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Vampire Hunters is an intense 5v5 game between Vampires and Vampire Hunters. Inspired by old classics like FM Vampire Hunters, and the original 2004 Vampire Hunters (yes that old!).
Features
- Spooky Halloween gameplay
- 15 heroes (currently) to choose from
- 5v5 Hero Combat
- Custom models and spells
- QWER Hero hotkeys
Are you a Hunter?
The Hunters are determined to end the Vampire threat once and for all and protect the innocents in the Town. Work together to destroy the Vampires and prevent them from escaping through the hell portals to the north and south.
Or a Vampire?
The dreaded Vampires seek to destroy the Town to usher in an eternity of suffering and subservience for the human race. However, they are weak from their long hibernation. Avoid the Hunters until you gain enough power to fight them head on. Escape through the hell portals to the north and south.
Grow your strength by feeding on the villagers in the small towns (ALT+R to see the villages) scattered throughout the region and claiming their souls. At night, use these souls to summon monstrosities from your crypt to help you destroy the wretched human base. Collect enough souls and you will be able to summon the most powerful creatures from the depths of Hell itself.
Heroes
The Butcher
For most vampires, drinking blood is enough. The Butcher is not satisfied unless there is enough blood and gore to swim in. Her favorite pastime is hacking humans into little bits, preferably while they are still breathing.
Primary Attribute:Agility
Range: Melee
The Necromancer
The Necromancers are known for their cruelty and mercilessness. Even their fellow vampires shun them and are hesistant to work with them. Masters of powerful and twisted magic, they take pleasure in
torturing and toying with their foes.
Primary Attribute:Intelligence
Range: 600
The Enforcer
Enforcers are the most physically powerful of the vampires. They serve as the High Council's intimidation and enforcement arm to keep problematic humans- and vampires- in line. Only the most adept at melee combat can go toe to toe with an Enforcer and live.
Primary Attribute: Strength
Range: Melee
The Witch
The vampire Witches are the second oldest class of vampires, surpassed only by the Ancients. Only three are ever known to have existed, and all of them were first heard of in old Greek legends. They are able to cross running water unassisted due to their monstrous bodies, which sets them apart from their brethren.
Primary Attribute: Intelligence
Range: 600
The Ancient
Ancients are the oldest of the vampires and make up the majority of the High Council. Little is known about their abilities.
Primary Attribute: Strength
Range: Melee
The Infiltrator
The Infiltrators rare among the most feared of all the vampires. Agile and swift, they are nearly impossible to catch. The High Council will only call upon them in the most desperate and dire situations; more than one Vampire Lord has been assassinated by their kind.
Primary Attribute: Agility
Range: Melee
The Stalker
The Stalker specializes in long range combat with a bow. Less agile than other vampires, she relies on her dark magic and keen awareness to survive
Primary Attribute: Agility
Range: 600
The Duelist
The Duelist has been practicing with a sword his entire life. After discovering that his beloved fiance was taken by a Vampire, he dedicated his life to eradicating the undead from the earth.
Primary Attribute: Agility
Range: Melee
The Noble
The Noble couldn't care less about the town or the undead. He was sent by his father to investigate a declining tax base due to lower peasant productivity. He's caught up in the middle of this, and now knows that he must defeat the undead to survive and claim his birthright.
Primary Attribute: Strength
Range: Melee
The Monk
The Monk is a devoted holy man. Thanks to his extensive studies, he knows the best ways to confront the undead in the name of God.
Primary Attribute: Intelligence
Range: Melee
The Adventurer
The Adventurer has traveled the globe hunting big game, telling tall tales, and drinking the local spirits. He's since applied his skills towards hunting the most exciting prey: the undead.
Primary Attribute: Agility
Range: 600
The Huntress
Raised first in a convent and later on the streets, the Huntress is full of deadly surprises.
Primary Attribute: Agility
Range: Melee
The Sorceress
The Sorceress arrived in the town's hour of greatest need to defend humanity, but no one knows if she is human herself. Her motives are unknown, but one thing is certain: she, or it, has a deep hatred of Vampires.
Primary Attribute: Intelligence
Range: 600
The Assassin
The Assassin is a master of killing. Trained in the ways of taking down well guarded targets, she now works with the Hunters. Is she being paid by some mysterious figure, or does she believe in the cause? Either way, she is a deadly adversary and a welcome companion.
Primary Attribute: Agility
Range: Melee
Thank you to all the authors of the models/skins/textures/icons used in this map, a credits list is being compiled/new credits are being added as resources used are adjusted.
BloodRaven
Paladon
Rheiko
UjimasaHojo
NFWar
General Frank
Elphis (Nyuu)
Rising_Dusk
OrkOfMordor
Any and all feedback is truly appreciated. This is a work in progress.
WoW the description is just like FM Vampire Hunters. I am so happy to see this being made, FM was one of the best maps i have ever played, i wish you well on your project!
WoW the description is just like FM Vampire Hunters. I am so happy to see this being made, FM was one of the best maps i have ever played, i wish you well on your project!
Thanks for checking it out guys, we're on to version 46 beta now.
Converted leaderboard to multiboard
Added new Vampire item upgrades
Slightly increased vampire gold generation
Added a new trait for vampires: compulsion. Vampires now have a preferred villager type that they would like to feed on (e.g. men, women, children, merchants). Feeding on preferred type has a chance to generate extra gold
Rebalanced Huntress hero abilities
Added a new passive ability to the Exile
Changed the volume on some sounds to reduce map size and let you hear them better
I'm a fan of the style. So much so that I actually made my own attempt to improve the map back in 2008. Had a lot of fun with it in pubs because of some of the improvements I made that are lacking here:
So here's a few tips that'll make a huge amount of difference;
1. Your map is bloated. I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, it's over-inflated and it's going to hurt it this early on. Yes, I can see that there's tons of custom models and skins and so on in it. That's nice.
But the map is over 8mb. Downloading it on bnet would be an absolute nightmare. And some of it...isn't neccessary.
The load screen, for example...It doesn't look good in my opinion, but it also doesn't really add anything...Other than filesize.
The map preview looks decent...but again doesn't really add much other than hiding the minimap.
I would recommend a simple art shot for the map preview to convey the theme much better. Like a X made of a Fang&Wooden Stake, that would be something people would remember rather than "dem titties tho".
A lot of the shops and such...Don't need custom models. Like the undead grotto...doesn't need to exist.
It might be more iconic for it to be a standing coffin in fact.
Heck if you really wanted, you could trigger a cinematic whenever a player buys something from this shop that shows the coffin open up, spit out a simple model representation of the item, and have it float into the vampire's chest.
It would be awesome, easy to do, save on filesize, and make sense to the player.
The "Young Man" villager is redundant. You already have a farmer, merchant, and male villager. Replacing this with either a generic model or removing it entirely won't hurt the map at all.
2. Villagers respawn way too quickly. As a necromancer I didn't even have to leave a town at the start of the game and never lacked a target to hit. This is nearly true for the original VH as well, but there should be a small gap between the 4th villager dying and the 1st one respawning. This is so that once vampires are more powerful and kill villagers in half the time(higher dmg&faster attack speed), they will create a lull between their zombie spawns. Encouraging effective vampires to quickly move between two cities(using windwalk back then, obviously not possible here since some classes lack WW).
As it is now, you might as well just idle in the center of the village until a hunter shows up(which, just like the original, you'll know because they'll be following your trail of zombies).
3. AI players.
This was the huge thing that made pubs love my version of VH when I first made it...They didn't NEED a fullhouse to play with a fullhouse. AI Vampires and AI Vampire hunters can make a big difference especially since your map isn't popular yet(and I hope it becomes popular) and thus won't generally get a full house when hosted by other people besides yourself.
Make a simple AI for vampires and vampire hunters.
- They always pick the same class, this cuts down the bulkwork for you with the varying class skills.
- Hunters in VH-HC were programmed into I believe...Four different randomized personalities that would affect how they would fight.
{Cowardly} Hunters would flee back to town as soon as their HP dropped to 40%. You should take this a step further and program Cowards to only go out hunting with other hunters(IE when they spawn, randomly assign them to follow one particular hunter until they or that hunter dies).
{Brave} Hunters will fight til the end. They'll go out from towns following zombie trails and killing zombies on the way.
{Tactical} Hunters avoid zombies and instead head towards random villages looking for vampires instead.
{Guardian} Hunters will stay by the town, switching between top&bottom entrances as needed.
The four personalities also affected what items they would buy and in what order, along with which skills they leveled up and when they used them. IE Cowards only used Stake when it was time for them to run away, whereas Braves spammed it asap, and Tacticals only used it when a Vampire's HP dropped under 60%.
Likewise Vampire AI was much the same way. They would pick a village and just stay there until a hunter came following their zombie trail. Cowards would immediately windwalk and flee back to base, heading towards a randomized portal once they got there. Braves fought til the end, and Tacticals would sleep the hunters and windwalk to a different village to keep hunting. And of course they would summon at night(I believe it was random summons, not sure).
Basically, you should make is so that the game can actually be fun with NO human players on one team. 5players VS 5cpu should be somewhat enjoyable. That way you can also have 2player+3cpu vs 3player+2cpu without the game becoming too empty or boring.
As a bonus, you can actually give an unfair advantage to AI players by giving them slightly more rewards compared to normal players. This can compensate for the fact that they're obviously just not as clever as players will be, and thus keep them still as a SLIGHT threat.
4. The compulsion system is a wonderful addition to the gameplay. But the Compulsion system needs a bit more depth to it so that it can really help the map.
If a vampire is compelled to hunt a certain foe, they should be able to smell that type of foe's blood in the air, no?
This system should be made to be exploited by both Vampires and Vampire hunters. Including it as an item is a great idea...Because it means hunters can see what that vampire's compulsion is. Good.
However, this means that hunters should be able to use a command to pinpoint where each kind of villager is. IE let the hunters type in
"-child" and then it pings the map for them with the location of every child currently alive.
Inversely, vampires upon killing any villager should get a map ping of the location of one random compulsion villager(ie Child). It should be AFTER they've killed a villager though, not any other time. This means that often vampires will exit a portal and have to find a town before knowing where their compulsion is.
5. The town should defend itself AT LEAST somewhat. And there's an easy way to do this. Make all the units purchasable for the town into Heroes.
This way, as the units keep fighting and survive night after night, they'll keep getting slightly stronger purely by stats. A knight that's survived 10 nights in a row should be a powerful force vampires have let become too powerful, perhaps so strong that this knight could take out a vampire by itself if the vampire didn't use any skills.
Mind you, adding troops to the town isn't cheap for hunters. It's actually ridiculously expensive and takes away their ability to become more able to kill vampires.
So make the investment worthwhile and worth PROTECTING.
Hunters who buy units this way will be encouraged to protect those units and keep them alive. Because in turn those units will get stronger and more capable of defending against the more dangerous night summons&vampires.
I'm a fan of the style. So much so that I actually made my own attempt to improve the map back in 2008. Had a lot of fun with it in pubs because of some of the improvements I made that are lacking here:
So here's a few tips that'll make a huge amount of difference;
Wow! Thank you for doing such a thorough review of a lot of the different things in the game. I will definitely consider your suggestions. A few comments regarding your thoughts...
Filesize. It's true that the map is now a little over 8 MB and that could be considered a lot for a MP map. That being said, I've played the map probably 20 times over the past couple of weeks on battle net and it's never been an issue. We are trying to carefully limit any additional filesize increases going forward in spite of the limit being raised to 128 MB.
Villager respawn. I'm not sure if you played by yourself or in a multiplayer match when you did your review. In practice, as the game progresses it is more limiting to stay in one village because the villagers tend to die a lot faster. I am hesitant to lower the spawn rate because a complaint I have heard is that the game can be too slow, especially in the early game.
Player AI. Now this is a big suggestion and something I've never considered as a replacement for actual players. I feel like a team with an AI on it would quickly become upset at their feeding teammate (the AI). In the last version I added a punishment for Vampires who died too much and used up their team's lives in response to some (valid) complaints (punishment is they must be released by their allies who pay a small cost for this). It might be possible to work around these problems but among the people who have been playing with me on bnet I haven't had anyone ask to play against AI.
Compulsion. I'm glad that you liked the new system! I have definitely been eyeing it for changes/improvements since it was recently added and the players seem to like it. In practice, I'm not sure that having a map ping of a random compulsion villager would help very much unless a vampire was hunting for 1 extra gold to finish an item, or trying to constantly switch villages to farm gold. I've thought about adding an additional bonus, like a temporary burst of movement speed after you've killed your target.
Town Guard heroes. This is actually something I have considered in a slightly different form. I have planned to add purchasable town guard heroes with their own AI to defend the town. These would have a significant price but would be intelligent enough to defend the town's weak spots and attempt to run from danger. Making every unit a hero is an interesting idea though which I hadn't thought of.
Again, thanks for your feedback. You mentioned having made a 2008 vampire hunters map. I'd be interested in seeing this map/playing it. I don't believe I've ever seen any vampire hunters games with AI.
I'll number this to keep the topics easy to respond to and follow both for us and thread viewers.
1. Again though, you should ask yourself in regards to the filesize; does it ADD anything?
WS2 atm has a map preview, map loadscreen, and custom models&skins...And each one serves a distinct purpose.
The Map Preview shows the gameplay, this intrigues players to try out the map.
The Load Screen is essentially a PS1-era game manual. Explaining the controls, the UI layout, and the point of the game.
The custom models are necessary, since custom animations are used for literally everything the player character can do and the game features custom characters of frankly higher detail than WC3 units because of the camera involved. Sobresto added in the newest version is a good example of how terrible the map would be without custom models with custom animations.
And your map...Fails the first two points pretty hard. The map preview tells nothing about the game or the map...There are TONS of vampire-based maps in WC3, many of which do use a similiar map preview.
The original vampire hunter map was pretty popular, I honestly feel that you could remove the mappreview ENTIRELY because of this. Showing the in-game minimap as the mappreview is itself a good indicator to other players of what kind of map this is; A spiritual successor to the original Vampire Hunters map.
I honestly didn't bother checking this map out until I saw the comments on this thread describing it as like the original VH map. Because I'm not a fan of vampirism or most WC3 vampire maps.
I'm not even saying you should entirely avoid a mappreview. You might actually want to go with...For example...A hand-drawn map of the minimap. Give it a sort of medieval map made from parchment scroll and ink. Or go with the symbolism of the clashing forces, ie Wooden Stake crossing a Vampire's Fang.
The load screen is also guilty of this. It tells the player absolutely nothing and leaves everything up to the help menu...Which itself was pretty bare bones. I essentially only knew how to play because I knew how to play the original VH. And if you think about it, the gameplay...is rather nonsensical. Killing souls is the thing that matters most? Not drinking blood? Zombies spawn shortly after villagers die? Daylight doesn't hurt!? Wood!? WHAT!? PORTALS!? WHAT IS ANY OF THIS!?
You and I are so familiar with the gameplay that you may have forgotten just how...Odd that gameplay itself is to someone who hasn't played. And your map has even more complexity because of having more than one kind of vampire and the compulsion system, and that's just mentioning what's immediately apparent and not the other smaller things in the map.
I don't think you need to go all out with the loadscreen like I did with WS2. I think the map is simple enough that it shouldn't take as much to explain. But it DOES take some explaining nonetheless.
2. Villager respawn doesn't need to be increased THAT much. I'd say an extra 10%~15% longer would be enough to make a difference. You also should bare in mind that ranged units(IE Necromancer) save a lot of time compared to other vampires because they don't typically have to move to hit the next villager/soul.
In fact, something you COULD do is a "Village Fear" system. Essentially:
- Each day the Fear of all villages decrease by -50points. Or -100points if no villager died that day in that town(Just give a "First Villager" hidden skill to all initially spawning villagers and make sure atleast X villagers with that skill exist in that village at the end of the day).
- Every villager killed increases the Fear by +2points.
- If a Hunter is killed near that village, Fear increases by +50points.
- If a vampire is killed near that village, Fear decreases by -100points.
- Every 10 seconds, if a hunter is in a village, Fear decreases by 1 point. (Not 10 consecutive seconds, merely checking every 10 seconds).
- Fear has no maximum limit.
- Whenever a villager dies, their respawn time is equal to (base time)*(1+(Fear*0.01)).
- This can be viewed by the players either as a floating text over each village of "Fear : ###", or more interestingly, you can create a simple White obelisk in the center of each town whose mana is equal to the Fear level. And as the mana of the obelisk increases, you can have it's vertex coloring change to |255|255-Mana|255-Mana| making it get more and more Red as more and more fear builds up in the town. A player can obviously click the obelisk and see the exact mana/amount of "fear" of that town, or they can easily just glance at it's color to get a rough estimate.
In other words, let's say that a vampire can typically kill 20 villages before nightfall on day 1. And let's say the base time it takes a villager to respawn is 60 seconds. The 10th villager killed takes (60)*(1+(20*0.01))=72 seconds to respawn. Whereas the 20th villager will take 84seconds to respawn(40% longer).
If no hunter or vampire dies near the village, then when Daybreak occurs and day 2 starts, the 20~25 kills the vampire did during the first day&night generated 40~50 Fear, which drops to 0 since every village loses 50 Fear per day. So the 1st kill of the 2nd day has a completely normal 60 second respawn time.
However, let's say an absolute slaughter happens. Let's say 3 hunters attack a village right at the start, but the other vampire players joined in and just SLAUGHTERED those hunters. That's +150fear. Obviously some villagers already died if the hunters got to a vampire, so let's say there were 10 villager kills. 10villagers killed=20fear, whereas 3 hunters kill=150 fear. Meaning that town right now has 170fear.
170 fear means that the 11th villager to die that day in that village will take (60)*(1+(170*0.01))=162seconds. Now the day ends, and that village loses 50Fear...But it's still at 120Fear. So obviously the Vampire will want to move away from the village for the day to hunt elsewhere...Now there's an interesting problem. The village is SO afraid of leaving their homes, that there's too much fear even for daybreak to clear away. 120-100(daybreak) still leaves the village with 20 fear.
If a vampire tried to farm this village the next day, the first villager killed would still take 72 seconds or 20% longer to respawn. So vampires would need to wait til another daybreak before it was back to zero.
If the vampire DIDN'T want and killed even one villager though on the second day, the third day wouldn't just have 20Fear it'd have 70fear.
This system has a lot of additional advantages to balancing out the game though:
- If vampires are doing well, it punishes them. This gives the hunters a SLIGHTLY better chance at making a comeback. Remember that the game's structure currently means that advantages typically are permanent. If one team gets an advantage, it's typically going to have it for the entire game. This won't fix that, but it will help ALLEVIATE it slightly.
- It also narrows down the number of villages viable for hunting after a hunter is killed at one, which makes it easier to find vampires who have just successfully killed a hunter.
- Inversely though, if hunters are doing well or guarding towns then this punishes them slightly. Since those towns will now have a fresher respawn than other towns.
You could also make this system give SOME advantages to Vampires for high amounts of fear though, if you like:
+ Zombies spawned from towns gain bonus health equal to that town's Fear.
+ Whenever a Vampire kills a villager, there is a (Fear*0.5)% chance to get +1 gold from it. Meaning that the 1st kill has a 0.5% chance to give +1 gold, and the 20th kill has a 10% chance to give +1 gold. This can make an interesting choice between farming souls by moving to other villages or by farming gold by staying in a single village and exploiting fear.
+ You could make it so that "First Villagers" all spawn Zombies with 50% more health and that "First Villagers" all have a 10% innate chance to give +1 gold to the vampire. This encourages Vampires to hit every village every day, which in turn means that village only lose 50Fear that day and thus may not be at 0 at the start of any given day(but not far from it unless hunters die).
+ Hunters near towns with high fear get -0.5armor per 10 Fear. Just make it an aoe debuff from the Obelisk representing Fear that gains +1 level to the skill. In fact, give that skill 11 with level1(0~9fear) actually giving +1 armor instead of -0.
Villages are completely pivotal to the game as is the vampire's ability to feed but ALSO the vampire's NEED to move to towns. Mind you that creating a greater need to move can help balance out the vampire classes, such as favoring those with windwalk.
Changing the relationship of both Hunters and Vampires to Villagers with a system like this radically changes the game. You already changed the vampire's relationship to town guard by making them not get gold for every kill(as I observed atleast) which is very different from the original VH map.
3. AI players is something I've implemented in a few maps and VH-HC. It's not something people know they want, nobody expects it because most maps lack it, but typically everyone enjoys it if implemented decently. You do have to understand what the game's meta will be to implement it effectively though. The limitations are important to understand about AI Players.
- Visibility is a huge factor in this map that aids AI players. Because the human players can't be fully aware of where any given AI player is. AND this is further true with your map using custom models if you'd turn player glow off in the game. They wouldn't be able to just memorize "Oh, Green is a CPU" as soon as the game starts. If two players pick the same class or if they don't know the class of every player yet, they'll have to mouse over to figure out if it's a player or CPU(since the personality system means you can't tell just by the hunter ignoring zombies or the vampire fleeing as soon as you start fighting it). This is a bit of extra effort that has to be repeated every time, which means there's a general delay before a player is aware they're facing a CPU.
- An AI without a randomized personality is too predictable. If they will always follow a single path, then players can too easily account for this. However, randomized personalities make that difficult. Especially with personalities like a Coward that only hunters WITH other hunters and never alone. By sheer resources of two hunters alone, they're a threat to even a player vampire. Or the tactical who will avoid the zombie-paths&zombies if encountered while heading towards a village, which SEEMS like a player tactic but ALSO means the AI hunter is out of the player vampire's view until they're ABOUT to be in range to fight.
- AI Vampires are easy food...Sure. Cowardly AI vampires are typically a solution to this as they're nearly unkillable without a very good effort from multiple hunters, since they're built PURELY to run away on sight. So they won't contribute as much to the game, but atleast they won't feed. This leaves the question of Tacticals and Brave vampires. Tactically will turn cowardly when situations get rough, and since you're bound to give them the "Exile" class since it works most for the AI system they have an easy means of escaping hunters.
So how do you balance out the fact that Braves will scream Alahhu Ackblood and fight to the death against Hunters? Simple. You unbalanace it.
I. You can double the KTW and count player deaths a 2 and AI deaths as 1. You can do the same by halving the Gold&EXP Hunters get from AI vamp kills. This discourages farming, but NOT entirely.
II. You can double the EXP gain of AI players, both hunter and vamp alike. Giving them an EXP advantage early on can help them survive to get better builds and more survivability.
III. Perhaps fake their class. Give them an alternate version of the "Exile" or "Male Hunter" characters, except that their stat gains from leveling up are increased compared to the player version of the class. A few extra stats can be enough to make them too threatening for most hunters to take on easily. And if they're difficult to take on, that gives other vampires the chance to come help them out in a fight if they see more than one hunter approaching.
DO NOT change their skills however. Changing the skill changes how things work from the player's perspective and creates a dissonance with the game that you absolutely do not want.
Ultimately, ensuring that vamp&hunter AIs do not feed is much like ensuring that vamp&hunter players do not feed: The other players on the team keep an eye out, stay SOMEWHAT nearby incase that vamp/hunter needs help, and simply...git gud at keeping other players alive.
It's okay to leave some responsibility on your players for this. It's not like you're programming vampires to suicide rush into the bases, and you ARE programming them to avoid being lured INTO bases.
4. Gold is honestly a very major factor in vampires. In the original VH you would rush the village at night or early in the day with zombies JUST to land a few early kills for early gold to get Clarity or some other aspect.
There are a TON of items for vampires, as there should be. And you were smart enough to block vampires from using hunter shops, so you don't need to worry about that too much. Right now, vampires will have trouble getting gold against even semi-competent hunters...Which puts the hunters at an advantage.
My point about expanding the compulsion system is that...Right now it's nearly pointless. If you want to leave it as is, it's not something they can use strategically and is just sort of a random bonus gold that pops up occasionally that they can't count on or manipulate at all. It's pure luck, moreso since it's only 50% going to happen anyways.
Especially since there are SO many types of villagers, the chance of getting the one they need is VERY slim in any given village.
Making it into a system they can follow means it can differ how vampires&hunters play. You don't want every player to play exactly the same, because you want players to feel like they have options. Self-expression is a very useful psychological tactic in keeping people playing your map. You've already implemented it with the class system, no need not to exploit it here too.
5. A town guard's AI is going to be mostly irrelevant honestly. They'd have to be outright overpowered somewhat to have AI that matters. Doing it as heroes lets them be a controlling element to the game, giving more options for players on how to play. It encourages vampires to kill them, encourages hunters to protect them, encourages hunters to buy more of them, and encourages both vampires&hunters to focus on both villages&town at all time in a VERY natural way on the players.
6. Now for some actual balance changes the map might need:
- Hunters may need their starting 5 gold back. They aren't as initially powerful as vampires, and that's good...But they also should have SOMETHING.
- Windwalk on Exile&Assassin(I forgot her name) have way too fast a cooldown or way too long a duration. I had windwalk available BEFORE my windwalk ended. If a hunter doesn't have a truesight gem, this means that a single windwalk secures a vampire's path home even if there's a hunter at the portal to try and cut them off.
- Consider having the town spawn one random new guard at both the top&bottom. One of the weakest ones. This should go alongside the fact that...Town guard SHOULD give atleast +1 gold to vampires...
VH-HC did this by adding a sellsword every other day, but with the structure of your version adding one every day might be better.
- A town income system for hunters&vampires based on kills was in place for VH-HC. Everytime player 6(orange) or player 12(brown)got 10 gold, it would give all hunters or vampires +1 gold. The orange&brown acquire gold from kills, same as players, and with a rate of 10=+1 it meant that there was gold lost in the process(which is good for the game's economy and prevents players from relying too heavily on the Crypts&Town Guard).
- Change the vampire crypts to be just like Dark Green. One at the bottom, one at the top. This is something that always bugged me about the original and even I failed to fix it in my version. It radically changes the balance in 3v3, but also makes it awkward for vampires wanting to push either the top or the bottom. Only 2+1/2 players can send to either side.
Give one of Green's crypts to Light Blue, and vice-versa.
Give one of Pink's crypts to Gray, and versa-vice.
- VH-HC had a "Final Struggle" mode and I HIGHLY recommend this as it can help drastically balance out the game to help combat REALLY BAD players or AIs. Players would have 30 seconds at the start of the game to say "-final" to vote for this mode and if enabled(atleast half of the players voted for it):
_____When the Town hall is killed, all Hunters are revived&warped to a random point on the map and lose all gold. Undead AI will now target hunters and Vampires are giving full vision of Hunters. Hunters will no longer revive and will only lose once all Hunters are dead. This gives them one last chance to kill off the vampires and win the game, even though the odds are stacked against them terribly.
_____If 15 vampires were killed, instead of the game ending: All vampires are revived at their crypt locations and can no longer enter Hell, Hunters are granted full vision of Vampires. Vampires no longer revive and will only lose once all Vampires are dead. This is, again, a final chance.
- Something to consider, I'm not sure if this works in your map. VH-HC made it so that vampires lost 0.5% life per second during daylight...This worked out well because VH-HC let players START with all their skills learned at LV1(by having really poopy LV1 versions compared to either their LV2 version or the original VH's LV1), so vampires all had a LV1 vamp aura to offset it(5% lifesteal). However, it did mean that they were more in danger of fighting hunters during daylight since they could be stunned and would still lose life while running away(possibly getting themselves killed).
But since your version of the map does not have lifesteal as part of every vampire...This may not be wise.
- What I DO recommend from VH-HC however is the implementation of poopy LV1 skills on all heroes. This gives them a complete arsenal to use and try out to determine the value of each skill. While the LV1 versions are absolutely garbage compared to LV2, they at least present options to the player from the start. LV1 beats LV0, afterall.
As far as VH-HC itself. I don't mind linking to it, but the map's AI seems pretty broken now. The AI for hunters stopped working entirely, none of the commands to explain them even seem to work anymore, and the Vamp AI strangely only works for Green&Gray with the Pink&LightBlue vamps just sitting AFK at their crypts.
Although I will say that I was wrong about one thing regarding Hunter AI: It was only partially random. There were up to five types(One is called "Novice", so I suspect that might not be something you should include), and it's stated that no two hunters can have the same type. So essentially a full team of five hunters would have one of each personality, I'm not entirely sure I recommend this.
Something I want to stress is that...I want your map to succeed. My version was only remotely ever popular purely because it was an improvement on the original. We had a ton of fun, and it was nice to see it pop up in the map lists hosted by people other than myself. But that's because the VH map itself was originally good before I improved on it.
I would love to be able to see your map get popular enough for me to play it in pubs once I have ACTUAL internet again to actually play WC3 online.
Right now, I see a desire to make a map better than the original. I couldn't hope for a better starting point.
But don't settle for people being satisfied with your map. See how far you can push it. Always ask better of yourself than you ask of others.
Villages are completely pivotal to the game as is the vampire's ability to feed but ALSO the vampire's NEED to move to towns. Mind you that creating a greater need to move can help balance out the vampire classes, such as favoring those with windwalk.
Changing the relationship of both Hunters and Vampires to Villagers with a system like this radically changes the game. You already changed the vampire's relationship to town guard by making them not get gold for every kill(as I observed atleast) which is very different from the original VH map.
Thanks for taking the time to review our map. I agree that camping villages is too rewarding for Vampires at the moment, especially if hunters are not following the zombie trail. We are adding a "Tax Base" system to the game, where each village would have a small tax base, such as 5 gold, that is reduced every time a villager is killed in that village. Hunters would receive a share of taxes each morning, offering vampires a choice between camping a village for souls or striking multiple villages to deny hunter's tax income. The tax would be paid to hunters at dawn and reset back to its max value.
We removed gold bounties from some of the weaker units because we felt giving the enemy gold outweighed the benefit of summoning them. However, a favorite strategy of mine in the original was early raiding of the town for gold. We are doubling the cost of all items in game as well as all sources of income. This would allow us more nuance in item pricing as well as allow us to offer 1 gold bounties on skeleton warriors and town guards without making them feed for the enemy. This would also serve to balance the income from the new tax system.
We have since raised compulsion to 100% since there was already a high degree of randomness involved in getting a villager of your type. Vampires scale more off stats than Hunters so they are not as gold dependent.
As far as filesize goes I believe we are in a new era on battlenet, pub players demand custom resources and with new filesize allowances I think we should strive towards total conversion as much as possible. As we implement new features we will perform careful accounting of our custom resources to keep filesize in check. Surprisingly the current filesize has not been an issue in hosting, with most players downloading it quickly. We've also accumulated a core following of players so there are only a few downloaders in each session.
We did give DG a crypt at top and bottom. I like your idea of giving 1 crypt to the opposite player so that vamps can strike top or bottom, however I'm afraid 5 incomes worth of units to one front could prove OP. Also training from one crypt would be tediously slow if you were focusing a front.
Please share VH-HC with us, I would love to see it.
I agree that camping villages is too rewarding for Vampires at the moment, especially if hunters are not following the zombie trail. We are adding a "Tax Base" system to the game, where each village would have a small tax base, such as 5 gold, that is reduced every time a villager is killed in that village. Hunters would receive a share of taxes each morning, offering vampires a choice between camping a village for souls or striking multiple villages to deny hunter's tax income. The tax would be paid to hunters at dawn and reset back to its max value.
This seems like a system that only functions properly in a 5v5.
With less than 5 vampires, it's going to heavily favor hunters and inflate them with gold early on. Even if the number of hunters is the same.
It also means that hunters can simply camp 5 villages and ignore all zombies/vampires, ensuring that they start the next day with no less than 25 gold...Which is a lot for just day 2. And that's assuming vampires reduce all other village's tax gold down to 0 by making 5 kills.
Even doubling the cost of items means this would be equivalent to atleast 13gold...Which is still a ton per hunter per day.
Perhaps instead, a simple reward system? - Everytime a Vampire leaves a village, IF a hunter is there, that village gives +1 gold to all hunters. This bonus can only apply once per day [per village].
In this way, Hunters get rewarded for doing their lore job(protecting people from vampires), it's not heavily abuseable(a vampire leaves/re-enters a village over and over), and it's not a lot of reward. But it DOES reward the player for their effort.
In fact, this would finally solve a balance discrepancy between hunters and vampires in terms of effort/reward.
- Hunters only get rewarded in gold/exp if they kill a vampire or their zombies. But killing the zombies means the vampire is aware of the hunter and has plenty of time to flee. Not killing the zombies means that if the vampire is not killed, the hunter got nothing out of it.
- In contrast, the vampire still gain the souls&exp of the villagers they killed and it came at no strategic cost unlike the hunter.
We did give DG a crypt at top and bottom. I like your idea of giving 1 crypt to the opposite player so that vamps can strike top or bottom, however I'm afraid 5 incomes worth of units to one front could prove OP. Also training from one crypt would be tediously slow if you were focusing a front.
This is actually the main balancing point about focusing one side. It literally cuts the spawn rate in half to do so.
Likewise you have to bare in mind that IF vampires are all focusing one side, then that also lets hunters focus the same side. I don't have much experience with the hunter skills in this version, but in the original VH hunters could absolutely obliterate even stronger tier summons because of stakes&heals when combined with town guard&towers.
A natural problem is power distribution from crypts. IE if both of the bottom vamps leave the game(or there aren't any to begin with), then the crypts essentially drop down to 2.5
Because DG's top crypt is the only one he'll use, since the other two vamps can only summon to the topside.
This also further makes the game easier on hunters because they don't have to NEARLY reinforce the bottom as much as the top.
Lastly:
Vampire Hunters HC : Vampire Hunters HC 1.2 - Warcraft 3 Maps - Epic War.com
Bare in mind: As stated before, the AI seems busted now, likely since the map was made using W3EU back in 2008. Although lackluster coding could easily be just as much at fault on my part back then.
...Though FRANKLY, I'm not entirely sure this even is the finalized version. I didn't stop WC3 until around...2010 I think. Two years without an update...not typically my style for a map I actually played. @_@
This seems like a system that only functions properly in a 5v5.
With less than 5 vampires, it's going to heavily favor hunters and inflate them with gold early on. Even if the number of hunters is the same.
It also means that hunters can simply camp 5 villages and ignore all zombies/vampires, ensuring that they start the next day with no less than 25 gold...Which is a lot for just day 2. And that's assuming vampires reduce all other village's tax gold down to 0 by making 5 kills.
Even doubling the cost of items means this would be equivalent to atleast 13gold...Which is still a ton per hunter per day.
The tax base system scales based on the number of Vampires in the game, so with fewer Vampires it is much easier to deny the tax. I don't believe gold is over inflated for hunters right now.
In practice, this nightmare scenario of hunters camping 5 villages has not become an issue. It is naturally countered easily by 5 vampires just destroying the lone hunter (e.g. farm the hunters instead of the villagers if they do this).
Added the Antediluvian Vampire: an ancient and powerful evil slumbering underneath the Town. It can be summoned only by the strongest Vampires.
Hunters now have chests and Vampires have coffins for item storage. Chests/coffins have tool tips that provide detailed help information for those who want a deeper understanding of the game mechanics.
Added new passive abilities to the Enforcer and Hunter/Huntress
Difficulty tool tips now added for all heroes
Evolved Astral sight reworked to spawn the portal on your hero's current side of the map
When villagers die, they now have a small chance to scream and reveal their position on the mini map for 2s. The chance to scream is based on how many Vampires have died. As more Vampires die, the Vampires kill more brutally leaving less time to scream. Children will never scream when they die.
Reduced the mana costs of the Duelist's abilities
Moved Vampire Sight items to secondary shopkeeper
New zone in the top right added which serves as the Antediluvian Vampire's prison.
Increased CD of "pocket parasite" infiltrator ability by 1s at all levels
Hunter Idea: Mechanic
First Skill: Holy Water Trap works similarly to a regular holy water skill but has a weakend debuff in return.
Second Skill: Electrodischarge works as a slam that slows vampires and purges the user of buffs.
Third Skill: Bear Trap Has an initial burst of dmg and slowness effect while having an additional DOT bleeding effect.
Ult: Pain Train summons a temporary vehicle that has extremely high attackspeed and aoe damage useful for clearing waves and catching up to them with a high ms.
Possible Model for Mechanic: TlenoTech Mechanic
Possible Model for Pain Train: Dwarven Rail Tank
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