I've begun working on a map, the concept isn't really new but I'll explain in detail how it will work. A lot of it is very similar to WC3 Impossible Bosses, I am trying to be as innovative as possible but I want to keep a few key aspects.
Gameplay:
The Gameplay is simple; you pick a hero of your choosing and fight a boss together with other players. Each Hero is planned to have 7 Abilities. Included in these 7 abilities is a temporary invulnerability and a passive.
The passive ability is basically just a mechanic that will make the Hero more interesting, this could be the applying of a behavior which changes how your Hero use certain abilities or it could be a mechanic where your abilities work differently depending on the range you have from your target.
Difficulties
I’m hoping to create several different difficulty levels on each boss, preferably 4. Ranging from:
Easy:
Some abilities are disabled.
Health and Damage is reduced slightly.
No Enrage Mechanic.
Normal:
Standard Difficulty, Bosses will have their standard abilities, health and damage.
Enrage Mechanic comes in play.
Hard:
Additional abilities.
More health and damage.
Very Hard:
Adds more complexity to existing abilities.
More health and damage.
Enrage Mechanic has additional effects.
Very Hard should basically require perfection when it comes to how fast you interrupt, dispel, dodge abilities and how well you handle the Bosses ‘Enrage Mechanic’. Whilst hard should allow a few more mistakes and be more forgiving than Very Hard.
An example would be a fireball ability.
In easy, this would not deal very much damage and be fairly easy to dodge.
In Normal, this would be harder to dodge and deal an average amount of damage, is might even apply a debuff which increases the damage of the next fireball for 8 seconds disallowing the mistake to be repeated.
In Hard, the debuff would stack making several mistakes more punishing. The missiles might even be driven by Guidance Movers at the start to allow them to be more precise and harder to dodge.
In Very Hard, there might be 3 missiles fired at the same time and at 3 different players.
Every new difficulty has the previous effects.
Boss Mechanics:
I’ll try making each and every Boss fight feel as unique as possible but some basic mechanics may occur on several Bosses:
Enrage Mechanic; bosses will earn ‘Rage’ as the fight progresses and when it reaches a certain threshold they'll do something which increases the difficulty, this could be casting a certain ability or just a flat damage bonus. Certain Heroes can reduce the bosses ‘Rage’ with their abilities.
Interrupt Mechanic; some abilities will be interruptable. This basically just gives some necessity to time certain Hero abilities. A boss may have several Interruptable abilities, so you may either need to have several who can interrupt or prioritize which abilities are more necessary to interrupt.
Dispel Mechanic; some bosses will apply behaviors which will act in different ways such as dealing periodic damage, or reducing the Hero's damage. Some Heroes will have abilities to remove negative behaviors.
"Skillshot" Mechanic; some boss abilities will be dodgable, this makes manuvering a key aspect of the map.
Additional Information:
Heroes planned:
4 Tanks
3 Healers
1 Pure support
5 Ranged DPS
3 Melee DPS
Progression
There will be no leveling, or ability level upgrading in the map. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be ANY progression. I want the progression to be in the form of Loot. As well as a Stat system, however I don’t want someone to take a dump on Very Hard difficulty because he/she has some ridiculous stats.
So I want to enforce some kind of cap on stats, and I’ve been thinking of making it in a way where you get Stat points and then you pick what stat to improve. If you want you can even re-pick which stats you want at a later point in time.
Back to the loot, there will be 2 types of loot.
Equipment that increase stats; such as an armor upgrade that would increase your Energy by 200 or your Energy Regeneration by 5/s.
Equipment that improve abilities; the improvements aren’t flat damage buffs but instead change how abilities work. They might change a Healing ability to instead be a Shielding ability or change a buff to increase something differently. They might even add additional effects to certain abilities. Like adding an AoE Heal to a Teleport ability, or a Self Heal to a Damage ability.
Bragging Rights!
Achievements; Achieved through defeating Bosses, and there will be one for each difficulty.
Custom Frame; This will show what highest difficulty you've cleared, This means that if you kill all bosses on a certain difficulty your frame will be differently displayed to fellow players.
Still thinking of more ways to ensure you can brag to the max about certain accomplishments.
Note Worthy:
The Game-Camera will be the standard SC2 Angle, possibly more zoomed out.
All Heroes have unique abilities, however they are predetermined and are not customizable, with the exception through certain items.
You will only fight bosses, but I'll make different arena's / locations for each and every Boss.
I have not decided whether or not I want to save all Hero data, such as stat progression.
Most Hero abilities are target abilities, this is because I want the attention to lie on avoiding boss abilities and being ready to act depending on what happens. Instead of having to aim everything. Certain abilities might be "skill-shots".
I want to make Hero composition a key feature. This would be through the fact that some abilities are a necessity and I want there to be choice whether or not to take a certain Hero and tackling a certain mechanic. Lets say you don't have any interrupter in your group but instead choose to go with an additional Healer or maybe a Pure Support to instead attempt healing though the mechanic or reduce the damage sufficiently.
If you die on a boss you'll be dead until the fight is over. I'm however still considering whether or not there should be X number of revives per boss. This could also apply to the difficulty picking. On easy you might get 3 Revives per player, on Normal 2 Revives, on Hard 1 Revive, on Very Hard no Revives.
Please post Feedback
I'll update the post with more information eventually.
Just curious if anyone think the concept is good and if they'd be interested in playing a Map like this.
So Please post your feedback and questions bellow. I'd be thrilled to discuss the map.
If there already is an existing Map just like this, I'd love to be given a link and test it out. I'm not interested in making a map that already exist.
But right now I'm rather bored with the SC2 Arcade maps and would really like to see a good boss fight map.
Gladiator Arena is a boss fighting map. I have to note though that it does tend to get boring quickly as there isn't much to do, and all you really can do is spam your attack. I think the only reason people played it to begin with is because it got on page 1 for a while.
I presume you're referring to 'Clownz Gladiator Arena'?
Well sure there's Boss Fights, but in my opinion they're really simplistic. The basic idea of every Boss Fight in CGA is to avoid touching the Boss and dodging his projectile. Sure it's a fun mini-game but I think the core mechanics really aren't that strong to keep someone entertained for more than an hour at most.
Running around the map pressing [Right Click] and some [Left Click]s every now and then isn't really that much fun. It would actually be a drastic improvement if the fights were less 'sluggish'. There's always a ton of time to react, I like hectic Boss Fights were you really need to know what you're doing. Otherwise you'll be punished for it.
I think that if I do release my Boss Fights map, it will be VERY different from CGA. The only similarity would be that you're fighting Bosses. There would be a very different loot/itemization system, a lot more boss mechanics and Heroes with unique abilities. As well as some bragging rights ;)
If you have any suggestions on how I could improve my concept, Please post a comment below.
Well, the concept of your map sounds fun, I hope it will be able to recreate the "impossible bosses"-feeling from Wc3 :D
Actually, there is already a map on EU of a similar style (but still different to impossible bosses) called "In Development" (not joking, thats the real name)
It has a couple of heroes, abilities and bosses, but in this map the level of each hero is saved between games, and you can also choose from various weapons for your unit. Additionally, there are also unlockables and such things, but you should check it out yourself.
Nevertheless would it be cool to have a map more similar to the original, therefore good luck with your project!
I'll check 'In Development' out. Might get some inspiration and flesh out more mechanics and systems for my map.
Update:
I have now played the map, It's pretty cool actually. However it doesn't really give the feel that 'Impossible Bosses' did. I wont go too in-depth about the map but there are some key difference's that I feel is good to point out.
In my map I intend to disable auto-attacking, this is because I consider auto-attacks dull. I want there to be ways to optimize your DPS with your Hero by understanding his/her abilities. I want there to be a difference both in how well a player reacts to situations, maneuvers as well as usage of abilities.
Also I intend for the map to be for 4-8 players, I haven't decided how I'll scale it with players yet.
Yes this sounds good. I hope you know how to implement target position prediction for boss skillshots and your manuvering mechanic. Also like your minimalistic aproach with hero development process. Didnt like when in 30 min map author adding 3000 skills and items. If all that you desctibed above will work as it should this will be one hell ofa great map. Work hard on AI plz.
If there already is an existing Map just like this, I'd love to be given a link and test it out. I'm not interested in making a map that already exist. But right now I'm rather bored with the SC2 Arcade maps and would really like to see a good boss fight map.
Hm, the -RAID- (Impossible Bosses) one seems fairly interesting. Most of the other ones I've already checked out and quickly realized they're not what I'm trying to create.
One of the major reasons why I'm interested in creating this map is because it's something I'd really like to play.
Yes this sounds good. I hope you know how to implement target position prediction for boss skillshots and your manuvering mechanic. Also like your minimalistic aproach with hero development process. Didnt like when in 30 min map author adding 3000 skills and items. If all that you desctibed above will work as it should this will be one hell ofa great map. Work hard on AI plz.
Considering AI, I'm definitely going to work on it a lot. I myself want to be able to play something truly difficult.
I'd rather have the difficulty at a point where dodging abilities is so hard you'll likely get hit a couple of times, and when you get hit it's not too severely punishing. Instead of having easily dodgable abilities, but if you get hit you instantly die.
You can also add some randomness to each boss fight to increase replayability. For example different skillsets for bosses (2-3 per boss) or different ways for boss to use them. Also, i think better to make this battles realy challenging, so for example depending on current boss skillset your party can actualy fail. I rly like hardcore difficulties :).
It's a cool idea to have Random skill-sets. But I'd rather have a responsive AI which will actually acts differently depending on how situations are handled. I'll give two scenarios as an example of how this might work.
Scenario 1
You don't interrupt abilities or simply don't have the means to. Then the boss will realize this and use it to it's advantage. This might be in the form of actually using more dangerous interruptible abilities.
Scenario 2
You interrupt the abilities. Then the boss might try to cancel out the player who is responsible for interrupting before casting his ability. Perhaps this would be by stunning the player with an interrupt as he begins casting the ability. This stun might then be removed by another Hero which then allows the ability to be interrupted. If you have several interrupters the Boss might act differently according to that situation.
Scenario 3
Your group is really cluttered up, constantly moving together as a pack. Then the boss might cast an AOE ability in the center of your group or perhaps apply a spreading debuff on one Hero which spreads to all nearby Heroes.
Scenario 4
Your group is scattered across the map, never standing close to each other. Then the boss might simply cast a spell which forces you to be closer, there are many ways to do this. I think you get the general idea.
Does this sound like a fun way for bosses to work?
Some of these AI reactions might not be active on ALL difficulties, but on Very Hard I want there to be Chaos. A Chaos that you will want to control but may get out of hand if you fail to. I want there to be consequences to failure and success. However failure should always be more punishing.
Please respond whether this sounds interesting or not, perhaps you have an entirely different idea which is a ton better.
EDIT* Created Project. LINK: Give me a Quest
I've begun working on a map, the concept isn't really new but I'll explain in detail how it will work. A lot of it is very similar to WC3 Impossible Bosses, I am trying to be as innovative as possible but I want to keep a few key aspects.
Gameplay:
The Gameplay is simple; you pick a hero of your choosing and fight a boss together with other players. Each Hero is planned to have 7 Abilities. Included in these 7 abilities is a temporary invulnerability and a passive. The passive ability is basically just a mechanic that will make the Hero more interesting, this could be the applying of a behavior which changes how your Hero use certain abilities or it could be a mechanic where your abilities work differently depending on the range you have from your target.
Difficulties
I’m hoping to create several different difficulty levels on each boss, preferably 4. Ranging from:
Easy:
Normal:
Hard:
Very Hard:
Very Hard should basically require perfection when it comes to how fast you interrupt, dispel, dodge abilities and how well you handle the Bosses ‘Enrage Mechanic’. Whilst hard should allow a few more mistakes and be more forgiving than Very Hard.
An example would be a fireball ability.
Every new difficulty has the previous effects.
Boss Mechanics:
I’ll try making each and every Boss fight feel as unique as possible but some basic mechanics may occur on several Bosses:
Additional Information:
Heroes planned:
Progression
There will be no leveling, or ability level upgrading in the map. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be ANY progression. I want the progression to be in the form of Loot. As well as a Stat system, however I don’t want someone to take a dump on Very Hard difficulty because he/she has some ridiculous stats.
So I want to enforce some kind of cap on stats, and I’ve been thinking of making it in a way where you get Stat points and then you pick what stat to improve. If you want you can even re-pick which stats you want at a later point in time.
Back to the loot, there will be 2 types of loot.
Bragging Rights!
Still thinking of more ways to ensure you can brag to the max about certain accomplishments.
Note Worthy:
Please post Feedback
I'll update the post with more information eventually. Just curious if anyone think the concept is good and if they'd be interested in playing a Map like this.
So Please post your feedback and questions bellow. I'd be thrilled to discuss the map.
@Velkydia: Go
If there already is an existing Map just like this, I'd love to be given a link and test it out. I'm not interested in making a map that already exist. But right now I'm rather bored with the SC2 Arcade maps and would really like to see a good boss fight map.
@Velkydia: Go
Gladiator Arena is a boss fighting map. I have to note though that it does tend to get boring quickly as there isn't much to do, and all you really can do is spam your attack. I think the only reason people played it to begin with is because it got on page 1 for a while.
New to the Editor? Need a tutorial? Click Here
Want data assets? Click Here
@fishy77: Go
I presume you're referring to 'Clownz Gladiator Arena'?
Well sure there's Boss Fights, but in my opinion they're really simplistic. The basic idea of every Boss Fight in CGA is to avoid touching the Boss and dodging his projectile. Sure it's a fun mini-game but I think the core mechanics really aren't that strong to keep someone entertained for more than an hour at most.
Running around the map pressing [Right Click] and some [Left Click]s every now and then isn't really that much fun. It would actually be a drastic improvement if the fights were less 'sluggish'. There's always a ton of time to react, I like hectic Boss Fights were you really need to know what you're doing. Otherwise you'll be punished for it.
I think that if I do release my Boss Fights map, it will be VERY different from CGA. The only similarity would be that you're fighting Bosses. There would be a very different loot/itemization system, a lot more boss mechanics and Heroes with unique abilities. As well as some bragging rights ;)
If you have any suggestions on how I could improve my concept, Please post a comment below.
@Velkydia: Go
Well, the concept of your map sounds fun, I hope it will be able to recreate the "impossible bosses"-feeling from Wc3 :D
Actually, there is already a map on EU of a similar style (but still different to impossible bosses) called "In Development" (not joking, thats the real name) It has a couple of heroes, abilities and bosses, but in this map the level of each hero is saved between games, and you can also choose from various weapons for your unit. Additionally, there are also unlockables and such things, but you should check it out yourself.
Nevertheless would it be cool to have a map more similar to the original, therefore good luck with your project!
@TheUltragon: Go
I'll check 'In Development' out. Might get some inspiration and flesh out more mechanics and systems for my map.
Update:
I have now played the map, It's pretty cool actually. However it doesn't really give the feel that 'Impossible Bosses' did. I wont go too in-depth about the map but there are some key difference's that I feel is good to point out.
In my map I intend to disable auto-attacking, this is because I consider auto-attacks dull. I want there to be ways to optimize your DPS with your Hero by understanding his/her abilities. I want there to be a difference both in how well a player reacts to situations, maneuvers as well as usage of abilities.
Also I intend for the map to be for 4-8 players, I haven't decided how I'll scale it with players yet.
Does anyone find the concept appealing? And is it something you'd like to play?
Yes this sounds good. I hope you know how to implement target position prediction for boss skillshots and your manuvering mechanic. Also like your minimalistic aproach with hero development process. Didnt like when in 30 min map author adding 3000 skills and items. If all that you desctibed above will work as it should this will be one hell ofa great map. Work hard on AI plz.
sounds gooood. make it happen!
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/boss-fortress/
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/planetary-boss-hunt/
http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/player-zone/map-feedback/20440-mangled-minds-impossible-bosses/
http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/project-workplace/44435-raid-impossible-bosses/
http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/project-workplace/12048-contest-wow-boss/
Random pages that I remember seeing around here. Somewhat related.
Hm, the -RAID- (Impossible Bosses) one seems fairly interesting. Most of the other ones I've already checked out and quickly realized they're not what I'm trying to create.
One of the major reasons why I'm interested in creating this map is because it's something I'd really like to play.
Considering AI, I'm definitely going to work on it a lot. I myself want to be able to play something truly difficult. I'd rather have the difficulty at a point where dodging abilities is so hard you'll likely get hit a couple of times, and when you get hit it's not too severely punishing. Instead of having easily dodgable abilities, but if you get hit you instantly die.
I'll look into creating the Project for my Map today.
You can also add some randomness to each boss fight to increase replayability. For example different skillsets for bosses (2-3 per boss) or different ways for boss to use them. Also, i think better to make this battles realy challenging, so for example depending on current boss skillset your party can actualy fail. I rly like hardcore difficulties :).
@abvdzh: Go
It's a cool idea to have Random skill-sets. But I'd rather have a responsive AI which will actually acts differently depending on how situations are handled. I'll give two scenarios as an example of how this might work.
Scenario 1
You don't interrupt abilities or simply don't have the means to. Then the boss will realize this and use it to it's advantage. This might be in the form of actually using more dangerous interruptible abilities.
Scenario 2
You interrupt the abilities. Then the boss might try to cancel out the player who is responsible for interrupting before casting his ability. Perhaps this would be by stunning the player with an interrupt as he begins casting the ability. This stun might then be removed by another Hero which then allows the ability to be interrupted. If you have several interrupters the Boss might act differently according to that situation.
Scenario 3
Your group is really cluttered up, constantly moving together as a pack. Then the boss might cast an AOE ability in the center of your group or perhaps apply a spreading debuff on one Hero which spreads to all nearby Heroes.
Scenario 4
Your group is scattered across the map, never standing close to each other. Then the boss might simply cast a spell which forces you to be closer, there are many ways to do this. I think you get the general idea.
Does this sound like a fun way for bosses to work?
Some of these AI reactions might not be active on ALL difficulties, but on Very Hard I want there to be Chaos. A Chaos that you will want to control but may get out of hand if you fail to. I want there to be consequences to failure and success. However failure should always be more punishing.
Please respond whether this sounds interesting or not, perhaps you have an entirely different idea which is a ton better.
I've created a project page now: Give me a Quest