What would be a good Hero Arena?

Hi all, sorry to trouble you all but I'm currently making a Hero Arena map and have a mind-block on ideas....sigh... so many different types of hero arena maps...

Please let me know what kind of a Hero Arena map would be good. Or what kind of a Hero Arena you want to play in.

Something simple where your focus in only on your hero and you get to smash and bash stuff.

Some personal preferences:

- Have all items always be available, nothing incites revolt like "you just stole me sword you bastard!" and then having to wait 45 seconds for the next and hope that you get to it first -- not much fun sitting inside the area while everyone else levels up outside

- Have tomes! Now, I hate when units get to 5,000 stats and all that crap, but if you create the tomes in a balanced fashion, they won't be able to afford that many. If you have a ring that grants +10 strength for 500 gold -- have the tome that grants +10 strength cost 1000-1500 gold. Even with all the coolest items in the world, somebody is going to eventually fill their inventory and need something tos pend that excess money on. Also, I hate having to click on a tome 50 million times to use up all the charges! Either have them auto-used or only 1 charge each and create several different copies of it to grant different amounts of stat points.

- Ummm... when a player leaves, remove his hero and split up his gold/lumber and experience to his allies.

- That's all I can really think of for now.. mebbe I'll get more ideas later.. I need to hit da potty! Weeeeeee

I agree that tome balancing is needed, coz when a hero's inventory is full, he will need to spend money on something...mercenaries and tomes would be great... Thanks!

I strongly discourage hero arenas. They either end up stupidly long and unbalanced(ones with tomes) or you end up with a massive cash overflow and nothing to spend it on(ones without tomes).

Make an open rpg, tower defense, AoS, hero siege, normal rpg, or minigame map, just for the love of god, NO HERO ARENAS.

That's not what he asked for, qaenyin.

It's my opinion that the original Angel Arena maps were great -- and it is possible to make an equally great, if not better, hero arena series. If you've no constructive reasoning for why you dislike hero arena maps, those which can then be improved upon, then don't post here.




More ideas:

- Creep spawns gain levels in direct proportion to the average level of the heroes in the game

- Each "safety zone" have its own arena where players can spawn their choice of a unit to fight againt -- keep in mind that point-for-point, these creeps should be less rewarding than those in the arena. Also, damage control would need to be taken into account -- you don't want some idiot spawning 50 high level creeps into his base right away and ruining his whole team.

- Mercenaries should not only proove a valuable instrument for fighting, but for support as well. Each one should have an ability to help the hero, such as an aura or healing spell.

- Something unique. Every great game has at least one unique aspect to it that people are drawn to, playing countless times to experiment and learn all there is to learn about it. I've always enjoyed being able to make stuff -- maybe have weapon forge where you can give base materials (like spider legs and ant hides that you'd find while killing creeps in the arena) to create super weapons -- ones that won't necessarily make you uber, but give you that extra edge -- like a 10 second divine shield with a 45 second cooldown.

Just giving my opinion.

If you still want to make a HA map, I do have some things you must do/not do.

Do not have bash.
Do not have bladestorm on NON BM MODEL UNITS!(TONS of people forget only the BM can use it)
Make SURE people don't "base turtle" by making a trigger which boots each hero out of their "safe spot" after being in it X seconds at a time.
Have items with multiple uses, such as some with truesight AND other things. That way people don't have to buy crappy items just because one player abuses windwalk, or invis or whatever.

Instead of creating craploads of redundant heroes, do your best to make a small number of completely unique heroes.

Make custom creeps in addition to normal creeps, which respawn in hard to access areas and are strong enough to scale with the players who can reach them.

Make the hero duels either random, or rank-based, but do NOT just have the 2 people with the highest hero kills duel. This severely takes the fun out of the game for those who are not in the top 1 for each team.

Why would you want to make an arena if you didn't think of features you would like to see in it?

I thought the first objective of map making was to be able to create games that would be fun to yourself not to create the ultimate popular map that doesn't have features you thought about.

And the idea to have mercenaries, big no!, use summoned units.

lol Scold 'em and help 'em! That's my motto too.

Thanks for all your feedbacks! I'll surely take all of them into serious considerations when I create my map.

Some ideas and advises are really good. Thanks a lot!

Basically, I posted this thread just to find out what you guys think what criterias a good Hero Arena map should have. And I do have my own ideas, which I'll be intergrating into all the good things you guys have suggested so that the map can be both be a joy to play in for me as well as other players.....hopefully.

I think balancing is very important, no point playing in a map where 1 player becomes very powerful. Everyone should be given a chance to beat the rest.

To RaeVanMorlock,

I agree with most of what you said...maybe all of them. Hey, you are a great Hero Arena map-maker!

To qaenyin,

I think you've stressed the importance of game-balancing.
I'm actually coming up with a hero-selection system where you can choose your preferred Appearance and Abilities. I've successfully coded the system, thanks to Lord Vexorian and Shimrra for posting their unprotected maps which I've used to learn and referred. This is something I've always wanted to do as some Heros really have crappy abilities such as the Death Knight having Death Pact which is useless in Hero Arenas. I wanted everyone to be able to choose what abilities they like and so these useless abilities will not be in the map.

My map will have anti-camp measures also.

And Lastly To Lord Vexorian,

Why using mercenaries is not recommended?

I'll post my unprotected map as soon as I finish...

about mercinarys, people play hero areas so they can control just one guy- you can sit back with the hotkeys, and thus dont have to do any frantic clicking. As soon as you add mercinarys with abilities, or even the fatc ur microing more than one unit, and it kills this feeling.

But Lord Vexorian did said that mercenaries are to be replaced by summoned units so I got curious.

Is it because Mercenaries cause more lag?...hmm...

Should I let every Hero hit Air or just leave it as it is?

I believe the reason why Lord Vexorian said to make summons instead of mercenaries is because you can hoard mercenaries, while summons you cant.

My suggestions are not have agility boost speed, or reduce the effect. (reason explained later)

Make units hold only 1 items of each type, ie only one weapon, one body armor, one helmet, one necklace, and so on. Make heavy armor reduce movement speed and light increase. Same with weapons, low damage dealing weapons attack faster, while more damaging attack slower.

Add a story line, even a minor one will do.

Make a crowd favor meter, you win once you gain a certain percent of the favor. Better items get put in the shops the more favor you have(but only slightly better).

Thats all I can think of for now.

Ah, the storyline idea is good, adds a bit of theme and flavour to the otherwise purposeless hack-n-slash arena.

I wonder what is a good storyline for a Hero Arena....

Maybe a mad and powerful wizard has teleported a bunch of poor heroes to a arena and he wants to be entertained by their violence on each other? haha

That was merely a gameplay suggestion

oic, but it was a good one still as heroes cannot horde units if they are summoned.