Combat talk

[Chewett]

The Sparring Grounds Forum would be appropriate, and would also prevent clutter elsewhere.

The sparring ground was a group that no longer really exists. That forum isnt appropiate. Post it in new ideas :)

[powle]

you are wrong about one thing Ary, it was never intended for MD to divide players to weak (lots of losses) and strong (lots of wins) but instead to have them all balanced. And it works in such ways to enforce this. It rewards balanced profiles with bonus heat and stats and punishes those that are unbalanced (too many losses get you to skill damage while too many wins will get you to negative honor and again prevent you from gaining stats).

[Ary Endleg]

Yes, but I'm talking about lack of deviation of "lots of wins" compared to influx of deviation of "lots of losses". Just look at how it is now, allied players get balance frozen once they reach it and don't have to worry about MAINTAINING it at all. Unallied players have such problem of maintaining it, they lack the source of extra honor that allied players get from their allied fights, they don't have stable ratio, their honor varies. Yet even though unallied players pretty much with every fight have their win-loss ratio shifted one way or the other it is never ultimately shifted over onto "win side". Having more losses than wins is largely beneficial for unallied players because then they will always have source of honor from allied players since they are the ones with permanent balance. Stat damage for too many losses, well you know 1050 losses over wins is long haul, anything in between balance and 1050 losses over wins is safe and comfort zone for unallied players. It wasn't intended to be as such. When you say it was meant for them all to be balanced, that's close but still wrong. It was meant that they are struggle to maintain their balance, to remain as close to it as possible, it was meant to be challenge to hold it. If you read the very first couple hundred announcements you will see that alliance combat was supposed to be entirely separated from unallied, later it got joined and here is what you have, with that permanent balance feature. Anchors of comfort zones inbetween balance and stat damage provided by permanent balance, thus allied players have it easy because they don't have to care for balance once they get it while unallied people find it inconvenient and annoying to chase the balance eternally. You simply need some players with more wins than losses to make balance more attractive for unallied because once they become balance they don't have anybody giving them honor and they have plenty of targets that give them negative honor, yet if they attack only the ones who are balanced thus gaining 0 honor would still shift their balance ratio since unlike allied players their balance isn't frozen. Once their balance is broken again they are highly likely to lose even more honor. Unallied player can only try to keep their balance, they can't have it like allied players do.

 

In short for balance to work you need constant dance between too many wins and too many losses.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Ary Endleg

[Rophs]

But 1000 losses is skilldamage.

 

source: I've been there and back

[Ary Endleg]

oh, sorry. you are right, it skilldamage starts at 1000 losses difference while at 1050 your losses stop counting.

[No one]

[spoiler]

 

I was talking about creatures that don't have any stat rewards, such as priests and torments and toxicodendrites and angiens. I'm not so sure about luck being bonus stat and I see it very weird that it's not scaling because of some things that Chew mentioned on how those altars work. Luck being the only one not scaling is anomaly, but I personally see no reason for it not to scale. Unless you want to bring up how hard it is to get luck stat from combat reward because you need to get lucky among other thing. Then yes it would be reasonable that sacrificial reward for luck stays not scalable in order to prevent targeted grind of it from single source. But I'm unsure if that makes much sense.

 

 

You just can't use something that was meant to be different than it is today for argument that today's situation is good. In other words you saying that target all is good because it was intended to be used only on ultimate creature while such creatures are pretty much common today. From drachs, rusty is a drach and it's quite common. But what about chaos archer and grasan? They have target all too yet everybody can get them. So target "all" obviously wasn't designed to be just for rare creatures if it is available on those creatures that every new player gets once he comes out of story mode. Now back to the real issue which is that target all is the ability that removes thinking from combat solely to the fact that target all has power to end fight in first action. Fights have what? 60 actions for allied players and I think it's 300, maybe more, I forgot, for unallied players. Target all means that following can happen.

 

Round 0: A's Invincible does damage to all creature of B: all creatures die. A's Lucky Charm can't find any enemy creatures to target. Fight ends. A wins.

 

Everybody is aiming to do that. Makes combat somewhat dull and pointless.

 

 

What if that new player isn't accepting it but is being bullied? You call being bullied a decision? Interesting, do tell.

I also present possibility where there are no ways for noob to avoid it. It's a legitimate problem. If you say it isn't then it's same as saying that disabling regen for losing heat on mp3 was bad move or disabling burned ve from angiens to count as gained heat thus capping newbs who only got 10 wins and two Aramors. Negative VP should by any means be removed from mirror ritual spell.

 

 

Yes all this makes finding solution super hard, that's why I didn't yet offered any. Instead I focused on the fact that there are basically no players with win difference because Mur when making that concept thought that strong players would end up there and being strong is the reward for getting there. That's obviously not the case. If one would want to spice things up inside such mechanic then it needs to be tweeked. It's not my intention to do such separation of players by weak and strong, rather to disperse them on both balance sides in order to give that mechanic more meaning. Players are strong without having more wins, that's very clear nowdays, which removes the only reason that existed (or should I say, was designed or anticipated by Mur) for being in win-difference. In order to get some players to that side of balance, there needs to be new motivator for being there, new benefit. Currently there are only downsides to it.

 

I'll be probably opening separate topics in "near future"™.

[/spoiler]

If you didn't know, take this and pin it :

 - Luck is a bonus status.

 - Mur is a noob in combat and game mechanics

 

What is wrong for all to know hot to use the ultimate ritual , even if not the one in your example?

If you didn't noticed this much, in MD the majority say the are RPers. How you expect them to find a better ritual if they don't understand the concepts behind or have the "love"  for the mechanics ?

 

Also, some of your complains are also related to something that exclude the complain itself : high stats. If one has high stats, combat mechanics becomes pointles.

Please analyze your complains for stats = 0 and they maybe you will see what I meant by my previouse post with high level creature & rare creatures, weak/strong attacks.

If not, try to find the result of Mur's attempt to procect himself with 1.000.000 attack & def (after that he invented the illusions).

 

Indeed, the MP3's are the only really affected players by neg VP but :  how much neg VP can one MP3 get ? and ... from whom and how ?

So, forget about it, neg VP is something that you have to live with it (I know I had it for one month once so I know what it means).

 

[spoiler]

Yes, but I'm talking about lack of deviation of "lots of wins" compared to influx of deviation of "lots of losses". Just look at how it is now, allied players get balance frozen once they reach it and don't have to worry about MAINTAINING it at all. Unallied players have such problem of maintaining it, they lack the source of extra honor that allied players get from their allied fights, they don't have stable ratio, their honor varies. Yet even though unallied players pretty much with every fight have their win-loss ratio shifted one way or the other it is never ultimately shifted over onto "win side". Having more losses than wins is largely beneficial for unallied players because then they will always have source of honor from allied players since they are the ones with permanent balance. Stat damage for too many losses, well you know 1050 losses over wins is long haul, anything in between balance and 1050 losses over wins is safe and comfort zone for unallied players. It wasn't intended to be as such. When you say it was meant for them all to be balanced, that's close but still wrong. It was meant that they are struggle to maintain their balance, to remain as close to it as possible, it was meant to be challenge to hold it. If you read the very first couple hundred announcements you will see that alliance combat was supposed to be entirely separated from unallied, later it got joined and here is what you have, with that permanent balance feature. Anchors of comfort zones inbetween balance and stat damage provided by permanent balance, thus allied players have it easy because they don't have to care for balance once they get it while unallied people find it inconvenient and annoying to chase the balance eternally. You simply need some players with more wins than losses to make balance more attractive for unallied because once they become balance they don't have anybody giving them honor and they have plenty of targets that give them negative honor, yet if they attack only the ones who are balanced thus gaining 0 honor would still shift their balance ratio since unlike allied players their balance isn't frozen. Once their balance is broken again they are highly likely to lose even more honor. Unallied player can only try to keep their balance, they can't have it like allied players do.

 

In short for balance to work you need constant dance between too many wins and too many losses.

[/spoiler]

..." struggle to maintain their balance, to remain as close to it as possible, it was meant to be challenge to hold it."

Yes, it was like that and it was meant like that . Long after the concept of struggle for balance, the "balanced" feature was lunched as a secret.

 

And as I said, everyone can choose. Either to be close to balance or to be close to skill damage.

[Ary Endleg]

I would like you to define what exactly you mean by bonus stat.

 

What is wrong with all to know how to use ultimate ritual? Nothing is wrong with that. What is wrong is that ultimate ritual exists. That's the problem. It removes tactics from combat and makes half of available creatures useless.

 

Wasn't referring to MP3s for negative VP. Rather young MP5s or allied MP4s.

[No one]

... bonus stats

Hmm, I don't have my data with me but here it is :

 - take a creature and give it some figths

 - try to saccrifice it at each level and take note of what stats would give you

 - then compare all data

The water daimon, if I remember well has "defense" for first few levels then it changes for "power" as it changes form . At highest levels it adds some "bonus stats".

The initial stats seem natural as they use those , defense / power. The bonus stats are not related to any skill nor they increase with number of won fights.

 

... ultimate ritual ?

Yes, nothing is wrong if all know it except there is no such thing. All rituals can be taken down, anyone can be beat. It all depends on the context and experience.

For example : give the "ultimate ritual" to ... a new MP4/MP5 / convinced RPer (my memory fails with names) and that ritual will always fail taken a certain context (greater stats used and proper creatures).

So, you are actually complaining that there are stronger players then you.

 

... neg vp

Yes, and MP4&5 players should know how to handle most situations by then and the neg VP situation is no worse then being killed or jailed or a few other situation that one "experienced MDer" had encountered.

[powle]

what Ary is trying to say is that there shouldn't be a ritual that can only be defeated if you use the exact same ritual, but with more stats. Every ritual is supposed to have some weakness - a way to defeat it by creating a DIFFERENT ritual. Every new player learning about combat mechanics is told that any ritual can be defeated by a counter-ritual not only by higher stats (Loreroot guards are the perfect example). Understanding the mechanics and using your creature's strenghts and the enemy creature's weaknesses is how you win fights - at least that's what every newbie is told. Learning after months (or even years) of studying combat mechanics that it was actually all just a lie and that stats are all that matters because there is an unbeatable ritual that you can only defeat with higher stats is kind of a let-down, don't you think?


p.s. as i'm an unallied mp4 i cannot confirm the existance of such a ritual, but if such a ritual really exists then i'm not sure i even want to advance to mp5. Working your brain to figure out a way to defeat an unusuall def ritual is interesting and the feeling you get when you successfully beat it is great. Settting a good defence and then laughing when people have to attack you several times before they can defeat it is also quite nice. seeing the same def ritual on every player you attack and being attacked with the same ritual every time is just boring and uninteresting.

[Eon]

Just going to comment on neg VP:

 

I see no reason for an Mp5 to complain about Neg VP. I've put people at -20m VP and I always see people offering to help and getting them back to positive range in no time at all. If someones balance is so bad they are having trouble getting back to normal, that's their fault. UP's give complete weaklings/fools a way to get wins, and tree's/weak rituals are always easy to get losses. Only the completely lazy have it bad, as they should, in my opinion.

[Ary Endleg]

In that case no, luck isn't bonus stat, since only luck fits your description. No other creatures give it except lifestealers at top levels and there is no other example in any other creature giving any other type of "bonus stat". Maybe Chew can enlighten us since he can know how it's coded.

 

Ultimate ritual means that it has ultimate potential, meaning that creats aren't the only thing in there, but once fueled by high stats nothing can stand against it except same ritual with bigger stats. You are just giving example where such potential isn't fulfilled. You talked about high stats in last post and now you talk about in-existence of ultimate ritual, those two claims seem conflicting to me. If you say that once high stats are achieved tactics no longer matter, then yes that is sort of true. If one has 1 million attack he can obliterate noobs who don't have freezes with single aramor, but he can't use same creature against somebody who has half million attack stat and has freezes and drachs. Common sense.

 

In fact, due to how freeze and antifreeze currently work, it's possible to make "counter ritual" that is based on you getting lucky that attacker gets frozen and you don't. But when you attack and opponent has this ultimate ritual in defense, it's totally different story, you won't manage to freeze him, because he will unfreeze himself and yet you will get frozen, so even if you have stats it pretty much doesn't matter.

 

Moreover you can't give ultimate ritual to MP4, because mp4 can't have maxed drach :p And no, if you give ultimate ritual to newb, it certainly won't always fail, mainly due to freeze/antifreeze. You can try to exploit certain weakeness of that ritual in case the opponent has badly balanced stats and stealing the higher ones, either damage with soulweaver or ve with priest, but we are talking about perfect situation. For example darky has nicely balance stats, couple million of attack and several million of ve. If you try stealing any of it you will get small edge 5% of difference in comparison to him but you will succumb to freezes.

 

In the end, fueled ultimate ritual will win the day any time on defense and in most cases on attack, unless defender gets lucky with freezes by using same ritual.

 

powle understood it and nicely said it

 

As for neg vp, I can keep arguing about it, but it seems to have no point. But I must say, jail is something totally different, you don't go to jail just because somebody was bored and wanted to see you suffer. Killing, well it would be a problem if noobs were getting killed. Maybe MP4s and fresh MP5 should know how to handle -10 mil of VP, but hey, most don't know how to lose heat intentionally when they come to MP5. I'm not talking about RPers, I'm talking about players who show higher interest in combat, yet they are that much inexperienced due lack of other players at their level. They got to play with like 1 person on mp3 and mp4, struggling to fulfill basic requirements to advance. You can't really learn much with so few and inexperienced people at your level. MP5 giving advices from above is just limited help, one needs to see stuff with his own eyes, try it and understand it, rather than listen blindly from above about tactics with creatures he doesn't have access to yet.

 

Just put yourself in such shoes. You just came to MP5 yesterday, you have no idea what negative VP is, you are just trying to keep playing as you did till now. Suddenly you find yourself in bunch of negative VP. Soon you realize you can't buy that extra tree you planned to, your archer that is was glowing because you finally can upgrade it due to advancing to MP5, isn't glowing anymore. All you see is one big number of negative VP and wonder WTF, what, how, when, why. There is good chance that player might be also oblivious about what the mirror ritual is. It's easy for you, after 7 years of playing, seeing every announcement, every spell, knowing almost every mechanic to frown at newbie and say it's his own fault. He has 150000 unread forum posts and 3200 unread announcements, has no knowledge like you do, had very little chance to learn what you know.

 

Lets get a bit more constructive. What would you No one do to avoid getting negative vp from mirror ritual if you have no idea it would hit you in first place. Oh you can't avoid getting? I guess it's not a big deal, you have the means to bring it back relatively quickly. Now lets take away your maxed lifestealers and your high ve friends and life just became much more difficult. Even better lets assume you are one of those players who don't like to socialize or who can't really speak comprehensible English. The only thing you see is -5 million VP, regen interval happens every 10 minutes, you get 240 VP on every interval tick. That's 145 days of waiting. Pretty much game over for such player, and if you think that such player doesn't belong into MD due to low socialization or poor English, you are wrong. Many people started out as such and worked it up.

 

Eon, yes I see you are aiming at my situation combined with me speaking about neg VP. But really it isn't an issue for me. It is a bit inconvenient because due to it I have to take longer route to fix my honor. My ingame problem isn't about vp, it's about honor. Plus I delve deep into bad situations to test stuff and see them on my own, analyze them and learn more about them. I just have insight that there is technical possibility where neg VP gained in such way is harmful.

[No one]

[spoiler]

what Ary is trying to say is that there shouldn't be a ritual that can only be defeated if you use the exact same ritual, but with more stats. Every ritual is supposed to have some weakness - a way to defeat it by creating a DIFFERENT ritual. Every new player learning about combat mechanics is told that any ritual can be defeated by a counter-ritual not only by higher stats (Loreroot guards are the perfect example). Understanding the mechanics and using your creature's strenghts and the enemy creature's weaknesses is how you win fights - at least that's what every newbie is told. Learning after months (or even years) of studying combat mechanics that it was actually all just a lie and that stats are all that matters because there is an unbeatable ritual that you can only defeat with higher stats is kind of a let-down, don't you think?


p.s. as i'm an unallied mp4 i cannot confirm the existance of such a ritual, but if such a ritual really exists then i'm not sure i even want to advance to mp5. Working your brain to figure out a way to defeat an unusuall def ritual is interesting and the feeling you get when you successfully beat it is great. Settting a good defence and then laughing when people have to attack you several times before they can defeat it is also quite nice. seeing the same def ritual on every player you attack and being attacked with the same ritual every time is just boring and uninteresting.

 

 

Just going to comment on neg VP:

 

I see no reason for an Mp5 to complain about Neg VP. I've put people at -20m VP and I always see people offering to help and getting them back to positive range in no time at all. If someones balance is so bad they are having trouble getting back to normal, that's their fault. UP's give complete weaklings/fools a way to get wins, and tree's/weak rituals are always easy to get losses. Only the completely lazy have it bad, as they should, in my opinion.

[/spoiler]

Thank you powle and Eon for your help and examples.

Yes, that is what I meant.

 

[spoiler]

In that case no, luck isn't bonus stat, since only luck fits your description. No other creatures give it except lifestealers at top levels and there is no other example in any other creature giving any other type of "bonus stat". Maybe Chew can enlighten us since he can know how it's coded.

 

Ultimate ritual means that it has ultimate potential, meaning that creats aren't the only thing in there, but once fueled by high stats nothing can stand against it except same ritual with bigger stats. You are just giving example where such potential isn't fulfilled. You talked about high stats in last post and now you talk about in-existence of ultimate ritual, those two claims seem conflicting to me. If you say that once high stats are achieved tactics no longer matter, then yes that is sort of true. If one has 1 million attack he can obliterate noobs who don't have freezes with single aramor, but he can't use same creature against somebody who has half million attack stat and has freezes and drachs. Common sense.

 

In fact, due to how freeze and antifreeze currently work, it's possible to make "counter ritual" that is based on you getting lucky that attacker gets frozen and you don't. But when you attack and opponent has this ultimate ritual in defense, it's totally different story, you won't manage to freeze him, because he will unfreeze himself and yet you will get frozen, so even if you have stats it pretty much doesn't matter.

 

Moreover you can't give ultimate ritual to MP4, because mp4 can't have maxed drach :P And no, if you give ultimate ritual to newb, it certainly won't always fail, mainly due to freeze/antifreeze. You can try to exploit certain weakeness of that ritual in case the opponent has badly balanced stats and stealing the higher ones, either damage with soulweaver or ve with priest, but we are talking about perfect situation. For example darky has nicely balance stats, couple million of attack and several million of ve. If you try stealing any of it you will get small edge 5% of difference in comparison to him but you will succumb to freezes.

 

In the end, fueled ultimate ritual will win the day any time on defense and in most cases on attack, unless defender gets lucky with freezes by using same ritual.

 

powle understood it and nicely said it

 

As for neg vp, I can keep arguing about it, but it seems to have no point. But I must say, jail is something totally different, you don't go to jail just because somebody was bored and wanted to see you suffer. Killing, well it would be a problem if noobs were getting killed. Maybe MP4s and fresh MP5 should know how to handle -10 mil of VP, but hey, most don't know how to lose heat intentionally when they come to MP5. I'm not talking about RPers, I'm talking about players who show higher interest in combat, yet they are that much inexperienced due lack of other players at their level. They got to play with like 1 person on mp3 and mp4, struggling to fulfill basic requirements to advance. You can't really learn much with so few and inexperienced people at your level. MP5 giving advices from above is just limited help, one needs to see stuff with his own eyes, try it and understand it, rather than listen blindly from above about tactics with creatures he doesn't have access to yet.

 

Just put yourself in such shoes. You just came to MP5 yesterday, you have no idea what negative VP is, you are just trying to keep playing as you did till now. Suddenly you find yourself in bunch of negative VP. Soon you realize you can't buy that extra tree you planned to, your archer that is was glowing because you finally can upgrade it due to advancing to MP5, isn't glowing anymore. All you see is one big number of negative VP and wonder WTF, what, how, when, why. There is good chance that player might be also oblivious about what the mirror ritual is. It's easy for you, after 7 years of playing, seeing every announcement, every spell, knowing almost every mechanic to frown at newbie and say it's his own fault. He has 150000 unread forum posts and 3200 unread announcements, has no knowledge like you do, had very little chance to learn what you know.

 

Lets get a bit more constructive. What would you No one do to avoid getting negative vp from mirror ritual if you have no idea it would hit you in first place. Oh you can't avoid getting? I guess it's not a big deal, you have the means to bring it back relatively quickly. Now lets take away your maxed lifestealers and your high ve friends and life just became much more difficult. Even better lets assume you are one of those players who don't like to socialize or who can't really speak comprehensible English. The only thing you see is -5 million VP, regen interval happens every 10 minutes, you get 240 VP on every interval tick. That's 145 days of waiting. Pretty much game over for such player, and if you think that such player doesn't belong into MD due to low socialization or poor English, you are wrong. Many people started out as such and worked it up.

 

Eon, yes I see you are aiming at my situation combined with me speaking about neg VP. But really it isn't an issue for me. It is a bit inconvenient because due to it I have to take longer route to fix my honor. My ingame problem isn't about vp, it's about honor. Plus I delve deep into bad situations to test stuff and see them on my own, analyze them and learn more about them. I just have insight that there is technical possibility where neg VP gained in such way is harmful.

[/spoiler]

@Ary: even if I use the "spoiler" tags, I will not spoil everything for you. Do check all creatures. Some have that extra bonus stat, some have a bonus as an increased percentage of stat/win. And I think that Mur got either bored or imagination-less or found other kind of bonuses for some creatures. It is fun to find those differences and it is a killer when someone decides to change them.

If I remember well, the water daimon creature id is 5 and the old creatures had IDs up to 20 something. Most of those creatures were configured and released but there are still some that are not configured nor officially released but still got out (see the shadows). Later creatures came due to necessity of need for new and were/are poorly configured or were not twicked to fit in the limits of the older creatures (see the angiens or read the poor creature proposals on forum). I will not continue this thread. You have the answer, I said how I found it to be and (I personally will accept) only Chewett's, Mur's or Rendril's can trully contradict me (about these bonus stats).

 

... neg VP

I know how it is with it, I said I had it (about -5 - -10M negVP) and being me (No one) I didn't called  / couldn't call any help back then. So yes, I know how it is to have ALL creatures waiting for VP to upgrade for more the 1-2 months. So please, before contradicting me do get there (-5M negVP) and do your best to get out, alone or not. Stop speaking hypothetical about this and contradicting me when you don't know how it is. And ... I still play (no game over for me yet) and I still travel toward neg VP from time to time.

Now-a-days, as Eon said, gaining 1M VP is meaningless. Even the average grinder, without noticing it, gains few hundred thousands (if not millions) of VP per day. Just understand where that pozVP is coming from and you will no longer be worried about it nor will be worried about the need of using just life-stealer creatures for it.

You became paranoiac about this concept in some specific worst case scenarios  and instead of dealing with the problem (the players) you want to deal with the concept itself.

I am usually against the change without reason and I see no reason to change it.

I can say that I don't like negVP concept but  I like it better then freeze/unfreeze and stat-stealing concepts. I personally would remove the latest 2 but it is not my choice and some ppl enjoy having them while choosing fights. 

So, why should we choose to make it more comfortable for me instead of keeping it comfortable for them ?

 

Anyway, this negVP thread is also dead for me, I said all I had to say on it.

 

... the ultimate ritual

Yes, there always is / were / will be such "ultimate ritual"s along the history of MD. As I said, it is all about the context and as said above: they are boring.

It doesn't really matter if such ritual really exists, it matters what a player want.

From my experience, I can say that through my attempts to get balanced I came to find some players with hard/difficult rituals or with high stats. It was annoying (it still is) for me and satisfying for them.

My personal target is to grow some creatures. If I gain some stats while doing that, then fine, I am OK with it.

Other players want stats (I think I have enough), by millions. Some other players just want to protect other ritual. Great, good for them. It is their choice, I don't attack them anymore (not too often).

 

So, what is your problem ? that it is becoming boring to attack players with just such rituals in def ? Then attack me (when you find me) as I always have random rituals (and I really mean always unless requested).

I don't mind getting loses. I mind if ppl give me negVP or give me heat (I am over the cap again already) but it is their choice as I can stay hidden and they lose their toy.

So: attack me and ignore the boring / mindless copyists / imaginationless or just with-too-little-time players . I have a large collection of creatures (and hopefully growing), multiple levels for most, just maxed for some.

But don't expect me to come on request or stay still (unless after my MD-time) so that you can train on me.

 

Again, this thread (the ultimate ritual) is closed for me. I said all I had wanted* to say about it. 

*I will not say more as it some would want to discover things for themselves and I'd hate lacking them their fun.

 

-----------------------

Thank you Ary for the topic and keep coming with interesting things. If you need more info from me you know how to find me

Edited September 18, 2014 by No one

[Ary Endleg]

Seems like we got to end of our discussion on those matters, unable to come to agreement on any of them.

[No one]

Seems like we got to end of our discussion on those matters, unable to come to agreement on any of them.

 

:) I agree with you at least on this matter

[Jubaris]

Not sure is this mentioned, since it is a leeeengthy topic - but why don't number of rounds in a combat concerning players in an alliance increase more than just 3?

[Rophs]

Ally combat doesn't limit the number of rounds to 3, try attacking someone with a single creature

[Jubaris]

Of course, I'm talking about 6 vs 6. Attacking with a single creature is a rarity/stupid with all the freezers, so you won't be seeing it around.

 

Maybe the short amount of rounds is meant to symbolize the difficulty in using all 6 aspects of yourself, so the duel can last only that short, with a game mechanic encouragement to use lesser amount of creatures, but 5-6 creatures due to mentioned freezers is an axiom, if you really want to fight, so the encouragement today is null.

[No one]

Not sure is this mentioned, since it is a leeeengthy topic - but why don't number of rounds in a combat concerning players in an alliance increase more than just 3?

If I remember well, the alliance combat is limited to about 40 actions (really old info). Now ... these days, I don't know if one action on multi/all is counted as one or more.

 

Anyway, this limitation is one of the benefits of the alliances which will help you  "protect" your creatures from total and complete death (back then MP3s could still join alliances).

[Jubaris]

It was a plus back then maybe, but I think all of you will agree its outdated. We have such fighters that one attack is enough to finish the duel. Small number of actions just hurts single target creatures, which should be an alternative to the mainstream trend with ultimate rituals.

what do you guys, combat knowhows, think about a possible increase in number of rounds/actions, how much if yes?

[Ary Endleg]

No one is quite close to right, it's 60 actions for alliance combat. 60 divided by 12 creatures is 5 rounds (round 0,1,2,3,4). Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's more

 

However question is what exactly is 1 combat action. Nobody knows for sure. From my observation it varies greatly, and it seems not to take into account targeting types. Rather it seems to take in account ability types. It could also be the case that death of creature either nullifies the count of actions take by that creature until death from total count or it keeps counting it even though creature is dead. Another possibility is that some abilities count as less than 1 action. It's possible that temporary effects at start of round count as action too, there's possibility that freezes influence it as well. Very hard to tell what exactly is going on under hood.

 

Ability costing less than 1 action could also possibly be bug, but it's impossible to prove if that's meant to be or not since this part of system is totally undocumented aside from 2-3 announcements from 2007. But on rare occasions I did see allyVSally 12creat fight where it went all the way to round 7.

 

I was poking into this matter long time ago but couldn't make much sense of it, this is one of things that are more difficult to test.

 

 

As for what I think about possible increase, well I think it won't take any effect on current gameplay because of trillions of stats. I also don't see why does 60 number of actions hurt single target creatures?  If you don't have stats to fuel your punch, higher number of rounds is hardly your friend :))

Edited October 22, 2014 by Ary Endleg

[No one]

It was a plus back then maybe, but I think all of you will agree its outdated. We have such fighters that one attack is enough to finish the duel. Small number of actions just hurts single target creatures, which should be an alternative to the mainstream trend with ultimate rituals.

what do you guys, combat knowhows, think about a possible increase in number of rounds/actions, how much if yes?

As I said above: the relatively small number of actions is just for alliance members.

If you want longer fights, you can always quit.

 

If you forgot what it mean a 40 rounds fight : complete loss of VE creatures (in most cases). If you like  it like that ... sure, get out. Most of the times I prefer winning in 3 rounds then losing in 40 (yea, same rituals / same fight will have different outcome).

And if you've ever wondered, yea, I prefer not to obliterate the weaker players if I can avoid it.

Edited October 22, 2014 by No one

[Jubaris]

The respective announcemenets are:

http://magicduel.com/page/Announcement/view/131

and

http://magicduel.com/page/Announcement/view/133

 

They do not speak about the reasoning of the system, for instance protection of new players, just explain that the effect of the lesser amount of rounds for alliances will be less energy loss.

 

As for what I think about possible increase, well I think it won't take any effect on current gameplay because of trillions of stats. I also don't see why does 60 number of actions hurt single target creatures?  If you don't have stats to fuel your punch, higher number of rounds is hardly your friend :))

 

Because you can't rely on a single-target creature to win a fight. For instance, I'm playing around with aramor anniversary auras, and in each of the 3 rounds, the aramor kills one creature, but in the end, I usually lose the fight because I lost more VE (enemy pope extracts too much VE, or the damage my opponent did to my other creatures, because aramor was taking 1 damage, was higher in combination than what that one aramor did to my opponent's creatures), even though the fight would clearly be won if the aramor had a few more rounds to take out the other creatures.

 

My question is, why don't we stimulate the diversity of creatures following the fact that a lot of creatures aren't chosen simply because they aren't all-attackers (and by that naturally weaker than those that are, for ally fights, they are just devalued further)?

 

In that concrete example of anniversary aramors - you are already weakened by the fact that you hit single-target per round and that the 4 aramors you use in a ritual don't have a single freeze/antifreeze aura, so you sacrifice a lot, only to be decapitated by the fact that you can't finish off your opponent because of a round or two missing.

 

As I said above: the relatively small number of actions is just for alliance members.

If you want longer fights, you can always quit.

 

If you forgot what it mean a 40 rounds fight : complete loss of VE creatures (in most cases). If you like  it like that ... sure, get out. Most of the times I prefer winning in 3 rounds then losing in 40 (yea, same rituals / same fight will have different outcome).

And if you've ever wondered, yea, I prefer not to obliterate the weaker players if I can avoid it.

 

Why do you think, if we increase it, we necessarily need to take 40 rounds fights immediately? Although total-combat sounds interesting to play around with, I would first aim towards 6 or 10 rounds.

New players usually don't join alliances that fast, plus, when they do, they don't join it because of hoping to get 3 rounds per duel, at least I haven't heard of such cases.

Are we really still protecting the new players with this rule? The mentioned trillion stats cases make sure the weaker players are obliterated, I don't think that a few more rounds of damage that didn't kill them in the first 3 rounds is that newbie-unfriendly.

 

Because of fighting for only a few rounds, ally fights shouldn't be called magic duels, but magic skirmishes. x) Unless you 1-hit kill your opponent, then it's a proper duel.

 

Perhaps there should be some kind of option box, rather than enforce this type of fighting?

 

Leaving the option to fight the old-school way by not being in alliance simply is not good enough, because it contradicts our desire for a player to be deeper in MD.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Rhaegar Targaryen

[Ary Endleg]

Because you can't rely on a single-target creature to win a fight. For instance, I'm playing around with aramor anniversary auras, and in each of the 3 rounds, the aramor kills one creature, but in the end, I usually lose the fight because I lost more VE (enemy pope extracts too much VE, or the damage my opponent did to my other creatures, because aramor was taking 1 damage, was higher in combination than what that one aramor did to my opponent's creatures), even though the fight would clearly be won if the aramor had a few more rounds to take out the other creatures.

 

Ufff... attack with less ve? You complaining because you got countered by popes?

 

Thing is how I see it, as well as some others (as I understood earlier from their replies) is that single targets have higher damage output than target all creats, hence when you are on equal grounds stats-vise you are likely to kill off opponents key hitter before he kills your guys. I really think that problem are freezes and stat difference, in your case, your high ve got countered by priests.

 

I just don't think this would be much of a buff to single-target, if any buff at all. On other hand I don't really see the reason for allied fights to be shorter than unallied, so I think it might be a good idea to equalize them, but I doubt such change would bring target-all and single-target onto more equal ground.

 

Keep in mind that according to what you chose for fight, it will have effect on how long fight will last (if not ended by annihilation beforehand), so you have a slim control on how/when fight will end. But that is of course largely shadowed by more important stat boosts :D

[Jubaris]

I don't remember the exact details, I just know I lost a lot of fights with it from random rituals. I used 1% slider (just to have some regen, if they get killed so I don't need to heal them, lazy protocol).

4 aramors, soulweaver to grab some stats because I have squat if I meet someone with lots and to use as an all damager, and a snowman.

 

Things changed to better when I swapped the snowman for a tokened chaos archer.

 

Of course, such stuff can't do anything serious because it's vulnerable to a lot of things, freezes, VE, angiens... But on a lower level, for weaker mp5s, it should be alright for them to be able to fight with such creatures, between each other and use as such creatures a legit way to try to beat the training rits of grinders, at least.

 

I'm way off what's going on in combat, so maybe that's already present, but what I want to emphasis the transition period of an mp5 player when he still doesn't have angiens, or stats, or drachs, etc. Giving more room to single-target creats as a means to enhance potential of that transitional period.