SC2Mapster

@Szei

Not at all considering most of the people who commented agreed with me. When you say "impressed by different things" I think you're inadvertently talking about editor skill level. Most of the people who have commented have likely made equally impressive abilities or heroes, So when we see something we've already done we're not going to spend an entire video looking at what we have been meticulously creating for months.

Therefore when the typical map editor sees this video they'll skip over the heroes/spells (because they're not cutting edge) and go straight to the UI which IS impressive and new.

So by saying that the video is bad because all you see is the UI, I'm saying that the video fails to capture any aspect of the game that would be impressive to someone who has already made the same thing for months.

Thus the video is of poor quality because it doesn't showcase what it was meant to (the gameplay). Instead it shows off the UI which probably wasn't the goal.

@ProzaicMuze: Go

"You know a video is good when 5s in you notice the awesome effects and don't even realize there is a custom UI."

Okay, that just sounds ridiculous as does your comment. Everyone will be impressed by different things. You may have just noticed the UI, but I didn't even pay attention to it for the duration of the video. I'm not saying this map will be good, but the video certainly didn't turn me away from the map. I'll just have to wait for the map to come out to see if it's actually any good. And I don't have any sound on so I don't know, maybe the sound was bad? The animations looked nice though.

Even if this map turns out bad the custom animation assets will be awesome for future unrelated projects.

So the videos was horrible ...... with or without sound it sucked ........ The game play shown was like a cluster fuck for the eyes and no clue wtf was going on....... Also the second i saw 13000 hp I think of WoW and other mmo's with their retard hp and damage..... I get this is for a project and your trying to showcase how you will have all your heroes in both a aos and a arena, but I mean it nothing special so far.... If we compare this to Indy games released by developers we have LoL Blood line champions and HoN most of those games had 2 years in the making and had to develop their own engine plus art assets.... Bloodline is 16 guys..... So considering u didn't have to create art assets or code your own engine 9 months of work for 2 guys doesn't show much..... I mean you guys have tons of reference for this genre thats out or in beta and at most we see here is a decent ui.... I mean this project got ALOT of hype and delivery and originality wasn't their...... I would recommend adding commentary or something....... But saying Impressed? was the most arrogant thing i ever seen a mapper do for something so unoriginal

dont mean to hate... but very unimpressed.... especially the amount of hype and everything that was done for this map... =(

Prozaicmuse totally hit it home with that point. After reading his comment I realized I did in fact mostly ignore what was going on in the video and focus on checking the UI. :P

@Mephs: Go

That's exactly what he was trying to defend. Read a few posts lower, it's mine and creation25's.

Fact is, they write all these mysterious news posts as if they will revolutionize Starcraft 2 as we know it.

Well guess what, it won't.

From what we've seen, 6 heroes for an arena? I can predict this is going to get old soon.

You know a video is bad when about 5s into the video you go "Oh hey, nifty UI" and spend the rest of the video checking it out while completely ignoring whatever was happening in the "background."

No idea if the game is any good by watching this. Need a new video.

9 months in the making...on an over-done concept. Perhaps it will at least be a polished one?

@puritysdisciple: Go

Large values aren't easier to balance, in fact they're harder to even out and make it feel like you're not beating on each other aimlessly for hours on end. But that also depends on the damage values.

I aimed for shorter, this game looks to be aiming for something completely different, all in all Tofu is a completely different type of game IMO.

another (hero map) Zzzz really?

Nice work on the UI, although I do feel the ability panel shouldn't be so close to the middle of the screen, as it is a little obstructive. As far as the gameplay goes, I don't feel like anything really stands out, at least not from the video. Perhaps the video just didn't convey the game well, but it seems as though you get your hero...you get your 5 spells...and you kill stuff. Unless this map was designed to be played by zombies, I believe it could use some strategic value.

A neat little trick you may want to consider for adding strategy, is lowering the hero hitpoint to damage ratio, so that things die faster. Pair that up with some sort of dodge skill or two and I believe the gameplay would be significantly raised.

Best of luck.

Seriously? Way too cocky for something like this. And the 9 months thing really isn't helping you guys, it's not like you've undergone pregnancy and brought life into the world. Just from watching the video, I am pretty sure that I will stick to Smashcraft and nobody else's Arenas have anything to worry about in the future.

@Creation25

I would tend to disagree, balance is about making small tweaks until the numbers match up the way you want them to. Due to the fact that small is a relative number the scale of the numbers being balanced has no bearing on it at all.

If something has 13,000hp and you need to lower it, you can reduce it by 1% (-130hp)
If something has 1000hp and you need to lower it, you can reduce it by 1% (-10hp)

The only difference is that 1000 is a number that is much easier to grasp for the human brain than 13,000. I agree with mjllonir completely in that large numbers are bad and make for confusing gameplay.

@mjllonir

Games with higher numbers are easier to balance. If you must learn anything from the Koreans, it's that.

Let me bring up a few points, mentioned previously by other members and my own thoughts:

1. Why did you use Sandstorm? This song has been used waaaaaayyy too much in the past, and the "hype" of it has faded over the years. In the future (And that goes to all of you), NEVER use that song.

2. The last comment, "impressed?" was unnecessary. Just because of that last comment, I no longer want to play the game.

3. UI and spells look quite impressive. Cookie points for that.

4. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like seeing units w/ 13 000 health. Personally, I would decrease the Health and the damage input of the spells and units. Keep the same scaling, just use a fraction of the whole.

Finally, I'll just go ahead and say there was too much excitement for nothing. The whole video definitely did not reflect the game style I was waiting for. The fast pace music did not flow with the video. Units slicing each other w/ nothing happening around them is not fun...for anyone.

Nope, there is only 1 data editor to ever touch this map and its me. I made every hero you saw actually, and everything they do and make is 99% data.

The damage tags above the targets head, which can be toggled on and off at the players discretion, and when a hero morphs, or creates a unit such as a pet some of the heroes attributes are transferred to the morphed or created unit this was done with triggers, but nothing else hero wise.

Just so everyone knows, there is only 1 ability in the game that uses the psi storm model 8-), what it does is strike 1 enemy within it each second for relatively light damage, however two of the hero Moomba's abilities have their damage increased by 100% vs. targets within the storm, allowing him the opportunity for some nice burst damage, but at the same time allowing the opponent the opportunity to minimize that burst. If Moomba is inside of the storm as well, he receives a very nice increase to his energy regeneration, some movement speed, and a small stat boost. This gives his storm incredible versatility, and allows him to gain some sort of benefit from it whether there is an enemy in it or not, the downside is that it costs him quite a bit of energy to use, and has a hefty cooldown in comparison to his other abilities, so choosing when and where to put it are very important decisions.

So a quick run-down on something to maybe help bring that into perspective.

In TMA your weapons damage is NOT by any means your primary source of DPS (Damage Per Second), in fact your abilities put together are far more than just your weapon, not to say th weapon is arbitrary but you have 5 abilities, not all of them do direct damage of any kind but most do, and only 1 weapon. In TMA its not a boring sit there auto-attacking waiting for the opportune moment to use an ability that you might only use once or twice in the whole fight, nor is it a jump out of a bush and kill someone in 3 seconds kind of pvp game. The way the heroes are balanced if for whatever reason two heroes were to just stand there and duke it out it would take between 10 and 15 seconds to kill each other, but the game is only balanced that way until heroes start leveling, and gaining items, at that point much more comes into play and fights could be much quicker or even slower depending on too many things to list here.

This gives the players involved in the fight enough time to make strategic decisions, choose intelligently which ability to use next, or time to execute a well planned attack, but not so much time that some hero on the other side of the arena can get to the fight in time. This allows for team battles where several heroes are involved but also the opportunity for smaller 1 on 1 battles as well, so any situation can occur.

Each hero starts with 100 energy, which regenerates at 5 energy per second. The attribute Intellect increases this total amount and the regeneration amount, as well as increase all damage done by Intellect based heroes by 1% per point. Other sources of energy can be found in powerups, and items purchased from the shop, these are high value very powerful items.

Towards end game an average strength hero should have at least 10 energy regeneration per second, more at the cost of less Str, but the dps tradeoff is roughly the same until you reach the point where your abilities no longer consume energy faster than you regenerate it, of course at which point the dps stat or health stat far outweigh energy regeneration.

This form of combat resource suffers what I call Depletion Range, it is the point at which you have ran out of energy and can no longer use abilities any faster than you can regenerate your energy. More energy staves off Depletion Range for a longer period of time, meaning that your abilties are only waiting on cooldown, or for you to use them and not their resource in this case energy.

I think this is a great way to go about combat because it puts the fight in the players hands, you do not have to ever worry about getting jumped without the ability to cast your spells because you were out of your combat resource, you get to cast them quite a lot in fact, but neither is the resource infinite, and its not just mashing buttons, there is a synergy between them that allows for a range of damage output values, and a built in delay between casting spells that allow time to make those decisions as well as prevent multiple spells being cast at once.

Quote:

They should fire whoever did their video.

This.

If I was a betting man I would guess that the person who developed their Tassadar hero is different that who developed their other heroes, the difference in quality is night and day. I had lost all hope for their data work until I saw "Tassadar". But I could always be wrong.

I'd also like to encourage all data editors currently developing games to use more Psionic Storm actors and models, with the current status of custom maps, we clearly do not have enough. If you ever hope to have your map rise to page 1, you will need to learn how to master and edit actors to add the psionic storm animation to all custom abilities.

I jest in good fun. I look forward to seeing how this map turns out.

A word of advice: avoid sounding overly "cocky" when trying to get people to like you. The "impressed?" comment made me go from "heh, another arena map with some very flashy effects, maybe i'll try it" to "haha, who do they think they are - this actually wasn't impressive at all and will fail".

I will say this much, I was not impressed due to the music. And well for something that looks like it's ment to be fast paced it's really hard to see and the units stand still and just hit eachother which is retarded. Also it reminds me almost too much of smashcraft.