Shadows over Tirisfal 8.1

[Frotty]

Played again today 2 times.

• Hero bots are nice, but have a few issues, like:
  • They often attack minions instead of heroes, even after casting a spell, e.g. vampire tped to hero then attacked creeps
  • The "inRange" check to retreat seems to not be vision based? Enemy cpu retreated when I was getting close from woods
  • They can be kited into fountain and then easily killed
  • No way to ask for help or order them to go a certain lane, I think?
  • Lane choice is very wacky. Bot is being pushed, so I go there to help CPU, but when I arrive it leaves to another lane. Other times they tped to all go same lane
• Pathing is overall a bit clunky, often get blocked by minions and terrain, paths are not very clear, some dead ends look walkable just to result in death. Even the CPUs ran into spaces where they then got blocked and killed often
• The enemies pushed us to statue quite quickly, killed rax, but couldn't finish, because CPUs were kited into fountain, and we could repair statue then after 30+ min defending or so we "backdoored" them and won which felt undeserved
• CPU with "simple" heroes are basically carry, they had more kills than human players
• I had plaguecaster hero and felt like I didn't really have much impact. At the start I'm starved for mana, late I'm always full mana but can't use it cuz spells on CD. It feels weird that the potions share CD, so can't really employ good combos. Even when I casted Q, then W, then the spread potion to infect entire enemy minions, it still did less damage than normal attack of other heroes. Except for cripple, I had like no impact in team fights. Just fehlt kinda useless. I can cast my heal spell on enemies, but just doesn't do anything. If it would work could at least have semi-stun and then surround or catch enemy. If I could stack my spells, or stack potions, and some were based on stats, could at least have some late impact. Also I thought "plague not disspellable" would mean it would last for the duration of potion then, but doesn't. This makes it not really useful, imho.
• In general, flat-value spells don't seem to scale well into late at all. I mean, a stun is always useful, but 200 Damage over Time when enemies have 4k hp and heals, just doesn't do anything
• Items seem very damagedealer/tank focused. Apart from mana and manaregen there isn't much for a mage to buy. When we were deffing I also had no time to even go to shops to buy. Also hard to see which items can be crafted from the ones I already bought
• Quests seemed underwhelming. Some gold and perhaps and item or so, for leaving lane for 1-2minutes just doesn't seem worth it.
• Game took long and in the end was kinda stalemate
• 3v3 is recommended, but especially in 3v3, but also in general, support heroes seem super underpowered. If you're 1v1 on a lane as support vs a DD, I don't see how this would ever work out.

While it was good enough to finish, don't think we will play again soon.
I think the UX could be hugely improved by making use of reforged additions such as framedefs, but I guess this won't happen. E.g. Having to struggle with 2 spellbooks and using items with spiritwalker hero is just super finicky.

 

[Antares]

I think you were going into this with slightly wrong expectations. The bots are passable, but they're nothing to write home about, and you shouldn't expect a thrilling game if you have to fill up with bots to get enough players. I believe a minority of AoS maps even have bots, let alone on this level.

Yes, with the knowledge I have today I could create bots that are much smarter than the ones I have, and if you want to see really good bots, you should check out Particle Party. But Shadows over Tirisfal is an ancient map that I worked on more than a decade ago. I gave it a face-lift ~6 years ago, made a few new heroes, and then did some more work ~2 years ago, but most of the map's systems are still from around 2010.

I'd also rather not have to deal with my ancient GUI/JASS mix spaghetti code, so the chances that I'm ever going to work on updating the core systems is quite slim.

To some of your points:

• You can upgrade your spells at the tome shops in the top-left corner. On level 5, the damage of your plague goes up to 290. This is how caster heroes are supposed to scale in the late game.
• Your assessment that support heroes are underpowered, I can't really confirm. It really depends on the hero and less on the role. The Dragonmage is a pure support hero and he's borderline OP. The Plaguecaster is definitely on the weaker side, but I wouldn't put him in the useless tier. He has ok single-target and aoe damage, ok summonings, as well as some heal and utility. But he's just mediocre at everything, which is kinda his problem.
• There could definitely be more items for casters, but there are some. Like I mentioned, you can upgrade your spells and then there's the Tempest Blade, which shoots lightnings on your spell targets. That should be really good for the Plaguecaster. You can also get the Lifebinder's Mantle to increase your healing.
• Quests are fine for a full game, because you only need 1-2 people to do them and the entire team gets the reward. With lower player numbers, they're kinda lackluster, you're right. The best option here would be to increase the reward and scale the boss strength based on player numbers.

In any case, thanks for playing and for your feedback!