Test of Faith v2.01e

[MStylo]

Okay I have tried my very best to make it accessible for all patches and the options are I can either set it to work on latest patch = which it is right now and therefore requires to be played on latest patch OR set it default which downgrades all melee units into point of state many pathes ago where Archers have 310 health & no Elune's Grace. It just cannot be set to convinence for all player patches. It seem to work with melee maps only.

 

[Lone_Wolf_2021]

the title made me remember the game= Red dead Redemption 2.

I guess all of the gang needed some faith?

 

[Againstallodds]

Interesting game. Seems simple but it is complicated. I like it as much as i am confused with it
I ll revisit my statement when i have spent some time on different combinations.

So today i played a round with the following choices. Items, Race based, Sacred Pillar, Supply decay, Challenges, advanced spellcasting. Normal mode.
I got orc and i followed it up with considerable researches. I encountered an issue when I reached Week 6, the research drop box disappeared. I had a composition of grunts, tauren, docs, codo, beserkers.
Question: is there a way to hotkey the consumable reward healing bar on the top of the screen?
Decay: I had a similar problem with orcs, decay started even though i had killed all units. Maybe codo devour didnt trigger right.

i ll follow up with updates in this original statment if you are interested in my feedback.

2nd Review
I started playing this game again and i enjoyed some of the changes implemented in the latest patch.
I selected all choices on normal mode and race focus seems to work very nicely.
I got undead and i tried to prioritize supply and sustainability. Around 35-40 supply i started focusing on
upgrades and items as i had composed a decent army with abos, destroyer, fiends, statue and frost wyrm.
I treated the frost wyrm as my hero and got him an ank, potions etc and i equiped all fiends with orbs and
damage items. Abos carried auras and scrolls. So i was now solid 50 supply and steady when i reached the
decay trigger issue after a day 7 when the hero of the week summoned animated dead.
I tried the same strategy and i am managed to reach week 27.
I thorougly enjoyed it.

 

[MStylo]

The research box seems to be a current warcraft 3 bug. It keeps happening when you jump to windows while having reward dialog open. What you have to do is jump into windows and back again and it should reappear. But you raise a point, I can make it keep coming back automatically.
I can't really work with any way of allowing the player setting his own hotkey. Perhaps in wc3 options you can modify hero selection that is default to F1 into something else and it should work as well as ESC which an is extra option I've added. But I recommend using ESC because I'm about to remove trigger that would return the selection group after using F1 or manual click. It started causing issues with new feature I'm about to add.

Your comment is much appreciated. Any feedback is always welcome. Especially if you put effort into giving me info of possible cause or surroundings.

 

[Againstallodds]

The research box seems to be a current warcraft 3 bug. It keeps happening when you jump to windows while having reward dialog open. What you have to do is jump into windows and back again and it should reappear. But you raise a point, I can make it keep coming back automatically.
I can't really work with any way of allowing the player setting his own hotkey. Perhaps in wc3 options you can modify hero selection that is default to F1 into something else and it should work as well as ESC which an is extra option I've added. But I recommend using ESC because I'm about to remove trigger that would return the selection group after using F1 or manual click. It started causing issues with new feature I'm about to add.

Your comment is much appreciated. Any feedback is always welcome. Especially if you put effort into giving me info of possible cause or surroundings.

Oh thanx for the info. Esc works fine, no need for custom. Research box really not a big deal as you said with alt tab it reappered like magic.

 

[Jahjahbinks]

I selected divine guardian, either lv6 or 7, saw the pillar of light gfx like a unit would be spawned, but nothing else happened. A unit is supposed to spawn then right? If so here's replay.
Thnx for updates. What is your formula for spawning siege units? It seems as with air units, when it airs it pours and you end up with 4 meat wagons or half a dozen mortal teams hiding in the trees.

 

[MStylo]

Wow you really got screwed over by those siege. I already had a suspicion they were spawning bit more than intended. I'll neft them soon.
Thanks for letting me know about Divine Guardian. There was small chance that it would random no unit.

 

[Jahjahbinks]

• -air command: Being forced to use this because the map generates a wave the player cannot clear reeks of bad design. The single biggest offender present.

I agree. Perhaps the pillar has an (pre game option?) upgradable attack or anti air attack, or it summons lightning bolts etc... While there is way less air than earlier patches typing -air hurts on a few levels.
I think it's a replayable map, especially for single player. Maybe not like fiend addictive, but maybe you head out to the ghetto to buy some crack once or twice a month addictive albeit pretty consistently.
I also somewhat defend the "useless" item question, most days most rewards are relatively useless. Orbs not allowing ground attackers to hit air is lame, afaik game engine problem with no easy fix...ironically it would help the -air problem.

 

[MStylo]

Thank you for wide feedback Krauser.

Sacred Pillar Destructible: I may eventually remove it but still some people play without it.
Items: many items will simply feel bad because they are designed for different purpose. It's an extra feature making rewards feel less hollow and enhacing high level creeps to feel way better. I'm trying to include as many various items as possible in exchange for their usage that's true. But it's the better option, otherwise there would be only same 12-20 good items just like in the early versions. I can't use any stat items or Sobi Mask which are among the best feel items in game.
Challenges: soon to be improved
Race Focus: great to see different people value different features

Restore: it was designed to help squishy units to stand a chance against heavy nukes (crushing wave against archers is nothing you can do about it situation). I know it's sort of a weird mechanic and takes a while to get accustomed to but it rewards player's skill and provides survivability mid-combat without making either low or high level units busted. I'm sure there is ways of improvement though.
Divine Encouragement: this is to help "Sacrifice all units for big boy" survive. Nothing too much just some hp regen and armor which is fairly needed when fighting 1v5. Of course when you are left with 3 archers on week 8 you can't expect an aura to save you.
Rewards considering current state: the system cannot be overly generous otherwise you would easily get too convinient runs. You just need to remember you have a chance unit will be tied research you own and research to be tied to unit you own. 20% +1% per research for units and 30% for research. It's reliable as far as rng can get you. And of course chances of other rewards like healing are getting buffed if demanded.
-air command: I have done alot of improvements to minimize having to fight against air enemies with no ranged units but of course there are cases. I'm thinking of way of removing it completely.

Only channeling gets interrupted when units are paused. Any order will continue to be executed afterwards. You don't really channel any other ability other than cannibalize which may uneffectively consume your resource - corpse.

It is just a melee micro simulator but one of the best in it's category :3

I agree. Perhaps the pillar has an (pre game option?) upgradable attack or anti air attack, or it summons lightning bolts etc... While there is way less air than earlier patches typing -air hurts on a few levels.
I think it's a replayable map, especially for single player. Maybe not like fiend addictive, but maybe you head out to the ghetto to buy some crack once or twice a month addictive albeit pretty consistently.
I also somewhat defend the "useless" item question, most days most rewards are relatively useless. Orbs not allowing ground attackers to hit air is lame, afaik game engine problem with no easy fix...ironically it would help the -air problem.

I'm trying to include as little modifications to default units and mechanics as possible. Pillar shooting or melee units attacking air could be bit too much.

 

[hextor]

So...not sure if it's a bug or not, but surely seems like one.

• Test of Faith 1.17b;
  
• Night Elf;
• All options on;
• Hard difficulty;
• Archer, Hippogryph, Mountain Giant;
• The Archer is always replaced by a Queen of Suffering.

That's quite an upgrade from a simple Archer

 

[MStylo]

yep I'm very much aware of that already
it's something I forgot to change back into archer when I was looking for bugs with the queen event. thanks

 

[Superfrycook]

Does it work in Reforged mode?

 

[MStylo]

Someday when they fix reforged they will also fix terrain changing triggers and the map will be playable on reforged.

 

[ElderWolf]

Playing on latest version. Got to week 6 day 6, killed all enemies but the game didnt progress, died to decay :/

 

[Blasterixx]

Sup Stylo, i hope you are doing well and that you are still working on this map, it is one of the best custom maps after all.

I was watching Wtii play this map and this thought came into my mind, I think the map gets a bit too predictable, especially after you played it or watched it being played by someone a few times and since this map is heavily based on the replayability aspect i believe it lacks that extra thing to make it feel more fresh each time you play it, so here are some suggestions:

---- There should be some extra events that happen at least once during each week like this:

- This would be called the Clones Event:

It is clear that all the waves look pretty random with random creeps but i would love to see certain waves having only 1 type of unit (as example a wave of 13 ghouls, or 10 archers, or 3 mountain giants, or 10 sorcs, etc.)

- This would be called the Random Faction Week Event and Special Themed wave Event:

It would be cool if certain weeks have random themes to them (as example, Undead week, where every wave has only undead units and the final wave having an undead boss as well, even the rewards like the items can have an undead theme as well).

Talking about themes, i think it would be cool if there were waves in some random normal weeks that have a special theme like a Starcraft theme wave for example, where one entire wave is made out of zerlings (like 15 zerlings for week 3, wave 5) or a wave of 5 marines, i think this would be fun. (The zerling and all the other starcraft units can be found in the war3 editor, i think they are fun and easy to play and be used in this map without breaking the overall micro theme.
It can be used for the final wave in a week as well, for example having 2 hydralisks for the boss wave.

Other themes for special weeks or waves: Naga theme, Fel orcs theme, draenei theme, etc.

- There should be some random boss waves that have heroes as well replacing the high level units, for example for the first week there can be a random level 3 Hero, and the higher the week, the higher the level of the random enemy hero would be, the enemy hero can have some extra items as well, stronger items for later weeks.

This can go hand in hand with the previous themed events thing, for example for the undead week event, there can be an undead last boss hero at the end of the wave.


I hope my suggestions aren't too crazy or out of the blue, and that you will consider them.

 

[MStylo]

Thank you for stopping by.
I do have an idea like this in mind for over a year by now where enemy on certain day would be fully themed but plenty of other improvements got importance over it. Why I haven't made it yet is because it requires some real cautious implementation and thinking so the regular day enemies and rewards don't start to feel underwhelming or worse, things start to break.

 

[Phaxxi]

hey, i just recently created this account specifically to give a kind of review of this map. been playing it for a while and i think it has a lot of potential, even though it's already very good. i've gotten to week 23 and i was slightly shocked that i died to a caster attack when i had pretty good forces )those are really something that could be tuned down, especially with advanced casting where even with dispels it's pretty ridiculous). i also think that it would be really nice to see some more objectives on the game, such as: having a hero (as a specific gamemode) that levels up at the end of every week, you not being able to choose what hero it is at the beginning and it would open options for more reward options, maybe (stuff like hero auras and death coil/holy light being really a bit op, but maybe functional); though i like the "kill marked enemies first" objectives, i think you could make more with that basic idea, for example forcing the player to get last hits with a specific unit, or not allowing one of your units to get last hits at all (this could play into maybe having more than one challenge per week after a certain number of weeks). over all, the map is very good, and i would love to see more development being done on it. i don't knw if you're still planning on updating it, but stuff like really good custom items (your standard arcanite reapers) and even boss units (such as enemy heroes or joke units like kor'gall and snarlmane...) could be additions to the less interesting later weeks. oh and taunting shards are weird i haven't used them, are they any good? idk. i hope you keep working on what is quickly becoming my favourite custom game, and hope it becomes as good as possible. glhf, stylo

 

[MStylo]

Sorry for taking forever to reply. I was waiting for a moment of enlightenment to decide how to update the map further but it never came
I'm very fond with the current map state though.

Yeah spellcaster wave becomes toughest late game and can definitely catch you off guard despite anything you've got But it's impossible to get all the bs under control and being and endless mode it's good for it end unexpectedly.
Things like heroes especially would need to be done so carefully and still it would kind of break the map. Custom items I may do at some point but reason I have not done them yet is because the game could feel overwhelming to a newer player as it already is.
As cool as it would be to have even more challenges like you mentioned (force unit kills by a unit), it is extremely tough to execute. I have tried quite hard to come up with as many unique challenges as I could and some of them sometimes feel unnecessarily punishing.

Ideas I'm tinkering with in my head:
- 2 player coop
- last man standing multiplayer (4 players defending their own pillar)
- some form of story modes
- game mode that would feature waves specific to terrain you have chosen to play on
- custom items (just because I would have fun making them)

Thanks for your kind words. You are welcome to join my discord (map description here on hive)

 

[stalkerfox]

any chance we could ever get a simple 2 players mod? atleast like just an additional slot that has shared control with player 1 so that you can do 2 players?

 

[Jahjahbinks]

Don't attack me or my son ever again ???

ps: seems like as game goes on, rewards are less related to starting race/previous race rewards. ie picking only orc units/upgrades I rarely get orc unit options as game progresses. if this is not intentional..

 

[MStylo]

any chance we could ever get a simple 2 players mod? atleast like just an additional slot that has shared control with player 1 so that you can do 2 players?

unlikely it's gonna happen. But there is a chance

Don't attack me or my son ever again ???

ps: seems like as game goes on, rewards are less related to starting race/previous race rewards. ie picking only orc units/upgrades I rarely get orc unit options as game progresses. if this is not intentional..

lmao. do you tend to pick upgrades from other races aswell? Because that usually messes things up in terms of what you units get offered. Other than that the chances for a unit of which upgrade you own go higher with each research you have.

 

[The_wand_mirror]

Alright so I saw this map on youtube from WtiiWarcraft and thought I would try it out and have been playing it for a few matches the last few days.

I think it is definitely very fun and addictive only there are a few things I would like to point out when you progress very far in the waves.

Stuff:

• sometimes I accidentally click a button on the dialogue when clicking on stuff, this happens less often once you get used to the dialog appearing but still...
• there is next to no time between waves to sort through your items, which feels a little unfair to me as you end up with multiple inventories
• ranged units that can attack air are quite useless unless they are extremely powerful otherwise they just get targeted and killed by air units

Spells:

• polymorph is super overpowered in that a sorceress can just polymorph some units and it will last for a very long time into the next wave
• the tornado skill (don't know the name, naga ability?) is a also quite op as it just disables an entire unity
• also the devour skill is very annoying with the same reasons as tornado/polymorph

The thing I was doing really well and a wave of 4 necromancers and 4 naga sirens showed up, the sirens tornado'd all of my guys up in the air and the necromancers then raised dead on all the corpses and they started to demolish the pillar without me being able to anything about it.

Now imagine a wave with 4 sorceress or 4 kodo beasts instead of the naga. It will basically end anyone's playthrough unless you have a super powerful unit with spell immunity.

Besides those few instances I think the map is fine. Maybe there could be a way to sell items or buy units or something? Like a random vendor building option popping up now or something.

EDIT - Also just realized there is no blight or any option to make blight if you are undead? but maybe that would be op

 

[MStylo]

How far have you managed to get to and what units have carried your game most?

 

[The_wand_mirror]

How far have you managed to get to and what units have carried your game most?

Furthest I got is Week 16 I think.
Best single units or units I had so far were:

• Ancient Hydra + Randoms
• Fully upgraded knights
• Naga Royal Guards (but didn't get full upgrade) + Knights + Mountain Giant
• Centaur Khan + Infernal + Ogre Magi
• Magnataur Destroyer (I sacrificed him oops )

Btw I do think there is at least one bug that is sort of annoying right now in that orb items (orb of x) doesn't seem to make the unit's attack target air? At least it didn't seem to work for a Centaur Khan for some reason.

Also one time I had all of my forces healed and I had those decoys crystals enabled and there was one priest still alive, I got one of my guys to take care of him but he (and my units idling around the pillar) seemed to take damage from nothing for some reason. And a couple seconds later all my guys were almost half health without anything attacking them!?... Swear I am not crazy, there was nothing left in the wave...

EDIT - in regards to the dialogs, why didn't you just reuse that mechanic from the beginning. Where you can select things in the menu in the bottom right. You could add descriptions/icons that way as well. Is it because you want to pause the game or something?

 

[MStylo]

Thank you for feedback. Many of the issues you mention are caused by the game dragging on more than it should. Some high level units perform much more reliably than other, which is good but not to the extent they carry over 10-12 weeks with ease. Not sure if I'll be able to find enough spare time to make things much more even in regards to balance but I do see great bit of room for improvement. And much more

I'm waiting for what comes out of the Warcraft 2.0 patch rumors.

Orbs do work properly by how they are supposed to, it's just people are used to "enabled air attack" functionality from heroes. What it actually does is they enable secondary attack type that is preset within the unit's data. That means footman has no secodary attack data to enable, flying machine gets to attack with bombs, while heroes have a setup to attack flyers.

I much prefer the simplicity of dialog box reward selection over abilities in the pillar, especially since you would be forced to do mouse movement to hover over every single option just to get a grasp on what's being offered.

Also one time I had all of my forces healed and I had those decoys crystals enabled and there was one priest still alive, I got one of my guys to take care of him but he (and my units idling around the pillar) seemed to take damage from nothing for some reason. And a couple seconds later all my guys were almost half health without anything attacking them!?... Swear I am not crazy, there was nothing left in the wave...

This was just "Decay" mechanic wasn't it? If you stall for too long (mostly to abuse time to heal), life & mana starts being depleted so you cannot exploit. Game warns you beforehard it's about to happen.

Having an item shop would become a burden on player's mind as soon as he gets to control more than 1 unit. Which is the exact opposite to what I want this map to be. If the player wants to control a single powerful hero, he can tune in any other Warcraft 3 map. ^^