Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Bonuses
Creative Use of Models - [+]
Excellent Layout - [+]
Review:
Amongst the inevitable zounds of tower defense games made for every Blizzard strategy game, a select few always end up dominating the others out of the sheer weight of statistics; after all, with so many entrants, one is bound to be decent. For a while, though, I was under the impression that every single tower defense for StarCraft II would bore me, as I have played an awful lot of them and all of those were disappointments. This carried on for months through the beta and the game’s release… until now.
Let there be light!
The Sorcerer’s Defense is thematically very similar to Element TD from WarCraft III, with the group of elements including fire, water, earth, light, and darkness. Each of the elements has rock-paper-scissors style bonuses and penalties for each of the monster types that can spawn through the lanes, which is a much-used type of artificial dynamics that TD-mappers often use to give their map a semblance of strategy. Sorcerer’s Defense, on the other hand, actually does capitalize upon this setup to provide an effective gameplay control that increases the difficulty of the map by requiring players to plan ahead. It helps that every creep is cleanly archived in the help menu, too. Of course, the real reason why this map gets the elemental balance right while so many other maps fail at the concept is that The Sorcerer’s Defense is already balanced well enough that the players will actively notice the bonuses being applied – even more so, in fact, than Element TD itself, which is a good thing in my book. Since certain towers or strategies are not universally balanced in other tower defense games, attack type bonuses often do not matter that much unless they are artificially raised so some ridiculous numbers, usually resulting in some waves that are disproportionately more difficult than others. Sorcerer’s Defense has no such problems.
Let me tell you why this map got it right. I can summarize all of it in three words: polish and testing. Just play the map once and it will be obvious that Riley polished his map to a shine and then proceeded to keep polishing it until he could see his own reflection on its surface. I can make no complaints about the map’s presentation, production values, appearance, attention to detail, or anything along those lines. Even the models for the towers were painstakingly rigged to look just right and to accurately convey the element and the power level. Developers: The Sorcerer’s Defense is a prime example of how to present your map. I could take the time to detail every bit of it, but I’ll leave it to the reader to play the map for their self. Polish may be the easiest category to receive an “S” in, but it’s nonetheless exceedingly rare. Well done!
A tower defense with actually good scenery. Never thought I’d see the day…
The testing part of my argument is clear by observing the balance of the gameplay. Each tower is useful in its own way and can be utilized in its own type of strategy. I would have to play several dozen times to accurately determine that the towers are actually perfectly-balanced, but as far as I could tell for my set of playthroughs, everything worked as I would expect and seemed to be balanced to the extent of my powers of deduction.
Each type of tower has its individual accompanying strategy. Every single tower type has its own special properties/abilities. Even the basic towers have special properties. For example, the darkness tower does damage over time, the light tower buffs nearby towers, the fire tower does damage in a line, and the earth tower has a chance to stun for a brief period of time, etc. Let that sink in a bit. The different elements can be combined into different hybrid tower types, as well, in various combinations of one, two, and three element types and their multiples. Towers can be upgraded up tiers by adding more units of their respective elements, but existing towers cannot change type, only power level. I did notice a bug where upgrading a tower would use more elements than it should have, though (e.g. turning a tier 3 basic element into a t4 caused all three of my units of that element to be used up, when only one should have been removed). This allows for a sense of permanency and planning which helps the game seem more cerebral, even though you can just sell the tower to get back 75% of its total cost…
Why do they call these things “mazes,” when there’s only one path to take?
There are actually more than a few gripes I had with The Sorcerer’s Defense that stood out to me, as I played version 1.2 of the map. But after loading up the map for one last run, I noticed that I was once again downloading the map even though I had played it many times before. A picture is worth a thousand words:
Hey presto, it’s fixed!
Many of the issues I had with the game were actually fixed right before my eyes as I was making screenshots for this review. You don’t get luck like that every day, you know.
Back on track, as far as the strategy element goes, The Sorcerer’s Defense is perhaps the most mentally-involved tower defense game I have ever played. It’s genuinely challenging (especially with the random elements mode on), but not overtly difficult as of the latest version (1.3). It is pretty unforgiving with only 10 lives that only regenerate by 1 if you go through a perfect round, meaning a 5-life leak on the first three rounds will screw you over for the rest of the game. The build timer is also pretty evil, considering once the timer’s up, you can’t build anything and all of your elements get reset, though the latest version has extended it a bit, but not enough in my opinion. This all just serves to compound the issue that this map is pretty unintuitive.
Did I mention that you can only build towers with the random set of six units of elements that you get each round? All of those are lost each round. The system handling those elemental units is well-done, of course, so the players pick up on that pretty quickly. What they don’t notice is that all of your unused elements can be made into blockades for mazing. That’s a damn important thing to leave out of the on-screen tips, Riley. Also, most players won’t figure out the appropriate strategy to stay alive for longer than a few rounds, which means you normally have to play several times just to live long enough to get a 3-piece hybrid. It would be very helpful if the players were forced to be aware of them, which would clue them in on the fact that in The Sorcerer’s Defense, you maze or you die. Also, we’re not told that the mobs that run though our mazes require 2 spaces, squared, in order to pass. They won’t go through 1x1 blocks. Players often find that out after going through a lot of frustration trying to figure out why their maze spouts an error. There are some other issues, but last but definitely not least in my list is the “undo” button. It’s NOT an “undo,” Riley. Your map’s “undo” button is a “reset” button. Rename it to “reset.” I hate it when players build a whole set of towers, have 15 seconds left on the timer and use their last element on a barricade, only to misclick the location to build it on. Then they hit “undo,” thinking it’ll set them back one step to replace the tower. Oh, no, you poor, misguided fool. That resets all of your changes, buddy! Now you are left woefully behind the curve: free game over!
There are some really nice features, like the almighty red line of pathfinding. This has saved my life many times.
The breadth of strategy in The Sorcerer’s Defense is amazing. There are many viable paths to take for the player, and each game will play differently, especially since the player may use spells during the mob-run portion of the round. It’s a brilliant addition: the player is kept busy by giving him the chance to use spells that, for example, buff towers and slow enemies. It’s also an effective wildcard that keeps the game varied. For extra chaos, try random mode, which spits out units with random elements instead of the usual set progression of elements.
Every six rounds, a boss will come out for some added challenge, but the boss rounds are generally pretty easier than the usual rounds unless you are particularly weak against that particular boss’ dual set of elements. The bonus, however, is another spell to throw around, which is hard to pass up. The waves themselves are always a group of units, each wave having the same speed and differing health and armor, with different elements. Perhaps the waves could be varied a bit more in their properties, but it would be difficult to balance such things out.
Where perhaps the mobs themselves lack, the layout succeeds. Mobs spawn from four different corners and make a circuit around the area before teleporting out at their original location. They spawn in intervals wide enough that you’ll see some mobs overlap, giving splash damage a chance to shine. More importantly, it gives the player a lot of room to make their own creative setup, since there is a whole bunch of space in the middle to create interesting mazes, especially since there are four different spawn points. It’s possible to get a unit to pass by a single tower 4 to 6 times, if you’re creative enough. Most tower defense games have some set paths that the units follow, perhaps some crisscrossing stuff to spice it up. The Sorcerer’s Defense inverts that setup by giving the players a sandbox of creativity, which is basically amplified by the polish of the map to appear as a tight, elite package of quality.
Good old-fashioned carnage after a hard day’s work.
The four-corner method is quite possibly the best tower defense setup I’ve seen, mainly because this map pulls it off so well. For example, the players need to work for their splash damage; to optimize the damage output of splash towers, the units need to be bunched up or, better yet, need to converge at a specific point. You’ve got to build whole setups around exploiting splash damage! Of course, knowledge of the various towers is more-or-less required to pull off the more lavish setups, but if a player does not have their towers memorized, then that player should pick an easier difficulty to get to learn them better. After all, this is a solo-type game. Even so, a player can still succeed without inside knowledge of the tower types, since the elements are randomized anyway. It’s possible to go through the game on an as-you-learn basis because of this (only seasoned veterans will be able to account for the randomized elements toward their “perfect” strategy, and only come to marginal success), as long as you survive the first few waves. All in all, the balance is excellent, the difficulty is high enough that the players need to be creative with their towers to win, and the map is polished enough that the players will want to get into the map enough to warrant using their brains. It’s a winning combination.
I have no shortage of good things to say about The Sorcerer’s Defense, and this review doesn’t cover everything I have to say because I don’t do much in the way of outlining these things before I write them. However, since this review is already longer than any of the others, I’ll get to my final point: this map suffers from chronic crashing.
Some might say that The Sorcerer’s Defense tries to be an ETD, but it’s really just a CTD. I crashed several times in the course of testing this map, and it’s a massive problem in a game that has such a long running time (I’d imagine that a full game could last nearly two hours, based on the online pace and the number of waves). It’s infuriating. I don’t think I’ve ever given such a hefty “Failures” penalty, but this map really deserves it. Crashing is a serious problem and you’ve got to get it fixed, as I’m sure you know, Riley.
Regardless, the pros outweigh the cons (crashing included) so much that The Sorcerer’s Defense is officially the first reviewed map to receive the score of Gold. Congratulations! Everybody owes this map at least one or two playthroughs. Continue to improve it (AND REMOVE THE CRASHING), Riley, and I’m sure it will be topping the popularity lists.
RATING:
Gold: This map is refined, high-quality, and memorable; it’s just all-around good.
Agree with most part of the review, nice touch using every single thing the game offer (help menu mobs and tower). Any other TD should take this into account.
Since this Blizzard contest submission did not win (like mine) I would be very sad pissed off if the winner turns out to be some unpolished crap.
Just wanted to say thanks for the review and I'm glad you liked it. The criticisms are extremely helpful as well, in fact I already took your advice and changed "Undo" to "Reset" :)
The counterintuitiveness is a big problem for me personally because I've joined lots of random games where players have no idea what to do and die in a couple of rounds. I am welcoming any suggestions on how to make the map more intuitive and newb-friendly without necessarily requiring people to read all the tips in the help menu.
A quality map. I love how you actually put some effort into the terrain. Although it is very tough at first, it is not hard to master. After a couple plays I got to about Level 27 before I had to quit because of lag. (It was the round with the Tauren Marines)
I found that in the games I played 100% of new players died on the first round. The problem the intro is long, so it is ultimately always skipped. You could try condensing it and putting the information into the loading screen. Or on the loading screen suggest that new players play a game by themselves first and watch the intro.
Awsome map, i really love it, but i got random crash only with this map, closing sc2 and error message, i dont know if this is fixed on last version, didnt seen on eu serv. To maybe help you about that crash, i use a french client, maybe it s about the localisation.
first of all,
thanks for or one of the best and most challanging td's ive played so far.
i usually die very early cause of too few time in the buildtime.
havent played it often so i have to look up the next creeptype and towerdescription to find the right toer i wanna build.
it would be awesome to have a small frame where the element of the next wave and the counterelement is visible.
maybe just for lower difficulties to lern the game better.
also, often when i trie to build on the bottom i get a error (something about circle path), but the crepps are not blocked
A tower defense with actually good scenery. Never thought I’d see the day…
I always wondered about this. Molding some land, texturing and adding doodads is about a 30minute job. Why do so many mappers skip this step?
Sorcerers defense is a cool map, although last i played it it crashed my game relentlessly (could never finish because it would literally crash to desktop). Perhaps those bugs have been fixed?
played just a game..... crashed again (eugb client) saw the small "next wave" first time xD
what about make it into a own hidable frme with the next few waves (3-5)
at the beginig you have to plan ahead at least to the second next wave.
First off can I say that this was an amazing map to play and I must agree with the reviewer. I played this map when it was first noticed by Sc2mapster a while back (cant remember when) and really enjoyed it. The only problems we found was when we played with 4 or more people it would randomly crash and disconnect our players =/... I hope this issue has been fixed even though it wasn't stated in the change-log.
On another side note and the main reason for my post here is the quote from above. I think as a whole we need to stop publishing your quality work on the actual site. It promotes people using 3rd party Sc2 clients (torrented, downloaded, etc) to play the custom maps and enjoy features of the game that should be left to the online community. It is because of people like this that we have Blizzard clamping down so hard.. I want the stand alone SDK to be released ='(.
You should not force mapmaker to upload or not with their works. If they choose to open source, they want it to be. If they want it top secret, leave it.
Get back to that thread if you still want a discussion, this is a review thread.
I haven't tried the map yet but it looks (and sounds) excellent. Good work.
I was thinking, what if upon startup each player is asked "Have you played before?" if "Yes", ignore this. If "No", demonstrate the first round for the player... ie: change ownership to a computer player, issue build orders, explain the different elements... at least enough so that the player can get the gist of how to build and what the objective is? And of course they can "End Tutorial" at any time to retake control of the units and continue play.
Of course, the real reason why this map gets the elemental balance right while so many other maps fail at the concept is that The Sorcerer’s Defense is already balanced well enough that the players will actively notice the bonuses being applied – even more so, in fact, than Element TD itself, which is a good thing in my book.
You got my attention there. Can you elaborate on that? Maybe I can learn something.
Most tower defense games have some set paths that the units follow, perhaps some crisscrossing stuff to spice it up. The Sorcerer’s Defense inverts that setup by giving the players a sandbox of creativity, which is basically amplified by the polish of the map to appear as a tight, elite package of quality.
This comes across to me as saying that the map is better because it uses mazing. I believe mazing versus non-mazing is more of a personal preference and does not make one TD superior to another.
Some might say that The Sorcerer’s Defense tries to be an ETD, but it’s really just a CTD.
That was a funny tidbit about the crashing. I haven't played the game yet but judging by the review (very good as always), I would not say that it is trying to be an ETD. Obviously Riley has borrowed a lot from me, but it seems he has applied it somewhat differently and to a different type of TD altogether.
Yeah; After playing both your TDs quiet a bit I must say that there is a TON of differences between the two. Once you play the TD and actually see the fundamentals behind his you will understand what I mean. It seems like its what would happen if Element TD and Artifact TD had a baby. Grats to two great Authors! Thank you both for your amazing maps and looking forward to seeing yours Karawasa
That was a funny tidbit about the crashing. I haven't played the game yet but judging by the review (very good as always), I would not say that it is trying to be an ETD. Obviously Riley has borrowed a lot from me, but it seems he has applied it somewhat differently and to a different type of TD altogether.
I guess comparisons with Element TD are inevitable but truthfully I think they're very different kinds of games which try to be challenging in different ways. The use of "elements" is kind of an interesting story. This map went through two earlier phases. At the beginning it was called "Tarot Defense" and you were dealt a set of tarot cards that you had to combine to make different tower types based on the major arcana - for example, two wands and two cups make The Hanged Man who did damage over time. This was pretty cool and unique thematically but unfortunately it was a gameplay disaster because there was no relationship between what the towers did or were called and the cards needed to build them.
So next it became Alchemy Defense. Here the components were aether, mercury, vitriol, sulfur, and aqua. Towers were based on alchemical compounds, processes, or creations. For example, combining Aqua and Vitriol gave "Aqua Fortis" which was an acid-type tower. Gameplay wise this was a massive improvement over tarot D but ultimately too arcane for most people to understand, especially with the number of combinations I was planning on having. Also, it became difficult to find unique names things, and the sort of strength-weakness relationships the ingredients had didn't really make sense and was absolutely unintuitive. (Mercury beats vitriol? Uh, okay, that's easy to remember.)
I finally went to using elements because they're an established gaming vocabulary; people understand them immediately and can even intuitively guess at their weaknesses and strengths. I still think the alchemy version would have been cool, but I don't think it would have been a very popular map.
You got my attention there. Can you elaborate on that? Maybe I can learn something.
It's more of a psychological difference, if anything. It may even be a very minor difference, but I noticed that the whole turned out to be greater than the sum of its parts. It just felt like the elements were doing more. Maybe it's just an artifact of how difficult, balanced, and clean the map is.
This comes across to me as saying that the map is better because it uses mazing. I believe mazing versus non-mazing is more of a personal preference and does not make one TD superior to another.
That's true; mazing versus non-mazing is a matter of preference. However, as far as mazing TDs go, Sorcerer's Defense has the concept perfected. A non-mazing map, similarly, needs to be exceptionally good for its type to compete with Sorcerer's Defense. I suppose, as far as SC2 goes, this map is the only example of a great TD released thus far, which would make it appear that mazing is necessarily superior to non-mazing, which it is not.
That was a funny tidbit about the crashing. I haven't played the game yet but judging by the review (very good as always), I would not say that it is trying to be an ETD. Obviously Riley has borrowed a lot from me, but it seems he has applied it somewhat differently and to a different type of TD altogether.
There are enough similarities to make comparisons. I put that line in there for the purpose of making a joke; I specifically put "some" and "might" to show that it's not my own opinion.
I agree with most of the opinions here that this TD has a GREAT idea behind it. it someow remembers me of the gem td from warcraft 3, which has made it's way to many browser-ased clones. The system of combining those different elemental types and building barriers is realy nice.
BUT
i have a massive prolem in solving the first 10 rounds or so, because every time i try to build a good maze and i want to set the elemental blocks (or towers) to complete a path, the game won't let me because it says that i would prevent enemies from finding a way through it. those "path-finding-markers" just block the building process even if there's another (more tricky) way for the creeps to go.
so did u actually want this to happen, e.g. for mazes not to get too strong because of complexity, or is this just a bug?
anyways, for me it's kind of annoying and i would say that if i was allowed to build a maze just how i want to, this would be my favourite fun map. by far.
actually, i don't even need the markers because it's obvious where the creeps go.
->i apologize for typing mistakes, my keyboard is crap....
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You're in for some heavy reading, folks.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
The Sorcerer’s Defense by Riley
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (A)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (A-)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (A-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (S)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (B+)
Replayability - [3]
Failures
Crashes - [- - -]
Unintuitive - [- -]
Bonuses
Creative Use of Models - [+]
Excellent Layout - [+]
Review:
Amongst the inevitable zounds of tower defense games made for every Blizzard strategy game, a select few always end up dominating the others out of the sheer weight of statistics; after all, with so many entrants, one is bound to be decent. For a while, though, I was under the impression that every single tower defense for StarCraft II would bore me, as I have played an awful lot of them and all of those were disappointments. This carried on for months through the beta and the game’s release… until now.
Let there be light!
The Sorcerer’s Defense is thematically very similar to Element TD from WarCraft III, with the group of elements including fire, water, earth, light, and darkness. Each of the elements has rock-paper-scissors style bonuses and penalties for each of the monster types that can spawn through the lanes, which is a much-used type of artificial dynamics that TD-mappers often use to give their map a semblance of strategy. Sorcerer’s Defense, on the other hand, actually does capitalize upon this setup to provide an effective gameplay control that increases the difficulty of the map by requiring players to plan ahead. It helps that every creep is cleanly archived in the help menu, too. Of course, the real reason why this map gets the elemental balance right while so many other maps fail at the concept is that The Sorcerer’s Defense is already balanced well enough that the players will actively notice the bonuses being applied – even more so, in fact, than Element TD itself, which is a good thing in my book. Since certain towers or strategies are not universally balanced in other tower defense games, attack type bonuses often do not matter that much unless they are artificially raised so some ridiculous numbers, usually resulting in some waves that are disproportionately more difficult than others. Sorcerer’s Defense has no such problems.
Let me tell you why this map got it right. I can summarize all of it in three words: polish and testing. Just play the map once and it will be obvious that Riley polished his map to a shine and then proceeded to keep polishing it until he could see his own reflection on its surface. I can make no complaints about the map’s presentation, production values, appearance, attention to detail, or anything along those lines. Even the models for the towers were painstakingly rigged to look just right and to accurately convey the element and the power level. Developers: The Sorcerer’s Defense is a prime example of how to present your map. I could take the time to detail every bit of it, but I’ll leave it to the reader to play the map for their self. Polish may be the easiest category to receive an “S” in, but it’s nonetheless exceedingly rare. Well done!
A tower defense with actually good scenery. Never thought I’d see the day…
The testing part of my argument is clear by observing the balance of the gameplay. Each tower is useful in its own way and can be utilized in its own type of strategy. I would have to play several dozen times to accurately determine that the towers are actually perfectly-balanced, but as far as I could tell for my set of playthroughs, everything worked as I would expect and seemed to be balanced to the extent of my powers of deduction.
Each type of tower has its individual accompanying strategy. Every single tower type has its own special properties/abilities. Even the basic towers have special properties. For example, the darkness tower does damage over time, the light tower buffs nearby towers, the fire tower does damage in a line, and the earth tower has a chance to stun for a brief period of time, etc. Let that sink in a bit. The different elements can be combined into different hybrid tower types, as well, in various combinations of one, two, and three element types and their multiples. Towers can be upgraded up tiers by adding more units of their respective elements, but existing towers cannot change type, only power level. I did notice a bug where upgrading a tower would use more elements than it should have, though (e.g. turning a tier 3 basic element into a t4 caused all three of my units of that element to be used up, when only one should have been removed). This allows for a sense of permanency and planning which helps the game seem more cerebral, even though you can just sell the tower to get back 75% of its total cost…
Why do they call these things “mazes,” when there’s only one path to take?
There are actually more than a few gripes I had with The Sorcerer’s Defense that stood out to me, as I played version 1.2 of the map. But after loading up the map for one last run, I noticed that I was once again downloading the map even though I had played it many times before. A picture is worth a thousand words:
Hey presto, it’s fixed!
Many of the issues I had with the game were actually fixed right before my eyes as I was making screenshots for this review. You don’t get luck like that every day, you know.
Back on track, as far as the strategy element goes, The Sorcerer’s Defense is perhaps the most mentally-involved tower defense game I have ever played. It’s genuinely challenging (especially with the random elements mode on), but not overtly difficult as of the latest version (1.3). It is pretty unforgiving with only 10 lives that only regenerate by 1 if you go through a perfect round, meaning a 5-life leak on the first three rounds will screw you over for the rest of the game. The build timer is also pretty evil, considering once the timer’s up, you can’t build anything and all of your elements get reset, though the latest version has extended it a bit, but not enough in my opinion. This all just serves to compound the issue that this map is pretty unintuitive.
Did I mention that you can only build towers with the random set of six units of elements that you get each round? All of those are lost each round. The system handling those elemental units is well-done, of course, so the players pick up on that pretty quickly. What they don’t notice is that all of your unused elements can be made into blockades for mazing. That’s a damn important thing to leave out of the on-screen tips, Riley. Also, most players won’t figure out the appropriate strategy to stay alive for longer than a few rounds, which means you normally have to play several times just to live long enough to get a 3-piece hybrid. It would be very helpful if the players were forced to be aware of them, which would clue them in on the fact that in The Sorcerer’s Defense, you maze or you die. Also, we’re not told that the mobs that run though our mazes require 2 spaces, squared, in order to pass. They won’t go through 1x1 blocks. Players often find that out after going through a lot of frustration trying to figure out why their maze spouts an error. There are some other issues, but last but definitely not least in my list is the “undo” button. It’s NOT an “undo,” Riley. Your map’s “undo” button is a “reset” button. Rename it to “reset.” I hate it when players build a whole set of towers, have 15 seconds left on the timer and use their last element on a barricade, only to misclick the location to build it on. Then they hit “undo,” thinking it’ll set them back one step to replace the tower. Oh, no, you poor, misguided fool. That resets all of your changes, buddy! Now you are left woefully behind the curve: free game over!
There are some really nice features, like the almighty red line of pathfinding. This has saved my life many times.
The breadth of strategy in The Sorcerer’s Defense is amazing. There are many viable paths to take for the player, and each game will play differently, especially since the player may use spells during the mob-run portion of the round. It’s a brilliant addition: the player is kept busy by giving him the chance to use spells that, for example, buff towers and slow enemies. It’s also an effective wildcard that keeps the game varied. For extra chaos, try random mode, which spits out units with random elements instead of the usual set progression of elements.
Every six rounds, a boss will come out for some added challenge, but the boss rounds are generally pretty easier than the usual rounds unless you are particularly weak against that particular boss’ dual set of elements. The bonus, however, is another spell to throw around, which is hard to pass up. The waves themselves are always a group of units, each wave having the same speed and differing health and armor, with different elements. Perhaps the waves could be varied a bit more in their properties, but it would be difficult to balance such things out.
Where perhaps the mobs themselves lack, the layout succeeds. Mobs spawn from four different corners and make a circuit around the area before teleporting out at their original location. They spawn in intervals wide enough that you’ll see some mobs overlap, giving splash damage a chance to shine. More importantly, it gives the player a lot of room to make their own creative setup, since there is a whole bunch of space in the middle to create interesting mazes, especially since there are four different spawn points. It’s possible to get a unit to pass by a single tower 4 to 6 times, if you’re creative enough. Most tower defense games have some set paths that the units follow, perhaps some crisscrossing stuff to spice it up. The Sorcerer’s Defense inverts that setup by giving the players a sandbox of creativity, which is basically amplified by the polish of the map to appear as a tight, elite package of quality.
Good old-fashioned carnage after a hard day’s work.
The four-corner method is quite possibly the best tower defense setup I’ve seen, mainly because this map pulls it off so well. For example, the players need to work for their splash damage; to optimize the damage output of splash towers, the units need to be bunched up or, better yet, need to converge at a specific point. You’ve got to build whole setups around exploiting splash damage! Of course, knowledge of the various towers is more-or-less required to pull off the more lavish setups, but if a player does not have their towers memorized, then that player should pick an easier difficulty to get to learn them better. After all, this is a solo-type game. Even so, a player can still succeed without inside knowledge of the tower types, since the elements are randomized anyway. It’s possible to go through the game on an as-you-learn basis because of this (only seasoned veterans will be able to account for the randomized elements toward their “perfect” strategy, and only come to marginal success), as long as you survive the first few waves. All in all, the balance is excellent, the difficulty is high enough that the players need to be creative with their towers to win, and the map is polished enough that the players will want to get into the map enough to warrant using their brains. It’s a winning combination.
I have no shortage of good things to say about The Sorcerer’s Defense, and this review doesn’t cover everything I have to say because I don’t do much in the way of outlining these things before I write them. However, since this review is already longer than any of the others, I’ll get to my final point: this map suffers from chronic crashing.
Some might say that The Sorcerer’s Defense tries to be an ETD, but it’s really just a CTD. I crashed several times in the course of testing this map, and it’s a massive problem in a game that has such a long running time (I’d imagine that a full game could last nearly two hours, based on the online pace and the number of waves). It’s infuriating. I don’t think I’ve ever given such a hefty “Failures” penalty, but this map really deserves it. Crashing is a serious problem and you’ve got to get it fixed, as I’m sure you know, Riley.
Regardless, the pros outweigh the cons (crashing included) so much that The Sorcerer’s Defense is officially the first reviewed map to receive the score of Gold. Congratulations! Everybody owes this map at least one or two playthroughs. Continue to improve it (AND REMOVE THE CRASHING), Riley, and I’m sure it will be topping the popularity lists.
RATING:
Gold: This map is refined, high-quality, and memorable; it’s just all-around good.
Agree with most part of the review, nice touch using every single thing the game offer (help menu mobs and tower). Any other TD should take this into account.
Since this Blizzard contest submission did not win (like mine) I would be very
sadpissed off if the winner turns out to be some unpolished crap.Just wanted to say thanks for the review and I'm glad you liked it. The criticisms are extremely helpful as well, in fact I already took your advice and changed "Undo" to "Reset" :)
The counterintuitiveness is a big problem for me personally because I've joined lots of random games where players have no idea what to do and die in a couple of rounds. I am welcoming any suggestions on how to make the map more intuitive and newb-friendly without necessarily requiring people to read all the tips in the help menu.
A quality map. I love how you actually put some effort into the terrain. Although it is very tough at first, it is not hard to master. After a couple plays I got to about Level 27 before I had to quit because of lag. (It was the round with the Tauren Marines)
I found that in the games I played 100% of new players died on the first round. The problem the intro is long, so it is ultimately always skipped. You could try condensing it and putting the information into the loading screen. Or on the loading screen suggest that new players play a game by themselves first and watch the intro.
Awsome map, i really love it, but i got random crash only with this map, closing sc2 and error message, i dont know if this is fixed on last version, didnt seen on eu serv. To maybe help you about that crash, i use a french client, maybe it s about the localisation.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
first of all,
thanks for or one of the best and most challanging td's ive played so far.
i usually die very early cause of too few time in the buildtime.
havent played it often so i have to look up the next creeptype and towerdescription to find the right toer i wanna build.
it would be awesome to have a small frame where the element of the next wave and the counterelement is visible.
maybe just for lower difficulties to lern the game better.
also, often when i trie to build on the bottom i get a error (something about circle path), but the crepps are not blocked
I always wondered about this. Molding some land, texturing and adding doodads is about a 30minute job. Why do so many mappers skip this step?
Sorcerers defense is a cool map, although last i played it it crashed my game relentlessly (could never finish because it would literally crash to desktop). Perhaps those bugs have been fixed?
played just a game..... crashed again (eugb client) saw the small "next wave" first time xD
what about make it into a own hidable frme with the next few waves (3-5)
at the beginig you have to plan ahead at least to the second next wave.
where can i get an offline version of this ?
@fxandrei: Go
His map is not locked, you can try download it from battlnet server and then play as a guest, or load from your editor
First off can I say that this was an amazing map to play and I must agree with the reviewer. I played this map when it was first noticed by Sc2mapster a while back (cant remember when) and really enjoyed it. The only problems we found was when we played with 4 or more people it would randomly crash and disconnect our players =/... I hope this issue has been fixed even though it wasn't stated in the change-log.
On another side note and the main reason for my post here is the quote from above. I think as a whole we need to stop publishing your quality work on the actual site. It promotes people using 3rd party Sc2 clients (torrented, downloaded, etc) to play the custom maps and enjoy features of the game that should be left to the online community. It is because of people like this that we have Blizzard clamping down so hard.. I want the stand alone SDK to be released ='(.
@criss123: Go
You should not force mapmaker to upload or not with their works. If they choose to open source, they want it to be. If they want it top secret, leave it.
Get back to that thread if you still want a discussion, this is a review thread.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
I haven't tried the map yet but it looks (and sounds) excellent. Good work.
I was thinking, what if upon startup each player is asked "Have you played before?" if "Yes", ignore this. If "No", demonstrate the first round for the player... ie: change ownership to a computer player, issue build orders, explain the different elements... at least enough so that the player can get the gist of how to build and what the objective is? And of course they can "End Tutorial" at any time to retake control of the units and continue play.
Would that work?
Glad I stumbled upon this review. I'm excited to try this when I get a chance. Sounds like it could keep me busy until I can play my own TD.
You got my attention there. Can you elaborate on that? Maybe I can learn something.
This comes across to me as saying that the map is better because it uses mazing. I believe mazing versus non-mazing is more of a personal preference and does not make one TD superior to another.
That was a funny tidbit about the crashing. I haven't played the game yet but judging by the review (very good as always), I would not say that it is trying to be an ETD. Obviously Riley has borrowed a lot from me, but it seems he has applied it somewhat differently and to a different type of TD altogether.
Yeah; After playing both your TDs quiet a bit I must say that there is a TON of differences between the two. Once you play the TD and actually see the fundamentals behind his you will understand what I mean. It seems like its what would happen if Element TD and Artifact TD had a baby. Grats to two great Authors! Thank you both for your amazing maps and looking forward to seeing yours Karawasa
I guess comparisons with Element TD are inevitable but truthfully I think they're very different kinds of games which try to be challenging in different ways. The use of "elements" is kind of an interesting story. This map went through two earlier phases. At the beginning it was called "Tarot Defense" and you were dealt a set of tarot cards that you had to combine to make different tower types based on the major arcana - for example, two wands and two cups make The Hanged Man who did damage over time. This was pretty cool and unique thematically but unfortunately it was a gameplay disaster because there was no relationship between what the towers did or were called and the cards needed to build them.
So next it became Alchemy Defense. Here the components were aether, mercury, vitriol, sulfur, and aqua. Towers were based on alchemical compounds, processes, or creations. For example, combining Aqua and Vitriol gave "Aqua Fortis" which was an acid-type tower. Gameplay wise this was a massive improvement over tarot D but ultimately too arcane for most people to understand, especially with the number of combinations I was planning on having. Also, it became difficult to find unique names things, and the sort of strength-weakness relationships the ingredients had didn't really make sense and was absolutely unintuitive. (Mercury beats vitriol? Uh, okay, that's easy to remember.)
I finally went to using elements because they're an established gaming vocabulary; people understand them immediately and can even intuitively guess at their weaknesses and strengths. I still think the alchemy version would have been cool, but I don't think it would have been a very popular map.
It's more of a psychological difference, if anything. It may even be a very minor difference, but I noticed that the whole turned out to be greater than the sum of its parts. It just felt like the elements were doing more. Maybe it's just an artifact of how difficult, balanced, and clean the map is.
That's true; mazing versus non-mazing is a matter of preference. However, as far as mazing TDs go, Sorcerer's Defense has the concept perfected. A non-mazing map, similarly, needs to be exceptionally good for its type to compete with Sorcerer's Defense. I suppose, as far as SC2 goes, this map is the only example of a great TD released thus far, which would make it appear that mazing is necessarily superior to non-mazing, which it is not.
There are enough similarities to make comparisons. I put that line in there for the purpose of making a joke; I specifically put "some" and "might" to show that it's not my own opinion.
@DarkRevenantX: Go
awesome but i've crashed a couple times. is anyone else experiencing crashing issues?
@SleepSheep: Go
Yeap on more then one occasion but I can say 110% hands down this is the gateway to perfection for future TDs
I agree with most of the opinions here that this TD has a GREAT idea behind it. it someow remembers me of the gem td from warcraft 3, which has made it's way to many browser-ased clones. The system of combining those different elemental types and building barriers is realy nice.
BUT
i have a massive prolem in solving the first 10 rounds or so, because every time i try to build a good maze and i want to set the elemental blocks (or towers) to complete a path, the game won't let me because it says that i would prevent enemies from finding a way through it. those "path-finding-markers" just block the building process even if there's another (more tricky) way for the creeps to go. so did u actually want this to happen, e.g. for mazes not to get too strong because of complexity, or is this just a bug? anyways, for me it's kind of annoying and i would say that if i was allowed to build a maze just how i want to, this would be my favourite fun map. by far. actually, i don't even need the markers because it's obvious where the creeps go.
->i apologize for typing mistakes, my keyboard is crap....