Umulak2 - Coming Soonish?

[Dridmar]

So it's been a while since Umulak has been released and I think I should make something else for high levelled players again . While I wait for Thorn_North to be looked over I started this. I also plan to release this without waiting for the next patch but that means it'll have the same rewards chests as Umulak. I will have some pictures maybe tomorrow.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

MORE MUMMIES?!

 

[Kanta]

More high level content would be nice.

More mummies would not be nice.

 

[Dridmar]

Mummies aren't that bad. At least give them on more map then we can move on to a Chinese theme with Terracotta warriors.

 

[Thothie]

Shame Crow never got that map with the Star Gate done - it might at least help explain why we have so much in the way of Egyptian themed stuff in this world... I'd blame my namesake, but a lot of it was here before I was.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

 

[Dridmar]

@Thothie That SG1 mod has an actual Stargate model(s) and they animate to actually open the gate too.

Which means... Umulak3, taking down Apophis and saving Daragoth.

 

[MS:C community]

Don't forget pushables and elevators!

 

[Dridmar]

I never forget anything, I still remember that JM guy who got banned!

 

[zeus9860]

You could always make a mid tier map that self adjusts to high level players, but do make sure you control the scaling properly, we don't need more creatures like the greater earth elemental or stone ogre. In other words, stay away from scaling cancerous enemies.

You could instead replace weaker enemies with stronger types to push the overall difficulty little by little. Also you don't really have to make umulak2, you could create something different, if you feel like doing more mummies, then do it but you could instead do something... different.

Logically speaking, umulak ends with the death of the pharaoh. There isn't much you can do after that... unless you create some sort of storyline that explores the mummies concept even deeper in a similiar fashion ot the khaz cult or something along the lines. It would make more sense to create an open area to explore with a pyramid in the middle of the map, which would be umulak, basically a prequel map to umulak. You could have ruins scattered around the map to explore with boss/mini boss battles that are triggered via certain circumstances, it would be a open world-esque map that isn't linear, desert themed, perhaps you could even go as far as applying that one idea of "Thuldar" roaming around the pyramid after deserting the palace, as there was some sort of "lore" idea of having him roam the desert after the consequences of shad_palace. This would involve a little bit of lore i guess, which the mod would also benefit more. You could even go a step further and add aditional rewards for people to run presequel umulak before umulak, like an unique item. This would add replayability to both maps. Umulak could still be reached via vote, but the rewards would remain as it is. Using the transition in the prequel map would add the possibility of a new item to spawn.

By stating a prequel to umulak, it doesn't mean you have to rig the map with mummies only. I would expect a free roam map to have diversity in enemy types, perhaps some orcs, wild life and mummies randomly spawning similiar to hunderswamp with specific areas having specific enemies.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

You could always not make giant essays that no one cares about besides you, because it's all just you barfing up your awful ideas that no one cares about, and you cant take the hint.

 

[MS:C community]

You could always make a mid tier map that self adjusts...

Sorry zeus, but given how broken the tier system is, I stopped reading there. Say "NO" to self-adjusting monsters.

And @Dridje it was a serious suggestion. I really enjoy the pushables and elevators in Umulak.
But yeah that J-M v2.5.6 guy was such a twat. I wonder who's behind that account. Good thing he got banned though.

 

[zeus9860]

You could always not make giant essays that no one cares about besides you, because it's all just you barfing up your awful ideas that no one cares about, and you cant take the hint.

Well if it isn't Mr.Wordor, back at it again, craving for some attention.

Except you are stupid enough to reply back to me, trying to act like a smartass for the 100th time. If you didn't care, you wouldn't have bothered replying to me, wasting your precious, yet sh*tty lifespan on me, which you have failed to do so. Plus the comment wasn't directed towards your inbred sorry @ss, don't be thinking you are important now just because i decided to post a comment directed towards someone else and that goes against your ideology. So gtfo my face.

Sorry zeus, but given how broken the tier system is, I stopped reading there. Say "NO" to self-adjusting monsters.

The tier system isn't 100% bad, just avoid cancerous npcs and it should be acceptable. Hence the reason i said to stay away from npcs like the stone ogre or greater earth elemental. There are plenty more to add to the list.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

Zeus' brain

 

[Kanta]

I think the monster scaling system can work fine if you set reasonable limits for each mob in the map. Pretty sure everyone has so much disdain for it because it has rarely been used to good effect, most all of our experiences with the system have been negative(underpath, rmines, fmines, undercliffs come to mind for me). It's my belief that the monster scaling system should be used purely supplementary to just replacing mobs with stronger counterparts.

So, for example lets say we have a group of 3 goblins that spawn on the lowest possible "level" for a map. As HP/level of players goes up in the server this trio of goblins could increase a level, then be swapped out for base level blood/vile goblins, upgrade to a single goblin guard, level him up, then upgrade him to a base level vile/blood goblin all relative to the increasing power of players present. This is just a rough explanation really, goblins were easiest example I could think to use in my head to get the general idea across.

Prefer upgrading mobs to new counterparts, use a little bit of scaling between each level if you feel its absolutely necessary, is what I'm trying to say. Though preferably, just think up better monster levels for each level of play.

 

[MS:C community]

Prefer upgrading mobs to new counterparts

This idea, which is vastly better, in my opinion, requires actual time and effort.

With the monster scaling addparam you can just edit... I mean butcher a single NPC entity and be done with it. It's a god damn lazy man's hack that just screams "HEY GUYS I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAP SO HERE IS A STONE OGRE VI"

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

"HEY GUYS I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAP SO HERE IS A STONE OGRE VI"

While this has been changed in the upcoming patch, it should be pointed out that this "complaint" is almost exclusively made by cheaters. It's really not hard to defeat a level VI monster in a server full of 1000 hp players, but I could see how someone might have a hard time when they use alts to artificially inflate the HP in a server so they can cheat extra XP and higher drop chances for themselves as a solo player.

 

[MS:C community]

**** spawn chance: 2.43% at eight players. Eight. When do you ever see eight players in-game nowadays? It should be no surprise that people like me try to game the system*.

As for the point you're trying to make: Yeah, a Stone Ogre VI isn't that hard to beat when you have five or more properly equipped 1k+ HP players in-game, but having even five of such players in-game is a rarity. And the fight sure isn't fun. Just hold down your +use key and endlessly hack away at the extreme HP bag that is Stone Ogre VI. Noone wants to endlessly waste their time on a boring non-boss monster. As Humansteak once said: Monsters should hit hard, but die fast.

Yea dying fast is fun, so is getting uber raped, it might even be funny, if at least, you don't have to hit the same enemy for 3 minutes to kill it while it kills you in 3-4 hits (And that is when you actually manage to isolate one from their group). In other words, die fast and kill fast=fun. Die fast and kill slow is just boring.

...And I haven't even mentioned the Greater Earth Elemental VI yet. You know, the thing that can do a literal 4000 damage to players who are immune to stun (thanks to some... revolutionary gameplay design choice), but also has a metric crapton of HP...? Even groups of 1k+ players do not dare to go toe-to-toe with these things.

...or are the only complaints you get about those from alleged cheaters too?

Also, my opinion that some monsters just shouldn't be upscaled to insane values of 5x dmg and 5x HP (as is the case in tier VI) is not even the biggest problem of the ramping system. If you kill 99 tier VI monsters and one tier V monster, the 'average tier slain' is (99*6 + 1*5) / 100 = 5.99 which gets rounded down to five. Now if that's not completely stupid, I don't know what is.

*For spawn rates, mind you. I don't need to perform any tricks to get more XP because XP rates in (very) high level maps are actually quite decent these days.
Sure, not "hilarious-pushover-boss-in-orc_for-172k-XP-per-solo-run" decent, but still decent enough.

 

[Kanta]

Yeah, the "only cheaters have to deal with level VI monsters" argument is a little bit horseshit. I've heard lots of people rightfully upset about the severe "difficulty" at a place like undercliffs, players (who aren't "cheating" a.k.a. playing by themselves or with friends without bothering to boost their drop chances) with 900 to 1000 hp with equipment/weapons getting near to end game content items, who will struggle even before leveling up the monsters to VI. It's precisely the reason you hear complaint mostly coming from players who have their stats all maxed out, because they are the only ones with enough power to barely stomach fighting these overpowered crimes against game balance because they want to get items.

While this has been changed in the upcoming patch

To his credit, I know personally that Oyster has been putting a lot more effort into fixing up the monster layouts in his maps to make them less agonizingly un-fun by making sure to assign a level cap to each of the mobs. (Even if I wanted to strangle him at one point because he thought Trencherbeak III was a good idea smh.)

 

[Dridmar]

Well aside from all the unrelated bitching in here, still working on Umulak2... With all the work that went into them we should give em one more map.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

...or are the only complaints you get about those from alleged cheaters too?

For the most part, yes. Those are the people that encounter level 6 monsters the vast majority of the time since, as you mentioned, we almost never see a server with enough people to boost the mobs that high.

***** spawn chance: 2.43% at eight players. Eight. When do you ever see eight players in-game nowadays? It should be no surprise that people like me try to game the system*

If you kill 99 tier VI monsters and one tier V monster, the 'average tier slain' is (99*6 + 1*5) / 100 = 5.99 which gets rounded down to five. Now if that's not completely stupid, I don't know what is.

This is indeed a problem, and one that should be taken up with the person who is responsible for placing loot in maps. Unfortunately mappers don't get to decide what chests are placed in our maps so there's nothing I can do to fix this aside from explicitly telling said person not to use scaling chests in the future.


The REAL problem with the scaling system, and one of the main reason that I capped everything, is because it can discourage teamplay between low level players.

Also, it's worth noting that your suggested method of creating different difficulty tiers by hand, while superior in theory, was not viable for large free roam maps, especially ones with randomized encounters, because of all the extra entities it would generate. I say "was" because the new spawn system that Thothie designed for the "upcoming" patch not only makes this possible, but it can be done with less entities than even a normal linear map without dynamic spawns would generate.

 

[Thothie]

Well, it's no secret that Oyster and I tend to have opposing views on balance/design choices, and I have a rough time even testing his maps, even with the friggin maxed map test character and cheats, but he's the sorta map designer that wants to make sure you have a challenge, and I can respect that, when it isn't an effort to undermine game mechanics, even if I can't enjoy it myself. But the aesthetics are always decent, occasionally creative, and I suppose the encounters are varied, just kinda wish they were so in a more thought-out and cohesive way, and, as Kanta points out, that's been improving as well.

We do provide a lotta tools to tweak various encounters that tend to get overlooked, and the base auto-balance system does entirely break at the fringes (and isn't real great the rest of the time, hence that extra cap param). Ya can't just mindlessly lay it on and expect it to work itself out, as Oyster knows, and it's a lotta time consuming work, repeatedly testing every encounter, at every level, tweaking it, compiling it, then testing it again (then rinse and repeat 100 times) - then finding your efforts were all for naught in a multiplayer test and starting all over again. Hope to have a better system, as I've discussed elsewhere, someday, but for now, it's the best tool we got for that "expand the level range" sorta thing.

Also makes coding up chests a pain, though I suppose that'll always be the case when it comes to unique loot items.

Providing entirely different monster sets for more players is certainly preferable to simply depending on the balance system to beefcake the existing ones, or even beefcaking them manually, but it is a pain, both in entity layout and additional testing. Plus, if you add too many models to the map as a result of your efforts at variation, it can make it hella unstable, or just outright refuse to load.

(side note)

If you kill 99 tier VI monsters and one tier V monster, the 'average tier slain' is (99*6 + 1*5) / 100 = 5.99 which gets rounded down to five. Now if that's not completely stupid, I don't know what is.

Five is the max the reward system handles anyways, save for gold and XP, which aren't rounded down.

 

[Thothie]

In regards to mappers not always getting the loot they want, when maps are first introduced, save in special circumstances, loot tends to be fairly nerfed, and loot gets shuffled between maps every few patches. Mappers rarely, if ever, get the loot they really want for their maps, as everyone obviously wants to make their maps as tempting as possible, but if they simply started withholding their maps until they got the glorious loot they wanted, we'd just never have any new maps (and encouraging that kinda friction in the development team for sake of better loot, is indeed wishing for the game's demise.)

I do wish we had a more auto-balanced looting system that we could just let mappers plop down that'd work itself out nicely, and we do have several self-generating randomized chests for that sort of purpose, but we also have a lot of "unique items", and those, sadly, have to be dealt with individually - the latest and greatest usually being extremely slim pickings, usually becoming more relaxed/common as they become dated over time, and the next latest and greatest rears its ugly head. (And, eventually, they tend to make their way to the generic randomized loot table, making up about half of the epics therein.)

Granted, particularly in the case of the instance being harped on, this tends to be done with the thought in mind that we'd have patches more often than we have, lately... >_>

 

[MS:C community]

In regards to mappers not always getting the loot they want, when maps are first introduced, save in special circumstances, loot tends to be fairly nerfed, and loot gets shuffled between maps every few patches. Mappers rarely, if ever, get the loot they really want for their maps, as everyone obviously wants to make their maps as tempting as possible, but if they simply started withholding their maps until they got the glorious loot they wanted, we'd just never have any new maps (and encouraging that kinda friction in the development team for sake of better loot, is indeed wishing for the game's demise.)

This wasn't the point. Not even remotely.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I think MSC Community was talking more specifically about the fact that the scaling system, when applied to chests, can be extremely cruel when a low level player joins your run and nerfs the chests by scaling down some of the monsters. This can create an anti-teamwork atmosphere where high levels don't want low level players to join their run. I don't think he was specifically talking about mappers choosing loot type or drop rate, just that they might want to control the system that is used to spawn the loot because of the problems it can create for players when low levels join and nerf their chests.