AoS The Big Game

Xienoph

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Ok, but how do you move the controllers forward? I noticed they had reallypoints you could set, but not all units moved to those rally points. And sometimes when I looked back at the controller it suddenly had moved forward.:confused:
You can move them forward by selecting and right clicking them. Like how you move units around. I'm not sure what happened to you though ...

What I actually meant was like a bonus from a trueshot tower or one of those, which was still standing in enemy territory. But I guesse they help everyone as long as there aren't enemy heroes around.
Huh. That sounds like a bug. We'll look into that.

Furby said:
And also I don't like that you don't have any skill points at the start, I'd stay 3 for start would be nice to have at least one spell.
Eh? But you can use all skills without putting any skill points into them. Just grab an ability item from the obelisk, and you're good to go.

Thanks for the feedback!
 

Sneakster

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Hey I read on the AD-Wall that you wanted beta testers. I would be glad to help as much as I can! I can even host it if needed...

-Sneakster
 

Xienoph

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It's time for an update! Version 0.8 is up. A lot of interface improvements, added all tooltips for items, and added a hints system. The hints system is meant to help new players to be familiar with the game.

Keep checking this thread. We're going to upload more hero details soon. (in the meanwhile, you can view them here)

EDIT:
Hero Details is up!
 

Xienoph

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BUMP!

195 downloads and hardly any feedback. Could it be that we're doing everything perfectly? :p

I'm still working on the intro to describe the objective. Could use some ideas from you guys. Since we don't really have any settings (and the game name is ambiguous) any ideas are welcome.

The next update will be a major update. We're improving the creep balance and adding two new heroes.
 

Angrypuffin

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Cool map!

What's the mechanic for creeps leveling up? I appreciated the notification, but I think it'd be good to word it in such a way that it makes it clear that it happened because you killed guys, or because the amount of time was passed, or something.

Since I'm an engineer in real life, I couldn't help picking the Engineer in-game.

In general, the game seemed slow. Specifically, I usually found that the engineer had full mana and the tower had no mana (I'd use it whenever there was enough, but the tower's regeneration was pretty small). I'd put the tower in a good spot, so it didn't need moving. I wish there was a way to transfer mana from the engineer to the tower. You might be able to turn siphon mana into this.

Initially, I didn't understand the difference between "build tower" and "channel tower". Could they possibly be combined into one spell, that automatically detects if your tower is alive and ready to be moved? Because of this, the first few times I was always building- and boy, that 75 seconds is punishing. You really need to be sure of what you're doing before you put something like that on a player- you're basically making them not play for 75 seconds.

Channel tower tooltip: "te1eported".

Pretty neat core mechanic. Makes for bad single-player play, because I can just take all the territory, and watch the enemies impale themselves on those spiky, spiky blades of grass. But as a map-maker, it's intriguing.
 

Maelkyral

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Angrypuffin, thanks for the feedback! Every comment really helps us get a better idea of what we can do to improve the map.

As I understand it, your main concerns with the Engineer was the downtime of the initial build time (and having to suffer that downtime again in the instance the Tower was destroyed) and the low mana regeneration (which essentially equates to lengthy downtime where the Tower is not particularly useful).

We're considering reducing the maximum mana and damage of the Tower in exchange for a build time reduction and faster general regeneration. This should help make the Tower's usefulness more consistent throughout a game and make the Engineer feel like a more involving hero.

We did initially consider a mana transfer spell between the Engineer and his Tower; if we find that one of the current Engineer spells proves to not be useful we'll see if this can become the replacement.

I understand that Build Tower and Channel Tower's functionality can be confusing. We probably cannot combine the spells because the Build ability is inherent to the Engineer whereas we want to keep Channel optional. However, we could certainly add further clarification in the tooltips that explains how Build Tower is only for circumstances in which the Tower does not currently exist. Alternatively, we could also add this as an Engineer specific hint message at the beginning of the game. Do you have any other suggestions for how we can make this clearer?

Btw, the mechanic for creeps levelling up is indeed a fixed passage of time. Again, this is something we could add to the hint system for clarification.

Yeah, the map is not particularly challenging in single player. Its definitely a lot more fun in 2v2 - 4v4. We're aiming to host some multiple player games soon, we'll post here when we have more news about that.

Thanks once again for the comments!
 

Xienoph

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BUMP! Downloads are coming, but what about the feedback? :'(
 

Moridin

Snow Leopard
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This actually seems really interesting. I myself tried a territory control map a loong while back (when I couldn't trigger for nuts and didn't know what the object editor did :p).

I think I'll try this out and get back to you :). One question, is there an AI? If there isn't, can you MAKE an AI / Recruit someone to make the AI ?
This is because I usually play with 2 RL friends in the evening via LAN. I don't normally go online to host full 5v5 games.
 

Xienoph

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I think I'll try this out and get back to you :). One question, is there an AI? If there isn't, can you MAKE an AI / Recruit someone to make the AI ?
This is because I usually play with 2 RL friends in the evening via LAN. I don't normally go online to host full 5v5 games.

No there is no AI. We've had requests for an AI. Unfortunately, we have no idea how to do AI for this game. We find it to be a very challenging problem, specifically the strategic aspect, such as cutting enemy's terrain path, keeping neutral towers in control, sneaking into enemy's base, and changing the creep flow.

Well, if you have any suggestions on where to start, do tell me. Right now, I have no idea where to begin making an AI that can handle all that.
 

Moridin

Snow Leopard
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Alright! Played it with a friend and it's pretty nice. Really like the ground conversion mechanic you've implemented :D. Much better than my old one. However, while the core mechanic is very nice, I feel it's been implemented in the wrong way. The game was pretty boring :/. Here's a few points why:

* The bases are huge monoliths. They're crazy large....and you have to walk through it to get to the obalisks and fountains quite often. The size of the maps are more painful because of the lack of town portal scrolls.

* No items = less customisability. If two people pick the same hero, they're going to end up very similar. The number of ways you can play a hero are limited because you can't have different item builds.

* Some abilities had no noticeable effect. I played the beast tamer and found that using the ability trojan horse, wizards orb and rise and fall, from my obalisk, didn't do anything :S. It also spent 3 skill points, so I quickly stopped using it. Infact, I ended up just leveling attack damage and health because it's much more rewarding than leveling up the abilities. You can level up your health 3 times instead of leveling up a somewhat weak ability once. :(

Also note that in my specific hero, the healing wards didn't heal me, which was dissapointing.

* The size of the heroes blobs on the mini-map are tiny. It's very hard to notice enemy hero positions easily.

Finally, I really believe you should just have 6 abilities and items, instead of 7 abilities and no items. The pros of that one ability are far less than the cons of no items.

GJ on the ground mechanic, don't change that. It's a very original idea that really changes the way the AOS is played. However, as I've mentioned before, there are lots of minor things that need ironing. :)
 

Xienoph

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* The bases are huge monoliths. They're crazy large....and you have to walk through it to get to the obalisks and fountains quite often. The size of the maps are more painful because of the lack of town portal scrolls.
We have warp circles that allow you to teleport across the map. Have you used them? If so, why aren't they helpful?

We also use the size of the map to make sneaking into enemy's base easier and discourage heroes from traveling in a single large group (something we dislike from DotA). A single hero with a controller is quite powerful against towers. If there are no heroes or controllers nearby to stop that group, it is your team's mistake for not covering that area.

We suspect that the map feels large because you are playing a 1v1. Maybe you should try it with more players?

* No items = less customisability. If two people pick the same hero, they're going to end up very similar. The number of ways you can play a hero are limited because you can't have different item builds.
We expect that this is difficult to see from a 1v1. But every hero has 8 abilities and can only maximize 4/5 of them. We made sure that every hero can fill up several roles. This means that 2 of the same heroes can have different builds to specialize in different roles. Of course, this is hard to see in a 1v1 since both heroes need to be "pusher / damager."

* Some abilities had no noticeable effect. I played the beast tamer and found that using the ability trojan horse, wizards orb and rise and fall, from my obalisk, didn't do anything :S. It also spent 3 skill points, so I quickly stopped using it. Infact, I ended up just leveling attack damage and health because it's much more rewarding than leveling up the abilities. You can level up your health 3 times instead of leveling up a somewhat weak ability once. :(
We've been encountering this problem with almost all testers. You need to get the ability items from the obelisk and move them to your hero to enable that ability. We've added them in tooltips and hint prompts. Do you have any idea on how we can notify the player?

Also note that in my specific hero, the healing wards didn't heal me, which was dissapointing.
So ... did you give the ability item to the hero? Why did you have trouble casting the others? Anyway, Healing Wards only heals creeps, because that is the hero's flavor. Besides, they heal so quickly that they practically make creeps invulnerable to any attacks that don't one shot kill them. You really don't want that on heroes.

* The size of the heroes blobs on the mini-map are tiny. It's very hard to notice enemy hero positions easily.
This is probably related to the size of the map. We'll look into this.

Thanks for the feedback!
 

Moridin

Snow Leopard
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We have warp circles that allow you to teleport across the map. Have you used them? If so, why aren't they helpful?

I actually did notice the circles a little late into the game...but didn't try using them. I guess that's my mistake.

We also use the size of the map to make sneaking into enemy's base easier and discourage heroes from traveling in a single large group (something we dislike from DotA). A single hero with a controller is quite powerful against towers. If there are no heroes or controllers nearby to stop that group, it is your team's mistake for not covering that area.
Doesn't this discourage teamwork?

We suspect that the map feels large because you are playing a 1v1. Maybe you should try it with more players?
Perhaps. I thought about this for a little while and I decided that even if there were more heroes, you'd still have to run around a lot by yourself.

We expect that this is difficult to see from a 1v1. But every hero has 8 abilities and can only maximize 4/5 of them. We made sure that every hero can fill up several roles. This means that 2 of the same heroes can have different builds to specialize in different roles. Of course, this is hard to see in a 1v1 since both heroes need to be "pusher / damager."
I really didn't see 2 different builds for the beast master :S. All my abilities were meant to push push push. None of my abilities helped me or other heroes, with most of them being aura effects or buffs for creeps only (like the healing ward).

* Some abilities had no noticeable effect. I played the beast tamer and found that using the ability trojan horse, wizards orb and rise and fall, from my obalisk, didn't do anything :S. It also spent 3 skill points, so I quickly stopped using it. Infact, I ended up just leveling attack damage and health because it's much more rewarding than leveling up the abilities. You can level up your health 3 times instead of leveling up a somewhat weak ability once.
We've been encountering this problem with almost all testers. You need to get the ability items from the obelisk and move them to your hero to enable that ability. We've added them in tooltips and hint prompts. Do you have any idea on how we can notify the player?
This is actually a problem tbh. I personally knew about this, because I read it in the quest menu, but it's very obscure. I personally suggest telling people about it in terms of game text messages whether or not they activate hints. Maybe include a clear command to help those that are bugged by text on their screen?

So ... did you give the ability item to the hero? Why did you have trouble casting the others? Anyway, Healing Wards only heals creeps, because that is the hero's flavor. Besides, they heal so quickly that they practically make creeps invulnerable to any attacks that don't one shot kill them. You really don't want that on heroes.
Yes I did know about the whole item = ability thing.

------------------------

One idea I had was this. You can still have items in your map if you make the ability items consumables. The first level consumes the ability and further level ups can be directed to the unit that triggers the level up. This allows you the flexibility to add items into the game?
 

Xienoph

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Doesn't this discourage teamwork?
It encourages teamwork since you have to split the tasks among team members. A hero can be in charge of one lane, one can be defending, one can be sneaking into the enemy's base, etc.

Perhaps. I thought about this for a little while and I decided that even if there were more heroes, you'd still have to run around a lot by yourself.
Also, keep in mind that Beast Tamer isn't a very mobile hero. There are a lot more mobile heroes in the map, such as Peregrine, Engineer (well, sort of, you'll see what I mean if you try him), and Savior. These heroes are meant to be mobile.

I really didn't see 2 different builds for the beast master :S. All my abilities were meant to push push push. None of my abilities helped me or other heroes, with most of them being aura effects or buffs for creeps only (like the healing ward).
Hmm ... that's true. But it's bad to have 2 Beast Masters on the same team anyway since most of their abilities don't stack: each team can only have 1 Trojan Horse at a time; Endurance Aura, Healing Ward, and Wizard's Orb don't stack.

Also, a lot of the abilities are situational: You do not want to use Healing Ward if there are a lot of ranged enemy heroes around, specially Peregrine, since they can snipe the ward. Spirit Chain is more useful if you have a healer (Savior) in your team. Wizard's Orb is good if you're facing enemy heroes that have mana heavy builds (Meteor Hunter Killer, any Lord of the Swarm's builds, Vortexing Mind Bender). Trojan Horse should never be used if there is a Savior with Dispel in the enemy's team.

I can go on and on, but I think it'll get irritating so I'll stop ^^. I'll talk about this with Maelkyral.

This is actually a problem tbh. I personally knew about this, because I read it in the quest menu, but it's very obscure. I personally suggest telling people about it in terms of game text messages whether or not they activate hints. Maybe include a clear command to help those that are bugged by text on their screen?
We had a text displayed at the start of the game before we made it only displayed when they activate the hints. That didn't seem to help. I'm thinking of reverting that change, actually.

One idea I had was this. You can still have items in your map if you make the ability items consumables. The first level consumes the ability and further level ups can be directed to the unit that triggers the level up. This allows you the flexibility to add items into the game?
We want people to be able to change their build mid game to counter their opponent's builds ... or to fake a build, since some abilities are quite good in mid game unleveled. For example, as Savior, you can pretend to not use Dispel at all and let the enemy's Beast Tamer put points into Trojan. In mid game, you can start killing Trojan Horses with your Dispel. That'll waste a lot of Beast Tamer's skill points.
 

Maelkyral

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Hi Moridin! Thanks for the feedback! (Nice nick btw ^^). I'd like to ask you more about a few points you raised.

1) You say you didn't find Trojan Horse, Rise & Fall, and Wizard's Orb particularly useful. Were their other abilities of the Beast Master that you thought were better than them, or did you find the abilities somewhat lackluster all around?

2) I've heard from a few people now that Trojan Horse is not very useful, which really surprises me because my concern was that it was too powerful (hence why multiple Beast Masters on one team are limited to a single Trojan Horse between them at a time). Could you elaborate on why it was not useful?

3) Regarding leveling attributes versus leveling skills, we are still examining the balance between that. I think if the core spell is useful then the levels provide enough incentive to invest in it, so maybe the issue is the power level of spells at level 1.

4) The Beast Master is really not the best hero at protecting himself, since his role is mostly creep support. However, you can cast Spirit Chain on yourself and that will help your allied creeps tank somewhat for you. Or you can cast Chain on groups of them and then Healing Wards will make them nigh invulnerable.
I think as it stands, the Beast Master is not someone who wants to go toe-to-toe with an enemy hero. He would prefer to hide behind his creep army and use them to overwhelm the enemy instead. This is the kind of game play that we planned for the Beast Master, however perhaps he can use a couple spells that allow an alternative, more directly combative build.

5) On that subject, you mention that the game has insufficient build customization. Our hope was that having 8 abilities from which you can only pick 6 would create a good diversity of possible builds, since in many other DotA style maps your hero will end up getting all the spells once they are high level. You also cannot max all 6 of your spells and attributes even when max leveled, so you have to make more choices here.
Perhaps choosing 6 / 8 is not enough choice still? Would having more spell choices per hero be enough? I also that the Beast Master in particular does not have a lot of choice in play style even between different builds, so this might be a contributing factor.

6) Lastly, you mention the heroes not having enough mobility to cover the large sized map. Do you think that if you had known about Warp Circles from the beginning of the game it would have alleviated this issue? Any ideas on how we can make that feature clearer?
Some heroes as Xienoph mentioned are a fair bit more mobile than others. Five of the eight existing heroes have some kind of mobility spell, and we are adding two more heroes like this. Ideally I would probably like every hero to have a mobility ability, perhaps if we expand the abilities per hero we can address this.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment!
 

Moridin

Snow Leopard
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1) You say you didn't find Trojan Horse, Rise & Fall, and Wizard's Orb particularly useful. Were their other abilities of the Beast Master that you thought were better than them, or did you find the abilities somewhat lackluster all around?

2) I've heard from a few people now that Trojan Horse is not very useful, which really surprises me because my concern was that it was too powerful (hence why multiple Beast Masters on one team are limited to a single Trojan Horse between them at a time). Could you elaborate on why it was not useful?
They weren't useful because I didn't see anything happening at all. I didn't have the abilities in my hero, I couldn't get the abilities as items off the obalisk and when I spent points to upgrade it at the obalisk nothing really happened. So I kinda stopped spending points in it :S.

4) The Beast Master is really not the best hero at protecting himself, since his role is mostly creep support. However, you can cast Spirit Chain on yourself and that will help your allied creeps tank somewhat for you. Or you can cast Chain on groups of them and then Healing Wards will make them nigh invulnerable.
This is infact the only thing I did :p. I used to use the spirit chain to make my creeps take my damage while i killed my friend on the battlefield.

I think as it stands, the Beast Master is not someone who wants to go toe-to-toe with an enemy hero. He would prefer to hide behind his creep army and use them to overwhelm the enemy instead. This is the kind of game play that we planned for the Beast Master, however perhaps he can use a couple spells that allow an alternative, more directly combative build.
Well, I actually used the creep waves a lot. I used to lure my friend (enemy) into my creeps and let him hit me a bit while i was spirit chained. This would make my creeps attack him for a bit, and eventually he'd either run away or die :p.

On that subject, you mention that the game has insufficient build customization. Our hope was that having 8 abilities from which you can only pick 6 would create a good diversity of possible builds, since in many other DotA style maps your hero will end up getting all the spells once they are high level. You also cannot max all 6 of your spells and attributes even when max leveled, so you have to make more choices here.
I actually only had 4/5 abilities :S. Confusinggg.

I also that the Beast Master in particular does not have a lot of choice in play style even between different builds, so this might be a contributing factor.

Lastly, you mention the heroes not having enough mobility to cover the large sized map. Do you think that if you had known about Warp Circles from the beginning of the game it would have alleviated this issue? Any ideas on how we can make that feature clearer?
I actually want to play the map again to check these things out. Will get back to you again later :).
 

Xienoph

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They weren't useful because I didn't see anything happening at all. I didn't have the abilities in my hero, I couldn't get the abilities as items off the obalisk and when I spent points to upgrade it at the obalisk nothing really happened. So I kinda stopped spending points in it :S.
Why couldn't you get the abilities as items off the obelisk? Do you know that if you press the "patrol" item, you can go to the second page with Trojan Horse, Riase and Fall, Endurance Aura, and Wizard's Orb?
 

Moridin

Snow Leopard
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Why couldn't you get the abilities as items off the obelisk? Do you know that if you press the "patrol" item, you can go to the second page with Trojan Horse, Riase and Fall, Endurance Aura, and Wizard's Orb?
If I remember right, in the beginning of the game the obalisk had 5 abilities in it's item slots + some recycle thing (I don't really remember what it was called, it had the icon that looks like recycling though). I couldn't pick up the recycle thing, so I thought it was something else that wasn't ability. Finally the 3(?) other abilities that weren't in the obalisk, I could never get.

Edit: Just reading your post, I realise that if you click the "recycle" ability (patrol :p) you get to the second page. Did not know this. :p
 

NightShade

Ultra Cool Member
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I just played this 1v1.

The game was ruined by the fact that only 1 of my abilities worked. I was playing the tinker engineer hero. I would equip the abilities and nothing would happen. I would upgrade them and nothing would happen. My opponent had about 3 of 8 abilities working (was warden) so he was winning (we quit because of bugs before we finished the game).

also all of the creep rally points were named the same thing, so I got confused late game which was which. this can be easily fixed by changing the name to bottom, top, and middle rally point.

the map was too big, and I had trouble finding portals because the map was too big. the background terrain look reddish brown and makes it hard to make out unit on it. Snow would be much better.

If I went invisible people could still see me some of the time. I did not see any signs that they had truesight.

The map started lagging.

the creep graphics seemed random. doom guards for trees and farie dragons for undead?

I can't give feedback on the map when most things bug, but the concept looks really good.
 

Maelkyral

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I just played this 1v1.

The game was ruined by the fact that only 1 of my abilities worked. I was playing the tinker engineer hero. I would equip the abilities and nothing would happen. I would upgrade them and nothing would happen. My opponent had about 3 of 8 abilities working (was warden) so he was winning (we quit because of bugs before we finished the game).

Nightshade, that's really strange since we have extensively tested the game ourselves and all the spells should work. Several of the engineer's spells are cast by his tower, did you check if the tower gained the spells you equipped? Perhaps some kind of notification about his tower might be useful?

If the tower also didn't acquire the spells when you equipped his items, I'm not sure what the reason might be. I'm also at a loss for why Hunter Killer's (warden) abilities were not working. Can you mention which spells specifically were the issue?

Were you able to find all 8 ability items ok? The 'recycle' button in the obelisk's inventory is used as a toggle to switch to the second page of ability items, I'm not sure if that was clear.

also all of the creep rally points were named the same thing, so I got confused late game which was which. this can be easily fixed by changing the name to bottom, top, and middle rally point.

Good idea. We'll do this.

If I went invisible people could still see me some of the time. I did not see any signs that they had truesight.

The sight towers in the left and right side of each base grant vision and detection of invisible units within a limited area. Perhaps this could explain how people could see you when invisible?

Thanks for the feedback!
 
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