Need input for hero arena like map

I'm currently in the process of debugging and fixing up my newest map, Battledome ]|[, but I need some suggestions from all you mappers and custom map players :)

Battledome is essentially a hero-arena-like-map-that-doesn't-suck. In other words it's a go around with your 1 hero to kill other player's heroes map, but unlike most hero arena maps it's not going to suck (so don't suggest stuff that would only be useful when you're controlling 100 guys or something). With 150 triggers and 87 variables so far, it better not ;)

1) One of the things the game features are rampages. These are like GTA3 style rampages -- they're events that randomly occur that are meant to make the chaos even more furious. Basically random stuff to make things more interesting. If you 'win' a rampage (how to do this is different for each one) then you get a random reward. So far I have:

-Spawns a sheep on the map, that if you kill, kills everyone else and gives you credit (money/xp).
-Bounty Hunt, which makes the leading player give a rampage reward if killed.
-Teleport all players to the center of the map for instant carnage (not a winnable rampage)
-Invasion, tons of creeps flood the level, whoever kills the most in a minute wins
-Quad Damage, everyone does 4X damage for a minute.
-King of the Hill (speaks for itself)

What other rampages would be cool to add?

2) I need more ideas for hero skills. Inparticular, I'm looking for hero skills that could be used together strategically. For example, the panda in my map has fire trail (makes fire trail behind him as he walks) and switch (makes him switch places with another unit). One tactic is to stand still to let the fire build up under you, then switch places with another unit, so now it's standing in the middle of a bunch of fire. What hero skills would be cool to add?

3) Another new feature is limit breaks. These are like the limit breaks from Final Fantasy 7 if you've ever played that. If not -- basically a limit break is a super spell that you can only use once you've been attacked enough. Everytime you're attacked your meter goes up, and when the enemy does more damage it goes up more, and when it's full you can use your super spell. When you use the super spell you can't use it again until the meter is full again.

How should I determine when the player has received enough damage? I'm having a really hard time tweaking this to be just right.

4) I mentioned before that winning a rampage gives a random reward. What rewards would it be cool to have? Besides the standard attack/defense boosts. I already have a bunch of stuff like critical strike, pheonix fire, life leech...

5) How can melee combat be made more strategic? In other words, how can I make sure the player has to actively do stuff with their hero, not just right click on them once. I added points on the map that give mana/life among other things to try and soup things up.

6) The 3rd (and last) big feature my map has is rune spells. There are certain runes throughout the map on the ground (the Runes black citadel doodad) that when you step on, you can cast a special ability -- but only while you're standing on the rune. I'm still 1 short of these -- what would be a cool rune spell to add?

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS IS NOT A TEAM MAP. It's FFA.

*shameless bump*

1)

There are some things that would really spice up the game, and i think the coolest would be a few (not neccessery to have that many) where every player takes a pause and plays a mini-game, doing different cool mini-games. You could take some of the most popular ideas from uther party and such and i think this would fit perfectly in your map.

2)
Kinda depends on the map terrain, but a thought is:

Everburning Fire:
Iluminates the target in fire damaging it for # at second.+

And have the only way to dispel that is getting to a certain point (water)...could be a pool in the middle of the map (again, depends on the terrain).

3)

A rain of chaos limit, where chaotic'ly fast meteors (inferno) strike down at random points around the whole map... i don't know how you'll make this only damage enemies, and you may also have it rain down "near" your own hero, but anyways...do something like that...

And have the limit bar displayed at the leaderboard (or multiboard, whatever), this makes fighting alot more interesting...

Should i attack him, he has 88% limit :/, or
hmm, i have 88% limit, i'm gonna hurry and fill it up by giving enemies something to attack.



4)

I think this is a very good idea, i also got this idea awhile ago for my brainstorming for a good map. The rewards to every interesting stuff would always be "displayed" at the start of the rampage, this would serve as a real cool motivation on everybody and all would try alot harder (like blizzard does in WOW).

I like to think of all kinds of different stuff, examples would be:

500 xp
"abilities like you mention"
gold (depends on your economy)
Items of different powerful summons.
Rune-tome (allows you to cast your rune power at any place)
All kinds of other different "interesting" items, items that may run beefed up versions of the skills you already made.

5)

As you already thought of, putting around all kinds of different stuff around the map, and make them have a cooldown (something like NE's food generator).
The runes already help make this really interesting, one will want to run away when one notices the enemy starting to do something crazy.
Other locations of interest.

Portal of random (teleports you to a random point on the map, a escape point, could be abused, but would be ok prolly as all persons would know of this and avoid other people for using it.

Pool: used with that flame spell ;)... and may have other bonuses, could "slow", but i guess you dont want that.

Other stuff would be terrain variety, like having choke points and stuff.

6)

My fade-filter skill ;) lol, nah, whatever, but i think anyways that it would work well as the target would panic and try "blindly" to run away, but you already decided about that one.

If this is team based map, you could have a limit-filler rune-skill, that empties yours own but fills all your allies's...similar to that FF7 limit, this could also be as a limit, but i think most people are too selfish to take away their 100% limit to support others... that is, if they really have a choice (of limits)...

Steal money rune skill...

Well the point is that i don't really know how this rune stuff works...can you just search for a rune anywhere and use it at any time...?...is there a cooldown? ... :/

Well, i did this just for the fun of it, and becouse you had no replys and a shameful bump :p, i also just thought of 1 thing for each of these as i just wanted to bring up ideas, not spend the whole night brainstorming for you, lol :p

Good luck with the map, and i'd enjoy betatesting with you.

Cubasis

I also wanted to place a limit break system in a map awhile back but i had trouble figuring out how to measure the dmg exactly and convert it in a % that would be displayed in a leaderboard. Limit breaks also should not be too easy to obtain, and every time you lvl or your limit break lvls or however you want to do it, it should become more difficult to raise your limit break (more dmg will be required to get the same percentage as you get stronger, but your enemies will hopefully be getting stronger as well.) Lemme know how you work this out if you do.

It sounds like a very good idea with the rampages as well. I was thinking that you could make a random item (within a certain item lvl range say, 1-4 or 5) for certain rampages so that the winner may end up winning a ery decent weapon or armor, or possibly just a potion when they win the rampage and nonone will have a way of knowing what will show up. The reward will show up in a special storage that only that char can get to, which will make sure the item is theirs even if they don't have inventory room for it.

You could also create rampages that take gold or another sort of penalty upon players that lose, which makes everyone fight to keep what they have. I can't wait to see how this turns out!emote_sweat

What exactly is this fade-filter skill you made which you speak of, Cubaisis?

- Lazurus

Thanks for the suggestions =)

I think I'll use the limit break rune idea for a convert mana -> damage rune spell. I'll even use the sound effect of Neo saying, "Hit me." ;)

Ooooooh.... that's a good idea =)

That'll certainly make people more anxious to participate. ^_^

lol lazurus.

The idea was that when you use this spell on that rune, all heros in a radius of 1000 would suddenly get:

1) a alpha'd 75% fade filter, so they'd see very little, or
2) a complete fade filter so they'd see nothing (the panda fade filter :))

The spell would also cancel everything that player was doing (don't know about spells) so if the target was attacking the caster, he'd stop it.

This would make the target players panic, and they would have few possibilities, they could run away (blindly), or they could try to see through the fade filter (as context sensitive cursor brings the name of everything it runs over "through" the fade filter). So they could try to continue fighting, but it'd be hard for them,

At that time the caster would be lucky as he could go around attacking targets and use other skills he has.

Another thought was to make the target player-camera "zoom" completely in, so they saw little-too nothing. but then they would have to use minimap to run away or something.

But i've already contributed this idea, and it obviously does not fit into what he wants with this map. So i don't bother nagging him about it :p.

Cubasis

ps.
Cloud, This is a fairly hard thing to do, you have to notice everything the user does, it's mainly hard with warcraft's system, would be easier with ones own hp-system, but anyways.

You can f.ex. work with the difference of max hp (and this way "store" hp's that the hero gets via healing) and current hp, and find out the difference, put it into a variable, and reset the max hp variable. But it's definetely do'able.

Well it already works, I'm just having trouble tweaking when the player has sustained enough damage =)

When the player picks their hero, I use the new TFT action "Add event" to add a Unit Takes Damage event for the hero that was just created. Then it adds (Damage Taken)/(Max Unit Life) to the limit break meter. Then when the meter reaches 5, the player can use their break. I'm gonna lower that though. It theoretically should work well, since the player's max life should get bigger with level, thus the same amount of damage gives smaller boosts to your meter, but the problem is that damage seems to increase faster than HP :P

For JASS spells I add the meter by hand.

Another question for everyone: I have a limit break called Telefrag, which causes the panda to teleport inside a random enemy, causing them to explode and doing area of effect damage to anyone nearby. What my testers keep complaining about is that there's no way for the victim to block it -- they explode instantly no matter what. But if I make it do a set amount of damage, then I'm going to have a panda stuck inside a guy :P What should I do?