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View Full Version : Thoughts on the Halloween gambling quest and M & M game



Tagamogi
11-07-2019, 04:27 PM
Let's start off with my main suggestion: Maybe allow an alternate way of completing the quest to help Chaf the Gambler? For example, reach a certain score in the Cashfall game, or get a spot on the leaderboard of any of the casino games? This would allow players to focus on the game of their choice, or alternate games if they are tired of a string of losses in one game.

I spent quite a few hours on the M & M game in the last couple weeks to complete the Halloween quest, and I found myself primarily bored, with maybe a side of frustration at myself that I wanted to complete the quest badly enough I was willing to put up with a game mechanic I didn't find fun.

The M & M game was actually a great favorite of mine when it first released - I hugely enjoyed figuring out how it worked and I still really like the idea of playing as a mantis and I still really love the game's text. What has changed now is that I have reasonably figured out how the game works, so the game has become a mechanical exercise of pushing the right buttons at the right time and hoping that this time the RNG is in my favor. There is nothing I can really do to improve the outcome. The cashfall tickets are a great addition to the game to keep it rewarding [ I collected about 120 of them during my Halloween efforts], but when it comes down to actually winning the game all the way, it's just one looong string of luck. (Which yeah fits in with a gambler's quest really well, but ugghh. ;) )

So, as a non-gambler, my frustrations with the game are:

- The skills are not equal. Prey is bad. Skewer is ok but Lurk is better. Skewer or Lurk are better than Mindgnaw or Crush in most cases, and since you don't have time to level all skills, I find it easiest to ignore Crush and Mindgnaw completely which is a shame because they could add some variety to strategy.

I checked out the high stakes leaderboard in the last couple days and it seems to align with my assessment: Of the 7 wins, 6 had lurk, 1 skewer. Of the 8 other high scores, 6 had lurk, 2 skewer. Every single top run listed had Execute in their build. (There was one person yesterday briefly in spot #15 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=15) with Prey, but I promptly replaced him with a Lurk/Execute run of my own.)

This could of course be because we are all following Sasho's strategy in the other thread but really, Sasho's list matches pretty closely what I came up with independently. Our chief difference is that he recommends just cashing out on a game if you start off with bad skills, while I keep on going because I hate losing my money. His strategy is smarter. It's certainly possible to get your money back with Prey but it takes playing time and the odds of actually winning the game are really small.

I actually had fun with prey/skewer builds, alternating what I used depending on whether the enemy's health was odd or even, but as a strategy, it's just not effective. The low level prey is pretty horrid since it has a chance to do no damage at all. So, if your choice is to use skewer or lurk and get the mob down in 1-2 hits vs using prey and getting the mob down in 2-4 hits and *maybe* healing, killing the mob faster is always better. At higher levels, Prey feels more fun (anything is better to read than "your attack did 0 damage" ;) ) but unfortunately the mobs are doing more damage too so even if prey heals me, it usually heals for less than I was damaged, and it just seems I'm better off ignoring the heal chance and focusing on getting the mob down asap instead.

As a side problem, Execute also makes it much easier than Prey to collect cashfall tickets since it's completely safe to remain at low health when you know you are going to kill the mob in the next round with execute. With Prey, you'd better drink a potion to get your health back up before the next round.

I feel that in order for prey to be effective, it either needs to do more damage, more healing, or have a higher chance of healing

- Hats. If I don't get a good hat early in the game, I won't win. If I don't get a good hat upgrade later in the game, I won't win. Hats are not created equal - hats that restore health are far better than anything else, imo. Which is a shame because I'd love variety and I'd love for the diplomacy hat to be useful.

- The first two or possibly three levels of the game feel kind of pointless. The rewards there are so low, it really doesn't matter if a rogue takes all my money or not - the math is just that if I make it to level 4 before cashing out, I'll make cash on the game, if not, I won't.

This combined with skills is really my chief frustration with the game. As soon as the game starts and I see my skills, I can tell whether it's going to be a good game or not. My choice then is whether I want to waste my time slogging through the first levels of the game to see if I can recover my 750 councils, or if I should value my time and write off my money as a lost cause when I'm stuck with Prey for the fifth time in a row. I always decide to continue to the bitter end but then find myself hoping for double 1s on a saving throw to put me out of my misery.

Playing the game overall takes a really long time and I wish it was a bit shorter.


So, I don't know. As a gambling game that's intended to be very very hard to win, I don't think it's bad, although it does feel like Prey could use some love. What I would like are ways to reduce the randomness. Maybe have the game start off with a mini-character creator, allowing you to pick one of your skills, or a hat, or to start off with a bonus for your character from the table buff list. Or maybe have a way of inheriting your hat from your previous character if that character survived the run - it's now a happily retired mantis and doesn't need the hat anymore, so it passed it on to its favorite cousin.

It would be nice if eating a corpse restored a bit more health - there's nothing quite like deciding to forego a badly needed skill upgrade to heal up and then having the game roll 4 ones for you as a health buff. It might also be interesting if there were more ways inside the game to influence how the corpse eating works - maybe if you are unlucky enough to be stuck with Prey that could help you when eating a corpse, so if you roll a 1 for the corpse eating, it would trigger a Prey heal.

Vish
11-09-2019, 05:01 AM
Very fast summary on Halloween event:
FRUSTRATION
why:
because of M&M quest
i have more than 1000h in game and this is first time that this game give me negative emotion

alleryn
11-09-2019, 08:25 AM
My experience with this quest:

- Talk to Chaf
- Drop Cursed Coin

I don't really see the problem here.

Greyfyn
11-09-2019, 08:32 AM
Hi!

Tagamogi's comments compel me to mention my own thoughts on the halloween event.

Which I have NOT done for several years. Generally I prefer to comment only on topics where I have some experience, but I've come to the conclusion that there are two areas in this game that foster a type of exclusivity that repel.

Specifically I don't even start the halloween quests because I know I will not have time to complete it. If there were an analysis done on how much time each player takes to complete the quest, that might be useful. Personally, I cannot commit to this kind of time sink every last quarter of the year. Even farming for pumpkin seeds, recipes, and other holiday specific items is too much time. And for the rest of the year, I pay a small price for not participating. So for the people who can devote hundreds of hours to the game during these months, great! Fantastic, I'm glad they are entertained. For the rest of us with jobs or other commitments, we're left out. With a small player base, that's a lot of developer time spent on an activity for a relatively small group of people.

My second comment is a side gripe. Really! But it festers. Another area of exclusivity is the druid skill line and its accompanying benefits. Yes, I could be a druid. Basically the game creates a huge void if a player is NOT a druid. While there are several long-term players who have chosen not to go this route, it is more a matter of stubborness. Of course most players choose to be druids! Why wouldn't they!? But in terms of development, you've got a really big focus there that by design benefits an exclusive group, which severely unbalances the game for those who decline. Perhaps focussing on the few players who are not druids could result in some features that expand opportunities for that excluded group.

As I said, I haven't had time to play, but please consider that I would like to. For fun! Not for what appears to be a career.

~( ' .')~ Grey

Sheawanna
11-09-2019, 08:41 AM
Hey Greyfyn , I totally agree with ya . I'm on the side of no druid for me been there done it . personally should be far more side effect for not going to those events when your online besides no exp during the druid event .. if it were up to me ? If a druid event pops up and your online you get a pop up . if you log cause guess what you not want to do the druid thing . then you should still have no exp penalized till you do one druid event .. regardless if you log .. you got the pop up :P

Halloween well again should be the whole month of oct for those who cant be online the entire weekend ( although it does go longer :) ) .

DRUIDS what one say everyone has one :P or had one I should say :)

Sheawanna
11-09-2019, 01:03 PM
Alleryn @ , I dropped coin never managed to win . spent like 50k yeah I don't gamble for reason :):):) no love here for M&M
It's not about true grit or steel not even about your own will . its chance I gave up for was my will :)

Celerity
11-09-2019, 04:22 PM
I personally don't think it's too bad to win m&m or have it as a requirement for the halloween quest. You only ever really need to do it once, alongside the other cultist quests in order to get the title, and if you really don't like it then you don't ever have to do it again as the only reward is some money and loot keys on the repeat. As for winning it, I don't think it's too bad as long as you use the pro table and don't get too greedy, by this I mean if you cash out the furthest you can make it without dying on each run regardless of your skills then you will activate more table buffs and with the right combination of table buffs it makes winning trivial. Obviously this is difficult if you're the only person playing but there should be lots of people on the tables during the event.

You're right about prey though, if I have prey I never level it or use it and lurk/execute is definitely the best combo. I think you're mistaken about mindgnaw however, since I would argue it's better than skewer straight up but additionally has potential to be even better than lurk if you get the wizard hat which gives +5 damage or have the +1 damage table buff since the buffs also get doubled when mindgnaw's special effect triggers.

The hat point is also correct, without a healing hat you don't get the sustain necessary to level up your skills often enough and once you get to the later levels you will have to use consumables every fight just to stay alive. With a damage hat, unless you get ridiculously good rng you will just end up running out of potions/bombs and end up whimpering out. Additionally none of the damage hats give +max hp as well, which is again critical otherwise you will be relying on rng to survive the fight even if you start at full health.

Just to give some evidence for my claims, this is the highest score I've ever seen on m&m and I got it using mindgnaw/execute when there was a +1 damage table buff. In the hour this buff was active alongside 2 or 3 others, I think I got something like 5 or 6 wins (only 2 in the screenshot), 3 of which were with mindgnaw/execute and the others were with lurk/execute. Note this is also on the regular table not the pro one.

https://i.imgur.com/3rW8jPW.png

EDIT: I would just like to quickly say I think it does take longer to win now though. This is because you used to be able to click to skip the dice rolls and so it meant each run took a lot less time. Last year when I saw I had prey I would just quickly click through every roll until I got to level 4 and cashed out or died because I wasn't paying too much attention. Either way it would only take around 30 seconds whereas it can take a minute or 2 now and as a result I actually started dropping the runs with prey immediately. Of course this also affects the runs with execute making them slower too.

Celler
11-09-2019, 05:26 PM
To be honest I have not got the patience to mess around with M&M, so will be unlikely to complete that . I don't mind the Halloween events to be honest, there is plenty going on and much of it isn't really that game changing as long as you can pick up the recipes etc over the course of a few years events.
Even though I'd done much of it this year I didn't make it to the party, my own laziness really.



I kind of feel the druid events benefit non druids too really.

The mentioned idea of if you miss event whilst online you don't get exp till you do one is a non starter surely. If your 2 minutes from logging out for the day and a druid event pops up what then? You could go days without the ability to gain exp as the events are few and far between at times, unless there were some sort of penalty events that could be completed over 15 minutes or so instead perhaps.

Unless I'm mistaken you can quickly go to the events kill one thing and leave to get credit anyhow.

I seldom play druid, mainly I just do a few events for tokens to buy the revive goblets, plus I like most use flight lots.
Perhaps if flight was linked to having druid on a bar that would stir things up a bit. It's more a case at the moment of are you willing to put up with druids limited downside to have the ability to fly for many, I'd imagine.

Sheawanna
11-09-2019, 05:56 PM
like the idea of linking flight to having druid on bar :):):) most certainly would stir the pot !

bionniq
05-19-2021, 07:36 AM
I really like the idea of that.. can we implement it ? I really love this kind of stuff about gambling, I think that it adds some more feeling and emotions to the game. I'm personally gambling here (https://casinowithoutgermanlicense.com/), and it's very interesting in my opinion. That's why I think that it would be super cool to have something similar in Gorgon, which is my favorite game. It would be even better, literally the best game in the world