Ninja vs Samurai - Legends

This is a complete remake from the Ninja vs Samurai series. Made from scratch.

There are 2 teams
Ninjas & Samurais

The Ninjas are the attacking team, which must sneak in & out of the Samurais Forts and steal their Talismans.

The Samurais are the defending team, which must guard their Talismans and kill the Ninjas.

- There are 9 Talismans across the map, Ninjas only need to steal 7 in order to win.
- Ninjas get 20 lives, they loose 1 if a Samurai Computer kills them and 2 lives if a Samurai Player kills them
- If a Ninjas is reduced to 0 lives, he returns as an evil spirit in which he can partially assist the remaining Ninjas
- If all Ninjas are reduced to 0 lives they loose.

Improvements from other versions:
- Very cool models/skin (thx to Black_Stan)
- Each team has 3 heroes to choose from
- Ninjas simply need to walk over any beacon in their base to return a Talisman. It is then removed from the game permentantly so the Samurais can no longer steal it back
- Ninjas can come from any corner, preventing them from being trapped/boxed in.
- As their are 9 Talismans, Samurais cannot camp the last one, as they will eventually be split guarding 3 remaining Talismans

Any suggestions or bugs?
Fulla @ Northrend
[email protected]

If i understand it right, this is a completely new map using the same basic idea as ninja versus samurai?

If that is so, i recommend changing some things to make it more original; you could have spies trying to infiltrate a fortress to steal secret plans, or vampires trying to steal civilians. What im saying is that you should allways try to make your map look as original as possible, even if you use a old concept.

Anyways, ill try it soon.

Yes

I want to add a few modes, so its not always evolving around the Talismans. Was hoping for some suggestions.

One I may implement soon is:
- Assassination Mode
1 single target in center of map

That sounds like a fun idea. Perhaps the victim of the assasination could be the leader of the defending team. That way the body guards and the victim could move around the map and try to survive as long as possible.

Alright well let me list this out.

Pros:

• Nice terrain, it is clean and playable, yet easy on the eyes.
• I like the idea of capturing talismans, it keeps the game from becoming an AoS.
• Easy to use yet relevant spells.

Cons:

• Poor balancing. At every Talisman site was a tower owned by the enemy ready to take me out, along with a half a dozen guards. What do the Ninjas get? A tower to prevent camping. The Ninja abilities could get me into their base just fine (Blink) but by the time I got the talisman and blinked out the NPC archers got me. Although there was 5v5, it was more like 50v5 because the NPS’s could kill us just as easily as the Samurai.
• The Trapper hero was far overpowered, he could place mines all around every talisman.
• Spells were not very creative, many were just normal Warcraft III spells modified slightly.
• The alter for hero selection remained after everyone had chosen, it just wasted space and ruined the scenery in the area.
• Large file size. Although the model are nice, using so many in an online map is not advisable. The download time was roughly three minutes per person, I was lucky I have enough friends around that don’t mind waiting 20 minutes for everyone. I suggest you resize Black_Stan’s skins (I assume they are currently 256x256) to 128x128, you will loose some quality but save a ton of space.
• Team-Kill bugs all over the place. I killed a debris crate and I got penalized for killing an ally. At one point an enemy killed me and he ended up dying as well because the game claimed he had Team-Killed.
• Undescriptive Quest menu. Granted you mentioned the appropriate credits (and even a Wc3Campaigns ad!), however there was no description of the game itself, nor any hints to help new players find ways around. It all just got flooded by in-game text which blocked my screen.
• Missing seemed to be a manner of; luck rather then skill (Evasion for example).
• Ninjas have lives but the Samurai don’t? I would rather the game last X minutes and the Ninjas have to steal the talisman within that time or lose.

All in all I do not approve of this map in it’s current state. It has a lot of eye candy but lacks gameplay. I suggest you try to reduce file size via the method mentioned above, and focus on balancing the game. You might know the perfect strategy for the Ninjas to win, but the players don’t.

Imbalance
Seriosuly, you have to play the game a few times, Ninjas stand a good chance.
Especially with the 1/2 hit kills, the 2nd time you play it, it will be alot easier.
- If a big group of samurais are in one side of map, they can teleport to opposite corner and go fo a dif talismans.
- Use bombs for the towers, they cost 2 gold, and you get 1 gold back (bounty) for killing 1.
- You should take out a guard 1 by 1, then get the talisman. Especially when there are Spearmen

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Trapper Hero
Well I admit I tend to always play this hero, cause he can be lame :-)
Hes quite vulnerable to a good player, who uses items and abilities well.
- He generally cant keep up with the Ninjas, so hes pretty defensive, if ninjas happen to atk a differnet location he wont levelup very well.
- Assassin can windwalk to sneak up on him, sixth sense to detect mines/stasis
- Deciever can use illusions as guinea pigs for traps
- Stalker may have a bit of trouble but can shuriken him from a distance.

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- Thats only the evasion skill thou? It just helps when fighting multiple units and you cant use avoid on all

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Spells
They werent really meant to be Super Jass enchanced, or even *Original* they were just simple basic spells that fitted the gameplay.
Ill re-evaluate them anyways, probably can replace/tweak a few.

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Yes Ive been wanting to add that feature, I think 20 minutues will be enough
But Samurais will always have infitine lives and Ninjas a finite amount.

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Will be taken care of.

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Large File Size
- Yes alot of ppl have told me that, Ill definetly try and shrink the filesize down.

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Overall I cant really argue, with most things you said, they simply are true and I need to do them.
And ofcourse I will :-)

Except balance, I honestly think the map is balanced quite well.

Im aware of a few other bugs as well, such as the Barricades are bit screwed up, some of them you can walk through??
Also victory/Defeat doesnt always work

Ok, I uploaded a new version, which should fix every problem as far as I am aware.

Most noticeable is the filesize which is nearly half the size now :-)

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A added bonus addition, thx to Chuckle Brother, is an attack detection system..
It prevents the war3 bug of units hitting unit waaaay over their distance.

If a melee unit strikes a unit over 150% of his max range it auto "Misses".
This helps alot as a hit will generally kill you so makes it easier to dodge units.

What about the ranged units? They are hence exempt from this range rule? Then I would say it would cause further imbalance.

They have extremely long cooldowns on their attack.
Also only have a 250 range.

Ill probably lower their movement speed slightly in next update.

The archer has a longer range, but is artillery so her attacks can easily be dodged.

After this second test I say that this should be moved to our Map/Campaign Projects forum, or to the Beta Test forum.

• Not enough time to choose your hero. It should wait at least 45 seconds.
• Preload those heroes, it's laggy as shit while everyone chooses.
• No leave message when a player leaves the game.
• Disable auto-acquire so players cannot just attack-move, they need to choose who to attack.
• Horrible pathing in the central fort! Fix it!
• 10% passive in a 1-hit-kill map? I think not.
• Attack speeds must all be the same for both teams, I clearly attacked first, but I was killed anyway because he had a fast attack speed. (I was a Ninja, I should be more fast anyway!)
• When all Ninjas have 0 lives the game should be over. When a player leaves the game remove their unit - don't leave it. Who can micro 2 units in such a game?

Again I do not approve. I highly suggest this be moved elsewhere.

Not that my opinion as a warm body for said test matters, but I mostly agree.

Even though tim was a ninja I easily turned around and attacked in time to kill him.

And as I said on MSN, make the fort walkable(by the stairs) that would be super fun(DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!yo)

I'm not sure how exactly you are supposed to take them out 1 by 1 when they are all clumped together (and behind baricades in some cases). I did manage to capture a talisman in the test game (the only one we managed to get). I Firebombed both towers at the 'base', but I still died atleast 4 times when clearing out the guards there. I was the hero with the passive image on attack spell (can't remember the name) and I even had two mirror images when I assaulted the guards on two occasions. Both died instantly to any attack, leaving me vulnerable once more.

I don't think making a hero die 4+ times to retrieve one talisman is satisfactory, considering the limited lives, and while no allies helped me, there were also no enemy heroes present at any time.

And there was that mystery crash, apparently at the end of a jump; when the guy hit the ground Wc3 fatal errored on us.

Actually, I think it was determined to be caused by some archer using attack ground (I know there is a bug where attack ground fatals when used by units without a certain attack type or something).

I can fix everything you mentioned.
Chuckle Brother is helping me out on the Attack Ground bug with the Archer.

No leaver message?
Are you sure, I've never had that problem?

Ninja's Defeat
I tested this a few times, seemed to work fine :-( I'll look into it

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Its very easy. The spearmen are the hard part and thats why I put them there.
You run in kill a guard run back, to thin the numbers
Then you run in thro the bomb, but keep running dont stand still

But seriously, the game takes practice and the 1hit kill system takes getting used to.
You always stand a better chance if you go in groups to clear a Talisman 1by1.
Once you get good you can afford to split up and attack varying talismans at the same time.

Guards only make you loose 1 life, so you get 20 attempts per player in 20 minutes.
Its meant to be a fast paced game, where Ninjas have to be very careful with their lives.

I will update it soon

thank you for testing & for feedback

EDIT: May take a while b4 an update, dont mind if you wanna move this thread somewhere.