New map concept, need feedback

krainert

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Greetings,

First of all: I don't know if this has been done, or if any existing maps come close to it. Please let me know if either is the case.

An optional bit of background:
I've been trying to come up with an idea for a competitive map for a while now; a "competitive map" in the sense that part or all of the challenge in it is based on player actions so that the experience reflects how the map is played to improve replay value. The thing is that maps in which the challenge is based on the players' choices, such a TD's where players in some cases send mobs against each other, tend to be rather confined. For example, I wish to build a hero map, but if I choose to let the players do the mob spawning, the role of the heroes will have to be strictly defensive since I will surrender my influence on when, where and with what units the teams are attacked meaning I can't rely on progressive sequences where players fight their way through dungeons, bosses, etc. since those would pose unfairly ideal spots for massively built-up spawns from the opposite team. This tendency seems to be rather persistent.
As a consequence, I started looking into hybrids. In particular, RPG maps seem to offer a good base for non-repetitive maps since they allow for both freedom in choosing of general direction for the players and boundless possibilities for concrete challenges for them to overcome since I get to decide what happens where and when given a particular player-chosen path. However, this predestined nature implies very poor replay value since every playthrough will offer the same challenges, albeit in a potentially different order depending on player choices. Also, with no player-based challenges, enemies will be purely mobs - mobs chosen by me in advance, that is.
And so: How could one achieve a map, in this case a hero map, in which players can comprise challenges for each other while the gameplay still has more depth than what a single aspects like defense or PvP has to offer?


The idea is actually quite simple: Provide players with the classical choice of heroes and then drop each selected hero onto the battlefield on random places selected among a certain set of possible spawn points.
Player relationships will initially be neutral, and none will know where the other heroes are currently located. Once heroes meet, the player controlling one can propose an alliance with the other who can accept or decline. Once an alliance is made it offers the players shared vision and can be expanded by accepting more heroes into it. Any participant can leave his alliance without warning thus voiding the shared vision between him specifically and the rest of the group which remains allied.
Furthermore, any player can at any time opt to attack another causing a hostile relationship between attacker and attackee (which should probably affect alliances in which they participate as well - specifics to be determined).

So, heroes must make their alliance(s) themselves. How is this interesting?
Well, initially, players will probably race to achieve the highest level before encountering potentially hostile players, but sooner or later they will have to cooperate in order to complete more challenging tasks (large dungeons, hardcore bosses, special objectives requiring multiple participants). Ultimately, the players will have to comprise a large band in order to complete the game's main task (or one of several available main tasks - to be decided). At the very end of that task, only one player can achieve its goal. As a consequence, players will make alliances knowing that one of the participants will eventually be required to kill off his friends in order to complete the objective and win the game.

Thus, the main challenge in the game, aside from the obvious one of fighting through mobs, is figuring out when and where your allies are going to turn on you. This should certainly provide some pretty unpredictable gameplay from time to time! :)

What do you think? Is it feasible? Has it been done? Am I missing something vital about human psychology?

Thanks.
 

TomTTT

New Member
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This game sounds nice, but may be too much, and players would focus on one thing, without going on another. I'm not sure, it pretty much depends on the availability of the dungeons - If they are accesible right away or blocked, or hidden in the far side of the map or hidden. The alliance thing sounds cool, but people might abuse it and maybe while they are in an alliance and attacking creeps together, one will break the alliance and attack his ex-ally (sounds so mean xD), or people might just make an ally of all against one, and he is doomed :p.
Summary!
This concept is really nice, but only if it will be used in a well-done map, which will be entertaining and yet fair for all players.
 

krainert

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[...] but people might abuse it and maybe while they are in an alliance and attacking creeps together, one will break the alliance and attack his ex-ally (sounds so mean xD), or people might just make an ally of all against one, and he is doomed :p
Exactly. :cool:

About the dungeon/quest availability thing: Yeah, thanks, I think that's a really important point. Almost all areas should probably be open from the beginning, and no non-mandatory dungeon should probably take more than 15 minutes or so - so players will actually get to do different things and have a chance to run into each other.
 

CrazedPyscho

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]Thus, the main challenge in the game, aside from the obvious one of fighting through mobs, is figuring out when and where your allies are going to turn on you. This should certainly provide some pretty unpredictable gameplay from time to time! :)

Yeah I think this is a really awesome idea :D Probably be hard to pull off but still its a great concept involving alliances. (I'hve been thinking of maps to create 4 a long time as well, wonder if i should go ahead with adaptation, hmm.) Anyway GL with this :D
 

BlackRabbit

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It seems really busy. And by dungeons, do you mean creeps just placed somewhere on the map? It sounds like an intense idea, and depending on how you want to go about it, it might be tough for WE to do it without a TON of custom scripts. But hey, look at DotA. I'm sure people said it sounded crazy at first, and now look at it? Headed to steam shortly! So who knows? Maybe you've got a gold-star idea here. I look forward to an alpha or beta map
 

krainert

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Thanks.
I do believe the workload will be considerable, but I'm willing to put quite a lot of time into it.

Do any experienced designers out there have some advice?
 

HydraRancher

Truth begins in lies
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Concept is nice, but the role playing community of WC3 isn't very large, so it might not be very popular.
 

krainert

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Concept is nice, but the role playing community of WC3 isn't very large, so it might not be very popular.
That's an interesting issue... How long can a map take to play through on average before it gets too extensive for the common WC3 player?
 

HydraRancher

Truth begins in lies
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That's an interesting issue... How long can a map take to play through on average before it gets too extensive for the common WC3 player?

Think about a loap game. They last roughly an hour I'd say, if you got some good role players. It all depends on balance; loap games with a huge godly character aren't going to be very favourable. Also, not everybody wants to role play.

On the other hand, SotDRP is/was popular, because of the huge variety of things to do.

All in all, make it a good RPG game, with role playing elements inside. I would also recommend having allies a large advantage. Games like Diplomacy usually rely heavily on allying, maybe some sort of bonus?
 

DioD

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scissors + rock + paper.

you may create any concept, but cant create anything new.
 

krainert

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I wrote a long reply, but then I hit the Reply to Thread button. Again.
I really don't see why that one has to remain visible after it has been clicked once.
Anyway, thanks.
 

krainert

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Just wanted to let you know the diplomacy system is 100 % operational now :)
15 triggers, 1 spellbook of 3 abilities, and input handled in 18 distinct ways complete with descriptive feedback.
 

BlackRabbit

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scissors + rock + paper.

you may create any concept, but cant create anything new.

Um... Ok?
Try being a little more helpful and a little less cryptic? rofl

I guess with something like this, you'll have to put it together and see how it's received. It'll either be received well and played by a select community, or it'll tank. I guess you just have to see.

I guess the aforementioned is right. At this point, WC3 and the editor have been around for so long, it'd be hard to create a purely original idea without borrowing something from someone else. Just do your best.
 

Rakaesa

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The concept is absolutely great, it's like an orpg and hero arena combined with cleverness and an intrigueing idea. But like all games, there will be a flaw to it. I can already see two.

1. This goes for almost every arena game available to play in WC3. And since this is a pvp orpg, I will treat it half like an arena sort of thing. Alright, so the issue is power. In EVERY Arena, you have either too much, or too little power.

Let's take angel arena as an example. My favorite version is Morphed, because it's unbalanced. Unbalanced means players can become very godlike and win against all other players every single game (Like I do, not trying to boast xD). So you have me as a perfect example of a player like that.

Then you have the other versions like Allstars. THIS version of angel arena is very balanced, and it's hard to gain the upper hand.

I perfer unbalanced, because if you're all balanced against eachother, it gets quite boring to fight eachother.

So how do you solve this problem? It's almost impossible. The idea is you have to have some way for a player to become powerful, but other players have to be able to beat him. This concept I have never seen done before, because a second player would need to have equal power against the one who is godlike. Which means they'd both be able to kill everybody else untill EVERYBODY in the game was godlike, and then they'd all be equal, and it goes on untill every player has the best items and stats achievable.

Why is this a problem, you may ask. This is an ORPG set up. Indeed it is, but there is PVP. With PVP, the above problem applies whether you like it or not. This problem infact leads to my second problem.

2. PVP Itself.

I love the PVP idea, don't get me wrong. It's a very good concept and a nice map, and you won't have to change it. But there's a problem with it, like all systems in the world. Lets say you have an alliance of four people. You're all having fun with a dungeon, but one guy gets bored. So he decides to unally his teammates. Within seconds, his teammates will kill him, because he's the only one that unallied. So it's either stay in your allied group and live, or get roflpwned by them the moment you unally them. Instantly the 3-man alliance will have the upper hand and usually with WC3 players they will decide to hunt you down untill you want to leave the damn game.

That's the problem with PVP alliances. I'm not sure how you'll resolve this problem or if it's actually an issue at all, but i'm just pointing out the things that I see need to be fixed or helped in some way.


So don't take this personally, I have nothing at all against this map idea. It sounds like a great map that I myself would play, because I love orpgs AND Arenas, so both together is awesome. I'm just giving some constructive criticism.

Edit: Oh, also, about the first power issue. If this is like a real ORPG and you have a save/load character system, a guy will probably get the best character possible and then get bored, so he'll use it to join all the games and repeatedly kill all the noobs in the game. XD
 

krainert

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10
Wow, thanks for the feedback :)

Since I'm a big fan of competitive gameplay myself I think I'll try to keep the map focused on being the first to complete the main objective - or be the last man standing. This should also mean games will be shorter; I imagine an average duration of about an hour if the players (ultimately one of them, that is) actually manage(s) to reach the goal, slightly less down to probably 20-30 minutes otherwise. Therefore I don't expect I'll need a load character function.

The balance thing is definitely relevant, though, and I haven't gone into the details of hero design yet - but I suspect refining specs and abilities will take quite a while.

About the volatile alliances, I changed the concept a bit; relationships are now managed between two players rather than for entire groups which gives the players much more freedom and also prevents them from building up into one horde hunting down the rest so easily. Also, the risk of forming a horde is probably too large for players to actually do this; if it decides to turn on you, you're screwed, so everyone is probably better off with groups of 2-4 in most cases - since you can run away from 1-3 players relatively easily :)

I'm still not sure of the layout, though... Some thoughts:
  • A traditional hero maze approach with one path to the goal won't work since that would require everybody to team up which is against the concepts of competitiveness and player-controlled progression
  • Having one large dungeon with branches or different directions probably won't work either since each part can only be completed once which means players would run around in empty corridors looking for something to kill or some objective to complete half the time
  • A completely RPG styled scenario with an open area featuring loads of objectives not directly related to the main goal is probably not going to work either as this would encourage turtling and/or actual roleplaying - which is bound to conflict with the idea of rushing to be the first to complete the main objective
What I'm considering right now is a semi-open environment with a variety of dungeons each yielding something giving passage to new areas with new dungeons - probably often through portals to prevent one player unlocking an area from resulting in the area being available for everybody else as well. Then some dungeons later could contain items required to unlock a passage to the final part of the map, and players could rush to collect these items (one probably being available at each spot for each player so that one can't just take one and hide :)). This would also mean players would be likely to have teamed up by the time they reach the final part - and that many will be dead by then - so that the last bit actually gets competitive in the sense I'm seeking.

Something else I'm not sure about: Death. Players being resurrected will probably kill the excitement of having to survive the competition, but dying early resulting in one being effectively out of the game will probably be pretty lame as well - so I'm thinking of letting dead players fly around as ghosts capable of possessing mobs. Then the dead players could collect player kills, and if all players die before one completes the main objective (or too many die for the anyone to be able to reach the last areas) the dead player with the most kills wins.

Thoughts? :p
 

Rakaesa

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The semi-open environment sounds good, and so does that death system. But another option for death is have dead heroes revive in some kind of proving grounds or judgement grounds area for dead people, where if they get through it succesfully they are brought back to earth alive. Like a maze or dungeon or something. This way the other players will have a chance to get ahead, too, so there's a disadvantage to dieing. I still like your first death idea though.
 

krainert

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Yeah, I've gotten a few more ideas regarding the death system, and this is - abstractly - how I figure it'll work:
The player has a karma-o-meter showing 0 at the start of the game. Whenever the player does a good deed, the meter goes up. Whenever he does something less-then-heroic, the meter goes down. Since the more artsy concept of the map from the beginning has been holding a sarcastic tone against the concept of heroes, I hope this'll fit well into the spirit. So, some quests or features require the player to have karma above or below a certain limit which will hopefully force players to make a choice between the two sides. To make a challenge out of this, the darker side will of course yield more challenges along the way, as one will be the target of not only monsters but also otherwise friendly neutrals - and/or face simular consequences. How does this relate to the death system? Well, depending on whether or not you've been good while alive, you get different choices when you die. The idea is that it becomes hard for aggressive player-killing heroes to return to the battle whereas the innocent monster-slaying ones are granted a huge advantage. In other words: You can either kill everything you see and pray to the heavens you don't get slayn yourself, or you can try do fight you way through the scenario in a more decent way to gain a number of benefits at the cost of easiness at times. Of course all this will need a vast amount of balancing in beta :)

Other news:
The first hero class is done; the Krain (yeah, I'm so creative). It's a spell-based melee class with Agility as its main stat. It starts with 18 Agility, 12 Intelligence, and 6 Strength and gains 3, 2, and, 1 in those, respectively, for each level (up to level 15). It masters the following abilities:
  • Impertukinetics: Magically imbue the Krain, adding physical damage to melee attacks at the cost of mana. Cannot be activated simultaneously with Muniokinetics.
  • Muniokinetics: Magically imbue the Krain, increasing armor and reducing damage taken, draining mana instead. Cannot be activated simultaneously with Impertukinetics.
  • Aequikinesis: Meditate into a state of trance, dramatically increasing mana regeneration relative to normal for the duration of the channelling.
  • Terrakinesis: Launch a charged fist into the ground, causing a localized earthquake damaging and reducing the movement speed and attack rate of nearby enemies for a period of time.
  • Aerokinesis: Magically generate momentum, launching a powerful shockwave through the air dealing damage to and stunning enemies in a cone for a period of time.
Sounds reasonable? I *tried* to be a bit original in my hero design.
 

duderock101

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Very nice Hero idea... is that hero a Tank/Dps hero or are you not having Class role. Might be more helpful if you have to ally with certain other Hero's to overcome challenges (Kinda like WoW, but try not to have pure healing/dps/tank classes)

Just an Idea :p
 

krainert

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Yes, I'm trying to build classes that benefit from teaming up with players of particular other classes. In this case, the Krain is Damage/Tank class which is well complimented by a Support/Tank class.

EDIT: Stuff removed here. Thinking again, I don't really believe anyone cares enough to read a wall of text explaining the theory behind my class system :)
 
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