I think the cloud is actually pretty good but underestimated. The range disable basically means that only like half of the enemies will be able to attack. If you use that in single player, you'll notice how much less damage you suddenly take. The speed reduction is just a little bonus, nothing fancy.
@s3rius
Yes I know that as it stands now, you get a lot of crappy items. But I have allready made a crafting system that allows you to turn bad items into better once, and thus gives a sense to poor items.
The Elder thing is a typical RPG problem. The challange is that he needs to be made interesting without being too strong a fighter. I'll think of something.
Actually I am moving towards making the Elder less "musthave" and give players a choice whether they take him or not. The Time Machine Abilities were a step towards that direction. The other one is that the foreseer can now actually heal fairly decently with a high Will Skill.
I heard about the bug when players leave at selection, but couldn't quite put a finger on it yet. I'll look at it more accurately for v1.7
The Time Skip ability in it's nature is a little suspectible to bugs, but I sorted most of them out. I've seen a huge flashing light that was not supposed to be there myself. I'll keep trying to find the issues.
@HMoon
The Issue you metion are allready fixed in version 1.6^^
In fact, the Elder's Encourage ability has not been changed since it's introduction. So it might be OP. Frankly, my main concern is getting bugs fixed and planned elements introduced. Balancing is important but a little on a back note right now.
As for the foreseer, I think he is actually quite underestimated. Time Skipping Breeders and Chrono Sphereing the front makes an incredible difference. Aside from infinite energy supply. I've heard a lot of players who said foreseer is a little hard to play but fun. Some think he's imba, some find him useless. So it's basically a preference thing. I realize however that the Manipulation Skill is fairly useless as it stands now. It will be changed.
Are you on the EU server? Because I can't publish anywhere aside from EU. Blame Blizzard.
And for everyone:
Patch 1.6 is allready done with a lot of changes. But I am having GATEWAY_DOWN errors when trying to publish. I am trying my best to get it out^^
This is a pretty big patch so I'll only go over the bigger changes:
3 Items of the same type and the same quality can now be crafted into an item of the next higher quality
Ranks have been introduced. There are 8 Ranks (initial excluded) You can gain.
Each rank gives a bonus of +10hp +10nrg +2% dmg
You collect experience for Ranks which is saved completely. (Actually you have allready been collecting Experience since 1.4)
Time Machine had a few reworks.
and Many more
This turned out quite a big patch because I had several problems trying to publish it and kept working instead. But now it's out. Let me hear what you guys think.
I am very sorry but I am a little afraid of doing that. Even though its plain obvious from this thread that I am the creator, people believe what they see on battle.net. I am really hoping that Blizzard will make us able to publish on different servers soon. Or we find a sulotion on ourselves, but untill then I am afraid it can't be played in US. I hope you understand that.
i am really curious about the triggers.. there is something terrible wrong. sometimes only a few enemys are there and sometimes they spawn every 15 seconds.. faster than you can kill em. what to do?
it does not save items, xp, crafted items or anything else for me right now :)
@Ryaneko: Go
Hmm strange. Need to test the saving a little more. I thought I had enough tests and it worked fine.
Which pillar do you mean? Mostly the pathing for the specialist is not my fault. He uses basicly the same cliffjump as reapers. And as we all know reapers tend to be quite stupid when trying to find their way. XD
The triggers are fine. It's nothing but luck really. They spawn at random spawn locations and take random paths, therefor if you are lucky you don't run into a lot of patrols and if you are unlucky you run into 3 groups at once. It really comes down to reacting in time and fleeing if the fight is too though.
@Xelaran
Sure the cloud is very useful, but the Assassin is lacking an ultimate skill at the moment, and I think this would be a good one. It would cost about 1/3 of total energy, have a long cooldown, and restrict attacks to melee and give the 'sin a considerable movement/attack speed bonus, as well as maybe a % damage taken buff. Would seem like a very cool yet very balanced skill to me ^^
Yea well I get what you mean. But not every agent has an ultimate. actually i would only call charged shot and psi barrage actual ultimates.
And the assasin has a lot of low cooldown abilities. that defines him, fast and furious. That put aside, spamming clouds all over the place to disable all rangers is more usefull than having one strong cloud imo.
EDIT: And frankly, I am planning abilties that will be unlocked at a certain rank. There i might consider giving the sin some kind of armor bonus or evasion or whatnot. We will see though.
Yes definitly. And I'll make sure they are not as easy to come by. Green actually only means "somewhat better" so there will be better qualities in the future.
Hey Xelaran, we played together yesterday and I have to say that it was a lot of fun to see the map creator in-game :) I think this map is really addictive and I'm probably going to play it more this week. Maybe we'll meet each other again some day?
Anyway, I feel that there are certain balance issues at the moment, especially regarding the Specialist, as I'm sure you are aware. In my opinion the two main points that make the Specialist so strong is their insanely long range and the permanent scan effect. I think Charged Shot is fine as it is and the Specialist passives are nice but not really overpowered.
I would suggest making only two changes to the Specialist. Firstly, the attack range per upgrade could be reduced to 1. When you get 2 per upgrade, the Specialist becomes able to snipe enemies from over a big chasm, making it impossible for the target to retaliate. Secondly, I think the reveal of Motion Scan should have a limited duration. Maybe keep the Motion Scan functionality as it is now but give the reveal a max duration of 30 seconds.
My current strategy when playing Specialist is to immediately scan every single stationary enemy on the map, then walk out and snipe them one at a time. The scanning is a rather time-consuming process, so I would definitely like to see it nerfed.
The suggestions are fine and pretty much what I was going to do anyway xD I realize by now that permanent revealing was a little bit of an overkill. I think the range is ok though, I wanted him to be realy high ranged, and 20 is actually not that much of a range. Well maybe I'll change it to 1.5 per level. That would make 25 at max, which is fine I think.
The Charged shot will also be nerved because it realy does too much damage considering the giant area of effect it has. It was fine before skills made the range longer and before the foreseer was there so that the spec could really just use it twice in a long time. But I found that a forseer supplying a spec with energy all the time, is powerful beyond reasoning.
At any rate, the next patch is gonna take a while longer because I am working on the 7th Agent.
Oh, well the Foreseer + Specialist combo could easily be nerfed by giving Charged Shot a short cooldown after it is activated. I think that would be better than reducing its damage/range, but it's your decision :)
25 max range for Spec is a step in the right direction. I think he's still gonna be on the strong side, but I'm fine with that, since I enjoy playing Spec :) And I'm looking forward to seeing what the 7th agent will be.
It's just that Specialist sounds a lot like a Terran unit, just like Corrupter and Infester sound Zergish and Immortal and Stalker sound Protoss-ish( just like Assassin and Elder for that matter).
I can't find the map on Battle.net :(
Wow. That's a lat of feedback.
I'll try responding to everyone.
@MrEpping
I think the cloud is actually pretty good but underestimated. The range disable basically means that only like half of the enemies will be able to attack. If you use that in single player, you'll notice how much less damage you suddenly take. The speed reduction is just a little bonus, nothing fancy.
@s3rius
Yes I know that as it stands now, you get a lot of crappy items. But I have allready made a crafting system that allows you to turn bad items into better once, and thus gives a sense to poor items. The Elder thing is a typical RPG problem. The challange is that he needs to be made interesting without being too strong a fighter. I'll think of something.
Actually I am moving towards making the Elder less "musthave" and give players a choice whether they take him or not. The Time Machine Abilities were a step towards that direction. The other one is that the foreseer can now actually heal fairly decently with a high Will Skill.
I heard about the bug when players leave at selection, but couldn't quite put a finger on it yet. I'll look at it more accurately for v1.7
The Time Skip ability in it's nature is a little suspectible to bugs, but I sorted most of them out. I've seen a huge flashing light that was not supposed to be there myself. I'll keep trying to find the issues.
@HMoon
The Issue you metion are allready fixed in version 1.6^^
In fact, the Elder's Encourage ability has not been changed since it's introduction. So it might be OP. Frankly, my main concern is getting bugs fixed and planned elements introduced. Balancing is important but a little on a back note right now.
As for the foreseer, I think he is actually quite underestimated. Time Skipping Breeders and Chrono Sphereing the front makes an incredible difference. Aside from infinite energy supply. I've heard a lot of players who said foreseer is a little hard to play but fun. Some think he's imba, some find him useless. So it's basically a preference thing. I realize however that the Manipulation Skill is fairly useless as it stands now. It will be changed.
@Dustin374: Go
Are you on the EU server? Because I can't publish anywhere aside from EU. Blame Blizzard.
And for everyone: Patch 1.6 is allready done with a lot of changes. But I am having GATEWAY_DOWN errors when trying to publish. I am trying my best to get it out^^
it does not save exp?
Update! (1.6)
Finally I managed to publish it xD.
This is a pretty big patch so I'll only go over the bigger changes:
This turned out quite a big patch because I had several problems trying to publish it and kept working instead. But now it's out. Let me hear what you guys think.
@Xelaran: Go
Xel, send the map to [email protected] and I'll publish US for you.
@Dustin374: Go
I am very sorry but I am a little afraid of doing that. Even though its plain obvious from this thread that I am the creator, people believe what they see on battle.net. I am really hoping that Blizzard will make us able to publish on different servers soon. Or we find a sulotion on ourselves, but untill then I am afraid it can't be played in US. I hope you understand that.
@Xelaran: Go
And so the segregation starts =/
Can you send it to me so I can upload it Privately and play with a couple of my RL buddies?
no. does not save xp for me. i always start with 2005
oh and there are many bad pathing issues. the pillar at stalker start for example
Great update! Especially the crafting. Those small and medium crystals were really becoming a pain. Keep it up!
i am really curious about the triggers.. there is something terrible wrong. sometimes only a few enemys are there and sometimes they spawn every 15 seconds.. faster than you can kill em. what to do?
it does not save items, xp, crafted items or anything else for me right now :)
@Dustin374: Go
Can't you actually just download it from here?
@Ryaneko: Go Hmm strange. Need to test the saving a little more. I thought I had enough tests and it worked fine.
Which pillar do you mean? Mostly the pathing for the specialist is not my fault. He uses basicly the same cliffjump as reapers. And as we all know reapers tend to be quite stupid when trying to find their way. XD
The triggers are fine. It's nothing but luck really. They spawn at random spawn locations and take random paths, therefor if you are lucky you don't run into a lot of patrols and if you are unlucky you run into 3 groups at once. It really comes down to reacting in time and fleeing if the fight is too though.
@MrEpping: Go
You guys see now why I didn't want to add a "scrap all gray items" button? xD
@Xelaran Sure the cloud is very useful, but the Assassin is lacking an ultimate skill at the moment, and I think this would be a good one. It would cost about 1/3 of total energy, have a long cooldown, and restrict attacks to melee and give the 'sin a considerable movement/attack speed bonus, as well as maybe a % damage taken buff. Would seem like a very cool yet very balanced skill to me ^^
@MrEpping: Go
Yea well I get what you mean. But not every agent has an ultimate. actually i would only call charged shot and psi barrage actual ultimates.
And the assasin has a lot of low cooldown abilities. that defines him, fast and furious. That put aside, spamming clouds all over the place to disable all rangers is more usefull than having one strong cloud imo.
EDIT: And frankly, I am planning abilties that will be unlocked at a certain rank. There i might consider giving the sin some kind of armor bonus or evasion or whatnot. We will see though.
@Xelaran: Go
are you planning to add higher tier items? i have all green ones...
Besides that great work man!
@Topsen17: Go
Yes definitly. And I'll make sure they are not as easy to come by. Green actually only means "somewhat better" so there will be better qualities in the future.
Oh and by the way, love your game, but Specialist is the worst name ever. How about Lancer or something?
Hey Xelaran, we played together yesterday and I have to say that it was a lot of fun to see the map creator in-game :) I think this map is really addictive and I'm probably going to play it more this week. Maybe we'll meet each other again some day?
Anyway, I feel that there are certain balance issues at the moment, especially regarding the Specialist, as I'm sure you are aware. In my opinion the two main points that make the Specialist so strong is their insanely long range and the permanent scan effect. I think Charged Shot is fine as it is and the Specialist passives are nice but not really overpowered.
I would suggest making only two changes to the Specialist. Firstly, the attack range per upgrade could be reduced to 1. When you get 2 per upgrade, the Specialist becomes able to snipe enemies from over a big chasm, making it impossible for the target to retaliate. Secondly, I think the reveal of Motion Scan should have a limited duration. Maybe keep the Motion Scan functionality as it is now but give the reveal a max duration of 30 seconds.
My current strategy when playing Specialist is to immediately scan every single stationary enemy on the map, then walk out and snipe them one at a time. The scanning is a rather time-consuming process, so I would definitely like to see it nerfed.
@Nillo42: Go
Yea sure I remember :)
The suggestions are fine and pretty much what I was going to do anyway xD I realize by now that permanent revealing was a little bit of an overkill. I think the range is ok though, I wanted him to be realy high ranged, and 20 is actually not that much of a range. Well maybe I'll change it to 1.5 per level. That would make 25 at max, which is fine I think.
The Charged shot will also be nerved because it realy does too much damage considering the giant area of effect it has. It was fine before skills made the range longer and before the foreseer was there so that the spec could really just use it twice in a long time. But I found that a forseer supplying a spec with energy all the time, is powerful beyond reasoning.
At any rate, the next patch is gonna take a while longer because I am working on the 7th Agent.
@MrEpping: Go
What's wrong with the name? xD I didn't want to call him "Sniper". and "Lancer" sounds pretty medival if you ask me.
Oh, well the Foreseer + Specialist combo could easily be nerfed by giving Charged Shot a short cooldown after it is activated. I think that would be better than reducing its damage/range, but it's your decision :)
25 max range for Spec is a step in the right direction. I think he's still gonna be on the strong side, but I'm fine with that, since I enjoy playing Spec :) And I'm looking forward to seeing what the 7th agent will be.
@Xelaran: Go
It's just that Specialist sounds a lot like a Terran unit, just like Corrupter and Infester sound Zergish and Immortal and Stalker sound Protoss-ish( just like Assassin and Elder for that matter).