Or at least that'd be my guess with that if they're all supposed to do something. Obviously it being your map and me kinda sucking at SC2 mapping I couldn't really do it myself, but those'd be my suggestions.
Don't turn yourself down; anyone can have awesome ideas, despite the fact, they might not be able to do them themselves.
Helmet would be vision, Boots would be movespeed, Weapon is obviously damage and perhaps attack speed, Armor would be armor and maybe some stats. Accessories would have assorted effects from movespeed to vision to armor to damage to attack speed to stats to spells and possibly more.
Yes, well, these are the obvious ones. Since I would like to have some variety in the items, I need some more fitting attributes for those items.
I want at least 2-3 or more options for the items (for boots or helmets, 2 or 3 might suffice, but for important things like weapons and armor I would like to have some more choices)
However, these are things, which can be done for future updates as well.
Helmet : Since your vision is enhanced, it would either be - increased vision range/higher accuracy(or dmg)/dodge attacks
Weapon enhancer : More dmg/atk speed/more damage against specific types of units(Say a sword does more dmg to light while an axe more to armoured)
Armor enhancer : Reduce damage by percentage or absolute/returns damage to opponent/slows you down/giant red cape to make enemies miss more
Movement enhancer - I'm lost on this one. Flying boots? Dash boots?
Accessories can do anything that seems fit (eg. make yourself shiny :P)
I meant that as to say that I don't want to sound like I'm telling you what to do.
After reading Shadow's ideas I had a couple of thoughts of my own, like the Helmet, some of them could make it so when you attack and the enemy has an evasion, the evasion is ignored because of "accuracy".
Perhaps armor (perhaps "robe/cape") could give some evasion
What I'd like to see are things like (HLW RoC references for those who don't get them) Heart of Aszune, Shield of Honor, whatever the shade dagger thing was (mirror image+corruption+evade), and the tiara thing (negative auras to enemies). Granted they don't have to be things like a shield and dagger etc, just the concepts of their effects. Because those 4 with speed/vamp pots was basically the best set of items imo :P
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"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Whats with the talk of "vision range"?
In Hero Line wars u are able to see the entire map.... are you guys referring to "Mr X's" attack range?
& if you are, would it make the game unbalanced since if you give increased vision to ranged units they wont have to worry about running into enemies and if you increase a melee units attack range, that just doesn't make sense.
Currently, not the whole map is visible. I would like vision range to be a considerable factor; you see only as far as your heroes and your mercenaries see. Thats why there could/probably should be items to extend the visual range somehow.
This might not be final, but I'd like to try it out.
Whats imbalanced with attack range changes? Well, it should not work with melee attacks for obvious reasons, but for ranged heroes it would not be that hard to find balanced numbers for increased range, I guess.
After reading Shadow's ideas I had a couple of thoughts of my own, like the Helmet, some of them could make it so when you attack and the enemy has an evasion, the evasion is ignored because of "accuracy". Perhaps armor (perhaps "robe/cape") could give some evasion
What I'd like to see are things like (HLW RoC references for those who don't get them) Heart of Aszune, Shield of Honor, whatever the shade dagger thing was (mirror image+corruption+evade), and the tiara thing (negative auras to enemies). Granted they don't have to be things like a shield and dagger etc, just the concepts of their effects. Because those 4 with speed/vamp pots was basically the best set of items imo :P
Well, I won't just recreate the HLW RoC items, but I can definitely pick up some of the concepts (well, Heart = HP and regen, Shield = Dmg Reduction and a Critical strike; nothing fancy about those concepts), but I would like the items to scale better; as mentioned you will be able to upgrade them.
So they are not only for the very late game and then suddenly incredibly powerful, but you can purchase most items earlier, with weaker effects and upgrade them later on.
Heart late game was mostly the 50% revive time, and Dagger was epic for the mirror image. Shield was mega reduce+super damage. So I'd say those are actually your basic concepts. And no, I wouldn't expect you to just recreate the RoC items.
And as for not being able to see the whole map, let us at least see spawn areas and slightly past that. That way we can tell what's coming, and approx how long it should take to get to you.
Other thoughts: Perhaps the mapwide vision could be a mode. (-mw, -vs, -mv are possibles for just 2 letters, possibility for 3 letters -mwv). Also, will things like upgrade bonuses be there? And no upgrade bonus modes? (Or upgrade bonus modes?) Also, could it be set so you can choose what racial spawner you want? Some people might not see you have to choose race based on what race of hero/creeps you want, so that could end up confusing people. (However, would make "Random" race much more interesting. Means you have at least one hero each race you're willing to use...I ask these because I thought you said you were going to make heroes for each race, and lobby is where you'd pick race.)
Other questions/thoughts too, but they seemed to have scrambled themselves as I typed this...however I believe they were related to old modes and which you were going to keep (or base new modes on)
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"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Currently, not the whole map is visible. I would like vision range to be a considerable factor; you see only as far as your heroes and your mercenaries see. Thats why there could/probably should be items to extend the visual range somehow.
This might not be final, but I'd like to try it out.
Whats imbalanced with attack range changes? Well, it should not work with melee attacks for obvious reasons, but for ranged heroes it would not be that hard to find balanced numbers for increased range, I guess.
Well, I won't just recreate the HLW RoC items, but I can definitely pick up some of the concepts (well, Heart = HP and regen, Shield = Dmg Reduction and a Critical strike; nothing fancy about those concepts), but I would like the items to scale better; as mentioned you will be able to upgrade them.
So they are not only for the very late game and then suddenly incredibly powerful, but you can purchase most items earlier, with weaker effects and upgrade them later on.
Alright i see. I guess there is no harm with experimenting with vision.
But as for adding attack range for ranged units i think it will make it imbalanced since at the start or when ever the hero is able to obtain the attack range item, they will be able to harras/kill creeps from an unfair distance which will give ranged units a very distant advantage from melee creeps along with heroes. In hero line wars, when i play a ranged unit at the start and there are powerful creeps coming i just hit as many times as i can then before the creep/s can attack me i move back,hit,move back,hit,ect. If you increase the attack range it will make things too simple. IMO
Btw i hope you're not gonna add "buyable/upgradable" auras to creeps like in RoC. I have been playing RoC recently and my god the thorn aura on creeps is just.....eh. Its a very quick and imbalanced game changer.
Heart late game was mostly the 50% revive time, and Dagger was epic for the mirror image. Shield was mega reduce+super damage. So I'd say those are actually your basic concepts. And no, I wouldn't expect you to just recreate the RoC items.
Damn, I actually forgot about the respawn time reduction xD.
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And as for not being able to see the whole map, let us at least see spawn areas and slightly past that. That way we can tell what's coming, and approx how long it should take to get to you.
Right now, the spawn area up to approx 1/4 of the lane is visible. Also there is a Xel'Naga Watchtower for each team in a forward position, which gives additional vision, but might be risky to hold, because its very close to the spawn positions of enemy mercs.
Also like said before, I plan on adding observer ward-ish items to further increase vision.
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Other thoughts: Perhaps the mapwide vision could be a mode. (-mw, -vs, -mv are possibles for just 2 letters, possibility for 3 letters -mwv). Also, will things like upgrade bonuses be there? And no upgrade bonus modes? (Or upgrade bonus modes?) Also, could it be set so you can choose what racial spawner you want? Some people might not see you have to choose race based on what race of hero/creeps you want, so that could end up confusing people. (However, would make "Random" race much more interesting. Means you have at least one hero each race you're willing to use...I ask these because I thought you said you were going to make heroes for each race, and lobby is where you'd pick race.)
Currently, heroes aren't dependant on the race. There are zerg-themed heroes, but you can pick them, even if you picked the protoss race. The race's only influence is on the types of mercenaries you can send.
I plan on implementing many different modes over time, also most constants should be changeable (like income time, start income, start lifes etc), however right now I have only 2 different mode options: Hero Pick/Random Heroes and Race Pick/Random Races.
Alright i see. I guess there is no harm with experimenting with vision. But as for adding attack range for ranged units i think it will make it imbalanced since at the start or when ever the hero is able to obtain the attack range item, they will be able to harras/kill creeps from an unfair distance which will give ranged units a very distant advantage from melee creeps along with heroes. In hero line wars, when i play a ranged unit at the start and there are powerful creeps coming i just hit as many times as i can then before the creep/s can attack me i move back,hit,move back,hit,ect. If you increase the attack range it will make things too simple. IMO
Well, you could say ranged heroes are imbalanced in general, with the same argumentation. But melee heroes usually have other advantages, they usually get stronger attacks and more tanking power, which are needed desperately later in the game.
Also would it be imbalanced, if you increase the range of a 6 range hero by 0.5? I guess not, this is a question of balancing the numbers.
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Btw i hope you're not gonna add "buyable/upgradable" auras to creeps like in RoC. I have been playing RoC recently and my god the thorn aura on creeps is just.....eh. Its a very quick and imbalanced game changer.
Maybe later on, not for the first release. Maybe, I will just scratch auras and start experimenting with other stuff to improve creeps. We will see ;)
Perhaps if you're the same race as your creeps you send (hero race at least) then they get a slight bonus. Nothing to make it imbalanced, but something to be work looking in to for people. Like a 5% or perhaps even 10% bonus to damage/life/armor/MS/AS/shields/energy/skill damage/regen/etc. Of course not all of them get bonuses, perhaps they could pick which bonuses they want (like you can get +5% damage or +10% life, or pick 3 of 5, or something) to make things more interesting. Just spouting any ideas I can think of.
By the way, you should update the RoC site's info. I know some of the creep infos were wrong, like some had incorrect HPs listed.
And yeah, Aszune in long games was mostly for the revive time. 50k hp when you have 500k str isn't very much.
Another thought: If armors if bonuses (say, +10 armor) perhaps it should be a set number and a % (like +500 hp and +5% hp) so it's never a complete waste of money, it can be useful after quite some time. And a +50k HP would be much more useful earlier on, once you have over 5m HP (I've had millions of agi on HLW RoC before, not in debug) the +5% would be more like 250k bonus instead of just 50k, which is a lot more useful in the long run.
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"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Perhaps if you're the same race as your creeps you send (hero race at least) then they get a slight bonus. Nothing to make it imbalanced, but something to be work looking in to for people. Like a 5% or perhaps even 10% bonus to damage/life/armor/MS/AS/shields/energy/skill damage/regen/etc. Of course not all of them get bonuses, perhaps they could pick which bonuses they want (like you can get +5% damage or +10% life, or pick 3 of 5, or something) to make things more interesting. Just spouting any ideas I can think of.
Interesting idea, I will think about this one. However, this could be hard to balance, I don't know if I will implement something similar. Most likely not for the first release.
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By the way, you should update the RoC site's info. I know some of the creep infos were wrong, like some had incorrect HPs listed.
Well, since I officially abandoned the project, I don't want to put any additional effort into it (would only delay the SC2 version for you ;) )
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And yeah, Aszune in long games was mostly for the revive time. 50k hp when you have 500k str isn't very much.
Another thought: If armors if bonuses (say, +10 armor) perhaps it should be a set number and a % (like +500 hp and +5% hp) so it's never a complete waste of money, it can be useful after quite some time. And a +50k HP would be much more useful earlier on, once you have over 5m HP (I've had millions of agi on HLW RoC before, not in debug) the +5% would be more like 250k bonus instead of just 50k, which is a lot more useful in the long run.
I kinda want to avoid these absolutely huge numbers. While I understand, this was probably the most fun for some people, to give like 50 billion strength to their hero; it makes the game very hard to balance in the later stages and it gets out of control.
I will try to implement the possibility to create very strong heroes still, but without having to use millions of stats to do so.
Yeah I'm sure it'd be difficult, but it'd give some extra incentive to match race if you didn't have to.
Well yeah, having the SC2 version out ASAP would be nice, and maybe someone else could update for you. (It's a bit of a pain to see some of those higher HPs, so it'd take a while for me to update it, and I wasn't suggesting me in the first place.) I was just thinking so that people there got accurate information, because I remember a few parts there weren't correct. If nothing else, you could look at stuff from that map for other ideas for this one.
It was just an example...I'm not saying we'll all have billions of HP, however in long games it could happen. Say one two people have 2.5k HP, one buys an item that gives 2.5k HP and 50% hp bonus (base hp) and the other gets an item that's 5k HP bonus. When they buy them right then and there, the 5k one seems more useful, however only at first, because once the first guy has over 5k base HP, his is more useful. Which was sorta my point, %based usually tend to work better in the long run than base #s, even if it could be like 5% or something because even if your gain for that 5% bonus is only 100, those 5s from each 100 will add up very very fast.
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"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Ahh yes, one other point i should make is that ive noticed in HLW magical ability attack based characters become useless in the very end (against the final and strongest tier units) but physical based characters are easy to maintain. It proves difficult to fight off hordes of strong units as a magical attack based character where as for example the blade master can make 8 or something illusions of himself with a nice crit chance along with agility to boots his attack speed and damage and thats all he needs.
So a way to avoid this problem is to give abilities flat damage + a certain % of your characters agility,strength or intelligence.
its 1 am here so imma continue this later.
I think what Dark Lord means is that most abilities are useless late game (at least in HLW RoC)
Useless stuff on Hell Spawn would be Dark Regen, it's like his best move until you start getting massive tomes. Knockback was weak but the freeze/stun made it good. Tauren Soldier's (forgetting his name =O) cleave was really good late game, and his torch move (the one that made his damage go up a TON for a short time) was a bit rigged late game. Most agi heroes were good until late game, Int being almost useless most of the game. (There were like 2-3 that were good Int characters for a long time. Dragon Rider was really good, and Furion was good but took zero skill and was kinda lame tbh)
Random thought: What about a way to disable specific characters? Like in RoC I'd love to disable Furion once in a while because he's just plain gay, takes no skill, and is for the lazy noobs. Only starts being useless in PvP when Strength guys had a billion HP and Furion had like 500k (if that, the only hard part about PvP w/ Furion was if they had Vamp pots you had to only have 1 person fighting at a time or he'd heal epic fast...)
iRamble a bit....oops...(then again, thoughts for the map. Something could be used! =D
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"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Well, HLW was not really balanced for the usual public games, where masses and masses of creeps were sent. Within our clan and in tournaments, another style of play has been developed over time, which included sending very few, but powerful monsters, very early upgrades and as a result, heroes with very little income and level compared to your usual public game.
For this kind of gameplay, most of those "weak" heroes were actually really strong (for example, jaina was an extremely powerful hero for this mode, while the old blademaster prior to his remake pretty much sucked), and most of the times, games ended at around 50-75k income; quite some time before heroes with massive amounts of stats could dominate the creeps.
In SC2, the whole balancing will be completely different; I don't think it is even possible to recreate the exact same behavior like in WC3. We will see, how this works out.
Also, right now the starts, Strength, Agility and Intelligence already have direct influence on ability damage, since agi increases ranged damage, str increases melee damage (some abilities might cause ranged or melee damage as well) and int increases spell damage (so the majority of spells already gets bonus damage from increased intelligence).
Sounds good. Hopefully the pvp will actually be interesting rather than just "look at me basic attack you" or "fear my never ending stun/s"
Oh, that brings me to another point. What about implementing PVP battles where every X minutes 1 person on each team with the highest income battle each other for a small reward, but it will be fun to watch. During the process everything else stops and the others players can only spectate but once the fight is complete, every one returns to their normal positions but the game is still not in motion for about 5 seconds so people can view the map a little to see where they are at.
I don't know if you might be able to get any other good ideas from this site but i highly recommend you look at it, it can help you create great moves along with figuring out the formulas for certain abilities Link to site > League of Legends. This game derived from the makers of Dota. I dont expect you to make the ability system like they did, but this is just to help you create ideas on what moves you can make and ways to balance out the moves.
Ive been reading posts in this thread, and I can say that Kueken definitely has a good sense on game design and balance. You get +1 respect point from the Wraith.
I have no idea what the map is really about. Never played it on Wc3. I do hope you succeed well in it and I`ll try it out on release.
Well, HLW was not really balanced for the usual public games, where masses and masses of creeps were sent. Within our clan and in tournaments, another style of play has been developed over time, which included sending very few, but powerful monsters, very early upgrades and as a result, heroes with very little income and level compared to your usual public game.
For this kind of gameplay, most of those "weak" heroes were actually really strong (for example, jaina was an extremely powerful hero for this mode, while the old blademaster prior to his remake pretty much sucked), and most of the times, games ended at around 50-75k income; quite some time before heroes with massive amounts of stats could dominate the creeps.
In SC2, the whole balancing will be completely different; I don't think it is even possible to recreate the exact same behavior like in WC3. We will see, how this works out.
Also, right now the starts, Strength, Agility and Intelligence already have direct influence on ability damage, since agi increases ranged damage, str increases melee damage (some abilities might cause ranged or melee damage as well) and int increases spell damage (so the majority of spells already gets bonus damage from increased intelligence).
Yeah I had some games end with less than 1k income...I don't care for those. Saving for big stuff is what some people did, and I found stupid honestly. Took too long to get decent income, which was kinda what the whole game was about. Get highest income to be the winning in most cases. However, if I had to say any hero was a bit overpowered, I'd say Hell Spawn. I could get no items/tomes until "Better" creeps, then I only needed 3. (Then again, I was possibly WAY good at it...)
Anyway, perhaps you could make it so both "modes" of spawning work at once. If you even have similar stuff for spawning.
The stats make sense I guess for skills, although Agility hardly would seem proper for psionic ranged stuff. I'd say that's more of Intelligence, no? Guess I'm thinking more of "Spell" than "ranged ability".
Maybe I'm just way tired and not thinking straight in my response...which is entirely possible...and I feel like I'm rambling again...(which seems to be happening a lot lately)
Warning: Inquisitive mind at work.
Warning: Insanity is on the horizon.
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Sounds good. Hopefully the pvp will actually be interesting rather than just "look at me basic attack you" or "fear my never ending stun/s"
Oh, that brings me to another point. What about implementing PVP battles where every X minutes 1 person on each team with the highest income battle each other for a small reward, but it will be fun to watch. During the process everything else stops and the others players can only spectate but once the fight is complete, every one returns to their normal positions but the game is still not in motion for about 5 seconds so people can view the map a little to see where they are at.
I don't know if you might be able to get any other good ideas from this site but i highly recommend you look at it, it can help you create great moves along with figuring out the formulas for certain abilities Link to site > League of Legends. This game derived from the makers of Dota. I dont expect you to make the ability system like they did, but this is just to help you create ideas on what moves you can make and ways to balance out the moves.
Well, tbh, right now I did not even implement pvp in the map at all. This was a part I kinda disliked for the game anyway, since it is absolutely not balanced for pvp. If I would want pvp, I would create an AoS or a hero arena; HLW is heroes vs mobs, and I'd like to focus on that. So there will be DEFINITELY no periodic team battles, maybe a lategame pvp once again, however, I am not even sure about that (yes, I know, this will probably annoy many people, but I like to think, that I will be able to keep the game entertaining without direct pvp)
I will never be able to balance the heroes for pvp anyway, since its all about killing massive amounts of mobs right now. Any hero specialized in single target hero killing would absolutely suck throughout the entire game, just to get a small edge in those (pretty unimportant) hero vs hero fights.
Playing vs computer controlled mobs or playing vs enemy players are 2 entirely different things requiring completely different skills, tactics, items, balance etc etc.
Ive been reading posts in this thread, and I can say that Kueken definitely has a good sense on game design and balance. You get +1 respect point from the Wraith.
I have no idea what the map is really about. Never played it on Wc3. I do hope you succeed well in it and I`ll try it out on release.
Yeah I had some games end with less than 1k income...I don't care for those. Saving for big stuff is what some people did, and I found stupid honestly. Took too long to get decent income, which was kinda what the whole game was about. Get highest income to be the winning in most cases. However, if I had to say any hero was a bit overpowered, I'd say Hell Spawn. I could get no items/tomes until "Better" creeps, then I only needed 3. (Then again, I was possibly WAY good at it...)
Well, most people did not like this way of playing, because they were used to the "traditional" way. In a public, the "new" way was not even good, because if you are the only one of your team doing it and everyone els just sends masses, you have no real gain, but a massive lack in income.
However the real fun starts, if all players are familiar with this tactic and act as a team, for example in a 4v4 8 people saving up for powerful creatures and each of them supporting 1 player, which should get all of the kills to maximize income. I remember great games :). For me, this was WAY more fun throughout the entire game, instead of the 30 min farmfest, where not a single mob was a real thread to you, into teleporting to the enemy and abusing whatever hero killing machine you picked (no offense ;) )
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Anyway, perhaps you could make it so both "modes" of spawning work at once. If you even have similar stuff for spawning.
Well, both "modes" worked before. The save for harder creeps was more difficult to hold, but it was doable.
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The stats make sense I guess for skills, although Agility hardly would seem proper for psionic ranged stuff. I'd say that's more of Intelligence, no? Guess I'm thinking more of "Spell" than "ranged ability".
Not all spells are psionic stuff ;)
2 examples of the map:
A Jim Raynor hero can fire a salve of uranium shells as a spell, these collide with the first targets they hit and deal ranged damage instead of spell damage.
And an ultralisk can use his ram spell, to damage, stun and knockback units in front of him, which deals melee damage instead of spell damage. Kinda makes sense, no?
On a side note: I would consider the map quite close to beta. I implemented most of the content I wanted, tested most basic features over and over again, not that much more I can do alone. I will most likely start private and/or public play tests very soon to massively test the balance (and everything else, of course, but the balance needs the most work right now, I think).
Just a few things to go, little tweaks like giving the hero spells cooldowns and mana costs (I did not bother until now, because for testing abilities cooldown and mana costs are just obstackles)
I found at times 30 min farmfest could be hard in right situations. A dozen guys smacking you that heal about as fast as you hit them was basically impossible at first. Until you could take 3 hits, unless you're fighting 2/3 of the weakest things it was hard. And still was hard in some cases.
As for the PvP stuff, yeah very little was balanced for PvP. It was basically whomever could tome the most or stun the longest would win. And in some cases, there still was no winner, because you got stunned too long to actually kill them, and they couldn't deal anything near enough to kill you. (One occasion comes to mind. Spawn VS Jaina. Jaina couldn't kill me because skills weren't stat based, and I couldn't kill Jaina because of stuns in spells.)
Anyway, having a beta soon would be awesome. (I'd love to test AI, or do you not have that in yet?)
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Warning: Inquisitive mind at work.
Warning: Insanity is on the horizon.
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Anyway, having a beta soon would be awesome. (I'd love to test AI, or do you not have that in yet?)
The first release will not support AI, creating a decent one would require a serious amount of time and testing, and I delayed the release long enough ;).
For now, I'd like to finish the few issues left with the current content, then move to balance testing/tweaking and finally release the first version.
AI will probably be implemented for later versions.
Don't turn yourself down; anyone can have awesome ideas, despite the fact, they might not be able to do them themselves.
Yes, well, these are the obvious ones. Since I would like to have some variety in the items, I need some more fitting attributes for those items.
I want at least 2-3 or more options for the items (for boots or helmets, 2 or 3 might suffice, but for important things like weapons and armor I would like to have some more choices)
However, these are things, which can be done for future updates as well.
Helmet : Since your vision is enhanced, it would either be - increased vision range/higher accuracy(or dmg)/dodge attacks
Weapon enhancer : More dmg/atk speed/more damage against specific types of units(Say a sword does more dmg to light while an axe more to armoured)
Armor enhancer : Reduce damage by percentage or absolute/returns damage to opponent/slows you down/giant red cape to make enemies miss more
Movement enhancer - I'm lost on this one. Flying boots? Dash boots?
Accessories can do anything that seems fit (eg. make yourself shiny :P)
I meant that as to say that I don't want to sound like I'm telling you what to do.
After reading Shadow's ideas I had a couple of thoughts of my own, like the Helmet, some of them could make it so when you attack and the enemy has an evasion, the evasion is ignored because of "accuracy". Perhaps armor (perhaps "robe/cape") could give some evasion
What I'd like to see are things like (HLW RoC references for those who don't get them) Heart of Aszune, Shield of Honor, whatever the shade dagger thing was (mirror image+corruption+evade), and the tiara thing (negative auras to enemies). Granted they don't have to be things like a shield and dagger etc, just the concepts of their effects. Because those 4 with speed/vamp pots was basically the best set of items imo :P
Whats with the talk of "vision range"? In Hero Line wars u are able to see the entire map.... are you guys referring to "Mr X's" attack range? & if you are, would it make the game unbalanced since if you give increased vision to ranged units they wont have to worry about running into enemies and if you increase a melee units attack range, that just doesn't make sense.
@darklordofspawn: Go
Currently, not the whole map is visible. I would like vision range to be a considerable factor; you see only as far as your heroes and your mercenaries see. Thats why there could/probably should be items to extend the visual range somehow.
This might not be final, but I'd like to try it out.
Whats imbalanced with attack range changes? Well, it should not work with melee attacks for obvious reasons, but for ranged heroes it would not be that hard to find balanced numbers for increased range, I guess.
Well, I won't just recreate the HLW RoC items, but I can definitely pick up some of the concepts (well, Heart = HP and regen, Shield = Dmg Reduction and a Critical strike; nothing fancy about those concepts), but I would like the items to scale better; as mentioned you will be able to upgrade them.
So they are not only for the very late game and then suddenly incredibly powerful, but you can purchase most items earlier, with weaker effects and upgrade them later on.
Heart late game was mostly the 50% revive time, and Dagger was epic for the mirror image. Shield was mega reduce+super damage. So I'd say those are actually your basic concepts. And no, I wouldn't expect you to just recreate the RoC items.
And as for not being able to see the whole map, let us at least see spawn areas and slightly past that. That way we can tell what's coming, and approx how long it should take to get to you.
Other thoughts: Perhaps the mapwide vision could be a mode. (-mw, -vs, -mv are possibles for just 2 letters, possibility for 3 letters -mwv). Also, will things like upgrade bonuses be there? And no upgrade bonus modes? (Or upgrade bonus modes?) Also, could it be set so you can choose what racial spawner you want? Some people might not see you have to choose race based on what race of hero/creeps you want, so that could end up confusing people. (However, would make "Random" race much more interesting. Means you have at least one hero each race you're willing to use...I ask these because I thought you said you were going to make heroes for each race, and lobby is where you'd pick race.)
Other questions/thoughts too, but they seemed to have scrambled themselves as I typed this...however I believe they were related to old modes and which you were going to keep (or base new modes on)
Alright i see. I guess there is no harm with experimenting with vision. But as for adding attack range for ranged units i think it will make it imbalanced since at the start or when ever the hero is able to obtain the attack range item, they will be able to harras/kill creeps from an unfair distance which will give ranged units a very distant advantage from melee creeps along with heroes. In hero line wars, when i play a ranged unit at the start and there are powerful creeps coming i just hit as many times as i can then before the creep/s can attack me i move back,hit,move back,hit,ect. If you increase the attack range it will make things too simple. IMO
Btw i hope you're not gonna add "buyable/upgradable" auras to creeps like in RoC. I have been playing RoC recently and my god the thorn aura on creeps is just.....eh. Its a very quick and imbalanced game changer.
Damn, I actually forgot about the respawn time reduction xD.
Right now, the spawn area up to approx 1/4 of the lane is visible. Also there is a Xel'Naga Watchtower for each team in a forward position, which gives additional vision, but might be risky to hold, because its very close to the spawn positions of enemy mercs.
Also like said before, I plan on adding observer ward-ish items to further increase vision.
Currently, heroes aren't dependant on the race. There are zerg-themed heroes, but you can pick them, even if you picked the protoss race. The race's only influence is on the types of mercenaries you can send.
I plan on implementing many different modes over time, also most constants should be changeable (like income time, start income, start lifes etc), however right now I have only 2 different mode options: Hero Pick/Random Heroes and Race Pick/Random Races.
Well, you could say ranged heroes are imbalanced in general, with the same argumentation. But melee heroes usually have other advantages, they usually get stronger attacks and more tanking power, which are needed desperately later in the game.
Also would it be imbalanced, if you increase the range of a 6 range hero by 0.5? I guess not, this is a question of balancing the numbers.
Maybe later on, not for the first release. Maybe, I will just scratch auras and start experimenting with other stuff to improve creeps. We will see ;)
Perhaps if you're the same race as your creeps you send (hero race at least) then they get a slight bonus. Nothing to make it imbalanced, but something to be work looking in to for people. Like a 5% or perhaps even 10% bonus to damage/life/armor/MS/AS/shields/energy/skill damage/regen/etc. Of course not all of them get bonuses, perhaps they could pick which bonuses they want (like you can get +5% damage or +10% life, or pick 3 of 5, or something) to make things more interesting. Just spouting any ideas I can think of.
By the way, you should update the RoC site's info. I know some of the creep infos were wrong, like some had incorrect HPs listed. And yeah, Aszune in long games was mostly for the revive time. 50k hp when you have 500k str isn't very much.
Another thought: If armors if bonuses (say, +10 armor) perhaps it should be a set number and a % (like +500 hp and +5% hp) so it's never a complete waste of money, it can be useful after quite some time. And a +50k HP would be much more useful earlier on, once you have over 5m HP (I've had millions of agi on HLW RoC before, not in debug) the +5% would be more like 250k bonus instead of just 50k, which is a lot more useful in the long run.
Interesting idea, I will think about this one. However, this could be hard to balance, I don't know if I will implement something similar. Most likely not for the first release.
Well, since I officially abandoned the project, I don't want to put any additional effort into it (would only delay the SC2 version for you ;) )
I kinda want to avoid these absolutely huge numbers. While I understand, this was probably the most fun for some people, to give like 50 billion strength to their hero; it makes the game very hard to balance in the later stages and it gets out of control.
I will try to implement the possibility to create very strong heroes still, but without having to use millions of stats to do so.
Yeah I'm sure it'd be difficult, but it'd give some extra incentive to match race if you didn't have to.
Well yeah, having the SC2 version out ASAP would be nice, and maybe someone else could update for you. (It's a bit of a pain to see some of those higher HPs, so it'd take a while for me to update it, and I wasn't suggesting me in the first place.) I was just thinking so that people there got accurate information, because I remember a few parts there weren't correct. If nothing else, you could look at stuff from that map for other ideas for this one.
It was just an example...I'm not saying we'll all have billions of HP, however in long games it could happen. Say one two people have 2.5k HP, one buys an item that gives 2.5k HP and 50% hp bonus (base hp) and the other gets an item that's 5k HP bonus. When they buy them right then and there, the 5k one seems more useful, however only at first, because once the first guy has over 5k base HP, his is more useful. Which was sorta my point, %based usually tend to work better in the long run than base #s, even if it could be like 5% or something because even if your gain for that 5% bonus is only 100, those 5s from each 100 will add up very very fast.
Ahh yes, one other point i should make is that ive noticed in HLW magical ability attack based characters become useless in the very end (against the final and strongest tier units) but physical based characters are easy to maintain. It proves difficult to fight off hordes of strong units as a magical attack based character where as for example the blade master can make 8 or something illusions of himself with a nice crit chance along with agility to boots his attack speed and damage and thats all he needs. So a way to avoid this problem is to give abilities flat damage + a certain % of your characters agility,strength or intelligence. its 1 am here so imma continue this later.
I think what Dark Lord means is that most abilities are useless late game (at least in HLW RoC)
Useless stuff on Hell Spawn would be Dark Regen, it's like his best move until you start getting massive tomes. Knockback was weak but the freeze/stun made it good. Tauren Soldier's (forgetting his name =O) cleave was really good late game, and his torch move (the one that made his damage go up a TON for a short time) was a bit rigged late game. Most agi heroes were good until late game, Int being almost useless most of the game. (There were like 2-3 that were good Int characters for a long time. Dragon Rider was really good, and Furion was good but took zero skill and was kinda lame tbh)
Random thought: What about a way to disable specific characters? Like in RoC I'd love to disable Furion once in a while because he's just plain gay, takes no skill, and is for the lazy noobs. Only starts being useless in PvP when Strength guys had a billion HP and Furion had like 500k (if that, the only hard part about PvP w/ Furion was if they had Vamp pots you had to only have 1 person fighting at a time or he'd heal epic fast...)
iRamble a bit....oops...(then again, thoughts for the map. Something could be used! =D
Well, HLW was not really balanced for the usual public games, where masses and masses of creeps were sent. Within our clan and in tournaments, another style of play has been developed over time, which included sending very few, but powerful monsters, very early upgrades and as a result, heroes with very little income and level compared to your usual public game.
For this kind of gameplay, most of those "weak" heroes were actually really strong (for example, jaina was an extremely powerful hero for this mode, while the old blademaster prior to his remake pretty much sucked), and most of the times, games ended at around 50-75k income; quite some time before heroes with massive amounts of stats could dominate the creeps.
In SC2, the whole balancing will be completely different; I don't think it is even possible to recreate the exact same behavior like in WC3. We will see, how this works out.
Also, right now the starts, Strength, Agility and Intelligence already have direct influence on ability damage, since agi increases ranged damage, str increases melee damage (some abilities might cause ranged or melee damage as well) and int increases spell damage (so the majority of spells already gets bonus damage from increased intelligence).
@Kueken531: Go
Sounds good. Hopefully the pvp will actually be interesting rather than just "look at me basic attack you" or "fear my never ending stun/s"
Oh, that brings me to another point. What about implementing PVP battles where every X minutes 1 person on each team with the highest income battle each other for a small reward, but it will be fun to watch. During the process everything else stops and the others players can only spectate but once the fight is complete, every one returns to their normal positions but the game is still not in motion for about 5 seconds so people can view the map a little to see where they are at.
I don't know if you might be able to get any other good ideas from this site but i highly recommend you look at it, it can help you create great moves along with figuring out the formulas for certain abilities Link to site > League of Legends. This game derived from the makers of Dota. I dont expect you to make the ability system like they did, but this is just to help you create ideas on what moves you can make and ways to balance out the moves.
@Kueken531: Go
Ive been reading posts in this thread, and I can say that Kueken definitely has a good sense on game design and balance. You get +1 respect point from the Wraith.
I have no idea what the map is really about. Never played it on Wc3. I do hope you succeed well in it and I`ll try it out on release.
Yeah I had some games end with less than 1k income...I don't care for those. Saving for big stuff is what some people did, and I found stupid honestly. Took too long to get decent income, which was kinda what the whole game was about. Get highest income to be the winning in most cases. However, if I had to say any hero was a bit overpowered, I'd say Hell Spawn. I could get no items/tomes until "Better" creeps, then I only needed 3. (Then again, I was possibly WAY good at it...)
Anyway, perhaps you could make it so both "modes" of spawning work at once. If you even have similar stuff for spawning.
The stats make sense I guess for skills, although Agility hardly would seem proper for psionic ranged stuff. I'd say that's more of Intelligence, no? Guess I'm thinking more of "Spell" than "ranged ability".
Maybe I'm just way tired and not thinking straight in my response...which is entirely possible...and I feel like I'm rambling again...(which seems to be happening a lot lately)
Well, tbh, right now I did not even implement pvp in the map at all. This was a part I kinda disliked for the game anyway, since it is absolutely not balanced for pvp. If I would want pvp, I would create an AoS or a hero arena; HLW is heroes vs mobs, and I'd like to focus on that. So there will be DEFINITELY no periodic team battles, maybe a lategame pvp once again, however, I am not even sure about that (yes, I know, this will probably annoy many people, but I like to think, that I will be able to keep the game entertaining without direct pvp)
I will never be able to balance the heroes for pvp anyway, since its all about killing massive amounts of mobs right now. Any hero specialized in single target hero killing would absolutely suck throughout the entire game, just to get a small edge in those (pretty unimportant) hero vs hero fights.
Playing vs computer controlled mobs or playing vs enemy players are 2 entirely different things requiring completely different skills, tactics, items, balance etc etc.
Thanks :)
Well, most people did not like this way of playing, because they were used to the "traditional" way. In a public, the "new" way was not even good, because if you are the only one of your team doing it and everyone els just sends masses, you have no real gain, but a massive lack in income.
However the real fun starts, if all players are familiar with this tactic and act as a team, for example in a 4v4 8 people saving up for powerful creatures and each of them supporting 1 player, which should get all of the kills to maximize income. I remember great games :). For me, this was WAY more fun throughout the entire game, instead of the 30 min farmfest, where not a single mob was a real thread to you, into teleporting to the enemy and abusing whatever hero killing machine you picked (no offense ;) )
Well, both "modes" worked before. The save for harder creeps was more difficult to hold, but it was doable.
Not all spells are psionic stuff ;)
2 examples of the map:
A Jim Raynor hero can fire a salve of uranium shells as a spell, these collide with the first targets they hit and deal ranged damage instead of spell damage.
And an ultralisk can use his ram spell, to damage, stun and knockback units in front of him, which deals melee damage instead of spell damage. Kinda makes sense, no?
On a side note: I would consider the map quite close to beta. I implemented most of the content I wanted, tested most basic features over and over again, not that much more I can do alone. I will most likely start private and/or public play tests very soon to massively test the balance (and everything else, of course, but the balance needs the most work right now, I think).
Just a few things to go, little tweaks like giving the hero spells cooldowns and mana costs (I did not bother until now, because for testing abilities cooldown and mana costs are just obstackles)
Yeah I was tired when I wrote that :P
I found at times 30 min farmfest could be hard in right situations. A dozen guys smacking you that heal about as fast as you hit them was basically impossible at first. Until you could take 3 hits, unless you're fighting 2/3 of the weakest things it was hard. And still was hard in some cases.
As for the PvP stuff, yeah very little was balanced for PvP. It was basically whomever could tome the most or stun the longest would win. And in some cases, there still was no winner, because you got stunned too long to actually kill them, and they couldn't deal anything near enough to kill you. (One occasion comes to mind. Spawn VS Jaina. Jaina couldn't kill me because skills weren't stat based, and I couldn't kill Jaina because of stuns in spells.)
Anyway, having a beta soon would be awesome. (I'd love to test AI, or do you not have that in yet?)
The first release will not support AI, creating a decent one would require a serious amount of time and testing, and I delayed the release long enough ;).
For now, I'd like to finish the few issues left with the current content, then move to balance testing/tweaking and finally release the first version.
AI will probably be implemented for later versions.