Game Length

Well, every time I think about going to play MM&M, I realize I don't have time because it takes so long for a game...Especially when you're going to start new.

Suggestions:

Do the NPC thing I suggested a while back. Keep the same EHP for spells (Lower Health, and raise magic resistance) and lower the EHP for physical attacks (Lower the armor drastically, and lower the health). Allows low level games to end much quicker, from say 3 hours, to maybe 1 .

Allow a -surrender, or -tie command during game. Both commands would only work within 30minutes of the game, or during uneven teams (if you can trigger that). -surrender would allow one team to give up, so that you can go and quest instead of dragging it out. -tie would be the same thing except neither team wins and gets the extra level or whatever.

On a side note: Do quests get increased EXP/Gold from -an? If not, I suggest that they should as well. Both the creeps themselves, and the rewards. This will help nullify the "Base" mages of a level X Arcane mage and using it for multiple mages. (Another sidenote, what is the Skillpoints/Gold that can be saved currently anyway?).

Yeah, it's ridiculously long. It can often be 2-3 hours BEFORE the questing. At higher levels it's not quite so bad, but balanced teams can still push back and forth for a long time. This makes me end up having the same problem as Jay. When I'm only online for an hour I can't play MM&M.

The surrender or tie suggestion sounds great.

I'm also curious about the maximum gold you can save. I'm backing a couple of base mages and I want to know how far I can push it before they won't load. (I can figure it out by trial and error, but I would rather not.)

I haven't played the map in a very long time, but did you guys remove the option of NOT join the Great War?

Because if you didn't remove that option, than you're just QQing because you want levels from the victory faster ...

Low level people have to do the war. (Under 15 IIRC)

The war is the fun part anyway. Sure we could get together and grind for half an hour, but that's not nearly as much fun as stomping each other. (Although the new quests and things have continued to make the questing more manageable and reward-laden.)


Btw, whether intentional or not we have slowly but steadily decreased how long it takes to max your mage. It now only takes like half as long to get all maxed out. I was reminded of this by how ungodly long it takes to get decent in M&M. I was talking to people who couldn't even afford the Basic Set yet and were only like level 30-40 who had put in 4-6 hours. That's just sad and is the kind of thing that tempts me to cheat. (I'm almost level 70 and I just got Hawk Garment, Tri-barrel, and Divine Shot. Geez it takes forever to get crap. Although I have noticed that I am starting to get more money now. I can get almost 5k per game at this level as opposed to the beginning where I was lucky to get 500 per game.)

Zync wrote:

I haven't played the map in a very long time, but did you guys remove the option of NOT join the Great War?

Because if you didn't remove that option, than you're just QQing because you want levels from the victory faster ...

-an makes it so everyone is joining the war (So would a load game and making a new mage). Games don't end (The War) for more than 2+ hours with one team dominating, having the other team a much lower level - or 3 hours for a fair balanced team - and it's stupid because it's the team that DOESN'T push that wins, because they push slower and build up a bigger army (Since currently even 4/5 waves from both sides at once won't kill a single NPC hero) now when you put in AoE to the mix, it's nearly impossible to actually end sometimes.

Also - with this kind of game length, as Dragon says....you can pretty much max a mage, or get to like 40-50 by the end of one game just due to the sheer length.

Wouldn't it be simpler if NPC heroes evolved like creeps, but on a slower rate?

That way, they'd be balanced to be killed at any given time.

In the upcoming version I have hijacked the ANNS Game mode to be my future experimentation for NM and AN games. Currently from testing I have discovered that the game is significantly funner when you increase the overall speed of the game.

Currently Im entertaining the idea of having a forfeit command for either the entire war or for specific players that simply do not want to play in the war anymore. Also I believe that Siege units will greatly reduce the time of the game by itself so Ive been looking into that as well.

Siege only reduces game time if you have problem with towers. If you got an Earth towers are a cinch.

>.< Any comments on rebalancing the EHP's of the NPC heroes?

Can't say I have many comments about the NPC heroes EHP but I do find it annoying when I'm trying to kill the knight/archer for max EXP and then the army kills the paladin ._.

I do like the idea of a -surrender function for single characters. If a person gets tired of the war they can leave it and go quest or something.

Victory Or Death!!
1 hour in, Npc rush bottom lane, gaining extra creeps for each tower left.

Why hasn't this been done yet? its pretty simple imo.

Sounds like a silly way to end things if you ask me. The AoS is, at this point in time, a major part of the game. Cutting it short takes out one of the more fun elements in the map: Player VS Player combat. There is currently no arena area (Or a -duel command) where mages can 1v1 each other, and the questing is pretty meh, to the point of where all I want to do is kill the dragon for the skill point, if I'm close to a level top it off, and then move on to the next game.


However, if the war is not turning out to be a -fun- environment, an option to leave it while it is progressing without quitting the game entirely would be nice.

well weren't bosses suppose to be done to make the rpg side more attractive?

I like the War being long, as it indicates that it really is a "Great War". Really, you don't even know if that side wins as their castle is still alive !

It's just 3 hour games are ridiculous. EHP of NPC's changed around with a -surrender/-tie command helps solve these problems - but they have to be done so everyone on the team, or everyone in the game agrees...otherwise people might randomly leave the war and completely skew the teams.

Yeah, long war is fine as long as you have the option to leave it if necessary and it does end eventually. Something like 1-2 hours average is ok. I just think that 3-4 hours is overkill.

well make it so victory or death can be set by the host, so if they only want the war to be 30 minutes they can set it to go off then, or if they like long wars, they can set it to 2 hours. Power to the players!

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well make it so victory or death can be set by the host, so if they only want the war to be 30 minutes they can set it to go off then, or if they like long wars, they can set it to 2 hours. Power to the players!

I don't like that suggestion, it will lead to a division of players.
Let's say 3 people are on the channel, 1 of them says he is gonna host a 1 hour game, one of the other two decides to enter the game, the other doesn't because he doesn't like short games of MM&M, and in a regulat MM&M, the three of them would of joined.

If you don't have the time to finish the war, just add a -surrender/-tie command, or a-withdraw command to retreat from the war and some way to balance the teams after withdrawing from it.

but what if neither side wasn't to tie or surrender? perhaps add both the commands and victory or death? or maybe make VoD vote-able?

Then they want to keep going if neither team surrenders or ties...With surrender, you have a clear cut winning side, they just can't end it...but the other team won't ever be able to end it either. With tie...it's just even and taking too long.

If both teams think they can win then it's balanced....and if they don't want to they don't say anything, then if it becomes too long they just tie. Not hard...

-withdraw: Removes the player's mage from the war and places them back on the main island.

-vote shuffle: reshuffles the players in the war in an attempt to rebalance teams. Only usable after 6 minutes into the game and every 10 minutes.

-surrender/-tie: Initiates a vote which requires a majority of the team/all players on a side/in the war. Bonus level for winning disabled.

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-withdraw: Removes the player's mage from the war and places them back on the main island.

This would be a bad command. Imbalances teams....And doesn't make sense. Either someone is going to save and leave, or not join the war to start.

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-vote shuffle: reshuffles the players in the war in an attempt to rebalance teams. Only usable after 6 minutes into the game and every 10 minutes.

I like it.

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-surrender/-tie: Initiates a vote which requires a majority of the team/all players on a side/in the war. Bonus level for winning disabled.

They should be different. Surrender would only require one team, and would give the other team the bonus level. Tie would not. Sometimes there is a clear cut winner, they just can't end it - and the other team won't ever be able to end it.

The reason I put surrender/tie together is because someone can abuse the surrender command at higher levels to give someone else free levels.

withdraw on it's own is bad, yes, but withdraw + shuffle would work.

Well you could easily put a time limit, like you must have played an hour before you can surrender.

And if everyone has to agree to shuffle, then that might not work - as people could be like "Teams are fair now" even if they clearly aren't so they can get an easy win.

Yawn, another thing shortening game length does is promote multiple hostings which in turn spreads the map, which then allows balance/bug reports etc to come in at a faster rate.

I don't think a -surrender should give EXP.

It should just be so players can grab a few quests before saving and leaving.

I also think that every island should have enough creeps so that one pass through killing EVERYTHING should complete all the quests. It's annoying to stand there and wait for respawn sometimes.