Jay and I are currently doing a Stukov - Nova Co-op series from level 1 to 15, in which you can check out the first video below. Playing with a Stukov partner, I have to say it's very enjoyable seeing hordes of jumping infested, infested marines, and exploding infested shot out from siege tanks. Weird but awesome.
Here is my playthrough. I think I played the second to last version?
Fun and polished map. I just hope you continue this campaign! My only real complaint is that there is a pretty big lull in the action once you take command of the base. I suggest letting the player start with 2 scvs inititally loaded inside the CC.
Attempted the 2nd map on solo once. Wasn't able to get past the 2nd beacon. I also didn't use the flashbang though which probably would have helped. Some notes:
- Engineer - still has the Herc tooltip.
- Dr Munro - no portrait
- The repair drone didn't seem to be healing anything. I could be wrong but I didn't see any healing animations coming from it.
- I think Dr. Munro becomes neutral and invulnerable during the holdout portions. Not a huge deal, but after losing my entire army, I had to sit around until the timer expired for the Dr to become allied again and die. Have him remain stationary, keep him allied, but not vulnerable. The enemy should still prioritize your units with an attack.
- The voice acting has definitely improved since I played the first map.
- I like the addition of the different abilities throughout the mission.
- Adding doodads, foliage, etc. to these maps would help a great bit for the overall feel. As of now they look a bit plain.
Remember that you don't have to change anything. No matter what your critic says, it's only one person's opinion. Just because they don't like what you've done doesn't make it wrong. There's very rarely a truly right thing—you are perfectly entitled to stick to your original vision.
I feel like this is a problem many mapmakers struggle with. Often people feel like they have to please everyone.
Also, if people want to be assholes, there is little someone can do to stop them. It's just a reflection of the type of person they are.
Same thing happened when I played M17. Ally would make it to the main enemy base early on, but later kept attacking the side bases. I get a little frustrated in my playthrough - but that's mostly due to my heroes continuously dying in inopportune times. Thank god for quick-saving though.
Just finished M17. Definitely the most difficult mission overall so far, at least for me. The macro section and the boss battle are very challenging, but like you said, the difficulty makes sense for what's at stake. I did read through the changes you made to the boss encounter, and I just have to say I'm happy I waited to play this now instead of earlier. My only suggestion would to be to beef up the Iduran's defenses up a bit - the attacks against your base are frequent enough that I don't think you should have to worry about protecting your allies as well. Or at least have a notification saying that you must prevent their Nexus from being destroyed, as I learned the hard way.
I hope we get a bit of a breather in the next mission though!
I played this solo last night so I'm not sure if you had updated map or not since TChosenOne played it. The attack waves were no joke. I had 2 planetary fortresses with bunker support on each side and turrets on the top and bottom (which were needed for the amount of units pushing through). I'm not saying that it was too difficult or too easy - you really have to play the map yourself and decide. Do you want the maps to get progressively harder as the campaign goes on or do you want a consistent difficulty across all maps?
One thing I would change is the spawning of enemy units. Try to make it so the enemy actually builds units from structures and not spawned instantly in the middle of their base. Or at least have the units spawned somewhere off screen. It's quite demoralizing when you are breaking into an enemy base only to have 20 or so units spawn right on top of you. I noticed someone else had left a comment on the Arcade page pertaining to this as well.
Add a hero health bar for the doctor/scientist so it's easier to see if he is getting low on health. You could even copy what Mass Recall does with their audible notification when a hero's health dips below a certain percentage. I feel like this is especially important on the arcade where you cannot save. Maybe think about using fail safes in future missions (similar to what OutsiderXE did with Shadow of the Xel'Naga).
The voice overs need to be louder in my opinion. Try to match the volume levels in a Blizzard map. I could barely here the Protoss voice over. Valerian's vioce over should be stronger. He doesn't sound like someone who is in charge.
The best macro maps allow the player to choose from multiple strategies to complete. Dudki has done a great job with that in the entire campaign, but especially with the last few maps with the amount of unit and upgrade choices available. If he tries to eliminate cheese or exploits entirely, I feel like that just limits the player on options to beat a map. Adding detection to the enemy base to avoid the player from getting a free path to the objective is one thing, but if the player wants to 1 base and rush a map, why not? If they want to mass nuke, let them.
You guys get the point - limiting possible exploits and cheese is limiting the player's creativity. In the end, all of these campaigns are meant to bring the player enjoyment through gameplay and possibly a story that leaves a lasting impact. This is not multiplayer where balance is the goal and competition is key. The only prize in beating a map is personal satisfaction. If cheesing maps helps you attain satisfaction, then cheese the hell out of it.
Glad to hear you guys are trying to revive the testing thread. I will definitely be testing the maps and making videos when I'm free and when not on travel, which I find myself doing a lot more lately.
For the Rhik section, consider, just for the first spawned attack wave, reducing the # of units so you have a chance to lay down a turret. Currently if you don't lay a turret down within a few seconds of starting, you're probably going to lose. I think there was a predator, marine, and marauder in the first attack. Maybe just a marauder? Unless you want the player to learn by losing first. Another thing that might help is panning over the Computer Core and beacons in the cinematic beforehand so the player has an idea of the layout.
Finally catching up to you with my playthroughs. Completed M16 over the weekend and will be playing M17 sometime this week. M16 is very long and challenging but in a good way. I'm not going to complain about any additional quality content added to this campaign. Having it split into multiple portions (micro/macro/micro/boss/macro/boss/micro) may seem overwhelming to anyone reading this who hasn't played it yet, but it works. If you can't play 2 hours straight, a good place to stop and take a break is the beginning of the 2nd macro section.
Playing on hard and with the most recent version of the mission, I felt like the final 3 sections were a tad on the difficult side, but fair. Besides heroes dying in the initial push into the ammunition centers, I didn't have to restart that macro section at all on my first playthrough.
The 2nd boss battle is very unique and once you get the hang of it, not super challenging. My only criticism is that you are given very little time to get used to playing with Rhik and orient yourself with the mechanics (i.e. beacon locations, what beacons do what, where enemies spawn, location of building you have to protect, etc.) before getting attacked. Once you get the hang of it though, I found it very enjoyable since you really have to think about turret/mine placement and timing as well as deciding the optimal time to max out the beacon percentage.
The final micro section is not too bad if you use Reeve's abilities well. It'll be tough to complete the first try, since Ferring's speed is quite shocking.
Still have yet to play the last two maps, but I agree with Defiler that this campaign has one of the most unique story lines on sc2mapster. There are some annoyances in the gameplay that have been addressed in my playthroughs and Defiler's feedback, but with some polish, this campaign could be one of the better ones out there. Definitely try this campaign out if you have a chance!
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Jay and I are currently doing a Stukov - Nova Co-op series from level 1 to 15, in which you can check out the first video below. Playing with a Stukov partner, I have to say it's very enjoyable seeing hordes of jumping infested, infested marines, and exploding infested shot out from siege tanks. Weird but awesome.
0
Here is my playthrough. I think I played the second to last version?
Fun and polished map. I just hope you continue this campaign! My only real complaint is that there is a pretty big lull in the action once you take command of the base. I suggest letting the player start with 2 scvs inititally loaded inside the CC.
Also, what is the significance of SC2Bis?
0
Attempted the 2nd map on solo once. Wasn't able to get past the 2nd beacon. I also didn't use the flashbang though which probably would have helped. Some notes:
- Engineer - still has the Herc tooltip.
- Dr Munro - no portrait
- The repair drone didn't seem to be healing anything. I could be wrong but I didn't see any healing animations coming from it.
- I think Dr. Munro becomes neutral and invulnerable during the holdout portions. Not a huge deal, but after losing my entire army, I had to sit around until the timer expired for the Dr to become allied again and die. Have him remain stationary, keep him allied, but not vulnerable. The enemy should still prioritize your units with an attack.
- The voice acting has definitely improved since I played the first map.
- I like the addition of the different abilities throughout the mission.
- Adding doodads, foliage, etc. to these maps would help a great bit for the overall feel. As of now they look a bit plain.
0
I feel like this is a problem many mapmakers struggle with. Often people feel like they have to please everyone.
Also, if people want to be assholes, there is little someone can do to stop them. It's just a reflection of the type of person they are.
0
@JayborinoPlays: Go
Same thing happened when I played M17. Ally would make it to the main enemy base early on, but later kept attacking the side bases. I get a little frustrated in my playthrough - but that's mostly due to my heroes continuously dying in inopportune times. Thank god for quick-saving though.
0
@DudkiSC2: Go
Oops yep I just didn't notice the objective. It should've been intuitive anyways though, so my bad.
0
Just finished M17. Definitely the most difficult mission overall so far, at least for me. The macro section and the boss battle are very challenging, but like you said, the difficulty makes sense for what's at stake. I did read through the changes you made to the boss encounter, and I just have to say I'm happy I waited to play this now instead of earlier. My only suggestion would to be to beef up the Iduran's defenses up a bit - the attacks against your base are frequent enough that I don't think you should have to worry about protecting your allies as well. Or at least have a notification saying that you must prevent their Nexus from being destroyed, as I learned the hard way.
I hope we get a bit of a breather in the next mission though!
0
I played this solo last night so I'm not sure if you had updated map or not since TChosenOne played it. The attack waves were no joke. I had 2 planetary fortresses with bunker support on each side and turrets on the top and bottom (which were needed for the amount of units pushing through). I'm not saying that it was too difficult or too easy - you really have to play the map yourself and decide. Do you want the maps to get progressively harder as the campaign goes on or do you want a consistent difficulty across all maps?
One thing I would change is the spawning of enemy units. Try to make it so the enemy actually builds units from structures and not spawned instantly in the middle of their base. Or at least have the units spawned somewhere off screen. It's quite demoralizing when you are breaking into an enemy base only to have 20 or so units spawn right on top of you. I noticed someone else had left a comment on the Arcade page pertaining to this as well.
Add a hero health bar for the doctor/scientist so it's easier to see if he is getting low on health. You could even copy what Mass Recall does with their audible notification when a hero's health dips below a certain percentage. I feel like this is especially important on the arcade where you cannot save. Maybe think about using fail safes in future missions (similar to what OutsiderXE did with Shadow of the Xel'Naga).
The voice overs need to be louder in my opinion. Try to match the volume levels in a Blizzard map. I could barely here the Protoss voice over. Valerian's vioce over should be stronger. He doesn't sound like someone who is in charge.
0
The best macro maps allow the player to choose from multiple strategies to complete. Dudki has done a great job with that in the entire campaign, but especially with the last few maps with the amount of unit and upgrade choices available. If he tries to eliminate cheese or exploits entirely, I feel like that just limits the player on options to beat a map. Adding detection to the enemy base to avoid the player from getting a free path to the objective is one thing, but if the player wants to 1 base and rush a map, why not? If they want to mass nuke, let them.
You guys get the point - limiting possible exploits and cheese is limiting the player's creativity. In the end, all of these campaigns are meant to bring the player enjoyment through gameplay and possibly a story that leaves a lasting impact. This is not multiplayer where balance is the goal and competition is key. The only prize in beating a map is personal satisfaction. If cheesing maps helps you attain satisfaction, then cheese the hell out of it.
0
Glad to hear you guys are trying to revive the testing thread. I will definitely be testing the maps and making videos when I'm free and when not on travel, which I find myself doing a lot more lately.
0
I am no expert on Diablo by any means but I think your model looks great so far.
The only thing I see to critique on is the tail. It could be just the captured pose, but it seems a tad too stiff.
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@DudkiSC2: Go
For the Rhik section, consider, just for the first spawned attack wave, reducing the # of units so you have a chance to lay down a turret. Currently if you don't lay a turret down within a few seconds of starting, you're probably going to lose. I think there was a predator, marine, and marauder in the first attack. Maybe just a marauder? Unless you want the player to learn by losing first. Another thing that might help is panning over the Computer Core and beacons in the cinematic beforehand so the player has an idea of the layout.
Now I'm nervous for M17...
0
Finally catching up to you with my playthroughs. Completed M16 over the weekend and will be playing M17 sometime this week. M16 is very long and challenging but in a good way. I'm not going to complain about any additional quality content added to this campaign. Having it split into multiple portions (micro/macro/micro/boss/macro/boss/micro) may seem overwhelming to anyone reading this who hasn't played it yet, but it works. If you can't play 2 hours straight, a good place to stop and take a break is the beginning of the 2nd macro section.
0
@DEFILERRULEZ: Go
Still have yet to play the last two maps, but I agree with Defiler that this campaign has one of the most unique story lines on sc2mapster. There are some annoyances in the gameplay that have been addressed in my playthroughs and Defiler's feedback, but with some polish, this campaign could be one of the better ones out there. Definitely try this campaign out if you have a chance!
0
@Gradius12: Go
You can force enable enemy unit selection to be on in through triggers ().
Not sure if there is any other way to do it.