Darrowshire

[WolfFarkas]

The map has a lot of potential, an 8 player map has a lot of value it self.

I like the effort you put in the cliff use.

A) Red and yellow expands to no trees expandings, blue and pink expands to mines with trees. Thats a big no. Trees are needed for many things, harvest, owl scouting, keeper of the grove summoning treants, NE buildings free heal by eathing trees, mountain gigants wooden club skill.
B) block paths with trees is not a good idea either, some heroes can take them down with spells some others dont. paths should not be blocked for players.
C)Those expo are imposible to avoid peon killing, you can reach from behind and from the side. the bases, is ideal to have more or less trees behind the mine.
D) Agresive creeps in paths, players use peons / workers/ wisp, to scout, if you are attaked, the scouting is aborted. Also agresive creeps is considered something not good for melee in general.
E) trees simetry. In melee, mirrow the wood is like a must. No simetry = to unbalance: like no-equal base shape, no equal wood in base,
Minor differences of 1-5 trees are acepted, but the no-equal tree simetry is easy to detect here.
F) Small paths for a 8 player map, marketplaces should not be no-guarded. The only building that goes no guarded is the tavern ( not going to consider the shipyard since is problematic for melee). It would be better to put a tavern in the middle or nothing.

Overall is a nice map, I like it,

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

View attachment 330588



The map has a lot of potential, an 8 player map has a lot of value it self.

I like the effort you put in the cliff use.

A) Red and yellow expands to no trees expandings, blue and pink expands to mines with trees. Thats a big no. Trees are needed for many things, harvest, owl scouting, keeper of the grove summoning treants, NE buildings free heal by eathing trees, mountain gigants wooden club skill.
B) block paths with trees is not a good idea either, some heroes can take them down with spells some others dont. paths should not be blocked for players.
C)Those expo are imposible to avoid peon killing, you can reach from behind and from the side. the bases, is ideal to have more or less trees behind the mine.
D) Agresive creeps in paths, players use peons / workers/ wisp, to scout, if you are attaked, the scouting is aborted. Also agresive creeps is considered something not good for melee in general.
E) trees simetry. In melee, mirrow the wood is like a must. No simetry = to unbalance: like no-equal base shape, no equal wood in base,
Minor differences of 1-5 trees are acepted, but the no-equal tree simetry is easy to detect here.
F) Small paths for a 8 player map, marketplaces should not be no-guarded. The only building that goes no guarded is the tavern ( not going to consider the shipyard since is problematic for melee). It would be better to put a tavern in the middle or nothing.


Overall is a nice map, I like it, but I am sorry to say that I cant recommend it for tournament play as it is.

Hi thanks for your reply and I agree with you in most things
First of all, this is my first "proper" attempt to create a melee map^^

A & C & D & E are very blatant oversights by be and will be fixed with the next update to the map. Thank you for pointing them out to me.

Regarding the unguarded marketplace: it's pretty obvious that my map is inspired by maps like full scale assault or deathknell. But after playing each of them literally hundreds of times on the 4v4 RT ladder I personally found that rushing is to weak on both of them. Unless the enemy team would build like no t1 units at all or have simply no clue what they are doing, they defending team would stop that rush with minimal macro damage. Since creeping on my map rewards pretty good items, and the defending team would usually have the creep advantage over the rushing team, I thought it would be nice to see on how it plays out if the attacking team had the access to the same items as the defending team, without having to creep any of them. My hope is this would make early aggression less risky on a map layout that rather punishes it.
In addition this provide some point of interest in the middle of the map, where heroes with t1 units could fight about, without being "separated" by creeps.
Actually, adding a proper creep camp to the middle would only accomplish two things IMHO: favoring the blademaster and adding another delay to early game aggression or even worse, units rallied to the hero would run through it.
You pointed out that I could add a tavern on the middle of the map, but usually this is not of importance enough to warrant a proper fight over it ( maps like murgul oasis, where litterally noone fights in the middle early on). From my playtesting already the early game impact of the unprotected amrketplace is rather limited, since it's depended on what has been crept (and the items cost alot of gold, the impactfull ones). And the mid to lategame impact of a unprotected marketplace in rather limited in 4v4, since usually it will have been crept anyway at this point of the game, and adding creeps there would rather hurt the gameflow of the map, then improve it IMHO.

and the small spaces in the middle: I'm totally willing to remove them and expand the village, but this would have the consequence that both the northern and southern entrance of the village would be removed, since then there would be not enough space left between the village walls and the northern/southern cliff of the mountains. I would personally love to see more playtesting for this on how the "+" shape of the middle plays out.

about B) here we have to distinguish between the "outer" blocked path (the path between the two goblin labs) and the "inner" blocked path (the one on the cliff north/south of the village). On the outer ring I see no problem removing them, however I'd thought it would be fun to see on how players would utilize the goblin lab to overcome it (a single shredder lumber workload is enough to cut through the vertical trees there for example)
, but since it's not really required for the map to work, I could remove it.
However on the "inner" ring I'm afraid that some blocking must take place, otherwise units rallied to the hero would rather quickly run through the red creep camps protecting the expos.
I could swap out the trees for destructible rocks, but those are usually rather frowned upon on melee maps. And there are enough melee maps that have value stuff hidden behind alot of more trees then I have, Golems in the mist is the prime example, where they have a safe expo behind trees.
Now we have to look what is really to "gain" by breaking the trees of the inner ring:
First of all, the inner ring trees are literally between the HARDEST creep camps of the map with non-sleeping creeps. So there is no bloodmage or keeper sneaking by EARLY in the game, destroying the trees and moving an army through without getting rid of at least two red creep camps. So creeping them AND destroying the trees early, would be pretty silly, considering they could just have moved through the village. And in any point later in the game, the advantage of having those heroes solely for destroying trees is greatly diminished since there are so many more options around it after you have t2.
Also removing the land horizontal land bridge of the inner ring entirely would have a negative impact of the gameflow of the map, since it would enncourage the use of air units on a map and game mode, which already encourages using air units.
So TL;DR about point B) either trees or destructible rock or turning the map in a inferior version of full scale assault. those are pretty much my options here. Unless you would have a better idea of fixing it.

 

[WolfFarkas]

1 hour 8 mins from the video of a 8 player melee map called "Frostfloe Deep"
If you see the review of a map that is similar to Feralas. Wtii, wich is a very famous wc3 youtuber, review the map:
the author of the map put rock chunks, trees, and barricades, and by looking it, it seems the author wanted to avoid agressive creeps while scouting, walking,

while it seems a clever solution for safe scouting/pathing, the problem is that players in ladder,the last of the last things they want to do is to waste time to log trees, destroy rock chunks, that stuff, they have others matters to be busy with.

A)"I'd thought it would be fun to see on how players would utilize the goblin lab"

A) "Since creeping on my map rewards pretty good items, and the defending team would usually have the creep advantage over the rushing team, I thought it would be nice to see on how it plays out if the attacking team had the access to the same items as the defending team, without having to creep any of them."


B)"Regarding the unguarded marketplace: it's pretty obvious that my map is inspired by maps like full scale assault or deathknell."


A-B) maps are veto for very few things. experimental things usually dont work.

And there is another famous rule that goes perfect for melee, if something can fail it will fail, and players opinions/reviews are mercyless.
I cant predict how will be the play. with the marketplace unguarded, when usually is guarded by strong orange or red creeps, as example, left team can loot permanent level 4 and 5, or chareged 4-5 and the other team randomly can get aura items, and ankh of resurrections free.

About the wind walk blademasters, with that criteria goblin merchants should also be unguarded but they are guarded. Usually when there are marketplaces, loot items is set to level 4, discarting levels 5 and 6, to be safe, so no crayzy charged L5-L6 summons.


I also understand tha many dislikes marketplaces because cheap items are a waste of time, and powerfull items are a waste of gold.
If you see Nerubian Passage, that map got ladder recently, it has a red creep on the marketplace, to me Nerubian Passage seems a map recipe to consider.
Nerubian Passage

your map is 160x160, Nerubian Passage is 192x160, is bigger. and still red creep on the marketplace.

C) "Unless you would have a better idea of fixing it."

C) Wtii sugestion: dont block paths. My sugestion: dont block paths

A) about the center you can design a center with many stuff like this map did, so the center will be worthy, important:

Lordaeron Plaza - Warcraft 3 Maps - Epic War.com

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

1 hour 8 mins from the video of a 8 player melee map called "Frostfloe Deep"
If you see the review of a map that is similar to Feralas. Wtii, wich is a very famous wc3 youtuber, review the map:
the author of the map put rock chunks, trees, and barricades, and by looking it, it seems the author wanted to avoid agressive creeps while scouting, walking,

while it seems a clever solution for safe scouting/pathing, the problem is that players in ladder,the last of the last things they want to do is to waste time to log trees, destroy rock chunks, that stuff, they have others matters to be busy with.

View attachment 330614

A)"I'd thought it would be fun to see on how players would utilize the goblin lab"

A) "Since creeping on my map rewards pretty good items, and the defending team would usually have the creep advantage over the rushing team, I thought it would be nice to see on how it plays out if the attacking team had the access to the same items as the defending team, without having to creep any of them."


B)"Regarding the unguarded marketplace: it's pretty obvious that my map is inspired by maps like full scale assault or deathknell."


A-B) maps are veto for very few things. experimental things usually dont work.

And there is another famous rule that goes perfect for melee, if something can fail it will fail, and players opinions/reviews are mercyless.
I cant predict how will be the play. with the marketplace unguarded, when usually is guarded by strong orange or red creeps, as example, left team can loot permanent level 4 and 5, or chareged 4-5 and the other team randomly can get aura items, and ankh of resurrections free.

About the wind walk blademasters, with that criteria goblin merchants should also be unguarded but they are guarded. Usually when there are marketplaces, loot items is set to level 4, discarting levels 5 and 6, to be safe, so no crayzy charged L5-L6 summons.


I also understand tha many dislikes marketplaces because cheap items are a waste of time, and powerfull items are a waste of gold.
If you see Nerubian Passage, that map got ladder, it has a red creep on the marketplace
Nerubian Passage

C) "Unless you would have a better idea of fixing it."

C) Wtii sugestion: dont block paths. My sugestion: dont block paths

A) about the center you can design a center with many stuff like this map did, so the center will be worthy, important:

Lordaeron Plaza - Warcraft 3 Maps - Epic War.com

when I said I wouldnt recomment it for ladder, dont take it serious I would also veto all my maps for money prize tournaments.

Okay I've made some quick & dirty modifications, just to check if I'm on the "right path" so to speak from your PoV (I know trees are still not symetrical, but this is more about getting the layout right right now.

First of all, since I can't get the unit pathing to work in the "inner ring" without destructibles to prevent unit rallied to heroes to run through the red creepcamp, I got rid of the northern & southern cliff, and I blocked all entrances to red creepcamp expansion besides one. I personally fear this will make flying units to strong, but anyway this was the only way to do it without destructables.

Secondly, the village got larger, and since I got rid of the north&south cliff of the inner ring, I could prevent the "+" layout of the village. And I added a few non-undead green creepcamps in it. And I straight up removed the market, since I don't want a red creepcamp in the middle where rallied units run trough (a la lost temple)

I removed the vertical trees from the north&south "outer" cliff

overall addes wood to goldmines.

Do you think this is better now?

 

[WolfFarkas]

"Do you think this is better now?"

eehh, you are talking to someone that needs to fix a 6 player map because lacking trees in the center for the keeper of the grove play.

fast idea, move the gob labs to there, so paths should be free of agresive, and still walking options. is just a fast idea dont take it serious.

1 hint I can give you is carefull with cliffs and water, sometimes it can be problematic.
2 the other one to make your life more easy, mirrow terrain and mirrow woods, I can tell is not mirrowed by looking some key spots (teal circles)
If I would have to do my 13 maps with no mirrowing... that would be very boring.
3- about the trees, no-equal trees may end in no equal NE scouting, advantages in scouting = better time reaction = better chance of counter. I remembered a 1v1 map where a player had better NE scout than other. (Orange youtube user review I think,, I dont remember the video).

wait @mafe review he is the map reviewer / melee expert. I just wanted to give you feedback so you can improve it.

Again I like it, and I hope it can reach ladder,


edit:

I may be wrong, but when creeps are to near, there is a risk of link, I attack 1 and the other walks around to get me.

 

[mafe]

@WolfFarkas has raised some valid points, but I'll repeat some of them anyway. Basically, the general layout is very good as to how main bases and expansions and neutral buildings are located. But the execution has numerous flaws in the detail; basically you made several typical rookie mistakes.

Starting with the "technical stuff":
-Itemdrops are not balanced. Look at standard ladder maps and see what items drop at creepcamps of which strengths. For example, a lvl 3 charged item from a camp with just a lvl 3 + lvl 2 creep is completely unseen on ladder maps.
-Indeed trees should be within reach wherever players are on the map.
-The forests are bad. Luckily I know you are german-speaking, so I'll just refer you to google "mafutrct melee mapping guide", where it is explained how do it right.
-Creeps at expansion gold mines should not be set to reduced aggro range.
-Some creeps are just not balanced by blizzard and therefore should better not be used: Undeads are immune death coil, thus they have a much easier time creeping these Death revenants than other races. Yes I get you used them because of their style. And for a 4v4 map, I'm ok with it. But for a 1v1 map, this creep would be no-go. Given that there are 5 different revenant creeps available from the dungeon/underground, is there a reason why you only used the lvl 9 death revenant over and over again?
-Heroes can get stuck on the left side of the eastern tavern, if you happen to have too many units on the right side when buying the hero. The situation is mirrored on the other tavern too.
-Town halls/geat halls near some expansions apparently can only be placed in such a way that they have to be build on the ramp, blocking it off completely for heroes.

There are also some issues which I think will make the map unfun to play, but that's up for discussion:
-Small and narrow paths (especially in combinations with ramps). 4v4 is a lot about big teamfights. But in most parts of the map, with 4 armies in the lategame, players will just unnecessarily block each other, unless everyone goes for air.
-Not enough creepcamps that can be taken with earlygame armies. This limits the options available in early on.
-I'm also not a fan of blocked paths. Yes, there are maps with have trees block something, but this usually is something that is immediately valuable, such as a big creepcamp or an expansion, that YOU get by opening the trees. If it is "just" a pathway, the enemy benefits almost as much as you do, which imho makes it much less appealing to put effort into destroying these trees.

I'm not seeing those creeps in the center that are present in the newer screenshots. Is the currently uploaded version still relevant?
About the unguarded market place, I don't see a big problem with it.

So given that there are too many issues right now, I will put this map to awaiting update. If you have new version where you fixed at least adressed some of those issues which I listed onder "technical stuff", I'll have another look.

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

I'm not seeing those creeps in the center that are present in the newer screenshots. Is the currently uploaded version still relevant?
About the unguarded market place, I don't see a big problem with it.

The current version is not really relevant anymore, I will upload a fixed version as soon as its ready.

This are the changes I'm workon on currently:

Creeps:
adding 8 more green creep camps with non UD creeps.
adding 4 more green creepcamps with UD creeps.
All deathlords outside of the 4 red creep camps will be removed.
one deathlord of the red creepcamp will be swaped out to another creep of the same level.
Rebalancing all non-red creep camp item drops according "modern" 1on1 ladder maps like Northern islses.
Sludge Montronosties will be swapped out with another undead creep of simular level.

Pathing/terraining:
morroring the west half of the map onto the east half of the map (including trees)
completely reworking the middle: The streets of the village will be 8 quares of medium grid in the world editor wide.
Getting rid of the "inner" circle, by making the northern&southern "inner" cliffs walkable like the eastern&western.
All path blocking trees will be removed.
adding trees to all expansions

*edit* I've added some screenshots. Gonna hopefully playtest this today on bnet.

 

[WolfFarkas]

Another cheap - free - fast - sugestion (or CFFS). if this map where mine:

what about gob labs in those cliffs, and another gob. merchant in the green circle, 2 gob merchants for 8 players, they probably will run out of stock fast

 

[Jahjahbinks]

I'm too terrible at ladder to critique but good concept and aesthetic

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

@mafe one (hopefully) final update is comming this week. WIP screenshot of the map with pathing, minimap, and the WIP map attached in this reply for people brave enough to check it out
I improved the visual design, opened as many pathways as possible, without changing the basic map layout, added way more creepcamps, rebalanced most creepcamps, added two more goblin labs, added alot of dooalds and also added critters. And pulling creeps by accident is now borderline impossible on all creepcamps.

 

[WolfFarkas]

You are going to hate me so much with this one:

the nerubian neutral buildings zigurrats, have - comes with bligth terrain, if you destroy them, the bligth is there, undeads can stand there and have better healing ratio, is like a very cheap helling fountain only for undeads.

is not a big issue, but I think pro maps dont have such things, so if is only for enviroment: nerubian creeps = nerubians ziggurats, remove them and just decorate with skull pills, remain scorched, egg sacks (those are nice because they are moving doodads), that stuff.

 

[mafe]

So, you made some changes, and most of them are improvements.

For example, the itemdrops are good now. The cent is very interesting now with the new green camps. Creeps in general look more balanced.
The lvl 7 + lvl 6 item from the central goldmines are still too strong, I think 7+3 would be sufficient for example.

I still think that the map is too narrow in several places. I accept if you disagree, but I wanna talk about general philosophy here for a moment: If you are going to do something on your map and it is something you don't see on ladder maps, then there usually is a very good reason for this.
For example, on ladder map ever ramp is at the very least 1.5 cells wide (by cells I mean the yellow boxes which appear by pressing "G"). And there are very few ramps in general, and even less ramps leading up two cliff levels. And no long paths leading to dead ends, even when there are gold mines at the end.
But I will not refuse approving this map because of this.

What I think should be fixed still however are some "bugs" introduced with the changes:
-Here there is something buggy with the ramps (this often happens when copy-pasting or just reworking ramps too often. I find that instead of changing a ramp, it's safer to first create a cliff to remove the entire original ramp and then start again with a "new" ramp). Some part of the ramp is unpathable:

There's at least one other ramp, where this bug occurs again. There's even more ramps where the cliff-ramp-transition is sharp instead of smooth, such as in this case:

-Here the doodads are in the way of melee units, and in particulat grunts: Grunts (and heros) can only go past the orange gap, but not past the red gap. This make is very cumbersome to creep this camp with grunts.

It also happens to a lesser extend at the majority of the new camps.

The blight at the nerubian ziggurats apparently disappears when they are destroyed, so this should not cause problems. At least that's what happened when I tested it.

So for now, I'd request you fix the unpathable areas at the ramps and make the new creepcamps more accessible to melee units (and fix the ramp-cliff transition would also be nice). Until then, the map is back to awaiting update.

 

[WolfFarkas]

So, you made some changes, and most of them are improvements.

For example, the itemdrops are good now. The cent is very interesting now with the new green camps. Creeps in general look more balanced.
The lvl 7 + lvl 6 item from the central goldmines are still too strong, I think 7+3 would be sufficient for example.

I still think that the map is too narrow in several places. I accept if you disagree, but I wanna talk about general philosophy here for a moment: If you are going to do something on your map and it is something you don't see on ladder maps, then there usually is a very good reason for this.
For example, on ladder map ever ramp is at the very least 1.5 cells wide (by cells I mean the yellow boxes which appear by pressing "G"). And there are very few ramps in general, and even less ramps leading up two cliff levels. And no long paths leading to dead ends, even when there are gold mines at the end.
But I will not refuse approving this map because of this.

What I think should be fixed still however are some "bugs" introduced with the changes:
-Here there is something buggy with the ramps (this often happens when copy-pasting or just reworking ramps too often. I find that instead of changing a ramp, it's safer to first create a cliff to remove the entire original ramp and then start again with a "new" ramp). Some part of the ramp is unpathable:
View attachment 330864
There's at least one other ramp, where this bug occurs again. There's even more ramps where the cliff-ramp-transition is sharp instead of smooth, such as in this case:
View attachment 330866
-Here the doodads are in the way of melee units, and in particulat grunts: Grunts (and heros) can only go past the orange gap, but not past the red gap. This make is very cumbersome to creep this camp with grunts.
View attachment 330865
It also happens to a lesser extend at the majority of the new camps.

The blight at the nerubian ziggurats apparently disappears when they are destroyed, so this should not cause problems. At least that's what happened when I tested it.

So for now, I'd request you fix the unpathable areas at the ramps and make the new creepcamps more accessible to melee units (and fix the ramp-cliff transition would also be nice). Until then, the map is back to awaiting update.

I dont know why I had the idea in my mind from the WC3 campaing that by destroying buildings bligth remains and you had to build near to dispel it, but perhaps I just confused. My mistake, at least it was worthy to test it.

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

@mafe I am now finally finished xD I updated the map & screenshots

 

[WolfFarkas]

Decided to rate it 4/5.

one last sugestion, when taking screens, go map preferences, time of day noon, because screens in night can be dark, day time screens are more easy to see mostly the overall general map (like the first image you did and I used to do draws).

 

[mafe]

Ok, so the ramps are no longer buggedfrom a gameplay point of view (the transitions from ramps to cliffs are still visually "bugged" in some places).
The creepcamps in the middle are now more accessible for grunts etc. It's still knida narrow in some places, but now it's also more easily possible to lure the creeps out in front of the creepcamps so I'm ok with it.

About the recent introductions, maybe reconsider the following:
-Some creepspots dont leave any corpses behind for undeads to summon skeletons. Maybe add a critter near those.
-A creep with possession dropping an item is basically never a a good idea. It will possess one of your units (unless you decide to throw a stun or something similar at it, and not every army might have one), and then the item is gone.
-The creepcamps at the labs, shops and merc camps could also drop a tome.

Overall, there is still a room for improvement. But given the effort that is required to make a 4v4, I consider the map now good enough to be approved.

 

[WolfFarkas]

congratulations for the approve!

 

[Nudl9]

I would clean center off doodads.
Mini-obstructions are super annoying when you have several units.
Even single units will bonk their head in the crappy wc3 pathfinding.

I doodled over the minimap with changes i would make.
It mostly comes down to the map being very tight with linear paths.
With more open space the players have more freedom to pick and choose where they fight.
In 4v4 you always need big roomy areas to fit those 200 food unit fights that will go down.
I also don't see the point in having so many labs and mercs.

I've no idea what the nerubian passages are there for, personally i'd just remove them, but whatever floats your boat.