What follows are various balance issues that I've noted so far, in regards to overused spells and overused classes. In theory, if the classes are balanced they should be used equally, we all know that this isn't the case because of hard counters. Making the classes more about skill and less about which matches up best with which should definitely be a goal of this map. How successful in the long-term would StarCraft melee have been if Terran almost always beat Protoss, Protoss almost always beat Zerg, and Zerg almost always beat Terran? While I play publicly, there are a good amount of players whom I see frequently and have good competition with, and I'd doubt that the private games players here are far above my level.

Assassin: My favorite class to play, primarily because it's the only class that can actually make effective offensive base raids before 15-20 minutes into the game. I must say, though, that the L1 is completely overpowered. It means that I don't need to get any HP upgrades and just enough armor to kill spawns easily, and I'm set for the game provided I can dodge a Medic's L3 and avoid double teams during the day. My suggestion is instead of a cooldown, merely a 3 second charge up before the spell is cast. It's simply far too good compared to other L1's.

Warrior: L2 spell was addressed in this update, and I haven't had a chance to test that out yet, but it's rather easy to spam 3 times and completely immobilize a hero. I'd think a 1 or 2 second cooldown would be fitting, allowing a sort of cat and mouse game in that short timeframe to avoid a second prison. Also, the warrior's L3 spell stuns the warrior for almost as long as it stuns the opponent, meaning you have to chain it with a level 2 or have teammate support or it's completely worthless except for killing spawns. It can end up killing you almost as easily as your opponent. I'm almost thinking that simply switching the Warrior's level 2 and level 3 would be the best solution...

Medic: L4 plus 3 man teams = imbalanced. My only thought is to restore each character to the HP that it has leveled up to plus 10% or something along those lines, but give the Medic full hp.

Dark Mage: L1 is a joke. With 80 mana and an orb I can maelstrom you 5 times if I'm at all a decent caster. That's just laughable. My thought here is to make the Dark Orb start with 10-15 less mana than the requisite to cast maelstrom. This would allow a decent enemy to get away without proper pursuit and/or ensnare.

Light Mage: Longer cooldown on L1. I know it's there, but it's too strong irregardless, melee classes have no chance to deal damage without taking the brunt of the next cast. This delves into the hard counters I referred to earlier.

Spec Ops: The marine with mass mines can do very well, especially when he has lots of HP. Mine spamming plus mass assimilators pretty much means that a non-ranged team has lost. A tentative solution is to limit the maximum number of mines, I'm not exactly sure what is reasonable as I cannot stand playing this class.

Mutant: My second favorite class, and I have to say that lurker bombing is just too easy. Supposedly the overall damage was lowered in the recent version, but the lurkers became more armor piercing, so I'll have to see how that works out, it seems like a backwards solution to be honest; that makes them more efficient at killing heroes in the late game, though it will potentially stop early lurker rushes. On the whole, the Mech is the only character that can actually outrun the Mutant's lurkers. The fact that he can burrow and cast it at night too makes it a nightmare, especially since he is the only character which can see in the dark. He'd counter himself well, but,

Mech: Because of its versatility, the Mech is a hard counter to multiple classes. The life on a Mech with even just two forms and a few +4%'s is extraordinary. A solution is beyond me, other than the obvious lowering of HP which would make the Mech very vulnerable early game. As it is, though, the Mech can easily have 10000-12000 life, so I think this is necessary.

Other general suggestions:
- Fewer and more powerful spawns is good. Less grinding and more micro to gain experience is a welcome change, rather than just one hitting spawns. (I hope this was changed, from what I've read on the new version...) In time perhaps players will begin to last hit for kills purposefully. It's a shame that the SC system can't incorporate denies efficiently.
- Cannons are too tough defensively. Spawns, even broodlings, should be able to damage them over time, letting one team who is controlling the map and spawns gain an advantage by doing so. The plasma shields and armor upgrades are to blame, here. The damage could possibly be lowered, but it doesn't need to be if the armor is. This would make them cheaper. as a result, and would allow their usage to become more common, too.
- Pylon hunting is too easy. Making the cannons easier to kill, however, could potentially alleviate this problem, so this need not be addressed if that change is made.
- Too much Temple armor. In order to prevent the summoner from completely destroying it, it definitely needs some armor, I'd suggest 20 or 25. With that armor, 30,000-50,000 life would be raidable by any character, requiring more active defensive and offensive roleplaying. This does not display, however, so one way to alleviate this would be to stack multiple temples with 9999 life. This of course makes the temple more susceptible to the Mech's Tanks, Mutant's Lurkers, and especially Volt. If this is a problem, toggle invulnerability on only one temple at a time, changing when the first is killed, though emphasizing splash classes as offensive could definitely add an interesting and fun element to the game.

This armor change would be an enormous one in relation to the game, coupled with the ability to destroy pylons and cannons with more ease if you have map control on a lane. I play as the Assassin solely because I can make the game more interesting by focusing on destroying the temple. Every other class except perhaps the Warrior and Mech are essentially forced to kill heroes for the vast majority of the game, until such point that the game has usually become decided anyway, and destroying the temple or portions of the enemy base merely a (usually obnoxiously long) formality.

I have one other rather large suggestion, but I'll hold on that one until I see the reception given to these.

Thanks guys, I welcome critical responses.
FaZ- aka Decency

That would definitly work. Only L4 I've ever seen used like crazy was the new Mech and Warrior, and of course a certain Mutant..

(Edit: No, I didn't put Mech and Warrior in the order I did to signify any kind of subliminal message.)

Before I start, thank you for the well-formed and well-mannered constructive criticism.

This is why we have 3v3. The races don't always almost always beat each other because they have multiple units and strategies, just like a 3v3 is going to give your team three classes. This is a team game and that needs to be factored into the balance.

Medic's L2*
I'd say that you'd be screwed against mana draining classes, but you're not a big fan of class-to-class counters.

Agreed.

If you let the Medic level that much, you kinda deserved to be punished. It can't engage in straight up combat with anything except maybe Light Mage or Mutant (early game), and almost any effective combat with it requires a LOT of ghost micro. If L4 is being spammed, then the game already was... to borrow an adjective from you, obnoxiously long.

The mines don't really annoy me. What grinds my gears is that 95% of people play upgrade/HP spam for Marine as if it's the only viable strategy. I'm not sure on making any major changes to this yet, though.

Warrior, Assault (with stim), Spec Ops (with stim)

I'm definitely opposed to balancing the game to make it newb-friendly, but forcing this kind of level of micro on people is going to be a major turn-off for casual and public players.

Mech's L1/L3 do a nice job at killing the Temple.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 18 2008, 1:06 am by Mini Moose 2707.

Mech's L1 can breach cannons with about 100 mana, at about 10 minutes of the game. I've only seen myself do it though.

I myself don't like using mech's lv 1 to kill cannons/pylons early in the game. It gives the enemy team slightly more feed from the spawn that would normally have died to cannons.

I do like occasionally using mech's lv 1 on warring groups of enemy and ally spawn. The splash kills can nab you some extra exp, although not as effectively as light mage's or dark mage's storm.

As the creator of the map, I have to say that your comments addresses the same major issues that I see in the map. And I want to thank you for bringing it out to us.
I shall follow Moose's format in answering ur comments (Yes i'm lazy)

First of all, I completely understand what you mean by "hard counters" and that the map should be about skills and not which hero to pick. This, for me, is limiting myself. What I want is a divergence of heroes that have their own unique niche that plays almost completely different from other heroes. This was the passion that started the map. The "hard counters" was really the 'juice' of this map that fueled me to create it! Instead of balancing the characters by limiting their spell-set and abilities, I'd much rather make whatever is too powerful by making something else more powerful, until the perfect feel is achieved. As moosey said, in a 1v1 game, it definately is a major issue. But once you play 3v3 or even 2v2, all of these balancing issues are almost miniscue. Instead of trying to limit things to balance, think of powering other things instead, because you have a good eye on balancing this map.

Assassin's L1 fits is purpose. Making L1 a channeling spell (i.e. require time before casting) would, i think, limit the char, and give me (or moose) triggering headaches. (Not that moose don't have one already heheh)

Warrior's L3 is probably going to change. I still want L2 at 12+2 or even lower, so I can make warrio'rs L3 better. Yes, I agree that the stunning should be a bit longer, but I made it so it can clear off the spawns so you can focus on the hero with your powerful melee. (which again goes back to why i don't like the hp drop in warrior)

By the time Medic has L4, every hero has a lot of capabilities. And having to use Medic's L4 on both of your teammates are often harder than you'd think. I rarely see it happen, and when it does, it is really annoying, I don't feel that it's overpowered, considering that the team itself has lost an attacker, the full hp can be a disadvantage in comparison. A smart player would pin on the medic to drive it away. It is also a bad idea to make the heroes heal to its level hp, because Medic have medic spawns, and usually the teammates got higher HP than their level hp.

Several posts earlier i said Spec Ops will face a face change. lol, I really hate how everyone uses it as a Tank too. I'm switching L2 and L3, making them a bit better (especially SCV), probably spawn 4 mines with L1, and maybe a longer mine drone or some advantage of using mine drone with buildable buildings with ur SCV. SCV will get to build supply depots as walls, and ghost bunkers which'll do probably 40 dmg, owned by the computer. The new walling mechanic NEEDS TO BE TESTED!! (After it's done) It might start another stormgaying tradition :C.

Mutant's L3 (n warrior's l2) is probably the only spell i'm looking to lower in strength and maybe add a pre-spell cast effect to warn enemies.

As with the Light Mage and Dark Mage, this goes back to the "hard counter" thingy. These two classes are very VERY specialized, and I think it is fun. All i could do is make other spells in other chars more powerful to balance this out. But so far, Dark mage's maelstorm seem perfectly balanced since the micro-ing skills involved are high, and ppl can miss. Light Mage is also balanced because they cannot stack the spell, and have this little crucial cooldown. Now I know, light mage's L1 is rigged... But considering that I've never seen a light mage who sticks to L1 only win, it is not imbalanced, just frustrating for pro players (U LM freaks gotta use spell 2 more often, JEEZE). Yes I can see how it's a "hard counter", but I think of it as the mage's niche.

Lastly, the spawns are WAAY imbalanced to the point that they're not a viable strategy. and Yes, it is a bad bad issue that needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, the balance line for this is SUPER thin.. and I haven't had the time to change it. I agree with the lower armor temple with higher HP (30 000 maybe?), cause it'd let spawns and low dmg heroes do sm work, and not overpower the assassin's base rape abilities.

BTW, summoner was not mentioned. Does that mean it's good? .. YES!! thnx moose n everyone =P
thnx FaZ-
~Unholy

Lol wut? You just throw in some explosions before he teleports. "Effects", as you call it.

What's wrong with Mutant's L3?

Have you tried BATTLE TANK? BATTLE TANK is viable.

Anyway, I'm going to be putting out a more... "experimental" version of 1.4M soon. ^_^

From being a medic several times, you can easily get spell 4 + the 120 mana needed at around 150xp. Hopefully, one of your teammates would be making assims to get the 7 attack needed to 1-hit broodlings to make it go a lot faster, but that's not always the case. Even so, it doesn't take THAT long to get the spell, considering the medic stays at the damn cannons 99% of the time so they don't die.

Easily put the first 3 levels into mana, then nothing but spells while upgrading attack from kills.

Dark Mage's DA. Ahh. It has the best PK abilities by far, but even I agree the L1 is too strong. If you pump nothing but mana, you can easily have 10 maelstroms ready, PLUS if you keep your DA out, you can have 2 maels in one DA. Dark Mage is my favorite class, but I suggest switching the L1 and L2, and decreasing 30 seconds to 15-20 and the DA energy increased to 150 (for 1 mael and 1 feedback), or keep it the same.

As for the Mech, It's my second favorite class. Each spell has a weakness- Gol being slow but higher hp, Vul being fast but low hp (EASILY dead to Mutants L3), Tank slow as hell but higher hp and specifically designed for temple sieging. The Old L4 is pretty worthless. Yeah you have absurb amounts of HP, but you have to upgrade reaver, while the NEW L4 I think is a bit too powerful since you can get off 3-4 tank shots...either lower the amount of hits it does or simple do 2 of each or 3 of each.

As for it's L1, I rarely see anyone use it after the first 5 minutes of the game. I use it before I get vulture form. After that, I'd never use it except for maybe on temple late-game instead of using tank form.

I have something to add for summoner. It's L2 is really only useful for killing assims, but assims only have 20 armor, so it'd be better to use lings anyways. My other concern is it's L4. Can't the ultras have the speed upgrade? Or at least add an ultra den where the speed costs 60 or something. It'd make it more viable. Plus, you get 40 or 60 minerals from killing one, and they are easy to kill since they can't exactly run away.

Regarding the tank issue on Special Ops, I've seen people recently making the bunkers with two ghosts in them for their computer ally. In some versions, they do 18 and others they do 25. This is a good strategy for most heroes since several bunkers (one of my friends made like 20 lol) are perfectly for anti-heroes since they'd be torn apart. It's perfect for low-hp heroes. At the same time though, you don't get the xp from the kills the ghosts get and might even steal your xp, while giving good xp when they die. I thought it was pretty cleaver myself It's a good way to counter DM (although my partner had swarm so not too much ^_^)

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Nov 18 2008, 5:16 pm by Alpr.

teleport should play the recall.wav

There's too much wrong with what everyone is saying for me to ever hope to correct them, so I'll just say this:

I want to see a benefit to killing enemy cannons. Right now killing cannons do more harm than good. That's not how games should be played.

I REALLY want to see a benefit to killing warp gates. Right now if you kill an enemy warp gate, the only thing you've accomplished is never gaining another level for yourself.

What this boils down to is Nested Victories. The only place this is currently present is in the 3 lives.

I want to see ONE of the following:
a) A new unique hero that doesn't do anything that's already done by another.

b) A secondary puchasable item/equipment system. I'd like to see a shop that can sell stun grenades, or eqiupment that makes certain spells last 2 seconds longer.

c) A reworking of all the char's spells, amking them even more unique from each other, and slightly customizable.

if B or C are done I believe it should be called Temple Siege 2

This is definitely true, a good team should learn to not put themselves in such a situation, and choosing who fights who on what lane is definitely critical. In 2v2 the problems can be very defined, though, but there's no easy fix, so it's probably best to just let the map evolve.

I need 25 mana and I have an instant base teleport, any mana drain needs to completely take out all my mana, which I have never had happen to me. Even if this is the case, they still have to be able to see me before I recharge, and after the first night I've usually taken out half or all of a team's pylons with my L3, rendering most of their detection useless. Dark Mage and Summoner (Ensnare/Maelstrom/Plague) are a threat, but they can't catch me, merely keep pace, so I can outrun them until I have 25 mana, which takes a very short amount of time. Then I'm home free. As I said, it takes a double or even triple team of the right units to eliminate me.


It doesn't need to be spammed to be hugely effective. With the first cast a Warrior and a Marine can suddenly turn into high damage tank classes and take over any spawns. By the time you've done 6000 damage, the medic should have the next 120 mana easily, and there's your full re-heal, except it's right next to the enemy base, virtually forcing temple heal camping. It's not really that hard to get the exp for, and maybe it's because I'm a Sniper but I don't find ghost micro difficult at all.

Against a speedling? You don't play much real StarCraft, I take it? -.- Even a vulture has difficulty, the speedling is by far faster, not to mention that it is smaller and more navigable. If the Mutant times the lurkers correctly, they cannot be dodged by anything but the vulture, and even that can be overcome.

Obviously this change wasn't made. It's not something that players would have to know in order to play the game, merely a way for better players to gain an advantage and incorporate more skill into the game than being able to do math... It wouldn't turn off casual players, I don't think, it may even entice them by seeing the level of skill in the game.

I'm aware and do it myself, but it takes about a dozen casts to break a pylon, and you rarely have the time or spare mana to do that when you could be vulturing someone or their spawns.

I understand the goal of a niche, but having a PK niche in a game that is right now very much about killing players doesn't seem to fit. Couple that with the fact that both classes have psi storm which lets them level off their own team, and fast, and coupled with their Level 1's which are very strong, and it's so easy to play. Re: Moose, the premade Orb has at least one, possibly two casts. With 80 mana I can cast three more maelstroms, and in the time that those 4 maelstroms are in effect, I will recharge enough mana to cast it at least another time. Given enough mana upgrades, it could very likely be cast indefinitely, and that would be a game ender for any team without a Mech and Volt. I'm actually going to have to try that strategy next game when an opponent doesn't go Mech or Volt. =o



I have no problems with the summoner, to be honest it seems underpowered in 3v3, especially against a team with a good Mech, which can just Zergling hunt. This is our difference though, I'd rather see the overpowered classes be fixed, rather than the underpowered classes to be improved. It's often much harder to tell what is underpowered and how much so it is, because it never or rarely gets used. What you're trying to do is balance a 12 sided scale by adding weights all around. That will just turn into a spellfest where there is too much power all around, and little micro skill.


I actually had this issue in a game today, a newb player on my team upgraded spawns for us, which I originally thought would be good because he wasn't going to contribute much to player killing. It completely backfired, the other team had 600 experience each and I was leading my team with 300. The ratio of experience/killing difficulty is hugely imbalanced. We had marines while the other team still had broodlings, and it was just simple feeding for them. I think that again, FEWER spawns that are more powerful is a good idea. I am not at all opposed to seeing three marines that deal 50 damage each spawn. Force players to have to worry about more than just enemy heroes, and if the enemy upgrades spawn and controls the map, force them to break that control or lose, rather than just benefit from it. The team with the map control advantage ends up leveling much slower until the other team turns that "advantage" into a win for them by breaking out with far more experience. That's completely backwards.

Other critical errors:
- I just played a game as Mutant, my Ultralisk morph was "Unit Unplaceable" and it was counted as a death for me, which cost us the game... I think that moving the unit from a premade location would solve this problem (Zergling can fit where Ultralisk can't), merely moving the Zergling out of the playing field only when the Ultralisk has been moved as well, and thus when the Zergling has enough space. If people think that the Ultralisk is overpowered, that could also be a solution, it could not be spammed because its life would be retained after each cast and would only heal when you do.
- Version name overwrite is annoying as hell. Please call it 1.45 or something, because it's getting ridiculous. I'd also suggest putting the version into the final Force name so that it is visible while downloading, to prevent overwriting the useful version. A simple (v1.45) after the file size would solve this.
- Mech lvl 4 is lol...

I look forward to the experimental version, which I beg that you don't call v1.4M...

Don't worry, I promise I'll never let it come to that. And besides, niches aren't always just on the spells, It could be the versatility of the spell (like what i was TRYING To do with Spec Ops and Archer), or the hero's dmg/hp themself (assassin, LM, warrior). I have also considered the combos of spells that I give to each hero and their spell level. They seem pretty good to me in terms of level except for Spec Ops.
Anyway, I like the 'you must heal zling to heal ultra' way of balancing mutant's L4. I think we should do that for Mutant. For Volt's L4.. maaaybe, but we already put a 20 sec cooldown. I think we should leave Volt with the 20 sec cooldown, and also make the supercharged form a lil' bit vulnerable (maybe ~3000 hp or less)

To CAFG..
A) prepare for x4 of them once moose sends me a version in which I can work on
B) and C).. TS 2.. yeah? No space in map and in my mind to do all that. Some spell effects'll probably be changed tho.

Was that necessary?
If I'm understanding the situation now, "outrun the Mutant's Lurkers" was poor phrasing.
Do you mean run away from the Ling before he uses them?
Do you mean dodge the Lurker's attacks?
Do you mean escape the area before the Lurkers make their second attack?

I already figured that out and edited my post yesterday.

I already put a cooldown in the version that I'm about to put out, lol.

Volt's L4 is fine already. Nobody is complaining about it anymore. If anything, I think it's too weak and doesn't do enough damage to be worth it now. It'll be even worse at Temple killing after the high hp/low armor if we decide to keep it.

Having the Dark Archon spawn with 85 or 90 energy might be a good solution to that. To give something back to the DM player though, it should heal on recast.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Nov 18 2008, 10:52 pm by Mini Moose 2707.

Updated First post

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 19 2008, 5:08 am by ClansAreForGays.

There is something rather important that everyone is overlooking.

We need an anti-hack that works.

Does it already use the disabled-sprite thing?

I've noticed that anyone who has any hacks adds a loss to their record now, so an easy way to tell if someone is hacking is checking their stats. If they have an absurd amound of losses, and they get +1 after a game, it means they are hacking

As far as the anti-hack goes, yeah I noticed it never works lol.

That was patched over a week ago. Why so slow?

Assasisins teleport should take like 3 seconds to cast so you cant do maximum damage (Unless you're pro teleporter) all the time.

Just throw all the crash units in that 1 spot, instead of just the 1 outdated one. EUD text hack detection from intra would be nice too.

You could easily change the startup text though.