Just make it DBZ/Naruto style and have your health and mana, with pre-determined stats. Then you can do levels and such, but all that does for you is allow you to upgrade your hero on a predetermined scale. Such as, say you have a fast attacking hero and upgraded his attack. It wouldnt be a lot compared to a slow attacking hero, who would receive more damage. As for spells, have them all available from the get go, but their energy is dependent on how good they are or do the lesser, better, good and awesome mana costs for them. Then you could upgrade the damage of these spells, also pre-determined and it does it all at once. Bringing you to the stand off: Do I want to be able to cast more spells, more often? Or save up mana and combo with a higher max... Or attack damage? No, I need more health or resistance. Stuff like that.

@LoveLess: How would levels be determined? Suppose you're in an 8-player FFA deathmatch and one player is dominating, killing 6 others quickly. That player then comes after you with upgraded attacks and such, and you'd have no chance. Balancing that seems like a nightmare.

Powerups in an FFA Deathmatch and only one person is killing everyone, without any chance of catching up? They must suck.

Fair enough, but still how would a hero level up? If it is just by experience gained from killing other heroes, that seems odd.

I suppose I can see Cardinal's idea working, though, with everyone leveling up at the same time. That then seems like there's no point in the level process, though, since everyone will basically be doing the same percentage of damage to each other, unless health/shields aren't scaled with levels.

Also, added a new arena idea for FFA or a team thing:


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 2 2010, 10:07 am by DevliN.

That's right. When you gain a level, all you gain is a new skill point.

Maybe there will be 11 levels maximum? So you start on level 1 and gain 10 levels through the game.

So, in this case, the timers would have to be adjusted

• Quick Game - gain level each 60 seconds. Killing subtracts 10 seconds, dying adds 5 seconds.
  
• Normal Game - gain level each 120 seconds. Killing subtracts 20 seconds, dying adds 10 seconds.
  
• Epic Game - gain level each 180 seconds. Killing subtracts 30 seconds, dying adds 15 seconds.
  
• Marathon Game - gain level each 300 seconds. Killing subtracts 60 seconds, dying adds 30 seconds.
  

You would start the game on level 1 with 1 skill point to be assigned.

Abilities would be
First Ability - 5 levels maximum
Second Ability - 5 levels maximum
Third Ability - 5 levels maximum
Ultimate Ability - 3 levels maximum (unlocked at levels 5, 8 and 11)

We would have to balance the abilities strengths and power to justify, say Leveling your first ability to 5 and your third ability to 5 but taking only level 1 ultimate.

Would be very cool to display a custom UI with 'healthbars' representing each players level up countdown. We could add text over this health bar to display Kills and Deaths. And to the left of the healthbar display the actual numeric value in seconds until that player levels up, as well as his current level.

Sort of like this:
Level 4 - 45 seconds
1 Kill - 0 Deaths
Level 2 - 18 seconds
1 Kill - 4 Deaths
Level 8 - 57 seconds
4 Kills - 1 Death

I want to briefly describe a concern I have about the understanding of what levels are supposed to achieve within a video game. Whenever you add a leveling up system into a game there are major design implications that are implicit to the system that I don't think many inexperienced designers understand. One of these is knowing that a leveling up system needs to have a specific purpose; you can't just add it into the game to give the player a sense of progression. If you want the player to have a sense of progression throughout the game, then do it some other way, as arbitrary "levels" are going to be boring.

A leveling up system usually serves the purpose of throttling the player's progression through the game, and forces a player to spend a certain amount of time at each certain stage. In regular DotA, levels serve the purpose of forcing players to stay within each phase of the game for a certain period of time, and forces a losing team to stay in an earlier phase longer than a winning team, thus leading to a disadvantage. I'm sure just understanding this simple explanation will help you design this map

This is an extremely interesting concept! I feel like it has potential. However, I'm not sure players will like to know that they're being penalized for being good. ;P

How are they being penalized you fool?

Example. Epic Game begins. Every player has 180 seconds until they level up.

Cardinal (Player A) fucks up Payne (Player B) in the first second of gameplay.

Cardinal (Player A) now has 150 seconds to level up.
Payne (Player B) now has 195 seconds to level up.

Oh god, I had understood the whole thing the exact opposite: killing players would see their level-up going further and further (which made more sense to me in terms of balance).

I started it because I enjoyed the concept of the MOBA hero suggestion. I have no idea why it was uploaded to the database though.

This is basically why I'm against traditional levels in this. In an arena (excluding MOBAs), there are no real phases as a match consists of small skirmishes. If you're going to die, you can attempt to run, and then jump back into the battle. All your abilities are given to you from the start, so the playing field is theoretically equal. I know that thanks to the excitement of MOBA games, this concept seems boring but I think it will actually be okay. With a variety of heroes, arenas, and gameplay types, this should work well.

That said, Cardinal's proposition is interesting, and puts a new spin on the "leveling" process. I don't think the abilities should level with the hero, though. Instead perhaps we can set up specific attributes that augment the hero's base stats in some way, and over the course of a match, they get 10 points to put into these attributes. These stats could modify health, movement speed, sight radius, etc. I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to modify attack speed, damage, and ability damage, though, unless the increased damage was slight (like adding 2 damage per point or something).

To clarify also, I see this map as being a bunch of smaller arena matches that take place one after another. Let's say you have 8 people playing in FFA mode and they want to play a deathmatch to 15 in one arena. Once someone gets those 15 kills, that player wins and the group can move to a new arena, sort of like minigames. I agree wholeheartedly that long arena games are boring unless they are like a MOBA, but that's why the ability to change the arena or objective will be effective.

Yeah, I thought it was for this, not the SEN MOBA project.

Well, whatever road we decide to go on, I hope it has levels...

The attribute version is nice. Will be hard to balance and get right.
Attack - each point increases base attack damage by +2
Attack Speed - each point increases base attack speed by 0.25%
Movement Speed - each point increases movespeed by 0.02
Armour - each point increases your armour by 1 point.
Ability Power - each point increases ability damage by 5, 3, or 1. (single target, damage over time, or AoE)
Life - each point increases your base hitpoints by 15
Energy - each point increases your base energy by 8
Shields - (where applicable) each point increases your base shields by 10

Singularly, these are minuscule increments. So, maybe each level you should get 10 points to 'upgrade' your hero. Bonus points when you get Double, Triple, Multi-Kill etc.

The alternative is the skill-point level up system. Which is mentioned above in detail..

I think both systems work well on the Timed Level Up feature.

The bottom level of my argument here is, that while it will be complicated to balance and implement either one of these features... I think an Arena type map without this basic RPG/AoS feature is going to look a bit 'empty'.

As a game goes on, we want it to progress. We don't want each arena battle to simply be the same abilities, strategies and techniques used on a different terrain.

Again, going back to my suggestion:

Just don't have levels, make it like TS had their stats done: Add X to Y and X to Z. Just instead of increasing your number of spells, it increases their effect all-around. The drawback of doing spells all-around, is that you can't cast them all-back-to-back, so why does it really matter? It just gives you a slight advantage, like any of the other categories. If you haven't played Evermurder Arena or one of the Tag-Team Hero maps on Brood War, I suggest you go play one. That is how I am suggesting that spells are done, everyone just has different mana costs and some dont have 4 active abilities. But everyone's spells fall along the same general line of cost, excluding a few heroes maybe.

The TS style of avatar growth is really cool. It allows you to choose what to strenghen in your character and gives the player a pretty wide range of play-styles with a pretty simple character. You can maximize your mana regeneration for casting many successive smaller spells in fast repetition, or you can increase the mana cap to allow you to stockpile mana and unleash singular powerful spells. You can become a tanker, or focus on DPS. I think using a TS system would be a smart idea.

My ultimate needs a buff. Add "OlimarandLouie deals 1.5x damage" to it.

Walpicide. I somehow missed the guideline about not summoning swarms of units... That's totally what I was going for with my hero. Swarms of infested flailing around.

So. I'm scrapping the ultra and going with a Hybrid Maar. I'll need to think about its spells for a while.

This is awesome.

It should be made so that players can vote on whether or not to have items.

Alright, new hero idea that's not LOLSPAMUNITS. Well, okay, I lied. It still is. But they all have short timed lives so they can't be massed or anything.

BIOPHYSICIST
Models: Hybrid Maar (main unit), Broodling, Swarm Guardian (from The Lost Viking), Baneling, Drone
Spells:
-Summoning Aspect (Passive): Each attack has a chance to summon a Broodling at the target's position.
-Explosive Bug: Launches a Baneling. Upon attacking a target, it will do damage and summon Broodlings.
-Acidic Pursuit: Summons a Swarm Guardian which pursues the target, shooting acid at it. The Swarm Guardian will lose HP over time and be turned into a (vulnerable) ground unit.
-Biophysics: Splits Biophysicist into ten very fast Drones. After ten seconds, they will all die and Biophysicist will re-appear at the position of one of them (at random).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 3 2010, 1:37 pm by Biophysicist.

Minor problem with Deo using the Archon model. Since I'm using the Archon model as my primary Hero and mine also will be tinted (Red, Greenish Brown and Blue at various stages)... Maybe get a different model :S