Graveyard Mob Resets

[Cassy]

So, your argument that the GY should be an easy spot to mindless grind away to get to 99 the fastest in sort of invalid.

Erm... but that wasn't my argument
I'm not interested in making everything as easy as possible, I actually even hate easy games in general.
IMO it's just not a change that balanced things, it made the balance worse by making that hole I described bigger.
Also to me there's a difference between easy levelling up and having fun levelling up... skulls are no fun

However, I heard some players who are fine with this change and some who hate it, it's about a 50:50 ratio.
I think I wrote everything I have to say about this change.

[wushin]

https://github.com/themanaworld/tmwa-se ... l/54/files

It's not counting everyone in the graveyard.

[AnonDuck]

Fix pulled. I dunno when it'll go live. Thanks.

[Kazenawa]

God, I am going to sound like I am saying 'Get off my lawns kids!' but I leveled to 80 off mountain snakes and snakes alone, back when the GY was just a distant pixelated dream in someones head. Got to 95 off the two skulls in the Northern Mines when it was 'the spot' to grind and skulls weren't such a pain in the ass.[...]
Hell, I remember a few old players who got to 96 off snakes alone. Try leveling a character the old way and come back to this argument [...]

Well, sorry for the word, but I personnally call that obstinacy... I surely do not like easy games too, but to me a game is intended to provide me fun. I honestly couldn't have had fun the way you did it, spending hours doing always the same easy thing without everyone else around...
Though, I respect your way to have fun, everyone is hopefully different. But I doubt it's a common way to have it

If graveyard was intended to be a place for high-level players, I'm not against spawning all kind of hardly-killable stuff there, even in a crazy way. That's for high-levels, after all. Moreover, various sorts of monsters only killable by a certain type of players oblige them to cooperate. In a multiplayer game, I think it's a really good thing.
However, if graveyard is going to be modified this way, I like the idea to make a new place for players, maybe in the range of [70-90].
That's a personal opinion, but I really wouldn't enjoy levelling from 70 to 90 thanks to 2 or 3 skulls and mountains of snakes

[o11c]

We've had a couple of other fixes lately so it'll probably be soon.

[tux9th]

Cassy is working on a map which is going to substitute the lost xp grounds for players in the level range from ~60 to 80.

it is going to look something like this:

Spoiler:

http://sagdas.net/mana/pictures/043-4-4.png

[AnonDuck]

If it's easier than the GY and provides just as much exp, what's to keep high level players from just coming in and owning it? Lower level maps probably should give less exp as it's less of a challenge.

[Cassy]

If it's easier than the GY and provides just as much exp, what's to keep high level players from just coming in and owning it? Lower level maps probably should give less exp as it's less of a challenge.

Nah, easier & same EXP wouldn't make sense.
Of course the EXP must be lower, but higher than e.g. Mountain Snakes -> that's the hole i mentioned.
In numbers (if the wiki is correct) this is 2,102 EXP (Skeleton) vs. 230 EXP (Mountain Snake).
-> Creating something in the middle by e.g. using the Skeleton Sprite but different dressed (idea by wushin).

Should be fine for everyone.

[SudoPlatypus]

"Mob Penning" or putting the skulls and sometimes the jacko into the box is a uniqueness for the graveyard map that should be kept. Players can either join together and help to put them away, or one or more players can decide to be a rotten apple and slay or drag them back to fighting areas. This resetting is bad because it messes with players ability to alter their combat/contact with monsters that is a feature, not a flaw, of the beloved Grave Yard.

For something as radical as monsters resetting themselves, an extension to the Grave Yard, and it applying to new stronger mobs; that would be for the win.

[AnonDuck]

After the bugs having been worked out with the resetting, reading the feedback here, and observing gameplay, I think I've come up with a semi-satisfactory solution.

As some of you may know my original and ideal solution was to have mobs walk back to their spawn area when otherwise unoccupied. tmwAthena's pathfinder is too broken to make this happen, and I am not good enough of a programmer to properly fix it. I've asked for help on this and nobody else seems to be able to figure it out either.

So here is the solution I'm proposing:
If a mob is unoccupied(in random-wander mode)
AND is far out of it's spawn area
AND has been out of it's spawn area for X(10?) minutes or so
AND no players are able to see it
Give it a (50?)% chance of warping back to it's spawn area.
Don't kill it. Retain all damage it may have previously taken.

To clarify, the random% chance is re-rolled every X minutes. So all mobs WILL eventually end up back where they belong. It can just take some time. The idea here is to make it less obvious/surprising.

The random % chance and timer will have to be tweaked by feel so as to make mobs relocate back to their spawn points eventually, without making it feel too weird to play. Maybe use # of players on the map as a factor in the equasion.

This should ensure that mobs cannot be indefinately penned up in one location while allowing players some minor ability to temporarily re-arrange things. It's within my ability to implement and I think I can do it without introducing many bugs.

Opinions?

ps: I've seen AMAZING teamwork happening in the graveyard since the resetting was implemented. I'm glad to see that some players can easily adapt and enjoy a different gameplay dynamic.

[Techron]

What I have observed is that the graveyard is now a playground for the Banshee Bow equipped archer only. These players can take out the skulls easily and there is no way a lower lvl player can compete with this. The fun part about the graveyard was that a player could "pen" a group of mobs thus making it a more playable area. Sure, the Banshee Bow players could go in and unpen the mobs though their greed or trolling, but that was part of the challenge. Now it is just too much of a challenge for the lone archer.

Techron

[Kazenawa]

[...]
So here is the solution I'm proposing:
If a mob is unoccupied(in random-wander mode)
AND is far out of it's spawn area
AND has been out of it's spawn area for X(10?) minutes or so
AND no players are able to see it
Give it a (50?)% chance of warping back to it's spawn area.
Don't kill it. Retain all damage it may have previously taken.

To clarify, the random% chance is re-rolled every X minutes. So all mobs WILL eventually end up back where they belong. It can just take some time. The idea here is to make it less obvious/surprising.

The random % chance and timer will have to be tweaked by feel so as to make mobs relocate back to their spawn points eventually, without making it feel too weird to play. Maybe use # of players on the map as a factor in the equasion.

This should ensure that mobs cannot be indefinately penned up in one location while allowing players some minor ability to temporarily re-arrange things. It's within my ability to implement and I think I can do it without introducing many bugs.

Opinions?

This seems more fair in my opinion. However, I would set the time to more than 10 minutes or the probabilty of walking back to less than 50%, but it depends on GY's occupation of course.

Edit :

[...]ps: I've seen AMAZING teamwork happening in the graveyard since the resetting was implemented. I'm glad to see that some players can easily adapt and enjoy a different gameplay dynamic.

I've been quite surprised too ! Honestly, the return of skulls is a real pain for non-banshee archer or low level warriors, because they respawn quite fast and are hard to kill. But now, at least, players are nearly obliged to fight together with different stats. I think that's a really good point.

[Nard]

But now, at least, players are nearly obliged to fight together with different stats. I think that's a really good point.

when there are players with a level high enough to deal with them. My opinion is that the graveyard is too small to allow those respawns. it would be different if there were more areas with various difficulties such as those Tux9th designed in Tonori. Skulls bring difficulty immediately to very high. When there is 20 or even 30 players online...
for me skulls are just boring and bring only more waste of arrows or iron powder. Players have always cooperated in GY, at least to bring the skulls away, only the stacks and bots did not.
edit: the only "positive" aspect is that it brings more fun to those who like to train their magic with kaflosh.

[Cassy]

But now, at least, players are nearly obliged to fight together with different stats. I think that's a really good point.

when there are players with a level high enough to deal with them. My opinion is that the graveyard is too small to allow those respawns. it would be different if there were more areas with various difficulties such as those Tux9th designed in Tonori. Skulls bring difficulty immediately to very high. When there is 20 or even 30 players online...
for me skulls are just boring and bring only more waste of arrows or iron powder. Players have always cooperated in GY, at least to bring the skulls away, only the stacks and bots did not.
edit: the only "positive" aspect is that it brings more fun to those who like to train their magic with kaflosh.

I totally agree with that as I already mentioned before but now I don't care about it anymore because the map and two new mobs for the level range about ~60-80 is already finished (graveyard was designed for level~90 as pointed out before).
We only need to test it and then we should be able to add it within this year

Hope this is good news for you.

[Villain]

Thanks for fixing that. I know how much feedback you received from the community to implement an emergency change to stop "gy penning" the skulls everyone loves so dearly that they developed a tactic to get rid of them. Maybe now the community will grow larger because the game is more difficult to play. Thanks for Platynaing us.

In keeping with the spirit of never deviating from the original creation / purpose:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19644_th ... ducts.html