Review - Arena
(Version August 9th 2022)
Description: Arena is a 4-player melee map of the City Scape tileset with creeps blocking all pathways between players. The creep camps are also randomized, leaving players up for a surprise.
Terrain: Terrain is severely lacking: there is no tile variation and the ground is completely flat. While flatness can be justified in certain scenarios the terrain here just looks poor and unfinished. Decorative doodads are also placed seemingly randomly. The trees are placed in square shapes making them look unnatural, which can be justified on the tileset, but their placement does not make them look hand-placed either, making them just look weird. The terrain needs to be improved significantly.
Layout: The layout is simple due to the simplicity of the terrain. The creeps create interesting interaction as all the corridors and passages are blocked off by creep camps, but I think to an extent that is unhealthy for gameplay. The players cannot access any point of the map without challenging the creeps. While it can work as a gameplay element I don't see it bringing enough value on this map, unless the map is otherwise refined. Due to the randomness of the neutral buildings and the fact that creeps block the pathways, the layout is hard to judge and play. The neutral buildings can be accessed from on top of the cliff without the need to fight the creeps.
Creeps: The creeps are random to an unhealthy extent and they do not change as groups either: the central camp can have seemingly any combination of creeps, making it hard to read during gameplay: Centaurs, Furbolgs, Spiders, Bandits, and Infernals mixed together is very hard to read and looks thematically weird. Do not mix too many races of creeps together. The creep placement is also unusual, but I see it as intentional on this map. The map is overall too simple to justify this though. The item drops are unacceptable: do not use "Any Item Of Level X" as a drop as it can drop items from categories as Miscellaneous, which are not intended drops in Melee in the first place. The rewards for creep camps are also not consistent: with level 17 camps dropping a level 2 item only. Overall, the creeps need a lot of attention and improvement.
Gameplay: The map is not suitable for standard melee gameplay.
Recommendations:
The idea of creeps blocking every pathway and acting as "gates" can work, but the quality of the map overall is lacking: The terrain is poor, the item drops are inconsistent and the randomness of the creeps and neutral buildings are too much. Typically you want to have a maximum of one unique element in one map. I'd recommend reading some
tutorials to improve your understanding of different aspects of mapping, such as terraining as well as looking at other melee maps to see what kind of rewards and creep camp strengths are appropriate. The idea you have can work, but the execution needs refining and improvement. By improving this bit by bit I can see it become really unique and fun melee arena to play on.
The author's name does not match your name, can you clarify this?