Most hero arenas are filled with constant killing of neutral units, followed by everyone watching 2 players fight. Mix in some overpowered tomes, and you have 99% of the hero arenas on B.net now. Greed is a new spin on a hero arena. Greed uses the smallest map size (32x32) to keep the combat constant and team-oriented. The goal of the game is to accumulate 2000 gold. Simple enough right?
Heroes
Currently, there are 7 heroes. Each side picks from the same set of heroes, but there is a limit of 1 hero-type per team. To make it so the heroes start fully developed from level 1, every hero starts with 1 point in each of their four hero skills. The maximum hero level is 16, and each ability has a maximum level of 5. The heroes' roles are as unique as their themes. All damage in the map is physical, so armor affects every type of damage. Every hero takes advantage of a condition system inspired by Desert of Exile. Below is a list of the conditions:
Burn - Affected units take 20 damage per second.
Bleed - Affected units take 10 damage per second.
Poison - Affected units take 5 damage per second.
Paralyze - Affected units have attack speed reduced by 75%.
Slow - Affected units have move speed reduced by 50%.
Stun - Affected units are stunned.
Silence - Affected units cannot cast spells.
Pierce - Affected units lose 10 armor.
Screenshot: Hero Selection
Gold
Each player on a team shares the same stash of gold. This means that whenever a player buys an item, the gold cost is taken out of their team's pile, and whenever a player gains bounty it is put into the same stash. The most common way to gain money for your team is to kill enemy heroes, but it certainly isn't the only way. In the center of the map is a unit called the Greedy Peon. When a player attacks the peon, the peon is pushed along a path through the middle of the map toward the enemy's base. When the peon reaches the enemy's base, a portion of their stash is taken by the peon, and each team then tries to push the loaded peon back to their own base to score the bounty.
Screenshot: Greedy Peon
Events
Throughout the game, random events will occur. A few examples are a flock of golden sheep, which run around randomly while players chase them and fight over them, and a giant tornado which spins around and damages nearby units. These events can be a great alternative to gaining money aside from killing heroes, but they aren't distracting to the point where they keep players from fighting the other team's heroes.
Screenshot: Golden Sheep Event
Items
Every hero has 4 inventory slots and there are 24 items in the game. Each item has a gold cost and a level requirement, and all items are unique (Heroes may not carry two of the same item). Items cannot be dropped on the ground or traded between players. There are 4 potions and 4 basic stat items which can be used at level 1, and there are a wide array of miscellaneous, caster, damage, etc items which range up to a required level of 10. Items with a higher level requirement also have a higher gold cost. When you sell an item back, you get a 100% refund on the gold, but are given an item called "Junk" which occupies a slot in your inventory for 60 seconds until it automatically vanishes.
I must say, I really like the spells. In fact some of the best and most polished I've seen in a while.
The gameplay idea is nice... but all the games I've tried online have unfortunately ended with people claiming that the map is gay, just because they died once or twice.
It is an excellent map, I must say. However, I did have one concern last time I played it that I forgot to mention: faster attacking heroes can make the peon move significantly faster. For example, multiples of the murloc hero can make it move at an incredible rate, neutralizing the efforts of a more, slower attacking heroes.
Um personally, I didnt like it that much. The heroes seemed to have little or no syngergy, I mean my hero (the red blademaster) was all damage and attacking "this skill boosts his damage, this skill boosts his attack speed, this is an effect on attack skill", other people said the same thing about thier hero.
I realize that making a fountain would give you a bit of a stronghold in your base, but I really think the game is slowed down without a fountain. I realize the map was supposed to be fast-paced and fun with the 32 by 32, but I really think making deaths matter so much and not having a fountain killed it. I mean I've seen it done before, I thought Fulla's Warcraft Arena and it's small map (smaller than yours in terms of fighting space) made it work, but here you're scared of dying but once you get to a certain health % you have to either die or just hang around at the fringes of battle hoping not to get killed and waiting for your potions cooldown to come off.
I thought the peon idea was good, but wasnt quite sure how to get back my gold once the team had stolen it. I attacked him but he kept going further into our base and never returned the gold. The events were nice too, especially the golden sheep.
Overall, it had some nice ideas but felt the gameplay could have been better.
I'll look into what the deal is with faster attacking units and the peon. It's possible that they simply deal more damage per second, which means I'll have to lower it to match the other heroes.
My goal with designing the heroes was to make each hero fill a very specific role and have a unique gameplay style. The synergy in this game is not between one skill and another on the same hero, but in the combination of heroes on a team. Obviously I didn't design perfect heroes, so I'll take any specific hero problems and suggestions to heart.
The problem with a fountain at base is simple: people will use it. Which means that people will be spending time away from the fighting, which is pretty much the opposite of the type of gameplay I'm aiming for. I'll probably add a regenerative buff which you gain after killing an enemy, since you're absolutely right about the problem in which people will skirt around the fighting when they get low.
As for the peon, I thought it was quite intuitive. You attack the peon to push it into the enemy's base and steal gold. Then you keep attacking it and the peon is pushed back to your base with the gold. Did the peon actually go past your circle without giving you the gold? It's possible that there was a bug with it.
Greed is a map that attempts to add a new spin to the 'hero arena' genera. I guess it does that, to the extent that changing 'kills' to 'gold' and removing the safe area is considered changing things.
Really, this map is a normal hero arena, with the removal of duels and replacing the creeps with 'special events'. Although, don't let that deter you from the gameplay.
This map contains some of the better spells that I've seen in a while, and is terrained, almost, to a tee. The balance is also pretty much 'spot on', although things could do with a bit of tweaking here and there. A prime example of this is the ability for the Mage to tank.
On the topic of tweaking, you may need to do some editing to your triggers/jass. The greedy peon can be, somewhat easily, bugged up and it's possible to spawn camp the enemy team; you can buy items from either teams shops.
All in all, this map isn't too shoddy. It does, however, have a long way to improve to be, in my opinion, accepted into the database.
I played a game of 3vs3, but in the very first seconds of the game, one of my team members quit the game, leaving me with only one companion left, but we did not give up. Instead, we owned. I got to around level 12, 13 whilst the others were maybe level 5, and so I could easily kill them enemies of. My other team member left for dinner when the game was nearing an end, and so I was left alone on the battlefield. I lost the game but at one time had 1990 gold before the Greedy Peon robbed me and gave it to the other team who won.
Pros:
I liked the idea very much, and it never got boring.
The random events we're amazing, and they also contributed to the fact that did not get boring.
Lots of different items and customization availiable.
I for one liked the Preview image, it gave you a clear image of what the game was about. Gold!
The heroes seemed to have nice spells, judging from the hero I played, anyways.
Cons:
Heroes seemed abit unbalanced, it's hard for me to say from one game, but the Red Blademaster seemed very good, whilst some others seemed weaker.
Even though lots of items existed, you didn't wanna spend gold on items that costed like 80g since you was still aiming for your goal, 2000.
You leveled up to quickly, and thus the level requirement for items wasn't really necesarry.
Might add some more random events, and perhaps add an option in the beginning for the host to pick the Gold Goal for the game, since the game did not take that long, if I remember correctly.
Overall, this was a fairly nice map, and it was fun troughout the entire game. Only thing that bugged me was that the name didn't seem to attract so many people, since it dosen't say anything really about the game if you haven't played it, maybe i'm wrong. I would suggest to work on balance and perhaps add one or two new features, other than that, it was a pretty decent map.
The first time I played Greed I didn't think highly of the map afterwards. Everything had gone wrong in the game and the hero picking didn't even seem to work for some of the players. But I thought I should give it a second go with atleast 3 people on each team so it felt more like a full line-up, and so I did.
After this second playthrough I enjoyed the game much more than the first time, though it still had some pretty big downsides. Overall it was an entertaining match even though the leveling system seemed to be bugged and mass leveled players at random.
The good
Interesting map concept.
Entertaining and easy to understand gameplay.
Simple but fitting and good looking terrain. I especially like the barn with the goblin.
Excellent random events, though it could use some more than the few there is.
The bad
Poor hero choosing system. It's just weird and unnescesary.
Leveling is weird and doesn't seem to function well at all. One hero was level 15 while the rest was level 4-5, then by luck I killed him and raised 8 levels at once.
Odd item system. In general people didn't pay much attention to items as they took away from your gold reserves and didn't do enough to be worth the waste. Also the restrictions is unnescesary as you reach max level in no time.
Heroes are dull, the spells are dull. Make them more arena oriented.
The peon couldn't return the gold to the side it stole from, which in my opinion is ridiculous. That basically means as soon as you get the peon to an enemy base, they lose X gold regardless of what happens unless the team that stole it gets it back to their base. THEN the other team has another chance.
The Demon Lord is imbalanced as shit. Condition immunity that he had enabled forever? Jesus Christ, he has the life to spare to take the bonus damage and be immune to God knows everything that matters to half the heroes. Also, some heroes are too reliant on conditions, which presents a problem since there are so many that uh, can just ignore them.
The hero combat is uneventful and downright boring. I think there's a critical component to the PvP that you're missing, it's called aim. I was that ghost hero that had 3 click shoot abilities and a passive. That's called "Boring hero" especially with what the abilities did. There was nothing my hero did to take advantage of the invisibility she did -- Except you know, run away.
If you didn't select a hero before the timer ran out, it didn't select one properly for you. We had to restart the game we were playing because both players on my team were gipped of a hero.
You know, I hate to say this Szy, but you suffer from a bad case of amazing skill and polish, but just not creating fun maps. In the long run, it was a bunch of click-shoot, attack some sheep, attack the peon, get some cash, then voillah, it's over in 20. Also, you seem to have a really hard time crafting an atmosphere for your map. There's no overbearing 'feel' that your maps have that gets you into the map. It lacks flow, team synergy, and so forth. You don't feel like you're part of something big, you're just kind of there. It didn't feel epic, fun, or exciting at all, rather very dull and droll and repetitive for the above reasons. The problems this map has in my eyes are so fundamental that I don't think you could even fathom to fix it, it bothers me to say it, but I honestly think it's true.
For that, I kind of have to give this a disapproved. Sorry dude, you've got a shitload of talent and I'll be the first one to tell you that, but you're just creating things that aren't fun. What's a map got if it isn't fun? Nothing, I'd say, just a bunch of heartless code.
