Mazz VI: Wisdom of the Mancers

[ChrisP]

Godz, I won't be on Mnet till probably Sunday night, maybe Monday.

The lack of tracking for the level 1 fireball is intentional. While it may seem a huge handicap, it does more damage and costs roughly a third the mana of the (easier to use) level 2 fireball, making it a relatively effective level 1 spell against easy targets. Also, the mancers were never intended to perfectly match one another spell for spell. The electro has greater accuracy and burst damage potential, but the pyro is more mana efficient and can pump out steady damage for longer.

[Archer]

That would make sense, except the Electromancer's level 1 attack is honing, and he has a much easier time leveling up than the Pyro does.

In general, if something comes with a manual, and a behaviour is documented in that manual outside of a "known bugs" section, it's probably not a bug.

(I'm not keen on the weirdness that happens with the gains-seeking-but-damage-goes-down-and-cost-goes-up leveling, but it's clearly intentional. 'Sides, all you need to do is path a good line a few times to get up to speed to level from normal spells, and it's not like you're given any shortage of ammo)

~J

[ChrisP]

This may seem lazy of me, but I am wondering if anyone would be kind enough to volunteer to make a very simple collection for me. I will do the photoshop work, including indexing, but if someone (Graydon mb?) can take the jpeg for a "Lvl 5" icon, resize it appropriately, and turn it into a collection tag, that'd save me from figuring out that god-awful app (Tahoe I think?) again.

I'm not keen on the weirdness that happens with the gains-seeking-but-damage-goes-down-and-cost-goes-up leveling

Hey now, leveling still grants gains with the fireball! As Godz's complaint demonstrates, tracking is a huge benefit, easily outweighing the damage and cost difference. The whole idea was if you could hit with the level 1 fireball, it's a decent level 1 spell for the cost (roughly 0.033% mana or 10,000 fireballs per full mana bar). Level 2 fireballs aren't as powerful or mana efficient, but considering they don't usually miss, the overall damage-per-second-per-point-of-mana they can produce should still be slightly higher in most cases than level 1.

Incidently, I am redoing how mana works for the mancers anyway.

Also, I appreciate all the suggestions, whether they're called "bugs" or whatever. Many of the suggestions I've rejected as impossible, too difficult, or just plain not a good idea, but some suggestions you'll see added over the next several betas, so thanks!

[gvari]

Had this strange thing happen while playing the new Beta solo/timid yesterday.
I used Heal Burst, which almost emptied paladins mana bar, then, a few seconds later it filled up completely.

The fil is here> http://hl.udogs.net/files/Uploads/%20Us ... %20bug.zip

This strange occurance happens about 55 minutes in.

[Archer]

I'm not keen on the weirdness that happens with the gains-seeking-but-damage-goes-down-and-cost-goes-up leveling

Hey now, leveling still grants gains with the fireball! As Godz's complaint demonstrates, tracking is a huge benefit, easily outweighing the damage and cost difference. The whole idea was if you could hit with the level 1 fireball, it's a decent level 1 spell for the cost (roughly 0.033% mana or 10,000 fireballs per full mana bar). Level 2 fireballs aren't as powerful or mana efficient, but considering they don't usually miss, the overall damage-per-second-per-point-of-mana they can produce should still be slightly higher in most cases than level 1.

Right, I completely agree; Pyro-can't-aim syndrome makes L2Fireball clearly superior. It's just that the fireball is the only spell where a higher level is inferior to a lower level in any respect, which is why I call it "weirdness". I don't really like it, but you'll notice I'm not asking you to change it

Incidently, I am redoing how mana works for the mancers anyway.

Don't suppose you'd be willing to expand on this, would you?

~J

[ChrisP]

I used Heal Burst, which almost emptied paladins mana bar, then, a few seconds later it filled up completely.

I'm at work and can't watch the film, but I think I know what happened. When certain units completely vet and/or level up, they now get "bonus powers". It's not as great as a new level, but still pretty good. The paladin, In addition to the mana refill you reported (and I think some extra ammo) begins to slowly and permanently regenerate health after he gets 250 kills.

[ChrisP]

Don't suppose you'd be willing to expand on this, would you?

Well, for starters, all the mancer spells will now cost twice as much mana. And I'm getting rid of the mana rechargers, or at least making them much rarer - not sure which yet. The mancers will still be able to select inventory 0 and recharge a little bit that way though. Finally, they will now slowly regenerate mana automatically.

Getting the right mana regeneration rate might take a lot of testing and trial and error. If it doesn't work out I'll have to go back to the way it was. I still want it to be an absolute necessity to ration one's strength over a long battle of attrition, but at the same time, I'd like to remove the tedious task of having to manually recharge mana.

[Jon God]

Don't suppose you'd be willing to expand on this, would you?

Well, for starters, all the mancer spells will now cost twice as much mana. And I'm getting rid of the mana rechargers, or at least making them much rarer - not sure which yet. The mancers will still be able to select inventory 0 and recharge a little bit that way though. Finally, they will now slowly regenerate mana automatically.

Getting the right mana regeneration rate might take a lot of testing and trial and error. If it doesn't work out I'll have to go back to the way it was. I still want it to be an absolute necessity to ration one's strength over a long battle of attrition, but at the same time, I'd like to remove the tedious task of having to manually recharge mana.

Sounds alright to me.

[GodzFire]

Well, for starters, all the mancer spells will now cost twice as much mana. And I'm getting rid of the mana rechargers, or at least making them much rarer - not sure which yet.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa.......why the heck would you do that? It would totally destroy the Mancers. Chris there are games where, due to the people involved, the mancers have to pick up the slack and do more than usual, or worse if one of the mancers die. If your changes go through, they will be worthless, and also no one would pick them up for a small group game.

I'm sorry but I strongly disagree with this.

[Pyro]

CP, you still have the mazz mesh pointing to the SL. So after you win, and you try to next mesh... crash.

And I saw the film of Ing. It is as you said, the paladin reached 250+ kills and that happened. Also why does Mazz get mana for?!

[pompey]

When certain units completely vet and/or level up, they now get "bonus powers". It's not as great as a new level, but still pretty good. The paladin, In addition to the mana refill you reported (and I think some extra ammo) begins to slowly and permanently regenerate health after he gets 250 kills.

Is it possible that these "certain units" also include say, demos, so that they are a little more helpful? Not that I've minded the games where I've been handed them, but it would be great to have something better to do than steal kills from the more worthy units while hoping to find a H&A crystal somewhere... that the strider hoors haven't already stolen.

One huge, oh-my-god-would-be-awesome request is for arcs to hero. If this statement of yours extends to them for a mana attack of some variety, or just a boost in hp/resistances I would just.. I'd just cry like a girl.

[Graydon]

One huge, oh-my-god-would-be-awesome request is for arcs to hero. If this statement of yours extends to them for a mana attack of some variety, or just a boost in hp/resistances I would just.. I'd just cry like a girl.

I'll second this. I haven't really played much Myth online in quite some time, but when I remember playing lots of Mazz back in the day, I recall the sort of devolving of arching in Mazz. In Mazz 3 it was pretty well the archers and mazz that got to pick up all the really powerful spells... Hellfire for example. Back then it was just stunning to rack up 30 kills at a time with an arch, and because of their ability to carry these powerful tools, they were crucial to keep alive through the entire game. As Mazz evolved and the mancers and ranger got involved, the regular archs seem generally forgotten to me.

Some new cool feature that would make people want to play archs more, would definitely be a benefit to the plug overall.

[Archer]

Well, for starters, all the mancer spells will now cost twice as much mana. And I'm getting rid of the mana rechargers, or at least making them much rarer - not sure which yet. The mancers will still be able to select inventory 0 and recharge a little bit that way though. Finally, they will now slowly regenerate mana automatically.

It takes over two hundred applications of the Inv 0 Mana Recharge to charge from empty to full; I'm really not sure you need to make mancer spells cost more. I fully support the regeneration, though; right now, the Mancers are either massively powerful or fancy archers based pretty much solely on how lucky you are with mana drops (affected somewhat by how much mana gets wasted or burnt to stave off emergency), which is a kind of swinginess that isn't desirable IMO.

If I were to make significant changes to the Mancers, I'd probably add slow mana regen, possibly increase the basic mana recharge a bit, get rid of super-rechargers, make standard rechargers a little less rare than super-rechargers, narrow the range of charges (4 to 6 or 3 to 5, maybe, instead of 1 to 9), and maybe reduce the recharge percentage to 5%-7%. Oh, and probably give them the Super-Recharger's recovery time. That might still result in mana being too scarce, but it'd make the amount of mana that one potentially has access to over the course of the game a lot more reliable, so you can actually plan for it.

But that's just brainstorming.

(I do have to agree that there's possibly too much disincentive to using archers and the Ranger; the larger waves may have fixed it, but on Timid we've found that it's easy for up to three-quarters of the kills the Ranger gets to be wasted, and there's no surplus of guys on which to vet the units that actually need the kills. Well, at least not after the Ranger gets done killing stuff.)

As an aside, we've gotten into some significant gameplay changes; you may want to consider making a simple bugfix release (Demo bug, Lectro inventory reorder if feasible, maybe the bigger waves and/or endgame scaling) and releasing the rest as… well, it feels weird to call it Mazz VII, but that's what it is when you add in substantial gameplay changes. Anyway, just a thought.

~J

[GodzFire]

It takes over two hundred applications of the Inv 0 Mana Recharge to charge from empty to full

Wow, just wow

I do have to agree that there's possibly too much disincentive to using archers and the Ranger

I think the Ranger is perfect right now for leveling. Besides the Mancers, my next favorite unit is the Ranger. The problem is most people don't know how to vet him correctly. At the start, you pick off as many warlocks, fetch, and ghost dwarves/archers as you can. Your main priority is finding a Bow of Strength, since that 1 shots all the listed enemies, and then you vet like nuts. For me, I'm usually maxed by half or 3/4s of the way in the game.

The normal archers, are a different story; very slow walkers, very long downtime between shots, and a lackluster vet rate. Maybe reduce the amount of total archers, decrease the downtime more as they vet quicker, and have the ability for them to randomly vet into Heroes like the Zerks and HGs. That would actually be nice and uniform with the other units. An Archer Hero could showcase quicker attacks, 4 bows max instead of 2, and a slightly quicker walk speed.

[Archer]

I do have to agree that there's possibly too much disincentive to using archers and the Ranger

I think the Ranger is perfect right now for leveling. Besides the Mancers, my next favorite unit is the Ranger. The problem is most people don't know how to vet him correctly. At the start, you pick off as many warlocks, fetch, and ghost dwarves/archers as you can. Your main priority is finding a Bow of Strength, since that 1 shots all the listed enemies, and then you vet like nuts. For me, I'm usually maxed by half or 3/4s of the way in the game.

You're clearly better at holding back with him than we are; like I said, our problem isn't vetting him, it's keeping him from sucking up hundreds of kills that other units need after he's fully vetted

The normal archers, are a different story; very slow walkers, very long downtime between shots, and a lackluster vet rate. Maybe reduce the amount of total archers, decrease the downtime more as they vet quicker, and have the ability for them to randomly vet into Heroes like the Zerks and HGs. That would actually be nice and uniform with the other units. An Archer Hero could showcase quicker attacks, 4 bows max instead of 2, and a slightly quicker walk speed.

The big problem with a Hero is that I'm pretty sure ChrisP has said that the level is already at the unit cap; something else would have to come out.

Though I guess if he's making something Level 5, he's already removed something…

(I do have to admit that there was general disappointment in our group when we discovered that whenever we get either enough new people or enough multitasking skill to move up to Normal, all it'll get us is more little melee and a pack of archers. Demos are so much more exciting.)

~J