[Miscellanous / Other] Sirensong

[Cokemonkey11]

Introduction

Sirensong is a 6v6 combat capture the flag/miscellaneous/hero arena/aos in which teams of players construct armies using a charm-like ability, then push to capture a flag.

Sirensong was made as part of the wc3 fun mapping challenge #3, and the majority of the map was made in 24 hours. I've put about 3 hours in after the fact to clean things up and add a couple features.

Please try it out and let me know what you think, and do remember to read the directions!

Opening Lore

The Human and Orcish high magi have discovered their ability to summon powerful shards from ancient Naga ruins...

What they don't know is that the shards possess far more power than they can control alone.

The two warring siren clans have feigned alliance with the humans, and orcs, respectively, but have different plans for the shards entirely...

Use your superior military command to aid your alliance in summoning a shard from the opposition, then slay their champion and extract energy from the northern obelisk.

How to Play

Along the beach, an army of humans and orcs are fightning. Help your side push, and your mage will conduct a ritual to summon a fragment. Steal the fragment and bring it to the north, and use it on the obelisk to score a goal. The team which surpasses the other by 3 point wins the game.

Screenshots

Jungle drops provide powerful stat enhancements, raising the question of whether to charm a monster or slay it.

Pushing causes your team's mage to summon a fragment and bring it to your base. But you can steal the fragment to score a goal!

Using a fragment on the obelisk in the north scores a goal, but to win you must score 3 more than your opponent.

Ability: Sirensong

Ability: Anti-Magic

Ability: Stasis

Ability: Decrepify

Credits

Special thanks to firecrow78 at Deviant Art for the Mermaid drawing used in the map preview.

Vexorian, Pitzermike, lookingforhelp, among others who contributed to Jass Newgen Pack.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

I've updated the post with much more detailed information and screenshots. Hopefully this will entice some of you to download and test it out, as I'm looking for some feedback before submitting it to the maps DB.

Find a friend and start it up, the only requirement is even teams Thanks!

 

[jopi]

well, looks nice so far and i like this little twist with chaming the jungle creeps. I get that this is a very early stage and until now its only a mini game but it has a lot of potential. Here are some ideas/thoughts i have about this:

- leveling up grants you nothing more than stats as far as i see it, maybe if you add different 'sirens' (heroes), with different skills the classic skill-leveling system can be applied here, or maybe add levelable passives that increase the charmed creep's stats?

- just as above, add different 'sirens', maybe some that are more lane present, while others are more in the jungle charming creeps to assist the lane, also a question here: is it possible to charm a unit that a other player/enemy charmed before?

- as it is now the charm is instant once you hit with it, but i think a nice idea would be changing it so you have to hit multiple times to charm a unit (maybe a counter over the unit?), this would also mean that having multiple players charming one creep (the stronger it is the more charm-counters it has obviously) will result in faster charming and also allows stealing the unit from the enemies with hitting the last charm (maybe a siren with invis?^^), also you could have different sirens have different ways of charming (skillshot or channel)?

- you could implement events where a big neutral creep spawns in the jungle waiting to get charmed. Here i would implement something like a capture system for charming so you have to try to keep the enemy sirens away from the creep to charm it

And last, as the terrain size is quite small, i would be willing to do the terraining if you want^^, just pm me. For some terrains of mine just check my gallery.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

well, looks nice so far and i like this little twist with chaming the jungle creeps. I get that this is a very early stage and until now its only a mini game but it has a lot of potential.

Well, mini-game is still very relative. We tested a 6v6 on Friday for over 30 minutes and still no one had scored. I'm not sure if a team won or not (my internet disconnected me). The game is definitely not a short one, though. Additionally, I would describe the map as "near complete". Any new things made by myself are likely to be small - I would prefer not to get too ambitious and end up with a map that is never complete.

leveling up grants you nothing more than stats as far as i see it, maybe if you add different 'sirens' (heroes), with different skills the classic skill-leveling system can be applied here, or maybe add levelable passives that increase the charmed creep's stats?

Different sirens probably won't happen. My initial intention for the mapping challenge was to give siren's an R ability (in place of stasis, thereby making decrepify their E ability):

Activation: Briefly causes the Siren to be untargetable and immobile, disjointing all effects. The siren transforms into a ruthless tidal guardian with a melee attack and all new abilities:

Q: Sheer Storm: Launches slow moving projectiles at nearby enemies that deal (100+) magic damage and stuns affected units for (2+) seconds.

W: Submerge: Dives underwater and reappears after a short delay at the target location. Disjoints projectiles and provides temporary invulnerability.

E: Frostclaim: Resets attack animation and causes the next basic attack to deal (20+) bonus magic damage. Units stunned by sheer storm have this damage multiplied by (5+)

R: Siren: (Disjoints and transforms back into a siren)

All the tidal guardian's abilities are short cooldown and R has an 8 second cooldown. This introduces a lot of high speed gameplay to fights, allows players to slay each other and high priority monsters. Whether I'll actually make this or not is hard to say. I need a lot more testing so I can decide whether introducing this kind of game play is good design, or if it's just fun (which are different things)

also a question here: is it possible to charm a unit that a other player/enemy charmed before?

Yes, as long as that unit is not under the effects of Anti-Magic.

as it is now the charm is instant once you hit with it, but i think a nice idea would be changing it so you have to hit multiple times to charm a unit (maybe a counter over the unit?), this would also mean that having multiple players charming one creep (the stronger it is the more charm-counters it has obviously) will result in faster charming and also allows stealing the unit from the enemies with hitting the last charm

Causes a lot of problems for teamplay (who gets the monster), steepens learning curve (what do you mean charm doesn't charm?) and honestly just doesn't sound fun to me

(maybe a siren with invis?^^)

I will not include invisibility at all in this map.

you could implement events where a big neutral creep spawns in the jungle waiting to get charmed. Here i would implement something like a capture system for charming so you have to try to keep the enemy sirens away from the creep to charm it

Neutral monsters scale with average hero level. If all heroes (including jaina and thrall) are level 5, only level 5-6 monsters will spawn.

If you mean making neutral monsters that have some secondary effect, like maybe pushing the lane automatically depending who charms it... I would consider it, but I think there are more interesting things to do with a large jungle monster (for example, a magic immune unit which drops unique items on death, but cannot be charmed)

---

Thanks for taking a look at the map, your feedback is valuable to me.

Edit: If you're curious about what things I'm definitely interested in for the map:

• Improving the visual effects of scoring goal and winning game
• Making equipment items to buy (can only carry one) - equipment items provide a 'D' ability, above W on the command card. For example I would change blink dagger to an equipment, and put blink at command card slot (1,1)
• Making all neutral monsters have QWER ability hotkeys, and balancing some of them (I don't like fel beast chaos attack type, and I don't like disease cloud)

 

[Gekigengar]

This is an interesting concept, subscribing!

 

[Garodar]

Good luck mate.

 

[Cokemonkey11]

leveling up grants you nothing more than stats as far as i see it, maybe if you add different 'sirens' (heroes), with different skills the classic skill-leveling system can be applied here, or maybe add levelable passives that increase the charmed creep's stats?

I forgot to respond to this in full.

What do you guys think about making sirens start with all abilities level 1, and can upgrade them using hero level-ups?

Perhaps there could be 6 levels for all 4 abilities, and players could choose how to distribute them among level-ups.

 

[Gekigengar]

I forgot to respond to this in full.

What do you guys think about making sirens start with all abilities level 1, and can upgrade them using hero level-ups?

Perhaps there could be 6 levels for all 4 abilities, and players could choose how to distribute them among level-ups.

I totally agree, imagine it this way.

"You fool!, why did you take storm bolt at level 1 when its totally useless early game?"

IF people has abilities with level 1 at start, nobody would be "Wrong" to take any kind of skill early game.

and people may even level-up abilities that they like, why limit combos to when you are like level 3/4?

I encountered a lot of these problems in Dota/LoL.

And these are annoying, it just brings disadvantage to some heroes early-in the game, because they cannot execute their combos.

And sometimes, learning abilities early is wrong, because you do not know what you need in certain situations.

I feel like having all abilities at level 1 (Including ultimate) is amazing concept, please do implement this!

 

[jopi]

Well, I would suggest to make levelable skills, but i would focus more on the charmed creeps. What I mean is that with this quite uniqe gameplay you have you should focus more on it. For example you could give every siren 5 passive stats that can be increased, but they also/only affect the creeps you charmed e.g. some spells/abilities the creeps have will be unlocked only if you have the needed stats. This way sirens on one team can have different roles like one player is focusing on defense and thus mainly charmes defensive creeps (e.g. turtles...) while others focus on attaking or casting creeps giving them more dmg/attackspeed or manareg/increased manapool, while also unlocking more powerful spells on their creeps. Also here I would manage it this way, that when you steal a creep from someone your stats 'override' the stats of the 'pre-owner' so you can't steal a upgreaded defensive turtle while you yourself are focused on offense without the turtle becoming less powerful (in defense).