Sindusk goodbye Wurm

Sindusk
Villager
Sindusk
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500 posts
Posted 4 minutes ago
I decided to resign from the Wurm Online development team. This was not due to any specific event, but instead a much longer sequence of events and general disagreement with deep-rooted policies in place for the Wurm Online team. I joined the team to make progressive changes for the game, and fix long standing issues with existing systems. The priest rework was a major accomplishment in that regard, overhauling a major system of the game into a much healthier state. However, I truly feel that the most significant issues with the game cannot be fixed through code. The common theme between everything that caused my resignation can be traced to one aspect: Communication.



The first part would be development communication to the players. Certain features and development goals are kept secret with poor reason. Major changes can be implemented with players reading about them during the patch notes while the server is down. Without going into detail, Tower Chaining was one such feature that was nearly mishandled in this regard. This type of secrecy in the development leads to anxiety for players.



What is the future fate of Epic? Should players continue playing there? If they place a new deed on Elevation, is there a possibility of the map being reset shortly after? How much heads up will be given?



All these questions stem from the fact that there is no official statement for plans on the future of Epic. Everything is being done behind closed doors and leads the community to speculate. The players don’t know if there’s a plan for Epic at all. Making sure that content is complete before announcing it is one thing. Leaving the community in a state of anxiety without giving them something to look forward to is a whole different beast.



There doesn’t need to be a set date, there doesn’t need to be a specific timeline. If something gets delayed, there was a reason. State the reason and trust the community to support it. Everyone in this community just wants the game to get better, but get kept at arm’s length due to fear of having them bark up a storm when something doesn’t get done. If you communicate clearly, and speak to your players like you’re having a conversation with a human instead of calming an angry consumer, you’ll see a much better response.



The second part is an extension of the first, which is constraints imposed on staff when it comes to communicating with players. It was very recent that I received a discord PM regarding someone wondering who they should contact in order to report someone. I asked in the general staff channel if there was anyone around who could help this player. It got resolved, but not without it being made clear that type of communication to players is frowned upon. The expectation, being a developer and not someone who handles moderation, was to not respond to the inquiry at all.



This is just a recent example, but this dates all the way back to when I first started. My communications with players seemed to have gone under incredible scrutiny. I remember instances where I was urged not to join specific chat channels or discord servers. I remember getting an absolutely insane amount of flak for appearing on stream without proper notification ahead of time. I remember reporting an issue and being told I shouldn’t even be bringing it up because it’s not part of being a developer. I remember having an exploit reported directly to me, bringing it up in the development chat, and then being chastised for having handled the bug report directly instead of redirecting them to the forums. These events all added up seemed to have painted me as hostile in the team. Like I was somehow breaking the natural order of things or overruling someone else’s duty.



If someone comes to me with an issue, I shouldn’t have to judge whether I should attempt to resolve it or not. I shouldn’t be expected to ignore the message entirely and give the player no direction. Players have no interest in jumping through hoops to get something done “correctly” - it should just get done. These artificial restrictions, whatever purpose they serve, do nothing but harm the players in the long run and make players reporting issues excessively difficult.



The final part is communication about GM actions to the general public, and even the players who are subject to the actions. This has nothing to do with GM rulings themselves. Instead, my primary point of complaint here is the communication to the players and general public when rulings are made. The lack of communication allows the players on the other end of the ruling to spin the narrative to paint corruption and bias into the decisions, even if they are not present.



This dates all the way back to when Propheteer was banned and there was only the single statement made about it. From the GM team, there was no general statement as to why one of the most prominent players in the game was banned. Instead, it was handled behind closed doors and Propheteer was able to release his own statements to the player base, spinning the narrative to suit his perspective. If a clear, informative statement was made saying “Propheteer has been banned for this reason and this is the evidence we have against him” the whole situation would have gone much smoother.



This translates to all decisions. When a PvP ban or raid ban is announced, it’s just announced then lifted some time later. Updates on the progress and expected timeframe would help settle the minds of players. Updates similar to “The bug has been found and fixed, and will be patched in the next update. When the update is live, we will ensure the bug has been fixed and lift the ban.” You can even provide non-committal ballparks for when that is. “We expect the update to go live later this week.” If it doesn’t happen, again, like stated before: You have a reason, just state your reason and trust the community to back it.



Finally, this should extend to investigation process. Both sides should be heard during a dispute. Too many times have I heard of a player being punished without anyone listening to their perspective of events. Truth can’t be known until both sides are heard, and you can figure out the actual events that happened. For some reason, the players being accused are considered hostile and are never contacted to hear their side of events. GM’s should serve as mediators between players, not executioners of justice for those who do something suspicious.



With all of that said, these aren’t the only reasons. Certain events that I’m not at liberty to discuss were also part of my decision. I truly respect the current development team and feel they have the best interests of the game in mind. However, improving the communication and winning your community back to supporting your efforts should be of paramount importance.



I wish the best of luck to the future of the game, and hope players enjoy the content I’ve worked on. It’s been a great experience and it pains me to leave, but I feel that the work I do was being consistently tainted by policies and decisions outside my control.