Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

(I may have brought this up before, but i couldn't find a thread on it)

At the moment, the only massive holdup to 1.11 is me finishing off a hero or two, and the undead dont have unit upgrades. This is partly due to me being overly picky on what kind of upgrades I want undead to have, but this is more about the fact that i'm not sure i want unit upgrades existing in game as they are at all.

Why?

Pros:
- Adds flavor
- Upgrade mana is an extra resource to focus on
- Units scale over the game
- Potentialy using upgrades to counter enemy tactics

Cons:
- More abilities = more load time + more editor lag
- More lag from units doing extra stuff
- Vulnerbale to screwing the team by picking wrong ones
- Unit scaling to an extent is a bad thing, as it negates heros growing in power

Implemintation problems:
- Not all are equal, or even desirable
- Upgrade resource is rarely noticed, and play slittle role
- Few, if any, actual counters work out
- Players may pick upgrades, but don't actualy interact with them

As I see it, the primary motivation for putting upgrades in game didn't work out at all. Fixing them might be possible with a complete overhaul, but I really dont want to look at that at this time. As such, i'm not eager to add in all the undead crap for something that i don't feel is productively adding to the game. And if undead dont get upgrades, this implies removing upgrades from the other two factions as well.

And so i'm asking for feedback:

If I disabled all unit upgrades, would this have a negative impact on gameplay? Would you be upset if they were removed?

All comments are highly desired.

Make no mistake, I like the concept of upgrades in general, but I feel the current implimentation is broken and poorly planned.

DarnYak

It'd seem weird since most people have been playing EotA with unit upgrades for a while now. But from a nuetral standpoint I really wouldn't miss the upgrades that much. But for a negative impact of gameplay, I'd think it'd help the more slower people in the Warcraft 3 gaming world understand the game quicker and not upgrading clockwerk goblins when someone is massing drakes,"It's not about you, it's about the consumer"-Joe Dirt


EDIT: As for the new heroes, how about the ones in the hero suggestions area? If they aren't up to par what can we change them to make them better?

If it means 1.11 coming out, the get rid of upgrades.

Ahh... well i the Tactical aspect of the upgrades...
All the time i just see Aos Maps where you only play one hero, which become boring, even when i play Aotz and thats a fast paced map.

You could reduce the Upgrades to 10~ important ones per race.

My problem with the updates as they are now is that you don't really know how much impact will one upgrade have and why you should take this upgrade over that upgrade.
There are just to many of them to have an overview.

Thats shown in the way people get upgrades. Usually people get the global upgrades and maybe the furbolg/footy upgrades. I haven't really seen any spell upgrades. I wouldn't get these either because I don't know how often they'll be casted etc.

Honestly I cry whenever someone uses -upgraderate 1.
I find its boring to have and makes the game retarded with that many upgrades soooo ya no upgrades would not effect me much at all.
Besides the merloc builders units doesnt get upgrades already anyway.

I think, that upgrades are needed, BUT I want to play EotA 1.11 ASAP, so I think you should strip the map from them and release 1.11. In any case you can develop and add them later (in 1.12 or 1.11b).
IMO upgrades should be similar, but race-specific, i.e. healing: elves - direct heal, creeps - empathy (sorry for spelling, i'm russian), undead - life drain... and so on and so forth.

We're probably just wusses, but my buddies and I have played Eota for years at LAN parties, and for most of that time we've had house rues outlawing unit upgrades - among other things. We basicly like having the flow and length of the game to hinge on the heroes. So we wouldn't miss unit upgrades one bit.

I kinda like the upgrades, but...hm. If the manual upgrades were removed, would there be a slow, automatic increase of stats to the creeps? Because otherwise, you'd get some heroes who can kill an entire creep wave with one AoE spell. I mean, you'll still probably get that anyways, but...yeah.

Divine wizard and ice spider can do that regardless of how many upgrades you get >.>

My view on this is you could easily get rid of more than half the upgrades. I think the only really useful ones are passives like Exploding Arrows and such, that help push. The active spells suck (especially nukes) because the creeps just use them on other creeps and waste mana. If you make them use these on heroes then that would be worth considering though...

xmusicfreakx wrote:My view on this is you could easily get rid of more than half the upgrades. I think the only really useful ones are passives like Exploding Arrows and such, that help push. The active spells suck (especially nukes) because the creeps just use them on other creeps and waste mana. If you make them use these on heroes then that would be worth considering though...

Most, if not all, of those spells specficily dissallow them targetting heroes. Having a mass of creeps chain stunning a hero would be really, really bad. The idea behind those spells is they both deal damage, and prevent that creep from dealing damage, thus it leaves your guys a bit more alive.

More questionable is if they cast them anywhere near often enough (probably not)

DarnYak

Since there hasn't been any major objections, i've gone ahead and done away with upgrades. They're currently disabled, not deleted, so the option to change my mind is still there, but they'll definatly be out for first release of 1.11.

Currently trying to figure out what is missing from 1.11 at this point, because i've frankly forgotten over all this time. I'd expect test7 this weekend.

Along the same lines, i'm probably going to disable talents for 1.11, but I'll see if ic an get a 1.11b with them in it afterword. Lets face it, I bit off more then I could handle this version.

DarnYak

I assume it'll be hosted on East then? And if so what time?

KEEP TALENTS. *cough* sorry, but I've been waiting for them for so long... and apart from UD, it is the only thing I look forward to...

In terms of upgrades: Why dont both sides get upgrades randomly?

To balance Sonic Blades against a global weapons upgrade, there is a cooldown time after each upgrade, before a new one is purchased randomly. Cooldown time depends on amount/level of bases and game-time passed (mid-long early on, quickly in the middle and mid-slow later on, since you got so many already).

This would fix people screwing builds since there would be no builds at all. When the upgrades have an impact, it would even force players to change their spawn tower strats (and probably even make an inferiorly towered base superior).

Since this might be too random, people should be allowed to vote on a focused area, like Casters, Ranged, Melee, Special (=Gobos, Murlocs with lower CD times). Then there would be a higher chances for upgrades from that branch, granting limited influence on spawns (which might be useful for some heroes, like Tact/AA mass-buffing Archers). Of course ones focus should be changeable through the altar.

Ohh, as one might have noticed, I would miss upgrades... no more druids chain-starblasting stuff (which reminds me, the next upgrade in a row would also gain a higher chance to be picked than other skills)

Ohhh, and I know it would be a hell lot of work, but at least to me, the idea of random ups (possibly with influencable chances) sounds nice.

And in terms of working with the WE: can't you copy/paste them into another map and remove them (and disable triggers along with it) while you don't need them for testing and stuff? Then WE would run faster, or am I wrong once again?

Oh yeah, I wanted to say this, but why not name the version 1.20 or something? Naming it 1.11 makes it seem like just a bugfix version, but it adds a whole new race for crying out loud!

Anyway, staying on-topic, random upgrades would be cool, but I think the only upgrades that should be random are armor, damage, speed, etc etc. Getting random spells would be extremely hard to balance, and in some cases would be really unfair for one team. If anything, I say at least keep the general upgrades, spells and stuff like that I can live without.

Random spells wouldnt be unfair imho. Think of one team getting Improved Starblast to level 2, but they don't have Druids yet. If they get them now, they gain full advantage of the upgrades, which may be a bit strong, but they have to change their strategy and think. If they don't get the druids, they may continue their old spawn tower strategy, which might be very strong, but the other team might use their ups.

And since all ups will be random, both teams have the same chances... might end up unlucky for one team, but new challenges lead to new solutions, combinations and ideas... would be worth a try...

My idea would be all mod upgrades be random, but also keeping sonic blades for humans and keeping one unique footman spell for each race.

I think if the upgrades would be random, it should atleast be possible to set the upgrade center to the type of unit you want the random upgrade to be for.

I would like to see the upgrade system simplified, hopefully that would make it easier for you to implement it too.. upgrades are a nice spice but you dont need that many.. bundle them up more or something..

Upgrades are too strong, if one team gets some and the other dosent they dont stand a chance, and globals > anything else

Barrage is too good

Freezing breath is strong but not imba, but ffs 6+drakes in a lane with it is annoying.

Casters pretty much blow

Melee is just for drakes

Cats/archers are where its at

Upgrades are necessary to me. That is the only thing allowing for specialized forces, if upgrades were not present, everyone would be dropping down random towers for a balanced army and not a specialized one. I am against upgrade removal, I'd say the classic way is the best.

What the shit Suzuki ? No. Mass drakes FTW.

Uh, Suzuka, I hate to break it to you but.... 1.11 has been out for a day, there's no going back now. May as well wait for .11b or 1.21 or w/e it's gonna be called.

Yeah, I didn't realize that earlier. And in addition, SPELL MY GODDAMN NAME RIGHT! You people on bnet cant spell it to save your lives.

And drake masses are easily stopped if specialized in, geez.