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Thanks to everyone who has been sharing their thoughts on the forum. Even though glitch and I don’t have time to write out replies to everyone, we do read through these posts and find them valuable. It’s not easy to put your voice out there in a public arena while keeping everything civil despite differing opinions and outlooks. We will also have a feedback form at the end for anyone wanting to share opinions more privately as well. Asher In the beginning, we had the probabilities for collecting the grave water and glowing moss higher, but we quickly lowered them once we realized that stage 2/stage 3 mechanics needed to be adjusted and the other ingredients really wouldn’t be of much use until we fixed that issue! Players should still be collecting them on occasion, but not enough to gather a huge stockpile. The probabilities will be re-adjusted once we start getting stage 2 and 3 into the mix.
Posted 11/11/19
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Myla Okay good to know! I won’t worry about not getting any for now lol. I was planning on stocking up on salves but it’s no big deal for now. I thought I just had awful luck haha. Thank you! :)
Posted 11/11/19, edited 11/11/19
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polygone Also, I’m aware of how the game works. -_- My issue with the event has absolutely nothing to do with teams. This event was made to pit people against each other - that’s the definition of PvP. By curing someone, you actively prevent other players from getting achievement points, because you either have taken a target they could have had or you remove the possibility of a later stage cure. Because there is a points cap based only on achievement goals, not on each individual cure/infection, and because there’s a limited time for this event as well as a timer, this makes every lost point matter. One person gets points at the expense of another. That is how this event works. There’s no “everyone’s a winner” there. The playerbase is far too small and the random cure/infection is far too common to make those lost chances merely trivial. Because the zombie achievements are easier to accomplish, being infected is better to be early on. There’s no incentive in wasting ingredients you might need for a later stage cure until you have the 80 brown shrooms, since the higher stage achievement cures are so much harder to get and solely rng-based. I switched to selecting admins because not everyone changes their pet name for the event, and if someone’s working on an achievement, I don’t want to add to the already frustrating event by changing a side right before they cure/infect someone. Plus, from reading the thread, it’s obvious this happening is upsetting some people. And y’know, I’m not a jerk, so I don’t feel compelled to throw an “it’s just a game” in their faces. Like Dora said above, games are supposed to be fun, not make you feel crappy. As for said agents of chaos, they’re not doing anything wrong, they’re just given incentive to be mean-spirited - like I said already: the communities for these sorts of games that I’ve seen have seemed to be rather toxic. And it’s that kind of community that I hope MC doesn’t turn into with the addition of PvP events. The RP/community aspect is probably MC’s greatest draw as a petsite, and this entire event feels like it’s running counter to that.
Posted 11/11/19
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Hi, hello, here to poke at some stuff for ideas I’ve had for what to do with this game and what I’d like to see in the game. Should note this is more from a ‘future-events’ view than a ‘right-now’ view of the event, though some of this could probably be tweaked in the here and now, thusly it warranting a post and not a text document to be saved for feedback time. Plus everyone else is throwing feedback anyways, so I’m taking my long-winded turn. Humph! xP As I’ve a lot to talk about, I’m going to group this into sections and talk about bits of the event at a time. Each section gets it’s own fancy little spoiler tag, and I’ll try to focus on the bit I’m on as well as an explanation. Then I’ll hope someone reads it because it’s absolutely going to be far too long. xD I’d quite like the timers to either be equal for both sides, or otherwise have the page notify you when you’ve changed teams. It’s rather annoying to get to hear the ding only to have to wait a minute or find that you’ve wasted a minute. It also seems to occasionally have the bell just not work sometimes, though I’m not sure if that’s because of switching last minute or not. It’d be much simpler and less annoying if both sides had the same timer. The timer for invulnerability is notably less annoying, and in fact rather loved here. Having it be just long enough to gather or curse once with a minute or two of grace afterwards in case of being slow is fantastic, and I hope that if the cooldown timers change that the invulnerability timer adjusts to match. It does feel perfect as it is, potentially with the gather timer increased to match the curse one. The stage 2 and 3 infections take WAY too long though. I’d like them to be more along the lines of an hour to two hours for it to progress, along with some later edits to how the infection and curing works. This is mostly because staying on one side for too long shouldn’t be incentivized, and instead lightly nudge people to seek being cured/cursed if they remain on one side for too long. Given that, progressing infections faster to keep up with each player’s desire to be cured is probably a good idea. The mechanics are kind of counter-intuitive to how the game wants to be played. Humans VS Zombies is not really a team-based game, it’s more of a free-for-all, where each player is acting on their own goals according to whether they are currently a human or a zombie. For the sake of this game, it’s cursing people as a cursed player and curing people as an uncursed player. Eventually, one team will outnumber the other and ultimately tip the balance to where one side is the only one that exists. In most cases, that team ‘wins’, and the game is reset. But something to note is that since everyone has been converted, everyone always wins the game. There is no team vs team since in the end every player in the game is on the same team. With that in mind, the mechanics of the game should be incentivizing doing a good job on their current team for the short time they’re on said team before they inevitably switch sides. Given this forum version is meant to last two weeks, it should also make people want to swap sides occasionally to help prevent needing to mass-convert people using NPCs. The stages of infection counts completely against the idea of swapping sides haphazardly, since the higher stages of infection have a greater infect rate than the later stages. If you are infected, you want to be a stage 3 infected because they simply get to do more and get the achievements faster than the stage 1 infected. This is the main reason mechanically why people would get upset over being cured. This needs to be thrown out or reworked to be less intrusive, or people will likely continue to be upset about being cured, especially at later stages of infection. (Which is bound to happen once we start seeing it due to built up supplies of cures.) I suggest flipping it around and making the earlier stages more deadly than the later stages of infection, with the final stage being more or less inert until cured. Stage 1 would then be able to curse two players at once, stage 2 can curse one player, and stage 3 can’t curse anyone, instead passively accumulating time on a timer that increases until they are cured. This can then be used to offer rewards to these unfortunate players while incentivizing them reaching out to the community to be healed. It also helps stop the runaway effect of more players being cursed resulting in even more players being cursed. This will, of course, leave cured players at a disadvantage at the moment and require a change to the simple one gather per button that we currently see. Mycenians who are cured should be happy about it, and excited to help others also be free. Given this, having the first gather grant extra materials would be a nice bonus to make people happy about being cured. It’d also be nice if the invulnerability timer was changed to a gather counter, so players remain immune until the first time they gather. That way nothing can stop them from getting their extra plants from their first gather, though that isn’t wholly necessary. If players are cured from a stage 2 infection, it means that the cursed players are starting to win and we need more healers. Due to this, recently cured stage 2 mycenians could get two gathers where they are immune to being cursed, as well as two turns instead of one where they gather double. For stage 3 infected, they could get that same double immunity with the added bonus of gathering triple for the first two gathers, so they can really make up for having been unable to curse. If this happens, it’d help the uncursed catch up to a rampant infection taking over. It also allows the salve costs to be returned to a bit higher value, since recently converted medics will more quickly be able to build salves and heal players, while older medics will cease being immune and get cursed, allowing them to repeat the cycle. Though having it remain a timer and potentially cause people to miss out on the doubled rewards will likely result in frustration, so swapping it from a timer to an immunity for a number of gathers would be a good idea. This also means players who are cured from stage 1 always get at least 2 herbs, stage 2 gets 4 herbs, and stage 3 gets 6 herbs before being vulnerable, if all these proposed changes to the cured state occur. A more advanced infected team wouldn’t be able to convert as many of the newly cured players as a freshly converted one, and the uncursed team should naturally be able to fix the balance and start mass curing without the need for as many random NPC cures, with a fresh outbreak of cursed doing the same. If the cursed team wins, a few uncursed will quickly be able to fight to de-petrify everyone with their increased drops. If the uncursed team wins, a few freshly cursed players will rapidly spread the infection to non-immune medics and begin the cycle over again. And so the game continues. These changes would make it so that instead of feeling burdened by switching teams, players find themselves much more capable of collecting materials and cursing each other when they’ve recently swapped sides, making it favorable to want to do what you can early on when you have boosted stats before the time comes to seek out someone who can convert you, potentially making new friends on the forums in the process. It also sets the game up to be self-balancing, since the side that’s winning won’t snowball and will instead slowly become weaker on its own, since at the moment the game more or less relies on the NPC mass-converts to continue to be played, rather than actions the players themselves did. For target selection on both sides, having the option to select a mycenian/player directly would be rather nice, since it’d allow specifically converting people who reach out on the forums, wanting to change teams, rather than waiting for them to show up on the list. It’d also be helpful if the player who has been on a given team the longest were the ones who showed up in the recommended section, if my previous changes occur, since it’d help keep the flow of everyone changing teams constantly, and not leave anyone on one side for too horribly long. Keeping the option for selecting a random player would likely also be appreciated, even with the ability to select someone specific. As it stands, achievements incentivize two things: Infecting as many people as possible, and curing each stage of the infection a number of times. On paper, this is fine. But with the current mechanics, it means that at some point it’s better to not cure players until they reach later stages so that we can cure them at that level, and it’s better to stay cursed as long as possible so you can infect more and more players as you progress through the stages. That makes the current meta of constant switching kind of un-fun for a lot of people since it’s frustrating to not be able to earn points as quickly as you could potentially be doing so. With the mechanical changes I suggested in the previous section, most of this worry goes away though, but the milestone-esque nature of the achievements leaves something to be desired. For example if you reach 150 players infected with just a few days left, there ceases to be a point to cursing people since you aren’t going to get another 150 to reach that 300 converts achievement. Keeping milestone-based achievements is fine, but I’d like to see the value of the longer-winded achievements reduced in value somewhat, specifically the big 50 points ones at the bottom of the list. It’d be nice to hit that goal, but not so much that you feel compelled to try hard for the highest tier of one team just because it’d net you the most points to do so. Instead, introduce a system that rewards consistent playing of the game by way of points-per-convert. Essentially, every x number of players you curse gives you a point, regardless of how many you curse by the end of the event. The same goes for the number of players cured, though giving more points for curing later-stage infected is probably a good idea. That way no matter how many people you’ve converted on either side, you always want to convert more since that means you will earn more points, even if you don’t have time to hit the big milestone goals. This would also further incentivize changing teams if my previous mechanical suggestions came about, since recently converted players would be more effective at further converting players and thus earn more points. As for stage 3 infected, who wouldn’t be able to curse at all, their timer that counts up would grant them points for every x minutes they were a stage 3 infected, though there shouldn’t be any achievements tied to being a stage 2/3 infected directly, as far as milestones go. There could also be a section of achievements tied to how often a player is cured, since this would further incentivize being a turncoat. Gather events are both my favorite and least favorite events, and the main point of distress is because of randomness. It’s kind of annoying to get lots of one material to craft something and nothing of the rest. I’m actually rather happy about there being a salve that only takes one ingredient, with that one being the most common. But I am somewhat concerned about an individual player’s odds of just never getting enough of a specific item to get the achievements for curing stage 2/3 infected. This is, unfortunately, not something I really have a good fix for. I’m glad the staff are watching the numbers and adjusting the chances for a given material based on what’s going on with the event. Giving one side or the other a boost in numbers when one team is about to win automatically is also appreciated, though occasionally annoying given the current mechanics regarding stage 2/3 infected. So that’s all of that. The idea of an event where we constantly and chaotically switch sides, watching the two factions vie for control while each of their members are constantly at risk of defecting is super cool and I really think that with the right tweaks it can result in some interesting stories and a closer community, bringing people together to join in the madness of a turncoat-based minigame.
Posted 11/11/19
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e/ Oh oops I double-posted. I’ll just edit this one to respond to Ashlar. Was going to do that in a separate post anyway, since the previous is a contained thing and I didn’t want any responses cluttering it up.
Ashlar Yep! In it’s current state, the game kind of sucks. But the mods have been actively working on it and taking in feedback to edit timers and drop rates to help make it suck less. I actually went over a bunch of those same points in my previous post on my own feedback for the game. I hadn’t really meant my entire post’s bottom section to be directed solely at you, though I was responding to your post. That’d be why I didn’t ping you. My apologies for that not being clear. The game is in flux while it’s still new, things are going to change and adapt. I’m just adding my thoughts on the matter to the pile. With the event how it currently is, I would agree the community aspect of this event is lacking. There’s simply no reason for us to talk to each other as it stands apart from chatting about potentially doing an RP among friends with the event as a backdrop. The lore for the event is rather interesting, after all. Everyone seemed rather excited by it to begin, at the least. So the RP side of the event isn’t doing terrible, though it could very much be better. If you’d like, I actually offered quite a few edits and tweaks to how the game could work in my previous post that’d make the game more community-oriented and actually assist with making it more RP-friendly. Perhaps you’ll like some of them, seeing as we’ve got similar gripes about the current state of affairs.
Posted 11/11/19, edited 11/11/19
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*peeks in* ovo I’ve been enjoying the event, but I do share some of Ash’s frustrations. (She put them well, and I don’t know how to add to that conversation much, so I’ll leave it at that). I like that the site is trying new things and is willing to alter things for balance and such, because I know some places don’t care about trying to make an event good. I look forward to the changes to be made, and have liked many of the ones I’ve seen. My two cents that I haven’t seen anyone really discuss much is the achievement system. I know people have commented on how hard it is to get enough points for everything/prices, but my issue is more with the achievement system itself. I think it’s awesome to have achievements, but relying on them for points is a little hard. The achievements get progressively harder to get, and while the payouts increase, it’s not by much. Moreover, those who don’t switch between sides much will have trouble getting all the achievements, and those who don’t have much time to spend on MC will have even more of a problem. Personally I think it would be nice to have points given for infecting/curing, and then maybe the achievements give bonus points, or award an extra bag or item. I know it’s likely too late in the game to change this system now, but I thought I’d voice my thoughts on the matter. (This would also combat the issue of one player doing something taking away from another that Ash was describing.) On another note, let it be known I am fine with swapping around! Infect/cure me to your hearts content~
Posted 11/11/19
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One of my favourite things about collecting/gathering events is watching my little point total grow, so I would personally love to have points per curse/cure if we had this style event again! The achievement system slows that point gathering down so much that it’s not quite as satisfying and makes each individual action feel not as special - though I do like the achievement system as its own thing!
Posted 11/11/19
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Would like to note my favorite point I made in my little list of potential edits is that I’d like to earn shop currency for every x number of curses/cures we do, with the milestone-based achievements we currently have being a nice little bonus for those who go above and beyond. Seems I’m not the only one who thought of it, too! :D So ye, I echo Oxton. I like watching numbers go up.
Posted 11/11/19
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Just dropping in with my two cents: -I actually find this slightly more fun and interesting than the general timer events (though that may be because we’ve had so many of those)
Posted 11/11/19
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Popping in with a quick reply as I’m still at work, but Lala I can confirm that I have had several random pulls that are not from my available list — so it might just be very coincidental if you are getting random selections that are from yours!
Posted 11/11/19
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polygone Also want to echo the above posts, if the achievements were an added extra instead of the main way to get points, that would be so much nicer - a point per cure/infection would remove much of the issues. And since the shop doesn’t open until later in the event, the prices could still be balanced around the different point total.
Posted 11/11/19
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Oooh, having the event be set up under an incentivized test would’ve been nice, yes. I quite liked that style of adding new events to the site as well. It’d've allowed for more notable changes to the event now and then, though it also would’ve made it drag on a bit and pushed the shop until the end of the event probably.
Posted 11/11/19
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Dove Neat! Thanks for clarifying that for me. Also tacking onto what Ashlar said and clarifying what I was thinking, the usual timer events we can get about 1.5-2.2x the value for each action we do once we craft recipes, so that’s why I thought it could be a reasonable thing to add a point for each action. This could also address the frustrating feeling of not having enough points/a hard limit on points earnable/the perception that we aren’t going to be able to obtain even one of each item. From an eyeballing of the current values, I think it would make sense? Not sure if it still will if staff decide to rebalance everything though in six days.
Posted 11/11/19
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I’m really glad changes have been made to the event. However I really hope a change is made to the stages 2 and 3. Even if people don’t cure you, it seems like sooner or later an NPC will cure you. That’s making it impossible to advance in stages. I think it is good that the site decided to have a new fall event this year. But more changes need to be made. And there definitely needs to be balance in the prize shop too.
Posted 11/11/19
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They’ve already stated that there will be adjustments coming to the prize shop and the later stages. They’re purposely collecting data today to figure out the best way to that :) I’m just restating what was said in the previous page, obviously the staff said it way better than me lol (but I’m on mobile and my fingers are not dextrous enough for quoting lol)
Posted 11/11/19
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Just wanted to say that I am really enjoying the event so far :) I wasn’t around for most of the first day so maybe I missed some of the initial frustrations but it’s great to see the responses from the MC team. There aren’t many games where people listen so attentively to the user-base. I love the fact that there are always new things being tried out. Some will always suit certain players more than others because we all have different preferences and styles of playing. Just one question - since healing requires gathering at least mushrooms and is therefore harder than cursing, wouldn’t it make sense if that scored points for the same incremental increases as the cursing, rather than leaping from 1, 5, 10 to 50?
Posted 11/11/19, edited 11/11/19
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Hi everyone! A few more updates:
Posted 11/11/19, edited 11/11/19
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Update to Infection Stage mechanics
The mechanics for infection stages has been updated. As of now, when you become infected, there is a chance that you become infected at Stage 2 or Stage 3 of the Stoneskin Curse. The power difference between Stage 1 and higher stages has been removed, so all stages now curse at the same speed (once per timer). As such, the effect of higher stages of the curse are now just that you’re more difficult to heal, and that healing you allows healers to work towards additional achievements. Drop rates of ingredients will be adjusted accordingly, and will continue to be kept in sync curse rates. Three things to keep in mind:
Posted 11/11/19
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glitch am… i supposed to be able to infect infinitely? i’m positive this isn’t normal lol. i infected a few times thinking it’d stop, but it didn’t. i think something went wrong there.
Posted 11/11/19
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glitch
Posted 11/11/19
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Ah, whoops. I accidentally infected twice. I thought I choose a non-eligible person the first time and clicked a second one. I then noticed the button was available again. I figured that I should confess to the one extra click in case it needs to be rolled back a point. :( Edit: good to see it’s already been noticed.
Posted 11/11/19, edited 11/11/19
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Ishy and Sapphy Could it be because you got to stage 2? Maybe that showed in place of a dialogue that says “your infection grew to stage 2”? maybe you both caused infinite infections, lol. infecting each other over and over. the ultimate contagion
Posted 11/11/19
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