Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

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serina
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Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by serina » Sat 07.06.2008, 21:37

Hello everyone.

Today we all went SPLAT! Alot. We tried moving fast, and we got punished for it.

I suggest we next time either start out at 400ft and go from there, since the warriors can make everyone survive there. But that means the priests and mages need to hold back some and just act as backup.

And EVERYONE needs to take > and move off the stairs. Waiting for stragglers is just boring, it splits up the party and and people run off alone and get killed. If you're scared about not finding a > in time, stay close to a mage. They detect stairs from lvl 3.

Another solution would be that everyone plays a character up to lvl 10-15 before we start partying, so we don't get killed by the first o that sees us. We don't have the cooperation required ATM to just go as we did today.

Those are my thoughts. Discuss, please.
ZAL

serina
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by serina » Sun 08.06.2008, 00:37

How many deaths have there been for each race? Updated June 8th..

486 Dwarfs
411 High-Elves
275 Dunadans
263 Humans
196 Half-Trolls
101 Half-Elves
100 Kobolds
84 Elves
79 Hobbits
69 Half-Orcs
54 Gnomes

Half of these deaths were made today at the lvl 1 dive. MUAHAHAHA!

ZAL

Ace
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Ace » Sun 08.06.2008, 03:21

main problem is that people disturbed each others due to the natural "here iam mentalitiy" (me included) :)

imho th e groups must be made smaller - 3 ppl each and they start either slightly different or at same time. Third to effectivle play we need to at least make some basic communication macros.

Since keys are on short supply i just suggest some macros for the person that should steer the group. E.g. going to next level, resupply etc.

it was very fun when it worked, but often ppl were just idling (?) or doing their own thing. What was very funny was the base that you built on 450 ft :)

finally i think it became better when certain leves had been reached and the group became much smaller :)

grisu
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by grisu » Sun 08.06.2008, 09:23

We need to improve templaying instead egomanic superuberdiving and dont split the team in too many parts.
1.) Most important: Only non brave chars. If someone dies, he resurrects at 4 (later gets resurrected by players) and can immediately recall, gets the stuff back and can continue with just few hps lower. The catching up tries of died non warriors just resulted in too many new deaths and the group fall apart in too many small grooups/single players.
2.) Better use of guildmaster. Our first goal should be to collect stuff and money until everyone has escape items. The common house should contain money and backup stuff for dead players, BEFORE the group dives deeper.
3.) A big main group may split up on 2-3 levels, but it shouldnt be that the warriors/paladins/rogues are in one
group and the weaker classes are in another subgroup. So more patience is needed.
4.) Organizing is tough in a big group, but some basics should work, this includes reading this forum thread.
5.) The goal should not be to suffer a glory blaze dead, the goal is to survive and continue a team group for a longer time(days/weeks). Defense rules, a group of players has enough fighting power, better get higher con instead an extra blow.
6.) It is suggested to not start at lvl 1, but then we need some rules like not above lvl 5, not deeper than 250 feet, only buying at shop 1- 6, all collected gold to the guildmaster.
7.) better sharing of items. The best chars had the best items, the worst chars the worst items, that should change. Not just give backups away, also your best items, if someones gets a bigger advantage from it.
8.) Common team password and char sharing. People have different times to come and go. someone who joins later may overtake a char from a player who has to leave.
9.) People should play a race/class combo they are familiar with (including macros).

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Warrior
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Warrior » Sun 08.06.2008, 17:13

Problems:

1: We didn't have a leader to follow, everyone went their own way, unless we stay together there's not really much point in partying.

I suggest the leader is a paladin. In a party like this we don't need paladins, we've got dedicated healers and we've got dedicated fighters but a single paladin in each party is good simply because then we all know which @ to follow. (Plus it makes sense in a roleplaying world to have a paladin leader) :)

2: We all pretty randomly played the class we wanted.

I think we need three or four warriors, one or two of them should typically run close to the leader, protecting him and two should escort the weaker classes typically staying maybe as much as ten spaces away from the fighers in front.

The corridors of mangband typically has room for two people fighting side by side and three people fighting one single monster


#######
..o@....
..@@....
#######

When the paladin stands here he will be able to easily step back and away from harm if he needs to, the strongest warrior should be standing to his left, because more monsters will be able to attack him. If the paladin steps back the two warriors should stand beside eachother, denying the monsters access to the weak healers and spellcasters behind them, as seen in the example below, this would be further right/east down the hallway.

###############
.....@..@...@....
.....@..@...@....
###############

Here we see the priests standing in front (to not waste sp's healing mages if they should get minor wounds, then mages behind them, doing their thing with magic, then two warriors behind them, watching their back. These two guys can replace the fighters in front if need should be but preferably only one at a time to not allow the monsters to reach the priests and mages. In that case the mages and priests open up like this:

###############
....@...@....@....
.....@...@...@....
###############

Either way, these are just examples to illustrate the general idea, the warriors do the fighting, the priests do the healing and the mages do the ranged attacks.
The important thing is to remember your role in the party.

It's no problem at all to have a pretty large party (10-15 people) as long as we have a leader to follow, as long as we know what to do in battle and as long as we agree on the goals of the dive (which has been mentioned before, it is to survive and at the same time have fun, we can very safely go down to 4-500 immediately to gain levels, the warriors are strong enough to protect the other classes).

So, ideally,

1 Paladin (leader, the @ to follow)
1-2 warriors escorting the leader
2-3 priests behind the warriors, healing them
2-3 mages behind the priests, ranged attacks, detecting, identifying, etc.
1-2 warriors behind the mages, protecting them from danger.

And of course rangers and rogues are useful also, especially the rogues might be useful for luring once they get some extra speed, wake up monsters and lure them to the warriors without getting harmed. And rangers for ranged attacks while the mages (and priests) are resting.

Will edit this later...
-- Mangband Project Team Member

serina
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by serina » Sun 08.06.2008, 20:53

There's 1 problem with this. The priest-targetting will get very screwed because it swaps within all characters in sight, starting with the closest one. So the priests might have to go through 5-8 other targets before getting to the right warrior, and they need to know the warriors name in order to get the right one. Else, something needs to be done to the targetting system, so you can target "by name". Example: \e(war)p2C would heal warrior. This way ) after a name indicates a character name to target same way as the war: works for chat.... I dunno if that's hard, but it would certainly make things ALOT easier.

ZAL

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Flambard
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Flambard » Sun 08.06.2008, 21:12

Actually, targeting system is 'fixed' in trunk, and sometime in the future it will (hopefully) make it to the game server, so we can continue imagining like it's working while reading Warrior's post :P

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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Warrior » Sun 08.06.2008, 21:48

Hehe. Yeah, the pictures were just for the general concept, in the party we had, people of all classes seemed to play their regular single player mangband game, mages and priests in the front line of battle or just running way ahead or away from the team. There's a lot of room for improvement in the code when it comes to partying, lots of features that'd make a big difference, for example whats mentioned above with specifying the name of the character you want to heal, specifying the class, specifying the % of health and so on but with the changes recently made to targetting the whole situation should be better :)

Being able to specify player name of the character to heal would be pretty sweet, you could have one priest assigned to each warrior, or hit F6 to heal War, F7 to heal Didy, F8 to heal Ace and so on... but then again, identifying players is quite a problem in such a big party.

Maybe we should consider putting a different colored highlight (box) around each character in a party so you can tell them apart more easily?
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Ace
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Ace » Mon 09.06.2008, 01:01

Suggestion:

shift P offers a new options for the creator of a party. The "current order" is shown for all party memebers in a corner of the screen - dont ask me where to put it probably we have to find some color encoding?

1) none (default) - nothing visible on mainscreen
2) clear {sector coordinates} - red box with sector coordinates and depth
3) regroup {current position of party leader} - blue box with sector coordinates and depth

To keep it simple this should be kept same for the whole party.


But probably this is just to o much work - imho voice com would work wonders. :)

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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Ashi » Mon 09.06.2008, 03:31

I don't think that party setup would work -- it would have to move at a snail's pace, pits and vaults would be difficult to tackle, and many of the @'s will wind up doing nothing, especially the back line warriors... I think that small groups are best, preferably with 4 @'s per group. I have had good results in the past with parties of 3-4 players; 5 or more and the party usually scatters while diving.

I suggest that if our next level 1 event shows as large a turnout as this one, we should assign players to groups of 3-4 as they show up and/or ghostdie. We can all still be in one party, but we should partition it off into subsets within that one party. ;)

The number one rule of party diving is to stick together. The party should function as one powerful unit that can dish out melee, heal itself, and cast spells all at the same time. This is especially important for level 1 diving, because you will often be short on levels and gear -- trying to fight something by yourself is equivalent to solo playing out of depth and with gimp gear!

This means that fighters will have to wait for mages and priests to regain mana, which can take a while... To ensure that they don't go running ahead, maybe each group should appoint one person as a leader (not necessarily a party leader, just someone to lead the way through the dungeon). That leader should understand that if someone is lagging behind, the group must stop and let that person catch up. That's really the only problem we had; if we can get everyone to stay as a group, we will be a lot more successful.

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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Huma » Tue 10.06.2008, 21:37

maybe they could make a command in a macro that makes it so you cycle heals but start wit hthe player with the lowest HP and cycle up to the highest % hp

serina
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by serina » Wed 11.06.2008, 00:36

The main problem with the heals is tho that you need line of sight to the target. If there's a player or a monster in the way to you target, the heal hits them. I'm unsure if the monster is actually healed tho, heh. But it should be able to heal the intended target regardless of what's in the way. Else it's too unreliable in a big party and against summoners/traps.

ZAL

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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Billsey » Wed 11.06.2008, 02:36

Perhaps healing should be treated like Orb of Draining in terms of targeting. With OoD, the prayer flies over everyone in the way, then does an area affect at the target point. This is completely different than the beam weapons most attack spells emulate. Healing could be a heal done with radius one on the target, allowing healing from behind the ranks...
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serina
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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by serina » Wed 11.06.2008, 09:05

That would rule! And it was exactly what I was thinking, Bill ;)

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Re: Improvements/suggestions for lvl1 partying...

Post by Maegdae » Thu 12.06.2008, 02:11

I think the major issues seen here come down to the ones which have plagued any Mangband party since the dawn of time:

Some players are faster then other players. If you're playing a war-rog-pal, you're by default going to have a faster and more aggressive playstyle. Slow the first group to match the second, and you get boredom and acting-out which breaks the spirit of the team.

The answer, therefore, is Pink Floyd (along with certain illegal drugs) for the warriors and death metal (along with other types of illegal drugs) for the squishies. That will slow the fast movers down and speed the slow movers up and everyone will go at the proper pace.

(or pool money and buy regen gear for all the mages and priests).
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