(5) Starcraft RPG : Marines Assault

Starcraft RPG : Marines Assault (1-5)

Introduction ( texts from introduction cinematic ):

"All our assault troops have been eliminated...
We failed to prevent Zergs for moving into the region and preparing their assaults...
You represent our last chance. The city wishes you to help us for defending our colony until the complete civil evacuation.
Choose one of our 5 best officers and fight those demons !"


Basic containing:

Marines Assault is a RPG with a survival part. You start by choose one of the 5 heroes and have to complete all the starcraft style missions and defend the base against the zergs assaults.
If you are a beginner, 2-3 hours are necessary to finish the map.

There are 8 quests and some are very differents :
- 4 boss to kill
- eggs clutch to destroy
- outpost to help
- valves to fix
- bridges to blow up
...

5 heroes :
- Caporal : Infantery specialist
- Sergeant : Artillery specialist
- Chief officer : technology specialist
- Medical officer : logistical and psy specialist
- Eradicator : cleansing specialist

Terrans unit types:
- Marine recruit
- Marine soldier
- Marine veteran
- Medic
- Dropship
- Siege tank
.. customed units from Acathla

Zerg unit type
- zergling
- hydralisk
- ultralisk
- scourge
- overlord
...and variation of hydralisks.

Gameplay:

- The playable at 1 as at 5 players.
- Difficulty variates with players numbers.
- Difficulty variates after each quest complete
- Difficulty is decreased if a player leave the game. You can start at 5 and finish at 2 if you want.
- The gameplay is not based on creeping because you earn money by defending the base between each quests.
- The items are only charged type. The gameplay doesn't base the power of the heroes on permanent items.
- Players have to make team play to complete quests... make the quests at 2 players in a 3 players game can be very difficult.

Evolution:

- The map can evolve a lot if people like it. I can add more quests and some more model like Mutalisk or Goliath.
- The quest can evolve too and not be in the same order, and not the same difficulty depending on this order.

Current version : 1.00, beta tested during 4 months.

Download link: http://www.acathla.com/

I look forward to testing this, I enjoyed it a lot back when it was in early beta and now that it's finished it should be a blast. Prepare for massive feedback in about 6-7 hours. Oh, I'm probably going to point out a lot of critical spelling mistakes too, be forewarned.

Ok no problem. It could contain some bugs because of the last update..so i'm prepared for the reports... i noted a lot of reports to release this version.

Starcraft is and as well be a great friend of mine! How long until we can test this map?

Right now? I added a link at the bottom to his site (the one in his prefs), and that has the download link near the top (note how I didn't rudely hotlink?). If it should get approved, I'll make sure it's uploaded to WC3C, but we have issues with files over 2.5 MB I think (not entirely sure).

Files over 2.5 MB... Indeed, my map is about 3,6mo. But if you play it, you will understand it very well because the map contains so many customized things. On b.net, people doesn't have problems to download it, it's not so fast but good.

I downloaded it and will be trying it as soon as I have time. It looks pretty epic.

I have tested it now, and I think this map has potential, but I wouldn't approve it (although Im not a map approver anyway).

I played it single player, and it didn't feel really balanced for that.

I could kill the waves of zergs incoming, but that was all I could do. After a while it started getting boring just to wait for the zerg and kill them for a tiny amount of experience and gold.
I did get a quest to kill a big zergling boss, but I was in no way ready to face him at the level I got the quest. I packed up on hp potions and went to the boss at lvl 4-5 something but I had no chance. I didn't even get him to 50% life. If he is supposed to be that hard you really need to make people understand that they can't go and kill him directly.
I didn't understand some of the abilities either (like the gas cloud from the eradicator, a trap which activates after 4 minutes and slows units?). One more thing that annoyed me was the use of auto-cast icons on casted spells like fire shield and auras with active buttons. Some units used for abilities should also get the locust ability so they can't be selected (again the green gas thingy).

However, I really liked the terrain, the imported models and the starcraft feeling overall. The spells you had were also quite cool and original. It would probably be more fun in multiplayer with cooperation and hopefully more balance. I don't know what the difference in difficulty lies but if you just spawn less units it won't work at all for bosses. Instead I would suggest making all enemy units take an upgrade when a player leaves (and in the start depending on levels) which REDUCES their hp. Don't remember if it's possible to make a %-based upgrade though, but just cutting their hp in half is not a nice solution since it looks like they're half dead.

Anyway: I think it is a nice map and with just small improvements it could be really good. Maybe it was a bit "unfair" of me to only try single player but the game is supposed to support that :)

The map takes way too long to play. It's just too slow, that's my biggest problem. I played a 4 player game and it dragged on for so long it made my eyes bleed. 2 hours and all we could get to was the mission about killing the three hydralisks at once. At that point my entire team was just like "What the crap" and we decided to leave.

Also, when cinematics come up, you should pause all zerg and everything except the ones in the cinematics. We had an entire base defense set up, but a zerg attack came during a cinematic and apparently nothing fought back against them. We were nearly destroyed by this and all of us agreed that it was wretched.

This is very important for the polish of the map and especially for getting it approved. These issues need to be fixed. Also, I'm quite sure the grenades ability on the Chief Officer doesn't work at level 3. I couldn't even kill a zergling with it.

It needs to be sped up with more fast-paced action. The pressure on the base needs to be heightened at all points in time and the defense should be boosted to adjust for that. The rate at which you gain experience should also be raised, really, the map should not take 3 hours to complete, that's unreasonable for any BNet map.

I'm not sure if it is the fastest and funniest way but the single play is the easiest way to finish the map.


No way ? Tell me in which way you have tried?


Of course, they can't kill him directly. They can kill him easily by using all stuffs you can get and many tactics.



Indeed.. you couldn't kill Zergling boss if you don't understand that. Was the description wrong ? :/
Do you know what is a gas puddle ? You are spraying gas on the ground. You attack it, so it burns ( don't try at home ^^ )... so it deals damage... no ? That's it.


No problem, which one ? Only gas puddle ? I think puddles need to have not locust. I will try but i think i have tried it.


I'll try something if it appears that it is the last problem.


No, the single play is important ^^

I'll give you some advices to complete the missions. My beta testers started getting problems within mission 3. I gave them easy ways to complete it.. and they understood well the gameplay so they finished the map easily.

It's not so hard, you just have to use all your spells that you learned, to use items and tactics. Eradicator is one of the easiest hero for the beginning.
The gameplay is very different from the one of Rexxar campaign for exemple. (Hack, slash, life potion, hack and slash ^^)
About mission1 for example :
- take a sentry gun pack, antalisk, 1 health cell, 1 energy cell.
- deploy the 3 sentry guns at the entrance of Boss area
and with eradicator :
- spray some gas puddles around sentry guns, deploy antalisks and fire the gas.
- when Boss arrives, go behind the sentry guns, (if you should have learnt the fireshield, cast it and stay in it )
- order antalisks to attack the Boss
- owned ^^

Sentry guns and antalisks are the friends of Eradicator because they are not damaged by fire.
The difficulty of this map aims to know which items to use in the right time. The problem is that all items and stuff are very new, so it needs to know it well before use it well.

I have not played your most recent version of the map, but I would just like to chime in based on your last response.

By the fact that you had to tell your beta testers (and now these reviewers) how to complete the missions successfully means that your map is not telling them how. As it would appear to be a cooperative game, that is a design flaw in the map which should be adressed.

My advice; apparently the first boss is too difficult for someone who has never played before to defeat. To fix that, try introducing simpler bosses or areas prior to the time that they have to encounter that boss in which they must use the tactics you described.

As you apparently screwed up your Beta testers by informing them of the tactics neccesary, you should embrace this second opportunity to understand what the players are thinking when they play.

If it seems like a lot of people have this problem, maybe you should consider adding it as some sort of tutorial so that players know where to look to get the requirements to win.

This is a campaign map. People shouldn't have to play it multiple times in order to learn what items and abilities you need to use in order to beat the first mission, because then the game goes nowhere.

I'm seeing a pattern here, and please don't take offense in any way; I'm just trying to help. But Abriko, it seems you aren't fully understanding that the players didn't make this map, and thus don't know everything about it. It seems, from your reactions to the map reviewers thus far, that you're assuming everyone who plays knows just what to do (such as attack gas clouds so they blow up), and you thus don't tell them in-game. I haven't played, so maybe you do explain things and people just aren't seeing it. But your responses give off an "Well, you should already know this" feeling.

I've yet to try this, I hate to admit. I will very soon, but I've been really bogged down.

Hum.. the advice was just : "take something like antalisk item and more marines". They tried and they come back to tell me "indeed it was easy".
So i can just add the one sentence advice in the quest description...


"My advice; apparently the first boss is too difficult for someone who has never played before to defeat. To fix that, try introducing simpler bosses or areas prior to the time that they have to encounter that boss in which they must use the tactics you described."

Good idea, i think about something like this. Small quests before begin the serious missions. Only the first Boss mission is difficult. The next missions, player got skills, level and gold necessary.


Just 2 of them, with a very small advice as i told you ^^ Another one told me "your first boss is just ridiculous, he died like a shit"
So how to know where the truth is ?


Please play the game before report something, i have a lot of work just to listen and think about the report from testers.....

"such as attack gas clouds so they blow up"
Gas puddle tooltip includes function + description + tip + warning .. so please.


Did you play it ? There is more people that don't have problems than people blocked.
I gave one the 50 ways to complete the mission.

If you want to help. Tell me which hero you had, what did you try ( way, tactic, items, soldiers, money ).

Just to check - all models and icons in here (except the acknowledged uskalisk model in the credits) are entirely your own work?

- Make that cinematic skippable.
- Disabled icons. Add them.
- They're coming is displayed 4 times in a couple of seconds. Please, don't spam, and learn to use variety.
- Fix the English. This should have been done before submission.
- Some tooltips are wrong, eg: sentry gun.
- I've watched several marines kill themselves with stimpacks. While no one is attacking.
- Grind, grind, grind....boredom....total boredom....no pressure....not even an attack on my hero to aleviate boredom...
- Sentry fire animation is bugged at the end. It fires briefly in the wrong direction.
- Siege tanks are borked. Can't move. No warning about that.
- I took out the first boss, but only by cheating money and taking in the mother of all assault forces. Even then, I had only 6 soldiers left out of about 30 I took in.
- My repair ability couldn't repair buildings, but said it could.
- I swear that taking out the boss results in more troops coming against me, but that might not have a causal link.
- Again, can I repeat how bad the quality of the English is?
- I'm gunna kill myself if I have to play any more of this...

Disapproved