Mmm, my zerg defense map was just a quick experiment to see if heroes could work in a tug of war setting. I think they could, but they'd have to be more like commanders than heroes. Having interesting unit buffs and calling in units, while the tug of war element would have to be simplified. Still, I left the map online because it's surprisingly popular for how little time it took to create, usually hanging around page 2. It was never meant to be a "killer app" though. I'll revisit the idea of a PvE tug of war someday and use what I've learnt.
Items are totally the core of the map, yeah. I like the style of having to choose which stats you want to focus on. Items were built with having one primary stat that increases the raw power of your wave (max life, weapon damage etc) and one secondary stat that gave some smaller benefit (ability cooldown speed, energy regen, ability damage). I'm pretty pleased with the item system overall, though some refinement seems needed. I plan to swap out energy regen from the rifle, for weapon range.
I'm also looking for ideas for item effects, like the Siegebreaker aura. 200 games is about double what I've played, so I'm all ears regarding suggestions.
Ideally you'd be able to customise your items to counter any enemy hero, but focusing too much on that one enemy hero would put you at risk of that hero just changing lanes. I added Siegebreaker purely to counter Zeratul and Tychus, for instance.
Weak defenses and short game length are probably the biggest complaints about the map. I'll definitely look into extending it a bit. Though, the item system was only designed to last 25-30 minutes (depending on how many gold income bonuses you purchased), so the match length couldn't be stretched too much.
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated! And again, any thoughts on item changes and item balance are more than welcome.
or some confirmation if the Arcade becomes stand-alone or not!
Part of me is like, "Yeah, that sounds amazing!"
But then, what motivation would Blizzard have to make the arcade stand-alone? The SC2 arcade is already basically stand-alone. All you need is the free SC2 client and a battle.net account.
Still, the idea of a shared asset pool between SC2 and whatever Blizzard develops in the SC2 engine, under the guise of "Blizzard Arcade", sounds pretty appealing if nothing else.
Preset heroes also are more newbie friendly, since some players might not (re)play your game if they hop in and have to read through a sea of skills before starting to play. But again that can be fixed by having a few preset builds/guides people can follow.
This is an excellent point.
A fact of the arcade is that players generally give your map one try. You really, really have to work hard to get people to play more than once. Custom heroes require a lot of reading (to find which skill you want), making that first time a real stress. Systems like "you only start with a handful of abilities, and unlock more as you play more" can reduce this stress, but they in turn bring more problems because locking a percentage of your content away from new players can make your map seem shallow.
Don't have much experience with making heroes, but hey, more replies are good right?
I prefer pre-built heroes to custom ones. The problem with custom heroes is that it often becomes an exercise in developing the path of least resistance. Which ability is going to make me the strongest, while also requiring the least effort to use? Typically you're going to lean towards heroes with lots of summon and passive spells, and there will always be one "best" ability for each ability slot.
Having weaknesses is just as important as having strengths, which is another thing that is extremely difficult to pull off with custom heroes. "This guy's healing should be awful, but should have amazing stealth and damage capabilities" is a baseline that you can build an interesting hero upon. However, nobody is going to make their custom hero have such a glaring flaw.
I think if you're dead set on custom heroes, then the Hearthstone or Diablo 3 mechanics work best. You have a base class, and a selection of abilities to choose from. This way, you can enforce a weakness. Say, mages have awful self-healing, and this is enforced by none of their abilities providing healing.
Still though, you're going to run into redundant abilities in the above system too, which means wasted development time.
I'd probably make 20 or so heroes, and then later allow players to swap out abilities as they progress through the map. Say, swapping a hero's passive ability for a different passive, or their self-heal for a targeted buff.
I enjoyed the first one, so I was pretty happy to give this one a go. Grabbed a friend and went at it.
Balance
The early-game is nicely balanced. The waves are just strong enough to make losing possible if you're careless. Some of the Zerg units seem to be pretty bad value. Basically anything that can't survive a siege tank or a hellbat/firebat (the AI has a LOT of these) seems useless. That pretty much meant brutalisks and ultralisks only. Anything else just got chewed up. Rather than having the other units buffed, I'd probably prefer to see the AI have fewer siege tanks. It gets pretty insane at times.
Lag
The lag becomes gamebreaking after a while. I mean, so bad that my client refused to even let me leave the game. The path that the AI units take is so long that the whole map gets filled with zerg units. There's some rocks which I can only assume are there to shorten the path, but we couldn't figure out how to destroy them. Infesting towns makes this problem 10x worse. The zombies are so slow that they tend to get stuck at certain waypoints and just clog up huge portions of the map, blocking your own units which adds even more issues. I'd strongly recommend giving a different bonus for infesting towns. Maybe a few aberrations that spawn periodically instead of zombies?
Heroes
Stukov seems fine as a hero. Fungal Growth seemed a bit weak compared to his other abilities, but then that's probably down to how many stationary siege tanks the AI relies on. Allies can't "push" past his infested terrans, meaning that you can bodyblock an allied hero in, who will then probably die to siege tanks.
The Commando has a tiny vision range. Seems like he should have the best vision range.
The General is a really nice concept, but his mineral income method is so weird. You have to spawn units (which cost minerals) to destroy units (which grant maybe 1-2% of your unit's cost). I'd rather see the headquarters have energy, and calling in units costing energy. You'd then have the usual assortment of energy upgrades for him.
Infested Mothership isn't biological. I guess it makes sense, but it does kinda mean that you can't interact with basically all zerg healing. Prefer to see this unit be biological so that it can actually be healed!
Didn't try the rest!
Other
The Hero Assassins. Oh god why. They sit in your base, permanently cloaked, waiting to 2-shot you when you respawn. I'd really, strongly recommend putting these only on the harder difficulties. The effect they have on the game is "okay, I'll move my hero over here and- why is my hero dead? Oh..."
Late game vespene income is crazy-high.
Base defenses are so not value for money. Personally I think they should respawn like the nydus worms do.
I liked the map overall. Just a bit rough around the edges at the moment!
You should add a feature that force the players to can't choose the same hero choosen by an ally... One time i had two stetmann... Ragequit imeditate
Mmm, something that bothers me in other hero-battle type games is when someone takes the hero I wanted. I'm pretty happy with duplicate heroes!
With that said, Stetmann could definitely use some love. Having a dedicated heal as a hero ability didn't pan out to be quite as fun as I thought it'd be.
Hmm, I have played a few games of this and my only thought is that it is really easy to overwhelm the opponents base early game.Have you considered strengthening defensive structures, or allowing for defenses to be upgraded/repaired?
To me, it seems as though investing in experience is aces, because it allows you to get more units, which swarm faster and take out structures in seconds.The hero AoE attacks are a good combative to the blob of doom; but in the time it takes my hero to run from my side to the other, i have summoned 3 times and roll all the way to the opponents base like an unstoppable wave (unless an opponents hero starts spamming an AoE on me)
Overall, a pretty decent game though; I am not really a follower of your games, but I am a little surprised this game doesn't have more momentum on NA servers.
Game length is probably the biggest complaint I see. I set out to make this a very short game from the outset, so a lot of the experience balancing (in terms of how many units I can get on one map before the sc2 pathing system starts to die) and the gold income rate around this short game length. Might look into slowing the game down in future, but mostly it's something I'll keep in mind for future projects.
As for not doing so well in NA, well, I think it's very hard to get a player vs player map off the ground. I definitely should've added some solo/co-op content.
GENERAL
- Greatly improved the trigger which decides which lane a unit should take.
BALANCE
- Chain Lightning jump distance greatly increased.
- Aberration move speed nerfed from 2.95 to 2.25.
- Salve of Clarity heal buffed from 600 to 750.
- Salve of Clarity energy restore buffed from 150 to 300.
- Heroic units are now immune to the root effect of Fungal Growth.
UPGRADES REVIEWED
- Artanis learns Charge at level 3 (was 4).
- Raynor learns Combat Shield at level 3 (was 4).
- Raynor learns Stim at level 5 (was 8).
- Raynor learns Yamato Cannon at level 8 (was 12).
- Nova learns Combat Shield at level 3 (was 4).
- Nova learns Stim at level 5 (was 8).
- Artanis learns Extended Thermal Lance at level 8 (was 12).
- Kerrigan learns Chitinous Plating at level 9 (was 12).
- Kerrigan learns Adrenal Glands at level 7 (was 8).
- Kerrigan learns Metabolic Boost at level 3 (was 4).
- Stetmann learns Durable Materials at level 7 (was 12).
- Stukov learns Neural Parasite at level 10 (was 12).
- Sarah learns Adrenal Glands at level 7 (was 8).
- Sarah learns Metabolic Boost at level 3 (was 4).
- Tosh learns Yamato Cannon at level 8 (was 12).
UPGRADES ADDED
- Stetmann learns Infernal Pre-Igniter at level 5.
- Stetmann learns Hi-Sec Auto-tracking at level 8.
- Stetmann learns Structure Armor at level 9.
- Stukov learns Enduring Locusts at level 5.
- Swann learns Concussive Shells at level 5.
- Tassadar learns Graviton Catapult at level 9.
- Zeratul learns Anion Pulse-Crystals at level 7.
FLUFF
- Added graphics and sound to Energy Potions.
- Made Salve of Clarity graphic more obvious.
BALANCE
- Flamestrike damage buffed from 100 to 150.
- Flamestrike cost buffed from 100 to 75.
- Stetmann's Medics replaced with Wraiths.
- Healing Wave redesigned (buffed);
- Cost reduced from 75 to 35.
- Cooldown reduced from 15 to 10.
- Amount healed reduced from 200 to 100.
- Wave jump distance doubled.
- May now be auto-cast.
- Entangling Roots now slows heroic units instead of rooting them.
- Leviathan's Bio-plasmid Discharge damage nerfed from 500 to 300.
- Leviathan's Bio-plasmid Discharge cost buffed from 75 to 50.
- Leviathan's Bio-plasmid Discharge cooldown nerfed from 10 to 15.
ITEMS
- All items that provided max energy have now been split to provide less energy, but also energy regen.
- Fel Reaver Plating: Added Spellshield effect; reducing the damage your hero takes from abilities.
- Blackrock Buckler: Siegebreaker effect now increases in radius each time the item is upgraded.
- Mooncloth: Added move speed.
NEW
– Item stats now apply to all units immediately (except weapon speed; will be updated soon).
– Life stat changed to be percentage based. 100 life = 10% now.
– All in-game tooltips should now display the correct values.
ITEMS
- If your inventory is full, buying a potion will use it instantly.
- Salve of Clarity: Restores life and energy but ends if the caster takes damage.
- Energy Potion cost buffed from 50 to 45.
- Greater Energy Potion cost buffed from 100 to 90.
- All items with Life Regen have had the amount halved.
- All items with Lifesteal have had the amount halved.
- Blackrock Buckler now has Siegebreaker; reduces weapon speed of enemy mechanical units.
BALANCE
- All heroes have had their life, energy and move speed varied a little.
- Base hero life regen increased from 1 to 1.25 per sec.
- Stetmann's Hellbats buffed from 3 per wave to 4.
- Stetmann's Healing Wave energy cost buffed from 90 to 75.
- Tychus' Widow Mines buffed from 3 per wave to 4.
- Stukov's Acid Rain damage nerfed from 30 per wave to 20.
- Stukov's Acid Rain debuff duration buffed from 5 to 6.
- Swann's Rain of Fire damage buffed from 15 per wave to 20.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's attack nerfed from range 10 to range 4.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's cooldown nerfed from 10 to 20.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's minimum damage nerfed from 10 to 1.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's cost buffed from 125 to 100.
- Zagara's Death Coil redesigned. Now deals damage and heals allies in an area.
BUG FIXES
- Units should now be more intelligent about which lane they move down.
- It is no longer possible to buy non-consumable items while having a full inventory.
- Basic Items menu hotkey changed to "B" to avoid hotkey conflicts.
- Consumable Items menu hotkey changed to "C" to avoid hotkey conflicts.
FLUFF
- You may now move around before learning an ability.
- Many hero abilities have had their sound files changed to match their WarCraft 3 version.
- Added descriptions to each hero when their wireframe is moused over, like regular units have.
- Buying a potion will display the proper number of potions bought in the "item purchased" alert.
- Fixed a bug causing Marauders to be immune to spells.
0
Mmm, my zerg defense map was just a quick experiment to see if heroes could work in a tug of war setting. I think they could, but they'd have to be more like commanders than heroes. Having interesting unit buffs and calling in units, while the tug of war element would have to be simplified. Still, I left the map online because it's surprisingly popular for how little time it took to create, usually hanging around page 2. It was never meant to be a "killer app" though. I'll revisit the idea of a PvE tug of war someday and use what I've learnt.
Items are totally the core of the map, yeah. I like the style of having to choose which stats you want to focus on. Items were built with having one primary stat that increases the raw power of your wave (max life, weapon damage etc) and one secondary stat that gave some smaller benefit (ability cooldown speed, energy regen, ability damage). I'm pretty pleased with the item system overall, though some refinement seems needed. I plan to swap out energy regen from the rifle, for weapon range.
I'm also looking for ideas for item effects, like the Siegebreaker aura. 200 games is about double what I've played, so I'm all ears regarding suggestions.
Ideally you'd be able to customise your items to counter any enemy hero, but focusing too much on that one enemy hero would put you at risk of that hero just changing lanes. I added Siegebreaker purely to counter Zeratul and Tychus, for instance.
Weak defenses and short game length are probably the biggest complaints about the map. I'll definitely look into extending it a bit. Though, the item system was only designed to last 25-30 minutes (depending on how many gold income bonuses you purchased), so the match length couldn't be stretched too much.
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated! And again, any thoughts on item changes and item balance are more than welcome.
0
Part of me is like, "Yeah, that sounds amazing!"
But then, what motivation would Blizzard have to make the arcade stand-alone? The SC2 arcade is already basically stand-alone. All you need is the free SC2 client and a battle.net account.
Still, the idea of a shared asset pool between SC2 and whatever Blizzard develops in the SC2 engine, under the guise of "Blizzard Arcade", sounds pretty appealing if nothing else.
0
WarCraft 3 update/remake. Calling it now. There's no way those hero models just vanished into the ether.
0
I'll be honest, I thought the developers had gone their separate ways. Looks a whole lot more interesting now.
0
This is an excellent point.
A fact of the arcade is that players generally give your map one try. You really, really have to work hard to get people to play more than once. Custom heroes require a lot of reading (to find which skill you want), making that first time a real stress. Systems like "you only start with a handful of abilities, and unlock more as you play more" can reduce this stress, but they in turn bring more problems because locking a percentage of your content away from new players can make your map seem shallow.
0
Don't have much experience with making heroes, but hey, more replies are good right?
I prefer pre-built heroes to custom ones. The problem with custom heroes is that it often becomes an exercise in developing the path of least resistance. Which ability is going to make me the strongest, while also requiring the least effort to use? Typically you're going to lean towards heroes with lots of summon and passive spells, and there will always be one "best" ability for each ability slot.
Having weaknesses is just as important as having strengths, which is another thing that is extremely difficult to pull off with custom heroes. "This guy's healing should be awful, but should have amazing stealth and damage capabilities" is a baseline that you can build an interesting hero upon. However, nobody is going to make their custom hero have such a glaring flaw.
I think if you're dead set on custom heroes, then the Hearthstone or Diablo 3 mechanics work best. You have a base class, and a selection of abilities to choose from. This way, you can enforce a weakness. Say, mages have awful self-healing, and this is enforced by none of their abilities providing healing.
Still though, you're going to run into redundant abilities in the above system too, which means wasted development time.
I'd probably make 20 or so heroes, and then later allow players to swap out abilities as they progress through the map. Say, swapping a hero's passive ability for a different passive, or their self-heal for a targeted buff.
0
I enjoyed the first one, so I was pretty happy to give this one a go. Grabbed a friend and went at it.
Balance
The early-game is nicely balanced. The waves are just strong enough to make losing possible if you're careless. Some of the Zerg units seem to be pretty bad value. Basically anything that can't survive a siege tank or a hellbat/firebat (the AI has a LOT of these) seems useless. That pretty much meant brutalisks and ultralisks only. Anything else just got chewed up. Rather than having the other units buffed, I'd probably prefer to see the AI have fewer siege tanks. It gets pretty insane at times.
Lag
The lag becomes gamebreaking after a while. I mean, so bad that my client refused to even let me leave the game. The path that the AI units take is so long that the whole map gets filled with zerg units. There's some rocks which I can only assume are there to shorten the path, but we couldn't figure out how to destroy them. Infesting towns makes this problem 10x worse. The zombies are so slow that they tend to get stuck at certain waypoints and just clog up huge portions of the map, blocking your own units which adds even more issues. I'd strongly recommend giving a different bonus for infesting towns. Maybe a few aberrations that spawn periodically instead of zombies?
Heroes
Stukov seems fine as a hero. Fungal Growth seemed a bit weak compared to his other abilities, but then that's probably down to how many stationary siege tanks the AI relies on. Allies can't "push" past his infested terrans, meaning that you can bodyblock an allied hero in, who will then probably die to siege tanks.
The Commando has a tiny vision range. Seems like he should have the best vision range.
The General is a really nice concept, but his mineral income method is so weird. You have to spawn units (which cost minerals) to destroy units (which grant maybe 1-2% of your unit's cost). I'd rather see the headquarters have energy, and calling in units costing energy. You'd then have the usual assortment of energy upgrades for him.
Infested Mothership isn't biological. I guess it makes sense, but it does kinda mean that you can't interact with basically all zerg healing. Prefer to see this unit be biological so that it can actually be healed!
Didn't try the rest!
Other
The Hero Assassins. Oh god why. They sit in your base, permanently cloaked, waiting to 2-shot you when you respawn. I'd really, strongly recommend putting these only on the harder difficulties. The effect they have on the game is "okay, I'll move my hero over here and
- why is my hero dead? Oh..."Late game vespene income is crazy-high.
Base defenses are so not value for money. Personally I think they should respawn like the nydus worms do.
I liked the map overall. Just a bit rough around the edges at the moment!
0
Mmm, something that bothers me in other hero-battle type games is when someone takes the hero I wanted. I'm pretty happy with duplicate heroes!
With that said, Stetmann could definitely use some love. Having a dedicated heal as a hero ability didn't pan out to be quite as fun as I thought it'd be.
0
Game length is probably the biggest complaint I see. I set out to make this a very short game from the outset, so a lot of the experience balancing (in terms of how many units I can get on one map before the sc2 pathing system starts to die) and the gold income rate around this short game length. Might look into slowing the game down in future, but mostly it's something I'll keep in mind for future projects.
As for not doing so well in NA, well, I think it's very hard to get a player vs player map off the ground. I definitely should've added some solo/co-op content.
And thanks! I had great fun with it myself too!
Edit: May I ask what kind of maps you're into?
0
The Summoners v1.10
GENERAL
- Greatly improved the trigger which decides which lane a unit should take.
BALANCE
- Chain Lightning jump distance greatly increased.
- Aberration move speed nerfed from 2.95 to 2.25.
- Salve of Clarity heal buffed from 600 to 750.
- Salve of Clarity energy restore buffed from 150 to 300.
- Heroic units are now immune to the root effect of Fungal Growth.
UPGRADES REVIEWED
- Artanis learns Charge at level 3 (was 4).
- Raynor learns Combat Shield at level 3 (was 4).
- Raynor learns Stim at level 5 (was 8).
- Raynor learns Yamato Cannon at level 8 (was 12).
- Nova learns Combat Shield at level 3 (was 4).
- Nova learns Stim at level 5 (was 8).
- Artanis learns Extended Thermal Lance at level 8 (was 12).
- Kerrigan learns Chitinous Plating at level 9 (was 12).
- Kerrigan learns Adrenal Glands at level 7 (was 8).
- Kerrigan learns Metabolic Boost at level 3 (was 4).
- Stetmann learns Durable Materials at level 7 (was 12).
- Stukov learns Neural Parasite at level 10 (was 12).
- Sarah learns Adrenal Glands at level 7 (was 8).
- Sarah learns Metabolic Boost at level 3 (was 4).
- Tosh learns Yamato Cannon at level 8 (was 12).
UPGRADES ADDED
- Stetmann learns Infernal Pre-Igniter at level 5.
- Stetmann learns Hi-Sec Auto-tracking at level 8.
- Stetmann learns Structure Armor at level 9.
- Stukov learns Enduring Locusts at level 5.
- Swann learns Concussive Shells at level 5.
- Tassadar learns Graviton Catapult at level 9.
- Zeratul learns Anion Pulse-Crystals at level 7.
FLUFF
- Added graphics and sound to Energy Potions.
- Made Salve of Clarity graphic more obvious.
0
The Summoners v1.9
BALANCE
- Tychus' Widow Mine count nerfed from 4 to 3.
- Psionic Shot energy restore nerfed from 2 to 1.
ITEMS
- Energy regen on items reduced by 20%.
- Stormscale Trident now provides bonus Weapon Damage instead of bonus all Damage.
FLUFF
- Updated unit animations.
0
Yep it's live on all servers, and currently on page 1 on EU servers. Takes about 20 seconds to get a game going!
0
The Summoners v1.8
BALANCE
- Flamestrike damage buffed from 100 to 150.
- Flamestrike cost buffed from 100 to 75.
- Stetmann's Medics replaced with Wraiths.
- Healing Wave redesigned (buffed);
- Cost reduced from 75 to 35.
- Cooldown reduced from 15 to 10.
- Amount healed reduced from 200 to 100.
- Wave jump distance doubled.
- May now be auto-cast.
- Entangling Roots now slows heroic units instead of rooting them.
- Leviathan's Bio-plasmid Discharge damage nerfed from 500 to 300.
- Leviathan's Bio-plasmid Discharge cost buffed from 75 to 50.
- Leviathan's Bio-plasmid Discharge cooldown nerfed from 10 to 15.
ITEMS
- All items that provided max energy have now been split to provide less energy, but also energy regen.
- Fel Reaver Plating: Added Spellshield effect; reducing the damage your hero takes from abilities.
- Blackrock Buckler: Siegebreaker effect now increases in radius each time the item is upgraded.
- Mooncloth: Added move speed.
0
The Summoners v1.6
NEW
– Item stats now apply to all units immediately (except weapon speed; will be updated soon).
– Life stat changed to be percentage based. 100 life = 10% now.
– All in-game tooltips should now display the correct values.
OTHER
– Removed Drums of Battle.
0
THE SUMMONERS patch 2
ITEMS
- If your inventory is full, buying a potion will use it instantly.
- Salve of Clarity: Restores life and energy but ends if the caster takes damage.
- Energy Potion cost buffed from 50 to 45.
- Greater Energy Potion cost buffed from 100 to 90.
- All items with Life Regen have had the amount halved.
- All items with Lifesteal have had the amount halved.
- Blackrock Buckler now has Siegebreaker; reduces weapon speed of enemy mechanical units.
BALANCE
- All heroes have had their life, energy and move speed varied a little.
- Base hero life regen increased from 1 to 1.25 per sec.
- Stetmann's Hellbats buffed from 3 per wave to 4.
- Stetmann's Healing Wave energy cost buffed from 90 to 75.
- Tychus' Widow Mines buffed from 3 per wave to 4.
- Stukov's Acid Rain damage nerfed from 30 per wave to 20.
- Stukov's Acid Rain debuff duration buffed from 5 to 6.
- Swann's Rain of Fire damage buffed from 15 per wave to 20.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's attack nerfed from range 10 to range 4.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's cooldown nerfed from 10 to 20.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's minimum damage nerfed from 10 to 1.
- Artanis' Ball Lightning's cost buffed from 125 to 100.
- Zagara's Death Coil redesigned. Now deals damage and heals allies in an area.
BUG FIXES
- Units should now be more intelligent about which lane they move down.
- It is no longer possible to buy non-consumable items while having a full inventory.
- Basic Items menu hotkey changed to "B" to avoid hotkey conflicts.
- Consumable Items menu hotkey changed to "C" to avoid hotkey conflicts.
FLUFF
- You may now move around before learning an ability.
- Many hero abilities have had their sound files changed to match their WarCraft 3 version.
- Added descriptions to each hero when their wireframe is moused over, like regular units have.
- Buying a potion will display the proper number of potions bought in the "item purchased" alert.
- Fixed a bug causing Marauders to be immune to spells.