Planet M.U.L.E.

Sometimes its really NOT fair that the player at 1st place get BAD events only. :(

In Game http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=15666
all players were really close in score.
In THIS case, if players all very close in score/points the "only negative events for the 1st" is deadly. :(

I was 1st up from round 2.
Got planetary pest twice :(, lost mules at several earthquakes :(,
and the worst: In round 10 I lost a plot of land.
It was hard to stay first with the other bad events before (pest meant no time for development, so land left without building).
But this last bad event to loose a plot threat me to death. :(

Would you like me to call a WAAAAAaaahhmbulance?  ::)

LOL - I helped myself with a heart defibrillator.

MOD:
Please move topic to Feedback and Suggestion. Wrote here in Bugs by accident, sorry.
Not a bug here (may be its a feature? ;D )

Develop a new strategy - keep third place as long as you can.  It's more challenging that way!  ;D

Im a noob so I agree with the first post. When the game is going bad for everyone the negative events may cause you to lose the game. Worst case scenario; everybody but you have -4 on food. you got 1 riverplot and you're leading. You get hit by a planetary pest and then you all can wait for a aid package.

my point; no matter how bad the scenario is, someone will be at 1st place.
my solution: No negative effects until the players total score has reached a certain level.

Actually the game would be a lot less interesting without the random events. It is already a "nice" version compared to the original: no events nor land auctions on first round. I have lost many times due to those last-round bad luck events but I didn't have to be 1st then, did I? Like rommager said, you should aim not being first before round 12. We all know about the events, they are part of the game.

Idea:

Right now player 1 never gets a good event, players 3 and 4 never get bad events, and player 2 may get good or bad.

How about:
Events are either "weak, medium, or strong".
Player 1 only gets a strong bad event if they have a big lead over (P2? Average?). A weak event if P1 and P2 are almost tied.

P2 gets anything from "as bad a negative as P1 to as good a positive as P3" based on how far between P1 and P3 they are.

P3 and P4 get events based on how far behind they are -- far far behind gives them more strong good events.

Finally, P4 always gets something good -- it might be a weak good if they are close.

I like that idea, my crops were eaten two times in a row then again after one round of peace, to be honest I think that's outrageous, suffice to say I came second, I think I could have won if they were at least just spaced out instead of being all in a row like that, it doesn't bother me because I came a respectable second place but I think the fact that bad events only usually happen to first place is bad, I think it should happen to all the players but 40% chance for #1, 30% for #2, 15% for #3 and 5% for #4.

They are unfortunate, but part of the game, I seem to regularly lose a plot of land when I am in 2nd place.  And the last time I lost a plot in second place I was already 1 plot behind everyone and just purchased the one I lost at auction for over $1000.  This was in about round 6 so at this point I lost game, the other players overtook me by leaps and bounds after that, they were able to afford more plots and by the end of the game I was down about 4 plots from them and lost by a very large margin... I never complained tho, really I didn't ;-)

The truth is, the game is supposed to be fun with the element of some random surprise.  It's not all about winning.  There is also a fun factor.  There are a lot of games out there that cause bad things to happen to the player in first, to even out the playing field a little for less fortunate players.  Look at it this way: the way the game works now, it brings out the sore loser in people.  This is great, because it lets you quickly figure out who not to play with ever again. LOL.

I believe that both Player events (good and bad) and Player-targeted Production events should be suppressed for the first round.  Anything that happens here is utterly unfair and un-fun.

After that, no, messing with the winning players is completely fair and valid.  Frustrating, sure, if you are first or second, but the Random Number Generator is a harsh master and sometimes demands its due.  :)

IIRC, it presently already is.

At this point, it's not so much the random number generator as it is pure sadism, since randomness would imply that the events are RANDOM, as opposed to always negative. But like it or not, as a faithful implementation of the original game, that is how it is.

Forgive me for saying this, but if you end round 1 in the lead, you deserve the ill fate.

Maybe skip the pub if you need to be third?

Well, it's like the saying goes: As even the most immature encrustling knows, there must always be one Spathi that picks the short Ta Puun stick.

How deliciously obscure! +10 cocktails to you, good sir.

Obscure or not, some of us smile ...

And remember a game where the big bad starts moving because you took too long, and you're following in their wake, trying to figure out the last clue, only to put it all together too late to catch them...

The only event that's a real issue is the pest attack. I've never seen lose a plot or mule goes crazy in the beginning of the game. This absolutely CRIPPLES you if it hits at the beginning.  It's the reason i stopped playing flapper in vs cpu games. it's that bad.

You get stuck without food, and are behind a round on development. and early on that really HURTS.

So here's my rules on what should be needed to make things more reasonable.

1) never let the same player lose two plots worth of production in one turn.
2) No targetted production loss events can hit you unless you own 3 plots. If this would force 3rd or 4th place to eat a bad one, a different event happens.

And, to placate the whiners a litle bit more, maybe.

3) No player ever gets the same bad event 2 turns in a row. Lost plot one turn, pest attack next is fair game.

To anyone who says this isn't going far enough, boo hoo.

2nd place should lose a land relatively rarely compared to the player in 1st place. I agree with the original game designers that 2nd place should lose a plot 20% of the time, and 1st place should get the event 80% of the time.

For stats on this see this website.

http://www.smithore.com/eventstats.php

Also note, a player should rarely if ever lose a plot of land on the 1st turn. The original game held to this principle almost always.

The pest attack provided incentives for players to choose to play defensively or not. Believe it or not, you can always try to get a flatland plot next to a river and have two plots of food production. (Or go for a 2nd river plot if it hadn't been taken.

If you're in 1st/2nd place and have only one plot producing food you leave yourself vulnerable to the pest attack or a mule going crazy.

Agreed, that is why I love MULE, the unexpected bad luck.   In the original the guy in first and second place would get bad luck.  Probably the worst is to get a plot taken away in the early rounds when everyone has just about the same thing in terms of money and land. 

Like production phase 1, if you failed to win a land plot in the auction?

As I said I was getting screwed by that so many times that I had to switch from flapper to another race just so the computers would get hit by the pest attack instead.