(9) Battle for Maelaru v0.70 (First Open Beta)

Hoorah, After weeks of telling myself, "It'll be done next week", and then finding a new problem or coming up with a new idea that just had to be put in, I've got the open Beta ready.

Battle for Maelaru is an AoS map with three teams of three players, all fighting for control of the Mystical Tower of Maelaru. Located on the long lost Gallara Isle, the Tower contains all knowledge and power in the universe, and is no doubt treacherous, for it was built by the gods themselves. (It also contains top-tier item combinations >_>).

For the most part it follows the same AoS format: Pick a Hero, it levels up, get Items, push through the lanes, and kill your enemies. However in Battle for Maelaru, each player gets to control one of their team's three barracks. Through this, the players can control which units spawn from their base, and each unit follows a different strategy, and are useful for different situations. Players also control a Research Center, from which they can spend money to upgrade their creeps instead of buying items if they wish.

All Twenty Heroes are unique and most (I would like to think) have a very distinct and interesting playstyle, which calls for an increased level of skill to fully utilize the Hero. The map also features an Instructional Cinematic for new players, and a Tip system that gives you a different tip whenever you die.

I'm open to all forms of Criticism; feel free to post it here, or on my site, which can be found in my signature below. Thank you, and have Fun!

I can't seem to attach the map, so here it is, if that's Okay:
Battle for Maelaru on Filefront

EDIT: Alright, V0.80 is out! Wooo! You can follow the same link, I've updated it.

Changelog:

Hidden information: v0.80 Major Terrain Revamps. Minor Balancing. Added Two New Heroes: Arcanist & Celestial. Added an innate to the Battle Trainer. Changed Entropy Aura so that it no longer affects the Chaotic. Replaced Bounty Hunter's "Tracking Device" with "Gravity Bomb". Updated tooltips by seperating Lore from Spell Effects. Switched to Vexorian's Hero Selection System. Changed the Usage of the Depthguard's "Slimy Skin". Major Balancing Changes to: "Concussion (Depthguard)", "Entropy Aura (Chaotic)", "Feel the Burn (Body Builder)", "Blade of Stars (Star Knight)", "Train Footmen / Ranger (Battle Trainer)". Fixed a bug with Sorceresses that severely decreased their mana replenishing. Added a maximum number of Skeletons per Necromancer. Replaced Dynamo's Ultimate "Overload" with one that has a different effect. Replaced Star Knight's "Twisted Time" with "Righteous Blade".

Please, do not bump your topic, we do not allow such posts on the forum. I downloaded the map, but I don't have the time to play anything until the weekend, so I'll post my thoughts then.

I wrote a review on your forum. The map could use a lot of work.

I tested it in a 2v2v2 because you asked me to or I felt like it, I forget which one by now. I have the following thoughts:

• The lanes are too long and take way too long to traverse, even with boots.
• Strength gives 40 life a point, making strength builds more viable than others. Seriously, I massed +6str items and had over 6k life. Take that, 90 damage per second!
• It never ended. Seriously, nothing ever made it to a base. We played for an hour and a tower was never even attacked by an enemy unit. Creeps were too fragile, or they fought and killed eachother before they could reach a base. You should redesign terrain into a triangle so all teams can attack eachother unabated, not that silly propeller design.
• Terrain was relatively bleh.
• The firelord hero had a 90 DPS target unit spell that lasts 45 seconds and spawns shit on death? Please, that was ridiculous.

The rest of my main complaints were in atmosphere being pretty dull and the hero imbalances, you know, 8 second stuns and stuff like that. My hero, the depthguard, was terrible. My first spell had like a 30s cooldown at level 5, it was so boring. Also, my innate was so useless, very few times was I ever near the middle enough to go swimming.

Argh, my AoS has a 3-team 3 player set up too! Oddly enough, I also planned on giving my players some control over what creeps spawned, although not as much as you are.

...Woah. Did a hero seriously have a 45 second 90 DPS spell? Jesus!

From what I see in your screenshots:

-Heroes with chaos damage damage in the hundreds at just level 13 (a hero had almost 100 at level 5 w/o bonuses, which is scary) is kind of overdoing it.
-Your terrain layout is poorly designed. It's nearly impossible for creeps to reach enemy bases in that particular setup.

First of all I would like to say that, for various reasons, you map is being judged a little more harshly than most.

Secondly, your map has incredible amounts of potential, and it has realized very little of this it.


CRITICISM:

Functionality:

Though my computer isnt the best, it should certainly be able to handle any map on Bnet without any trouble. However your map was choppy because of the sheer amount of units on screen at any time.
The reason that your map has these problems and other maps that may have larger spawn counts dont is the terrain. On maps like DotA, spawns dont have to travel very far before they encounter enemies and are killed, and this time is usually similar to the time between spawns. However your spawn time-unit count-life span ratio is out of wack. You small spawn numbers and large spawn times count for nothing when faced with the immensly long time the spawns require to actually die. By the time they start fighting, there is an impossibly large number on screen already!

The Cinematic was quick and to the point. It told me what i needed to know and it didnt take up alot of time (like Zoator TD's cinematic). However, the camera changes were very abrupt and choppy, which neither looked nice or contributed to the over all polish of your map.

Terrain:

As mentioned before, the terrain seriously hampers your maps functionality and makes it hard to really enjoy.

The terrain, though not "badly" done, was boring and very basic. This can easily be attributed to the BETA status as far as doodad placement and tiles go, but the layout itself was also lacking.

I would suggest more interesting bases, the ones you have now arent very inviting or intimidating.

You should also implement multiple lanes, three to each base. This not only allows for slightly more complicated gameplay, but also gives the illusion of choice, which is essential to a succesful map.

You have alot of unused, and therefore wasted, space on your map that could easily be turned into additional lanes, secrets or a more original concept (hero duel arenas, private homes for heroes just because you can, mini games, item storage)

You have chosen a good tileset that has a lot of potential to look great with minimal effort, you really need to take advantage of that (slightly winding paths, bits of the road overgrown or trampled out)

I would seriously suggest moving the bases in closer to the middle.

Mechanics:

I like the idea behind the barracks, but it doesnt play out that well (free additional spawns always looks unbalanced and unpolished). My suggestion is to either make the additional spawns cost something OR make it a choice between spawns (choose to make only archer, choose to make only wolves etc;). People really enjoy customizing, being an essential part of a team and filling very specific niches (while still being allowed to choose), so having players choose which spawns they will have is a very big up as far as entertainment goes.

I really like that, as one team begins to push into another teams lane and break their unit wall, the other team is reaching that point as well, not only affording the losers some time, but also forcing all of the teams to fight eachother.

Heroes:

Your heroes are very well designed, simple, interesting, elegant. I enjoy it when people do more than trigger and mess around with numbers and actually think and enjoy what they are doing, and it appears that you really enjoyed designing the heroes.

as far as balance goes, i havnt a clue, i didnt thave much time to experience all of the heroes. From what i hear their are some problems with balance.

CONCLUSION:

Your map is very well done for a simple, stripped to the bone mechanical preview, but to be a B.net hit, it really does need some work.

Your heroes are excellent, as are your ideas

you need to fill up the map more (empty maps give me the creeps.. the kind that you get when around really old office buildings or homes filled with abandonware) and flesh out the lanes

and you really need to shorten the distance between the armies a lot

I enjoyed the time i spent playing and i really look forward to playing later versions of this map!

Quite frankly, I disagree with you here. While the map itself has some strong ideas that could quite easily be improved to great effect, I found the heroes to be a weak point. Heroes that are almost all passive skills, or have 3 stuns and a slow are not well thought out and not well designed. No offense, Rose, but I found the heroes to be the most lacking of any part of the map when I tested in single-player.

I played a 2v2v2 and agree with him entirely.

Well since a lot of this came a little later than I expected, I've already begun work on v0.80. Here's the Progress:
- Passive Heroes fixed. There really are no more passive Heroes, Like, say, the Star Knight (I'm sure you were refering at least mainly to him. He's been improved).
- The terrain has been completely remodeled. If you want, I can give you some SSs, but I don't have to. And there is a lot more water, actually, so that will probably appease you :o
- Heroes are also contstantly being redone, replacing old abilities with ones that fit better, or changing up old abilities slightly. Not to mention the balance issues with different spells or stats.

Of course, there are some things I should probably say about other parts of the criticism:
- The Chaos damage is the Star Knight's ult, he only gets it for a few seconds.
- Wildfire really isn't that strong when you think about the rest of the spell, or the fact that using it on most units for the DPS would be a waste. The spell is about the spawns, not the DoT. That might need to be toned down, I geuss.
- The Length of the terrain is due to back when I had even stronger towers along the terrain, which I did away with because they stopped anyone from getting anywhere for a matter of... hours. I'm probably going to shorten the terrain (Which should help deal with the "No one got anywhere" Aspect).
- You have to remember the importance of the Units. I mean, yes, a bunch of infantry and archers against a bunch of infantry and archers probably aren't going to go anywhere. But if you say, Use wolves against a team spamming necros, use infantry against a team spamming wolves, or use archers against infantry, well you're going to get a lot farther. And that's just the basic units.

Overall, I'd say thanks for playing it :) I'm glad to see that it isn't 'Terrible', despite the fact that it definitely needs some work.

Oh, and I've gotten comments from others that the Depthguard was way-super-OP-cakes, so I'm not sure about him ?_?. I may lower Geyser's (Which you may know as Submerge, I can't remember if I renamed it before or after release) CD a little though.

Oh, and that 40 health per strength >_>. I'll probably lower that.

EDIT: I've shortened the Paths, and you're right, it makes a Huge Difference. Also, you may end up seeing two new Heroes I have almost ready (One has actually been ready for a while, but I didn't want to release with 19 Heroes >_>)

Yes, you do! We want screenies!

Well, in case you're wondering, those two Heroes in the pictures are the ones I was talking about.

And if you couldn't tell (Because I also decreased the Camera Bounds), I decreased the Path Lengths.

And that last one isn't about Terrain, that's just me showing you I'm using Vex's selection system now :)

And Strength has been changed to 30 Health a point.

New version time? :D

Not quite yet >_> I have a few tooltips to finish (Yay new spell for Bounty Hunter, Tracking Device = Suck!)

And I'm almost done with the Arcanist, actualy. I just need to finish her ult and her tooltips. Oh, and the Celestial's Tooltips. I don't like doing Tooltips.

I guess I don't have to put them in, they still need quite a bit of Solo Testing... But I also need to finish separating lore from spell effects in the Learn Tooltips for all Heroes.

Once again: I don't like doing tooltips.

EDIT: Ugh, I'm having far too much trouble with the Arcanist's Ult. I guess she doesn't have to go with the celestial, but UGH.

Glad you took my advice about Vex's system. Don't worry too much about adding tons of new heroes, especially since each side picks heroes from the same hero pool, so you don't need to worry about adding another hero to each side.

Yeah, I just couldn't wait to put these guys in since they're mostly finished. Or, rather, they're completely finished now. I'm going to limit myself (In all future versions, however many their are) To a maximum of 26 Heroes. Any more is kinda dumb. Maybe 30, but that's the hard limit.

I'm putting them in, and I think you'll like them both. I think I can finish up the tooltips today and release 0.80 tonight, but first I have some Homework to do (>_<)

On a side note, should I start a new thread for the new version?