Part 2: Objectives

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DarnYak
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Part 2: Objectives

#1 Post by DarnYak »

After playing ToB inhouse games, stalemates quicky became one of my most hated map problems. Or, if not a stalemate, then long drawn out battles where the game was clearly over but the losing side couldn't leave out of principle. (Side note: This just gave me an idea). Thus one of EotA very early goals was to include ways to help force the game to a close. One of these was the high/"unlimited" level cap - heroes would continue growing and could in theory outlevel the other side, unlike other AoS's where both teams have heroes hit the level cap and then don't really go anywhere. The other part was including an objective so teams weren't required to bust into a well defended main base to beat the game.

Stormwail Obelisks
I believe we breifly tossed around the idea of making Rockin' Arthas the map objective (there was a day or two where a music themed AoS sounded like a good idea - it might actually be, but impossible with WC3 size limits, difficult with differing music tastes, copyright issues, etc.). Obviously we ended up settling on the Obelisks. The original implimentation (which was in the first few versions of the released EotA) had this concept of Obelisks sets, so that each one was a part of multiple sets and completing a set gave you the bonus. For example, holding both Obelisks in middle lane wold give 5% experience gain (I think each set was exp gain actually). Because Obelisks belonged to multiple sets, it would make certain ones a higher priority because you can complete two or even three sets by capturing it.

Once you controlled a certain number of sets (I don't believe it required all obelisks), then the Artifact in the center would appear. Now, we didn't want it to be an instant game over, and presumably the losing team was still holding on well enough, and opportunties for epic comebacks are always good, so we made it a slow trek to haul it back to your main base, with the opportunity for the other team to capture it. So, effectively, if they could take back the one lane, and hold it, the losing team could potentially win the game. Obviously this mechanic remains today, although I'm unsure if any team has ever had such a victory.

The Obelisk set idea didn't really work at all. Part of this was due to Obelisk placement - some were in bases, and thus untouchable until you capture that base; others were out in the middle of nowhere and just too far to reach, making them equally safe. They were intentionally not placed in the lanes because there was a goal of putting them on neutral ground so both sides can contest them. The second problem is that nobody knew what the hell they were, why they were important, or how to capture them. That problem was somewhat easy to solve with the introduction of mini obelisk towers (to be honest I don't remember if these predate the starter scrolls), which was simple enough that players generally wanted to use the random item in their inventory - assuming they could find the obelisks. The third problem is the sets were just confusing - it would probably be good for a board game or something, or maybe even high level experiened players, but you're average person didn't want to learn this crap from some random map they decided to play.

Simplifying the system was the first step. As it is now, each obelisk became valuable on its own. The benefit was arguably made more complex (tower cores - more on that later), but it became something tangible for players to work with instead of a passive exp boost that players wouldn't notice. After this was done, people started to steal obelisks in the middle of nowhere, which then required the addition of guards to avoid games being completely screwed in the first moments of gameplay.

Once the guards were added, the obelisks unfortunately became once again fairly stagnent - claimed at the start of game, then ignored. It took me a while to realize they were simply too far out of the way - if you wanted to simply harrass and destroy one, it took too long to get over there and kill it (and its guards). If you wanted to take it for yourself, then it was just too vulnerable. I initially considered only doing what i did on north/south, moving them to somewhere more up front but still in neutral territory. But then I reconsidered putting them in lanes, which would give a bonus to a team able to hold more of a lane then they are required to, as well as put them directly onto the active parts of the battlefield (plus, obelisk towers still take a while to destroy without spawn help). Ultimately I settled on a mixed approach, so that most were in lanes, some weren't, and each team gets one free one so they have SOME core generation.

The Good: The Obelisks became an actively pursued main objective. It puts pressure at various points around the map, so players have incentive to leave whatever thier doing and go defend them. It also rewards teams paying attention to help stop big pushes early or striek at vulnerable ones. It also definitely pushes games to an end, both from the artifact unlocking and from superior spawn numbers from continous superior obelisk holdings. The gold investment of building obelisk towers is also helpful as it makes players put some of thier gold at risk (although perhaps a bit too much).

The Unintended: They were kind of suppose to be a secondary objective, helpful but not always game centric. Now superior obelisk control is virtually guarunteed and necessary to win games. Is that bad? Not so much.

The Bad: I feel the Obelisk towers are still a clunky way to do control. It works work perfectly fine, but I feel a more elegant approach exists (not automatic capturing).

What I would change: Hard to say. I think the Obelisks are a little too important now, but not unduly so. Overall I'm pretty happy with the result.

Kedge Moon Tears
With the addition of new maps, I wanted to try out some other possible objectives. Partly because the map layouts didn't always suit Obelisks, partly becuase I wanted a variety of gameplay, and partly because the all-important lore didn't have Artifacts on other battlefields. The all-important is sarcasm, by the way.

Kedge was intended in part as an expirement in capturable buildings/towers - just an overall how would it work, how would it interact with general game flow, would it slow the game to a crawl as the sides capture a tower, then spend a while fighitng and losing it, would they ever even reach the bases, etc. I just had a general approach of "this could be cool, or it could be a disaster, lets find out!". Turned out they were mostly irrelevant due to the other lane.

The other lane, with the Moon Tears, was the only way to get cores on this map. As mentioned in Stormwail, tower cores became the only real way to win games. This inevitably raises a question of whether players win games because they have cores or whether players have cores because they win games (aka are better). I hope its the second, but that's a debate for another day - back to tears. The difference in lanes was obviosly intentional, but the other part of the intended experimenting was to have the two lanes' success intertwined - controlling cannon towers should make controlling the beach lane much easier, and controlling the beach (to get cores) should make controlling either lane easier.

This system ended up having major problems. First, the cannon towers didn't really do thier job. They were really hard to balance - you didn't want them slaughtering waves, and especially not slaughtering heroes, but if they didn't they would be irrelevant. They would also miss a lot, because of the far distance of the projectile travel (note that this was partly desired). Second, the wagons were just retarded. Partly their own poor automatic control which just got stuck. Partly because they were so vulnerable, and it was more or less impossible to stop a tear capture once it left the middle shrine area. The third was mercs, a tactic I should have forseen and didn't (and sadly, when I released Verdant Falls I didn't even consider mercs then either). Three base layers means 3 merc waves which can be dealt with but you WILL loose the middle of the lane - unless, of course, your own team mercs with better timing. This tactic made me consider massive changes to mercs, but I didn't like any of my options.

Now, obviously Moon Tears have been revamped, but its too early to tell how the new system is. However, I'll explain the reasoning behind my changes. First, one of the central problems was that the important part of the fight was completely dependent on a specific location for a very brief period. All you needed was to hold that for a few seconds, long enough for a wagon to grab it and run, and the rest of the time you never need to push out of your base. Making the Moontear take time to mature, and making it vulnerable during that time, hopefuly solves that problem - one team might have an advantage of grabbing it first, but you still need to keep hold of it for long enough. This also solves another problem - hero killers weren't as effective because Kedge has the most spawns per lane of any map, so the heroes with AoE's were strongly favored. Now, hero killers have thier own important role - killing or protecting the tear holder. I'm looking foward to seeing how it all plays out in practice.

One other thing to note: For some reason, Blue/top seems strongly disfavored for winning this map. I do not know why, the terrain appears very equal.

The good/bad: Hard to say, this map is still in flux as I obviously just changed it.

DarnYak

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Re: Part 2: Objectives

#2 Post by DarnYak »

Gloommite
Gloomreap's purpose is to be "Stormwail Lite". Simpler map, smaller map, similar objective, etc. Primarily to address many of the complaints of stormwail, such as being too big, too spread out, and so on. It started out with Obelisks too, however I didn't feel that worked out well because it was more complicated then I desired for a 'lite' version of Stormwail, and the smaller lanes made holding the obelisks to be too much of a mess. In retrospect I could have just changed it to a version of obelisk towers that were a cheaper investment, or something similar.

The first, and primary, flaw of the map was unfortunately lane design. One thing I liked in Stormwail's design is that when a lane fell, it would impact other lanes because of how the reinforcement paths intersected. I wanted to recreate something like that in Gloomreap. In addition, I didn't want a single layer of outposts, but two seemed to take up too much space. Hence I came up with the idea of parralell lanes that have a third spawn lane sharing both, so each side would be like 1.5 outposts. What a disaster that was. Not only did it just confuse players on what the lanes were, it confused players when spawns would suddenly split off and go another way (often in small forces that each quickly died). Worst of all, it completely FUBAR'd the experience distribution, certain locations would consitently get twice the amount of experience the others did. Horrible. I had figured the player lane confusion could be overcome with time (it wasn't) but the experience distribution made it mandatory this map gets major changes.

Does this mean all lane intersections are fatally flawed? I'm not so sure. Ones that merge as either an X, or >---< are probably viable and fair. Experience distribution should be generally even, although with some extent of randomness. However, anything more complex then that could easily be inherently imbalanced and messed up. Will I try an X type for Gloomreap 2.0? I dont know yet.

As for Gloomite, this was suppose to be a simpler, fairly automatic Obelisk system. The more of, and longer, you hold of a lane, the more Gloomite is harvested. Miners are automatic, and automatically refill, so no concern about people neglecting to build towers. Killing harvesters is an option to slow down the other team's core generation. They were given the option to control them so that more active players can protect them, or move them into a lane that is more actively pushing. Also exists is the possibility of early on focsing on mining the middle of lanes before the other team can get ot it, leaving the more safe Gloomite for when you have nowhere else to mine. The basic strategic concept to it, I think, is fairly sound.

The problem, of course, is that players don't like it. This is largely speculation based on personal experience, because I'm not sure anyone's ever articulated why they ignore the miners (feel free to contribute in replies to this post!). I suspect it is primarily that players don't enjoy babysitting the miners - it needs to be done too often, the controls are less then ideal, the miners die pretty easily. The miners are also fairly hard to see and notice (I primarily rely on the distinct sound they make hitting the crystal). It could probably be solved if the activity were somewhat more interesting then just mining, and there were fewer to watch. For example, what if it were some sort of beast that were eating the crystals, and once it's been fed enough it goes on a rampage? Would be more exciting, easier to watch, probably make players a bit more invested in keeping the things alive. Should I change this for the next version of Gloomreap? I'm not sure, but it is a consideration.

The good: Not much. I was kind of satisfied with pulling off a swampy feel, given the current tileset, but ever since finishing Verdant Falls I'm not even happy with that.
The bad: Almost everything. But it's going to get revamped, so hopefully it won't end this way.

Candleburg
The other major disaster of a map. In some respects, this was also to address complaints about Stormwail; so here's an extremely simple, small map where heroes are all bunched up for epic hero fights. Epic hero fights is what I would say was the primary goal of this map - too often in Stormwail it was 1v1 heroes in a lane. So why not have a map giving the opportunity for exploring good teamwork?

Spawn towers were not viable on this map due to the one outpost limit. Sure, that limit could have been removed, but we wouldn't want to a base with 20 spawn towers anyway. Further, I wanted to play around with the option of the spawn types not being permanent. The original setup was that peasants would spawn in the town center, your troops would rescue (or capture, depending on your race), which were then used to be trained as new spawns (or used as food, or murdered and risen by necromancy, or sacrficed for demons). The mechanic sort of worked, but it was far too passive and invisible to players and didn't really impact the map at all beyond causing extra lag. Hell, the "objective" was more or less the same as what you're normal objective is - push a lane as much as you can. The villagers would also block stuff when running around as an extra annoyance. This was replaced with the current placeholder system with more or less the same result.

The main problem of this map, as I assume everyone knows, is that games never end (as Setokavia said, "the beauty of Candleburg is that it CAN'T be won"). Oh, in all fairness it will eventually end, but it takes a disproportionate amount of time. There's a few reasons for this. First, the high density of heroes in one place means spawns don't usually last that long. Even if you get a push going, odds are one of the enemy heroes has an ultimate ready to decimate it. If that doesnt' work? Well, then we have the convenent instant spawn barracks to spawn 12 knights or whatever to tank while the towers beat shit down. Not enough? Hire mercs! And there's like 6 towers in close range of each other. And the castle is RIGHT THERE so that the heroes can recharge quickly. There's just a crapton of defenses on this map, and it kills games.

Possibilities to fix? Thinning out the number of towers might help. Maybe pushing them further down the road so that there's 2-3 defensive tower layers, but each is much weaker individually (I suppose this would be more like DotA and its various towers). Troop training probably ought to be redone as well - put it on some sort of delay so you have to do some planning ahead and guesswork (possibly add to next spawn wave). Removing tower repairs is also an option, but not terribly good because there are a lot of cheap ways to take down towers, especially over time.

The other problem is frustration. Players enjoy large hero fights. Players don't enjoy instantly dying, and then having to wait for a long respawn, only to instantly die again. The instant deaths are sort of inherent when you have 5 heroes working in unision, but it should work itelf out in well balanced teams. Waiting for respawns has hopefully been improved in the current version, with completely new respawn rules specific to the map.

The last thing of note is the terrain. The town buildings are...interesting in how they block pathing and hero movement. Do I need to tweak it? I'm not sure, there's two spots that seem to consistently be problematic (both right hand side of the top half of the map). I ought to remove some of the obstructions around there. The tall buildings do add a somewhat interesting element of suprise, however.

Is Candleburg a hopeless cause? I'm not prepared to give up on it just yet, but I don't have a good outlook for the final version.

Verdant Falls
I don't have too much to say about this yet because it is still new. I had wanted to add a "enchanted forest" type map for a while, and never had any clear idea what I would be doing with it aside from making sure there was a lot of streams and probably some sort of elemental shrines. It didn't come out quite as I had planned (nothing ever does) but visually it's easily my favorite of EotA maps and makes me wish Stormwail looked as good.

Being created so much later, this map was intended to address a lot of the problems in all of the previous maps. Very small, very easy to get around. A bit confusing (unfortunately) but you're always within a screen of a front line so its pretty hard to get truely lost. A minimap would help so much. It's smaller so a lot of potential for teamwork, and the shrine battles are intended to produce huge team battles every few minutes - with limited penalties for any individual dying. And cores are directly related to those team battles so people will feel far a direct reward for doing well, or the possibility of catching up by doing better in the next battle.

The hardest part really was getting people to notice and go to the shrine battles. After a while I finally discovered most the people didn't notice it due to not having sound on, and the warning looking too much like general tip spam. This has been corrected by givin the screen a very distinct flash, so as long as you're looking at the screen you should be aware of it happening.

I suspect and hope that this map will rival Stormwail in popularity.

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Re: Part 2: Objectives

#3 Post by Dekar »

I want to hear your thoughts about how good EotA introduces new players to all the mechanics.
And I hope the second post will be about gloomite.

Moontears have the problem that you have to run back to grab them when you are pushing far to get rid of them as soon as possible. Also in the one game we had, there were 5 moontears at once because nobody was on the right lane to pick them up. :p
Do they have a notification too?

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Re: Part 2: Objectives

#4 Post by DarnYak »

Yea, one of my posts is going to be about newbie (un)friendliness. Gloomreap is definitely in post 2, but I got sidetracked.

Moontears currently lack a warning, but I'll add one.

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Re: Part 2: Objectives

#5 Post by DarnYak »

Part 2 finished.

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Re: Part 2: Objectives

#6 Post by Dekar »

Murder Rampage Gloomite Beast? Yes!
Town Buildings? Never annoyed me.
Shrine Activations are definitly more noticeable now.

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Re: Part 2: Objectives

#7 Post by Setokaiva »

Verdant Falls is awesome! I definitely love the small forest map, teamwork REALLY has a place here now because allies are literally only a screen away from you. Shrine activation is good and does seem to produce large team battles, makes for a very fun system overall, well done!

Yeah the biggest problem with objectives seems to be actually getting the players to pay attention... most new people I meet don't even look at their scroll when they start Stormwail or any other map.

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