Disclaimer: All mechanics and gameplay are presented on an as-is basis, and are therefore subject to change.
Currently we have completed the game system, and are working on refining heroes and item/mercenary effects. Balancing begins on release date. We are also currently testing several changes in the game mechanic with the addition of a mercenary bay, different spawn numbers from each side, and an attribute system based on SC2 parameters. All these changes are executed in an effort to develop a revision of DotA that is derivative of StarCraft game mechanics.
We are in short supply of heroes so this could be your chance to get yours out there with a simple "how about a hero that shoots kamikaze battlecruisers?". Our hero criteria as follows:
- Heroes should take advantage of new mechanics like the mercenary bay. AoE buffs, disruption, and information acquisition abilities are in the zone.
- Heroes are no longer based on str/agi/int, but rather on armor class. Armor classes affect how you take damage and logistically, how you deal damage. Classes include Biological, Psionic, and Armored.
Armor Classes:
The new armor class system may seem immediately imbalanced or foreign to most, but it simply affects the method in which the hero is developed over time. An immediate misconception is that Biological=Zerg, Psionic=Protoss, and Armored=Terran. This is not the case. For example, Lord.Zyrkhan (a zealot) is considered armored since he is designed as a close-quarters melee hero.
- Biological: Low armor, high vital stat gain. Deals below average weapon damage. Bonus damage against Psionics.
- Psionic: Moderate armor, moderate stat gain. Deals above average weapon damage. Bonus damage against Armored.
- Armored: Heavy armor, moderate stat gain. Deals average weapon damage. Bonus damage against Biologicals.
Mercenaries:
Mercenaries are hired via the shop and provide support on the battlefield in the form of information acquisition, healing, chasing, or simply destroying towers/creeps. Like items in DotA, they are combined in later stages to call forth stronger mercenaries, but are subject to destsruction on the field. To offset this downside, players recieve a partial reimbursement when a mercenary dies.
While we should have 8 heroes by release date, we would sincerely appreciate additional help in developing more. If you are interested in working directly with us on refinement, send ekcolnovkol a message on irc or via the forum.
Have to say I like this direction and its a nice twist with the Mercenaries, dosn't make it just 'all about the items' now so it should be intresting to see where things go with that, look forward to playing it. As for hero ideas, A changling hero may be a neat things to do, being able to not only 'look' like another unit but also make another 'unit' look like it or another unit, could be an intresting hero to do, all other heros I can think of may be a bit too complicated atm. If I think of anymore i'll of course post or let you know :)
I use the hero-concept of DotA as a reference (4 spells, 1 ultimate, usually 1 passive).
I am unsure about how this whole Mercenary thing is supposed to work and how it feels when playing, so I'll leave that out.
How about an Immortal-hero. Armored tank, of course. High hp/shields, mediocre damage, slow/medium movespeed
- Shockwave: The immortal uses his battle cannons to to hit every target in a line. All hit targets receive medium damage and a short attack/movement slow
- Hardened Shields: Reduces incoming damage (passive)
- Plasma surge: Overloads the immortal's shields to stun all nearby enemies. For every second this ability is channeled the Immortal loses a good chunk of his shields. If he is stunned or his shields are completely depleted the ability is canceled. (channeled).
- Weapon platform: Allows the Immortal to fire while moving for a short amount of time and increases it's attack (and movement) speed (Ultimate).
Or a zergling, biological "rouge". Rather fragile, low attack damage, high attack speed, high movement speed.
- Adrenal Glands: Greatly improves movementspeed and moderately improves attack speed for a short duration to close in on his targets.
- Battle hunger: With every melee attack the Zergling gains a fraction of his life back (passive)
- Overwhelm: Stuns an enemy for a short time and reduces his movement speed for a longer time. Enemies are only effected when they're hit from behind. Might also deal some damage.
- Without numbers: Where there's one Zergling, there are more. This skill reduces respawn time when the Ling got killed and reduces kill bonus (gold) that the enemy receives from killing it. (ultimate)
And a baneling. Psionic. Has a short-range attack like the Roach. Medium stats.
- Burrow: Self-explanatory, while burrowed the baneling has slightly improved health regeneration
- Charge: The baneling starts rolling towards the targeted location, dealing moderate damage to all non-heroes in it's way and detonates if it hits an enemy hero. The detonation deals high damage in a medium AoE, stops the banelings charge and depletes 50% of the blings maximum life. During that charge the baneling is immune to most kinds of stun (maybe except of Ultimate ability, which would cancel the charge instead of stunning). The baneling can't change the direction once it started rolling and cannot be stopped until it reaches destination or detonates.
- Explode: The baneling channels this ability for 1 second, then blows up in a huge explosion. All enemies in a large AoE are damaged and enemies and allies are slowed for several seconds. The baneling dies. If the baneling is below 10% health the explosion deals less damage in a smaller area.
Aaaand a Reaper, psionic ranged. Medium stats, medium attack range.
- Jump: The reaper can use his jetpack to quickly jump to a different location (just like blink, only with the reaper actually jumping).
- D-8 Charge: throws a D-8 charge at the ground that explodes several seconds later. The D-8 deals additional damage to targets whose shields are empty. The skill has no cooldown and can be spammed.
- Reaper Madness: The reaper's attack range is slightly reduced, but attack speed and damage are improved. Reapers are made for close combat! (passive)
- Nitro packs: Greatly improves the reaper's attack speed and grants him the ability to jump up/down cliffs for a short time. If he uses his Jump ability in this state he is able to jump much farther than usual and even into unrevealed area.
Overlord hero:
- Let it shoot kamikaze battlecruisers. (passive)
- Make the battecruisers shoot their laser guns (ultimate).
- Nuff said.
Lurker Hero. I know the unit is in the editor yet, but, he'd be an excellent ambush unit. Armor type: Psionic [? Not sure, not really great on balance.]
[Unburrowed the Lurker has a weak ranged attack.]
Abilities:
Burrow: Greatly increases damage for subterranean spines.
It's a Trap: Increases damage to marked units [aoe marker]
Subterranean Caverns: Creates a burrowed "blink" spot.
Ultimate: Ghost image of the Lurker [as seen in the video, the Dark Templar Strike] running in a line from the Lurker's position firing off spines in random directions, units that get "ran over" will be stunned. Units stunned this way take additional damage.
Obviously, I am going for a hero that has ways to keep stacking the damage on.
Brain is drawing blanks. Really though, Lurker hero.
Oh my god, this is so promising!
Exactly the direction DotA/AoS "ripoffs"/clones should have for Starcraft 2!
Take the simple concept, and evolve it! In the comparison on how League of Legends failed to do it (my opninion), I guess this can turn out really well.
Mercenary sounds really interesting. And the removal of stats, and the addition of armor types can bring some competitiveness as it is more clearly what unit counters what, as this can sometimes be hard to realize/see in DotA.
As for game mechanics, the ideal is that a hero death should be forgiving (which is not the case in DotA/HoN), but at the same time, team-play should still be rewarding. If hero death is more forgiving, it might be possible to hinder rageleaving as this is happens in 90% of all DotA pub games (don't know about HoN).
Also, if you are looking for some hero ideas, there are lots of them on PlayDota. http://www.playdota.com/forums/hero-ideas/
I'm sure you can take ideas, or the whole concept of the hero by asking the author.
If you need any help, with testing or coding, I can gladly help!
I made it from scratch. This was my only reference: Link
The map is also not identical. Many paths in the zerg forest have been changed to make better use of the editor's terraining tendencies.
I noticed alot of people developing AoS maps tended to end up using the same terrain. The layout would pretty much make up the rest of the story, so yes there would be alot of unintended similarities.
Every time a Dota map is created, a kitten spirit of originality dies. What's wrong, too chicken to make your own map? Cheap popularity grab? Imagine you can make Dota as successful as Icefrog without devoting your life to making it so?
Every time a Dota map is created, a kitten spirit of originality dies.
What's wrong, too chicken to make your own map? Cheap popularity grab? Imagine you can make Dota as successful as Icefrog without devoting your life to making it so?
Every time a Dota map is created, a kitten spirit of originality dies.
What's wrong, too chicken to make your own map? Cheap popularity grab? Imagine you can make Dota as successful as Icefrog without devoting your life to making it so?
Just... make... something NEW.
I myself never owned WC3 so I was never able to play DOTA, however after playing League of Legends beta because I was not invited to HoN's beta, I really enjoyed the game, but not enough to buy it, but since it's going to be on SC2, might as well play it
Every time a Dota map is created, a kitten spirit of originality dies.
What's wrong, too chicken to make your own map? Cheap popularity grab? Imagine you can make Dota as successful as Icefrog without devoting your life to making it so?
Just... make... something NEW.
Can't you understand that some people like the dota genre? This is like saying that companies aren't allowed to make 10000 MMORPGs (pretty much the case), as there are already MMOs out.
Dota is a genre, a guy with his website even named it MOBA, deal with it.
I do agree however that some kind of innovation and originality should be made to the clones, which is the case of League of Legends (and not Heroes of Newerth).
I think the DotA genre obviously has a lot of potential and there certainly should be more SC2 maps like it. I think now's a great time to try new stuff and innovate though. Quite frankly the original DotA doesn't need a SC2 version, there's already HoN which has more features than DotA in Battle.net 2.0 ever will.
Personally I would say ditch items entirely and replace them with mercenaries. That gives it more of an SC2 flavor, based more on micromanaging a task force than itemizing an RPG hero. Then some heroes can be frontline fighters that want minions to back them up, and others can be support heroes that fight primarily through their mercenaries(or just go pure support)? Just an idea.
Also please add a 1v1 or FFA game mode for those of us who tend to rage out at bad teammates :P
I have no problem with a DotA SC:2 appearing.
I do, however, have a problem when it gains as much popularity as in WC3. People were so besotted with DotA that most of them neglected all the other, less known, maps there were.
It was like a cancer, spreading everywhere and pushing away the "healthy" tissue.
Try making a gunslinger hero for the Terran Reaper.
Gunslinger:
Has a range of 6 or 7. Similar to that of a marine.
Focuses on close to mid range rapid fire combat.
Every abilities is oriented to fast and rapid attacks.
Keeping true to the reaper's nature, they can jump cliffs.
They aren't anti-structure though, so they can't just toss detpacks at structures.
Weapons - Have 3 weapon types (Dual Pistols / Dual Revolvers / Dual SMG) (weapon model does not actually change, unless your able to do so, be my guest).
Dual Pistols - Does low damage at a rapid pace, deals bonus to light, -1 range.
Dual Revolvers - Does moderate damage at a normal/slower pace, deals bonus to biological, +1 range.
Dual SMG - Does minor damage at a extremely fast pace, no bonus, -2 range.
Abilities:
Blitz / [whatever you'd want to call this] - Deals low to moderate damage surrounding the Gunslinger, rapidly fires randomly around him.
example: wild shot from dungeon fighter online
Grenade / [insert name here - Tosses a grenade to do moderate damage to units and structure, bonus damage to biological.
Last Ammunition - Usable when low on health, allows the gunslinger infinite ammo and shoots a lot of bullets in a direction, effect differs depending on weapon. Attack speed is 2x faster than normal attack of the Gunslinger's weapon. Lasts for 5 seconds. Gunslinger will be unable to do normal attacks for 10 seconds (out of ammo). Range is almost 30% further than normal attack range (probably a range of 8 or 9).
Hmm I guess I should play that since I'm out of games (that and returning to maplestory made me painfully remember why I left it ages ago, and mabinogi ran out of fun content to play... Again).
The thing I dislike about Dota, and still do is probably the rpg aspect and the know-how you MUST have when playing against others.
Cause eventually, the better players with more knowledge about the game will win because they are able to amass items and super abilities and tactics that you'd have no idea what the f...k is going on!
Basically, Dota isn't newb friendly.
A starcraft 2 version of it, has to be more newbie friendly but at the same time fun. Easy to learn, hard to master. Dota (WC3) was hard as hell to understand what the heck is going on, since it doesn't really explain it.
SCII DotA: Storm of the Imperial Sanctum
Hero Development Page
Disclaimer: All mechanics and gameplay are presented on an as-is basis, and are therefore subject to change.
Currently we have completed the game system, and are working on refining heroes and item/mercenary effects. Balancing begins on release date. We are also currently testing several changes in the game mechanic with the addition of a mercenary bay, different spawn numbers from each side, and an attribute system based on SC2 parameters. All these changes are executed in an effort to develop a revision of DotA that is derivative of StarCraft game mechanics.
We are in short supply of heroes so this could be your chance to get yours out there with a simple "how about a hero that shoots kamikaze battlecruisers?". Our hero criteria as follows:
- Heroes should take advantage of new mechanics like the mercenary bay. AoE buffs, disruption, and information acquisition abilities are in the zone.
- Heroes are no longer based on str/agi/int, but rather on armor class. Armor classes affect how you take damage and logistically, how you deal damage. Classes include Biological, Psionic, and Armored.
Armor Classes:
The new armor class system may seem immediately imbalanced or foreign to most, but it simply affects the method in which the hero is developed over time. An immediate misconception is that Biological=Zerg, Psionic=Protoss, and Armored=Terran. This is not the case. For example, Lord.Zyrkhan (a zealot) is considered armored since he is designed as a close-quarters melee hero.
- Biological: Low armor, high vital stat gain. Deals below average weapon damage. Bonus damage against Psionics.
- Psionic: Moderate armor, moderate stat gain. Deals above average weapon damage. Bonus damage against Armored.
- Armored: Heavy armor, moderate stat gain. Deals average weapon damage. Bonus damage against Biologicals.
Mercenaries:
Mercenaries are hired via the shop and provide support on the battlefield in the form of information acquisition, healing, chasing, or simply destroying towers/creeps. Like items in DotA, they are combined in later stages to call forth stronger mercenaries, but are subject to destsruction on the field. To offset this downside, players recieve a partial reimbursement when a mercenary dies.
While we should have 8 heroes by release date, we would sincerely appreciate additional help in developing more. If you are interested in working directly with us on refinement, send ekcolnovkol a message on irc or via the forum.
Have to say I like this direction and its a nice twist with the Mercenaries, dosn't make it just 'all about the items' now so it should be intresting to see where things go with that, look forward to playing it. As for hero ideas, A changling hero may be a neat things to do, being able to not only 'look' like another unit but also make another 'unit' look like it or another unit, could be an intresting hero to do, all other heros I can think of may be a bit too complicated atm. If I think of anymore i'll of course post or let you know :)
I use the hero-concept of DotA as a reference (4 spells, 1 ultimate, usually 1 passive).
I am unsure about how this whole Mercenary thing is supposed to work and how it feels when playing, so I'll leave that out.
How about an Immortal-hero. Armored tank, of course. High hp/shields, mediocre damage, slow/medium movespeed
- Shockwave: The immortal uses his battle cannons to to hit every target in a line. All hit targets receive medium damage and a short attack/movement slow
- Hardened Shields: Reduces incoming damage (passive)
- Plasma surge: Overloads the immortal's shields to stun all nearby enemies. For every second this ability is channeled the Immortal loses a good chunk of his shields. If he is stunned or his shields are completely depleted the ability is canceled. (channeled).
- Weapon platform: Allows the Immortal to fire while moving for a short amount of time and increases it's attack (and movement) speed (Ultimate).
Or a zergling, biological "rouge". Rather fragile, low attack damage, high attack speed, high movement speed.
- Adrenal Glands: Greatly improves movementspeed and moderately improves attack speed for a short duration to close in on his targets.
- Battle hunger: With every melee attack the Zergling gains a fraction of his life back (passive)
- Overwhelm: Stuns an enemy for a short time and reduces his movement speed for a longer time. Enemies are only effected when they're hit from behind. Might also deal some damage.
- Without numbers: Where there's one Zergling, there are more. This skill reduces respawn time when the Ling got killed and reduces kill bonus (gold) that the enemy receives from killing it. (ultimate)
And a baneling. Psionic. Has a short-range attack like the Roach. Medium stats.
- Burrow: Self-explanatory, while burrowed the baneling has slightly improved health regeneration
- Charge: The baneling starts rolling towards the targeted location, dealing moderate damage to all non-heroes in it's way and detonates if it hits an enemy hero. The detonation deals high damage in a medium AoE, stops the banelings charge and depletes 50% of the blings maximum life. During that charge the baneling is immune to most kinds of stun (maybe except of Ultimate ability, which would cancel the charge instead of stunning). The baneling can't change the direction once it started rolling and cannot be stopped until it reaches destination or detonates.
- Explode: The baneling channels this ability for 1 second, then blows up in a huge explosion. All enemies in a large AoE are damaged and enemies and allies are slowed for several seconds. The baneling dies. If the baneling is below 10% health the explosion deals less damage in a smaller area.
Aaaand a Reaper, psionic ranged. Medium stats, medium attack range.
- Jump: The reaper can use his jetpack to quickly jump to a different location (just like blink, only with the reaper actually jumping).
- D-8 Charge: throws a D-8 charge at the ground that explodes several seconds later. The D-8 deals additional damage to targets whose shields are empty. The skill has no cooldown and can be spammed.
- Reaper Madness: The reaper's attack range is slightly reduced, but attack speed and damage are improved. Reapers are made for close combat! (passive)
- Nitro packs: Greatly improves the reaper's attack speed and grants him the ability to jump up/down cliffs for a short time. If he uses his Jump ability in this state he is able to jump much farther than usual and even into unrevealed area.
Overlord hero:
- Let it shoot kamikaze battlecruisers. (passive)
- Make the battecruisers shoot their laser guns (ultimate).
- Nuff said.
@s3rius: Go
Lurker Hero. I know the unit is in the editor yet, but, he'd be an excellent ambush unit. Armor type: Psionic [? Not sure, not really great on balance.] [Unburrowed the Lurker has a weak ranged attack.]
Abilities: Burrow: Greatly increases damage for subterranean spines.
It's a Trap: Increases damage to marked units [aoe marker]
Subterranean Caverns: Creates a burrowed "blink" spot.
Ultimate: Ghost image of the Lurker [as seen in the video, the Dark Templar Strike] running in a line from the Lurker's position firing off spines in random directions, units that get "ran over" will be stunned. Units stunned this way take additional damage.
Obviously, I am going for a hero that has ways to keep stacking the damage on.
Brain is drawing blanks. Really though, Lurker hero.
Oh my god, this is so promising! Exactly the direction DotA/AoS "ripoffs"/clones should have for Starcraft 2! Take the simple concept, and evolve it! In the comparison on how League of Legends failed to do it (my opninion), I guess this can turn out really well. Mercenary sounds really interesting. And the removal of stats, and the addition of armor types can bring some competitiveness as it is more clearly what unit counters what, as this can sometimes be hard to realize/see in DotA.
As for game mechanics, the ideal is that a hero death should be forgiving (which is not the case in DotA/HoN), but at the same time, team-play should still be rewarding. If hero death is more forgiving, it might be possible to hinder rageleaving as this is happens in 90% of all DotA pub games (don't know about HoN).
Also, if you are looking for some hero ideas, there are lots of them on PlayDota. http://www.playdota.com/forums/hero-ideas/ I'm sure you can take ideas, or the whole concept of the hero by asking the author.
If you need any help, with testing or coding, I can gladly help!
I created the map o.O
@ekcolnovkol: Go
Ah. Zifoon? http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/aos-template/
I made it from scratch. This was my only reference: Link The map is also not identical. Many paths in the zerg forest have been changed to make better use of the editor's terraining tendencies.
I noticed alot of people developing AoS maps tended to end up using the same terrain. The layout would pretty much make up the rest of the story, so yes there would be alot of unintended similarities.
... are those roaches shooting cannons? o_O"
Every time a Dota map is created, a kitten spirit of originality dies.
What's wrong, too chicken to make your own map? Cheap popularity grab? Imagine you can make Dota as successful as Icefrog without devoting your life to making it so?
Just... make... something NEW.
Competition is always good for the consumer.
I myself never owned WC3 so I was never able to play DOTA, however after playing League of Legends beta because I was not invited to HoN's beta, I really enjoyed the game, but not enough to buy it, but since it's going to be on SC2, might as well play it
Can't you understand that some people like the dota genre? This is like saying that companies aren't allowed to make 10000 MMORPGs (pretty much the case), as there are already MMOs out.
Dota is a genre, a guy with his website even named it MOBA, deal with it.
I do agree however that some kind of innovation and originality should be made to the clones, which is the case of League of Legends (and not Heroes of Newerth).
I think the DotA genre obviously has a lot of potential and there certainly should be more SC2 maps like it. I think now's a great time to try new stuff and innovate though. Quite frankly the original DotA doesn't need a SC2 version, there's already HoN which has more features than DotA in Battle.net 2.0 ever will.
Personally I would say ditch items entirely and replace them with mercenaries. That gives it more of an SC2 flavor, based more on micromanaging a task force than itemizing an RPG hero. Then some heroes can be frontline fighters that want minions to back them up, and others can be support heroes that fight primarily through their mercenaries(or just go pure support)? Just an idea.
Also please add a 1v1 or FFA game mode for those of us who tend to rage out at bad teammates :P
I have no problem with a DotA SC:2 appearing.
I do, however, have a problem when it gains as much popularity as in WC3. People were so besotted with DotA that most of them neglected all the other, less known, maps there were.
It was like a cancer, spreading everywhere and pushing away the "healthy" tissue.
@cocosoft: Go
League of legends is free.
SoTiS
It will be drawn from DotA but better if they start calling it SoTiS since it's different. DotA will just make people think Warcraft 3.
Try making a gunslinger hero for the Terran Reaper.
Gunslinger:
Weapons - Have 3 weapon types (Dual Pistols / Dual Revolvers / Dual SMG) (weapon model does not actually change, unless your able to do so, be my guest).
Dual Pistols - Does low damage at a rapid pace, deals bonus to light, -1 range.
Dual Revolvers - Does moderate damage at a normal/slower pace, deals bonus to biological, +1 range.
Dual SMG - Does minor damage at a extremely fast pace, no bonus, -2 range.
Abilities:
Blitz / [whatever you'd want to call this] - Deals low to moderate damage surrounding the Gunslinger, rapidly fires randomly around him.
example: wild shot from dungeon fighter online
Grenade / [insert name here - Tosses a grenade to do moderate damage to units and structure, bonus damage to biological.
Last Ammunition - Usable when low on health, allows the gunslinger infinite ammo and shoots a lot of bullets in a direction, effect differs depending on weapon. Attack speed is 2x faster than normal attack of the Gunslinger's weapon. Lasts for 5 seconds. Gunslinger will be unable to do normal attacks for 10 seconds (out of ammo). Range is almost 30% further than normal attack range (probably a range of 8 or 9).
Hmm I guess I should play that since I'm out of games (that and returning to maplestory made me painfully remember why I left it ages ago, and mabinogi ran out of fun content to play... Again).
The thing I dislike about Dota, and still do is probably the rpg aspect and the know-how you MUST have when playing against others. Cause eventually, the better players with more knowledge about the game will win because they are able to amass items and super abilities and tactics that you'd have no idea what the f...k is going on!
Basically, Dota isn't newb friendly.
A starcraft 2 version of it, has to be more newbie friendly but at the same time fun. Easy to learn, hard to master. Dota (WC3) was hard as hell to understand what the heck is going on, since it doesn't really explain it.