(12) Azeroth's Arcane Arena [Pre-1.24]

[Belphegor666]

Great stuff though you should balance it a bit. For example with Berserker and Demon Hunter I reached max lvl in 15min as for the Tree Protector hero I need 30mins!!!
Also there is a very spamy use of that dwarven shoter. Add 3 to 4 bombs at spawning place of the unit and when unit enter arena detonate bombs and voila 1 hero kill without firing a bullet. BTW why didn't you level up all of the spells so we can see what they really do.

[Blade.dk]

Originally Posted by Blade.dk

Doesn't focus much on balance of abilities and such, simply because I plan to, more or less, redo all Heroes and a lot of the abilities in the next version.

I would say that placing a lot of bombs close and then tricking an enemy to step on it is a strategy, just stay out of mines.

About abilities, I plan on doing something else with them than ultimates, I think dataangel was the first to do this, Vexorian used it too later. It is basically about that you need to take a certain amount of damage to use an ability, not that you must reach a certain level.

[Belphegor666]

I meant placing in the spawn circles. That aint strategy thats just bastardly play. You MUST spawn on your spawn circle one way or the another :D there is no tricking just waiting till he spawn.

Like battledome, hmm. As long as it aint bugged as Battledome, though Battledome was rather fun :) IMO if you are to do a battledome-like arena you could make your spells dependant of your atributes instead of your level, that wouldn't recquire additional casters or anything.

In any case best Arena evah (until battledome is fully fixed).

[Blade.dk]

Originally Posted by Belphegor666

I meant placing in the spawn circles. That aint strategy thats just bastardly play. You MUST spawn on your spawn circle one way or the another :D there is no tricking just waiting till he spawn.

Oh, I see, I will prevent it from being cast in spawn circles then. Thanks!

Like battledome, hmm. As long as it aint bugged as Battledome, though Battledome was rather fun :) IMO if you are to do a battledome-like arena you could make your spells dependant of your atributes instead of your level, that wouldn't recquire additional casters or anything.

Yeah, Battledome rocked (and still rocks).

I will use attributes, maybe not on all abilities, maybe only on some of them, I am not sure about this.

Originally Posted by Belphegor666

In any case best Arena evah (until battledome is fully fixed).

Thank you, much. dataangel has left wc3 modding as far as I know (and that's a shame), so battledome will probably not be fully fixed.

[Das Jank]

I was playing this map solo with 1 computer on each team and I ran across a bug, somehow the purple computer (south) would duel himself. He would just get put up there in the duel arena and then when the next duel happened he was there to attack the two people who really were dueling.

[Blade.dk]

Sure you played the newest version 1.5?

[aaero]

OK I played this map (once solo and once online) and here's my comments. Understand that I'm not an expert, I'm just offering my first impressions.

Overall, my feeling was this - as is, I enjoyed the game but I wouldn't keep playing it. I felt that with some relatively minor changes I would play it more often though. The game is extremely well made - there was never any bugs, never any lag, and all the abilities worked how they were supposed to. What was lacking for me, really, was the "fun" element.

To go into detail, the general feel of the game just wasn't right. It seemed very slow-paced, which I didn't like at all. A game like this should feel frantic, instead I felt like my hero was as slow as a slug and the only reason I was ever able to kill someone was because they made a huge mistake (or a series of serious mistakes). This was largely due to the lack of disables (maybe my team just picked heroes without them) in the early game. Don't get me wrong, I actually like the lack of disables. I also really like how the disables that do exist have to be aimed and are dodged if you're aware. Summing up, the pace of the game feels slow though the abilities are fun.

I didn't like that duels were 1v1. I thought there was an emphasis on teamwork? Duels should be team vs. team, or there should at least be an option to do that. That's just me though. It is called a duel, which implies 1v1 combat. It would please me if there was an option for a team duel, anyway.

Increase the variety of creep. They are unimportant to the map, but the minimum length of your game is 15 min. That can get pretty long, and there's almost no variety at all. You don't even have to make creep with different abilities/stats if you feel lazy, just increase the number of models you put in the arena. Ideally there would be a small variety of creep with different defining statistics. For example, you currently have what i would consider one group of creep. You could add two more groups, and have the new groups themes' be Agility and Intelligence. The defining statistics don't have to be STR/AGI/INT of course.

Try to find a way to favor the losers. As is, the game can become heavily slanted easily. If your team begins to dominate, it just becomes easier and easier to dominate. In game design, this is generally considered a flaw (but there are of course exceptions). I don't really have a good idea on how you could do this. Maybe you could give less money for killing heroes on losing teams than the winning team. Give it some thought, don't just assume that teams will automatically balance out by ganging up on the winners.

I think the hero selection area is much too big, but that's just personal preference. I understand it's for appearance reasons, but I'm much more of a function over form type guy. I like to be able to see a lot of heroes at once so I can quickly look at their abilities and such.

It seems that you want to promote teamplay, which I think is a great idea. Why can't everyone on a team be the same color? I almost killed an ally many times because I forgot which colors were on my team, and I had no idea which of my opponents were on the same team. I think it would be a cool feature to make all players on a team show as the same color. It would easily allow me to join my teammates if they were in a battle, and it would let me know which teams were my competitors. If you do this, you should color-code the leaderboard so that it matches (ie if North is red, it should be red on the leaderboard).

I'm forgetting one more thing, I'll add it on to my post as an edit I suppose.

Here are some comments from a friend who played.

I think the game itself is solid
not buggy, well coded
Gameplay needs to be faster
also I didnt really feel like anything I did really mattered
Needs to be more to it than just kills
I went around kill stealing ppl and it was extremely effective
Good Game, but not quite fun enough to match the quality of the game

I've never been an arena fan, so you can take my comments with a grain of salt if you wish. But it's my opinion that this game could be very fun but as is gets bogged down by it's predictability, it's slow gameplay, and the lack of defined teams. I'll keep a watch on it and if you update it in the way of my suggestions I'll give it another try for sure.

[Anitarf]

Originally Posted by aaero

It would please me if there was an option for a team duel, anyway.

That already exists. It's called the Main Arena. :)

I like to be able to see a lot of heroes at once so I can quickly look at their abilities and such.

Didn't your map Gladiator Survival have a similarly large hero selection area? :P

I think it would be a cool feature to make all players on a team show as the same color.

That feature is built into warcraft, there's a button next to the minimap that allows you to toggle between three views: player colours, ally/enemy colours and mixed (ally/enemy on the minimap, players in the main window).

[Blade.dk]

Anitarf's is right, and I agree with everything he said in the above post.

Besides that, I am working on most of the other stuff already, eventually read this.

[aaero]

Ah, that other thread does look refreshing. I like the look of the updates - I wish I would have seen that thread before I wrote my comments here. Hopefully this does verify for you that what you're working on is the right thing :). As I said, I'll keep my eyes open for an update because I felt this game has a lot of potential.

Rebutting the rebuttals, the main arena is not a team duel. It's a free-for-all with a fountain, an area to escape and it lacks arena-altering effects (like the blizzard and earthquake that occur in duels). A small duel area with a 3v3 (2 teams) is what I had envisioned, but I apologize if I didn't make that real clear. I was pretty sleepy when I posted that last night :). After reading your thread I didn't really see any plans to implement something like this (which is fine, it's not necessary -- it's just a suggestion).

As far as toggling ally colors...well, yeah. Even geniuses like me forget things sometimes :sweat:. Have you put in an easy way to tell what team an enemy is on (as far as is he North, South, East, or West). You might already have something that I missed.

Would you prefer I had posted in another area? You asked for comments and suggestions in your title post here, but it looks like that development thread would have been a better decision. I almost didn't post last night because I wasn't positive this was the right place but I figured you'd rather have the input (I always like getting input on my game, even if I disagree with it).

Oh, and I remembered the last thing I wanted to write. It was about the AI and how bad it was (not your fault). There's a lot of discussion on that already in the other thread so I'll let it go.

[Anitarf]

You had a point with the team duel, it is I who keeps forgetting this map has 4 teams, not 2. :)

[Babylon2006]

Strengthen AI

[Blade.dk]

I plan to :).

[BBDino]

Erm, only one thing to contribute, item gold costs seemed a bit random. 1k for the Mask of Death vs. 400 gold for a potion is not great balance.

[Blade.dk]

As far as I remember, the prices were not edited by me, blame Blizzard for that. But items, are more or less, being reworked, so things might change.