Elemental Wars (Update: Circle of Elements)

[erwtenpeller]

This originated from a theorycraft held in general development.

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ELEMENTAL WARS!
Introduction.

The elements form an unstable unity, where some elements form no harm against eachother, while others obliterate eachother. The forces of good and evil have reconised this power, and will absuse it to gain the upper hand against the enemy no matter what the cost.

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In Elemental Wars the player controls a single character on one of two teams: the Forces of Good or the Forces of Evil. In their battle against oneanother they call upon the 5 elements to aid them:
Earth, Storm, Fire, Spirit and Frost.

Your team is aided by computer controlled elemental units that are send to march upon the enemies base, where they will meet the enemies elementals in battle. Each base spawns a diffrent kind of elemental unit, and at the end of every round the elements change.

A Player character gains experience and gold from killing enemy player characters and computer controlled elementals. The more experience a character has gained the more abilities it will be able to learn to bring down the pain onto its enemies. Gold can be used to perchase Items at diffrent shops and merchants to further empower and customise its character.

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features:

• The 5 Elements
• The Heros
• The Land
• The Elementals
• Elemental Power
• The Items

[erwtenpeller]

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The 5 elements.

The 5 elements are the core aspect of gameplay. Exploiting they're strengths and weaknesses is what elemental wars is all about, and that reflects back onto every aspects of the game.

Each hero character is assigned with 2 elements; one offencive, and one defencive. The diversity of characters is balanced in such a way that on each side there is one character availible for each combination of elements.

The offencive element determains the characters attack damage type, and generally means that its offencive spells are of its type. The Defencive type determains the characters damage reduction and generally means that its supportive spells are linked to that type.

The elements all have its unique strengths and weaknesses. Each element is extra effective against two elements, neutral to two elements and weak against its own element. If a certain defence type is hit by an elemental attack or spell of a type it is weak against, the effect will be greater. If it is hit by an effect of the same type, it will be reduced.

The following table shows all Five elements and how they interact with oneanother.

Damage Multipliers:

There is a sixth defence type (Neutral) featured in the map wich takes reduced damage from every element, but it is only used to rare occations.

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[erwtenpeller]

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The Heros.

A "Hero" is the character you play with. At the beginning of the game you will be able to choose one out of ten Evil or Good heros, depending on wich side you've chosen. A hero character starts off at level 1, with a bit of gold to perchase its first items.

A Hero character can obtain a maximum level of 10. A Hero advances in levels by gaining experience from killing enemy heros and elementals. A Hero character has a total of four abilities, three of wich have three levels and one of wich is an extra powerfull ability that becomes avilible at level 6. Each level a hero will be able to choose a new ability or advance an allready learned ability.

Each Hero character is outfitted with two Elements; and Offence and a Defencive one. The Offencive element determains the elemental type of its attack damage, The Defencive type determains the damage reducion and addition received.

The characters featured in this map are the same as in Ladder, tailored to fit the diffrent elemental types.

Here is the current table of Characters.
= Attack Type . = Defence Type

Table:

Good Heroes

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[erwtenpeller]

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The land.



This'll be the terrain layout, small size.

Team bases are located in each corner of the map. Each team has two bases of the same size and strength. They're located on opposite sides of the map. From each base spawnies spawn in both directions to attack adjecent bases. In each team base theres a fountain of mana, but no shops.

In the middle of the map there is a big neutral zone. In this zone there'll be shops from wich both sides can perchase items. This is also where killed heros respawn. In the middle there'll be a powerfull fountain of health.

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[erwtenpeller]

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The Elementals (Rounds)

Spawnies are controlled by real-time rounds. At the beginning of the first round, a random element is assigned to each base and one element is benched. In the first part of a round several waves of spawnies will be spawned of the assigned element. After these waves there is a short break in wich bases elements revert to neutral and buildings get a little regeneration. Then, the elements rotate and the next round begins.

Only in the first round are elements assigned randomly. Each round from there the elements rotate in a preset scedule.

When one of your temmates kills a hero, your team is rewarded with one "Primal Dust". In the next round, each primal dust grants your team one additional spawnie per wave for that round only, and the dust is expended.

Further Explanation This system really makes you focus on the elemental gameplay. There will always be an advantage somewhere and a disadvantage somewhere else, to be exploited as your team sees fit. The pause between rounds can be used to rearrange where your heros are located, reposition them for maximum elemental abuse. The fountains are there to keep the action in the outter rim red-hot. You'll have easy access to loads of mana to cast your spells, and when a siege is turning out to the attackers advantage there wont be any defenders duddling around a fountain where they are hard to kill. Instead they'll have the advantage of having more mana, being able to thwart you with spells. The fountain in the middle is there to kind of keep the peace and give players a place to recover health outside of battle. You'll also be passing the middle on a regulair bases when changing positions, the shops there conviniently placed so you can do your shopping on the move reather then having to go back to your base. Respawning in the middle lets you assess the situation and get you to the place where you're most needed the fastest.

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[erwtenpeller]

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Elemental Power.

Elemental Wars adds a new type of stat to warcraft 3. This stat is Elemental Power and is devided into the 5 Elemental types Elemental Wars uses:
Earth, Storm, Fire, Spirit and Frost.
None of the Hero Attributes have an effect on elemental power, the stat can only be obtained through certain items and certain spells.

Elemental Power boosts a number of things; it increases the armor value or attack damage of the same Elemental Type, and it increases the effectivity of Hero Spells of that Elemental Type.

I'll give you an example of how this works.

First we take a look at how a fire attack looks on the hero card:

As shown on Hero Card:

Then we take a look at the tooltip.

As shown on Attack Tooltip:

Fire Damage + Fire Power

Fire deals additional damage to Earth and Frost Armor.
Fire deals reduced damage to Fire Armor.

Right after the attack type indication, it shows a fire power indication in green.

Now lets see what happens when we add an item that gives +4 Fire Power.

As shown on Hero Card:

The same goes for armor. The Green "+XX" thats shown after the base attack or armor value represents Elemental Power. It increases your attack damage or armor value by the indicated amount, and effects spells in a number of diffrent ways wich are specified in the spell tooltip as such:

Ability Tooltip:

Flamestrike - [Level 1 Fire Ability]

Creates a column of fire that deals inititial Fire Damage to units in target area of effect, then burns them for additional Fire Damage over time.

Deals more damage for each point of Fire Power.

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Additional Note: in this system all +attack and +armor items are removed from the game, as these effects will be accomplished through elemental power. Abilities can still increase attack or defence, and the effect will be counted as an increase in elemental power.

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[erwtenpeller]

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Items (The Socket System)

There are three diffrent basic item types:

Consumable: Items that have an active ability. Usually come in a limited stack.
Artifact: Items that give passive benefits when in your inventory. Usually are socketed.
Gem: Can be put in socketed Permanents.

Gems can be added to socketed permanent items. An item can have up to four sockets for gems.
Some Permanents have a bonus effect that only becomes active when all of its sockets are filled.

Placing a gem in a socket will enhance the item with its perscribed effect. Lets have a look at an example of a verry basic gem:

Fire Ruby:

The icon border is green to help indicate its type. All Gems will have green borders.

A gem sitting in your inventory alone doesnt do anything, so lets take a look at an example of a socketed Artifact!

Table-Ten-Ton Hammer:

The Item being aan Artifact is indicated by its grey border.
The three dots indicate its sockets: This weapon has three sockets availible.

There is a Greyed-out "+6 Strength" visible. This is an attribute that only activates when all of this weapons slots are filled with gems.

On the bootom it also sais "Left-Click to open." When this is clicked the sockets inventory of that perticulair item is opened. This means that the items you are carrying will be hidden and in your inventory you will be able to vieuw the currently socketed gems. on the top left there will be a "back" button to return to your inventory, in the top left you'll be able to see wich Artifact you are currently vieuwing. You can also drop this item on the ground, trade it to allied heros or sell it to a shop, and the gems it has socketed will move or sell with it.

When you have your socket screen open you can also directly buy or sell gems.

Now we're going to socket the Fire Ruby into the Ten-Ton Hammer.

Socketed Hammer:

One of the gray dots has now shown as a green dot, to indicate that slot being filled with a gem. The tooltip also sais that its amount of availible sockets is now two instead of three.

You'll notice that the additional "+6 Strength" is still greyed out, becouse it requires the item to be fully socketed.

Lets keep on feeding it gems, and see what happens!

Socketed Hammer:

All three slots are filled, the bonus attribute is activated. The icon has also gained a green inner glow to emphasise the fact that it is full.

All three dots are now a bright green, and it sais that there are no more sockets availible.

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On a sidenote, attribute bunusses will only show a green bonus on the attribute, it will not add any elemental power.

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[Rising_Dusk]

The thing is, when one falls, so much pressure comes onto the last one that it is bound to fall within one or two rounds.

Then one is an expansion, rather than having two bases. The fundamental idea of the base is that you lose when it dies; removing that you become just a spawning point that is expendable. AKA: Expansion.

But it is insanely hard to come up with a balance group of heros that fits this roster.

I wouldn't say that, you're just refusing to use anything but Blizzard heroes. That's where it becomes hard, because you are trying to maintain the Blizz hero feels while having them flexible enough to fit the map.

[erwtenpeller]

No, not at all. I've been tooling with custom heros, and trying to work in B&B heros, for example. The thing that makes it so hard to balance is that you want both interesting and rich characters on both sides, but still want equal amounts of both attack and armor types on both sides. This becomes exponentionally harder to balance and especially, come up with when you're doing a setup where each hero has a diffrent armor and attack type.

I'll accept any help i can get on this front, most definetly. But i still want to maintain the simplicity of blizzard heros, no weird farfetched spells in sight.

Some concepts i've got floating around for example are:
Autumns Emissary: Storm/Earth
King Leo: Spirit/Earth
An Earth/Fire SH mod with a desert nomad theme
Naga Sea witch with Storm/Frost

And some Blizzard heros make it easy on themselves to do this, like the Far Seer, the Blood Mage and the Lich.

Like i mentioned before i've been ranting ideas in this thread, and i wil keep doing so. For details on custom hero ideas you can go there.

[erwtenpeller]

Originally Posted by Litany

I like it better where it cleaves to existing heroes with thematic variation to suit their element(s).

Thats basically what i'm working on now. But getting the thematic variations right is allready a pain in the ass, since i cant just use anything everywhere i like, the teams still have to balance out in the end. And some thematic adjustments are so dramatic, custom graphics or even model edits are needed. Poof, we now have a custom hero.

About the marketplace, I don't see why changing the overall base layout has any effect there.

Becouse there'd be a lane through the middle, thus the market would have to be split up.

[Pheonix-IV]

An 'Avatar' is simply the physical incarnation of a God, as such, the spell 'Avatar' works fine in a storm environment, except instead of turning to stone, he gets lightning effects all over him.

[erwtenpeller]

I came up with a WIP table containing 20 dual-elemental Heros. It took me a hell of a lot of work to get to this point, and i'm quite astisfied. See it here.

[emjlr3]

just to interrupt a wee bit, and to bring some bright green into your midsts

that beta terrain layout looks strikingly, if not precisely similar to my "masterpiece" Hulks Heroes ( http://wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=83492 )

not that I assume you garnered any interest from it

you, like most, presumably weren't even sentient of it's existence

in any case, this "project" has potential, and unlike B&B, I hope it entertains you long enough to see it's own completion

[erwtenpeller]

Originally Posted by emjlr3

that beta terrain layout looks strikingly, if not precisely similar to my "masterpiece" Hulks Heroes ( http://wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=83492

No, it really really doesnt.

in any case, this "project" has potential, and unlike B&B, I hope it entertains you long enough to see it's own completion

Thank you.

Eh, combining opposed elements is for expansions. They look ok in general.

I tried to figure out limits to combinations that'd make things more fair, but in the end, i think 10 unique combinations on a team will be for the better of the map. Ye you could end up against a team that has individual heros that can all beat the shit out of individual heros on your team, but ther'll always be teammates that can return the favour.

Allthough i must say coming up with good Fire/Frost heros has been murder. Frost/Storm heros however, work great. So does storm/spirit, Earth/Spirit... Actually, i think pretty much everything can be made to work. Yay. Only problem is a kind of ran out of good blizzard builds to base things on, so customasation is my only way out. OH SHIT.

[Pheonix-IV]

I'm telling you Ert, make use of the frost\fire switching spells. Suck the heat out, then blow it back in a FIREBALL.