In round 3, I got 5 bread from a chest. I just dug a hole and chilled in the mountain until there were 2 players left. But, @theredburn still bested me in the end. Well done, sir.
Yeah... that sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen and would have been countered by the high hunger loss - but word on the street was that the hunger loss was TOO high.
Yeah, high hunger loss was a bit too much in the first game, but felt just about right in the 2nd and 3rd games. I really really loved the idea of the segmented areas of the map this time around. It was easy to see how this eventually forced everyone's hands into invading different areas to get the stuff they needed. When night fell, so many people bum rushed the mountain to grab wood so they could make torches. It got really intense at those moments and I loved that.
I think if I were to offer suggestions on changing, maybe a little less water in the map next time. It made movement routes predictable (which had both good and bad effects on the games), and in some cases, made it easy for people to hide in plain sight if they ducked under the water in front of another player. There were some cases where I'd be overly aggressive because I knew I could duck underwater for a bit and avoid being hit or seen. Again, this had positive results as well, considering I was actually being aggressive.
Also, the spectating areas were really great for early losses, but some of the teamed up players on skype or vent were able to use dead group members to get bearings on other player positions and activities.
Never forget my clumsy ass falling to death when I had enchanted armor and iron sword
Finally, hidden fanfiction is best fanfiction.
really spectacular work, guys. I had a blast playing this year.
The main themes this year were supposed to be fortification, choice, and siege... and that totally and completely fell through. Next year we will be using more mobile themes, like we did last year. In the meantime, allow me to recollect on our design philosophies and explain just where we went wrong.
The map was designed for people to be able to build excellent fortifications that were easily defendable - but still be reliant on materials from all three islands, necessitating the need to import shit. I shall elaborate more fully:
1. First, all the discussions on fun vs anti-fun from last year still stood. 2. The three islands contained food, war materiel, and shelter, segregated. 3. Ramped-up hunger and only one major food source SHOULD HAVE forced conflict. 4. Poorly-defendable areas on the high-resource islands discouraged fortification by more than one party... further reducing the acceptable landmass for base-building and (in theory) forcing conflict. 5. Water SHOULD HAVE represented a difficult barrier to cross, forcing sieges or raiders to use the land bridges, funneling conflict and defensive building locations obvious.
We expected people to land in the cornucopia and be able to survey the entire map - allowing them to choose between food, resources, or shelter before leaping off into the arena. However, players were more focused on the more imminent pressure of potential conflict in the cornucopia, and most folks just hopped off and swam for the nearest land.
We expected people to realize that they had a lot of tools INITIALLY for keeping opponents away or hiding - there was plenty of food to begin with, and some ender pearls here and there for teleporting around the map. We learned from last year that lots of people thought turtling was a good strategy, and we wanted to capitalize on that mentality. The plan was to let players' natural instinct to turtle lead them to run from everyone else, build a hidden little base, realize they were missing significant materials (war materiel or food), then sit and plan for a moment how to acquire those materials safely. We thought this would be hella fun - kind of like survival mode is normally.
Based on actual player action, we found out that: 1. Players see materials as more advantageous than positioning, and at that have a very different view of which materials are most important and when 2. Players see offensive battles as more valuable than defensive battles 3. Players see hiding and fighting as equally viable, and will choose either as the situation warrants. 4. Water is not a fucking obstacle. Not even a little bit. Dude, fuck water.
Out of all the groups, only ONE wound up playing as we expected - this was @theredburn, @QCH, @GnomeQueen, and @Teramona in one of the very last rounds. The UPS crew was close to our ideals during the round that @BobbyDigi won, but even then they never felt the pressure of defensive conflict because their base was hidden rather than defensible - the groups that did pop in to the food island simply took what they needed and left.
So obviously I goofed pretty hard on the viability of the playstyle envisioned, but I think we got a pretty damn good insight into how you all feel when you play the Hunger Games style maps. We've got some ideas for next year that are particularly titillating, and I'm looking forward to talking them through with Jimmy!
Thank you for playing this year, I hope you had fun!
I really, truly enjoyed the game after hunger was turned down a bit. In the first round the UPS crew decided to forsake the cornucopia and go right for food. Unfortunately the meat drops from cows weren't enough to prevent starvation even long enough for our wheat to grow. (I still remember Farge 'What the hell? Are they farming?')
My favourite part of the whole event was when @UPSKingpin, @UPSLynx and I staged a 3 man raiding party on the group who had set up in the ore mines.
Also hidden base is best base, the few people who did show up for food were either left alone or mercilessly hunted down Predator style as they passed our little Hole in the Wall.
One of the reasons a quick offensive battle proved to be more valuable is because, unless you've made sure that you have 100% coverage and/or only one viable avenue of approach defending is incredibly difficult for the average group size, especially if the attacking group is hiding behind terrain and waiting until a time to strike presents itself (I.e. Kingpin acted as bait at the mine while Lynx and I waited until the two of us could hit the other group while all their attention was focused on Kingpin.)
In some cases it wasn't even attacking I remember at one point we needed iron so instead of attacking I merely ran to the ore mines, waited for the group to leave to gather more materials and robbed their furnace of it's ore.
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TeramonaConsulting Tea Specialist Best Coast! Icrontian
3. Ramped-up hunger and only one major food source SHOULD HAVE forced conflict.
It's interesting because it did, but I think it took too long for people to come to terms with and realize that before they could take action on it, so many people just ended up starving to death.
My group ended up in the pasture in the first game. We were thrilled to have the food resource. But the need for materials forced us to venture out to the mountain to get some wood. The mechanic worked perfectly in that case, and we ended up starting beef with some people doing the same thing. We nabbed wood and returned back to our pasture.
Night fell so quickly that we didn't have torches or weapons yet, so we got our asses kicked by the creeps, so we ended up just tunneling and trying to survive rather than fortifying, which is what we wanted to do. But that was a minor issue.
What we quickly learned as being the biggest issue was that even though we had TONS of animals chillin' out on the pasture side, and that we owned the whole area, we couldn't get enough food from the animals to survive as a group. The drop rate for food was very low, maybe 1/6 killed animals dropped a piece of food. And since we weren't able to cook it (we hadn't made a trip to the quarry yet), the few food items we found didn't give us enough nourishment. So again, we turtled until we almost killed all of the animals, then we starved out.
So I think if there is a way to modify the drop rate, making the animals drop food more frequently would have solved the food issue in the first game. It's not that the hunger rate was too severe, it was that we slaughtered 3/4 of the pasture and still didn't have enough food to keep ourselves alive.
The plan was to let players' natural instinct to turtle lead them to run from everyone else, build a hidden little base, realize they were missing significant materials (war materiel or food), then sit and plan for a moment how to acquire those materials safely. We thought this would be hella fun - kind of like survival mode is normally.
This is exactly how the first round went for us on the pasture, actually. We knew we had a kickass resource, but as we slowly realized that it was our ONLY resource, it forced our hand and eventually generated conflict on the mountain. There was this really great tunnel vision moment for all of us when we realized just how effed we were and that we HAD to risk it to stay alive. That was awesome.
Seriously great work you guys. MC Hunger Games is one of my favorite activities of Expo.
Holding up in the quarry with starting food resources worked well until the starving group invaded. we were planning an offensive with our better weapons, but we didn't have the time we thought we had, so wet were surprised.
At no time did i feel we had the time to set up elaborate defenses that we couldn't carry with us.
In round 3, I got 5 bread from a chest. I just dug a hole and chilled in the mountain until there were 2 players left. But, @theredburn still bested me in the end. Well done, sir.
I try. You did put up a fight! I broke my sword on you
Comments
ENJOY USING THE SAME ELEVATORS, SAPS
Round 1:
1st - @Farge
2nd - @Massalinie
3rd - @theredburn
Round 2:
1st - @BobbyDigi
2nd - @UPSKingPin
Round 3:
1st - @Massalinie
2nd - @QCH
Round 4:
1st - @theredburn
2nd - Steel_Serpent (@guppy)
Thank you to all who participated!
I think if I were to offer suggestions on changing, maybe a little less water in the map next time. It made movement routes predictable (which had both good and bad effects on the games), and in some cases, made it easy for people to hide in plain sight if they ducked under the water in front of another player. There were some cases where I'd be overly aggressive because I knew I could duck underwater for a bit and avoid being hit or seen. Again, this had positive results as well, considering I was actually being aggressive.
Also, the spectating areas were really great for early losses, but some of the teamed up players on skype or vent were able to use dead group members to get bearings on other player positions and activities.
Never forget my clumsy ass falling to death when I had enchanted armor and iron sword
Finally, hidden fanfiction is best fanfiction.
really spectacular work, guys. I had a blast playing this year.
The map was designed for people to be able to build excellent fortifications that were easily defendable - but still be reliant on materials from all three islands, necessitating the need to import shit. I shall elaborate more fully:
1. First, all the discussions on fun vs anti-fun from last year still stood.
2. The three islands contained food, war materiel, and shelter, segregated.
3. Ramped-up hunger and only one major food source SHOULD HAVE forced conflict.
4. Poorly-defendable areas on the high-resource islands discouraged fortification by more than one party... further reducing the acceptable landmass for base-building and (in theory) forcing conflict.
5. Water SHOULD HAVE represented a difficult barrier to cross, forcing sieges or raiders to use the land bridges, funneling conflict and defensive building locations obvious.
We expected people to land in the cornucopia and be able to survey the entire map - allowing them to choose between food, resources, or shelter before leaping off into the arena. However, players were more focused on the more imminent pressure of potential conflict in the cornucopia, and most folks just hopped off and swam for the nearest land.
We expected people to realize that they had a lot of tools INITIALLY for keeping opponents away or hiding - there was plenty of food to begin with, and some ender pearls here and there for teleporting around the map. We learned from last year that lots of people thought turtling was a good strategy, and we wanted to capitalize on that mentality. The plan was to let players' natural instinct to turtle lead them to run from everyone else, build a hidden little base, realize they were missing significant materials (war materiel or food), then sit and plan for a moment how to acquire those materials safely. We thought this would be hella fun - kind of like survival mode is normally.
Based on actual player action, we found out that:
1. Players see materials as more advantageous than positioning, and at that have a very different view of which materials are most important and when
2. Players see offensive battles as more valuable than defensive battles
3. Players see hiding and fighting as equally viable, and will choose either as the situation warrants.
4. Water is not a fucking obstacle. Not even a little bit. Dude, fuck water.
Out of all the groups, only ONE wound up playing as we expected - this was @theredburn, @QCH, @GnomeQueen, and @Teramona in one of the very last rounds. The UPS crew was close to our ideals during the round that @BobbyDigi won, but even then they never felt the pressure of defensive conflict because their base was hidden rather than defensible - the groups that did pop in to the food island simply took what they needed and left.
So obviously I goofed pretty hard on the viability of the playstyle envisioned, but I think we got a pretty damn good insight into how you all feel when you play the Hunger Games style maps. We've got some ideas for next year that are particularly titillating, and I'm looking forward to talking them through with Jimmy!
Thank you for playing this year, I hope you had fun!
EDIT: fixing Kyle's name.
My favourite part of the whole event was when @UPSKingpin, @UPSLynx and I staged a 3 man raiding party on the group who had set up in the ore mines.
Also hidden base is best base, the few people who did show up for food were either left alone or mercilessly hunted down Predator style as they passed our little Hole in the Wall.
One of the reasons a quick offensive battle proved to be more valuable is because, unless you've made sure that you have 100% coverage and/or only one viable avenue of approach defending is incredibly difficult for the average group size, especially if the attacking group is hiding behind terrain and waiting until a time to strike presents itself (I.e. Kingpin acted as bait at the mine while Lynx and I waited until the two of us could hit the other group while all their attention was focused on Kingpin.)
In some cases it wasn't even attacking I remember at one point we needed iron so instead of attacking I merely ran to the ore mines, waited for the group to leave to gather more materials and robbed their furnace of it's ore.
My group ended up in the pasture in the first game. We were thrilled to have the food resource. But the need for materials forced us to venture out to the mountain to get some wood. The mechanic worked perfectly in that case, and we ended up starting beef with some people doing the same thing. We nabbed wood and returned back to our pasture.
Night fell so quickly that we didn't have torches or weapons yet, so we got our asses kicked by the creeps, so we ended up just tunneling and trying to survive rather than fortifying, which is what we wanted to do. But that was a minor issue.
What we quickly learned as being the biggest issue was that even though we had TONS of animals chillin' out on the pasture side, and that we owned the whole area, we couldn't get enough food from the animals to survive as a group. The drop rate for food was very low, maybe 1/6 killed animals dropped a piece of food. And since we weren't able to cook it (we hadn't made a trip to the quarry yet), the few food items we found didn't give us enough nourishment. So again, we turtled until we almost killed all of the animals, then we starved out.
So I think if there is a way to modify the drop rate, making the animals drop food more frequently would have solved the food issue in the first game. It's not that the hunger rate was too severe, it was that we slaughtered 3/4 of the pasture and still didn't have enough food to keep ourselves alive. This is exactly how the first round went for us on the pasture, actually. We knew we had a kickass resource, but as we slowly realized that it was our ONLY resource, it forced our hand and eventually generated conflict on the mountain. There was this really great tunnel vision moment for all of us when we realized just how effed we were and that we HAD to risk it to stay alive. That was awesome.
Seriously great work you guys. MC Hunger Games is one of my favorite activities of Expo.
At no time did i feel we had the time to set up elaborate defenses that we couldn't carry with us.