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Time to Change Warcraft!

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There hasnt been a map that has stood up to Dota in a long time. sure maybe footman frenzy or the LOAP series were pretty popular, none have actually been hosted alot.


I want to recruit a team of mapmakers to make a map that will be successful, at least one host per refresh or something. If anyone else wants to also, then lets start a team.
 
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No map is going to take on dota without an extremely good PR and marketing strategy. The majority of dota's success lately is all about having been around to the point where everyone is familiar with it and having been pimped for so long, not to mention blizzard's interference involvement.

The rest of it is about making a map which is relatively unique but has a very comfortable learning curve.

Generally it needs to be competitive, easy to learn, have a large allowance for skill (not memorization), doesn't overwhelm new players, has variety (even if it's not all shown in a single game/round), gives players a sense of empowerment, gives players a sense of individuality (aka some manner of customization/upgrades/good items), makes players feel like they're playing on a coherant team, etc. The map needs to look and feel polished, even if it uses mostly base warcraft 3/tft assets.

The map should be planned out to insane detail before work begins. You'll find that once you've completed everything that you had planned for the map, you're going to spend 3-4 times+ the amount of time that you've already spent adding new features and polishing the map.

The map shouldn't have any manner of public testing at all until the map is roughly as complete as you can get it on your own (aka all features functional, terrain complete, game winnable). Most public testing will just be to come up with idea for features that you didn't originally plan but are necessary for the map, as well as tweaking/balancing.

If there is one major goal for players in the map, try not to give them too much to get sidetracked on. Most things the player can do should have a direct impact on the game's outcome and shouldn't keep them out of the play field for too long.

If you're going to take on dota, your main goal should be to find a large target demographic of warcraft 3 players and cater your map towards them. Don't think that you can pick fans of a genre such as aos's or td's though. Be more vague and think of the general gameplay - such as competative team vs team sport with heroes as the central player unit. Then pick one or a few major gameplay elements that people will enjoy, and wrap it up with a coherant theme to follow.

Your goal shouldn't be to just insert whatever they tell you to add to the map. You should boil down and filter their requests into an answer for the question "what is the map missing?". Any complaints or requests are because they feel that the map is missing something - your job is to determine where the gap is and fill it with changes that make sense for the map as a whole. Not all map problems have direct solutions.

Also, one other factor that people don't take into account is that many of the most popular maps and genres started from a map which spawned innumerable spinoffs. Neither you nor your team can satisfy everyone, and due to contradictory opinions on what makes a good map, you never will with a single map. Instead, consider making a map whose features are modular, and which can easily be edited by other mappers. You could spawn a whole new genre that, if done right, might be more popular than dota.

If you feel that people are going to try to steal the map or rig it, just release a separate protected version with some manner of notification that they're playing the definitive version of your vision, and not an edit or modification. That way you have the advantage of having a protected map with the advantage of having a map that can be edited and spread across battle.net.

Arrange a quality group of testers as early as you can - roughly once you've finished the original plan for the map and are also 100% sure that you know how to do everything that you'll need to do in order to complete the map.

If you're going to have a team of people working on the map, get a bug/issue tracking system like phpbt or mantis so you can track/assign work and problems to the various team members. Make sure everyone knows their role, and don't set it up to where so many people have the same job that they're stepping on each other. Generally one person should be compiling all of the contributions from the other people into the actual map file (usually the project lead).

Consider doing your public battle.net testing using an alias. That way people won't give you biased comments and suggestions. People also won't bug you about being included in the credits for participating in a public test. You should generally stick to adding people who've tested very often and contributed useful suggestions to the list of testers, along with your core test group.
 
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Do you really think that dota will stay popular forever?Yeah its catchy but every trend has to end once.Since the name dota is already well known to almost every wc3 player on the globe,its not getting much new players.And the old players will get sick of it eventually no matter how many new heroes and items they add.As that shampoo commercial says "it wont happen overnight but it will happen".Theres also a big possibility that when dota gets boring,it will pull all other AoS maps down with it because people never really got bored of the heroes and items in dota.They get bored of the gameplay.
 
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After dota dies,there will still be a couple of months left for wc3.If no big changes occur,then the wc3 will die,but if you manage to make a better map,these couple of months will be your time to strike.
 
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Eleandor, a lot of people still buy Wc3 (don't get why) and BNet is actually often swarmed with new players in public DotA games. But perhaps not as many as there used to, but still there is a steady growth of people.

That's more or less my point. WC3 isn't really Bestselling anymore, and the existance of DotA is probably one of the reasons why it's still selling in the first place. Like you said, people still buy WC3 and DotA still gets new players. That's why I say that when DotA is no longer popular, WC3 will look death into the eyes.
 
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People are to retarded, as long as everyones obsessed with AoS in general, then you aren't going to make a better one, since your trying to deal with one that has A)No actual learning curve, the curve is playing a bunch until you know what heros and items to get. B) Tons of morons playing it that host it 24\7 and do not play any other maps and C) fail D)People have had it to long, its like a parasite that leeches onto peoples minds, and never lets go.
 
we dont make an AoS, see, as much as people play dota so much, you know how they will get bored of it, and maybe play a round of some random game, well if we make that random game, host it enough for people to say "damn wtf is this shit, i see it everywhere, *joins the game, plays, hmm this is fun i should show my friends!*, bam, more people host, and more people play. sure dota will still be top dog in terms of games seen on warcraft, but thats not the point of this project, the point is making it successful and seeable on game list such as footman has and "those random games (sheep vs rabbits(fun) those slide ____ slide! games (also i guess fun?)). people will still play dota, thats fine but i know that they stop for a while.
 
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I have experienced a lot of success with my stay alive like survival game that doesn't have any unique skins or custom buttons but is fun, easy to learn and you get better each time you play (and its different each time I improve it). Although I'm still testing it I see many of the same people back again and again. I don't think you can rival dota, but who wants the players who play dota anyways?
Its all about what people want and enough people like my game for me to continue working on it.
 
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Even if you make a new game that becomes more popular, then that serves no point. Now everyone is still playing one game.
--donut3.5--

I think part of the point is we're all in an "anything but dota" mentality.

A new map only needs to have a fraction of the success of dota to break its hold on the gamelist. Once it looks to the average player like there's something other than dota that might be worth playing, people will be more likely to try other maps.
 
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My opinion

Ok guys, I know you put a whole lot of well-thought out comments there, but I just ignored them because they were too damned long

The bold catches attention :wcool:

Ok, the way to do anything right, is to get inside the heads of your enemies, understanding every single movement and why they did it

After that, they are so easy to read, they are pretty much your trained monkeys (they trained themselves, all you gotta do is press the buttons)

Here we are dealing with wc3 players
Let's analyze this a bit

GENERALLY SPEAKING


A) They are obsessed, leading to delusion (double-negative), often leading to a very lacking social life (their whole perspective on life becomes distorted and people become uncomfortable around them)
SOME PEOPLE ARE LUCKY AND ARE NOT AFFECTED

This leads to insecurities, which leads to being scared and always taking the "safe path", in other words

THESE PEOPLE ARE EXTREMELY RESISTANT TO CHANGE!!!

B) The people who play DotA are generally unhappy with their own lives, when they play DotA they are in a new world where they reign supreme
Please Note: People will always look for a single tactic that they can use over and over until it doesn't work

Once you understand that, you see that people begin to become set in their patterns, often becoming

EXTREMELY RESISTANT TO CHANGE!!!

C) Part of B, Dota Players are increasingly cruel to new players, their fantasy world where they are kings, it's a well known fact that angry people want to release their aggression.

If the angry person has only targets stronger than said angry person, they will find a weaker target (new DotA players) and unload on them (the DotA players could just mess up ever so slightly, and the people get so set in their ways, it's like pulling a hair trigger)

_________________________________________

Anyway, my point to this whole mess, is you need to feed people

It's not about making a "good" map or a "cool" map
Those terms mean sh*t

THE WAY TO GET A PERSON TO REPEATEDLY PLAY YOUR GAME WITH UNFAILING UN-ATTENTIVENESS IS TO PUT THEIR TRAINED MINDS INTO AN ENDLESS LOOP!!!


Making it difficult, but just enough so they feel challenged but NOT overwhelmed, an interesting effect

Now, this is the difference between a "good" map, and one that is played over and over

"GOOD" MAPS - Have some cool effects, occasionally a great idea, always balanced fairly well, in the balancing, is where the problem lies

I LOVE to play risks, BUT to the average person, they feel overwhelmed, and try to find something to blame their failure on, they can't imagine that you are simply better (you have some kind of tactic, cheat, anything)

They leave, crying and never play again

PLAYED REPEATEDLY
- The game is exactly the same as the "good" maps, *EXCEPT*, it works on the sub-conscious of it's players, usually on accident

Ways that affect the average players mind

COMPETITION - People love to prove themselves, allow them without overwhelming them

SELF-IMPROVEMENT - Another way of proving themselves, people like to build and then show it off, RPG's are a great example (Why the fuck would somebody play WoW for days???, this is why)

Lastly

SELF-COMFORT - People want to always be comforted by a back-up, something they can ALWAYS use, and it will work EVERYTIME, in real life such rules do not exist, thats why video games are so appealing, they can do the same thing every time, and have the same end result (some form or pleasure)

When players play DotA, Counterstrike, WoW, all three of these points are present (just forming an RPG characters SETS you in one strat until you build a new one [the more you go, the more the strat evolves, but I'm not gonna get into that])

My suggestion, when you balance the map, make a few strats extremely attractive to achieving the PLAYERS goals (see above to predict what they would like)

Make these strats luscious, make many of them, BUT

___________________________________________

ARE YOU STILL READING THIS!?!?!?!?

ALWAYS MAKE A COUNTER!!!

THE COUNTER MUST BE DIFFICULT TO PULL OFF!!!

But still possible

If the counter is impossible, or doesn't exist, the strat will be imba, and the players will feel overwhelmed, cheated, and will never play again

If there is no luscious zone of comfort for people to repeat, they will play the game a few times, but then just leave, saying it's just "OK" (footies)

Lastly, there must always be some sort of notion of building upon oneself, but thats easy

So is making it competitive (make damned sure it's PvP, or PvComp, making the comp continually adjust to allow the player to win 20%-40% of the time, but the comp generally wins)

Another example of these things are TD's, although, there isn't much to compete against once you've beaten it, until then, TD's are excellent

PLEASE NOTE I have said it before, there is no such thing as a set rule when it comes to real life, so there are exceptions to these general rules, people who just don't work like that

Fill these three points, and you WILL BEAT DOTA

(By the way, these explain very well why Risk is dead, and Devo Risk is the only one ever played [Hint: Self-Comfort > Competition for this one])


If you actually read this whole thing, put "I" as Title for your next post and I'll give you +rep :thumbs_up:
 
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F*ck

I contradicted myself with that one :ugly:

(As for the double-post, would you really have even seen this if I put this in there???)

The main points

Competition
Self-Improvement
Self-Comfort
 
Level 12
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Lol

I thought I'd get somebody,

Now heres the question:

Why are the DotA players such assholes??? [Hint: Part B]

Then you get +rep :xxd:
 
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yup, you have to make a map that can be played repeteadly... so, no like histories... that is fun and you can play all the times you want... thats a point... but i dont think you will surpass dota or get people for your project if you dont even show us your ideas...:hohum:...
 
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WC's been around for years

Even after WoW started, WC is STILL AROUND

I think it's like 5 years old or something now (I remember playing when DotA first came out)
 
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well, yeah, every game die... but the thing is that only people decide if it is alive or not... blizzard can easily bring us more expansion packs and all that... but, they are also planning more games... thats why...
 
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You needed to put the I here ><

Yeah, you didn't put the I in the right spot ><

If you need anybody to help you out, count me in

Anybody else who doesn't want to help is just jealous cuz we're gonna own the fuck out of everything they know and love about WC3 (or something along those lines)
 
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THESE PEOPLE ARE EXTREMELY RESISTANT TO CHANGE!!!
B) The people who play DotA are generally unhappy with their own lives, when they play DotA they are in a new world where they reign supreme

Normal Person: "Want to try a new map?"
Stereotypical DotA player: "Is it DotA?"
Normal Person: "Uhh no..."
DotA Player "NEVARRRR"

Playing in a confined world they think is unlimited and thinking they constantly improve while they never do while blaming mistakes on their heros abilities or allies. Complaining about heros needing nerfs when they lose and defending the game as balanced when they win That is DotA
 
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I'm sure its been said somewhere in this thread but...

People don't want a balanced map, they want a map that makes them feel powerful and awesome. Players want to pwn noobs and take names, not develop decisive strategies, ect.
 
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Lol Gj Maddawg

Hah, he got it

+rep :thumbs_up:

_______________

That would be the post I made, DungeonM
 
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Haha good stuff
I got all that from my brothers when they play I've tried it a few times and hated it. Did you guys play it in the past?
 
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so if you make some heroes godlike and other heroes noobs... there is no warcraft, it is a piece of trash... the only thing you can make, is make it full of chaos... a mean, war everywhere...
 
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Yup

Yeah I made a map like that recently using a risk making system I made

It's pretty much just insane chaos

All the kids who can't stand being beaten cry and never play again

While all the kids who like seeing huge fights or people getting fucked up stay to play the game out (the game is pretty much never-ending, but you get my point)

Heres the map
 

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My thoughts.

You want to addict people, admit it. If you want a popular map, make it addictive.

If you can get them to thinking:

"Hey, i'd love to try getting THAT item for THAT hero..."
You're on a good road. That's what makes me want to play dota. Options it is, a lot of options that all look good. It's like you were on conditoria and looked at all those delicious cakes and didn't know which one to take, then someone told you "You can take one now and come tomorrow and take another one." you'd be there, right?

"ZOMG I REALLY PWNT THAT NOOB /WIN!!"
It might be even better, make killing other players challenging, but not very hard. That way they feel like they have won. Make it so that they feel that *THEY* were the one that did the kill.

"OMG THAT GUY KILLED ME OMG HE MUST MAPHACK A FUCKING NOOB ZOMG"
Well, it's still good. If people get angry enough to scream because of a map you made, that means that they actually want to be better. Self-improvement, this is the trickiest so far. The game should be easy to learn, but hard to master. You know like Tetris? You play it, anyone can get some lines off, but it takes a whole lot of dedication to play the hardest levels.

"Look, i have a lot better gear/rating/score than you, noob!"
Superiority. This is tricky, this is what keeps people addicted to MMORPGS like WoW. People want to feel that people admire them, that they have accomplished something. They want to feel that they are better than someone because their character has better gear. This one, however, does not work very well in WC3 because save/load codes are iffy, and map size is limited. You should more of dedicate on the three above.
 
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