Azeroth's Arcane Arena v2.0

Hello there.

Some of you might have played my map, Azeroth's Arcane Arena, if not, download it here or here.

Although the latest released version is version 1.5, I am now working on version 2.0. Why?

Simply because, I will remake a lot of things in the map, and add a lot of new things too, especially things that will make the gameplay more interesting.

As said, features that will make the map funnier will be added, some of these features will be inspired my the, in my opinion, two best hero arena maps ever, dataangel's Battledome ]|[ and Vexorian's Vexorian Hero Arena.

I plan to add the following features and make the following changes to the map:

• Minigames and/or special events that will occur while playing the map.
• Improved Hero AI.
• Remade heroes with remade spells.
• Ultimate abilities will not need a certain level to be cast and be affected by primary attribute, but will instead require the hero to take a certain amount of damage. Also, all abilities except of the ultimate can be learned at level 1.
• More items, and more things to spend gold on.
• More creeps and better creep AI.
• The map will be better balanced and more will be done to help teams that are loosing.
• And much more...

If you have any ideas/suggestions feel free to tell me.

Please do NOT report balance issues in v1.5, because Heroes and spells will be, more or less, redone balance problem reports from v1.4 will be useless.

Version 2 will be betatested before released, so when a beta is released, you are more than welcome to report balances, but for now, please only post ideas, comments and bug reports.

When I have the time, I will post progress here.

Thanks for your time.

meh since Blade told me to stop bugging him and post here I will. Most of these I have told u on MSN but...

- AI stands around in thier safety zones
- You should give each player 500 gold at the start
- Make lumber do something
- AI sucks
- Give the AI stat boosts to compensate for suckiness
- Put in a level limit
- Creep hero bosses on each of the corners where the creeps are spawned
- Creeps actually get more powerful as you do.
- Make there be something to do outside of the arena
- Diffferent game play types, I thought of Maze, where you start off in different corners of the maze and work ur way to the middle where there is some good items guarded by creep bosses. You will obviously face each other while wandering the maze.
- Many of the DISBTNs of custom icons are messed up.
- team challenges
- TAUREN HEROS
- Minigames sound cool

Anyways since u told me to post da tauren here too

The Runemaster - Mystical and powerful melee tauren, who combine thier brute strength with powerful magical attacks.
(honestly I don't know a whole lot about runemasters so these spells may be a bit off)

Bovine Wrath - (auto-cast) when enabled it increases the Runemaster's damage by X.

Mystical Runes - The Runemaster can summon one of several runes (through spell book)
Runes:
Healing Rune, Rune of Mana, Rune of Bloodlust, Rune of Hatred (deals damage when picked up, if it is not picked up within X seconds it will explode dealing Y AOE damage), Rune of Fear (when picked up it will cause the wearer to be unable to attack but it will grant them max speed), Mystery Rune (randomly becomes one of the runes once picked up)

Soul Destruction - When the Runemaster slays an enemy, the duration the slain hero has to wait till he is revived is increased by X%. The Runemaster also gains X% mana everytime he kills a unit (even if it's not a hero)

Energies of The Earthmother - Creates a mystical rune circle at a target position, the rune contracts slowly and seals all within it's walls, slowly damaging all units who touch it's borders. The circle dissipitates after it reaches X radius.

Wrath of the Dead (ultimate)- When the Runemaster is slain, his soul forms into an all-powerful tauren spirit which is able to attack (and can be attacked) with great profficiency. The Runemaster's revive timer is paused whilst the soul is in existence, and the longer the soul exists the lower the starting health of the revived Runemaster. The spirit has the option to be self-destructed. Like reincarnation, this ability also has a cooldown, and will not activate if the cooldown is not complete.

(the spirit really has to be powerful, because there are quite a few drawbacks)

Thanks for your suggestions.

Note that DISBTNs aren't screwed, they are intentioanlly using versions already in-game, to save map space.

If you have any ideas for tauren heroes, I would be happy to look at it.

So for those of us who haven't played your arena map, we supposed to guess what's in 1.5?

There is a link to 2 download locations of the map in the first post, download and test the map from one of those places.

AI will always suck.
And that is just about the lamest way to improve the AI challenge.

But in order not to turn this thread into an AI debate, let me suggest balanced item drops... I think I remember someone mentioning they got a kickass item at lvl1 and owned everybody in the game.

that bug has been fixed, I think Anitarf. Then what do you suggest for a better AI?

Anyways heres my suggestion:

The AI does not cast some spells at all, so I suggest that for every spell you give it an interger value. This would represent what type the ability is, then you disable all abilities for AI and enable them only when those abilities need to be cast.

E.g.

One type of spell could only be cast when you have low health, another when a nearby unit has low health, etc. Some spells could remain undisabled because wc3 takes care of it pretty good. It might cause some lag but I think it could help out. You might also want to make it so AI move out of the way of those "natural effects" that are generated.

Finally you might want to get rid of the weather effects sometimes they can really increase lag (especially for the heavy winds)

Some weather effects will be removed.

Making such an AI would be like impossible, because when a spell should be cast is hardcoded, and the AI was only meant as a small thing to make the game keep running when a player left it, it is mostly made for multi player. But of course I want to improve it :).

Thats why you should disable it when it is not being cast, but yes it is a bit impractical.

When a player leaves, share his unit control with his allies. Problem solved. Even with non-expert players, the hero will still do better than if it were left under AI control.

err I don't think so Blade's AI isn't that bad, you have to concentrate on your own hero when playing. There are challenges and everything else like that. The AI probably would be better.

Melee game players can concentrate on 2, sometimes 3 heroes as well as a whole army and the base management back home. I'm sure controlling one more hero in an arena is no big deal, at least for the best player on the team.

The AI is bad. I don't mean any offense towards Blade.dk, I just mean that making a good AI is like the hardest thing you could think of making in a war3 map, or a game in general (unless the game is designed specifically so that making an AI for it is simple).

Sure, if the computer controls the hero, it can cast abilities more regularly than a player who is focusing most of his attention to his own hero. However, the computer doesn't act strategically. Let's take, for example, the basic trigger of when it's time to run away from the fight. The most basic trigger just does so at a certain hp percentage, which is of course useless. If the enemy has disabling or stun abilities, they will easily defeat such a hero.

Let's review what an AI would have to consider to be even remotely efficient: it would have to estimate the opposing team's capability of hindering it's retreat to know when to retreat; but that's not so simple. There's the question what abilities the enemy heroes have, how much mana they have, the range of the abilities, the positioning of the enemies (tell me how do you evaluate something like that simply), but then there are allies to consider, what kind of support can they offer, which of the enemy heroes would dare go after you anyway. Then there's the question if retreat at all, the hero might be without mana anyway, and therefore useless even if he escapes, he might need to hold his ground so the enemies can't get to an ally that's also on low hp, but has still lots of mana to deal some damage, or he needs to hold his position to use an ability that's crucial to the succes of that battle...

There's simply too many factors to consider them all, and if you don't, the human player who does will always beat the computer easily.

Too true, even the most inept of human players have an infinitely better ability to assess and act to a situation. The real problem is that the AIs will not adapt, nor will they ever. They will continue making the same mistake over and over again, allowing you to quite easily exploit them.

Anyway, Blade about the icons, what does 2 or 3 kbs really mean one way or the other? Its not that huge to add, what? 15 DISBTN icons at 45 kbs in total. The additional map size is no real barrier, even on Dialup and I can still easily and quickly download the map, and the fact is that there aren't many of us poor souls left on dialup.

And about the creeps. They really need to increase in power as they go, and I dunno about anyone else but I would really like to not having to keep seeing the same ugly unit all game.

Oh and I just wanted to know, what is the Duel Challenge spell based on that the stupid computers constantly use it all the freakin' time?

Hmm, the AI is crappy, I agree. I am not sure at all, but I think I will keep the AI (and improve it), and use dialogs to ask people on the team if they want to control the hero themself or if the AI should do it. I am not totally sure, but I agree making an intelligent AI is almost impossible.

The problem with DISBTNs is that they don't take up 2 oor 3 kb. They take up at least 5 kb in the map, and I plan to use a lot more icons in v2, because of new items and stuff. And I don't think DISBTNs matters at all, since icons normally more often are showing the BTNs than the DISBTNs. I don't think I will change my opinion here.

I will add more creeps, and make them more powerful as time goes. If anybody have ideas for which units would be good to use as creeps, I would love to hear them.

I don't remember what the duel challenge spell is based on actually, but I think that I am ordering the AIs to cast it and that they don't do it themself, so I can just decrease the chance for them to cast it, even though I think it's fine at the moment, so I probably won't.

Regarding the icons, you can use more compression on the .blps, they normaly don't loose much quality even on 30% compression (the default on wc3viewer is 85%). DISBTNs aren' that unimportant, when you look at an enemy hero's inventory, you always see it in DISBTNs. They take nearly half as much space as regular icons, if you compress it some more you'll use up less space with DISBTNs than you use now without them.

Icons are the best way to add custom content to a map with low filesize (besides possibly simple buff models). Custom unit models, skins, or a custom map preview all add a lot more. You shouldn't be afraid of using more icons.