[X] My Assistant

It still won't solve the problem of people opening multiple accounts just to make more monsters. That's the main problem to solve.

This might work.

Making food non tradeable would

Both food & pills, just like the tokens. That way, it's only what you bring to the table from a hard day's fighting. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

It still won't solve the problem of people opening multiple accounts just to make more monsters. That's the main problem to solve.

Tenbs Happy Pills will solve this but at the same time it will screw over legit People with many monsters thus we ask to salvage some of them.

inb4 a training for 100 million credits that increase the drop rate of pills by 50%.

Making food non tradeable would

That will screw everyone who want to be AFK for a while.

This might work.

That will screw every low-level/causal player who want to make anything but a strong monster. It will also make the monster distribution heavily skewed towards high PL, as everyone's force to have a few monsters and can only upgrade those.

Tenbs Happy Pills will solve this but at the same time it will screw over legit People with many monsters thus we ask to salvage some of them.

I'm not against players willingly salvaging their monsters. I just want to state that salvaging/limiting number of monsters alone won't solve the stated problem.
TBH I too feel the hunger/morale's a strange idea. But at the same time I see new potential for business/development there.

This post has been edited by varst: May 3 2013, 10:01

That will screw everyone who want to be AFK for a while.

The opposite would screw balance.

That will screw every low-level/causal player who want to make anything but a strong monster. It will also make the monster distribution heavily skewed towards high PL, as everyone's force to have a few monsters and can only upgrade those.

That's actually desirable. It's a plus, not a minus. Few (?) high PL monster who actually pose a challenge as opposed to hundreds of half assed "ouzai...", "i fear...", witches and so on.

Letting people create as many critters as possible and forcing people to feed/upgrade them or they'll become inactive/useless seems more of a punishment than game mechanics. Just impose a rule to limit the number of monsters based on how much you have invested in them. Make the cost a little steep and you're set.

It's better to have a single good monster per player than feeding/drugging a myriad of grumpy, whiny critters.

Why not just exclude rare Drops from low Level Mobs?
Also lower the chance for wanted Bindings.

Suddenly Multiaccounting for a Army of low mobs is much less desirable.

The opposite would screw balance.

It's better to have a single good monster per player than feeding/drugging a myriad of grumpy, whiny critters.

It's even better to let the players themselves to decide their own composition. If the player want to have more low-PL monsters and is willing to pay others for the extra food, why wouldn't they be allowed to do so?

And I would like to know why making food tradeable would screw the balance?

Making food non tradeable would

That will screw everyone who want to be AFK for a while.

OK, so give monsters a 'hibernate' option. Reduces food/drug consumption by X%, but in return monsters' stats are reduced by similar amount (they still show up, but weak as hell).

This might work.

That will screw every low-level/causal player who want to make anything but a strong monster. It will also make the monster distribution heavily skewed towards high PL, as everyone's force to have a few monsters and can only upgrade those.

Fine, then have a looser limit, like 5 or 7 or something. You can still make mobs, just not so many of them. The whole objective is exactly to limit the number of mobs you can have active, right? Isn't this what this FDA business is all about? Eventually the average mob PL will be around 750?

I'm not against players willingly salvaging their monsters. I just want to state that salvaging/limiting number of monsters alone won't solve the stated problem.
TBH I too feel the hunger/morale's a strange idea. But at the same time I see new potential for business/development there.

I think it is at this stage that we should examine the whole system of Monster Lab. What are the in-game objectives? What are the 'meta' objectives? This is what I can gather.

In-game:
1. Bring back bindings, mats and Rares for Forge upgrades
2. Slightly higher credits received when defeated
3. Slightly more XP received when defeated

Meta:
1. Make game more interesting with different mob names, classes, capabilities
2. Credit sink
3. Bragging rights

I don't know if there are any others, but I'm sure people can add to them. But simply dealing with the 'meta' issues, (1) with the removal of AGI as a speed differentiator, I can't for the life of me really tell the difference between 1 PL1000+ mob and the next. Also, once you hit a certain (high) level, depressingly, all the monsters you meet are the same ones over and over again.

I have to be honest, I kinda miss the Sperm Whale, the Mantitcore, and all the rest of 'em.

TenB's been going on and on about how having hard limits won't stop multiple account creation, and lots of mobs still active when their players are no longer around. Excuse me, but that's an accounts management issue, and bloody little to do with the players. You can't delete your account - why? You can't suspend your account - why?

- send an email to registered email address when user hasn't logged into HV for X days. Said email contains a 'keep-alive' link with a required Y rounds played in Z days, otherwise account goes 'dormant', all monsters associated stop appearing. But account remains active for forums and Galleries and whatnot. Don't want to play anymore? No problems!

- Use Symantec's PIP authentication process with OTP generator keyed to player's PC/mobile phone or similar.

The opposite would screw balance.

That's actually desirable. It's a plus, not a minus. Few (?) high PL monster who actually pose a challenge as opposed to hundreds of half assed "ouzai...", "i fear...", witches and so on.

Letting people create as many critters as possible and forcing people to feed/upgrade them or they'll become inactive/useless seems more of a punishment than game mechanics. Just impose a rule to limit the number of monsters based on how much you have invested in them. Make the cost a little steep and you're set.

It's better to have a single good monster per player than feeding/drugging a myriad of grumpy, whiny critters.

No, you want that army of mid to high PL unchaosed mobs around. Without them, there's nothing but the RagingHeart Excelions and Liselotte Werckmeisters of the world left. You do not want every round to be 8 full Chaos mobs.

TenB's been going on and on about how having hard limits won't stop multiple account creation, and lots of mobs still active when their players are no longer around. Excuse me, but that's an accounts management issue, and bloody little to do with the players. You can't delete your account - why? You can't suspend your account - why?

- send an email to registered email address when user hasn't logged into HV for X days. Said email contains a 'keep-alive' link with a required Y rounds played in Z days, otherwise account goes 'dormant', all monsters associated stop appearing. But account remains active for forums and Galleries and whatnot. Don't want to play anymore? No problems!

- Use Symantec's PIP authentication process with OTP generator keyed to player's PC/mobile phone or similar.

How would the first option even help? Those with multiple accounts are still going to log into HV with those accounts, so how would that stop people doing so?

And keying to player's PC/mobile phone is the worst possible option. This isn't those goddamn facebook/android games.

No, you want that army of mid to high PL unchaosed mobs around. Without them, there's nothing but the RagingHeart Excelions and Liselotte Werckmeisters of the world left. You do not want every round to be 8 full Chaos mobs.

But you won't, not for another year or so anyway. There are ~20 PL1000+ mobs now, and a whole lot more PL900+ mobs, and a vast horde that are PL500-800 (those I can fight, I mean). It will take a seriously long time before you have rounds exclusively composed of these high-level blighters. Whom, in any case, the lower-level players won't be meeting.

@varst: It will help with mobs from the likes of Tiap and Hito, who apparently aren't playing any more, but whose mobs are still out there. I presume that's what this whole FDA stuff is partially aimed at.

As for the keying, I don't insist on it. But the point remains. I'm just saying that there are ways of deterring people from multiple accounts; this is one of them. Requiring a non-webmail email is probably another. Are the vast majority of players being assholes about this multiple account thing? If so, then it's part and parcel of the game and just let it be. If not, then don't penalise everyone else.

If I were a botter, I would still be having my army of bots spam for food and drugs. I'd reduce the number of individual mobs per bot account, but I would just multiply the number of accounts to make up for it.

I must make it plain that I'll wait for this new system to be in place before pronouncing final judgement on it (like anybody cares). But I do believe that we should be very clear what the ML is for, and whether there are alternatives to what we're all thinking and suggesting now.

so:

CODE

Why not just exclude rare Drops from low Level Mobs?
Also lower the chance for wanted Bindings.

+

CODE

Food not tradeable

+

CODE

Happy Pills will not be needed but  instead will Buff Monster Stats for a certain amount of time

=

Yay!

There is no need to have 2 things to keep Monster useful to the trainer.

No, you want that army of mid to high PL unchaosed mobs around. Without them, there's nothing but the RagingHeart Excelions and Liselotte Werckmeisters of the world left. You do not want every round to be 8 full Chaos mobs.

Actually I'm pretty fine with rounds upon rounds of heavily chaosed up monsters, I'm literally fed up with hundreds of unimaginative unchaosed "stock monsters" made by people who create more critters than they know what to do with.

What's more, I'd make it so you can't choose the same class of a monster you already have unless you've created a monster for each class available first.

That will screw everyone who want to be AFK for a while.

You mean it will screw people who only wish to check their monsters and nothing else. Which seems a fair tradeoff to not having morale which will make it necessary to abandon monsters once they become unsustainable.

And I would like to know why making food tradeable would screw the balance?

Almost missed this one.

Who's gonna pile up more "low/mid level food" than they have use for? The very same ones with an army of monsters, because they already play thousands of rounds per day.

Who's gonna need that food? The casual players who play every now and then.

What will this amount to? Another market segment where the Big Players will lobby, raise market price and get even more credits so they become Bigger Players, while casual players will simply face another credit sink that will slow their progress even more.

It's the same history repeating over and over again.

Those who have already acquired a hefty advantage over the others will just keep going on same as before if not even better, unless there's a reset of sorts.

Hard limits, heavy investments in current monsters before being allowed to create new ones, limitations on multiple monsters of the same class would discourage farming, while letting people make good use of their monsters.

@low PLs: PL 25s still pay off in like a week or so from mid-grades, compare to current half a year to over a year for other monsters. Stopping bindings/phazons from them will not make them inefficient. However, because of limits you can only have so much, so PLseveralhundred is where most of the mat farming is done. Vast majority of phazons and slaughters come from high PLs because they bring gifts just so much more often, as opposed to once every 2 days. And this is why Frith's comparison isn't really valid for lows. However, still applies for mid-PLs

@making food nontradeable: Ugh. That means essentially much harder limit on monster numbers.

@traficantj: There are already hard caps in place. Current hard cap is 255 monsters.

@Hohenheim: As it is, having 20% resist on every monster would destroy mages even further. The current idea already promotes more non-affection chaosing.

But regarding morale system, under required 12k every 12days/1k per day morale, a monster would reach 10th/32th(above 12k) upgrade in 53.7938(3) days, being a PL of 674, worth 7375186 C at 21c per primary/7c per secondary.(well, this clearly won't pay off in under 2 months, 6 months even given the spaced upgrade schedule). From there on out, it will be question how many is too many in 12 days? I'll assume 120k here(10k crystals per day, and optimally distributed), which is around 3 further primary upgrades for each stat and 10 elementals, optimally taking up obvious 88*12 days, or 2.89 years before happy pills become necessary. This is just 1 monster though, if you spread it between 20 monsters be forced to spread every monster 5% of that, which means you'll need happy pills for them before they reach 12k+ upgrade cost even.

I'm unsure what you mean by "making good use of monsters" without giving "hefty" advantage to their owners. Make it so monsters will never, ever pay off and the "good use" is having a name appear often?

Also, making monsters of every class is not a problem in creating them, through one may argue that certain classes dominating is a balance problem.

varst: Currently, inactive players are punished by getting only 1 gift out of possibly how many? So no change there.

xmagus: problem with making monsters be weaker with smaller cost for upkeep is that almost all non-waifu mobs would receive it, because players die due running out of resources mostly - and they can preset battle items to run out of spirit and mana about same time.

@tenboro:
In regards to the math, your assumptions for players and rounds may be set a bit too high(even deep in grindfest don't 10 monsters only appear when a boss does, no? Usual is between 7 and 9. And scavenger's last level requires estimated future 989999901 C in loot value for it to be a sane investment. That's not quite twice the value of paradise lost tree....and how many players can afford that at the moment?), but that's honestly not a magnitude-class problem as real-life numbers aren't vastly different.

However, the estimated 16k iwbth(0-scavenger) monsters should net then 80 high-grade food, putting it at 0.5% for HGF? Isn't that a bit too high estimated rate, given that monsters have 5% base drop rate already, and 10% of it is already 0.5%?
(Although I'm uncertain how to account for future PL distribution and thus drop rate here, median PL is under 700 at the moment).

That said, it is possible my assumptions are wrong. But if I assume hgf is 10% of that 0.5% total food drop rate and 8 monsters per round, it does suddenly jump to 10k rounds needed for 20 monsters.

This post has been edited by Lement: May 3 2013, 11:54

The actual number's still floating around. Today it's 12k crystals for 15 days, the upgrade scaling's also different. So don't count on any numbers in you guys' arguments. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) I hope the actual number of Morale system will be more feasible.

If the max Morale point is 12k (just for example), it means one can only feed one mob 12k in one week or the rest Morale will be waste (especially when the happy pills drop rate is very low).

So does the high level monster, one upgrade cost more than 12k and those morale gained more than 12k are also waste.


Maybe there are two ways to cope the problem.
1: Make the limit of morale point much higher so that our poor TPP's Eila won't waste too much morsle per upgrade (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) (is she over 1500+? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) )

2: Insure the pills using is avaible for mid-high PL monster(over 600+ primary upgrade may cost 16k+), higher drop rate , hath perk, Trainning... anyway (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Those who have already acquired a hefty advantage over the others will just keep going on same as before if not even better, unless there's a reset of sorts.

Hard limits, heavy investments in current monsters before being allowed to create new ones, limitations on multiple monsters of the same class would discourage farming, while letting people make good use of their monsters.

That's not called imbalance. Something's not in balance when you put in the same effort and get different result. Those players put in more money/H@H servers/time to get their status.
Also, that won't prevent people from opening multiple accounts. They'll just get even more of them for farming

If the morale system goes through, I think the game is going to become vastly more difficult as players abandon a lot of their weaker monsters and focus on just a handful of the already strong ones. The food system will also do that to a degree, but nothing like the morale system. As it is now I can get a number of rounds in a row without any dangerous monsters, whereas just a month or 2 back that was a rare occurrence.

It will also leave players with massive amounts of spare chaos tokens to spend upgrading just a small number of monsters as opposed to making new ones causing the difficulty to spiral further out of control....