Regiments!

[alext]

Howdy
I made this map as a proof-of-concept and gameplay testing ground for an idea i've had. The point is an AoS / DotA like game in which players get their own little private armies of creeps that allow/require no micromanagement (thus hopefully not ruining the DotA gameplay).

Regiment control
Each player has a hero (the commander) and a flag. The commander can hold the flag or he can plant it in the ground anywhere. The troops can not be controlled by the player, they just go where the flag is and start fighting any enemy that's around. The player can buy from buildings in his base whatever units he thinks will be tactically apropriate for whatever he has in mind.

This version
This is a working version, not meant to be final. There are the two cities (the bases of DotA) and the units they spawn move along two lanes. On each lane is a village, one initially held by each side. The players must help their city to destroy the enemy village and ultimately the enemy city. For now, I've only made one hero class and three unit types (aside from the computer-controlled creeps). Also, the map has no neutral monsters and I've not included any items.

What I need
While I think this sort of thing would be interesting, I need to know if anyone else likes this kind of gameplay and thinks this is worth pursuing.

Disclaimer
If this has already been done or tried and proven pointless, i've not been able to find it. In that case, I guess it's gg for me

Any thoughts?

Thanks to
Rising_Dusk for the LastOrder library http://www.wc3c.net/showthread.php?t=104175

EDIT: I haven't decided if I'm going to continue working on this, so I've posted here. If the powers that be think this is better positioned in Map Development, feel free to move it there.

 

[alext]

More details

Features implemented in the current version

Lanes
On each of the two lanes there's a village, capturing it means destroying the village hall. If a player does that, his side (Northerners or Southerners) receives a new village hall at the same position as the destroyed one.

Bonus auras
Being near the commander gives 50% bonus damage to all the player's troops. Being near the flag gives 20 bonus armor (about 55% damage reduction).
The 'near commander' aura is meant to give an advantage to players who fight alongside their troops rather than have them do all the fighting while the player sits safely in his base. The 'near flag' aura is meant to enable supply-line cutting tactics, catching players' reinforcements before they arrive at the flag and killing them easily. Also, if a battle is going badly, the only way to retreat is by placing the flag near the home capital. The retreating troops are thus made more vulnerable to the victorious enemy.

Faction - Imperial Legion
The player can recruit the following units from the Legion Barracks: Legionnaire, Legion Cavalry, Legion Artillery

Legionnaire
Designed as archetypal infantry. Fair hit points, fair dps, low cost. Has 20% chance on attack to bash, doing double damage and stunning for 1 second (heroes too).

Legion Cavalry
Shock troops. Good hit points, good dps with heavy burst, high cost. Moves faster and sees further than infantry. Every 15 seconds, throws a warhammer at an enemy, doing 1000 (armor mitigated) damage.

Legion Artillery
Ranged siege weapon. Low hit points, reasonable dps against units, high cost. Heavy hitter against buildings. Attack does not home in on units, so less effective against moving targets. AOE increases efficiency against groups of enemies.

Hero - Legion Commander
Abilities:
Storm hammer - Basically War3's Storm Bolt without the stun
Trample - War3's Thunder Clap
Battle Rage - Berserker-like ability, increases attack speed and movement speed but without the increased damage taken clause
Ultimate - Back into the Fray - full heal on a 30-second cooldown

I've included in this map some game mechanic tweaks and I'd like to know people's opinions on them

Mana and mana regen
Mana regeneration is greatly increased while mana pools are highly decreased. This has several consequences:
- Battles are started with full mana
- Using one ability means that no other ability can be used before mana is recharged (a few seconds game time)
- Mana regeneration is the greatest controlling factor in how often a hero can spam spells
etc

Armor types
- only two armor types so far, Normal (units) and Fortified (structures)
- only two attack types, Normal (full damage to units, half damage to structures) and Siege(full damage to units, triple damage to structures)

Hero attributes
- Strength is renamed Power, controls auto-attack damage and health regen (staying power)
- Agility controls speed and armor (survivability)
- Intelligence controls mana regen and to a lesser extent mana pool (abilitiy use)
The point about this is to make each attribute equally interesting to all hero types. Instead of being forced to stack a certain attribute by the class you've chosen, you figure out which attribute fits better with your playstyle and current situation. So if you really don't want to die you can stack agi, if you want to be able to spam abilities you can go for int, if you don't ever want to retreat you go for Power.

All the values are guessed by me and probably need tons of balancing before they're viable. The hero, the units and all the stats are also guesswork and require testing. And of course, the mechanics haven't been tested in multiplayer action.

If you've come this far, thanks for reading through all that What do you think?

 

[Goffterdom]

I think you shouldnt speak about your map as "Dota-Like". If it looks like DotA for hero, change that. You found a very nice gameplay features (flag and regiment), I think it deserves to think to a more original gameplay for heroes.

Why dont you base all your heroes on increasing stats of nearby units ? I mean, they are generals or captains or lieutnants or whatever.

But anyway this is a good project, +rep.

 

[alext]

Ideas needed

The flag-regiment system could be used in multiple game types and I'd like people to post their ideas in this thread. I'm going to start projects and hopefully get more people working on them. It is guaranteed that the people coming up with the ideas will be mentioned in the final versions' loading screens as 'after an idea by NAME'. Of course, good ideas get rep. So - bring it on and keep'em coming!

@ Goffterdom - thanks for the feedback, got me thinking.

 

[alext]

Game mode - mercenaries

World
Large map with some number (10,20,?) of cities and monsters in the wilderness.

Players
Each player is the captain of a mercenary company. The player recruits soldiers from cities for money and he must complete quests to earn more money.

Quests
Each city is a quest hub where players go to get the quests and afterwards to collect rewards. Quests should range from starter quests that are easy to do solo to very hard ones, best done with others. Examples of easy quests might be killing some monster, escorting an npc that will be attacked by bandits, exploring a location etc. Harder quests could be destroying the farms of another city or killing another player. A group q could be sacking another city.

Winning
The win condition could be leaderboard-like, the winner being the first player to gather a sum in gold. Killing other players should not be the primary goal of the game, but it should be a way to stop or delay them. Still, it should be more profitable to do quests than to kill players just for the hell of it.

Alliances
Players should start as enemies with each other and should make alliances whenever they wish, to complete some objectives. Completing a quest while allied with another player should split the rewards equally with him. Alternatively, there could be locked teams and a team would win if one of its members reached X gold first. In this way, some players might specialize in doing quests, others in delaying the other team.

More ideas?

 

[alext]

Game mode - conquest

The world
A large battlefield with objectives that have to be captured.

Players
Each player is a general that gains prestige by capturing objectives and spends that prestige on more troops (and maybe items or upgrades).

[Objectives]
Capturable: Normal and strategic objectives. Strategic objectives should be few, well-guarded and award very much prestige when captured. They could also give a small amount per second to all allied players. Strategic objectives could also be troop recruitment and player respawn points.
Normal objectives should be more numerous and award a smaller amount of prestige.
There could also be periodic objectives, like monsters that have to be killed. When they die, the killer and his allies get some prestige and the monster will respawn after a given time.

Winning
The winner should be the team that captures all the strategic objectives on the map. Alternatively, there should be a time limit and the team that gathered more prestige should be the winner.

More ideas?

 

[ELFoglalt]

Hmm pretty good ideas here. I didn't download the map yet, but I'll test it if have some time. Funny because I use very different creep management in the map what I'm creating (Note: And it's called "Mercenaries" lulz...)

Some ideas:
Making a world where people gain prestige points for area is a BAD idea. Or, you have to add some balancing mechanics. The main problem is that with this, in the first 10 minutes of the game, we get a winner. After that the remaining 2 hours of play is just the endgame. You should add something like: the bigger area you control, the more riots you may cause. If the 75% of the map is yours, you have a quite high chance that neutral rebels will raid one of your control points every time you get prestige. So as you get bigger and bigger, other players have less chance to kill you, but increasing your territory is getting harder because you have to garrison units in order to defend the points you hold. (Or something like this.)

 

[alext]

@ELFoglalt - good point about balancing. I've started working on a small conquest map that should be ready soon and post it so it can be tested and balanced by more people.

I think the problem about adding a handicap for the team that's doing better is that games end up taking too long. Of course, the first minutes shouldn't decide the winner; still, losing several fights in a row should decide the match. The hardest part is probably getting the reward for doing well just right.

Anyway, since this is idea forum, give ideas pls

 

[warman45]

i got a unit idea. called commander. he follows the commander flag but has space to carry flags of his own. that way you're not limited to 6 guys. coincidentally also allows army structure.

 

[alext]

@warman45 - The flag isn't one for each unit, you can have as many units as you want (none,2,10,20,wtv) and all of them go to the same flag. The idea about having some kind of army structure is interesting and in my opinion it should have its own implementation.

 

[13Stallion]

I can see an American Civil War map coming from this XD. Great idea and did u make this yourself? I would love to see the battle of Gettysburg in wc3, i suppose you could use a morale system to determine the winner in a conquest map. Each city/region captured will yield your team with more morale while reducing your opponents morale. when a team reaches 0 morale they lose etc... In order to preserve balance each team should probably recieve the same income throughout the game and morale should not effect a team's power. The morale system would be a great victory condition so long as the winning team doesnt gain benefits from a higher morale. Ive played these type of maps in starcraft for a few years and if you need any advice,ideas, just let me know. Ill be glad to help out with this map. This is one of the freshest map ideas ive seen in a long time.

 

[Herian]

This sounds pretty awesome.
I got a unit idea, which is Squad Captain who helps the nearby units by giving them a boost.
and, Tactics Organizer that may be used as a second flag .. Also rallies troops.
Also, the (pure epic win): Engineer, he builds Tanks/Chars every few seconds..
Well here are my ideas, basic yes, but well, good luck.

 

[alext]

Warleader

I'm using this idea in my project called 'Warleader - Master of the Realm' based on the conquest mode above.

Check it out here and please submit feedback.

Alse, if you're interested and you want to join the team see recruitment thread here