What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

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What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Whiplash! »

Hey guys I was just wondering what features do you love in an AoS map? What features do you hate?
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Marine »

I love AoS but I wish for some new stuff into an AoS not just plain battling I mean you do other stuff with the heroes you choose.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Whiplash! »

Um... that was very unspecific. Can you please elaborate?
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Grandma »

I really hate the repetitive nature of most AoS maps I play. I'd rather have some dynamic features that don't clog up the map.


A glorious AoS would be one that could merge melee elements into it. I could see a good AoS having a sort of resource scramble for the first 5 minutes, that has a big bearing on mid-game, and a lesser effect on late-game. More micro intensive spells would be pretty awesome (i.e. Blizzard, Impale, Silence, Shockwave, etc)  Oh and scripted events would cute as fuck. Hell, the official Halloween Map has a unique twist with the candy monsters. I really like that. If you ever played dynasty warriors, make an AoS sorta like that. That would be fun. And, if you do make an AoS, steal the death system from the Blizzard Halloween map. I love that.



Hah, I'm making this campaign for shits and giggles, and what I was really proud of thinking of was having giant airships flying into battle, and whenever they die, crashing and burning into the ground.

EDIT: Oh and I LIKE them because well, they're easy to just jump into and kill shit.
Last edited by Grandma on Sun Aug 26, 2007 1:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Lavarinth »

It should require you to help establish the base and actually understand WHY there is a battle. I mean.. Come on, all of a sudden out of no where two huge bases are dueling each other and you as a hero just happen to walk in on it?
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Zilla- »

I hate boring heroes with generic spells. That is the biggest reason I love AotZ is because every single hero is ridiculous, the creator of it allows and includes heros that other people suggest but if they are too "simple" and not inane enough he will just say "Nice hero but needs more zaz, some heroes have zaz, all I'm saying is he needs some zaz." or something along those lines.

Also the map needs to work properly, Battle of the stars is a perfect example of this, dudes are either horribly imba or their abilities do the wrong thing (ex the alien hero has an ability thats supposed to slow down attack and move speed for melee attackers, instead it increases it..."
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Marine »

Mantidz wrote: Um... that was very unspecific. Can you please elaborate?
Oh my apologies, well I do like AoS, but with the heroes all you are doing is helping to push your army into the other enemies base and destroy, some have different qualaties like bigger landscape, I would like, and I dont think someone could do so is add more flavor to the AoS, not terrain wise nor detail wise I mean gameplay, add more stuff instead of just fightign with your lame or ridioculously fun Hero in pushing the army that fights the enemy into the others pase, I cant really explain the gameplays, just add more, not just plain attack anotehr enemy. I hope this may help, may not but this is much I could think of getting off work. Gameplay for one is like being able to upgrade the army, actually upgrade them not just them automatically at 3/3 attack and armor, being able to wander the places and sneak attack bases I mean.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Mucky »

I hate the AoS genre in general. There's been so many AoS maps that have come and gone that it just doesn't appeal to me anymore. DotA, the most popular AoS, is the epitome of mundane. At one point I enjoyed the map, but there are two things that killed it for me:

1) Abominable hero design. Nevermind the fact that there are over 20 oldschool heroes that are crap and could be made far more interesting, every major version seems to introduce more garbage designed by 12-year-olds. In the end, the popular heroes are never succeeded.

2) High-level play. Seemingly contradictory, I realize, but high-level play emphasizes everything I hate about DotA. Farming, carry heroes, creep denying, creep pulling, CREEP BLOCKING, an AoS that supposedly revolves around teamwork places much value on activities that are done on your own. Even team battles and ganks have glaring issues, that is to say, the team with more AoE and disables is typically the team that will win. If a given hero has neither AoE nor disable, 90% of the time said hero is useless, and with 80+ heroes in the game, it's hard to find an organized team that doesn't have 3 or more disables.

Team battles are way too fast, never lasting more than 20 seconds, and melee heroes are at a major disadvantage. After a melee hero spams all of their spells, they can either charge in and die or sit back and twiddle their thumbs, because melee heroes don't take any more time to down than a ranged hero, if not less. This is what really pisses me off. In a world of last hitting and lane harassment, melee heroes are inherently at a disadvantage, but it doesn't help that the morons behind their design also give melee heroes less HP and less damage than the best ranged heroes.

TGS has a more interesting approach by having creep upgrades as well as skill shops, but it has its own flaws. Level 10 spells are grossly overpowered and destroy entire creep waves. In a way, it makes creep upgrades seem futile, but you have to get them anyway, because while your AoEs help you push, you eventually have to go back and heal, and since the other team is doing the same thing, they'll be at your base's front door by the time you're back.

Which brings me to my next point; the creep upgrades are retarded. Every level does nothing more than spawn an extra unit. This extra unit makes no different against AoEs with no damage cap (and there's way less AoEs with a damage cap than AoEs without), and if the game goes on long enough, there'll be so many units that the it slows down and unit movement comes to a halt. The recent versions may have done something to help these problems, but in the end it's still the same old TGS.

AotZ is one of the better AoS maps. At a glance, it seems like a rip-off of DotA, with an important saving grace: the hero designs. In DotA, you can make a unit with an unused model, slap on four skills with little regard to synergy, and that's enough to qualify as a hero. In AotZ, you will not find a single hero whose skillset has been half-assed, and all of their spells are designed to work together and form a cohesive package.

Battleships is, in two words, a shit sandwich.

KoS is similarly retarded. To be fair, however, the last update it received was close to two years ago. Arcan, Cheese-Child, and myself used to play this map all the time. It has a certain nostalgia to it, but I'm gonna go ahead and say that RCX was wasted when he made this map. Gryphon Avaries that rotate and shoot you (this is actually where me and Arcan got our obsession of Gryphon Avaries), flying leap attackers that randomly bug out and send you flying across the map, pandas that roll around in the air, flying boats, flying frozen thrones, a swear filter that hexes you for saying stuff like "penis" but not "cock," soul powers that flood the entire screen with pretty colors, and let's not forget the times where a throng of pit lords will spontaneously spawn and murder you. The list goes on. Every little thing from every corner of your imagination is united. This map is so god damned insane that a five minute video clip of its gameplay could be used as a torture device in interrogations.

Rival Nations is probably the oldest AoS map for WC3 next to KoS. It features a three-way faction battle, unlike any other AoS map to date. The only heroes it had were the plain jane ladder heroes, only had items from ladder, and the only way to upgrade creep waves was to buy a trainer and stick it next to the barracks. I guess because of those things, it fell off of Battle.net.

There is another AoS map that I forget the name of, but it has a bunch of ultimates, all of which do damage or disable dudes in an AoE. Whenever a team battle took place, it fell into a clusterfuck of AoE ultimates that melted the face of the earth five times over and even left permanent terrain deformations due to memory leaks. Incidentally, there is a beastmaster that sells an item called the "Sharpened Stick." If that isn't awesome, I don't know what is.

LoL was the closest any map came to an intelligent creep system. Firstly, instead of adding on a bunch of relatively weak units, it replaced low-level units with stronger units. This made creep waves quite resilient to lone heroes, and it would take a team effort to mount an effective push. Instead of paying gold to upgrade, you received lumber periodically and had to choose between several types of creeps to upgrade. This allowed you to keep your gold, and thus it wouldn't interfere with purchasing items unlike TGS, and it also placed emphasis on choosing the right upgrades and using your heroes correctly. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, IskatuMesk lost hope for humanity and committed suicide. The map was far from a balanced state, and many heroes had incomplete skillsets, and some with no skills at all. With the author having departed from this world, production came to a halt and the map never saw the light of day.

Okay, so I wanted to highlight a few things, but I ended up reviewing every AoS map ever. Sue me.
Last edited by Mucky on Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Whiplash! »

Thanks Mucky, that was a really great read and help.

things i grabbed from your post that I liked mucky:

- dynamic heroes

- creeps serving a greater purpose

- cap AoE damage

- controlling the amount of creep denying/pulling/blocking that 1 player can achieve

- give a map some very interesting but borderline insane features

- creep upgrades (what mesk did but balanced)

I'm going to need to grab a version of mesk's map and take a better look at it.

Also, what do you guys think about quests in AoS maps? Are they necessary, take away from the game play, or do they give it more flavor?
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Grandma »

Mantidz wrote: Also, what do you guys think about quests in AoS maps? Are they necessary, take away from the game play, or do they give it more flavor?
Flavor, but not pointless side-quests, more like "hm, you can increase OUR revenue, and decrease their revenue by doing this generic task!" and maybe, that generic task, once completed, would give you additional troops to push into an enemy base.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by IskatuMesk »

If Xenon and/or Tipereth decided they wanted to trigger things again, specifically make the creep system not leak, I would consider resuming work on LoL since now I can convert and have access to a bunch of new graphics that were made for the campaign.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by WB »

refering to ITASUS?
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by IskatuMesk »

No. I mean the wc3 campaign I was working on.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by Xenon »

Unfortunately "not leak" seems to be relative in Wc3.  :P I might be more motivated if I can get ahold of a better computer, since LoL takes an absurdly long time to load.
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Re: What do you like/hate in an AoS map?

Post by IskatuMesk »

That's a problem with wc3 and not your computer.
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