Multiplayer mutators

[Bo_]

I know remake 2012 is PAKER.
But where did I say anything about PAKER?

[Remake 2012]

I know remake 2012 is PAKER.
But where did I say anything about PAKER?

In another topic you write about PAKER maps...

[sado1]

I thought you didn't know. Well, that just means you need to choose more tactful examples next time... Especially after giving some strong opinions about his maps before.

Alright... can we cheer up a bit and stay on topic from now on? I think the mutator concept is good, I especially like melee only and "changing house HP and build speed". I'd even modify the latter to "instant-buildable roads/houses, with no resources/builders needed to build them" - you would plant buildings just like in the editor, and resources would be needed only for production. That's very extreme but I think it would be very interesting, and would shorten the game a fair bit.

[Bo_]

Yes I did. But honestly, last time I saw your maps they were crap. But that was more than 2 months ago, a lot of people say you've improved them well so I'm just joking.

[Da Revolution]

Sudden death => losing a building will make you lose. Or just when you lose your starting storehouse.

Edit: Although like everyone gives up after losing that storehouse already.

[sado1]

I don't, it's usually empty through most of the game anyway... If not for the gold I stack there, I could play without a storehouse.

[xROELOFx]

a 'shroud regrow' option like in c&c. the fog of war will turn light dark/transparent when you don't have any units that can see it with their line of sight. in this area you won't see what is currently happening, but will see what the last unit that saw that area saw. i hope this is clear, its kinda hard to describe... most of you will probably know what i mean.

[Lewin]

I'm not sure about mutators, it means lots of exceptions and special cases in the code. It also means a lot more room for bugs that are hard to find, because there could be bugs specific to a certain mutator that nobody played with during beta testing. So I think we shouldn't add too many yet.

I'm also worried about splitting the community too much, if we allow you to customise too many rules then people will have no clear idea of what KaM really is, some people will see it with fog of war, some people with instant building, some people with never hungry troops, etc. So when you try and play with people you might not have any common ground on the kind of game mode you want. I think we should restrict the number of mutators to just a few ones that are interesting.

The kind of mutators I find interesting are:
- Blocking all iron production (including trading)
- Blocking archers (melee only mode)
- Blocking market
- Blocking towers

Some maps have these features already, e.g. River of Gold you can't make or trade iron troops. When I played on that map ages it was fun because you build quite a different village when focusing on leather and no iron. These kind of changes "highlight" certain aspects of KaM by removing others. For example I think playing without archers would be really interesting, massive melee battles rather than sneaky archer vs archer stuff.

A game speed changer (maybe a slider with 1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0) is a very highly requested feature, possible because people think KaM takes too long. The truth is that any "pro" player knows that after the first school is built you are never idle, always planning the next thing and deciding what to do (you never feel bored, there's always something to decide/plan/check). Also, battles at a faster speed probably wouldn't be much fun, and since the peacetime phase of the game lasts longer, maybe there could be seperate sliders to choose speed before/after peacetime ends. I can imagine playing on 2x speed while building my village, then dropping back to x1 after peacetime. That means you could have a decent game in 45 minutes (60 minutes building at x2 and 15 minutes of fighting). I still think I'd usually play on x1 speed because I like planning my economy well.

[Krom]

The problem is that everyone has his own sense of whats interesting and whats not. Some might like "no iron" and some might think its a cheap mutator and prefer "1hp houses" for example (I would choose "no iron").

[xROELOFx]

A game speed changer (maybe a slider with 1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0) is a very highly requested feature, possible because people think KaM takes too long. The truth is that any "pro" player knows that after the first school is built you are never idle, always planning the next thing and deciding what to do (you never feel bored, there's always something to decide/plan/check). Also, battles at a faster speed probably wouldn't be much fun, and since the peacetime phase of the game lasts longer, maybe there could be seperate sliders to choose speed before/after peacetime ends. I can imagine playing on 2x speed while building my village, then dropping back to x1 after peacetime. That means you could have a decent game in 45 minutes (60 minutes building at x2 and 15 minutes of fighting). I still think I'd usually play on x1 speed because I like planning my economy well.

A 'feeding' slider could be nice too. When set on 0.5, your troops get hungry twice as fast. When set on 2.0, they last twice as long once they have eaten. This way you can move a game more in a certain direction, concentrate more on army production (2.0) or on the total survival of your town (0.5).

[Kridge]

A game speed changer (maybe a slider with 1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0) is a very highly requested feature, possible because people think KaM takes too long. The truth is that any "pro" player knows that after the first school is built you are never idle, always planning the next thing and deciding what to do (you never feel bored, there's always something to decide/plan/check). Also, battles at a faster speed probably wouldn't be much fun, and since the peacetime phase of the game lasts longer, maybe there could be seperate sliders to choose speed before/after peacetime ends. I can imagine playing on 2x speed while building my village, then dropping back to x1 after peacetime. That means you could have a decent game in 45 minutes (60 minutes building at x2 and 15 minutes of fighting). I still think I'd usually play on x1 speed because I like planning my economy well.

A 'feeding' slider could be nice too. When set on 0.5, your troops get hungry twice as fast. When set on 2.0, they last twice as long once they have eaten. This way you can move a game more in a certain direction, concentrate more on army production (2.0) or on the total survival of your town (0.5).

But wouldnt that take away the difficulty of the game you think? Or you think it would only focus on certain things this way? I do not know about this, honestly. I wouldn't know if I would like that. I see your point, yes. It might set the gameplay mode, in a way. Might... I am not sure.

[Da Revolution]

Only speeding up their hunger will change the gameplay.

[Kridge]

Only speeding up their hunger will change the gameplay.

Yes, that is exactly what I think too. Lowering the speed would make the gameplay far to easy, it takes pretty long for soldiers to get hungry.
Maybe there could be a button to set difficulty from normal to hard? I'm still not sure. I mean a button here a button there. We keep wanting to add things, which is good. But maybe we should really think about it well. I always want to hear critic on my posts, because they can point out my mistakes and such. I can then see the things that would work and wouldnt work and see the disadvantages. Maybe I can improve the idea, think it through some more, or realise it wont work at all. But back to hunger speed, it could work. It might provide some more intense gameplay if soldiers are hungry really quick. It would be interesting, yes I agree. It could work. But I dont know what is holding me back to say a Yes.

Maybe if the difficulty could be set, it could be integrated there. Together with other things that make it more difficult. Such as less accurate ranged units, less view distance, so the black fog stays longer. Im just brainstorming here right now, but maybe.

[xROELOFx]

i'm just dropping some ideas, they don't have the be implemented in their initial form . perhaps it inspires someone else with another (better) idea.

a normal, hard or expert mode would be far better indeed!

[Lewin]

We could add sliders to change thousands of values within the game, how fast bowmen reload, how many stones are mined, how fast hit points restore, how fast buildings are destroyed, how many hit points each stone/timber gives a building, how many pigs can fit in a swine farm at once, how much corn horses take to reach maturity, how steep terrain is before you can't build on it, how far the fisherman will walk to the water, how much you lose when you trade at the market, etc. etc.

But at the end of the day, we want to produce one game, with a consistent feeling to it. How can you become a pro player with infinity many game modes? I really think that "less is more". The things that we leave out of the game are more important than the things we add to the game. A few multiplayer mutators that enable/disable aspects of the game like iron, archers, market, etc. sound great. Even stuff like infinite resources, no hunger, etc., once again that's really just enabling/disabling a gameplay feature. As long as we don't have too many mutators I think it would be ok. But sliders for every little value and difficulty settings will just make the game feel inconsistent and over complicated in my opinion.