Uber AOS?

Hey all,

A friend and I have been working on a new AOS (I'll bet you're tired of hearing that...) However, we, as almost everybody does, promise ours to be unique. We've got a few awesome ideas being made right now, but we could always use more. So, tell us, what would you like to see in an AOS? I personally dislike the fairly monotonous, strategy-less objectives, so we're fixing that. What do you guys suggest? If possible, we'd like to include enough custom models and such to make this an actual mod. What would it take to get you to download it and play it online?


Thanks

--TiJiL

You should have some modding like models. It shouldnt be too large not over 1.5mb unless u got website. I suggest u add a minimap preview because it makes the map stand out from the rest. I like not too complicated spells, in some aos they use triggers and over do it.

Yes, I am hammering away at a few models. As for complicated spells, what's your definition of complicated? What's an example of a spell that's too complex?

if every hero was a custom model...not a custom skin but model i would 100% surely check it out. that takes lots of work and just that alone would certainly get you lots of respect from me because if you took that much time on models you musta put that much time into it all....atleast i would hope so. also all skills gotta be custom...you can throw in some renamed and edited ones as long as they are good.

Cool, cool. I am working on a rather nice list of models. All of the heroes will eventually be modeled, and we have a few unique concepts, which, if I can do them well, should turn out quite nicely.

Hmmmm... maybe an indivual quest system would be nice. Unique, and may add fun.

Like the Pandaren Hero gets a quest to find the randomly dropped Beer of Power. It will boost his stats. This gives people something to do other than kill units.

Or you can give mission + counter mission. Like there's a special caravan that will summon WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and you're supposed to kill it. However, an enemy hero is given the same objective to protect it. Reward with money... exp... blahblah... well I think it may add variety to a many-hour-long AoS like map and give people stuff to do other than KILL.

- Also enables people to stray away from battles if they're too low level

OOooOOooOooo i really really like the mission and counter mission idea. that would be very cool to have someone trying to defend something while your trying to kill it. or you could even have a nuetral city that people have to persuade to join thier effort and if they win they get more troops spawned and stuff like that. would be cool.

I disagree with the modelling everything, it is an AoS that you are making and hence it will be made to be played online, modelling can easily eat away at least 250k each from your 4 MB max for a battle.net map. Also alot of people won't be able to play a map that comes anywhere near 4 MBs due to slower computer load time and DL time.

Many people are starting to consider the AoS market presently saturated, and there are alot more AoS maps in progress that are about to be released. But if you do want to make an AoS, a couple of recommendations. Obviously you will need some eye candy to attract people to your game initially. Biggest trick will of course be balancing eye candy with file size. Next you will need to look into a truely unique style of play, maybe things like a different skill gaining system/levelling system. Things to distract people from the base AoS system which is becoming old news, such as quests. Then in the end, the last thing you will have to be very careful about is balance. Heroes need to give people a sense of power with out entering the realm of cheese, people despise being in situations where they are powerless to stop themselves from dying, but on the other hand they don't ever want to feel like their hero isn't greatly influencing the battle.

On a closing note, it is unfortunate to state that even if you make a great map. It will have troubles competing for a piece of the pie.(Sorry if my post seems really pestimistic)8))

Like too much JASS enhanced. It makes it longer to load.

No problem, Illithid. Negative replies are better than positive ones, really. Thanks for all the comments, everyone. We are working on a few quests, though we hadn't thought of making them very story-like in manner. One of the concepts that I like that we are working on is terrain that is affected by the characters. For instance, the map will be criss-crossed with bonuses and shortcuts that apply to particular characters. One of the heroes is flame related (I won't go into further details). The bonus associated with him is starting a forest fire in a particular area, which burns enemies that walk through it, as well as healing him. We are trying to think up a unique hidden bonus for each hero.

Now, as for a unique system of leveling, do you guys have any suggestions? We had not considered that, and if we could manage to do it, that would be cool.

As an example of one of the other features we're including to help get us away from the worn out AOS style is the cannons. Each base has a powerful anti-unit cannon. However, the enemy base has shield generators which protect it from the cannon's fire. If you manage to destroy all three of them, your cannon will begin to bombard your foes. If you lose your shield generators, a worker will be dispatched to create new ones.

Finally, we've made the terrain pretty cool, in that it isn't merely equal spawns clashing in the center. The terrain makes the spawns actually have their own strategic value. One of the routes/spawns is the shortest and most direct path to the enemy, but is much much more dangerous to traverse, for instance.

And Illithid, we've got some pretty awesome eye candy in the works. As for not getting a slice of the pie, that's ok. I personally just want enough fame to have people try it and like it.


Thanks again for all comments.



So... Any other comments/Suggestions?

I"m the other guy on this team...


Anyone played Diablo II? Another nice feature we have is Gemmable items. Just like socketed items... Already worked out the triggers.

Time Gem plus, say, a Broad Sword, gives you a broad sword that slows with every attack, and will occasionally cast the spell slow for a doubled effect.



-Tobar

I thought of a cool leving system Awhile ago but never put it into motion. It cotains alot of work but offers a SHITLOAD of unique hero possiblities. for an example, say there is a mage class. Ok the first skills avable are the basic nerco, hydro, pyro and maybe healing. When you pick one of these basic spells it disables the other ones and opens up a new tree of spells. and on as many times as you like. This allows some to play a single class 5 times and have a completely differn't guy each time. I just never found a good map for myself to implement it on.

EDIT: one thing about spawns, aquistion range. I found that you can make them ALOT more intellgent by just giving them unlimited aquistion range. This way they act on their own AI and if there is open paths they will try to support nearby paths if they are in trouble.

PS: I had a lvl 56 necro in DII, had the arm of king leoric. Got pretty boring when all I had to do was walk around and my summons slaughtered everything. hehe, all that blood....

The spawn thing doesn't apply here. I can't really give you more than that, but it simply doesn't, because we have a VERY unique path pattern. You'd have to see it to understand it, really, but here's a little description of attack routes...

There are three ways to attack the enemy base:
Assault Front: Your troops have a huge advantage, you are in range of your own towers most of the time.
Critical Front: Your enemy's assault front. You are in range of THEIR towers most of the time. Failure to defend it will ultimately result in a loss of troop flow to your assault front.
Direct Front: Neither side has a real advantage, plus it is the quickest path to the enemy's base; HOWEVER, the troops are extremely powerful in this area and low level heroes will likely get cut to pieces if they stay there long.


EDIT: I like your leveling idea, but we can't use it. Our heroes are too unique and it wouldn't make sense with most of them. For instance... we will have a Druid of the Club that turns into an Ankylosaurus as his ultimate. Would look quite stupid to see him casting, say, a fire based spell.

ok, I can see that being a problem for the aquisition, what about my skill system?

(See edit)

If it were possible to think up about 20 spells for every hero, your idea would be very good. But, as it stands, we are thinking of 6 each; 2 innate and the standard leveling spells. I mean, realistically, if you want to make every hero unique and equally cool, there is no way to have 20 different spell options. We may make one hero, however, that you could customize... I'll talk it over with TiJiL...