Mauve Manticore Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Custom Scenarios and Boards' started by Pengw1n, Nov 20, 2013.

  1. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    It's really great to see all the new custom content that MM#1 has spawned. Too bad all my custom maps has used MP parties - I'll have to check if I can retrofit them! ;)
     
  2. tuknir

    tuknir #3 in Spring PvP Season

    Cool, need start brainstorming new ideas and polish some old ones :)

    ye Pengw1n i fell you..mus tmy scenarios use mp party, lets see what i can do about it :p
     
  3. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    Maybe it would be simpler if submissions were linked into the thread instead of being posted in it? Not sure how Farbs would prefer it, but that's how we did the contest thread and that seemed to work well. I can imagine things getting cluttered this way (especially if this is supposed to be an ongoing thread) - or maybe it's just me?
     
  4. Why not have both? Submissions would have their own topics where you could have indepth discussions. This topic on the other hand would be used to post kind of summaries of those topics so that it will be easier for devs (and others) to find all the contestants in one place without having to open a million tabs.


    I have a question about the contest. Are there any unwritten rules that we should know about? For example are there performance related limits like maximum map size or maximum number of characters on the board? Are there some other things that will cause a scenario to not be published regardless of how good it is?

    I'm asking so that I don't waste time by starting something big that is futile from the get-go :)
     
  5. Aldones

    Aldones Ogre

    It's not clear to me if we're talking about submitting a single battle, or a full 2-4 battle adventure, or both?
     
  6. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    Both - or either. ;)
     
    Farbs likes this.
  7. Farbs

    Farbs Blue Manchu Staff Member

    In my rush to put up the Mauve Manticore Submission thread I forgot that people would also need a place to discuss it. So, this is now that place. I'll move discussions from the submission thread over here and cross link between the two.
     
    Pengw1n likes this.
  8. Farbs

    Farbs Blue Manchu Staff Member

    I retrofitted the first scenario in MM#1 with fixed characters, and I think it worked pretty well. I'm sure you'll be able to find a good mix of characters from the MP AI set.

    Actually the contest was a bit of a pain, since I had to bounce around all over the forum to collate the entries. This should be much easier (for me at least).

    That's a good question. There are already some limits (eg to monster counts) applied by the scenario editor, but then I usually find that scenarios containing a huge number of monsters aren't particularly good anyway. Waiting for a hundred zombies to each take a step isn't much fun at all. It's even less fun when you're arbitrarily pushing 100 zombies around. Regarding map size, I'm sorry that I can't give specific numbers but yes, at some point they could simply be too big. Similarly, insane doodad counts can also push up the data costs of loading a map which might prevent us from publishing a scenario. Unfortunately this is an area where we haven't tested the boundaries yet, so we really don't know where they lie.

    Either is fine. I expect some editions will contain multiple single battles, while others will contain one or two longer adventures.
     
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  9. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    Also look at the Greenfang parties, and anyone listed by their name in the dropdown list (Carolinia, Gethen Deathzap, etc).

    I've been thinking of testing some of those limits myself, but haven't had time yet.
     
  10. tuknir

    tuknir #3 in Spring PvP Season

    Farbs or anyone else its possible to post the same map 2 times, but with 2 diferent difficult curve?
     
  11. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    The rules didn't say anything this time, but the previous contest allowed multiple entries, so it should be fine to post each version and let the devs decide which one is best.
     
  12. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    The editor allows 1000 chars total, but Firefox keeps crashing before it finishes placing them all.
     
    Farbs likes this.
  13. Aldones

    Aldones Ogre

    I've got a question about selecting an appropriate difficulty level. One of the things I have to keep in mind is that if I make a map that ends up being designated mission 3, then someone who makes it to my map will have already invested a lot of time into their adventure, and may or may not have any of their 3 retries left. This means that making something that feels awesomely difficult but fun, or relies on an unusual gimmick might end up creating a lot of rage, because it would become famous for being that map that wastes all your hard work at the end of the adventure run when you're already running short of retries.
    But, I'd also hate to nerf the map so that any idiot could just waltz through it.
    What do you guys look for in map progression, and do you sometimes make the first one the hardest because the player has the luxury of infinite retry? Are boss battles always so one-on-one because the inclusion of too many other variables creates a situation where there is too much randomness and not enough solid strategy?

    One guy's epic battle is another guy's tedious time waster, too, so has anyone found a way of finding that sweet spot for how long the map is designed to take? Anyone got any tricks for estimating how fast a battle will be over just by looking at the design?
     
  14. Farbs

    Farbs Blue Manchu Staff Member

    It is possible, but if we get so many submissions that we can't play them all before each edition and someone has posted a thousand variations of one battle, you can probably guess which ones we will skip. We're a long way from that at the moment though.

    Ha!

    I'm generally opposed to cranking the difficulty up for an endgame boss, but probably the best way to think about it all is this:
    We're going to look at what scenarios and adventures are offered, and try to find ways to assemble them into cool editions of the Manticore. This will probably mean that submissions not published in the edition after they were posted still have a strong chance of showing up several months later, when they fit in well with whatever other submissions have arrived and vary nicely from the previous edition. If your scenario or adventure is less cool or interesting for being made easier, then definitely don't make it easier! The same goes for making things more difficult.
     
    Aldones likes this.
  15. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    Thanks, this answers a question I forgot to ask!
     
  16. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    Speaking of limits, it seems that the game can handle up to 10 maps per adventure, which would be worth 2,750 pizza if it won the contest. Do you want to make an official statement on how many is too many?
     
  17. Farbs

    Farbs Blue Manchu Staff Member

    A good point. So, our data format can handle up to 10 battles per adventure. To publish anything larger than that we'd have to either change our data format, or break the edition up into multiple adventures. Either is possible, and for an utterly mind blowing 100 scenario adventure we might just do it, but then again we might not.

    It's worth keeping in mind that many of our own adventures used to be much longer than they are now, but we split them into multiple adventures because that effectively gave the player more checkpoints and thereby removed some frustration from the game.
     
  18. Aldones

    Aldones Ogre

    Does this mean we may be seeing some of the SP maps that were cut completely make a return at some point? For example, when the wizard's workshop was cut from 4 to 3 maps, a part of me was thinking, "People are going to start missing removed maps like that after they complete the campaign and start begging for more content".
    When do you feel it's a wiser idea to cut maps completely, and when does it feel better to split an over sized stack of maps into two separate adventures? I'd imagine it's largely just based off of player enjoyment, but the creation of too many adventures probably also plays havoc with your planned rate of player XP gain, or gold chest acquisition, so I'm guessing it's much more complicated. Knowing this vision would help me get a much clearer picture of where you feel the sweet spot is for adventure duration. It's also interesting that because custom maps grant no loot or XP, we can enjoy a certain amount of freedom that SP content designers can't. Tailoring a custom map to make a good Manticore map seems to necessitate that it exert special restrictions on itself because the potential for loot is now hanging on it's completion, and is no longer simply being played just for fun. :/
     
  19. Farbs

    Farbs Blue Manchu Staff Member

    Dorian - our numbers guru - doesn't choose the Manticore maps, so I wouldn't worry too much about this :)
    Our goal in assembling each Manticore is to create something fun that doesn't break the game, not something that perfectly fits a progression formula.

    EDIT: I should also point out that when we split some of the adventures that was because they were gating progress, so unless a player could complete them they were completely stuck. Since the Manticore is supplementary to the main campaign progression this isn't a concern for it.
     
  20. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    Are we allowed to use bold or italics in the before and after text? I have an idea for making multiple map adventures that sound like RPG sessions, but I want to make it clear what is being said in character and out of character.
     

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