Gilles said:
Exactly. I never really gave it any thought till now.
*whew*, alright. I'm just sitting here reading posts, like "are they
seriously still considering forcing every entrant to do the same race??"...
I mean really. If that went through, I'd just stand back and laugh (how many Dwarf Warriors can I see?...).
Then again, maybe I'd enter to just to pwn everyone's soul.
(that's right, he's gotten cocky. Jump him!)
~~~
Wait, how can you say this:
Gilles said:
Maybe one hero? Heroes aren't the biggest part to me.
and still think this:
Gilles said:
because balance is a huge aspect of creating a race
Regardless of whether they're "the biggest part to you" or not, Heroes are a huge part of a race's balance (4 super-units that can level up through combat, hold/use items, and gain up to 4 spells that can drastically affect the game?).
Hence the "mini-race" argument.
I am 100% with Mechmap on this:
Mechmap said:
Making 4 complete heroes is pretty hard work.
It
is] a lot of work to make 4 good, balanced, innovative heroes (none of this "chain lightning - frost nova - endurance aura - bladestorm" garbage
).
If we were doing mini-races, making 1 (heck, bump it up to 2 for kicks and giggles)
good heroes becomes much more feasible.
Mechmap said:
What would be the fun if everybody did Dwarf race?
The only good that would come of that is a whole bunch of Dwarf resources (requests, modellers working on this, etc). And that's not even 100%.
Mechmap said:
BTW: about what units are allowed, think about that creeps like satyr, only have buildings that are used in the campaign that are not under creep, so thats a dissapointment if theyre not allowed.
I'm not sure I understand you're question... But if this goes through like it should, the "theme" will instead just be "anything
but Human/Orc/Undead/Night Elf, so you can use whatever kind of building/unit/hero models you'd like for a Satyr (or whatever) race.
Linaze said:
No theme, relatively low file size limit, full techtree and a combination of triggered spells and in-game spells.
Yeah, that'd be my dream "theme" for this contest.
- Any race (except the playable 4)
- Allow Imports
- - File-Size Limit (meh? dunno a good one)
- Allow Teams (2 people max)
- Standardize submissions (all must use the same Ladder test map, starts with [TECH] and then the race's name, must have credited authors and credits for all imported resources, etc)
- Allow Triggers (period)
- Mini Race.
~Grade on~
- Completeness (how "finished product", including polish like hotkeys and tooltips and stuff)
- Balance (compared to either the playable 4, or other Entries, or just "in general")
- Creativity (how interesting is the race? does it play well? are the spells interesting, or not just all renamed Blizzard spells w/ imported SFX?
- Feel (does it feel like how that race should feel? (i.e. Dwarves = stocky and slow, mainly melee fighters, all about war, plus some mechanical know-how -- Trolls = swift and agile, guerrilla warfare, magic and ranged stuff, violent and destructive))
Even if no "mini-races", please to be keeping the rest.
Gilles said:
@Kyrbi0: I still think that you can make an interesting race using some of the skills already in wc3. I also meant small edits, like changing the effect of acid bomb (if you look, there are multiple things acid bomb can do, that it normally doesn't). That would only take a few minutes, as apposed to making one using triggers, which could take an hour.
I'm sorry, I wasn't really clear with what I was saying. I totally agree with you; there are several spells in the game that have unused Object Editor fields, that can be twisted to do all sorts of things. There are even more spells and abilities that are
unused in the Editor (as well as hidden models/icons/etc).
In fact, it's quite possible to make a good race (at least, make some good abilities) with minimal triggering.
I'm just saying; I'm willing to bet (well, not really, but you know what I mean) that we will see a bunch of races that are filled with garbage abilities. Nothing ingenious, little changed. I don't want to see it (it'd be nice to compete against, though, if I can find the time to make a good entry.
)
If instead we work with Mini-Races, there's a lot less to botch up, and there are enough unused/modifiable abilities that we can make something interesting.
Which brings me to my main point (lawl). Mini-Races. I realized yet another thing in support of them. If this goes through as "make an entire Techtree!!", it will be achingly similar to the currently floundering
Campaign Contest. It is simply too much work to consider doing competitively. Races and campaigns are the kinds of things people (or teams of people) spend
months on, with real drive and passion behind their work.
I'm not even talking about the idea that people will put forth bad effort, or that not enough people will join. I'm talking about sheer boredom. Even if you make, say, a 3-month deadline ("plenty" of time, right?), people are just going to get absolutely bored out of their gourds doing this thing. No one wants to undertake something of this magnitude for this long. It's just an unfeasible contest idea, plain and simple.
Not to mention, the more time this thing takes (which it will, trust me), the more Real Life will get in the way. Few of us have the time to set aside, or even the will to set aside a couple months for work (sure, you can work here and there, squeezing in time, but at the cost of all other recreation?).
However, making races competitively
still sounds like a fun idea, IMO. The appropriate solution to this problem of boredom is to make a miniature techtree (which Blizzard conveniently gave us a perfect example of in the TFT campaigns), like the Naga. Something like that can be made in a relatively short amount of time, with not
nearly as much effort or time as a full-race. It's at least half as large (or less) than a regular race, with much less being required. However, as anyone who's played Naga can tell you, the Naga still 'feel' like a well-thought out and capable race.
If we can capture that 'feel' with this contest, I'd say we've succeeded. Then the rest is just a matter of deciding who did the best job in capturing the racial theme (not to be confused with the poll's themes), and they're the winner.
(*whew*)
