1.) When I open the map, I see 4 sets of the heroes. Why is this?
2.) The new concentrate spell disables aggro and you can become invulnerable for up to four periods of the spell. Why is it not disable-able?
3.) The shop idea is good, but the visual shop is so small! It's only a tent with supply crates around it.
4.) The push spell's actor seems too big for the AOE area it effects.

Just played the new version.

When people are selecting heroes, are they all seeing the same shared units? You can start casting the instant abilities without choosing a hero, so you can basically drain energy and screw over other players it seems.

Also, I was playing alone as the Dark Templar and at the start of each wave I kept getting a new Zealot (even if the Zealot was still alive) so I had 3 Zealots to play with by Wave 3.

So, Payne, you asked me to review the map... I'll just post here, since I don't have that much to say.

Firstly, since I never uploaded it to EU, I had to play it on my own.

I imagine things might be a bit more calm and relaxed with 3 other players. But my point still remains, it's too fast paced. Most rounds I could simply use the Stalker to tank for a while, the Dark Templar's Pierce to knock out banelings and then just DPS everything else into submission. Then when an ultralisk comes along all I had to do was use the Stalkers Release spell, the duplicate spell and a pierce and he was good as dead.

I think my main problem is that the Tank is really fragile. Sure, he has shields. But in SC2 Shields take full damage from everything. Go test it out. The main problem with this, is that the Healer's right-click ability is far too powerful. Spamming that can keep any hero alive - except the tank since he dies in 3 or 4 hits without shields.

I know it is just a test map of the infiltration abilities, but still. The way the 4 hero's are crowded on that small cliff and enemy mobs just spawn and attack - could use a bit more ingenuity in this department.

• Tank - an ability that reduces attack damage/attack speed, but increases armour.
  
• Alternative for Tank - an ability that causes all nearby enemies to attack the tank, tank gets +10 shield armour but can't attack for 5 seconds.
  
• Healer should get two heal spells. First, is an instant 125 hitpoint heal. The second is a heal-over-time, maybe 400 hitpoints over 8 seconds? The rightclick spam means you don't really get much freedom to use other abilities in a more tactical manner.
  
• Also, a lot is pinned on having a good healer character. But all that is required to be a good healer is to constantly rightclick your allies. Not sure that's gonna be much fun!
  

Finally, if the map was a bit larger, and there were different sort of regions, where fighting could take place, it would give a better feel to the game. Maybe have the Damage Upgrade shop at the left, the Hitpoint upgrade shop at the right, and if players want to upgrade these things they need to discuss with there team to fight to control the left or the right for their next upgrade session.

Apart from that, its nice.

quick edit, regarding the pace of the game: Instead of lots of Zerg units attacking, create stronger and fewer zerg creatures. It would give it more a Duel feeling, insteaed of the current hack and slash.

Anyways, these are just my opinions on how I would improve the map. The main argument is that it feels too much like a square concept being jammed into a circular hole.

As aalleecc said, when you open the map, there are 4 groups of the 4 heroes placed: it is so each player can select his own hero. Indeed, the Player 1 can mess with his own energy (because other players get Player 1's units and see theirs removed), yet when the game starts, I set everyone's energy to 100%.
I'll look into that Zealot bug.

@Cardinal, nice ideas. Before doing such modifications to the gameplay, I'd like to obtain feedbacks from others as of your ideas.

EDIT: Couldn't reproduce your bug, Devlin.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 4 2010, 4:07 am by payne.

Ahh I totally forgot to give some feedback after I said it sry payne

Swarmed Heroes by Payne

Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (A)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (B-)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (C-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (A)
Flavor (Replayability, Style, Charm) - (D)

Review:
I could make a couple introductory paragraphs to give some extra explanation of the gameplay of Swarmed Heroes but its pretty simple - A team of 4 hero human players try to survive waves of enemy forces. Pretty fun and simple. Lets go over my ratings.
Fun - B+. It was great to play a SEN map, I can see Payne and others worked really hard on it. The thrill of having to rely on players to help you kill mobs was fun and everyone had different spells/role.
Gameplay - B-. Although the game was fun, there is a teeny imbalance concerning heroes. In a full house situation, some heroes will get waay more kills than others. Each hero should be both unique in roles and even in mob killing.
Content - C-. A small size map with only 4 heroes and no objectives but to just survive lets me easily give this an average rating.
Polish - B. Playing an non-buggy version gives this map an A for polish. There was no buggyness. I don't give it an A because the visual of the 4 heroes select screen was too basic. Anything you do is quite basic Payne even that battle.net 2 picture you made was just a grey background with text. It doesn't look appealing.
Flavor - D. The upgrade and the character select screen can be annoying and this is just a pure personal pet-peeve of mine. Just change the color of the boxes or even have it like that Left 2 Die character select screen would be nice. Putting visual work on those would bump some of these ratings up.

Happy map making

I'm currently mostly trying to increase the replayability of the map.
It has been pointed that it missed a goal and some more polished systems in terms of aesthetic. If anyone has precise suggestions for both of these, it would be appreciated.

Queen, you do realize rates at the top of your post aren't the same as the ones you're mentioning in the review?
And as for the B.net 2 picture, it was really just because I wanted to show people the concept itself... How it should look is pretty much up to Blizzard. Oh, and I've never played any other game than StarCraft and Diablo: mind explaining how Left 2 Dead's design look like?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 8 2010, 8:07 pm by payne.

What about this: players were sent there to collect meteorites that currently have extremely high values on the market. The sector has been identified as being a fall-region of these meteorites.
There would be 1 or 2 meteorites to protect every wave. The landing location of the meteorites to protect are pin-pointed randomly every new wave.
Not quite sure how I could reward players if they collect it. Maybe simply let them sell them in the Store UI? The Meteorites could be preserved for up to 2 or 3 consecutive waves. The reason why a player would want to not sell it as soon as he can is because its value would randomly fluctuate every wave.
The pint-points would force players to leave their little cliff and thus possibly put them in disadvantage.

Not quite sure what would make the players defeat, though. I prefer not to have something as boring/simplistic as "Don't let the enemies take away 3 meteorites from you!".

I've worked a bit on the map today.
Now I'm wondering, for the Healer, how his new Heal spell should look like: it would for sure launch a unit (artifact or spider mine?) to the target point. This unit would either:
- Heal all units within its range and die after a certain amount of time.
- Have a certain amount of energy which it uses to heal all units within its range. It dies only once its energy count reaches 0. No energy regeneration.

I'm also questioning myself as of if the Cloak spells are really useful at all and if they should be replaced with another spell.
Also, should I make spell upgradable via the store, thus requiring players to spend money on the upgrade? Or should they be upgradable via a Veterancy behavior? Or should they not be upgradable at all?

Please give feedbacks in regards to this.

I find the cloak spell is really useful on the dps hero. allows you to stay at the front without all the baddies targeting you.

Ok, but this means you agree that we should change it into another spell for the other heroes?
And what about this new "Healing Beacon" spell?

Yes the other cloaks should probably be changed.

I think balancing the beacon spell would be difficult. I really like the current one.

I like it too, but as Cardinal pointed out, the game entirely relies on having a good Healer, and in order to be a good Healer, all you need to do is to be able to spam-click your allies.

Well the healing beacon makes it even more boring cause you just throw something down every x seconds and then do almost nothing to help kill enemies. Could always give the healer the push ability to put it in more of a support role.

We might want to brainstorm a bit our heroes soon.

This is what I am currently having in mind for this map. I am still unsure as of if I will implement this new gameplay or not. What's for sure is that if I do not find a terrainist, there's no way I'll implement it.

Temp unfortunately cannot be as active working on this project as he used to.
Being a complete noob of the Data Editor and being totally unwilling to learn about it, I am requesting the help of a pro.

Anyone would be interested into becoming the 2nd Data Editor map-creator?
The list above is an extremely accurate list of what you could have to do. Sort what is part of the Data Editor in it and you have your TO-DO list.

Also, please and by all means, I need detailed feedbacks on the new Gameplay I am proposing. Please.

Here's my suggestion / brainstorm for the heroes.

• Healer - support class
  • Single Target, Instant Heal - restores between 125 and 300 hitpoints to target friendly unit, 20 sec cooldown.
    
  • Single Target, Protection over time - Increases friendly unit armour and hitpoint regen for 8 seconds, 12 sec cooldown.
    
  • Summon Healing Ward, Health restore over time - Restores 1 to 3% of max hitpoints to all friendly units in certain AoE for 15 seconds, 30 second cooldown.
    
• DPS - carry class
  • Passive Toggle, Damage Increase - increases base damage/attack speed but increases damage taken by lowering armor. Perhaps mitigated by Healer spell 2.
    
  • Single Target, Amplify Damage - increases damage taken on target enemy unit by lowering armour. 20 second cooldown.
    
  • Passive Toggle, Cloak - renders the unit invisible and unable to attack. Useful for avoiding aggro.
    
• Tank - tank class?
  • Passive Toggle, Absorb Damage - creates an aura which reduces incoming ranged damage by 3. While active, this damage is stored for the Release spell. Drains 1 energy per 3 points of damage absorbed.
    
  • Line AoE Damage, Release - Unleashes a line of damage scaled to the amount absorbed by ability 1. With a maximum of 200. Maybe this number should gradually count down when Ability 1 is inactive.
    
  • Active Transient, Taunt - causes all enemy units within x AoE to attack the Tank. Tanks shields are increased by 50% and gain +7 armor. Lasts 6 seconds, cooldown at 15 seconds.
    

About the 'Meteor Scenario'. Yes, definitely. The map needs some sort of context instead of 'SURVIVE!'. Make the map larger (Map Options>Bounds>Camera bounds/actual bounds). Each round spawn 2 to 3 meteors which hit the ground and create a crater (possible through terrain deformation). They leave behind precious crystals/minerals which the players can collect to gain moar upgrades. Ping the map locations of these spawns at start of round.

Scale the game difficulty to both the number of players in the game and the number of meteors collected. Since the value of the meteors would make upgrades easier to attain, you would have to offset the game difficulty in some way. Maybe make more enemy units spawn and waypoint to the meteor spawn locations.

At later stages, you can trigger in some Nydus Worm ambushes. To slow down the players collection of meteor-minerals.

Random events and typified rounds. Zergling round (mass zerglings). Brood Lord miniboss. Nydus Round (mass Nydus worms, maybe give them the Roach Attack?).

Score system. Healer can't kill as much as the Tank who can't kill as much as the DPS character. So, the healer gains score for healing team-mates. The Tank gains score for absorbing damage/taking damage while shield-buffed. DPS gains score for kill-chains. All heroes gain score for kills. Bonus score for Mineral collection.

Maybe, with the Larger map size, you can implement the Upgrade Shops at different locations. Maybe Defensive / Offensive upgrades at opposite ends of the map? Aesthetically speaking, maybe a Pylon or Warp Prism for the 'defenders' to warp in better equipment etc.

Good ideas there, Cardinal!
Unfortunately, I've kind of abandoned the Meteor scenario. If you read my last posts "New gameplay" part, you'll see I had something completely different in mind.
However, I do like the idea of random events and that kind of jazz... so why not have an event involving Meteors?

Nice score idea too.