Back home, TMN offline

Last Saturday morning I arrived back in the Netherlands after a fun (yet busy) trip to Brazil, where myself and 15 others were doing research in the field of IT. The trip involved many visits to research institutes, companies and university departments, as well as some places important to the local culture and history (and beaches are part of that as well, logically).

After some rest, I pulled the plug on TMN in the evening, and replaced the game by a static page providing everyone with some information. Because of a slight jetlag (and being tired in general) nothing much was done on Saturday or Sunday.

Right now I am preparing a test environment, so we (Devious and myself, for now) can test the updated features, so the next round will have a smooth(er) start (than last round).

Some questions that were sent to my inbox have not yet been answered, so I will address those here:
* The percentage of credits that will be returned has not yet been decided;
* Properties will not be dropped before some players are ranked hitman+ and own more than 10mil;
* Property pickup fees will be there at the start of the round, but may be lowered/raised/removed later on, depending on the state of the game economy;

Marc

TMN Reset Announcement

Rumors have been around since week 3 of this round, but logically we never took those seriously. Even in early January we didn’t take them seriously, but when the economy dropped from more killings (and more after that), we had to get thinking and planning. As mentioned before; those two activities aren’t easy on me (), and consume most time. My personal planning is not so straightforward either; I have to plan around exams, projects, visits to cool countries and other occasions of extreme workload. For that reason we only had one option for the reset, but as players last year really hated me for announcing the reset early, I decided to wait with the announcement. Now is the time to post it though!

So, what’s the date? Here’s a draft of the planning I have in mind:

• On February 14th I leave the country for a warmer place
• On February 25th I return home, and pull the plug on this round of TMN :’(
• On Saturday, March 10th Sunday, March 11th we launch the next round, with improvements based on suggestions made (more on that later)

Below you’ll find a list of accepted suggestions and our own ideas:

• Fewer cities and networks
• Artillery Bunkers: keeping some bullets after you die (credits store option)
• International Prison (possibly with minimum jail-times before someone can break you out)
• Losing health on numerous occasions (OC, jailbreak, GTA) to limit scripting a little
• Easier killing of people wearing protection (this seems to have been a bit extreme this round)
• A TOS update on “duping”; we’ll be more strict
• A TOS update on “scripting”; manual script tests may return

Marc

Due to another meeting on March 10th, the launch had to be postponed by one day, and will be on March 11th.