I love minions. I have wizards of every school and I use minions with all of them. If you're wondering, then the answer is yes... I even use them in high level worlds like Celestia and beyond. Having said that, there are some issues. I have found that a deck configured for the effective use of minions relies on being able to summon one. I see this as the single biggest issue with the current system. To enjoy the benefits of minions at the current moment, I have to find an empty realm and take precautions in order to preserve a space to summon the minion to. Obviously, we need to be able to reserve a ring for the minion.
"We're gonna reserve a little ring..."
I think that the solution to this lies in modifying the existing group functionality. I would like to suggest an alteration that allows you to select "minion" in your friend list so that you can then choose "add to group". The group functionality already reserves spots for members of your group. This also provides a conduit for a little more control over your minion through the use of simple menu chat options. Even if you could just tell your minion "no" when it is casting a spell you don't like so that it will choose another, that would be a huge improvement.
"We're gonna have a golem, and some trolls, and we're gonna have, maybe, maybe, a cyclops."
My next issue is specific to Myth. What is the purpose of having so many different minions if you can only summon one at a time? If you were allowed to summon one minion per card type then I would say we're golden. However, as it sits I feel that Myth kind of got shafted on the rank X spell(s). Not only are they pip limited, adding both of them together still comes up 7 pips shy of max. Why are there so many different minion cards when all the types could be managed in one card like Death's animate?
"And I get to tend the minions?"
I think there are two possible solutions to this. The first and possibly simplest would be to adjust it so that everyone can summon one minion per card type. Not only would this adjustment give purpose to minion treasure cards, it would help Myth to realize their potential as the school of minions. Of the current 20 quest related spells for Myth, 6 are minion spells. Balance has 3 and every other school has 2. That is a heavy investment in spells you can't be guaranteed to use at all, let alone together. Which brings me to my second possible solution... collapse at least troll, cyclops, and minotaur (possibly talos as well) into one X style animate card and give myth a couple more combat spells which are useful without minions present.
Please consider some of these suggestions, I'd hate to see minions go the way of Lenny...
I understand where you are coming from. Many times while soloing with my Myth character, my deck is specifically set up to work in tandem with my minion. This is complicated further if I am joined by three other players, since almost half of my deck instantly becomes unuseable.
I too believe Myth should have a rank X type minion, but I do not believe it should replace current minions. Being able to select a certain type of minion at the right time or right fight, is not something I want to be further constrained by how many pips I currently have (or may not have). With my Death, it is great to have a minion with a tremendous amount of health at the cost of all my pips and several rounds, but specifically trying to get a particular minion at the exact amount of pips can be hard to do. If I need a Minotaur for tanking purposes, I can't wait for the right amount of pips and for it to show up in the hand at the right time. There will always be a chance I will be one pip off and get a minion I did not want (and would lead to the Spectral Minion situation for Balance wizards). Plus, with the increase of pip manipulation spells recently (like Mana Burn), controlling your pips will get even harder. Specifically casting a spell to potentially lower my pips to get the right minion is not always ideal.
I really like your idea of Myth being able to call multiple, but different types of minions. It would really shine as a solo school for Wizard101. However, I doubt that would occur given the counter effect to henchmen.
I would like to add a suggestion to your concept. With the release of Khrysalis, we now get "followers." They don't take spots in the group, but still provide increase in stats for combat. If they could be programmed to cast spells every round instead of increased stats, that would be the perfect minion for a Myth player and allow three other wizards to join the fight (sorta like a pet may cast, but would be every round and cast a variety of spells instead).
I understand where you are coming from. Many times while soloing with my Myth character, my deck is specifically set up to work in tandem with my minion. This is complicated further if I am joined by three other players, since almost half of my deck instantly becomes unuseable.
I too believe Myth should have a rank X type minion, but I do not believe it should replace current minions. Being able to select a certain type of minion at the right time or right fight, is not something I want to be further constrained by how many pips I currently have (or may not have). With my Death, it is great to have a minion with a tremendous amount of health at the cost of all my pips and several rounds, but specifically trying to get a particular minion at the exact amount of pips can be hard to do. If I need a Minotaur for tanking purposes, I can't wait for the right amount of pips and for it to show up in the hand at the right time. There will always be a chance I will be one pip off and get a minion I did not want (and would lead to the Spectral Minion situation for Balance wizards). Plus, with the increase of pip manipulation spells recently (like Mana Burn), controlling your pips will get even harder. Specifically casting a spell to potentially lower my pips to get the right minion is not always ideal.
I really like your idea of Myth being able to call multiple, but different types of minions. It would really shine as a solo school for Wizard101. However, I doubt that would occur given the counter effect to henchmen.
I would like to add a suggestion to your concept. With the release of Khrysalis, we now get "followers." They don't take spots in the group, but still provide increase in stats for combat. If they could be programmed to cast spells every round instead of increased stats, that would be the perfect minion for a Myth player and allow three other wizards to join the fight (sorta like a pet may cast, but would be every round and cast a variety of spells instead).
Oran: "I too believe Myth should have a rank X type minion, but I do not believe it should replace current minions."
This is definitely not my preference. My preference would be to be able to summon one minion per card type (which I feel would give the existing cards purpose and legitimacy) but I find I should also clarify in regard to the reservation suggestion... I don't think any player should be able to reserve more than one minion space.
Oran: "but specifically trying to get a particular minion at the exact amount of pips can be hard to do"
Should KI decide that merging the existing minions is a better idea, then what I would like to see is pip "bands". The current cards all summon a specific type of minion and varying strength and I would like to see a similar method in a consolidated system... something like (and this is just off the top of my head) 1-4 Troll minions, 5-8 cyclops minions, 9-12 minotaur minions, anything else Talos... But I don't know how they would implement it seeing as you receive so many minions so early in the game. Maybe have the old X card that starts out pip limited and increase the limit as it goes? I dunno... I honestly haven't figured this bit out as I would really prefer to be able to summon multiple types of minions.
Oran: "However, I doubt that would occur given the counter effect to henchmen."
I'm not sure I understand what you mean on this one. My guess is that you mean it might reduce reliance on henchman... Is that accurate? I suppose its possible but it would only really affect Myth in any substantial way and only until most wizards get into higher levels.
Oran: "With the release of Khrysalis, we now get "followers.""
I had considered requesting something like that... but from a game mechanics standpoint I thought it may be limiting. Part of the value of minions is that I use them to draw fire away from me. If they always stood behind me I feel it would tend to limit their strategic value. I'm also uncertain how you would go about being able to "take down" a minion like that. This is something that would have to be worked out or there would be a raft of "myth is OP" complaints. I'm really on the fence to be honest. I would be concerned that it would completely alter minion use in the game and from my standpoint it could wreck minion use as easily as it could help. I tend to think being able to "group up" with a minion "friend" and to send it simple menu chat commands would fix most of the existing complaints without requiring nearly as much programming. However, I may be thinking too much like a programmer at the moment and not enough like a player...
"I'm not sure I understand what you mean on this one. My guess is that you mean it might reduce reliance on henchman... Is that accurate? I suppose its possible but it would only really affect Myth in any substantial way and only until most wizards get into higher levels."
Yes, that is what I meant, but I was also under the impression you were asking for multiple spots for minions, not just one.
"However, I may be thinking too much like a programmer at the moment and not enough like a player..."
This is the Dorms. No need to be constrained by simple things like cost, time, effort, balance, fairness, or reality.
"I'm not sure I understand what you mean on this one. My guess is that you mean it might reduce reliance on henchman... Is that accurate? I suppose its possible but it would only really affect Myth in any substantial way and only until most wizards get into higher levels."
Yes, that is what I meant, but I was also under the impression you were asking for multiple spots for minions, not just one.
"However, I may be thinking too much like a programmer at the moment and not enough like a player..."
This is the Dorms. No need to be constrained by simple things like cost, time, effort, balance, fairness, or reality.
"Yes, that is what I meant, but I was also under the impression you were asking for multiple spots for minions, not just one."
I do want to be able to summon multiple types of minions, however, I only want to be able to specifically reserve just the one spot. The others would need to fall into more of a traditional "if there's a spot there I can take it" kind of roll. I am actually pretty pumped about the idea of using menu chat to communicate with your minions though... I don't recall it being suggested before and when I was poking through the options after making the suggestion, I noticed that pretty much every instruction people want to give their minions is already there. It seems like some simple scripting on the minion side could easily make it possible.
I was further thinking on this multiple minion suggestion as well... it will cause an uproar in PvP. Therefore, perhaps the solution is to only allow a minion to the one reserved spot in PvP? That should not dramatically alter the dynamic in there right?
"This is the Dorms. No need to be constrained by simple things like cost, time, effort, balance, fairness, or reality."
ROFL. I don't know what to say to that... I laughed for several minutes. It sounds just like being in tech meetings with neuro-typicals. LOL.
I love minions. I have wizards of every school and I use minions with all of them. If you're wondering, then the answer is yes... I even use them in high level worlds like Celestia and beyond. Having said that, there are some issues. I have found that a deck configured for the effective use of minions relies on being able to summon one. I see this as the single biggest issue with the current system. To enjoy the benefits of minions at the current moment, I have to find an empty realm and take precautions in order to preserve a space to summon the minion to. Obviously, we need to be able to reserve a ring for the minion.
"We're gonna reserve a little ring..."
I think that the solution to this lies in modifying the existing group functionality. I would like to suggest an alteration that allows you to select "minion" in your friend list so that you can then choose "add to group". The group functionality already reserves spots for members of your group. This also provides a conduit for a little more control over your minion through the use of simple menu chat options. Even if you could just tell your minion "no" when it is casting a spell you don't like so that it will choose another, that would be a huge improvement.
"We're gonna have a golem, and some trolls, and we're gonna have, maybe, maybe, a cyclops."
My next issue is specific to Myth. What is the purpose of having so many different minions if you can only summon one at a time? If you were allowed to summon one minion per card type then I would say we're golden. However, as it sits I feel that Myth kind of got shafted on the rank X spell(s). Not only are they pip limited, adding both of them together still comes up 7 pips shy of max. Why are there so many different minion cards when all the types could be managed in one card like Death's animate?
"And I get to tend the minions?"
I think there are two possible solutions to this. The first and possibly simplest would be to adjust it so that everyone can summon one minion per card type. Not only would this adjustment give purpose to minion treasure cards, it would help Myth to realize their potential as the school of minions. Of the current 20 quest related spells for Myth, 6 are minion spells. Balance has 3 and every other school has 2. That is a heavy investment in spells you can't be guaranteed to use at all, let alone together. Which brings me to my second possible solution... collapse at least troll, cyclops, and minotaur (possibly talos as well) into one X style animate card and give myth a couple more combat spells which are useful without minions present.
Please consider some of these suggestions, I'd hate to see minions go the way of Lenny...
Funny, I started my minion thread exactly a day after you did yours. :)
Hmm... I actually feel bad for Myth. Minions are cool, but when the only spells you have are minions that would not help very much. But at least it has a to all enemies spell, unlike Life, well at least to about level umm... 70 or 80?
Hmm... I actually feel bad for Myth. Minions are cool, but when the only spells you have are minions that would not help very much. But at least it has a to all enemies spell, unlike Life, well at least to about level umm... 70 or 80?
Myth does have a lot of spells aside from minions. However, they are missing some notable categories of spells specifically because of their focus on minions. For instance, they don't have a true X spell but instead have two different pip limited minion X spells... Troll Minion x-3 and Cyclops minion x-4. In addition, the have only moderate damage and moderate health all because of minions. Its very difficult to set up a deck that is effective at controlling and working with minions but can also work well if the circle is full. That's really the driving factor in this thread... finding a way to reserve a spot for minions. FYI... life's forest lord spell quest is given at level 58.
World: Mooshu Area: Tatakai Outpost