EMC Development Status Update - 3/26/14

Discussion in 'Empire News' started by Aikar, Mar 26, 2014.

  1. We love you Aikar :)
  2. Have you ever learned?
    Never, ever, ever, NEVER, EEVVVER ask Aikar for a time estimate. I guess a better way to put it is don't get your hopes up.
    Icecreamcow would say "#aikartime!"
  3. I simply asked so I don't bother him with some mild suggestions/ideas I have... xD
  4. I wonder how this will affect mob farms and such?

    I'm not sure how difficulty usually works even in SP. So question on the Diffculty setting for EMC:
    1. Will more mobs spawn faster with higher difficulty?
    2. Will mobs have more Hearts with higher difficulty? Or do they simply take less damage from players?
    3. Will mobs still take the same damage from 'natural' cuases like fall damage/fire damage? Or is that reduced with higher difficulty also?
    4. Will spawn rates of mini-bosses increase with higher difficulty? ATM, it's max of 1 per hour in each world correct? Will this change wither higher difficulty? or are more likely to spawn near someone with higher difficulty on?

    I'm wondering how the difficulty setting will affect darkroom mob spawners. Is it possible a player can exploit the difficulty by setting it to 10, and waiting at their darkroom spawner to 1-2 hit mobs for even more drops than on difficulty 5 (normal)?

    Cheers
    Scruffy
  5. Umm yea, even if Aikar has a planned time, don't ask him for it. things can happen that could delay it, and people get upset. Just let it come out when it comes out.

    As for other ideas. There are many on the list todo :) Check if the idea is already there, and if not, throw it out there in the suggestions thread. :) I think Aikar likes hearing ideas, or suggestions on improvements to things.

    Just spit it out basically :)
  6. thats not rlly true but partially because: we go in the wild then someone logs in and is like im having trouble in town with _____ can you come help me. so we tp to town and gotta make the trip all the way back to out outpost the normal way. atleast that was one of the annoyances i had as a mod. its hard to do anything in the wild when you constantly are having to hoof it back to what you were doing. but many mods (myself included at one point) liek dwight and death do have wildbases they use rather frequently
  7. As far I know, the settings don't affect mobs, but rather the player's interaction with those mobs.
    It doesn't entirely make mobs that spawn near you have more strength exactly.
    For example if your on difficulty 10, and friend is on 1, you could get hit by that mob for more damage, while the friend will get hit for much less by the same mob.

    As for grinders, I imagine that the same old rule will apply where the mobs need to die via mostly player damage in order to drop custom items or more vanilla items.
    OrangeDuck607 likes this.
  8. Ok well I didn't know that the rule was removed as Aikar stated. I knew of mods having wild bases but when someone asked it was "Well TECHNICALLY it's NOT a wild base" so I thought it was still in place. I had no idea about the whole TP to town/walk to base since you TP'd to me a few times in the wild on 6 and then would vanish and Mods can see town chat from the wild so I just assumed that stuff could be taken care of from there.
  9. theres a difference between a wild base and a wild community. wild base is i go there to mine and get drops from grinders. community = im a part of a group working for something and would be bias in my treatment of the community
  10. Well, to be more accurate: 1/2 heart damage with a looting IV item is all that is required to drop a crap load of mob drops. As per looting effect.
    But certain custom rares only drop if player does the majority of damage (like heads, fragments, etc).

    However, to clarify where I was coming from.
    Aikar mentioned that the 'reward' for killing mobs at a higher difficulty will be greater. I take that to meaning more drops, or more rare items in drops?. This is why I was asking if that could be exploited with dark room grinders? As that would not be an intended feature of the difficulty setting.
  11. I suspect that the anti-grinding systems'll stop people using them to get huge amounts of drops.
    NZScruffy likes this.
  12. I am too part of community! :) I try to be involved in as many communities as I can find the time for. It's fun.

    Perhaps you are referring exclusively to Senior Staff? As Aikar said, what they have access to, in order to do their job, also separates them from many survival player activities (like the economy). But who said 'Senior Staff' have only their staff account? Nothing stopping any staff member having an alt they can play normal survival with right? (with no extra perks/abilities at all). And chances are, you have no idea who they are, which is exactly how they want it.

    I LOVE surviving in the wild, I have very little interest in town. :) the only reason i go to town is to maintain my shops/malls, and enhance public services I build. I'm totally equal to every other player in every way.
    But I also have another job to perform when required. And when I am needed to Moderate something, I drop what I am doing and go do my job. Then I return to my normal everyday survival like every other player. :)

    I'm also just pretty awesome in general. :p

    Don't ever think for a second that moderators have an advantage over other players. If anything, it's the opposite. I spend half my time in EMC moderating, not building, or inventing, or just larking around. :) Players have the advantage with no other side responsibilities.
    To be honest, I wouldn't want to be snr staff. Excluded from EMC's fun economy? All that extra responsibilities? So much work? :) Being a player is way more fun. Jealousy towards the perks Snr staff have is misplaced. Imagine being Aikar? He must hardly get to play EMC at all. :) But he loves building it, so that's cool.

    But we all pursue doing what we want to do right? I wouldn't be a moderator if I did not want the job. I love being able to help EMC in this role. And there is so much more I want to do, it'll be fun.

    .. Like kill a momentus/Marlix on difficulty 10. lol I'm going to get slaughtered so bad! -- I wonder if momentus can instant-kill a fully god armored player in one hit? that'd be so fail!

    Scruffy: "Woohoo, a momentus, i'm gonna kill em!"
    Momentus draws you in!
    NZScruffy killed by Momentus!
    Scruffy: "Dang! What the heck just happened? and where's all my stuff?"
    Scruffy scrolls up to read chat...
    Scruffy: "Oh... meh, didn't need all that god gear anyway. :("
    PandasEatRamen likes this.
  13. I meant community. Sometimes people switch the two out.


    I like that staff are able to take part and do things that non-staff members are able to do and are able to be on the same playing field. The jealousy I've seen usually comes from how Senior+ have creative and World Edit so they can just pull sponge and bedrock out of their infinite pockets and world edit things into the server with very little effort. People feel they have an advantage to these things that we all don't have. I guess because we're all stuck in vanilla survival while they have world edit and they have things like God Mode and all that, sometimes people don't see them as part of the community, more like I dunno...the council in Green Lantern that they all answer to. I wouldn't say higher powers because that sounds like I'm saying they're Gods and people would get offended. I think people don't see them as part of the community so to speak because they're not on level playing fields or "vanilla players" due to these extra abilities. I feel like I'm talking in circles xD. But I don't want to get ranted at for saying the wrong thing. So that's all I can think at the moment.
    OrangeDuck607 likes this.
  14. I think it's getting off-topic anyway. :) i'll Convo you.
    PandasEatRamen likes this.
  15. Well you're partially right. Sr Staff does not 'play on the same field' as players/mods, but that doesn't mean they still don't have experience from their days before senior staff, or common sense skills understanding how minecraft works to make good judgement on things.

    Players should not look at Sr Staff with any form of competitiveness, they are not there to 'be the best mega mall' or 'have the greatest build they can say they built legitly'.

    Sr staff sacrifice normal gameplay in order to help the players, so worldedit is used so they and even myself in those blue moon situations can try to build SOMETHING.

    SrStaff/Admins simply don't have the time to play legit survival, otherwise they would be sacrificing the time they spend on helping players instead (or in my case: coding)
    cadgamer101 and PandasEatRamen like this.
  16. So, every damage done affects a monsters "Difficulty Score", and the score is modified based on what did the damage.

    IF 4 players on difficulty 10 hits a mob, its difficulty score is 10. If 2 difficulty 10 players hit it and 2 difficulty 1 players hit it, its score is 5.5... Now if that 4th hit kills the monster, that monster only drops loot as if it was difficulty 5.5.

    So non player damage will drop the monsters score, but that monster is still going to hit the player based on 10, not 5.5.
    NZScruffy likes this.
  17. THanks for the update...
  18. I will try it with a group...
  19. Well that is just brilliant. :) which of course is what i was expecting.
  20. Will there be group difficulty settings? If I and a few friends were to start doing something together, oh... let's say we enter a certain dungeon that starts with "D" and ends in "ragon Tomb", and we are all set at 10, cuz that's how we roll. If we offer to let a couple of people join our group, that kind of messes our plans up if they are set lower.

    My inclination would be to encourage them to set their difficulties up even if they aren't confident and then try to help them out as we go. I used to play Guild Wars a lot before I met MC and I was often going into missions with other people expecting Hard Mode and the leader would forget to set it. We would be tearing through mobs and then realize what happened and have to restart.

    We could ask everyone to change their settings or maybe the group leader could control the whole group's settings? It might also be helpful to be able to tell what everyone's settings are so that we don't start out and realize that everyone is set to 1 or something.