SMotA v1.00

[Moderator]

Heero: Well, the map is based on Dota, altough some alternatives what makes it fun to play.

 

[TheImmortalOne]

To find SMotA games, visit channel Clan TSMA on Azeroth (USEast).

Hive SMotA Group

SMotA Site

SMotA Blog

SMotA Forum

 

[Asgard_Ragna]

Even if Aos maps get a bit overmade/used atm u did a great job with this.

 

[EpixBelongToMe]

the map isn't very balanced

-the time keeper is the worst hero i have ever seen (more imbalance isn't possible) - mass stun / slow - time stop over the whole map - bash
-the ultimate of the ghule is imbalanced too (he can attack and remains invis)
-the gnoll archer and the harpy are very weak
-the towers could be stronger

 

[ipeonrush-ship]

This is an excellent map. I liked it so much i decided to sponsor it on my site.
http://www.thegoldenageofpirates.com/forum

I highly recommend everyone try this map as it's got a lot of original concepts.

It is still a map in progress so balancing will eventually pan out. Dota wasn't created in one day either.

 

[twelveoclock]

Nice map! There are alot of heroes that are like dota's except with a twist. There are also many original ideas.

 

[Pszczolek]

Very good AoS map. Each hero is well playable, spells are nice and quite good ballanced (but some targetable spells costs a lot of mana and deal less damage then many AOE spells), items are not hard to remember what they give. If nargaque keep working on this map it will be one of the best AOS.

 

[WerBackIII]

Umm... I had a map called "DotA: Icecrown heroes" that was nothing but a re-terraining of DotA, which, I think, was used in this map... I don't know.

EDIT: Never mind, I played it and It's AWESOME!

 

[Hedgehog-king]

this seems really organized, surprisingly

 

[chichichi1]

Would be lovely if someone can make an ai version for this great map. I know it is REALLY HARD to make a good ai version of any map but any effort will be much appreciated.

 

[r0x_yo_s0x]

not too shabby.

 

[1)ark_NiTe]

God damnit, at least make it sound different than DoTA .

 

[Tempopopo]

I like the map overall nice ideas of skill creations. Balancing is pretty well done. Fun to play online.

but yeah, the terraining is just not good enough. All the trees aren't looking natural. Should have studied more on terraining skills. You should have made it look more lively. Puts in more those mushrooms, rocks or some shrubs near trees to make them real, and use raise and lower terraining, too.

Other than that, a very good map.

 

[FailsWithTails]

Looks nice. I haven't had time to try it, but some friends of mine have tried it and they say they like it. I really like the name, too. It has a funny ring to it.

 

[Phooxeh]

Massive feedback incoming!

Dear nargaque :

First off, I'd like to say that I really enjoyed this map a lot, the heroes are mostly original and their skills are lots of fun ^^.

Of course, this being a beta means that there are a few rough ends that need smoothing, I'm going to state what I found here :

Balance :

I'm going to say that balance is mostly decent but there are a few culprits that really break balance and they are :

1. Kotaka, The Destroyer :

Right, nothing special about this guy stats or skill wise - except for a wee bit of a slight problem. His curse skill.

The tool tip claims that it amplifies incoming damage by 30% but it's actually a lot more than that, I'm assuming 300%. In a 1v1 with a friend of mine who was trying out destroyer, he had a max damage of 150 (items included) and with Orb of annihilation, this makes for 250 damage. I was playing Drixxel, elven hunter.

He cursed me and then fired one shot at me - my current HP at that time was 900 btw - I instantly died! A test turned that the damage dealt was 1.1k - O.O?

2. Drek'Thar', The Far Seer :

This guy's skills are just way out of whack - I'm talking about Far lightning and Ether bomb in specific. They're far too good - map-wide nukes? That's crazy!

It would've been fine if it only affected enemy creeps or heroes, but no, both spells hit neutral creeps and neutral creeps give LOTS of gold in general.

The result? A very well-feeded Far Seer winning the game singlehandedly.

3. Earthquaker, The Tauren.

I'm really not very sure that this guy is 'fine' compared to other heroes, he also suffers from the Drek'Thar syndrome - His global stomp affects neutral creeps.

4. Ober, The Helicopter :

His skills are possibly way too good for what they are, Auto gunships maxed at level 5 will deal 16x5 damage - that's 80 damage++ (without having to stop, mind you - can hunt running heroes this way indefinitely. - works when stunned too^^).

Lift off is a very, very good escape skill due to it's mini-map dot removing capabilty and massive speed boost.

unload gunner makes a gunner with good stats and low cooldown

Hyper-dimensional wrap is quite evil and at level 4 it has a mere 60 seconds cool down - highly abuseable.

All I have so far


--------------------------------


Skill-related bugs :

1. Destroyer's Curse (see above).

2. Fearoth's (doom guard) Demonic charge - if the enemy keeps running, fearoth will keep charging at max speed and magic immunity, getting hits in but not able to stun until the enemy stops in their tracks before fearoth hits them.

3. Duran's (Ghost) nuke can cause a massive mini-base ownership bug if it was used on a friendly base's tower and killing it - resulting in a "deny".

When that happens, the base "ownership" gets transfered to a possibly random? player on the ghost's team.

This gives you the ability to select structures and train creeps from there, the ability to control the 2 extra spawned super-creeps and makes the enemy unable to capture the base - They will be able to kill the tower and turn it into their side but all the structures won't change ownership, this includes the teleporter.

4. Again, globals affect neutral creeps - netting a ton of money.


---------------------------------------

Items :

1. I personally think Armor ++ items are way too cheap - quickly negates the usefulness of physical attacks.

2. Periapt of vitality and Khadagar's Gem of Health are not cost-effective. The end result of Essence of Azune and Heart of Searinox aren't very effective either.

Let's do a little comparison here :

A Maul of strength, 10+ STR costs 700 total gold : 150+450+100 = 700. This adds 210 HP to our hero and a hp regen of 0.60 as well as 10 additional damage if our hero is a STR-based hero.

Periapt of vitality only adds 150 HP and costs 600 gold, we don't get extra HP regen nor extra damage. If it got upgraded into khadagar's, which is 800 gold - we end up with 1400 gold wasted.

The price of two mauls, adding 1.20 HP regen, 20+ damage (if str based) and 420 extra HP - we can later save inventory space by turning them into a Horn of Strength, working our way towards crown of kings II.

3. Mindstaff is possibly also too strong on Int-based heroes. For a mere cost of ~4300 gold, we get 75+ damage, 400 mana and 200% mana regen - That's pretty killer early mid-game!

4. Overall, late game items aren't much aside from orbs - gets a bit bland y' know? .

----------------------------------------

That's all from my side, Here's a comment by a player :

"I think the game is too focused on heroes, heroes become strong rather quickly and creeps quickly become useless - they don't upgrade fast enough to keep up with single heroes slaughtering every creep in their path for breakfast. Game becomes a hero-arena as a result of this."

Note that the game that player was in had short mode enabled.


Last words :

Finally, the map has very high potentional, very fun to play and rather easy to get players to join the game due to the name having a funny ring to it - more than half the players join the game asking "wtf is smota?"

..... Although I do think the full name is rather cheesy =). Also, every game just HAS to have a player picking ghost - A real noob trap I tell you.

Phew, that was one long wall of text.

 

[nargaque]

Very helpful feedback Phooxeh, and the rest of you. The Destroyer bug came from a ghost trigger was being created every cast and it increased the damage exponentially per cast ... fixed . The other things were much easier to change. Keep up the support!

 

[Night_Gob]

nice map is SMota shortened word for anything? like dota is defense of the ancient
or just for have a dota-like name?

 

[Phooxeh]

Thanks for the fix narq!

By the way, mind maintaining a changelog for the stat-cruncher in each of us?

And is there a site / someplace for smota now that GAOP is nuked?

Edit : A quick test reveals that Far seer's Ether bomb still hits neutral creeps. I assume far lightning also does this?

Edit 2 :

Ack, I forgot to mention this in the previous comment :

There's a small bug with the Shield of Honor.

You see, if two heroes fight and both of them die at the same time with one of them having the shield of honor (or possibly both, but I haven't seen that yet), the one with the shield of honor will get 2 kills effectively gaining double bounty while the player who doesn't have the shield loses double money and doesn't get a kill.

Also, one of my friends feels that death-penalty tends to make you lose huge amounts of gold later in the game, I personally can't say whether I've noticed that or not as I'm too busy worrying when I'm going to spawn. (Not that I die that much ).

Oh and F9 could use a bit of update perhaps?

I don't see any secret shops for example ;P.

What's the point of The Cheese as well? Just an inside-joke / tribute to maps with "+ all stats" cheese?

 

[nargaque]

Oh I have a changelog and it was originally on a different forum (GAOP, which got hacked), but it's far too long to post here.

Regarding the two Far Seer spells the damages are decreased slightly and cooldowns increased (one from 20 to 25, another from 22 to 30). This makes it less efficient to farm neutral creeps with them.

And with the Shield of Honor I have no idea what could be causing the double kill text; I guess that could be a bonus power of the item (since "honor" gives more gold per kill).

Finally, the purpose of the cheese is clear once one finds the secret shop(s) .

 

[Phooxeh]

Rofl, after spending an odd 20 minutes searching the entire bit-by-bit, I finally found the secret shop. The Terrain change gave it away which let me also find the 2nd secret one since I assumed it was a mirror ^^.

Boy, is it secret! Pretty hard to spot.

 

[ipeonrush-ship]

This map continues to get better.

keep up the good work.

 

[ipeonrush-ship]

This map continues to get better.

keep up the good work.

 

[Somaz]

I would like to see the map when it weights 500 kb. You will have to remove some custom things, but i'm not hosting this map because of it's size.

I play on eurobattle, and noone there will wait that long until the map downloads...

Could you please create a smaller version just for guys like me.
I would like to make this map popular, but it is impossible for me to host it right now.

 

[Phooxeh]

Here's a tip : Move away from eurobattle.

Seriously. No one has a single bit of patience there or a decent connection to download fast enough (or speaks english) ~____~.

Also, I had found a few things and kept em till I got more, but now that you've already updated, I'll see if they're fixed or not ;P.

 

[Somaz]

Omg get me an original cd key and i'll play on official battle net

 

[LexX]

I love this map, but I think u should make some changes with teleporters. I think u should make teleporters teleport to outposts, cause teleporters u made make some problems while playing=) Hope u understood what I've written cause I don't know English perfectly=)

 

[Zaekman]

I am having issues with random disconnects from players in games. I host and every time 2 or 3 people just get dropped, not from bnet, from the map and they send me tells like omg drophack. I am not using anything like that just people get dropped. Same ones too. Also would like to know if there is a site or something with a changelog.

 

[maareek]

Where can I find smota games?

Suggest me a server and time

 

[TheImmortalOne]

Smota games are played quite often on the server Lordaeron (USWest) in channel clan gaop. Feel free to stop by anytime; there will be the most activity during evening hours in North America.

 

[UchihaSasuke.gr]

This game is made really good!The heroes and spells are well connected together the ability recipes are easy to make and not complicated and there are lots of good spells!Great map!

 

[yugi_1995]

Is this map never had changelog??

 

[aznchong91]

does anyone want to reveal the location of the secret shop? at least a tip as to how to find it, general location, maybe prerequisites (must have cheese in inventory? dunno... ) would be extremely helpful!

LOVE THE MAP, KEEP IMPROVING IT!

 

[maareek]

I found a bug with Destroyer regarding hes ultimate. The description of ultimate says that
it deals damage over time and gives the destroyer 50% of max HP and mana of the targeted hero its used on. In reality the ultimate just does the damage over itme and doesnt return any hp/mana.

 

[nargaque]

Hey maareek the Destroyer's ult is designed to restore the hp/mana IF, and only if, the target hero dies under the effect. I double checked the tooltip and it explicitly states "...If the target unit dies under the grip, the Destroyer will gain 50% of the maximum hp and mana of the target unit..." This way it gives more of a choice to the player: Should I use it now to disable the target for 3 seconds, or should I wait and use it as a finisher to restore myself?

If you had played Banshee before I see why the Destroyer's ult wouldn't seem right since the Banshee one restores based on the mana cost no matter if it kills a unit or not. You probably used the Destroyer ult on a hero but didn't kill it in the 3 seconds, so it wouldn't give back hp/mana.

Anyways thanks for trying to help .

 

[maareek]

Sorry about about not paying enough attention on destroyers ult description. Anyways I found a mistype: In the tavern Mountain King is classified as an agility hero but hes main attribute is strength.

 

[Khaaz]

Whats the point of the observatories and outposts? What advantages do they give you?

You should make it so the teleporters teleport you to the outposts only or something, theyre kinda op as they are now. Also add some sort of tactical advantage to keeping the observatories. Otherwise the game is great, lots of fun and the heroes/skills are really cool

 

[emperor_d3st]

Very nice map, we liked it a lot.
Some problems:
The game lags insanely when played 5v5. We tested it many times with different hosts and players and it always lagged very heavily in 5v5.
Also, the game is a little slow and 8 players out of 10 don't even notice the observatories, so you might want to do something to them.
Keep up the good work, we are looking forward the next versions

Edit: Oh, and what does SMoTA mean? We were thinking about it very hard and we came to the conclusion it stands for SMell Of The Ancients. Were we right?

 

[Demon$layer]

This AOS is excellent. The variety of Heroes and their abilities is vast and offers hours of replayability. Item recipies are also used well but I wonder if when I purchase the lvl 3 boots and gloves that im automatically supposed to get the LvL 1 combined version.

PS: I thing SMotA should stand for 'Swords & Magic of the Ancients/Ages'

 

[TheImmortalOne]

Very nice map, we liked it a lot.
Oh, and what does SMoTA mean? We were thinking about it very hard and we came to the conclusion it stands for SMell Of The Ancients. Were we right?

Here are a few interpretations for the map name:
1. Silly Monkeys over-take Azeroth
2. Sacred Masters of the Arctic
3. Some More of the Action

 

[nargaque]

Some problems:
The game lags insanely when played 5v5. We tested it many times with different hosts and players and it always lagged very heavily in 5v5.
Also, the game is a little slow and 8 players out of 10 don't even notice the observatories, so you might want to do something to them.

The lag problem is indeed annoying. Whenever I fix it in one place it seems to pop back up in another. For now try sticking with a 3v3 or smaller match-up and there shouldn't be nearly as much lag. I'm trying different triggers to figure out what exactly is causing it.

And the observatories give a large area of sight, kind of like a constantly casted level 3 Far Sight in ladder (but without revealing invisible units). There was an idea a little while back of adding to the Observatory a weak fountain healing effect, which would of course heal at a slower rate than an actual base fountain. However we deemed this to be not balance-able. I'm sure there's more ideas though.

Oh and to maareek, good eye for spotting the Mountain King primary attribute typo.

 

[emperor_d3st]

Observatories do give the team a nice advantage but new players rarely notice its existence.
4v4 works fine, doesn't lag. 5v5 does, from the very begining.

 

[Echo MasterMind]

A Tauren named Earthquaker on a map named SMotA?

It's a joke, right?

 

[nargaque]

It's a joke, right?

Of course it can't be too dull and serious.

 

[shockmonkey]

i can't find the secret shop no matter how hard i look!! could you point me in the right direction? or you could tell me..I'm trying to get an edge over my cousin who won't tell me where it is...he's been smoking me.

 

[TheImmortalOne]

i can't find the secret shop no matter how hard i look!! could you point me in the right direction? or you could tell me..I'm trying to get an edge over my cousin who won't tell me where it is...he's been smoking me.

Here is a hint: use observatories

If that is not enough, come back for more help.

 

[jensen]

-2500+ trees, 500+ other doodads
-1000+ custom objects
-370+ triggers

LMAO-ed! put this for what? I am sure I am pretty sure that I am not going to like this map.

 

[Matrix]

the map is just awesome. U did a lot work
but the landscape can be better

 

[StasMaN]

I REALLY HATE AoS type maps where creators concentrate on hero quantity , not quality

 

[nargaque]

I REALLY HATE AoS type maps where creators concentrate on hero quantity , not quality

Could you actually provide an example of a hero of low quality? And did you actually play this map or just see "98 heroes" in the description - since your statement seems to be implying, not directly pointing to SMotA, etc.