| - NibelungNomads (+5 - best): The custom build animations and extensive attachments applied to the buildings really helps separate this race from the other melee races.
The custom models for units seems well thought out, though the hero's model seems a tad unfitting in my opinion. Arthas wielding Frostmourne would probably have been better, a black paladin with a pompous mustache just doesn't seem to work aesthetically as the hero for me :/
When a supply depot pack horse goes to assemble into a supply depot, the horse stays and a depot is created :O (All other buildings I tested worked as they should have ;)
The armaments system that the workers can acquire workers very smoothly.
This race seemed polished and tended to work out well, though even with the level of attachments it seemed like it was missing something. It seemed a little plain, which I imagine was accomplished through the seeming lack of flashy magic and whimsical effects on a large portion of the units. They seemed more realistic than the other races, being primarily humans with a more realistic assortment of armor, the village provided workers, etc. I for one am more interested in scantily clad babes blasting flashy magic to bring down opponents, but I suppose the seeming blandness of your race is more of a neutral thing than being either good or bad.
Overall this race seemed to have more working for it than against it, and most of the race seemed to be a little more polished than the others I tested, thereby giving it the highest rating.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - WitchesOfCeronen (+4): The banshee should have been able to do some sort of work besides 1 time summoning, having one sitting around kind of felt like a waste of food supply after the lumber economy was started up. Being able to sacrifice them into the creation of the super-unit was a good touch though, but I would have liked it more if the banshee could do at least something to get rid of the idle worker icon from the time the game starts to when she can be sacrificed.
When I played this race a second time with your final submission the gold mine ceased to work correctly, it would only send 1 coin to the town hall when they were connected and then abruptly stop :( (This made it very tedious to test)
18 upgrades is a bit overkill, and the upgrades added a rather cluttered and confusing level to this race. 18 happens to be the same number of upgrades that the Undead Scourge has, and the Naga only have 6. With the more limited number of buildings, units, and places to put upgrades, less upgrades would have been one of those circumstances were less is more. Having the massive number of upgrades available also made it much harder to find out how to get additional units and expand up the tech tree, especially in finding out how to get the super-unit. If the upgrade number was kept to something more manageable it would be much easier to find out how to upgrade units, get the super-unit, and so on. Some upgrades were unneeded and shouldn't have to be researched, and cramming the upgrades onto a few structures really killed the ability to research upgrades from different structures, and pretty much necessitated building multiples of buildings with upgrades just to have them researched in a useful time-frame.
This race was not as intuitive or user-friendly as it could have been, the worker could not do much, the icons were hard to sort out, etc.
The units seemed relatively well balanced for their costs, including the super unit. The super unit actually seemed a tad weak for its extensive costs to bring into being, compared to the level 10 dragons that can be summoned in some maps.
The building creation, birth effects, and building attachments were done very well.
Their were plenty of things that could have been improved upon for this race, but overall it works relatively well, creates a unique feel with it's aesthetics and abilities, and had enough new and creative ideas to stand on its own.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Bone (+3): The town hall turning into the ultimate unit was an interesting concept, but made it difficult to expand to other regions of the map. Having to produce a crystal wyrm and then have it build a town hall was rather time consuming, it would have been nice if the gravediggers could build the town hall, rather than always having to resort to first creating a crystal wyrm.
The crystal wyrm did not really stand out much as a super unit for only being allowed one, it's stats seemed nearly identical to the frost wyrm as far as stats are concerned.
The warlocks can summon 20 skeletons. Really? 20? And they have no expatriation timer. That offers major lag and the ability to camp in the starting base and send wave after wave of essentially free and endless units at the enemy. Its like sending zerglings without the need for acquiring resources, the temptation was to much. I slaughtered all three computers I was up against and had the lowest resource score at the games end. That shouldn't happen.
The summoned skeletons cost food, but summoning them does not check the food cap. It was easy to get up to ~150 food worth of units, primarily skeletons, to send at my enemies.
The warlocks should have had their cost (gold, lumber, and food) reflect the ability to bolster the army size by summoning minions that last until slain, and the summoned minions should cost no food and have a maximum limit of something closer to 3-6, depending on how their stats are allocated. With your beefed-up skeletons, probably something like 3 would have been sufficient.
The grave diggers could have used a different model, the acolyte looks pretty funny attacking trees. The sound set you chose for it also seemed a little weird, and probably would have worked better with a different model, + its not like comical grave digger's aren't available, this would have fit the sound set much better, and served to differentiate the race from the scourge a little more ;)
The icon for the basilisk could have been something different than a seal, if you need any help with making quick icon fixes you could always ask someone to help you out, it takes very little time and effort to make new icons ;)
The overall model selection for units and buildings was very reminiscent of the undead scourge, and it was difficult to imagine this race as a separate race. The warlocks could have used one of the Kel'Thusald necromancer models, the grave diggers could have been zombies using the skin above, or could have been villagers, the skeleton warriors could have used the skeleton orc model, etc. But just about all of the units were using models already represented in the existing melee races, which really didn't create a unique aesthetic for this race.
The anti-air artillery unit was creative, and the ability to consume corpses to increase in power for the abominations was pretty cool.
The hero spells seemed well done, fit in with the races them, and seemed balanced enough for melee play.
A race based on corpses is an interesting concept, but the Undead Scourge has an extensive investment in the use of corpses as well. Overall the race, though different from the Scourge, did not stand out enough for me :( . The race wasn't terrible though either, and more or less struck a middle ground for the races I tested.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Chess (+2): Despite the fact most of the unit and building models are used in the existing races they worked for the concept and fit the idea of this race pretty well, I can't think of many units that could have used a different model. That being said some units such as the knight still could have used the alternate-color version available in WC3, in this case the Bandit Lord. The king also seemed to use a model that didn't fit, the admiral strikes me more of a king that sits on the thrown and looks pretty, or one that existed during the period of time that gunpowder made the use of armor obsolete. Considering the amount of armor-clad units on this race, he just didn't seem to fit, and I would have rather seen an imported model or the use of a more armored hero, such as Uther (while his portrait is the same as the melee paladin, his armor is much more epic). There are also some pretty kingly skins out their, such as this one Skin Link ;)
The knight seemed very similar to the human knight, the only major difference was the siege damage type.
Having workers that double as basic attackers means the person next to you is dead. Having them able to build structures as well means you can do a combination of a tower rush and zergling rush at the very start of the game without having to wait for a spawning pool or any structure to produce warriors. Being able to promote pawns into anything once they get into the enemy base is a little messed up to, it like setting up a barracks in their starting zone. All things considered, this race had every rush tactic readily available at the very beginning of the game, which I find to be horrendously overpowered.
The Hero can be produced at the start of the game without waiting for an altar to be constructed, and is produced instantaneously. Paired with the pawns, this race has a severe advantage over all others in the game's beginning.
The pawns seem to move more quickly than standard harvester units, causing them to return harvested resources faster, and requiring less to mine gold.
Several of the King's abilities had no icon for learning the ability, as they were represented by the super-sexy and by no means obnoxious bright green squares that appear when no icon information is given.
The nationalism aura was named endurance aura in it's learning tooltip.
I was able to build as many queens as I could supply food for, either from the castle, or through promotion. When a queen was built 1 of the castles would have a cooldown for it to be built again, and all others would not.
Being able to promote pawns into any unit is a very powerful aspect to this race, and drastically reduces the time needed to produce units if they are all promoted from pawns. This added a unique feel to the race, and its name fits the concept very well.
The queen used a skin I made, which makes me very happy just to see it being used :D
Overall this race had a nice aesthetic feel, though it seemed rather unfinished. With flaws in tooltips, learning abilities, producing multiple super units, and blatant unbalancing this race could have stood to be worked on much more. These are the reasons it is rated as it is :(
There should probably be a worker unit that upgrades into the pawn, as A). - the pawns are incredible overpowered, being able to easily defend a base under attack, quickly rush and attack opponents at the game start, build structures, and generally their high stat-to-cost ratio, and B) - medieval armies are not powered by the foot soldiers working, rather by the peasants and surfs that work the land and pay soldiers for their offered protection. The pawns can just simply do to much :/
Another building could have dispersed the massive amount of upgrades and made the race feel a little cleaner as well, mostly the upgrades in the Castle.
The theme for this race is probably the coolest out of the group, but the exaction could use a lot more work. A lot more. I could sympathies with not getting an ability or two not to work, but it seems much more than that is not working correctly for this race, hence its lower rating :((( <- super sad face.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Templar (+1): Hard to differentiate this race from the humans, the starting units all look the same and work in much the same way.
The ultimate unit is nearly impossible to get, not many of the units have the stats to get 15 kills.
considering the food limits in WC3, 15 kills can account for half of an army - or even an entire army, which makes it close to impossible to reach (without codes).
I would recommend changing this limit to something a little more attainable, and also making it based off of the level or food cost of the slain unit, not just a unit has died. Bringing down a frost wyrm is much tougher than a skeleton warrior, and that should be justly represented. Also, the super-unit should probably require no higher level value of kills than the super unit itself is worth, so around ten would be better.
The ultimate unit kind of sucks at first, he has low damage and isn't particularly impressive, but when he dies and is reborn he is extremely overpowered. When I tested this race out he took down a good 150 food worth of units, as he got cloistered between two armies. And he survived through the demise of both armies, only to die afterward from being unable to find anything to leech life off of.
The model selection for the units and buildings seemed rather uninspired. Considering just about every structure doodad is a human building it's not like their is a lack of resources :/
Most of the hero abilities had no icon for learning the ability, causing a super sexy and by no means atrociously obnoxious bright green square to appear in it's place.
Several ranged units had unfitting projectiles, or no projectiles at all. The only difference between the archers and dwarven rifleman was the model and icon from what I can tell, the missile art and instant attack type were the same. The super-unit ghost also had no missile art, I'm guessing it had a normal/melee attack rather than a ranged attack, or simply no missile art :/
The buff for the hero's ability that boosts damage and defense was that of roar, and the casting art was the same. This ability also had no learn icon, which makes me think it was a quick conversion of the normal spell into a hero variant.
The Templar were one of three types of knights used in the crusades, and this race seemed to have little to no basis in it's ties to it's name.
This race seemed hastily thrown together, a few of the abilities were not working, the super unit was impossible to get and could easily bring down armies when obtained. The overall feeling I got from playing this race was "The contest deadline is when :O, I better get something submitted quick; I don't have the time for balancing and polishing it :(" Hence the lowest score.
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I couldn't test the Scorpions map out so will leave it unrated for now, if anyone is willing to help me test this map I would appreciate the help :D (or I guess with the disclaimer on the voting submission unrated forever :O)
Right now I don't see the map when in WC3 after I boot it up in the folder it should be in (it is there in my program files), and I haven't quite figured out how do get the Jass compiler to work on my computer, so I can't change the 90% handicap to something I can force-start form the world editor :( If nothing else I would enjoy testing it out :D
(* Automatic vote: TheOnslaught +8 *) |
