Planning to make an AOS with a huge twist.

[CixxyZ]

Ok I just had a cool idea come up, and I like to share it with you guys before I get started cause I know its gonna be a lot of work if I am to make it its full potential.

Here goes nothing
- I plan to make it simple and have a medium to small map so that walking around isn't so cumbersome.

- Imagine dota, but instead of the great tree and the frozen throne you have two towers in their places. These towers will shoot slowly and every aspect about them can be upgraded. Even their AOEs. The most dramatic of all is their range. One of the main purpose of the game is to rush range so that your side's tower can attack the other side's tower. Either that, or you can play the traditional way of frontal assault.

- How do you upg range you ask? Well, lets say you are playing on the dark side, you simply go to your enemy's side of the map and kill their villagers/ or a boss unit . You gather the random upgrade from them and take it back to your tower. Of course this won't be so easy. You would be in a disadvantage because I will introduce a morale system so that you have increasing penalties for going further and further in to the enemy's side. Also, such sites might be an easy place to set up an ambush.
They will appear in lanes instead (updatE)


- I want the heroes to be generic, like the ones in Final Fantasy Tactics. For eg you would have a Defender, Mage, Archer, etc. Perhaps a different ult depending on which side you're on. This is so that teamwork can be much More strategic

@Moridin
Something nice about generic classes is that you can for instance make a team of 1 defender 3 mages and the def will have skills to mob up the enemies and the mages can aoe the mobs. Or a whole team of archers to pin the foes to the ground and they wont easily get near your team.

Yeah ofc it would be lame with just like 5-6 classes. And with too many it would just be like dota.
Your 2) idea is awesome and I will probably use it. So perhaps once you reach level 10, you can choose a new class which specializes in one of your skills. A la Secret of Mana 2

- The AOS element of AI troops vs AI troops is there to keep up the excitement of the game. Also so that the Towers do have a target to shoot instead of just heroes. Not sure exactly how to go about this part to make it unique, but I was thinking something like a Rock Paper Scissor kind of game (counter game) where any team member can set up a unit to spawn for the line as long as they pay a resource.

What do you think? Any ideas and feedback welcome. Also if you think its a shit idea please say so. Thanks

update


- There will be around 6 classes and each class can branch into 3 sub-classes. The subclasses can then branch into one last sub-sub-class which is difficult to obtain.
This signifies strategy for example, in one game, the Leader has a Archer>Ranger class scout the area with her pet or her winged mount for enemy intelligence.
The scout reports back sightings of two mages defending their boss unit on the way to the lanes. The leader then dispatches the two warriors which one of them happen to be a Templar class to go and cut off the mages. Being a templar, he is resistant to their magicks and is at a great advantage when dealing with them alone.

- The Bosses will be interesting and have different abilities. One boss could be a siegebreaker boss like the one in Diablo3, it rams one direction violently, knocking everything back in its way. They spawn at certain intervals in the game and there will be indicators on your minimap for them. In around midgame or later, there will be multiple bosses spawning in different lanes so for instance if you are leading the team you can order some of your party to defend a boss and others to attack the enemy's boss. Or just go all out on one boss.

- When you gather the resource from the slain boss, you will have to run for your life back to the tower. If you die, you also drop the resource and it will vanish in about 10 seconds if no one else picks it up. CTF moment.

- The Tower can be upgraded with the resource you get from bosses and can be customized with any kind of upgrade, with the more important upgrades costing more resource to upgrade.

- The Tower shoots in an artillery fashion, so its shots can be avoided with quick reflexes--- unless of course the AOE upgrade is at a high level.

Update on Classes, thanks Glen! :

(3:51:00 AM) Glen: Ok so letme summarize
(3:51:05 AM) Glen: Heroes capped at lvl 30
(3:51:12 AM) cixxyz: kk
(3:51:41 AM) Glen: 3 passives with 15 levels per passive. 5 levels for non branch. 10 levels for 1st branch. 15 levels for 2nd branch.
(3:52:00 AM) cixxyz: yep
(3:52:08 AM) Glen: 3 abilties with 4 levels each. 1 ulti with 3 levels.
(3:52:20 AM) cixxyz: k
(3:52:37 AM) Glen: On 1st branch advancement, your old skills are replaced with new ones, and you receive 1 skill and ability point as reward.
(3:52:44 AM) Glen: 1st branch is availabe at lvl 10
(3:52:54 AM) cixxyz: yeah
(3:53:03 AM) Glen: while on the 2nd branch advancement, your ulti is replaced only.
(3:53:11 AM) Glen: available at lvl 20
(3:53:14 AM) cixxyz: yeah
(3:53:15 AM) Glen: which is hard to get to
(3:53:52 AM) Glen: And each branching is assigned to a certain strength. For example, Tanker, Damage Dealer etc
(3:53:58 AM) Glen: Support
(3:54:14 AM) cixxyz: hmm>??

(3:54:22 AM) cixxyz: no
(3:54:38 AM) cixxyz: each branching depends on which ability of the first class you wish to pursue
(3:54:48 AM) cixxyz: or something like that
(3:54:55 AM) Glen: oh
(3:55:01 AM) cixxyz: an archer can be a ranger
(3:55:08 AM) cixxyz: hmm
(3:55:10 AM) cixxyz: okay lets say
(3:55:14 AM) cixxyz: an archer can summon her pet
(3:55:17 AM) cixxyz: okay?
(3:55:27 AM) cixxyz: now if he's a ranger, she gets a Winged pet
(3:55:40 AM) cixxyz: cause she specialized in her pet as a ranger
(3:55:44 AM) Glen: k
(3:55:48 AM) cixxyz: and her other skills are also pet related

Update on the Story
The story will be on the lines of a group of illegal mages known as the "Hand of Forbidden" seeking to gain their birthright as a mage to practice magic freely outside of restriction by the church. The church order of Templars "Celestial Faction" found out their plans, and soon found their hideout. The mage's archmage had already established a tower in their territory but the Templars were more in number so they quickly set up their own for a chance to win in an arcane war.

This all make sense because mages fight war in towers and the theme of the game will be Demon Vs Angel based so the Mages would summon the demons and priests/templars the angels.

_____________________________________________________________________


btw if anyone wants to join the team to make this game, reply in this thread i started:
http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?p=1153357

 

[cryowraith]

Your idea is nice, about an AoS having an alternative winning condition, though that wouldn't make it as an AoS but more like a capture the flag. But the idea of villagers in opponent's base is not that great.

What would the base towers do when enemies approach to kill villagers? Its not easy to tank a tower during early and mid game. When it's late game, upgrading your tree/throne tower would be too late because I assume that you need quite a few upgrades to be able to shoot at opponent tower. And you can't take away the towers as well because units will then rush into the base and requires heroes to do constant defending.

And 1 more thing. Windwalk = Win.

 

[CixxyZ]

Edit: Ok I see what you mean, the map sketch I drew is that the villagers are not on the lanes with the base towers so that they remain unprotected but are great places to set up an ambush.

The tower will shoot randomly and it just adds to the luck part of the game. Also skill involved because you have to play the Rock/P/S game for your lanes so that they will have more cannon fodder for the tower. It might be funny seeing unlucky players being owned by a giant projectile. But I was thinking to make it like if the tower unluckily hits you, your class has an effect on how you die. Perhaps if you're a defender you only lose half your HP, and if you're an archer, you lose 90%
Yeah , the resource part is hard. The best I could come up with is villagers or a boss unit that your team has to protect and the other team has to kill, yes sorta like CTF.
If you have any better ideas feel free to share, thanks mate.

Edit: theres always the possiblity of the tower hitting all but hero units.

 

[CixxyZ]

bump, anyone with ideas or improvements to this ?

 

[Avaleirra]

This sounds like a great idea. Your gonna have to tell your map testers to try to grief as hard as possible because this map sounds like it could be easily exploited.

 

[Moridin]

Nice AOS ideas. I like the new systems involved but I think that generic heroes would be pretty lame :S.

The thing is, when playing an AOS, you want to play someone unique / different from the rest. Then, when bragging for example, you can say "Ha, I owned you using ________". Having generic classes is alright, but I suggest either:
1) Have the classes branch off into customizable areas.
or
2) Have LOTS of classes...so there's some semblence of uniqueness.

 

[CixxyZ]

@ Ava
Thanks, What kind of exploits are you thinking of?

@Moridin
Something nice about generic classes is that you can for instance make a team of 1 defender 3 mages and the def will have skills to mob up the enemies and the mages can aoe the mobs. Or a whole team of archers to pin the foes to the ground and they wont easily get near your team.

Yeah ofc it would be lame with just like 5-6 classes. And with too many it would just be like dota.
Your 2) idea is awesome and I will probably use it. So perhaps once you reach level 10, you can choose a new class which specializes in one of your skills. A la Secret of Mana 2
Thanks mate.

 

[CixxyZ]

btw if anyone wants to join the team to make this game, reply in this thread i started:
http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?p=1153357

 

[avalya]

Hmm, not sure, is this a started map or just a discussion?

 

[CixxyZ]

It's a discussion, I jsut wanted opinion on this thread.

 

[CixxyZ]

Okay, I have another idea, instead of villagers or a boss unit kind of thing, it would be a bit more simple and fun by just making it so that you gain the resource if your team manages to pick up the resource dropped by a boss unit that spawns in the AI controlled lanes, and bring it back to the tower.
Comments?

 

[Moridin]

^That wouldn't be a bad idea. Maybe you get the resources by killing enemy heroes? That would give more motive for ganking...

 

[CixxyZ]

Yeah good one, that too. They would drop rune-like resources which you collect and have to bring safely back to the tower like CTF. You can collect a few but with an item like a backpack you can collect more.
Btw I couldnt catch you on IM mate, I'll pm you my accounts.

 

[CixxyZ]

Points that we have pointed out during our talk:

- There will be around 6 classes and each class can branch into 3 sub-classes. The subclasses can then branch into one last sub-sub-class which is difficult to obtain.
This signifies strategy for example, in one game, the Leader has a Archer>Ranger class scout the area with her pet or her winged mount for enemy intelligence.
The scout reports back sightings of two mages defending their boss unit on the way to the lanes. The leader then dispatches the two warriors which one of them happen to be a Templar class to go and cut off the mages. Being a templar, he is resistant to their magicks and is at a great advantage when dealing with them alone.

- The Bosses will be interesting and have different abilities. One boss could be a siegebreaker boss like the one in Diablo3, it rams one direction violently, knocking everything back in its way. They spawn at certain intervals in the game and there will be indicators on your minimap for them. In around midgame or later, there will be multiple bosses spawning in different lanes so for instance if you are leading the team you can order some of your party to defend a boss and others to attack the enemy's boss. Or just go all out on one boss.

- When you gather the resource from the slain boss, you will have to run for your life back to the tower. If you die, you also drop the resource and it will vanish in about 10 seconds if no one else picks it up. CTF moment.

- The Tower can be upgraded with the resource you get from bosses and can be customized with any kind of upgrade, with the more important upgrades costing more resource to upgrade.

- The Tower shoots in an artillery fashion, so its shots can be avoided with quick reflexes--- unless of course the AOE upgrade is at a high level.

 

[Moridin]

^ Please edit earlier posts instead of making new ones. The current restriction for double-posting / bumping a thread is once per day per thread.

 

[CixxyZ]

thanks for the heads up, original post updated.

 

[MagnaGuard]

Some AoS I always wanted to make was very briefly like that

The setting is in a city. There are 3 factions.
City - NPC
Republicans - Player group 1-5
Democrats - Player group 6-10

Fight against the other party to seize control of the throne. You get a hero and can wander the streets looking for opposite party members. You can fight them, but if the guard catches you...they fight as well

Other people on your team could do many things as well, like get a job and help fund the party etc.

Just something original that you reminded me of

 

[CixxyZ]

Pretty neat idea too. By the sound of it, it just might have some action pacing issues and by doing many things, they need to be on a simple level to appeal to a larger audience.

Anyway the main focus of this project are teamwork, hero customization and strategy. So in that regard it does sound very similar