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Reduced Reliance on RNG (from the perspective of a game maker)

Posted 2024-07-24 04:50:59
#1236014
I dont gamble because I dont like my hard earned money to vanish due to RNG.
I do not invest in Wolvden because I dont like my hard earned money to go to waste on RNG.
But I remain hopeful that the Devs are listening and are willing to make the necessary changes to attract my investment as well as my time.
Mustang 🐎
#3314
Posted 2024-07-24 06:33:56 (edited)
#1236049
Had to flee another battle with a porcupine after rolling five solid 1s in a row. Fantastic.

Maybe healing salves should only cost one herb to make instead of two, considering how quickly we go through them. I'm gonna get my lead to lvl 15 to unlock special chased wolves, but after that I'm steering clear of the battle scene 		4everwolf
#142039
Posted 2024-08-01 11:42:59 (edited)
#1239840
Yeah, Im now level 20, 850+ stats and losing to level 14 animals due to low rolls, even with full energy.

Now that the Cataclysm is out, the monsters are often level 20 with bleeds that are unreal, and quite simply,....really Wolvden?

Bleed does 2-3 damage, combined with a standard hit of 3-5 damage equals 5-8 damage per hit.  With talents a level 20 get destroyed in 5 rolls or less. 

I can take getting beaten down in a good fight, but being 5 shot by any mob is just stupid beyond belief.  Rabbit feet are completely useless.  I lose the same amount whether I use them or not.  They are a complete waste.

I really sympathize to the new players getting ROFLTSTOMPED into the dirt.  If this were my introduction into Wolveden, Id be saying, "Nope! Im done here!"

Battling in its current form is certainly a good reason to not be motivated to play the game long term. 

Wolvden is 4 years old.  There are more players in Lioden than here.  There is a reason for that.  A reason for non-investment of the time playing. 

Battling and breeding stagnates after a few months of play due to poor design meant to be "challenging".  People offer suggestions, very reasonable and logical ones, but Wolveden is not showing a willingness to be flexible and adaptable.  No one wants easy mode, they just dont want dice rolls to dictate every aspect of the game.

Dice rolls on finding items in explore or special bases or mutations is one thing, losing to mobs 5 levels or more lower is unreasonable.


Observations and Thoughts:



Gates for SC gains:  Cant make money to buy better wolves, keep more wolves, afford items to heal wolves, etc.  Battling awards very little and only if you win. Fishing awards very little if you want to spend 2 hours fishing, you might get 150sc.  The Enclave offers a pittance, but only if you have wolves to leave, which you need SC to breed, or breed your own, but once again you need to have nesting materials, food and cave space as well as babysitters, all of which new players struggle with.

Gates for Stat gains: To get more stats, you have to have a lot of healing salves, so a lot of dandelions and charcoal.  RNG based foraging and explore items.  You could trade other herbs, but at the cost of 3:1 which new players cannot get easily, so they either have to buy it or are SOL.  Its taken me 4 years to save up enough salves and herbs to help heal my current lead for all the battles Ive dealt with.  To get to my NBW (270 starter) to 860 stats, Ive used about 2000 uses of salves.  Imagine a new player wanting a better lead.  To be able to win a good portion of battles, you have to be 1k stats or better, so once again, buy it from an NBW monster, risk the genetic bottleneck or pour real money into an RNG based system.

Gates for pup inheritance has caused a massive blow to those who work so hard to get their leads to 2k or more.  There is a thick, tacky substance that players have to slog through just to get past 500 stat pups.  And it only gets more and more challenging.  The effort of gaining stats does not equal the reward for getting there.  The cost of getting to 7k stats, then the lead dying and only popping out 1k pups with a bottlenecked gene pool is too high.

Gates for number of Jobs such as Herbalists, hunters and Scouts.  Larger dens need more healing, which means more herbs, which means the herbalist is working overtime.  You can reasonably get 8 salves if you have the herbs, per day.  However, the constant power bleeds and RNG battle pounding eats through those in just a few fights.  3 salves are needed for a full bar of health.  With the herbalist 3 uses buff, that means, at best, 8 battles and hopefully you can win.  If not, you end up SOL, unless you can find them or buy them. 

Artificial gates created by clean lineages:  This is a thorn in the side of the game.  And its twisting deeply, causing lack of growth.  This attitude from players who wont buy wolves 3 gens or higher has caused a massive weeping wound.  Its pustulant and toxic.  People want leads that can win at least 3/5 battles.  RNG is causing low stat leads to get pounded into the dirt and discouraging playing Wolvden by the very people helping to keep this game alive, the Customer.  They turn to buying stat pups from the very few leads available on the market.  But because there are SO FEW stat leads, the gene pool soon become saturated with these few studs.  It is almost unobtainable for most players to push a 300 stat pup into the 1k range without toxic amounts of play time, money and resources.  Unless that wolf has a desirable/popular mutation everyone wants or some new rare/breed only marking, new leads cannot hope to compete.

4 years into the game and there are no wolves above 7k.  The top 8/10 wolves in the game are all under 3k.  Battling is severely holding back players from gaining stats.  It takes an average of 5-7 battles for 1 stat point, if you are lucky!  Salves and energy are not cheap, either in time or money, so the cost to get to 2k is enormous!  The highest stat wolves are bottlenecking the cub market too, so those people who actually put in that time and effort are actually losing in the end because those pups will lose value really fast. 

I am not burned out on the game.  Im disappointed. I log in once a month for the Lunar event and as much as possible for Cata, but I can tell you, from experience from having high stat leads and low end leads, these issues are killing the game.  And they are all related.

4 years and we are not breaking ground with more players.  East coast mornings, I see roughly 400 players logged in.  At 6pm east coast time, I rarely see over 1k players logged in and its usually during events or weekends.  As a founder, I had hoped to see Wolvden grow, but its obviously become stagnant. 

The devs make beautiful artwork.  I adore the artwork, but the battling and the RNG issues are having far reaching negative affects on the game.  It is not fun to play because RNG has killed the motivation.  Customers open their wallets when they have fun.  There is a fine line between challenge and fun.  Wolvden has neglected the fun aspect in the belief that cosmetics will keep people playing and that challenge will attract loyal players.  It may, to a degree, but without motivation for forward growth, people tend to leave.  RNG dopamine does not work when people have to reset constantly and cant go forward or see gains with effort.  If every battle is an repetitive grinding chore, there is no reason to keep punishing ourselves.
Mustang 🐎
#3314
Posted 2024-08-21 02:31:13
#1254324
Level 12 goat beats a Level 20 900+ stat wolf:

[Rolled 2 + 1] The Lunar Goat makes a swift dash before you can react. Your opponent has the first move.

[Rolled 3 + 2] The Lunar Goat charges at you with its horns. You take 3 damage but you managed to dodge the horn attack.

[Rolled 3 – 2] You bite the Lunar Goat for 5 damage.

The Lunar Goat rams you for 3 damage.

[Rolled 4 – 2] You bite the Lunar Goat for 2 damage.

The Lunar Goat swings at you with its horns for 3 damage.

[Rolled 1 – 2] You bite the Lunar Goat for 4 damage.

The Lunar Goat attacks you for 4 damage. You are wounded!

You are wounded and have lost 1 HP.

[Rolled 1 – 2] You bite the Lunar Goat for 4 damage.

The Lunar Goat rams you for 4 damage.

You are wounded and have lost 1 HP.

[Rolled 2 + 1] You try to bite the Lunar Goat but miss.

The Lunar Goat rams you for 5 damage.

You are bleeding and have lost 2 HP.

[Rolled 1 + 1] You try to bite the Lunar Goat but miss.

The Lunar Goat swings at you with its horns for 4 damage.

You are bleeding and have lost 1 HP.

[Rolled 1 + 1] You try to rest but the Lunar Goat rushes at you and attacks for 2 damage!

The Lunar Goat attacks you for 4 damage.

You are bleeding and have lost 2 HP.

[Rolled 5 – 2] You bite the Lunar Goat for 3 damage.

The Lunar Goat rams you for 1 damage.

You are bleeding and have lost 2 HP.

[Rolled 2 + 1] You try to bite the Lunar Goat but miss.

The Lunar Goat swings at you with its horns for 5 damage.

You are wounded and have lost 3 HP.

[Rolled 3 + 1] You bite the Lunar Goat for 1 damage and lock your jaw on it.

You are wounded and have lost 2 HP.

[Rolled 3 + 1] You crush the Lunar Goat with your teeth for 4 damage. You can feel something breaking under the pressure.

[Rolled 4 + 1] The Lunar Goat is desperately trying to free itself, but you hold it tight.

The Lunar Goat is wounded and has lost 3 HP.

You are bleeding and have lost 2 HP.

You seem to have gained a persistent illness - it may be time to visit the Herbalist.

You are bleeding profusely. It is time to retreat.

Total energy used: 19. HP regained: 3
Mustang 🐎
#3314
Posted 2024-09-16 19:12:08 (edited)
#1275674
Mustang, you said it perfectly. I won't write a whole essay here because you've perfectly encapsulated the issues at hand, so it would be redundant. But I did want to say that I've also been here since almost the very beginning and the stagnation is a massive issue. They need to be making some fundamental changes or the stagnation will develop into losing money, and losing money means bye-bye Wolvden. I'm so incredibly unbelievably bored with the gameplay after 4 years of playing. Even when there is an event going on, I find the majority of the gameplay & mechanics for most of the events to be super boring, repetitive, ultra grindy, just a real drag, not very fun (I say 'most' because Fayre was a massive improvement IMO). I force myself to participate so I'll have apps to sell to sustain my GC income for the next year (mostly an F2P player here, with the occasional small purchase to support the devs). There hasn't been a new BO T3 I wanted to breed for since... Corundum?? The only reason I've stayed is because I make custom decors and I love that shit.

ETA: If you've been paying attention to the player count at the bottom of the screen, it hasn't really moved significantly in 4 years. Therefore I don't really think it's a question of whether the stagnation is an issue or not, but a question of how to move forward and move out of the stagnation.
mercurie
#35270
Posted 2024-09-20 18:06:30 (edited)
#1279402
Honestly, I don't think battles are too hard to find. My main wolf is not a super grinded boy with impossible stats, he just reached LVL 20 last week. Even so, my % of battles won is 97.37%, which I find very high. I would not want it to be higher than that.

I'm not sure RNG is the biggest issue in winning battles, as much as maybe a lack of understanding battle mechanism by most players. I agree though drops should be more frequent. I have played for years and never once saw a Growth Root, lol.

Sadly the thing about clean lineage is something I see in all games. For some reason people just want their pixel pets to be "pure" or something. Never got that. I recommand you get a "pure" stud to make SC, and make your own pair of high stats wolves to get a nice high stat wolf as a leader eventually c:
Flavien⭐Bouchard
#52221
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