mod changes committee

[DW_Bomzin]

No all those adren bundles that just spawn repitively should go . Was never in favor of them , you should have to work for your weps.

[monsTo]

TBH, I rarely die. TB even more honest, I find it hard to score XP on some maps. Everyone is globing, lighning rodding, summoning 4,000 pets on these wide open maps. When the server is rocking, the monsters are half dead by the time I even spot them.

all too common a problem. i actually fell behind the level of the wave of players that joined the server when it started cuz i didn't play for a couple weeks. I can now no longer consistenly power a globe while playing cuz i'm 80 levels behind the wave.

I remember when 2k3 was on its last legs, and DW went through it's invasion phase. We had a blast [. . .] We considered it a victory to get to wave 12, or 13. We rooted like hell for the last guy in a wave, huddling in a semi-sheltered part of a regular DM map hoping for timeouts. It was a blast! When we introduced RPG to the mix, we had a guy who played morning noon and night. He had stats through the roof. His weapon speed was something ridiculous like 700. I asked him if he was bored with it all knowing he was impossible to kill, and he admitted it was. BTW Wraith, that was Tie (Payback) if you don't remember.

there's other servers i've played on where 16 was not a foregone conclusion. the biggest thing about those servers was that they didn't use druids... just straight rpg. one of them used Weapons of Power. (I have the WoP code. i'd like to try it on the test server and see what we think. here's the thing with WoP... it's just a mutator. so you could turn off druids, and just run it on vanilla invasion. and every map is then a whole new world.)

TBPH, i think the class bit just complicates things. if classes and class-specific skills went away (with the exception of the monster skills) i personally wouldn't miss it.

Can we remove wide open maps? Can we have maps that are not 100% safe (like Blackhawk, unless you have changed it since then)? Do we force the map limit to something drastic like 15 or 20 so that we are not playing dome every 5th map?

Do we need to have "Campaigns" where we reset the stats every 6 months or so to get people excited again? That's kind of drastic, but IMHO, if we don't change something, we're going to have a server filled with level 300 folks scoring major XP via globe, lightning, pets, and the newbies will not get a chance to even score any. How can you expect a new person to level up? Hell, *I* can't level up!

fucking dome. worst map ever. period.

Yeah i can't level up either. I can't run my globe which means i'm not hitting anything. I used to level up about everyother map. in the last to playing sessions of about 3 maps each i've not leveled once.

that being said, combining the above 2 ideas... a 17 map limit with resetting characters every X time would make sense. add in changing the monsters at reset, and it's perfect. I personally wouldn't disagree with this, but then there's the guy(s) only been playing for 2 weeks and just gotten used to the game . . . then campaign end. ugh. also there'd need to be some kind of persistent in game reward to make it worth continuing to play IMO.

I think a better way to approach the hordes of lv 300 characters is to have an effective level limit. so everythings pretty well paced at say level 150, but then the accelleration for levelling really ramps up. so that the entire chart from 0 - 200 is logarhithmic. lv 200 requires 70k and 201 requires 140k or something equally depressing. at that point it'd be time to start a new guy.

P.S. Is this the first sign we need two servers?

a server with druids, custom invasion maps (like dome and my maps) and the effective level limits versus a server with vanilla rpg (and maybe the monster skills hacked in), but with maybe runes or WoP, and NO custom invasion maps (only quality multiplayer maps).

. . . a High Magic, balls out server vs a Low Magic, skill (player and character) based server. They would require COMPLETELY different styles of play. needed? nah. Cool? yep.

[zeus]

P.S. Is this the first sign we need two servers?

Well, I have been thinking about this since the early days of Monster Mash.

You could essentially have two levels of play - amatuer and pro (just designations). Amatuer people could play dome of dumb and chaka's to their hearts content. However, once they hit level 100 (random number), they have to play on the pro server. All of your abilities gets automatically transferred over.

The pro server would not have any of the crap maps. They would be regular maps without all of the excess power ups, hidey holes, etc. Maybe pull the mines out of everything. Have tougher monsters, but maybe quicker power ups. At this point, I would like to see getting to wave 10 as an accomplishment. Getting to wave 16 is a meriacle. You would actually have to get out and play.

I see two disadvantages to this:
1. It fragments the community. However, you are already running SV and Tricked Out, so that may not be that big of a deal. Plus, considering in the last couple of weeks we have seen the MM server maxed out quite a bit, it may offload some people so that everyone could play.

2. It adds overhead to Wraith to have to migrate people to the pro server.

[DW_Hornet]

I think we are getting ahead of ourselves. Lets see what happens in the next few months maybe about august time. Even if we have the audience that will make this feasible, I'm not sure we have the available bandwidth for SV, and 2 invasion servers. 2-3 months will give us ample time to assess the situation.

Toxic when does the contract for Chicago run out?

[DW_ToxicWaste]

Right, things will be tight CPU and bandwidth wise for a couple of months. Chicago is gone by the end of the month.

August time frame we'll be putting another server into Chicago where we'll have loads of CPU and bandwidth headroom. But that doesn't prevent us from kicking ideas around.

Zeus: I don't think we can force people to play where we want them to play.

The bottom line again is for some folks, spamming, leveling, and not dying is fun. And for some, fight for survival is fun. And I can tell you that for me, some days I might like midless spam, and other days the fight. So as an admin, how do you win? You don't, right Wraith? :blackeye: But I think a good start is to trim a couple of the worst offending spam maps, and up the repeat limit. This way people have no choice but to choose some more tough maps.

It's the problem I face on SV with all the questionable maps I'm running there. I don't think they are fun in the least, but some people do.

Rich (TW)

[DW_Wraith]

Good points Toxic, esp. the no-winning part.....lol

One thing I haven't done, is set the monster skill up higher. Currently it is set at Inhuman, there is one last rung it can goto and that is Godlike, which I believe other servers use. This may be the simplest way to make all maps challenging in one fell swoop. If there is enough agreement to do so, I would like to see it on the test server with people one there to see what its like. I can turn down the Monster Adjustment Factor in needed. Godlike settings should make the monster much more aggressive and snooze less. Maybe this will at least give us more time on what to do at the very least. I'm willing to give it a try tonight later in the evening.

[zeus]

I will try to be on later to help out Wraith. I am always up for a good ass kicking. That is why I play TAM... ;)

[DW_ACY]

The only reason I bring this up is cranking the monster to be ever harder is becoming fruitless, and newbies have an awful hard time now as it stands, while high level players such as RM (not meaning to pick on you personally) can be nearly invincible while being under a 300 level. While I want the players to eventually become nearly invincible, I didn't think that could happen so fast. I don't like the idea of redeemer creatures either, as its too hard on the newbies and its just unfair.

DW>Wraith

Damage reduction is to high , The higher level medics don't take damage like you would expect . They don't even have to try and avoid anything other then a big rock . I have no idea how high it is 300+ . You may be better off with a lower DB and make them have to atleast move in on the higher waves. Make them invest in health points instead.

Death should always be an option .

Bomzin sorry for the misunderstanding my thought on this was when you mention damage reductin being to high. I don't think damage reduction is to high I think advanced damage deduction is to high. Every player has full access to damage reduction stat but only medics and wm get advanced, so yeh they can stay out there but turning down regular stats all the time is not the solution either. Look at the specialized items that make it possibel not just the regular stats. Anywho wasn't wanting to misrepresent, I just think turning down stats is not always the way to accomplish the goal.
Question is it possible to set different paramenters for stats on the clases? If so would it not make sense to slow down weapon speed for say medics and then progressivly allow higher speed for AM and the highest for WM's. That same principle could be used with each class to allow for balanceing and role playing. So that an AM with adren drip 3 gets more adren faster to allow for the making of wepons, while the medic is limited to adren drip 1 or 2 which is very slow. I don't know is this to much to do with the programming code.

Anyway Wraih I will be more than happy to help test the Godlike mode on the test server tonight.

[monsTo]

2. It adds overhead to Wraith to have to migrate people to the pro server.

This can be handled at the os level. a simple php script could read the character file for one game server, find specific entries, and write them to the character file for a different gameserver (whether it's on the same box or not)

P.S. Is this the first sign we need two servers?

a server with druids, custom invasion maps (like dome and my maps) and the effective level limits versus a server with vanilla rpg (and maybe the monster skills hacked in), but with maybe runes or WoP, and NO custom invasion maps (only quality multiplayer maps).

. . . a High Magic, balls out server vs a Low Magic, skill (player and character) based server. They would require COMPLETELY different styles of play. needed? nah. Cool? yep.

yeah sure that's a copy paste, but it plays to what toxic said about sometimes wanting to spam and sometimes wanting to PLAY play.

[DW_Bomzin]

If those monsters are still set on god like and nothing has changed since last night , except the people in the server . You really don't stand a chance on getting a good balance. From the differances I just saw .

Wraith you have done a very good job of getting it to the point it is at , Kudos .