Sheep Tag Community

Okay, so I just playtested the map Myll is working on for the first time. I played 1 game of 1v1 with Polar. We fooled around a bit and tested how the map feels like. I will now write a post about everything that came to my mind while playing.

Myll, I don't want this post to sound like a list of orders about what needs to be fixed and what sucked, but I want to list every little detail for polishing purposes and also historical documentation. I really think you are doing amazing work. Don't forget that.


Major things:

First of all, the very first round was totally bugged. Every round that came after that worked just fine. But during the first round only, both the Sheep and the Wolf stayed stunned for the whole 60 seconds duration. So we had to wait out the 1st round before we got to play at all. Also the Sheep seemed to not have the abilities learned by default during that 1st round, but they all were available from the start during later rounds (like they should be).

Sheep and Wolves are both overpowered in their own way. I get that the building-mechanic will be completely different from WC3 with the missing buildgrid and the new crazy jump mechanics but the Sheep can build new farms so easily and so fast that its almost ridiculous. In WC3 we have these "massing strategies" that have been in development for years and you have to position yourself perfectly for maximum farm massing speed. Here I just spammed Q and the screen got filled up with farms in a matter of seconds. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it makes the Sheep exciting to play. But if the games are like this I don't see the Wolves ever winning in 5v5 games. Obviously this will change when Wolves get their abilities and items, which are not in the game yet. So I guess it's best to wait and see before we do anything about this.

If anything, the new massing mechanic seemed super FUN! It was REALLY hard to figure out where the farm will be placed without the grid but the pathfinding and collision detection feel INCREDIBLE for a before-alpha release. Unbelievable work, Myll. Just want to get that out there. I want to see this map become a reality! Also the pure power and speed the Sheep have in this game felt super.

The Wolf on the other hand, was way too fast. In the current version the Sheep had 410 MS and the Wolf had 470. The Wolf is supposed to be faster than the Sheep, yes, but only a minimal amount. With the speed difference this high (60 MS) there won't be any runtagging. I would suggest slowing down the Wolf to at least 440 or even 430. This would enable the Sheep to survive a bit longer when running outside of farms.

The way you shift through "building menus" by pressing R felt super weird at first but I guess it really is the best alternative we have compared to the "real" buildmenus in WC3. A nice innovation. I guess it would only take a bit of practice to get used to. And it's really nice to have more than 6 different kind of farms. =)

The games last only 60 seconds at a time? That's WAY TOO SHORT. A normal game of Sheep Tag lasts 10 minutes in WC3, and a tournament one 20 minutes. I understand that we're not making a carbon copy of ST here but a map "inspired" by it but 1 minute is just insulting. Longer games pleaseeee

The last big thing that I want to talk about is the farm size. The normal farm model is a bit too big in my opinion. They take up so much space that a 2x2 space in between 2 farms really looks like an 1x1 gap to my eyes. I thought that I was safe but the Wolf ran right through that space. So make them a bit smaller, maybe. =P Also, the tiny farms could be a bit larger, just a tiny bit. They looks so small right now. I guess everyone just has to get used to playing without the WC3 grid. =)


Minor things:

1. Make 5 separate Sheep heroes and 5 separate Wolf heroes? The picking phase seems to be a bit bugged when there's more than 1 player per team.
2. In the loading screen it said SHEEPTAG. Can you separate the words and remove the ALL CAPS?
3. Tiny farms were 2 hits. They're supposed to be 1 hit by the Wolves.
4. Hard farms were 2 hits too. They're supposed to be stronger than that. Can't remember how many hits exactly, though.
5. If you tried to build something when you didn't have enough gold the Sheep just stopped. Can you make the game give the player a message about not having enough gold?
6. Why are you using a freaking Pudge model for tiny farm? xD
7. Every farm was named npc_dota_farm_name. I know that this is the default placeholder name. It goes on the fixlist.
8. Strong farm had the same name as an upgraded farm. I guess you copy&pasted and forgot to change it.


And to close up this post, there's the thing about swapping teams that we discussed about. I'm just going to mention this here so others know that I said something.

At the moment, the game is played by 2 teams, that get swapped after every round. This means, that a 5v5 is the only fair way thing map could be played. In Sheep Tag, a 2v2 is not balanced. Sheep win that kind of game every time. But if you made a 2v3 or a 2v4 in this map, it would become 3v2 / 4v2 every other round. I'm not sure how we could go around this problem in the Dota 2 engine, though.

What I do know is that it is the SINGLE MOST distinct feature of a good map in Warcraft III Battle.net that the game can be "rehosted" in-game without actually having to end the game and go through the lobby again. (Starting up a Dota 2 game takes forever anyway.) Is it possible to make the game work like Revo in a way that it wouldn't matter which slots you join in the Dota 2 lobby? If we could form teams in-game before starting the actual gameplay and possibly shuffle through the players that get to play as Sheep in a 2v4 game so that the amount of Sheep stays constant through every round it would make for a much better map. I do get that this is hard to implement in the Dota 2 engine, though. And I do understand that even creating the system as it is now has to have taken some amount of work. I just want to put this out there, because in my opinion it is the single most important thing. We can't have Sheep Tag in Dota 2 be a game that constantly needs to be rehosted to make new teams. People would get bored really fast that way.

But still, awesome game, Myll Happy to help you!


EDIT: I forgot to mention the killing range of Wolves. It felt completely different (duh, lol). The attack range of Wolves has been a matter of discussion for... ever I guess. I don't know what the current ATK range is in WC3 but I know that it has been experienced with in the past, and there will ALWAYS be that one guy who gets killed and shouts "RANGE WTF!"

In your game, the attack range seemed just okay while the Sheep was isolated (maybe a bit too long even). But while the Sheep was inside farms, it was a different story. As long as the Sheep was staying inside the 1x1 gap of the farms, it couldn't be attacked. No matter how close. The Wolf and the Sheep were standing right next to each other, their models literally touching, but the Wolf could not target the Sheep for an attack. I guess it is the pathfinding mechanic somehow interfering with the attack order. That's my best guess. Or then the angle was just really weird. Anyway, we need to look further into this in the future.

Just felt like I had to reply to show my support. I'm honestly amazed to see how much effort you put into this. Much respect, man!

Personally I think that those buildings in your last screenshot would do perfectly as farms. Hard farms don't look bad either. Great work!

If you need playtesters at any point, I'm definitely down. My Steam name is VsKatshuma.

I'm also studying Dota 2 modding myself but I'm not anywhere close to this level ^^

I think we can safely come to a conclusion that 100% of all people prefer to play as sheep. =)

Can you guys guess what I am building?

I really like this idea because AFK abusing is really annoying for the guys who never do it (me + some others).

Some people are bound to rage about this, though.

Knock out the mofo.

Putting the trigger on hold for 5-6 seconds before finishing what it does creates opportunities for it to glitch and is not considered professional.

Timers are more reliable, more accurate and offer more control over what happens after the wait is over while also being able to run other actions related to the same trigger when the timer is ticking down.

As Chakra said, they are very much not the same.

Also, I think this idea is cool but the item would have to be very expensive. I'm saying like more expensive than 2 golems and a cloak expensive. The ability to reach mid even if its completely blocked off by farms when an iso happens late into the game could be very game-breaking.