Exodus: The Violet Gate 2.05.1

[Nyctaeus]

my only complaints were like the item drops were too repetitive( like i got the same item thrice on mission) and against ch 10

We're working on improvements :].

i feel like at least on normal the ai sends attack waves way too frequently forcing me to stay in my base and grind all the upgrades and then push,

We're also working on fully script-based AI for the sequel. Blizzard's AI seems to be highly unpredictable by it's very nature, and often does crazy things. To this day I remember 4 battering rams deployed at me by Peanut Syndicate AI in M04, despite the fact that we set a single ram. And the list of issues like that is still growing..

We can't really implement it retroactively to TVG as it would require us to rebalance everything from scratch. Hopefully the sequel will be more free of similar issues.

and the cap being 60 also hurt as as i needed a lot of workers ( expansion + lumber) and the air transport

You can increase cap limit of Vimthurn forces by completing a subquest [and gain access to kickass Gunships ^^]. Dropships will have their supply cost removed in the next patch. It's kinda oversight on our end that we noticed, but lost among other things we had to do before the release.

 

[KnightKyle]

I'm playing on version 1.30.4 when I put the files in the campaign it doesn't show on custom campaign. any idea how to solve this problem?

 

[Macielos]

I'm playing on version 1.30.4 when I put the files in the campaign it doesn't show on custom campaign. any idea how to solve this problem?

Download 1.31 .

Patch 1.31.1 Backup Files

Greetings, After Warcraft III: Reforged launched, some people like myself either updated to the latest version by mistake or regretted doing so afterwards. Since Blizzard removed patch installers from Battle.Net, the option to go back to an older version was effectively lost. The purpose of...

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[U-K6]

We're working on improvements :].

We're also working on fully script-based AI for the sequel. Blizzard's AI seems to be highly unpredictable by it's very nature, and often does crazy things. To this day I remember 4 battering rams deployed at me by Peanut Syndicate AI in M04, despite the fact that we set a single ram. And the list of issues like that is still growing..

We can't really implement it retroactively to TVG as it would require us to rebalance everything from scratch. Hopefully the sequel will be more free of similar issues.

You can increase cap limit of Vimthurn forces by completing a subquest [and gain access to kickass Gunships ^^]. Dropships will have their supply cost removed in the next patch. It's kinda oversight on our end that we noticed, but lost among other things we had to do before the release.

i guess that was what lead to my downfall as i had beaten all the scourge bases before going to look for the guy also excited to know the issues are being addressed!

 

[KnightKyle]

Download 1.31 .

Patch 1.31.1 Backup Files

Greetings, After Warcraft III: Reforged launched, some people like myself either updated to the latest version by mistake or regretted doing so afterwards. Since Blizzard removed patch installers from Battle.Net, the option to go back to an older version was effectively lost. The purpose of...

www.hiveworkshop.com

Mah men Thanks

 

[Macielos]

i guess that was what lead to my downfall as i had beaten all the scourge bases before going to look for the guy also excited to know the issues are being addressed!

You were fairly warned in the cutscene what would happen if you destroy one side too quickly. That is - apart from the terrain - the main challenge in this map .

 

[U-K6]

You were fairly warned in the cutscene what would happen if you destroy one side too quickly. That is - apart from the terrain - the main challenge in this map .

hmm maybe ai went wrong then? because the only base i destroyed was the one where alliance sets up their base and then both started never ending attacks on me, still thanks for the advice i will def remember that for hard more

 

[Macielos]

hmm maybe ai went wrong then? because the only base i destroyed was the one where alliance sets up their base and then both started never ending attacks on me, still thanks for the advice i will def remember that for hard more

Okay, so that's not the case, only after destroying all 3 northern Scourge bases or all 3 southern Forsaken bases the other side's spawned flyers start hitting your base instead. Otherwise, that's just standard AI attacks which - I admit - are pretty strong on this map, especially the flyers. You need strong tower defense and high mobility with your heroes to fend them off. Unfortunately AI has a dose of randomness in it, so it may happen that several attacks will hit you at the same time.

 

[Nyctaeus]

but still it is one of the best campaigns i ever played and imo deserved atleast HC!
Thanks for making it!

Hmm... Now that you mentioned it...

Hey @deepstrasz, can we have a HC :]?

 

[U-K6]

Okay, so that's not the case, only after destroying all 3 northern Scourge bases or all 3 southern Forsaken bases the other side's spawned flyers start hitting your base instead. Otherwise, that's just standard AI attacks which - I admit - are pretty strong on this map, especially the flyers. You need strong tower defense and high mobility with your heroes to fend them off. Unfortunately AI has a dose of randomness in it, so it may happen that several attacks will hit you at the same time.

yeah wc3 ai always was weird but it's good that are heroes are so strong so they can fend off all the attacks

 

[deepstrasz]

Hmm... Now that you mentioned it...

Hey @deepstrasz, can we have a HC :]?

What's HC?
I'm a bit reluctant to give it the High Quality status since it's mostly eye candy, gameplay mechanics being Warcraft III core material.
However, I'll cautiously shove it there for the artistic work.

 

[Macielos]

What's HC?
I'm a bit reluctant to give it the High Quality status since it's mostly eye candy, gameplay mechanics being Warcraft III core material.
However, I'll cautiously shove it there for the artistic work.

It's not just eyecandy, it's also "earcandy" - AI-generated voicelines of majority of units .

Plus lots of other content and mechanics we added since 2.00, like expanding custom techtrees and unique skillset for Vespira in the bonus chapter. It was always meant to be a classic RTS campaign just like e.g. Arkain, but we did our best to keep the gameplay diverse, fresh and enjoyable.

Anyway, thank you very much for HQ and we promise to try even better next time. I've already dived into LUA scripting and have quite a lot of custom mechanics already coded for the sequel, so stay tuned.

 

[Butano]

This campaign is excellent! I want to congratulate you guys a lot! I LOVED it!

 

[AramChe]

To me this is the best a.c. I played as well as Ice Avatar. I like maps, landscapes especially. It was amazing experience wish there were more such an attitude towards the game.

 

[FlorianGeyerGiebelstadt]

I thought the title "Exodus: Violet Gate" just meaning Dalarans(or its some special structures) and its alliance story but the identity is rather surprising. Very apt title.

Environmental works and terraining techniques are so good,
They entertained my eyes, providing a more lively background.
But it's a bit sad and they give me some confusing that there are often Doodad trees mixed between harvestable trees.

Appropriate BGMs helped me stay immersed in gameplay.

It was a lot of fun to have interesting and diverse chapter quest types evenly distributed.

3d model of Enclave's Marksman causes framedrops so bad. I had to arbitrarily delete Marksman's custom model to somehow further proceed with this campaign.

Because the event in which Spearman's passive: additional damage happens in the moment when units tries attacking, not the detection of damage done, the effect of Spearman's passive can be amplified powerful with "S" control. However, this does not sharply reduce the difficulty of the campaign, as the selection rate of the barracks units drops towards the second half of the chapters.
The fly height of the air units is so high that it's a little confusing in visibility and gameplay.

There are a little disappointing in the game-level design.
In a chapter cooperating with Vimthorn Dwarves, rather not letting maroon undead go extinct and not bringing in a ranger troops makes the game more easily.
There's no reason to provoke the powerful Alteraci skirmishers, as they're activated when we bail a town, and they're automatically created by trigger periodically and quickly. That's because when they get into action, the total number of enemy units is so many that it's almost impossible to scorch earth the bases where the Alteraci heroes are located. Also, Warcraft III's upkeep is a great balancing mechanism on a multiplay-ladder basis, but in campaigns, upkeeps often triggering the progress that makes games boring, the level design is extremely difficult. (Think of chapter 02 of TFT Alliance. You'll need to gather over 6,000 golds and lumbers and build a few dozen cannon towers right in front of the green undead base, fill 100 food forces, and then launch an attack.)
In the part where the enemy unit is periodically created with triggers(boss-fight, maze search), the enemy units creation cycle is too fast and the core target's HP is not high, so consistently dealing with the core target very quickly is the top priority. There is no the boss type that is to attack the minions first and then accumulating the damage to the bosses(If I do this, lose).

AI scripts written with AI Editor has low quality.
It easily stops functions just by killing top prioritized units or structures that are in the build order, and they often do not send attackwaves properly.
It sends too many, or too little, or it breaks the exact time the producers intended.
WAI's advantage is to detect allies or players is being attacked and sending reinforcements, but there are more disadvantages...
Since it sends additional reinforcements to the attackwave that should end neatly with a suiciding charge, this shows an polarizing that completely breakdown defenseline in difficult situation or they overspent too many units and then we can clear their bases easily.

I was able to enjoy completing this campaign because there was no part that significantly reduced the fun of the game as a whole except for the frame drop.

 

[Vidar]

I have to ask- what did y'all use to generate the voicelines?

 

[tulee]

I played this back at the start of last year, so I am guessing most of the things I was going to comment on have already been fixed.
Just wanted to say this was a fantastic campaign, and I am shocked a campaign with a story about aliens from another world managed to be woven so seamlessly into the normal story of Wc3. Also, really great to see an old campaign be remade into something so amazing (it was good back in its original form, but this is like on another level).

 

[Macielos]

I have to ask- what did y'all use to generate the voicelines?

Text to Speech & AI Voice Generator | ElevenLabs. We've got a basic subscription for it. Here I gave a guy some more details of how we produced the voicelines: Macielos

 

[Nyctaeus]

I played this back at the start of last year, so I am guessing most of the things I was going to comment on have already been fixed.
Just wanted to say this was a fantastic campaign, and I am shocked a campaign with a story about aliens from another world managed to be woven so seamlessly into the normal story of Wc3. Also, really great to see an old campaign be remade into something so amazing (it was good back in its original form, but this is like on another level).

Orc are aliens from another world, Burning Legion are aliens from another world... So we injected what fits in :].

Also, thank you for the rating. We just made to the first page of maps sortred by "Highest rating" :]. Thank you all, who left kind words and high ratings. It's an honor and pleasure to be among such gems like Curse of the Blood Elves, Shadows of Hatred, Re-reforged, CSW or Arkain :].

 

[Bogdanov89]

Very fun, with a ton of unique units & models, plus a unique approach to map terrain design and very good custom voice acting.
Frankly its a lot better than most of the more rated campaigns.
Works flawlessly on the latest version of Reforged (classic graphics mode).

 

[Vidar]

Text to Speech & AI Voice Generator | ElevenLabs. We've got a basic subscription for it. Here I gave a guy some more details of how we produced the voicelines: Macielos

Thank you!

 

[LovG]

Whoa~ this campaign was too good.

I spent this month weenkends playing this, I'm gonna miss it. Thank you guys for such wonderful work.

High quality, Bliz style but with some new touchs, beautiful scenery throughout the campaign, good character designs and custom models (the AI generated voices added more flavour to the personalities of each of them), custom models also on point and HQ.

Overall a really nice experience, I don't know if this had a hard mode difficulty but I played on that and was really challenging.

I recommend playing this campaing.

Guys, congrats, such a big project and it's so good!

I'll love to see what's comming to our heroes on the Enclave ~

 

[TwoAcross]

help my w3 didnt detect the custom campaign file. im using w3 1.30.4 patch

 

[Macielos]

help my w3 didnt detect the custom campaign file. im using w3 1.30.4 patch

You already answered yourself . Download 1.31 from here:

Patch 1.31.1 Backup Files

Greetings, After Warcraft III: Reforged launched, some people like myself either updated to the latest version by mistake or regretted doing so afterwards. Since Blizzard removed patch installers from Battle.Net, the option to go back to an older version was effectively lost. The purpose of...

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[Yuefang]

Hey there, I got Reforged a couple weeks ago and started to play Custom Campaigns, got to play this one and here's my experience, I'm playing on current version (1.36.1) and probably issues of gameplay are related to the version since I saw it was recommended on 1.31, so, here we go!
Story: Story's pretty good, I ended up liking all characters, probably Inaylia more than all, Eldin was a little boring in my personal taste (in his personality, his skill set was pretty likable) but he works in his role, the other characters are fine, probably Margoth with his taunt lines are a quite...annoying when heared across all map lol, but they were funny at the start, good job on the story and characters development!
Gameplay: Okay so...I started playing on Hard, it was all good until middle of story where I just switched to Normal because it started feeling a bit unfair than challenging, enemy attacked with really tough attacks and since ally AI in some maps wasn't helping at all, it's hard to deal with some maps being a 1v4 or 1v3 tbh, can be that I'm not that good to play on Hard, yet last couple of missions felt like such a massacre difficult even on Normal <.<, last boss fight minions were never ending! Chapter 2 and Chapter....7-8 was it where we help Alteraci escort convoys and fight the Forsaken? Well, those ones were my favourites, loved them! I completely skipped Chapter where we coop with the dwarves, nothing personal, just that I felt that if it was hard to control 1 base in Normal, I'd really struggle more controlling 2, specially a new race all of a sudden
Terrain and art: Nothing bad in these ones, terrain was pretty good (Though the bridges sometimes were a bit annoying due to the amount of troops that go through them and end up stucking) maps were diverse in position of bases and expansions, was cool to explore most of them
Campaign was really good! Hope it gets more known and people speak of it.

 

[Mon40k]

Wow... I already had high expectations going into this, but the campaign blew me away! Absolutely brilliant work!

 

[Macielos]

For those who might have missed it - we've published the first bunch of lore stuff from the upcoming Exodus 2. Grab it here:

Codex Entries 01, 02, 03 - Jiluun, The Enclave, The Cleansers

A name assigned to a habitable, but extremely hostile planet linked to Azeroth in the past by an artificial portal contraption created by rogue Guardian of Tirisfal - Medivh, with assistance of renegade mages of various former affiliations. Jiluun is believed to be an accidental discovery that...

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[kristoffer kørvell]

hey, i have run into some crash problems starting in chapter 8. the crash seems random. is there a solution for this, or am i the only one with this problem?
i'm playing patch 1.31.

pls help! would rly like to finish the campaign

 

[Macielos]

hey, i have run into some crash problems starting in chapter 8. the crash seems random. is there a solution for this, or am i the only one with this problem?
i'm playing patch 1.31.

pls help! would rly like to finish the campaign

Well, several people experience crashes from time to time, but it's difficult to compare them. I don't remember any in this particular map. Can you provide a save file so that I could reproduce the crash? Does it happen in a particular moment of the mission, e.g. during enemy attack, or after a specific time?

 

[kristoffer kørvell]

Well, several people experience crashes from time to time, but it's difficult to compare them. I don't remember any in this particular map. Can you provide a save file so that I could reproduce the crash? Does it happen in a particular moment of the mission, e.g. during enemy attack, or after a specific time?

well, the crash only appeared in chapter 8. i juts saved every ten minute, and then it was playable.

 

[gabfou]

Really liked this one will definitively do the next!

here some my through/criticism:

I found the story well made especially how it integrate in the existing lore but i feel a lot of what is said could be left unsaid or said with less detail, i don't think we need everything written to understand what going one in every one head, this is probably not helped by the fact we cannot skip a line of text even if no voice over (i understand that it's an engine problem)

gameplay wise a lot of interesting mission with diverse/interesting premise but too difficult for me in normal especially in rts segment, we are often swarmed by enemy which make me often ignore optional objectif before every thing is dead on the map because i just don't find time to care.

i really like the new "race" visually or gameplay wise the forsaken/enclave/humain where a delight to see/play/confront

same from the hero even if i think rainardt may need some work on is face ^^ (might be an eyebrow thing not sure)

all in all really good campaign!

 

[Macielos]

Really liked this one will definitively do the next!

here some my through/criticism:

I found the story well made especially how it integrate in the existing lore but i feel a lot of what is said could be left unsaid or said with less detail, i don't think we need everything written to understand what going one in every one head, this is probably not helped by the fact we cannot skip a line of text even if no voice over (i understand that it's an engine problem)

gameplay wise a lot of interesting mission with diverse/interesting premise but too difficult for me in normal especially in rts segment, we are often swarmed by enemy which make me often ignore optional objectif before every thing is dead on the map because i just don't find time to care.

i really like the new "race" visually or gameplay wise the forsaken/enclave/humain where a delight to see/play/confront

same from the hero even if i think rainardt may need some work on is face ^^ (might be an eyebrow thing not sure)

all in all really good campaign!

Thanks for the feedback.

As for dialogs, there's a thin line after which a detailed storytelling may become an over-exposition. It's even more problematic in our next campaign as there's even more to tell about Jiluun, but we're keeping it in mind and trying to be more concise + I have scripted a new dialog window with optional choices and skipping single lines.

Reynart will get a facelifting, we've already hinted his new look in the meme thread .

Exodus - Official Meme & Humor Thread

I got inspiration from comments below Jayborino's playthrough, so here we go, the first ever Exodus meme, based on a famous quote from Reynart and Eldin's journey to Lonely Ridge. Very low effort, ugly as hell, coming straight from the less artistic part of the duo. (no, I'm not trying to troll...

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[Nyctaeus]

I found the story well made especially how it integrate in the existing lore but i feel a lot of what is said could be left unsaid or said with less detail, i don't think we need everything written to understand what going one in every one head, this is probably not helped by the fact we cannot skip a line of text even if no voice over (i understand that it's an engine problem)

Exodus was founded on a philosophy, that detail, nuance, portrayal and impression are key factors that determine enjoyable experience. This is deliberate artistic choice that indeed stretches the experience, but it's far from adding fake content for the sake of gameplay lenth. Plot is more character driven then classic campaigns and there is much more psychology underneath simply because it's much easier for us to tell a story from perspective of ingame characters rather then Medivh-like narrator of external spectator of events.

Sequel will feature more options to customize the experience both gameplay- and narrative-wise. Most long talks will be relegated to active camp phase [SevenBlood's Orc Campaign-style] between missions, rendering many activities optional. All dialogues in the campaign will be done using fully-scripted, RPG-style dialogue window so everything will be skippable.

But in the end, this is still Exodus with its signature, long and detailed dialogues, rich character development and detailed lorebuilding. This is core feature of Exodus that makes it unique, among other things. This is the form we prefer, and this is the form we will continue to deliver out content in. We do not intend to change it, but rather prefer to make it easier to digest or even skip if somebody just wants to go for the throats of whatever eldritch abominations we will challenge players with in Exodus 2.