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Ardent Heroes - ORPG

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Today's progress involved improved team-oriented organization (prioritized tasks, further discussion about skill masteries, and other related subjects) and some additional fixes to the Lore - as well as some additional story content for Millbrow and the character Koraak Skullcrash. PurgeandFire also did some further work on the Fullscreen Skill Mastery Window system and Yabooer has finished 50% of the Healer class's Melee, Missile, and Magic skill masteries.

There's actually a good deal of other things we've discussed about the RPG that will likely be added. I'll post about it sooner than later!
 
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Thank you very much, but the new lore content is still a work in progress. They are, in my opinion, lacking descriptive details. I am very tired today, but I just wanted to get the lore for the Ugari Jungle and Forgotten Temple started already since it is the second zone right after Millbrow.

[EDIT]
Also, what me, PurgeandFire, and Yabooer discussed today was a Disguise skill, Thief Mastery, the Healer class, Looting, and Trading.

Disguise Skill - A skill in Thief Mastery that allows you to disguise as someone else, whether it be a player or NPC. Disguising will change your appearance but will not reduce your stats at all - this part may change though.

PvE Benefit: Being Disguised as another player when fighting a mob will divide the threat generated, making it much more difficult to become hated and allowing tanks to hold aggro while you pound in DPS. Disguising as an NPC, depending on the NPC choice, will allow you to evade mob groups easier and cause confusion. Disguising as a NPC such as a guard will be useful when you're a temporary Wanted Criminal for stealing and wish to walk amongst the guards again.
But keep in mind that if you come within a 300 area radius of a unit that is potentially hostile (guards looking for you, mobs, etc.) your disguise will instantly wear off. You cannot disguise in combat and cannot disguise in dungeons. (may be altered)

PvP Benefit: Disguising as an opponent in team-based PvP fights will help to confuse your enemies into healing you, buffing you, or even leading them to believe the player on their team is the actual disguised player. Can be quite fun I imagine.

Right now, the Disguise skill seems to have no downsides, aside from the fact that if your disguise wears off at the wrong moment, you're screwed. If any of you guys have any ideas for what can be added to limit the Disguise skill, I'd appreciate it. Keep in mind that all skills should be balanced for both PvE and PvP.


Thief Mastery: An entire skill tree dedicated towards allowing players to specialize in becoming a stealthy and scandalous fighter.

PvE Benefit: Thieves can learn to unlock chests and other locked objects in the RPG such as dungeon doors and gateways, making thieves an actual relevantly beneficial addition to your group.

PvP Benefit: Because the Thief Mastery tree isn't as adequate in combat as other classes may be, thieves can attempt to snoop into the pockets of NPCs and players, as well as attempt to steal an item of their choice from their inventory. (except for some items) This means that you can quickly snag a few good items or so (can only steal one item per pickpocket attempt) from players who are unsuspecting, such as AFK players or players that preoccupied with something else such as reviewing a merchant's wares.

Though because of the powerful advantages this skill provides to thieves, snooping and picking pockets will have a likely chance to fail. What happens when you fail at thieving? Well, if you aren't caught snooping the player's inventory, you'll get caught for failing at stealing the item by guards in a town or city if they are within 600 range. If you were caught stealing/snooping and were killed within 2 minutes and 30 seconds, you will drop all items you had stolen, even if you equipped it right after stealing it.
Note that this does not apply to items you had stolen in previous games.

Thief Mastery has enough advantages for the thief and enough disadvantages for the victims. We've been brainstorming ideas that could help balance this entire mastery so it is more beneficial than a tour-guide and less threatening.


Healer Class: The healer is one of the three core classes players get to choose from before entering Millbrow of 'Ardent Heroes.' It is designed to be more of a supportive healing class, but it balance it in PvP or to help Healer players hold their own, they are also decent damage dealers if the appropriate mastery tree is chosen.

So the above explains briefly what we're going for. All classes are initially given a distinguished purpose (Tanks hold aggro/take damage, DPS excels in burst damage, and Healers keep friends and themselves alive) hence their very uncreative and generic names. You can't get confused with choosing a class in Ardent Heroes! And if you do, you must be a newcomer to RPGs, but you will learn quickly what roles you will be able to fill. Every class in Ardent Heroes is pretty versatile, allowing players to choose their play-style.

To get to the point, the Healer class quite obviously is given skills to empower and refresh yourself and your teammates. Even if you're the stingy type of player who'd rather get in on the action, you still get abilities that can heal while doing damage, but of course will not be as effective or powerful as direct heal skills are. In summary, the Healer will be pretty similar to the way the Warrior Priest class works in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMORPG.


Looting: Looting is the acquiring of an item into your inventory that has been dropped from an NPC, player, or a pre-placed object.

Looting in regular melee WarCraft III games and Diablo II is not fit for Ardent Heroes. It is too easy to ninja items and beginners tend to do it all the time in all RPGs because they are unaware if the item can benefit them immediately or if it will be able to later on. Curiosity really. Therefore, we plan to implement a system that allows players to Need roll ONLY on items they can use. So if you're a Tank and a staff drops, you can either Greed or Pass. If you're a Healer and a two-handed axe drops, you can only Greed or Pass. And so on. A simple system and will likely not remove ninjas completely, but it will certainly make ninjas far less likely. Need items for your alt? Then play your damn alt!! Makes sense?


Trading: The transfer between two players of an item/items in return for another item/items.

Players can trade an item or multiple items for another item or multiple items in return. Players cannot trade gold. Trading might not be added though since it can be exploited and none of us can think of effective solutions.
 
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Yabooer argues that the thievery mastery tree will be used the most by players. If thieves do become rampant in the RPG, the mastery will be replaced or removed completely.

I don't really want to introduce mounted combat - as cool as it would be - because it could be abused, especially mounted abilities that allow you to knockback or stun other players. Sorry! Although I do appreciate players such as yourself throwing ideas at us regardless that you think would be cool. Maybe we'll fit something like mounted combat later.
 
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Well, if the thievery mastery tree is believed to be the most used, then add something to each tree that would even the scale. Or replace it, as you just said.

Will each hero have some sort of class mechanic? I enjoyed Warhammer Online's class mechanics, as they made gameplay interesting (though, some mechanics were boring, and some overpowered) and greatly influenced your playstyle.

EDIT: You could always have the thief mastery tree as a support, able to detect traps in dungeons, open chests (if in a party, items in the chest should be rolled for), etc. This, while also taking out the pickpocketing aspect, makes the thief an interesting role to pick and even essential when running dungeons.
 
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No core class abilities, unfortunately. The only things classes have are:
  • Unique skills to manually choose to learn and upgrade in either the Melee Mastery, Missile Mastery, or Magic Mastery. This ultimately defines the roles the player can fulfill.
  • Weapon and armor restrictions, so players don't/can't NEED roll on every possible item that drops. (i.e: Healers wear light armor and use wands, staves, mauls, and maces only)

Thanks for the input about thievery by the way.
 
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You could always have the thief mastery tree as a support, able to detect traps in dungeons, open chests (if in a party, items in the chest should be rolled for), etc. This, while also taking out the pickpocketing aspect, makes the thief an interesting role to pick and even essential when running dungeons.

We already discussed that, we are going to have it for pick pocketing NPC's in Dungeons to unlock doors that couldn't be opened other wise for a short cut or side boss.

Keys will not be 100% it will be a low chance to pick one.

Thieves are "Thieves" they are to steal not to support others, we could rename them to fit their role as a stealer/supporter.

We will have lock picking for locked chests, and traps will be useless to disarm because it will be ticked off anyways seeing how most players are very eager and decide to run off then begging healers to rezz them.

Edit: Craka is a noob who doesn't want to play WAR.
 
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Because a double post is required in this situation.



Craka_J is a noob who does NOT want to play WAR we shall all make fun of him.
 
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Yesterday I made some terrain progress on Mug'kral, Forgotten Temple, and Millbrow. I also started terraining the Land of the Dead area. I think I'll be focusing on setting up pathing blockers and invisible platforms now, so the terrain can be more prepared for playability once the triggers are all done by PurgeandFire.

The Healer class's spell masteries have not yet been completed, but are about 60% done.
 
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Thanks guys. I'll let Purge know, Anachron. Though he seems to understand it pretty well.

I'm about 50% done with Mug'kral, the orc city. The outskirts of the city are pretty empty though, I'll work on that after the city is done. Millbrow, the first zone you start in, is mostly done. Just some empty areas that need decorating.

Forgot to mention that some buildings will be enterable. Buildings will have an open doorway you can walk right into. And instead of taking up more map space to design the interior of a small insignificant house, we're going to make the building become transparent so you can see what's inside once you've walked into it. This allows for players to more easily determine which shop or building their friends are in and it is also less confusing. I remember back when I first played RPGs for WarCraft, I couldn't understand why I would teleport to the corner of the map.

Though of course, the interior of instances and dungeons will be traditionally elsewhere on the map for a variety of reasons.
 
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Well the healer tree is beyond 60% it is about 85% done just need to finish two more talents then the 5th tree will be done, leaving just the last Melee tree for Healer, which is turning out to be hard to come up with an idea for.

All which should be finished by tomorrow night. Finishing up my work and then comes the rest of the terraining and of course the rest of the triggering.

Which from I understand most of the triggering will be done within a couple of weeks.

Terraining, I have no clue how long that will take but it seems it will take a while to finish up seeing how Craka just HAS to perfect everything he does =).
 
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Didn't get much terrain work done today because I was attending a party most of the day. PurgeandFire and Yabooer got some work done though, as usual. Purge is still working on getting multiboards (window for item and spell descriptions) to auto-fit properly and Yabooer is nearly done designing the Healer class's spell masteries.

Next weekend will surely have more progress done and possibly enough for a sneak peek or two!
 
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The powerful heals have to be based on %'s or else it will fail later on in the game and become useless.

The damages will be balanced after the first phase of testing. The heals need to be able to counter these damages.

Also there is a passive bonus that increases the heal to 20% and gives the target a HoT healing 2/4/6/8/10% of their health in the form of a HoT for 5 seconds.

Basically a 100 health unit will receive a 20 health heal and then (If the passive skill has all 5 in) it will heal 2 health for 5 seconds.
 
Purge, did you use my window system? It allows you to create powerful systems within a few hours.

I am just wondering :)

Nah, I did it manually. I actually didn't know those systems were non-customInventory specific. xD But I did use your system as a reference for some of the terrain setup things, and I used the same models.
 
Nah, I did it manually. I actually didn't know those systems were non-customInventory specific. xD But I did use your system as a reference for some of the terrain setup things, and I used the same models.
What the fuck? Just check CustomWindow, it's a complete system by itself which allows you to create windows by itself. (MPI)

Just check the libraries.
 
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I apologize for the lack of updates from me this week. During weekdays I usually am too busy with schoolwork and sleep, so staying productive and up to date with my projects is a bit more difficult at those times.

But it's Friday again and I have a three day weekend! That means you can expect an additional day of mouth-watering updates for Ardent Heroes. The only catch is that I promised that I would work on Wc3:WoW too, so the work I do will be divided between those two projects. Gotta keep it fair and alive!

Though I seem to hardly be needed to keep this project alive. Yabooer has been doing some fine boss-fight designing and I believe is done with the Healer class's skill masteries, and of course the almighty PurgeandFire111 is doing a fantastic job this week on the skill mastery window & system. It's looking really great!

From this point on throughout the weekend and Monday you can expect further good news reports for sure. :smile:
 
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Uploaded three new screenshots of the terrain in Ardent Heroes!
  • Mug'kral - first portion of the city when you enter it.

  • Forgotten Temple (Dungeon Entrance) - The exterior of the Forgotten Temple dungeon. For levels 10 up to 19.

  • Forgotten Temple (Dungeon Entrance) - The exterior of the Forgotten Temple dungeon. For levels 10 up to 19.

I hope you enjoy it so far. It is mostly complete, which is why I'm showing it off. The more empty areas are likely to have more added to them because they're probably not done yet.
 
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