Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

So I recently was able to come back to the site, and one of the big things I notice about the game is that it looks an awful lot like it did back in 2005 or so. But I know from tidbits on the forum and general osmosis that there were a lot of developments in the intervening time that have since gone away - customisable weapons, mini-cons, more tactics etc - that I never really got to see. Colour me curious about what kind of things there were!

Help me catch up on what I missed - what is YOUR favourite feature from HMW past that you'd love to see return and/or get fixed up?

Alternatively, if you don't remember/cherish an old feature, what would be the #1 new feature that would get you excited about the game again?


(Please note: I'm very much aware that no changes are likely to happen in the current setup. I'm interested in talking about what people have enjoyed in the past or what they'd love to see in the future - let's just assume that "but it'll probably never happen" is understood on every post, without needing to snark about it. Indulge an old man's nostalgia! )

Glyph wrote: - what is YOUR favourite feature from HMW past that you'd love to see return and/or get fixed up?

i miss the 'bots & 'cons that would i interact with. the tournaments, the craziness that went with players from all sides jumping into missions...

arena battles. they really don't exist for highlevels (mostly due to 1v1 missions pan out better)

robot modes & mini-cons we had 'em for a bit then they went away

Robo-combatants, "ghosts", while i do not miss the sparkless ones, be nice if a "empty" mission were filled with NPCs to battle it out with.

..and i'm really the only one lol, Battle Beast Gambling. its broke yo (lololol it worked in 2018, no so much these days)

I hear you on the emptiness... The game really could use some form of PvE or NPC battles for when there's hardly anyone about.

Bad Wolf wrote:robot modes

Ooh, that's interesting. I've thought about those a few times but didn't know they ever made it into the game. I'm guessing it was things like humanoid, feline (Ravage), avian (Laserbeak)? Was it just cosmetic or did it have game impact with hardpoints or anything like that?

Bad Wolf wrote:..and i'm really the only one lol, Battle Beast Gambling.

You may be, I built that thing and was never really happy with it or used it! It's nice between-games candy, was pretty sure the novelty would wear off quickly though. Still, glad someone enjoyed it

Glyph wrote:I hear you on the emptiness... The game really could use some form of PvE or NPC battles for when there's hardly anyone about.

Bad Wolf wrote:robot modes

Ooh, that's interesting. I've thought about those a few times but didn't know they ever made it into the game. I'm guessing it was things like humanoid, feline (Ravage), avian (Laserbeak)? Was it just cosmetic or did it have game impact with hardpoints or anything like that?

Bad Wolf wrote:..and i'm really the only one lol, Battle Beast Gambling.

You may be, I built that thing and was never really happy with it or used it! It's nice between-games candy, was pretty sure the novelty would wear off quickly though. Still, glad someone enjoyed it

I saved what i could. Here is the list:

1. Protoform - No abilities. Your default robot mode.
2. Melee Type - Enhances strength
3. Recon Type - Enhances speed and skill
4. Assault Type - Enhances firepower
5. Bulk Type - Enhances endurance and armor
6. Computational Type - Enhances intelligence and courage

(there's a thread around here some where for the details)


The mini-cons that were available were:
+ Name ID: Sparkler
Powerup Type: Offensive - Increases Firepower by 4 in combat
+ Name ID: Lifter
Powerup Type: Offensive - Increases Strength by 4 in combat
+ Name ID: Hopper
Powerup Type: Offensive - Increases Speed by 4 in combat
+ Name ID: Deflecter
Powerup Type: Defensive - Creates 10 tons of Electrum armor in combat
+ Name ID: Charger
Powerup Type: Offensive - Increases Courage by 4 in combat
+ Name ID: Jogger
Powerup Type: Offensive - Increase Speed by 2 in combat
+ Name ID: TripleDipper
Powerup Type: Defensive - Nullifies the tactic attacks of triple changer alt modes.


and at one point Kremzeek showed up. Current Known Abilities:
Kremzeek does a dance - Kremzeek will fully repair target*
Kremzeek unleashed - Kremzeek will inflict damage upon a target*
Kremzeek attacks - Kremzeek inflicts damage upon multiple targets*
Kremzeek steals - This steals XX amount of Energon from target*
Kremzeek gives Kury - Kremzeek will heal target/opponent
Kremzeek turns - Kremzeek will turn on wielder
Kremzeek gives a big hug - Kremzeek inflicts damage upon target*

*Faction does not determine Target
*Damage can include paralysis

The Kremzeek was my favorite weapon

The community, it brought friends, rivalries, it unleashed creativity.

And Steve.

Bad Wolf wrote:{bot modes, mini-cons, Kremzeek lists}

Thanks, looks like some interesting and, uh, slightly random stuff there! I missed the whole OS era and everything that happened there - hadn't dug back far enough in the forums to find those threads, but it sounds like quite a few things got brought in (and also that the forums argued about it as much as ever!).

Burn wrote:The community, it brought friends, rivalries, it unleashed creativity.

And Steve.

For sure. The community was always the best part of the game, and it's the hardest thing to rebuild, isn't it? Always amazed me how much people got out of (or more accurately, poured into) what's really a pretty bland set of options. It's probably the biggest reason this daft little game has lived rent-free in my head for 15 years even when I spent most of that time locked out of it! (well, that and the nagging itch of its unfulfilled potential)

Not even sure how you'd go about trying to rebuild (not saying I wouldn't want to try, mind you) - the high score list currently shows 613 total active characters (not players), and almost a third of them are levels 10-11. That's not a game that's bringing in or retaining new players, whether they're on the forums or not. It's not like you can advertise off-site, and with the low foot traffic on the forums generally, there's not a lot of people to pull in from the rest of the site. IDK whether there are many older players still lurking, or who might be lured back by word of mouth, but it seems you'd have to start with the things that put new players off - the bugged UI, the lack of competition, the general sense of "is that it?" after the first few missions.

Which is part of why I asked the second question - what would get you excited again?

Personally, things I'd like to see include: in-game events (a tracked set of missions for ROTB would be a no-brainer); more options for characters and a lot more flavour in battle reports; in-game goals to aim for (the Cybertron map, trophies, achievements, whatevs); community integration (rivals, challenges, etc); ...

Glyph wrote:.. more options for characters and a lot more flavour in battle reports; in-game goals to aim for (the Cybertron map, trophies, achievements, whatevs); community integration (rivals, challenges, etc); ...

not sure if you noticed but we do have armor missions where one side or the other can win armor supplies but other than that, i think we had some specialized weapons created (the reaver weapons come to mind from the last "hunt")

*i know there was "talk" about a battle map at one point but if memory servs OS could not get it to work

Yup - can't remember if I originally created those armour missions or not, but I do recall doing some work on them. I believe they were meant to be the first step towards making a lot more of the supply & pricing stuff depend on winning missions/territory. I saw in the last development thread from 2018 that Ryan really wanted to get the mission locations and map working too; I don't think the tracking portion would be particularly complicated, just the display.

Also, my bots would like to... vigorously shake the hand of whoever designed those Reaver-Obliteration Orbital Platforms that keep one-shotting them.

Glyph wrote:Also, my bots would like to... vigorously shake the hand of whoever designed those Reaver-Obliteration Orbital Platforms that keep one-shotting them.

LOL
I think that was mostly Psych & Myself.
They were part of an event that Psych ran years back. They were supposed to be slight OP for flavor reasons and were going to be a prelude to a sweeping repowering of all the weapons that we had in mind (at which time the Reaver weapons would have been largely underpowered comparatively to other weapons with their stat requirements)
It was going to be a lovely rebalance that made weapons relevant again at higher levels (or at least tried)

But as is usually the case around here, life happened, Psych & others trying to make it happen had to drop away for a while and the event never had a proper finish.
The rebalance never happened.
All the plans withered and died (though probably exist somewhere in my old files)
And now there's a bunch of OP weapons out there and a bunch of lulzy but functionally boring ones out there (Rusty Shovel, Dysentery, Water Pistol)


As to an answer to the topic of the thread...

The Community.
There's no greater asset to making the game enjoyable.
This was a great place to have a bit of imaginative fun with creative & passionate people.
Now it's a hollow shell populated by people grinding out of habit & very possibly long-forgotten play-bots considering the regularity of play still (averaging 300 missions a day for the last 3-4 years despite most of the players abandoning the site... come on... who other than a computer program is launching their entire team every hour?)

I just told what's left of the FB crew that even though we all gave up 3 years ago I've had an alarm set to pop into the game every day and record the 24 hour mission results... until today.
End of an era.
Time to let it go.






That being said, if by some miracle someone can convince Ryan to give a **** and appoint someone that knows WTF they're doing the power to fix and revive the game I'll be right back here trying to bring it back.

Drop me a line if that happens.

Bun-Bun wrote:And now there's a bunch of OP weapons out there and a bunch of lulzy but functionally boring ones out there (Rusty Shovel, Dysentery, Water Pistol)

I think that happened because some hallowed jackoff chucked a wobbly over them and we had to depower them.

Bun-Bun wrote:

Glyph wrote:Also, my bots would like to... vigorously shake the hand of whoever designed those Reaver-Obliteration Orbital Platforms that keep one-shotting them.

They were supposed to be slight OP for flavor reasons and were going to be a prelude to a sweeping repowering of all the weapons that we had in mind (at which time the Reaver weapons would have been largely underpowered comparatively to other weapons with their stat requirements)

Ooofff... that's a terrifying proposition when paired with the open missions! They may be great for farming XP once you can reliably pull off a bit of damage, but I find the low-level experience to be either Blurr at Autobot City ("Nobody nobody nobody!") or Pipes bumping into Overlord in the Lost Light's basement...

Burn wrote:

Bun-Bun wrote:And now there's a bunch of OP weapons out there and a bunch of lulzy but functionally boring ones out there (Rusty Shovel, Dysentery, Water Pistol)

I think that happened because some hallowed jackoff chucked a wobbly over them and we had to depower them.

Yeah there was that too


*edit instead of double posting... though who would care now?*

Yeah I see what you mean Glyph but as I recall there was a plan in place that made seem less bad for the littles at the time... It's been way too long for me to remember the details without going back over my files

Would love to see minicons being implemented. I don't quite remember what they did in their brief existence, but minicon partner or similar partners, like Soundwave and his cassettes would be a lot of fun.

Honestly, I'd have loved something like 'Generic Con' and 'Generic Bot' to fill out missions, kind of like we got to fill out the ranks in War For Cybertron, where they have the bare minimum of the missions and at least give your people something to target if it's empty. Or if the mission is lopsided you get some help.

Venomous Prime wrote:Would love to see minicons being implemented. I don't quite remember what they did in their brief existence, but minicon partner or similar partners, like Soundwave and his cassettes would be a lot of fun.

I know there were Armada-style minicons (that were basically stat upgrades for the character - Bad Wolf gave a list upthread) but 'minion' mini-cons would be hella fun to implement. They'd be a bugger to balance, I suspect, as an 'extra something' that some characters can get and others can't. But a lot of fun. (Dammit, threads like this make me wish I could still scratch that particular itch.)

ashe5k wrote:Honestly, I'd have loved something like 'Generic Con' and 'Generic Bot' to fill out missions, kind of like we got to fill out the ranks in War For Cybertron, where they have the bare minimum of the missions and at least give your people something to target if it's empty. Or if the mission is lopsided you get some help.

That's something I've thought about a lot... The game definitely needs some kind of PvE options IMO for when there aren't enough players online - or at all! - and I don't think it would be particularly difficult to add if you're smart about it. Has it ever had something like that?* Aside from filling up missions, how cool would it be to have raids, or a tournament where you work up to fighting some big boss NPC at the end? Plus, NPCs would let you test out new tactics and upgrades before just throwing them out to the playerbase and hoping they don't screw everything up

*(Not counting the Unknowns )

The Uknowns and a game glitch where old missions were overlapping current ones and dumping in bots and cons that had been in before regardless of level are the closest to having NPCs or generic fighting partners.

Ah, I see. I caught a bit of that scrolling back through the forums - looked like the big missions table got reset (could it really have hit 2 billion missions generated? Or perhaps just 'cos it would have had a huge filesize by then) and whoever did it didn't realise that the the mission_characters table needed to be cleared down at the same time. Result: new mission generated with a 'recycled' ID, and the old mission_characters entries for that ID got picked up along with the new ones when it was processed.

Missed opportunity to declare a Time Wars event, IMO

Glyph wrote:Ah, I see. I caught a bit of that scrolling back through the forums - looked like the big missions table got reset (could it really have hit 2 billion missions generated? Or perhaps just 'cos it would have had a huge filesize by then) and whoever did it didn't realise that the the mission_characters table needed to be cleared down at the same time. Result: new mission generated with a 'recycled' ID, and the old mission_characters entries for that ID got picked up along with the new ones when it was processed.

Missed opportunity to declare a Time Wars event, IMO

Only one person had that sort of access, and it wasn't me.

Glyph wrote:

ashe5k wrote:Honestly, I'd have loved something like 'Generic Con' and 'Generic Bot' to fill out missions

That's something I've thought about a lot... The game definitely needs some kind of PvE options IMO for when there aren't enough players online - or at all! - and I don't think it would be particularly difficult to add if you're smart about it. Has it ever had something like that?*

IIRC The only times the game has had anything like that is when you added turrets for a tourney around 300 years ago, and when OS had us fighting the Fallen and Quintessons during the minicon era. He took almost all of it with him when he ragequit, all we have left from that is the Bite tactic and a minicon menu that has nothing attached to it.

Bun-Bun wrote:

Glyph wrote:Also, my bots would like to... vigorously shake the hand of whoever designed those Reaver-Obliteration Orbital Platforms that keep one-shotting them.

LOL
I think that was mostly Psych & Myself.
They were part of an event that Psych ran years back. They were supposed to be slight OP for flavor reasons and were going to be a prelude to a sweeping repowering of all the weapons that we had in mind (at which time the Reaver weapons would have been largely underpowered comparatively to other weapons with their stat requirements)
It was going to be a lovely rebalance that made weapons relevant again at higher levels (or at least tried)

But as is usually the case around here, life happened, Psych & others trying to make it happen had to drop away for a while and the event never had a proper finish.

Yeah, those were my bad. We had a whole bunch of different tourneys planned and the real world picked the ideal time to go tits up just as we were getting close to the wind-up and the ending never happened.

Bias speaking. I miss the story. While I do like to write, I wasn't the only one that wrote for it. I liked when we did things that you didn't know what was coming next in the story until results where calculated. Yes, the mission bits do have story but it's repetitive at this point I doubt anyone even reads them. Also I know that unless we're doing an event with texts not in game itself, they need be cannon, while, the custom story bits with players characters always made people feel like part of the game. That's likely something that won't be changed though.