Where is the vast SC2 modding community?

[aider]

Where is the SC2 modding community, the tons of resources/assets? The galaxy editor have been out for some years now but when I search here and on SC2mapster it's barely anything, SC2mapster's organising of assets is messy and clunky anyway.

Seeing how WC3's modding community have been so strong for so many years, I thought SC2 would be just as strong, even stronger really.

What happened? Why isn't there a site with strong design, forum and tons of assets flowing through every week? Even when I search google for this question nothing comes up, no one else is missing what could have been?

 

[edo494]

what happened? Blizzard made the editor retardedly complex so people that are 13 and want to make their dreams alive will rather use wc3 editor, in which you can achieve a lot of stuff in no time, rather than sc2 editor, where you have to make actor for just about anything(make it ridiculously complicated)

 

[aider]

But once you learn the complicated stuff, is it better and faster?
I want to test out the galaxy editor now that the WC3 assets are there.
One thing that was awesome with WC3, was all the spells that already where built in. SC2 miss that because it's a different kind of game

 

[edo494]

I really doubt its faster, but it may be better, because it has a lot more features, which also make it a lot more complicated

 

[SA Dashie]

what happened? Blizzard made the editor retardedly complex so people that are 13 and want to make their dreams alive will rather use wc3 editor, in which you can achieve a lot of stuff in no time, rather than sc2 editor, where you have to make actor for just about anything(make it ridiculously complicated)

Pretty much me when I was 13 lol.
I would look more into it, although I already do everything I want with Wc3.

...And the fact that there is near no community here for it.

I think the game requires to much investment for what most of the community thinks is worth going for.

 

[Orthane]

Pretty much me when I was 13 lol.
I would look more into it, although I already do everything I want with Wc3.

...And the fact that there is near no community here for it.

I think the game requires to much investment for what most of the community thinks is worth going for.

I am, I use to be a modding/ spell workshop thread owner here on Hive a few years back, I just bought Starcraft II and Heart of the Swarm, I have Void on Pre-order, I plan on making a few maps, I had to do most of this crap anyway to make complex spells, Starcraft II editor simply isn't for people who are new to coding/map making.

I've already started on a map. If anything I find the lack of organizition in my editor to be annoying, it wont allow me to use race fields in the drop down tap. Their are plenty of crappy maps already created on Starcraft, all you need is a few goods one to bring the community back.

 

[The_Silent]

They made a crappy system where only the 20 most popular maps would be played, when they replaced it after years, with something better, it was too late.

 

[Orthane]

They made a crappy system where only the 20 most popular maps would be played, when they replaced it after years, with something better, but it was too late.

Which is why I waited until now. You can see my project in Idea area, When Legacy of the Void comes out, more people will come back, so the idea is to work on it now for release when the large crowd comes back.

 

[Dr Super Good]

They made a crappy system where only the 20 most popular maps would be played, when they replaced it after years, with something better, it was too late.

After years? It has been years since it was replaced.

The main problem is todays modders are too busy on Facebook or Twitter than actually making stuff. Either that or people had devolved to be more stupid over the last decade so are not able to make maps.

 

[LordDz]

Ah the old "The kids nowadays are stupid"..

The problem with Starcraft 2 was the timing of the lobby, the lobby system in the beginning was really bad and made a lot of people who would have gone from the Warcraft 3 communities to go back to the Warcraft 3 editor.

And the object editor of starcraft is complicated to learn, don't hush it away on young people being stupid or so, the object editor is far more complex than the world editor, which turns unexperienced modders away from the editor.
The world editor didn't become popular because we didn't have facebook, 10 years ago we had a lot of other online communities, we had msn for gods sake. The world editor became popular because it was easy to learn.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

The problem of SC2 modding was just a huge number of bad decisions by blizzard when SC2 was first released. These decisions were so bad that they killed the initial hype. And history has proven that if you scare away a customer (or modder) once, they will just move on to the next game and never come back.


But just for the curious, these are the things that blizzard failed at with Wings of Liberty. Some of these had been rectified, but way too late to actually revive the community:

1) providing a good documentation on how the editor works... seriously Blizzard; was it too expensive to have someone write a usable manual at Blizz HQ?
2) battlenet 2.0 popularity system
3) missing art tools until the first expansion drove all modellers away
4) and even when they were finally released; art tools ONLY compatible to a LEGACY version of 3ds max that you can't get a legal licence for. Was it so hard to modify art tools with compatibility in mind? Even friggin' Neodex works on max2015!
5) too small maximum map size compared to WC3.
6) almost no support for the mapping community. Critical technical questions about the game engine were left unanswered in the early days of SC2, so modders couldn't even create their own 3rd party tools
7) critical promised features weren't delivered, like linking maps for multiplayer campaigns
8) official blizzard mod plattform killed strong 3rd-party communities.
9) failing to deliver a good number of blizzard-created custom game maps to keep the custom game community occupied until modders could catch up in map design... In the first days of SC2, bad tower defenses were pretty much all that existed. In WC3, the lobby was filled with warchasers games.

 

[chobibo]

Ah the old "The kids nowadays are stupid"..

There's truth in that though... But I think the guy wasn't implying they were stupid, I think he means they're preoccupied with other stuff. Or maybe not... dunno.

 

[Tauer]

But just for the curious, these are the things that blizzard failed at with Wings of Liberty. Some of these had been rectified, but way too late to actually revive the community:

1) providing a good documentation on how the editor works... seriously Blizzard; was it too expensive to have someone write a usable manual at Blizz HQ?
2) battlenet 2.0 popularity system
3) missing art tools until the first expansion drove all modellers away
4) and even when they were finally released; art tools ONLY compatible to a LEGACY version of 3ds max that you can't get a legal licence for. Was it so hard to modify art tools with compatibility in mind? Even friggin' Neodex works on max2015!
5) too small maximum map size compared to WC3.
6) almost no support for the mapping community. Critical technical questions about the game engine were left unanswered in the early days of SC2, so modders couldn't even create their own 3rd party tools
7) critical promised features weren't delivered, like linking maps for multiplayer campaigns
8) official blizzard mod plattform killed strong 3rd-party communities.
9) failing to deliver a good number of blizzard-created custom game maps to keep the custom game community occupied until modders could catch up in map design... In the first days of SC2, bad tower defenses were pretty much all that existed. In WC3, the lobby was filled with warchasers games.

Holy fuck. I had no idea they failed that hard with SC2 modding. What the hell were they thinking?

 

[Dr Super Good]

1) providing a good documentation on how the editor works... seriously Blizzard; was it too expensive to have someone write a usable manual at Blizz HQ?

Rumour has it that one will come with 3.0.

4) and even when they were finally released; art tools ONLY compatible to a LEGACY version of 3ds max that you can't get a legal licence for. Was it so hard to modify art tools with compatibility in mind? Even friggin' Neodex works on max2015!

*cough* Warcraft III *cough*
That problem did not stop Warcraft III modellers so it should not have stopped StarCraft II modellers.

5) too small maximum map size compared to WC3.

Maximum map sizes are the same. WC3 only supports bigger due to third party modifications. In the case of SC2 bigger maps are supported at a terrain level but the path finder breaks (units start to act weird).

6) almost no support for the mapping community. Critical technical questions about the game engine were left unanswered in the early days of SC2, so modders couldn't even create their own 3rd party tools

*cough* Warcraft III *cough*
Again this is not an excuse as Warcraft III had no problem with it so StarCraft II should not have well. Most people still have no idea about half the crashes Warcraft III encounters in custom maps. Developers even abandoned Warcraft III projects due to unsolvable crash problems.

7) critical promised features weren't delivered, like linking maps for multiplayer campaigns

That was solved from the early days (pre-launch). Banks from same author do transfer to different maps published by same author. Only thing not supported is automatic map progression (force the next map to start) but that is hardly a problem.

8) official blizzard mod plattform killed strong 3rd-party communities.

Yet made playing content a whole lot easier. SC2 has no hosting problems, no robot problems and technically no map size limit.

9) failing to deliver a good number of blizzard-created custom game maps to keep the custom game community occupied until modders could catch up in map design... In the first days of SC2, bad tower defenses were pretty much all that existed. In WC3, the lobby was filled with warchasers games.

Players had access to the entire campaign in the editor to see how that was done.

You failed to mention the key and most critical problem SC2 had that actually killed the mapping community from the early days. Region locking. Although now solved, originally you were stuck to one region. The result was that some custom maps could not even be played in some regions (not available as they were not published there) and when you did play custom maps you were greeted to 90% "join, play 1 minute and then drop without ever saying a word" in your Arcade games in Europe.

As such your list is kind of... rubbish...

 

[edo494]

Holy fuck. I had no idea they failed that hard with SC2 modding. What the hell were they thinking?

$$$$

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Rumour has it that one will come with 3.0.

Yeah... great strategy to ship a manual with 3 years delay after the community figured everything out the hard way...

*cough* Warcraft III *cough*
That problem did not stop Warcraft III modellers so it should not have stopped StarCraft II modellers.

The difference is: reverse-engineering models in Warcraft III was way easier than reverse-engineering SC2, due to the much more primitive construction.
Yes, blizzard made roughly the same mistakes in Warcraft III. The difference is: Warcraft III was simple enough for us to figure it out.

Maximum map sizes are the same. WC3 only supports bigger due to third party modifications. In the case of SC2 bigger maps are supported at a terrain level but the path finder breaks (units start to act weird).

I'm not talking about the actual map size in numbers, but the perceived map size. Everything has a much larger scale in SC2, hence why the maps appear way smaller.

*cough* Warcraft III *cough*
Again this is not an excuse as Warcraft III had no problem with it so StarCraft II should not have well. Most people still have no idea about half the crashes Warcraft III encounters in custom maps. Developers even abandoned Warcraft III projects due to unsolvable crash problems.

Again, the critical difference is in the complexity of SC2 modding compared to WC3. You just can't release a much more complex product and provide zero support for it.

That was solved from the early days (pre-launch). Banks from same author do transfer to different maps published by same author. Only thing not supported is automatic map progression (force the next map to start) but that is hardly a problem.

I was talking only about automatic map progression. --> Hence why I said "campaigns". It was a promised feature that many modders (or at least I) looked forward to.

Yet made playing content a whole lot easier. SC2 has no hosting problems, no robot problems and technically no map size limit.

There is no denying that SC2 modding at it's core is superior to WC3. Nobody ever said that. I just stated why the modding community was so alienated in the early days.

Players had access to the entire campaign in the editor to see how that was done.

But still no blizz-made custom games to play in multiplayer. Not everyone enjoys laddergames. WC3 didn't have many aswell, but at least Warchasers kept players somewhat occupied in the early days until more content was created.

You failed to mention the key and most critical problem SC2 had that actually killed the mapping community from the early days. Region locking.

Oh yeah, almost forgot about this. And related to that: the stupid forced localization string mechanic...

Anyways, I'm talking from my own experience here. So I don't see how these points can be rubbish. I know that a lot of my friends left for exactly those reasons. Me included.

To go back to the modelling problem, which was my biggest gripe with it ever:
It took the community a whole year before the first working 3rd party modelling tool appeared. Way too late to keep the WC3 modders in place that just wanted to recreate their WC3 maps in SC2.
Sci-fi just isn't for everyone. That's why modelling was so critical for SC2. Had blizzard just released their Star Tools with WoL, everything could have went way different.

 

[Spellbound]

I tried on four different occasions to get into sc2 modding across several years. The main problem I see with sc2 modding is the learning curve. The data editor is so hard to learn that it makes getting into basic modding extremely challenging. Making a unit in wc3 requires only a few clicks. Sc2 requires a lot, and a detailed tutorial. The time and effort required to get into sc2 modding is just too great for potential modders to care.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yeah... great strategy to ship a manual with 3 years delay after the community figured everything out the hard way...

At least you will be getting one unlike WC3 where the community took a decade to find stuff out.

The difference is: reverse-engineering models in Warcraft III was way easier than reverse-engineering SC2, due to the much more primitive construction.
Yes, blizzard made roughly the same mistakes in Warcraft III. The difference is: Warcraft III was simple enough for us to figure it out.

The M3 format is not that complex. Most of the chunks are special purpose, NYI (coming with 3.0) or possibly even deprecated. The problem was no one really bothered until 3 years odd passed.

I'm not talking about the actual map size in numbers, but the perceived map size. Everything has a much larger scale in SC2, hence why the maps appear way smaller.

Scale of everything can be adjusted, just like it could in WC3.

Again, the critical difference is in the complexity of SC2 modding compared to WC3. You just can't release a much more complex product and provide zero support for it.

SC2 is not more complex. People who think that are either very stupid or never used it themselves. Sure SC2 has more parts to it, however unlike WC3 they all make sense.

Triggers are infinitely easier to create in SC2. Not only do you get runtime error messages if something goes wrong, but they will not crash the game. Better yet is there is a trigger debugger allowing you to trace through buggy triggers and find why they are breaking. Even GUI was vastly improved from SC2 with the ability to use local variables, custom functions/actions and copy arguments around.

The data editor may seem complex at first, but actually is very simple. Unlike WC3 where objects mostly had strange hard-coded and hard to predict mechanics, everything in SC2 is made from a set of standard objects which have easy to predict mechanics. The only really mysterious part is how actors operate since some of the terms used are cryptic however you mostly do not need to touch these or can learn their mechanics from examples provided (other actors used in campaign).

Unlike WC3 you have an inbuilt cutscene editor allowing you to view the inner workings of models including animation properties, physics properties, texture paths etc. Although it cannot edit them it removes the need for third party tools. It apparently can be used to create cutscenes as well, however for multiplayer maps it is generally not recommended to have cutscenes.

I was talking only about automatic map progression. --> Hence why I said "campaigns". It was a promised feature that many modders (or at least I) looked forward to.

It may still come.

I think the reason we do not have it is mechanical and probably similar to why such a feature was not in WC3 multiplayer. Basically progressing to a map you do not have will probably result in some pretty bad things happening. Let us not forget how to score and log the session you were playing (how would replay work? how would map be recoded on your play list? how would end of game score screen be made?).

But still no blizz-made custom games to play in multiplayer. Not everyone enjoys laddergames. WC3 didn't have many aswell, but at least Warchasers kept players somewhat occupied in the early days until more content was created.

There were user created custom maps from day 0 thanks to their beta program. The best of which for release was "Night of the Dead" which was maintained for several years. The actual problem was maps like Night of the Dead did not hit EU on release because of the stupid region system and the authors having to use proxy accounts to publish to the EU region.

Had blizzard just released their Star Tools with WoL, everything could have went way different.

I think they could not as the tool did not exist. They used other approaches to produce M3 models which might only make sense in a professional work space. For example maybe they had a sort of "makefile" which ran proprietary converts (which could not be given away publically) on each model source to produce output.

The data editor is so hard to learn that it makes getting into basic modding extremely challenging.

Not as hard has the ability editor in WC3. I still keep learning new things about it.

Making a unit in wc3 requires only a few clicks.

Your unit is then restricted to basic, boring old mechanics. For example you cannot have your unit use its "spell" animation when attacking instead of its attack animation.

Sc2 requires a lot, and a detailed tutorial.

It basically split the functionality of a WC3 unit into different elements. Attack fields became "Weapons" data. Art fields became Unit "Actors" data. Ability command card fileds were extracted to Unit level. Rest stayed pretty much as is.

A very simple unit can be made with two copies and some field edits (linking actor to unit is 1 edit then you need at least 1 edit for the actor model and possibly another for the portrait model, an additional edit for sound).

 

[Eagle XI]

SC2 has no hosting problems, no robot problems

You do realize an faggot is(or was?) sabotaging and blocking the Star Battle lobby with throwaway free-to-play accounts and Blizzard did nothing against him (or did they anything as of yet?) ? And its not like Star Battle has been the first case of this bullshit happening.. if some random angry loser kid can block one's hardwork well made map like that for days you cant really tell "SC2 has no hosting problems".
Almost everyone used farmbots for portrait farming back in WoL, how many of them got banned ? just only an sizeable chunk but hey not all, for justice would be disastrous for the business.
They cant be really that naive to expect me to believe that many autists are around, interested and capable of playing SC2, performing the same routines every single day over an course of months, playing the boring game always the same just to get an silly cosmetic unlock.

The real reason SC2 is faring down, is that it has turned into an fucking cringefest.

Edit: And hey i just realized this sounds as if personal towards you, rest asure not, just my 2cents.

 

[Dr Super Good]

You do realize an faggot is(or was?) sabotaging and blocking the Star Battle lobby with throwaway free-to-play accounts and Blizzard did nothing against him (or did they anything as of yet?) ? And its not like Star Battle has been the first case of this bullshit happening.. if some random angry loser kid can block one's hardwork well made map like that for days you cant really tell "SC2 has no hosting problems".

And? In WC3 the same people would make custom games and then kick people they take a dislike to. The number of times I was kicked for being close to winning...

Almost everyone used farmbots for portrait farming back in WoL, how many of them got banned ?

How many of the robot hosts in WC3 have been banned?

They cant be really that naive to expect me to believe that many autists are around, interested and capable of playing SC2, performing the same routines every single day over an course of months, playing the boring game always the same just to get an silly cosmetic unlock.

Oh but there are such people. Sure some were robots but not all were. For example professional players would most certainly have certain huge game number award icons.

 

[edo494]

arguing sc2 fanboy(dont know how else to call you, dont want to be insultive tho) in thread that is bashing sc2 is really useless. Thats the same as opening thread about how wc3 is shit

 

[Dr Super Good]

I am arguing to prevent false rumors being spread. A lot of what people think of SC2 was put into their mouth by threads like these rather than them actually running into problems.

If everyone said how easy SC2 editor was to use then I am sure fewer people would find it hard.

 

[SanKakU]

Arguing that something is true when it clearly isn't won't help people to find the editing easy. You should rather make it easy for them by explaining the editing to them, don't you think? Or do you also not understand it easily?

 

[Dr Super Good]

Arguing that something is true when it clearly isn't won't help people to find the editing easy.

The reality is if you came to the WC3 forums asking "How do I create a unit?" you will be called an idiot for not being able to do something "simple" yet if you go to a SC2 forum and ask "How do I create a unit?" everyone will tell you how shit SC2 for being "complex" instead.

Both ways do not help people and put ideas in their head. The WC3 guy will go off to keep trying by himself to solve the problem since it is "simple" after all. The SC2 guy will leave editing SC2 because it is "complex" so he need not even try.

 

[Spellbound]

Not as hard has the ability editor in WC3. I still keep learning new things about it.

But it's still very straightforward to get into. While it has some severe limitations (like creating a custom build system is practically a nightmare) the problem with sc2 modding isn't that it doesn't make sense, the problem is that it's overwhelming. You open up the editor and you are immediately flooded with a torrent of information. It's not surprising no one sticks to it.

(That being said, sc2 has a fantastic trigger editor. Love that thing)

Your unit is then restricted to basic, boring old mechanics. For example you cannot have your unit use its "spell" animation when attacking instead of its attack animation.

Don't get me wrong, the Galaxy data editor is far, far superior to World Edit's, but the problem with it is that you just don't know where to start. In wc3 you just copy a unit and modify some fields. In sc2 you copy and unit and then realise it's not showing up because you didn't duplicate the actor as well and "oh god what the hell are all these other fields what am I even doing." Eventually you learn what to do, but by then, most people have already given up.

Imo that could have been avoided by putting those more detailed mechanics to maybe an advanced data editor. Dunno. As is, it's honestly not newbie-friendly at all. At all. The entire process is so daunting it scares newbies away. The Galaxy Editor is a very powerful tool. It's also like climbing a cliff when you don't have the necessary gear

 

[Zwiebelchen]

A node editor like what is common practice in modelling workstations would have helped a lot:

click

Basicly, what this does is breaking down data editors into smaller windows that have their dependencies shown like a flowchart or mind-map.

 

[Retera]

Rum, tum, tummmm! Somebody linked me this thread and I thought I'd throw in a Retera's two-cents-worth.

I side with Dr Super Good a little bit in one sense -- when Starcraft 2 came out, I think it was the forums that killed it for me. It felt too complicated, like performing basic tasks that I felt I already understood in concept were suddenly hard. When I went online and googled things related to this, I quickly found myself in a culture of people saying 'blahhh this editor is awful and terrible why why why' and even just a quick google of "Retera Starcraft" brings me to pages that are almost shameful because they remind me that I joined the bandwagon back then:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/248425213

Before Starcraft 2 came out I had had some imaginary vision of a superwarcraft, where I could make everything I wanted to make but with even more creative freedom, where the old logical limits and boundaries of the editor ('locusted unit missle systems', 'Illidan's channel dummy abilities', etc) did not exist.

I think the people who made the Galaxy Editor wanted to make exactly what I just described and probably did a much better job than I would have done in their place, but the Galaxy Editor taught me 3 lessons and I have almost never returned to that program, I currently don't even have it installed.

1.) Change is hard. I tried to make devour using the Nydus Network's load and unload function back around those days, and it never worked. Seeing something ('Devour', a basic WC3 ability) that I could not replicate in SC2's engine made me feel more powerless, like it was a different and not better system. I am not trying to claim Devour could not be made in SC2, on the contrary I imagine it's been done for those recent WC3 in SC2 mods, but it was merely more difficult than a Warcraft modding kid (probably ~16 at the time 5 years ago) could figure out in a day's work.

2.) Do not underestimate your future workflow, which you invent when you write a Graphical User Interface.

Have a look at this recording of me livin' it up back in High School:
https://www.youtube.com/v/t1-kF63y4eg?start=396
Three words for that: what the flux?
(Not sure if swearing is allowed on here so I figured I'd go for a WoW reference)
The entire software pictured there was written by me prior to recording the video, also while in High School, and it certainly shows it. The design is a mad cluster of boxes, text, and more boxes, and for this reason people are turned away by something that really shouldn't be that complicated. And it's because I made my 'dream program' that 'does everything.'

Here's another example:
When I learned WC3 heroes could only have 5 hero skills, I decided to show myself I was awesome when I was 14 years old and redesigned the entire hero skill system in pure JASS. I named my creation HeroLevelsG. However, you had to literally make 6 abilities for each single 'hero ability' because I believed in polishing what the user saw to exactly what I wanted. As I recall, these were:

1. The actual ability
2. The Research icon, as a separate multilevel ability, to go inside skill list
3. The spellbook that was to be Disabled to 'add' or 'remove' the research icon
4. The disabled research icon, as a passive ability
5. The spellbook to be Disabled to contain disabled research icon
6. Some sixth item that I don't quite remember

(Obviously, with modern warcraft 3 modding systems you could probably reduce this number or generate the abilities with LUA)

This project taught me a valuable lesson: I never wanted to use HeroLevelsG because designing content for it was painful at best. The efficiency of clicking "New Hero Ability" and then setting a "Learn" tooltip with "%d" vastly outdoes making a custom "Research" ability, picking a unique Base Order ID for it, and using 'Auto Fill Levels' to fill in a multilevel tooltip for learning each level of the ability.

When I opened up the Galaxy Editor, I had heard tale that it 'supported heroes'. I thought Warcraft heroes were cool, so this was exciting! After finding out that each level or each ability had to have separate ability objects and its own separate Command Card icon object made for it (or something like that), I think I had nightmares of HeroLevelsG and just decided I never wanted to make a hero in the Galaxy Editor.

3.) If you actually understand how Starcraft 2 is built, why don't you write your own instead of learning the Galaxy Editor? This sounds like a cliche bad joke, but in retrospect... I actually did this. Meet 'Planetary War', when Retera writes his own Starcraft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KB60bXttJc

That made a really fun hobby a couple of years ago, and I've been meaning to revisit it and rewrite it recently but have been behind the times. And no, I still haven't bothered to learn to use the Galaxy Editor, because teaching myself how to write a networked LAN game using Java, TCP sockets, and OpenGL apparently struck me as more fun and interesting than learning the Galaxy Editor back in those days.

So where am I going with that? I guess I'm not sure. The Galaxy Editor taught me who I am; a Warcraft modder. Yeah, the Galaxy Editor might be good, I wouldn't claim to know. But I am never going to dig up HeroLevelsG from whatever dark abyss that map fell into after I worked on it. That I do know.

There was a time when I thought HeroLevelsG was a good idea:
https://www.youtube.com/v/TLzhlsEFcVQ?start=202&end=208

(Post script: I read online the other day that they have an M3->XML converter now, which sounds like as beautiful a secret as unlocking the MDL. Matrix Eater for Starcraft, anyone? Seems like Starcraft could benefit from making a Marine-headed-zergling or something, like how we can make a Grunt-headed sheep in only 3 minutes for WC3.

 

[Tya]

When I opened up the Galaxy Editor, I had heard tale that it 'supported heroes'. I thought Warcraft heroes were cool, so this was exciting! After finding out that each level or each ability had to have separate ability objects and its own separate Command Card icon object made for it (or something like that), I think I had nightmares of HeroLevelsG and just decided I never wanted to make a hero in the Galaxy Editor.

You CAN give each level of each ability it's own effect tree, but you don't have to. Personally I just use upgrades and set catalog triggers.

http://i.imgur.com/O742kjj.jpg

Each ability on this archmage uses one ability with one effect tree. When you add a level to Blizzard, it adds an upgrade level which increases the number of waves and damage.