[Defense / Survival] Looking for ideas for new map

[SnowYell]

Do you have any ideas or feedback for my custom map? It is not meant to be something huge, just for some fun with some friends.
So far I've brain stormed and come to this:

You and your fellow players are defending a castle, which is guarded by allied NPC's. The goal is to keep the king alive from the enemy waves of units.
The enemy waves will become increasingly stronger and the longer inside the castle you are forced, the stronger the allied NPC's will become.

You spawn randomly within the castle as a normal citizen, being generated a random role of the castle (Villager, Footman, Wizard, Medic, Peasent etc).
From there you decide to go to arms in order to aid your city.

Outside the castle are several camps formed by the enemy forces, in which you will have quests to destroy to being able to withstand the push.
Camps will respawn after a duration.
One camp is the main source of the push and may not be prevented.

Players and most NPC's will be the 40 animation villager with attachable animation items.

Most units have items equipped.
All items drops upon death.
Items expire after being dropped for 60 seconds.

Items may be found in loot chests and have randomly generated content.
The same goes for several bosses and allied NPC's.

If you attack allied NPC's, you will become enemy of the faction for an amount of time.
This way you will have a hard time assassinating NPC's. Also if you manage to do so, you have to hide until you no longer are wanted.

Abilities will be customized from the start or somehow through-out ingame choices. Any ideas on this one?

 

[cleavinghammer]

How do you win if the main camp can't de destroyed?

Abilities: you could have each class have one or two set abilities, and others that can be chosen, acquired or improved via quests (for example, Footman starts with Defend, then can choose to learn Heal, Firebolt, etc.). Northrend Bound has an interesting system where abilities are given by held items.


Some ideas:

* Give one player at a time the ability to take limited command of the army (order troops to concentrate in one place or pull back). Conversely, a spy quest to give fake orders to enemy camps, sending enemy troops somewhere they're not needed or easily killed.
* As the player goes up in class rank, he gets class abilities (Footman can gain command of NPCs or ride a horse, Wizard gets a customizable Spellbook, etc.) and can buy better items (castle armory).

 

[SnowYell]

Abilities: you could have each class have one or two set abilities, and others that can be chosen, acquired or improved via quests (for example, Footman starts with Defend, then can choose to learn Heal, Firebolt, etc.). Northrend Bound has an interesting system where abilities are given by held items.


Some ideas:

* Give one player at a time the ability to take limited command of the army (order troops to concentrate in one place or pull back). Conversely, a spy quest to give fake orders to enemy camps, sending enemy troops somewhere they're not needed or easily killed.
* As the player goes up in class rank, he gets class abilities (Footman can gain command of NPCs or ride a horse, Wizard gets a customizable Spellbook, etc.) and can buy better items (castle armory).

Some very nice ideas mate!
I think I will strongly concider using the idea with the items granting abilities when held. That way you are not bound to be smth particular.
It will just somehow make certain classes more rare than others, not meaning they will be stronger. I think that is a way to make it more interesing and balanced too.

When I said they spawn as a role (footmen, wizard etc) i didn't mean it was a class. It just had to do the start more interesting if you know what I mean.

Also I don't think I will be doing this as a PvP map, rather a PvE where the players work together to overcome the waves. That sort of thing.
I wouldn't know how to make the 'limited command' option in use. Cool idea, but might be difficult to arrange. Maybe if you equip a full set of 'Captain Armor' or smth, you will be able to command versatile footmen or smth. Could be interesting.

 

[cleavinghammer]

It was something I saw in an AoS, where the player basically decided which path the spawns took (i.e., don't send anything down the north lane so as to send double the troops down the weakened south lane). Here you could use it for things like reinforcing a point about to be overrun or pulling troops back from an impending AoE attack/spell.

Personally I think it'd be more interesting if there was a "kill them all" victory in addition to surviving the waves, but I never liked timed missions.

 

[SnowYell]

Ye I don't intend to do this like 'Survive for 20 minutes' kinda thing. This is just survive as long as possible or until you manage to push back and kill the enemies.

Maybe you should somehow be able to gather resources and by doing events, gather allies to aid you in numbers to be able to push back late game. Could be cool.

 

[Chaosy]

LoL had a really fun gamemode.

Basically imagine this:
Default melee map
Enemy bases constantly spawn mobs to rush to your base. (every 30 seconds or so)
Occasionally neutral creeps joins the waves in the assault
Gold gain from mines is increased, training time/research time/build time reduced
All enemy abilities are empowered in some sense, lower cooldown, single target > aoe and so on

Goal is to survive for 15 minutes.

 

[SnowYell]

I think Imma stick to the castle survival. Got a good bunch of ideas already for it. But thx, sounds great tho. :O

 

[cleavinghammer]

How about dividing gameplay into combat and preparation? Preparation would be the time where you carry out quests, train units, start upgrades, etc., combat sends everyone to the frontlines.

Some ideas (using the idea of classes, but that can be adapted):
* Spy goes into the enemy camp for sabotage or information gathering: Lower amount of troops sent, send them to the wrong location, steal resources, disable troop types, increase preparation time, etc.
* Hunter kills critters for food and creeps for gold.
* Engineer fixes/upgrades defenses.
* Looter goes on the battlefield collecting resources (gold from soldiers, wood from siege engines...)
* Medic goes around healing the wounded (increased mana regen during prep time).
* Peasant grows food and ensures the castle's stockpile is safe from rats and such.
* Wizard spends resources to get better spells.
* Runner goes through an enemy gauntlet. If he makes it to the end, reinforcements will turn up during the next combat phase.

Events:

* Spies: The enemy sends spies that can sabotage buildings or units, and need to be found and killed.
* Sappers: The enemy sends sappers to damage a defensive section.
* Assassins: The enemy sends an assassin directly for the king.
* Plague: The enemy uses catapults to send rotting bodies over the walls to cause plague.
* Diplomacy: Cancels the next wave in exchange for a very large amount of gold.
* Refugees: Refugees from the countryside beg to be let into the castle. Letting them severely reduces food stocks and may lead to disease, but gives a lot of weak units.

 

[SnowYell]

How about dividing gameplay into combat and preparation? Preparation would be the time where you carry out quests, train units, start upgrades, etc., combat sends everyone to the frontlines.

Dude this is brilliant! I was wondering how I would make time for the players' heroes to adapt to quests or events when they would be under siege constantly.. Breaks!
A few minutes to carry out quests, reinforce and stuff. This is pretty brilliant dude. Nice, thx!
Nice event ideas as well!

 

[pick-a-chew]

Sounds like a fun idea, remember to stay realistic and start simple though. As with your initial intent, don't let your idea get too big or complex otherwise you'll likely drop off developing it. Start off with a few quests, events, some basic terrain and fights, and then build upon it if it turns out to be good .

 

[SnowYell]

Sounds like a fun idea, remember to stay realistic and start simple though. As with your initial intent, don't let your idea get too big or complex otherwise you'll likely drop off developing it. Start off with a few quests, events, some basic terrain and fights, and then build upon it if it turns out to be good .

Great advice. I already spent several hours just trying to arrange the castle in which all the quarters and buildings will be. wops.

 

[cleavinghammer]

How far apart are the waves?

 

[SnowYell]

How far apart are the waves?

I think it depends on what time is needed. You don't want people to stick around for too long getting bored, so a little time pressure is alright. But you don't want to rush people around. I want to keep it between hack'n'slash and strategic.

I plan on saving the waves as a group and detect when it has been exterminated and from there on you will have 2min or something. I am not quite sure yet, again it depends on how long the quests may take.