The sequel to DotA

Hi!

First a small lesson in Warcraft UMS History:

Many years ago I made Valley of Dissent, the map on which DotA was based on back in the days of RoC. Few people today remember this map, although it was a phenomenon back in the day, and the first map to actually have clans formed for the sole purpose of playing it.

Eul, the maker of DotA, certainly didn't "steal" my idea or anything like it, in fact, he gave me more credit than I deserved for his great series. This is just one of the overly generous things he said about my map, at his regular forum at thewarcenter.com :

I certainly see his point: VoD really defined the whole AoS genre. VoD even predates the classic triangular AoS map. Around 2003/2004, VoD was the point of reference experienced mapmakers used when comparing new maps of the AoS genre.

Why a sequel to DotA?

For a long time I was happy with DotA taking over that position, and indeed, DotA allstars has been my most played map for the last two years. But at some point I guess I just got tired of it all. To be honest, after Eul stopped and other random people kept updating DotA, it became more and more obvious that the entire map and the entire AoS genre is actually less fun than the original VoD was. Believe it or not, VoD had more features and more intense gameplay than the current DotA Allstars has.

So, I finally decided that it's time for me, and my partner Mosef that helped me out with the original VoD, to get back in the game. I am going to take VoD, AoS and DotA to the next level - I just love the entire genre and I know it has so very much more potential than DotA Allstars and the like.

How on earth I can do better than DotA?

Because I know what it takes. First of all: A GOOD MAP IS NOT ENOUGH.

Don't we all know tons of maps that are a LOT better than DotA? Then why is DotA the most popular map? It is because making a GOOD map has nothing to do with making a POPULAR map. With quite a bit of marketing experience, having worked in sales and studied the subject, I am very well aware of this. I will pay much attention to the marketing part of my map to make sure it doesn't become an unknown diamond.

But of course, it has to be a good map. The fabolous popularity VoD had proves I can make a very good map. I have 10 years of programming and design experience and my knowledge of the war3 engine is quite extensive.

Thirdly, and this is why I am writing this post here: It is vitally important that I gather a team of mature and supportive testers. VoD would never have been the great map it was if it weren't for the fact that I had many of the top war3 players actually playing it. Back then no "pro" players played UMS except as a distraction, but VoD changed this. For many, it was the only UMS map they played. I can not make a great map without some great people that can play the map with me and tell me straight to my face what is excellent and what is sucking totally.


What the sequel will be like

Most of the map and gameplay has already been designed, the terrain is laid out, and all that remains is adding spells and heroes. The following is a list of features, and many of them are already done and implemented.

• Heroes have 4 unique abilities each as normal, but can select one of 6 gods, which adds another 7 abilities.
• Custom skill-menu where the 4 hero-abilities and 7 god-abilities becomes a unified menu of 11 skills the hero can choose from. (It will be impossible for anyone to levelup all the 11 skills to the max during a game, they will have to focus on some of them).
• Custom skill-point system: Instead of gaining 1 ability-point per level, the players will constantly earn Crystal Points, which can be used to learn abilities. This has the great advantage of putting a variable Crystal Cost on abilities. One skill may cost 100 for level 1, 300 for level 2 and 900 for level 3, while another can cost 100, 1000, 15000 (for an amazingly powerful level 3).
• Custom item-system. Very simple but efficient, 6 slots: Weapon, Secondary Hand, Body, Feet, Head and Hands. The reason to have a custom system is to enable better hotkeys for the items, in addition to get more item-slots, as the normal item-slots can be used for 6 consumables, which means a total of 12 items can be used by one hero.
• Points of Interest: Spread around the map will be many lesser control-points. These include Crystal Generator (earns the team a small amount of extra crystal - Gold Mine, the ai will send peons to mine these for team gold, so peons should be protected - Obelisks, which will give the controlling team a small bonus such as +10% max hp and etc.
• No stacking problems: All orb-effects will stack, and abilities such as evasion and critical strike stacks without making them overpowered.
• Resistance - just like armor, but will reduce the damage taken from spell, and will also reduce the duration of stun, slow and other spell-effects.
• 6vs6 (of course)
• Challenging creep-camps that, when defeated, will replace and improve the team AI units.
• Full original soundtrack, using a method that has not been done in the war3 engine before.

I left out some other features because I guess people will already think I am quite crazy.

Summary

The map is ready to be played quite soon.

As I said, a great map cannot be made by one mapmaker alone. I would be very happy to get to know anyone that wants to be a part of the base-team that plays and contributes feedback for my map. I encourage anyone interested to let me know, either by posting here or through a private message.

(I am not looking for ideas, terrainers, modelers, skinners or anything like that. Me and my partner is quite capable of doing all the work for now.)

Thanks for your time reading this.

*hands karu a paper bag with holes in it*

you might need it once the flaming starts. ;)

jks, but you should not call this a sequel to DoTA, you won't get much help here if your just doing a sequel. Be original make your own map, and people will come. Start doing something, post some screenies and stir up interest. That's all I gotta say.

Am I allowed to make a sequel to dota when dota is more or less a sequel to my very own map? You should hardly have to tell ME to be original ;)

Isn't the topic "sequel to dota" just the kind of annoying topic you just HAD to read eh? :)

Wow. Glad to see someone is brave enough to challenge DoTA's popularity. I hope you succeed. And I agree, map popularity is very important to ensure that a mapmaker's hard work is rewarded. (Or is it?) But umm, wouldn't the original soundtrack make the map' size unnecessarily large? (Kinda nooby question but oh well...)

Then make it the sequel to Valley of Disent, DoTA is just overused.

I suggest DotA makers add this in their map auto-displayed texts:

THANKS TO (your name) FOR MAKING THE FIRST TRUE VERSION OF DOTA.



i also think dota's a bad game. i seen ALOT of games better than dota. it IS driven by marketing. like any product, people will buy the most popular food, not the best...

@hourglasseye: I said "Full original soundtrack, using a method that has not been done in the war3 engine before." ;) The "method that has not been done" will ensure the filesize stays small. Basically, it is a rather advanced midi-hack thing, but I'll leave it at that.

@Taur: Sure, I would love to call my map Valley of Dissent 2. All my friends knows the map as VoD2, it's filename is Valley of Dissent 2 Alpha etc. But from a marketing perspektive, I may end up calling it something based off dota. Gotta sacrifice pride sometimes :)

@Exilus: Hehe, they don't even acknowledge Eul who made DotA. Heck, the newest DotA Allstars don't even acknowledge the guy that made DotA Allstars. The only one DotA allstars acknowledge is the the random dude that _currently_ adds new heroes to it. I find it very amusing :D

No comment...

I remember valley of dissent, did it have the wisp hero, where it threw itself?

@Tiki: If you remember it you have certainly been around since the start. Yeah, King Laban (wisp model), he threw himself to damage the enemies. :)

after eul quit, dota started sucking. In fact, i cant recall ever having played a decent dota on tft. This is why people that really like AoS games for what they are these days, play tides of blood. Its the only AoS type map out that with a decent (not perfect) balance, good customasation that looks smooth, and refreshing spells that are not overly complicated, but nice.

From what i read here what you wish to do with your AoS, you are just adding a lot of gimmicks to flaunt your imba programming skills, but i see nothing that actually really adds something to the core gameplay of AoS. Why would you have these crystals that can buy you skill points, while you allready have experience as a recource to do this with?

reading your post, you leave a verry professional impression, but reading into your ideas shows what little you really know.

I wish you the best of luck: but i know you will fail.

How the HELL can you claim that DoTA is based on your map? Since DoTA is part of the AoS genre, which, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm 99.9% sure I am, origionated in Starcraft?


I only really skim read after this, since it seemed to me to be you claiming credit for coming up with a genre that predates WCIII itself.

Oh, and when I read this, I found it so funny:


That's where you are so, so wrong.

@erwtenpeller: I certainly can't argue with you when you say my featurelist is just gimmicks. Hey, it's just a feature-list, and pretty cursory as well. The real soul in an AoS comes with the whole exectution, that is the finished map. How does it PLAY. And that is something I do not even attempt to capture in a forum post. Nevertheless, I congratulate you on your divining skills whereby you know not only that I am a bad designer but also that I am going to fail. Such things motivates me, because it will just make success feel that much nicer. Nah seriously, who knows; I'll do my best - time will tell what the result will be.

Post 2:

Captain Griffen: I can not say I know the encyclopedia definition of what the AoS genre is. The first I saw of it was a map called "Aeon of Strife" in the very very early days of RoC. It was a simple map - footmen and archers spawned on each side, and the players could pick one of the standard heroes to play. A few items such as tomes and anks could be purchased in shops. That was it. There wasn't even a respawn system. VoD was released within a month after the original Aeon of Strife.

If there were an AoS in Starcraft, I do not know about it. I never played Starcraft much. The only thing I do know is that Heroes are a vital part of the AoS genre the way it plays out in War3 and Starcraft did not have such things, although if you have more information than me on the subject, please inform me.


Also, if you had not skim-read as you say you did, you would have noticed that the statement where I said: I am making the map all by myself - the statement was to emphasize how important the community that plays the map is - do you disagree with that?

Edited by Blade.dk. Reason: Double post..

First, don't double post. I very rarely take people who double post seriously.

Yes. I would. Because to be honest, the community in general doesn't have a blatant clue what a good map is. See DoTA, for example. I've made several maps which were damned good (according to some complete strangers, ie: those who had the intelligence to understand that just because you don't always do damage, doesn't mean you don't kill stuff, as shown by the dead bodies). And some of them were done alone. Without community input, apart from the odd bit in fine tuning balance. But that was mostly done by what felt right.

So don't tell me great maps can't be made with one person. I'm not a great map maker (though I can think laterally), I don't know JASS, I can't terrain well, but I can make good maps. Alone.

EDIT: Found version numbers varying from 2-7 for AoS on SC, back in Feb 6, 2004. Since this is 3 days after the first map in the data base, I can safely assume it was around for quite a while before that, but I can't find any sites from that long back that work very well anymore.

Good luck, Karukef.
Anything which attempts to replace DotA with something even MARGINALLY better is grand by me.
Oh, and ert?
EotA.