Battle for Jaelinor - Train of Thought - new DotA?

[ubran]

Battle for Jaelinor - hero balancing issues

I've been screwing around with this Battle for Jaelinor idea for a little over a year and a half now, and haven't gotten squat worth of work done. I recently started playing DotA again, and I had an idea.. Maybe I could remake the Battle for Jaelinor into a MOBA like DotA, because I know my hero idea wouldn't get added into the next patch no matter how much I begged.

Original Plan Features:

-Relatively large map with autospawning creeps, and three capturable zones in middle, top left, and bottom right
-Orcs and trolls combined base (two ancients to kill, got scrapped almost before it was in the idea notebook
-Sun elves and Wood elves combined base in northeast
-capturing a base along the river produced additional creeps and acted as a 4th tower


New Plan:

-Keep the orcs v elves idea, but shrink the map, and make only mid capturable. This would speed up gameplay to a reasonable timeframe, and make a little more stategy involved (choosing between pushing middle to capture or top or bottom to get to enemy base easiest)
-throw out wood elves and trolls as units, but keep them as heroes, and fill the DotA roles of carry, nuke, disable, tank, etc.
-Make a talent/rune system that can go beyond items and skills to effectively improve one aspect of a character or fix their problems. For this I could make a few vendors for each side that sell different runes that when used are basically potions that last all game and can be tested for using the ingame trigger editor to amplify a skill by a certain amount.



A few hero ideas, 2 of which I'll put a little more detail for and let you guys decide if they are anywhere near balanced:

Big ent dude with tanking capabilities and maybe a channel aoe heal spell where he roots and channels or something;
Orc (maybe like blademaster or DotA juggernaut) with a ground slam, spinning whirlwind change, and possibly an on-dodge effect to attack the enemy;
Troll shaman support character with maybe a root and a heal to help get heroes out of sticky gank situations;
Elf shadow mage that leans toward nuking with some expensive high damage spells and maybe a demon summon and death pact combo to increase survivability

Fleshed out heros:

Maegwyn, the elemental archer:
Searing Pain- 20% chance on hit to inflict a dot dealing 20/35/50/65 immediate damage and and additional 20/35/50/65 damage over 5 seconds
Frost Arrow- 4/7/10/13 magic damage per level to each shot, slowing movement and attacks speed by 15/20/25/30% for 3 seconds(not sure how much mana per shot, thinking 7/8/9/10 as it levels)
Charged Strike- shoots a lightning enchanted arrow that deals 75/125/175/225 damage and stuns for 1.5/2/2.5/3 seconds
Ultimate was actually hard to think of, but here goes nothing
Arcane Barrage- fires arcane missiles into the air that seek out enemy heroes and deal 250/400/550 damage to all enemy heroes within 2500 range (anyone think 2500 is overkill?)

Morwyn, the dark hunter:
Drain life- Drains 15/25/35/45 health from the target to Morwyn each second for 5 seconds.
Shadow blast- Shoots an arrow of impenetrable darkness at the target, dealing 60/105/150/195 damage to the target. If Shadow Blast kills the target, Morwyn reagins half the mana of the spell and gains a buff that increases the damage by 5 the next time Shadow Blast is cast within the next 20 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.
Raise Skeleton- raises a skeleton for each charge of Shadow Blast that fights for Morwyn for 2 minutes. Skeletons have 100/135/170/205 health and deal 10-13/14-17/18-21/22-25 damage.
Death Sentence- Morwyn instantly kills target with less than 200/300/400 life and heals life equal to half the damage dealt to nearby friendly heroes.

Do the abilities of these two heroes seem balanced, or do you think there are a few things I should tweek (other than mana costs, already balanced all of them for these 2 heroes except for frost arrow)

 

[Jsprat100]

Its all nice on paper and I like how you called the two published ones 'sneak peak' heroes as if you are under the impression people will be anticipating it at this stage in development.

I also understand how every 5th member of Hive wants to create a Dota clone and defeat the map but it just won't work. The problem with the AoS category is that they are all the same and they lose popularity quickly. You can't put new things into them. Dota has pretty much achieved a balance of features and simplicity.

If you add too many features, the game will become overly complicated and become more like an exam than a game. If you keep it too simple, people will become bored and not play it. To be honest, even if you did get the balance right, there would be a tiny chance that anyone would care.

Create a website, create a forum, host adverts for all I care, but all I see is another Dota Clone which I doubt will go anywhere.

(Sorry if I seem harsh, but honestly, another Dota Clone? At least the heroes seem remotely good. No, 2500 isn't overkill, Dota's zeus has something simmilar for a global)

 

[ubran]

(Sorry if I seem harsh, but honestly, another Dota Clone? At least the heroes seem remotely good. No, 2500 isn't overkill, Dota's zeus has something simmilar for a global)

Eh, I realized that the thread title was worded badly.. If only I could change it

I don't really want this to kick DotA off of Battle.net, but I do want that feeling of pride that I could make one myself, shows that I learned GUI fast. If I finish this anytime soon, I'm willing to bet it's just going to be me and a few friends playing, but that'll be okay because it'll still be fun as long as it doesn't have that frustating-ness I get from the DotA community.

 

[Jsprat100]

I suppose the Dota referance threw me off a bit. I do realise that most people will want to have a laugh with their map, and thats OK. I am just a bit cold and cynical is all.

 

[ubran]

I've been doing some more hero and map design work, and I came up with a few ideas to add to the map, but as they may or may not be exactly related to the OP, I'll add them separately.

Instead of making it like every other AoS out there, I'd like to make it so the map starts out more or less RPG-ish and once you reach a certain level you can go wage war on the enemies base. The problem with this is about when to allow players to attack eachother. I could make it so a majority of each team has to vote that they are ready, but some jerk could say no to ruin everyone else's fun. Or I could make it so players each have (as a starting guesstimate) 10-15 minutes of RPG style grinding for exp until the sides start squaring off.

Any questions, comments, concerns?

 

[ClanOOKARep]

The 10-15 mins part sounds pretty good, maybe shortened from like 5-10, depending on the amount of creeps on the map, cause you dont want this fast hero goin around picking off exp like mad while the rest look where creeps are already dead. Either that or put tons and tons of creeps around

 

[ubran]

I wrote out the abilities for a hero inspired by an Ancient of Life (can't remember who made it, but will post credits in map, definitely!) that uses wolf animations but looks like an ancient.

Pounce - Jumps at an enemy, slowing it by 40% for 3 seconds and dealing 50/75/100/125% of the Avatars's melee damage to it.
Sneak - The Avatar of the Forest goes invisible for 30 seconds, losing 30/20/10/0% movement speed and increasing the damage of the next attack by 40/65/90/115. (I'm gonna try to get it to affect Pounce as well, but I'm not sure if it will anyway from the base ability or if I'll have to trigger it in with GUI)
Snaring Roots - Roots burst from the ground, ensnaring the main target with a chance to root other nearby targets and deal 10 damage per .25 seconds for 1.5/2.5/3.5/4.5 seconds.
Life Essence - Ultimate: creates a duplicate of the Avatar of Life that can cast lvl 1/2/3 Pounce and Sneak, and on death releases the life energy, dealing 1/5 of its maximum life in damage to enemies in a 300 area. It can be detonated early to do an extra 1/5 of it's current life as well.

Most of these abilities can work erally well in conjunction with each other, and I don't think I've seen anything like this in any other game. (though the ultimate is similar to Shaco's from League of Legends) If you have any comments, please post them, especially any of them concerning balancing, because I don't want one really tough to play hero that once mastered wipes the floor no sweat.

 

[ClanOOKARep]

Then you just have to make all heroes as powerful, just in different ways. Like for intelegence heroes, make them have ok life, lower strength and agility but more intel and all that. I think the first thing you need to do to balance this hero though, is decide whether it is intel, agil, and strength hero, and then balance it that way.

 

[ubran]

A few new hero ideas ^.^ both elemental :[

The one that I deem worthy of posting is the Elemental Torturer, a melee intelligence hero that focuses around dealing more damage the more mana he has. Though in theory stacking agility would lead to more attacks for more damage and some armor for melee survivability, pure intelligence would probably be better (unless I made him a strength hero, but that wouldn't make much sense for a magical being o.o) for the sheer damage it would make him do.

Overload - Each attack has a 10% chance on hit to unleash 15% of the Torturer's current mana plus 10/35/60/85 damage in a 200 area effect of the target.
Electrokinesis - Paralyzes a target for 1.5/2/2.5/3 seconds and after the stun slowly returns movement speed over the same duration.
Mana Combustion - Burns 50/90/130/170 mana from the target, dealing damage equal to the amount of mana burned.
Potency - Can be activated to cause intense bolts of lightning to jump from the Torturer, dealing 80/135/190 damage per second to all nearby heroes. 30 second cooldown after deactivation, burns 75/85/95 mana per second.

Any comments about this hero would be greatly appreciated, especially critical analysis involving balancing issues. As always, if you'd like to suggest a hero that fits with the theme, I'll gladly consider it, maybe edit it to fit, and it might end up in the finished product.

Edit: holy crap that chance on hit dealt way too much damage.. I'm gonna get rid of the extra damage and just increase the chance on hit, because at lvl 3 it was dealing almost 200-something damage. The revised spell now is:
Overload - 10/14/18/22% chance on hit to deal 15% of the Torturer's current mana in a 100 radius aoe from the target.

 

[ubran]

It's been a long time since I was on ze Hive, and I don't really have a good excuse, but I do have some good news abuot the map:

So far, aside from the odd chance on hit dot spell a month ago, I haven't had a single bad trigger yet.
I have a grand total of 7 of the 15 heroes (small number I know, but how much can one man do?).
And, probably the most important, I figured out a nifty little system that allows for limited PvP during the early, "RPG-like" element of the game that basically gives both sides access to both creep areas with the middle of each being the highest level and giving them almost an arena aspect to it. Using triggers that check for unit ownership, I can keep the arenas as closed PvP until the AoS part of the map kicks in.*breath* Another use of the "checkpoint" walls could be to limit the level of players that can enter each level of the "creep jungles" so high levels can't go back for easy kills, and lower levels have a chance to catch back up relatively easily.