Feedback for Map Contest Maps

[FML|WorpeX]

This thread is for feedback to Map Contest Maps currently on the ladder rotation!

The following maps are currently in Rotation:

• Neon City v. 1.00 by SuperCumulo
• Ashen Wood v. 1.00 by Tyrant66
• Purity v5 by blast870
• Boomtown v1.1 by LightIceNotive
• Gilneas v1.0 by Cinderfire

These 4 slots will change periodically. If any bugs or issues are found with these maps, please report them in the comment section below.

If you're the map maker of any of these maps, updates to your submission also belong in this thread.

Thanks!

[ZsSuperCumulo]

You guys can upload my map, so far I think I´ve done a good job at balancing the map, after all I´ve been playing FFA in FML for a little bit more than a year by now and I think I have sufficient knowledge to make balanced maps. However, this doesn´t mean that my map is as balanced and well built as some of the classics, such as Twilight or Market, but I like to think it has some resemblance.

Some of the things that I´ve noticed so far are the following, and I don´t know yet if they really need fixing since it´s too early to tell but maybe with your feedback, positive or negative, we can make our maps better.

Equalrium:

Regarding the creep camps

- As you may have noticed this map has a lot of creeps, some of them are orange camps, few of them are green camps, and most of them are red camps.

- The items found in all of these camps are balanced in terms of the reward you get by creeping, specially the red camps that have very good items and also provide good experience.

- There is no market place for imba items, this means that creeping is an important factor to consider and since there are lots of creeps you will have as many good items as you could have in Twilight Ruins or Market Square.

- Although the red camps provide good experience and good items, they are quite strong so it´s up to the players to decide if they want to break 50 to creep more efficiently or struggle at the red camps and risk losing their heroes/units or get caught by other players by just creeping at 50.

- The four red turtles at corners drop infernal, doom guard, scroll of resurrection, ... etc.
- The four revenants at the expansions drop blink dagger, orb of frost, ring +5, claws +15 I believe, etc.
- The two four red camps at 12, 3, 6, and 9 oh clock drop amulet of spell shield, greater pendant of mana, staff of silence, ...., etc.
- The two red camps at mid drop crown of kings, mask of death and tome of power.
- The other four red camps right behind the middle expansions, the ones with water elementals drop book of necromancer, stone of health/mana, and healing ward.

Regarding the number of gold mines

- Although at first glance it may seem that there are way too many gold mines, you should look carefully at the amount of gold each one has.

- Market Square and Twilight ruins both have 16 gold mines each, and the amount of gold in each gold mine is between 15k and 17.5k.

- Adding up all of the gold in each of the maps mentioned above gives a total of 264k gold or 260k gold respectively or vice versa.

- Equalrium has 28 gold mines but the amount of gold in each expansion is very little compared to the classic maps; for instance, your natural expo only has 8k gold; the expos at the middle have 8k and 10k gold depending on the creeps levels that guard them, red camps guard the 10k gold mine and the orange ones the 8k gold mine; lastly the corners do have 10k gold since they are guarded by the red turtle.

- Adding up all of the gold in Equalrium comes up to be 276k gold so the difference is really not that much, especially when you consider the gold you spend to build several expansions rather than just few like the other classic maps; in other words, it would probably come to be close to the amount of gold in total to the classic maps.

Regarding the Goblin Lab and Market

- If you´ve noticed the map only has two goblin labs and two goblin markets. I made it this way so that not everyone gets an early shredder and goes autopilot mode; in other words, players will have to adapt their strategies in the game rather than going with a specific plan " Oh, I´m gonna get a shredder at this time, I´ll send it to the mid expo, then I´ll send it to another expo and then I won´t have lumber issues".

- Since there are only two goblin labs, it may seem "unfair or imbalanced" to those who spawn closest to the goblin lab. Although this may be true, the map has plenty of wood, I´d say more wood than Market Square, so you should be able to harvest similar amounts. Yes I know that early shredder is better, but maybe you as an adaptive and experienced FML player will know how to flourish from a position of weakness.

- Now, one last thing on the shredder dilema. Personally I would rather leave it as it is, since it adds a bit of a luck factor into the game and tips the scale in favor of some players just by a small margin. However the main reason for why I chose two goblin labs and markets was the way it looked. Yes to me design is everything so in other words, I don´t care if it´s 100% balanced, where everyone gets a shredder and hoards happily for 30 mins. I care how the map looks and to me it looks better this way than having 4 goblin labs and 4 goblin markets.

- Let´s take a look at two examples of this, Silverpine and Andorthal, both of these maps are for 6 way but only have two goblin labs that favor positions very heavily; however, getting an early shredder doesnt mean autowin, sometimes it´s risky since people will try to kill ur shredder so something similar could happen in my map.

Regarding the Distance Travelled

- The map is 168x168 so it´s pretty big, this means that you can have an easy time for rebuild, specially because of the large amount of gold mines, you can always recover from an early push. I think players who will excell on this map could be Gradient, J33 and maybe some other scrub who can´t micro for shit but can play deadcard for 2 hours before finishing you off with mass chippos.

Regarding the Choke points

- This map has some good choke points that heavily favor Night elfs and undeads too. These choke points are most notably in the middle expansions and the corner expansions right on the bridges.

- I think Humans have a disadvantage here more than any other race since we rely more on tanks to fight air, and tanks are slow and terrible at narrow spaces. Orcs will most likely have an upperhand over humans since all they need really is just mass bats and few casters, since heroes are a joke and can solo anything. But I think when I created this map, I gave the edge to ne and und air units since they are always crying about being the weakest race in the game, but fail to acknowledge that they have probably won most FML championships.

Anyways these are all my thoughts about my map, Equalrium. I don´t know yet if I´ll be making major fixes since that would change how it looks and to me it looks great already. Neverthless, I´d like to hear your thoughts on it, specially if you´ve played it multiple times and consider some things to be just ridiciously imbalanced such as 10 chims focusing fire ur tanks at the corner expo with a POTM dropping star fall from behind so your mk can´t stun for shit making him useless, stuff like that.

[FML|red7z7]

I think players who will excell on this map could be Gradient, J33 and maybe some other scrub who can´t micro for shit but can play deadcard for 2 hours before finishing you off with mass chippos.

Don't talk about mog like that :(

But I think when I created this map, I gave the edge to ne and und air units since they are always crying about being the weakest race in the game, but fail to acknowledge that they have probably won most FML championships.

Well, undead winning 4/23 is far less than human winning 10/23, and even elf winning 6/23. NICE TRY BUDDY

[ZsSuperCumulo]

I think players who will excell on this map could be Gradient, J33 and maybe some other scrub who can´t micro for shit but can play deadcard for 2 hours before finishing you off with mass chippos.

Don't talk about mog like that :(

But I think when I created this map, I gave the edge to ne and und air units since they are always crying about being the weakest race in the game, but fail to acknowledge that they have probably won most FML championships.

Well, undead winning 4/23 is far less than human winning 10/23, and even elf winning 6/23. NICE TRY BUDDY

look at my debunking your logic, (4/23 + 6+23 ) >= 10/23 8D

[DV-]

elf won 5

[fetta_ook]

Feedback on nr 3, Cumulo's map:

The pathing is just fucked up, or is it supposed to be literally impossible to send a wisp to tavern? Maybe if you micro the wisp manually in circles around all the creeps, maybe you get there, I dunno since I just played it once.

Feedback nr 2: It reminds me of Hurricane Isle, insanely big and insane creeps. Everyone knows how good FFA map Hurricane is....

[DV-]

Normandy v. 1.03 by Mr.Light

Great looking map, cant say much, i think its great for 4/6 way. Needs more testing.




Equalrium by SuperCumulo

Can not be played in 4 way, just insane number of creeps/goldmines. Pathing is broken and creeps are imbalanced. Good looking, might be cool for 8 way inhouse.




Greenville Woods v1 by Mr.Henci

This one is kinda boring but good looking. Creeps are totally imbalanced. Natural is uncreepable for ud/orc at t1 and too ez for elf. Shops only range creeps, can be creeped by solo BM, lab creeps give +2 tome, wtf. Creeps must be reworked.

[ZsSuperCumulo]

@fetta_ook and @DV- , thanks for the feedback guys. I do agree that there is a large number of red creeps, or maybe creeps in general, so I'll see the way to reduce the amount of levels they give so that max levels reached could be 4 4 3 instead of 5 5 5.

Regarding the pathing, apparently there is a problem with the path wisps and peons take to get tavern heroes so I'll fix so that you get ur hero on time without problems.

[ashalar]

for equalrium id suggest having 4 taverns in each of the corners

replace the shops with 2 more goblin labs; having 2 goblin labs in a 8 way map is kind of a nightmare

put 4 shops in on the sides of the maps and make them orange instead of red

and get rid of the skeleton creeps that cast death coil, they are way too hard for how easy they are suppose to be, i think those are the ones that are messing up the pathing too, plus they never sleep

and could also put a mana fountain or marketplace in the middle if u move the tavern

[ZsSuperCumulo]

Thank you for your suggestion @ashalar , I appreciate your time to play my map and to provide feed back as well. I think you have some valid suggestions, and I'll make sure to make the necessary changes to the map, but I think that a fountain of mana is out of the question, next thing will be teleportal doors at every corner of the map to neutralize AM lvl 6 spell lol.

[ZsSuperCumulo]

@DV- I made the requested changes, here is the link to download:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dpt6sqbtd9in3d7/%288%29Equalrium.w3x

Changes made

Regarding Goblin Lab
- There are now four Goblin labs at each corner of the map, between starting spawns 10 and 11 'clock, 1 and 2 'clock, 4 and 5 'clock and finally 7 and 8 'clock.

- This way the only way you can cry about not getting a shredder is if u dont get on time from the goblin lab right outside your base. If this is the case you must go to the other corner of the map to get it.

Regarding pathing
- You can now walk freely in the map from your main to the tavern to get your hero. I've made the necessary changes to guarantee your wisp or peon doesn't get hit whatsoever when you attempt to get your broken Dark Ranger.

Regarding the red camps
- This also came up several times and because of it, the map was initially strongly considered great for 6 or 8 way. Well now I've removed quite a lot of the red camps and replaced them with orange camps.

- Now, having done this, some of the great items are gone, but there are still enough out there (in similar proportion as in market square) so that you can still get at least 2 really good items.

Regarding hero levels
- This one derives from the one above. Due to the fact that there were too many red camps, heroes reached levels 5 5 5 and prolonged hoarding for up to 20 minutes or so.

- Now heroes may reach up to 4 4 3, but I'm curious how it goes, it should be similar to the levels you get from classic Market Square or Twilight which would make the map more adequate for a competitive 4 way.

Thank you all for playing my map and providing feedback, any other suggestions will be taken into account for the final release.

PD: There will be no fountains of any kind, orc race is a broken race as it is, no one wants that joke race more ridiculous than it already is.

[ZsSuperCumulo]

Oh yeah, this is how it looks now with the recent fix:

[Mr.Henci]

Greenville Woods v1 by Mr.Henci

This one is kinda boring but good looking. Creeps are totally imbalanced. Natural is uncreepable for ud/orc at t1 and too ez for elf. Shops only range creeps, can be creeped by solo BM, lab creeps give +2 tome, wtf. Creeps must be reworked.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. I will look on the creeps, but I must ask you. Do you think it is possible to change the boringness or this layout simply doesn't have future. Just asking 

[DV-]

Greenville Woods v1 by Mr.Henci

This one is kinda boring but good looking. Creeps are totally imbalanced. Natural is uncreepable for ud/orc at t1 and too ez for elf. Shops only range creeps, can be creeped by solo BM, lab creeps give +2 tome, wtf. Creeps must be reworked.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. I will look on the creeps, but I must ask you. Do you think it is possible to change the boringness or this layout simply doesn't have future. Just asking 

I say wait for more feedback about ur map being boring or not. Maybe its just me? It has future, I liked portals and mid overall.

[ashalar]

for greenville -

the top left and top right spawns have really big ledges behind their base that the bottom  ones dont have; build-able ledges are pretty abuseable in ffa and there might be problems with ledges being so close to base like that.

technically you can creep all the expos with 1 flying unit since they have no anti-air, not necessarily bad or good but might want to consider

and i think i'd prefer to add 1 more tiny green camp near the bases

edit_ i think i dloaded the current version

for retzivan-

here i would also prefer +1 green camp per spawn or make one of the oranges slightly easier