Advanced Melee

Yeah Orlean, I thought you were pretty bad, hehe.

Although that guy is much worse. His lack of detail is somewhat amusing. I doubt he has a clue on how long it takes to customize and balance spells. Much less units.

Fiery has said that we are working on temporary spell name changes and tooltip modifications. Until Frozen Throne comes out.

Care to elaborate on what you think is wrong with "the entire Night Elves?"

-Riven

You guys should add in more JASS scripted spells in the game to replace the likes of Death and Decay. People couldn't give a crap to play a game with just new units, they want different abilities (not cloned ones through an ability.slk edit), and they want units that make sense and be different. I agree that the huntress hall only producing one unit sucks; only tier 3 structures should produce 1 unit only like the Tauren Totem. Cheers,

Martin

Thanks, we plan on it. Fiery is signed up on a trigger spell team. He's still learning but getting pretty good. The first little while(weeks probably) will be privately tested and balanced by Fiery, PureChaos, Laevatienn, and myself.

The idea for the huntress hall building a unit(as with all upgrade centers) is because they are powerful tier-two units. To place make the game more fair, it is like this so that you cannot upgrade them and build them at the same time.

Just curious, what units don't make sense? And how can we make them bring sense to the game/map?

We would have the tier3 buildings able to make only one unit but then we would run out of buildings. There are too many tier3 and tier4 units placed into the game to make each one have their own building.

Keep playing, we need suggestions and feedback for humans/orcs/undead still.

-Riven/Rivin

There is good things in store for the newest version we are working on. We are implementing the changes for the Night Elves, replacing one of the non-essential Human units, and we have a load of spells we are working on. I don't want to give away any details, but these spells are like the original spells, except with new graphics, names, and most dynamic of all... icons. I won't say where we got them from but it rhymes with Brozen Phone. Also we are working on a new map, I hope to release the new units on along with on Desolace.

But before we get the newest version out, we need more people's opinions on the new units. We have had a few replies for Night Elf, and a one or two for Human. We need more opinions. How are the new units? Do you like them? Are they balanced? Do they encourage more dynamic strategy? What would you change if anything? What do you dislike most? How could we improve on this map?

These are the things I want people to consider. Every idea gets read and considered. Don't hesitate, send feedback lol :D

Fiery_Maelstrom :ggani:

Hmph... I'll be blunt - I didn't enjoy this.

Don't instantly hate me cause i'm gonna say why...

First thing that flared me up was 2 types of workers. Persoanlly, I canot stand having two types of workers. As your delvin into spells, you might wanna try doing this little simple trick - creat5e a shapeshift spell caled advanced buildings (theres even an icon for advanced buildings too if you check) and it switches from peasent (one) [give it editor suffix ] to peasent (two). THis way you dont have to have the tedium fo trainign two types of workers - wasting food and, lets face it, it looks more professional.

The giant treant... scrap it. Currently it functions like a mountain giant who has a half decent attack... and you looking to make this a project during FT as well. Either scrap it or give it a new ehtos - make it a new exciting counter for something not just a replica of a blizzard unit!

About Quel'dorei... the term Quel'Dorei doesn't describe a person it describes a social class. After the great sundering, there was no such social class, thus no Quel'Dorei. High Elves NEVER had a class called Quel'Dorei. hus there should be no High Elven Quel'Dorei

Who said that the Enchantress Of Elune was more like a demon hunter than a potm. If they follow Elune, like her name suggests, they wont delve into the demonic arts. "You goddess herself has condemned the one imprisoned here" the kotg tells elune as she battles for illidans freedom. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT SKILLS YOU GIVE HER AND ALL HEROES! Don't give ne a lich... before you make the skills decide what sort of hero she is going to be. Several thousand altered melee games involving 6 new heroes for every race have been released and people see this as noobish. Creating 6 heroes is easy. Anybody whos played with the edit for 10 minutes can do it. Creating 1 good hero with his own ethos and abilities that compliment this ethos is hard. This is partially why i thought ill of this before i touched it with all its new units.

Be careful with tier 4 as well... Think about what is conatined within each tier...

Tier 1: Basic melee, basic ranged
Tier 2: Casters, Misc. units
Tier 3: Heavy melee, Heavy air

Whats going to be in tier 4 and why is it so important we are going to want to tech to it? It is an awful long way there.

Persoanally I'd recommend you come up with a design document and make it availible for us to look at, in it outlining each unit, what it's designed to do it and how it's abilities allow it to accomplish that goal. For instance, If you create a new caster that is desiged to be an anti caster (just off the top of my head, obliviously with all the anticaster units in FT people may just get bored with another bloody anti caster) dont give it a buff to support melee units, an offensive buff and a pidling little dispel becaause people wont use the unit like you intend. Blizzard know what each unit is supposed to do and whe people mis use it (like using uprooted AoWs to attack when they are designed for base defence, now have been nerfed so when uprooted they have heavy armour, but they can fight defensively rooted) they fix it. If you stick close to Blizzards ethos, you cannot go wrong as people enjoy warcraft III (Thats why your here right? You don't mod omething if you get no pleasure from it). Instead give that caster 2 skills that have a 10 foot high neon sign that says HEY IM USEFUL VS CASTERS!!! and another skillw hich can be used versus casters but can also be used versus other units. Lets take the spell breaker - 2 skills for use vs casters (spellsteal, Control Magic) and one skill that is extremely useful versus casters, but can also be used in a wider range of scenarios (feedback, usful versus casters but also agaisnt any unit with mana, like heros, other spellbreakers, dryads, obsidian statues etc. etc.)

One final thing, if you making spell icons (this aint so important) give them similair colour tones for individual units.look at the Tauren Chieftain - All of his skills use very earthern tones. Dont give someone, say, Charged Bolt, a very yellow icon, Firestorm, a bright red icon, Frost shiled, a blue icon, and shadow missile, a dark icon as it will look out of place, like a mixture of other units skills put together.

Please dont see this as my flaming you, as i am trying to be constructive. Hell i ain't got much going on, I'd be willing to join your team if you need help.

I don't know how correct you are on the Quel'dorei thing, Arriba. Although you are right that there were no social classes after the destruction of the well of eternity, the original Quel'dorei were unable to give up their magical luster and therefore when they demonstrated their defiance to give it up, they were expelled from their NE brethren. I think it's more than safe to say that the Quel'dorei made up the majority of the NE magic caster. The Quel'dorei studied the wells powers, experimented and manipulated them under the guidance of their Queen. Also, remember that Illidan is described as one of the few non-Quel'dorei to even practice magic. The Quel'dorei end up being the high elves, so of course there was no quel'dorei class among them, they all were quel'dorei! Just thought you might want to look at that.

I agree, tier 4 sucks, it's too late in melee games and who few people get up to tier 3 alone. Long games suck, and usually reflect on poor playing skills.

Martin

Wow, that's a good idea for the morphing thing. Maybe we can implement something like that in the next version of The Desolace or perhaps in the next map we put the unit settings into.

I would say the giant treant is cool. He's a big tree...not much more "druidic nature loving" than than. He is a tank. A good one, his food cost is going up to 8 or 9 in the next version so people can't make so many of them. I must agree that in quantities they do wreck havoc. But everyone has a melee siege unit (pummelers, hellfire golems, chaos riders, (forget humans)) that can bend over, and have their way with the treant.

For purposes of not giving every Night Elf unit:
Entangling roots
Force of Nature
Trueshot Aura
Starfall\TRanquility

we had to hand out moves to all heroes to be fair. If they all had their races best moves they would be an improved hero, not a "balanced" one. I agree, some moves don't make "sense" but they do "kick ***". They put fairness into the game that only that kind of balancing can bring.

Tier4: Generals, heavy assult

I'm not sure what the problem is with tier4, you can get there without needing to get your third mine. I can make it into teir4 with three heroes out within 9-11mins. I love this map because you can't be rushed in it. It takes to long to scout out where your enemies are and move in to be effective. Like on the TFT map "Turtle Rock" where everyone is within 100 feet of each other. It's boring because the Undead/Humans/Orcs rush in and wreck the Night Elves because Huntresses are useless and archers can't do much to grunts.

Long games are good, it shows skill if you can win (unless it's via "hide the farm") and you learn if you lose. There is no skill in getting a hero in two minutes and three melee units then winning the game. Doing that hurts my intelligence.

No worries about the spell icons. We're making them now and having a bit of trouble. Maybe you can help 8)

"Hash Table is Full. Add file procedure failed."

Any clue on what that means? Heh.


Perhaps Fiery can squeeze you into the team, if not; no hard feelings intended. The original testers are friends and we can get defensive. ( Eh Orlean ) :ggani:

By the way, play the other races and tell us what you think, everyone is only replying about the Elves and a new version will not come out without changes for the others.

-Riven

Okay I'll try everything else out and give something as long as that about all of them.

Personally i think there are three ways at looking at the Quel'Dorei. Either:

A) No high elves are Quel'Dorei and thus they shouldn't have Quel'Dorei units
B) All high elves are Quel'Dorei and thus calling somethign a high elf high elf swordsman is stupid and thus they shouldn't have Quel'Dorei units
C) High Elves and Night Elves are two completely different societies and Quel'Dorei exist in Night Elven but they aren't a High Elven thig. Thus high elven Quel'Dorei should be scrapped.

Great, keep testing away.

I think you're missing the big picture here. Fiery has explained this to someone else about the Quel'Dorei already.. ( by the way... is the swordsman still called "High Elven" ? If so please let us know)


Just letting you know.

-Riven

The thing is you call them Quel'Dorei like thier real name that everybody knows wht to call is Quel'Dorei. NOBODY in ANY blizzard campaign (including warcraft II) have called the high elves Quel'Dorei and those that know the history think of Quel'dorei as being night elven units. Your bound to get people who disagree.

Okay I'm gonna go through each individual unit for orcs and tell you what I think...

OGRE SMASH LORD:

Me and my firends ended up at how stupid this guy was. He has 9 intelligence for christs sake, why bother giving him spells? Sure h makes a great tank, but with all the new hero killers he dies fast anyway. A more original hero should be thought of.

WARCHIEF:

He's an MK in disguise. You are basically giving a human racial difference to orcs. The ablitiy to mt "does not make him quick to move around the battlefield and exceptional at leading assaults." Needs new spells fast. Maybe even worth scrapping

Blood Ritualist

He's got not one, but 2 hero kill spells. You ever tried harrassing fast creping to 2 then harrassing? Iyts really easy and effective - they have about 1 hero to defend and you sleep it whils you entangle enemies. Recharge and repeat. Spells need changing and he isn't particulary original or fun.

CHOAS PEON

Okay you may use my idea of an advanced building "shapeshift" but EVERY advanced melee has choas orcs in for crying out loud! Also he as CHOAS DAMAGE! I massed about 30 of these little guys (with all the gold and no food to buy em was easy) and they ripped the eneies buildings apart whilst we fought. Scrap em

CHOAS GRUNT

Whats the point of replacing units full out and giving standard units chaos damage? You waste early game units. Why reasearch beserk so grunts can fight at tier 3 when you can simply go to tier 4 and get these own all troops? Unoriginal and unexciting.

CHAOS RAIDER

See above

OGRE

Orc have got thier heavy melee. Stick bash on a heavy melee and it does not produce a wonderful new concept.

TROLL BESERKER

I dislike them being built at a building which is designerd for a task other than training units. Right theres the first thing. These guys are too similair to headhunters. as with ogres, sticking critical strike on a unit isn't a wonderful new concept

CHOAS KODOS BEAST

Ya gotta be kidding? You dont build Kodos for thier offensive ability anyway - you get em for the aura. whats the point in buying this when you can get a cheaper regular kodo?

WAR RIDER

Now orc have 5 different boring melee units. This one is no exception to the trend.

OGRE MAGI

Surely you can at least come up wit a better name. I'd prefer a doc and a shaman personally.. more spells. He's a hybrid of melee and caster, which doesn't seem to be a good idea in warcraft

SALAMANDER VIZIER

Cannot quite figure out why a slamander is working wih the orcs in a spirit lodge. An anti caster unit? Giving a unit mana burn is bad news for heros... 3 of these mothers and you can wave any caster hero goodbye. Not quite sure WHY he has anti magic ability. And I see yet another orc unit with lust.

WARLOCK

ARGH!!! A FOOD TWO UNIT WITHA POWERFUL DAMAGE SPELL! get 24 of these guys, get mt for warchief and mt into their base and enjoy the carnage as u unleash thousands of damage spells. Better than siege tanks.

RED DRAKE

Totally unoriginal air unit. He can devour and last slightly longer than wyverns. Not really any ground breaking new concepts here.

WARLORD

Now here i go... I HATE THE CONCEPT OF GENERALS! a unit that costs lotsa money and should be good. This guy aint. The generals are very un wc3 like really... something more powerful than a hero? Scrap all of them and nobody will care. they may even be happy.

OVERALL:

A set of throughly unteresting units. I will use them once to check them out, realise they are nothing specail and use tried and tested orc startegies. And you know what? these strategies own and combo of new units.

You aim to high - lemme tell you its far better to produce a mod with 2 refined new unis that you've spent a few hours round in IRC talking about than 13 units that we'vew all mysteriously seen before in other similair advanced melee maps. Scrap generals, cut down to one new hero, and scrap most of the new units and just have a tier 4 AT THE FORTRESS with your 2 new units slotting in there.

Yes i have been brutal, but when we almost went random and all got orcs and ended up with several different boring melee units fighting each other, all bloodlusted and supported by statis traps, we began to get tired. I mean mass war riders isn't gonna be different in ANY WAY to mass grunts in the end. You can move a bit faster. In this incredibly cramped up map it dont matter one bit. Do yopu buy knights over footen because they're faster? no you do it mainly because of thier improved combat prowess (and more specifically, thier defence)

Well, thats feedback and it is helpful, I will try to say what we are going to do for each thing mentioned.

- first off, It is feedback and it didnt bash or flame meaning, we are glad you replied.

- Units/Hero cuts... We'll this sounds like a good idea, and having 2 new units, and one new hero, all greatly unique and different, although cool, would attract no one. Who wants to play a normal melee map with 3 new units. They could just go play Ladder and live without them ... AND... get ranked. That is why we wanted to try and add alot of units, and we hoped for them to be useful and fun to play with.

- JASS Spells, right now thier is going to be new icons/names/graphics, but the spells are like their ones now. It is possible we could make completely original spells, but that would take alot of time, and it would be awhile for next version to come out. Second of all, Laevatienn was getting tired and said to release it now, or else we were never going to and we would just keep making changes. To completely redo all the new Heroe spells, Units, and Heroes would mean we would be back to square one. We have already spent more than 2 months on the map, It would be frustrating to be back to nothing.

- 2 workers. We will implement the changes next version, so your workers can build advanced buildings. For the icons I am sure we can think of something as their is only an advanced build icon for humans.

- Giant Treants, I am not sure what an ehtos is, but the Giant Treant has a use now, and if that is along the lines of the Mountain Giant we will deal with that when FT comes out. Currently it fills a spot as tank now. Also this unit was planned before Frozen Throne had any units listed, so it isnt really copying. When FT comes out, we will need to edit map to be compatible anyways, so might as well deal with it then when it actually becomes a possible problem.

- Quel'dorei. You say that Quel'Dorei is not a social group, but the reason we call them that is because if it was just... "Swordsman or Archer" You wouldn't know if they are Elves or not. ALL High Elves are Quel'Dorei. If anything is called a High Elf High Elf Swordsman, It is a mistake and it is supposed to just be Quel'Dorei Swordsman.

- Enchantress of Elune. I already explained earlier that even though DnD is a good thing on her, we forgot about it, and it does not make sense. With newest version this will be fixed.

- Design Document. We would do this, but there is two dilemmas. First one is that we have been working on this for 2 months straight... hundreds of hours of work, and like it for the better part. Redoing it from scratch would probably end up with us flinging ourselves in traffic or some other "accident". Even if it is a good idea, the second problem is... No one posts thoughts... 700 people have this map and for sure I think... including you 5 people have replied. So leaving them up here would probably just leave us by ourselves, at square one... again... I'd rather have a completed map, that can be improved on than a map that is idealess and gets even *less* feedback.

- Ogre Smash Lord. I will look over him, he will probably get a str decrease/ int/agi increase. I hope to keep him in as having a Ogre hero is not only original, but cool.

- Warchief. Will look over his abilities.

- Blood Ritualist. Will look over abilities. Sounds like a problem that needs addressing.

- Chaos Peon. Will be removed.

- Having a Chaos Grunt, is a replacement, but it makes it so someone who upgrades that far, would have an advantage as they should. And someone would upgrade Berserker Strength still, because it affects Chaos Grunts too.

- Chaos Raider. This is supposed to be a better/main Melee/seige unit for Orcs. Melee seige meaning a melee seige, not seige unit, because catapult would be prefered choice of course for seigeing bases.

- Ogre. Pretty much a new unit that lets you have a heavy melee that does great damage, has bash... but has weak heavy armor, so has a weakness.

- Supposed to be a heavy ranged unit. I thought it was a good idea, and I guess Blizzard agreed somewhat. In the beta they made an upgrade for Headhunters. All races have a new Heavy Ranged unit.

- Chaos Kodo. hmm.. good point.

- War Rider. Added in for variety. Uses Berserker Strength upgrade and Pillage... Just put in to diversify strategies.

- Ogre-Magi. I'm pretty sure the Ogres in WII were called this. Will look over.

- Salamander Vizier. Good point.

- Warlock. Will be rebalanced for sure.

- Red Drake. Is already in for a rebalance next version. I hope to make it weaker than say a wyvern, but the Devour makes it more useful.

- Generals. The Generals were added in to be strong and help your army. They are also a concept that im pretty sure is nowheres else. We tried to make the map have appeal, by being full of original ideas. If we remove Generals, what makes this dif than any other advanced melee? Besides not being lame and taking 10mins to make and never being tested like most. The map needs to have new concepts or else people would just play ladder.

- Overall. You gave me lots to think about. It is entirely possible we could streamline map more next version. But I do not want to goto the extreme of only having 2 new units and 1 new hero. As I said before, it would be great and all, but people cpuld just play ladder. Thanks for the feedback. I will discuss these with Rivin and Laevatienn and see what the Triumvirate :) decides. Also for you being on team... I will also discuss. You could probably help alot with ideas and testing. Keep up the good work!

Fiery_Maelstrom
[email protected]

Interesting feedback, thanks.

I see, Fiery has posted already so I'll keep it short.

-Play Humans and Undead.

We have very minimal feedback for those two races, everyone is giving suggestions for the Night Elves and the Orcs.

Thanks,

-Riven

I got some feedback on undead... me and a mate tried to do the but then he figured out that ghouls cost 1 food before and the rush that followed was invicible as he dont have to pay for zigs after he's built his first. emote_sweat I can foresee that the game could just become who can reach 40 food with ghouls fastest. 33 ghouls just as you've maybe broken into tier 2 is not a nice sight.

Ziggarauts didn't cost gold OR lumber? After the first you say? I don't understand. Are you implying that they are free? Or just cheap?

Hmm... Perhaps the 1 food on the ghouls should be changed. That's insane.

I'll talk these over with Fiery...

Still unclear about the costs of the Ziggaraut.

:no: Fiery_Maelstrom


-Riven

Ghouls food cost will be changed next version.

Fiery_Maelstrom
[email protected]