I have started working on a map and I would really appreciate a few thoughts on it.
Concept
The concept is based on the primal zerg living on Zerus; you become what you kill.
Other inspiration for this map includes standard evolution theory and a Warcraft 3 map called "Darwin's Island" (http://www.epicwar.com/maps/192383/).
The rudimentary idea is that the map must be easy to learn, but hard to master. Players should be able to join and have fun for a few minutes. But the map must also be intellectually challenging, providing incentives for players to seek different evolutionary paths and develop new tactics for winnning.
How to play
At it's current state it's an FFA map where everyone starts out as a parasite at the bottom of the food chain. Players must then infest and kill monsters/zerg (AI controlled) and other players to collect their essences and thus evolve. Evolving is equivalent to levelling up. By evolving players receive increasingly more powerful abilities, and they become deadlier and more advanced organisms. The unit models will change and grow as a player evolves.
Currently, I have worked out 5 evolutionary schools, which players may choose from. I'm actually quite happy with them. These schools are:
Endurance: Additional health, reducing enemy damage, health regeneration.
Perception: Increased vision and detection range, able to see footprints and track down enemies, other awareness skills.
Aggression: Increased damage, generally abilities for use in combat.
Deception: Trickery, baiting, laying traps, hallucinations, can burrow, etc.
Potency: Faster evolving (XP gain increased), minions (e.g. through Mitosis; split in two).
The map is flooded with respawning AI monsters of varying difficulty. Monsters - and players alike - provide a certain amount of essence when they die. However, essences fall within the 5 evolutionary schools as well. And so, players must acquire said essences in order to gain access to new abilities within the respective evolutionary school.
Scene/Tileset
A jungle environment (Zerus tileset) where hiding behind obstacles like trees and rocks is an option for smaller organisms.
Starting up
At the beginning, a player will choose his/her primary school. Each primary school provides the player with 3 baseline abilities; 2 actively used abilities and 1 passive. Said baseline abilities are available to each player throughout the game through all evolutionary stages. For the Aggression school, for instance, these abilities could be something like Charge, Cripple, and passively increased damage by a percentage.
A player is not locked to a school (with the exception of the baseline abilities), though, and may gain access to all abilities - with limitations. These limitations I haven't worked out yet. I thought I played with was having the evolutionary schools in columns and then tiers of abilities as rows, and then only one ability from each tier row can be selected, by spending collected essence. A bit like the current talent tree in World of Warcraft.
Main objectives and victory
Kill enemies and collect their essences
Grow and become more powerful
Eliminate opponent players and become the most highly advanced creature in the game
Ultimately, all player organisms will grow to become big, fast, and hit like a freight train, which in turn will cause just one player to be victorious. I have not yet settled on definitive victory conditions, though.
Any ideas?
I would very much like to hear from you guys if you have ideas which would be cool to incorporate into the map!
I liked Darwin's Island in wc3. The following is just my thoughts and opinions.
I think that this is the kind of thing which can only exist as a mini-game, and would hence be important to design the game from the ground up with that in mind. Short games (15-25min), easy entry mechanics, impossible to fail in the first few minutes, and forgiving failure mechanics, with a clearly defined victory objective.
I do prefer your "leveling" system to that of Darwin's Island, which seemed almost random in it's progression. Though, if I were making this, I'd strip it down to 3 attributes. This is about all the choice you need to make a compelling game, and further attributes could be added in future, but making sure that the game has a solid core to start with is vital. I'd also shy away from mechanics that increase xp gain, as you then need to balance the game around both having this attribute, and not having it, which quickly becomes a real mess.
I liked Darwin's Island victory condition. Upon reaching a certain level (11 in wc3), you were given the most powerful monster type, but you also became unrevivable. Furthermore, anything you killed was permanently slain, so that after a certain point you'd win. This was pretty fair, fit with the game theme, and was clear enough to avoid being confusing.
Hiding behind trees sounds fun. It'd have to be limited to very early levels, or else you'd end up in a situation where you couldn't finish your opponents due to greater mobility.
I agree that things shouldn't be overly complicated. I've considered introducing different game modes. A "Normal" mode introduces the very basics. Other game mode could unlock more complex features. This, too, makes balance harder, though.
Agreed. I want to allow more control over the evolutionary paths, and not just - as in Darwin's Island - say "You killed a crab. Congratulations, you are now a troll." What...?
The core is exactly what I want to nail first! One of the primary reason I made this post.
I'm not too fund of the victory condition in Darwin's Island. It promotes snowballing and I really dislike that effect. I'd rather introduce some form of tennis logic, then. Something like if you are 5 levels above anyone else, you win. It needs refining, of course.
Yes. Hiding will be mostly for the early game. IIRC, in Darwin's Island, all players had vision on the level 11 "super" unit? This map will have something similar so that you can't just turtle, camp, or run forever.
Just curious if losing is possible (like if you die, you get the lose screen), or if players will respawn as the lowest form. Would probably encourage players if they got to respawn. In this case you could make the victory condition to reach a certain level, or even consume the essence of some super boss zerg. You could make a couple different boss zerg, and have one randomly picked per match. Of Course respawning will mean you'll want computer zerg to respawn as well. Perhaps over time respawning zerg could get stronger. You'd also likely want to make it so players don't get any experience from attacking zerg so many levels lower than them (so they can't just farm low level zerg).
Is the baneling path available? That'd be hilarious to spend time to become one then suicide death.
Yes. Respawning or some similar feature will exist. I'm not sure if I like the idea of players having to start from scratch, though. That mostly comes down to balance and ultimately: What is fun?
I did think about creating super units - or "bosses". But then I reconsidered it. At a certain point, I want players to move away from farming easily killed AI monsters to actually hunting each other down.
Once you have acquired a certain amount of essence from any type of monster, you will no longer gain essence from it. This forces people to seek out and kill stronger and stronger monsters, and ultimately go for the player controlled units.
Hehe. That Baneling suggestion certainly is interesting! Anything is possible. The Potency school, for instance, could reduce death penalty, provide faster respawn time, or something similar. Just spitballing here. Nothing is chiseled in stone, yet! :)
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I have started working on a map and I would really appreciate a few thoughts on it.
Concept
The concept is based on the primal zerg living on Zerus; you become what you kill.
Other inspiration for this map includes standard evolution theory and a Warcraft 3 map called "Darwin's Island" (http://www.epicwar.com/maps/192383/).
The rudimentary idea is that the map must be easy to learn, but hard to master. Players should be able to join and have fun for a few minutes. But the map must also be intellectually challenging, providing incentives for players to seek different evolutionary paths and develop new tactics for winnning.
How to play
At it's current state it's an FFA map where everyone starts out as a parasite at the bottom of the food chain. Players must then infest and kill monsters/zerg (AI controlled) and other players to collect their essences and thus evolve. Evolving is equivalent to levelling up. By evolving players receive increasingly more powerful abilities, and they become deadlier and more advanced organisms. The unit models will change and grow as a player evolves.
Currently, I have worked out 5 evolutionary schools, which players may choose from. I'm actually quite happy with them. These schools are:
The map is flooded with respawning AI monsters of varying difficulty. Monsters - and players alike - provide a certain amount of essence when they die. However, essences fall within the 5 evolutionary schools as well. And so, players must acquire said essences in order to gain access to new abilities within the respective evolutionary school.
Scene/Tileset
A jungle environment (Zerus tileset) where hiding behind obstacles like trees and rocks is an option for smaller organisms.
Starting up
At the beginning, a player will choose his/her primary school. Each primary school provides the player with 3 baseline abilities; 2 actively used abilities and 1 passive. Said baseline abilities are available to each player throughout the game through all evolutionary stages. For the Aggression school, for instance, these abilities could be something like Charge, Cripple, and passively increased damage by a percentage.
A player is not locked to a school (with the exception of the baseline abilities), though, and may gain access to all abilities - with limitations. These limitations I haven't worked out yet. I thought I played with was having the evolutionary schools in columns and then tiers of abilities as rows, and then only one ability from each tier row can be selected, by spending collected essence. A bit like the current talent tree in World of Warcraft.
Main objectives and victory
Ultimately, all player organisms will grow to become big, fast, and hit like a freight train, which in turn will cause just one player to be victorious. I have not yet settled on definitive victory conditions, though.
Any ideas?
I would very much like to hear from you guys if you have ideas which would be cool to incorporate into the map!
Thanks in advance! Kafoso
I liked Darwin's Island in wc3. The following is just my thoughts and opinions.
I think that this is the kind of thing which can only exist as a mini-game, and would hence be important to design the game from the ground up with that in mind. Short games (15-25min), easy entry mechanics, impossible to fail in the first few minutes, and forgiving failure mechanics, with a clearly defined victory objective.
I do prefer your "leveling" system to that of Darwin's Island, which seemed almost random in it's progression. Though, if I were making this, I'd strip it down to 3 attributes. This is about all the choice you need to make a compelling game, and further attributes could be added in future, but making sure that the game has a solid core to start with is vital. I'd also shy away from mechanics that increase xp gain, as you then need to balance the game around both having this attribute, and not having it, which quickly becomes a real mess.
I liked Darwin's Island victory condition. Upon reaching a certain level (11 in wc3), you were given the most powerful monster type, but you also became unrevivable. Furthermore, anything you killed was permanently slain, so that after a certain point you'd win. This was pretty fair, fit with the game theme, and was clear enough to avoid being confusing.
Hiding behind trees sounds fun. It'd have to be limited to very early levels, or else you'd end up in a situation where you couldn't finish your opponents due to greater mobility.
@TyaArcade: Go
I agree that things shouldn't be overly complicated. I've considered introducing different game modes. A "Normal" mode introduces the very basics. Other game mode could unlock more complex features. This, too, makes balance harder, though.
Agreed. I want to allow more control over the evolutionary paths, and not just - as in Darwin's Island - say "You killed a crab. Congratulations, you are now a troll." What...?
The core is exactly what I want to nail first! One of the primary reason I made this post.
I'm not too fund of the victory condition in Darwin's Island. It promotes snowballing and I really dislike that effect. I'd rather introduce some form of tennis logic, then. Something like if you are 5 levels above anyone else, you win. It needs refining, of course.
Yes. Hiding will be mostly for the early game. IIRC, in Darwin's Island, all players had vision on the level 11 "super" unit? This map will have something similar so that you can't just turtle, camp, or run forever.
@datLoLorian: Go
Perhaps :) I'll write you a PM.
Just curious if losing is possible (like if you die, you get the lose screen), or if players will respawn as the lowest form. Would probably encourage players if they got to respawn. In this case you could make the victory condition to reach a certain level, or even consume the essence of some super boss zerg. You could make a couple different boss zerg, and have one randomly picked per match. Of Course respawning will mean you'll want computer zerg to respawn as well. Perhaps over time respawning zerg could get stronger. You'd also likely want to make it so players don't get any experience from attacking zerg so many levels lower than them (so they can't just farm low level zerg).
Is the baneling path available? That'd be hilarious to spend time to become one then suicide death.
@MaskedImposter: Go
Yes. Respawning or some similar feature will exist. I'm not sure if I like the idea of players having to start from scratch, though. That mostly comes down to balance and ultimately: What is fun?
I did think about creating super units - or "bosses". But then I reconsidered it. At a certain point, I want players to move away from farming easily killed AI monsters to actually hunting each other down.
Once you have acquired a certain amount of essence from any type of monster, you will no longer gain essence from it. This forces people to seek out and kill stronger and stronger monsters, and ultimately go for the player controlled units.
Hehe. That Baneling suggestion certainly is interesting! Anything is possible. The Potency school, for instance, could reduce death penalty, provide faster respawn time, or something similar. Just spitballing here. Nothing is chiseled in stone, yet! :)