Taking Island Defense to the Future

[Gwypaas]

As we all know this community is dying, whatever we try to do through WC3 is doomed to fail because the game itself is dying. If Island Defense is to survive we need to do something radical, right now.

The first step would be to migrate Island Defense to another game with a living community, SC2 is the perfect example of this.

The second step would be to transform Island Defense, the game is too boring and uncompetative today. Basing, the goal of the entire game is just sitting and doing nothing while slowly strengthening the base. Lumber basing is mostly just sitting around waiting for your resources to build up. Yes you can hunt minions and that's a lot of fun but it also requires the titan to not have too many or be too good for it to be worthwhile.

The strength of the Titan is in many cases a joke. Either he is overfed and just breaks the bases right away or he's underfed and has to resort to all cute tricks he can bring up to even have a chance of winning. Most pro titans seem to like the underfed path since that challanges them but this also makes new titans really weak since the game is balanced around giving the pro underfed titans a challenge.



I proposed in another thread that to transform Island Defense into something more fast paced and thrilling we should build from the Star Defenders concept. For all you that don't know what Star Defenders is: It was a rethinking of ID to allow for better clan wars and more rivalry between teams. The map would be split in 2 identical halves with their own gold mounds if I remember right and then it was the basers job to defend their teams heart tree while their titan was hunting for the other teams.

In contrast to Warcraft 3 Starcraft 2 allows up to 16 players if I remember right, 14 without doing anything special. This makes the whole concept a whole lot more appealing since both sides more would more resemble the original Island Defense feeling.

Although, I think one thing in the Star Defenders concept is lacking, the "heart tree" is going make all games very similar too each other. I would say that the normal ID way would be better here, last man standing on either team wins. But we still need something to encourage builders to not just camp around, to counter this I propose some kind of a rune system, the team that picks the rune up gets some kind of a buff to help their team in the fight. The time constraints imposed by having two different teams would also increase the speed of the game and the risk/reward gains.

The major problem this idea has is what to do with dead players, when they die their minions become the titans since they are on opposite teams. What I think would work here is that the titan has a minion control system where he can give minions to dead players from his own team if he wants to. Maybe also some kind of minigame that the winner of gives their own team a little buff to keep them entertained and in the game.

What do you think? All this blabbering above is just my vision of what Island Defense could be in the future, I bet you have a different vision, please comment on mine and share your's.

If Island Defense is to survive we can't wait. We need to set the direction today.

[Monkeysmine]

tl;dr

[csphere]

all about dota 2 now dawgs

[sburnett21]

This sounds incredibly fun, its just a shame that i'm unable to play SC2. Disregarding that, the minion concept is a problem. The idea you posed was great, but along with the rune system, it would be basicaly un-hindered from getting any runes it finds. What if when someone dies, they go to a literal mini-game, that supplies their team with supplies, builders lumber, titan gold.

[Playerof]

Heh if you need funds to revive island defense just come asking me.
But quite honestly, I just don't know any more. I can't image island defense any other way.
Maybe if we become incredibly lucky some company will pick us up. But that is extreamly doubtful.
I will support and help in any way I can though i now think it is a lossing battle.
But remember i'll still help with out any question. Just call me  .

[Bremetar]

hell, why not give this concept a chance? I'm willing to try.

woohooo 1200th post

[Playerof]

*pats on back
Good job buddy.

[Neco]

First things first, you have to find someone that wants to willingly use the SC2 editor to make a map.

Good luck!

[Ryld]

revive id in 10 years on wc4

[VAMPSI]

revive id in 10 years on wc4

It's been 7(?) since wc3 came out, we got a few more years of waiting

[MuDDy_PaNDa]

revive id in 10 years on wc4

It's been 7(?) since wc3 came out, we got a few more years of waiting

8 years

Back on ropic: I am completely for this idea, but yeah, gl finding someone to use that damned sc2 editor.

[Striker]

Step 1. Find Editor.
Step 2. Make sure the map isn't piss poor and resembles ID.
Step 3.
Step 4. Profit.

[Bremetar]

Step 5: get a community I can tolerate. http://www.islanddefense.org/forum/index.php/topic,2788.0.html  <- i'd link that topic i made on the sc2id forum but i can't find it anymore.

[turbo]

Star Defenders was an interesting concept, but we're going to need to refine the idea a bit before we start working on it. That and:

First things first, you have to find someone that wants to willingly use the SC2 editor to make a map.

Good luck!

Step 5: get a community I can tolerate. http://www.islanddefense.org/forum/index.php/topic,2788.0.html  <- i'd link that topic i made on the sc2id forum but i can't find it anymore.

How are they doing anyways? How good(horrible) has the game become?

[Gwypaas]

First things first, you have to find someone that wants to willingly use the SC2 editor to make a map.

Good luck!

Why? This is just brainstorming of what could be done to ID to make it something worthwhile. Maybe an open source approach?

Star Defenders was an interesting concept, but we're going to need to refine the idea a bit before we start working on it. That and:

First things first, you have to find someone that wants to willingly use the SC2 editor to make a map.

Good luck!

Step 5: get a community I can tolerate. http://www.islanddefense.org/forum/index.php/topic,2788.0.html  <- i'd link that topic i made on the sc2id forum but i can't find it anymore.

How are they doing anyways? How good(horrible) has the game become?

I think their editor pretty much abandoned them and the community is slowly dying. He was going to remake the entire map into "Island Defense 2" with everything rebalanced and redone instead of the joke much if it is today and there were tons of spirit 6 months ago when he started, then nothing happened. Their forum is waaaay more active than ours though, but most if it is just random spammed shit.

[Neco]

First things first, you have to find someone that wants to willingly use the SC2 editor to make a map.

Good luck!

Why? This is just brainstorming of what could be done to ID to make it something worthwhile. Maybe an open source approach?

Even an open sourced approach still involves people opening up the map editor and doing things in it.

[Gwypaas]

First things first, you have to find someone that wants to willingly use the SC2 editor to make a map.

Good luck!

Why? This is just brainstorming of what could be done to ID to make it something worthwhile. Maybe an open source approach?

Even an open sourced approach still involves people opening up the map editor and doing things in it.

True, but I think even you can manage to come up with some crazy idea you just need to implement although you don't like the editor.

[Bremetar]

if you can manage to make the game competitive, then people will be more "addicted" to the game.

[Neco]

True, but I think even you can manage to come up with some crazy idea you just need to implement although you don't like the editor.

I have thousands, but I'd sooner build my own editor off another games engine before using that crap.


@ Bremetar Indeed, but there are already so many of those that have been made for SC2. The game would have to have something majorly different and yet easy to learn in order to be a success.

[theorchero]

hi darox

[itaughtkobe]

So is anyone still active on this forum, or in island defense in general

[theorchero]

yes, and we get plenty of lurkers too.

darox.

[itaughtkobe]

If that's the case, you should get some bots going or private hosting channels or something.  Not being mean just constructive criticism.  Also where do you DL the newest version?

[sburnett21]

If that's the case, you should get some bots going or private hosting channels or something.  Not being mean just constructive criticism.  Also where do you DL the newest version?

http://www.epicwar.com/maps/164312/

[Gwypaas]

True, but I think even you can manage to come up with some crazy idea you just need to implement although you don't like the editor.

I have thousands, but I'd sooner build my own editor off another games engine before using that crap.


@ Bremetar Indeed, but there are already so many of those that have been made for SC2. The game would have to have something majorly different and yet easy to learn in order to be a success.

I would say that the biggest problem with SC2 custom maps is that people play them once and if they're not gods at the game then they never play it again, in contrast to WC3 where people played the same game over and over again and slowly got better if the map was popular enough to regularly be in the list of hosted games.