Approved
- Joined
- May 12, 2012
- Messages
- 104
A nice little Lord-Fall map, because that tileset is always very nice! It has some issues that I'd like to address (some of which could be fixed easily).
===
LAYOUT
It's possible that the action is pulled away from the middle for most of the game. All the gold mines are in the corners, as are the goblin merchants and merc camps.
It's pretty easy to defend the expo that's located between you and your ally. The enemy only has two attack routes, and both can be flanked by your base.
Additionally, there are two bottleneck entries. Place a single barracks and you have one of them sealed off entirely for the enemy hero:
The expo will still be a weird thing though because the area is very open and no matter how you place your town hall, the enemy can walk in from the side and kill your worker line.
It's also my impression that the map is slightly too large, so it's even harder to harass the expo cause you need to walk so far (and back!).
Some of the terrain could be improved. For example, this long grass edge looks weird:
Or here, you could use the "smooth" terrain tool:
And some areas are just super flat.
Good job on the doodads though, it looks warcraft-ish. Also, most paths are of a good size, just large enough to allow two joined armies to march there.
===
CREEPS
The lvl 6 troll camp near the expo drops a lvl 2 item, that's too big.
Since the lvl 26 camp at the goblin lab drops any lvl 5 item (instead of permanent or charged), it may include the "misc" item Lesser Scroll of Replenishment. I assume that it is not dropped on any other melee map (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here) so people won't know what it is. And since it's such a rare drop (chance 1 in 18), they might only come to notice it in their 30th game on this map, at which point it will be an even bigger surprise and then they need to quickly read all the text and figure out what to do with it. Some folks probably won't like that.
Same issue with the lvl 21 creep camp at the starting positions in case the map is played 1v1. Again, if these items actually show up on other melee maps and are commonly known, disregard my concern.
The four lvl 18 troll camps as well as the lvl 26 camps in the middle that are all open towards the tavern might be too big a prize. If you find yourself in a situation in which you have the enemy pinned to his base, for example because he's expanding and can't challenge you in the open field momentarily, or because he lost his main hero, you can walk from camp to camp quickly with your buddy and sack tons of items. Make that a bunch of claws of attack +6, claws of attack +12 and invul potions and the game is over. Advanced players should give a second opinion on this though.
This creep camp has aggro:
Also, the wizard once polymorphed my grunt when I passed by, but I couldn't reproduce that.
===
SUMMARY
I'm actually not sure of several of my points, but I can guarantee that the expo will cause debates.
I like that it's a pretty basic map without any crazy stuff like portals. It's still not tournament ready but it looks very cozy and it's closer to being balanced than many other contest entries.
===
LAYOUT
It's possible that the action is pulled away from the middle for most of the game. All the gold mines are in the corners, as are the goblin merchants and merc camps.
It's pretty easy to defend the expo that's located between you and your ally. The enemy only has two attack routes, and both can be flanked by your base.
Additionally, there are two bottleneck entries. Place a single barracks and you have one of them sealed off entirely for the enemy hero:
The expo will still be a weird thing though because the area is very open and no matter how you place your town hall, the enemy can walk in from the side and kill your worker line.
It's also my impression that the map is slightly too large, so it's even harder to harass the expo cause you need to walk so far (and back!).
Some of the terrain could be improved. For example, this long grass edge looks weird:
Or here, you could use the "smooth" terrain tool:
And some areas are just super flat.
Good job on the doodads though, it looks warcraft-ish. Also, most paths are of a good size, just large enough to allow two joined armies to march there.
===
CREEPS
The lvl 6 troll camp near the expo drops a lvl 2 item, that's too big.
Since the lvl 26 camp at the goblin lab drops any lvl 5 item (instead of permanent or charged), it may include the "misc" item Lesser Scroll of Replenishment. I assume that it is not dropped on any other melee map (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here) so people won't know what it is. And since it's such a rare drop (chance 1 in 18), they might only come to notice it in their 30th game on this map, at which point it will be an even bigger surprise and then they need to quickly read all the text and figure out what to do with it. Some folks probably won't like that.
Same issue with the lvl 21 creep camp at the starting positions in case the map is played 1v1. Again, if these items actually show up on other melee maps and are commonly known, disregard my concern.
The four lvl 18 troll camps as well as the lvl 26 camps in the middle that are all open towards the tavern might be too big a prize. If you find yourself in a situation in which you have the enemy pinned to his base, for example because he's expanding and can't challenge you in the open field momentarily, or because he lost his main hero, you can walk from camp to camp quickly with your buddy and sack tons of items. Make that a bunch of claws of attack +6, claws of attack +12 and invul potions and the game is over. Advanced players should give a second opinion on this though.
This creep camp has aggro:
Also, the wizard once polymorphed my grunt when I passed by, but I couldn't reproduce that.
===
SUMMARY
I'm actually not sure of several of my points, but I can guarantee that the expo will cause debates.
I like that it's a pretty basic map without any crazy stuff like portals. It's still not tournament ready but it looks very cozy and it's closer to being balanced than many other contest entries.
