In this game:

http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=48268

The mule server locked up, so we all disconnected from the game in round 1.  Turns out the server kept right on playing without us, using 4 AI bots as replacements.  The game affected our scores/ranks, and everything.

Congrats, indeed, on reaching that impressive milestone.

I haven't been playing as much recently, but I doubt I'll ever claim to be officially, permanently retired.  I'm just not as addicted as I used to be!

I just click sound off until the game starts

Which is a fine solution if the game starts soon, or if you have the MULE window in front where you can pay attention to it.  It's much less useful as a workaround, though, if the game takes a long time to start (as they often do), and so you'd rather be able to put MULE in the background and do other things until it does.  But turning the sound off means you can't hear when other players join the game.

For this reason, and also because when players go for break mid-game, the music loops endlessly, I'd really love the option to disable the MULE theme song (but not the other sounds) during the game.  Or just make the song play once and then stop... there's pretty much no reason to have it loop endlessly.  Nobody likes the tune THAT much!

While this idea would indeed help prevent the land buyer from enjoying the benefits of being in last place for a while (good events, win ties, etc.), in return it would increase your final score.  I think this would actually wind up being a BIGGER problem.

Look at it this way... you could now pay $5000 for a plot of land (assuming you had the cash to do so), and it would not drop your current/final score AT ALL!  In fact, it could only raise your final score (by the amount of goods that the new land produces).  Even if you did nothing with the plot of land, it would still be worth $5000 to you in computing your score, so there would be no loss.

So, under your system you may as well spend ANY amount of money on land (assuming you had enough money left over to survive, of course).  I'd gladly spend $10000 for a single plot of land... after all, there would be no risk or penalty to do so!

[only]

(Congrats Kipley, you finally made it! )

Thanks, piete!  Though my being at the top of the new rankings may indicate a problem with the system.  I know for a fact there's a handful of players out there that can consistently outplay me.  This is not false modesty on my part, it's just the way it is.

And yet under this new system I outrank these players.  I'm not certain why.  Perhaps it's because these same players also tend to be very particular about whom they play against... as they are also players that go out of their way to only play in games with experienced opponents (and often highly skilled opponents, as well).  I'm not nearly as picky... when I want to play Mule, I tend to want to play now, and so I play against whatever first three players show up, whether they be experienced or complete newbies.  The only folks I refuse to play against are those that have an excessive amount of abandons (or certain "infamous" players mentioned ad naseum in these forums).

So perhaps the new system overly rewards playing against weaker opponents?  Because that's the only reason I can think of why I should outrank some of the worthier competitors out there.

This change jeopardizes the play balance in the game.

It removes a specific play tactic, and changes the gameplay from the original version of MULE, on that much I'll agree.  But I'm not convinced that it unbalances the game.

If I understand the new Land Auction change correctly (and I haven't actually played a game in the new version yet, so I could be wrong), the net gameplay effect of the change is that you can no longer raise the auction price of a plot of land way up, and then decide not to buy it, thus preventing other players from buying the land at a reasonable price.  So the question becomes, is this a desirable change to MULE?  I would argue that it is an improvement to the game.

I never enjoyed the possibility of the land auction spoiling gambit for two reasons:

1.  It wasted a lot of time.  Waiting for someone to march the price way up, only to end up NOT buying it, got old really quick.  It interrupted game flow, and made the game drag on longer, all so that NOTHING would occur during the auction.

2.  The players who could actually use this gambit to their advantage are the players with a lot of money.  And/or, they were the players who already owned so much land that they didn't really need to buy more, instead they were more interested in preventing other players from catching up to them in land ownership.  In both cases, the players using this gambit tended to be the ones winning the game.  (Players owning more money and/or land than their opponents are usually in the lead, or are in a great position to take the lead by turn 12).  Given that MULE is all about making things tough for the the leading players while giving benefits to the trailing players, leaving in a gambit that ONLY the leading players will use seems contrary to that core game philosophy.

I can play.  As long as I still remember this in 3 hours...

...only because I am a female.

Rest assured, Sockmonkey is just as vile, rude, and unsportsmanlike towards male opponents as well.  He's an equal-opportunity offender!

Fortunately, the vast majority of Planet Mule players are quite decent folks, and fun to play with.  There are only a couple Sockmonkey's out there that derive their enjoyment from trolling, instead of from playing the game.

I'm available at that time and would like to join the test.

The number of plots you own has a HUGE effect to how well you can do.

Agree with this completely!  However, I draw a different conclusion than the one you arrived at.

Land is already very important to winning, as each plot of land can produce goods for you throughout the game, contributing mightily to your final score.  Also, each plot of land you have is one plot of land less that your opponents can have, so owning more land is also a good defensive boost even if you're not currently producing anything on it.

A plot of land also gives a 500 boost to your total score just for owning it.  You want to increase that value.  But increasing it just makes land, which is already ridiculously valuable, even MORE valuable!  As it stands right now, very often the person who wins the game is the one who owns the most land at the end.  If you made land worth 1000 or 2000 or whatever, it just slants things even more in that direction.  Raise the value of land too high, and it would be practically impossible to win the game by any other method other than winding up with the most land.  The game would be less interesting if the amount of land factored even more highly into who wins than it already does.

This is bound to be a controversial suggestion, but I believe the game would be better if the "Gain a free plot of land" and "Lose a plot of land" events were removed altogether.  My reasoning is that they are too powerful, meaning they can easily swing the entire course of the game either for or against a player in a way that can't be recovered from (against competent opponents).

Evidence:  Look how much players pay for land in auctions now.  $2000 is usually considered cheap amongst good players.  Land routinely goes for $3000, and sometimes even more.  This means that the gain/lose a plot of land event gives an equivalent swing in a player's fortune by about $3000.  That's a MUCH larger swing than ANY other individual event that can befall a player.  (Yes, some global events, such as pirates, can wipe out more cash than that in a single turn... but these events potentially affect EVERYONE, not just a single player).

Even worse is when you get the gain/lose a plot of land when you're in currently in second place.  It doesn't really feel "deserved" to receive such an incredible boon/penalty when you're in not even ranked exceptionally good/poorly to begin with.

Most random events affect things in relatively small ways, costing you $100 here, gaining you $200 there.  And some of the nastier events you can plan for, such as stocking extra food for yourself when you're in the lead as insurance against pests, holding out on going big into crystite until the pirates have already visited, and so forth.  But there's nothing you can do to prepare for the gain/lose plot event, other than staying in 3rd or 4th place almost the whole game.

Some may argue that the game isn't supposed to be fair, it's a tough life on Irata, after all, so buck up and get used to it!  Well, I agree that random events to some extent ARE good, and keep the game from being stale and predictable.  But when the effects of the events are too great, it hurts the game.  For example, there could be a event that arbitrarily wiped out all of a player's cash, or sent a smithore ninja to steal all of a single player's smithore.  I think we'd all agree that those events would be too much, and would make the outcome of the game too random.  And that's where I feel we are now with the land gain/loss events... they often make the eventual winner of the game too arbitrary.  If I wanted a game that was based more on luck than skill, I'd play bingo.

The only change that it looks like EVERYBODY wants is to the auction system.

I would say that everybody also wants a change to the method used for calculating the Hi-Scores.  Even the folks at the top of the list agree that total number of wins is a terrible metric to rank players by.  Now as far as what the best alternate method of ranking is, well, there's no clear consensus.

I would also say there's bugs that everybody wants fixed, such as restoring the sound that alerts awaiting folks to when a new game is created in the lobby, and the various host advantage bugs.

But your point is valid, in that there are many, many other player ideas for how to "improve" the game, many of which would not be agreed upon by all.  Or even by a majority.  Or even by anyone else other than the person who came up with the idea!   

I've always assumed that the freed wild mules do battle with the freed radioactive mules.  It's epic warfare, with the working mules mining and producing defensive structures, and the radioactive mules hurtling themselves recklessly into them....

[I]

Pirates visit either 0, 1, or 2 times per game (though 1 time is by far the most common).  As far as I know, it's pretty much random if/when they appear... and that they don't tend to appear more if players are producing more crystite.  Players will often comment that pirates will appear because now there's a lot of crystite being produced, but I think that's more players bemoaning ironic twists than a reflection of actual game odds.  I've seen pirates come many times when nobody is producing anything, and I've seen them completely ignore games where there's collectively 300 crystite being produced in a turn.

My comments on how your proposed change of pirate visitation affecting game play is a reflection of how I would change my gameplay, if pirates were to never come if no crystite is being produced.  As the game works right now, I tend to wait before switching over to crystite until the pirates have already come once, and will dive wholeheartedly into crystite if they've already visited twice.  Right now, one of the reasons to NOT get into crystite early is because pirates might come early.  But if I knew pirates would never come if nobody produced any crystite, I would definitely tend to change my gameplay in the ways my original post described.

As far as having no bad events in round 2, you kind of run into a slippery slope there.  Why not have no bad events in round 3, either?  Right now the rule is no bad events in round 1, which you can argue is a good cutoff point for two reasons:  1.)  In round 1, you only have one plot of land, so certain bad events can be unusually devastating (lose a plot of land, for instance).  2.)  In round 1, you haven't done anything yet to earn 1st place (which always gets bad events) or 3-4 place (which always gets good events), so to punish/reward you for the place that you're randomly assigned to would be arbitrary.

But once you hit round 2, you've had a chance to jockey yourself into 3rd place, if you want to be safe from bad events, so I say let the events fly starting in round 2!

When I enter the MULE lobby, if there's another game already awaiting players, I'll generally join it (certain infamous hosts excluded, of course).  If there's no open games, I'll create my own and host it.

This forum has seen many discussions about the various advantages the game host has.  With his lower ping, he can better judge the actual bids in land auctions, he can click to grab plots during the land grant that he should lose to the tiebreaker based on current game rank, etc.  There's no real way to eliminate the host advantages (until the next version of the game, with its new host model and potential bug fixes).  However, feedback I've received during my games suggests that my network setup gives me even more of the host advantages than most.

I admit that it's hard for me to turn off my tendency to try and win.  Sometimes I don't notice that I'm in the lead and am getting plots that I shouldn't.  And sometimes even if I DO realize I'm in the lead, it's hard to know if a certain action is appropriate.  For example... should I try to grab the "very high" crystite plot left by the asteroid if I'm in the lead?  Or should I let the selection square highlight the "very high" square for a split second before pressing my button, to allow the 4th place player a fair chance to get it first?  And sometimes, even if I KNOW what the "correct", fair action is for me to take... it's hard to turn off my honed impulses to try and fight and grab the plot anyways, since that's such an ingrained impulse in the gameplay.

Rather than put myself in the awkward position of having to be careful about not playing too hard to win, I've come up with this solution:  If anyone ever sees me hosting a game that's awaiting players, feel free to join my game long enough to tell me that you're about to start hosting your own game.  (Press space to get my attention so that I see your message).  After you do so, I'll be more than happy to leave my own game and join yours.  That way, I won't have to worry about accidentally exploiting my host advantage anymore.

And, of course, players who don't have the ability to host, or aren't worried about facing my rumored massive host advantage    , are welcome to just play in my hosted games, if they so choose.

Thanks!

-Kipley