(I agree with LaurenI and there will be some duplicate points since they posted while I was writing my essay and I'm too lazy to take those parts out)
So I've played about 20 or 30 games in the past few days and I have quite a bit of feedback. It's going to be a long post and I'll probably jump around a bit but I'll try my best to organize it.
First off I'll list the huge bugs/flaws that I've found that aren't really matters of opinion in most important to less important order.
The initial waves aren't balanced at all, the terran wave gives almost no exp or gold, the zerg wave gives a ton of exp and some gold, and the protoss wave gives a bit more gold than the zerg one and a bit less exp. Facing the zerg wave it takes about 4 waves to hit level 4 where if i were vs the terran wave I'd be maybe a bit into level 2. All the initial waves should give the same amount of exp and gold to prevent such huge advantages.
Whenever you walk by the unit shop it deselects your character, this is by far the most stupid, annoying thing I have ever encountered in any game /rage. Also the selection area for it is too small, I understand you want people to return to base to upgrade army but you should be able to select new troops from anywhere in the base, with selection like the main base.
It's far easier to slip into the zerg's base and nuke all their harvesters than the other bases since they have 2 ramps into the middle both guarded by only 1 spine crawler that tends to die first.
Broodlings can't be pushed and can't be killed. I also think that all spawned broodlings should die when the broodlord that spawned them die. It's annoying having things hit your stuff and being able to do absolutely nothing to stop them.
Some assorted hero bugs I've found; brutalisks charge does stun moving heroes most of the time, novas snipe will sometimes have infinite range if she starts the cast at the same time she loses vision of the target. The infested marine guy sometimes gets stuck chasing a hero with drain life and can easily get dragged into the base defense.
Now I'll get into stuff that's really just my opinion, i could be wrong or it could just not be how you want the map to play.
Overall, splash damage abilities feel too good, the fact that you can wipe an entire wave with them makes all low tier units worthless, a unit needs at least 500 hp to even be worth considering to build, anything less and you're just feeding your opponents more exp and gold. this gives toss an advantage since all of their units have more hp than the other races.
It would be nice if there was some way to protect your probes from harrassment. Something like an ability on the main base that phases out all of your workers for 20-30 seconds but allows them to continue mining. I think 50 minerals would be a fair price for it since it will save you a bunch of money but you have to be paying attention and be able to kill the enemy hero in time. Another idea would be to add an upgrade for maybe 50 gold 500 minerals that allows you to produce 2 workers at once and double larva spawn speed, so you could at least recover faster late game.
The cost of upgrading should also be standardized across the 3 teams. Either split terran's upgrades up a bit or merge the other races into the basic 3.
I don't like being limited to only 3 repairs, especially because once a spawn building goes down it's gg. I think the cost to repair should start at 50 gold and just go up by 25 each time you use it.
That's all I can think of for now as far as general balance. I know it might seems like I hate the map from all the negatives I listed but I don't, I'm just trying to give constructive criticism so a map i like gets even better. I'll post my thoughts on each of the heroes in the next post to prevent this from getting any longer.
edit: wow this is a lot longer than I thought once I hit post, glad I got all of this out of my system.
First I'd like to start with stuns, most of them don't really benefit from leveling them, in the case of melee heroes you're better off leaving them at level one as long as possible so you can spam them with the least investment into intelligence. I think it would be a good idea to have the stun duration scale with the level as well as the damage. For example I think gregors stun is 3 seconds now, with my suggestion it would start at maybe 2 seconds and gain .2-.3 per level.
Attack: unless I'm playing a melee hero I tend to leave this stat to near last, abilities just give better damage for less investment and can be spammed almost endlessly. very powerful once you max it but it takes awhile to get there.
Armor: Probably the worst of the stats, nice if you're tanking the enemy army but since you can nuke it all in the blink of an eye why bother. Doesn't provide enough of a benefit to take it over attack vs another hero if you're going to be slugging it out.
Health: Another stat that I mostly ignore except on melee, You want enough that you can survive your opponents combo but beyond that it's not as important as being able to kill the enemy yourself.
Intelligence: This is the stat I find most of my points going into on most heroes. This stat gives enough regen that you can spam pretty much everyone's abilities non-stop and avoid taking damage. If you want to tone down the aoe-fest nerfing the regen this provides is probably a good place to start.
speed: the most important stat, let's you abuse your range vs melee, chase for the kill as both, and run away if you need to as long as you invest more than your opponent. Also lets you grab power-ups and get back to your lane in a timely fashion.
Now for the heroes.
The medic:
Overall I think he's either the worst or 2nd worst hero in the game. He has decent survivability and his ultimate can farm fairly well but he just puts out no damage at all vs other heroes. The heal is nice but the shield is just better for survivability. The spider mine does meh damage but it'll never actually hit an enemy hero who isn't blind.
How to improve him:
I think the heal should be replaced with something else, preferably something that stuns or slows to combo with his other 2 damage skills. It would also be cool if his shield protected him from stuns and/or slows while it's up and if the attack that applies it doesn't break the shield.
Nova: Very similar to kerrigan and the HT, probably the weaker of the three she's still a good hero, snipe is really powerful but there's plenty of warning to get out of range or stun.
gregor: solid hero that's definitely the best of the melee heroes. his jump probably has a bit too short of a cooldown and there's really no reason to level it as the lower mana cost of level 1 lets you spam it without needing to invest in energy and his seeker missile is better for farming waves anyway.
DT: another decent hero, death grip is also probably on too short of a cooldown and his x feels pretty worthless for farming compared to the other aoe skills. His ultimate is useful vs big army targets but not that great vs enemy heroes.
HT: Probably the best overall hero He doesn't have the crazy late game of kerrigan but his early game is better and he tends to farm armies better. he also has pretty good survivability with his x and c. On the other hand his z is worthless beyond the very early game, I usually skip leveling it in favor of more stats once I can.
Preserver/Shockwave guy: This hero is both good and incredibly bad at the same time. Shockwave is a pretty amazing army farmer, but all of his other skills are either meh or just bad. His z just feels like a weaker snipe but on the whole it's not the worst. Phase shift is worthless from what I've seen of it, It doesn't prevent things like snipe which is the majority of the damage you'll be taking. Then there's his ultimate, I guess it looks pretty? As far as I can tell it does no damage and has no range.
Infested marine: This guy is really less of a melee hero and more like a melee range caster. All of his abilities are good but require a ton of mana to use, meaning you can't invest in actually melee stats. I think he should get the gregor treatment and switch either his ultimate or slime move over to an hp cost to combo with his drain life ability and reduce his mana consumption.
brutalisk: Everything I've seen of this guy so far has been pretty underwhelming. His charge is like death grip, only in reverse and worse, it moves you into danger and doesn't even stun for as long. his fear is somewhat useful, but things move so fast you can't really hit them while they flee, if you're lucky they run into your cannons. His infection move is good vs tier 3-4 army but it's useless vs heroes so it's not that threatening. Then his ultimate is just a weird concept for a melee unit, why would you want to push something away from you? You want them as close as possible so you can hit them.
Kerrigan: she has a monstrous late game, most non-melee heroes tend to die in one combo and you can easily heal up any damage you took with z. However she has a very weak early game and if you survive her combo or dodge her ulti you can do fairly well vs her. I think she could stand to lose some distance on her ultimate and maybe a little damage since it stuns and is instant cast. In exchange turn her c into splash damage that she can farm with early game.
First off all great feed back. This is the kind of stuff that will really improve the map. I appreciate it.
Now to get started:
The initial waves I did was not balanced towards exp/gold rate, but army strength. I made it so no wave is stronger than the other w/o hero support. So from what I'm seeing here the zerg vs terran lane needs more units? That can easily be accomplished.
I'll remove the hero deselection from the spawn building. I did this so it was a quick way to access it, but I have run into the same issue and it does tend to be annoying. As for being able to access it from anywhere, it was originally like this, but I had to change it to the way it is now, due to the defense changes and the buff you get on your defenses. This will stay the same. I like making it so if you leave your lane with your hero the enemy will advance on you.
I really don't know what to do with the zerg base as for the defenses. I orginally had a middle ramp with an additional 2 defenses there, but the problem with that is when the B.O.B. got close to it, it was pretty much zerg's GG. I agree something needs to be done here, but I don't know what.
I'm going to remove the broodlord altogether, and add in some big air unit and reduce the corrupters dmg back down.
I really like the phase out ability on your workers and also the double worker production idea. I'll get this working.
I'll standardize the upgrades across the races.
I limited the repairs to 3 to try to make the games shorter, but I'll try your idea and we'll see how it goes.
LaurenI thanks for pointing out the bug with valac and the bob unit that's a pretty big deal and will be fixed ;p
Hero Section Response:
As for the stuns. Their duration does not increase on any ability. It's a set duration. It may feel like it, but trust me it's a static time.
Attack - Casters really shouldn't worry about this, as they should focus more on this abilities then this IMO.
Armor - Idk as a melee hero I tend to find this usefull. Lets me live longer for sure, but I see your point.
Heath - Agreed. This is just to give people options.
Int - I've change this damn stat so many times with the regen. I had to give enough regen where the game was still fast paced enough to cast spells. I could lower the regen a lil bit if it's now still too strong.
So for the overall AOE abilities it seems to be a general consensus to lower the dmg that they do considerably. I mean honestly should a rank 5 AOE spell not 1 shot t1/t2 units? Other than rank 5, I can scale back the dmg.
Kristo: Love your ideas here. Will make these changes. I agree that he is super weak and def needs to be fixed. I just couldn't think of how.
Remi: She really is a killing machine. I don't think she's either being played right or given enough credit. I WRECK people when I use her. She is def more suited on taking out melee heroes vs casters though based on her bind ability. I honestly don't see any issues with her.
Gregor: I will make it so rank 1 of his leap has a long cooldown and with each rank it reduces it. Also I will lower the stun duration.
Akeru: I will do the same with death grip as I will do for leap. I made his X ability not target heroes because in combo with death grip you could pretty much lock down a hero and that was too op. As for his ultimate, I can increase the dmg it does vs heroes. This has been changed the most out of all abilities. It went from retarded OP as shit to now looks like too weak. He used to be able to take out 2 heroes by himself with just his ult lol
Saru: So all of his abilities needs to be down scaled in damage?
Nerix: I will make it so phase shift makes him invuln, I thought it did this, but I guess not. I can increase the dmg of his ult. It does move slow but it does do dmg, but just not enough apparently. I could also add a slow effect when hit by it?
Darosa: I like the thought of making his constricting slime ability cost life. I will also lower the mana cost so you can put points into stats. Also he is the only hero who has splash on his default attack.
Valac: His stun on charge is 1.5 seconds like all the others. Yes it moves you into damage but that's how charges works lol. Use it wisely. I will make it so the terrify roar ability makes them run around way slower so its more manageable. I will also make an inflate version that u can cast on heroic units, that is a dot or something similar. His ult ya it pushes back but it's nice to help push the lane back and ya I've ran out of abilities so it is what it is ;p
Kerana: Will reduce the damage and the range on her ult. Her C ability already deals splash damage. So your saying increase it
Other thoughts:
Before making the above changes I'll wait for replies on questions asked. Keep up the good suggestions/input everyone I once again appreciate it.
UPDATE:
Just thought up an excellent idea to deal with melee and the ability costs. I'm going to make it so Melee heroes start with 0 energy and they get energy per attack they land with no regen rate. The more points you put into INT will increase the energy u get per attack. This should make it better so you can focus more on your attack/armor/health attributes.
Also going to either do map the map bigger and include expos that you can setup OR do an additional mode that players can vote on either being classical or this new mode. Which would be better?
i just payed two game in a row against remi with her and i lost both times due to snipe
most of kerana's abilities are usless except for transfusion and her ultimate so increase effect of transfusion and buff the other two spells quite simpily sh can't touch rimi because of snipe reduce the damage on rimi's snipe so it can two sho early heros!!!!!!!!!!
I don't think snipe is a bad idea against enemy heroes, but I do have a problem with it being used on structures, especially when it one-shots unupgraded turrets that have been otherwise safe most of the game due to smart lane control. On units and heroes, it's fine as it has enough windup and a pretty blatant tell, so I figure if you get hit by it you deserve the damage. If anything, I actually find Remi to be one of the weaker heroes due to her nuke which is generally inferior to Valac/Saru's AoE spells until it starts hitting max level.
Valac inflate skill
This is just another minor observation, but an enemy killed by inflate or the surrounding AoE doesn't give a gold bounty. This may be intentional, though.
Preserver Hero phase shift
I managed to kill a preserver in phase shift the other day and he couldn't respawn afterwards, which caused him to leave the game in frustration. I don't remember how I killed him, but I remember I was playing Remi and I'm guessing it was one of those infinite range snipes that occasionally happens.
AoE spells and unit health upgrade
You stated that you don't want to reduce rank 5 AoE damage, and I can kind of see the idea as it takes so long to reach rank 5; however, the problem with this is that it still eventually happens, and when it does the map is instantly stripped of any tactical reason to use low-HP units. High damage AoE spells aren't necessarily a bad thing, as I like to use them to kill enemy heroes at the end of a combo of stuns and attacks. It's the ability to wipe out entire armies that's the big issue.
I think there is an alternate solution to weakening AoE skills that can solve this issue: you can make the health upgrade for army units much more powerful, or make it a percentage increase from base or something. As things stand, the health upgrade gives 10HP per level. If you were able to acquire all 20 levels of it (completely impractical, as most games never see upgrades beyond 9 or so in weapons and armor), your units would have a 200 HP bonus, which brings the starting units up to around 300HP, still too weak to survive most rank 5 AoE. So the health upgrade is more or less a waste when you could be getting more damage or armor for the same cost! By increasing the potency of this upgrade, you'd be creating a way for armies who invest in low-tech units to stay relevant even in the presence of massive AoE damage, and thus add more tactical complexity to the game. This could also benefit an army's workers, giving them some defense against the opponent running in and wiping out all mining capability.
If you do choose to increase the health upgrade's strength, do so with caution, especially if you choose a percentile approach, as you may end up making tier 3 units even more necessary instead of providing a justification to use weaker ones. I suggest each upgrade gives low HP units a significant increase, and high HP units a more minor one, so we don't end up just fighting massed 4000HP Ultralisks or something. The idea is to give weaker units the ability to survive 2 and eventually 3 or 4 AoE spells.
Zerg static defenses
From what you said earlier, it seemed like the problem with having only one entrance covered by two turrets was that the turrets could hit other players' B.O.B., virtually guaranteeing a Zerg win if it got close enough. I'd like to know how this is different from the way it is for the other two races right now, as they have a single entrance covered by two turrets, and if you get close enough to it with B.O.B. it's pretty much the same deal. I'd think with a bit of clever map restructuring you could find a way so that the top spine crawlers both covered a single entrance as well as their respective sides.
Wow can't believe you could target buildings with snipe. Def a huge bug and already fixed. Thought I tested all the spells vs buildings, guess I missed one. What's interesting about you saying that it's weaker is ALL hero ult's that are AOE deal the SAME dmg, so it I guess just seems like a smaller amount? I mean I could increase the damage at little, but I mean they all deal the same amount.
Ya Valac's inflate ability is the only one that's based on triggers so it makes sense that gold isn't rewarded from kills. I'll factor that in.
Ya I will look into phase shift more.
As for the life upgrade being more useful I like this idea and it would save me lots of work haha. Yes I would also agree the hp would only affect T1 and prob T2 units more then it would T3/T4.
As for the way Zerg worked it was different because they had a ramp to the left and the right and a ramp to the north and the north also had 2 more turrets so zerg had six altogether. I will rearange the base to accommodate.
UPDATE:
I don't know why, but I've spent the last hour trying to rework the terrain where it would work out so zerg's base works like the others and I can't get it to work right.
Ya that's exactly what I was trying to do, but it just isn't working out. It's very wonky because the lanes are a set width and for some reason the diagonal lanes are larger then the horizontal lanes. I even tried removing the entire zerg base completely and having lots of free terrain to work with and I still could not get the zerg base to have two open sides and be able to cover a northern ramp. It just doesn't work right. After an hour or so my brain was fried from school etc. I'll mess around with it some more today.
the diagional ones are wider because when you turn a say 20 x 20 square on its side its true wideth and hight is now 28 instead of 20 spo its has close to a 50% wider affect when you are traveling in a straight vertical or horsantal line the same aplies with a regular one traveling on a diagional you have to use a much smaller tool tip or click on the on that has the angle and switch between the two as needed or you could use the circle tool tip and for go all those troubles.
The starting armies do seem pretty similar in terms of combat ability, but not in reward for killing them, I'll make up some numbers to try and illustrate my point. Let's say the starting armies consist of 8 zealots 12 marines and 16 zerglings (just random convenient numbers). Let's also say that each zealot gives 4 gold and 20 exp, to make it balanced each marine would then give 3 gold 15 exp and each ling would give 2 gold 10 exp. Right now it feels as if each marine is only giving 5 exp and 2 gold while each ling is giving 12-15 exp.
For some reason I thought the other stuns were 3 seconds while charge was only 1.5, though i don't actually know where i got that idea. The scaling stun duration was just my idea for how to make leveling stuns worth it (under the mistaken assumption that they were 3 seconds now). Your idea for the decreasing cooldown is probably better since the stun numbers are shorter than I thought.
I think the best way to address the aoe problem is to buff the hp upgrade to provide a larger flat bonus. For example if it gave 50 more hp to every unit that's a big deal for a marine, but a BC already has something like 1.5k, so what's another 50.
Kristo: I thought of an actualy abilty to replace the heal with, I'll leave the name and exact numbers up to you. My general idea of his combo would be something like Shield before you run in then throw out your ult, slow the target so they take longer to get out from under it and put the mine in their path for extra damage.
As for the ability: The common cold (working title)
Infect your target with the common cold, Aside from the sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy, head, and fever the affected unit also takes X damage a second for Y seconds, has their movement speed reduced by 30ish?% and (maybe?) Attack speed slowed by 15ish%.
The duration should probably be about the same as other slows in the game and the overall damage should be about 50-75% of kerana's dot. If you wanted to you could also give it a chance to spread to nearby units every time it deals damage as if they were spreading the cold, though making only the main target able to spread it would probably be a good idea. I feel like 30% might be a bit low for the slow but the ability can potentially be doing a lot of things so I didn't want to go overboard, and I'm not sure exactly how strong the other slows are.
Remi: I didn't mean to imply she's weak, I think she's perfectly balanced, just I've had better results with the other two.
Gregor: Stun duration is fine, it's more the fact that he could spam it endlessly if he never leveled it, Increased cooldown alone should fix it.
Akeru: I wasn't complaining about his X not being able to target heroes, it just doesn't seem to do enough damage to the army compared to say Remi's sticky grenade.
Saru: It's not quite his damage that makes me think he's the best, more like it's just his skill-set. His X and C can keep you off him all day and his V wipes your army and heals whatever damage he's taken to his health. He's not the best hero killer but he feels like the best lane pusher, which is what wins games.
Nerix: I've hardly ever used his ult but from what I've seen it makes a big ball right in front of him that doesn't go anywhere, then it makes a bunch of little balls that go all over the place and 90% of them don't hit anything. I'm not sure if I've just been using it wrong but it's never really done much for me.
Darosa: Funny I never noticed his splash, probably because I'm always pumping int for his great spells.
Kerana: I think a slight damage nerf on he ultimate would be good, and i don't really see a need for it to go so far past her sight range though it is fun killing people you can't see, I was in a game while I was typing those posts up where I ended up solo vs saru and nerix and my ultimate at one point one shotted both of them from near full hp. I was probably just higher level than them since I go army light to give less exp, and they probably didn't invest in HP, but it left an impression.
As for her C, I've tried using it to farm army early on like I would with shockwave or sticky grenade and it only ever seemed to do single target damage. It might be that you need the target to be on fire for the aoe damage to happen/be noticeable but enemies don't really have the hp at that stage to survive the fire dot so she has no farming/pushing ability before her ultimate.
Been playing games pretty consistently, and I have to say that I think that most of the Heroes are...fairly balanced. The Nerix shockwave ability gets overpowered in the later levels, but only against Zerg, as far as I can tell. Mainly because it wipes out 3/4 of the units, just because they all have such low health. Seems a bit imbalanced, but at the same time it's not as useful against Terran, so I don't think it's the ability, I think it's the Zerg units.
A fun game, though. =)
Do you mind if I add you? It might be fun to play a few games with the creator, some time.
So I think I found my new favorite way to play Akeru, I got nothing buy 1 level in death grip and his ultimate and leveled his speed boost whenever I could. Aside from that, I saved every point for point buy and as soon as it unlocked it was glorious. very first thing I did was go solo the zergs top spine crawler (they had built almost no troops vs us since we hadn't vs them) and proceeded to kill them 2 vs 1 then solo down the spawning pool.
Also on a bit of a side note, I've discovered a slight respect for Valac. If you dump all his points into int he can at least keep a hero CC'd pretty much forever, well forever if his charge wasn't so incredibly buggy. It'll take you forever to actually kill anyone but they can't do anything about it. So if his charge ever gets fixed he'll definitely need a longer cooldown on his fear move since perma CC isn't really fun. As for his charge bug it seems to almost drop a stun "mine" at the end and if you're moving away it won't trigger and just sit there invisible until you walk over it again, at which point it will actually stun you even 5 minute later.
lol interesting. I'm about to release the newest version which needs some serious testing with all the changes implemented.
As for valac's charge ya it's wonky, but it works if you mess with it. I tried to get people help me with it, but had no luck. I made it, but it doesn't work exactly how it should.
Health army increase now increases life based on tiers. Tier 1 +40, T2 +30, T3 +20, T4 +10
Added more starting units to the Zerg vs Terran lane. Also fixed the experience and gold rate that zerglings we're yielding. Cut in half
Walking up to the spawn building, now no longer de-selects your hero.
Army upgrades now affect your workers.
Added a new ability called "Defensive Shields" which adds the hardened shield ability to all of your works for 20 seconds (reduces incoming damage to 10) and can be used every 3 minutes for 25 gold.
Added a new base research called "Increase Production" that gives the command center and nexus an additional 5 que. Think of it like having a reactor built on. Costs 3200 minerals and 125 gold and takes 60 seconds to research. Also for the zerg it reduces the spawn time on larva by half.
Lowered xp from base defenses to 50 from 100.
Reduced initial damage defenses do to heroic targets.
Fixed zerg's base back to how it was originally with 1 ramp and 2 extra defenses.
Zerg upgrades are now combined across the board. So no longer missile/melee upgrades. All into one.
The broodlords attack has now been changed to launch a series of units that suicide into other units. It's pretty cool.
Added autocast ability for the corrupters and they will only cast on targets with 500+ life (non-heroic) also reduced their base damage.
The base repair ability now costs a base of 50 gold and goes up in increments of 25.
Movement abilities like death grip etc can no longer target B.O.B.
Heroes
All Melee heroes now start with a set 100 energy, have no regen, and they get energy based on landing melee attacks. Putting points into aptitude now will increase the amount of energy you gain per swing by .5 energy.
Gregor = Leaps level 1 cooldown is now 9 seconds and will progressively get lower as it's leveled.
Kristo = Heal has been removed and Temporal Rift has been added. Temp rift deals damage and units trapped in the field have their movement and attack speed reduced by 70% can be used every 25 seconds.
Increased the damage of cluster bomb by 15
Remi = Fixed snipe so it should work better now and no longer can target buildings.
Akeru = Increased the damage done to heroes on his ultimate. Also his death grip now works like Gregors leap.
Nerix = Phase shift should now work better. Doubled the damage his ult does as well as increased the acceleration of the orb.
Darosa = His ult now costs life to use. Starting at 150 and increasing by 50 each level.
Valac = The enemy unit's movement speed while under the effects of territying roar has been reduced by half. Should result on easier targeting. Inflate has been reworked. It is now castable on heroic targets which acts differently. While on heroics it acts like a dot and does not do splash damage. You now also recieve gold from kills with this ability.
Kerana = Decreased the range on her ultimate down to 5 and reduced the upgraded damage by half. Also added a base splash damage to her c ability. I thought it had it, but was mistaken. If you cast her x spell then cast her c spell on the same target, you will yield in more damage if you read the tooltips. The spells work together.
Fixed Darosa's consume dna ability so you can cancel it. It will not long chase a target indefinitely.
Increased the life/shield regen to 5.0 on the main buildings (cc,nexus,hatch).
Fixed an exploit where terran or protoss could que up ugprades without getting a cost increase. Upgrade cost now increases when you click it. So if you cancel the upgrade before it's researched, the cost for the next tier will already be in effect.
Debating:
Making it so tier 3/4 unit deal reduced damage to heroic targets. Don't know if I want to do this yet.
So I've only played about 4-5 games with the new changes but so far zerg is unbeatable, the buffs were a bit over the top. Absolutely nothing can beat ultra/baneling now and corrupters still own the air so that's not really an option (not that BCs or carriers were ever really good for killing ultras). Also Dorasa's ult is too good now (turns out that idea of mine was a bad one), just alternating it with life steal is enough to easily beat any hero in lane. Should probably either be reverted or given a much longer cooldown since it's essentially a free spell.
Ultras just didn't need that kind of damage buff, and I've been wondering this for awhile but why are banelings only 350 when firebats, which is the closest terran equivalent, is 3 times that amount and HT are more and require a research. The problem with the zerg army was never that the ultra wasn't good enough, it was that they had no good high hp general purpose unit like void rays/carriers/thors/BCs.
Edit: So I've since played zerg and it seems their upgrades are bugged to never go up in price, the new ulltras are still OP though sincethe times I faced them and lost horribly they weren't massively upgraded. Banelings have always been somewhat OP but pair with the ultra so well now. Banelings definitely need a price hike so you can't spawn so many so easily, and they probably need reduced damage to buildings and heroic.
(I agree with LaurenI and there will be some duplicate points since they posted while I was writing my essay and I'm too lazy to take those parts out)
So I've played about 20 or 30 games in the past few days and I have quite a bit of feedback. It's going to be a long post and I'll probably jump around a bit but I'll try my best to organize it.
First off I'll list the huge bugs/flaws that I've found that aren't really matters of opinion in most important to less important order.
The initial waves aren't balanced at all, the terran wave gives almost no exp or gold, the zerg wave gives a ton of exp and some gold, and the protoss wave gives a bit more gold than the zerg one and a bit less exp. Facing the zerg wave it takes about 4 waves to hit level 4 where if i were vs the terran wave I'd be maybe a bit into level 2. All the initial waves should give the same amount of exp and gold to prevent such huge advantages.
Whenever you walk by the unit shop it deselects your character, this is by far the most stupid, annoying thing I have ever encountered in any game /rage. Also the selection area for it is too small, I understand you want people to return to base to upgrade army but you should be able to select new troops from anywhere in the base, with selection like the main base.
It's far easier to slip into the zerg's base and nuke all their harvesters than the other bases since they have 2 ramps into the middle both guarded by only 1 spine crawler that tends to die first.
Broodlings can't be pushed and can't be killed. I also think that all spawned broodlings should die when the broodlord that spawned them die. It's annoying having things hit your stuff and being able to do absolutely nothing to stop them.
Some assorted hero bugs I've found; brutalisks charge does stun moving heroes most of the time, novas snipe will sometimes have infinite range if she starts the cast at the same time she loses vision of the target. The infested marine guy sometimes gets stuck chasing a hero with drain life and can easily get dragged into the base defense.
Now I'll get into stuff that's really just my opinion, i could be wrong or it could just not be how you want the map to play.
Overall, splash damage abilities feel too good, the fact that you can wipe an entire wave with them makes all low tier units worthless, a unit needs at least 500 hp to even be worth considering to build, anything less and you're just feeding your opponents more exp and gold. this gives toss an advantage since all of their units have more hp than the other races.
It would be nice if there was some way to protect your probes from harrassment. Something like an ability on the main base that phases out all of your workers for 20-30 seconds but allows them to continue mining. I think 50 minerals would be a fair price for it since it will save you a bunch of money but you have to be paying attention and be able to kill the enemy hero in time. Another idea would be to add an upgrade for maybe 50 gold 500 minerals that allows you to produce 2 workers at once and double larva spawn speed, so you could at least recover faster late game.
The cost of upgrading should also be standardized across the 3 teams. Either split terran's upgrades up a bit or merge the other races into the basic 3.
I don't like being limited to only 3 repairs, especially because once a spawn building goes down it's gg. I think the cost to repair should start at 50 gold and just go up by 25 each time you use it.
That's all I can think of for now as far as general balance. I know it might seems like I hate the map from all the negatives I listed but I don't, I'm just trying to give constructive criticism so a map i like gets even better. I'll post my thoughts on each of the heroes in the next post to prevent this from getting any longer.
In other news, I discovered today that you can permanently kill Bob using Valac's inflate skill. Welp!
edit: wow this is a lot longer than I thought once I hit post, glad I got all of this out of my system.
First I'd like to start with stuns, most of them don't really benefit from leveling them, in the case of melee heroes you're better off leaving them at level one as long as possible so you can spam them with the least investment into intelligence. I think it would be a good idea to have the stun duration scale with the level as well as the damage. For example I think gregors stun is 3 seconds now, with my suggestion it would start at maybe 2 seconds and gain .2-.3 per level.
Attack: unless I'm playing a melee hero I tend to leave this stat to near last, abilities just give better damage for less investment and can be spammed almost endlessly. very powerful once you max it but it takes awhile to get there.
Armor: Probably the worst of the stats, nice if you're tanking the enemy army but since you can nuke it all in the blink of an eye why bother. Doesn't provide enough of a benefit to take it over attack vs another hero if you're going to be slugging it out.
Health: Another stat that I mostly ignore except on melee, You want enough that you can survive your opponents combo but beyond that it's not as important as being able to kill the enemy yourself.
Intelligence: This is the stat I find most of my points going into on most heroes. This stat gives enough regen that you can spam pretty much everyone's abilities non-stop and avoid taking damage. If you want to tone down the aoe-fest nerfing the regen this provides is probably a good place to start.
speed: the most important stat, let's you abuse your range vs melee, chase for the kill as both, and run away if you need to as long as you invest more than your opponent. Also lets you grab power-ups and get back to your lane in a timely fashion.
Now for the heroes.
The medic: Overall I think he's either the worst or 2nd worst hero in the game. He has decent survivability and his ultimate can farm fairly well but he just puts out no damage at all vs other heroes. The heal is nice but the shield is just better for survivability. The spider mine does meh damage but it'll never actually hit an enemy hero who isn't blind.
How to improve him: I think the heal should be replaced with something else, preferably something that stuns or slows to combo with his other 2 damage skills. It would also be cool if his shield protected him from stuns and/or slows while it's up and if the attack that applies it doesn't break the shield.
Nova: Very similar to kerrigan and the HT, probably the weaker of the three she's still a good hero, snipe is really powerful but there's plenty of warning to get out of range or stun.
gregor: solid hero that's definitely the best of the melee heroes. his jump probably has a bit too short of a cooldown and there's really no reason to level it as the lower mana cost of level 1 lets you spam it without needing to invest in energy and his seeker missile is better for farming waves anyway.
DT: another decent hero, death grip is also probably on too short of a cooldown and his x feels pretty worthless for farming compared to the other aoe skills. His ultimate is useful vs big army targets but not that great vs enemy heroes.
HT: Probably the best overall hero He doesn't have the crazy late game of kerrigan but his early game is better and he tends to farm armies better. he also has pretty good survivability with his x and c. On the other hand his z is worthless beyond the very early game, I usually skip leveling it in favor of more stats once I can.
Preserver/Shockwave guy: This hero is both good and incredibly bad at the same time. Shockwave is a pretty amazing army farmer, but all of his other skills are either meh or just bad. His z just feels like a weaker snipe but on the whole it's not the worst. Phase shift is worthless from what I've seen of it, It doesn't prevent things like snipe which is the majority of the damage you'll be taking. Then there's his ultimate, I guess it looks pretty? As far as I can tell it does no damage and has no range.
Infested marine: This guy is really less of a melee hero and more like a melee range caster. All of his abilities are good but require a ton of mana to use, meaning you can't invest in actually melee stats. I think he should get the gregor treatment and switch either his ultimate or slime move over to an hp cost to combo with his drain life ability and reduce his mana consumption.
brutalisk: Everything I've seen of this guy so far has been pretty underwhelming. His charge is like death grip, only in reverse and worse, it moves you into danger and doesn't even stun for as long. his fear is somewhat useful, but things move so fast you can't really hit them while they flee, if you're lucky they run into your cannons. His infection move is good vs tier 3-4 army but it's useless vs heroes so it's not that threatening. Then his ultimate is just a weird concept for a melee unit, why would you want to push something away from you? You want them as close as possible so you can hit them.
Kerrigan: she has a monstrous late game, most non-melee heroes tend to die in one combo and you can easily heal up any damage you took with z. However she has a very weak early game and if you survive her combo or dodge her ulti you can do fairly well vs her. I think she could stand to lose some distance on her ultimate and maybe a little damage since it stuns and is instant cast. In exchange turn her c into splash damage that she can farm with early game.
@Alamand: Go and LaurenI
First off all great feed back. This is the kind of stuff that will really improve the map. I appreciate it.
Now to get started:
The initial waves I did was not balanced towards exp/gold rate, but army strength. I made it so no wave is stronger than the other w/o hero support. So from what I'm seeing here the zerg vs terran lane needs more units? That can easily be accomplished.
I'll remove the hero deselection from the spawn building. I did this so it was a quick way to access it, but I have run into the same issue and it does tend to be annoying. As for being able to access it from anywhere, it was originally like this, but I had to change it to the way it is now, due to the defense changes and the buff you get on your defenses. This will stay the same. I like making it so if you leave your lane with your hero the enemy will advance on you.
I really don't know what to do with the zerg base as for the defenses. I orginally had a middle ramp with an additional 2 defenses there, but the problem with that is when the B.O.B. got close to it, it was pretty much zerg's GG. I agree something needs to be done here, but I don't know what.
I'm going to remove the broodlord altogether, and add in some big air unit and reduce the corrupters dmg back down.
I really like the phase out ability on your workers and also the double worker production idea. I'll get this working.
I'll standardize the upgrades across the races.
I limited the repairs to 3 to try to make the games shorter, but I'll try your idea and we'll see how it goes.
LaurenI thanks for pointing out the bug with valac and the bob unit that's a pretty big deal and will be fixed ;p
Hero Section Response:
As for the stuns. Their duration does not increase on any ability. It's a set duration. It may feel like it, but trust me it's a static time.
So for the overall AOE abilities it seems to be a general consensus to lower the dmg that they do considerably. I mean honestly should a rank 5 AOE spell not 1 shot t1/t2 units? Other than rank 5, I can scale back the dmg.
Kristo: Love your ideas here. Will make these changes. I agree that he is super weak and def needs to be fixed. I just couldn't think of how.
Remi: She really is a killing machine. I don't think she's either being played right or given enough credit. I WRECK people when I use her. She is def more suited on taking out melee heroes vs casters though based on her bind ability. I honestly don't see any issues with her.
Gregor: I will make it so rank 1 of his leap has a long cooldown and with each rank it reduces it. Also I will lower the stun duration.
Akeru: I will do the same with death grip as I will do for leap. I made his X ability not target heroes because in combo with death grip you could pretty much lock down a hero and that was too op. As for his ultimate, I can increase the dmg it does vs heroes. This has been changed the most out of all abilities. It went from retarded OP as shit to now looks like too weak. He used to be able to take out 2 heroes by himself with just his ult lol
Saru: So all of his abilities needs to be down scaled in damage?
Nerix: I will make it so phase shift makes him invuln, I thought it did this, but I guess not. I can increase the dmg of his ult. It does move slow but it does do dmg, but just not enough apparently. I could also add a slow effect when hit by it?
Darosa: I like the thought of making his constricting slime ability cost life. I will also lower the mana cost so you can put points into stats. Also he is the only hero who has splash on his default attack.
Valac: His stun on charge is 1.5 seconds like all the others. Yes it moves you into damage but that's how charges works lol. Use it wisely. I will make it so the terrify roar ability makes them run around way slower so its more manageable. I will also make an inflate version that u can cast on heroic units, that is a dot or something similar. His ult ya it pushes back but it's nice to help push the lane back and ya I've ran out of abilities so it is what it is ;p
Kerana: Will reduce the damage and the range on her ult. Her C ability already deals splash damage. So your saying increase it
Other thoughts:
Before making the above changes I'll wait for replies on questions asked. Keep up the good suggestions/input everyone I once again appreciate it.
UPDATE:
Just thought up an excellent idea to deal with melee and the ability costs. I'm going to make it so Melee heroes start with 0 energy and they get energy per attack they land with no regen rate. The more points you put into INT will increase the energy u get per attack. This should make it better so you can focus more on your attack/armor/health attributes.
Also going to either do map the map bigger and include expos that you can setup OR do an additional mode that players can vote on either being classical or this new mode. Which would be better?
i just payed two game in a row against remi with her and i lost both times due to snipe
most of kerana's abilities are usless except for transfusion and her ultimate so increase effect of transfusion and buff the other two spells quite simpily sh can't touch rimi because of snipe reduce the damage on rimi's snipe so it can two sho early heros!!!!!!!!!!
Snipe
I don't think snipe is a bad idea against enemy heroes, but I do have a problem with it being used on structures, especially when it one-shots unupgraded turrets that have been otherwise safe most of the game due to smart lane control. On units and heroes, it's fine as it has enough windup and a pretty blatant tell, so I figure if you get hit by it you deserve the damage. If anything, I actually find Remi to be one of the weaker heroes due to her nuke which is generally inferior to Valac/Saru's AoE spells until it starts hitting max level.
Valac inflate skill
This is just another minor observation, but an enemy killed by inflate or the surrounding AoE doesn't give a gold bounty. This may be intentional, though.
Preserver Hero phase shift
I managed to kill a preserver in phase shift the other day and he couldn't respawn afterwards, which caused him to leave the game in frustration. I don't remember how I killed him, but I remember I was playing Remi and I'm guessing it was one of those infinite range snipes that occasionally happens.
AoE spells and unit health upgrade
You stated that you don't want to reduce rank 5 AoE damage, and I can kind of see the idea as it takes so long to reach rank 5; however, the problem with this is that it still eventually happens, and when it does the map is instantly stripped of any tactical reason to use low-HP units. High damage AoE spells aren't necessarily a bad thing, as I like to use them to kill enemy heroes at the end of a combo of stuns and attacks. It's the ability to wipe out entire armies that's the big issue.
I think there is an alternate solution to weakening AoE skills that can solve this issue: you can make the health upgrade for army units much more powerful, or make it a percentage increase from base or something. As things stand, the health upgrade gives 10HP per level. If you were able to acquire all 20 levels of it (completely impractical, as most games never see upgrades beyond 9 or so in weapons and armor), your units would have a 200 HP bonus, which brings the starting units up to around 300HP, still too weak to survive most rank 5 AoE. So the health upgrade is more or less a waste when you could be getting more damage or armor for the same cost! By increasing the potency of this upgrade, you'd be creating a way for armies who invest in low-tech units to stay relevant even in the presence of massive AoE damage, and thus add more tactical complexity to the game. This could also benefit an army's workers, giving them some defense against the opponent running in and wiping out all mining capability.
If you do choose to increase the health upgrade's strength, do so with caution, especially if you choose a percentile approach, as you may end up making tier 3 units even more necessary instead of providing a justification to use weaker ones. I suggest each upgrade gives low HP units a significant increase, and high HP units a more minor one, so we don't end up just fighting massed 4000HP Ultralisks or something. The idea is to give weaker units the ability to survive 2 and eventually 3 or 4 AoE spells.
Zerg static defenses
From what you said earlier, it seemed like the problem with having only one entrance covered by two turrets was that the turrets could hit other players' B.O.B., virtually guaranteeing a Zerg win if it got close enough. I'd like to know how this is different from the way it is for the other two races right now, as they have a single entrance covered by two turrets, and if you get close enough to it with B.O.B. it's pretty much the same deal. I'd think with a bit of clever map restructuring you could find a way so that the top spine crawlers both covered a single entrance as well as their respective sides.
zero you need to re work the map into a hexagon from a square in order to fix the problem with the zerg defenses
@LaurenI: Go
Wow can't believe you could target buildings with snipe. Def a huge bug and already fixed. Thought I tested all the spells vs buildings, guess I missed one. What's interesting about you saying that it's weaker is ALL hero ult's that are AOE deal the SAME dmg, so it I guess just seems like a smaller amount? I mean I could increase the damage at little, but I mean they all deal the same amount.
Ya Valac's inflate ability is the only one that's based on triggers so it makes sense that gold isn't rewarded from kills. I'll factor that in.
Ya I will look into phase shift more.
As for the life upgrade being more useful I like this idea and it would save me lots of work haha. Yes I would also agree the hp would only affect T1 and prob T2 units more then it would T3/T4.
As for the way Zerg worked it was different because they had a ramp to the left and the right and a ramp to the north and the north also had 2 more turrets so zerg had six altogether. I will rearange the base to accommodate.
UPDATE:
I don't know why, but I've spent the last hour trying to rework the terrain where it would work out so zerg's base works like the others and I can't get it to work right.
You could try something like this:
sorry I'm so terrible at drawing things :<
You might have to change the angles of the triangle to make lane distances even (or you could just eyeball it because who cares)
@LaurenI: Go
Ya that's exactly what I was trying to do, but it just isn't working out. It's very wonky because the lanes are a set width and for some reason the diagonal lanes are larger then the horizontal lanes. I even tried removing the entire zerg base completely and having lots of free terrain to work with and I still could not get the zerg base to have two open sides and be able to cover a northern ramp. It just doesn't work right. After an hour or so my brain was fried from school etc. I'll mess around with it some more today.
the diagional ones are wider because when you turn a say 20 x 20 square on its side its true wideth and hight is now 28 instead of 20 spo its has close to a 50% wider affect when you are traveling in a straight vertical or horsantal line the same aplies with a regular one traveling on a diagional you have to use a much smaller tool tip or click on the on that has the angle and switch between the two as needed or you could use the circle tool tip and for go all those troubles.
I hope that helps
The starting armies do seem pretty similar in terms of combat ability, but not in reward for killing them, I'll make up some numbers to try and illustrate my point. Let's say the starting armies consist of 8 zealots 12 marines and 16 zerglings (just random convenient numbers). Let's also say that each zealot gives 4 gold and 20 exp, to make it balanced each marine would then give 3 gold 15 exp and each ling would give 2 gold 10 exp. Right now it feels as if each marine is only giving 5 exp and 2 gold while each ling is giving 12-15 exp.
For some reason I thought the other stuns were 3 seconds while charge was only 1.5, though i don't actually know where i got that idea. The scaling stun duration was just my idea for how to make leveling stuns worth it (under the mistaken assumption that they were 3 seconds now). Your idea for the decreasing cooldown is probably better since the stun numbers are shorter than I thought.
I think the best way to address the aoe problem is to buff the hp upgrade to provide a larger flat bonus. For example if it gave 50 more hp to every unit that's a big deal for a marine, but a BC already has something like 1.5k, so what's another 50.
Kristo: I thought of an actualy abilty to replace the heal with, I'll leave the name and exact numbers up to you. My general idea of his combo would be something like Shield before you run in then throw out your ult, slow the target so they take longer to get out from under it and put the mine in their path for extra damage.
As for the ability: The common cold (working title)
Infect your target with the common cold, Aside from the sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy, head, and fever the affected unit also takes X damage a second for Y seconds, has their movement speed reduced by 30ish?% and (maybe?) Attack speed slowed by 15ish%.
The duration should probably be about the same as other slows in the game and the overall damage should be about 50-75% of kerana's dot. If you wanted to you could also give it a chance to spread to nearby units every time it deals damage as if they were spreading the cold, though making only the main target able to spread it would probably be a good idea. I feel like 30% might be a bit low for the slow but the ability can potentially be doing a lot of things so I didn't want to go overboard, and I'm not sure exactly how strong the other slows are.
Remi: I didn't mean to imply she's weak, I think she's perfectly balanced, just I've had better results with the other two.
Gregor: Stun duration is fine, it's more the fact that he could spam it endlessly if he never leveled it, Increased cooldown alone should fix it.
Akeru: I wasn't complaining about his X not being able to target heroes, it just doesn't seem to do enough damage to the army compared to say Remi's sticky grenade.
Saru: It's not quite his damage that makes me think he's the best, more like it's just his skill-set. His X and C can keep you off him all day and his V wipes your army and heals whatever damage he's taken to his health. He's not the best hero killer but he feels like the best lane pusher, which is what wins games.
Nerix: I've hardly ever used his ult but from what I've seen it makes a big ball right in front of him that doesn't go anywhere, then it makes a bunch of little balls that go all over the place and 90% of them don't hit anything. I'm not sure if I've just been using it wrong but it's never really done much for me.
Darosa: Funny I never noticed his splash, probably because I'm always pumping int for his great spells.
Kerana: I think a slight damage nerf on he ultimate would be good, and i don't really see a need for it to go so far past her sight range though it is fun killing people you can't see, I was in a game while I was typing those posts up where I ended up solo vs saru and nerix and my ultimate at one point one shotted both of them from near full hp. I was probably just higher level than them since I go army light to give less exp, and they probably didn't invest in HP, but it left an impression.
As for her C, I've tried using it to farm army early on like I would with shockwave or sticky grenade and it only ever seemed to do single target damage. It might be that you need the target to be on fire for the aoe damage to happen/be noticeable but enemies don't really have the hp at that stage to survive the fire dot so she has no farming/pushing ability before her ultimate.
Been playing games pretty consistently, and I have to say that I think that most of the Heroes are...fairly balanced. The Nerix shockwave ability gets overpowered in the later levels, but only against Zerg, as far as I can tell. Mainly because it wipes out 3/4 of the units, just because they all have such low health. Seems a bit imbalanced, but at the same time it's not as useful against Terran, so I don't think it's the ability, I think it's the Zerg units. A fun game, though. =) Do you mind if I add you? It might be fun to play a few games with the creator, some time.
@Alamand: Go
The abilities are setup like this:
So Akeru's X is going to do less dmg then say Kerana's C, etc.
Ya zetal you can add me, however I'm rarely on these days been playing The Old Republic. I do however check this daily and update my maps :)
So I think I found my new favorite way to play Akeru, I got nothing buy 1 level in death grip and his ultimate and leveled his speed boost whenever I could. Aside from that, I saved every point for point buy and as soon as it unlocked it was glorious. very first thing I did was go solo the zergs top spine crawler (they had built almost no troops vs us since we hadn't vs them) and proceeded to kill them 2 vs 1 then solo down the spawning pool.
Also on a bit of a side note, I've discovered a slight respect for Valac. If you dump all his points into int he can at least keep a hero CC'd pretty much forever, well forever if his charge wasn't so incredibly buggy. It'll take you forever to actually kill anyone but they can't do anything about it. So if his charge ever gets fixed he'll definitely need a longer cooldown on his fear move since perma CC isn't really fun. As for his charge bug it seems to almost drop a stun "mine" at the end and if you're moving away it won't trigger and just sit there invisible until you walk over it again, at which point it will actually stun you even 5 minute later.
@Alamand: Go
lol interesting. I'm about to release the newest version which needs some serious testing with all the changes implemented.
As for valac's charge ya it's wonky, but it works if you mess with it. I tried to get people help me with it, but had no luck. I made it, but it doesn't work exactly how it should.
Update 3.0:
General
Heroes
oh so thats why keranas one ability was next to useless thanks
UPDATE 3.1:
Debating:
Making it so tier 3/4 unit deal reduced damage to heroic targets. Don't know if I want to do this yet.
So I've only played about 4-5 games with the new changes but so far zerg is unbeatable, the buffs were a bit over the top. Absolutely nothing can beat ultra/baneling now and corrupters still own the air so that's not really an option (not that BCs or carriers were ever really good for killing ultras). Also Dorasa's ult is too good now (turns out that idea of mine was a bad one), just alternating it with life steal is enough to easily beat any hero in lane. Should probably either be reverted or given a much longer cooldown since it's essentially a free spell.
Ultras just didn't need that kind of damage buff, and I've been wondering this for awhile but why are banelings only 350 when firebats, which is the closest terran equivalent, is 3 times that amount and HT are more and require a research. The problem with the zerg army was never that the ultra wasn't good enough, it was that they had no good high hp general purpose unit like void rays/carriers/thors/BCs.
Edit: So I've since played zerg and it seems their upgrades are bugged to never go up in price, the new ulltras are still OP though sincethe times I faced them and lost horribly they weren't massively upgraded. Banelings have always been somewhat OP but pair with the ultra so well now. Banelings definitely need a price hike so you can't spawn so many so easily, and they probably need reduced damage to buildings and heroic.