24 player melee maps?

[Jahjahbinks]

Anyone with experience making or playing 24 player maps? I started designing one but realized it took at least 3 minutes for an Archmage to travel across the map. What should the max size be for a 24 player map? In order to save space/halve the map size, 2 or more people could start very close and have to fight off the bat. Any ideas? What's the largest a map should be? Most 1v1 maps, it takes about 40 seconds to run base to base. I think about 90 seconds should be the limit.

 

[cleavinghammer]

I've played a few 24-player maps in single player, and my main complaint is that it's possible if not easy to have all heroes at level 10, all upgrades maxed out, food cap reached, and still have half the enemies left to clear out, and so finishing the game becomes a repetitive chore.

So while a smaller map does cut down on the time a little, you might want to look into other features to make gameplay interesting until the end.

 

[SnowYell]

I started designing one but realized it took at least 3 minutes for an Archmage to travel across the map.

Ye, that wouldn't work.

How about making those Way Gates, like in the ordinary 12 player melee map.
Have you considered making islands to separating players/teams more easily?
Taking experience from Age of Mythology, occasionally you would find player allocation in bigger maps to be spread around the sides of the map as in the middle. Usually they would make hills and landscape as an obstacle. However AoM does not have as strong air units as you may have in W3.

 

[Jahjahbinks]

Ye, that wouldn't work.

How about making those Way Gates, like in the ordinary 12 player melee map.
Have you considered making islands to separating players/teams more easily?
Taking experience from Age of Mythology, occasionally you would find player allocation in bigger maps to be spread around the sides of the map as in the middle. Usually they would make hills and landscape as an obstacle. However AoM does not have as strong air units as you may have in W3.

I always thought people don't like maps with way gates they're very annoying, at least 2 way waygates. Map is inspired by Stromgarde 6 player map. Imgur Been busy last couple weeks so not much progress. But the concept is there are "12 islands" like Stromgarde, then 2 players will spawn on each. Probably about 7000 gold in starting mines, forcing players into the center of the map, a big city loaded with creeps and gold. Also had that AoM no fly zones notion, to protect against mass flying terrorizing bases...as seen in the second picture, a previous attempt at the map.
A neat but not "melee" mechanic would be that each island has a waygate but its not set anywhere. To set it up, you need to place a space item somewhere on the map, then the waygate will teleport to that location. Or maybe the waygates all teleport to center of map, where there are fountains, but dangerous since anyone can port there.