I would like to officially present a relatively new cooperative-survival map, that is now available on US and EU.
Night of the Dead Spec Ops is a hardcore team based survival game. It draws roots from Warcraft III custom games: NotD II and NotD:SO. If you have played them before you should feel very familiar with this one.
For newbie players various mechanics have been created to help them get into the game faster. Note that even so, Spec Ops is a game with a very steep learning curve. If you have no previous experience with NotD-style games, you will likely need to play several times and listen to veteran advice to get yourself comfortable with all the action!
The best way to get into a game is to join the starcraftII channel: notdso
You will find other players and veterans here, just ask to be invite or host a game yourself and invite others from the channel. (note: Veterans usually lurk the channel in the evenings)
The game has a strong focus on teamplay and replayability, to accomplish this many unique features are employed such as:
-Dynamic Spawn System, ensures that every game has different enemy unit wave composition. A variety of factors is also taken into consideration for each wave, such as number of players and their skill.
-Zombie Wander System, allows zombies to wander into nearby building, walk aimlessly or join into the main wave and pursue you.
-Random item distribution. Items are spawned randomly on map every time, their distribution is also dependent on number of players, making sure that smaller teams have less trouble finding equipment.
-Leadership System, allows up to 2 players to act as leaders, allowing quick and easy coordination of the squad. Efficient leading is rewarded!
-Shared Experience, the team gains shared experience, making sure fragging is not rewarded
-Complex Achievement System, rewards skillful play and punishes mindless spam. There are over 100 custom achievements to be earned: ranks, medals, badges, ribbons and codex entries!
Several game modes can be chosen from lobby, including a bootcamp mode, which will aid you in understanding the game mechanics.
The map is a co-production between myself - malkavian (EU) and FahqueL (US).
Additional credits and recent changelog can be viewed in game by pressing f12.
The map is in a highly polished and balanced state. But this will not stop us from updating the map regularly!
For discussions, questions, changelog etc. visit/join our dedicated forum.
One of the best maps out there.
Fans of the old survival maps in Wc3 will almost immediately find themselves in a familiar setting.
I wouldn't recommend this map for every newbie, but if you're looking for a nice challenge, a great team game and are not afraid of a few initial setbacks ( = early death ) then you should try it out!
At first glance it doesn't exactly show much of Sc2's graphic capabilities, but when you play it you'll notice that it's actually very well composed. Special effects are kept at a realistic niveau, every important thing has a fitting visual indicator and blowing up one of the monstrous bosses with tons of explosions made me laugh out loud more than once.
The map has a story line, but even though I've played it several dozen times I don't really know much of it yet. Story is very secondary and is kept as reports in a small menu (like a PDA) where you can read it when you're not currently running from the undead. The gameplay itself is much less story heavy than it's brothers NotD:Aftermath or Dawn of the Dead.
One of the big strong points for replayability is the experience and achievement system. By playing you gain experience which will allow you to rank up in your military standing, starting off as a Private and eventually becoming a General. Each new rank will grant you small favors like a few additional hitpoints.
Even more interesting is the achievement system. For performing well in games (helping your team, being the teamleader, killing dangerous enemies, using your skills to full efficiency) you get the chance to be awarded with medals, ribbons or badges which tell the tale of your heroics. Of course you can also watch the other players' achievements and compare it to yours. See who got the larger e-peen :)
Achievements also increase your stats or slightly improve some skills.
But beware! The game is everything but easy!
Die a single time and you're done for, there is no respawn and no second change in this round. The great variety of different zombies and monsters can mostly hit you hard and sometimes cause injuries like broken limbs or open wounds. A skilled medic is necessary to even have a chance of survival on the long run.
There's a lot more things to talk about: The codex log, the Material system, missions, skills, the hacking minigame, etc etc. But you should best find out by playing it yourself.
Couldn't get people to play a full game yet (which might be because the map has so goddamn many imports that haven't be handled properly in terms of filesize-reduction, that it takes ages to load even if a good DSL connection and most people don't like waiting), but a few things to note after a few rounds:
Move the Class Selection towards the game. Lobby selection is not efficient, as you can not look at skills and don't get enough information. While it makes team composition easier, it might be better to force a certain number of certain classes upon people inside the game.
Your Tutorials are horrible walls of text. Fix that, it makes it way too hard for new players to actually understand what they're supposed to do. The argument "But Leaders..." will NOT be counted. Why? Because you might not have someone who is good at leading. And natural behavior for any multiplayer game is that everyone is fighting for his own fun and score, not for teamwork. Even if you try to encourage teamwork with extra exp and stuff, most people will not care about it. And since it's a hard map, the chances of them coming again, after you left them confused out in the creepy zombie apocalypse are very, very low.
UI Design horrible. It's not meant to be used by anyone who doesn't spend at least 15 minutes to find this stuff. I guess you guys have no idea how it actually works, so yeah, better read up on it. And you can close certain parts and without knowing that TAB opens it back up, it just disappears. Had to click around a lot to find it.
Your Terrain is not good. It shall not find my approval if it's not looking beautiful, there is no eye-candy, it seems to be done without love. At least though it's better than the other NOTD map.
The Trailer, while informative, is boring. It doesn't make people wanna play, it bores them to death. Really.
Loadscreen is pretty though. But I would wish that there was actually more action after the landing cinematic in the beginning, it just dumps you there and all. Maybe make a short cinematic, where the Zombies attack and the Pilot runs like hell and lifts off or something? Dunno.
Edit: And yes, I only tell you what sucks, because you don't have to fix good things.
Thank you for all of your feedback!! S3rius has pushed us to run some publicity for awhile now. We took our time polishing the map beyond its original public beta form and created a 2nd much more "informative" trailer before launching a PR campaign.
The older trailer is a bit more action packed, the new trailer is much more informative. Please visit us in the sc2 channels on US and EU, or post on this thread, or post on our official bnet threads, and/or visit our forums.
We DO read and internalize nearly every feedback we get from the community. However, be aware that our goal is EXTREME DIFFICULTY survival map, NOT cheeseball, easy to finish, solo map.
-Please note that you can play alone with AI as allies. Add a medic in your lobby and he will have AI to use his skills (not items). Additionally you must learn his skills for him. All computer players have AI to follow the player designated as "primary leader". Use this opportunity to familiarize yourself with the map.
Trailer is well done. Map seems to look good too... I'll try it one day. If you guys ever want a more cinematic trailer one day (perhaps for an update release) let me know!
Are you two the new FM Bilouxi/Osiris combo haha? Those were the greatest mappers in war3.
If there will be trouble I will remove those particular songs. I have seen other maps using custom tracks and they dont seem to be in trouble, so unless someone targets us in particular it should be fine :p.
Maybe we can get someone in future to make a couple of action tracks to replace those :)
@Gorandor
Intro cinematic just gets annoying, especially in a map with focus on replayability ( you see the cinematic once, twice you get tired of it). Sure you can add the skip feature, but its just 'meh' in my opinion to make something that 90% of population will ignore. Think of Left4Dead they didnt use cinematics there either, and it was fine. You get a small intro of 5-10 sec with a camera pan and then something in the end after surviving for 1hr.
Lobby selection - yes you are right about having little information about classes. Perhaps in the future Attribute descriptions will work and this will not be an issue.
Also look on the other side, if you add in game class selection then in most of the cases 2 things happen: either someone goes afk/ wastes too much time deciding what to pick (making everyone wait after him 2 minutes or w/e timer u added) or everyone picks w/e they want and you get a team of classes that wouldnt survive even in the hands of pro players (eyes on sniper the douche bag magnet). With any of these game momentum would be broken.
I might not be an expert in game design or have read articles, but I do have 3+ years of notd experience, and I would say that counts for something when it comes to this genre of maps. In the end what I`m saying is that there really was a process of doing things, and they weren`t just slapped in there because it sounded "cool".
Nonetheless feedback is appreciated, and perhaps you could detail a bit more about UI being bad/horrible?
Intro cinematic just gets annoying, especially in a map with focus on replayability ( you see the cinematic once, twice you get tired of it). Sure you can add the skip feature, but its just 'meh' in my opinion to make something that 90% of population will ignore. Think of Left4Dead they didnt use cinematics there either, and it was fine. You get a small intro of 5-10 sec with a camera pan and then something in the end after surviving for 1hr.
L4D is the most horrible example I could think of for this kind of situation. Lemme give you a good and more recent one... Killzone 3. They use short cinematics inside the Multiplayer. They're not longer than 30 seconds, max, but they do A LOT for the atmosphere. You need at least something to build up a bit of action. Otherwise it feels just wrong. You have that good landing, but nothing after that, it just is way too straight into the fight. Try to do something there, even if it's just Marines being dropped off and getting jumped by zombies instantly, after the Dropship is gone. A bit of atmosphere goes a long way with this type of maps.
Lobby selection - yes you are right about having little information about classes. Perhaps in the future Attribute descriptions will work and this will not be an issue.
"In the future" is no argument. You gotta deliver new players the means to decide on their classes today, not in 6 months, when they already switched to some other map again, because there are at least 5 other (and some way better) zombie survival maps that I know off, that will be released within that time frame. And at least one of those will probably swipe the rest of them down from the Popularity with ease. As it is now, I'd have to play one game for each hero, if I don't do it in private with bots, to get to know all of them (and seriously, knowing players on Battle.net, only a minority will do that. The rest will just say "Eh, fuck it" and play the other NOTD Map that is already around for a lot longer). That is not acceptable in terms of player comfort, as you might imagine.
Also look on the other side, if you add in game class selection then in most of the cases 2 things happen: either someone goes afk/ wastes too much time deciding what to pick (making everyone wait after him 2 minutes or w/e timer u added) or everyone picks w/e they want and you get a team of classes that wouldnt survive even in the hands of pro players (eyes on sniper the douche bag magnet). With any of these game momentum would be broken. I might not be an expert in game design or have read articles, but I do have 3+ years of notd experience, and I would say that counts for something when it comes to this genre of maps. In the end what I`m saying is that there really was a process of doing things, and they weren`t just slapped in there because it sounded "cool".
As I said, try the enforced road. Not more than 2 of any given class possible or something along those lines. Make sure that they have to get a decent setup going, which with they can play at least for 30m+ or something. If you make it too hard to begin with and people die after 5m, you will loose players. Making it hard, doesn't mean, that you should make it so, that only hardcore NOTD fans can play it. Because that will not benefit you, not the community. And people will ALWAYS pick what they want to play without that restriction, except maybe some hardcore clan of NOTD players.
The wait can also be easily solved, by simply spawning the player on the biggest chunk of already active heroes, so he doesn't get left behind and the others can already go for the action.
Whatever experience you might have in terms of NOTD maps, it doesn't help, when you can't find solutions to make the game easier accessible for your players. Because that's where it's at - the players, not you. And as it stands right now, it's horrible for new guys. Especially anyone who didn't play NOTD in WC3 and came over from SC1 or just started out with custom maps in RTS, due to the massive SC2 hype. As always: Just because you played something a lot, that doesn't make you a good designer. It only means you know how to play this type of map well ;)
Nonetheless feedback is appreciated, and perhaps you could detail a bit more about UI being bad/horrible?
Don't worry, UI Design is something most companies have problems with too. You current UI is hardly good. It does not easily display all the necessary information to the player in a clean, non-tetris way. Currently, I have to click through multiple menus, options and what not, to find what I'm looking for. This takes roughly 15m if you're standing around with other people to cover you. If you have to move, following other people ... oh boy, than it gets REALLY annoying. When you know your UI, it's all right. If you don't and you're new, you will probably again just go with the "Fuck it, I'm out of here" option.
What you can do:
Move the Codex up into the Menu, next to Achievements.
Add the options you have under Menu, with the rest of it, where it belongs.
Mark current objectives on the Minimap, the same way Blizz marked the Leviathan and things on it. It's easily done and removes two buttons.
More Information regarding those Missions can be stored in the Codex, only lore-nerds will read that anyways, the rest will not be bothered by it.
Combine Status & Squad and bind it to the "Tab" key.
Remove KIA from the Squad part, nobody really cares a lot about this, sometimes people die. It happens.
Make Health & Energy with a few bars, that's worth more than flat numbers
Open Achievement Tabs by clicking on the Portrait stored in the Status part.
Clean up your Medals, Badges & Ribbons in the Achievement part. Nobody cares about the Patriotism talk on it. They wanna know EXACTLY how they gain those things. You can put all the blabla inside the Codex. Because, once again, no one really cares, they only care how they can get it.
Also, on a side note, don't make the mistake to say "It has to be hard, so it's fun." ... What it needs, is a good build curve on difficulty. Make the beginning easier, so that new people can look around, enjoy the map and get used to it. And after that, at first slowly, increase the difficulty. So they have a good experience at the beginning and slowly get a challenge. And after that, change the curve to a straight line, that makes the game harder and harder, until it's a fucking nightmare. And they'll come back and enjoy it. Think of what you need to do, to make it more enjoyable for your players, not for yourself. You still gotta have fun with it, but I guarantee you, you'll have a lot more fun if lots of people play it and tell you how good a job you did on it.
If anyone can help with the following issues please speak up.
Do you know anything about increasing the size of the default inventory and inventory container icons/buttons?
Can't make item use transient.
Can't resize the buttons to my knowledge.
Stacking functions for items are completely awful and incomplete.
Some of the gameplay suggestions I disagree on, but I guess thats to be expected, after all each of us has their own ideas and that makes us unique.
However, your post did motivate me to focus more on beginner-friendly side, already have some ideas how this can be achieved so you can expect very soon an update targeted at newbies :)
@Fah
I think inventory icons can be resized editing sc2layout. What bugs me is that you cannot make inventory stay open, and dont auto-close if u click empty ground or select a unit w/o inventory <- This I would like some info on if anyone can help
I tested the map twice yesterday... I expected to die miserably in the first try. It happened so fast I wasn't able to understand what to do... I didn't have the time to read the info about the various abilities my unit class had, there were already 5 units on me. Second attempt, with a bit more people, we managed to last a little bit longer... but losing anyone in the team almost instantly means we're doomed. We pretty much can't last long as soon as we lose a player, may he quit the game or just die.
Anyway, the map looks good so far, I liked the idea of sticking together with the leader in order to survive, and there is a true challenge that makes it worth spending time. But I have to agree though, you'll absolutely need to make it more newbie-friendly, at least in the beginning so that we can choose safely which powers to learn. I assume many players won't try hundreds of time if they automatically lose within the first 2 minutes...
Another thing, about the lobby... I don't know if it was intended that way, but it seems we can't choose the class we want if someone already has it... Basically we can't have a team of snipers, that's good. But it also means you can't have the class you wanted to, if someone already took it. I know the lobby is not really permissive about this, but maybe choosing your class in the lobby wasn't the best thing to do to begin with... I would rather make my choice while the dropship is landing at the beginning, for example. Until everyone has a class selected, the camera would stay focused on the dropship. That way, you could forbid more than X number of units of class Y... People taking too long to choose a class will be set to a random class which wasn't taken yet.
Hopefully Exp Gain is much fair for early players so it will still attract them into the game.
If achievements and ribbons and such allows them to gain bonus experience quicker, to unlock more stuff, it's a smart way to involve them more.
Because the old NOTD for SC2 felt very repetitive when it lacked these features. Most of the experience gained is from completion of side missions main missions in the old one, so to get the new classes feels repetitive.
Also look to BFBC2's style. You do get classes unlocked, but the potential weapon and equipments needs to be unlocked.
So if you can create a unlock system for every player, where leveling or ranking earns a unlock point, and allow the players to spend it, it will make the game seem more progressive.
A good future thing to note, is to change the UI to match the game's style... Bigger Map, more visible Ally health and status, and changing it so instead of a typical RTS UI, with the bar to view every unit you click, the bottom only shows your unit's stats and never for enemies and such.
What I am saying is, changing it so you do not need to select your character to order it anymore, as all click will make it move in the same way as League of Legend's champion controlling (you always command your champions no matter what you click).
As for the class balance selection in the lobby, better to have it ingame than the lobby, and have the banks fetch the stats ingame.
only 3 classes of a type can be chosen seems balanced enough, and basically, no unit spawns until everyone chooses their classes, or until the 2 minute timer is up. At this point, everyone can read a documentation on various things...
A interesting aspect to teach players as they go, is to have a "newbie" course where simple weak enemies will appear and require specific attacks to bypass.
Like "Press Z to melee" and you see a neutral zombie standing there. Slash slash, dead, no exp gain, but its practice basically.
Players can ignore that tutorial segment and run past and trigger a cutscene, and at this point, all players will be warped to the cutscene part.
What I am saying is, changing it so you do not need to select your character to order it anymore, as all click will make it move in the same way as League of Legend's champion controlling (you always command your champions no matter what you click).
You dont always control your marine. Sometimes you need to select armed explosives (chains with detonator, satchels etc), or beacons (artillery beacon). Such a feature would remove a good amount of gameplay.
Quote from dra6o0n:
A interesting aspect to teach players as they go, is to have a "newbie" course where simple weak enemies will appear and require specific attacks to bypass.
There is already a beginner-friendly system (recently implemented). You get a small tutorial window with various informative tips and the game is set to a very easy mode if a high amount of newbies is detected. I think the game has way too many strategies and "features" for an ingame interactive illustration to be viable.
Quote from dra6o0n:
So if you can create a unlock system for every player, where leveling or ranking earns a unlock point, and allow the players to spend it, it will make the game seem more progressive.
This is an interesting suggestion that I would like to implement sometime in the future.
Quote from dra6o0n:
A good future thing to note, is to change the UI to match the game's style... Bigger Map, more visible Ally health and status, and changing it so instead of a typical RTS UI, with the bar to view every unit you click, the bottom only shows your unit's stats and never for enemies and such.
The only part of the bottom UI I can think of that is not important is the unit portrait. I don`t see how 10 health and energy bars could be crammed in there...
I`m likely to follow Gorandor`s suggestion and place health bars inside the sidemenu for each player (instead of raw numbers)
Health can be measured in colors for each of the 19% of health that is dropped.
Blue = 81%100%
Green = 6180%
Yellow = 4160%
Orange = 2140%
Red = 120%
And for a interesting bit, have a skull appear when they die, and the location of death be shown on the map and area through fog of war.
Unlocking systems is what makes cooperative games interesting, but it does have a limit.
You need to have a customization system in for equipments, maybe unique (personal) weaponry/tools that you can unlock for each class as a final unlock.
Like the Sniper would unlock the unique "UASV" Unmanned Aerial Strike Vehicle which as a cooldown between use but enables you to send a robotic vehicle that comes in and bombards the area with explosives, and it also scouts the area too.
Each tools/weapons should be unique to the class type.
Medic can unlock a final "Injector Rifle" Which saps life from enemies and gives the Medic energy at a 3 life to 1 energy ratio (30 dps). This gun also increases the healing range of the medic.
I'm not sure because I didn't put the time to play SC2 to test this map out yet, so plz wait till I do... LOL.
we added a newbie mode in which marines are buffed, enemies are handicapped and achievements and xp gain are severely reduced. The purpose is to allow new players to survive longer and understand the game mechanics better.
THE HOST OF THE GAME must type "-newbiemode" within the first minute of gameplay to initiate this mode. If successfully done you will see a yellow text message stating that newbie mode is on.
So, tonight played 7 times, and the results of which, all games but 2 being 7+ players was just mass fail. only 1 maybe 2 could be considered new, as it stands playing with more than 6 seems a waste of time, 7 is just terrible, 8 is a bitch cause everyone fights about the extra class, four and five is pointless without all pro players, but my overall point is this. If you want us playing with new players reduce creep count (zomibe normal) or reduce normal zombie hp or reduce 10% to 5%. Secondly I understand there was some sort of change but honestly, if you are going to put in 1000000000 lurkers, make marines target OTHER creeps and not dance cause they are trying to shoot lurkers AND when you attack move marine TRYS to target lurker 1st before other shit, if you insist on the mass of them, let them be killable above ground by mortar or 5rpg, at the moment there is no way to kill them above ground one shot and reso leaves them with enough hp that GL doesn't kill...
Thirdly, Defi's coming constantly = good challenge, but not when there is something wrong with reso wether it be there attack order, the trigger running them or the item/skill it's not reliable during bunker.
And last thing.. wanders, we all avoid them or just blow them when they are moving around us, but honestly change the trigger so they spawn farthest spawn from the team, there is nothing more annoying than walking on the edge of the map and having the same creeps respawning right infront of you.
Ok cars? not too bother some, but some of the objects you have chilling around the map as scenery, make it killable (like the shit in bunker).
And, please, lets get some of the older complaints taken care of before more new content or upgrades are added.
Finally The infester mission =g00d
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Greetings,
I would like to officially present a relatively new cooperative-survival map, that is now available on US and EU.
Night of the Dead Spec Ops is a hardcore team based survival game. It draws roots from Warcraft III custom games: NotD II and NotD:SO. If you have played them before you should feel very familiar with this one.
For newbie players various mechanics have been created to help them get into the game faster. Note that even so, Spec Ops is a game with a very steep learning curve. If you have no previous experience with NotD-style games, you will likely need to play several times and listen to veteran advice to get yourself comfortable with all the action!
The best way to get into a game is to join the starcraftII channel: notdso You will find other players and veterans here, just ask to be invite or host a game yourself and invite others from the channel. (note: Veterans usually lurk the channel in the evenings)
The game has a strong focus on teamplay and replayability, to accomplish this many unique features are employed such as:
-Dynamic Spawn System, ensures that every game has different enemy unit wave composition. A variety of factors is also taken into consideration for each wave, such as number of players and their skill.
-Zombie Wander System, allows zombies to wander into nearby building, walk aimlessly or join into the main wave and pursue you.
-Random item distribution. Items are spawned randomly on map every time, their distribution is also dependent on number of players, making sure that smaller teams have less trouble finding equipment.
-Leadership System, allows up to 2 players to act as leaders, allowing quick and easy coordination of the squad. Efficient leading is rewarded!
-Shared Experience, the team gains shared experience, making sure fragging is not rewarded
-Complex Achievement System, rewards skillful play and punishes mindless spam. There are over 100 custom achievements to be earned: ranks, medals, badges, ribbons and codex entries!
Several game modes can be chosen from lobby, including a bootcamp mode, which will aid you in understanding the game mechanics.
The map is a co-production between myself - malkavian (EU) and FahqueL (US).
Additional credits and recent changelog can be viewed in game by pressing f12.
The map is in a highly polished and balanced state. But this will not stop us from updating the map regularly!
For discussions, questions, changelog etc. visit/join our dedicated forum.
Enjoy the game!
Played it, loved it.
One of the best maps out there.
Fans of the old survival maps in Wc3 will almost immediately find themselves in a familiar setting.
I wouldn't recommend this map for every newbie, but if you're looking for a nice challenge, a great team game and are not afraid of a few initial setbacks ( = early death ) then you should try it out!
At first glance it doesn't exactly show much of Sc2's graphic capabilities, but when you play it you'll notice that it's actually very well composed. Special effects are kept at a realistic niveau, every important thing has a fitting visual indicator and blowing up one of the monstrous bosses with tons of explosions made me laugh out loud more than once.
The map has a story line, but even though I've played it several dozen times I don't really know much of it yet. Story is very secondary and is kept as reports in a small menu (like a PDA) where you can read it when you're not currently running from the undead. The gameplay itself is much less story heavy than it's brothers NotD:Aftermath or Dawn of the Dead.
One of the big strong points for replayability is the experience and achievement system. By playing you gain experience which will allow you to rank up in your military standing, starting off as a Private and eventually becoming a General. Each new rank will grant you small favors like a few additional hitpoints.
Even more interesting is the achievement system. For performing well in games (helping your team, being the teamleader, killing dangerous enemies, using your skills to full efficiency) you get the chance to be awarded with medals, ribbons or badges which tell the tale of your heroics. Of course you can also watch the other players' achievements and compare it to yours. See who got the larger e-peen :)
Achievements also increase your stats or slightly improve some skills.
But beware! The game is everything but easy!
Die a single time and you're done for, there is no respawn and no second change in this round. The great variety of different zombies and monsters can mostly hit you hard and sometimes cause injuries like broken limbs or open wounds. A skilled medic is necessary to even have a chance of survival on the long run.
There's a lot more things to talk about: The codex log, the Material system, missions, skills, the hacking minigame, etc etc. But you should best find out by playing it yourself.
Couldn't get people to play a full game yet (which might be because the map has so goddamn many imports that haven't be handled properly in terms of filesize-reduction, that it takes ages to load even if a good DSL connection and most people don't like waiting), but a few things to note after a few rounds:
Move the Class Selection towards the game. Lobby selection is not efficient, as you can not look at skills and don't get enough information. While it makes team composition easier, it might be better to force a certain number of certain classes upon people inside the game.
Your Tutorials are horrible walls of text. Fix that, it makes it way too hard for new players to actually understand what they're supposed to do. The argument "But Leaders..." will NOT be counted. Why? Because you might not have someone who is good at leading. And natural behavior for any multiplayer game is that everyone is fighting for his own fun and score, not for teamwork. Even if you try to encourage teamwork with extra exp and stuff, most people will not care about it. And since it's a hard map, the chances of them coming again, after you left them confused out in the creepy zombie apocalypse are very, very low.
UI Design horrible. It's not meant to be used by anyone who doesn't spend at least 15 minutes to find this stuff. I guess you guys have no idea how it actually works, so yeah, better read up on it. And you can close certain parts and without knowing that TAB opens it back up, it just disappears. Had to click around a lot to find it.
Your Terrain is not good. It shall not find my approval if it's not looking beautiful, there is no eye-candy, it seems to be done without love. At least though it's better than the other NOTD map.
The Trailer, while informative, is boring. It doesn't make people wanna play, it bores them to death. Really.
Loadscreen is pretty though. But I would wish that there was actually more action after the landing cinematic in the beginning, it just dumps you there and all. Maybe make a short cinematic, where the Zombies attack and the Pilot runs like hell and lifts off or something? Dunno.
Edit: And yes, I only tell you what sucks, because you don't have to fix good things.
finally it got on the front page :D
good terrain, balance and units.
overall a great game :D
but if you meet a biger wave of enemys your nearly dead :(
anyway 5/5 :)
Thank you for all of your feedback!! S3rius has pushed us to run some publicity for awhile now. We took our time polishing the map beyond its original public beta form and created a 2nd much more "informative" trailer before launching a PR campaign.
The older trailer is a bit more action packed, the new trailer is much more informative. Please visit us in the sc2 channels on US and EU, or post on this thread, or post on our official bnet threads, and/or visit our forums.
We DO read and internalize nearly every feedback we get from the community. However, be aware that our goal is EXTREME DIFFICULTY survival map, NOT cheeseball, easy to finish, solo map.
-Please note that you can play alone with AI as allies. Add a medic in your lobby and he will have AI to use his skills (not items). Additionally you must learn his skills for him. All computer players have AI to follow the player designated as "primary leader". Use this opportunity to familiarize yourself with the map.
@FahqueL: Go I'm not saying "Make it easy", I'm saying "Make it more accessible to new people and more balanced in terms of the team"
Trailer is well done. Map seems to look good too... I'll try it one day. If you guys ever want a more cinematic trailer one day (perhaps for an update release) let me know!
Are you two the new FM Bilouxi/Osiris combo haha? Those were the greatest mappers in war3.
Great music ingame (from Killing Floor)
You sure you're not getting into trouble by using this music? Or do you have permission?
Anyway, good overall first impression... gotta get some skill for this one. Seems LOTS more difficult than NotD2 for Wc3, what I used to play often.
@KnarrenHeinz8
If there will be trouble I will remove those particular songs. I have seen other maps using custom tracks and they dont seem to be in trouble, so unless someone targets us in particular it should be fine :p. Maybe we can get someone in future to make a couple of action tracks to replace those :)
@Gorandor
Intro cinematic just gets annoying, especially in a map with focus on replayability ( you see the cinematic once, twice you get tired of it). Sure you can add the skip feature, but its just 'meh' in my opinion to make something that 90% of population will ignore. Think of Left4Dead they didnt use cinematics there either, and it was fine. You get a small intro of 5-10 sec with a camera pan and then something in the end after surviving for 1hr.
Lobby selection - yes you are right about having little information about classes. Perhaps in the future Attribute descriptions will work and this will not be an issue.
Also look on the other side, if you add in game class selection then in most of the cases 2 things happen: either someone goes afk/ wastes too much time deciding what to pick (making everyone wait after him 2 minutes or w/e timer u added) or everyone picks w/e they want and you get a team of classes that wouldnt survive even in the hands of pro players (eyes on sniper the douche bag magnet). With any of these game momentum would be broken. I might not be an expert in game design or have read articles, but I do have 3+ years of notd experience, and I would say that counts for something when it comes to this genre of maps. In the end what I`m saying is that there really was a process of doing things, and they weren`t just slapped in there because it sounded "cool".
Nonetheless feedback is appreciated, and perhaps you could detail a bit more about UI being bad/horrible?
L4D is the most horrible example I could think of for this kind of situation. Lemme give you a good and more recent one... Killzone 3. They use short cinematics inside the Multiplayer. They're not longer than 30 seconds, max, but they do A LOT for the atmosphere. You need at least something to build up a bit of action. Otherwise it feels just wrong. You have that good landing, but nothing after that, it just is way too straight into the fight. Try to do something there, even if it's just Marines being dropped off and getting jumped by zombies instantly, after the Dropship is gone. A bit of atmosphere goes a long way with this type of maps.
"In the future" is no argument. You gotta deliver new players the means to decide on their classes today, not in 6 months, when they already switched to some other map again, because there are at least 5 other (and some way better) zombie survival maps that I know off, that will be released within that time frame. And at least one of those will probably swipe the rest of them down from the Popularity with ease. As it is now, I'd have to play one game for each hero, if I don't do it in private with bots, to get to know all of them (and seriously, knowing players on Battle.net, only a minority will do that. The rest will just say "Eh, fuck it" and play the other NOTD Map that is already around for a lot longer). That is not acceptable in terms of player comfort, as you might imagine.
As I said, try the enforced road. Not more than 2 of any given class possible or something along those lines. Make sure that they have to get a decent setup going, which with they can play at least for 30m+ or something. If you make it too hard to begin with and people die after 5m, you will loose players. Making it hard, doesn't mean, that you should make it so, that only hardcore NOTD fans can play it. Because that will not benefit you, not the community. And people will ALWAYS pick what they want to play without that restriction, except maybe some hardcore clan of NOTD players.
The wait can also be easily solved, by simply spawning the player on the biggest chunk of already active heroes, so he doesn't get left behind and the others can already go for the action.
Whatever experience you might have in terms of NOTD maps, it doesn't help, when you can't find solutions to make the game easier accessible for your players. Because that's where it's at - the players, not you. And as it stands right now, it's horrible for new guys. Especially anyone who didn't play NOTD in WC3 and came over from SC1 or just started out with custom maps in RTS, due to the massive SC2 hype. As always: Just because you played something a lot, that doesn't make you a good designer. It only means you know how to play this type of map well ;)
Don't worry, UI Design is something most companies have problems with too. You current UI is hardly good. It does not easily display all the necessary information to the player in a clean, non-tetris way. Currently, I have to click through multiple menus, options and what not, to find what I'm looking for. This takes roughly 15m if you're standing around with other people to cover you. If you have to move, following other people ... oh boy, than it gets REALLY annoying. When you know your UI, it's all right. If you don't and you're new, you will probably again just go with the "Fuck it, I'm out of here" option.
What you can do:
Also, on a side note, don't make the mistake to say "It has to be hard, so it's fun." ... What it needs, is a good build curve on difficulty. Make the beginning easier, so that new people can look around, enjoy the map and get used to it. And after that, at first slowly, increase the difficulty. So they have a good experience at the beginning and slowly get a challenge. And after that, change the curve to a straight line, that makes the game harder and harder, until it's a fucking nightmare. And they'll come back and enjoy it. Think of what you need to do, to make it more enjoyable for your players, not for yourself. You still gotta have fun with it, but I guarantee you, you'll have a lot more fun if lots of people play it and tell you how good a job you did on it.
If anyone can help with the following issues please speak up. Do you know anything about increasing the size of the default inventory and inventory container icons/buttons? Can't make item use transient. Can't resize the buttons to my knowledge. Stacking functions for items are completely awful and incomplete.
@Gorandor: Go
Some of the gameplay suggestions I disagree on, but I guess thats to be expected, after all each of us has their own ideas and that makes us unique. However, your post did motivate me to focus more on beginner-friendly side, already have some ideas how this can be achieved so you can expect very soon an update targeted at newbies :)
@Fah I think inventory icons can be resized editing sc2layout. What bugs me is that you cannot make inventory stay open, and dont auto-close if u click empty ground or select a unit w/o inventory <- This I would like some info on if anyone can help
I tested the map twice yesterday... I expected to die miserably in the first try. It happened so fast I wasn't able to understand what to do... I didn't have the time to read the info about the various abilities my unit class had, there were already 5 units on me. Second attempt, with a bit more people, we managed to last a little bit longer... but losing anyone in the team almost instantly means we're doomed. We pretty much can't last long as soon as we lose a player, may he quit the game or just die.
Anyway, the map looks good so far, I liked the idea of sticking together with the leader in order to survive, and there is a true challenge that makes it worth spending time. But I have to agree though, you'll absolutely need to make it more newbie-friendly, at least in the beginning so that we can choose safely which powers to learn. I assume many players won't try hundreds of time if they automatically lose within the first 2 minutes...
Another thing, about the lobby... I don't know if it was intended that way, but it seems we can't choose the class we want if someone already has it... Basically we can't have a team of snipers, that's good. But it also means you can't have the class you wanted to, if someone already took it. I know the lobby is not really permissive about this, but maybe choosing your class in the lobby wasn't the best thing to do to begin with... I would rather make my choice while the dropship is landing at the beginning, for example. Until everyone has a class selected, the camera would stay focused on the dropship. That way, you could forbid more than X number of units of class Y... People taking too long to choose a class will be set to a random class which wasn't taken yet.
@malkavianVision: Go That's fine. I'm just telling you where I see quite a few problems, nothing more. If you need anything, drop a note.
Hopefully Exp Gain is much fair for early players so it will still attract them into the game.
If achievements and ribbons and such allows them to gain bonus experience quicker, to unlock more stuff, it's a smart way to involve them more.
Because the old NOTD for SC2 felt very repetitive when it lacked these features. Most of the experience gained is from completion of side missions main missions in the old one, so to get the new classes feels repetitive.
Also look to BFBC2's style. You do get classes unlocked, but the potential weapon and equipments needs to be unlocked.
So if you can create a unlock system for every player, where leveling or ranking earns a unlock point, and allow the players to spend it, it will make the game seem more progressive.
A good future thing to note, is to change the UI to match the game's style... Bigger Map, more visible Ally health and status, and changing it so instead of a typical RTS UI, with the bar to view every unit you click, the bottom only shows your unit's stats and never for enemies and such.
What I am saying is, changing it so you do not need to select your character to order it anymore, as all click will make it move in the same way as League of Legend's champion controlling (you always command your champions no matter what you click).
As for the class balance selection in the lobby, better to have it ingame than the lobby, and have the banks fetch the stats ingame.
only 3 classes of a type can be chosen seems balanced enough, and basically, no unit spawns until everyone chooses their classes, or until the 2 minute timer is up. At this point, everyone can read a documentation on various things...
A interesting aspect to teach players as they go, is to have a "newbie" course where simple weak enemies will appear and require specific attacks to bypass.
Like "Press Z to melee" and you see a neutral zombie standing there. Slash slash, dead, no exp gain, but its practice basically.
Players can ignore that tutorial segment and run past and trigger a cutscene, and at this point, all players will be warped to the cutscene part.
@dra6o0n: Go
You dont always control your marine. Sometimes you need to select armed explosives (chains with detonator, satchels etc), or beacons (artillery beacon). Such a feature would remove a good amount of gameplay.
There is already a beginner-friendly system (recently implemented). You get a small tutorial window with various informative tips and the game is set to a very easy mode if a high amount of newbies is detected. I think the game has way too many strategies and "features" for an ingame interactive illustration to be viable.
This is an interesting suggestion that I would like to implement sometime in the future.
The only part of the bottom UI I can think of that is not important is the unit portrait. I don`t see how 10 health and energy bars could be crammed in there... I`m likely to follow Gorandor`s suggestion and place health bars inside the sidemenu for each player (instead of raw numbers)
Health can be measured in colors for each of the 19% of health that is dropped.
Blue = 81%100% Green = 6180% Yellow = 4160% Orange = 2140% Red = 120%
And for a interesting bit, have a skull appear when they die, and the location of death be shown on the map and area through fog of war.
Unlocking systems is what makes cooperative games interesting, but it does have a limit. You need to have a customization system in for equipments, maybe unique (personal) weaponry/tools that you can unlock for each class as a final unlock.
Like the Sniper would unlock the unique "UASV" Unmanned Aerial Strike Vehicle which as a cooldown between use but enables you to send a robotic vehicle that comes in and bombards the area with explosives, and it also scouts the area too.
Each tools/weapons should be unique to the class type.
Medic can unlock a final "Injector Rifle" Which saps life from enemies and gives the Medic energy at a 3 life to 1 energy ratio (30 dps). This gun also increases the healing range of the medic.
I'm not sure because I didn't put the time to play SC2 to test this map out yet, so plz wait till I do... LOL.
Several updates have been made over the past days, including better support for newbies!
@malkavianVision: Go
we added a newbie mode in which marines are buffed, enemies are handicapped and achievements and xp gain are severely reduced. The purpose is to allow new players to survive longer and understand the game mechanics better.
THE HOST OF THE GAME must type "-newbiemode" within the first minute of gameplay to initiate this mode. If successfully done you will see a yellow text message stating that newbie mode is on.
So, tonight played 7 times, and the results of which, all games but 2 being 7+ players was just mass fail. only 1 maybe 2 could be considered new, as it stands playing with more than 6 seems a waste of time, 7 is just terrible, 8 is a bitch cause everyone fights about the extra class, four and five is pointless without all pro players, but my overall point is this. If you want us playing with new players reduce creep count (zomibe normal) or reduce normal zombie hp or reduce 10% to 5%. Secondly I understand there was some sort of change but honestly, if you are going to put in 1000000000 lurkers, make marines target OTHER creeps and not dance cause they are trying to shoot lurkers AND when you attack move marine TRYS to target lurker 1st before other shit, if you insist on the mass of them, let them be killable above ground by mortar or 5rpg, at the moment there is no way to kill them above ground one shot and reso leaves them with enough hp that GL doesn't kill... Thirdly, Defi's coming constantly = good challenge, but not when there is something wrong with reso wether it be there attack order, the trigger running them or the item/skill it's not reliable during bunker. And last thing.. wanders, we all avoid them or just blow them when they are moving around us, but honestly change the trigger so they spawn farthest spawn from the team, there is nothing more annoying than walking on the edge of the map and having the same creeps respawning right infront of you. Ok cars? not too bother some, but some of the objects you have chilling around the map as scenery, make it killable (like the shit in bunker). And, please, lets get some of the older complaints taken care of before more new content or upgrades are added. Finally The infester mission =g00d