Melee Survival:Horizontal Town v3.7

[Paillan]

Please remove all bad words and insults from your description. It's not even funny.

 

[Koricthegreat]

Please remove all bad words and insults from your description. It's not even funny.

uhhh, would those bad words be "friggin" and "damnit"? Cause if friggin doesn't count then there is literally one "bad" word. I'll remove the word (s) if it's that big a deal and my map won't go anywhere because of it. (whatever pending status means) And I'm pretty sure no one cares what you think is funny. You sir, are ruffling the feathers of a first time uploader of a map.


Your comment was short and blunt. I'm ASSUMING everything else is fine with the map. Or at least it's description.


And I just noticed you also said "insults". I have to remove "Sharing is for suckers"? I will if I have to. I am assuming you have some authority over what will happen to my map. I hope the load screen of my map doesn't cause any issues. <_<

 

[Paillan]

Well yes I assumed that you added those words (like sucker) for comedic effect. But as said, context in humor is important, there is nothing to laugh for just using the words. People will inmediately approach your map defensively or just leave.

Does "map reviewer" ring a bell? Now I wouldn't approve or disapprove your map just if you keep or remove those words in the description, I just like to review starting with the description as it is the most important part of a map, it's content decides if people look at your map or don't, at least I see it like that.
Pending just means no reviewer has seen it, it's the regular state of resources on upload.

 

[Koricthegreat]

Map reviewer doesn't ring a bell with me. I have little experience with uploading maps so I ASSUME that that isn't a self imposed title and that it's official in some way.

"You have a grape fountain!...Defend it! Sharing is for suckers!" That describes what you're doing in the map and sets up a silly nonsensical tone. It's not some dramatic defense plot, you have a drink and obviously sharing is not for suckers. I think we just have a disagreement about people's possible sensibilities here. I'll risk my sucker line and leave the rest cleaned up.

I guess the confusion is cleared up. I thought the fate of my map depended on how well censored my description was. It kinda sounded like you were just giving me orders while telling me you didn't think it was funny. (even with the word please in there)

I guess the current 50 downloads means that regular users can see this map? (with it's pending status) I'm not even sure what the effects of approval or disapproval on my map would have. I'm sure I can find a thread that explains this.

Anyway, thanks for your time so far, Mr.Map reviewer.

 

[Paillan]

Well, suits yourself.
I am off to test the map ingame. BRB.

Edit:
Okay, first issue, more of a visual issue. It would be nice if you removed the minimap icons from the units owned by player 9 (aka the Town), as I can barely see were my allies are and what gold mines are free or not.

Okay, let's talk about difficulty. A friend and me managed to survive until minute 30, but our bases were dead on minute 15, and only I managed to make a base that for some reason the enemies avoided. I mean holy shit man, the tree boss is insane, almost infinite health, summons small trees, and basically nothing stops him. It was like: okay, first wave is easy, second wave is uh oh and third wave is like: I give up defending couse my troops do nothing. You might want to balance out the power of units in your map, as while the AI scales, the player does not. You may want to add ways to the player to improve his units.

There are some portals in the map, what's their purpose?

A quest line telling what players are supposed to do would be nice. Also, is it possible to take the gold mines from the enemy? Speaking of Gold mines, both the town AI and invador AI should not use gold mines, instead give them gold via triggers, that way you save gold for players.

The AI is kinda bumpy (I know you used the normal AI, so as expected) sometimes attacking units will fall back, stop or just do weird stuff. The same applies for AI allies.

Is the map infinite? or can you win at all?

I feel like this map needs a lot of polishing, the game idea is actually quite fun at the beginning, but as said, not fun anymore once your units just don't do anything.

set to Awaiting update

 

[Koricthegreat]

hmm. I suppose I could do that. But what if I said that basically all of the goldmines are free? Which they are, except for any goldmine you see grey actively using around the grape fountain. But you can't see your allies. You don't have the allies set to be the same color or anything do you? I wonder if removing grey's appearance on the minimap would cause any problems. I could actually make it optional with a text command. like "hidegrey" or something. I'd have to make sure people knew about this though. I actually have a command for changing your color as well but I haven't fully implemented or even told people about it. I will keep this minimap clutter in mind.

----I might just hide grey on the minimap
----I might make a command to hide grey (And make sure people know about it)

 

[Koricthegreat]

By the way, if you play the map and save the replay, I wouldn't mind checking it out. I have no clue how another person would interact with my map. I should add this to my description somwhere....

 

[Paillan]

By the way, if you play the map and save the replay, I wouldn't mind checking it out. I have no clue how another person would interact with my map. I should add this to my description somwhere....

Well, we both felt useless after the 15 minute mark as said. And the AI just died a bit later.

 

[Koricthegreat]

"We both"? Cool, I guess you played with another actual person.

INDENTING PARAGRAPHS IS WEIRD SORRY!!!!!!!

• The Difficulty!
• The spirit of the game! (being overrun)
• The AI
• The Trees!
• Tree Secrets!
• Enemy Goldmines!
• Town Portals!
• An expositional quest line!

LOSING: Losing in this game works by you being overrun. So there will be enemies who won't die any time soon. If you can't kill the tree in 15 minutes, you'll have two trees on you at the same time. The way you lose is by not being able to keep all the enemies dead, you'll have to fall back if overrun. And if you end up all the way at the grape fountain, you lose.

You may also be preoccupied with new incoming attackers while previous attackers you couldn't stop destroy the fountain. The spirit of the game isn't for you to make attacking waves dead as they show up. You can try for as long as you can, but you are meant to lose. The game picks up it's pace at 10 minutes. The first 10 minutes are really just for base building and hero leveling.​

Is the game winnable?: The game isn't winnable, you're suppose to see how long you can last. It's a very arcade-ish survival in that way. You play, you lose, you try again or try some different idea. I play these myself when I wanna kill time and have a big battle in warcraft. I might playthrough it once or twice per session.

Here's a secret though. I don't have any NEW attack waves after 60 minutes. Sometimes I throw in a 70 minute enemy (I have more then one map) but generally, there's 60 minutes of increasing waves, then they repeat and overlap until you lose. If at this point your heroes are OP and you are not dying (this is possible, believe in yourself)...then you can consider the map beat. And I have beaten all of my maps with AI allies only. (perhaps I should post one of those playthroughs) I do however have a work in progress that's collected dust for a while now that uses a different formula for the attack waves that will, continue to increase in difficulty if you manage to get this powerful with your heroes and your base.​

I will type some strategies I've used below for survival.
THE AI: The AI gets the job done in ways I actually like. They attack everything, everywhere, all the time and, they always spare units to kill that fountain. They attack your base, your peasants, they run through you, they attack the fountain, they come back. There ends up being a battle happening all over the map all the time, everywhere you run. I find it fun, as my philosophy for this map is for you to be overrun. You're suppose to lose remember. The only AI that fully retreat are the ones that own goldmines.
THE GIANT TREE MEN! I think the first tree shows up at about 15 minutes. He attacks a random player. He'll wreak havoc for a long time before he's killed, and he usually makes his way through you all the way to the fountain, without even destroying your base unless you want to trap and force him to fight. In the footage I posted on youtube, the tree boss landed on my base twice in a row and my base stood strong. (though I lost the front end of my base).

SECRETS OF THE GIANT TREE!: If you are not satisfied with the tree surviving at all to soak up tons of arrows from towers and stuff. Here are the secrets to almost all the giant bosses in my maps.
They are treated as structures...so imagine the possibilities.

• Grunts and Raiders can pillage every strike on them for resources
• The dragonhawk Rider's (the blood elf on wings!) cloud ability stops them from attacking.
• You can use nets to hold them down.
• Steamtanks can shoot the tree and units similar to him.
• Oh and, siege damage.

Here's where it can get abusive.

• The Lich's ultimate destroys his HP via percentage damage.
• (sigh)...and the Frost wyrm can freeze the tree.

I wanted people to discover this stuff by accident though. Like what?!?!? My frost wyrm froze the tree!?

ENEMY GOLDMINES: Yes you can take those goldmines and go further to destroy their base and that will be one less person attacking you for the rest of the game. That won't be easy though.

TOWN PORTALS: you mean the town portals? I mean waygates. They're just a faster way to go from the top of the town to the bottom if you need to help an ally. The guy in the middle doesn't need that kind of help.

A QUEST LINE: I actually don't know how to set up all that quest window stuff. I'd fill it with your objective if I knew how. It's something I've always saved for later. In fact, I wouldn't even mind making an opening cinematic to show you around the map first.

Sorry if it doesn't sound like I'm making changes to the gameplay. If I knew how to start the game by giving the players options to choose from though, I would allow the players to choose the difficulty at the beginning of the game. Right now the only difficult setting available is the one I prefer. The difficulty sounded like the biggest issue, though I do think you can do better! Not sure what this means for my map, lol. I suppose my best solution is to figure out what I mentioned before about choosing the difficulty.

Oh and
Making your UNITS stronger: I was thinking of adding more upgrade leveles for places like the blacksmith. But I was afraid I'd make the game too easy. This is all based on me playtesting the game myself so, that's what happened to the difficulty. And you need to lose.

 

[Koricthegreat]

• Quest lines
• Optional difficulty
• and hide grey on the minimap

Will probably be most of the changes I'll make, if it's what needs to be done for that nice shiney approval.
(I can have a difficulty swap the tree guy for a lower HP version or something)

 

[Paillan]

the problem is most of the time you haven't get the tier 3 stuff when tree arrives. I don't know if you made this based on pro play time progress, but regular players take more time to build up.

 

[Koricthegreat]

I'm no pro but......it kinda is based on pro play progress I guess. <_<. Could 5 or 10 more minutes really make the difference? Either way, I'd like to make the difficulty optional, so I'll have to dig through tutorials for that.

I was also worried that allowing people to reach tier 3 so easily would make the game too easy. But really, optional difficulty seems to be a fine solution. It's a casual game, no need to make people play the way I play.

This is all very useful feedback.

 

[Paillan]

There are more than a few ways to implement a difficulty system. The most basic is amounts of health and damage, were people create secret upgrades that improve the AI's health and damage as difficulty scales.
Other difficulty parameters involve slower or faster AI units (on TD's and defense map this makes wonders), smarter AI, bonus spells, new units and even new places were the AI can move.

 

[Koricthegreat]

UPDATE TIME! I added a difficulty option at the beginning of the game. Dialog boxes show up and you either pick NORMAL or KORIC'S difficulty. I believe the difficulty was the most important change so I wanted to get that done before more people downloaded the map because I see the downloads happening.

NORMAL MODE: The first boss, the giant tree spawns 5 minutes slower and his HP has been reduced to 40%. This includes the creatures he spawns. The mini versions of himself were pretty strong too with 2K HP. The trents he summons are very weak, but he summons them often anyway, and when you tried to pillage him before he'd crush everyone with his not warstomp. (the mountain king bash move). He should blow away his mana faster now that his trents and mini mes die faster.

ONLY PLAYER 1 can choose the difficulty. I'm worried there will be complications with everyone clicking on the difficulty. Your start point is random so being player 1 doesn't matter there.

Descriptive Quest Log!: There is now a descriptive quest log letting you know many of the details about these survival maps besides the fact that you have a thing to defend!

Color Change: You may now change your color by typing a command like "colorred" or "colorblue". You may even type "colorblack" and you can play as black! Or type "colorgrey" and make grey clutter the minimap even more!

Making Player 9 grey not show up on the minimap: I'm stuck! I don't know how to do this. It should only be a problem with this particular survival map though. I apologize for my incompetence!

 

[Koricthegreat]

Bump! I made another update! (edited the post above) I believe everything but hiding grey on the minimap has been remedied. I'm not sure how to do that!

 

[Saelendious]

idk why but its kinda fun to play, even tho me and my friend still need the 3rd one instead of an ai xD

 

[deepstrasz]

1. 100k mines just don't make you need to change place but only expand. The enemy hasn't got that, well, unless they expand to their nearest.
2. Spell descriptions after level 3 remain the same. There's no mention that there might be more than 3 levels per the usual spells.
3. Waves seem kind of chaotic from the 10th minute onward.
4. The gray player is always orc.
5. Haven't seen any custom towers for more interesting gameplay.

The concept seems rather simple, there's not much custom content but those items and merc camps. Well, there are some edited units.
Maybe some custom enemy races or player ones.
This could help: How to: Create a Full-working Custom Race

It's OKish I guess. Not sure how doable it is though.

Awaiting Update until some improvements/updates/addons.

 

[Koricthegreat]

1. 100k mines are there because if you wanna stay on one mine, you potentially won't last as long. So the player is free to stay in one spot if he wishes. Besides, as a survival map, I don't want the death of goldmines to be the reason you died.

2. Spell descriptions!: I knew this would get me. I procrastinated this to no end.

3.Though the game should be a bit chaotic, I'll admit that the making attack waves is the most difficult part. It'll be the biggest fix for me to do. (because playtesting trial and error). I do have a new formula for attack waves the would work better in my most recent map. But it has a bug that keeps it from working. (I guess I could share this in the incomplete map section)

4. On this map grey should be orc since it's kind of an orc theme. It's a coincidence that the lost temple is also orc. This month I'm going to release my human themed map. (I have 5 maps already made, they were collecting dust). I guess I could make a map where grey is random, or with more work, selectable.

5. I've thought about custom towers for the player who might want to play very tower heavy, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. You're feedback will have prompted me to actually get to doing it.

6.The concept is simple indeed. The melee game turned into a survival mode that's fun to play even if you only have AI allies available due to the lack of an ability to host games.

7.Custom races?: It's not necessary to get my maps to function, but, now that my maps are out there, if players want more, then maybe I'll deliver. Most of what makes these maps what they are has been the path of least resistance. ie. custom stuff is in the shops. (you can hire that murloc in this map to build a Naga base)

Thanks for the feedback on my map, I appreciate it and these suggestions are very actionable. I guess I'll bump the map when these changes are made.

Oh and, the custom race guide you linked me actually looks pretty handy and useful. Beyond what I could've expected.