Herocraft Arena

Hero Arena - next to tower defences, one of game types probably most frowned upon:

- In many Arenas, you controll a single hero, making them a rather unchallenging game type
- In many Arenas, there are so many heroes that one is bound to be imbalanced
- In many Arenas, mad toming can give you absurdly powerfull heroes, especially agility ones
- In many Arenas, there is a lack of style, design, they seem like everything was thrown together
- In many Arenas, gameplay can get boring and repetitive.

We have grown used to these and other characteristics that have been featured in the genre so much that it seems to us that they are the ones that define the genre. That a map cannot belong to the genre without it being crap.

But is that true? Of course not! All that defines a "Hero arena" is it's name. There is an arena, and heroes do battle in it. None of the above mentioned features are inherent to this design. They can be left out. And they must be left out. Should but one remain, it would leave a mark on the map, condemning it to be seen as "yet another hero arena".

There was once a Hero Arena that surpassed these stereotypes; the Advanced Hero Arena in RoC. I have taken it as an example of greatness that can be given to any genre, any breed of a map, and I now hope to make a map of similar qualities.

So I shall bring you the Herocraft Arena.

Allright, that dramatic introduction was neccesary because, well, image sells, and I want to attract your interest. Now that I, hopefully, have it, lets get to the actual map:

Essentially, the map will be a basic Hero Arena; two teams of heroes, two base areas, one circular main arena with four creep enterances. The two teams fight it out untill kill limit is reached. The kill limit and the speed of experience gain will be modeled to allow most players to reach the maximum level, and not take too long to do so.

Herocraft Arena will feature 10 all-new "classical" heroes; heroes who are equivalent to the original 10-level 4-ability heroes of warcraft. As such, they will wield spells of similar power and mostly the same items as their elders did. There will be no purchasable tomes, and not enough money around to equip yourself with just the most powerfull stats-boosting items.

The heroes will be team oriented to support tactical gameplay; not just the usual hack&slash of multiple warrior heroes; with the lack of items and tomes to pump them up, they need the help of support and ranged heroes to be victorious.

Quite some heroes have summon spells, many of which are a new kind that yield units with activated abilities, thus giving a new challenge to better players to micromanage them all well. An option for one player to be able to command two heroes may be implemented in the end, for any "gosus".

The new heroes and their spells will be throughly designed, some of them featuring new icons, skins and models. Of course, only those who need them most, as filesize must be taken into account, as always.

In the end, when winners will be declared, a random minigame will be chosen for the end. It will be a short duel of the best two players, or all-vs-creeps, or something similar, to give a smooth and diverse ending to the game.

I am posting this now because I have just more or less finished the mechanics of the game. All heroes and spells are fully functional and await only balance changes. The game runs and the kills are counted. The only triggers lacking are the end minigames.

Well, that was functionality. However, one big part still looms ahead: The Art. It may take me quite some time to get all that over with, especially getting the hang of modeling.

In the meantime, I will occasionally post a picture as I make them, and release a description of a hero or a spell, to give you a glimpse of what's ahead, and keep you on your toes.

And, by all means, during that time, your thoughts, opinions, suggestions, wishes,... are greately appreciated and welcomed. Post away.

If your going to make a hero arena please make it good. That means good heroes. No tomes. And a hella load of blanances.

edit: that dramatic intro was sweet ^_^

Yeah, balance and good heroes is what I'm aiming for, that's why there's only 10 of them, because they will all be throughly designed, each will have a bit different role in combat, and with new abilities, more than half (Edit: turned out 3/4 in the end) of which are trigger enhanced to bring forth new game mechanics, new combinations, and new design.

To support teamplay, there is slightly more emphasis on invisibility and true sight, buffs, summons and dispell, channeling and stun, etheral units... To get as dynamic and intense gameplay as possible.

And, for a quick update before I plunge into the creation of artwork, here's a view of the arena: a simple, yet elegant design.

Complimants on the Arena, I offer my services to help you Balance, Create Abilities, Create Units. Whatever you need besides Models, Skins, Icons and Triggered Abilities.

That is if you need them and if im not too busy doing this stupid RPG i'm wrapped up in

Simplicity is elegance. So i suggest excluding the end-game mini-games. Not everybody likes minigames. If you want you could always make a mini game map.

I also suggest having a good Computer AI to allow single person playing.

Balance only comes through testing. If you want a beta tester feel free to ask me.

You make a good point about the minigames. Still, since I threw out the duels, because they interrupt gameplay too much, but they are still a very common feature in the design of arenas, I wanted to pay a tribute to that with at least an ending duel, as a sort of a climax, and a chance for a good payer that might have ended with a crappy team to get some satisfaction out of the game by at least defeating the champion of the other team.

Then I came to the thought that if one team was totaly defeated, meaning that not even the best player on it would be good enough to compete with the opponents, it would be kind of lame if he were still forced to fight an enemy hero that has 2 levels more and better items. So, for such an opportunity, I then thought that a cooperative ending game would be more appropriate, at least giving the defeated team a chance to waste a bunch of creeps.

Then, when I already had two endgames in mind, I thought, why not have even more possibilities; that would give the game more different endings, so it wouldn't be the same every time, giving it a slightly better replay value.

Of course, having too much of this can spoil the gameplay like the duels originaly do in hero arenas, but since it's only meant to be a single finishing, non-compulsory minigame, I'm not sure if it is such an offense on the simplicity of the game; well, I need to give more thought to it, and get more feedback.


As for the AI, I don't think I'll do it. First of all, I am a big fan of multiplayer gaming, and as such I strongly feal that a human opponent cannot be replaced with an AI, the experience just can't compete with having an opponent made of flesh and blood. And secondly, even if I wanted to make an AI, I have absolutely no experience with the AI editor, so I am very unsure about my ability to make any decent piece of AI, especially with all the trigger enhanced spells that do more than the computer, judging from the spells they are based on, thinks they do. Well, again, I'll give this more thought, and wait for more feedback.


Other than that, I am happy to receive your offers for balance testing, I'll be sure to do a beta test one day in the future.

Haven't posted in a long while, have I?

Just wanted to let you all know that after some time of inactivity, the map is making progress. Want proof? Take a look at the Night Ranger Training Grounds , a test map I submitted for a spell-making challenege. It features one of the Herocraft Arena heroes, the Night Ranger, fully finished, with custom icons and everything.

Comments about the hero, as well as the arena in general, are welcome.

hmmm, well, I have to say that I hope better heroes are to come. No offense, it's just that the special effects wer rather simple, but I guess they worked. I like that Fire of Elune, that was very interesting how the ranger shot into the air then BAM but the others were just... too simple. I just didn't say "wow" know what i mean?
But in any case, good to know you already had an idea on an arena :P makes me respect your opinion on mine much more, and also our shared hatred for tomes I found verry interesting :) keep it up

Oh, I never intended my arena to be a lightshow, or a "look what never-before-seen things I can do" kind of map. I believe the triggers and the effects are to be used to serve gameplay, not themselves. If a spell I want the hero to have can be done just with some object editor work, then that's fine by me. However, it took me quite some time, research and innovation to make the system the moon arrows use, because I just wanted to have a new, different autocast attack based ability.

Most heros are like the Night Ranger, with some abilities just modified in the object editor and some a bit different, enhanced with triggers... but nothing too fancy, I wanted the heroes to be warcraft-like, in a sense that I could add them to a melee game and they would fit right in. Because they are still intended for an arena, not a melee game, they are more specialised to support teamplay and their skills may sometimes be more challenging to use to full potential, but they are designed to be just a new generation of warcraft heroes, and that's why their spells aren't all something new and flashy.

in that case, they are perfect then :) good base abilities with simple graphics, then one really cool special with uber graphics that make you like it. Now that I've gotten your full aim, it's awesome.

before I was just on the track of a critic :P

And critics are always good, because even though I mostly respond to them with "meh, you think that would be better, but I prefer it like it is, we just think differently" (like I just did now), there's always a chance that something will occur to someone that hasn't yet to me, and it's those little details that really help a map improove, not the drastic changes, because they are more like making a whole new map rather than improoving the old one.

So, thank you for the critic, and at the same time, a note to self, that I really haven't given you and everybody else much to critisize yet. I should really try getting this map out in the open a little faster. Or at least show out one more hero now that the spell championship deadline has been extended. :)

I'm having a huge dilemma and need lots of feedback!

The more I look at the terrain, in the editor and in-game, it seems too big. Now, compared to some classic round arenas like Gladiators and others, it's about the same size. It's definitely smaller than Angel arena, and it has no additional areas to teleport to. But nevertheless, compared to a map like Battle arena, it's terribly huge. Of course, Battle arena maps are quite different, they have no fountains or creeps, but they also have very intense gameplay, which can get a bit boring in the others.

So, shrinking things down to the size of a Battle arena definitely isn't my intention. Not just that I have all the classical arena stuff like fountains and creeps that take up some space, the Battle arenas seem just a bit too hectic to me, I want to have a bit slower pace, just not too slow!

But reducing the size of the arena can have drastic consequences. If you consider the gameplay of a classic arena, fighting often takes place at the enterances to the enclosed area with the fountains: the team that's there wants to keep the other team out, so they can have a safe place where heros can run out of combat to heal themselves. To prevent a team from comepletely turtleing, there are creeps outside that give you experience and items, to lure healed heros away from the fountains.

Now comes the tricky part. By reducing the arena size, I would be reducing the distance between the fountain area and the creep camps. A team could then be easily at both places at once, thus being able to counter the other team's creeping efforts while holding the fountains at the same time.

I could remove the fountains, but then a damaged team would have no way to counter a freshly revived opponent, unless they spent their gold on clarity potions and healing salves... on one hand, that would balance things out between uneven teams, so I suppose it would mean more fun for all, but on the other hand, it's unfair to give someone an advantage just because they are loosing. Removing the fountain would also promote the use of support heros that can heal and recharge mana, which is OK by me, because people otherwise always go for the fighter heros, but on the other hand, it creates a danger that the support heros would be too powerfull, which I don't want.

So what should I do?

Keep things as they are and hope gameplay doesn't go too slow?
Slightly shrink the arena and hope it won't be too easy to dominate the map?
Shrink the arena a bit more and remove the fountain, but what if fans of clasical arenas won't like that?

The Herocraft Arena needs your comments on this, os it can be the best it can be!

I think you aren't going to like this, but I'd say dump the creeps. I think creeps spoil hero arenas. They should be about killing HEROES, not creeps which just sit near their portals. If you must have creeps, try making them AI heroes that aren't aligned to either team and don't revive or buy items.