Topics

Our current rating for FFA games takes place order into consideration.  That is, if you finish 1st, you take points from all losing players.  If you take second, you lose points to 1st place, but take points from 3rd and 4th place.  If you place last, you lose points from all of the other players who survived longer than you did.

When we designed the FFA rating this way, we thought placement made it fun because even when your mage is decimated first turn, there's still a hope to outlast other placers to help ease your points loss (and maybe even gain some points if you place better than a higher ranked player).

Some players have suggested the system causes too much fluxuation in rating points- as a high ranked player who loses a FFA game to low ranked players will take a huge drop in points.  We could change the system so that points are only gained by the winner (1st place) and only lost to 1st place.  This would certainly be better for higher ranked players (as they stand to lose less points for losing overall) but less advantageous for beginners or struggling survivors.  So, we are asking you community, what do you prefer?

We will run the poll for two weeks- at which time, we will consider the majority votes as reason to change our system if at least 50 members participate.  Your personal commentary on the matter is also welcome - perhaps you even have alternative solutions (like, place does not matter/matters is an option in the game setup or something).

You are allowed to change your votes but will not be able to view the results until the poll has closed.

Come play with the Devs Friday and Sunday evening 8/7/09 and 8/9/09 7:30PM - 12:00AMCDT

What are everyone's thoughts on the power of Recovery Spells?

We are considering making the following changes:
-Change Dispel Magic from Cost 0: "Remove all status effects from target unit." to Cost 1: "Remove all status effects from target unit or destroy target creature."
-Eliminate Unsummon spell and replace with an extra Dispel Magic spell in deck
-Eliminate Mana Surge and repalce with extra Scribe in deck (with theory that Mana Surge may be too powerful)

Please share your opinions.

It has come to our attention that many users have created multiple Hero Mages accounts.  This is strictly against our Terms of Service that you agreed to when registering.  Each person may only have 1 Hero Mages account.  If you are currently using multiple accounts, please stop now.

We will strictly enforce this policy, as there are many unfair advantages to having multiple accounts and doing so also exlcudes new members from gaining access to beta heroes .  Playing as a member and as a guest is also strictly forbidden.  If you are caught using multiple accounts, we will delete them and ban your IP address.

Please adhere to the rules so that everyone can enjoy a fair playing experience.  If you suspect a player is using multiple accounts, please report this to us discreetly by sending an email to admin@heromages.com.

You asked and we delivered!  Check out the new game features for version 1.0.1 at www.heromages.com/news/versionLog.html.

D20Studios, LLC will be online Wednesday July 29th at 7:30PM CDT - come join us for some games!

We are noticing and are appreciative of our devoted fans and want to do everything we can to grow our community so that it won't be necessary to check the lobby every 5 min for an opponent.  What are your thoughts on how we can spread the word about Hero Mages and increase our user base?

We are hoping our showcase at GenCon Indy will bring some serious hits to the site as well as forth-coming Google ad campaign.  We also have a facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/pages/Hero-Mages/126810461284?ref=mf that you can become a fan of!

Your help, suggestions, and ideas are most welcome!

We have discovered a bug involving unranked games.  It would seem that although unranked games are being tracked as such, they nonetheless still affect your rating as if they were ranked.  So, as it stands now, ALL games will affect your player rating.  Note, however, that winning/losing to a guest player NEVER affects your rating.

We will have this issue corrected in our next release.  Since all previous games have affected your score, we will make a change to the database to reflect this when we make the update, crediting all of your current unranked games as ranked ones.

Also note that in order to play team games with randomly assigned teams, you must set the game to "unranked".  This is also a bug and will be corrected in next release as well.

We apologize for the inconvenience and will have this fixed for you very soon!

What other games do you enjoy playing?

Personally, I am a big fan of miniature based table top games.  Hero Quest, by Milton Bradley, largely inspired Hero Mages, as well as table top war games like Warhammer Fantasy and 40,000.  I have 3 display cases full of miniatures in my basement- including 5 full 40K armies and 2 Fantasy armies, and over 100 fantasy Reaper figurines- so there was a lot of inspiration to work from.  I even own a 1000 piece MageKnight 3D dungeon!  I am also a fan of computer based stategy games (Dawn of War is my current favorite), team based FPS (BF2142 in particular), and Xbox (Halo and Oblivion are my top 2). 

How about the rest of you?  (Comon, brag a little about your nerdiness)

An additional way you can identify Flash Errors within the game is to download and install the debugger version of the Flash player.  This will allow you to see internal error messages generated by the game that will give us specific information regarding when and where the bug is happening and what is causing it.

If you'd like to help, get the debugger version of Flash player by following this link:
https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

Look under "Adobe Flash Player 10 â€" Debugger Versions" for your OS/Browser version.

Please take screenshots of any error messages that popup during gameplay (Use CTRL+PRT SC to capture both the error prompt and the game window).  If you hit "Dismiss" the current error message will hide and Flash will resume.  If you hit "Dismiss All", Flash player will hide the error prompt and will not show any further errors for the current session.

Welcome map designers!  I've seen some great custom maps made by our users and I thought it would inspiring to others if you could share some screenshots of your best custom maps here.

Greetings, all!  We're excited to see our community growing - let's keep the party going!  Checking out the leaderboards today, I was quite surprised no one has tried playing a team game yet.  In light of this, I will be personally hosting some 2v2 gaming sessions this Saturday, July 25th 10:30PM - 12:30AM CDT.  Log in and join game "GameDev 2v2" to play as my ally or grab a friend and try to defeat us- the choice is yours!

I wanted to start some dialogue about the Mage's valor abilities.  How does everyone feel about the balance between the different Mages?  Does a particular Mage's abilities seem overpowered in comparison to others, or do you think each character is well balanced?

We are aware that a number of you are experiencing some issues with the game.  We want to irradicate these issues so that Hero Mages can deliver a prestine playing experience for everyone- but we need your help!  When you encounter an issue, please post a detailed description of the bug on this board.  Tell us about the problem you encountered as well as what was happening in the game prior to the bug.  Also try to include as much of the following information as you can so we can narrow down exactly what is causing the bug and fix it:

-Operating System
-Processor
-Memory (Ram)
-Browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, etc.)
-Browser version number
-Flash Player Version (include full version number)

-Screenshot of the game/website when the error occured
-Copy of the game log (if playing game when bug occurs)

Please post whenever you encounter an issue (even if it's the same bug you saw before).  The more reports we have of these bugs the easier it will be to narrow down the triggers causing them and the sooner we can have a fix available for you.

What elements of Hero Mages do you feel distinguish it apart from similar stategy games?

Now that you've played a couple games of Hero Mages- we're curious to know what you enjoyed about it.  Do you admire the character artwork/graphics, the music and sound effects?  Is it the intuitive interface and easy-to-learn gameplay?  Maybe it's that certain bit of satisfaction you get when you pull of that perfect move.  Please share with us- what do you like about Hero Mages?

Greetings all!  Well, the Hero Mages launch was a great success!  We had many new faces from various online communities join us, including BoardGameGeek and SmartFox.  Sure, we encountered a few bugs (as is to be expected on the first day, right?!), but for the most part, everything ran very smooth and it seems like players genuinely enjoyed the game.  It was truly a pleasure to see our creation come to life and witness the excitement we delivered to our fans!  Playing games with you was a lot of fun.

Congratulations to Gavin28x for taking first place on the overal and FFA ratings leaderboard with an astonishing 4 player vs all win and Baker for taking 1st place on Duels leaderboard and having the top rated hero of the evening: his Wizard- with an impressive 9 kills and 0 defeats!

To all those who played, we encourage you to spread the word to your friends and followers and share your thoughts on the game here in our forums.  Our community is our greatest asset, and we need your help to grow.  We will host another developer game session soon, but for now, the game is active and free for you to play and enjoy!  Looking forward to seeing you again.

Greetings!  I am Ross Przybylski, the creator of Hero Mages.  If hope that you enjoy playing Hero Mages.  We welcome your feedback.

D20Studios, LLC is proud to announce that we will be attending GenCon Indy 2009! Look for us in the electronic gaming section of the exhibition hall (booth #235) where we’ll be showcasing Hero Mages to over 20,000 gaming fans. Come meet us face-to-face and play games with us for a chance to win some sweet Hero Mages prizes!

Hero Mages will launch on Wednesday, July 22nd at 7:00PM CDT. At this time, you will be able to visit the Hero Mages website and use the “Play Now!” button to launch the game client and create your account. Doing so will also register you for the forums where you’ll be able to share all your thoughts on the game with our developers and your fellow players.

D20Studios’ own, Ross Przybylski, the creator of Hero Mages and company founder, will be online 7:00PM-12:00AM to challenge you to your first matches and discuss the game with you. Attendees of the launch party will also be given access to some of our premium game content, such as exclusive heroes and the ability to save your own levels using the custom map editor. Please note that our launch event server is limited to 100 simultaneous users, so login early to beat the crowd!