Game Modes + Other suggestions

My friends and I have a few suggestions!

1. I'd like to see a capture-the-flag type map - I feel it would add a lot more strategy and depth to which heroes you want to pick (ie the flag runner, the support, etc.). Perhaps even a healer character would be fun (throw ball through someone to heal them as the "R" defensive)

2. I'd also like to see a king of the hill map, first team to x points wins and points add up as you stand in the node.

3. An auto-balancer would help public games a lot, as people tend to leave if things aren't going too well. Or buff the stats of the team if the teams are imbalanced (i think something like that might already be in place with minerals? I can't tell).

4. Some way to make it more clear how many minerals you've earned for the round & how many you've earned for your team. I'm not sure the way personal mineral gains and team mineral gains interact - is it just assists that give minerals or does your entire team get some minerals for your kills no matter what?

5. ELO / Rating system

6. More rewards - glows, different colors, different unit models (like the dark protoss models), achievements (class-specific would be fun too - like kill 4 opponents with one "e" as a siege tank, steal 3 masterballs from opponents in 1 round as an infestor)

7. reaper is REALLY strong, especially in public games. I suggest -1 base power on reaper or -1 base speed. It feels too forgiving to get hit as a reaper because the shield cooldown ticks down while you currently have a shield up still. Instead of nerfing the stats, you could make it so the shield cooldown doesn't tick down until the shield is broken and lower the cd on shield slightly.

8. marine feels weak at the start of the game and catches up later. I recommend adding more base health to the marine - getting 2 shot in round 1 as a slow unit without anything to really offset that isn't all that fun.

9. stalker is very tanky. I wouldn't say it's an imbalanced unit, but it's definitely up there. In my opinion, stalker is the best unit to be in round 1 aside from maybe reaper. Roach is another one that feels really strong with no real weaknesses, but I dunno how to balance it.

10. I know I said this in the chat earlier, but ghost is soooooo bad. Slow, gets 1 shot, E is blocked by obstacles, and cloak doesn't actually prevent getting hit. The way I see it, ghost and roach are very similar, but roach is better in every way. Tanky, still has a lot of power, stun lasts longer and isn't blocked, and burrow is harder to see + makes you immune to Q shots.

will add more as we think of them!

Some really cool suggestions, let me go ahead and give my thoughts on them:

1. New game modes is probably the most time-consuming type of addition, so in all honesty it will be a while before I add new ones. Right now I'm specifically looking at adding an "Elimination" mode, which would be best 3 out of 5 in the same format as the last round (I never had any real desire to create this game mode, but A LOT of people have requested it). I've thought about adding a Medic unit to be a healer--its offensive ability would be a flare, which would blind an enemy for x seconds, and I love the idea of making the defensive ability a dodgeball-based heal!

2. Capture the Flag is a really cool idea. I actually worked for months on a capture the flag Hero-Arena that I called "StarFlag," which I eventually gave up on when I had the idea for this game, but I could recycle a lot of the mechanics and things. As I said before, however, new game modes are lower on the priority list as of right now.

3. I'm happy to say that the next patch (which will come very soon, hopefully) will deal with leavers by having a computer take over for them for the rest of the match. Right now if you're down a player you get an extra 5 minerals per round, but that's really not enough to compensate. Hopefully this will help, especially for casual games.

4. Yes I agree it's hard to know how many minerals are coming in (for the record, scoring a kill gets everyone on your team +1 mineral and then +1 additional mineral for yourself, and in FFA it's +2 minerals for a kill and +1 mineral for an assist). I'm not sure where I can include that information (I try to keep the in-game on-screen UI at a minimum as much as possible). If you have any additional ideas about it please let me know!

5. Definitely something I'll be working on. I'll have to learn the math behind it, but if it's just a simple formula it won't be hard to implement.

6. Achievements are very complicated and will probably have to wait a little longer. Right now I'm working on adding "death animation" perks that you can choose the same way you choose perk dodgeballs. Whenever you get a kill, some sort of "extra" death effect occurs (fountain of blood, fireworks, text tag saying "PWNED by *insert playername here*, etc). I've also started thinking of competitive perks--small buffs along the lines of +3 starting minerals (default), increased lob speed, +1 point into Auto-Dodgeball, etc. What would you think of those?

7. I agree the Reaper is too good. I was experimenting with allowing damage abilities to remove the shield, but it really gave a strong hard-counter for the Immortal to take advantage of. I like your idea a lot, I'll start seeing if I can make it work.

8. In all honesty I haven't felt the same weakness with the Marine in the opening round. It has better than average speed and with Stim I never really feel slow. Do you know if others feel the same way? Again, I avoid changing unit stats, but I could easily buff Stim if his speed feels insufficient.

9. The Stalker is definitely one of the best--I nerfed the range of Blink a couple weeks ago, but if there's consensus about it being OP I can tone down Blink a little more. The Roach is very solid but in all honesty I practically never see anyone choose it willingly. It might just be a boring unit compared to the others, but if again if people consider it too strong I can tone down its hostage ability (I assume most would consider that to be its best strength?).

10. Yeah, I fully agree. You can even look in the thread "Best/Worst/Favorite/Least-Favorite" and see I marked him as the worst a while back! You can expect buffs to EMP and Cloak, with Cloak reducing the amount of damage the Ghost takes, for sure.

Again, great suggestions! I'd bet you guys know more about the balance of the game than me, as I tend to spend more time in the Editor than actually playing the game! If you guys arrive at a consensus about OP or UP, please pass it on to me and (pending my approval, of course!) I'll go ahead and experiment with changes. Your feedback is really important to me, and I am absolutely thrilled to have your help.

rut

Can you elaborate on #6, Rut? Is it complicated editor-wise or database-wise ? If it's database-wise, I can help with database structure.. I am a web developer so I work with them often.

When I say that achievement would be difficult to add, I'm more talking about the dialogs, the pictures, the coming up with achievements and having point values and such. It's not really "difficult" to make but I can imagine it would be extraordinarily time-consuming. Though it'd be cool to be able to click on someone's name and see what achievements they've gotten and all that, the time investment is prohibitive at this stage, that's all.

Right now there's a lot that can be added to the game. More units, maps, perks, game modes, etc. It's just a matter or prioritizing.

rut

Thanks for taking a look at our post, rut. It's awesome to see that you take feedback, especially when we spend so much time playing your game lol

We'll let you know if we think of anything else & keep spreading the word about this game so hopefully it never loses popularity!

Spread the word on the channel too!