Tanaris Primals Race

[Adiniz / Imemi]

Is this for the contest or is the usage of Tanaris here a coincidence?

edit:

nvm i can't read

 

[FlameofChange]

There's already a problem with the faction on version 2.0.X
90% Handicap is applied anyway.
You should add in the init the action which puts the handicap back to 100%.
I'm gonna edit this very message once I do my tests, but on a version where I put the handicap back to 100% for an intended effect.

[Edit] Also strangely you enabled custom team settings, so we are stuck at FFA. This is a very minor thing, but other people won't be able to test it for teamplay. I also manually unticked it for the coming tests.

TL;DR This is maybe because of not having much time left, but there's a lot of aspects which feel rushed. Take this as a quite ephemeral review since there's some broken elements in the object editor.

Spoiler: Legend

VS] When Vinz and Spellbound makes something together on Warcraft 3

S] Great, elegant, extra thicc, easily hooks the mind

A] Good. Nothing much to say except nitpick

B] Genuinely OK, but can be better in many ways

C] Average. Not bad, not good. C- would be "meh"

D] Flawed, or insignificant

E] Unstable, badly made, or just broken

F] Fatal error, ruins the rest

Spoiler: Tier List

Aesthetics D+ (How well the graphics blends with Warcraft 3 while being elegant) This is very vanilla and quite a mixed bag. Most of the stuff comes from Night Elves and many abilities could benefit from custom icons and effects. The treant worker is faulty as it plays odd sounds during lumber animations. Some spawned models also comes with static birth animations. Doodads as buildings is very cheap. There could have been some good ideas to exploit, but many things while not out of place makes thing awkward to explore. Indeed the model search is very specific so I cannot blame you on it and I won't expect a "wow" effect. On the other hand it started really well, for example the Primals and the Altar.

Fluff N/A (The epicness, spice, philosophy and background of the faction) I'm gonna throw a wildcard here, since it's a lore I'm not at all familiar with. The overgrowth is somewhat represented in the faction, but I don't feel -through your actual map- how it is reflected in game.

Feel & juice E+ (How fun is it to play the faction, how well the faction gives you positive feedback) From the underpowered elements, odd choices of FX and the situational access to elite units makes your faction very bland. Even if the raw stats are rebalanced accordingly, the juice is quite repetitive as you "swarm" enemies with summons. There's also a lot of elements inherent from night elves themselves, which makes it looks like a disguised night elf faction. Early game is uninteresting because your heroes are too damn slow ; and they don't have flashy abilities to compensate.

Strategy and tactic E+ (How the mechanics blends together, giving the faction its unique approach) This is where it hurts, however I'm gonna split into two approaches : theoretical and practical (aka your implementation). Theory ☼ Summons are too easily countered, but only for some factions. Undead and night elves would have a very hard time dealing with the summon swarm, since their respective dispel is expensive (wand of negation / Dryad) or only accessible to late game (Destroyer) ; furthemore considering the eventual coexistence of other custom faction it is not guaranteed they will have trivial counters (or not). Humans can just spam cheap priests, orcs purge is good but they also have Spirit Walkers. ☼ Summons are also free real estate for hero experience ☼ Elite units created from a building summon has multiple implications ►► It synergies (way) too well with Graveyards ►► You have to somewhat spawn/kill something nearby ►► The summons indirectly costs gold and would be too frail to dispels ; 100 gold for 2x6 corpses, 50 mana per corpse, that makes 100 gold for 300 mana in 6x8=48 seconds. ►► The building may benefit from custom mana regen aura ►► ☼ The way units are summoned is very redundant and predictable. The enemy just have to spam casters with dispel in advance, making the strategy very linear. ☼ You said your faction doesn't have good anti-air, but the basic archer already fills well this role (more details bellow in the Balance section), making your flyer underwhelming and redundant. ☼ Having two basic melee units, one light at tier 1 and a medium a tier 2 is another redundancy. You could perfectly nix the T1 and put the T2 at T1, which is actually a Grunt equivalent ☼ Your faction has an interesting ambivalence of trees and corpses, but the usage is very indirect and situational while also very synergy dependant. If one of the chain breaks everything collapses. ☼ Your spell casters have overlapping roles with multiple healing and dispel abilities ; Nature's Blessing also have poor synergy with ally units with low-to-none HP regen (or even negative !) ☼ The usage of trees could be interesting in abilities, I saw some potential in there so it deserves to be pushed more ! ☼ Summons doesn't cost food, and you may get a supply/upkeep advantage on another player ☼ Siege units may interfere in a good way on tree summoning, but night elves can just nomnomnom the trees (KotG, ancients, War club) in a way other can't do trivialy (Flame Strike, Death and Decay). Practice ☼ You can't even access your caster building (due to a bug ?) ☼ You can make flyers at tier 1 (idem ?) ☼ Abilities are very dependent on corpses and trees, so it is risky to take engagements

Balance D- (How its strengths leave space to the rest, does it blends gameplay-wise together with the other 4 races) The power is globally very underwhelming. Paradoxically the (almost) vanilla abilities manages to salvage something (french expression). Some of the problems comes from technical issues : ☼ You spawn with 6 workers since you replace the entangled mine by a worker ☼ Your starting building is at Tree of Life distance but workers gathers like humans/orcs, so you just need 4 of them for optimal gathering (however newly build main buildings have the regular minimal distance) ☼ You can't access your caster building For the rest ☼ Hero DPS is a bit high for my taste ; I think you traded attack speed for damage but the net difference is too positive. ☼ Hero base stats are all over the place. They should start with ~50 + 6 per level total (with some minor exceptions). Sometimes I do agree they need a bit more HP, mana, armor or DPS in specific cases so they can better fill up their role. ☼ The low movement speed of the primal makes engagements and retreat very risky, even taking in account their ancient classification. A rule of thumb is to give them 280-300 speed for a slow hero, 300-320 for a fast one (I highly recommend you to compare with regular heroes). You may go down to 270 for a super-heavy kind of hero (i.e. my Fallen God) if it can compensate with filling up its role (my Fallen God tanks very well). It makes creeping either tedious or forcing the summon of a swifter hero. ☼ In the editor the Mandragore looks daunting. Very high HP regen, fast long ranged splash damage, and not costing supply as they are summoned (?). On practice their range is actually caped by their aquisition range, so they have only 700 range. I had not the occasion to test them however, so take it with a grain of salt. ☼ Only one attack and armor upgrades -cheap moreover- from a cheap building is strong. Not enough to make the faction overwhelming, but ironically it helped make the faction catch up its strategical weaknesses at least in the early game

Content D- (Does the faction feels complete compared to its intent and the other races) The 5 heroes and custom items are carrying the notation by themselves. The rest is very flawed but not too bad. Some units and many units are redundent, but not to a point of pulling everything down. I can't be harsh there since the faction is technically unfinished and what's present don't make the player completely disarmed.

Handling & ergonomics D (Does this faction have the proper data shown, how easy is it to understand) Summoning a lot of thing could grow (ahah grow) exponentially and clog the melee downwards. The slow heroes makes the faction tedious to use in early and late game, each with different reasons. Some icons are placed in the wrong locations, which can mess up the position of everything else.

Triggers, code, overall polishing E (Is the map correctly coded, no leaks, have efficient algorithm, are details taken care of) The map doesn't have groundbreaking triggers, but it's better to have something simple working rather than a mess. So I won't put a finger on it in this regard. You should however take care of the following aspects : ☼ Memory leaks ☼ Custom icons and descriptions ☼ Remove the war3mapimported/ ☼ Selection size ☼ Icon position Other secondary stuff if you want to exercise yourself : ☼ Credit could simply be moved in map init ☼ Damage point / backswing ☼ Projectile Launch X/Y/Z (sometimes giving 32 or 64 Y adds a bit of oomph, trust me !) ☼ Death time

Contest rules E+ (Only relevant in a Tech tree contest) The most concerning element is the lack of central named commander required in the contest (unless I missed something very obvious ; in this case my bad). For the rest your faction is clearly unfinished in terms of technique, design and implementation. That could however be fixed with easy grabs, reworks and testing. Maybe you rushed things. In any case there's a lot of points you can make better within your reach.

Overall tier D Like I said earlier, this is unfinished. Not necesseraly bad to the point of being catastrophical, however. It can be technically played. My notation could completely shift upward once the main elements are fixed. I was almost tempted to give it N/A but your faction has enough stuff to be talked about. And the review of an unfinished faction isn't a finality. Well... maybe reviewing your faction now wasn't the best idea of mine ; but I wanted to give you broad strategical and design perspective you maybe missed. If you feel like the faction is ready to be reviewed again, I shall be back !

Personal taste N/A (No impact on the rest of the notation, just by curiosity) I expected more, but concluded I cannot have a first impression since I feel like the faction has not the shape it desserves to be reviewed. Even with the technical aspects fixed the design could benefit from having better and more accessible synergy. I genuenly liked the stance and the risks you took, but maybe this was too big to chew at your level (or allowed time). I don't blame you at all, and I would be interested into helping you sort things out even during the remaining week of the contest. You were not very far from cooking an interesting retake of night elves, and I can imagine how this would look like with a month of additionnal work, or with some years of experience in the making. This is not an easy exercise and you should continue forward ! Don't hesitate to hit me up on discord if you want to talk further into it. Be not afraid of asking factioneers help !

After few days and tests I might give additional feedback ; unless we get in touch directly on discord.

 

[ToaNoah]

There's already a problem with the faction on version 2.0.X
90% Handicap is applied anyway.
You should add in the init the action which puts the handicap back to 100%.
I'm gonna edit this very message once I do my tests, but on a version where I put the handicap back to 100% for an intended effect.

[Edit] Also strangely you enabled custom team settings, so we are stuck at FFA. This is a very minor thing, but other people won't be able to test it for teamplay. I also manually unticked it for the coming tests.

TL;DR This is maybe because of not having much time left, but there's a lot of aspects which feel rushed. Take this as a quite ephemeral review since there's some broken elements in the object editor.

Spoiler: Legend

VS] When Vinz and Spellbound makes something together on Warcraft 3

S] Great, elegant, extra thicc, easily hooks the mind

A] Good. Nothing much to say except nitpick

B] Genuinely OK, but can be better in many ways

C] Average. Not bad, not good. C- would be "meh"

D] Flawed, or insignificant

E] Unstable, badly made, or just broken

F] Fatal error, ruins the rest

Spoiler: Tier List

Aesthetics D+ (How well the graphics blends with Warcraft 3 while being elegant) This is very vanilla and quite a mixed bag. Most of the stuff comes from Night Elves and many abilities could benefit from custom icons and effects. The treant worker is faulty as it plays odd sounds during lumber animations. Some spawned models also comes with static birth animations. Doodads as buildings is very cheap. There could have been some good ideas to exploit, but many things while not out of place makes thing awkward to explore. Indeed the model search is very specific so I cannot blame you on it and I won't expect a "wow" effect. On the other hand it started really well, for example the Primals and the Altar.

Fluff N/A (The epicness, spice, philosophy and background of the faction) I'm gonna throw a wildcard here, since it's a lore I'm not at all familiar with. The overgrowth is somewhat represented in the faction, but I don't feel -through your actual map- how it is reflected in game.

Feel & juice E+ (How fun is it to play the faction, how well the faction gives you positive feedback) From the underpowered elements, odd choices of FX and the situational access to elite units makes your faction very bland. Even if the raw stats are rebalanced accordingly, the juice is quite repetitive as you "swarm" enemies with summons. There's also a lot of elements inherent from night elves themselves, which makes it looks like a disguised night elf faction. Early game is uninteresting because your heroes are too damn slow ; and they don't have flashy abilities to compensate.

Strategy and tactic E+ (How the mechanics blends together, giving the faction its unique approach) This is where it hurts, however I'm gonna split into two approaches : theoretical and practical (aka your implementation). Theory ☼ Summons are too easily countered, but only for some factions. Undead and night elves would have a very hard time dealing with the summon swarm, since their respective dispel is expensive (wand of negation / Dryad) or only accessible to late game (Destroyer) ; furthemore considering the eventual coexistence of other custom faction it is not guaranteed they will have trivial counters (or not). Humans can just spam cheap priests, orcs purge is good but they also have Spirit Walkers. ☼ Summons are also free real estate for hero experience ☼ Elite units created from a building summon has multiple implications ►► It synergies (way) too well with Graveyards ►► You have to somewhat spawn/kill something nearby ►► The summons indirectly costs gold and would be too frail to dispels ; 100 gold for 2x6 corpses, 50 mana per corpse, that makes 100 gold for 300 mana in 6x8=48 seconds. ►► The building may benefit from custom mana regen aura ►► ☼ The way units are summoned is very redundant and predictable. The enemy just have to spam casters with dispel in advance, making the strategy very linear. ☼ You said your faction doesn't have good anti-air, but the basic archer already fills well this role (more details bellow in the Balance section), making your flyer underwhelming and redundant. ☼ Having two basic melee units, one light at tier 1 and a medium a tier 2 is another redundancy. You could perfectly nix the T1 and put the T2 at T1, which is actually a Grunt equivalent ☼ Your faction has an interesting ambivalence of trees and corpses, but the usage is very indirect and situational while also very synergy dependant. If one of the chain breaks everything collapses. ☼ Your spell casters have overlapping roles with multiple healing and dispel abilities ; Nature's Blessing also have poor synergy with ally units with low-to-none HP regen (or even negative !) ☼ The usage of trees could be interesting in abilities, I saw some potential in there so it deserves to be pushed more ! ☼ Summons doesn't cost food, and you may get a supply/upkeep advantage on another player ☼ Siege units may interfere in a good way on tree summoning, but night elves can just nomnomnom the trees (KotG, ancients, War club) in a way other can't do trivialy (Flame Strike, Death and Decay). Practice ☼ You can't even access your caster building (due to a bug ?) ☼ You can make flyers at tier 1 (idem ?) ☼ Abilities are very dependent on corpses and trees, so it is risky to take engagements

Balance D- (How its strengths leave space to the rest, does it blends gameplay-wise together with the other 4 races) The power is globally very underwhelming. Paradoxically the (almost) vanilla abilities manages to salvage something (french expression). Some of the problems comes from technical issues : ☼ You spawn with 6 workers since you replace the entangled mine by a worker ☼ Your starting building is at Tree of Life distance but workers gathers like humans/orcs, so you just need 4 of them for optimal gathering (however newly build main buildings have the regular minimal distance) ☼ You can't access your caster building For the rest ☼ Hero DPS is a bit high for my taste ; I think you traded attack speed for damage but the net difference is too positive. ☼ Hero base stats are all over the place. They should start with ~50 + 6 per level total (with some minor exceptions). Sometimes I do agree they need a bit more HP, mana, armor or DPS in specific cases so they can better fill up their role. ☼ The low movement speed of the primal makes engagements and retreat very risky, even taking in account their ancient classification. A rule of thumb is to give them 280-300 speed for a slow hero, 300-320 for a fast one (I highly recommend you to compare with regular heroes). You may go down to 270 for a super-heavy kind of hero (i.e. my Fallen God) if it can compensate with filling up its role (my Fallen God tanks very well). It makes creeping either tedious or forcing the summon of a swifter hero. ☼ In the editor the Mandragore looks daunting. Very high HP regen, fast long ranged splash damage, and not costing supply as they are summoned (?). On practice their range is actually caped by their aquisition range, so they have only 700 range. I had not the occasion to test them however, so take it with a grain of salt. ☼ Only one attack and armor upgrades -cheap moreover- from a cheap building is strong. Not enough to make the faction overwhelming, but ironically it helped make the faction catch up its strategical weaknesses at least in the early game

Content D- (Does the faction feels complete compared to its intent and the other races) The 5 heroes and custom items are carrying the notation by themselves. The rest is very flawed but not too bad. Some units and many units are redundent, but not to a point of pulling everything down. I can't be harsh there since the faction is technically unfinished and what's present don't make the player completely disarmed.

Handling & ergonomics D (Does this faction have the proper data shown, how easy is it to understand) Summoning a lot of thing could grow (ahah grow) exponentially and clog the melee downwards. The slow heroes makes the faction tedious to use in early and late game, each with different reasons. Some icons are placed in the wrong locations, which can mess up the position of everything else.

Triggers, code, overall polishing E (Is the map correctly coded, no leaks, have efficient algorithm, are details taken care of) The map doesn't have groundbreaking triggers, but it's better to have something simple working rather than a mess. So I won't put a finger on it in this regard. You should however take care of the following aspects : ☼ Memory leaks ☼ Custom icons and descriptions ☼ Remove the war3mapimported/ ☼ Selection size ☼ Icon position Other secondary stuff if you want to exercise yourself : ☼ Credit could simply be moved in map init ☼ Damage point / backswing ☼ Projectile Launch X/Y/Z (sometimes giving 32 or 64 Y adds a bit of oomph, trust me !) ☼ Death time

Contest rules E+ (Only relevant in a Tech tree contest) The most concerning element is the lack of central named commander required in the contest (unless I missed something very obvious ; in this case my bad). For the rest your faction is clearly unfinished in terms of technique, design and implementation. That could however be fixed with easy grabs, reworks and testing. Maybe you rushed things. In any case there's a lot of points you can make better within your reach.

Overall tier D Like I said earlier, this is unfinished. Not necesseraly bad to the point of being catastrophical, however. It can be technically played. My notation could completely shift upward once the main elements are fixed. I was almost tempted to give it N/A but your faction has enough stuff to be talked about. And the review of an unfinished faction isn't a finality. Well... maybe reviewing your faction now wasn't the best idea of mine ; but I wanted to give you broad strategical and design perspective you maybe missed. If you feel like the faction is ready to be reviewed again, I shall be back !

Personal taste N/A (No impact on the rest of the notation, just by curiosity) I expected more, but concluded I cannot have a first impression since I feel like the faction has not the shape it desserves to be reviewed. Even with the technical aspects fixed the design could benefit from having better and more accessible synergy. I genuenly liked the stance and the risks you took, but maybe this was too big to chew at your level (or allowed time). I don't blame you at all, and I would be interested into helping you sort things out even during the remaining week of the contest. You were not very far from cooking an interesting retake of night elves, and I can imagine how this would look like with a month of additionnal work, or with some years of experience in the making. This is not an easy exercise and you should continue forward ! Don't hesitate to hit me up on discord if you want to talk further into it. Be not afraid of asking factioneers help !

After few days and tests I might give additional feedback ; unless we get in touch directly on discord.

Thank you for your feedback! I agree with some of your takes, and others I'd like to push back against and perhaps explain my reasoning a bit more.

The named commander is a good point. I suppose I forgot to choose one. Phylarch the Evergreen would be my commander, as he is the leader of the Botani, who are the overall inspiration for this faction.

You point out a number of bugs, which I can fix easily. I did try and finish this up real quick this week so I could make a post so in that way you are right it is a little rushed, hence some bugs slip through the cracks.

You point out that my faction is overly reliant on corpses and trees. That is kinda the idea! In lore the Botani are all about the usage of infested corpses and trees/treants/ancients. This is why so many abilities, in particular the Heroes, are focused on creating trees, so they can be used mid battle. Perhaps more interesting and custom abilities are called for with using trees, I just haven't thought of anything up yet! The Fertilizer item also enables you to create corpses anywhere, providing your army with a mobile supply.

You say summons can be easily countered by some races and this is true. Perhaps easier access to elite units, or maybe earlier, can help with this. Increasing the amount of mana "mulched" by the Birthing Pool could help with this. Say 100. Or an upgrade that increases this amount.

But I would say in the style of the SC2 Commanders, they have kind of a gimik that makes their race different from the main, but still recognizable. The Night Elves use lots of trees, so do the Primals. It makes sense. There are lots of different builds you can do in a normal Protoss race, but if you choose one of the Protoss commanders, they have a few different builds they can do, but are geared in a certain direction. They are also recognizably Protoss, they aren't changed so much that they lose hold of that basic reality.
I think you mean to say the only gimik with the Primals is that they summon alot of units. This is intended but perhaps at least one other build path, one that focuses more on the elite units, is needed to address this issue and add some build variety.

You say this is too vanilla. Perhaps. I looked at your map and it is VERY custom. I simply do not know how to do most of the stuff you have done. I only really deal with GUI, never learned JASS or anything. So if the triggers appear to be bare bones to you, that is why.

On to a few specific critiques.
You point out the archer is good anti-air. Yes, I agree, and I never really like the flyer anyway. I thought at least 1 air unit was necessary, so he was included. I would rather take him out tho, maybe add net to Archers to make them a better counter
T1 and T2 Melee from the same building. I have an idea for this, one that ties into another idea I have for the Primals in general. I want them to be able to spread the trees, not just thru all of the abilities, but a bit like a creep tumor or blight does, but it is trees. There is a hero that can do this with Grow Roots. But maybe upon death the T2 melee grows a lesser Roots that only makes trees and can't spread? Or perhaps the Roots are incorporated as their own unique unit somehow. I really like their idea. They do use corpses to spawn the trees tho. If there is a better way to do it I have not discovered it yet.
Overlapping spellcaster roles can be fixed with abilities. I am thinking different abilities for Botani Druid instead of Dissenchant and Rejuvenation. Increase of Nature's Blessing to 400% for Mystics, so it is more powerful.
Ideas for more tree spells? I am all ears.
Summons don't cost food for Undead, and they use the most summons. I think the Primals probably use more, but that is intended as I said before. But if they are easy to dispel, is it that much of an advantage? Idk. Plus all the ward summons can't move, so you can move away from them.
The heroes being slow is an easy fix. I just make them faster. The reason they were so slow is because they benefit from Nature's Blessing (the Treant/Ancient movement speed tech). So they are slow to start then gain normal speed later after you research that tech
The Birthing Pool can be used too well with Graveyards. Maybe to fix this can't summon on blight? I am sure there is a way to do it, I can't recall if it is default preset in editor.
Caster building should be buildable by worker? I tested this and it works for me so I am not sure where the disconnect is. Dark Ancient trains casters.
Decrease level of all summons = less XP for heroes
Hero DPS and stats can be leveled out. I took the base stats of existing heroes and slightly altered them. Having 3 Genesaur heroes doesn't really help tho, as they are all similar in stats. Maybe I can replace the green one with an Ancient as a hero. I use the green one already as one of the regular units.

I guess one of the big ideas I still haven't implemented yet is the idea of the Primals as kind of this natural force that spreads its own sort of natural corruption across the land. Like the Overgrowth. You say this is not well represented. Maybe the Roots that can spread and grow trees is a start? The other side of this is the Infestation part, which comes across well I think, with the use of corpses. Is there more here? Probably, I just haven't thought of anything yet.

I want to thank you for your critique, even if it was filled with low ratings. This is the first iteration, I am hoping the next will be better!

 

[Wazzz]

Hey! I was intrigued with your premise, and wanted to give this a wee playtest!

I am noticing a couple of bugs that could need some addressing:

• For whatever reason, you start with 6 Botani Workers instead of 5, one acutally replacing the Entangled Gold Mine
• Setting my handicap to 90% has not corrected back to 100% handicap, and so my health values are lower just for playing this faction
• There are some interesting graphical glitches of the "Gold Bags" from the Botani Workers appearing on the Tree of Life's tusk for some reason
• Harvesting lumber with the Botani Workers causes the Death Animation sound to play - I think both this and the previous bug might be from an unupdated version of the Treant Worker model from the hive, I recall having similar issues with that previously before seeking a fix for it

Design wise, it's an interesting undertaking, but I'm already looking at the Keeper of Deeproot and do not like that it uses Entangling Roots and Force of Nature, ideally custom factions should at least reskin these abilities, and for Techtree Contests it is better if they present something new and compelling to the gameplay. Icon placement for structures could be better (Altar and the Food Structure should be swapped around, Lumber Camp should be on the top row, Dark Ancient should be in the middle row). Botani Huts cost 85 gold and 30 lumber despite providing 10 food - this is really strong. Having the Infested Flyer available at tier 1 also seems very strong, although this could be something unique - however, flying units typically aren't available at tier 1.5. Speaking of which, they also happen to share a hotkey with the Botani Archer. Botani Soldiers and Archers seem to carry identical tooltips to their Skeleton counterparts, and don't really describe to me what they benefit from.

I'm looking at Barkskin as an upgrade - a resistance to piercing through an upgrade is a very interesting premise! I love the thematic nature of it, too. Improved Bows and Marksmanship are copied directly from the Night Elves, however. When I see you creating something from your own ideas, they are quite thematic, and I feel like when you are copying things, it is because they are similarly thematic. Not a bad style, it will potentially be harmful in contest scores, especially for creating something custom.

I found the starting stats on the Keeper of Deeproot to be... insane. A strength based hero starting with 27 Intelligence is actually stronger in Intelligence then staples like Keeper of the Grove, and he has the same starting abilities. He is very slow, though, so I believe that is the thought process for this design? Curiously asymmetrical to the base factions.

Regrowth as an ultimate ability is... underwhelming. It respawns dead trees? I wouldn't want that as a hero ability, much less an ultimate. Could be a good item ability, especially if you tap into the tree birth animations, add some SFX on top of it.

The Birthing Pool's design is... not ideal. It requires mana, which it does not naturally produce. To get mana, it needs to "Mulch" corpses, which... is hard to access with a structure, unless you have some way of producing corpses. The cooldown on Mulch is a bit of a killer, too. This does have some interesting dynamics with your Fertilizer item, and I think that's a really nice connection we have here (thematically, it's great!), but then I look at the mana costs for what it produces and compare it to the costs of the items. We can probably do some math here to see if it's underpowered, overpowered or... possibly just right. Each charge spawns three corpses, so for 100 gold we can spawn 6 corpses. Each corpse provides 50 mana. So for 50 gold, we get 150 mana. The Genesaur costs 1000 mana. So you need to buy 7 charges to get enough mana for this. 700 gold needs to be spent, the time invested is another thing. And then you need to target a building with your ability to convert it into a Genesaur. The "Awaken Gnarled" ability requires a nearby tree, which thankfully I went with the hero option that regrows trees, because otherwise I'd be left with a structure that can't do anything. And wow I do think the Gnarled may be a more worthwhile investment than the Genesaur. Half the mana cost, needs a tree instead of an Ancient, as long as you can guarantee nearby trees, these are statistically really strong units. The Genesaur doesn't sport much more statistics for its cost, and while it does have some strong abilities, it's more like a really strong creep.

And maybe that's how I would describe a lot of the design choices with the units - they are very nice design ideas for new creeps. I think if I saw the Genesaur as a high level creep, I would imagine it to have the same abilities you gave yours, maybe even with the Eat Tree ability. Just Chaos Damage instead of Siege. There are definitely some nice ideas here, and the concepts you have for some of the thematics are really interesting, just a bit lacking in execution. I really like this from a thematic standpoint. For what you can probably focus on for now, I'd be looking at the icon placement and seeing if there's any resolution to some of the current bugs that stand out the most.

Also, from a balance perspective, I won easily against the AI using almost entirely Botani Archers despite being at 90% health. They're really strong for how cheap they are, and when you get all their researches online, they're all I needed in that instance. I'm sure against a competent player I would be punished for my impudence, though.

EDIT: I've noticed the Botani Archer does not have access to the Barkskin ability, so as far as I can tell, this upgrade does nothing. I also noticed that, in the Ability Editor, the Barkskin ability does exist, but doesn't actually require the research.

 

[FlameofChange]

Thank you for your answer and precision.
I think most of the design problems could be circumvented by changing the definition of summons.
In a starcraft 1/2 perspective having a junior spawning from a dead senior makes a net benefit. However in Warcraft 3 that just increases the XP generation of the unit for the enemy. For your Co-op argument the contest doesn't explicitly require to make the faction used as co-op. It is indeed inspired by Starcraft 2 co-op, but this doesn't reinforce your point too well.

This is how I would rework some of the core principles of your faction
☼ The supply building generates one (1) tree on its position, and regrows after a duration when cut
☼ Also reduce their supply since they are so small
☼ The pool can automatically eat nearby trees with a large range to convert their HP into mana
☼ The pool can also eat dead trees and corpses to gain a bit of mana
☼ The pool can convert gold and lumber into mana directly
☼ The mandragora is not counted as summoned (just spawn it with trigger)
☼ Order the summoned units to smart the rally point
☼ Genesaur can only replace a player owned ancient to avoid crippling a night elf player ; can also only target a finished building
☼ Fertilizer converts a corpse into a tree with high HP, and grant an HP regen aura like a weaker ward
☼ Make Growth sap MUI and double the growth instead ; else it could be used to proxy tower like a jackal
☼ Make the Podling level 0 (shift+enter) so it no longer feeds XP to enemies
☼ When killed the podling heals nearby friendly units
☼ Set polding armor type to either unarmored, medium or heavy ; light is exclusively reserved for air units (and don't ask why Scout Towers, those pesky humans are hiding some crusty secrets)
☼ Center each Primal to one clear role : Warrior, Support and Mage.
►► The Warrior can fix the enemy on place with short ranged mass entangle, brawl them with cleaving attacks and maybe calling devastating charges
►► The Support can spawn attacking trees (with an actual RANGED attack), increase HP regen and converting corpses into mana for friendlies
►► The Mage can immobilize a friendly unit but adding it a powerful autonomous ranged attack on top, quake the ground from afar, temporarily bury an enemy for a duration
☼ If you really want to make heroes affected by Nature's blessing, raise their speed to like 270 and make the upgrade just adding them 30 speed and no armor. I would add that piling up a 4th level of armor upgrade on units could be also a bit broken.
☼ Make the summoned units having different roles instead of straightforward combat. Most of them are melee so they can't benefit from their dps when the fight is clogged. For example (completely improvised)
►► Summoning just one big ass tree tentacle which converts nearby corpses into a smaller tentacle
►► Some kind of fruit treant which can sacrifice its hp to heal friendlies
►► A stone/root hybrid able to get stronger when absorbing mechanical units and structures
►► A magic immune treant of charcoal having detection and punishing invisible units
►► Overgrowth a unit making it much stronger but with a timed life
☼ Replace the Font of Life spawn by Podlings but each level increases their duration, spawn rate and maybe attack/armor when near the Font of life
☼ Make the ancient protector equivalent able to uproot into a heavy flying unit at Tier 3, but the conversion is one way and costing resources like Destroyer Form.
☼ Add an ability to most treant/ancient to eat a friendly podling to regain HP ; could be an upgrade
☼ There's space to transform one of your caster into a heavier ranged attacker, attacking ground enemies with spawned roots akin to how Sunken Colonies work.
☼ Reserve one caster for healing/dispel, another for messing up enemies, the third could have exotic assets

I'm gonna stop here or my brain is gonna overfixate on this instead of being a productive member of the society (spoilers : no).

[Edit] I've retested again, and I take back something : the caster barracks was hidden in plain sight... my bad ! I was looking at the wrong location... force of habit. However more I look at it, more I bump into new problems.
► It is not intuitive to know which unit is an ancient or not during the fight
► The Genosaur is underwhelming. Yeah they tank good but are too weak against magic damage dealers. The process to create them is tedious for a too expensive unit. Siege damage is awful in combat. For this price I would make it normal damage with bonus against buildings, and the redundant entangling roots accentuates the APM required of the faction. 50+4D5 every 2.5 seconds in Tier 3 for a 8 food unit is quite low. Two demolishers does the siege job much much better, and it would get a bad mashup against spiked barricades.
► Having a very squishy worker unit with no moon wells just make your faction prone to fall against rushes. Coupled with slow heroes you cannot fend of blade master rush for example.
► You don't have much tools to break tower walls. Many of your abilities targets trees and units, but not buildings.
► The Mandragora is a XP cake. Level 7, and you add two level 4. That makes 15 levels divided by two (due to be summoned) levels of XP.
► The third caster has the price of a 2 food unit but costing 3. Is this intentional ?
► The archer is very cheap for its stats. Higher HP, better regen, higher range. Even if it lacks Elune's Grace it is slightly overpowered.
► Actually no units benefit from Barkskin : check out their abilities !

 

[ToaNoah]

New Update! 1.01!

I will post full changelog some time this weekend. I am too tired right now to type it all up. But you can check out the changes in the map!

 

[FlameofChange]

New test on your latest version. Things got much much better, but there's still a lot of small and medium details to take care off ; and I don't know which ones are intentional.
☼ Don't put anything in the 3 2 UI coordinate in a building as it would shift everything when it is working due to the cancel button appearing
☼ Your two Primal heroes still have high base stats, and I would also reduce their scale to match their selection size
☼ Be sure that all basic hero abilities requires level 1, as the default value for a unit ability converted into hero is 0. Else a level 2 hero can have a level 2 ability !
☼ I would split the attack/armor upgrades between two types and raise the price of the lumber camp to match at least the orc Warmill ; as well as changing the name
☼ The supply building might be too cheap for my taste and built too fast. I might start at something like 90 35 35 and reduce the HP & armor ; the tree spawn might raise its cost even more if balance is needed
☼ The Mandragora spawn is based on the Spirit Wolf ability, which kills the previous one when a second is created. You might just use the Channel ability to have a blank & clean base. Why does it have mana ? Why does it costs 8 food ? You might also show the food cost of each spawn and lock them if the player don't have enough supply.
☼ The botani unit icons may are a bit too lookalike
☼ The passive abilities should have passive icons ; for this the Button Manager does marvels and is trivial to use !
☼ Having a Footman and archer clone is quite uninspired, and the former gets outclassed by its tier 2
☼ The Dark Ancient has a build time of 17 ?

Ranks updated ! I haven't tested absolutely every nook and cranny but these were the things which jumped onto me.

Spoiler: Legend

VS] When Vinz and Spellbound makes something together on Warcraft 3

S] Great, elegant, extra thicc, easily hooks the mind

A] Good. Nothing much to say except nitpick

B] Genuinely OK, but can be better in many ways

C] Average. Not bad, not good. C- would be "meh"

D] Flawed, or insignificant

E] Unstable, badly made, or just broken

F] Fatal error, ruins the rest

Spoiler: Tier List

Aesthetics D+ ► B (How well the graphics blends with Warcraft 3 while being elegant) The choices are better, more vibrant, more Primal, still uncompleted on the icon side of things. We feel much more the vibe you wanted to show. On the other hand there's annoying details like some summons with building models spawning with birth animation.

Fluff N/A ► C (The epicness, spice, philosophy and background of the faction) Now I got familiarized with your faction, we get something quite vanilla. However I don't know what's the balance between tree growing and corpse conversion.

Feel & juice E+ ► B (How fun is it to play the faction, how well the faction gives you positive feedback) The balance helped things a lot, but not only. There's more cascades of VFX rolling on the battlefield which is good. Heroes and casters feels better to use, even if it's rough around the edges. You feel less threatened but not invincible. Swarming enemies with summons got better !

Strategy and tactic E+ ► C+ (How the mechanics blends together, giving the faction its unique approach) The synergies and spirit of the faction are starting to take shape. It has more identity yet have some secondary problems. For this section I'm assuming the strange ability behaviors are unintended. ☼ I'm surprised you took seriously some of my suggestions, having a supply building generating tree makes base defense better eh ? Hero abilities can be used with more flexibility even if it is very APM/tree dependent. ☼ The Podlings no longer feeding XP makes engagement less risky, as they fill their fodder role better ☼ Some of the elements still feels quite vanilla : footman, archer, ancients (especialy protector) ☼ 3 casters with comparable cost and scope could be made spicier, you call ☼ I am still concerned about how the pool use corpses to fuel its mana. I can respect the intent but the implementation keeps me perplex, and I can't find a good elegant way to turn this over yet. ☼ Each summon type have better different roles, enough to leave more breathing room for the rest ; which was felt in the tests. ☼ To spice the Mandragora up, I would reduce its DPS but make it attacks 3 targets at a time.

Balance D- ► C+ (How its strengths leave space to the rest, does it blends gameplay-wise together with the other 4 races) It got better in many fronts, but there's still some exploits to make which can ruin the game with experienced players. ☼ Pool units are the most concerned. Either too unpractical or underwhelming, while expensive in food. ☼ Archers are still too cheap, I would add 10 lumber cost to match the archer ☼ I would reduce the HP of the spawned trees from abilities to make destroying them easier for the enemy ☼ The ancient rootling and evolutions are too underwhelming for the 125 (!) mana cost. If you want a big ass tanking ent I would increase its HP, armor and maybe adding hard/resistant skin, make them affected by barkskin, even maybe some kind of spiked armor ☼ The rejuvenation is a tricky case. I would rework it by making it faster reloading, its healing constant through levels, reducing mana cost per level and only adding a bit of mana for level 2 and 3. In early game it can have a early creeping impact, and late game you would be able to save units for longer ☼ Corpse conversion into mana for the pool is now twice as strong ! Maybe overkill.

Content D- ► C- (Does the faction feels complete compared to its intent and the other races) Stuff got a bit more synthesized while other features found better place. You're not that wrong about removing the 5th hero if it's for making the other 4 better equipped ; and maybe creating back an actual 5th hero once everything is sorted out ! Overlapping and redundancy is still a concern for some units, but now it is slightly less of a problem.

Handling & ergonomics D ► C- (Does this faction have the proper data shown, how easy is it to understand) Keeping track of trees and tree abilities is again messy. Some icon positions are displaced (in a QWERTY perspective). Overall it got a bit more easier to use stuff. ☼ Swamp maw makes the hero use it whenever you right click a tree, which is inconvenient when accidentally clicking a tree.

Triggers, code, overall polishing E ► D (Is the map correctly coded, no leaks, have efficient algorithm, are details taken care of) Most of the memory leaks were taken care of, but the work hasn't ended yet. You can fuse different triggers into one, for example ability based ones. ☼ Never use Units in range matching conditions as it has a unremovable leak. Use instead a simple Units in range and then filter them inside of the unit group. Furthermore you can better use GUI filters in a condition block rather than cramping everything in a function argument. ☼ Each Awaken Ancient and Awaken Gnarled leaks a location ☼ Entangle autocast leaks a location ☼ Composte leaks a location ☼ Growth Sap could break things if multiple of them are used at the same time ; you might need to dive into using local variables and it would be a good exercise for you ☼ Spawn Genesaur could also mess up since EventUnit could gain a different value during the 4 second wait ; same advice for Growth Sap ☼ Splinter could be just made into one trigger, and set the level of the ability for the dummy to the level of the ability of the hero ☼ Massiver Roots leaks a location each ; same remark for the Splinter ☼ House leaks a location ☼ Recycle could randomize a bit the location of the trees, or make it spawn in a small circle ☼ Vampiric lasher leaks one location each ☼ To fix the too close starting tree of life problem, instead of replacing the tree of life just remove it and manually spawn a tree of life at the player spawn point (can be retreived in GUI don't worry)

Contest rules E+ ► B+ (Only relevant in a Tech tree contest) Still concerned by the gameplay elements, but there's now a clear main character. The rest would depend on the judges and tastes.

Overall tier D ► C It got better in many fronts, but it needs more efforts in terms of balance and design. I'd say it is a matter of experience and it should come in the following years (months ?). You learned new tricks and cooked your own soup, which is enough to encourage you further !

Personal taste N/A ► C (No impact on the rest of the notation, just by curiosity) I can see the gameplay potential of the faction, but maybe it is too soon to keep it as it is. In the meantime I cannot be fond of it while not blaming it. Not enough matter to grind on, not enough juice and fluff, but eh it's not like the progress gonna stop very soon. Let's see how it developps shall we ?

 

[The Nightmare Book]

Note: I had played on the very first version, so my impression could be somewhat outdated.

OVERALL It's such a shame that we didn't see races from primal Draenor before. I'm myself had imaginated Botani closer to Infested from Starcraft 2 race, completed in Stukov Co-Op commande: amassing a horde of podlings, saplings, infested orcs and other creatures, burying the enemy under their mass and growing new nature creatures out of corpses.
And... And you've done it! It's still far from the Stukov imagination I had, but your gameplay proposition is nice. I liked dozens of summons you offer to player, cheap infantry units. In an appropriate scenario, it felt like an unstoppable force of Nature.

In terms of BALANCE, I can say that Birthing Pool (at least in the version I had played and recorded) became available way too late, and I cannot imagine that I should power it up with spamming corpses via an item from a race magazine.
It would be nice to give it some sort of Graveyard ability to allow it passive mana regeneration. More corpse generation!


In conclusion, I liked this race. But I agree with @FlameofChange's review, and I think that race should get some polishing, and it would be nice!

 

[ToaNoah]

Slight changes in this one. I don't have much time this week because I'm about to hit the road for work and be away from my computer, so unfortunately this may be the last update. I wanted to fix a couple bugs and change a little thing about the Birthing Pool. Now it creates 1 corpse every 15 seconds, but back down to 50 mana from every corpse.

It's possible I may be able to still make changes, though I make no promises. As such, I would consider this the final version of this map!

 

[deepstrasz]

Approved based on Techtree Contest #19 - Results There needs to be less step/time grind until reaching some techtree elements. Better/faster ways to use trees should also be implemented. Fun-work balance required.