This is the old thread that someone bumped, so I will just put the updated information here as well.
I have been working on this Hero Base Defense RPG for quite some time now and, generally, I believe it is complete. I was wondering if some of you wonderful people would mind testing it for me. You can find it on battle.net (U.S.) under the name Transcendence RPG.
Here is a (very old) video demonstrating a little of the game from beta:
Map's Features:
The ultimate goal is to defend Queen Morah for 50 minutes. The game is won by defeating King Wicker who arrives at the end of the timer.
You begin by choosing one of five heroes. Each hero has six abilities (including an ultimate), may gain experience/learning points and obtain loot. The heroes may also build structures, hire mercenaries and purchase upgrades.
The game is quite unique because, while there is a "primary" base to defend, there are also two others that contain Shrines of Morah. These shrines must be defended because, if destroyed, the enemy (including bosses) will be positively handicapped by 35%.
Although this is a Base Defense RPG, there is more to do other than defend as there are "special" respawning enemies in labeled areas that provide additional experience/minerals and improved loot. The gameworld also contains Bob's Bazaar, a place to sell excess loot, and Domains of Sanctuary that provide healing.
Your hero has an unlimited number of lives but respawns after a delay and with reduced energy. There are common/rare/epic/legendary items and I plan on adding more later. I also plan on adding additional heroes, a save system, difficulty modes (the game is currently balanced based on the number of players), balance changes, and more content.
I did my best to make the map look good and be exciting without causing lag. I also polished it extensively to get rid of all the bugs I could find and I tried to make it easy to understand. If you find any bugs or something else that you believe is wrong or should be changed, please let me know.
Thank you,
Potfish
Changelog - 1.7
A Splinter Turret now defends Queen Morah.
Shrines of Morah are now equipped with Star Pulsars.
Status bars on numerous feeble enemies have been removed to reduce lag.
Enemies are no longer ordered to attack heroes after they spawn at the Altar of Heroes.
Heroes now respawn with full health but reduced energy.
I made it so that the map's difficulty is now set based on the number of active players. All of Queen Morah's forces have their attack damage and maximum health increased for every missing player. I am not sure what the numbers should be so I know this map has severe balancing issues.
Anyway, I will add in dialog options to change the difficulty manually when I get the time. I would love to host on EU but I need someone to do it for me. :(
I played about 10 more times on my own. Obviously there's meant to be a team, so playing individual heroes alone isn't a good way to measure the game, but here are my thoughts:
I don't like the level 21 limit. As far as I can tell each level doesn't give you any innate bonuses, just an extra skill point. Skill points don't do nearly enough, unfortunately. 2 damage (probably not so bad), 20 hp (worthless), or 10 energy (useful at the start of the game to get an extra spell in or something, then useless later). You can pretty much get 10 levels worth of bonuses from rare items alone. You can have 8 rare items, and only 21 level points. If you don't increase the bonus, at least raise the level limit, possibly lowering the level xp requirements as well so you can at least generate your worthless points faster.
The marine seemed pretty well balanced. Unfortunately, as you'll see later, "pretty well balanced" means the computer is too hard and this guy is so overpowered he managed to overcome the difficulty. His spells are all low mana cost, but none of them have cooldown or a charge time like the Templar's nuke so he can spam them like crazy. He has a great dps skill, an amazing tanking skill that also does damage, a solid though slow aoe (the charge, I never really bothered using the mines since they appeared to be low damage), and a fairly worthless support skill. (Even inside the chrono rift my stats never changed, and neither did the stats of any enemies that I didn't kill almost immediately) Chrono Rift had a surprising use at the end of the game: King Wicker's projectiles got caught in it, letting me delay a lot of his damage for a really long time. Less useful if you're using the queen to tank for you, but still.
His ult is probably the best in the game, and by that I mean it sucks but is still usable. It does a small amount of damage in a large AOE immediately, but apparently lowers damage resistance after a while.
My best game I ended up with 4 Jaws of Whatever to give him huge damage, and I still couldn't beat Wicker. If I saved at the beginning of the attack and replayed, I bet 1 out of 10 times I could have done it. This is probably actually a good ratio to aim for, it makes the game very challenging without being impossible. However, the actual likelyhood I'd get 4 of the best attack item in the game again... not so good.
The Templar pretty much sucks. I'm pretty much going to be comparing everything he has to the Marine, since the Marine has everything he does and is so much better.
His main nuke does 220 base against most units, I think. Maybe 330? It also has a huge mana cost and a long channel time. The marine can throw down 3 of his aoe charges and get the same effect, damage after 5 seconds, except his splash damage is 100% instead of 60. He also gets to actually attack during this time.
His other AOE hits himself, which is pretty ridiculous. The Marine's charges never friendly fire, why should razor swarm? It does 240 damage over a long time, for its cost (80?) the marine can throw down 2 charges and get the same amount of damage much faster. If you really insist on it doing friendly fire, I'd say separate the Persistent data effect into one that targets enemies and one that targets allies, and have any spell damage boosters actually reduce the ally damage instead, so you actually friendly fire less the more you stack spell damage.
His shield spell is mostly worthless for the shield, just the speed boost. I'm guessing the Marine's turret has 500 hp, probably with armor. It costs 80. Templar's shield gives 220 shield, without armor, for 110. Both can be spammed, though, which is good for the Templar. If you're surrounded by zerglings, that 220 is going to go away real fast, whereas if you were down to hp your armor would have made you take only like 10 damage. Whenever he gains an armor bonus, maybe give him a shield bonus as well? Otherwise just flat-out increase the shields he gets.
Forcefield says it doesn't work on heroic or massive units. I figured everything else would be blocked but those units can go through. Nope, they just break it, making this a pretty useless spell. I'd change the massive/heroic units' collision types to not include the forcefield (unused 11 or something?) so they can just walk through it while other units get blocked. This might make it a really good spell, since large units press on while their tiny meatshields get left behind and can't tank small amounts of damage for them.
His ult is worthless. He's a sitting duck for 25 seconds. Enough said.
I found he did pretty well against the first two bosses, who have hp low enough that his main nuke can end them fairly quickly. Their low range and low dps also don't threaten the templar much. Once I got to the ARES, though, he could hit me from long range, and my nuke couldn't stop him quickly enough. Game ended quickly there.
I haven't used the DT much, though I expect he'd be better than templar but worse than marine.
He has an awkward nuke. It deals % damage, but doesn't work on the units with the highest hps. The heal is a nice touch, but if I'm poking big things I want to be cloaked, and not taking damage from them.
I think his cloak is the only ability in the game with a cooldown. I think all bosses are detectors, which kinda hurts his cloak too. Its not like it lasts long enough for you to really abuse anything.
He probably has the best aoe. It comes out much faster than the other 2 guys'. I'm not sure what the damage is on it, actually, but it seemed powerful.
His ult is pretty bad. I don't know how much the summons deal or anything. I assume its not very impressive.
Obviously, he's melee. This really, really sucks. He doesn't even have a decent amount of hp to use to tank.
As for non-hero issues:
When I die, sometimes I lose minerals, sometimes not. If I lose them early on, that 300 is huge, and I usually just ragequit and start another game by myself. I think the revive time is enough punishment.
The King's forces chasing you down while battling creeps is really annoying. I don't mind being attacked while travelling, or if I'm at a healing spot, but when I'm in a creep section, I don't like them coming behind me and messing up my attacks.
Solars cleave through bunkers, killing the units inside before the bunkers themselves die. Other units may do this too.
I don't like how King Wicker will just AOE all of your mercs and instakill them. Kinda lame if I actually try to use them rather than making a really badass hero all game without worrying about the little guys..
The heal stations are laughable. They're outside of bases, where you probably want them to be, and they heal for so little I'm probably better off dying right now so I can just revive with full hp.
You are a genius. I have been trying to figure out why the bunkers would suddenly stop firing and what would happen to the marines; the Solars cleaving through them explains it.
I agree with just about everything else you said. For one, I planned on making the healing stations provide % based health, but I think I can only do this through triggers. Your suggestion for Force Field is also genius.
I updated the map with a lot of your considerations. Thanks a bunch.
More feedback would be lovely. I think I know a friend who could upload to EU for me. Oh, and I have been working on a new hero who basically revolves around towers and/or minions.
I liked the buffs to the level skills. The armor was a really nice touch on the hp one. For the marine, I loved loading him with damage items, which meant his armor was low. Adding 120 hp and 1 armor might be worth the 8 damage I'd lose. I'm not certain the mana skill is high enough. The .12 also felt out of place when everything else was .10. I don't think a 20/.2 would be too bad, considering there's a common item (I think its common) that gives 88/.3.
The respawn is too brutal now. Half hp and no mana? I bet the marine can manage because his stimpack uses hp. The DT's speed skill might be low enough cost that he can get the mana in time. I played as the HT, though, and after my first death I couldn't even walk to a friendly base before the minions surrounded me, and I had no mana to attack with or to use the shield/escape spell to get away. I don't have time to test the other two heroes right now, but I don't think I even want to, because the shrine still doesn't heal enough, and once you die you're in for an incredibly rough time before you get back on your feet. So you die often and are too weak to do anything too often. If this is intended, I'd suggest buffing the forcefield again to allow your own hero to pass through it as well. This would let you place it on top of yourself to give yourself a short break from melee creatures as they try to swarm around you. It might cause problems with the Predators being too easy to attack, though. Broodlings too, though I doubt anybody would complain they're too hard to kill. I can't think of any other melee creatures that aren't able to pass through it already. (I realize now I never made it far enough to check if its been changed to let the larger creatures walk through yet)
Sorry, I'd give more input but I died about 3 minutes in while attacking predators, so there's not much for me to comment on.
That's weird - I guess I messed up. The respawn was supposed to be half health and half mana. I will fix it now. I don't think that Force Field buff would be very good, but I made sure that each hero has a good escape mechanism. All of the heroes have an ability that lets them ignore unit collision, so you can activate it and run away even though you may be completely surrounded.
I really enjoy playing this map, but there are a few things I've noticed.
1. If you die when fighting the first boss, you lose all of the items in your inventory. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not but I'm hopeful that it's a glitch.
2. If the first boss is killed next to the obelisk, the epic item he drops disappears or doesn't appear at all. I haven't figured out what causes it to happen but it's happened the last few times I've played it.
3. The computer is much more difficult than it was before the beta title was removed when trying to play on single player. (At least it seems that way to me) Losing the items in inventory makes it impossible to even try and defend a base after the first boss.
4. I'd like to see the cooldown for the flame turrent the marine has decreased a bit. None of his other abilities help as much as it does, especially later in the game.
I really enjoy the map overall and my friends and I are always looking for a good hero map. A few tweaks and some work on the difficulty and this will easily be one of the best on there.
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Transcendence RPG
Greetings,
This is the old thread that someone bumped, so I will just put the updated information here as well.
I have been working on this Hero Base Defense RPG for quite some time now and, generally, I believe it is complete. I was wondering if some of you wonderful people would mind testing it for me. You can find it on battle.net (U.S.) under the name Transcendence RPG.
Here is a (very old) video demonstrating a little of the game from beta:
Map's Features:
I did my best to make the map look good and be exciting without causing lag. I also polished it extensively to get rid of all the bugs I could find and I tried to make it easy to understand. If you find any bugs or something else that you believe is wrong or should be changed, please let me know.
Thank you,
Potfish
Changelog - 1.7
Looking good, actually
I tried playing this alone, it was fairly cool though obviously I died pretty quickly with 1 hero defending 3 bases.
Anybody want to plan out a time to play this as a group?
Upload on EU and I will test the shit out of it. :D
Really waiting for good ORPGs...
@A52BcE: Go
I made it so that the map's difficulty is now set based on the number of active players. All of Queen Morah's forces have their attack damage and maximum health increased for every missing player. I am not sure what the numbers should be so I know this map has severe balancing issues.
Anyway, I will add in dialog options to change the difficulty manually when I get the time. I would love to host on EU but I need someone to do it for me. :(
EU.UPLOAD.NAOW.
This map looks assome and ive been w8ting for quite some time for a decent RPG.
i would like to see it on eu servers aswell. love hero defense maps and it seems this one can be regarded as one of this kind
Dont forget Sea. COS THATS WHERE I AM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Pottfish:
I played about 10 more times on my own. Obviously there's meant to be a team, so playing individual heroes alone isn't a good way to measure the game, but here are my thoughts:
I don't like the level 21 limit. As far as I can tell each level doesn't give you any innate bonuses, just an extra skill point. Skill points don't do nearly enough, unfortunately. 2 damage (probably not so bad), 20 hp (worthless), or 10 energy (useful at the start of the game to get an extra spell in or something, then useless later). You can pretty much get 10 levels worth of bonuses from rare items alone. You can have 8 rare items, and only 21 level points. If you don't increase the bonus, at least raise the level limit, possibly lowering the level xp requirements as well so you can at least generate your worthless points faster.
The marine seemed pretty well balanced. Unfortunately, as you'll see later, "pretty well balanced" means the computer is too hard and this guy is so overpowered he managed to overcome the difficulty. His spells are all low mana cost, but none of them have cooldown or a charge time like the Templar's nuke so he can spam them like crazy. He has a great dps skill, an amazing tanking skill that also does damage, a solid though slow aoe (the charge, I never really bothered using the mines since they appeared to be low damage), and a fairly worthless support skill. (Even inside the chrono rift my stats never changed, and neither did the stats of any enemies that I didn't kill almost immediately) Chrono Rift had a surprising use at the end of the game: King Wicker's projectiles got caught in it, letting me delay a lot of his damage for a really long time. Less useful if you're using the queen to tank for you, but still.
His ult is probably the best in the game, and by that I mean it sucks but is still usable. It does a small amount of damage in a large AOE immediately, but apparently lowers damage resistance after a while.
My best game I ended up with 4 Jaws of Whatever to give him huge damage, and I still couldn't beat Wicker. If I saved at the beginning of the attack and replayed, I bet 1 out of 10 times I could have done it. This is probably actually a good ratio to aim for, it makes the game very challenging without being impossible. However, the actual likelyhood I'd get 4 of the best attack item in the game again... not so good.
The Templar pretty much sucks. I'm pretty much going to be comparing everything he has to the Marine, since the Marine has everything he does and is so much better.
His main nuke does 220 base against most units, I think. Maybe 330? It also has a huge mana cost and a long channel time. The marine can throw down 3 of his aoe charges and get the same effect, damage after 5 seconds, except his splash damage is 100% instead of 60. He also gets to actually attack during this time.
His other AOE hits himself, which is pretty ridiculous. The Marine's charges never friendly fire, why should razor swarm? It does 240 damage over a long time, for its cost (80?) the marine can throw down 2 charges and get the same amount of damage much faster. If you really insist on it doing friendly fire, I'd say separate the Persistent data effect into one that targets enemies and one that targets allies, and have any spell damage boosters actually reduce the ally damage instead, so you actually friendly fire less the more you stack spell damage.
His shield spell is mostly worthless for the shield, just the speed boost. I'm guessing the Marine's turret has 500 hp, probably with armor. It costs 80. Templar's shield gives 220 shield, without armor, for 110. Both can be spammed, though, which is good for the Templar. If you're surrounded by zerglings, that 220 is going to go away real fast, whereas if you were down to hp your armor would have made you take only like 10 damage. Whenever he gains an armor bonus, maybe give him a shield bonus as well? Otherwise just flat-out increase the shields he gets.
Forcefield says it doesn't work on heroic or massive units. I figured everything else would be blocked but those units can go through. Nope, they just break it, making this a pretty useless spell. I'd change the massive/heroic units' collision types to not include the forcefield (unused 11 or something?) so they can just walk through it while other units get blocked. This might make it a really good spell, since large units press on while their tiny meatshields get left behind and can't tank small amounts of damage for them.
His ult is worthless. He's a sitting duck for 25 seconds. Enough said.
I found he did pretty well against the first two bosses, who have hp low enough that his main nuke can end them fairly quickly. Their low range and low dps also don't threaten the templar much. Once I got to the ARES, though, he could hit me from long range, and my nuke couldn't stop him quickly enough. Game ended quickly there.
I haven't used the DT much, though I expect he'd be better than templar but worse than marine.
He has an awkward nuke. It deals % damage, but doesn't work on the units with the highest hps. The heal is a nice touch, but if I'm poking big things I want to be cloaked, and not taking damage from them.
I think his cloak is the only ability in the game with a cooldown. I think all bosses are detectors, which kinda hurts his cloak too. Its not like it lasts long enough for you to really abuse anything.
He probably has the best aoe. It comes out much faster than the other 2 guys'. I'm not sure what the damage is on it, actually, but it seemed powerful.
His ult is pretty bad. I don't know how much the summons deal or anything. I assume its not very impressive.
Obviously, he's melee. This really, really sucks. He doesn't even have a decent amount of hp to use to tank.
As for non-hero issues:
When I die, sometimes I lose minerals, sometimes not. If I lose them early on, that 300 is huge, and I usually just ragequit and start another game by myself. I think the revive time is enough punishment.
The King's forces chasing you down while battling creeps is really annoying. I don't mind being attacked while travelling, or if I'm at a healing spot, but when I'm in a creep section, I don't like them coming behind me and messing up my attacks.
Solars cleave through bunkers, killing the units inside before the bunkers themselves die. Other units may do this too.
I don't like how King Wicker will just AOE all of your mercs and instakill them. Kinda lame if I actually try to use them rather than making a really badass hero all game without worrying about the little guys..
The heal stations are laughable. They're outside of bases, where you probably want them to be, and they heal for so little I'm probably better off dying right now so I can just revive with full hp.
Okay, I spent way too long typing this. Have fun.
@A52BcE: Go
You are a genius. I have been trying to figure out why the bunkers would suddenly stop firing and what would happen to the marines; the Solars cleaving through them explains it.
I agree with just about everything else you said. For one, I planned on making the healing stations provide % based health, but I think I can only do this through triggers. Your suggestion for Force Field is also genius.
Where do you find Legendary items? I've only seen up to Epic.
@A52BcE: Go
Well, right now there is only one legendary item in the game, and it has a (very low) chance to drop off any boss (including Albator).
@A52BcE: Go
I need someone to upload to EU for me. :(
@A52BcE: Go
I updated the map with a lot of your considerations. Thanks a bunch.
More feedback would be lovely. I think I know a friend who could upload to EU for me. Oh, and I have been working on a new hero who basically revolves around towers and/or minions.
I liked the buffs to the level skills. The armor was a really nice touch on the hp one. For the marine, I loved loading him with damage items, which meant his armor was low. Adding 120 hp and 1 armor might be worth the 8 damage I'd lose. I'm not certain the mana skill is high enough. The .12 also felt out of place when everything else was .10. I don't think a 20/.2 would be too bad, considering there's a common item (I think its common) that gives 88/.3.
The respawn is too brutal now. Half hp and no mana? I bet the marine can manage because his stimpack uses hp. The DT's speed skill might be low enough cost that he can get the mana in time. I played as the HT, though, and after my first death I couldn't even walk to a friendly base before the minions surrounded me, and I had no mana to attack with or to use the shield/escape spell to get away. I don't have time to test the other two heroes right now, but I don't think I even want to, because the shrine still doesn't heal enough, and once you die you're in for an incredibly rough time before you get back on your feet. So you die often and are too weak to do anything too often. If this is intended, I'd suggest buffing the forcefield again to allow your own hero to pass through it as well. This would let you place it on top of yourself to give yourself a short break from melee creatures as they try to swarm around you. It might cause problems with the Predators being too easy to attack, though. Broodlings too, though I doubt anybody would complain they're too hard to kill. I can't think of any other melee creatures that aren't able to pass through it already. (I realize now I never made it far enough to check if its been changed to let the larger creatures walk through yet)
Sorry, I'd give more input but I died about 3 minutes in while attacking predators, so there's not much for me to comment on.
@A52BcE: Go
That's weird - I guess I messed up. The respawn was supposed to be half health and half mana. I will fix it now. I don't think that Force Field buff would be very good, but I made sure that each hero has a good escape mechanism. All of the heroes have an ability that lets them ignore unit collision, so you can activate it and run away even though you may be completely surrounded.
A glearing problem is the inventory menu. whenever I select an item the tool tip blocks the items and i cant even move that menu.. still reviewing
it's a good map :D save the characters as a MOD file you you can pump out different terrains with exclusive artifacts.
Went Online and played it.
Over All Great Job
Now time to make it popular :D
I really enjoy playing this map, but there are a few things I've noticed.
1. If you die when fighting the first boss, you lose all of the items in your inventory. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not but I'm hopeful that it's a glitch.
2. If the first boss is killed next to the obelisk, the epic item he drops disappears or doesn't appear at all. I haven't figured out what causes it to happen but it's happened the last few times I've played it.
3. The computer is much more difficult than it was before the beta title was removed when trying to play on single player. (At least it seems that way to me) Losing the items in inventory makes it impossible to even try and defend a base after the first boss.
4. I'd like to see the cooldown for the flame turrent the marine has decreased a bit. None of his other abilities help as much as it does, especially later in the game.
I really enjoy the map overall and my friends and I are always looking for a good hero map. A few tweaks and some work on the difficulty and this will easily be one of the best on there.