Mage Duel Map: Good Idea?

A month or so after TFT came out I did some work on a Mage Duel map. The idea came from some Dungeons and Dragons Fiction I read. (url for the main page here: http://web.mit.edu/eakeyes/www/dnd.htm) The idea is that 2 mages are going to duel so they each get teleported to opposite ends of dangerous valley. To win you must find and kill your opponent and come to a certain location in three days.

The map would involve lots of strategy because you must creep to gain experience and money for items, but you must also be wary not to be caught too weak by your opponent. There would be 6 mages to choose from each with their own advantages and disadvantages. There would be shops that sold items like sentry wards and traps as well as the normal potions, etc.

The drawbacks of this map are that if the map is too small it might end to quickly and not really incorporate much strategy into it but if it's too large you run the risk of the two duelers never finding each other. Of course, there are methods to get around this happening, like making a purchaseable item that pings the location of your adversary on the mini map for 2 minutes, or an item that summons you both to a dueling arena for 1 minute, that sort of thing.

Anyways, give me feedback on what you think of the idea, because I'm almost finished with a mini rpg and I'm interested in moving on to a new project afterwards, since i had so much fun making and playtesting the rpg map and I'd like to continue making things.

Hrm... well it would be good if it has nice terrian + gameplay.

exspect nothing else from fr0ggE!!!!

OK assuming that the terrain was nice, and the heroes were balanced, does this map sound like fun? I'm worried that it might turn out to be a little dull because a lot of it would have to be creeping and there prolly wouldn't be many duels with the other mage. After all when the 2 of you meet, unless someone is clearly weaker atm, you will fight and someone will die.

There will be items to buy like Potion of Expedious Retreat, that sort of thing, to give people the option of getting away after losing a bout with the opponet, or for catching someone trying to run.

I guess one way to try and prevent boredom would be to add some quests that you could do in the meantime. In fact when i planned it out originally every character would have a character specific quest, some of the quests would be to acquire your familiar (each character has a different familiar), other quests would be to get your ultimate spell, that sort of thing. I'm away from my computer right now but i have a lot lot lot of ideas written down.

I'm just worried the overall it would turn out kinda boring. What do you people think?

It might be fun. Of course, you could always add in more players instead of just 2. Of course, it'd have to be ffa and not teams. I think 4 players in a medium-large sized map might jsut do it, in fact if you need//want help I'll be glad to assist with anything except terrain, and skins :)

yeah a 4 person free for all would definitely be more interesting. A lot more of characters running into each other and probably a bit more strategy as well as a bit more randomness.

One thing about making it free for all is that smart players might be reluctant to engage in hero fights at all cuz you're going to get beat up. There would have to be a big enough reward for killing someone to compensate for the risk of getting all injured and stuff.

There would be XP of course, maybe i should make most items droppable on death. So you get XP, you get items.

hmm what do others think?

well, the 4 ffa sounds kinda bad cuz, one player could sit at his start position, wait for someone to get killed and get into fight when they are all weakened :)
if u'r making a more than 2 players, make 2 teams :)

sounds good do it :)

What do people think of a 2v2 game like this? How about a not-quite free for all game where every character had his own goal and there could be alliances of certain characters and all that.

Or how about a 4 v 1 (something like predator) where maybe 4 apprentice wizards are stalking the murderer of their master of something like that.

This is just a thought and it probably wont work, but you could make it so that there are more than just two players. You could add spectators that wait for their turn and have a tourney thingy. If someone leaves their opponent would automaticly win and the torney would go on. That way you could be a little sneaky by telling the players where their opponent is. It would involve a lot of diplomacy and that is always nice.

As for your main idea I would play it for a while. (It sounds good)

How about you make it a tourney of 1 on 1 battleS? That would be neat. Or Maybe 2 on 2 battles.

to compensate for the risk of dying make it so the hero's gain major exp for killing another hero. go into gameplay constants under advanced and find the hero exp reduction table. i believe that is the correct name and change all the numbers there into like 200. that would give the hero 200% exp for killing a hero. that would be reward enuff i believe. also making items dropable would be cool too. would make players wanna pk tho and also make weak players wanna quit. but i like that type of thing.