New Monsters. Concern on two of them.

[DW_TigerRaptorFX]

I'll just come right out and say it. Spinosaurus attack is very weak indeed. Speed of the attack should be increased a little more. I found it to easy to dodge even at close range. But over all I do like new attack as it brings something different to the table. Just my 2 cents.

[warhead2]

I'll 2nd that. I think they can be beefed up. more speed, more damage. I took them to the face a lot (with a high level character, and on purpose since they were so ez to avoid) and it didn't cause me much trouble. Overall though it's a nice adjustment. Don't have to worry about dying in two seconds since it's no longer super fast IG, I like the new look of the attack, and with some more threat added to it, s/b very nice. IG i think also would be ok if they were easier to avoid, but i'm totally cool with a high damage fireball. it somehow fits that kind of creature which looks somethink like a dragon anyways. :ssmile:

on another note, after playing some more, wave 7 & 8 actually seem 2b ok so i guess it's just 4 - 6 that could possibly use some beefing up. i'm with anonmouse in that the hoards of monsters and xp in the old wave 4 was really fun.

thanks very much for the changes.

[DW_WailofSuicide]

Yep, I did want to keep things kind of reasonable as I don't want to have a repeat of their rock attacks.
I think the splash in general is fine, I have seen several lower level characters getting killed by it when the attack bounces around inside a congregation area. I don't want it to get to the point where they're shooting a projectile that does 1000dmg in largeish AoE like they have, though. However currently if the monster level remains low, a direct hit is not something to be feared by a high level player even in the same way that a rock is. That's the main problem for me as the Spinosaurus are specifically intended to fill the role of Titans (Big guys with dangerous attacks that you really want to avoid) without some of the annoying features of rocks (invisible rocks, getting killed by rocks sitting still on the ground, unpredictable damage).

Side Note: Spinosaurus attack does 300 primary hit damage and is specifically keyed to that number as that's how much damage a Fury Titan dishes out currently with one of his attacks. I'm inclined to say the Fury Titan also needs a boost based on what you guys are saying.

[Anonymouse]

Some of the earlier waves could be a bit more interesting, although old Wave 4 with the Goros was really harsh for lower levels (IMO). I definitely tried to make the earlier waves more encouraging to have lower level players go out and run around, but definitely open to moving some stuff down into lower waves. A lot of this has to do with other monsters I want to add in there being currently unfinished and on the backburner since just getting a feel for the waves & tweaking the Dinos has been eating up all my time.

Why not lower speed or damage? Wave 4 was xp wave for pros

[warhead2]

agree that fury also seem to need dmg bump. i fear most titans but i dont fear him. him i just run straight at a lot and take a warm pleasant bath in his attack and that probably should not be.

[Jon!]

Here are my brief thoughts.

• Waves 1-9 needs to be tougher
• Less flying creatures.
• Less skaarj pack monsters (some times I feel like I'm playing invasion offline)
• Less dinos. Some dinos are a bit useless, while others look too similar to different species.
• Toughen up the dinos who are staying (T-rex and spinos one shot kill?)
• Wave 10 moved to later wave. (maybe switch 14 and 10?)
• More score. Players love to hear the Holy Spree runs.
• More monsters that are fun to shoot at. I don't know about others, but I don't take much pleasure in shooting a shrike compare to a titan or a queen.

I could support all of these reasons in more detail, but I don't want to write a page+ right now.[/color]

Sorry, I haven't read the whole thread yet - I probably will - but after returning to MM for the first time since the fall of Tony's monsters, I have to agree with you on all of that. I found over the last few days (ive played ~8 matches) that I don't get the same enjoyment out of Mashing than I did. The main reason is that I feel there's waaay too many tiny monsters that are a bugger to hit, it's like having about 10 different types of shrikes. And the dinos seem to be nothing more than a distraction in waves 1-10, not really much of a threat to +100s.

Problem is all the eggs of each colour are in the same basket, so to speak. LOTS of small monsters with high DR or HP on the lower waves, then a gargantuan amount of big monsters later on. It makes it into a boring slog to start with and then a spamfest in the late waves - there's no balance to it.

EDIT: Another point, now that I have read the whole thread. The waves are a total nightmare for the Medic Master, what with having one gun at a time with a high ammo amount. I used to adore the Medic Flak Cannon, now it's a liability because it favours larger and slower monsters - barely any of which are still in. The MP5 is a decent choice - although a bit samey to use - but it is crapped on by DR levels and highly armoured monsters I.E Spino, Angus, and the smaller stuff especially shrikes which take longer than a horde of queens to kill.

My final verdict is that atm, I feel like Monster Mash has become Dino Mash - or at least, I find myself surrounded by dinos which aren't particularly fun to kill, and they push out the classic good old Monster Mash monsters. My flak cannon comment above is reinforced by others saying the NRG Flak isn't much good now, so at least my moans aren't just me raging. I have found the value of Freezing/Petri Mini or MP5 to be massive, not just for seekers and enlighteneds, and somehow I gain more score and exp in the minute or so my medic can use a Freezing gun than I do in a wave with Medic MP5.

[Jon!]

Back on topic... I think you guys should just remove the dinosaurs altogether and place some better decent monsters.

This. Maybe if you insist keep the big ones on the final 2 waves, but I still prefer the classic "OMG THERES A RAPTOR IN HERE GET IT OUT" green instagib raptor. At least he can fit in hides and cause hilarious chaos.

IMHO the setup before Quake's monsters or Tony's monsters was the best. The one I used to complain was too hard. :slipssealed: :sdull:

EDIT: Wail, I only just read that you intended the spinos to replace titans. You do realise they're the most fun part of monster mash? The risks you take by fighting titans and the reward or punishment for those risks are fantastic. The spino on the other hand is less of a loose cannon, more precise, SMALLER, and it gives less score, adren, EXP, kill streak AND satisfaction to kill.

[DW_Ant]

This. Maybe if you insist keep the big ones on the final 2 waves, but I still prefer the classic "OMG THERES A RAPTOR IN HERE GET IT OUT" green instagib raptor. At least he can fit in hides and cause hilarious chaos.

FWI, the raptors are not part of the Dinotopia monster package.

[DW_WailofSuicide]

Sorry, I haven't read the whole thread yet - I probably will - but after returning to MM for the first time since the fall of Tony's monsters, I have to agree with you on all of that. I found over the last few days (ive played ~8 matches) that I don't get the same enjoyment out of Mashing than I did. The main reason is that I feel there's waaay too many tiny monsters that are a bugger to hit, it's like having about 10 different types of shrikes. And the dinos seem to be nothing more than a distraction in waves 1-10, not really much of a threat to +100s.

I agree the configuration needs some more work. Mostly this is because monsters like Shrike are in the waves for a specific purpose - DR ignoring damage. Now that all Dinos have this feature, there's really no reason for Shrikes to be around in as many waves. Same with Angus, and so on.
As for distraction vs. threat - Well, if you're high level the only thing that can reliably damage you is either (a) a Rock, or (b) an excessively high damage attack (e.g. Seeker attacks which do 900 damage) or (c) a "piercing" damage attack employed by the Dinotopia dinos (not standard issue Raptors).

It's just a fact of how Damage Bonus & Damage Reduction work in RPG in this game that it's pretty much feast or famine when it comes to threat - Either you're high level and able to soak all 8 of a Queens projectiles and take basically no damage from them, or you're low level and probably get killed instantly by even one piddly 30 dmg Queen projectile, much less a Titan rock or a 900 dmg Seeker shot. Piercing damage like the Dinos employ is at least possible to keep reasonable, but it does have its own problems.

Problem is all the eggs of each colour are in the same basket, so to speak. LOTS of small monsters with high DR or HP on the lower waves, then a gargantuan amount of big monsters later on. It makes it into a boring slog to start with and then a spamfest in the late waves - there's no balance to it.

Well -- When this was initially rolled out I did have smaller, easier to kill monsters mixed in on the later waves. I got biatched at for this, by the way, so now they're gone. This really isn't any different from how the older Tony config was (all super high dmg, high health monsters late wave).

Personally I think smaller monsters mixed in on later waves are a good thing - Helps you sustain your sprees, and not every monster needs to be a Titan or a Queen. (I also think it's useful to have at least one player-sized monster on a wave.)

There's also room for some beefier monsters early on. The main difficulty in general is that there's no way to specify, "Well, make a few of these monsters here and there but don't make too many." The only thing that it's possible to do right now is to say, "Well, randomly choose between these X monsters to spawn." Hence you'll get, for example, a swarm of Shrikes outnumbering all the other monsters in the level 3 to 1, or a swarm of flying monsters because no one is shooting any of them down, and there's no way to weight the spawn against them when there are already "enough" in a level.

Back on topic... I think you guys should just remove the dinosaurs altogether and place some better decent monsters.

This. Maybe if you insist keep the big ones on the final 2 waves, but I still prefer the classic "OMG THERES A RAPTOR IN HERE GET IT OUT" green instagib raptor. At least he can fit in hides and cause hilarious chaos.

IMHO the setup before Quake's monsters or Tony's monsters was the best. The one I used to complain was too hard. :slipssealed: :sdull:

EDIT: Wail, I only just read that you intended the spinos to replace titans. You do realise they're the most fun part of monster mash? The risks you take by fighting titans and the reward or punishment for those risks are fantastic. The spino on the other hand is less of a loose cannon, more precise, SMALLER, and it gives less score, adren, EXP, kill streak AND satisfaction to kill.

Spinosaurus are not set up to replace Titans, they're set up to be a Titan equivalent. They are using the same base score calculation / value as Titans are using. Adren, EXP, Kill Streak all follow the same value as a Titan would have on the equivalent wave.
As for the "risks" vs. rewards, I don't have anything against Titans per-se but the way their rocks behave is very annoying (to me). Getting killed by "invisible" or "settled" rocks is so typical it's just expected. I mean, there's "risk" and then there's uncontrollable buggy behavior.

The only real point is they're a bit smaller face-on. I actually did make them a little bit chunkier in that dimension in the last update. But there's only so much you can do without tweaking the model. If their tail didn't stick out so far I'd be happy to make them bigger, but it's not practical to have something 1.5x to 2x as long as a Titan trying to navigate many levels.


As for the setup before Quake or Tony monsters - You're talking about something two years back, I don't think we have records of that. I actually would love to have some of those earlier configs if possible just because I want to be able to have the game choose between a variety of preexisting or map-specific configurations so that you're not always going to fight the same monsters in the same configuration every game.

[Jon!]

I knew that Ant. I just sometimes think that I'd prefer a raptor for every dinosaur that spawns (Read: I prefer to fight raptors to dinotopias)

On the spino, yeah, I know there's only so much you can do but the dinos in general are just a tad too small. The smaller ones are just plain tiny. My flak cannon does almost no good at all against some waves, which is why I say that this setup is biased against the low-medium medic, (Not deliberately) because I have to constantly change to a more/less accurate/powerful gun. Wasting adrenaline and guns.

I know the setups were a long time ago. As a matter of fact I would be prepared to put up with the Quakes myself, although others disliked them. I managed to get two of my friends interested in the Mash back then with the vores and stuff, but yesterday my dad watched me play and said "This just looks weird." I don't think the hordes of dinosaurs have a place in MM, don't get me wrong change is good but I preferred alien and monster-type monster mash.
BEFORE: Lots of varying monsters, +Queen and Titan variants+Seekers+Raptors
AFTER: at least 50% dinosaurs, +some Queens and Titans and one effective raptor type, plus classic seekers.

I'll finish with what I was thinking before I left the game earlier: "Monster Mash just isn't as fun anymore. I don't get the same thrill from survival." Nor can I (level ~124) peek my head out for a bit of a fight without A. Having my kills stolen by a higher level or B. Getting raped by a triceratops or a Waillord. That's another thing there's too many of - one or two variants is fine. But not the amount there is now.