Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

Optimus Prime007 wrote:I've been reading a lot of threads within the forum. Also noticed the lack of posts as well. With the active posters here in the forum lets try and form up together in the game. I know its hard to get collective support here in the forum like getting ice water in hell. I read Jack Hallow's thread and some others. I playing everyday and want to help coordinate what we can to put up some valid resistance in the game.

Also, this something I thought of is there a way to have messages displayed on the HMW game homepage to display messages to check into the forums or in possible mission prompts? Perhaps that could bring some of the players who do not post back into the forums....

I hope some people are interested in teaming up or working together, whatever you want to call it.

Maybe we could work out a tourney or something to draw in some more players. Just trying to think of ways to benefit the game, as well as the site.

I copied this from the thread I made in the Autobot forum, figured this should be for everyone not just bots.

I want to try and get the game back to its hay day in the past with some group effort on both sides. I see a lot of players here and there and just want to throw the idea out to everyone for inputs on how together we can make the forums and game better.

Perhaps, we can get some solid ideas together and bring em to Ryan or whoever else admins.

Good idea, but not going to work. HMW is Ryan's very last priority, and not even the HMW mods have any power to adapt this game in any significant ways.


* This message was brought to you by the power of positive thinking; making your day brighter and shinier! *

Of course positive thinking doesn't make up for misconceptions.

Here's a list of what we CAN do. (Or at least looks to still be functional)

Modify weapons
Modify characters
Restock armour

To be perfectly honest, it's not much. Sure you can run competitions and have prizes like special weapons or alt modes, BUT ... you'd want the competition to attract new people so the "regulars" don't end up winning again and again.

alldarker wrote:Good idea, but not going to work. HMW is Ryan's very last priority, and not even the HMW mods have any power to adapt this game in any significant ways.

Well that's a shame that Ryan doesn't care about it or would want someone to help fix it. Well I guess I'll go back to playing Xbox that wasting time trying to make good in this debacle.

I was thinking that if the HMW community bounded together then we could force Ryan to bring on someone to work with the game since its not one of his "Priorities." Or at the very least bring in new players.

Seriously? You disappear for months on end and every time you come back you have this desire to resurrect the AWC or band the Autobots together or whatever ... and now you want to FORCE the site owner into upgrading the game?

Maybe you should try asking him nicely first?

Maybe do an HMW fundraiser. I waste a few bucks every month on stuff I do with less interest than upkeep my little HMW team. If we throw a little green Seibertron's way, maybe it would get the ball rolling on...whatever it is that would help make the forum part more interesting.

Insidious wrote:Maybe do an HMW fundraiser. I waste a few bucks every month on stuff I do with less interest than upkeep my little HMW team. If we throw a little green Seibertron's way, maybe it would get the ball rolling on...whatever it is that would help make the forum part more interesting.

That is actually not even a bad idea at all. I also play Kingdom of Loathing: donations are optional in that game, but allow a couple of game developers to be employed to keep developing the game. A Kickstarter campaign or something might be a step forwards to HMW 2.0.

We've asked Ryan about that before, and he's insisted that it remain free. I do understand that a donation doesn't mean you have to. But he hasn't wanted to employ anyone to do the work, that it should be voluntary.

Burn wrote:Seriously? You disappear for months on end and every time you come back you have this desire to resurrect the AWC or band the Autobots together or whatever ... and now you want to FORCE the site owner into upgrading the game?

Maybe you should try asking him nicely first?

I never said I or anyone to Force the owner to do anything. I just pointed out how messed up it is that he hasn't tried to let anyone work on the game or whatever the previous programmers were doing.

Oh and your right I did disappear for months on end. Deployments in the middle east tend to tie me up from this fantasy life that you live in. I'm a civilian now and I go to school full time. So I figured this is a good opportunity to come back, play, and do something good for this site and the players.

What is it that you do here? Besides attack people for every post they make.

alldarker wrote:

Insidious wrote:Maybe do an HMW fundraiser. I waste a few bucks every month on stuff I do with less interest than upkeep my little HMW team. If we throw a little green Seibertron's way, maybe it would get the ball rolling on...whatever it is that would help make the forum part more interesting.

That is actually not even a bad idea at all. I also play Kingdom of Loathing: donations are optional in that game, but allow a couple of game developers to be employed to keep developing the game. A Kickstarter campaign or something might be a step forwards to HMW 2.0.

I agree, it couldn't hurt to have the people invest in a game they enjoy playing. Although, we would have to make sure that the money is going to a place where it would be used appropriately. Rather than buying new figures, or a new flat screen .

Off-topic and personal discussions have been moved to private. Let's keep churning out ideas for the game.

I don't post much, but I've been playing on and off since 2003. I lost all my original characters in the great reset a few years ago and I've only picked it up again over the last 2 years. That being said, I only have 1 character at level 3 and the rest are at level 2 after about a year of steady play. To say that it's a "slog" to move up would be an extreme understatement.

However, I rarely ask for anything to be fixed or updated because, accurate or not, the perception is that as long as the lights are on Ryan isn't going to do anything with it.

The end result (and I'm sure this is the same for a lot of new users) is that they get bored with all the constant clicking to spawn new missions just to end up winning because no one else entered. To make things worse, they eventually end up finding out that it hasn't have a real update for years and there are no plans for the future.

I guess my suggestion here is that if there are more users at the higher levels, wouldn't it make sense to move users up faster so they can actually find some missions with other people in them?

That is plausible. Bonus XP for accomplishments to help aid those that do play in gaining speed. However.... once you get up there the battles can be epic there isn't anywhere to go.

It could be an offering, and the player at that point can choose to take it or not.

Same position as WarHorse, and I agree with a lot of what he said.

About making the game more attractive, is it possible to introduce a NPC into the mix to make things interesting?

Super Megatron wrote:About making the game more attractive, is it possible to introduce a NPC into the mix to make things interesting?

We'll get the programmer onto that.
(aka ... not without a programmer will any coding changes happen)

Might as well lock this thread now. All conversation on how to make the game better is a complete waste of time because the game will never get any better. It is, apparently, what it is.

Not locking the thread when there could be someone out there that could spin up an idea that we can actually run with.

Is there any way you can modify weapons so the have a maximum stat value eg: firepower of 1-3? These weapons could then be modified (ie massively increase damage values) to allow lower level bots to be more able to compete against their higher level counterparts in the big missions like the 1-11 ranged ones.

It not only would help balance the missions and it might also prevent newer players from being turned away by what can sometimes feel like the disheartening lack of progress during the early levels, as they will be able to at least have a chance of affecting the outcome of one of these battles even if they only get in a single hit.

On top of everything else it more effectively uses the HMW player base, placing everyone in a larger pool, rather than having the community separated into smaller brackets which result from the current levelling system. It could thus help make the community feel larger.

Hopefully this suggestion requires very little coding beyond some basic value alterations, but I'm only speculating as I have no knowledge of the subject.

Light Blade away!

Light Blade wrote:Is there any way you can modify weapons so the have a maximum stat value eg: firepower of 1-3? These weapons could then be modified (ie massively increase damage values) to allow lower level bots to be more able to compete against their higher level counterparts in the big missions like the 1-11 ranged ones.

It not only would help balance the missions and it might also prevent newer players from being turned away by what can sometimes feel like the disheartening lack of progress during the early levels, as they will be able to at least have a chance of affecting the outcome of one of these battles even if they only get in a single hit.

On top of everything else it more effectively uses the HMW player base, placing everyone in a larger pool, rather than having the community separated into smaller brackets which result from the current leveling system. It could thus help make the community feel larger.

Hopefully this suggestion requires very little coding beyond some basic value alterations, but I'm only speculating as I have no knowledge of the subject.

Light Blade away!

This isn't a bad idea, except it negates any reason to really level up. If a level one scores on a level eleven there is a massive payout. The reverse is not as easily said. What this means is that you have people that don't have an incentive to level up. You end up with strong characters that sit at levels and soak up XP kills while not allowing the other side to benefit from their level.

For example (and I'm an offender of this from time to time due to my OCD of keeping my order of my players) Darq had enough XP to level to 11. This benefits everyone, even the level 1s. Hitting Darq would mean that you get more xp than when he was sitting level 10. At level 11 he really isn't much stronger than when he was at level 9. In fact, there are some level 8s out there that for the most part perform better than my level 11s, 10s due to Lady Luck seemingly always being on their side. Trust me there is nothing more disheartening than a level 8 that pounds your level 10 into the ground several times in a row.

Ideally the best reaction we can have besides a programmer that would be allowed to create new missions. Once we have new missions we could actually implement a booster. By this I mean that every 24hours a player would get an XP bonus for a certain amount of games/hours of play. Think of it as an XP doubler for casual players. Hard core players like NV/AllDarker/Burn/Naked would get a bonus out of this too, but for the most part it wouldn't benefit them as much as it would say somebody that logs onto the site once a day for an hour or two a day.

The easiest thing though would be to program enders into the game. Enders would be max level automatons to fill the mission once it is closed. So a level 0 joining a mission by themselves would actually end up with a full team on both sides. The "Enders" wouldn't be owned by anyone and would actually just be at the highest level for the mission. Their interaction rate would be equal to 1:3 ratio and pretty much offer the players something to attack for added XP/Energon. On the other side it wouldn't depreciate energon any further by actually attacking the player offering a chance to CR the player. Experience earned off an Ender wouldn't be equivalent to that earned by a player, but a fraction. Still with this offer and the bonus XP a casual player could level much faster than empty missions and lopsided missions of 1 vs 5.

Burn wrote:Not locking the thread when there could be someone out there that could spin up an idea that we can actually run with.

That was just my frustration talking.

I'm loving the idea of getting a daily bonus for the number of missions you join per day.

I'm not sure how much coding this would take but man, I'm so sick of spawning missions! I play form about 8am to 5pm US EST and I have to spawn about 80% of the missions I join. It's a slow monotonous process. If I have 6 active bots and there are no open missions, why should I have to click the missions link (or refresh the page) 6 separate times?

I'm getting so sick of doing it that I find myself just leaving the page altogether. Some most days I just try again later. Yesterday I just didn't.

Coding really depends on the current code that was there and how attached we are to it. The XP bonus can be done with about 8 lines of code and 2 small changes to a sql database.

The Enders would take roughly 36 to 190+ lines of code and a few table changes.

As for your issue with spawning missions. I feel you. I play odd times and seems like I am the only one around sometimes. I've actually got a way of having the system autospawn missions for me by spacing out my levels and deployments. It works roughly 70% of the time.

I would much rather have drones in place than a one on one where a lower level beats down my level 11's and 10s constantly (IE this game). No offense to anyone, but the end game doesn't pay to level except to create high XP targets for everyone else. I equivilate it to having Wheelie or Bumblebee beat the crap out of Six Shot or Galvatron. Part of the reason for leveling should be to become stronger than your opponents. To much RNG and not enough multipliers on the stats.

_Anshin_ wrote: Part of the reason for leveling should be to become stronger than your opponents. To much RNG and not enough multipliers on the stats.

Hence why I was thinking along the lines of negating level ups, as this seems easier than coding to ensure higher levels have larger multipliers. Forsake your false stat gods and embrace the way of the RNG!

Burn, or anyone really, could you put up a list of what features are currently functioning in the game? I haven't been around much recently but I remember there being some odd glitch in the arena battles, has this been resolved.

Another option we might look at is a narrative campaign that branches depending upon who wins the most missions or which side acquires the most experience within a time limit, prizes could be new alt modes or if possible weapon restocks for the winning faction. We could even impose a bit of structure to this by having say 12 targets on a map of cybertron (a simple gif image would be great here), and holding each one would grant something, being the aforementioned increased alt mode options or even some sort of forum badge.

If anyone was willing we could take the narrative campaign further with the results feeding into a faux war report type thread documenting the HMW... there must be some aspiring writers lurking around here somewhere.

As I said, if anyone could provide a more detailed list of HMW's current functionality that would give us a better understanding of what we are working with rather than simply blind firing unfeasible ideas

Burn wrote:Of course positive thinking doesn't make up for misconceptions.

Here's a list of what we CAN do. (Or at least looks to still be functional)

Modify weapons
Modify characters
Restock armour

To be perfectly honest, it's not much. Sure you can run competitions and have prizes like special weapons or alt modes, BUT ... you'd want the competition to attract new people so the "regulars" don't end up winning again and again.

Its been posted. Sadly we are very limited.

You could always read my post on the first page ...

Sustain wrote:Its been posted. Sadly we are very limited.

I was thinking more in terms of game functionality as opposed to moderator capability. E.g. is armour doing anything beyond making our robots look spiffy?