[POLL] Hero Contest #7

[Footman16]

well ok

Something you'd like to share? Because I believe you yourself said it was best to be direct.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Something you'd like to share? Because I believe you yourself said it was best to be direct.

I think he's saying that

...how I felt playing the hero.

is indeed a

weird self-inspired connotation of how to judge

.

The problem lies in the understanding of that as a 'bad thing'; that is, in fact, precisely what the "Awesomeness" Criteria was there for; not necessarily "weird", but a self-inspired idea of how cool/good/awexome/interesting/well-crafted the entry was.

Some of you may/have argued against the inclusion of such a Criterion. Perhaps in future Contests it will be removed for that reason. Now, I definitely wouldn't mind seeing a bit more... description/explanation/justification for each Criterion (but especially "Awesomeness"), and not just in the official Judges but in anyone else who Votes using the Criteria... However, it's well within his right to award "Awesomeness" points as he sees fit; it was designed as an "outlet for subjectivity", provided that the rest of the Criteria were approached as objectively as possible.

 

[Lambdadelta]

UH, nothing special here. I skipped a few because they had no hero or way to spawn a hero and I was too lazy to check if commands existed or place it in the map myself.

The best thing I saw was that ice spear/lance thing.

 

[Kazeon]

UH, nothing special here. I skipped a few because they had no hero or way to spawn a hero and I was too lazy to check if commands existed or place it in the map myself.

The best thing I saw was that ice spear/lance thing.

So I assume you are looking for some candies. You've came to the wrong place then, we are making heroes for melee maps here.

Heckc, actually we have some special entries here. Like kyrbi0's and DED1's entry are pretty much interesting.

 

[Shadow Fury]

Cokemonkey, sincerely I feel you've been inaccurate with all your judgements. Why do you deduct points for using only GUI? The contest clearly says we can freely use any kind of coding for all our abilities. As far as there are no bugs, no points can be deducted from anyone. You kept listing negative points on how I used the triggers but in the end they had no bugs.
Then, as for my Fire Knight, I made Hell Strikes to slow down and keep enemies as much as possible in Fire Barrier, as well as the stunning ultimate with the same purpose. Cross Fire is made to deal damage so as a battling spell.
No level up command? Then you didn't not look well at the triggers. Type -lvl and the number and it's done.

That's all for now.

 

[Vinz]

I think the GUI comments are jokes and do not count.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

I think the GUI comments are jokes and do not count.

They didn't, but they should. If it were my contest I'd disqualify all GUI entries.

Edit: actually, dark sorcerer's implementation is better quality than many JASS triggers I see around here. It's overengineered to the point that it's painful, though.

 

[Direfury]

Good thing it isn't your competition, then.

 

[A Void]

They didn't, but they should. If it were my contest I'd disqualify all GUI entries.

Edit: actually, dark sorcerer's implementation is better quality than many JASS triggers I see around here. It's overengineered to the point that it's painful, though.

Good luck making your own contest..

 

[Shadow Fury]

Really Cokemonkey, I feel you ranked people according mostly from what they made the abilities (GUI, MUI, MPI etc...) and not on how the heroes are good and balanced. You say you would disqualify all GUI entries, this means you stick more to the heroes made with JASS or whatever isn't GUI. This is not the purpose of the contest and judging people on such a thing brings only inaccurate hero reviews.

 

[Kazeon]

Guys, please. Indeed he denied GUI but I think it's not a big minus to your scores.

Honestly, your heroes are pretty much boring, that's why I decided not to continue my review,

Spoiler

but the good side they are a good lullaby

They are mostly poorly coded, buggy, imbalance, and many more. I can only find 3 quite nice entries yet they are far from perfect. This contest is disappointing me. I wonder why do you hope a better score from Cokeyboy? My review will not be that far different from it or even worse. Truthfully, I would complain much more on Kam's review. I can see Cokey's review is much more objective than Kam's. I have tons of prevention to make Kam's review dis-counted, but let's just see if he will do better.

If I want to write my list, it's going to be like this:
1. Mythic
2. Kyrbi0
3. DED1
...
(I haven't tried them all so, not sure)

Mythic's hero is well-coded but I don't find it's interesting enough.
Kyrbi0's has the nicest concept I've seen so far but sadly I spotted some nasty bugs and imbalances out of it.
DED1's has a very interesting concept, but it fits melee maps poorly.

Sorry guys for saying such thing, I'm just expecting a better effort for a contest like this.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Cokemonkey, sincerely I feel you've been inaccurate with all your judgements. Why do you deduct points for using only GUI? The contest clearly says we can freely use any kind of coding for all our abilities.

You say you would disqualify all GUI entries, this means you stick more to the heroes made with JASS or whatever isn't GUI. This is not the purpose of the contest and judging people on such a thing brings only inaccurate hero reviews.

Regardless of whether we like his reviews or not, the fact is that he has performed exactly to the specification of the Voting method in this thread (first so far, I might add).

If he were a Judge, he would be beholden to the specific Judging Criteria in writing his review. However, as a Voter, he is entirely within his rights to vote in whatever way, with whatever metrics that he desires (whether it 'fits in the Contest' or not). All that matters is that he post in the thread (check), with a preferential ranking (check), and reasons for everything (check). (Internal) Consistency is always appreciated, but not mandated (though he has that too, mostly).

Stop griping & start voting. : )




("Stop griping" doesn't mean you can't disagree & debate it with him... But he's already stated he'll take comments elsewhere (a kind move to keep the thread clean), so feel free to do so)

//EDIT//

- You have storm bolt, goblin land
mines, phoenix fire, and kaboom. No triggers.

Woah, wait; did he actually have no physical triggers associated with his Hero spells, or do you just mean "materially" (as in Footman16's entry)?* If the former, than that could be grounds for disqualification.

 

[A Void]

Woah, wait; did he actually have no physical triggers associated with his Hero spells, or do you just mean "materially" (as in Footman16's entry)?* If the former, than that could be grounds for disqualification.

I do have triggers, please open the map. They (Direfury and Cokemonkey11) are false and incorrect, I have reported them for obvious false information. I will also ignore them in the future. (Another great addition to the ignore list)

 

[Kazeon]

@A Void:
I can open your entry normally using newest JNGP.

But I found that you only have one trigger enhanced ability, it's Kaboom (yet it's very simple and deserves no point). The other one, Light the Fuse!, is actually doesn't need any trigger since you can simply learn Phoenix Fire ability.

 

[A Void]

@A Void:
I can open your entry normally using newest JNGP.

But I found that you only have one trigger enhanced ability, it's Kaboom (yet it's very simple and deserves no point). The other one, Light the Fuse!, is actually doesn't need any trigger since you can simply learn Phoenix Fire ability.

It still counts, Kaboom was auto-casting, It was problematic so I had to use channel and create the damage using trigger. Light The Fuse!, on the other hand needed a lot more since Phoenix Fire is invisible as an ability. I had to give the hero a false-button using triggers to make it "visible".

Suffice to say, triggers count if they are associated and affected by the abilities. So, unless you too are blind- I have two trigger affected abilities just as the contest requires.

 

[Kyrbi0]

...
If I want to write my list, it's going to be like this:
1. Mythic
2. Kyrbi0
3. DED1
...
(I haven't tried them all so, not sure)
...
Sorry guys for saying such thing, I'm just expecting a better effort for a contest like this.

Well I appreciate the vouch of confidence... But when you say "better effort", I'd have to disagree. It's been a while since a proper Hero Contest was Hosted, and so people are understandably rusty... In spite of that, though, we've got a pretty good selection of solid contestants (13 is higher than any Wc3C Hero Contest, and many THW Hero Contests).

...
* My design notes were the most important measure of their final score (it wasn't. implementation quality was the most important)

Since we cannot read your mind, all we have to go on for "why you voted as you did" is based entirely on the text you presented. And the "implementation quality" was not presented as 'most important', but rather merely one in four 'primary criteria' for you. (moreover your judging of "implementation quality" contained little (at most 2) positive remarks; was almost wholly negative remarks). This does little to gives us an idea of what you actually liked about our entries; what made one entry better than another.

...
* I state opinion in absolutes (it's intentional and a sign of good writing, I encourage you all to try it)...

!
I'm willing to believe that it's 'intentional'... But I would love to see some documentation/support behind the "sign of good writing" bit. Because not only do I personally/anecdotally disagree in every conceivable fashion, but even a cursory, value-neutral Google search on the topic ("state opinions in absolutes") comes with a wide-ranging list of how doing exactly that is a bad thing and a sign of poor writing & communication.

Though I'm seriously glad you went ahead & said this outright, since it was an issue I will be/would've been discussing in that continuation of our discussion I mentioned...

People are emotional about work they produce. Text communicates empathy poorly. I am mean.

!!
Ok, so of Cosmicat's two choices, you do indeed claim the latter...

Does that not strike you as problematic? Perhaps I'm reading your last-of-three sentences out of context (though I'm admittedly confused as to how the first two relate to the last), but... "Being mean is wrong". How else can that be said?

And if you are doing it, then people are well-justified in returning like for like?

I do have triggers, please open the map. They (Direfury and Cokemonkey11) are false and incorrect, I have reported them for obvious false information. I will also ignore them in the future. (Another great addition to the ignore list)

Um... Dude, no need to overreact. Mistakes are made; it's best to give people the benefit of the doubt.

And though your rationalization for "triggered abilities" is a tad tenuous, I suppose it is sufficient... Though be warned, that's not going to win you a lot of love (either in the Judging or the Polls). It's best to really stretch yourself, creatively, and come up with some kind of serious triggering to create your abilities (or get a lot more creative with in-game stuff, as some have).

Also, stop telling me to 'open the map'. I already tried & failed. I don't have time to install fancy new WE's onto my computer just to open a single map; as long as it works in Wc3, that's all I need.

 

[Softmints]

I would like to apply to be a judge in this contest. If this is okay, please confirm via PM.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

Woah, wait; did he actually have no physical triggers associated with his Hero spells, or do you just mean "materially" (as in Footman16's entry)?* If the former, than that could be grounds for disqualification.

He should be disqualified regardless, because writing a trigger to do a *worse* job of an existing wc3 ability is strictly worse than having no triggers at all.

Since we cannot read your mind, all we have to go on for "why you voted as you did" is based entirely on the text you presented. And the "implementation quality" was not presented as 'most important', but rather merely one in four 'primary criteria' for you. (moreover your judging of "implementation quality" contained little (at most 2) positive remarks; was almost wholly negative remarks). This does little to gives us an idea of what you actually liked about our entries; what made one entry better than another.

Major, broken, design anti-patterns were serious offenses, but in this contest I found terrible implementations more plentiful. I shouldn't have to tell you what I weighted more - that's my business, for the same reason I didn't use points/scores.

I'm willing to believe that it's 'intentional'... But I would love to see some documentation/support behind the "sign of good writing" bit. Because not only do I personally/anecdotally disagree in every conceivable fashion, but even a cursory, value-neutral Google search on the topic ("state opinions in absolutes") comes with a wide-ranging list of how doing exactly that is a bad thing and a sign of poor writing & communication.

Did you just read my opinion as though it were a fact?

Ok, so of Cosmicat's two choices, you do indeed claim the latter...

Does that not strike you as problematic? Perhaps I'm reading your last-of-three sentences out of context (though I'm admittedly confused as to how the first two relate to the last), but... "Being mean is wrong". How else can that be said?

And if you are doing it, then people are well-justified in returning like for like?

I said I was mean in response to people being emotional - just like those first two (short) sentences.

I would like to apply to be a judge in this contest. If this is okay, please confirm via PM.

I would like to vouch for Softmints' ability to judge

 

[Kyrbi0]

I would like to apply to be a judge in this contest. If this is okay, please confirm via PM.

No need to wonder (& no need to vouch, Cokemonkey ); I think you'd be an excellent Judge. Thanks for volunteering; PM forthcoming.

 

[Softmints]

My judging has now been completed and sent to Kyrbi0, who will presumably make it available once the results are out.

 

[Kyrbi0]

~BUMP~

Now I know I am still working on my voting, and there's at least one other that is doing so as well... But past that I'm not seeing a lot of activity here. We've all got about a week-and-a-half left, so get to it! : )

 

[Deleted member 219079]

When is the next hero contest? I'd love to participate in one.

If it wase on Xmas holidays I might actually make it in time

 

[Vinz]

Off T: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/contest-submission-233/hero-contest-8-altar-tavern-series-257987/

 

[Deleted member 219079]

Oh it's already on the way. I'll wait for the next one.

 

[cosmicat]

Less than three days left. I'll, uh, start arranging my notes soon-ish, but I think it's fair that I'm giving more priority to job application related stuff currently.

 

[cosmicat]

Explanations are given in order of importance to me, so you will see a mixture of positives and negatives in several cases. Occasionally, I make note of something that didn't really affect what I thought of the hero one way or another, but stood out in some other way—an asterisk (*) represents these points.

I am aware that some criticisms of sloppiness apply in equal measure to my own entry.

TABLE

1st	Footman16	+ Racial synergies are straightforward and fun: Cry Havoc is a powerful and tactical ability that eliminates the only disadvantage of Defending Footmen, and makes other Human units like the Knight (chasing) and the Rifleman (kiting) even stronger. + Ability synergies are straightforward and fun: Banner of the Alliance and Power Attack are melee, but Marshall can increase his own movement speed via Charge or Cry Havoc. - Acid Bomb is not compatible with itself as a buff; Alchemists will override Power Strike and vice versa. + Abilities have a coherent and cool theme, appropriate for the hero, who in turn is appropriate for his race. - Banner is on the weak side for an ultimate; the ward can be killed before the second pulse by most T3 units acting alone, and ranged heroes make short work of it no matter where it's placed. However this is only a matter of numbers and can easily be adjusted. - No indication of test triggers without opening in World Editor. * Triggers seem to be mostly for cosmetic purposes (casting Acid Bomb without seeing a projectile move from the hero to the target) but I don't view that as an issue.
2nd	Shadow Fury	+ Racial synergies are straightforward and interesting: Cross Fire provides the Orcs an equivalent to the classic Undead Triple Nuke, in concert with Shockwave and Chain Lightning; Hell Strikes is a potent area-denial effect that cuts off enemy escape routes while you advance with beefy Tauren and Grunts or punishes enemies who come in range of Stasis Wards, a Tauren Chieftain, or Raiders that have Ensnare; Fire Barrier protects squishier units such as Headhunters and Shamans. Infernal Meteor is potent no matter which build is used, without feeling especially overpowered on any path. + Ability synergies and trade-offs are straightforward and interesting: + Each ability has a different feel to it, yet is consistent with a theme of area-denial and strategic placement of long-term large-scale effects. - There is no level-up trigger, and the hero's placement is neither in the center of the map nor is it necessarily in the player's starting base. In my first two trials, my opponent's camp was at the hero's spawn point. Compared to similar problems in other entries, this one is a more significant issue for all sorts of reasons, but the main one is that I can't try him as a "second" hero. - It isn't especially clear why a Fel Orc would be helping...non-Fel Orcs.
3rd	Dalvengyr	+ The single-target effectiveness of Cold Addict vs. the army-smashing power of Frostwave represents an interesting opportunity cost and allows the hero's role to be somewhat flexible. Frost Phase is, of course, as indispensable as most mobility abilities tend to be, but its interaction with Cold Addict is interesting enough to justify learning Cold Addict while skipping Frostwave entirely. + Frozen Fate is an awesome ultimate ability, and works extremely well with a corpse-happy army (e.g. lots of Ghouls and Meatwagons and Necromancers). - Way too much crowd control to reasonably balance just by playing with numbers or slightly altering choice concepts. - Frost effects may be on-theme for Undead, but aside from perhaps a pun on "let my cries chill the living", there's no clear reason why a Banshee would emphasize ice magic this much. Frozen Fate is the only spell that seems "Banshee"-ish. The frost-based slows are also redundant since Frost Wyrms, Frost Armor, and Frost Nova already accomplish the same thing. * You rely on a lot of external libraries, which I did not think were permitted under the contest rules.
4th	Kyrbi0	+ Racial synergies are interesting and nuanced: Preservation and Spore Cloud interact nicely with the Night Elves' skew toward ranged units and kiting/scouting tactics, and (assuming some adjustments) these concepts can also synergize with Night Elf casters' need to "set up" a bit more than the other races (e.g. druids' transformations and buffs, Starcall/Tranquility/Vengeance). + Abilities synergize indirectly with each other and with other heroes: burst damage from Fury of Nature helps Spore Cloud propagate, which then helps Fan of Knives or Immolation to clean up. Fury of Nature also works well against heroes that have been isolated or cornered by a Keeper of the Grove, or to help finish off heroes that a Warden or Priestess of the Moon has injured. + Abilities feel crunchy and they work together well enough that the opportunity cost of ability leveling order feels meaningful; I would want to have access to all three by level 5, but (assuming some adjustments in Preservation's execution, but not its concept) choosing which one(s) to level further depends greatly on the rest of my army: if I have a Warden or Demon Hunter, I might prefer Spore Cloud, but if I have a Keeper of the Grove then Fury of Nature seems more beneficial. - Preservation is kind of hilariously imbalanced; it is StarCraft's Stasis Field, except without the possibility of friendly fire or the drawback that affected units become invulnerable (damage resistance would have been appropriate here). Other abilities are also noticeably overpowered, but they are easier to tune by simply adjusting some numbers. - Preservation also has an unclear area of effect, and requires a targeted enemy unit to center on for no discernible reason. + Clever use of un-triggered abilities, overall. - Fury of Nature has no clear effect when cast out of range of valid targets; the effect is very easily wasted, without any mechanical feedback about what the ability was supposed to do in the first place. - It is not really clear what, if anything, Toadstools are meant to do. - Parasite doesn't stack with itself, but this is less severe than the similar cases in other entries because it is less common for an enemy under the effect of Spore Cloud to also be targeted by a neutral creep's Parasite ability; it is far less likely that this interaction would really have an effect on the outcome of a skirmish, whether it came up intentionally or by accident. + Testing spellbook is maximally elegant and easy to use.
5th	Wa666r	+ Interesting opportunity costs in player's ability build options: Feeding does not drain mana fast enough to be especially oppressive, except that it sustains Deceive, which would then be best used as an assassination ability while being vulnerable to detection (retreat or fully draining the target's mana stops your own regeneration); but Mind War is a decidedly support-like ability that works best if Deceive is used to gain a good position. - Didn't like the forced-synergy interaction with Dreadlord heroes. + Mitigating the above, Mind War has obvious synergy and thematic relevance around Carrion Swarm (also Frost Nova, Carrion Beetles, and Locust Swarm), without feeling forced. - Ultimate does not make nearly as much sense in a Deceive/Feeding build as it does in a Mind War/Deceive build. + Cool overall theme/flavor. - No indication of what hero this is or test triggers without opening in World Editor. * Hotkey for modified Thunder Clap is still C, not W like the tooltip says.
6th	Mythic	+ Racial synergies are straightforward: existing Undead crowd control and aoe-nuke abilities like Freezing Breath, Carrion Swarm, and Frost Nova work well with Tornado of Souls and Malediction Aura. - Racial synergies are not fun or interesting: the Undead triple-nuke "strategy" from RoC is already a classic, and Impale and Locust Swarm already enhance those options. + Mitigating the above, this is a "squishy" hero that probably wants a Death Knight for protection, so the player's third hero choice (and the order to acquire heroes) is itself an interesting opportunity cost. + Ability synergies are straightforward: Hand of Corruption and Tornado of Souls keep units in place to ensure each other's success, as well as that of Darkstorm. - Ability synergies are not fun or interesting: they just involve stacking more and more damage and oppressive crowd control. The only decision is whether to prioritize Dark Swarm or Malediction Aura, and this depends entirely on whether the player is using a third hero. - Player can train multiple Dark Sorcerers. - "applying a DoT" is not clear phrasing for players unfamiliar with video game meta terms; Blizzard tooltips favor complete sentences over shorthand. - No indication of what hero this is or test triggers without opening in World Editor.
7th	Cokemonkey11	+ "Arcane Arrrows", "Forrestwalk", and Sigil of Dexterity work well together and give the hero a clear purpose: she's a ranged assassin. Two of these abilities (see below) also feel appropriate for WarCraft's version of High Elves, and the hero stands out from other heroes that are unique to her faction. - Mitigating the above, the only apparent synergies between the Arcane Ranger and the Human faction involve being the beneficiary of various heals and buffs, and all such synergies already apply to other ranged assassin heroes the Humans already have access to via Taverns. Conversely, she would benefit just as much from the Night Elves' support units. In short, the hero's flavorful and unique role come at the cost of having no racial synergy to speak of. - It is not clear from the tooltip that Sigil of Dexterity's range limit is centered on the point where it is cast. Also, moving while under the effect requires focused micromanagement reminiscent of StarCraft 1, because "dashing" means a move order can't be canceled before reaching the max range and doing so also dispels the attack speed buff. WarCraft III's unit-grouping and unique-spell-cast mechanics were a deliberate movement away from this sort of thing. - Holy Sigil's cooldown and duration are almost the same, and are short, and it can't be autocast, and it's expensive; this is basically a much worse Holy Light, on a hero who can't actually protect herself. This reduces the use of Holy Sigil to a case where the player has already committed to using a Paladin, and is willing to spend every Holy Light healing the sort-of-DPS-ish ranged hero while carefully micromanaging heals on other units. - "Forrestwalk" is redundant and lacks racial synergy. Mortar Teams are the only units who might benefit noticeably from the vision range, but they can always use Flares to achieve the same effect. The Humans' tendency to clear-cut forests for lumber also creates an unclear trade-off that is difficult to plan around. This ability would have fit much better on a Night Elf hero. - Test trigger depending on Esc is annoying, since Esc has other effects already; the same key I want to use to cancel out of, say, viewing my heroes' abilities, also gives me a free level I didn't necessarily want. - Scaling on "Forrestwalk" is awful; an unreliable +2 attribute bonus for pushing it past level 1 makes which ability to leave for levels 9 and 10 an easy decision. * "Forrestwalk", on top of being physically painful for me to spell, is also visually unclear; allied players may believe her to be invisible, when really she's only getting a small buff from terrain. * Tooltip format does not match that of other WarCraft III heroes; slash-notation and other "you know this already" abbreviations belong in games where a certain amount of gameplay meta elitism is expected (dota 2, and...that's pretty much it, actually). * You rely on a lot of external libraries, which I did not think were permitted under the contest rules.
8th	Rufus	+ There are several options for the order in which a player levels and uses the Marksman's abilities, depending on whether they prefer to do single-target or area-effect damage. - There is no clear racial synergy. This hero seems to emphasize guerilla warfare, but the Human faction's other units and heroes are very poorly suited to this sort of strategy and the Marksman has no way of surviving on her own. - There is no clear synergy between the Marksman's abilities, and in fact Multishot and Volley seem to diminish each other's advantages. - Tooltips are not clear at all and give no indication about what the effect of leveling an ability will be. - "Artic Arrow" travels to exactly the point that is targeted, no further, which means you must aim very far behind the target you want to hit. This is substantially more burdensome than any other existing WarCraft III ability. - Test trigger depending on Esc is annoying, since Esc has other effects already; the same key I want to use to cancel out of, say, viewing my heroes' abilities, also gives me a free level I didn't necessarily want.
9th	Direfury	+ Racial synergies are somewhat interesting: Nourish is extremely powerful coupled with Holy Light and Brilliance Aura; AoE damage abilities work well with a Mountain King and, most thematically, an army that includes some Sorceresses. - No real ability synergies, except that Starchildren and Stormshiver allow the Arcanist to deal significant combat damage even during Nourish. But three flat-damage aoe nukes just seems redundant. - There is no reason to learn Stormshiver since the other abilities are so much stronger and easier to aim, no matter what the rest of your army looks like. - Roar is not compatible with itself as a buff; using the ability as a base creates conflicts. - Mana costs for everything are way too low, especially for what they do. - No test triggers
10th	DED1	- All four abilities are over-complicated and irritating to use; this is especially true of the Parrot. - Pirate Warfare and Walk The Plank! are both practically impossible to deploy in any controlled way; every aspect of the Pirate's gameplay feels random instead of tactical. - I could not find any racial synergies or reason to favor any particular army composition or additional heroes while using a Pirate. - Other than the forced synergy that only sometimes occurs when Pirate Warfare and Walk The Plank! are used in concert, there are no clear or interesting synergies across the hero's own abilities. - Drawbacks are far more crippling than they are mechanically interesting, especially in the case of Pirate Warfare (which is literally useless at level 1) and Summon Ghost Ship (which weakens your army almost as often as it helps). - Acid Bomb is not compatible with itself as a buff; Alchemists will override Pirate Warfare and vice versa. + Testing interface is relatively elegant and easy to use. * Pirate-y flavor is amusing, with enjoyable thematic references to Treasure Island, Monkey Island, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. and lore snippets help explain why this hero exists in the Warcraft 'verse, but the hero's overall theme still feels out of place here. Overall kind of a wash.
11th	angkyseputra	- Illusion swarm feels cheap...until the enemy wipes your entire "army" with a single Shockwave and easily murders the Shadow; the hero either solos an entire enemy army without trying, or gets countered by a single strategic decision and is worthless. There's nothing interesting about this sort of gameplay. - There is no racial synergy, except that this hero looks similar enough to a regular Demon Hunter that enemies get even more visually confused by the hordes of illusions. - There is no interesting ability synergy; this hero basically has just one ability/core mechanic, split across four slightly different ways of improving it. - There is no opportunity cost in the hero's ability build; Shadow Blade -> Shadow Edge -> Shadow Dodge -> Shadow Edge -> Shadow Edge is very obviously the optimal order of ability levels, just by glancing at the skill descriptions. - Training the hero does not consume a Hero Token. Player can train multiple Elven Shadows. - Leveling test trigger does not actually work.
12th	A Void	- Light The Fuse! is not actually an effective substitute for having a normal attack: the hero misses out on the use of items that are meant to benefit heroes; the hero's placement in an attack-moving group is automatically terrible, meaning this hero must be carefully micromanaged in ways that the rest of WarCraft III deliberately avoids; the hero cannot be countered by Sleep or other effects that are intended specifically to counter heroes; the hero is forced to take Light The Fuse! in order to be remotely as relevant as other heroes. - Using landmines as a non-ultimate hero ability is impossible to balance; it will always be so strong that the optimal use case is to rush the hero out and plant a mine at the opponent's gold mine, devastating their economy faster than a Blademaster could without presenting an opportunity for counter-play, unless it is so weak that it might as well not be in the game. - With one exception that frankly seems entirely accidental, there are no synergies between the Sapper and the Orc race. - There are no synergies at all between the Sapper's own abilities. - Light The Fuse! will not attack any enemy that has been affected by a Phoenix Fire debuff. + Landmines synergize reasonably well with the Witch Doctor's Stasis Wards and with the overall defensive layout of an Orc base that has committed to using Spiked Barricades with Bunkers, and Watch Towers. But, again, this doesn't feel like an intentional design choice so much as a serendipitous mistake.

Edit: Er, or I guess that's how my vote would have looked, except I missed the "GMT" part of the deadline so I'm several hours late.

 

[Kazeon]

Frost effects may be on-theme for Undead, but aside from perhaps a pun on "let my cries chill the living", there's no clear reason why a Banshee would emphasize ice magic this much. Frozen Fate is the only spell that seems "Banshee"-ish. The frost-based slows are also redundant since Frost Wyrms, Frost Armor, and Frost Nova already accomplish the same thing.

You know what? I have also wrote a lore story of my hero that explains why she is so icy

To strengthen his army even more, the Lich King gifted his mighty ice elemental power of Frostmourne down to those special banshees, which soon will be known as Banshee Queens. So unlikely the other banshees, they have ice element as their base abilities.

You rely on a lot of external libraries, which I did not think were permitted under the contest rules.

They are allowed. But pre-made spells are not.

- Way too much crowd control to reasonably balance just by playing with numbers or slightly altering choice concepts.

Uhm.. I don't understand this part.

Different time zone has always been a consistency problem in this site. So I guess it's fine

EDIT:
This is kind of too late. But since Kyrbi0 seems like didn't publish our pastebin entries, I will give the link to mine (http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin.php?id=z6uigf). I have re-wrote the story likely more than 3 times but I feel kinda disappointed it's just for nothing, contest host didn't even hear/read my suggestion to publish the presentation of our entries. Now everone (judges & reviewers) misunderstand my icy spellpack to be a copy of Lich's Well, fair enough.

 

[cosmicat]

Uhm.. I don't understand this part.

Just that, with all those slows, plus the three-second area-effect stun, it would be hard to balance the hero just by changing the duration or damage of the spells. What only recently occurred to me was that it might work if the mana costs were increased to look like Shadow Fury's hero, so that you have to carefully decide which spells you want to cast...but then, that also reduces her effectiveness as a caster hero and hurts the relative helpfulness of Obsidian Statues near her.

Also, I wanna say again that I put my explanations in approximately the order they mattered to me, and was in most cases comparing against what I would ideally want a "good" entry to look like.

Basically, I felt like your abilities are "hard" to balance, but all four combined didn't count against you as much as Frozen Fate's concept, execution, and overall niftiness were points in your favor. The overall thrust of that critique is that it would probably take some relatively lengthy play-testing to get the hero to a vaguely balanced-looking state, and there would probably be some mechanics changes and re-coding along the way, but the basic concept would still be there. Whereas, say, land mines just have to be totally replaced; the concept is fundamentally not suited to a melee hero; major negative.

Grades are subjective and I didn't bother using any numeric notation to quantify how I felt about things, but you can compare how I generally felt about similar issues across certain entries. For instance, avoiding the use of base abilities like Acid Bomb is pretty important to me in the design of a hero intended for melee play—it's the third most important thing on my critique of my favorite entry. But it's only the sixth most important thing on my critique of DED1's entry, not because it's less important in that context but because the five negatives above it are just that much worse.

Edit: At least as far as my votes went, theme was generally either not very important or totally unimportant. I was much more concerned with how well the hero's kit interacted with the race it was made for, and yours did pretty well there.

 

[Shadow Fury]

Oh my God, there is a damn level up command where you type -lvl 6 for example to level up to level 6. You should check the triggers and see that I actually made a level up command.

 

[cosmicat]

Huh, could've sworn I had looked.

Shrug; hero spawning in an arbitrary camp is still unhelpful, and the level trigger itself is pretty much the difference between second place and second place.

There are way better reasons to use profanity.

 

[Softmints]

Looks like time's up. Good luck to all contestants; I am excited to see who will come out on top.

 

[Kyrbi0]

*headdesk*

Well, I guess I should've expected this... I'm very sorry guys (lol, "all the people waiting to hear what I had to say in my vote"). After going to so much trouble to set up not only this Contest but this unique Voting method, I have failed to deliver.

I'd ask if people want a Voting Extension, but I'm fairly certain it'd only be for me. :<

I will do my best to finish & post it later, if only as a courtesy to all of you who have worked so hard. But alas, it looks like we pretty much have one (or was it two?) voters (scratch that, only Cokemonkey11 made it in on time. Lol).

~

I'm still convinced that this kind of Voting method is the optimal & helpful one... However I'm realizing that perhaps, the Hive just isn't ready for it yet. So, I'm wondering, given the circumstances, what people would like to do:

//~	Extend the Poll Deadline	Despite what I just said above. Would include Cosmicat's & (goodness-willing) my vote, as well as (hopefully) a few others.
/	Have a quick, secondary "Regular" Poll	Would let us grab some simple crowdsourced numbers and a better-represented "Voting" score... But would take some more time (if people want results NAO) (And by "regular" I mean "2-vote", probably)
	Discount the Poll	Ignore the Poll and give 100% to Judging... But would be a 'slap-in-the-face' to those who did take the time to vote (& correctly). Cokemonkey11 (and to a lesser degree, Cosmicat & I)
/	Keep the Poll, Move On	Just keep going, take Cokemonkey11's vote & the Judging & put out results.

EmoRant

I can't believe I let that happen again...

I was so determined this time, to get something that was important to me accomplished... I even decided to entirely forgo working on my Techtree Contest entry (despite spearheading that, too) since I felt this was more important.

And here, I've stayed up to the goshforsaken hour of 5am, merely to realize that I was out of time 5 hours ago (before I even started).

*sigh*

~~~

@Cosmicat: Lol... I'm rather surprised I was placed below Shadow Fury (haven't tested Dalvengyr's yet). But thanks. x )

@Dalvengyr: A few people asked about the linking of Pastebins. Thing is, in this Contest we were looking to maximize anonymity & standardization. Having all the entrants use the same map-naming paradigm (site.contest.name), putting them all into a single Zip, not having pictures (or massive backstory's/explanations/presentations) was all part of that.

I remember asking about it a few times, and a few responded, but it didn't seem to go anywhere after that, so I'm sorry if you felt ignored.

And while I haven't tested your hero yet (was working backwards; got to DED1), I will say that it doesn't matter what kind of lore you wrote to "explain" why your Banshee hero has ice powers. The fact is, the race you made it for (Undead) already has a hero like that. Not just an Intelligence hero, or an Intelligence Caster hero, or a ghostly Intelligence Caster hero, but a ghostly Intelligence Caster hero with ice powers. I'm just not feeling it. I would say the same about someone designing a nature-wielding four-legged demigod for the Night Elves, or a voodoo-obsessed lanky Troll spirit-master who turns people into frogs; it's just not creative.

Moreover, Warcraft heroes are really meant to stand alone of any explanation. Sure, some people (myself included ) read the manual... But not many. If your hero has to be explained to make sense, that is part of the problem.

@Shadow Fury: There was... But the onus is on the creator to make testing easy, not the tester to find it. That means letting the player know in-game, as if they'd just unzipped into Wc3 & pressed "play". Quest menu, dialog, pop-up text... Tester item, Tester Unit, Tester Building... Debug mode, cheat mode... Whatever. But triggers out-of-sight in the World Editor isn't exactly conducive to 'easy testing'.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

- Mitigating the above, the only apparent synergies between the Arcane Ranger and the Human faction involve being the beneficiary of various heals and buffs, and all such synergies already apply to other ranged assassin heroes the Humans already have access to via Taverns. Conversely, she would benefit just as much from the Night Elves' support units. In short, the hero's flavorful and unique role come at the cost of having no racial synergy to speak of.

Interesting, I didn't really consider how tavern heroes could be considered an extension of a race that way.

- It is not clear from the tooltip that Sigil of Dexterity's range limit is centered on the point where it is cast.

There is no indication because that isn't true. You're only limited to a total of (1000 was it?) units of dashing. i.e. you can't just keep dashing in a small circle forever.

Also, moving while under the effect requires focused micromanagement reminiscent of StarCraft 1, because "dashing" means a move order can't be canceled before reaching the max range and doing so also dispels the attack speed buff.

Neither of these things are true. If you right click a small distance away you will only dash that far. Dash distance also has nothing to do with the AS buff. The AS buff is purely based on duration.

I'm sorry you misunderstood this - i'll look to improve my tooltip verbosity in the future.

However, you are probably right that the level of micro involved is too high. You are essentially forced to deselect your army to use this with maximum effectiveness.

WarCraft III's unit-grouping and unique-spell-cast mechanics were a deliberate movement away from this sort of thing.

I deliberately chose to bring it back because I don't think this kind of design decision will be prevalent in future games. Of course this is getting quite meta and you're entitled to your opinion... moving on.

- Holy Sigil's cooldown and duration are almost the same, and are short, and it can't be autocast, and it's expensive; this is basically a much worse Holy Light, on a hero who can't actually protect herself.

Actually, at max level holy sigil's duration is longer than the cooldown. This is intended to allow the BR to heal more than one ally at once when used effectively. Do note that arcane arrows regenerates mana and refreshes; before level 6, holy sigil is her only guaranteed source of mana usage.

This reduces the use of Holy Sigil to a case where the player has already committed to using a Paladin, and is willing to spend every Holy Light healing the sort-of-DPS-ish ranged hero while carefully micromanaging heals on other units.

I never tested against a real player, and I'm not really a good ladder player in the first place, but I found it pretty reasonable to efficiently utilize the arcane arrows/holy sigil combination against bots. In fact, I never even tested with a paladin as my second, and achieved a pretty high win rate.

- "Forrestwalk" is redundant and lacks racial synergy. Mortar Teams are the only units who might benefit noticeably from the vision range, but they can always use Flares to achieve the same effect. The Humans' tendency to clear-cut forests for lumber also creates an unclear trade-off that is difficult to plan around. This ability would have fit much better on a Night Elf hero.

Yeah, I was pretty torn on forrestwalk. I initially made the sight range quite high to be used for scouting, but became afraid it could be abused by a player better than myself so reduced it until it was borderline useless. I guess that's a red flag on its design!

- Test trigger depending on Esc is annoying, since Esc has other effects already; the same key I want to use to cancel out of, say, viewing my heroes' abilities, also gives me a free level I didn't necessarily want.

I'm sorry you felt that way. I don't use escape as a hotkey during game. I'll remember this in the future.

- Scaling on "Forrestwalk" is awful; an unreliable +2 attribute bonus for pushing it past level 1 makes which ability to leave for levels 9 and 10 an easy decision.
* "Forrestwalk", on top of being physically painful for me to spell, is also visually unclear; allied players may believe her to be invisible, when really she's only getting a small buff from terrain.

The +2 was once much higher. I wish I was a better player so I could more accurately balance such a thing I didn't consider that her opacity could be mistaken for invisibility, so that's interesting.

* Tooltip format does not match that of other WarCraft III heroes; slash-notation and other "you know this already" abbreviations belong in games where a certain amount of gameplay meta elitism is expected (dota 2, and...that's pretty much it, actually).

Indeed, I think my tooltips are better than the standard ones. I prefer not to use wc3 as a base for good design, where possible.

* You rely on a lot of external libraries, which I did not think were permitted under the contest rules.

That is incorrect

---

Thanks for reviewing. Would love to chat more via PM/VM if you have the time.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

Sorry for double post, feel free to merge:

@Kibri0: I suggest extending the official deadline by a short time. I'm usually against extending deadlines, but I don't think extending a voting deadline gives any strategical advantage to anyone.

 

[Kazeon]

@Kyrbi0:

Your voting method might works well if we have less than 7 (or less) entries. But for 13 entries, on earth have times/efforts for them? Even with simplest common voting method, 25% people will say simple impression like "I vote for "a" because it's cool!", 65% will vote without any comment, and the rest can probably give some clean reviews about their favorites. But now, they are supposed to write reviews for 13 entries? No way.

EDIT:
And I feel kinda disappointed I didn't finish my review

EDIT 2:
"Have a quick, secondary "Regular" Poll" and "go on" thingy are the best options. Extending the deadline will result in nothing. Discounting the public vote is also not an option and it's unfair for ones who have spent lot of their times for reviewing.

 

[Softmints]

I would accept extending the deadline by a week if there were at least 4-5 users who were going to make use of the extra time. If we can't find users who will agree to vote, then there's no point in an extension.

I have no objection to use of the 3 votes we have at this time, but unless the vote count increases substantially, I don't believe borda-count preferential voting is stable enough to produce a meaningful consensus. Relying on the judges would give a more conclusive result.

As a general courtesy, I would encourage contestants to remember to give rep to the other contestants who took the trouble to prepare votes and give you feedback.

A 'lite' poll will produce garbage/lazy data: anyone who has troubled to try all the heroes should have no problem using preferential voting.

 

[A Void]

This contest seems to fail. It should have ended ages ago...

 

[Vinz]

Almost every other contest recently had extensions too.
@ Review:

- Player can train multiple Dark Sorcerers.

I couldn't edit the Gameplay Constants because of gamebreaking bugs (possibly in my MPQ).

 

[cosmicat]

I would accept extending the deadline by a week if there were at least 4-5 users who were going to make use of the extra time. If we can't find users who will agree to vote, then there's no point in an extension.

I have no objection to use of the 3 votes we have at this time, but unless the vote count increases substantially, I don't believe borda-count preferential voting is stable enough to produce a meaningful consensus. Relying on the judges would give a more conclusive result.

A 'lite' poll will produce garbage/lazy data: anyone who has troubled to try all the heroes should have no problem using preferential voting.

Gotta agree with all of this.

Other thoughts:

• Hive in general...doesn't seem to understand MBC. Or preferential voting in general, even. The entire point was supposed to be that you don't have to try all the entries before you vote; you can if you want to, but it works almost as well to just play the ones you're interested in, and vote on those only. —Provided enough people actually do vote. I don't know how we can make that clearer in the future, but it's something we'll need to try if we want to continue to experiment with preferential voting in the future.
• It's slightly more work for contestants, but in the future I would recommend having write-ups/blurbs/screenshots as part of the presentation of the poll, so that people who don't want to try every entry can choose which ones they want to try more easily.
• That, or more thoroughly standardize the Map Description format to the same end.
• I still believe Schulze is a far superior method for this sort of thing, in every sense. It might be harder to understand how it works, but I think that is an advantage; even with my own intuitive heuristic for predicting results, I still can't think of a way I could metagame the system without multiple conspirators, even if I wanted to.
• We might have overplayed the "support/justification for vote" angle; I suspect some people might have been scared off by the idea that they were expected to review things with a certain amount of rigor—and that bar may have looked too high.
• I don't know what your implementation of MBC looks like, but I'm pretty sure any one of Cokemonkey11, Sreg, Levi, or myself would have the technical skill to implement the Schulze Method algorithm with pretty much any interface you could want. Provided you yourself (or a delegate...) have enough time to look over some mock-ups.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

Any kind of suggested improvements are subject to change when the number of entrants, duration of contest, number of judges, and number of voters are so volatile and subject to change.

If you ask every entrant to write a page-long description with explanation and screenshots, 2/3 of the entrants will not have a submission.

There isn't really a great way to get guaranteed improvement from this. Let's just finish the contest and move on. It's gone (relatively) smoothly already.

 

[cosmicat]

Is there any kind of deadline for voting on what's going to happen to the votes?

 

[Kyrbi0]

@Kyrbi0:

Your voting method might works well if we have less than 7 (or less) entries. But for 13 entries, on earth have times/efforts for them? Even with simplest common voting method, 25% people will say simple impression like "I vote for "a" because it's cool!", 65% will vote without any comment, and the rest can probably give some clean reviews about their favorites. But now, they are supposed to write reviews for 13 entries? No way.

#1) The number of entries is immaterial (mostly). Notice (as Cosmicat helpfully reminded us), on the front page, the disclaimer "as many as you can". Voters need not vote (review) each entry.

#2) Sure, 13 sounds like a lot... But the last Hero Contest had 28 entries!! And the first time a preferential voting method (in this case, Schulze) was introduced over at Wc3C.net in a big way (the Race-Building Contest), there were FILLINWITHNUMBER entries... And we had an excellent voting turn-out. Lots of good & thoughtful votes.
I had/have hopes that the same could happen here; I had/have faith in the Hive.

#3) Number of entries aside, that was kinda the point; we wanted to avoid the sort of inane, meaningless & unaccountable Voting that has occurred countless times on this site. So we were expecting to have less voters than in previous Contests, and in my opinion that's OK; Quality > Quantity.
Now, having only 1 is a bit of a let-down, but see above.

EDIT:
And I feel kinda disappointed I didn't finish my review

You and me both, brudda. :<

I would accept extending the deadline by a week if there were at least 4-5 users who were going to make use of the extra time. ...

I too would like to see if others will Vote... But no one has spoken up.

Hello?

I have no objection to use of the 3 votes we have at this time, but unless the vote count increases substantially, I don't believe borda-count preferential voting is stable enough to produce a meaningful consensus. Relying on the judges would give a more conclusive result.

Well, um, we are... As well as the Vote. The ultimate score is part-Vote, part-Judge (25%/75%, to be perqueer; heavily weighted towards the Judging by design). I wouldn't want to entirely discount the Vote, regardless of how small an impact it might make.

As a general courtesy, I would encourage contestants to remember to give rep to the other contestants who took the trouble to prepare votes and give you feedback.

A worthy reminder. : )

This contest seems to fail. It should have ended ages ago...

Thanks for the vouch of confidence. Your support is warmly received.

:<

Seriously, man. The Contest ended 1 day before your post, and you are complaining?

Hive in general...doesn't seem to understand MBC. Or preferential voting in general, even. The entire point was supposed to be that you don't have to try all the entries before you vote; you can if you want to, but it works almost as well to just play the ones you're interested in, and vote on those only. —Provided enough people actually do vote. I don't know how we can make that clearer in the future, but it's something we'll need to try if we want to continue to experiment with preferential voting in the future.

I... Disagree? The entire point was to engineer a more thoughtful, meaningful & intuitive voting method. It was a (can't find the word) 'unintentionally/happy side-effect' that resulted in a system where users would not have to test & Vote for each one. In fact, we encouraged the former & discouraged the latter.

It's slightly more work for contestants, but in the future I would recommend having write-ups/blurbs/screenshots as part of the presentation of the poll, so that people who don't want to try every entry can choose which ones they want to try more easily.

This is another thing (which I know you haven't been around for); as aforementioned, we were going for 'equality' via standardization & anonymity. Previous Contests have done exactly this (big fancy descriptions & nice, edited screenshots; links to such from either the creator or the host) and I feel that is a big failing. We are trying to encourage people to actually care and review/test/vote on more than just their favorites; giving them the tools to differentiate & discriminate right off the bat is counter-intuitive. The resulting potentiality of less votes (while hoped to be as minimal as possible) was deemed a cost worth paying.

That, or more thoroughly standardize the Map Description format to the same end.

Yeah, this really needs/ed to happen, actually. Almost no one changed their map's inner name or the map description, so testing through Wc3 (rather than "Test Map" in Editor) was really tricky.

I still believe Schulze is a far superior method for this sort of thing, in every sense. It might be harder to understand how it works, but I think that is an advantage; even with my own intuitive heuristic for predicting results, I still can't think of a way I could metagame the system without multiple conspirators, even if I wanted to.
...
I don't know what your implementation of MBC looks like, but I'm pretty sure any one of Cokemonkey11, Sreg, Levi, or myself would have the technical skill to implement the Schulze Method algorithm with pretty much any interface you could want. Provided you yourself (or a delegate...) have enough time to look over some mock-ups.

I absolutely agree. However, I didn't feel up to the task of engineering it for this site, and didn't want to ask someone else to.
~
It looks like the one on Wikipedia, lawl. You know this; you helped me work on it. : ) That being said, if one of want(ed) to do it, I'd be more than happy to look it over... But as aforementioned, I didn't want to bug you guys for (what seemed like) a big coding thing.

We might have overplayed the "support/justification for vote" angle; I suspect some people might have been scared off by the idea that they were expected to review things with a certain amount of rigor—and that bar may have looked too high.

This may be true. In fact, it's very likely. But I'm not sure I'd be willing to see the bar lowered too much more. That would defeat the whole purpose of our many months of discussion on the subject.

I mean, while Cokemonkey's (& yours (& eventually my)) vote(s) were more in line with what we'd like to see, I don't think there'd be any problem with people voting minimally. As long as they say something... And that something isn't "I think it's cool", or something similarly minimal. Just a few things, couple sentences... Not hard, right? Ah dannae. Perhaps that just wasn't communicated well, like you said.

Any kind of suggested improvements are subject to change when the number of entrants, duration of contest, number of judges, and number of voters are so volatile and subject to change.

Not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying we shouldn't bother suggesting/implementing improvements? Some things may change, but we can incorporate Contest parameters/criteria to handle it, I would submit (i.e. "if 3-5 entries, X voting method. if 6-10 entries, Y voting method. If 11+ entries, Z voting method")

If you ask every entrant to write a page-long description with explanation and screenshots, 2/3 of the entrants will not have a submission.

This is true. Which is why I'm glad we didn't ask for all that.

There isn't really a great way to get guaranteed improvement from this. Let's just finish the contest and move on. It's gone (relatively) smoothly already.

<3
And while that may be true, I don't think it should stop us from discussing what went right/wrong in this Contest, for application in future Contests.

Is there any kind of deadline for voting on what's going to happen to the votes?

Lawl NOPE.

But on a serious note, I didn't include a deadline. Maybe we should have a Poll to decide when to end the Poll to decide??



But on a serious-ersr note, I think we've heard enough to know not to throw out the votes. Personally, I'm increasingly busy as things ramp up to the end of classes here (even though it's a "holiday" week, I still work most days & have family plans on the one day off), so I'm only "tentatively hopeful" in getting my vote accomplished in short order.

I suppose a sort of soft-deadline is when I get all the Judging in; Softmints & Kam are finished, but we are now only waiting for Bannar to finish his. I've already organized all the Judging (still have to count up the current vote(s)), so it's mostly ready. Sans what we're talking about now.

//EDIT// - So at this point I've tested (barest run-through) & written up votes for all but 4 of the entries. Bleh. These weekends really don't result in much for me, anymore. Kids != productivity. Welp, I'll keep trucking along just in case. Still waiting for Bannar's Judging.

 

[cosmicat]

//EDIT// - So at this point I've tested (barest run-through) & written up votes for all but 4 of the entries.

This is what I mean. We'd probably have more votes/participants if people were more willing to say, "I only had time to play all but four of the entries, so here are my votes for all but four of the entries."

Edit: Also, while polling the room for opinions on the best course of action is admirable in a way, you are the host. You don't really need everyone to agree with you before you make a decision.

 

[Kazeon]

How is this going?

 

[Vinz]

Bannar hasn't given out his scores yet, I think.

 

[A Void]

Omg, shouldn't this be closed yet? Or does it need to be requested..

Ps: Unsubscribing to this thread.

 

[Kyrbi0]

~my vote~

So here it is. Took me long enough.

Anyway, to be succinct (I can see Cokemonkey11 rolling over in his grave... ), my voting here was primarily determined by 1) How cohesive, well-designed & interesting the Theme & Role were, 2) How well it seemed to "fit" into the standard, regular game & factions, and 3) how cool it felt to me. Bonus points for creativity & polish. Surprise, surprise; those were all the Criteria for the Contest. It was pretty dang subjective if I do say so myself, but there it is. Some of you made it difficult by being great at one thing but bad at another, so meh.

One thing I feel I could say to all Contestants; many of you still seemed to struggle with the idea that this was a "classic" Hero Contest with "add a compatible 5th hero to a regular melee/ladder faction" as it's goal. Whether it was as simple as 1 'special' proper name, or overly-detailed/fancy tooltips, all the way up to crazy-AoS-ish spells... Yeah, it was there for many of you. There is a time & place for that (i.e. the fiery pits of Hell), but it wasn't here. So I heavily rewarded those I felt "got it" in this sense.

Furthermore, any of you who used regular buffing abilities as bases (Roar, Howl of Terror, Bloodlust, Acid Bomb, Faerie Fire, etc etc etc), it's worth noting that (to my great personal misfortune), Custom Buffed Abilities Do Not Stack. That is to say, your custom Acid Bomb, even with a custom Buff (derived from the Acid Bomb buff), will not interact normally/favorably with the regular Acid Bomb, were those two to meet on the field. The stronger would override the weaker, but they would not sit on top of each other (as one would expect from two "different" spells). Nearly all of you struggled with this (even myself (though totally on accident; I actually worked super-hard to make sure I didn't do this, but forgot to realize that there is a Neutral Mercenary unit which can use Parasite. FML)), so yeah.

So yeah.

Yeah. So.

Wa666r

===
Wa666r - Nathrezim Agent
===

+ I really appreciate that you managed to find good, 'unused' icons that actually fit your abilities. Same thing I did, actually. : )
+ Nice simple (& some creative) names; Mind War & Deceive are faves.
+ You've got som reasonably gameplay-fitting spell mechanics
+ Undead could definitely use a supportive Agility-dude, so good choice (Role-wise)

~ testing triggers?
~ introduction? explanation? credits?

- a... dreadlord... redux?... (Theme-issues)
- intra-hero synergy is interesting, but unprecedented (in a bad way (IMO), unfortunately)
- bad consideration of Role; his first ability has an AoE effect centered on the hero... Who is Ranged, & thus should never be in firefights. ?
- Ultimate sounded cool (especially considering it as an homage to the Beta Dreadlord <3), but was very confusing; I could not understand it/make it work for me. Random multiple warpings despite how many units I target (or not?)...?

Overall, a decent entry in terms of craft & design (for the most part); the spells make sense on the Hero, and play towards a certain end. However, that 'end' is basically an "alternate Dreadlord"? Even though it uses a campaign model/icon to help differentiate it, I can't help but shake my head a bit. Of all the cool Undead creatures, essentially re-creating an existing one? Why?

In this sense, while your entry didn't fail majorly in any one way (see above), it kinda failed the "spiritual" point of the Contest; adding a Hero to a Faction that introduces a new Thematic & Role-tastic element. You got one... But far from the other. :<

Still, you did a reasonably good job; your experience with race-building has definitely helped you here. Good luck on future contests!

Shadow Fury

===
Shadow Fury - Fire Knight
===

+ good use of campaign model
+ very... thematic
+ clean & informative tooltips (except for Ultimate, see below)
+ nice SFX; especially like the underused "Mark of Chaos" for Hellstrikes.

~ testing triggers?
~ which race (demonic, red, fire-obsessed Orc)?

- problems with Theme: So he's a Fire Knight... In the Orcish Horde? Of all the things the Horde is about, Fire doesn't seem to be a big one (at least, not anymore with the whole "free from Demons" thing). Moreover, isn't "Fire-themed Hero" really covered with the (Neutral) Firelord? ~ What's worse, it's just really... repetitive. It's all "Fire Cross. Fire Strikes, Fire Wall, Fire Meteor". No "Knightly" or Orcish or "warlord"-type abilities to break it up... Just loads of fire. Meh
- problems with Role: granted, you had a rough time of it; the Horde is the one faction with all 3 attributes & a decent coverage of Roles (TC: big tanky brawler, FS: nuke & support caster, BM: assassin/dps, SH: psuedo-mage ranged support). But why, then, would you go for "straight up mega-nuker"?? Literally all of his abilities deal straight (& DoT) damage as their primary effect. The Firelord didn't have it that bad (a variety of DD, DoT, Debuff, summon, etc etc). Even the Tauren Chieftain (with 2 pure-DD abilities) doesn't feel so... repetitive.
I'll give you props for defying expectations & making the Fire Knight a "mystical" Intelligence-based Hero (rather than the more-obvious "burly" Strength-based). But it seems like the Orcs have enough of that (if of anything), and moreover it wasn't done in a way that felt "cool".
(well I'll admit, I find indiscriminately blowing things up to be "cool", but not particularly balanced or fun for anyone else )
- The Ultimate's tooltip was not well-worded & thus misleading; I assumed it could target an area (rather than being 'instant-cast'), but that was not the case. Wasted 175 mana & a nice long cooldown (in a real game) to figure out it hits right in front of [the guy who sits in the back casting spells]

Overall, it wasn't bad; the polish was nice, you picked some good models (unit & SFX). However, while it was 'structurally sound', it appears it would be most beneficial to really rethink both the thematic and gameplay decisions that went into it's making, and to design something that would really enhance the Orcish Horde. This goes double for (a) Hero('s) abilities; don't take the easy way out of stapling a buncha DD to a guy.

Rufus

===
Rufus- Marksman
===

+ Humans got a Ranger!
+ Theme: Did a pretty good job with this one (but see below). Chose "Marksman" and by golly, she had a load of Arrow abilities. I rather liked the diversity (i.e. abilities that referenced her bow (drawback), abilities that referenced her arrows (multishot, arctic arrow), abilities that referenced her firing (volley)), too.
+ Role: Did alright here (see below). The Alliance is really lacking in a straight-up ranged assault/nukers (well, MK is full of them but the casters both have channeling or DoT stuff), so good job following the Contest Theme & "filling the gap".
+ Of all the abilities, I liked Volley (how'd you get it to change the tooltip each time?), but my favorite was probably Drawback. Just a neat, non-obvious bow-related idea (even if it would probably have been better/more role-tastic/more seamless if you'd just used a modified reverse Wind Walk).

~ WHY oh WHY didn't you pick the cooler, snazzier, more fitting, infinitely better "Sylvanas" model? It's the perfect "Alliance Ranger"! You could avoid that nasty custom Hero Glow (which, the one on her Chest, by the way, was a bit large) that doesn't change colors right, you could get all those schweet Attack & Spell animations, the beautiful portrait, the soundset... Why?? It was simply meant to be. The Gods of Blizzard created that model for you to make that Hero... and you didn't. xD
(alright, a tiny overreaction. But still)
~ Your hero only had 1 Proper Name. Remember that this wasn't a Contest to make a DotA-style hero (who is a named, specific entity), but rather a Wc3-style hero (who is more like a "class", a series of individuals with a variety of names).

- While I earlier stated I enjoyed how well you stuck to Theme, I must admit it was a bit... repetitive. She literally had 4 abilities that were all "Super Arrow, Multi Arrows, Passive Multi-Arrows, Super-Duper Cold Explosion Arrow". A Ranger has a long & illustrious history, with a wide-ranging variety of talents. Even a (more focused, Thematically) "Marksman" has a range of ability ideas to go on; not only enhanced arrows but mobility, personal enhancement (sight-range upgrade?), one-ness with nature (well, more for a Ranger)... Etc. Think "Priestess of the Moon".
- Similarly, while I appreciated the Role above, I will say what I said for Shadow Fury; too repetitive with all the Direct Damage, guys! You get a bit of a pass because the Alliance doesn't have as solid-a-set of nuker, so you're "filling a hole"... But like the above comment, I say "branch out a bit". A Marksman has a whole range of cool abilities & ideas going for her; don't use up 4 abilities simply diversifying the idea of "damage, damage, damage".
- Your tooltips were misspelled ("Arctic Arrow") & worse, incomplete. Very sparse in terms of info, & no information whatsoever on the 3 levels (of the 3 first abilities). Wassup?
- Bit of a glitch, though I couldn't reproduce it; when I first chose "Multishot", I got a (working) level of "Volley" as well (or rather, some kinda passive mini-version; I still had 3 levels of it to get from the Hero-skill-menu).

This was one of the first heroes I tested that I really felt fit the part, and fit the place. Would've done her differently, sure, but it's not me, and you did a good job. Aside from the things I mentioned, I feel you've really understood what this Contest was about and delivered. Good job!

Mythic

===
Mythic - Dark Sorceror
===

+ Nice art-usage: aesthetic icons, decent model, nice model-mods, cool SFX, etc. Special props go to that creative usage of a giant Shade as a "swirling vortex of death"; Verah Noice. : )
+ For a "death dark summoner of the doom", he definitely followed Theme... Lots of nice "death-y" spells & skulls & death & stuff.
+ I rather liked the synergy between his Aura and his other damage-dealing-abilities. Nice way to encourage some interplay there (I wonder about the gameplay balance to such an ability (as well as whether Runic Bracers actually works that way), but meh).
+ While I had my beef with all the DD (see below), I appreciate that at least you came up with 3 creative ways to deal that damage.

~ You had pretty extensive testing & debugging codes & triggers... Yet didn't let the player know about any of them??
~ I feel like the Ghost-version of Kel'thuzad might've been a bit cooler (if only because it would help differentiate it from the Necromancer more). Just my opinion.
~ Your tooltips were informative, but a tad... AoS-y. Phrases like "DoT" and "tick", and specifics like "skulls move 0.3 seconds apart"... Just a bit off, trust me.

- I suppose my Role-beef fits into 2 main categories: "Why Moar Nukes" and "DamageDamageDamage" (sounding familiar...).
1) In a race literally known for it's powerful DD abilities on every hero, why would you create a Hero that literally has 3 more ways to nuke the crud out of people?? I would really have been excited to see a Shadow-Hunter-esque "pure Support caster" (no DD-abilities at all), with a variety of interesting spell types (preserving life, encouraging death, debuffing, etc etc). Heck, his Aura can then synergize with every other UD hero, rather than just make him a one-man army.
2) Similar to the others, I'm surprised at the sheer amount of damage-dealing abilities in general. Sure, some Heroes may make this harder than others, but even on a "Dark Sorceror" (generic super Necromancer??) there are plenty of options. Take a look at the stock Necromancer; he summons, debuffs, and 'buffs' (conditionally). No damage there, and plenty of interesting options. 3 Damage-Dealing abilities (sure, partial summon & sure, crowd control), & 1 Aura that essentially boosts those DD's... *sigh*
- Similar to the Role-complaint, I was really excited to see a sort of departure from the Lich (in that he's heavy 'glass cannon' caster with a total ice fetish), especially in a Thematic sort of "rites & incantations of the dead". Instead, it's just "death-death-death", interspersed with "doom". Check the in-game Necromancer; lots of variety there.

Overall I was impressed; you did a reasonably good job. I felt, though, that there were certain big issues that left me nonplussed. So I put you in the higher-half, but under some (such as Rufus' Marksman) who I felt "filled the hole" better or were more original with the type of abilities they put in. In the future, don't give up so easily; some of your earlier ideas sounded super-schweet, but it seemed you were unsure/indecisive/un-confident. Trust ya'self!

Footman16

===
Footman16 - Grand Marshal
===

+ Hey now! Someone finally used the Garithos model! I was fully expecting this guy, and you delivered. Good aesthetics (icons, model, SFX, etc). Coulda maybe used a bit more on the Banner, show how important it is, though.
+ In terms of Theme, this guy shines, as he has a decent variety of "things he does", but they are all things that fit into the idea of being a "commander". Rather than a specific (holy paladin, burly dwarven lord), this guy fills that "generic human commander" (& I use the word "generic" here positively) that the Alliance is missing.
+ In terms of Role, this guy's gameplay is another decent mix. Unlike many other contestants who simply spammed damage-damage-damage, you entertained a nice variety of damage, debuffs, buffs, and yeah-thats-it. I can see how you were going for the whole "mobility & hero-killing". I think you also do a good job of keeping him in the action (if not alive).

~ Testing triggers?
~ Surprised there's no passive; would've been the perfect place for one (& he doesn't have a whole ton of mana)
~ It's spelled "Grand Marshal" (one 'L').
~ Cry Havoc was a buff, but had red tooltips & turned unit portraits red. Don't know if anything can be done about the latter, but I do for the former.

- Unfortunately, if we're talking "fitting to in-game", I must point out that Buffs Cannot Stack; even if you make custom ones. So Cry Havoc (retooled Silence) and Power Strike (with modified Acid Bomb) don't stack as they should with regular Silence & Acid Bomb (respectively).
- I feel the Ultimate could've been a bit more... flashy? Or at least have more presence than a plank of wood with some cloth. More than that, though, I feel the whole thing could've been a bunch more simple/seamless; rather than a messy triggered Warstomp (which deforms terrain), simply use a modified Immolation (or Phoenix Fire - Flyer).
- In terms of "Contest Theme"... Nearly perfect, though I kinda feel like the Alliance doesn't need another burly melee tank-dude. Sure, he can "hunt down Heroes", but he's still on the front lines, hogging the space needed for the MK or Paladin.

One of my tops. I liked this guy, and thought you did a pretty good job. Nice and simple; Warcraft heroes aren't nuthin' flashy. This guy gets the job done. Some kinks here & there, but I felt pretty good about him.

Direfury

===
Direfury - Arcanist
===

+ MAN I cannot get enough of those little nurnies! You really outdid yourself with some creative OE-witchery to give her those magic balls that fly out for attacks/spells, exploding at the end of a lazer beam! Very cool and, fortunately, nearly seamless.
+ Also should point your excellent usage of hidden icons. Really made her shine.
+ I loved the Theme you had going here; a sort of souped-up Sorceress with arcane might. The Archmage was never enough to me (nor enough "raw Arcane") so I'm glad to see someone else trying this.
+ The Role was... Here and there. I got a definite "Nuker" vibe from the first two (and, well, ultimate), with some crowd control & some buffing on the side. Not too bad.
+ Really liked your names. I'm a sucker for names, and they were quite interesting.
+ The spells were (for the most part) quite satisfying to cast. Hard to explain, just *felt* good

~ I really really wish you'd used Jaina here... Not only is she more 'heroic', but she's unique (compared to the already-existing Sorceress) with unique model, icon, & soundset. However, I understand you were (probably) going for the whole "floating" bit, which does make her look cool... *sigh*
~ Testing triggers?

- To be frank, as nice as the Theme was (see above), it really seems silly to me to have a 3rd caster to the Alliance hero roster. Just... overkill.
- The Role was... Well, the Alliance doesn't have tons of nuking like UD. But they have enough. Why not emphasize the 'illusionist' aspect of Sorceress to make your Hero, or buffing/debuffing in some way?
- Didn't really see Starburst working for me. Why not give the Wisps a simple modified Kaboom or something?
- The transformation was a really interesting idea... But definitely more fitting to an AoS. Besides, I much preferred the Blue to the Green SFX. :<
- This hero, it was easy to see, would fit very well in an AoS. Knowing of your propensity for LoL-kit-making, I can only guess as to why. : ) Still, that wasn't the point of the Contest.

I'll be honest; I was pretty surprised to see something of this caliber come from you. I guess I just put people into 'boxes' in regards to skills, and you were a modeler to me. A good one, but just that. Let's just say I'm learning.
That surprise, coupled with what I believe is truly some interesting & powerful abilities plus some definite creativity earn this a top spot for me. Good on ya, mate.

DED1

===
DED1 - Pirate Captain
===

+ Dat Theme! Man, you took the idea of "thematic design" to the MAX with this guy! Everything from the artistic choices (models, icons, SFX, etc) to the literary choices (tooltips, quotes, etc) to the abilities & their mechanics just positively SHONE with thematic coherence. This, guys, is how to make a "Pirate Captain" (at least, Thematically).
+ Even though it was incorrect for the scope of this particular Contest, I really liked your little 'flavor text' blurbs at the bottom of each tooltip. That's, like, my favorite part of Magic (the Gathering) cards.
+ In terms of Mechanics (Role), your entry also does a reasonably good job of bouncing off of himself. Granted, it was a lot of Comboes rather than Synergies (i.e. obvious/contrived/overt/explicit connections between abilities, rather than implied/subtle/covert/implicit connections (Breath of Fire & Drunken Haze vs. Divine Shield & Holy Light)), but it was still there. The dagger skill worked with the Insult skill, which worked with the Parrot, which (sorta) worked with the ship... It just all fell together when this guy was a high-enough level to have all the abilities.
+ Something not enough people did/do; put some care & thought into the Proper Names. Kudos.
+ Very nice job with the obvious & helpful Tester unit & his abilities.

~ Most of the coding was pretty solid (assuming so since my game didn't slow down too much)... But it did freak out & error out of Warcraft at a certain point (not sure why). Didn't wanna reproduce, but it had something to do with blowing up the Treasure (I think?) with Mortar Teams or something.
~ Why the Bandit soundset? Why not Admiral Proudmoore? Just seemed a little weird. Same with the bird (didn't want us to get annoyed with all the screeching of the normal Vulture soundset??)

- Unfortunately, for all of how good it was, it suffered one CRIPPLING flaw... It was just waaaay too complex & combo-tastic & word-heavy & effect-laden & AoS-y & focus-needing than any other hero in Melee... And that (Melee) is what we were striving to build for. I won't go on & on about this (as others already have & much better written than I), but read what they say & add my voice to it. Basically, if you're ability needs that much tooltip real estate to get all the different things it can do written down, consider paring that ability down. Each ability should do, like, 1-2 things (maybe 3). It's not a matter of "dumbing-down" abilities/heroes for the player, but rather conforming to the design parameters of the medium (standard Wc3 factions/heroes).
- Just as a note, re-using spells (like Silence, Roar, Acid Bomb, etc) isn't compatible with Melee; even with modified, custom Buffs, they still don't stack right & that causes problems.
- The Rumor ability-thing was a Gordian Knot of complexity amidst a Bermuda Triangle of confusingly multi-faceted abilities. I really had a hard time getting it to work right, waited forever for the Tavern to have hints (since my Reveals (Ghost Ship) weren't very Revealing), couldn't determine how I was going to "dig up" buried treasure... And when I FINALLY found it, it was a stinkin' Ironwood Branch.

Wow! I was really impressed with this guy overall. He really tickled my "tongue-in-cheek" bone. I was also sorta expecting someone to use the Admiral for a good ol' Pirate Hero, and I'm glad you delivered so handily. Lots of work went into this entry, and LOADS of polish, which is something I (perhaps inordinately) consider. However, the major downfall here being how poorly it integrates into the game, keeps this from too high a score.
But seriously, good job. : )

Dalvengyr

===
Dalvengyr - Banshee Queen
===

+ Theme: You definitely follow your "Ice Ice, Baby" Theme here to the max...
+ It's nice to see some synergy; the 'frost lance' & 'cold addict' remind me of the Blood Mage's 'flame strike' & 'banish', only better because 'frost lance' doesn't require casting time.
+ Decent, thankfully-obvious demo triggers to work with.
+ Nice tooltips, relatively simple & well-laid-out. Like Blizzards.
+ LOVE the SFX on that frost-lance ability. Just cool.

~ Personally, I would've put the damage-dealing "frost lance" thing in the first spell slot. Blizzard generally does that, makes quick click-and-fire situations easier I believe. Not a major thing, just something.
~ Interesting choice for soundset; rather than the Banshee or Ghost (as we would expect) or Dark Ranger, you went with the Demoness? Cool.

- I'll just go ahead & quote myself from earlier:

...The fact is, the race you made it for (Undead) already has a hero like that. Not just an Intelligence hero, or an Intelligence Caster hero, or a ghostly Intelligence Caster hero, but a ghostly Intelligence Caster hero with ice powers. I'm just not feeling it. I would say the same about someone designing a nature-wielding four-legged demigod for the Night Elves, or a voodoo-obsessed lanky Troll spirit-master who turns people into frogs; it's just not creative.

In other words, that part of the Theme (& "Fitting to Race") is extremely lacking.
- Theme, cont'd: But ah dannae, it just seem a bit stale. A "Banshee Queen" could really have a whole host of interesting skills, and especially if (as I've said above & as Softmints has said) you were to take 2 major "facets" of the Hero to emphasize in her design. Perhaps the Banshee Queen could have a focus on her "spirituality" (that is, the fact that she's an incorporeal being ), and her "possessiveness". Or perhaps "cursing" and "protection from magic" (basing off of the Undead Banshee's spells). Or perhaps a bit of a "Siren" angle 'n' stuff, with ghostly wails & dirges. Sky's the limit, and here your hero is stuck at the North Pole.
- I'm not feeling a lot of racial synergy beyond the first two abilities. Cold Addict works well with any other Undead nuke (including Frost Lance), and so does Frost Lance (though really, do they need another damage-dealing ability?). But the Ultimate conflicts badly with Animate Dead (stealing corpses, and doing so indiscriminately (i.e. taking some of the "powerful" ones a player might want to use AD on)), and "Frost Phase" doesn't go well (game-wide) with the Night Elf Warden's "Blink", since it does everything Blink does but better (by introducing damage & AoE slow at the entry/exit). The increase to duration & manacost (& decrease to range (effectiveness)) don't outweigh this, in my mind (though the hard-'n'-fast math may prove me wrong).
- Watch out for Buff Stacking (see above).

Overall, I have to give you props where props are to be given; you've put a lot of work into the abilities (triggers especially), the story, and the various elements of polish. However, I feel your hero greatly lacks in terms of a Thematic 'fit' to the rest of the game, and also in terms of a Role-based/Mechanical 'fit'. Sure, it sticks to the idea of "Ice"... But that's done ad nauseum and also totally covered by the Lich. Sure, she has some ability inter-play... But it's not the selling point. She may play nice with some heroes (Dreadlord/Crypt Lord for meat-shielding), but not others (Death Knight, because of their Ultimate's conflicting).

Cosmicat

===
Cosmicat - Arcanist
===

+ I really like, just, like, nearly everything about the Theme of your Hero. The model, the icon(s), the spell effects, the soundset, the names, the ability ideas... Not just her personally, but for the faction in general (which was, entirely, the point). For her, all the art & ideas flowed together. An Artificer, how cool! New to Wc3 in general, sort of an amalgam between the Tinker & the Archmage in my mind. Magically-enhanced machines, techno-wizardry! The icons were all cohesive, the tooltips succinct & informative, the abilities & names fitting... And for the race, a female hero (+1), a techno-wizard (+0.5, already have 2 wizards...), the Jaina model & icon & soundset (+3)... Noice.
+ I also particularly love the Role going on here. At least for the most part (see below). I'll admit, I'm really poor when it comes to understanding/using some of the more advanced gameplay tactics. But I recognize them when they are explained to me in great detail I see them. Things like "Energize" would be lost on me, since "kiting" is way too complex for my puny mind to utilize. But a Hero that provides some solid specific-target damage (HU don't have an *awful* lot of), with some buffing utility & a nice support summon... Noice.
+ In particular, I liked Charged Bolt. Sure it's simple, but having a "splitting" lightning was a nice, interesting touch.
+ I also liked the creative touch to Static Shield; making a sort of pseudo-ranged Spiked Carapace was brilliant.
+ Beautiful & cogent testing functionality.
+ Loved the SFX, especially for Energize. Nice & creative.
+ Wonderful assortment of Proper Names.

~ I don't personally like having to spawn a buncha tomes of power, then collect them. But that's just me.
~ I felt like her throwing fire was silly and un-Thematic. Sure, you were constrained by the in-game model restriction, and she *does* channel fire (curse you Blizzard)... But I almost wouldn't have minded if her fire turned into a lightning orb or a mech gear or something.
~ I know it's a coincidence... But it was kind of a sweet surprise when my hero's proper name turned out be the same as my wife's. <3

- Just about the only thing that was off-putting about the Theme for me was just how overly-focused it was on lightning. Sure, it's cool, & a lightning-hero is non-existent in Wc3 (as a whole hero; Far Seer doesn't count)... But an Artificer should literally be a "craftsman/inventor"! "artificial"-whatevers. If this particular Artificer is focused on lighting, sure. But make it an element of hero Thematic design, rather than the summum bonum of her existence. Smacks somewhat of the major issue with Rufus' Marksman hero (too repetitive), though you avoid that by incorporating a good variety of Roles into your abilities (damage - utility/motion - defense - summon/damage).
- I felt your Ultimate was somewhat underwhelming. Sure, a lvl 10 Artificer with this & the Charged Bolt & Static Shield going off solo'd a Red creep camp... But it was just boring. It had no crazy SFX, just a tower, and it just shot lightning & sometimes bashed. Yeah, Chaos damage is cool... But what about a Red Alert-style Prism-Tower "power-up" mechanic, where she could power it up by being around it? Or it powers up local allies with LIGHTNING ATTACKS? Or she could place more than one, and the pattern in which she places it determines certain effects it has? Or or or... I dunno. Calling lightning FROM THE HEAVENS to split out UPON THE MASSES once in a while. Or protecting troops. Or speeding them up. Or having a personal Lightning Shield. Or being able to CAST lightning shield. An ultimate of this magnitude our shields can't repel needs something else.
- Maybe I didn't understand it (despite our numerous planning discussions), but Static Shield seemed a bit... Off, for a ranged, glass-cannon caster-type Hero. Why is she getting attacked? Shouldn't she be in the back, making a sandwich lightning tower? Giving her a defensive ability like this (not even one she can place on others, ala Lich's Frost Armor) seemed weird.

I'm getting worse and worse at writing minimal comments above, maximum comments down here. Welp, I pretty much said all I needed to say. Overall I was really impressed; it's the little finials and polishes that I really appreciate. And, aside from the over-abundance of LIGHTNING, I feel like both Theme & Role were excellent. Creative, interesting, full of potential.

Cokemonkey11

===
Cokemonkey11 - Blessed Ranger
===

+ Humans got a Ranger!
+ While I don't think I completely agreed with the reasoning behind your chosen Theme (Ranger + Holy Light = Blessed Ranger), and didn't see any "pro-Life/anti-Undead" abilities, I must say you took that Theme and really rolled with it, and that I can support. She has the proper mix of Ranger-y (arrows, forest, etc) and Hol-y (healing, buffing, etc) abilities, in a relatively cohesive mix.
+ You used Sylvanas! I was really looking forward to someone doing exactly that, and you delivered. Model, Icon, Soundset... The whole shebang. That, along with everything else, really helped 'sell' to me a 'Ranger'-hero that the Humans have deserved for quite some time.
+ Her Role wasn't clear to me at first, testing spasmodically as I did... But I finally realized how Arcane Arrows was supposed to work (it didn't proc on death, merely on attack), and things got interesting. It was cool, targetting Heroes to regenerate mana & deal extra damage. Her Forestwalk made her pretty mean (more AGI = more damage, more attack speed, more armor, etc), and her Sigil of Dexterity made her an absolute MONSTER. Holy Sigil... eh, more supportive, but still dependent on her dealing damage (& lots of it (via Arcane Arrows, if possible)), so it makes sense. It makes sense.
+ Your tooltips (though not conforming to Blizzard standards) were admittedly informative & creative.
+ That ultimate was pretty empowering. And even though the motion was stuttery & strange, the whole "dashing to & fro" thing was a neat touch.
+ Excellent synergy (rather than comboes). Smarter people than me have extolled this particular virtue, so I'll merely add my voice to theirs. This is a case study of some good heroic synergy.
+ A beautiful roster of hero names. It's the little things that count, with me.

~ Icons were a little all over the place... Or, well, really just the Forestwalk. Why not use trees? Orb of Annihilation seemed rather intense.
~ This can't be your fault, but I noticed Sylvanas is really... quiet. Her soundset would just stop playing for some reason, and I wouldn't hear a peep out of her. Guess it's rather fitting a Ranger, but still.
~ While questionably fitting-to-standard-Wc3, I really thought your "Forestwalk" idea was pretty creative; best of the bunch. Seeing over buildings (utilizing a dummy flying unit?) & buffing near trees was an excellent bit of tactics I liked. The only thing better would've been actual "forest-walking"; i.e. teleporting with trees. : )

- "Forestwalk". One 'r'.
- WOAH NELLY this lady was imbalanced (and if I can notice it, it's a problem ). Normally I wouldn't count off (a lot), since imbalance is usually a matter of shuffling numbers... But seriously, at level 10 I had over 100 Agility, which went into ~120's next to the trees. That meant crazy-huge armor (nearly unkillable except with a large army), massive damage (AGI being the primary attribute), and insane attack speed with which to deal it. This is all pre-Sigil of Dexterity. I was almost one-shotting Peasants, and I was solo-ing the whole enemy army. Not good.
I'm not sure what happened, but I checked your OE values & determined she shouldn't have higher than 50 AGI, normally. Tested again (the only person I tested more than once, lol) and it was true. So yeah, guess it was some kinda glitch with Forestwalk saving values?? Unsure.
- Why can the Ranger hero with Bow & Arrows not attack Air??
- I fear your hero had certain elements of AoS gameplay in her. It was slight (the tooltips, the micro-heavy Arcane Arrows (especially given her attack speed)), the multi-cast nature of Holy Sigil... Just my thoughts.
- I know (now) that you don't hold Blizzard's hero design in very high esteem. I may agree in particulars (Blademaster, Warden, Tauren Chieftain, etc), but I disagree in general. More importantly, though, that was the entire point, the stated purpose, the summum bonum of this whole Contest. So the strange tooltips? Definitely out of place. Moreover, your hero only plays nice through Holy Sigil; otherwise she's a pure loner (which, being a holy ranger, makes sense... But at the same time, Wc3 is a game of armies, not heroes).

Wow. Another excellent package. I truly (and inadvertently) saved some of best for last in my voting; you and Cosmicat were both excellent. But less about him, more about you. : )

In short, I was impressed. An excellent ranger hero, with an interesting (holy) twist. Wonderful synergies and creative abilities give this entry high marks. Some issues, major & minor, bring it down again. With some tweaks this hero is solid business.

AngkySaputra

===
AngkySaputra - Elven Shadow
===

+ I liked that you used a campaign model (demonic Illidan)... And I liked the idea of using Illusions (kind of an untapped resource, Blademaster aside).
+ Came up with some proper names. I like
+ Aside from the Ultimate, your icons are all pretty cohesive.
+ Good to see some tooltips.

~ Thanks for having testing triggers; though if they worked (for more than Player 1 (Red)), that'd be great. Also if they stuck around (perhaps the Quest Log or something?) so I could remember them...

- Thematically, you played it like several other contestants did: too close to the vest. That incorrectly-utilized euphemism means to say "too much/focused". See, "illusions" is a cool idea. "shadow" is a cool word. But you literally have either "shadow" or "illusion" every other word, nearly! In fact, 3 out of a total of 4 of your Hero's abilities start with "Shadow ___"! Like the Fire Knight and the Banshee (Ice) Queen, this one was just too much.
- Role-tastically... There was nothing Role-tastic here. I'm sorry. I'm not even going to dock you points for "lacking creativity" like the others will; in fact, I'll give you points for it (the thing the other guys miss is, this is a Contest for Warcraft 3, set in Warcraft 3, and we're grading things like balance & creativity compared to Warcraft 3. If something's done in DotA, great. If it's not in Wc3, then it's still "creative".) It won't help. You're guy literally just pounds away at guys, warping in crazy-tons of Illusions (all with differing percentages of "takes/gives damage"), through mostly Passive (i.e. boring) machinations. Deal damage & Slow, get Illusion. Attack? Get an Illusion. Get attacked? Get an Illusion. Want more Illusions? Level 6, here ya go.
- On that note, there was little to no creativity in the ability choice. You essentially took Cripple, Drunken Brawler, and Mirror Image, modded them a bit, tacked on the "Illusion-spawning" bit, and called it a day. I understand you (appear to be) were trying to mimic the Phantom Lancer from DotA... But even there, I'm not sure he had really good, really balanced Role; it was also more like "illusions-illusions-illusions!"... However, at least the Phantom Lancer had some more gameplay options (only 1 Passive, IIRC), and everything wasn't "shadow shadow shadow". As many have said, part of the issue lies in the fact that this requires a definite level of micro that's an order of magnitude greater than what should be required for an RTS player. For an AoS (as in the Phantom Lancer), that's one thing. But to properly use all those Illusions... Meh.
- Finally, a small note, but consider running your tooltips through a spell/grammar-checker, as well as compare them to existing Wc3 tooltips; rarely are they so verbose.

Not much else to say. I think you had an interesting seed/core of an idea, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. I definitely wish you luck in future Contests. : )

A Void

===
A Void - Goblin Sappers
===

+ Well, I couldn't check your map to see, but you have at least come up with 1 Proper Name, so I give you props for that.
+ You've definitely followed your Theme well here, though like all the others it's done to an unfortunate extreme. At the very least, though, you didn't do "bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb", but more like "rocket-mine-rocket-bomb". Meh?

~ Personally, I see a Bombardier being primarily an Intelligence hero (with some good Strength). Or perhaps vice versa. But Agility?... Interesting...
~ Probably should've included a vanilla-Editor version for us 'regular guys' to look at the map. In the future this will be mandated via the Contest parameters, but even if it wasn't, it behooves you as a Contestant to make things easy for the people to test.
~ Goblins... In the Horde? I'm sorry, but until WoW: Cataclysm I have a hard time seeing that happen. They specifically separated themselves from the Horde back in Wc2, to pursue mercantile options neutrally. This really seemed like a stretch on your part to do an idea you wanted, but in the wrong Contest (believe me, I hope to run/participate in a "Neutral Hero Addition" Contest here soon/eventually. ).

- WHAT. What even was this. Your Hero cannot attack. That is, like, a stand-by, a hallmark. How is he supposed to fend for himself? Sure, you may point out his "Light the Fuse" ability... But at a paltry ~30 damage a shot (& uncontrollable I might add), this'd never kill something. More importantly, who would think to get it?? You can't just make that the only way for him to "attack" and not make it more clear. Something, a tooltip?
- DOUBLE WHAT. WHAT^2. His Ultimate kills him. Literally, he dies. A Suicide skill???? I literally cannot think of a way in which this would be balanced in the world of Wc3 (lol, WoWc3). Heroes are insanely integral to the game; a Hero living or dying can mean the difference between life and death, winning & losing (not just the battle but the whole match), as it gives your enemy's Hero the time to gain experience & gather items & all that. It's just the way the game is built. So this ability flies in the face of everything this game stands for.
And y'know what's real sad? I thought to myself (knowing about this before hand) well, at least he can spam SFX and make it look cool". But there were none! No explodey-bits, no mushroom clouds; nothing! Even spammed horribly it would've been better than nothing. :<
- There were no triggers or codes or methods whereby to test this hero, nor even to level him. I literally had to guess that I could train him from the Altar, and then level him up by killing things.
- I know what you said, and I know what I said... But seriously, there doesn't appear to be a single trigger necessary in what you did. Literally put Storm Bolt, Goblin Land Mine, Phoenix Fire, and Kaboom, on a Hero. I'll give you the slightest bit of cred for modifying Phoenix Fire a bit. But really.
- His abilities are literally all about damage. Even a "Bombardier" need not have 4 Explosive Bomb-like abilities. While it was Thematic, it was also boring & predictable. Consider defensive abilities (e.g. toughened by explosions), utility abilities (e.g. rocket jump), supportive abilities (e.g. explosive research, intelligent study, being able to run really fast), and alternatives to pure damage (e.g. explosive auras, bomb-dummies that taunt, stun-mines, trip-wires, etc).

Where do I even start... A Void, this entry was just remarkably lack-luster. It did not feel like you put nearly any work into it, and it did not play like you put any thought into it. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but it doesn't seem this entry (or your remarks & attitude before/during/since it) have done anything to prove any of us wrong.

We love to encourage participation in these Contests, and enjoy the 'meeting of the minds' that results. It's great to see new & interesting ideas brought to the fore. So why did you feel the need to just be... problematic much of the way? This entry probably should've been disqualified on more than one account, but I let it stay in. Please don't let that have been a mistake.

Which leaves me with:

• 12 - Cosmicat
• 11 - Cokemonkey11
• 10 - Direfury
• 9 - Footman16
• 8 - DED1
• 7 - Rufus
• 6 - Mythic
• 5 - Wa666r
• 4 - Dalvengyr
• 3 - Shadow Fury
• 2 - AngkySaputra
• 1 - A Void

(Kinda broke up nicely into Top/Mid/Bottom-4)

Thanks again for a great & interesting Contest, you all! Feel free to ask me questions about what I said.

 

[Vinz]

I would really have been excited to see a Shadow-Hunter-esque "pure Support caster" (no DD-abilities at all), with a variety of interesting spell types (preserving life, encouraging death, debuffing, etc etc)

Good idea. I would go for a Shadow Assassin myself if I didn't feel I had to make a Necromancer hero so badly.

- Similar to the Role-complaint, I was really excited to see a sort of departure from the Lich (in that he's heavy 'glass cannon' caster with a total ice fetish), especially in a Thematic sort of "rites & incantations of the dead". Instead, it's just "death-death-death", interspersed with "doom". Check the in-game Necromancer; lots of variety there.

Good analysis, I'll keep that in mind. Rites and Incantations - those keywords really hype me

In the future, don't give up so easily; some of your earlier ideas sounded super-schweet, but it seemed you were unsure/indecisive/un-confident. Trust ya'self!

Thanks. Yeah, I was indecisive. Next time I hope I don't go through a lot of concepts again. :>

 

[Footman16]

~ Cry Havoc was a buff, but had red tooltips & turned unit portraits red. Don't know if anything can be done about the latter, but I do for the former.

Hmm, curious, it turned unit portraits red? Never encountered that myself I don't think, either way, it's something I'll look into next time.

~ It's spelled "Grand Marshal" (one 'L').

Depends upon your form of English, but in British English it is Marshall, with the two LLs.

I see all your criticisms and agree with them. The banner I was finding difficult to make "flashy" without making it too magical, so I left the slight terrain deformation which I thought worked. Next time I'll make sure it's a but more aesthetically pleasing and brush up on my triggering skills.

 

[A Void]

Where do I even start... A Void, this entry was just remarkably lack-luster. It did not feel like you put nearly any work into it, and it did not play like you put any thought into it. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but it doesn't seem this entry (or your remarks & attitude before/during/since it) have done anything to prove any of us wrong.

We love to encourage participation in these Contests, and enjoy the 'meeting of the minds' that results. It's great to see new & interesting ideas brought to the fore. So why did you feel the need to just be... problematic much of the way? This entry probably should've been disqualified on more than one account, but I let it stay in. Please don't let that have been a mistake.

Well, It wouldn't be surprising, I did rush the map four days before the contest was first to be ended. I was already two weeks late, I just did not have enough time to start a new concept- let alone fix my mistakes.

I appreciate your rating, and it was a nice part in my involvement in the contest. While I enjoyed looking at what the other people made, I am quite satisfied with your judgement.