SC2Mapster

Just an update, from what I see in the game:
For the record, between NA and EU I have a ~80-2 record, 2 losses with the prisoner way back when I was testing all of the heroes.  In almost all games, I have the highest score, and by far the highest income.  That said, a lot of the largest complaints in the game are against balance.  In games, the largest downfall is newer players, or even players who have played a lot, but still just "dont get it."

This in mind, I must reiterate my suggestions from the past.  The time between hero selection and getting out there and killing shit.  Starting players with 0 gold, and letting their first income tick be their first source of money; you would be giving new players 10 seconds to prepare.

Unit income, as I mentioned above.  Me killing more shit than my allies because I pick a hero instantly and run out and kill things while they are looking at skills quickly turns into me winning.  At least the first tier needs to have its income rescaled, I would suggest ranging it from 3-150 or 200, and scaling it up as it goes through. 3-7-12-18-25-34... ECT, would be +(2+(1xcreep level)).

Give auto-attacking based heroes a slight base damage increase, +5 damage.  It is silly that priestess of the moon and phoenix hero have almost the same auto attack DPS early on, but one of them can cast an AoE to clear an entire wave; which again, leads to a player getting ahead early.

Increase the cost and reduce the CD on frost fall from the shrine to allow players to defend once tier 2 creeps are spawned and a weaker team cannot afford the 75k items yet; and to prevent someone (Sometimes like me) from using it early on to steal creeps from my noob allies lane, to get that sweet sweet income.

And finally, as suggested above:  redo the income to cost ratio of units; so it isnt in everyones best interest to spam the strongest units as soon as shrine 2 is upgraded.  Players go from fighting 350 HP units to 6500 HP units in a matter of seconds.

Similarly, tier 3 summoner needs to have the CD reduced, especially on the lower tier units.  As soon as I click the upgrade, I have no choice but to send sasquatch, because I have too much income and not enough summoning choices.

New players don't like the game because it is not noob friendly at all; it is really anti-noob friendly.  These are the people giving the game bad reviews.

Edit to say that the new UI and all of the wc3 heroes look great.  As a whole, I feel the wc3 assets look much better in the sc2 universe than I thought they would.

I like to see buffs and stuff for creeps; auras make for much better pack sending. That is a situation where income return vs cost should be worse that other units; if i can send a few endurance aura units with my cheap tanks to boost them; tits is happening.  Something to consider with units like the brood mother; who is the least likely to be summoned unit in the game.  I go to shrine 3 rather than summon brood mothers.

Something unique that custom hero line wars used, that you may consider when you add more creeps.  They had a unit called "thief" it was a weakish unit that did not attack; rather it just went straight for the score.  If the unit leaked, the team that sent it gained a life.  the income to send ratio wasn't very good, and the units were weak for their cost; but a team planning to spam together might get a few through.  Every tier had 1, and later tiers they were faster, or had a slow aura, or something to make them more likely to score.  Good fun!

Just a heads up, people are really upset about the change to avatar.  I personally dont care, still the same concept of farming up 12 million and sending for a sure victory.  Also, the hero who can summon phoenix, which is awesome and all, can summon many of them.  The trick is to summon another bird while the others are in their shells.  My record is 4.  4 is a good record.

Summoner seems to be a "go to" hero now.

Summon shop 3 should cost more, if it is possible.  300k would be about right, 100k is about half an income.  15k for shop 2 would also be much better than 10k; which is 1 income at that point.

It seems as though heroes with an ultimate summon are the best heroes to use now; because their ultimate summons are so tanky and strong.  I wouldn't say imbalanced though, just a very easy go-to for almost all players.

If you ever get around to re-balancing the game, items should be looked at.  Adding an additional tier; and making the items cost to stat ratio not static.  a 15k ring is exactly 4X stronger than a 3k ring.  You should include a loss of stats per upgrade, and add a 4th tier.  Most people start buying items when they upgrade to summons2, and stop buying items when they upgrade to shop 3.  This leaves about a 10 minute window (tops) where item improvements play any role in the game, and it is a very static role.

giving shrine abilities to screw with the other team would be a lot of fun.  healing wards ECT, as custom hero line wars had in wc3.

I wont be able to check stuff out for a few days; but did have an idea that should help newer players, and give you your "no delay at the start".

I believe that creep bounty is all out of whack.  I summon 5 arachnids (costing 25 total) at the start.  someone gains 50 for killing them.  This makes the initial kills really more important than the initial income ticks.  I know I win a game when my ally I am sharing a lane with is 10 seconds late to pick; I start the game with 3X anyone else's income, due to my initial kills.  Avatars on the other hand, are insanely strong, and cost 50k, but only offer 1200 in return; during a time when 1 million income is likely.

This causes lower damage AoE skills to be amazing; I can clear out 30 weak units, and make bank; while my melee counterpart is force to single target the remaining stronger units; who hit much harder, and pay much worse in comparison to their spawned count (usually).

The above combines well with the fact that for the first house, the weaker units, which pay exponentially better bounty, also pay exponentially better income.  So for the first 5 minutes of gameplay, you have cannon fodder being sent back and forth between AoE casters, who continue to build each others income levels; while the melee hero is trying not to be 1 shot by the 50 centaur archers.

This helps explain why melee is, in most situations, worse off than ranged in the early game.

Part of the solution I propose is to simple alter the gold values awarded per kill.  I think something simple like 1/10th their cost to summon would be a great outline.  Players who fall behind later in the game because they bought items to defend their allies who maybe kept summoning instead of defending, would have an opportunity to rise up.  At the same time, this would greatly reduce the potency of that "I killed the first 10 creeps in my lane, so I win the game".

Also, if you do decide to add stat purchasing, I would highlyyyyy suggest you make each stat point increase in cost; otherwise you will end up with a game that cannot be ended.  If stat points constantly increase in cost, it would make them a viable purchase all game; outlining specific times when the purchasing of stats to income ratio would be perfect.  Late game however, you wouldn't be able to use your 2 million income to buy 5k stats every tick until you are an unkillable monster, there would always be a falling off point.

In comparison to the current game state, 22 avatars over 1 minute translates to 44 avatars over 30 seconds.  Realistically, this is not as strong as it sounds.  Comparatively, the spirit mage can make 10 avatars, which have a total of 750k HP, and can be recast every 30 seconds or so.  Also comparatively, almost any of the "good" AoE spells can kill 30 avatars in 2 casts, which can be achieved in a total of 20 seconds or less.  Ive bumped into a few hero combos which destroyed over 400 avatars at once with no deaths.  It was impressive.

Really, I think when you have the time and spreadsheet abilities, rescaling the game would be your best bet; income, item costs, creep bounty.  the game has 2 real build-checks, tanks, and avatars.  To deal with tanks, you buy and max items; there is a 3 minute window here when you stop spamming units to buy items.  then you carry through until avatars.  Also, the initial creep bounty is insanely imba, compared to initial income.  If you can run in and cast an AoE on 10 creeps at the start, you will have triple the income of anyone else.  This makes the game insanely rough for new players; or even anyone interested in looking at heroes.  Items, you cannot buy into you upgrade to shrine 2, and you fully upgrade when you upgrade to shrine 3.  there is a short window here.

It is cool that you are trying to stick to the liteon ideas, however you need to keep in mind that the entire creep system from liteon, was the same creep system used across almost all wc3 tower defense and wars games.  I can show you games released in 2005 which have the exact same creep system, with the same bounties and everything; also games released in 2013.  In wc3, it was something famillar to all players.  In SC2, you have the freedom to alter those values to better balance the game, without the fear that players of other games would be confused by the differences.

Enjoying the latest update; light orb is much better balanced.  Like the new mana potions also; I keep a stack on hand for as long as I can.

 I am gonna do some general hero suggestions, as I try to play each hero a few times.  My basis for concept will be comparing the heroes to the lightning hero and tassadar for balance.  Erazchan helped me with this list.

Also, I do not know the names of heroes or skills, hopefully you get what I am saying.

The Stukov Hero:
Restore Mana: skill is insanely weak early, and overpowered at low levels end game.  Starting out, 5% restore, 10 mana cost, on a unit with 200 life, gives you nothing.  This skill is worthless until shrine 2; then it suddenly becomes overpowered with only a 2 point investment, you can 1 shot that stray tank they send, and you get almost full mana from it.
Suggestion:  Make it 20%-1% per level, however increase the CD initially, and reduce the CD as it levels; so the killing aspect becomes a stronger point of the skill.  Late game mana isnt an issue anyways.
Flamestrike:  This skill is weak at pretty much all points of the game.  The damage is the same as light orb, but the "hits 5 units" part is rough; and the 1 tick per second makes it FAR weaker than light orb.  With 6 +ability damage items, against tanks the damage is still moot.  Allowing it to hit all units, with a higher mana cost would make it stronger for AoE purposes, and allow it to sync better with the restore mana skill.
Poison Bounce:  this skill needs to be able to bounce more, or deal a LOT more damage.  As it is, it is the DPS of flamestrike, but hits 1/5th the targets.  A completely useless skill IMO.  I would suggest increaseing the mana cost, and lowering the cooldown a LOT.  Let it be a huge mana sink in exchange for good DPS.
Ultimate Summon:  Well balanced in terms of strengths; My only suggestion would be to increase mana regen on it as it is leveled.

Overall:  One of the weakest ranged heroes I have played, and his skills while all being "damage over time" based, do not sync up well at all.  Early, mid, or late game, there is no point where this hero does noticeably well.  Should you decide to change him, I think your best bet would be to base the hero around his mana steal skill; to make him a defined hero.

I will update this post with heroes as I play them, I will give them all a few tries to figure out the best way to play them.

the priest of light:
In my opinion, a very well made hero, and pretty well balanced.  Very similar to the light hero, and I have a suggestion which is intended as a minor nerf.
The breath of fire ability, his first ability, should have its cost reduced to 45 or so, not 65.  The orb if fire ability should have its mana cost increased from 50 to 75.  Fire orb score a lot more kills, thus gaining more levels and income than the breath of fire.  It should cost more to express the potential of the 2 skills.
Also, I guess his heal should be messed with; like many skills, it us useless early, and pretty potent late.  I think late game it well balanced, considering the long CD.  Maybe have it start at 20% and add 3% per level, for a stronger early game.  As it is, i level all of my other skills first, then fall back on this once we are spamming 50 avatars at each other.

The big purple hairy monster (No idea what this thing is):
The thing with locust and a lot of regeneration.  The regeneration is too much.  This hero literally cannot die, at all, or even lose HP.  200 avatars cannot touch his life.  He is super weak and cannot damage them, but again, he literally cannot be killed by any means.

The prisoner zealot, assassin I think his name is:
Agreed by all decent players that this is the worst hero in the game.  
Mana burn is just silly, why not just give him chain light?  also being a melee hero with no other skills that are improved well with +ability damage stats, this skill becomes extremely useless.
Blood rage or w/e  attack speed boost.  With a max attack speed in the game, this skill also becomes useless fast.  This skill will not permanently max attack speed, so i need a 400% attack speed item, in return, making this skill worthless.
Evasion:  cool skill, however it is completely worthless until late game; and then it is pretty strong for tanking.  However, with no skills that make this hero viable until that point, you will lose or ragequit before you get that far.
Ultimate: not bad, but the requirement between getting damage and attack speed, and getting ability damage, splits this skill in half.
Players who random this hero ragequit because he is damn near unusable.
Suggestions: General concept being a fast auto attack based hero
Make his chain light/mana purn proc from attacking, chance to proc on attack, but cost mana when it does proc (a low amount) and reduce the damage.  Alter the movement speed from blood boil or w/e to life regeneration or life steal.  This hero is terrible at surviving, god freaking awful.  Evasion, like many skills pointed out, is entirely too weak early, and pretty strong late.  you should start it at 25% and add 3% per level or something; whatever ratio you feel is fair.  The ultimate is fine I guess, but still, that comparison of +ability vs +damage items, makes this skill a shot in its own foot.  I would suggest adding a decent % to max attack damage stat.
Overall, i feel the changes will allow a player to make a specific choice between ability damage (focusing on the chain light auto-proc damage) and attack damage (ultimate, blood boil)

A bug relating to the next 2 heroes; Ultimate summons bug out and only have 1 life when you get them to level 6-7 or so.  Perhaps using a % damage reduction modifier, rather than a +life modifier, or such a large +life modifier.  It sucks when an ultimate skill becomes literally unusable so late in the game.

The Summoner:
trash, sad to say.  Her summons are so weak initially, that this is pretty much an auto-attack hero.  You need to gear up 2X as fast as any other hero just to not die instantly.  then when you finally are fully geared, they still do minimal damage, and only survive for a marginal time, compared to just face tanking myself.
Overall:  Summons need to cost less to summon to even be usable for the first half of the game.  They really need more damage, especially as they level.  Having 2 killable wolves who deal 8000 max DPS to a single target pale in comparison to a single AoE spell, which can deal 8k dps to 40 units at a time.  Tassadars images are better than all summons combined on this hero.  Higher initial HP, and higher later game damage, and this hero will still be below-par; but that should be expected with any summoner class.

The fire phoenix hero:
Overall a pretty good hero, the bug causing the phoenix to have 1 max life makes the strongest part of this build useless though.  It would be amazing if you could make the "living bomb" skill an autocast, I pretty much never use it because I am too busy manually casting fire waves (on auto cast, you will run outta mana instantly).  There is a tooltip error on the aura, saying it increases enemy armor by 5%, rather than decreases.

http://www.epicwar.com/maps/223707/ there is a link to a map I just played. There used to be a more official version of it; but some euro got ahold of it and screwed with tooltips. You will see a lot of the heroes are the same as liteon, and the units as well. there is 1 more creep per spawn shop, and there is a final level spawn shop with 5 more units in it, you could use for reference. Though, it would really require some form of stat purchasing, or item upgrading, for players to stand a chance against any of them; they get strong fasttttt!

Ive been playing this a lot on EU, I've tried a lot of heroes and think I have found "the best of the best" so here are some major balance suggesting to bring them into the realm of balance:

The lightning hero, my favorite. His ball lightning is nuts, completely nuts. Mainly late game. Early game it is a little weak, which is fine. You should reduce the area of it per level, and reduce the duration increase per level, but maybe lower the CD a little to make up for it. As it is now, end game, i stand at the base side of a lane, and shoot light balls down an isle, and nothing can reach me. 50 second duration, and an area to hit any hit, is just a little much. Maybe scale it up to 30 seconds, half the AoE, and reduce the CD by .5 seconds per level.

The other major hero imbalance seems to be tassadar, who is weak early, but his images are stupid strong-tanky late game. The problem with them is their duration, I can have 50 or so avatars out defending, forever. Do you know how long it takes for creeps to kill 50 avatars, when 10 new ones sprout every 10 seconds? "Forever" is the answer. Just reduce the duration per level to +5, rather than +10, and a huge part of the problem would be solved.

Suggestion: Any item at all that increases mana or mana regeneration. there is no point in getting the shield which adds 1000 mana because no one will ever have that much. Potions take too long to restore mana too, maybe larger potions, or instant potions?

Suggestion: A big problem, imo, with liteon was always the creep cost to income ratio. It is all over the goddamn place. This is something you have the power to change. The biggest example creep spawner #2. You can build golems, harpies, and hydras for a 10/1 ratio of income. Meanwhile, much weaker units you are only getting a 20/1 ratio; and stronger units are getting a 20/1 ratio. Any smart player is going to be spamming those stronger units for the added income bonus; which creates a very strong "wall" for the losing team to overcome suddenly. It would be super if you could come up with a ratio where as units get stronger, you get less income per gold spent.

Bug: Every game is recorded as a win in the stats save thingy there. It says i have 20 games and 20 wins, but I am like 18-2 or something.

Future Consideration: In many heor line wars which came after liteon, or even before it; a 4th creep spawner was added, and lumber as an income. 100k gold was converted to lumber automatically, which was used to buy larger creeps from this final shop (as they were very expensive). Should you decide to add stats back to the game, this 4th tier would make for a kickass concept. Right now the game gets stagnant fast if players survive to avatars

Metagame problem: Early game is paced really well; you may die, you fight, you grow slowly, shit happens. Mid game there is always a fast turn, about halfway through the 2nd creep spawner; when shit gets wild fast. By the time I upgrade to the 3rd creep shop, it cannot "unlock" units as fast as I can summon them; and before I know it I have 1 million income, and it is just a "bleh". If you do decide to re-evaluate income ratios, i would highly suggest lowering income to cost ratio later in the game, about halfway through the T2 shop, and all of the T3 shop. It may also be helpful if every 5 min or so, you reduced the cooldown for buying creeps by 1 second or something.

Lag reduction: Late game, when you need to spam literally 500 avatars in a hope of breaking through, there is an issue. Adding 1 unit after him which is stronger but reduced your income would be a great addition (and is something many hero line wars games added over time)

Good job on the updated version of the game, I came back to playing sc2 customs just to try this out (Ive been playing wc3 customs lately).

This is awesome!

One thing that wc3 has that stands alone is the movement physics and such. turn rates, attack backswings, acceleration, ect. I am not sure if that would be entirely too much work for you, but getting anything decent along the lines of "units dont accelerate, turn, and attack instantly" would be cool; kiting is/was a big thing is wc3, which took a lot more skill on both sides than in sc2; I think you can add a lot of depth with minor changes in that area.

Quote from ScorpSCII: Go

@GlornII: Go

I disagree and would recommend putting more effort into the aesthetical dimension of the project. While it is not crucial to the game experience, it significantly compliments the overall impression, and it costs a relatively low amount of time to produce good, performance minded terrain. A good terrain shapes a live atmosphere that fits the game, while at the same time improving the clarity of the gameplay.

I shall clarify then. I did not mean it like "Do not make a pretty terrain" it was more a suggestion about terrain layout. One lane vs two, or three; hills, high ground, ect. Some thinking behind it (after playing the game a bit)

the way it is setup, all players sit at the first road combo, right in front of the spawns. Then, the creeps cross paths in an X pattern, the ones which spawn up top, go the bottom route; and the bottom ones go the top route. This will almost always force the team to sit at their respawn circle and fight as a team if they lose the front lines. The middle ground is unused.

The current may layout is and will be continued to be played as though it is just a single lane.

With 2 long lanes, you will have players split initially, near the furthest forward "bridge to the other side" until they become overwhelmed and are pushed back to fight as 1 near their base.

In an open field concept, you will at least cause players to scatter a bit; but again, when it becomes overwhelming, they will simple camp out near their base, where all the creeps will be easier to round up as a team.

You can make it as pretty as you'd like, but it will always be played in a line.

A few SEVERE gameplay comments:

Creep movement speed is entirely too fast. In the time it takes to respawn, a wave of units is knocking down your door, and it is game over.

Maruaders slow wins every time without fail, no questions asked.

Once you die at the front, the game is over. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop from losing the second a hero dies. Respawning at all is silly, because you will revive and be fighting the same creeps as before, at the same rate, and nothing at all will have changed between A and B.

the game needs to be adjusted based on player count. If the game is 1v2, or 2v3, or anything uneven, your "everyone is always balanced" concept instantly declares a winning team. Make it team based, team 1 and 2 get X amount of exp, split by players, X amount of income, X amount of summoning cash.

Heroes gain nothing when they level, a level 10 hero has barely anymore power than a level 1 hero; except a level 10 hero is fighting off much stronger units. Zero hero progression other than skill getting 5% stronger every other level; still not really a hero.

Quote from TyaArcade: Go

Yeah nothing is set in stone. To be brutally honest, I'm not happy with any of it. I'm currently redesigning every hero. I plan to redesign the terrain to be closer to the wc3 version. I also have a different spawning system that I'm going to swap with, that is a bit of a mix between my spawn system and the wc3 version. I'm likely going to look into a different income and experience mechanic.

I actually like your terrain, it is similar to "enfos" which was a nice hero line survival/wars game. I wouldnt suggest putting too much pressure on yourself with terrain; in the end it comes down to heroes killing summons.

With spawning, there was a very unique "hero line wars" game which had a "single unit spawn selection". Say you spawned a "roach" then every interval, a roach would spawn for you, and you would get income for it. You could only have 1 summon per player though (it summoned 1 for every player on the other team). I think if you combined that concept with you "build an army" concept, that could be unique and a happy medium. If players could only have like 3-5 summons; then you have to remove one to get a new one once you reach the cap.

I think having a constant XP and income rate is good for new players; however there has to be more on top of that which rewards good players. If you cut the value from summoners by 3, and used kill EXP (which can still be 30% shared or something) it would allow better players to do better. Giving all players an equal base all game does not make them all equal. A good player is gonna be dragged down by his weaker/newer/dumber team no matter what. If you allow that player to do better than his weaker allies; he may be able to make up the difference.

You should put this on NA servers as well, I had to log into euro to try it; and I could not for the life of me get anyone to join (I am sure timezones are a thing).

I too am working on a hero line wars, as part of my conglomerate hero game. The line wars and line survival (for less competitive play) are gonna be the first ones completed. I still have a lot of ability work to be done before it can be tested at all; but hopefully you will have a chance to see it before the end of time ^_^.

before playing it, just from your screen shots and description; this feels like "summoners" without the hero vs hero, and allowing players to pick from a long list of units; rather than a short list per hero. The rest seems similar.

I think "rich get richer" is not a bad choice; so long as there is some median of exchange. A big thing in the wc3 system of "rich get richer" was that to get richer; you could give up defending. Often, constant spawning lead to getting exceptionally richer than your opponents. With your "army building" spawning system, and no reward for kills; I feel as though you have largely eliminated the problem right there alone. It may be nice in the future, to at least add an option for income from spawning, and income from killing. Or a selection for each player on the start, to focus on offense or defense (rewarding income based on their kills or summoning, respectively).

I think you should really look at reviews for "the summoners" to get more ideas of what could go better here. The minor things that kept that on page 5, are the same things that will keep this game from page 1 consistently.

Look at Warships as an example for what people want in hero games; because it is technically a hero game. try to incorporate as much as you can from warships into this, and I am sure you can make a great game.

I am gonna go give this a shot a few times over, and will give you much better feedback after a game or two; then after a dozen or so; if it is fun enough to make it that far ^_^.