubt, and a settled one - but not the only category of any importance for Wurm, in my view.

 

Some examples of what I am thinking of:

- It is of great importance to make the experience of new-incoming players to be such that they want to stay, not leave. Where is their voice in all of this? Yes I know it's real hard to expect that a newcomer can oversee large parts of the game - in fact that *will* be impossible - but shouldn't their voices have a meaningful place nonetheless? And no, I don't think (after years of onlooking) that a player, any player staff or no-staff who has been playing for years can truly still look and feel through newbie-eyes and -feelings, and thus can be able to truly and fully substitute for that share of experiences and influences in a real correct way. How about attaching one new player, 2 or 3 months in, to that committee for a few months at a time (to then be replaced by again a new player, which that member then won't be anymore)? I do think it's important to have one on committee-side, not just as posters (if they even would, mostly not). Because I have seen with some regularity how something implemented which works out acceptable or well at the 'experienced-player's-level' can work out just awful at the beginning stages - apparently unseen or at least not (being able to be?) taken seriously by the 'experienced' player-category or even devs. I do think a new player as part of such a committee could safeguard against some instances of these kind of implementations, for example - not to mention that a fresh open onlook on the game could lead to some good surprises too as to which suggestions are seen as viable. Will keep the rest of the committee on it's toes in a certain way, and nothing wrong with that. :)

 

- Likewise, will the voices of players who play or want to play in a rather different way then players who will be dubbed and accepted as 'experienced players'  (and who will not easily or maybe at all be able to see what such players suggest as 'belonging to how wurm should be or become') still be able to reach the developers, if such a committee becomes the *only* route through which any suggestion must go? (A few examples: players who want to play without fighting, players who don't like to grind, players who want to be able to roleplay, etc - the smaller 'sub-groups' who do manage to find their route in wurm, be it with growing difficulty perhaps)
(Or to put it in other words, because this one isn 't the easiest to convey well: will this lead to a less broad 'menu', if you will, of ways that Wurm can be played and enjoyed, overtime? I'm not sure what the answer to this will turn out to be - but it does have me somewhat worried, especially in the longer term, because making such a 'menu' less broad as to playstyles possible would be something which would be slowly, probably unobserved, leaking in - slow, unobserved, but not good i.m.o.). I don't think this will be caught with petition's either, seeing the 'menu-choices' for these groups of players will always be on a sidepath to the main path - meaning never having a majority to help it forward in the process. They would be voted away, and yet I think a lot of what makes wurm unique, different and appealing are *also* those 'choices found on side-ways' where not too many go to find them. I would think it a shame to slowly loose that 'broadness' (of which wurm could use more rather then less, in my thoughts).

 

Anyhow, just some observations on my part, hopefully somewhat helpful to get this fleshed out well.

Edited by Kianga

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Ultimately, though, ...

 

... you have another problem. If developers listen to players too closely, it kills games:

 

what? you mean there are not enough pvp-ers in this game to get the BS running? that's impossible. shocking. it cannot be. then how come every freakin balance/LE mish/VP idea is shot down by a pvp-er because he says the majority of the players are pvp?

you are probably mistaking. go do those numbers again.

Player's are not game developers. You need some broccoli to balance all the sweets they will demand, filter and vote for implementing.

Edited by Jenshiye

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waaaaaant :o when will it be ingame? :D i so crave for those loam framed walls and that huge iron chain *waves with arms frantically*


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I can think of some good applications for that chain link fencing along high slopes to give a clear view and prevent falling off of them, which it seems is the intent of their design. Well done!


 


=Ayes=


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can the first vote be "Should we spawn in more drakes on freedom cluster?"

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Regarding the "new chain link fence".


I'm really liking the idea here and looking forward to them. However... :)


Can I request you consider also adding a "chain link gate"?


Forgive me if someone may have already requested this. I haven't taken the time to read through the forums as it negatively impacts my play time. :P


 


 


Here's a quick pic which may help visualize my idea.


It's basically your chain link fence with the image of a padlock added, either to the side or in the center would work.


lBSQY8J.jpg

Edited by Tuanta

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love it.. timber frames gonna geet ust allot on my new deed:)

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Any dates on when the house and road models will be introduced?


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