Techtree Contest #9 - Poll #2!

[Bannar]

It's not about that. I'd be fun to win theme poll (i.e my concept) ^)^

 

[hiphop4eva]

I choosed biome, full and limited.
Biome because it looks cool.
Full because they're better and more balanced.
Limited because I don't want them to get stuck with the normal models, but don't want them to overdo custom models too.

 

[Kingz]

So... now what?

 

[JokeMaster]

So it's an unlimited imports, biome themed full size race, yes?
If i want to make shadow elves which biome should i choose?

 

[Bannar]

Guess Nature/Forest. Afterall seeing "Elves" its yours race name brings strong connection to environment and nature.

 

[JokeMaster]

Yeah but they are shadow elves so duskwood/underground would be fitting too, right?

 

[VeljkoM]

Elves are very adoptable creatures, so many sub-species. But yeah Shadow type would fit in Underground/Duskwood/Fellwood, don't really see them as nature just because they are elves (Maybe if they were wood elves).

But anyway will we get some info about contest start date?

 

[Kyrbi0]

Oh and for Poll we really should count votes that have comments as explanation for vote to avoid popularity and pretty race votes. Or any of the suggestions Kyrib0 has been proposing for years.

*sniff* Someone noticed!

If I do one thing right for this (& future) Contests, it will be to make this true. Just like I began to do for the Modeling & Hero Contests.

What about using one of the Warcraft continents as Biome selection pool? Instead of just 1 biome or unlimited selection we get Kalimdor which gives you limited choice? So Kalimdor equals = Forest (Ashenvale), Corrupt (Feelwood), Jungle (Ungoro, Ferelas), Desert (Barrens or Tannaris), Snow (Winterspring).

What an idea.

I, as aforementioned, think that's a good idea.

But anyway will we get some info about contest start date?

I'd say we can just count up the "psuedo-votes" here in the posts; I don't want to bother with another whole Poll for "1 Biome vs. All Biomes vs 1 Continent", etc.

So it's an unlimited imports, biome themed full size race, yes?
If i want to make shadow elves which biome should i choose?

More or less, though please weigh in on whether you would prefer "1 Biome vs. All Biomes vs 1 Continent".

Shadow Elves? Hmm, that's a toughie... If they live Underground (like Drow), you can just about put them anywhere, but especially Lordaeron or Khaz Modan (north or south of the Dwarves) or something like that. Mountains, Plains, Forest, etc.

I choosed biome, full and limited.
Biome because it looks cool.
Full because they're better and more balanced.
Limited because I don't want them to get stuck with the normal models, but don't want them to overdo custom models too.

Thank you for your vote & reasoning.

It's a different community, not in a bad way, just different. By that logic if something is popular in one country it should be popular in every other country.
That is my opinion on the matter, lets not make a big discussion over it.

My logic is merely one of "trying". I'm not saying "Because rice is so popular in China, it must be as popular in Norway!". I'm saying "Because (one Wc3-modding site) ran contests this way & it worked splendidly, perhaps we can try that way at this (wc3-modding site) and see if it is also successful!"

It is absolutely a different community, but many of the same individuals frequent(ed) both. If it works well in one place, it might also work somewhere else.

~~~

Still working on the responses to a few of your posts; bear with me.

 

[Footman16]

One thing I would suggest is make it 3 heroes instead of four. Four can be such a pain to be inventive with. In most of my maps I make three custom heroes and leave one original melee hero or add three and then when I feel like it add a fourth.

 

[Kingz]

One thing I would suggest is make it 3 heroes instead of four. Four can be such a pain to be inventive with. In most of my maps I make three custom heroes and leave one original melee hero or add three and then when I feel like it add a fourth.

Yeah we already discussed this as being reasonable. 3 heroes should be enough to count as a full race.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Yeah we already discussed this as being reasonable. 3 heroes should be enough to count as a full race.

Whaat? Where was that discussed?

 

[VeljkoM]

Think we should ask when was that discussion since this time we only had partial vs full discussions. We didn't really talk about what counts as full race and the poll itself says 4 heroes.

But anyway call me a hypocrite but I don't see problem with 3 heroes since hero making limit is 3 so you aren't at disadvantage, just less choices. Also no need for 12 units, that should be limit not requirement.

 

[GhostThruster]

if it were up to me, an entry shud be able to have any number of heroes allowed.

a techtree is an end product made of several components including (but not limited to) no. of heroes and unit roles. in a techtree contest, we shud be judging the end product, not the ingredients.

 

[Kingz]

Whaat? Where was that discussed?

Jesus man i can't really bother to go through this thread and the one before.
But we did say that 3 heroes is just as fine for a full race since heroes take the most time (not to mention vanila WC3 had 3 heroes per tier anyway).

In fact it might be even you yourself who agreed with me on that matter, but feel free to scour the threads for that discussion.

 

[Bannar]

People have spoken. There is not much to talk about. Let it start!

 

[Kyrbi0]

People have spoken. There is not much to talk about. Let it start!

Au contraire, mon ami.

Think we should ask when was that discussion since this time we only had partial vs full discussions. We didn't really talk about what counts as full race and the poll itself says 4 heroes.

if it were up to me, an entry shud be able to have any number of heroes allowed.

a techtree is an end product made of several components including (but not limited to) no. of heroes and unit roles. in a techtree contest, we shud be judging the end product, not the ingredients.

Well yeah. With you guys getting all crazy-defensive about "full race or bust", I figured that's what you meant, a "Full Race", & so that's what I wrote on the Poll. Each Faction in Wc3 has (in terms of metrics) 3 Tiers with 4 Heroes, 12 units, 10-11 buildings, 8-9 items, and (in terms of gameplay) workers, gatherers, melee, ranged, casters, fliers, anti-turtling, anti-casters, detection, scouting, etc...

The concept of doing anything less would probably fit best under the other provided term... "Partial". 3 Heroes, less than 12 units... Etc.

Kinda what I was saying.

But anyway call me a hypocrite but I don't see problem with 3 heroes since hero making limit is 3 so you aren't at disadvantage, just less choices. Also no need for 12 units, that should be limit not requirement.

You make a good point (see my response to Kingz below) about the Heroes. However, my response to the other point, while not as harsh as "hypocrite", is of that tenor, and is essentially that to GhostThruster (also below):

a techtree is an end product made of several components including (but not limited to) no. of heroes and unit roles. in a techtree contest, we shud be judging the end product, not the ingredients.

Ok, but when you say "judging the end product", what exactly are we judging and to what are we judging against? Since many of you answered the first with (primarily) "balance" and the second (primarily) with "against the existing 4 races", and stated essentially that "anything less than a full-race would be too hard to balance against the existing 4 races..."

Jesus man i can't really bother to go through this thread and the one before.
But we did say that 3 heroes is just as fine for a full race since heroes take the most time (not to mention vanila WC3 had 3 heroes per tier anyway).

In fact it might be even you yourself who agreed with me on that matter, but feel free to scour the threads for that discussion.

Hey, just curious. To be fair, I'm not really that against it (though many times, it's hard to only come up with 3 Hero ideas xD), and it would certainly make things easier on us (also easier to test, since as you point out, you can only have 3; 4 means having to play the Race twice (HEAVEN FORBID! ). I may have even agreed with you. But yeah, keeping track doesn't hurt. : )

 

[VeljkoM]

@Kyrib0

I didn't call myself hypocrite regarding unit number. I wouldn't say partial race because number of units is not really set for all races. It seems like they have 12 units but undead have less units then others, night elves have more thanks to druid morphing and also summon units push the limit even further. And not all races have all unit roles (though I don't relay know what is anti turtling role, you mean long ranged siege?). Here are some examples:

Examples

Orcs for example have 3 casters with usual caster upgrades while other races have 2 casters. Orcs lack dedicated anti caster they just have purge and disenchant abilities on their regular casters while other races have anti-casters. Orcs also lack heavy air unit and have instead medium air unit and they also have suicide/flying siege unit while other races have 3 flyers (Heavy Air, Anti Air and Scout (Gyrocopter) or Anti Magic (Fairy Dragon, Destroyer)). Their tier melee is their ultimate unit while other races ultimate unit is flyer. Orcs are also the only race with Aura unit.

Undead have just 1 siege unit while other races have melee(ish) siege unit. Undead also use units to harvest, have dedicated scout only unit and dedicated heal/mana restore unit.

Night Elves lack early melee units and have huntress instead. They have pure tank unit and tier 3 melee unit, they have two dedicated anti casters and as I already said more units then other races thanks to druid morphing and have 4 air units if we count archer-hippo combo. Even more with buildings walking.

Humans are sort of jack of all trades and it is usually their teach-tree that is default version of full race, the only really unique units are siege engine Anti air/anti building unit and Gyrocopter that is reduced to scouting yet still has combat upgrades. Heck most of the time custom races that I have sen use orc/human system of resource harvest and building construction.

So the most common thing in all races are tier 1 melee (elves disagree) and tier 3 melee, 1 basic ranged unit (elves laugh at me now), 2 casters, anti-caster, Heavy and Light Air unit (orcs disagree with last 3 examples) and long ranged siege and close siege (undead disagree). Then you add units to fill the gaps and add flavor. But all this is not a rule but rather a guideline as you can find units that have more unique roles or several roles even. So in short I don't think 12 is unit number that must be reached as there is no such thing in the races we consider full.

What is the real true factor is that all races must have 3 tiers and the most basic upgrades, buildings and units (number of each not a factor) and that race must be able to win and lose against the standard 4 races. Full Teach-trees are flexible you have a lot of room for imagination.

*Heroes are standard 4 and that is why I called myself hypocrite but I already said why I don't mind just 3 heroes (I secretly would wish to remove heroes from game itself). But no less as Wc3 is really hero-centric game and having just 1 or 2 heroes would be handicap (unless there is a tavern but you get the point).

@GhostThirster

Well yes end product is what it is judged but when you judge a races you judge it by testing its units and heroes and see how the components work with each other. Wouldn't it suck if race would in the end need just 1 unit spammed to win while making rest obsolete? You can't have the end product without the components after all.

 

[JokeMaster]

As i see it every race should fit a minimum not a maximum. Becouse i remember on a local modding site we had a race contest and some people made choices in their tech trees. Meaning they had 14-18 units but they could produce in 1 gameplay only 12 of those. The minium should be so:

Units

Tier I
-1 gartherer
-1 meele
-1 ranged
Tier 2
-1 Siege ( mechanical)
-2 Casters
-2 Flying
-1 Rider/ mounted
Tier 3
- Heavy unit.

The rest should be up to the contestants.

Buildings

Buildings :
Tier 1
- Hall
-Farm
-Barracks
-Altar
-Woodwork and/or Forge
-Shop
-Tower
Tier 2
-Tier 2 Hall
-Second tier units barracks
-Caster barracks
-Flying Barracks
Tier 3
-Tier 3 hall
-Heavy unit barracks

 

[VeljkoM]

So guys any chance we can start soon? Both polls ended weeks ago. Can't we just quickly agree which biome and start before September? Biome won just need to decide which one or if we can chose our own for our race.

Forest was voted by Kyrb0, Kingz (as choice #3), VelkoM (as choice #2), Desert was voted by BlackKnightTGS, Kingz (as choice #2), VeljkoM (as choice #1) and jungle was Kingz (as choice #1). If I have missed someone please speak up but I guess I could count Joke Master as forest too because of his shadow elves.

I still say it would be better to have several biome choice like Kyrib0 first suggested with Continental grouping. I voted there for Kalimdor as it would have all choices that were voted for and everyone who voted for biome would be happy. Lets try to wrap this up and do something before summer ends?

 

[Kyrbi0]

Still working on my reply to your most recent points...

But in the meantime, please check out this Pastebin link for the proposed Contest thread. Give me some thoughts & critique; especially about the Criteria & the Judging/Polling methods; one thing I hadn't considered was to have the Poll merely used to pick the "top 3" (or 5 or whatever) for the Judges to then grade (meaning the Poll would have nothing to do with the score, technically).

Also, I'm all good with picking a Continent (even covering a few Biomes) since that'll be kinda like Risk ("continent war! elves vs. forsaken vs. orcs, or dwarves vs. trolls vs. elementals, or tauren vs. harpies vs. centaurs!"). Let's get some quick pseudo-voting out here, as well as thoughts on the aforementioned Contest Thread.

 

[Footman16]

750kb per map!? Are you kidding me? That's rubbish in my opinion. 3-5MB should be max I think.

Sorry if that came off a bit brusque but if you want a map with some quality in it's imports then there needs to be some room to work. Look at any of my custom races and see how much room they take.

 

[Kyrbi0]

750kb per map!? Are you kidding me? That's rubbish in my opinion. 3-5MB should be max I think.

Sorry if that came off a bit brusque but if you want a map with some quality in it's imports then there needs to be some room to work. Look at any of my custom races and see how much room they take.

Well, while I would argue that "imports != quality", I'll agree that 750kb is too small (I'm a little nonchalant about KBs, personally; I rarely pay attention/realize how large/small things are). I think I copy-pasted that from a different contest. 3-5MB sounds reasonable.

Appreciate the apology, but no big deal. : ) Just glad people are looking & critiquing. Anything else (anyone)?

 

[Footman16]

Oh, I just had a brilliant idea for this. Now that I'm reading through the rules.

Originality better be worth a lot of points because I'm aiming to win.

Oh I did just realize something, using skins will affect the standard races ((maybe)cosmetically) so will we need to download models using different paths or what?

 

[GhostThruster]

Ok, but when you say "judging the end product", what exactly are we judging and to what are we judging against? Since many of you answered the first with (primarily) "balance" and the second (primarily) with "against the existing 4 races", and stated essentially that "anything less than a full-race would be too hard to balance against the existing 4 races..."

we should judge a race in a holistic manner, not based off an arbitrary numerical requirement. we should judge it against the default races in terms of overall balance, not in terms of whether they fit into the cookie cutter mould.

we should not prohibit an entry with only 8 units and 2 heroes. we should not prohibit an entry with 20 units and 10 heroes. we should not prohibit an entry with 30 heroes and no units or buildings. the size and shape of a techtree should not be a restriction, because all you're doing is restricting innovation. they're risking balance for the reward of more originality and fun, and i think there is nothing wrong with that so long as each judging criteria is equal. like, what the fuck is the point other than to enforce monotony on entries?

Well yes end product is what it is judged but when you judge a races you judge it by testing its units and heroes and see how the components work with each other. Wouldn't it suck if race would in the end need just 1 unit spammed to win while making rest obsolete? You can't have the end product without the components after all.

point has been missed


so if you guys still don't get what i'm saying;
there shouldn't even be a requirement for either full or partial race, because it doesn't achieve anything other than discouraging techtree creativity. it doesn't discourage imbalance; that's what the 'balance' judging criteria is there for. if you're worried that an entry with 8 units will beat your 'full race' of 12, then that's fucking fine. because if they manage to change up their unit roles while still maintaining balance, that means they've put more effort and skill into making a race than you have and you should be ashamed of that. all a full or partial race requirement does is discourage entrants from diverging from a cookie cutter model.

please check out this Pastebin link for the proposed Contest thread. Give me some thoughts & critique; especially about the Criteria & the Judging/Polling methods; one thing I hadn't considered was to have the Poll merely used to pick the "top 3" (or 5 or whatever) for the Judges to then grade (meaning the Poll would have nothing to do with the score, technically).

so much fluff... i especially hate the judging (or 'design' criteria as you've labelled it for some reason) because 'role coherence' seems so stupid, meaningless, redundant, and filled with buzzwords much like 'the legion' criteria was in prior contests. i urge you to consider my more streamlined model, where each criteria includes everything and none overlap:
[10] Gameplay - fun factor (enjoyability) & polish (how finalised it feels)
[10] Balance - relative single unit power (e.g. comparing grunt to headhunter, or grunt to footman) & overall race balance (measured against default races)
[10] Presentation - aesthetic (how good it looks) & accessibility (how intuitive it is)
[10] Concept - creativity & compliance with contest theme

 

[Kyrbi0]

I seriously wish I had more time... But alas, duty calls. I'll try to be brief, and pray I make sense. : )

we should judge a race in a holistic manner, not based off an arbitrary numerical requirement. we should judge it against the default races in terms of overall balance, not in terms of whether they fit into the cookie cutter mould.

Alright, I too believe in 'holistics' (though that's a tricky word to throw around). I would disagree that (these) 'numerical requirements' are necessarily arbitrary, though.

I too think that some numbers don't matter so much as to whether it's balanced or not (i.e. a mini-race can be balanced against a full-race, etc)... But if we're talking about making Races, and we're comparing them to what exists, well, there are certain parameters, I believe. Some things happen by chance (e.g. the Death Knight has Death Coil & Death Pact? Only HU & UD have summons in their racial shop? etc), but many others, I would argue, don't (e.g. you don't see Factions with 6-8 units pitted against Factions with 20-30 units; you don't see units with direct damage abilities; you don't see heroes with attribute spreads greater than 6... etc).

Perhaps determining what is and isn't important can be a matter of debate.

we should not prohibit an entry with only 8 units and 2 heroes. we should not prohibit an entry with 20 units and 10 heroes. we should not prohibit an entry with 30 heroes and no units or buildings. the size and shape of a techtree should not be a restriction, because all you're doing is restricting innovation. they're risking balance for the reward of more originality and fun, and i think there is nothing wrong with that so long as each judging criteria is equal. like, what the fuck is the point other than to enforce monotony on entries?

I am not sure I agree.

First and foremost: What is "creativity" to you? Similarly, what is "originality" and "innovation"? Defining these would help me understand what you're talking about.

More importantly, though, is this: Can we agree that constraints allow creativity to thrive?

This may sound weird, but I have come to feel that this is true. "Creativity/Originality/Innovation" to me are close to buzzwords; but it is my opinion that they cannot exist 'in a vacuum', per say. "Creativity" is the unique combination & application of existing elements in an interesting/original/innovative/creative fashion; a mix that hasn't been seen before.
Take Blizzard's games as a perfect example. Is anything in Wc3 truly "new"? "Creative, original, innovative or unique"? Heck, it's mostly Warhammer & Lord of the Rings influenced... Plenty of classic tropes (main good guy becomes over-zealous, becomes seduced by dark forces, becomes puppet to dark master... vicious but honorable barbarians given a chance at redemption..) in the story... Heck, much of the 4 races consist of things found in Starcraft (protoss building warp-in = undead summon... zerg creep = undead blight... terran mobile buildings = night elf mobile buildings...). The races themselves are massively stereotypical caricatures of existing real-life cultures/races (scottish dwarves, native american tauren, medieval british humans, jamaican trolls (<3), etc).

But it's a combination of existing elements in a new & interesting way that makes Warcraft 3 "creative" to me, "original" to me. Combined in an innovative fashion, not ex nihilo ('out of nothing', as it were) but from existing parts. Call it "stealing" or "unoriginal" (many have); I call it "inspiration".

On that note, and on a more personal one: It has been my experience that given a blank sheet of paper & time, people may doodle... And heck, maybe some really good doodles. But it isn't until constraints are imposed that true beauty, true 'creativity' if you will, is engendered. Many of my favorite ideas/models/techtrees/spells/etc that exist today have come out of contests; contests which by their very nature featured constraints. It may have been Thematic/Aesthetic constraints ("create an elemental model") or Role/Style/Gameplay/Design constraints ("create a mini-race addition to the existing 4"). It may have been restraints upon the Manner in which something was done (i.e. "use only traditional media to draw", "use only in-game models", "use only GUI/vJass coding, no systems").

If we cannot agree on this point, then that may be the issue. Sure, I believe there can be too many Constraints, or the wrong ones... But based on what we're looking at here, I don't think this is the case. I don't think Constraints make anyone "cookie cutter" or anything, though it may feel like it.

Thoughts?

so if you guys still don't get what i'm saying;
there shouldn't even be a requirement for either full or partial race, because it doesn't achieve anything other than discouraging techtree creativity. it doesn't discourage imbalance; that's what the 'balance' judging criteria is there for. if you're worried that an entry with 8 units will beat your 'full race' of 12, then that's fucking fine. because if they manage to change up their unit roles while still maintaining balance, that means they've put more effort and skill into making a race than you have and you should be ashamed of that. all a full or partial race requirement does is discourage entrants from diverging from a cookie cutter model.

Lol, so where were you when I was all alone defending the fact that Balance isn't nearly as affected by Faction-size as everyone seemed to think? : ) Glad to see I'm not alone.

so much fluff... i especially hate the judging (or 'design' criteria as you've labelled it for some reason) because 'role coherence' seems so stupid, meaningless, redundant, and filled with buzzwords much like 'the legion' criteria was in prior contests.

Hey now. I appreciate that you have concerns/critiques, raise them, and (even better, since so few do) offer alternatives. But no need to get huffy about it. : )

I will agree that, having looked at the past Techtree Contest's judging Criteria, I was not impressed; I think (due at least in part to the lack of English-understanding) that they were, as you say filled with "buzzwords" and other redundancies. However, I had hoped that would not be the case with mine. :<

Let me see if I can break it down a little more plainly, since I feel pretty good about it (though I am open to suggestions, see below):

[10] Originality & Creativity:
How original the design of the Faction is in terms of creative ideas, clever implementations, or new concepts.
[10] Theme Coherence:
How well the various elements of the Faction (including aesthetics & design) fit together in a thematic manner such that they feel like they are representative of the given Faction (i.e. yes elves with bows, no demons using Divine magic, etc), as well as that of the chosen Contest Theme.
[10] Role Coherence:
How well the various elements of the Faction work together to achieve the tactical synergy & gameplay style the Faction has (i.e. melee-focused, hit-and-run, glass-cannon, etc).
[10] Melee Design Consideration:
Includes how well the Faction's Theme, Role & Originality fit into the melee environment in terms of balance, theme, style, complicatedness, and so forth.
[10] Awesomeness:
The most subjective of all grading criteria. This attempts to quantify exactly how awesome a Faction's overall design feels.

50 Points: Nice even number (could be lower, perhaps. Meh.)

1) The first point ("Originality & Creativity") looks at... well, just that. Basically we're saying "have you shuffled around a bunch of existing in-game abilities/units/heroes/buildings/items/etc in the creation of your Faction?" If so, you will do poorly here. Gather some interesting ideas & cool mechanics, make something (at least somewhat) new.

2) The 2nd point ("Theme Coherence") is essentially your "Presentation" and "Concept", somewhat. Every element of a Faction has as Theme, and the idea is to make sure it all fits. Examples of divine-wielding demons & bandits with grecian mythological creatures & Dwarves turning into snakes... That'd be bad Theme Coherence. Does your Faction make sense? Do the models & concepts fit together well? Is it polished, compliant, and aesthetic? Etc.

3) The 3rd point ("Role Coherence") is essentially your "Gameplay" & "Balance", somewhat. Just as important as the Theme is the Role (if not moreso); every element of a Faction has a certain Role it should fulfilll, and the Faction as a whole has certain Roles it should fulfill. What are they? The user decides... But maybe my Elves should be deceptive & cunning, with little brute strength; my Ogres should be nasty & powerful, with little finesse. Moreover, the various Roles ascribed by gameplay (siege, melee, ranged, support casters, anti-turtling, anti-caster, etc) should be covered in one way or another (combinations & such).

The first three look at the Race in isolation (all by itself). The fourth looks at each of those first three compared to the baseline (in this case (I hope we can agree that it is) the existing 4 races)

4) The 4th point ("Melee Design Consideration") essentially takes the first 3 out of isolation and sees how they apply to the setting, the rest of the game & the existing 4 races (that being our agreed-upon "comparison" or "baseline"). How well do the Theme & Role interact with the existing Themes & Roles of the other Races? Is it original & creative compared to the other races?*** How well does it play, and how well does it feel?

5) The 5th point ("Awexomeness") is pretty subjective, I'll admit. It's more there for fun. I could see it taken away... But it gives judges a bit of room to express a love for a particular race. The whole thing is subjective, masquerading as objectivity... But this one criteria is intentionally subjective, through & through. How cool is the race? Yeah, we've seen Elves a dozen times... What if someone makes a really schweet Furbolg race? Or, through perfect manipulation of custom models & creative ideas, prints out a schweet Elemental-Union? Subjective.

i urge you to consider my more streamlined model, where each criteria includes everything and none overlap:
[10] Gameplay - fun factor (enjoyability) & polish (how finalised it feels)
[10] Balance - relative single unit power (e.g. comparing grunt to headhunter, or grunt to footman) & overall race balance (measured against default races)
[10] Presentation - aesthetic (how good it looks) & accessibility (how intuitive it is)
[10] Concept - creativity & compliance with contest theme

Hm, interesting model.

As stated above, many of your elements appear to be encapsulated within my own (and I'm sure you could say the same about mine, lol). But just looking over it, I think it's pretty good... Although I'm curious how "polish" is different from "presentation" (could they be combined?). And 10 points for "Concept"? If it's essentially "did they follow the Contest theme" or not, it seems more like a "yes/no" or "yes/kinda/not really". :<
Balance on a unit-by-unit basis might be difficult if there aren't some constraints for, say, units; if there is no "basic melee" unit, how would that compare to the Grunt/Footman? Or do you mean "comparing it if it exists"?

I might switch "accessibility" and "polish", actually.

More importantly, though, my long experience modding has convinced me that "Theme" and "Role" (call them what you will ('aesthetics & style', 'presentation & gameplay', etc)... the names may change but they are essentially as I've described earlier) are two of the most important characteristics to any creation (Hero, Techtree, Spell, Unit, etc). I've made greatly "Themed" heroes for a while now (wasn't always the case... ), but it wasn't until I started paying attention to "Role" as well that my hero/faction designs really took off & made sense. Somehow putting that more explicitly in your Criteria is something I would look for.

***Just had the thought: by my very definition, "Originality & Creativity" as a Criteria can't possibly exist "in a vacuum", or in isolation; when determining that score, one has to compare to something. So there, that's at least 1 issue with my criteria that should be addressed.

 

[VeljkoM]

@GhostThruster
I am sorry I missed the point you were making but I will point out that I did spend the other part of my post showing why arbitrary minimal limits make no sense. There is no imaginary 12 man requirement, there is no building numerical requirement (there are roles that must be covered) nor do all units have to share roles as other races. I think I have shown that main races are all unique and there really aren't that many hard rules shared by all 4 races especially regarding unit numbers and rolles. As you have pointed out judge the end product because what matters is how the product works not if it follows imaginary rules.

I will still say that 3 heroes should be minimal as heroes are one of the key gameplay features for warcrarft 3. We are still making teach-tree for warcraft gameplay not for whole new game so some things should be kept such as hero number, tiers, gold/lumber resource existence. We do seem to have a problem to agree what each of us sees as key feature that shouldn't be changed.

Oh and I do think unit number effects balance but also to many units risk that many units will share roles or be overshadowed by better units. Too many units lose point when you have really low unit limit and can't use most of them. If you can make 20 units that have reason to be used, great I salute you. On the other hand if you have too few units you limit tactical choices.

Well, while I would argue that "imports != quality", I'll agree that 750kb is too small (I'm a little nonchalant about KBs, personally; I rarely pay attention/realize how large/small things are). I think I copy-pasted that from a different contest. 3-5MB sounds reasonable.

Appreciate the apology, but no big deal. : ) Just glad people are looking & critiquing. Anything else (anyone)?

Well already wrote up what I think about the faction numerical requirments. Better to be minimum 12 units not must be 12 units. Usually I wouldn't mind much about theme but considering contest theme it is important this time. Oh and before you jump at me I would say that mini-race itself does demand arbitrary constraints such as low numerical limits for units/heroes/upgrades and has only the very basic unit types. There are creative limits and then there are handicaps. Also what does "Role" mean, things like hit'n'run race, swarm race, defensive?

Submission rules are nice but I would add also makers name in case two guys make trolls for example (lets be honest there will be trolls). The mb or rather kb limit is laughable I think coding alone will break it, like others said at least 3-5mbs.

Am I the only one who is not ok with polls being able to kick all entries besides 5 most voted one? Even with all those measures implemented I think all entries should be given equal chance to be judged by official judge. I just have 0 trust in polls.

As for judging criteria well I am against definition of "Theme Coherence" and existence of "Awesomeness". How do you quantify and objectively judge if something is awesome (even more funny when we consider what that definition of awesome really is). One is Lore criteria and the other can't be objective. Think GhostThruster simple balance/gameplay/presentation/creativity cowers things nicely.

Creativity = Originality & Creativity;
Gameplay = Role Coherence;
Balance = Melee Design Consideration;
Presentation = Theme Coherence;

Doesn't fit exactly but I think that is fair comparing with some liberties taken and GTs names are more clear. Also would stay in spirit with former contests minus the legion criteria. Weren't all recent contests judged by these standards?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Argh there just had to be a post while I was making mine. You are making me write more then I talk in a day. Heck my net even disconnected as I was writing this. I'll try to be as short as I can for last part. Feel free to skip to end part.

Kyrb0 you are overthinking gameplay creativity and for some reason merging it with story and lore. I think you are putting far bigger role of lore when this is contest is about gameplay. I honesty see no reason for no divine demons (those would be angels I say ) or elves that don't use bows (ugly stereotype and simplification of elves actually, only wood/sylvan elves really are that connected to bows) or dwarves turning in to snakes. I ask what is key definition that all elves in all mediums share besides ears (and even that was never said in Lotr books that made elves popular)? For you I believe it maters because it gives you guidelines for what your race features will be. But that doesn't mean you can judge someones interpretation of lore he is basing his race. Perhaps he created his own story and wishes to make race based of it and not the warcraft lore.

What was new in Wc3? Heroes, heroes that was the main selling point, the early stages of Warcraft 3 were less starcraftish then then end result. Wc3 was supposed to be more RPG based. Starcraft was the one who was the creative that was its selling point to break the mirror races, wc3 used the system that blizz decided it works. Besides lets not fool ourselves Wc3 is good because of modding not because of Blizz gameplay (I myself would have preferred less hero focus and larger armies but that is mine alone subjective thinking).

But that is all irrelevant and rambling, what maters is your point "constraint creates creativity". For some constraints suffocate, for some it guides their creative thinking. I picked Biome as it had interesting constraint while the others had mandatory features. I prefer cleaner sheet of paper. So key is to find that nice line between creativity that guides and constraints that suffocate. I do find it ironic though that you own theme is least constraining as it allows freedom to make what ever feature you want while others had demanding features that had to be included.

TLR
I have no idea anymore what I was saying...I believe something about moderation in everything is key. I just want us all to agree what biome and start already not argue about "creativity vs constrictions".

 

[GhostThruster]

long post @kyrbi0

I too think that some numbers don't matter so much as to whether it's balanced or not (i.e. a mini-race can be balanced against a full-race, etc)... But if we're talking about making Races, and we're comparing them to what exists, well, there are certain parameters, I believe.

there are certain existing conventions, and that's absolutely fine. but 'parameters' are something you, the contest host, are artificially imposing via 'legion' criterias, 'faction requirements', or the like. and the reasoning that 'all the melee races had it therefore entries must follow a certain convention too' is not sufficient justification.

i am of the stance that we should neither encourage, discourage, enforce, or prohibit 'factions with 6-8 units, direct damage abilities, and heroes with >6 attribute spreads', because that means more freedom and room for creativity for the contestant. whereas all i'm getting is that you want to explicitly prohibit divergent features simply because they are divergent from the norm. let the entrants put in what they want, let the judges decide if it works or not.

First and foremost: What is "creativity" to you? Similarly, what is "originality" and "innovation"? Defining these would help me understand what you're talking about.

More importantly, though, is this: Can we agree that constraints allow creativity to thrive?
[...]
I believe there can be too many Constraints, or the wrong ones... But based on what we're looking at here, I don't think this is the case. I don't think Constraints make anyone "cookie cutter" or anything, though it may feel like it.

creativity/originality/innovation in this context, pertain to their dictionary definitions. i am in agreement with you in that originality != making this out of scratch, but i don't see how this is relevant.

i am definitely in agreement that constraints can allow creativity to thrive. just not the ones you've imposed for both historical and logical reasons.
historical: you should check out the 'super unit' contest, was kind of a polar opposite to the enforcement of a 'full race', in that it explicitly enforced a foreign mechanic onto the three fabulous entrants. wazzz, who suggested the theme, argued that by forcing entries to have a super unit (ie. an artificial non-aesthetic constraint), that it encourages creativity within the design of the unit. i argued that's retarded because you are not giving more options, you are taking them away. if there was no 'super unit' requirement, an entry can still opt to implement a super unit. the reverse is not true. anyways, the contest was kind of horrible so yeah.
logical: generally, for a constraint to promote creativity you want that constraint to force an individual to think outside the box. the 'super unit' idea is an example of this, but it was too far outside. constraints of '12 units, 3 heroes etc.' are so deep inside the box not a single ray of light can reach it. and again, even without that restriction the majority of entries will (at least in the past) follow the general outline, but with the added bonus of allowing contestants to be more experimental if they desire.

Lol, so where were you when I was all alone defending the fact that Balance isn't nearly as affected by Faction-size as everyone seemed to think? : ) Glad to see I'm not alone.

well i noe ur joking but i actually was inactive for a bit, and still only have time for 1 (lengthy) post per day or 2, and did not see that.
secondly, soz lel u r alone. faction-size substantially influences the process of balancing, but i believe we should encourage people to be more ingenius in not only their gameplay mechanics and faction-size, but how they balance this. but as i said; "that's what the 'balance' judging criteria is there for". we shouldn't prohibit certain ideas merely because they have the potential for imbalance (relative to default wc3), but we should definitely mark an entry down if it is actually imbalanced.

Hey now. I appreciate that you have concerns/critiques, raise them, and (even better, since so few do) offer alternatives. But no need to get huffy about it. : )
[...]
Let me see if I can break it down a little more plainly, since I feel pretty good about it (though I am open to suggestions, see below):

apologies, i do not mean to get 'huffy' but i can be blunt at times.

it's not that your categories don't sufficiently cover everything (tho i just noticed you've entirely excluded a presentation/aesthetics/looks criteria), it's that they possibly cover too much redundancies, and definitely overlap in a few places. plus, the names are kind of complex for no reason. 'role coherence' and 'melee coherence' definitely bugs me;
- role coherence is particularly problematic because it is your awesomeness criteria, but made to look sophisticated with buzzwords like 'tactical synergy & gameplay style'. the one (false) differentiation is that it also judges 'gameplay theme' (e.g. as you say hit 'n' run, melee-focused etc.). we really should not assign ANY marks to an individual who can simplify his race into conforming with 1 or 2 attributes (if anything we should assign marks to more complex races that can't be defined as just 'glass cannon'). but the underlying issue is that 'role' is just a means to an end, the end being fun/enjoyability/awesomeness (and you can argue balance as well)! it's the same argument i am making for the faction-size requirement, but re-purposed. we should not give significance to the means, but measure moreso the effectiveness of the end.
- melee design consideration; the name itself inherently implies that the closer a techtree resembles the default races in 'balance, theme, style, complicatedness, and so forth' the more marks it deserves. no, the only thing that matters is balance relative to melee races.

As stated above, many of your elements appear to be encapsulated within my own (and I'm sure you could say the same about mine, lol). But just looking over it, I think it's pretty good... Although I'm curious how "polish" is different from "presentation" (could they be combined?). And 10 points for "Concept"? If it's essentially "did they follow the Contest theme" or not, it seems more like a "yes/no" or "yes/kinda/not really". :<

my criteria covers everything relevant to a techtree, without 'fluff'. no confusion, no complexity, it's easy for both judges and contestants to understand. for comparison's sake (the following is all imo);
-gameplay = awesomeness, which 'role' is an intermediary (or at most an irrelevant by-product) for, + a little bit of theme coherence
-balance = melee design consideration
-presentation = ??? + a little bit of theme coherence
-concept = originality & creativity + theme coherence

polish = smoothness of gameplay(though you've made me realise 'accessibility' is a more apt term for this). presentation = looks of the race. i agree with your swap. with the swap in mind, example of a presentation factor: not only good looking icons, but whether said icons have proper DISBTN (polish). example of a gameplay factor: not only a fun and unique spell, but one with a functioning hotkey (accessibility).

concept = 'did they follow the theme + did they introduce unique ideas, mechanically and aesthetically?"

Balance on a unit-by-unit basis might be difficult if there aren't some constraints for, say, units; if there is no "basic melee" unit, how would that compare to the Grunt/Footman? Or do you mean "comparing it if it exists"?

what i meant by a balance on a unit-by-unit basis is if a particular unit is relatively OP. a perfect example is undead. at the top level, every 1v1 racial match-up has roughly 50%. that shows overall balance. but watch a few replays, and you'll see that nearly every undead goes death knight + fiends, with minor variants along the way. play a few games, and you'll know why (hint: it's because dk is op, and so are fiends. they have much more utility than any other hero & t1 ranged respectively). to shift singular unit balance whilst keeping overall balance consistent, for every unit nerf you make you must also make another buff for another unit. for example, if i were blizzard i wud nerf dk move speed to 300, reduce death coil range by 100, whilst buffing crypt lord speed to 300 and shrinking the mana cost of the dreadlord's 'carrion swarm' to 95.

More importantly, though, my long experience modding has convinced me that "Theme" and "Role" (call them what you will ('aesthetics & style', 'presentation & gameplay', etc)... the names may change but they are essentially as I've described earlier) are two of the most important characteristics to any creation (Hero, Techtree, Spell, Unit, etc). I've made greatly "Themed" heroes for a while now (wasn't always the case... ), but it wasn't until I started paying attention to "Role" as well that my hero/faction designs really took off & made sense. Somehow putting that more explicitly in your Criteria is something I would look for.

the way i interpret it, 'role' is a means to achieving fun gameplay (and balance to an extent). it serves as a guideline in making decisions as to what mechanics to include, but 'role' itself is not so much a characteristic so much as what i have called it before, a by-product or intermediary. role is an intermediary in the process of achieving gameplay (which is a characteristic); it is a tool. and when it is not, it is a by-product of the design process. for the purposes of balance, if i decided my race should have strong siege capabilities but weak archers, i've just inadvertently created an 'artillery' role. it's not something i consider intellectual or significant enough to warrant praise for deliberately designing a race/unit/mechanic with role in mind.

***Just had the thought: by my very definition, "Originality & Creativity" as a Criteria can't possibly exist "in a vacuum", or in isolation; when determining that score, one has to compare to something. So there, that's at least 1 issue with my criteria that should be addressed.

it should be assumed by judges that we are talking about originality in the context of wc3 maps. if a contestant decides to steal a spell from 'dawn of war' i'd still award it a mark for originality if few other maps have done so. it's very hard nowadays to come up with a completely original idea.

I am sorry I missed the point you were making but I will point out that I did spend the other part of my post showing why arbitrary minimal limits make no sense. There is no imaginary 12 man requirement, there is no building numerical requirement (there are roles that must be covered) nor do all units have to share roles as other races. I think I have shown that main races are all unique and there really aren't that many hard rules shared by all 4 races especially regarding unit numbers and rolles. As you have pointed out judge the end product because what matters is how the product works not if it follows imaginary rules.

I will still say that 3 heroes should be minimal as heroes are one of the key gameplay features for warcrarft 3. We are still making teach-tree for warcraft gameplay not for whole new game so some things should be kept such as hero number, tiers, gold/lumber resource existence. We do seem to have a problem to agree what each of us sees as key feature that shouldn't be changed.

Oh and I do think unit number effects balance but also to many units risk that many units will share roles or be overshadowed by better units. Too many units lose point when you have really low unit limit and can't use most of them. If you can make 20 units that have reason to be used, great I salute you. On the other hand if you have too few units you limit tactical choices.

i am sorry i missed the fact that you were making the point i was making, but i am busy man. in fact this'll probably be my last post for a while (it is frickin' huge tho).

you have a point which i agree with. some parameters need to be created, but not something like '12 units only'.

you also have a point which i agree with. in my long-ass hidden reply to kyrbi0; "faction-size substantially influences the process of balancing, but i believe we should encourage people to be more ingenius in not only their gameplay mechanics and faction-size, but how they balance this. but as i said; "that's what the 'balance' judging criteria is there for". we shouldn't prohibit certain ideas merely because they have the potential for imbalance (relative to default wc3), but we should definitely mark an entry down if it is actually imbalanced."

 

[Kyrbi0]

Here we go... Finally. Sorry to some of you who have been "waiting" for quite some time; I'll understand if you're no longer interested in continuing the conversation at this point.

Also, while I relish this debate of opinions & don't mind walls-o-text, I'll admit that even my proclivities towards such are somewhat strained by the nature of this conversation. There was a lot of text to go through, and even more that I have written in return. I also did so over a period of many separate days/weeks. So I apologize if I repeat myself, or miss your true point, or whatever. I'll try to make it more clear (and more succinct) in the future.

Anyway, I got stuff for

• Kings
• JokeMaster
• RulerofIron99
• =and especially=
• GhostThruster
• VelkjoM

So yeah.

~~~

People are drawn to nice things, as always.
It holds true for all contests, spells/techtree/hero/icon/model/skin and even maps that eyecandy will draw in a lot of votes on the poll.

Since poll is gonna be a minority of the score and eyecandy is also but a fraction of a judge score it allows for users to gain up on other fields.

Yes, different skills arent equal but it would be dumb to limit creativity still imo. Its not like someone will make a dozen of HQ models.
Also id say that judges might even appreciate smart use of WC3 resources more as in creativity.

Oh and I don't think we should not allow people to make their resource if they want. Yeah they get model/texture advantage but looks shouldn't be that important factor when judging a race. Its the gameplay and balance I would place far more important role. I am sorry but cosmetic imports like Models, Icons, Skins aren't the key factor in this contest. Oh and don't get wrong idea I am not saying they aren't important but they are less important then other factors.

I guess that's just part of my issue; people like eye-candy. People will vote for eye-candy. Eye-candy can disguise the fact that nothing really interesting or creative was made.

I'm still not a fan of users being able to create their own resources (obvious exceptions being screenshot icons, dummy models, reimporting models for different textures or no hero glow, etc) for this contest. But as has been stated, if the Poll is sufficiently "weak" (like, 25% max I'd say), it should be alright. Hopefully. We'll find out. : )

you do realize that the decision to create a mini-race has its own risks that balance itself against its potential benefits. what i'm saying is a good mini-race entry requires as much input/effort as a good full-race entry, albeit in different areas. eg) while it's easier & quicker to complete a mini-race & find suitable assets, it's much harder & strenuous to introduce innovative mechanics while maintaining balance.

I dunno, I didn't have that hard a time of it.

it would be unfair if resourcefulness wasn't a legitimate and relevant skill in regards to techtree contests. a techtree designer must accommodate to his available resources.
furthermore, having no imports is forced equality. it restricts everyone's choices while still allowing the central 'problem' (being a 'problem' only if you consider resourcefulness to not be a relevant skill) to persist; certain races/themes have more abundant sources of assets than others. case in point, compare the number of night elf models to draenei models within wc3.

edit: forgot to mention that we already had the 'no imports' theme chosen before. and, at least for me, it was a pretty shitty contest to be involved in.


not really, historically at least. check out the innovation comp in particular. dio's 'cabal' race had some legit-ass models n shit but the best he got out if it is a high 'presentation' (or whatever. yes i judged, no i dont have perfect memory) rating. 67chrome's drow also looked insanely good, but it wudn't have saved his race if the gameplay criteria was stupidly given emphasis on (meaning entrants were rewarded for flashy gimmicks but not for how well-balanced said gimmicks were).

you will never lose to an entrant with sexy tailor-made models but a poor race, even if all you have are ideas (... and the several thousand assets available on this website).

I think any level of "resourcefulness" should be allowed.

Remember, a model or icon is just as much a resource as a trigger system. If we restrict model usage to only the models in the database, for the sake of fairness we'd have to do the same with trigger systems, because coding is another skill that not everyone has. Making a race without being allowed to code my own spells and systems would be incredibly boring.

Hrm. Well I suppose it goes back to what I & RulerOfIron were saying... It's not so much that "resourcefulness" isn't an applicable/comparable skill. (#1, it's unfortunately not easily comparable to the masses (eye-candy >>> ideas), though hopefully weakening the Poll will help that). It's more a question of "what are we testing?" This is a Contest to test our mettle, our skills... But what skills? Not our artistic skills, I'd say, or (strictly) our coding skills... Primarily our Design & Resourcefulness skills.

Since that's the "variable" we are "testing", everything else should be made a "constant", or pinned down to allow the changes in the 'variable' to be truly tested & recognized.

(A good example (I hope) is Super Smash Bros; when I wanna play with friends just to have fun, we pick a fun stage with weird obstacles, enable all the items on High, set a Timer instead of Stock/Lives and just mess around. But when I want to play SSB and "test my mettle", really see how good of a player I am vs. another, things get serious; 1v1, no items, a simple stage with few/no environmental hazards, 3-5 lives, etc etc.)

So yeah, 'Resourcefulness' is (ostensibly) an applicable/comparable skill... But since it is in fact the skill we are testing (again, ostensibly), everything else should be nailed down.

The argument of competitiveness also came up in the MMC thread a few weeks ago. Here's my personal ranking of what's important in a contest:

1. Having fun
2. The community acquiring quality resources
3. Bragging rights aka winning/competing

If another contestant has a skill that I don't, e.g. model making, that affects my chance of 3. Winning. But 1. and 2. remain unaffected. I'll still be having fun, and the community will get some nice resources. It's nice to win, but I think we should prioritise having fun.

Still have yet to finish my PM to you about this... But this is pertinent for the purposes of this conversation, so yeah.

This is perhaps one of the more interesting things that has been said in this conversation (deja vu, have I said this before?...). While I initially (upon reading your list) agree with your list, I realize(d) my actions have actually been to the contrary, and (as seen in my response/discussion with GhostThruster), I am realizing that I see these contests as more of "tests of mettle", places to match up wits with other users & see whose the "best".

If it were all for fun, why not just have a Poll? Why have Judges & Judging at all; that's really more of a serious side.

I really love seeing new resources for the community, and I do enjoy having fun, but to me these contests are a vehicle for a proper challenge, primarily.

Not sure whether that's right, mind you.

I am again gonna have to argue it isn't. A footman is balanced against another footman because the winner will be Footman A in 50% of the cases and Footman B in other 50% coming down to which footman started his animation first.

You can disagree with me, it is your right, however for a mini race to be balanced with other races you have to make sure power spikes happen at around the same time as do other races. This will inevitably come to pseudo tiers gated by unit research and/or buildings.

Picture this scenario:
You have 10-12 melee units and 5-6 range units of your T1. To compete with enemies you have to research. Now lets say there are 2 researches which work as a pseudo tiers unlocking your unit strength to battle vs higher tier enemies. We face a problem because of the way a research works, once it completes you will experience a HUGE power spike compared to the enemy who just upgraded to T2 because your units are affected instantly. This power spike would fluctuate way too much depending on how many units you had already built before the research (aka pseudo tier).

This means in order to balance the race one would have to do some math and calculate the average number of units built before research and balance the unit upgrades with that in mind to prevent big fluctuations in power spikes.

That's a really interesting point... I had never really considered the "power spikes" element to the design.

I would argue that a mini-race could still have some sort of system for "power spikes"... Or perhaps not a Naga-like race (but again, we've already basically blown that out of the water (LOLOL)), but think of Wc2 or SC; they didn't have "tiers" (well, Zerg did with the Hatchery, but crazily they were the only ones; Wc3 took that and made it true for all factions). In Wc2 or SC, different "tiers" were unlocked by moving up the techtree; basically barracks/research structures would unlock further structures.

It worked there; I bet it could be made to work comparably for Wc3.

@GhostThirster

Well yes end product is what it is judged but when you judge a races you judge it by testing its units and heroes and see how the components work with each other. Wouldn't it suck if race would in the end need just 1 unit spammed to win while making rest obsolete? You can't have the end product without the components after all.

... Yeah, that was a major problem with my "Steamwheedle Cartel" Goblins in that first Wc3C Race-Building Contest. I realize I'm pretty bad at actually play-testing & any balancing beyond "theory-crafting". :< Lol, those "Saboteurs" and "Dirtdiggers" were (apparently) killer...

...
Tier 3
- Heavy unit.

Just out of curiosity; what exactly do you think is meant by "Heavy"? Is that "Heavy" like "big", or "powerful/damaging" (but could be fragile/weak in constitution), or "heavy-duty", or "high HP"?

@Kyrib0

I didn't call myself hypocrite regarding unit number. I wouldn't say partial race because number of units is not really set for all races. It seems like they have 12 units but undead have less units then others, night elves have more thanks to druid morphing and also summon units push the limit even further. And not all races have all unit roles (though I don't relay know what is anti turtling role, you mean long ranged siege?). Here are some examples:

Examples
Orcs for example have 3 casters with usual caster upgrades while other races have 2 casters. Orcs lack dedicated anti caster they just have purge and disenchant abilities on their regular casters while other races have anti-casters. Orcs also lack heavy air unit and have instead medium air unit and they also have suicide/flying siege unit while other races have 3 flyers (Heavy Air, Anti Air and Scout (Gyrocopter) or Anti Magic (Fairy Dragon, Destroyer)). Their tier melee is their ultimate unit while other races ultimate unit is flyer. Orcs are also the only race with Aura unit.

Undead have just 1 siege unit while other races have melee(ish) siege unit. Undead also use units to harvest, have dedicated scout only unit and dedicated heal/mana restore unit.

Night Elves lack early melee units and have huntress instead. They have pure tank unit and tier 3 melee unit, they have two dedicated anti casters and as I already said more units then other races thanks to druid morphing and have 4 air units if we count archer-hippo combo. Even more with buildings walking.

Humans are sort of jack of all trades and it is usually their teach-tree that is default version of full race, the only really unique units are siege engine Anti air/anti building unit and Gyrocopter that is reduced to scouting yet still has combat upgrades. Heck most of the time custom races that I have sen use orc/human system of resource harvest and building construction.


So the most common thing in all races are tier 1 melee (elves disagree) and tier 3 melee, 1 basic ranged unit (elves laugh at me now), 2 casters, anti-caster, Heavy and Light Air unit (orcs disagree with last 3 examples) and long ranged siege and close siege (undead disagree). Then you add units to fill the gaps and add flavor. But all this is not a rule but rather a guideline as you can find units that have more unique roles or several roles even. So in short I don't think 12 is unit number that must be reached as there is no such thing in the races we consider full.

What is the real true factor is that all races must have 3 tiers and the most basic upgrades, buildings and units (number of each not a factor) and that race must be able to win and lose against the standard 4 races. Full Teach-trees are flexible you have a lot of room for imagination.

Alright... Now we're stepping onto terrain that I've been treading for a while. I think a post I'm writing to GhostThruster will be pertinent to this discussion, but for the mean-time, I'll try to respond.

The first thing to recognize is where I'm coming from.

• #1 is MCV's Design Guide to the Fifth Race; it definitely needs some fixing up but is a truly powerful look at the kind of analytics I engage in & the kind of modding I pursue.
• #2 (though not as much) is Interceptor's Creation Guide, for similar reasons.
• #3 is the vast majority of my modding experience (I'd say "decade/years" since I started mainly back in 2003, but we all know none of us spend every day of all those years doing this, so more like "weeks" all together ) - It has been in exactly the kind of stuff we've been talking about (theorycrafting, looking for patterns, determining what fits & what doesn't, etc). Literally; take a look at the attached Excel spreadsheet to this post; this is the kind of stuff I thrive on (and that's not even all of it; perhaps more of it is on paper/planners/notebooks I have carried with me all day long, & referred to nearly every day, for years.)
• #4 is the information brought about by the same mindset you find here; the idea that patterns do exist, and for a reason (most of the time), and finding & emulating those patterns will highly induce success in this endeavor.

First of all: Yes, every Faction has 12 distinct units (not including summons or toggleable morphs, see below). This, to me, is a hard-and-fast rule (primarily due to it's prevalence & the absence of any precedent-setting to the contrary) for a "Full Race". So since that's what I thought we were voting for, that's why I voted against it (for the reasons aforementioned earlier in the thread).

The Unit Count

1	Peasant	Peon	Acolyte	Wisp
2	Footman	Grunt	Ghoul	Archer
3	Rifleman	Troll Headhunter/Berserker	Crypt Fiend	Huntress
4	Knight	Demolisher	Gargoyle	Glaive Thrower
5	Priest	Shaman	Necromancer	Dryad
6	Sorceress	Troll Witch Doctor	Banshee	Druid of the Claw
7	Spell Breaker	Spirit Walker	Meat Wagon	Mountain Giant
8	Flying Machine	Raider	Abomination	Hippogryph
9	Mortar Team	Wind Rider	Obsidian Statue	-> Hippogryph Rider
10	Siege Engine	Kodo Beast	-> Destroyer	Druid of the Talon
11	Dragonhawk Rider	Troll Batrider	Shade	Faerie Dragon
12	Gryphon Rider	Tauren	Frost Wyrm	Chimera

As stated, I count transformations that drastically alter the unit's Role &/or are permanent (i.e. the Destroyer, the Hippogryph Rider), but I don't count units whose transformations are temporary/toggled or not markedly different (i.e. NE Druids, Headhunter -> Berserker, Spirit Walker's Ethereal Form). Nor did I count Summoned units (who, not taking Food or training-time, and being relatively easy to dispatch (Dispels), I don't feel should count).

While many of the Roles are mixed & matched, there are some definite trends & patterns.

So everywhere you pointed out discrepancies between any patterns in the factions, I would submit that they still fall under the kind of analysis that can be done.

TONS OF ANALYSIS, Please Don't Skip

- Each race has minimum 2 Flyers, though some (HU/UD) have 3 and one (NE) has 4 (5 if you count the Storm Crow-form of the DotC (merely for combat-placement purposes).
- Each race has a "Tier 3 Ownage Device" (see MCV's guide), trained from it's own ("dedicated" except for Gryphon Rider, now) building & only available at the final Tier. For 3/4 races, that "T3OD" is a Heavy Ranged Flyer... However, I would argue that the T3OD is always an "epitome" unit for that race, which makes the Tauren (for the Orcs) perfectly sensible. (And makes my "Tiki Torchmon", a short-ranged ultra-versatile guerrilla unit with magic & combat training, also sensible for the Trolls. )
- Each race has Siege; generally 2 but with exceptions. Every race has a "long-range/artillery"-style Siege, though 3/4 of them are the faction's one Mechanical unit as well (Demolisher/Meat Wagon/Glaive Thrower); Humans switch it up by having an Organic "artillery siege" (Mortar Team), then again by having a special "Tier 3 Super Siege" Mechanical unit (Siege Engine). Orcs have Raiders (light melee siege) & Batriders (light ranged flying siege & anti-turtling), Undead have Frost Wyrms (magic damage = lame, but Freezing Breath is the key), and Night Elves have Mountain Giants w/ War Club (limited but useful) & Chimeras with Corrosive Breath (again magic damage = lame, but the breath-effect helps).
(Perhaps part of the issue for Meat Wagons is how prevalent they already are for Undead (i.e. the whole 'corpse collection' thing; UD players are likely to have more of them already for non-siege purposes, whereas the other factions must build them specifically for that purpose)... Are they also/perhaps cheaper/quicker to build than the others?) (This also fits with my Trolls; they have a T3 heavy/slow long-range Aerial Siege "Bom'bat'ier" in the style of the Starcraft Zerg "Guardian", but also a T2 melee siege "Basilisk" to compensate for mid-game Siege needs)
- Anti-Turtling: My own term to define one of the two "Roles" that Blizzard introduced to each faction in TFT. (This stems from my belief, vindicated through study of Starcraft's identical phenomenon with the Brood War expansion, that Blizzard uses expansions to help fill in the gaps & defeat over-powered strategies from the original. This in mind, I believe one of the issues Blizzard addressed from RoC to TFT was "turtling" or holing up in a super-defended base with a massive network of defensive towers & such) Each faction, if it didn't already, was given a unit with an "Anti-Turtling" capability. Humans got Dragonhawk Rider's with Cloud, Orcs got Batrider's with Liquid Fire, Undead already had Freezing Breath so yeah, Night Elves got Mountain Giants (super-resilient, esp. to weak piercing damage) with War Club (aided by Corrosive Breath-d Chimeras) (And as pre-stated, the Guardian-style long-range bombardment of the Troll "Bom'bat'ier" is a quick answer to turtling. )
- Anti-Caster: See above, for the same reasons. In RoC (supposedly) casters were super-abused, having Piercing damage & being really really strong, especially in large groups. To combat this, not only did they create an entirely new type of damage (the aptly named "Magic" damage ), but they created units with "Anti-Caster" utility. Humans got Spell Breakers, Undead got Destroyers, Night Elves got Faerie Dragons (though Dryads were already pretty good), and I guess (head-canon) Orcs' Purge was good enough that giving them Spirit Walkers with an AoE Dispel did enough (then again, the whole 'Ethereal' thing, maybe not... Perhaps it was just a racial difference ("weak to spellcasters" in general)) (My Trolls were meant to excel at Anti-Caster utility, with a dedicated mounted Anti-Caster/Caster "Hexxer", as well as a late-tier "Ritual Warrior" with Spell Immunity & good ranged damage vs. fleshy units.)
- Each faction has 2 Casters (minimum), generally 1 Supportive & 1 Offensive/Disruptive. Priest & Sorceress, Shaman & Witch Doctor, Necromancer & Banshee (those two sorta mix & match offensive/supportive), DotC & DotT. Now why the Orcs have a *3rd* caster... Wouldn't be so bad if it was Undead or Humans or Elves (ok literally any other race), but just Thematically it doesn't make sense to me; Orcs are brutish & warrior-like, why casters?? Whatever.
(Note: This doesn't really count "pseudo-casters", units with weak combat capabilities and/or several spells (i.e. Faerie Dragon, Dragonhawk Rider, Destroyer, etc); I'm merely counting units that are 'literally' Spellcasters (i.e. have the "Caster upgrades") (Hedge Witch & Hexxer, being (primarily) Supportive & Offensive, fit this OK. I also, considering Trolls to have a propensity towards Magic, incorporated a 3rd Caster & Combat unit in the aforementioned "Ritual Warrior".)
- Each faction has Melee & Ranged in a wide variety; generally 3-5 Melee & 8-9 Ranged each (crazy that there's so much Ranged, right? well it gets crazier...). However, that's including workers & such; when you break it down to just "Combat", there's really only 2 (count 'em) "Melee Combat" unit per faction (with the sole (and very fitting) exception of the Orcs, who have Grunts/Raiders/Tauren (& even then, Raiders with Siege damage are better suited to buildings than raw melee combat, so it's like '2.5').

Bit of a SideNote, related:

This is something fascinating that I had never considered yet discovered very recently, actually. As I was working on my Jungle Trolls, I have long considered one of the primary "racial themes" for Trolls to be "focus on Ranged, not so much Melee". That in mind, I'd been making & polishing the techtree for a while, and settled on a "mere" 3 "combat melee units", differentiating them successfully. Could've had more... But then I did this count & realized how wrong I was.
I guess I just had in mind all the combat that goes on, and when I think of Warcraft I think of big armies clashing, so naturally I assumed there'd be about equal parts melee & ranged (thus 6 base combat units to start with: Basic/Intermediate/Advanced, Melee/Ranged). However, after thinking about it I've come up with at least 2 reasons why this might be the case:

• 1) Due to the way the game is structured, you can only 'fit' so many units around a given enemy. Having much more than 2/3 "melee combat" units really lends toward a clogged & difficult battlefield to traverse for Heroes, the most important element to any faction/game (and see next point)
• 2) Heroes being so prevalent (can't win without them) & central to Wc3's design (it is essentially an RTS with major RPG elements), and many of the standard Heroes being Melee guys (HU:2, OR:2, UD:3, NE:1, Tav:5 (TR:2)), I'm sure Blizzard considered that in combat, much of the time you'll have a Hero on the front lines, and you don't want too many (types) of Melee units clogging things up, stealing the limelight from your Heroes.
  
  All that being said, it breaks down to a lot more Ranged units, and that's something very recently I had to fix in my Jungle Trolls; somehow, laughably, I had an emphasis on Melee troops. xD

• 
  - Many factions, by combining roles & freeing up "slots" in the design schematic, are able to contain "specialty"/"utility"/"support" units. Good examples would be the ones you pointed out; the Undead with their Shades (scouts) & Obsidian Statues (support), the Orcs with their Kodo Beasts (support), etc. Each of them could be considered to be "missing" things in order to make that possible (i.e. UD lack mid-game Siege as you said, and/or combine Harvesting with their Basic Melee unit... Orcs lack the Airpower the other races have...) Also interesting to note is that even the "support" units tend to have an Attack (however weak) (the Shade, being a Scout and not so much 'support', is an exception) (So far, I've essentially pulled some "utility/speciality/support" stuff mostly through my "Ritual Warrior", a late-tier caster/combat unit analogous to the Starcraft Terran "Ghost" unit (not that good at combat, but can aid in a variety of settings). Part of this was due to 'freeing up' slots due to my Trolls not having an extensive Airforce (similar to Orcs; I mean, how many flying units fit in the Jungle anyway? )
  - Auras: Each faction has 2 Auras... Except the Orcs (TC: Endurance). For a long time I resolved this by rationalizing that Endurance Aura was just "soooo good" compared to the others... However it was pointed out that Orcs do have 2 Auras; just not on their Heroes like everyone else. Yep, the "War Drums" (+Damage) aura that the Kodo Beasts have. (Currently my Trolls are sitting pretty with 1 Aura ("Primal": +Damage/+AS or +MS, can't decide), so I'm still working this out, actually...)

• 
  
  There's literally tons more, but I just wanted to address a few of the things you brought up, rather than throw EVERYTHING EVER out there. : ) My point is, there are tons of precedents that have been set, and tons of interesting/unique/creative/innovative ideas that can be put forth, even within the "confines" of these faction design parameters I've talked about here. It's not meant to be restrictive (at least it doesn't feel so to me); it gives guidelines for the way the game works & then lets you go from there.
  One of the biggest things is the idea of "Feel free to mix & match, add & remove... But whatever you do, compensate". You see this principle a lot in MCV's Design Guide, and in my own design(s). (I've already scattered loads of examples up above, but as yet another consider Healing; each faction has at least 3 different 'mechanisms' (spells, abilities, items, buildings) for Healing. My Trolls have, like, none, maybe 1 or 2... But racially, they feature MASSIVE Regeneration bonuses innately (like HU/OR have .25hp/sec always, NE have .50hp/sec only @ night, and UD have a whopping 2.00hp/sec but only on Blight... Well so far (pending playtesting) the Trolls have ~1.5hp/sec... always). That really fits the faction, I feel, so it was a 'trade-off' for the sake of fitting the Theme & Role that I feel was appropriate.)
  
  The most important thing, perhaps, though, is the fact that this is all only true for "factions designed to be comparable/equivalent/played against the existing 4". If we're talking a Contest to make some other kind of race, all bets are off (heck, we can make our own parameters/criteria/etc). But if we're all talking about making factions that fit into Wc3, that should be comparable to the existing 4, that are essentially a "5th race addition" kinda deal... Well, I feel that this is the way it should be done, because it's the way that it has been done. There's plenty of room for loads of creativity in the parameters I've thrown out there.
  
  I will admit, however, my personal 'non-preference' for radically-different Factions (mechanically, etc), like the aforementioned "Kalimdor Raiders"... Well, let's just say that despite what I'm saying there might be a place in this Contest for them. However, they'd still fulfill some of the "basic requirements" to me... Which I guess is another good point to make.
  
  The next most important thing, perhaps, is to realize I'm not saying all of the above would be MANDATED by the Contest itself.
  
  It's hard to explain... But there are a whole spectrum (there's that word again ) of expectations for a faction in Wc3. Perhaps the most basic & obvious is that it should be a faction; it should have Heroes & units & buildings; it should gather resources & construct structures in order to train units. Period.
  Farther up the spectrum (but still pretty essential, I'd say) are the numbers; as stated above, there are some limits imposed. 12 Units, 4 Heroes, 10-11 buildings, 8-9 items... 4 abilities per Hero (3 lvlable, 1 Ultimate), no more than, say, 5 per unit, etc etc...
  
  After that, we get to things I consider essential for a race, but would not dare make "mandated elements of the contest", but rather "personally mandated stuff", stuff I would use in my entry & in my grading of other contestants (were I a judge). That would be more like all that stuff up above; "2" casters, "2" combat melee units, anti-caster, anti-turtling, no buff-stacking, etc etc...
  
  
  

  ...something about "cookie cutter"...

  I have further comment on the idea of "cookie-cutter"-ness.
  
  I would submit that there is a whole spectrum of "cookie-cutter"-ness that an RTS game (with it's various factions) can fit into, and what we're looking for may fall anywhere on that spectrum (though we should decide on a particular part of it for a given Contest):
  
  On the most extreme left end you have Chess; literally each & every unit is identical. Both sides literally have the exact same number, type, composition & even placement; the only difference between the teams is "one goes first, the other goes second".
  
  Closer in but still far out there (farthest of the PC RTS's, in my opinion) is stuff like Age of Empires. AoE games tend to feature tons of factions (spanish/british/french/teutonic/german/aztec/norman/etc)... But you'll notice that there are very little differences between the factions. Yeah, they each have different building aesthetics (how they look), some different upgrade-paths, a few unit-availability differences, and of course, the "end-game super-unit" that they can field is always unique (one of my favorite parts). But almost literally everything else is identical; workers getting resources in the same way, to build the same (type of) structures, which train the same (type of) units. Infantry, Archers, Cavalry; anti-infantry/archers/cavalry; siege & stuff.
  
  Very close to the middle, but still on the left would be Warcraft 1 & even 2 (can't really talk about 1 aside from what I've read, though). Wc2 featured 2 factions that were essentially perfect dualities of each other, right down to the type & kinds of units they could field & buildings they could construct & upgrades they could research. Sure, minor differences in stats helped, but we all know Footman = Grunt, Archer = Axethrower, Knight>Paladin = Ogre>Ogre Magi, etc. The only primary difference was in the Spells (& some of the specialized Upgrades); the 'caster' & 'battle-caster' units of the game both had different spells based on faction. That kinda made a big deal of difference for gameplay, but otherwise things were pretty much identical.
  
  A little bit farther to the right than Warcrafts 1&2 would probably be Red Alert 2. They had that "duality" thing going on (only 2 factions), and some definite 'copy-cats' (GI = conscript, engineer = engineer (lol), raptor = MiG, allied tank = rhino tank, spy = spy (lol), etc). However, they managed to pull the 'duality' off with a little more diversity than Wc2 I feel; Axis stuff was way heavier & more powerful (but slower), vs. Allied stuff which was much more light & versatile (but less powerful). Each faction also had some really unique units that don't match up 'just so' (Apocalypse Tank & Mirage Tanks, Chrono Legionnaire & Tesla Trooper, IFV & Flak Track, etc), as well as the Super-abilities which were unique & non-identical.
  
  Off to the farther right would be Starcraft. Starcraft definitely had fewer factions (3), and they definitely had some similarities (i.e. Basic/Advanced structures, some similar unit schemes (transports, flying casters, main town hall & worker units, etc), but there were loads of techtree differences, not just in Units but in construction/training/resource paradigms (zerg hatchery-barracks vs. terran & protoss techtree forks; morphing units vs. training units; marine vs. zergling vs. zealot (base level units not all equivalent); creep-building vs. warping in vs. constructing; repairing vs. organic healing vs. shielding strutures; etc).
  The most important & impressive difference was, of course, how drastically the gameplay (Role) differed between each faction. Zergs with their cheap, weak & massable biological units; Protoss with their expensive, time-consuming but powerful (mostly) mechanical units; Terrans with their 'middle-of-the-road' combinations. The result was 3 factions that, though with similarities, looked, played & felt remarkably different.
  
  (Also off to the farther right (not sure where in relation to Starcraft, to be honest) would be something like Command & Conquer Generals. You have 3 different factions, like Starcraft, but in a way that Starcraft doesn't, they seem to have a tiny bit more deviance-from-the-standards (whatever those 'standards' are) in the factions. I'm thinking primarily of the GDA (?); they had some pretty ingenuitive & non-standard units, buildings & methods that really made them different to play with than the Chinese or USA. I could be wrong.)
  
  ~
  
  Somewhere in between AoE & SC (closer to SC) would, in my opinion, be Warcraft 3. Warcraft has the 'fewer but more different factions' thing going that Starcraft had. It has come a long way from Wc1 & Wc2; the four factions are all very different within the confines of their similarities. In fact, it shares a lot of the similarities with Starcraft's design ("not equal but equivalent"); you have all the Roles filled but in different ways (also shares the "same # of units per faction" thing (well, all except Protoss, who with 13 instead of 12 are the odd one out for some reason...), the "research structure" idea, the "different construction method" thing), which is pretty cool I'd say. However, you definitely have some constraints (whether explicit or implicit) that help to shape & define each faction; things like being a more "soft-counter" game, having a certain number of units, of certain kinds/roles...
  
  I'd be hard-pressed to draw too much of a line between Warcraft & Starcraft... Except for this. Where I believe this spectrum is important is in considering "Balance-ability". The ease with which a game is balance-able is dependent on how many & how different they opposing forces/sides/factions are. That's why Chess is so easy to balance; with only 2 & identical factions, essentially, it's pre-balanced, and also perfectly balanced (the only imbalance, and the reason it exists as a game, being the aforementioned Turn Order)! AoE, despite having so many factions, gets around this & becomes 'balance-able' due to the marked similarities between factions.
  
  If we consider Starcraft as the pinnacle of mid-spectrum balance (which I would argue it is)... Well, part of why that's so amazing is because it is so non-mirrored. It's easy to balance chess (same units, same roles, same placement, etc), but difficult to balance a game like Starcraft. The fact that they did so attests to to the ingenuity and dedication of Blizzard.
  
  ~~~
  ~~~MY POINT (one of many >_<...)
  ~~~
  
  When we talk about Warcraft 3, I recognize that there are different ways of doing things. Heck, one of the most interesting entries in the Wc3C Race-Building Contest #1 that I took part in (I'm the not-so-awexome Goblins ) was Alevice's 'Kalimdor Raiders'. He did what almost no one else did & made a faction that was drastically different from the existing 4 factions in terms of all the stuff I've blathered on about above (DL & check it out, it was awexome; basically it was a "fight to survive" guerrilla faction with massive mobility & loads of interesting mechanics
  
  Stuff like...

  (mobile main base, HP-regen firepits, & interestingly, hampered gold intake; the regular workers (Kobolds) got gold at a reduced rate, forcing the player to depend upon raiding (Pillage & creeping & stuff) to get sufficient Gold). There's more but that's what I remember.
  
  
  Due to all these differences, his entry really stood out among the rest of us (who had essentially mimicked Blizzard's 'formula' for factions in order to assure equivalency). We all did fine & had fun, but while he didn't win, he sure got some praise from some of the greatest names in creativity & design there are (erwtenpeller & Rising_Dusk I remember at least).
  
  Personally, though, I wasn't a massive fan of it. Not for any reason aside from "how different it was"; I was expecting & enjoying the classic Blizzard formula of factions. I have massive respect, though, for his endeavors to 'shake things up'.
  
  Now could a game be made with factions as "different" or "deviant" as the Kalimdor Raiders, and still be balanced?? I suppose anything's possible. Now "should it"? Ermm...
  
  ~
  
  If that's what you're looking for, let's go ahead & make that a Contest Submission; I think it'd be an interesting (though difficult to enforce) "Design Space" rule (i.e. "make a faction that is Stylistically/Gameplay/Role different from the existing 4"). To me here, however, I feel comfortable & proficient at what (I presume) we are doing here; "making a faction that mimics the original 4, comparable and equivalent (not equal) to them". Call it "cookie-cutter"... But I would disagree.
  
  ~
  
  And actually, I think since I have had a good deal of time to think on my responses, I can come to terms with one major element. Yes, I'm trying to design a Contest that is exactly "up my alley"; i.e. caters to the kind of modding I pursue. It may seem like a selfish motive, but I do honestly feel that it could be a fun & interesting & challenging Contest for others as well.
  
  It's not so much that I have a problem with other types of factions or Contests for them. It goes back in large measure to the results of the Race-Building Contest of Wc3C; if you look at the results, the top 4 are all from a group I'm a part of of "race-modders" that really pride ourselves on our dedication & attention to detail. Jademus won with his "Magic" faction, MichaelPeppers took 2nd with his "Femme Fatale" faction, I took 3rd with my "Steamwheedle Cartel / Mech-Obsessed Goblins" faction, and Alevice took 4th with his "Kalimdor Raiders" faction.
  
  Thing is, while I enjoyed the Contest & we all had a blast, I'll admit to a bit of discontent. Not with losing, per say (I lost in large measure because of some really obvious, egregious errors with Balance I had neglected to notice through proper play-testing ), but with the match-up. Because if you look at it, almost none of the top 4 (and indeed, many of the other ones) could be considered "classical Wc3 5th-race-addition"-type stuff. Mike's "Female Race", while well-suited to a particular Gameplay Role, was crazily out-of-Theme for a Warcraft race; Alevice's "Kalimdor Raiders", while perfectly in-Theme (c'mon, 'Kalimdor', how much better can ya get? ), was definitely deviant/divergent in terms of Gameplay/Role (raiding, pillaging, little harvesting, constant creeping, ... all aforementioned). Jademus's's's "Magic" race was a little off in both (Thematically there's Magic in Wc3, sure, but it's generally one kind or another; not a whole lot of "animate magic"; Gameplay/Role-wise, it had some weird elements (KNOCKBACK WARD) and a crap-ton of spells; really a lot of micro-intensive stuff.)
  
  Now what's wrong with that? Nothing, if the point was to make "any" race. In fact, those entries (and many of the other ones) were some of the most creative, ingenious, innovative & creative things to come out of any Wc3 community I've ever seen! That's great.
  
  But I guess I treated that Contest (like I am treating this one) as one to make something "perfectly" fitting into Warcraft ("perfectly" being subjective, of course, but something determined by the judges, the voters, etc). That's what I did... And I felt like the voting/judging was a little like "comparing apples to oranges".
  
  (This relates to a point I'll make later about the last Hero Contest, so I'll leave that for there)
  
  ~
  
  So like I said. Let's totally have a "Make Any Role" Faction Contest (different, like the Kalimdor Raiders), or a "Pick any Theme" Faction Contest (different, like the Femme Fatales), or heck, a "Pick Anything" Faction Contest (yes, we already had the "innovation: no limits", but I for one say if something's a good idea, why not do it again (if people want it)? ).
  But somewhere in there (and ostensibly, this one here), I'd like to propose a "Make a 5th-(Warcraft)-Faction-Addition" Faction Contest; a Contest (Thematically) for the Goblins, the Furbolg, the Draenei, the Dwarves, the Naga, the Pandaren, the Trolls, the Harpies, the Tauren, the Murlocs, the Lobstrokk, the Tuskarr, the Forsaken, the Bandits, the Mages, etc... And a Contest (Stylistically (Role/Gameplay)) for the 12 units, 4 heroes, anti-casters, fliers & siege & casters, spells & upgrades, etc. Somewhere in that line of Contests, I'd love to see one of those; those are not only what I do (reasonably) well at, but what I love.
  
  
  

  I will still say that 3 heroes should be minimal as heroes are one of the key gameplay features for warcraft 3. We are still making teach-tree for warcraft gameplay not for whole new game so some things should be kept such as hero number, tiers, gold/lumber resource existence. We do seem to have a problem to agree what each of us sees as key feature that shouldn't be changed.

  The bolded statement above is a great example of what I'm talking about.
  ~
  I will be honest with myself; while I have been championing (sp?) the concept of "standards" & "precedents", I'm also a firm believer in 'pragmatism' (part of the "partial-race" argument). And the issue of Hero-count is one I think has enough "pros" to weigh in it's favor.
  
  So What do you guys think? If we go with the whole "ideal 5th-race addition / full-race-size" dealie, one which would normally require 4 complete Heroes, can we all agree to instead stick to just 3? (Since you can only ever train 3 at once anyway, this greatly lessens the time for testing & voting & judging; moreover it obviously makes things faster & smoother for each contestant (Heroes being such an important & relatively-time-sink-y part of the game).
  
  

  Oh and I do think unit number effects balance but also to many units risk that many units will share roles or be overshadowed by better units. Too many units lose point when you have really low unit limit and can't use most of them. If you can make 20 units that have reason to be used, great I salute you. On the other hand if you have too few units you limit tactical choices.

  Excellent point.
  
  
  !!!

  
  KYRBI0 REPLIED WITH LESS THAN 10,000 CHARACTERS!?
  
  
  
  

  Also what does "Role" mean, things like hit'n'run race, swarm race, defensive?

  Good question.
  
  Role, as I have learned to analyze, interpret & use it, is a term essentially meaning the "gameplay" characteristics of an element. "Gameplay", "Mechanics", "Style", "Role", "Part", "Function", "Character", and "Purpose" are all related, synonymical (sp?) words.
  
  Basically, when you look at a game like Wc3 or TF2 or whatever, you look at any given element (unit, hero, character, building, spell, faction, etc) and ask "what does it do?" "what kind of gameplay does it enable", "what role does it fill in combat (or otherwise)", "what style of play does it encourage", "what part does it play in the grand scheme of things", "how does it function", etc.
  
  Best way to explain would be examples, so I'll give 3:
  • The Heavy, in Team Fortress 2, is a big hulking 'bear of a man' from Russia with massive arms & even bigger guns (= THEME). He doesn't move very fast or turn well, but he has the highest base HP in the game & can lay down some serious suppressive fire, really whittling down enemy health quite effectively. He excels at mid-close range, but is an easy target for Snipers. What he does, then mainly, is 'Defense' of chokepoints & bases (= ROLE)
  • The Paladin roleplaying class, in D&D, WoW, etc, is a dedicated champion of the Light/holiness/gods, able to wield the holy light & their martial prowess to the defense of the weak (= THEME). Generally considered a "combat/support-caster" class, their link to the Divine gives them great Support utility (healing & buffing), but their emphasis on Strength & ability to use armor/weapons gives them some melee combat capabilities. (= ROLE)
  • The Crypt Lord, in Wc3:TFT (duh ), is a massive hulking insectoid patriarch, leader of the spider-people, but raised in gruesome undeath to lead his multifarious minions in service to the Lich King (= THEME). His thick armor plates & high STR & high HP make him a natural "front-line" combatant. His abilities only serve to accentuate that: Impale (nearly every Hero deals damage) stuns enemies, Carrion Beetles are summons that help him Tank, Spiked Carapace literally does nothing but aid his 'tanking' (+Armor & personal-Thorns-Aura vs. melee attackers), and his ultimate, Locust Swarm, deals negligible damage to surrounding enemies but brings back a great percentage of that damage back as raw HP for him; essentially creating a tank that only gets better the more people you throw at him.
    This bevy of 'tanking' abilities is restricted by his incredibly-low INT (and thus limited mana pool) and low AGI (making his attacks slow); so he's not meant to be dealing tons of damage (via combat or spells) necessarily, just soaking it up so others can (= ROLE).
  
  This is an element of design present in (I would argue) nearly every game, is my point. And in Warcraft 3 (faction design), it goes as much for Heroes as it does for Units, Buildings, Items, and entire Factions.
  
  ~~
  
  You didn't ask for it, but it fits & I might as well put it out there for clarity:
  
  Theme, as I have learned to analyze, interpret & use it, is a term essentially meaning the "aesthetic/story" characteristics of an element. It covers/encompasses "Looks/Aesthetics", "Presentation", "Lore", "Background", "Flavor", "Character" and other such related, synonymical (sp?) words.
  
  Basically, when you look at a game like Wc3 or TF2 or whatever, you look at any given element (unit, hero, character, building, spell, faction, etc) and ask "what is it?" "what does it look like", "where does it come from", "what kind of character is it", "what role do they play in the story", etc.
  
  Best way to explain would be examples, so I'll give 3:
  • The Medic, in Team Fortress 2, came about due to the need for a purely Support-based class; one that could Heal other teammates. True, every class needs the ability to defend itself, so a melee & ranged weapon were required, but primarily this class needs to emphasize mobility & support, rather than self-defense. (= ROLE). Valve chose to give the Medic class a "European flair"; essentially the Medic is a dismayingly-inquisitive German "doctor", complete with lab coat & little glasses. Outfitted with a (patent-pending) Healing Gun, he is glad to test radical & dangerous new technology on his compatriots (bit of a "Nazi" touch, if you want). He dispatches distant targets with his vicious Syringe Gun (medic = doctor > syringes), and anyone who gets too close gets a taste of his trusty Bonesaw (again, "vicious Doctor" stereotype) (= THEME).
  • The Rogue roleplaying class, in D&D, WoW, etc, is an answer to the need for both subtlety and finality; a powerful damage-dealing (DPSer) class who provides more surprise than support. Also needed was some stealth, scouting, detection & trap-disabling capabilities (= ROLE). The player picks & chooses exactly what Race to play as, but it's generally understood that whatever the race, the character will be light, quick, and deadly; not overly muscled or even intelligent, but always devious & cunning to the extreme. Often Elves or Humans or Halflings/Gnomes/Goblins are picked for this Role, outfitted with light-but-uncumbersome leather armor and a variety of small but lethal weaponry (daggers, poison, crossbows, etc; not big swords or staffs or magic too much) Above all, they strike from the shadows, and to the shadows return; mysterious & deadly (= THEME).
  • The Spell Breaker, in Wc3:TFT (duh ), is an answer to the need for a dedicated anti-caster unit for the Human Alliance. Focused on controlling & manipulating mages & their mana, this unit should "Break Spells" in terms of his ability to manipulate buffs to their advantage, steal control of summoned units, and especially burn away the mana of casters, dealing extra damage upon attacks. This unit should also (due to the campaign/storyline setting of Garithos taking all the "regular/Human" troops, especially the primary "melee combat" troops) be able to be a sort of "off-tank", with higher HP & thick armor, and with a short-ranged attack that puts them in front of the more fragile ranged units (archers & casters) (= ROLE). Due at least in part to the needs of the campaign (but also 'cuz they're cool, and it makes sense), Blizzard chose to make the Spell Breaker a (Blood) Elven unit. Thus the armor is given Elven swoops & swirls, runic engravings, wide-winged helmets (like a phoenix from the ashes, *cough*); the lines involve the Blood Elven's lament for a homeland lost & burning (*cough*) desire for vengeance... and magic. Sweet, sweet magic (= THEME).
  
  Theme is what gives the different Roles 'character', or a 'story'; they allow lore & background needs to present a compelling "Character" to become involved with, rather than just a "thing" or "entity" to manipulate (i.e. like Chess (though honestly, even Chess has this element if you look hard enough; bishops, knights, rooks, pawns, kings, queens; could just as easily have been "unit G2 can jump over others in an L-pattern", but they went with calling it a "knight" like a guy on a horse, jumping over others. )).
  
  Theme can sometimes even be "whatever you want" (as long as you decide & stick with it); take the Firelord for example. Look at his spells. Is there anything in there that's particularly intrinsically "fiery", aside from the Volcano ultimate & Lava Spawn Summons? "Soul Burn: searing magical flame... debuffs & damages target...". "Incinerate: magical flame that cling to the target, enhancing damage... & exploding".
  The answer is "no". Blizzard wanted a powerful debuffing/damage-dealing Hero with some pseudo-caster elements but high mobility & destructiveness, and essentially picked "fire elementals!" to go with that want. The abilities themselves could really have almost *any* Theme, but they fit together & on that Hero, so it works. I'll bet you I could make an equally compelling Hero, with those abilities/stats (ROLE) with some other character (THEME); heck, even a water elemental or earth elemental. But maybe a Necromancer or an Ancient or whatever. Seriously.
  
  ~~~
  
  

  Submission rules are nice but I would add also makers name in case two guys make trolls for example (lets be honest there will be trolls). The mb or rather kb limit is laughable I think coding alone will break it, like others said at least 3-5mbs.

  Yeah, we've already discussed that the limit is too low; I'll try to change it when I get the chance.
  
  And the name thing... Well, I kinda agree, but I kinda worry about file-naming-length, too. I mean, only the Judges really need to see the name... but meh, it's not a big deal, so sure.
  
  

  Am I the only one who is not ok with polls being able to kick all entries besides 5 most voted one? Even with all those measures implemented I think all entries should be given equal chance to be judged by official judge. I just have 0 trust in polls.

  That's a really good point. I copy/pasted that from Wc3C's Hero Contest, a place where I actually trust the Polling process... But yeah, now that I look at it, that's silly. I'll take care of that.
  
  Y'know, instead of having polls/judges being a percentage of a whole score, what if we just had "the most popular hero" (winners of the Poll) and "the best Hero" (winners of the judging)? Basically the Poll is just for kicks 'n' giggles.
  
  

  As for judging criteria well I am against definition of "Theme Coherence" and existence of "Awesomeness". How do you quantify and objectively judge if something is awesome (even more funny when we consider what that definition of awesome really is). One is Lore criteria and the other can't be objective. Think GhostThruster simple balance/gameplay/presentation/creativity cowers things nicely.
  
  Creativity = Originality & Creativity;
  Gameplay = Role Coherence;
  Balance = Melee Design Consideration;
  Presentation = Theme Coherence;
  
  Doesn't fit exactly but I think that is fair comparing with some liberties taken and GTs names are more clear. Also would stay in spirit with former contests minus the legion criteria. Weren't all recent contests judged by these standards?

  Not only am I OK with deviating from the judging standards of the past, I in fact think it would be wise to make them better.
  
  That being said, I appreciate your thoughts on that, but I have to say that it's really all Subjective. The whole thing. We can try (with numbers, or certain criteria) to make it as Objective as possible, but when it boils down to it, it's the Judge's opinion on how balanced/fun/cool/thematic/stylistic/interesting/creative/innovative/fitting your entry is.
  
  That being said (again ), I think allowing for an entirely & obviously Subjective criteria ("Awexomeness" or "Coolness") lets judges 'flex' a bit with their grading; they can try hard to be Objective for the others, but let their preference & reasons out for the final criteria (which, not being weighted higher than any other, won't mess things up too much).
  
  "Theme Coherence" shouldn't be that Subjective, though... "How well does the entry fit a Theme & the Contest Theme?", basically. If we do this thing, Desert Biome & full-race & all that, and I pick "Jungle Trolls"... Well, you (as a judge) better raise some issue; Jungle Trolls don't live/belong in the desert (out of Contest Theme)! And even if I did, say, Sand Trolls, but still have all these water-magic or turning-into-birds-spells... Well that just doesn't fit Sand Trolls (at least to me. Sure, there may be things we disagree on but hopefully we can agree that Sand Trolls should probably have some heat/desert/sand magic somewhere).
  It's also saying "looking at the faction as a whole, do they "feel" like Sand Trolls? Do they "look" like Sand Trolls (using ice troll models or whatever would be bad).
  
  So yeah, there's some Subjectiveness, but again, is that escapable?
  
  
  

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  Argh there just had to be a post while I was making mine. You are making me write more then I talk in a day. Heck my net even disconnected as I was writing this. I'll try to be as short as I can for last part. Feel free to skip to end part.

  Sorry to hear about your network (that has happened to me waaaay too often), but LOL! That's hilarious to hear. : )
  
  

  Kyrb0 you are overthinking gameplay creativity and for some reason merging it with story and lore. I think you are putting far bigger role of lore when this is contest is about gameplay. I honesty see no reason for no divine demons (those would be angels I say ) or elves that don't use bows (ugly stereotype and simplification of elves actually, only wood/sylvan elves really are that connected to bows) or dwarves turning in to snakes. I ask what is key definition that all elves in all mediums share besides ears (and even that was never said in Lotr books that made elves popular)? For you I believe it maters because it gives you guidelines for what your race features will be. But that doesn't mean you can judge someones interpretation of lore he is basing his race. Perhaps he created his own story and wishes to make race based of it and not the warcraft lore.

  This contest is about whatever we decide it's about, really... And I would like to decide with everyone that it's about both Gameplay & Story/Lore (i.e. Role & Theme), as they are both equally important to Design, in my mind.
  
  You yourself said "this is a contest to make techtrees for Warcraft, not some other game". So sure, make your Dwarves turn into snakes or divine Demons (lol, 'angels') if you want... But in Warcraft? No such thing. If it's meant to fit the story/theme/lore of Warcraft, then it should fit.
  
  

  But that is all irrelevant and rambling, what maters is your point "constraint creates creativity". For some constraints suffocate, for some it guides their creative thinking. I picked Biome as it had interesting constraint while the others had mandatory features. I prefer cleaner sheet of paper. So key is to find that nice line between creativity that guides and constraints that suffocate. I do find it ironic though that you own theme is least constraining as it allows freedom to make what ever feature you want while others had demanding features that had to be included.
  
  TLR
  I have no idea anymore what I was saying...I believe something about moderation in everything is key. I just want us all to agree what biome and start already not argue about "creativity vs constrictions".

  Hm. So much to say, so little time.
  
  #1) "find it ironic my own theme is least constraining": Interesting you should say that. Thing is, there are at least 2 different kinds of 'constraints'; ones on the Theme of the Contest (i.e. the setting, style, characters involved, etc) and on the Role of the Contest (i.e. the type, manner, operations, and functions involved, etc)
  Sound familiar?
  I generally prefer to have certain guidelines for the "design space" (the Role, how it's done) of a Contest, but selectively pick a given "setting" (the Theme, where it's done) for the Contest. Case in point, I'd love to just 'decide' on a format (5th-race addition, entirely-new-non-Warcraft-setting), but then the "Theme" I suggested is truly that, a "Theme"; contestants can pick whatever faction they want (with whatever Role they want, especially) to make.
  
  #2) "what maters is your point "constraint creates creativity". For some constraints suffocate, for some it guides their creative thinking." Very true. And I guess this is just where we might have to differ & thus find compromise; that fine line is (there it is again) very subjective, and while I feel I'm sufficiently on the "good constraints"-side of the line, you feel that I am more on the "bad constraints"-side of it. :<
  
  
  

  there are certain existing conventions, and that's absolutely fine. but 'parameters' are something you, the contest host, are artificially imposing via 'legion' criterias, 'faction requirements', or the like. and the reasoning that 'all the melee races had it therefore entries must follow a certain convention too' is not sufficient justification.

  See above. It is, but only if that's what we have decided upon as the "point" or "setting" for this Contest (i.e. "5th-race-addition to Wc3, compatible & comparable & equivalent to the existing 4"). If we instead go for something else (creating things like the aforementioned Kalimdor Raiders, Femme Fatales, or Magic race) in our Contest, then sure, yeah, that's not sufficient reasoning.
  
  

  i am of the stance that we should neither encourage, discourage, enforce, or prohibit 'factions with 6-8 units, direct damage abilities, and heroes with >6 attribute spreads', because that means more freedom and room for creativity for the contestant. whereas all i'm getting is that you want to explicitly prohibit divergent features simply because they are divergent from the norm. let the entrants put in what they want, let the judges decide if it works or not.

  I kinda agree (have to check that Alchemist reference... Woah, how weird. & not just the Alchemist, but the Firelord... And nowhere else I can see. How weird.), or rather like the idea of "at least not encouraging/discouraging"... But I feel like too much "creativity" in terms of Role (how the Contest is run, the kind of entries we receive) will result in us "comparing apples to oranges"; i.e. ...
  
  Ah, excellent, perfect example!
  
  Were you around for the last Hero Contest (#6: defend against the burning legion)? Aside from having one of silliest/most restrictive Themes I can imagine (heroes could basically be "Night Elf or Nothin'!", since they were almost all that were around back then... and loads of people got counted off because they didn't take that into consideration), it involved a clusterbomb of hero-types.
  For example, my hero (the "Nightwalker", a sort of feral super-werewolf w/ pack-based powers) definitely had some major flaws (as detailed on my blog), so I was OK with losing due to that. What I was not OK with was losing monstrously in the Polls because my dinky little "perfect for regular TFT" hero (aside from those earlier issues) just couldn't compete next to those SUPER-AWEXOME-MEGA-GRAPHICS-ULTRA-CODING-NEATO-CINEMATIC Heroes.
  People made all sorts of different types of Heroes for that Contest, and not the good 'types'; I mean 'types' as in "heroes for a Warcraft game", "heroes for a Footman War-type game", "Heroes for a DotA-type game". Those are all very different from each other, and really not comparable; like I said, Melee/Ladder/In-Game Heroes can be pretty boring compared to AoS heroes (think Tauren Chieftain vs. DotA's Invoker ). But good ladder hero design demands different things than good AoS hero design, and that makes a bad Contest, in my opinion.
  
  You may say I'm bitter due to my loss, but I assure you I have swallowed a big bite of humble pie in regards to the reasons for my failing. Again, I'm OK with losing because I tried but wasn't as good (or forgot to check something, though I feel really dumb about the latter), but I'm not OK with losing the Weight-Lifting Contest because I worked out my arms exclusively but it turns out to be a leg-press-weight-lifting Contest. :<
  
  "Don't bring a gun to a knife fight" is a similar adage.
  
  ~~
  
  So that's the thing. I feel like allowing anything in terms of Faction Design will mean we have half-races against full-races against partial-races against something-races... Chaos. And really hard to compare between them (what Judging is all about, comparison).
  
  

  creativity/originality/innovation in this context, pertain to their dictionary definitions. i am in agreement with you in that originality != making this out of scratch, but i don't see how this is relevant.

  It's very pertinent, and I'm glad to hear you agree.
  
  Basically, if creativity/originality/innovation is as you & I described, then the whole concept of Constraints lies in "providing just the right number/type of tools for people to put together in interesting ways".
  
  Where that line is... Well, it looks like many pages & hours of work has gone into deciding that. Not sure we're there yet, but hopefully something can work out.
  
  

  i am definitely in agreement that constraints can allow creativity to thrive. just not the ones you've imposed for both historical and logical reasons.
  
  historical: you should check out the 'super unit' contest, was kind of a polar opposite to the enforcement of a 'full race', in that it explicitly enforced a foreign mechanic onto the three fabulous entrants. wazzz, who suggested the theme, argued that by forcing entries to have a super unit (ie. an artificial non-aesthetic constraint), that it encourages creativity within the design of the unit. i argued that's retarded because you are not giving more options, you are taking them away. if there was no 'super unit' requirement, an entry can still opt to implement a super unit. the reverse is not true. anyways, the contest was kind of horrible so yeah.
  
  logical: generally, for a constraint to promote creativity you want that constraint to force an individual to think outside the box. the 'super unit' idea is an example of this, but it was too far outside. constraints of '12 units, 3 heroes etc.' are so deep inside the box not a single ray of light can reach it. and again, even without that restriction the majority of entries will (at least in the past) follow the general outline, but with the added bonus of allowing contestants to be more experimental if they desire.

  Hm. That's ironic, because Wc3C ran their 2nd big "Race-Building Contest" with the exact same theme, after I had already left on my mission for 2 years... It came from Dusk, who I implicitly trust in matters of 'design', but I'm not sure I would've been a big fan of it (and actually, I don't know how successful it was. I think it was reasonably successful).
  
  So yeah, I dunno. I love super-units (Mothership, Thor, etc), but I'm just so stuck in my mindset of enjoying "classic Warcraft-style races" that I have a hard time accepting it.
  
  You said this:
  

  i argued that's retarded because you are not giving more options, you are taking them away. if there was no 'super unit' requirement, an entry can still opt to implement a super unit. the reverse is not true.

  Maybe that's the issue; are you saying that you believe any given Contest with less in terms of 'options' is intrinsically less open to creativity/originality/innovation and is instead too Constrained? Because I would disagree.
  
  Raw number of options does not = Creativity. Sure you can have too few constraints/options/tools/elements, but you can also have too many, I believe. Just the purely literal existence of an option or group of options doesn't necessarily indicate "creative openness", I would argue.
  
  

  well i noe ur joking but i actually was inactive for a bit, and still only have time for 1 (lengthy) post per day or 2, and did not see that.
  secondly, soz lel u r alone. faction-size substantially influences the process of balancing, but i believe we should encourage people to be more ingenius in not only their gameplay mechanics and faction-size, but how they balance this. but as i said; "that's what the 'balance' judging criteria is there for". we shouldn't prohibit certain ideas merely because they have the potential for imbalance (relative to default wc3), but we should definitely mark an entry down if it is actually imbalanced.

  Sorry to hear that. :< I too have issues getting on & posting sometimes.
  ~
  You make a good point; we don't punish a man for the potential to commit crimes, but for the crime itself. Similarly, until we've played it I can't just arbitrarily 'mark him down' for being "potentially imbalanced"... Unless it's obvious, I suppose (unit with permanent invincibility, unit with one-hit-insta-kill, etc).
  
  

  apologies, i do not mean to get 'huffy' but i can be blunt at times.

  Apology accepted. : )
  
  

  it's not that your categories don't sufficiently cover everything (tho i just noticed you've entirely excluded a presentation/aesthetics/looks criteria), it's that they possibly cover too much redundancies, and definitely overlap in a few places. plus, the names are kind of complex for no reason. 'role coherence' and 'melee coherence' definitely bugs me;
  - role coherence is particularly problematic because it is your awesomeness criteria, but made to look sophisticated with buzzwords like 'tactical synergy & gameplay style'. the one (false) differentiation is that it also judges 'gameplay theme' (e.g. as you say hit 'n' run, melee-focused etc.). we really should not assign ANY marks to an individual who can simplify his race into conforming with 1 or 2 attributes (if anything we should assign marks to more complex races that can't be defined as just 'glass cannon'). but the underlying issue is that 'role' is just a means to an end, the end being fun/enjoyability/awesomeness (and you can argue balance as well)! it's the same argument i am making for the faction-size requirement, but re-purposed. we should not give significance to the means, but measure moreso the effectiveness of the end.
  - melee design consideration; the name itself inherently implies that the closer a techtree resembles the default races in 'balance, theme, style, complicatedness, and so forth' the more marks it deserves. no, the only thing that matters is balance relative to melee races.

  That's good to hear, and I'm glad you clarified that (overlapping, not not covering enough).
  
  I guess I don't mind a little bit of overlap (not sure it's possible to completely avoid, to be honest...). But I worked hard to make the names as meaningful as possible. I think we can both agree in our distaste for stuff like "the legion" (I still don't get that...).
  
  "Role Coherence" is... well... how adequately the various elements of the faction (& the faction as a whole) cohere (stick to, align with, are alike to, etc) their given Roles. Whatever that Role is, stick to it.
  [[see: my definition of "Role" above; very pertinent]]
  (i.e. my Jungle Trolls. They have a focus on fielding powerful-but-fragile forces in guerrilla-style combat, emphasizing ranged & magic. At least, that's what I said when I submitted them to the contest, but do they really?
  Of course, the whole faction can't all be ranged/casters; there'll be some siege, some workers, some melee, etc. But do each of them perform there given Role the way they should? Are my "tanks" good tanks, and my DPSers good DPSers? Do my siege units actually fulfill that Role effectively? Etc.)
  
  Granted, we don't want things to be too simple... But even compared to the existing factions, you can boil the "faction role" to a couple of elements. Same with the "unit/hero/building/ability roles".
  
  "Effectiveness of the end" means nothing if the things we're comparing to aren't comparable. This is mostly my earlier arguments repurposed, as well. If we're making 5th-race-addition-style factions, that's what we compare it to. If not, find something else?
  
  "Melee Coherence" is the same as right above & much earlier; you're absolutely right it has 0% importance if we aren't making factions styled as "5th-race-additions to existing 4 Warcraft races". But it has 100% relevance if we are... And I'm hoping we are/will.
  
  

  my criteria covers everything relevant to a techtree, without 'fluff'. no confusion, no complexity, it's easy for both judges and contestants to understand. for comparison's sake (the following is all imo);
  -gameplay = awesomeness, which 'role' is an intermediary (or at most an irrelevant by-product) for, + a little bit of theme coherence
  -balance = melee design consideration
  -presentation = ??? + a little bit of theme coherence
  -concept = originality & creativity + theme coherence

  As aforementioned in my big "definition/examples" bit about Role & Theme, I think those two are important enough to (any) Design-related Contest to be considered part of the criteria. After that, sure, maybe a few more criteria, but not many (I agree in not having too many to not confuse people).
  
  You basically have Role in "Gameplay"... And your "Concept" + "Presentation" is essentially Theme (see below for a point on why I didn't have Presentation, exactly). "Balance" is (see below), I agree, distinct enough from Theme & Role to be it's own separate category, so I agree there... But I still feel you're missing "Originality/Creativity" as a distinct criteria (I see it's in "Concept", but consider this: A contestant basically recreates one of the existing races. Well, by definition they have well-defined Themes, well-fulfilled Roles, and naturally Balanced... But it sure isn't Creative. So it can stand alone.)
  Finally, I still kinda like "awexomeness" for the reasons stated above. But if push comes to shove, I can see it taken off. That would make 4-5 Criteria. Eh?
  
  

  polish = smoothness of gameplay(though you've made me realise 'accessibility' is a more apt term for this). presentation = looks of the race. i agree with your swap. with the swap in mind, example of a presentation factor: not only good looking icons, but whether said icons have proper DISBTN (polish). example of a gameplay factor: not only a fun and unique spell, but one with a functioning hotkey (accessibility).
  
  concept = 'did they follow the theme + did they introduce unique ideas, mechanically and aesthetically?"

  "Mechanically & Aesthetically", perfect. That's "Role & Theme" right there. : )
  
  And yeah, glad I could convince you to swap those two. Makes more sense, and I agree (having DISBTN's might not mean much for gameplay, but it sure makes things look nice).
  
  

  what i meant by a balance on a unit-by-unit basis is if a particular unit is relatively OP. a perfect example is undead. at the top level, every 1v1 racial match-up has roughly 50%. that shows overall balance. but watch a few replays, and you'll see that nearly every undead goes death knight + fiends, with minor variants along the way. play a few games, and you'll know why (hint: it's because dk is op, and so are fiends. they have much more utility than any other hero & t1 ranged respectively). to shift singular unit balance whilst keeping overall balance consistent, for every unit nerf you make you must also make another buff for another unit. for example, if i were blizzard i wud nerf dk move speed to 300, reduce death coil range by 100, whilst buffing crypt lord speed to 300 and shrinking the mana cost of the dreadlord's 'carrion swarm' to 95.

  Hm. Ok, I see what you're saying. While that would be the ideal (make every unit useful in different situations; minimize the "one-godmode-unit strategy" situation), I must admit that aside from ballpark balancing & theorycrafting, there's really no way to assure that. In fact, it may not be possible at all; we always talk about Starcraft (the original) as "dah best!", but aren't there certain unit combinations that are just plain 'n' simple better than any other?
  
  But yeah, try to come up with at least a few solid strategies for players to use in your faction.
  
  

  the way i interpret it, 'role' is a means to achieving fun gameplay (and balance to an extent). it serves as a guideline in making decisions as to what mechanics to include, but 'role' itself is not so much a characteristic so much as what i have called it before, a by-product or intermediary. role is an intermediary in the process of achieving gameplay (which is a characteristic); it is a tool. and when it is not, it is a by-product of the design process. for the purposes of balance, if i decided my race should have strong siege capabilities but weak archers, i've just inadvertently created an 'artillery' role. it's not something i consider intellectual or significant enough to warrant praise for deliberately designing a race/unit/mechanic with role in mind.

  Hum. Well, having read my definition above, I hope you can see that I would heartily disagree with you. "Role" is just as intrinsic to good design as "Theme" (perhaps even moreso, since it affects the way the game is played). Maybe we're calling it by different names and what I call "Role" you call something else ("gameplay", etc). But yeah.
  
  I'll give you a great example from my own modding. A while back, my Troll heroes were AWEXOME!! I had the greatest & coolest & most creative & unique ideas... And I also had a PERFECT fit in terms of Theme (no "wind elementals" or "divine magic" in these Jungle Trolls!) for each Hero.
  
  But my Heroes sucked. Why?
  
  Because I had never truly defined the Role they played.
  
  Yeah, they each had a certain 'function' or 'style of gameplay' that they leaned towards; my "big tribal chieftain" definitely worked OK as a front-line warrior, and my two caster heroes (spirits & brews) were good at casting neat spells that fit them... But several of the abilities were really not well-thought out, and "ruined the groove" of how they actually played.
  (I understand it may be confusing for me to talk in generalities, and I'd love to go into greater detail & examples, but I've literally already spent all day writing this, so I'll save that for Private if you're interested. )
  
  When I finally 'discovered' the importance of Role, everything changed. Suddenly it wasn't "is this a cool idea" or "can I make this idea fit", it was "what's his Role, and what's his Theme? alright, now What can I make that accentuates both of those?"
  
  So yeah, Role is super-important to me.
  
  

  it should be assumed by judges that we are talking about originality in the context of wc3 maps. if a contestant decides to steal a spell from 'dawn of war' i'd still award it a mark for originality if few other maps have done so. it's very hard nowadays to come up with a completely original idea.

  Exactly, it's "original" for Wc3 but not for Dawn of War. But that's ok, because (ostensibly) we're making this for & to fit into Warcraft 3. See above.
  
  

  i am sorry i missed the fact that you were making the point i was making, but i am busy man. in fact this'll probably be my last post for a while (it is frickin' huge tho).

  Awwwww man. Again, sorry to hear that. I am grateful for the large posts, believe it or not; nothing frustrates me more than to have people refuse to defend their position (*cough*), or provide support (*cough*), or respond to my attempts to do so (*cough*).
  
  I understand if you have to post quickly/shortly from now on. I'll try (hard(er)) to respect that by NOT CLOSING DOWN EVERYONE'S BROWSER WITH THOUSANDS OF CHARACTERS.
  
  ~~~
  
  [RAINBOW]MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN THAT WAS LONG.[/rainbow]. I would not be surprised in the least if that is the longest post I have ever written. Granted, a lot of it is Quotes from others, but still, even if 50% or more is mine... Criminy.
  
  Sorry to shut down the Internet guys. I'm grateful, though, to have people I can discuss things about which I feel passionately with.
  (That was some of the worst grammar I've ever seen...)
  
  Now just to re-re-read it for proofreading. Shouldn't take more than a week. xD
  
  Respectfully,
  
  Kyrbi0

 

[Footman16]

5th Warcraft-race is the best idea in my opinion, it's what I'd go with. It sets a basic standard and is easy to follow, again, in my opinion.

 

[VeljkoM]

I'll just say first that I simply find laconic way speaking better for me. Short, simple and understandable and tend to avoid sesquipedalian long winded speeches. I don't even like to use words that aren't used in everyday speech if i can help it.

- I still feel that there aren't 12 units exactly. Summon units although don't cost food are instead limited differently with timer, and morphing druids are at least to me completely different units. Both summoning and morphs can be used to cheat the limit. And honestly some units I just never use so they feel like they exist just to fill the gap to reach 12 number and I really hate units with no use or have role that is already covered.

Regarding patterns there is little thing. How many actually include all 4 races? Lets see it in your list:

Text

-Min. 2 flyers yet only one race has two flyers and that is orcs and both can be made at tier 2 with latest patch. Also the only thing that flyers share between all 4 races is that one unit has anti-turtling ability (I sort of would call it siege role really). Orcs have medium flyer and (weak) siege/aa flyer; humans get scout, heavy flyer and AA/anti-turtlinlg; undead get heavy flyer, light flyer (high AA damage and low ground damage) and anti magic flyer (why is Destroyer 5 food anyway he isn't that good); and elves get melee pure AA light flyer that can combine to be light air unit, heavy anti-ground (magic attack eats units really)/building only flyer (Corrosive breath adds siege damage), anti magic flyer and caster flyer.
- Always long siege no questions there, but the secondary siege is lacking for undead. All have flyers with siege/anti turtling abilities though
- Anti-casting comes in two flavors. Dispel and caster killing. Orcs have dispel but no dedicated caster hunter besides regular ranged units. Undead tried to compensate with Anti-magic shell but wasn't enough and they got Destroyer who eats buffs. Humans used to be special with priest dispel that now most have and got most dedicated anti-caster who counters enemy buffs, summons and even eats mana. Night Elves cower buff dispelling with dryad while fairy dragon punishes caster who dare to cast.
- Casters we could say offensive and support (I know I have) but orc shaman has offensive lightning and witch doctor healing is supportive. Undead both casters are alo a mix but both are more oriented to causing harm to enemy rather then agument their own troops. It seems casters are more complicated then on first look. Unsure why orcs of all got 3rd caster but disenchant had to be main balance reason as purge can't be enough (if it was auto cast maybe).
- I think there is more ranged because casters have attack at all which serves mostly probably just so they wouldn't go to front lines like units with no attack tend to do. Then we get long ranged siege who need it to counter towers, anti casters so they could catch casters and flyers. Melee units are more there to be battle line and tank while ranged units do their job. Oh Raider siege attack while bad against melee units is great against unarmored such as casters and with medium armor they can handle pierce attacking units.
- Its those slots that I think actually add flavor to races as they are unique.
- Hm always 2 auras that is good observation. I would say orcs still get better deal with Endurance Aura and Drums, add bloodlust and scroll of speed and watch brute might of the orcs. Humans anyway have high armor while thorns and vampire aura aren't really that great (really low values and only effect melee attacks both?).
- Healing and protection is also an important feature and before RoC undead were at big disadvantage and orcs too at early game. Humans have early heal item and hero for early healing and mid game they get caster with heal and Inner Flames; Night Elves have Moon Well and it seems to be enough, I am sceptically that night reg works only at night. works as intended; Orcs recived Hero with heal and early heal item to compensate for the former heal handicap they had (healing wards were at tier3); Undead only had blight (skeptical about this) and Hero abilities but received Statue/destroyer to fill healing/anti-buff role.

All of these patterns are more like guidelines to help then strict rules. I too prefer to stick to the more blizzard look then to go far with changes. I think that I agree with you after reading that evil post of yours and would say all of this serves as guidelines that we should follow but not strict rules with no compromise. We are making warcraft 3 gameplay based teach-tree.

Also regarding cookiecutter thing I though point was that many custom races end up being based of humans (or sometimes the other 3 races) with zero creativity and just model and stat changes. Perhaps they don't appear on contests but there are to many of them because many people think imports make a race. Not that giant story regarding history of RTS games.

Also I still think point of this contests is gameplay aspect. Lore IS important I don't say it isn't but not as judging matter but as help to us to design our entries. And if someone makes jungle trolls for sand biome he gets kicked out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But I would rather if we would return to the main topic. Sure all this is interesting but it is not getting us near finally starting this competition. If I have to talk about philosophy regarding race making I would rather go to the PMs. I mean come on we are month overdue and honestly I am no longer convinced I'll have time to participate.

I would like though to share more about why I have chosen biome. When I first saw biome I though it was great change from making political or ethnic faction and instead making incarnation of environment. But I was wrong the theme is to make a faction that happens to live on selected biome. So lets say forest gets picked if it was how I imagined it would be race that represent incarnation of forest itself when instead we are allowed to make any race that happens to live in forest. Like example Forest Trolls who besides having forest in their name aren't really representing forest and most will concentrate on their mayoincatec nature. I honestly wanted to make desert/swarm race that embraced the sand/wind/heat/death and had desert creatures as units. This is why for me same biome for all is illogical because I missed the point which I thought was more unique then just using biome as way to select a race and make it.

So I ask all just to select biome from where to pick our races and then finally start. At this point I don't even care what wins I just want to participate before I am so busy I won't see daylight again.

 

[Kyrbi0]

I too prefer to stick to the more blizzard look then to go far with changes. I think that I agree with you after reading that evil post of yours and would say all of this serves as guidelines that we should follow but not strict rules with no compromise. We are making warcraft 3 gameplay based teach-tree.

Alright, so that's 2 votes towards "warcraft 3 gameplay-based techtree" (assuming you mean in the style of a "5th-race-addition").

*sniff* You really read it? All of it? I'm so gratified..

So I ask all just to select biome from where to pick our races and then finally start. At this point I don't even care what wins I just want to participate before I am so busy I won't see daylight again.

Lol, same here. I believe I already "voted" on that, so I'll try and 'collect the data', see where we stand.

But I would rather if we would return to the main topic. Sure all this is interesting but it is not getting us near finally starting this competition. If I have to talk about philosophy regarding race making I would rather go to the PMs. I mean come on we are month overdue and honestly I am no longer convinced I'll have time to participate.

Well, I would argue that this stuff is important to determine how our Contest will be run. I don't want what has been happening in Contests all over the site for too long; heck, even just today in the Icon Contest someone got upset that they couldn't use their own custom brushes for the contest (a rule which was unstated but apparently "obvious"). Same deal with (if you really read my whole post ) the last Hero Contest.

I don't really even care so much anymore whether we do "5th-race-addition" or "new-Role-race" or "new-Theme-race" or both or whatever. (alright, I do care, wanting the former, but if I don't get it I'd still try to participate). But I do not want us to not have that decided for this Contest & thus have too many non-comparable entries (like the Hero Contest).

I would like though to share more about why I have chosen biome. When I first saw biome I though it was great change from making political or ethnic faction and instead making incarnation of environment. But I was wrong the theme is to make a faction that happens to live on selected biome. So lets say forest gets picked if it was how I imagined it would be race that represent incarnation of forest itself when instead we are allowed to make any race that happens to live in forest. Like example Forest Trolls who besides having forest in their name aren't really representing forest and most will concentrate on their mayoincatec nature. I honestly wanted to make desert/swarm race that embraced the sand/wind/heat/death and had desert creatures as units. This is why for me same biome for all is illogical because I missed the point which I thought was more unique then just using biome as way to select a race and make it.

Ahhhhh... That would explain the confusion. I'm sorry, I tried to be pretty clear when I wrote up the idea (but it was an idea "off the top of my head", so meh)...

Yeah, "Forest" means anything that you can rationalize lives in the Forest: (Blood/High/Wood Elves, Forest Trolls, Furbolgs, Nature-creatures, Druids, etc... heck, Goblins cutting down trees, or demon-corrupted ancients (& satyrs), or even grassy furbolgs. ). Same for "Desert", "Mountain", "Ice-World", "Island (sea & land)", etc.

~~~

... laconic way ... I don't even like to use words that aren't used in everyday speech if i can help it.

Lol. Had to look that up for a reminder.

- I still feel that there aren't 12 units exactly. Summon units although don't cost food are instead limited differently with timer, and morphing druids are at least to me completely different units. Both summoning and morphs can be used to cheat the limit. And honestly some units I just never use so they feel like they exist just to fill the gap to reach 12 number and I really hate units with no use or have role that is already covered.

I guess we'll just have to disagree there.
But more importantly, who's fault is it if a race-creator makes a race & people don't play with all 12 units? Happens all the time to Blizzard... And it's not their fault people don't use, say, Gargoyles or whatever.

Regarding Patterns

-Min. 2 flyers yet only one race has two flyers and that is orcs and both can be made at tier 2 with latest patch. Also the only thing that flyers share between all 4 races is that one unit has anti-turtling ability (I sort of would call it siege role really). Orcs have medium flyer and (weak) siege/aa flyer; humans get scout, heavy flyer and AA/anti-turtlinlg; undead get heavy flyer, light flyer (high AA damage and low ground damage) and anti magic flyer (why is Destroyer 5 food anyway he isn't that good); and elves get melee pure AA light flyer that can combine to be light air unit, heavy anti-ground (magic attack eats units really)/building only flyer (Corrosive breath adds siege damage), anti magic flyer and caster flyer.

"MINIMUM" means "at least"... So yeah, that fits every faction. Not sure I understand. :?
HU & UD have 3, NE have 4-5, sure, but minimum 2.

Also, while the Corrosive Breath upgrade does technically enable the Siege damage attack of the Chimera, the Corrosive Breath ability is merely a passive that gives a DoT effect to buildings (which makes it perfect for a new, non-buff-stacking Poison for enemy units //MY SECRET DON'T TELL ANYONE)

Also the only thing that flyers share between all 4 races is that one unit has anti-turtling ability (I sort of would call it siege role really).

It's kinda like Siege, yes... But "siege" is, in particular, "good vs. structures", whereas "anti-turtling" is specifically "good vs./@ disabling towers". Cloud & Freezing Breath, for example, aren't "siege abilities". Even Liquid Fire & Corrosive Breath barely are. But they all "disable enemy tower attacking", which is the big problem (turtling = millions of towers as your only defense).

- Always long siege no questions there, but the secondary siege is lacking for undead. All have flyers with siege/anti turtling abilities though

Check.

- Anti-casting comes in two flavors. Dispel and caster killing. Orcs have dispel but no dedicated caster hunter besides regular ranged units. Undead tried to compensate with Anti-magic shell but wasn't enough and they got Destroyer who eats buffs. Humans used to be special with priest dispel that now most have and got most dedicated anti-caster who counters enemy buffs, summons and even eats mana. Night Elves cower buff dispelling with dryad while fairy dragon punishes caster who dare to cast.

Good point.

- Casters we could say offensive and support (I know I have) but orc shaman has offensive lightning and witch doctor healing is supportive. Undead both casters are alo a mix but both are more oriented to causing harm to enemy rather then agument their own troops. It seems casters are more complicated then on first look. Unsure why orcs of all got 3rd caster but disenchant had to be main balance reason as purge can't be enough (if it was auto cast maybe).

Yes, there's some mixing, but not too much.
- Priest is pure Support - Sorceress is pure Offense (aside from Invisibility) - Spirit Walker is mostly all Support.
- Shaman is pure support (Lightning Shield is a defensive, not an offensive ability; it isn't really used to deal damage but to keep enemies away from the target, or to disrupt enemy lines (cast on enemy & they have to move things around to avoid damage). But you don't use it to deal damage. - Witch Doctor is nearly pure Support... Stasis Trap does Stun enemies, but that can be considered Defensive (giving your troops time to run or whatever).
- Necromancer is a good mix (summon-support-offense) - Banshee is the same (offense-support-utility)
- DotC is pure Support - DotT is pure Offense.

Yeah, it's not always 100%, but it's a pretty good start to designing the 2-minimum casters.

- Its those slots that I think actually add flavor to races as they are unique.

Totally!

- Hm always 2 auras that is good observation. I would say orcs still get better deal with Endurance Aura and Drums, add bloodlust and scroll of speed and watch brute might of the orcs. Humans anyway have high armor while thorns and vampire aura aren't really that great (really low values and only effect melee attacks both?).

With that in mind, you might be interested in this

- Healing and protection is also an important feature and before RoC undead were at big disadvantage and orcs too at early game. Humans have early heal item and hero for early healing and mid game they get caster with heal and Inner Flames; Night Elves have Moon Well and it seems to be enough, I am sceptically that night reg works only at night. works as intended; Orcs recived Hero with heal and early heal item to compensate for the former heal handicap they had (healing wards were at tier3); Undead only had blight (skeptical about this) and Hero abilities but received Statue/destroyer to fill healing/anti-buff role.

Good point (though I'm not sure why you're 'skeptical' about NE's only healing at night... It's true, it's in the Editor. Also, Moon Wells only regenerate mana at night, too. Part of the coolness)

Also regarding cookiecutter thing I though point was that many custom races end up being based of humans (or sometimes the other 3 races) with zero creativity and just model and stat changes. Perhaps they don't appear on contests but there are to many of them because many people think imports make a race. Not that giant story regarding history of RTS games.

That's very true, and something I'd love to try & avoid (the whole "HU/OR build scheme" thing). Granted, it's hard for some people to come up with new building/resource schemes, but it's totally doable; just look to some other games, or stretch out your mind.

 

[JokeMaster]

As tier 3 heavy i meant that powerfull unit of tier 3 in every race
-Humans : Knight
-Undead - Pudge(that meatbag)/Frostwyrm
-Horde: Tauren
-Night Elf: Chimera

Those are all tier 3 units which could be described as heavy. So their proportions would be over 200 gold , over 50 wood units, 4-10 food cost, level 4-10, over 30 dmg.

 

[Kyrbi0]

As tier 3 heavy i meant that powerfull unit of tier 3 in every race
-Humans : Knight
-Undead - Pudge(that meatbag)/Frostwyrm
-Horde: Tauren
-Night Elf: Chimera

Those are all tier 3 units which could be described as heavy. So their proportions would be over 200 gold , over 50 wood units, 4-10 food cost, level 4-10, over 30 dmg.

It's funny you should say that; if you check my uploaded Excel spreadsheet (on the mega-post), I keep track of everything that's gotten at Tier 3.

Part of doing that was (and this is one of the downsides to loving MCV's guide so much) that I got so 'entrenched' in the "Tier 3 Ownage Device" idea, that I thought there was only that 1 unit at T3.

That's true for OR & NE (Tauren & Chimera, respectively (well, unless you count Bear Form of Druid of the Claw (gotten only at T3)), but as it turns out, both HU & UD have 3 Tier 3 units (Knight - Siege Engine - Gryphon Rider, Abomination - Destroyer - Frost Wyrm). Both have a T3 heavy melee, and a T3 heavy ranged/'capital-ship'/T3OD, and then one other super-unit (super-siege, super-anti-caster-medium/heavy-flyer).

So yeah. Just making sure we were on the same page (since "Heavy" can mean "strong in HP but weak in damage", or "heavy damage but fragile", or both)

 

[VeljkoM]

Alright, so that's 2 votes towards "warcraft 3 gameplay-based techtree" (assuming you mean in the style of a "5th-race-addition").

*sniff* You really read it? All of it? I'm so gratified..

Yeah my vote goes there, the 5th race addition. I thought anyway that was the point of making a race for warcraft 3.

I did read it but at same time I lose track of what I read so I had to reread parts again careful and to avoid confusion. I might have missed some still mostly the parts directed at ghostthruster...

Lol, same here. I believe I already "voted" on that, so I'll try and 'collect the data', see where we stand.

Think I did collect it in some post. To me it seems forest won if we count jokemasters shadow elves as "forest". Or Desert won as it was the only other type with several votes... Compensate and have Forest vs Desert, life vs death? Forests are used to combat deserts anyway.

Well, I would argue that this stuff is important to determine how our Contest will be run. I don't want what has been happening in Contests all over the site for too long; heck, even just today in the Icon Contest someone got upset that they couldn't use their own custom brushes for the contest (a rule which was unstated but apparently "obvious"). Same deal with (if you really read my whole post ) the last Hero Contest.

I don't really even care so much anymore whether we do "5th-race-addition" or "new-Role-race" or "new-Theme-race" or both or whatever. (alright, I do care, wanting the former, but if I don't get it I'd still try to participate). But I do not want us to not have that decided for this Contest & thus have too many non-comparable entries (like the Hero Contest).

I don't know guess I am just worried at the moment that we won't start until mid of August or September so I am little rushing things. I am unsure if there was a lot of confusion in previous contests but if I recall correctly there weren't ever any problems about what not to do and what to do. People made races, poll would be made where most famous/best eye candy wins (I might be lil cruel here) and then we wait several months until someone judges. I always thought this was the most ignored contest ever, didn't even saw notification like all other contests had. Also at the moment you can make me agree to make race with only WoW heroes as units with quest givers giving quests for resources.

Ahhhhh... That would explain the confusion. I'm sorry, I tried to be pretty clear when I wrote up the idea (but it was an idea "off the top of my head", so meh)...

Yeah, "Forest" means anything that you can rationalize lives in the Forest: (Blood/High/Wood Elves, Forest Trolls, Furbolgs, Nature-creatures, Druids, etc... heck, Goblins cutting down trees, or demon-corrupted ancients (& satyrs), or even grassy furbolgs. ). Same for "Desert", "Mountain", "Ice-World", "Island (sea & land)", etc.

I still think the way I imagined was more fun (my mind saw what it wanted to see, you weren't unclear) or at least different approach for a race. Right now your only worry is that your race will be in biome picked with no special rules. Thank you for the colored empty paper

Lol. Had to look that up for a reminder.

Guilty as charged there though I was sure you wouldn't need to look it up. I study history so things like that are tormenting my head.

I guess we'll just have to disagree there.
But more importantly, who's fault is it if a race-creator makes a race & people don't play with all 12 units? Happens all the time to Blizzard... And it's not their fault people don't use, say, Gargoyles or whatever.

The magic of different opinions, we have to learn to live with them. I guess I can live with 12 units not like I really want to make more. Also I don't see why hippogriff rider counts in your list yet druid bear doesn't. And well lets look at gargoyle. Normal type attack so not as effective against air as crypt fiend is with web and pierce and his ground attack is too low so only benefits are flying and stone form and honestly I chose crypt fiends over gargs always. Doesn't help that web makes air units grounded so garg has to use weaker attack so no point to mix him with crypts. So I blame designer of the unit same way I blame them for thinking that destroyer costs 3 food when it costs 5 and it really isn't that powerful in my opinion or very existence of flying machine that kept its upgrades from time it had purpose I mean would you really upgrade scout to have ground attack or AoE Air attack (Never noticed AoE worked on air units at all).

Rest of response in the hidden department.

Regarding Patterns

"MINIMUM" means "at least"... So yeah, that fits every faction. Not sure I understand. :?
HU & UD have 3, NE have 4-5, sure, but minimum 2.

I just don't consider minimum a pattern when everyone has different number of air units and not same roles.

It's kinda like Siege, yes... But "siege" is, in particular, "good vs. structures", whereas "anti-turtling" is specifically "good vs./@ disabling towers". Cloud & Freezing Breath, for example, aren't "siege abilities". Even Liquid Fire & Corrosive Breath barely are. But they all "disable enemy tower attacking", which is the big problem (turtling = millions of towers as your only defense).

Well "siege" for me is any act against enemy fortifications not just pure attack. Ok siege literally is surrounding enemy town/fort/castle. Corrosive breath adding siege attack well counts as siege by your definition right? Liquid fire slows tower attacks but makes any building unrepeatable... also sometimes I wonder why there are towers in the first place anyway, I mean wc3 focuses on small limited armies lead by a hero where do unlimited towers fit there.

Yes, there's some mixing, but not too much.
- Priest is pure Support - Sorceress is pure Offense (aside from Invisibility) - Spirit Walker is mostly all Support.
- Shaman is pure support (Lightning Shield is a defensive, not an offensive ability; it isn't really used to deal damage but to keep enemies away from the target, or to disrupt enemy lines (cast on enemy & they have to move things around to avoid damage). But you don't use it to deal damage. - Witch Doctor is nearly pure Support... Stasis Trap does Stun enemies, but that can be considered Defensive (giving your troops time to run or whatever).
- Necromancer is a good mix (summon-support-offense) - Banshee is the same (offense-support-utility)
- DotC is pure Support - DotT is pure Offense.

Yeah, it's not always 100%, but it's a pretty good start to designing the 2-minimum casters.


I see disrupting enemy lines as offensive maneuver. For me support are abilities that empower your own units. And really none caster should ever deal direct damage that's why you have all other units (best way to annoy me is to give hero ability to spamable caster). Casters should disrupt enemy and support allies. Guess summons are middle ground. So Lightning Shield I count as offensive as you disrupt enemy lines and indirectly hurt them. .Would still say that there are support, offensive and mix casters with bigger importance being what race needs then to fit caster role. Probably why orcs get two support(ish) casters that increase effectiveness of their army (guess tauren mage hunter would just be silly anyway)... so yeah I agree with you in the end.

Good point (though I'm not sure why you're 'skeptical' about NE's only healing at night... It's true, it's in the Editor. Also, Moon Wells only regenerate mana at night, too. Part of the coolness)

Because to me it seems that undead and nightelves both regenerate hp when they shouldn't (outside of blight and during day just not as fast) but maybe I am wrong. Editor says many things like flying machines have AoE against air, or glave-throwers upgrade that causes line damage (what does it do really, add tree as targets and bigger splash behind unit that got hit?).

I want to add another pattern and that is that food buildings double as defense. UD and Orcs food buildings attack (burrow is scariest tower ever, with upgrade it is the only tower with building armor) and night elves have moon well. Humans get cheep walls but they shouldn't complain they also have 3 towers. And then there is Call to Arms, Spikes, Ancients punching and UD main building attack (nerfed to 15 damage of cold attack... scary!). I add this because people in most cases only remember towers and they often get as generic as possible.

That's very true, and something I'd love to try & avoid (the whole "HU/OR build scheme" thing). Granted, it's hard for some people to come up with new building/resource schemes, but it's totally doable; just look to some other games, or stretch out your mind.

I don't mind resource and building to be default human style but all units to be like humans? Still nothing compoared to my hatred of units having unbalanced hero abilities.

 

[Footman16]

Wait, wait, wait, so for biome we'll all be making a race for one biome? Or can we choose any biome and make a race for that one, because that's my understanding of it? It's also the option I'd prefer.

 

[Kyrbi0]

~Psuedo-Vote & Decision?~

Think I did collect it in some post. To me it seems forest won if we count jokemasters shadow elves as "forest". Or Desert won as it was the only other type with several votes... Compensate and have Forest vs Desert, life vs death? Forests are used to combat deserts anyway.

I counted it up and got this:

eubz - ?
kyrbi0 - forest
veljkom - desert/forest
blackknightgs - desert
retera - ?
Kingz - jungle/desert/forest
hiphop4eva - ?
JokeMaster - forest/duskwood/underground (something for Shadow Elves)
Footman16 - ?
Eagle XI - ?
GhostThruster - ?

So these people voted for Biome, but only those with no question mark specified which Biome.

*sigh*

It looks pretty tied between Forest & Desert, somewhat... Y'know, even though I still think 1 Biome is enough, you're "Life & Death" (Forest vs. Desert) idea sounds pretty rad, and hopefully roomy enough of a Theme for everyone to agree on.

So what say ye: is the Biome-inspired "Forest vs. Desert" aka "Life vs. Death" Theme acceptable to all? Those who didn't specify which Biome in your initial vote, vote here. Those who already voted, vote again.

~~~

Wait, wait, wait, so for biome we'll all be making a race for one biome? Or can we choose any biome and make a race for that one, because that's my understanding of it? It's also the option I'd prefer.

Yeeeeesss!!! That's kinda been the entire tenor of our discussion so far!

I wouldn't sound so frustrated, except I explicitly wrote out the Poll to contain this information, and it's what we've been discussing for a while now. :<

Yeah my vote goes there, the 5th race addition. I thought anyway that was the point of making a race for warcraft 3.

Cool, I agree. I'm curious as to what GhostThruster thinks, though (forecast: the opposite of me. xD)

I did read it but at same time I lose track of what I read so I had to reread parts again careful and to avoid confusion. I might have missed some still mostly the parts directed at ghostthruster...

Of course, of course. Same thing happened to myself a few times (since I obviously reviewed it a few times before posting). I'm just gratified you even tried. : )

I don't know guess I am just worried at the moment that we won't start until mid of August or September so I am little rushing things. I am unsure if there was a lot of confusion in previous contests but if I recall correctly there weren't ever any problems about what not to do and what to do. People made races, poll would be made where most famous/best eye candy wins (I might be lil cruel here) and then we wait several months until someone judges. I always thought this was the most ignored contest ever, didn't even saw notification like all other contests had. Also at the moment you can make me agree to make race with only WoW heroes as units with quest givers giving quests for resources.

Well, I'm working to change that. Let's do so together.

And Lol.

Still nothing compoared to my hatred of units having unbalanced hero abilities.

So true, and a great example: So no Unit has an ability like a Hero ability (no Direct Damage). The closest they get is Master-lvl abilities, many of which are "disables" (Cyclone, Polymorph, Cripple, Possession, etc) (the importance being in a squad-based, soft-counter game like Warcraft, disables have a lot of utility & are really devastating); those could, with some tweaks, become Hero abilities, but really the Master-lvl spell is the closest they get.

Now it could be argued that "just because Blizzard didn't do it, doesn't mean we shouldn't", saying that "it's creative! it's something that doesn't already exist!" I think that's true for some things... But I would argue that Blizzard made many decisions like this for a reason, usually for balance (something they're waaaay better at than me). So instead of 'breaking the mold" on an issue like that, I take a look at the existing precedents & say "Ok, so avoid DirectDamage & otherwise-too-Heroic abilities on Units, check."

Because to me it seems that undead and nightelves both regenerate hp when they shouldn't (outside of blight and during day just not as fast) but maybe I am wrong. Editor says many things like flying machines have AoE against air, or glave-throwers upgrade that causes line damage (what does it do really, add tree as targets and bigger splash behind unit that got hit?).

Hm. Well, they shouldn't.

And yeah, some of that stuff is pretty tricky to tease out (whether/how it works at all). Check Mojo Stormstout's "classic.battle.net/war3" guide for a lot of really good information about that kinda stuff & how it works. But yeah, technically it totally does; the Glaive Thrower's attack punches through the first target to deal damage behind it (trees & otherwise); the Gyrocopter gains a dinky little "machine gun" attack with that upgrade, and the Attack is already set up as having an AoE effect (like artillery siege, but in the air with bullets), however useful that is...

I want to add another pattern and that is that food buildings double as defense. UD and Orcs food buildings attack (burrow is scariest tower ever, with upgrade it is the only tower with building armor) and night elves have moon well. Humans get cheep walls but they shouldn't complain they also have 3 towers. And then there is Call to Arms, Spikes, Ancients punching and UD main building attack (nerfed to 15 damage of cold attack... scary!). I add this because people in most cases only remember towers and they often get as generic as possible.

That's an excellent point, though I'll modify it slightly to say "Each Food-Building has a secondary effect", whether it be Defense (OR Burrows & UD Ziggurats being (pseudo-)Towers) or Support (NE Moon Wells healing/regen-ing)... HU Farms seem the odd one out, but remember that they are cheaper & faster to build than any of the others, and are commonly used as 'expendable walls' around buildings you actually care about. So again, Support/Defense.
The only one that hasn't been done yet is "Offensive", and of course some interesting ideas could be discovered that are "Supportive" or "Defensive". But yeah, each "Farm"-building should be involved more in the Faction.

 

[VeljkoM]

I counted it up and got this:

So these people voted for Biome, but only those with no question mark specified which Biome.

*sigh*

It looks pretty tied between Forest & Desert, somewhat... Y'know, even though I still think 1 Biome is enough, you're "Life & Death" (Forest vs. Desert) idea sounds pretty rad, and hopefully roomy enough of a Theme for everyone to agree on.

So what say ye: is the Biome-inspired "Forest vs. Desert" aka "Life vs. Death" Theme acceptable to all? Those who didn't specify which Biome in your initial vote, vote here. Those who already voted, vote again.

You know my vote. Heh its like contest within contest. Maybe we could have tournament between desert and forest races.

Yeeeeesss!!! That's kinda been the entire tenor of our discussion so far!

I wouldn't sound so frustrated, except I explicitly wrote out the Poll to contain this information, and it's what we've been discussing for a while now. :<

Was on poll, you said several times in this topic, said it in topics before. So yeah think we can see why polls aren't trusted. Though can't say you don't seem to have really bad luck expressing your points to the others?

So true, and a great example: So no Unit has an ability like a Hero ability (no Direct Damage). The closest they get is Master-lvl abilities, many of which are "disables" (Cyclone, Polymorph, Cripple, Possession, etc) (the importance being in a squad-based, soft-counter game like Warcraft, disables have a lot of utility & are really devastating); those could, with some tweaks, become Hero abilities, but really the Master-lvl spell is the closest they get.

Now it could be argued that "just because Blizzard didn't do it, doesn't mean we shouldn't", saying that "it's creative! it's something that doesn't already exist!" I think that's true for some things... But I would argue that Blizzard made many decisions like this for a reason, usually for balance (something they're waaaay better at than me). So instead of 'breaking the mold" on an issue like that, I take a look at the existing precedents & say "Ok, so avoid DirectDamage & otherwise-too-Heroic abilities on Units, check."

With great power comes great responsibility. And Hero abilities are just too great for units that can be spammed unless abilities get nerfed. As for casters having direct damage spells I don't see that as creative or innovative, you already have so many other units with purpose to damage enemy. Some things aren't meant to be broken.

Hm. Well, they shouldn't.

And yeah, some of that stuff is pretty tricky to tease out (whether/how it works at all). Check Mojo Stormstout's "classic.battle.net/war3" guide for a lot of really good information about that kinda stuff & how it works. But yeah, technically it totally does; the Glaive Thrower's attack punches through the first target to deal damage behind it (trees & otherwise); the Gyrocopter gains a dinky little "machine gun" attack with that upgrade, and the Attack is already set up as having an AoE effect (like artillery siege, but in the air with bullets), however useful that is...

Ok tested now and they worked (guess in the past I was really really unlucky). I can see some charm in gyrocopters large aoe against air, but dragonhawks are still better as they don't need an upgrade and siege engines are just way more durable and get AoE air too. And Glaive Thrower well why does it need an upgrade to do what other sieges do already.

That's an excellent point, though I'll modify it slightly to say "Each Food-Building has a secondary effect", whether it be Defense (OR Burrows & UD Ziggurats being (pseudo-)Towers) or Support (NE Moon Wells healing/regen-ing)... HU Farms seem the odd one out, but remember that they are cheaper & faster to build than any of the others, and are commonly used as 'expendable walls' around buildings you actually care about. So again, Support/Defense.
The only one that hasn't been done yet is "Offensive", and of course some interesting ideas could be discovered that are "Supportive" or "Defensive". But yeah, each "Farm"-building should be involved more in the Faction.

Well I say defensive since it is all aimed to make your base survive longer either by attacking enemy (UD and Orcs) or making units last longer (NE) or defend other buildings (cheep wall + wide selection of tower choices). Heh I myself once added for skeletal race graves that raised dead. Good as offense and unfair advantage at creeping (like when humans use militia). But yeah in the end just make sure building isn't pure food only.

Also by the way I did once wrote my own Guide to make a race. It needs updating though and will use the links you provided me from wc3c.

 

[Footman16]

Yeeeeesss!!! That's kinda been the entire tenor of our discussion so far!

I wouldn't sound so frustrated, except I explicitly wrote out the Poll to contain this information, and it's what we've been discussing for a while now. :<

No the poll wasn't that explicit, it says Biome (Pick one blah blah blah) which I thought meant everyone would pick any one biome and make a race about it, which in my opinion is the best choice and doesn't constrain people in regards to options.

Limiting it to one biome, let's take forest for starters, will lead to a lot of races repeating each other. In Warcraft 3 Forest could only ever refer to NE, Trolls, Spiders (?), Ancients in my opinion and that is just too short a list. I say that you make biome mean any biome and people entering the competition have to pick one before they start and then make a race around it. This could result in everyone picking different biomes or everyone picking the same rendering my point moot but it still gives the greater diversity.

Also, I haven't been reading through all the discussions only the latest one which only mentioned it sparingly hence my question to clarify.

 

[VeljkoM]

No the poll wasn't that explicit, it says Biome (Pick one blah blah blah) which I thought meant everyone would pick any one biome and make a race about it, which in my opinion is the best choice and doesn't constrain people in regards to options.

Limiting it to one biome, let's take forest for starters, will lead to a lot of races repeating each other. In Warcraft 3 Forest could only ever refer to NE, Trolls, Spiders (?), Ancients in my opinion and that is just too short a list. I say that you make biome mean any biome and people entering the competition have to pick one before they start and then make a race around it. This could result in everyone picking different biomes or everyone picking the same rendering my point moot but it still gives the greater diversity.

Also, I haven't been reading through all the discussions only the latest one which only mentioned it sparingly hence my question to clarify.

I can clarify that. Did you press Biome? Key part in that post was:

"Biome" would be too broad for one contest, but a particular Biome for each contest could work, I think.

. But yeah I don't think anyone figured it (including me) when poll started so barely anyone picked a biome until we were reminded we should do so.

Forest has also furbolgs, satyrs but can also be gnolls or worgen. And well we never said it has to be warraft only based race? Problem is that "biome race" apparently means "race that lives in biome". So if all biomes are allowed then all races are allowed and that means that theme is pointless and we could call it Free Theme as there is no requirements at all. I too also don't like the idea of just 1 biome and I kept suggesting that we have a continent and pick biome from there, suggested my own interpretation of biome and as last chance the Forest vs Desert.

By the way congratulations for being able to read and live the last few posts.

 

[Footman16]

Ok, ok I don't agree with how this contest is being conducted in some ways but I do want to play along and enter, so I'm throwing my hat in for snow Biome and I am grateful for Kyrbi0 organizing this.

 

[Kingz]

Whoa those posts were huge, talk about testing the hive character limit xD

I am still to go through all the posts so if someone could sumarize in a few sentences what has been agreed on and what is still being discussed that would be great.

 

[Kyrbi0]

No the poll wasn't that explicit, it says Biome (Pick one blah blah blah) which I thought meant everyone would pick any one biome and make a race about it, which in my opinion is the best choice and doesn't constrain people in regards to options.

I was about to get a little frustrated; you "blah-blah-blah"ed out the important part. However, upon reading it a few times, I can see how it could be construed that way.

Still, the whole discussion has been talking about this.

Limiting it to one biome, let's take forest for starters, will lead to a lot of races repeating each other. In Warcraft 3 Forest could only ever refer to NE, Trolls, Spiders (?), Ancients in my opinion and that is just too short a list. I say that you make biome mean any biome and people entering the competition have to pick one before they start and then make a race around it. This could result in everyone picking different biomes or everyone picking the same rendering my point moot but it still gives the greater diversity.

I disagree. Earlier (for Forest alone) I came up with no less than 8-10 different races that could live in the Forest Biome, and I would wager that several more could be determined.

Taking a look at all the previous contests, we had anywhere from 0 to 12 entries, (lol), with an average of ~6.5 per contest. (also weirdly, it alternated (11-1-0-12-8-10-3...), so apparently this one is likely to be AMAZING...). So depending on which Biome we pick, I'm sure we'll have more than enough to go around.

Or, even better, we just go with the adjustment VeljkoM suggested ("Life vs. Death", "Forest vs. Desert") and effectively double it (check earlier posts).

I can clarify that. Did you press Biome? Key part in that post was:
. But yeah I don't think anyone figured it (including me) when poll started so barely anyone picked a biome until we were reminded we should do so.

Lol... I try & I try... Well what can you do.

Forest has also furbolgs, satyrs but can also be gnolls or worgen. And well we never said it has to be warraft only based race? Problem is that "biome race" apparently means "race that lives in biome". So if all biomes are allowed then all races are allowed and that means that theme is pointless and we could call it Free Theme as there is no requirements at all. I too also don't like the idea of just 1 biome and I kept suggesting that we have a continent and pick biome from there, suggested my own interpretation of biome and as last chance the Forest vs Desert.

Exactly. The entire point of a Thematic restriction is to, well, restrict the choices. Not unduly (i.e. "everyone make a spider race!" or "everyone make a purple race!"), but enough to actually make things interesting.

And to be honest, I thought of the "Continental" thing about the same time as you looking @ WoWWiki, and I totally agree with it. If we'd thought of it sooner, I'd have it thrown on the Poll. As things are looking now, though, I just wanted to help facilitate this getting started, and deciding "Continental" leaves us still having to decide which Continent. So since I also liked your "Life vs. Death" idea a lot too, figured I'd throw my lot behind that for consistency.

Ok, ok I don't agree with how this contest is being conducted in some ways but I do want to play along and enter, so I'm throwing my hat in for snow Biome and I am grateful for Kyrbi0 organizing this.

Well, the whole reason I'm putting all this fuss up, taking tons of time to write up these posts & Contest threads... It's all because I too am not content with how these Contests are conducted.

That being said, while I would thus encourage you to raise the issues that you see fit, I'd also suggest we 'pick our battles' and try to come to a reasonable compromise; I've learned I can't win everything.

Whoa those posts were huge, talk about testing the hive character limit xD

I am still to go through all the posts so if someone could sumarize in a few sentences what has been agreed on and what is still being discussed that would be great.

I don't know about decided, but the basic "point of discussion", the last thing that needs deciding is found at the top of this post; basically just hammer down a Theme.

After that, just check the link to the Pastebin containing the Techtree Contest "Proposal" thread, and let me know if anything looks ridiculously out of place.

 

[VeljkoM]

In short:

Main priority is to decide what Biome. Vote for singular biome you like, suggest a continent alternative or support Life vs Death (Forest vs Desert).

I think I am for strange reason attracted to idea of contestants dividing in to two teams and then let desert and forest races fight.

 

[Silly Lil Ant]

I'm going to vote for Life vs Death, as it will help provide a nice variety in races being made while not being too broad that following the theme becomes too difficult to judge.

 

[Kingz]

I have notified all members who voted Biome but didn't express a particular biome via visitor messaging.
Hopefully that will speed things up.

Only one who i couldn't contact is GhostThruster.

 

[Retera]

Got a message I should vote on the biome. I think I saw an email before that the status quo was leaning towards Forest & Desert, which sounds good to me. Is there anywhere official I need to express that vote?

Might finish the furbolg race design ideas mentioned in the Heaven's Fall thread, if that's legal (I'd have to read the rules about issues with small amounts of prior work. Maybe make all new content for the contest with the same ideas, or just recycle models?)

Edit: ('cuz Furbolgs live in the forest)

 

[Bannar]

Where ma contest at? I' washes everythin.
Neda dis to start already, tho.

 

[Kingz]

@Retera

Just post which Biome you would like to create your race in. Once all or majority of people post (the ones who voted Biome at least) i think it would be best to select the top 2-3 Biome options and start the contest.

 

[Eagle XI]

Hmm, im inclined to ask what would transient biomes count as, itselves ?
Fe. what if i wanted to make steppe orcs or tundra elves.
And what about multi-biome races ? Already in-lore example: Nerubians which live mostly in their underground kingdoms below the glacier(thus subterannean origin), but also do count as an species native to the continent of Northrend(evolvingly adapted to arctic climate) and thus could be used for either of both biomes(arctic or subterannean) without requiring any further(or only minimal) alteration between.

Another thing i need to know is if inhabitants of an heavenly/infernal landscape would count since 'alien planet' is mentioned, and technically the lore behind faction could be constructed such that it can counts as 'alien invaders from another planet'.

As somebody who rather is fond of evil races my votes are volcanic vs arctic, subterranean vs avian, desert vs forest, infernal vs heavenly. Whichever valid is.

 

[Bannar]

I suggest we start this soon, before holidays are over. Of course, only if you don't want another 1-year contest.
Biome / full race / unlimited imports has been chosen. If after couple of days ppl who voted for biome still hasn't answered the question about exact theme (biote type) then let Kybi0, the organizator decide.