MHWiki:Current events
Let's Put Dev Updates and Everything Else Here (up to one month, archive anything older). We'll include the newest update into the main page, and we can exclude the others using the NOINCLUDE Tag.
For older updates, visit the Archive.
Contents
- 1 Notes for Editors
- 2 News
- 2.1 Gold Shield Update
- 2.2 Gold Shields begin to expire May 25th
- 2.3 Quick Update
- 2.4 Database Maintenance
- 2.5 Hunting Party Adjustments
- 2.6 New Tournament Posted
- 2.7 Hunting Parties and MouseHunt Tournaments
- 2.8 Today's Updates
- 2.9 Transfer Limit Increase
- 2.10 New Map, Lucky Shields and Trade Changes
- 2.11 Trap Check Fix
Notes for Editors
- Please always put the newest news post first (if there are two from the same day, use the timestamp).
- Keep dates in DD Month YYYY format; this is an internationally recognized date format.
- The MHP Template, User Template, and Trade Template are god-like.
- Use Template:Date so that if we ever change the date format, it'll auto-update.
Template
=== News Title ===
''{{date|DAY|MONTH|YEAR}}''
<blockquote>
<p>Paragraph 1</p>
<p>Paragraph 2</p>
<p>Paragraph 3</p>
-- {{MHP|ID_OF_POSTER|Name o'Poster}}
</blockquote>
!!!!New!!!!
3 May 2009
Hi Mousehunters,
This is my first talk.
If you have noticed new mice in the hydro section. If you habit the harbour, a boat has sunken. It means new mice, maps, secrets. If you have any theories which you think are good. Write them here. I encourage you to come and be an editor like me.
Thank you,
Have a nice hunting and luck with the mystery.
News
Gold Shield Update
25 May 2009
Hello once again hunters!
Over the weekend we were reading through responses and opinions surrounding the time frame of the Lucky Golden Shield. Some hunters wanted different time frames for different donation amounts while others liked the 30 day limit for all donation amounts.
One concern that we wanted to address was that with the larger donation amounts a player receives more SUPER|brie+ than they will likely consume in a month.
After carefully considering what our community has shared with us through the message boards and in mails we have decided to have the shield last 4 months for a $50 donation, 2 months for a $25 and a single month for all others. We hope these changes allow players to keep their shields for a more realistic time while they use their cheese.
We realize we will never be able to please everyone but we feel that this is the solution that the majority of players will be happy with. We are currently making the appropriate changes and plan have shields begin to expire towards the end of this week.
As always thanks for your feedback on everything we do! We love reading your ideas, opinions and constructive criticism so keep it coming!
Gold Shields begin to expire May 25th
22 May 2009
Hello MouseHunters!
We wanted to give a few days of notice that Donators' Lucky Golden Shields will begin to expire on Monday, May 25th. On the 25th, if you have donated or completed an offer within the past 30 days your shield will not expire.
We waited a few extra days before starting the expiry effect to give everyone some forewarning.
There have been a few concerns surrounding the shield that we would like to address. Some players have suggested different timeframes for different donation amounts, or that the shield should be permanent.
The lucky shield is meant to be a "thank you" for any player that is generous enough to keep the game running month to month. As the world of MouseHunt continues to grow everyday so do the costs of supporting the hundreds of thousands of players that play for free each month. Without the generous support of donators each month we would soon have to shut our doors. No matter what you can afford to give we wanted an equal thanks for showing your support and that is what the Golden Shield is meant to represent.
A final thanks to everyone who supports the game and allows us to keep expanding MouseHunt week after week!
On a separate note, this week's Feedback Friday asked the question "What do you like/do not like about giveaways and how can we make them more fun?".
We wanted feedback on one specific idea - a special "Giveaway" mouse that would drop in-game items and be abundant enough to give players a good chance of catching one during a giveaway. The mouse would be similar to the elf mouse or birthday mouse that dropped gift boxes to be opened at a later date.
The feedback was a unanimous "YES!" and so that is exactly what we will be doing for the next giveaway! Expect the usual Mobsters and Leprechauns worth cash and SB+ prizes along with a special giveaway mouse that will drop gift boxes, or some other special item, containing random amounts of in-game items. We will provide more specific details before the next giveaway.
Happy hunting!
Quick Update
20 May 2009
Hello MouseHunters,
Just a quick update today with regard to Hunting Parties and Tournaments.
After substantial discussion with regard to subbing and all the back and forth with how to deal with it, we have ultimately decided to remove it as a strategy for Hunting with a Party.
Additionally, the mandate and multiplier issues have hopefully all been resolved this time around as well as a few Organize Party interface tweaks.
The question I'm sure you're all asking is what about the PRIZES...
Until we have everything balanced and equitable we're going to hold off on the prizes. But they will come eventually!Also, three instances of the Zombalicious Tournament will be starting in the next 24 hours. Good luck and thanks for all of your feedback!
Database Maintenance
14 May 2009
Hello MouseHunters. We would like to thank everyone for their patience today while the game was unavailable for database maintenance. Something came to our attention that would have negative effects on the game if left uncorrected and needed to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Due to the short notice of the significant downtime Glitchpaw mice have been released for the next 24 hours. Good luck capturing your first or adding a few more to your collection!
Hunting Party Adjustments
14 May 2009
Hi MHC,
There was some recent controversy about subbing people in and out of Hunting Parties to inflate the number of possible hunts. In order to level the playing field against parties using this tactic, you will now only be able to invite hunters to your Hunting Party post tournament start if your entire party has been inactive for 15 minutes. Thus, the captain invitation tab will disappear as soon as the first tournament horn is sounded and will only re-appear if no one in the party sounds the horn for 15 minutes.
Also, another tournament has been posted and it's called the Furoma Connection. Check it out!!! Only 10000 gold to enter.
Good luck to everyone in the upcoming Tourney!
Party HARD!
New Tournament Posted
13 May 2009
The Three Blind Mice Tournament is available to join and will start at May 14th 2009 - 20:00 GMT.
Get your Parties ready!
Good luck!
Hunting Parties and MouseHunt Tournaments
12 May 2009
Hello MouseHunters,
It is with great pleasure and excitement that we announce the biggest new feature addition to MouseHunt since MouseHunt 2.0: MouseHunt Tournaments and Hunting Parties! If you are of Apprentice rank or higher, you will now be able to form unique groups of hunters to hunt competitively in a series of regularly scheduled tournaments!
How do you sign up and how does this all work you ask? You can read all about how to join or create a Hunting Party and play in a MouseHunt Tournament by going to the Organize Party link under the Friends tab or following this url:
http://apps.facebook.com/mousehunt/organizeparty.phpWe're going to start with a few short daily tournaments so everyone can learn how things work and get their parties together. These tournaments will be available shortly
Occasionally, there will be prizes given out for MouseHunt Tournament winners. Also, there are two new boards that we've added to the forums: Tournament Talk and Meet and Greet. The Tournament Talk board can be used to discuss all things tournaments and the Meet and Greet can be used to recruit other hunters for your parties.
A few quick words about MouseHunt Tournaments...
Some tournaments will be free to join, others will have an entrance cost of cheese, gold or some combination of the two. Tournament Scoreboards for tournaments your current party has hunted in may be found by going to the Tournament Scoreboard link under the Lore tab and are updated hourly.
Finally, a special thanks to all of the beta testers! You've been so unbelievably helpful in getting these features to where they are now.
We're all very excited about this new addition and really hope everyone enjoys it and demonstrates good hunting etiquette!
Good luck everyone and PARTY HARD!
-The HitGrab Team
Today's Updates
22 April 2009
Hi MouseHunters,
We released an update today that has been unpopular with some of our players. We always listen and want to address some of your concerns.
We want to make clear the reasons for the changes so we can better work together to find a solution that everyone can be happy with.
Some players are upset that the +7 luck bonus of the lucky shield gives too great of an advantage to donators. This is our own fault for never fully explaining how luck works. Luck is the least important stat your trap has and only provides a very small occasional boost to help catch mice. Seven luck on average equates to about one less miss a day. Luck also boosts your ability to get loot in a very small way. Traps with around 20 luck will increase your odds by less than 2% for most items in the game.
If you play for free it is because someone else is not and we wanted to give a small, unique token of thanks to those who allow hundreds of thousands of players to play MouseHunt for free everyday.
People who donate by completing offers will also now be rewarded with a Lucky Golden Shield. This should allow people who are not able to donate via PayPal to receive the shield.
The trade request system was starting to become unbalanced. The buyer's section was almost pointless, full of posts that were never responded to. Players would have to reply to dozens of posts to try and scrape together enough sellers to meet their needs. These problems all stem from the root cause that SUPER|brie+ is worth more than 1,000 gold a piece to a majority of players. One of our most requested changes has been to remove the price cap on SUPER|brie+ in trade requests. We remind everyone that 10,000 is not the minimum but rather the maximum. We tried to pick a number that we know no one would ever buy for. We in no way are trying to make a piece worth 10,000. That number is merely in place to avoid errors and scams.
Finally, we apologize for the oversight of the many board competitions when introducing a limit on how much gold a player can send to friends. The generosity and inclusiveness of the community is the most important factor in the success of mousehunt. By attempting to add some checks to prevent scams we inadvertently punished those generous people who are active in the community. This is major oversight by us and we are immediately reversing the changes to the supply transfer system. We are removing the transfer limit and returning the tax rate to its original value.
With the cap on SUPER|brie+ removed we are confident that the amount of players abusing the give to friends feature will fall dramatically.
MouseHunt started as a very simple game where there were no locations, special types of cheese or trading. As more rich content and strategy is added to the game it is sometimes necessary to rebalance some of the core features of the game. We apologize for the oversights we made while making these changes and any stress they may have caused. At times it may hurt, but the vocalness of the community is a great asset to the game. We appreciate everyones feedback and look forward to continuing to making mousehunt the best it can be.
Transfer Limit Increase
22 April 2009
We have just increased the new restriction on gold transfers from 30,000 gold every 24 hours to 250,000 gold every 12 hours.
The give gold function is the most abused feature of the game by dishonest players. The ability to give endless gold also introduces imbalances of newer players with wealthy friends skyrocketing through the game much quicker than intended.
On the topic of the SB+ trading cap increase our intention was to basically remove the cap and allow SB+ to find it's own fair market value. The 10,000 per piece limit is only in place to prevent players from moving large amounts of gold by trading a single piece of cheese. The price will come down as sellers realize what constitutes as a fair price.
New Map, Lucky Shields and Trade Changes
22 April 2009
Strange footprints in Whisker Woods
With the scent of Gnarled cheese in the air some hunters have reported strange happenings in Whisker Woods. Slightly dampened foot prints have been spotted around the tree heading to the west. The King dispatched hunters to investigate only to have them returned with their courage crippled by what they described only as a winged terror.
Luck changes and new lucky shields
Ever wish there was something you could do to help maximize your odds of finding a map piece, potion or other rare drop? The latest research by the King's diligent Royal Trapsmith has revealed that luck now provides a small boost to a hunter's chance to receive loot when catching a mouse.
Word has come from the King that any hunter that gives a donation to the MouseHunt kingdom will not only receive SUPER|brie+ but also be granted a special lucky shield for the following 30 days, which will add 7 luck to your trap! This golden shield will appear instead of the grey MouseHunt logo in the top left of the game as well as be displayed on their profile. The world of MouseHunt would not exist if it were not for the generous support of our players. We wanted to give something unique to everyone who supports the game and help us cover our operational costs.
For those who have donated before this update we will be giving a shield to anyone who has ever donated and been active in the last 30 days.
Changes to trading and giving to friends
The King has raised the 1,000 gold per piece cap on SUPER|brie+ to 10,000 gold per piece but has also increased the tax rate to 20% for both trade requests and gold transfers. This change is to help keep balance as the game progresses and to help players put their gold to better use.
A new limit for giving gold to friends has also been introduced. A hunter can transfer no more than 30,000 gold to other players every 24 hours. For example if you send two of your friends 15,000 gold each you will be unable to send anyone else gold for 24 hours. This new rule is to discourage players from using the give supplies page for trading purposes and reduce the number of players who are victims of dishonest players trying to scam gold. This change will help reduce the thousands support emails we receive to help us concentrate our time on developing new content for the game. We find that 30,000 gold is a healthy amount to help along new players.
Trap Check Fix
15 April 2009
We have just applied an update that completely re-engineers the way trap checks work.
In our old system we were no longer able to generate 24 trap checks per day due to the large number of players we have now reached. Writing all the journals, awarding points, gold and loot creates a lot of database activity that slowly but surely adds up and brings things to a crawl.
The new system now in place generates trap checks much more passively to spread the load more evenly. This new method of handling trap checks has also allowed us to once again give a trap check every hour on the hour.
Please keep in mind that due to the urgency of this update we did not submit through our usual vigorous and lengthy of testing as we do for most of our updates. If a few hiccups occur here and there please rest assured we'll be hard at work to iron out the kinks.
Happy hunting (with trap checks too)!
