- Joined
- Nov 6, 2008
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- 8,316
Super Unit
The contestants had to create a race centered around a "Super Unit", which could have unique functionalities, or just be super powerful (of course not forgetting balance), etc. The unit could be a hero, unit or building.
Paired teams were allowed, but they were not mandatory.
Mephestrial
Gameplay:
-The summoning abilities were fun, as were the casters. So for the fun factor I award 2 points.
-There were no special features about this race, no trademark (eg. night elves have tree buildings and shadowmeld), save for all the summoning skills.
-The techtree as a whole was dull and unimaginative. I could have made this in 2 hours.
-The Demonfire ability didn't seem to work.
-Super unit was barely fun or different. Its abilities were simplistic, and the lack of heroes (or even normal units for that matter) restricted the strategic variety of this race. I could not launch stealth attacks, and I would have only one basic strategy: mass voidwalkers + finger of death with the super unit. I award you 1 point, but only because you included some sort of super unit.
3/15
Balance:
-Resource collecting and basic base construction was fair. You get one point for this.
-Lack of alot of buildings leads to imbalance in certain fields. eg. no lumber mills makes this race harder to expand. No items is a huge disadvantage.
-Lack of unit roles like magic damage dealer (both casters don't deal magic damage), detector, and fully capable air unit puts this race at a disadvantage.
-Units in general cost too much food, particularly the T1 units (including the hero). This leads to vulnerability early game, especially when considering the basic units take roughly 40 seconds to pop out (and a minute to finish a tower).
-The Super Unit is incredibly overpowered. 'Super unit' is not an excuse to give one unit a 400 dmg ability, plus mass teleport all available at level 1. I dislike the stat bonus, the EXP gained from killing a hero is a reward in itself, stat bonuses just add to the snowball effect.
-Transporter is overpowered, and I don't think I even need to explain why. One way to have balanced it is to make it cost food, or make the ability cost resources. Even then, having multiple mass teleports is unacceptable.
1/10
The Legion:
-You had a T1 basic melee unit, T1 basic archer, two T2 casters, a T2 siege unit, and a T3 ultimate unit. This is only half of the roles a normal techtree should have. I will give 2 points for these roles.
-You did not have a scout, or any full air units. If you had these, I would have given 1 more point. Unfortunately, the succubus cannot be classified as a capable air unit because: it is only available
-The casters' roles were quite versatile. I like that the succubus was a tank/DPS/anti-air all in one, and this covered alot of ground you missed with your other units. 1 point for this unit.
-Shivarran does not have a clearly defined purpose on the battlefield. She does not have magic damage. She has a ranged nuke spell and attack, yet she also has immolation and a support spell. Unlike the succubus, these roles of nuke/tank/support don't mix well in this case.
3/10
Originality:
-Undead/demonic theme is unoriginal and overused.
-Race layout is unoriginal, as in you haven't offered anything special to the techtree. Resource collection is standard, buildings are like undead summoning.
-The selection of buildings is also similar to previous entries' (where you are given only 6 or 7 buildings), so I can't award you for this. Also, each building except one is pretty basic; simplistic defense tower, standard T1 barracks and T2 caster, food building is similar to moon well.
-Teleporter building is somewhat original, but similar concepts like nydus worms from Sc2 and waygates from wc3 exist. Half a point for this.
-Units are either simple edits or do not innovate. For example, Felguard is basically a nerfed tauren and the two casters are given a set of pre-existing, unoriginal spells.
-The Super Unit has pretty basic abilities, and he is just a much stronger default hero. Still, I will award you half a point for the semi-original deploy inferno ability.
1/10
Appearance:
-Each model and icon fulfilled its purpose individually. 2 points.
-Resource quality was decent overall. 1 point.
-Some of the buildings didn't look like they belonged in the same race though, for instance the tower and citadel was too detailed and golden, whilst the other buildings were black and undead-ish.
-Lack of caster upgrade icons in the selection panel.
-Recoloured icons looked poor. The siege thingy's icon was not in a passive border.
-The crystal building lacked team colour.
-Summoning special effects looked cool. 1 point.
4/10
Overall: 12/55
LordkoonGameplay:
-The inclusion of the wandering spirit mechanic (this includes all the abilities that generate wandering spirits) is somewhat innovative, but due to its randomness, is not very good. Randomness in competitive strategy games is not good. 2 points for the innovation.
-A few of the abilities are custom and triggered, and have unique effects. They also fit the roles of the unit most of the time (forest guardian being an exception). Seed of life is one custom ability I liked. You get 1 point for putting some effort into the abilities.
-I didn't really like that the units cut down and killed trees. Are they supposed to be cannibalistic treants?
-The Super unit is very boring. His abilities define his role, but they are not unique or fun in any way. Your race also is not centered around it. The Super unit can easily be ignored and forgotten, especially considering it takes so much resources and time to get him out. No points for this unit, because at least in Mephestrial's entry, you actually needed train the super unit. It seems you wanted to make a normal race, and instead added this unit in in the last minute just for the sake of this contest's criteria.
-Lack of stealth, and overwhelming number of support abilities limit the strategic depth of this race.
3/15
Balance:
-Resource collecting and basic base construction was fair. You have a detector building, an item shop, and lumber mills (although I'm not a fan of the lumber mills and food production in one unit, for various reasons). The focus on lumber as the primary resource is not well thought out however; lumber is gathered more slowly, and lumber can also be exhausted much quicker. You get one point for this.
-A lot of the unit abilities were overpowered, not necessarily because of the effects, but because of the lack of drawbacks or costs. For example, the infuser's ability.
-One of the heroes has no food cost. I'll be considerate and treat this as a mistake rather than intentional stupidity.
-The Forest guardian is a ridiculous unit. It should cost like 10 food. Compare it to the mountain giant, which costs the same amount of food, the mountain giant has poor DPS and bad armour and abilities, and is nearly useless. This unit has chaos damage, and reincarnation. When I first saw this, I thought this was your super unit.
-But now to your actual super unit, his abilities are far too overpowered. 'Super' is not the equivalent to 'overpowered'. I really don't need to explain why he is OP, all I need to do is point you to his stats and abilities. You lose a point because of this!
0/10
The Legion:
-Most of the necessary roles are fulfilled. I'd still prefer this race to have better scouting capabilities. You should've made Sky Watcher a detector instead of its production building, since buildings can only use their abilities defensively. You gain 2 points for your legion being semi-complete.
-You only have two heroes available, but at least their roles are different. The Ambassador is a support hero whilst the assassin is a melee DPS hero. 1 point for these heroes.
-The roles were rather basic, but I liked the seed of life ability that gave the basic melee unit a kind of suicidal role too. Perhaps if the seed of life has true sight, the role would have been more versatile. I have never seen a unit that reveals on death before, and that unit could be really useful in a variety of occasions (thinking of it being super good against blademasters). 1 point.
-You lack a clearly defined siege unit. Forest guardians have chaos damage, and anti-magic abilities, so I'm confused as to whether it is a siege unit or anti-magic unit.
4/10
Originality:
-Ancient theme is heavily inspired from the night elves. Another contestant shares the same theme too. No points for this.
-Race layout is unoriginal. Basically the same as any other race, except for the super unit.
-I like the idea of the food building healing other buildings. I haven't seen anything like that before, so you get 1 mark for that.
-Some units and abilities, such as the seed of life ability, are unique. The wandering spirits are quite original. I award 2 points for the different unit abilities, and 1 extra point for the abilities being displayed and implemented differently (the spirits).
-Your super unit is not very inspired at all. His abilities are quite basic, and the way he is used is not very special. No points for your super unit, because his role is not unique, nor are his abilities.
4/10
Appearance:
-Each model and icon fulfilled its purpose individually. Building models were quite good, but you should've used custom icons for the abilities. As it is now, abilities are too repetitive and unfitting. 2 points.
-Resource quality was decent overall, and most resources mixed well together to look like a coherent race. 2 points.
-Lack of caster upgrade icons. Also, the spirit of nature had an improperly imported disabled icon for one of her abilities.
-Some icons did not fit the units they were supposed to represent. For example, the tree guard's icon clearly should belong to the treant harvester.
-Some buildings lacked working portraits. Brambled Harpy also lacked a portrait.
-Special effects from the lanterns and seeds of life looked good. 1 point.
5/10
Overall: 16/55
mischief123
Gameplay:
-You should technically be disqualified because I could not play the map on start, without having to go in the editor and manually place units to test. Most of your triggers did not work, and once I uprooted the Enchanter I could not root it again or entangle a gold mine. For the review's sake, I'll just remove any points you can gain in gameplay so no matter how good your race's gameplay was, it will only get zero in this field.
-The construction and resource harvesting was ...different... to play. Not necessarily fun (quite complex and tedious actually to do the whole process of just trying to get one stone fist) but interesting. You would have gotten 2 points.
-Your range of units was low and this limited strategic depth, since you could only choose from a few units, who all had similar stats and few abilities.
-I disliked how you just packed upgrades in two or three buildings. Once I've finished those upgrades, I have no use for those buildings anymore.
-The soul crystal is NOT a super unit. I will explain this later on in the originality section. For now, you get and would have gotten no marks for deciding to make this building a 'super unit' at the last minute.
0/15
Balance:
-Resource collecting and basic base construction was skewered. The fact that you need to pump out three different kinds of workers, which each cost 60 gold, 1 food, and which two of them die after constructing is very tedious and unbalanced. Your race has a worker disadvantage in management ease and cost.
-Lack of buildings makes your race really imbalanced. For instance, no item shop really reduces the effectiveness of your hero. No production building until after you do a ton of research slows this race down and makes it vulnerable early on.
-All units had fortified armour. A bit unfair, no? At first, it may be balanced because although they have high defense, they also have low DPS, but their production cost is too low, and later on, when other races get access is to units like flying machines, siege tanks (who can take alot, especially considering the units in your techtree have so low DPS), glaive throwers etc. your units will be useless and underpowered.
-Units take too long to get access to. I got stuck with an Enchanter until I spent around 500 gold worth of resources. But when I finally had access to other units, they all cost 1 food, and very little gold and lumber. This causes imbalance in early game, but will allow the race to build too quickly later on.
-There was only one hero, with fairly poor skills (all the skills were support based and could not be used for offense or defense, there was no ultimate ability). The soul crystal is a building with zero functionality, average stats, and therefore cannot be classified as a Super Unit. It is not centered on by your entire race as well.
-Gold harvesting is incredibly badly implemented. Unlimited gold essentially is not a wise decision.
0/10
The Legion:
-You had more than enough workers, but very few combat roles. Your units did not have clearly defined roles either, since most lacked abilities and they all had similar stats. No points because your legion is an incoherent mess.
-Lack of detection or invisibility. Lack of air units. Lack of siege units. Only two (barely qualifiable) casters. Lack of heroes. Lack of heavy units at different tiers...you get the point. Actually, you get no points, but I think you understand why you got no points for this.
-Your casters were somewhat understandable at least. I understood the war wizard was an offensive caster, and the other caster is a support. You get half a point for this.
-All your units had incredibly similar stats. I suggest you avoid this in the future, otherwise you will score zero in this section because we cannot tell what role that unit plays unless it is different somehow.
0.5/10
Originality:
-Ancient theme is borrowed heavily off the Night Elves. No points for your race's theme.
-Race layout is original. Very complicated, but nonetheless original. You had three workers; 1 for structures, another for ancients (who are special units), and a third for heroes. Some structures like the gold mine were unique. 3 and a half points for this.
-Although overall your techtree is made in a unique layout, individually your units lack abilities or special stats that add any spice to your techtree.
-Buildings were quite boring, either just being a huge spire full of upgrades or a copy of the moon well with magic attack. I will give you 1 point for the unique production of units/ancients.
-There was no Super Unit. Your soul crystal is not even a unit, let alone the fact that your race isn't centered on it. Again, you should be disqualified for not following the theme. But for the sake of the review, I will take away 5 points for this.
-0.5/10
Appearance:
-Each model and icon fulfilled its purpose individually. Resource quality was mediocre overall. 2 points.
-The buildings were all mixed up and did not fit well together. I cannot understand why you would choose to use the tower of orthanc model as one of your buildings.
-The spirits were confusing to look at and lacked team colour.
-Icon positioning was poor. You had units or abilities that were in weird slots in the command card.
-Half the structures lacked team colour + proper building animations, and the tint I found was too excessive.
-The hero is clearly a female dryad; it should not have a man's voice set.
-The UI is not technically part of the techtree, so even if it looks good, it is impartial to your entry.
2/10
Overall: 2/55
Mephestrial: ((5/25) * 30) + (12 * (70/55))) = 21,27
Lordkoon: ((13/25) * 30) + (16 * (70/55))) = 35,96
michief123: ((6/25) * 30) + (2 * (70/55))) = 9,74
Contest | Poll
Not because of the small points awarded but for the plain thought process behind them.
