For me it was a clearly "yes". So. Yes. :]
However, those are not made to be shared with the hiveworkshops users but only due to imago_'s maps exclusively. (I hope the grammar is fine. I just woke up.)
Btw. this is the first time I recognized you, too, are very versatile as I just read through your signature.
Cheers therefor! I like the eastern influences that you meantion. Especially Nobuo Uematsu from the FF series or Yoshihiro Sakaguchi from Capcom. If you want to share opinions or keep talking about this enjoyable topic I would suggest to choose another place to talk about as the everglade topic. Feel free to message me directly.
I suppose I might just start with creating the content for the hero descprition right now. Somehow talking about music got me in the right mood for creating something. Lol.
Suppose it's time to give you a fair answer to your feedback Jumbo! Let's go for it. :]
The map has an amazing atmosphere and great choice of sound and music (Ahh that Wow Cataclysm music ) with varied environments and - somewhat limited - tactical boss fights. It allows a significant amount of customization to your character and this really affects how capable you are of completing the missions the Commander npc sends you on. The ambush-like nature of environments and their encounters is something very nice and unique in Warcraft 3. Out of 20 starting lives we were down to 12-13 at map completion as completely new players to the map. This suggests a pretty decent balance in my opinion. The main quest felt a bit too short, but I suppose this is an early release at this point.
Big thanks. It's (nearly) all imago_'s work. I, too, really love the ambush-event of the mobs. During beta phase they only occured on harder difficulties. Yet they were so much fun for us that we let them appear on every difficulty. Nice to see that you like the cataclysm music, too!!
Shimmerweed quest received from Village elder doesn't complete in questlog - all other quests work flawlessly.
Fixed, yet not in the current released version.
Collision is a bit of an issue at times. You can get blocked by quest escort-npcs.
That might be true, yet it's rather easy to avoid this situation once you got used to the map. Maybe there will be some changes comming yet there are even more things to be done with a much bigger impact than this as it's not like there were much escort-quests anyway.
Collision between heroes is also annoying on bridges. In my opinion heroes should be able to move past each other at all times, even if monster collision is still a thing.
Well, that really wouldn't hurt. As I said above the two of us got that much used to the map that it's never happening to be annoying but I really get what you say. Especially for new players.
The story is very bland. The elements are there: Leading you from A to B and so on. This core is fine, but the dialogue itself could be better. I suggest you either hire a story artist or spend a lot of time writing lore/story by yourself if you feel inspired. At the moment it feels a little too generic for anyone to care about it.
You don't think this is the most fascinating story ever? JK. Lol. We know that already, obviously. Yet when a map is getting mapped you can't focus on everything at the same time. Consider how much time it took for imago_ to create such a detailed and living atmosphere allover the areas. Consider the amount of heroes, of spells, of events and systems. It's consuming a massive amount of time. Thats why the story is kinda lacking at the moment. As we are aware of that, we are thankful for opinions, feedback and suggestions. The story will surely be improved, yet I can't tell when this part will be finished.
It is clear that you have spent countless hours working on this, putting together the custom doodad materials to craft some gorgeous buildings, ruins and bridges along with nice fog effects for a dramatic mountains feel. Therefore these suggestions are only my own preferences and not necessarily objectively improvements.
Big thanks for that. :]
I personally like an ORPG system better than railroaded RPG. In the future this map could become one of the best ORPGs if you made it more open, with larger areas, with save/load (persistent characters) and perhaps player cap raised to 4. The main quest could still be there along with the other quests. Perhaps this could actually be done in a Diablo 2-esque way.
I can understand your wish for an ORPG as they might be fun for a bigger group of players. Sure. But if we wanted to create ORPG's we would have done. The reason why all of imago_'s maps are made for only up to 2 players is because the hiveworkshop has nearly no great 2P RPGs at all in my humble opinion. Or at least very, very few. Mostly with a very reduced look and feel. 2P RPGs are kinda the only maps I play (unlike imago_ playing like very wc3 map. lol). Since we wanted to play a nice 2P RPG together, imago_ started creating warcraft maps at all. This started a few years ago now and this has been the motivation behind all of his maps. Maybe someday he will get in the mood to create an ORPG as users asked really often 'bout that but for now we are focusing on 2P RPGs only. They are ment to be played best the really oldschool way. With a rl friend at a LAN over the weekend, not with 8 randoms from all over the world. (As I said, I know this can be fun - but that's not what we wanted. That's not our goal.)
obviously item attachment models would be nice and items restricted based on class. It seemed kinda odd to have my archer use dual blades as his only weapon. You have been using standard WC3 item system here, which is fine, but I am a huge fan of item attachment and "realistic" item systems in WC3 rpgs.
I, too, am a fan of this. Yet there we get back to the topic of effort. This might follow in a later update, but there are still more important things to be done. As for now it's planned that every area has it's own dungeon. To achieve this there needs to be mapped around 2-3 further dungeons and with that comes balancing, creating units, bosses, further spells, quests, and, and, and. As we think this will be much more fun to play, other "nice to have"-things will have to wait. Sadly! But if I'd ask you: What would you wish for the most in the upcomming version I suppose it would be "more content/dungeons/gameplay" over this. At least I hope so. :'D And don't forget with every new system and content there's a bigger chance of leaks or bugs sneaking in.
maybe add a few more spells to each class at high lvl. Sharpshooter was more or less pure dps, so maybe add a utility spell at the end.
That's because this is how sharshooter was supposed to be. He is highly item and stat depending unlike mage class. Imago might consider this, yet there are clearly some heroes with a good hand full of spells already so that you can throw spells like nonstop. For that I would advice you the mentioned intelligence class. It's a big fun nuking all mobs at once.
Make boss fights more interesting. Add more well defined phases. As it is now, at times the difference between dealing the death blow or dying yourself feels a tad too random at bosses.
Definitly planned and will happen. To be precise, they all have some kind of phases already - yet they are not all working totally. There will be some improvements for sure. Feel free to give us some input for further, completely new phases if you got some on your mind.
If at all possible a different smoother way of moving around would be amazing. Something like holding down the mouse button to move towards cursor. I don't know if it is possible with any of the WC3 custom editor tools found here on the Hiveworkshop.
Tbh I don't know it myself. Of course this would be kinda neet, but I'm not sure if this is needed at all. Players shouldn't be all to lazy. Get some muscles for your clicking fingers. ;]
Brilliant and well-crafted map. Better than most maps out there - rpg or otherwise - and yet it is a bit on the short side. It is a map with limitless potential and with patience and the right story it could become the best Diablo 2-esque RPG in WC3 and one of the best RPGs overall. If you add more content, improve the story and/or consider any of my suggestions, I would rate it 5/5, but for now it's going to be 4/5
Once more a big thanks and in the name of imago_, too. I hope with this post you might get the feeling for what this map is supposed to become and thus your rating might increase to 5/5. Maybe therefor you might want to play it again with a sorcerer class, or together with the creator imago_ or even with me for example. If not - then I suppose the upcomming release will change your rating for sure. At least I hope so. ;]
Up until then have a nice time and feel free to post an answer or further input if you feel up to it! It's really appreciated.