I know the question "how do I make my map popular" has been asked dozens of times before, but it's about to be asked again.
I've recently recreated and revamped 'Formation Defense', but despite my best efforts, the number of hours played is either remaining stable or dropping (last I checked). I understand that E3 is occupying some gamers, it's summer and the middle of the week, but I'm completely at a loss for what more I can do. Here's what I already have going for me:
Amazing gameplay and a polished result. I haven't had much feedback, but what I have received has been 100% positive. People seem to just love the game
A strong promotional video and gameplay videos
Project pages (two with video links) on three different websites. See my sig for Formation Defense 2.0's thread on this site
According to a mod on this site, my map is already 'in the queue' for being posted on the news page
Quick responses; every comment I've received has gotten a speedy and effective response
In-game achievements. Sometimes this is enough to bring people back again and again
It's also worth noting that the original version of this game peaked at fourth overall for popularity when it was released, but I don't know if that helps or hurts me now with the re-release. Some people might just see the name and go "I've already seen everything in that game".
The truth is that it is possible your map simply does not cater to the will of the people. I don't doubt that it is polished and that it is fun for those who enjoy the type of gameplay it offers. However, that is not enough to reach the top of the list. Certain gameplay types will never reach the top no matter what is put in. Take Smashcraft as an example.
The original version was released at a different time with a different map appetite on BNET. It is possible tastes have changed. Therefore, you can't expect 2.0 to behave the same as 1.0.
It sounds like you're doing a lot right in the promotion department. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that you've overlooked.
Yeah, I guess that could be the case, but I feel it's more an issue of a limited number of people actually seeing and trying it right now. I believe it to be good enough (gameplay wise) that once the popularity is high enough for more people to find it, it might skyrocket upwards. The problem is it just isn't getting that initial push that it needs.
Why it's not getting that push, I can't begin to guess. I mean, with all I've done to promote the map, it feels like a greater number of people should've had their curiosity piqued, but that just isn't the case.
So far, the limited number of players that have played the map are bookmarking it quite a bit, so I find that promising.
[Edit]: I just checked the popularity and it's lower than it was before the new release, which I just can't understand. The new release made it easier on lower difficulties (but still insanely tough higher up), more accessible to beginners, it's 10x more polished and been balanced way better than it was before... I think it's getting approx. 6 bookmarks a day though, even though it's popularity is practically empty.
Is it possible we have another DotA-style singularity occuring? Where people enter the game and just immediately enter a map lobby they know, which is always up on the first page?
Your map is too complex imo. Games has to be simple to make it to the top of the list imo, that when people play they'll feel like they are one of the best player.
Also I think using base unit that people are already familiar with will help. You created brand new units, with its own stats. I don't think people like to learn new unit.
Think Star Battle. So easssyyy. We got Leviathan, Cruiser, Carrier. We already know that unit and in love with the unit. Newbie will pick their favorite mothership. People think their build order is the best. People act like they are the best and start ordering noob what to do.
Smashcraft, on the other hand, when newbie comes in, they don't know what to do, They don't know what hero can do what. They got destroyed instantly and boom they quit.
Very hard making games... I wish I knew... Like Mafia... This is purely my own opinion... But how's that even a video game? That's just so lame... I can understand the game mechanic in real life. It's essentially Phantom Mode. I play a lot in real life, using playing cards for determining the role. And you can read the facial expression of your friends to determine whether someone's serious or lying.. But putting it in video games with chat bar?? No facial expression, not even voice chat, And yet many people love it... Super lame... It's even more popular than Phantom Mode, which I think makes much more sense to be put as video game.
Now if you look at Debates... War of Words you put it in video games using chat bar... Doesn't work...
So Congrats to Mafia to find out that people loves to play that kind of game using chat bar...
Or look at Xel Naga Observer vs Rodrigo's ICJug's observer map? The XelNaga Observer is much much popular than Rodrigo's ICJug, while ICJug has much much more features... I don't know what's going on there...
Yup, formation defense is "in the queue" for the news. But you pretty much have the most important stuff done. Once you get on the news you should get a bunch more feedback. I don't know what else to say though. The video was well done. I haven't actually played the map so I don't know how good it is. But polish the heck out of it if you haven't already.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Feel free to Send me a PM if you have any questions/concerns!
I spent almost a full month just playing (nearly every night) with my main alpha tester in competitive mode. Nearly every day I polished more, made more balance changes, etc; I've put a ton of work into it (mostly competitive...the solo mode is pretty much 'classic' version now).
I feel confident in saying that there are no noticable bugs with 1-2 players, because the testing has been so intensive. Once more players get thrown in...I'm not sure how some of the new stuff will react. It should be fine, but that's why it's a beta still.
As for polish, it's already one of the most polished maps I've seen. I'm not trying to brag, but I've made some very impressive custom dialogs. The only thing that's a little off are the cases where I have a unit that doesn't have an icon or wireframe, and I've had to improvise. As we speak, I'm actually making custom icons to fix this.
I intend about 40 custom icons. I have 24 so far (estimating off the top of my head).
Hopefully that helps make it look a little more professional. I hate when you see a unit that has half coloured abilities and half desaturated team-coloured ones.
The new competitive mode has a handy new feature...scouts. I don't know if you've played the game or watched the videos, but offensive units (competitive only) can be made into 'specialists'. One of these specialists is the Scout, which actually reports to you how many units of each type the enemy has (if it gets close enough to see for itself).
For example, it might say:
8 Melee
12 Rangers
3 Healers
Then it makes a recommendation for what you should build to counter that combination. Like so:
Recommended Strain: Mechanical
Recommended Specialist: Tank
(NOTE: The scout was intentionally designed to give so-so advice. The advice it gives is 100% accuracte, but it only grants the advice based upon the numbers you're given, so it doesn't know if the rangers are anti-bio or anti-mech, it just generalizes). This was done intentionally so good players still had a slight advantage...I wouldn't want a noob to be able to just blindly follow scout advice to win against a pro that watches the enemy base for himself.
It's absolutely fantastic for slightly evening out the playing field. My tester almost never beat me until I added in scouts. Once scouts were in, he managed quite a few wins.
The whole interface is nicely tucked ina corner and doesn't get in the way too :).
It's not that the map can't be complex. It just needs to have approachable complexity - easy to learn, impossible to master.
You should be able to jump in and have fun even if you don't necessarily understand all the rules yet. If that doesn't happen then, like you said, newbies will put off like PETA members at a butcher convention.
The less a player has to think to play your game, the more popular it will be.
Welcome to the McGamer age.
Mafia counteracts this somewhat by requiring thought to win. It then counteracts itself by being full or morons most of the time who do the most hilarious votes and cause their faction to lose.
Mephs hit the nail on the head, formation defense is too complicated for the masses.
Mafia is mainly popular because of it's ability to allow trolls to run rampent, like Phantom Mode :) You play it knowing there is a very high possibility that you will be trolled, yet you play it anyways and then rage when it happens. This is because humans by nature are addicted to Drama.
When you said you did some really impressive dialogs I decided to take a look at your map, and I am going to say this in the nicest way possible, I was not impressed. They were simply dialogs, with a background for images, cluttered and hard to read - even on a 27" IPS screen.
I thought I was being a bit too harsh so I loaded up your map for a second time, and have it sitting on the other monitor.
I am really not impressed with the dialogs at all. The light blue on green background is like OMG my eyes, you do not put those two colours together, they simply do not have enough contrast. The button text on the next/exit tutorial is too big, try "StandardButton" or "TeamResourceButton". By the time I got to Psionic Enchanters in Tutorial Mode I had already lost interest - FYI, the first wave shouldn't start until YOU say it is okay for it to start in tutorial mode.
It is really fucken complicated, even with the tutorial mode, it doesn't explain clearly what build order you should do or anything. In the tutorial mode you should have a "Reset/Restart" button, not a defeat button. Congratulations, you gave me a headache, I am not sure if it was from the Cigar I smoked earlier or your map, but it happened right around the time I was defeated. Your map is incredilbly hard to learn from a noob point of view, I have no doubt that you could find a cliche group of people that like it, but I don't. It gave me a headache, I lost interest and the UI hurts my eyes.
Oh, and no hotkey to select your hero. You disabled control groups, fine enough. But didn't even add a custom hotkey for your hero like TAB or something, why do I have to run around the screen looking for my little hero who was standing next to a tower looking like a tower. I want a nice little bar on the right hand side of the screen that says, here is what you should build first, that will automatically come up if I am a new player say games <= 5, and after that on request.
Edit>
If you want to see good dialogs using just dialog items, search for "Dogmai's Phant3m" and load it single player. I did this like 6 months ago, long before Tofu's custom art UI. It simply uses dialog and dialog items, no custom art.
It still looks better than Phantom Mode now, even though they have had half a year to update their UI (and trust me they did after this was released). You don't even want to see Phant3m 2.0 which I stopped working on to finish Tofu, it blows this one out of the water, but it shows what can be done with simple dialogs and dialog items and no custom art.
I'm going to disagree with both Dogmai and Mephs in that simplicity isn't always the key to a popular map. If people only liked simple maps, DOTA would never have become popular map genre. You are lying if you claim that the game is simple or easy to understand. You have to learn a huge range of hero abilities, combos and counters. On top of that you have to learn whatever item system the game is implementing AND how those items piece together in recipes (if applicable) and what ones are appropriate for you. Let's not forget this can change dramatically for the same hero if you have a different build order or elect to fill a particular role (Carry/Tank/Support/Nuke etc)
Compared to a TD: You build towers. . . near a line on the ground. . . and you upgrade your them. Oh and maybe a hero and some cool spells. Done. The only complexity you might see is with different construction resources, TD builder races or a maze building TD.
Bottom line, DOTA is not simple by any means. . . and yet it is somehow massively popular.
(Might as well throw EVE out there while I'm at it. You can't claim it's not both popular and MASSIVELY complex)
So then what DO people like if simplicity isn't the single most important aspect?
Control
In any game, players generally want to have control over what happens to them. Even if they're losing, players take comfort in knowing that they are the reason they lost and that with proper control they could overcome any obstacle placed before them.
An example of lack of control is typically RNG. While RNG can be very cool, people usually hate RNG because they have no control over it and you can't strategize around it. Off the top of my head, there is a hero in Heroes of Newerth (Blacksmith) who has an RNG mechanic built into all of his spells. Every spell he casts has a chance to proc up to 3 clones of that spell on top of it (4 total). So you will be fighting Blacksmith and suddenly he'll land several 4x spells in a row and utterly dominate you. . . 5 levels lower than you . . . with 10hp. Alternatively his spells are rather weak without this proc so he could end up equally screwed by a bad streak.
It IS possible to make RNG useful and fun, though, if you don't push it. People typically prefer RNG in situations where you have a small chance to slow someone or you have a small chance to set someone on fire. Things where even if you proc it 5 times in a row, it's not going to completely break the game. This is because people LOVE disabling opponents, but hate being disabled (lack of control). Thus if you have 100% proc rates, people are going to love it and hate it. Keep this in mind as your proc rates will often revolve around whether this is a PvE or PvP map.
Intuitive Design
This is probably the only point I will concede as revolving around "the less I have to think the better." People usually don't mind a complex interface so long as it doesn't get in the way of playing the actual game. Thus if you have a character portrait you typically expect any stats or items to be located near this portrait. If you spread your stats all over the screen, the player spends too much time looking for the information they need and quickly become annoyed. This can even prevent the player from actually playing the game! "Don't shoot! I need 5mins to buy my gun!"
The situations for this are endless but there is two fundamental questions you should ask when designing your game:
Where would I expect to look for this if I was playing the game?
How many clicks did it take to find it?
Customization
You will often hear people talk about limiting the number of options a player has to choose to prevent them from being overwhelmed. What many don't realize is that this idea was based upon product sales for a retail business. When playing a game it's completely different!
Lack of customization often leads to very predictable or stale game play. Why? Because once you've learned the game, it doesn't change outside of content updates (if any). You've essentially "beaten" the game because it's reliably linear to a fault. This is typically why games with a linear story are short-lived without other game play modes regardless of how good the story is.
This doesn't mean you need to make infinite story arcs or countless options. There IS a point where you start to overwhelm the player, but you have considerably more leeway than you think. As with Intuitive Design, customization that adds dynamic play is good. Customization that adds more options just for the sake of having them is bad.
Bottom line: When someone starts saying "I wish I could do this instead" you probably don't have enough customization.
Personal Identity
This primarily relates to RPGs, Hero Arenas and various other game types where you had a single unit or small group of units that you control. So a TD or Tug of War map isn't going to have this as often.
Customization provides the foundation for this concept in that being able to personalize your unit/group allows you to create an "identity" for yourself. In most games players will typically refer to you by your color or race/hero/etc that you chose. This is where the "identity" starts. Your ultimate goal is to get to a place where players have to refer to each other by their screen name or in game name.
Why is this important? In any situation, the moment someone says your name your body reacts to it and "involves" itself. You can see this in real life situations, especially large social activities. When you refer to someone as "Dude, guy, person, you" they don't immediately respond and typically aren't engaged when they do. Yet when you refer to someone by their name or nickname the reaction is almost immediate. They know you're talking to them and their attention is focused on whomever spoke to them.
Just think about it for a minute: When you're in a crowded room you often can't really hear what's going on around you, but the moment your name is mentioned (even if it's not directed at you) you suddenly hear that conversation above everything else.
Whether players admit this or not, the same thing happens in games. If you've ever played an MMO, just think about a time where you're in a PUG (pick up group) and someone refers to you by your class (ignoring spec/role/profession, whatever). Even if you are the only player with that class in the party you frequently ask "who me?" Sometimes you don't even notice it at all!
But when they use your name, you're considerably more likely to see the comment and engage with the party. You can experiment with this yourself! The next time you're a group with strangers, refer to them by name or by their class to see the difference in their response. You can typically see a marked improvement in the friendliness of groups that use player names to communicate.
This particular element will make people enjoy your game more because they develop an identity rather than a nameless class. They become immersed and take everything that happens in the game personally. You are for more likely to care about a game when you think it affects you in some way.
Replay Value
This is probably the most important aspect of any game you want to become popular and stay that way. If you have a story that is "beatable" you're already at a disadvantage because once beaten you must now provide ways to create additional gameplay that will feel new and unexplored without actually creating a new story. Now the good news is that you have a lot of options for overcoming this.
PvP Arenas: This is the easiest way to provide replay value, but it is also the hardest to get right. If your game wasn't designed for PvP, adding it will often ruin the game in the player's eyes. You can see this by looking at many MMOs that suddenly added PvP and then tanked immediately thereafter. You want to avoid this. If your game could adapt to a PvP setting it's worth looking at, but if it's something like a TBS single player campaign, attempting to add PvP after the fact could prove disastrous given that the entire game was based around one player.
Non-Linear Story: This is significantly harder to pull-off, but nearly risk free in that you create the illusion of a different story without changing the overall progression of the plot. You could do this by providing choices along the campaign that unlock/lock parts of the story. You could even make what order you complete events in the story optional. In the end, the most important thing to remember is that it makes sense. There still needs to be a fairly linear flow in the plot that is easy to follow and understand while allowing for multiple paths through it.
Non-Linear Gameplay: If your game doesn't have a story, you can still create non-linear gameplay. One great example of this would be Nazi Zombies in the CoD series. While your ultimate goal is to get to a particular area in the game and then get the super weapons, you can pick whatever weapons you want along the way, unlock aspects of the map when you want and all in whatever order you want. Suddenly it's not just "lets race here, grab a shotgun, GG!" You now decide whether certain guns in certain locations would allow you to survive longer.
Multiple Characters/Classes/Races This is a pretty universal concept and ties into Customization. Even with multiple story arcs, non-linear this and PvP that, your game can get boring very quickly without what I will call "styles" to switch between. I call it a style because all characters/classes/races/rolls/personalities etc boil down to their style of play. That style is what provides replay value. When you start to get bored of a certain play style you can switch styles and suddenly the game is fun again. Having a dynamic range of styles will prevent your players from getting burnt out by the same style.
Unlocks/Achievements Now this is fairly controversial in that some people HATE achievements, but others LOVE them. Unlocks are typically well liked, however, because they add a new level of progression. Achievements are just for bragging rights and often involve doing ridiculous things to get them. Thus, this really boils down to your opinion and what you enjoy.
It is important that you don't forget why you have Unlocks or Achievements should you decide to add them. Why? Because you could make the game even more linear if you tie unlocks to "beat the game with blah blah" or "reach Level X" or "kill N baddies." Especially if the unlock is a better version of whatever you are currently using. Then all you've created is weapon tiers or difficulty levels. Sure, those are nice, but they don't make good Unlocks/Achievements on their own.
I find that anything relating to your linear progression through the game should be tied to Achievements with a few Unlocks sprinkled throughout. The majority of your Unlocks should almost be like easter eggs or side-options where you have to go above and beyond what the game asked for to get them, but not to the point where you're just racking up X somethings for Y minutes on level Z.
A good Unlock: Free Hot Babe #2 (Different from #1 saved for the mission) on the Damsel in Distress Mission to unlock the Hot Babe class!
A bad Unlock: Kill 10 Zombies to unlock the Pistol Weapon! (Ugh. . . it's a quest!)
A good Achievement: Kill all 50 Zombie with your fists on Damsel in Distress Mission while naked!
A bad Achievement: Kill 10 Zombies (I think I've seen this before. . .)
Yes, this post is massive, but I think that this kind of information is worth spreading.
If you just skipped to the end of this without reading all of it, chances are your map sucks and you should go die in a hole anyways.
Compared to a TD: You build towers. . . near a line on the ground. . . and you upgrade your them. Oh and maybe a hero and some cool spells. Done. The only complexity you might see is with different construction resources, TD builder races or a maze building TD.
I liked your post except for this part. Perhaps it is just that you're used to the crap that is out on BNET at the moment? Needless to say, TD can have more complexity than you hinted at.
I did a lot of generalizing in my post so I am definitely aware that TDs can be complex, but you can agree that compared to DOTA, TDs aren't nearly as complex, yes?
That was the purpose of the comparison. DOTA has much more room to be complex without effort whereas TDs must struggle just to reach the level of complexity that DOTA starts at.
When you learn a TD, not a lot changes after that.
When you learn a DOTA map, everything changes when you switch to a different hero.
Yeah, I've seen tofu. The dialogs are great, no denying it. But you also had the advantage of having a whole new UI layout. You hide the info panel, alter this, alter that...it's a lot easier to pull off something great.
Formation Defense is a srategy game, which means every part of the blizzard UI is necessary. I had to alter everything to fit around the interface without cluttering it more. That's the difficulty of making good dialogs. Presenting the information in the best possible way without cluttering the screen.
Tofu has five icons and a few long bars to represent health and such. And your scoreboard at the top.
Formation Defense has two full tech trees, a tip interface, multiboard, tutorial dialog, scout report, and six pages of achievements. Getting all of that information on the screen, without cluttering things up, and presenting them all in a nice way is very time consuming, especially when you're working around Blizzard's already clunky UI.
I didn't say my dialogs were the best, I said I thought they were impressive. Why? Not necessarily because they're pretty (although they look a lot better than the average dialog flying around B-Net), but because so much informaiton can be found on them. Like ProzaicMuse said, an important part of creating a complex game is giving users access to information quickly. The tech trees, tip system, and achievement dialogs all give you all of the information you need in 1 click (three tops if you need to sort through achievments).
Finally, after all the negativity that's been directed at Tofu (not by me, I might add...I think it looks great), I would have thought you'd learned how important constructive feedback is, instead of simply trashing somebody's project.
The only constructive suggestion in your post was the idea of a hotkey for the leader. I used to have one, but got rid of it because it was never, ever used.
Dogmai's post is the first negative response I've gotten. Everything else has been positive. I am already attempting to flatten out the difficulty curve a bit. 2.0 introduced a wide variety of changes that help with tackling the difficulty curve (tips, new tutorial, refined tech trees, scouting reports, flashing tip icons, sight sharing for competitive, etc; ).
The difficulty settings were also scaled back a fair bit. I intend to make the game more user friendly with every update. I already suspected it might be a sticking point for some people.
I have another update (2.2) coming some time today, which should (once again) make the low difficulty settings easier.
I don't have the time to respond in Detail, but I played Dota since Eul's. I have the original Beta tests of Guinsoo's Dota, fuck Icefrog even beta tested the original Tofu in 2004. Dota started out with 24 heroes from memory, and in essence it is a simple game, you have 3 abilities and an ultimate - everyone already knew how to use heroes because they were in the Melee game, and the majority of popular maps at the time before Dota were hero arenas.
Dota was very simple when it started out - yes it is complex now for a player to learn from scratch, but it wasn't when it started its popularity. It is hard for me to comment on how hard it is to learn as I have played it for 8 years, I know every hero and item like the back of my hand, exactly what should be done in any situation, this is just through experience.
Dota is successful because 1) Allstars added sounds (Megakill, Ultrakill etc) - Which is why Guinsoo's version won the Dota wars. 2) Dota allows for the most basic human instinct to come forward - being selfish. Dota is a team game but people focus on the kills, I have a whole essay on this subject of why dota succeeded but those are the two most basic reasons - the gameplay in itself is simple. Hero, 3 abilties, 1 Ultimate, 3 lanes, go.
My post is the first negative because no one from my level (UI wise) has given you feedback yet, I was the first and as such, I expect you can do a lot better and have a lot of faith in you. I was actually trying really hard to be nice cause I know lately most of my posts have been coming off as an hardass.
When you learn a DOTA map, everything changes when you switch to a different hero.
No! Wrong - with the utmost respect. The only thing that changes are the abilities, items stay the same, shops stay the same, creeps stay the same, lanes stay the same, the only thing that changes are 4 little variables known as abilities. Yes technically, stats, movement speed, change as well - but for arguments sakes the only thing that changes are abilities, the game itself is the same.
Yeah, I've seen tofu. The dialogs are great, no denying it. But you also had the advantage of having a whole new UI layout. You hide the info panel, alter this, alter that...it's a lot easier to pull off something great.
Finally, after all the negativity that's been directed at Tofu (not by me, I might add...I think it looks great), I would have thought you'd learned how important constructive feedback is, instead of simply trashing somebody's project.
The only constructive suggestion in your post was the idea of a hotkey for the leader. I used to have one, but got rid of it because it was never, ever used.
Mate, haters gonna hate, and then they hate me or my advertising decisions not Tofu itself. Very few people actually hate the map, why? Cause no one has played it to form an opinion of it. There is a huge difference, and I thought especially for me, that I was being really nice and giving you good solid honest feedback. You should be proud that I even took the time to go look at your map and write up an honest opinion of what I thought cause I am as busy as a mofo atm. I gave you a shitload of constructive critism, re-read my post again.
Your UI is not clean and is cluttered, the font styles are all over the place, the text to background contrast is not high enough. I said these things from a designer point of view giving you advice how to improve it, and whilst Helral is without a doubt the Godfather of Custom UI, I am one of the top designers that has shown off his UI work here at Sc2Mapster so far, the same as ProzaicMuse is one of site's best Data editors, when Prozaic speaks I listen out of respect for him not only as a person, but for his skill level. I am no doubt harsher than most here at Sc2Mapster, but that is because I want the community to succeed in creating a higher standard in custom maps.
When I look back in my life the teachers that were nice and my mates, they can all go fk themselves because in the end they taught me nothing. It was the ones I hated at school, that gave me no slack, no room for excuses, that pushed me as far as I could go by being hardasses, that I have the utmost respect for now because they are they alone allowed me to achieve more than I ever would have done if left to my own devices.
Wow Dogmai! Your Phantom is wayyy better than the phantom in first pages.
Yes I know but they did a good job of *cough*borrowing*cough* my ideas and making sure to trash my map as best as they could - all is detailed on my blog. Zzz... Not to worry, Phant3m 2.0 is a fuckload better than what you see and I will be releasing it after Tofu is released.
I don't have the time to respond in Detail, but I played Dota since Eul's. I have the original Beta tests of Guinsoo's Dota, fuck Icefrog even beta tested the original Tofu in 2004.
Wait, so now you started Tofu back in 2004, way before SC2 was even planned? I know it's probably a typo, but it's becoming a fad - with the way this is going, next post we're gonna hear that you actually came up with Tofu back in '94, after playing through Warcraft: Orcs & Humans =P
Dota was very simple when it started out - yes it is complex now for a player to learn from scratch, but it wasn't when it started its popularity. It is hard for me to comment on how hard it is to learn as I have played it for 8 years, I know every hero and item like the back of my hand, exactly what should be done in any situation, this is just through experience.
Dota is successful because 1) Allstars added sounds (Megakill, Ultrakill etc) - Which is why Guinsoo's version won the Dota wars. 2) Dota allows for the most basic human instinct to come forward - being selfish. Dota is a team game but people focus on the kills, I have a whole essay on this subject of why dota succeeded but those are the two most basic reasons - the gameplay in itself is simple. Hero, 3 abilties, 1 Ultimate, 3 lanes, go.
Errr, yeah, but I don't consider that much of an argument. What you're doing is stacking overarching terms on eachother. In that sense you can pretty much call every game "simple" as it's always a showdown of PvE or PvP in which a correct set of actions lead to a win while a wrong set of actions lead to a loss. Your point isn't untrue per se, but you aren't mentioning the high skill cap, which I think is a fairly important component to it's popularity.
And on a sidenote - attach us that essay? It seems fairly ignorant to state that DOTA is about being selfish. I can't speak for the older DOTAs as - though I did play them - it's been ages ago, but definitely games that are out right now (like LoL) rely heavily on teamwork because every common situation is pretty much unwinnable on your own. Not to mention there's a buttload of abilities that need to be used on a teammate for optimal effect. I guess there's no direct 'healing class' in LoL, but it's as close as you can get.
Wait, so now you started Tofu back in 2004, way before SC2 was even planned? I know it's probably a typo, but it's becoming a fad - with the way this is going, next post we're gonna hear that you actually came up with Tofu back in '94, after playing through Warcraft: Orcs Humans =P
Yes, Tofu was created in 2004, Pendragon and Icefrog were beta testers, I got sidetrackked in early 2005, sent the map to Ice, never heard back. It actually is quite similar to what we have now, dark blue castle terrain, 4 abilities 1 ultimate, 6v6, dynamic map changes, even had portals. (Dryeyece came up with the portals for Tofu Sc2 by himself one night, I never told him they were in the original map, funny how two great minds think alike, it was uncanny, he is awesome).
I will publish the essay when I release Tofu, cause it has a shitload about the history of Tofu and Dota in there as well, and obviously I want to release it at the opportune moment.
Never confuse Pro Dota with Pub Dota. The majority of the community is Pub, not Pro. Dota succeeded because of the Pub community, not because of the few Pro teams in China or Europe, Dota's esport scene is no where near Sc2's level, cause no one wants to watch a one hour game. And yes, Dota now as an extremely high learning curve - that is if you want to know everything, the same as Pro Sc2. Dota falls in line with other Blizzard games, easy to pick up, impossible to master, the learning curve on Dota is no higher than Sc2, why do you think I never ladder and yet I can pwn 95% of the Garena community, simply because I have invested 8 years into Dota and have had asbolutely no time to learn Sc2 cause I have been too busy with Tofu -_-.
I do appreciate that you took the time to try it out (twice in fact). What I didn't appreciate was the segment of your first post where you said:
Quote:
Congratulations, you gave me a headache, I am not sure if it was from the Cigar I smoked earlier or your map, but it happened right around the time I was defeated. Your map is incredilbly hard to learn from a noob point of view, I have no doubt that you could find a cliche group of people that like it, but I don't. It gave me a headache, I lost interest and the UI hurts my eyes.
The rest of the post was alright. It just gave the impression that you looked at the dialogs for 20 seconds, decided you didn't like them and gave up. The only mention of actual gameplay was the leader hotkey. But anyway...moving on.
Quote:
Your UI is not clean and is cluttered, the font styles are all over the place, the text to background contrast is not high enough.
Can you specify which dialog you found this to be the case with? The tutorial and tip dialogs use similar text styles and have the same background, but all the others are different.
I'm actually in the middle of revamping the achievement dialog, because it's quite dated at this point (it's one of the few things that didn't get updated with 2.0).
I'm also confused by the green background comment you made in your first post. The only dialog with a green background is a small section of the unit tech tree dialog. If you're terran, you'll get the default terran background for a couple. Was it the default terran background that hurt your eyes?
Part of the problem with the dialogs is that I have a really high-end monitor, so the text is clearer for me than it might be for others. I've gone down to lower resolutions to check things from time to time, but not often enough, clearly.
I know the question "how do I make my map popular" has been asked dozens of times before, but it's about to be asked again.
I've recently recreated and revamped 'Formation Defense', but despite my best efforts, the number of hours played is either remaining stable or dropping (last I checked). I understand that E3 is occupying some gamers, it's summer and the middle of the week, but I'm completely at a loss for what more I can do. Here's what I already have going for me:
It's also worth noting that the original version of this game peaked at fourth overall for popularity when it was released, but I don't know if that helps or hurts me now with the re-release. Some people might just see the name and go "I've already seen everything in that game".
What else can I do?
The truth is that it is possible your map simply does not cater to the will of the people. I don't doubt that it is polished and that it is fun for those who enjoy the type of gameplay it offers. However, that is not enough to reach the top of the list. Certain gameplay types will never reach the top no matter what is put in. Take Smashcraft as an example.
The original version was released at a different time with a different map appetite on BNET. It is possible tastes have changed. Therefore, you can't expect 2.0 to behave the same as 1.0.
It sounds like you're doing a lot right in the promotion department. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that you've overlooked.
Yeah, I guess that could be the case, but I feel it's more an issue of a limited number of people actually seeing and trying it right now. I believe it to be good enough (gameplay wise) that once the popularity is high enough for more people to find it, it might skyrocket upwards. The problem is it just isn't getting that initial push that it needs.
Why it's not getting that push, I can't begin to guess. I mean, with all I've done to promote the map, it feels like a greater number of people should've had their curiosity piqued, but that just isn't the case.
So far, the limited number of players that have played the map are bookmarking it quite a bit, so I find that promising.
[Edit]: I just checked the popularity and it's lower than it was before the new release, which I just can't understand. The new release made it easier on lower difficulties (but still insanely tough higher up), more accessible to beginners, it's 10x more polished and been balanced way better than it was before... I think it's getting approx. 6 bookmarks a day though, even though it's popularity is practically empty.
Is it possible we have another DotA-style singularity occuring? Where people enter the game and just immediately enter a map lobby they know, which is always up on the first page?
@wingednosering: Go
Your map is too complex imo. Games has to be simple to make it to the top of the list imo, that when people play they'll feel like they are one of the best player. Also I think using base unit that people are already familiar with will help. You created brand new units, with its own stats. I don't think people like to learn new unit.
Think Star Battle. So easssyyy. We got Leviathan, Cruiser, Carrier. We already know that unit and in love with the unit. Newbie will pick their favorite mothership. People think their build order is the best. People act like they are the best and start ordering noob what to do.
Smashcraft, on the other hand, when newbie comes in, they don't know what to do, They don't know what hero can do what. They got destroyed instantly and boom they quit.
Very hard making games... I wish I knew... Like Mafia... This is purely my own opinion... But how's that even a video game? That's just so lame... I can understand the game mechanic in real life. It's essentially Phantom Mode. I play a lot in real life, using playing cards for determining the role. And you can read the facial expression of your friends to determine whether someone's serious or lying.. But putting it in video games with chat bar?? No facial expression, not even voice chat, And yet many people love it... Super lame... It's even more popular than Phantom Mode, which I think makes much more sense to be put as video game.
Now if you look at Debates... War of Words you put it in video games using chat bar... Doesn't work...
So Congrats to Mafia to find out that people loves to play that kind of game using chat bar...
Or look at Xel Naga Observer vs Rodrigo's ICJug's observer map? The XelNaga Observer is much much popular than Rodrigo's ICJug, while ICJug has much much more features... I don't know what's going on there...
The world is crazy my friend...
The less a player has to think to play your game, the more popular it will be.
Welcome to the McGamer age.
Yup, formation defense is "in the queue" for the news. But you pretty much have the most important stuff done. Once you get on the news you should get a bunch more feedback. I don't know what else to say though. The video was well done. I haven't actually played the map so I don't know how good it is. But polish the heck out of it if you haven't already.
I spent almost a full month just playing (nearly every night) with my main alpha tester in competitive mode. Nearly every day I polished more, made more balance changes, etc; I've put a ton of work into it (mostly competitive...the solo mode is pretty much 'classic' version now).
I feel confident in saying that there are no noticable bugs with 1-2 players, because the testing has been so intensive. Once more players get thrown in...I'm not sure how some of the new stuff will react. It should be fine, but that's why it's a beta still.
As for polish, it's already one of the most polished maps I've seen. I'm not trying to brag, but I've made some very impressive custom dialogs. The only thing that's a little off are the cases where I have a unit that doesn't have an icon or wireframe, and I've had to improvise. As we speak, I'm actually making custom icons to fix this.
I intend about 40 custom icons. I have 24 so far (estimating off the top of my head).
Hopefully that helps make it look a little more professional. I hate when you see a unit that has half coloured abilities and half desaturated team-coloured ones.
@Mephs: Go
Way to bum me out :P.
@Zelda: How large is this 'news queue'? Are we talking 'some time in the next week' or 'some time in the next month'?
@Maknyuzz: Go
The new competitive mode has a handy new feature...scouts. I don't know if you've played the game or watched the videos, but offensive units (competitive only) can be made into 'specialists'. One of these specialists is the Scout, which actually reports to you how many units of each type the enemy has (if it gets close enough to see for itself).
For example, it might say:
Then it makes a recommendation for what you should build to counter that combination. Like so:
(NOTE: The scout was intentionally designed to give so-so advice. The advice it gives is 100% accuracte, but it only grants the advice based upon the numbers you're given, so it doesn't know if the rangers are anti-bio or anti-mech, it just generalizes). This was done intentionally so good players still had a slight advantage...I wouldn't want a noob to be able to just blindly follow scout advice to win against a pro that watches the enemy base for himself.
It's absolutely fantastic for slightly evening out the playing field. My tester almost never beat me until I added in scouts. Once scouts were in, he managed quite a few wins.
The whole interface is nicely tucked ina corner and doesn't get in the way too :).
@Maknyuzz: Go
It's not that the map can't be complex. It just needs to have approachable complexity - easy to learn, impossible to master.
You should be able to jump in and have fun even if you don't necessarily understand all the rules yet. If that doesn't happen then, like you said, newbies will put off like PETA members at a butcher convention.
Mafia counteracts this somewhat by requiring thought to win. It then counteracts itself by being full or morons most of the time who do the most hilarious votes and cause their faction to lose.
@Mozared: Go
Sounds like a drinking game. ^_^
Mephs hit the nail on the head, formation defense is too complicated for the masses.
Mafia is mainly popular because of it's ability to allow trolls to run rampent, like Phantom Mode :) You play it knowing there is a very high possibility that you will be trolled, yet you play it anyways and then rage when it happens. This is because humans by nature are addicted to Drama.
When you said you did some really impressive dialogs I decided to take a look at your map, and I am going to say this in the nicest way possible, I was not impressed. They were simply dialogs, with a background for images, cluttered and hard to read - even on a 27" IPS screen.
If you want impressive dialogs; http://dogmai.org/tofu.jpg
I thought I was being a bit too harsh so I loaded up your map for a second time, and have it sitting on the other monitor.
I am really not impressed with the dialogs at all. The light blue on green background is like OMG my eyes, you do not put those two colours together, they simply do not have enough contrast. The button text on the next/exit tutorial is too big, try "StandardButton" or "TeamResourceButton". By the time I got to Psionic Enchanters in Tutorial Mode I had already lost interest - FYI, the first wave shouldn't start until YOU say it is okay for it to start in tutorial mode.
It is really fucken complicated, even with the tutorial mode, it doesn't explain clearly what build order you should do or anything. In the tutorial mode you should have a "Reset/Restart" button, not a defeat button. Congratulations, you gave me a headache, I am not sure if it was from the Cigar I smoked earlier or your map, but it happened right around the time I was defeated. Your map is incredilbly hard to learn from a noob point of view, I have no doubt that you could find a cliche group of people that like it, but I don't. It gave me a headache, I lost interest and the UI hurts my eyes.
Oh, and no hotkey to select your hero. You disabled control groups, fine enough. But didn't even add a custom hotkey for your hero like TAB or something, why do I have to run around the screen looking for my little hero who was standing next to a tower looking like a tower. I want a nice little bar on the right hand side of the screen that says, here is what you should build first, that will automatically come up if I am a new player say games <= 5, and after that on request.
Edit>
If you want to see good dialogs using just dialog items, search for "Dogmai's Phant3m" and load it single player. I did this like 6 months ago, long before Tofu's custom art UI. It simply uses dialog and dialog items, no custom art.
It still looks better than Phantom Mode now, even though they have had half a year to update their UI (and trust me they did after this was released). You don't even want to see Phant3m 2.0 which I stopped working on to finish Tofu, it blows this one out of the water, but it shows what can be done with simple dialogs and dialog items and no custom art.
I'm going to disagree with both Dogmai and Mephs in that simplicity isn't always the key to a popular map. If people only liked simple maps, DOTA would never have become popular map genre. You are lying if you claim that the game is simple or easy to understand. You have to learn a huge range of hero abilities, combos and counters. On top of that you have to learn whatever item system the game is implementing AND how those items piece together in recipes (if applicable) and what ones are appropriate for you. Let's not forget this can change dramatically for the same hero if you have a different build order or elect to fill a particular role (Carry/Tank/Support/Nuke etc)
Compared to a TD: You build towers. . . near a line on the ground. . . and you upgrade your them. Oh and maybe a hero and some cool spells. Done. The only complexity you might see is with different construction resources, TD builder races or a maze building TD.
Bottom line, DOTA is not simple by any means. . . and yet it is somehow massively popular.
(Might as well throw EVE out there while I'm at it. You can't claim it's not both popular and MASSIVELY complex)
So then what DO people like if simplicity isn't the single most important aspect?
Control
In any game, players generally want to have control over what happens to them. Even if they're losing, players take comfort in knowing that they are the reason they lost and that with proper control they could overcome any obstacle placed before them.
An example of lack of control is typically RNG. While RNG can be very cool, people usually hate RNG because they have no control over it and you can't strategize around it. Off the top of my head, there is a hero in Heroes of Newerth (Blacksmith) who has an RNG mechanic built into all of his spells. Every spell he casts has a chance to proc up to 3 clones of that spell on top of it (4 total). So you will be fighting Blacksmith and suddenly he'll land several 4x spells in a row and utterly dominate you. . . 5 levels lower than you . . . with 10hp. Alternatively his spells are rather weak without this proc so he could end up equally screwed by a bad streak.
It IS possible to make RNG useful and fun, though, if you don't push it. People typically prefer RNG in situations where you have a small chance to slow someone or you have a small chance to set someone on fire. Things where even if you proc it 5 times in a row, it's not going to completely break the game. This is because people LOVE disabling opponents, but hate being disabled (lack of control). Thus if you have 100% proc rates, people are going to love it and hate it. Keep this in mind as your proc rates will often revolve around whether this is a PvE or PvP map.
Intuitive Design
This is probably the only point I will concede as revolving around "the less I have to think the better." People usually don't mind a complex interface so long as it doesn't get in the way of playing the actual game. Thus if you have a character portrait you typically expect any stats or items to be located near this portrait. If you spread your stats all over the screen, the player spends too much time looking for the information they need and quickly become annoyed. This can even prevent the player from actually playing the game! "Don't shoot! I need 5mins to buy my gun!"
The situations for this are endless but there is two fundamental questions you should ask when designing your game:
Where would I expect to look for this if I was playing the game?
How many clicks did it take to find it?
Customization
You will often hear people talk about limiting the number of options a player has to choose to prevent them from being overwhelmed. What many don't realize is that this idea was based upon product sales for a retail business. When playing a game it's completely different!
Lack of customization often leads to very predictable or stale game play. Why? Because once you've learned the game, it doesn't change outside of content updates (if any). You've essentially "beaten" the game because it's reliably linear to a fault. This is typically why games with a linear story are short-lived without other game play modes regardless of how good the story is.
This doesn't mean you need to make infinite story arcs or countless options. There IS a point where you start to overwhelm the player, but you have considerably more leeway than you think. As with Intuitive Design, customization that adds dynamic play is good. Customization that adds more options just for the sake of having them is bad.
Bottom line: When someone starts saying "I wish I could do this instead" you probably don't have enough customization.
Personal Identity
This primarily relates to RPGs, Hero Arenas and various other game types where you had a single unit or small group of units that you control. So a TD or Tug of War map isn't going to have this as often.
Customization provides the foundation for this concept in that being able to personalize your unit/group allows you to create an "identity" for yourself. In most games players will typically refer to you by your color or race/hero/etc that you chose. This is where the "identity" starts. Your ultimate goal is to get to a place where players have to refer to each other by their screen name or in game name.
Why is this important? In any situation, the moment someone says your name your body reacts to it and "involves" itself. You can see this in real life situations, especially large social activities. When you refer to someone as "Dude, guy, person, you" they don't immediately respond and typically aren't engaged when they do. Yet when you refer to someone by their name or nickname the reaction is almost immediate. They know you're talking to them and their attention is focused on whomever spoke to them.
Just think about it for a minute: When you're in a crowded room you often can't really hear what's going on around you, but the moment your name is mentioned (even if it's not directed at you) you suddenly hear that conversation above everything else.
Whether players admit this or not, the same thing happens in games. If you've ever played an MMO, just think about a time where you're in a PUG (pick up group) and someone refers to you by your class (ignoring spec/role/profession, whatever). Even if you are the only player with that class in the party you frequently ask "who me?" Sometimes you don't even notice it at all!
But when they use your name, you're considerably more likely to see the comment and engage with the party. You can experiment with this yourself! The next time you're a group with strangers, refer to them by name or by their class to see the difference in their response. You can typically see a marked improvement in the friendliness of groups that use player names to communicate.
This particular element will make people enjoy your game more because they develop an identity rather than a nameless class. They become immersed and take everything that happens in the game personally. You are for more likely to care about a game when you think it affects you in some way.
Replay Value
This is probably the most important aspect of any game you want to become popular and stay that way. If you have a story that is "beatable" you're already at a disadvantage because once beaten you must now provide ways to create additional gameplay that will feel new and unexplored without actually creating a new story. Now the good news is that you have a lot of options for overcoming this.
PvP Arenas: This is the easiest way to provide replay value, but it is also the hardest to get right. If your game wasn't designed for PvP, adding it will often ruin the game in the player's eyes. You can see this by looking at many MMOs that suddenly added PvP and then tanked immediately thereafter. You want to avoid this. If your game could adapt to a PvP setting it's worth looking at, but if it's something like a TBS single player campaign, attempting to add PvP after the fact could prove disastrous given that the entire game was based around one player.
Non-Linear Story: This is significantly harder to pull-off, but nearly risk free in that you create the illusion of a different story without changing the overall progression of the plot. You could do this by providing choices along the campaign that unlock/lock parts of the story. You could even make what order you complete events in the story optional. In the end, the most important thing to remember is that it makes sense. There still needs to be a fairly linear flow in the plot that is easy to follow and understand while allowing for multiple paths through it.
Non-Linear Gameplay: If your game doesn't have a story, you can still create non-linear gameplay. One great example of this would be Nazi Zombies in the CoD series. While your ultimate goal is to get to a particular area in the game and then get the super weapons, you can pick whatever weapons you want along the way, unlock aspects of the map when you want and all in whatever order you want. Suddenly it's not just "lets race here, grab a shotgun, GG!" You now decide whether certain guns in certain locations would allow you to survive longer.
Multiple Characters/Classes/Races This is a pretty universal concept and ties into Customization. Even with multiple story arcs, non-linear this and PvP that, your game can get boring very quickly without what I will call "styles" to switch between. I call it a style because all characters/classes/races/rolls/personalities etc boil down to their style of play. That style is what provides replay value. When you start to get bored of a certain play style you can switch styles and suddenly the game is fun again. Having a dynamic range of styles will prevent your players from getting burnt out by the same style.
Unlocks/Achievements Now this is fairly controversial in that some people HATE achievements, but others LOVE them. Unlocks are typically well liked, however, because they add a new level of progression. Achievements are just for bragging rights and often involve doing ridiculous things to get them. Thus, this really boils down to your opinion and what you enjoy.
It is important that you don't forget why you have Unlocks or Achievements should you decide to add them. Why? Because you could make the game even more linear if you tie unlocks to "beat the game with blah blah" or "reach Level X" or "kill N baddies." Especially if the unlock is a better version of whatever you are currently using. Then all you've created is weapon tiers or difficulty levels. Sure, those are nice, but they don't make good Unlocks/Achievements on their own.
I find that anything relating to your linear progression through the game should be tied to Achievements with a few Unlocks sprinkled throughout. The majority of your Unlocks should almost be like easter eggs or side-options where you have to go above and beyond what the game asked for to get them, but not to the point where you're just racking up X somethings for Y minutes on level Z.
A good Unlock: Free Hot Babe #2 (Different from #1 saved for the mission) on the Damsel in Distress Mission to unlock the Hot Babe class!
A bad Unlock: Kill 10 Zombies to unlock the Pistol Weapon! (Ugh. . . it's a quest!)
A good Achievement: Kill all 50 Zombie with your fists on Damsel in Distress Mission while naked!
A bad Achievement: Kill 10 Zombies (I think I've seen this before. . .)
Yes, this post is massive, but I think that this kind of information is worth spreading.
If you just skipped to the end of this without reading all of it, chances are your map sucks and you should go die in a hole anyways.
I'm pretty sure God might hate you too. . .
Just sayin'. . . ;P
I liked your post except for this part. Perhaps it is just that you're used to the crap that is out on BNET at the moment? Needless to say, TD can have more complexity than you hinted at.
I did a lot of generalizing in my post so I am definitely aware that TDs can be complex, but you can agree that compared to DOTA, TDs aren't nearly as complex, yes?
That was the purpose of the comparison. DOTA has much more room to be complex without effort whereas TDs must struggle just to reach the level of complexity that DOTA starts at.
When you learn a TD, not a lot changes after that.
When you learn a DOTA map, everything changes when you switch to a different hero.
@DogmaiSEA: Go
Yeah, I've seen tofu. The dialogs are great, no denying it. But you also had the advantage of having a whole new UI layout. You hide the info panel, alter this, alter that...it's a lot easier to pull off something great.
Formation Defense is a srategy game, which means every part of the blizzard UI is necessary. I had to alter everything to fit around the interface without cluttering it more. That's the difficulty of making good dialogs. Presenting the information in the best possible way without cluttering the screen.
Tofu has five icons and a few long bars to represent health and such. And your scoreboard at the top.
Formation Defense has two full tech trees, a tip interface, multiboard, tutorial dialog, scout report, and six pages of achievements. Getting all of that information on the screen, without cluttering things up, and presenting them all in a nice way is very time consuming, especially when you're working around Blizzard's already clunky UI.
I didn't say my dialogs were the best, I said I thought they were impressive. Why? Not necessarily because they're pretty (although they look a lot better than the average dialog flying around B-Net), but because so much informaiton can be found on them. Like ProzaicMuse said, an important part of creating a complex game is giving users access to information quickly. The tech trees, tip system, and achievement dialogs all give you all of the information you need in 1 click (three tops if you need to sort through achievments).
Finally, after all the negativity that's been directed at Tofu (not by me, I might add...I think it looks great), I would have thought you'd learned how important constructive feedback is, instead of simply trashing somebody's project.
The only constructive suggestion in your post was the idea of a hotkey for the leader. I used to have one, but got rid of it because it was never, ever used.
Dogmai's post is the first negative response I've gotten. Everything else has been positive. I am already attempting to flatten out the difficulty curve a bit. 2.0 introduced a wide variety of changes that help with tackling the difficulty curve (tips, new tutorial, refined tech trees, scouting reports, flashing tip icons, sight sharing for competitive, etc; ).
The difficulty settings were also scaled back a fair bit. I intend to make the game more user friendly with every update. I already suspected it might be a sticking point for some people.
I have another update (2.2) coming some time today, which should (once again) make the low difficulty settings easier.
Wow Dogmai! Your Phantom is wayyy better than the phantom in first pages.
Okay you can't compare Dota ...
I don't have the time to respond in Detail, but I played Dota since Eul's. I have the original Beta tests of Guinsoo's Dota, fuck Icefrog even beta tested the original Tofu in 2004. Dota started out with 24 heroes from memory, and in essence it is a simple game, you have 3 abilities and an ultimate - everyone already knew how to use heroes because they were in the Melee game, and the majority of popular maps at the time before Dota were hero arenas.
Dota was very simple when it started out - yes it is complex now for a player to learn from scratch, but it wasn't when it started its popularity. It is hard for me to comment on how hard it is to learn as I have played it for 8 years, I know every hero and item like the back of my hand, exactly what should be done in any situation, this is just through experience.
Dota is successful because 1) Allstars added sounds (Megakill, Ultrakill etc) - Which is why Guinsoo's version won the Dota wars. 2) Dota allows for the most basic human instinct to come forward - being selfish. Dota is a team game but people focus on the kills, I have a whole essay on this subject of why dota succeeded but those are the two most basic reasons - the gameplay in itself is simple. Hero, 3 abilties, 1 Ultimate, 3 lanes, go.
My post is the first negative because no one from my level (UI wise) has given you feedback yet, I was the first and as such, I expect you can do a lot better and have a lot of faith in you. I was actually trying really hard to be nice cause I know lately most of my posts have been coming off as an hardass.
No! Wrong - with the utmost respect. The only thing that changes are the abilities, items stay the same, shops stay the same, creeps stay the same, lanes stay the same, the only thing that changes are 4 little variables known as abilities. Yes technically, stats, movement speed, change as well - but for arguments sakes the only thing that changes are abilities, the game itself is the same.
That is why I said go look at Phant3m.
Mate, haters gonna hate, and then they hate me or my advertising decisions not Tofu itself. Very few people actually hate the map, why? Cause no one has played it to form an opinion of it. There is a huge difference, and I thought especially for me, that I was being really nice and giving you good solid honest feedback. You should be proud that I even took the time to go look at your map and write up an honest opinion of what I thought cause I am as busy as a mofo atm. I gave you a shitload of constructive critism, re-read my post again.
Your UI is not clean and is cluttered, the font styles are all over the place, the text to background contrast is not high enough. I said these things from a designer point of view giving you advice how to improve it, and whilst Helral is without a doubt the Godfather of Custom UI, I am one of the top designers that has shown off his UI work here at Sc2Mapster so far, the same as ProzaicMuse is one of site's best Data editors, when Prozaic speaks I listen out of respect for him not only as a person, but for his skill level. I am no doubt harsher than most here at Sc2Mapster, but that is because I want the community to succeed in creating a higher standard in custom maps.
When I look back in my life the teachers that were nice and my mates, they can all go fk themselves because in the end they taught me nothing. It was the ones I hated at school, that gave me no slack, no room for excuses, that pushed me as far as I could go by being hardasses, that I have the utmost respect for now because they are they alone allowed me to achieve more than I ever would have done if left to my own devices.
Yes I know but they did a good job of *cough*borrowing*cough* my ideas and making sure to trash my map as best as they could - all is detailed on my blog. Zzz... Not to worry, Phant3m 2.0 is a fuckload better than what you see and I will be releasing it after Tofu is released.
Two things;
Wait, so now you started Tofu back in 2004, way before SC2 was even planned? I know it's probably a typo, but it's becoming a fad - with the way this is going, next post we're gonna hear that you actually came up with Tofu back in '94, after playing through Warcraft: Orcs & Humans =P
Errr, yeah, but I don't consider that much of an argument. What you're doing is stacking overarching terms on eachother. In that sense you can pretty much call every game "simple" as it's always a showdown of PvE or PvP in which a correct set of actions lead to a win while a wrong set of actions lead to a loss. Your point isn't untrue per se, but you aren't mentioning the high skill cap, which I think is a fairly important component to it's popularity.
And on a sidenote - attach us that essay? It seems fairly ignorant to state that DOTA is about being selfish. I can't speak for the older DOTAs as - though I did play them - it's been ages ago, but definitely games that are out right now (like LoL) rely heavily on teamwork because every common situation is pretty much unwinnable on your own. Not to mention there's a buttload of abilities that need to be used on a teammate for optimal effect. I guess there's no direct 'healing class' in LoL, but it's as close as you can get.
Yes, Tofu was created in 2004, Pendragon and Icefrog were beta testers, I got sidetrackked in early 2005, sent the map to Ice, never heard back. It actually is quite similar to what we have now, dark blue castle terrain, 4 abilities 1 ultimate, 6v6, dynamic map changes, even had portals. (Dryeyece came up with the portals for Tofu Sc2 by himself one night, I never told him they were in the original map, funny how two great minds think alike, it was uncanny, he is awesome).
I will publish the essay when I release Tofu, cause it has a shitload about the history of Tofu and Dota in there as well, and obviously I want to release it at the opportune moment.
Never confuse Pro Dota with Pub Dota. The majority of the community is Pub, not Pro. Dota succeeded because of the Pub community, not because of the few Pro teams in China or Europe, Dota's esport scene is no where near Sc2's level, cause no one wants to watch a one hour game. And yes, Dota now as an extremely high learning curve - that is if you want to know everything, the same as Pro Sc2. Dota falls in line with other Blizzard games, easy to pick up, impossible to master, the learning curve on Dota is no higher than Sc2, why do you think I never ladder and yet I can pwn 95% of the Garena community, simply because I have invested 8 years into Dota and have had asbolutely no time to learn Sc2 cause I have been too busy with Tofu -_-.
I do appreciate that you took the time to try it out (twice in fact). What I didn't appreciate was the segment of your first post where you said:
The rest of the post was alright. It just gave the impression that you looked at the dialogs for 20 seconds, decided you didn't like them and gave up. The only mention of actual gameplay was the leader hotkey. But anyway...moving on.
Can you specify which dialog you found this to be the case with? The tutorial and tip dialogs use similar text styles and have the same background, but all the others are different.
I'm actually in the middle of revamping the achievement dialog, because it's quite dated at this point (it's one of the few things that didn't get updated with 2.0).
I'm also confused by the green background comment you made in your first post. The only dialog with a green background is a small section of the unit tech tree dialog. If you're terran, you'll get the default terran background for a couple. Was it the default terran background that hurt your eyes?
Part of the problem with the dialogs is that I have a really high-end monitor, so the text is clearer for me than it might be for others. I've gone down to lower resolutions to check things from time to time, but not often enough, clearly.