Kill Count Challenge?

RATM

Spaceman
Hey everyone.

It's been six years since I posted anything substantial (even then... more like 12) and I was wondering if the community would find it fun to try a "Kill Count Challenge". Since GOG has made available the earlier WC titles, we could try to do an honour based challenge where players start from WC1, transfer their characters all the way to the end of WC2 SM2, hop on WC3 and 4, continue on to Prophecy and add all the kills together throughout the career, splitting them per game and between Kilrathi, Terran and Niphilim. We could also include the excellent fan made games as well.

A couple of ideas for rules would be Ace difficulty, winning path only (exception to Kurosawa 2) so everyone has the same amount of kill opportunities; no cheats, etc. Each contestant could have one post that they edit as they move on. Maybe a screenshot rule? Who knows.

Then again, with the amount of time everyone has, it might take us years to get through the games :D
 
I like this idea a lot! Perhaps we could match it up with a revival of the Community Replay series we did a few years back. See about getting a few more involved in either aspect.

Save Games and things can be used to verify kills, although most of us are in our late-20s or early-30s now so I imagine the inclination to cheat to be the best on a WC chatboard have declined a bit :D

I think we should start to look into setting this up.
 
And we would all have to combine it with our summer holidays! :rolleyes:

A good condition is, when you die, you never existed! (and would we actually need to hexedit the savegames to incorporate for killcount in WC3 and onward?
 
Seems like someone here already had a similar idea.

I suppose that a save game/screenshot review could help out. The honour system would still be rather important. Ie: not replaying a mission or ejecting/reloading or force failing a mission because your wingman took down that bogey you wanted to get. An alternative would be to let players do second run when they're done their first play through and indicate the changes to demonstrate improvement (or rustyness!) over time.

I've never played WC1 or the expansions on anything other than the SNES, and my WC2 deluxe edition was wonky at best when I got it :D; this is going to be terrible...! haha.
 
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And we would all have to combine it with our summer holidays! :rolleyes:

A good condition is, when you die, you never existed! (and would we actually need to hexedit the savegames to incorporate for killcount in WC3 and onward?
Sounds like more of a "hardcore" edition; some of us haven't played the buggers in 12 years and are bound to be cat fodder...!

My intuition tells me it would be best to set up a "level" playing field, in the sense that we indicate which missions are part of the "official" run so that the total amount of possible kills is the same for everyone.
 
A lot of us will probably die in SM1, or SO1. At least put some form of realism to the challenges "ahead".
 
No need for "realism" (this is blowing up cats in space and defying laws of physics) if it's more of an arcade style run through the different games, however.
 
No need for "realism" (this is blowing up cats in space and defying laws of physics) if it's more of an arcade style run through the different games, however.

To each his own, but I like the idea of actually trying to "live through" the war, without the assurance you can go back and just fly over, meaning that if you die in WC4, you have to start over in WC1, might sound harsh, but you'll fly a lot less confident!
 
Don't get me wrong; I like the concept. I feel it's even complementary to the original idea. Those who remember playing Diablo 2 undoubtedly remember "Hardcore mode" where when you died, you had to create a new character.

It sounds to me as though such an option should be available as a variant to the "Challenge" (or rather "Run", "Game", whatever), in which case, simply finishing any of the games would be an accomplishment in itself, let alone go through the Kilrathi war without dying.

edit: typos
 
Don't get me wrong; I like the concept. I feel it's even complementary to the original idea. Those who remember playing Diablo 2 undoubtedly remember "Hardcore mode" where when you died, you had to create a new character.

It sounds to me as though such an option should be available as a variant to the "Challenge" (or rather "Run", "Game", whatever), in which case, simply finishing any of the games would be an accomplishment in itself, let alone go through the Kilrathi war without dying.

edit: typos

None of us are hyperactive teenagers anymore, and have played other, be it more realistic simms, most of us should have learned bynow that it is not smart to fly in head-first, gun-blazing.
 
Seems like someone here already had a similar idea.

Yeah, the two ideas are very similar. Your post just got my mind thinking about the Replay from a while back and that maybe we should fire it back up.
 
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Yeah, the two ideas are very similar. Your post just got my mind thinking about the Replay from a while back and that maybe we should fire it back up.
Must of been during the 6 years that I didn't come here; can you offer a link?


edit: I'm assuming its something along the lines of this? In which case, I would assume that this style would have much less of an individual narrative, but could be structured more or less the same way (one-a-week style), so that everyone could keep pace?
 
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Yeah here's a front page story on the Replay from several years ago. We went through the main line games.

We could either start with WC1 again or go to the Privateers...or whatever. Probably just do a poll thread to see how many people would want to participate, how long to complete a certain set of missions (a week might be too quick this time, but we'll see, and so forth.
 
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All I can say is that there need to be more than two people in on the Challenge or replay. Lorien and I were pretty much alone on some of the replay entries.

P.S. - My Photobucket WC replay screenshot collection is still active.
 
What do you do about the missions (I know for a fact that there are such ones in both WC3 and in Prophecy) where there are infinite enemies? I.e. they keep respawning until the mission ends? (E.g. the Behemoth down mission, or the battle at the Wormhole Gate)? And what about missions where you get extra fighters launched if you don't destroy the capship right away? Kill count is going to be at odds with mission completion...
 
These are important questions. They could be answered by people establishing a framework with people who know the missions far better than I do (my WC is a little rusty). The best I can muster right now is have a set mission tree established before hand. With the case by case basis, I think we can find solutions that would be adequate.

We could just do it that people go at their own pace and when they feel like they want to play WC3 to go to it and send the score at the end of the game (minus last missions, I suppose).

I think all of it is up in the air for now.
 
Goddamn, you guys are hardcore! No dying? If you guys can do that, I think I'll need to be in a different, lower league of some kind. I thought it might be cool to see how many kills you can get per tour (i.e. Tiger's Claw, Concordia, Victory), regardless of the mission tree, or what's in the official storyline.

I think it'd pretty kind of cool to have to do the "last chance" missions in SO1 & 2, and to go through WC1 losing as many times as possible, while still getting all your kills and winning overall. I think it gives an extra challenge to lose branches but still rack up those kills. Is it cheating? Nope, it's winning! :D
 
I thought it'd be cool to have something on the site like the chalkboard from Tiger's Claw. If a lot of people wanted in, it could get broken up into leagues or pools or something like that. Have I given this too much thought? You bet
 
When I get my new PC set up in a month, I'm well up for this.
Perhaps instead of not being allowed to die, we also post up how many times we died. Restarting a mission due to failing objectives could count as a death.
 
When I get my new PC set up in a month, I'm well up for this.
Perhaps instead of not being allowed to die, we also post up how many times we died. Restarting a mission due to failing objectives could count as a death.
Sounds like and interesting idea actually.
 
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