[Campaign] Shapeshifters

[Oliphant]

Shapeshifters

Lore

High Elves, Humans, Orcs, Undead, Murlocs, Elementals and plenty others races inhabit the vast continent of Martind. Centuries were spent on countless wars between quarrelled factions. However, a conflict to come will be not like anything before...

Characters

	Kethund	Leader of Shapeshifter's Cult
	Akeral	The intellectual leader of the Cult
	General	Leader of remains of Shapeshifter's Cult
	Anhorak	The powerful undead feared even by a leader of Might of Undead
	Malgor	Main healer and voice of reason of Shapeshifer's Cult
	Loganis	King of High Elves

Features & Gameplay

• Custom Races - Such as Undead, Orcs, High Elves and Shapeshifters. Player get access to most of the custom units through the campaign.
• Lore - Campaign is not based in Azeroth, the story and history is unveiled during game.
• Voice Lines - Playable heroes have custom voicelines.
• Custom Abilities/Items - A lot of new abilities and items.
• Shapeshifting - Main hero has ability to morph into another hero with other abilities. On each map player get access to diffrent units based on enemies in last mission.
• Maps - 9 playable maps and 3 cinematics maps.

Screanshots

Spoiler: Screanshots

Credits

Spoiler: Models

To be added

Spoiler: Icons

To be added

Spoiler: Sounds

Valve
TJ Ramini
Michael Gregory
Sam A. Mowry
Dave Fennoy
Tony Todd
Nolan North
Jon St. John
Bruce Miles

Spoiler: Spells

xyzier_24
Chaosy
KILLCIDE

Version
Tested on 2.0
Required 2.0(?)

Bugs

• Some units/buildings might have wrong portait. Change in latest version of warcraft messed up portaits in game.
• Game might crash on victory screen on map 4 and 8.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

Idea is... The idea is unusual, yeah. Am I right that the race idea is to be able to mimic other races or take their best parts? Like building your forces from mimicking the most relevant enemy forces or classic 4 races equals to be playing all races at the same time.
Am I right?

 

[Mavcik]

Hi!

Small feedback,
First of all, great to play a new campaign, feels intresting.

Couple things after playing first and second mission.
In general missions are fun, locations are well desinged from the look perspective. I like pacing of the text and that most objectives are preety straight forward.

Few problems I have.
1) We have high elven faction, that we take control for short time on mission one, that is known for great magic.... And we get swordsman with 2 heroes that are both more of a fighter than arcanist. A bit off putting? Especially since they are suppose to be strongest because of their affinity to Magic. But thats a side note.
2) Okay How Strong are Orc Throwers to throw for 1150 units? a bit too much? Its more than most siege weapons . Plus one of the orc throwers in ambush is weirdly stuck and its almost impossible to hit him because of it. On the lower side of the ambush.
3) The dungeon crawl part of mission 1 is.... too long. and way too difficult. I know I'm playing on hardest difficulty, but waiting for mana and health to recharge because im fighting 3 thurnder lizards on 6th level as level 2 hero and a Bear is.... not ideal. I'd rebuild that segment a bit, same with few Trolls. Just overstatted. I think if they would be slightly nerfed it would make mission more approachable.
Besides these the Mission was intresting, new abilities look fun and its nice to play them.
Mission 2 and proper look at the new faction.
Faction is intresting, and the idea to gain differnt units based on side-quest from previous ones? BRILLIANT i love it!
But because of that you're playing mission number 2 with 5-7 new units and mission number 3 with 10-12 total unit count... Its a lot for completely new faction. I don't mind it, i actually enjoy it. But maybe put longer timer for Orc faction Quest on mission 2, because it might be overwhelming for new players.
Especially with 2-3 diffent armies attacking you at the same time.
Bug: Spider Cave did not interract. They attacked with first wave and did not show up anymore. and I couldn't get to them either. So couldn't finish that side quest ;/.
But in general, mission was fun, the hero changing with diffent skills is a great idea.
Question, how diffent is Spider Web and Sorcerer Curse? They kinda do the same, make enemy miss?
Mission 3 I barely started but... Giving on 3rd mission 2 towns and 2 separate resources to take care, new units to check while also defending against 3 enemies with 3/3 and a UNIT that has 1.5k hp and Avatar? That is a lot to ask for Nevertheless. I'll try it and see what I can do. Btw there is new building but has upgrades to units but no new units? a bit weird?

To sum up. There are some things that don't really work with me, but A LOT of intresting mechanics I'm more than eager to check and try. I'm curious how it will go. No game-breaking bugs, no crashes (well besides the side-quest break spiders) faction is curious, and innovative, Maybe i'd considering giving them more building or 2nd type of builder to separate the buildings and research and units a bit, because it gets a bit.... clattered? But I am excited for more!

 

[Mavcik]

Mission 3

The undead trigger is difficult predict. Sometimes later than other time earlier. Maybe just make him come at the start of the mission? Just after cutscene?

Defending 2 bases is incredibly difficult while getting upgrades to be able to fight. Especially since enemy starts at 3/3 (Why?? Can't we have them get upgrades over time? Would be easier to fight them early). After it was excruciatingly difficult to stabilise get upgrades and slowly move out. Akeral base fell down. Mostly because he doesn't get for himself 3/3, only 1/3 for melee and 1/1 for everything else upgrades. Fighting 3 enemies who send waves very frequently with strong heroes. Who have level 6 and stampede with no quick access to stun? (Besides ensnare on riders) That is not something that is good design.

Mission is practically impossible on higher difficulties. Maybe make the enemies have different timings of attacks. So you can have both bases defend together? And please let that Akeral ai be able to fend off himself. He cannot be grand sage and fall to some scrawny orcs just because he doesn't upgrade (or produce units after certain moment of the game. But he makes 3 town hall equivalent of buildings for some reason?)

I beg you remove orc spear throwers that are in the woods. Impossible to access them unless you buy yourself X throwers but the range of your ai ally is inconsistent so difficult to deal with them. And with their range they can even take out your buildings and help in attack waves. Please also reduce their attack range.

They insta target all casters and are difficult to approaches as they outrange everything besides themselves and artillery. Which you don't get in this mission.

No clue why would you add goblin mines. Especially since orc version of a hero is considered different player so if he dies in that form. You cannot get him back. Soft locking the game condition victory.

3.5 min per EACH with running around to go to each base? To long. 30-60s is more than enough considering you need to still defend down a hero that is moving around whole map 3 times.

Finishing mission number 3 ends in defeat. No clue why? Suddenly your all base dissapesr and says defeat during conversation of NPC's. And throws you back into campaign menu without mission success progression. Cheat to skip it doesn't work.

Make upgrades for units consistent. Some of them say ranged. But work on melee units, other opposite. Buildings have attack? I can see they follow night elves pattern in attack health and armour. But that makes them very vulnerable (since NE buildings start at 2 armour not at 5 as regular buildings) and have attack which doesn't make sense.

I want to like this campaign and I think there is potential here. But for now too many things are out of balance and out of order. I cannot check further missions but can provide some insights if you can help me progress.

 

[Oliphant]

Mission 3

The undead trigger is difficult predict. Sometimes later than other time earlier. Maybe just make him come at the start of the mission? Just after cutscene?

Defending 2 bases is incredibly difficult while getting upgrades to be able to fight. Especially since enemy starts at 3/3 (Why?? Can't we have them get upgrades over time? Would be easier to fight them early). After it was excruciatingly difficult to stabilise get upgrades and slowly move out. Akeral base fell down. Mostly because he doesn't get for himself 3/3, only 1/3 for melee and 1/1 for everything else upgrades. Fighting 3 enemies who send waves very frequently with strong heroes. Who have level 6 and stampede with no quick access to stun? (Besides ensnare on riders) That is not something that is good design.

Mission is practically impossible on higher difficulties. Maybe make the enemies have different timings of attacks. So you can have both bases defend together? And please let that Akeral ai be able to fend off himself. He cannot be grand sage and fall to some scrawny orcs just because he doesn't upgrade (or produce units after certain moment of the game. But he makes 3 town hall equivalent of buildings for some reason?)

I beg you remove orc spear throwers that are in the woods. Impossible to access them unless you buy yourself X throwers but the range of your ai ally is inconsistent so difficult to deal with them. And with their range they can even take out your buildings and help in attack waves. Please also reduce their attack range.

They insta target all casters and are difficult to approaches as they outrange everything besides themselves and artillery. Which you don't get in this mission.

No clue why would you add goblin mines. Especially since orc version of a hero is considered different player so if he dies in that form. You cannot get him back. Soft locking the game condition victory.

3.5 min per EACH with running around to go to each base? To long. 30-60s is more than enough considering you need to still defend down a hero that is moving around whole map 3 times.

Finishing mission number 3 ends in defeat. No clue why? Suddenly your all base dissapesr and says defeat during conversation of NPC's. And throws you back into campaign menu without mission success progression. Cheat to skip it doesn't work.

Make upgrades for units consistent. Some of them say ranged. But work on melee units, other opposite. Buildings have attack? I can see they follow night elves pattern in attack health and armour. But that makes them very vulnerable (since NE buildings start at 2 armour not at 5 as regular buildings) and have attack which doesn't make sense.

I want to like this campaign and I think there is potential here. But for now too many things are out of balance and out of order. I cannot check further missions but can provide some insights if you can help me progress.

Thank you for your feedback. All bugs you mentioned in this post and previous should be now fixed, well outiside town hall (ai doesnt work well with custom upgradable buildings). Map 3 should be easier by decent margin now (attack waves weren't supposed to be at the same time, and weren't during testing). Goblin mines are needed because otherwise you could just rush your hero to enemy base, and in this case you need to bring small army to clear it first (hero changes ownership to brown when he dies, i accidently removed that trigger). To anwser the question "how diffent is Spider Web and Sorcerer Curse", Spider Web is just web ability with added miss chance, so main purpose of it and unit that has it, is to counter air forces.

 

[Mavcik]

Cool! Can you provide me with the updated version then? Or the one in main download got updated?
I get the idea behind the mines, not my favourite but I get it . it's your campaign after all ^:^
I presume we won't get the spearthrower range reduction? ( (jk)
I will keep playing and provide further feedback if you want.

 

[Oliphant]

Cool! Can you provide me with the updated version then? Or the one in main download got updated?
I get the idea behind the mines, not my favourite but I get it . it's your campaign after all ^:^
I presume we won't get the spearthrower range reduction? ( (jk)
I will keep playing and provide further feedback if you want.

Yes the one in main download got updated.
Spearthrower's range is same for now, might update in future to something like 900-100, but i don't think it changes that much and considering you have access to them, it might be nerf for the player not ai.

 

[Mavcik]

Yes the one in main download got updated.
Spearthrower's range is same for now, might update in future to something like 900-100, but i don't think it changes that much and considering you have access to them, it might be nerf for the player not ai.

You might be right, I think AI has a bit better optoin to use it mostly because they have I think better vision? For example the spearthrowers hitting my buildings from fog of war. Which i dont think should be a thing? Maybe if we had some Sentry Wards avaialbe to use it? But it might be more viable later in the game, Thats just my take thats all.

 

[Mavcik]

Spiders quest still not reacting ( maybe im doing something wrong?

 

[Oliphant]

View attachment 499318
Spiders quest still not reacting ( maybe im doing something wrong?

Cave with spiders is next to base(on the right). I will probably remove this cave so players won't confuse it, and add circle of power that represents where entrace is exactly.