Since the other thread got locked I'm making a new thread.

I was thinking a map where your units auto-send, but you can upgrade them, change races, increase spawn rate and the like. Or even build a building that spawns supporting units, i.e. spellcasters or tanks.

I'm thinking either 3 teams or just 2.

Heroes would be a big part too.

maybe you could even pay to lower your unit spawn if you want to go hero only.

Thoughts?

Is the concept similar to Castle Fight?

I kind of dislike the idea of making units almost completely computer-controlled. If it were so effort-consuming simply microing hundreds of units over and over again, I would agree that letting users have macros to help them move their stuff would be harmless.

A 3-team scenario is something to think carefully about.

Somewhat similar to Castle Fight, but you could still control the units, the would just auto-send. Also you would mainly just span from one building that you upgrade and you could maybe build one extra building to spawn something like a kodo.


Yeah I think 2 teams would probably be better, or four.

generally 2 teams is better for "fair" play but four teams can be more fun

it really might be better to just not have heroes since usually certain types of heroes will be much better than others

hmmm that is a possibility.

just one hero. called ChimeraOfWIN

How about three teams of three or four? The players have control over where each unit is sent. I envision the map as a triangle with a team in each vertex. Then, the strategy isn't only what to build and when but also in where to send the units.

That could make for some interesting games. Hmmm...

I like the triangle idea, much more strategy.

but i agree that three teams is much harder to balance

im all for a 3 team style game.

heres another thought.

a frenzy style game, but this time 1 or (x players) of the team controls units. the other players control heroes.

a very rough concept, and i hope someone will get what im trying to propose.

maybe also teir the level of units each player on a team controls. 1 player controls simple units spawned at their base. another player controls mid grade units from their base. and another player controls a hero spawned from the base after choosing a teir or something, which can be upgraded by teiring the base.

think about it.

I was never particularly crazy about the 4-way setup. It seemed that no matter where the bases were located, SDF and Frenzy for example, the battles were largely between just 2 teams instead of all 4 teams. Would a 3-way setup be the solution to that? I'm doubtful. Two teams are going at it while the third team ganks them. I have a hard time seeing a clear cut solution other than making it largely, or entirely hero oriented. Even then the problem still exists.

In current maps such as SDF and Frenzy having the center area give a buff (mana regen) helps, but its not good enough. How do you get all teams involved equally amongst each other?

This doesn't have much to do with the topic at hand, but they're suggestions for a particular quandary that Incinerate brought up from awhile ago:

Incinerate wrote:i dont think its possible, cause when you look at a game like footmen frenzy in war3... unless you basically make all the heros support heros ( no dedicated farmers/no hero killers) it wont be possible...... like for e.g .. heros like blademaster dont benefit at all by playing a tech , they are actually disadvantaged due to it.


i think the only way for sc2 to have a 50 % hero 50% units outcome, its to make all the heros Support ( like alchemist for e.g) but then while this is in theory how we all want to play a map, this basically means the map has very little diversity..

like for e.g in foots you can play , FARMER ROLE, HERO KILLER ROLE, OR UNIT SUPPORTER ROLE... all depending on what hero you have.

for a map to be centred around units, the hero must be a supporter, which means the map basically will always play out the same way, which could be boring for some.

I think the problems with a lot of the heroes in Footmen Frenzy (and WC3 Heroes in general) is that they don't have enough interesting interactions with units and units don't have enough interesting interactions with heroes. The Blademaster, for instance, is really just a pure damage hero that doesn't help out his own units enough, and doesn't gain enough help from normal combat units. The Lich is a pure damage hero that keeps units around so he can eat them. The Archmage would also normally be just a pure damage hero, except Brilliance Aura works very well for him and caster units, and while Mass Teleport is very powerful, it is also very pointless unless one is already using very strong units. Heroes in general either take full damage or less damage from anything, while units deal with an armor counter system. These elements are in place to make Heroes powerful and relevant, no matter what they are facing.

(As a quick note, unless the damage formula can be modified, armor should NOT be used for Hero growth. Since damage in SC/SC2 is additive/subtractive and not scaled by percentage, Heroes with enough armor will no longer take damage from units, which would be a pretty good way to make tech useless.)

A very easy way to make Heroes relevant to units (and vice versa) would be to make Heroes use the same attributes and damage bonuses that units use. For instance, it'd be very important to know that the DT (Dark Templar) hero has the light attribute and takes more damage from Hellion spawns, which deal bonus damage against light targets. Or that an Archon hero has a damage bonus against biological targets, which makes it a big deal to use Marine or Zergling spawns. Sticking Heroes into the countering system wouldn't be all that interesting though.

Here's my rough draft for a DT hero, which would attempt to fulfill the Hero Killer role but would also help units and have units help him.

<Dark Templar>
[Psionic Shroud]
The Dark Templar covers himself and nearby friendly targets in a space distorting veil that cloaks and grants unit walking. While the veil is active, the Dark Templar will continue to lose energy. The Dark Templar and units can continue to attack and do other actions while retaining invisibility, but the units will have a slight attack reduction.

[Dark Mirror]
Creates illusionary copies of the target. Upon death, the illusions will explode with psionic energy, disorienting nearby enemy units for a short duration.

[Atom Edge]
Upon attacking, the Dark Templar has a chance of voiding the target's armor, which applies a debuff that causes attacks to deal more damage to the target. The Atom Edge debuff can be stacked.

[Fury of Shakuras]
Transforms the Dark Templar into a mighty Enraged Dark Archon for a short duration. The Enraged Dark Archon's will is absolute fury, causing anything hostile nearby to disintegrate and barring use of the Dark Templar's normal skills. He also employs a powerful shield that envelops himself and nearby friendly targets; direct damage dealt to him or the affected targets will damage his shield first, and damage dealt to his shield is first halved (minimum of 1 damage?).

Ok so pretty obviously this is the Blademaster with a bunch of fiddly tacked on to him, but imo the example DT is still an able Hero Killer that is also able to support his allies fairly well. It remains to be seen if he'll be completely overpowered or completely dependent on having units help out, but I think this could be a good try. I imagine there could be plenty of other way to create a Hero Killer, and there's no need to settle for templates of WC3 Heroes (though I copied off of the BladeM quite a bit here).

Regarding Incinerate's last point about the map becoming boring: adding new content won't necessarily prevent that stagnation, particularly if the new content doesn't add any interesting interactions. Personally I think pure Tanking Heroes and pure Hero Killers have a tendency to cause game progress to slow down or stall (mainly because one intentionally can't deal with Heroes and the other intentionally can't deal with units), so perhaps it'd be better to have less of a focus on those styles. Zergling Blood, Hydra Ranchers and MtG (which are ancestors of Footman Frenzy custom games) were very popular back in the day for SC UMS, and they'll probably do fine without Heroes in SC2.

For the future though I will likely discuss other subjects. I only covered Footman Frenzy at this moment because it was the biggest subject in Masda's previous thread, and I thought I'd rant about it a little first.

Having only support hero's would be a major turnoff for a lot of people.

In my opinion, the truly fun heroes are the ones that have a dedicated role in the game (jaood, archmage, sheep, etc).

what is sheep's dedicated role?

ChimeraOfWind wrote:Having only support hero's would be a major turnoff for a lot of people.

In my opinion, the truly fun heroes are the ones that have a dedicated role in the game (jaood, archmage, sheep, etc).

Jaood I can understand, but I don't see Archmage as necessarily having a dedicated role. He actually does AoE and army support very well and doesn't have to stick to either. I would think Bloodmage is a better example of a AoE dedicated hero, and Shadow Hunter is a better example of an army supporter.

Semantics aside, my issue with having heroes that are dedicated to a particular role is that they tend to not help the progress of individual games. Cattlebruiser, for example, is an absolute hero killer and can be fun, but late game he has a minimal impact on making his team win, just make it less likely for other teams. Jaood, though he's mostly designed as a hero killer, can at least mass DPS armies and crush buildings if he's geared right and the enemy isn't paying attention. Paladin and Shadow Hunter (and sometimes Death Knight) have the same problem; they can't help their team win on their own, but can greatly enable it if their team has a good tech going.

Coming back to UMS for SC2, I guess it wouldn't be okay to have all hero styled units be army supporters, but if dedicated roles are going to exist, then players are going to need additional options outside of units and/or heroes in order to let them have a fighting chance.

Massive-Man wrote:what is sheep's dedicated role?

Feeding heroes with Wind Walk or Blink? =O

Archmage was pretty much the ultimate turtling hero.

you could use granite golem + blizz to destroy armies and then just hide 221312323 dryads in ur base and rthen win

Sheep was..

well he was sheep