Okay, so I finally got to play all the maps in multiplayer so here are my impressions:
Cardiators
I like the idea of the game, although in my opinion, the game needs a lot of tweaking. The minigames rocked, especially that one with the castle gate. However, some things were a bit weird, like in the minigame with the boats, i was moving around as fast as possible but the AI still won because the splashdmg hit me...i think that's not how it's supposed to be
Also, we had an annoying bug. One of us would always be picked for a card game while he was in a minigame, thus unable to use the special cards like the stun and also, his monsters didn't attack any more. That was weird. I also think the first rounds of card games were pretty dull, it was basically nothing more than taking a card and immediately playing it. I'd suggest to maybe ask players to pick from a deck in the beginning which then immediately comes with 3 cards, like a "shadow deck" or whatsoever. But the idea rules, and the minigames were real cool!
Tides of Elements
I must say that we didn't play this map for too long because some bugs quickly made it unplayable for us. We were testing as 3 players on team 1, and first of all, after the gamestart, we had to wait like one minute until all the heroes were available which was pretty boring
then we picked, and ALL our heroes started in the enemy's base on their circle of power. I don't think that's intended, is it? When we then retreated to our own base, i noticed the enemy base's circle with the portal thingie which probably teleports to one of the 6 regions "outside" of the basic map. Unfortunately, I never got to test this since when i selected a realm (I think it was the second one), my hero simply got paused and nothing else happened. And there it remained paused and I couldn't do anything any more. When my friends also got some bugs then (don't remember what exactly it was, I'll ask them), we skipped the game. Sorry...
City of Drugs
Together with Cardiators, this was the only map I really had some good fun at (sorry for the harsh words, please read my reasons in the comments about the maps themselves). I absolutely like the idea. I was playing as a police officer and just walking around and driving in my car thingie, arresting junkies. Two friends of me joined the mafia and once i had even caught one of them in prison, that was cool. He just got out with jailbreak without doing anything for it, that was a bit weird, but hey, at least i got him in there for a while and then i could catch him again! However, what I didn't like is that the whole thing still seemed to me like a lot of very different pieces put together. Imo, most custom models just didn't fit in the map since they had too few detail. They had the comic style, but something was missing. But that didn't really matter that much, what I was missing most was heroes matching the style of the map. I mean, the map plays around what, second half of the 20th, first half of the 21st century? Then I just don't get why heroes have abilities like death coil, hex, avatar, chain lightning, healing wave, fan of knives etc...it just doesn't fit imo, it's a different style (well maybe FoK does for a super ninja hero). Also, i found it pretty weird that my hero was using a police SWORD at the same time while also being able to use a MACHINE GUN. To prove you that i'm being constructive here, here's some suggestions to make unit's abilities style fit the 21st century style of the rest of the map:
- For the female characters, add something like seduce, can be applied on male characters and distracts them, stunning them or maybe giving you control over them or whatever. Other possibilities would be something like "talk", which, if used on a female player, would restore both player's mana because they have a lot of fun, and if used on a male player, would cause them to fall asleep (sorry for the cliches, but cliches are fun, especially in such maps imo). A third ability would be a kick in the nuts. Critical damage against male characters, moderate damage against females.
- For the male characters i suggest something like a roundhouse kick. Play some tornado animation on the caster and push everyone around back, damage them and stun them for a while. A second skill could be a single-target punch which knocks the target back and deals high damage. A third thing, for a super-cliche again, could be "pee on the wall", the feeling of relief restores some mana. Dangerous if an officer is nearby. Or just something like that
If you agree on my idea that stuff like death coil just doesn't really fit, i can try and see if maybe i can think of some more (and better things). But apart from that, the map was pretty cool and a lot of fun!
Deadly Night
After we finally got behind the loadscreen (after
10 MINUTES, that was just NOT cool, I don't know why it took so long, but please, PLEASE fix that), we got the cinematic with two guys or whatever speaking in something that looked rather like the terrain generated on map creation by the world editor with some palm trees placed in lines, except that the guys weren't there? Maybe this was intended though. But anyway, when the conversation was over, cinematic and letterbox mode didn't end nor did the camera pan to anywhere else. We all shut down WC3 after waiting for 2 minutes and proceeded to the next map then, and since frustrated by the long loadtime, we didn't try it again.
Heaven Bound
We started this map with 4 players and got through 2 of the trials i think (wow!). It was a cool idea, but i think to compete with the other maps from the contest, especially Cardiators and City of Drugs (must not name BEER BEER
), it was a bit few. I mean, it was one mini-game. It was still fun, even if I think that the first levels were to tough because in the very first, if you didn't run right after those undead building death explosions spawned in the first lane, you were dead, so that's pretty tough with some delay for the first level. I still had some fun playing. It was an OK map, but i don't really think it's enough to be "standalone". Maybe add some more and different trials in the form of minigames to the map, that would be cool!
So now for my vote, I will definitely have to decide between Cardiators and City of Drugs. Not sure there right now, I think I might play both maps again and see which one i enjoy more that very instant
![Dreadnought[dA]](/data/avatars/m/134/134647.jpg?1465504677){kind=avatar}
