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s[ub]lime · **on:** July 22, 2012, 04:55:20 AM

INSIDE THE HERO
A Guide To Hero Idea Creation

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Foreword
Towards the success of my Modders Idea Factory, many people asked how I make hero ideas. I just answered them with an average of 3 - 5 sentences, summarizing my experiences with hero idea generation. I promised to one that I would make a tutorial for it. So, here I am now.

Before moving on, I would give you a Disclaimer. These are solely based upon my experience and opinion and may not render to be true. So, I am merely pointing out the basic and near advanced ideas in my point of view here. Again, it is purely a topic of opinion.

This tutorial would give you a sort of in-depth look into hero idea creation, mainly for Dota-like games, but give you a wider knowledge on the function of heroes and how to create effective ideas. Here, you will know four things about heroes - Rules, Roles, Synergy, and Balance. Rules tells what to and what not to do, Roles would tell you their function in a map, Synergy as the ability to link their spells, and Balance for making your hero not to overpowered yet not too weak.

This tutorial is not only limited to creating hero ideas, but for regular units too. The knowledge you gain here can also improve your overall idea generation and imagination.

Required knowledge/tools for this tutorial:

A Brain and an Imagination
Notepad or a place to write/type anything

Level of this tutorial:

Basic (Upon reading) - Intermediate (After reading, and giving some thought on it, of course)

Before going in to hero idea generation, let us familiarize ourselves with some terms first, to prevent confusion. These terms are also used in playing hero-based maps.

AoE - Also known as Area of Effect. It is the area covered by a certain ability or an effect.
Aura - A passive effect which can help the hero by boosting his own abilities or degrading the enemies abilities. Auras are typically shared.
Backdoor/Backdooring - To attack enemy towers or bases without the aid of creeps.
Buff - A passive effect which garners the hero either positive or negative effects which typically has a duration.
Cooldown - Often abbreviated as CD. The time before an ability can be casted again. Some games have Cooldown Reduction, which is self explanatory. Unfortunately, Cooldown Reduction is impossible for vanilla WarCraft 3.
Creeps/Mob - Neutral/hostile foes with can give you both experience and gold. They can also be the units helping to push the lanes.
Crowd Control - Abbreviated as CC, Crowd Control is the act of manipulating the possible actions of a certain group of units, typically enemy controlled mob's or player controlled characters.
DD - Direct damage. An ability which directly damages the enemy's HP.
Disable - An ability or buff which prevent the hero from doing certain actions.
DOT - Damage over time. An ability which depletes a set amount of HP distributed evenly over a certain duration. Damage over time is different from damage over second, since damage over second applies an HP reduction effect every second, while damage over time applies it over a short period of time, maybe half a second, 2 seconds, etc.
DPS - Damage per second. Typically used for DOT spells to show the amount of damage taken every second.
Executed - Killed by a tower/mob/creep without an enemy hero taking credit for it.
Gank - A process where two or more heroes gang up on an enemy hero where the enemy hero has no hope of defending themselves.
Farm - Farming is obtaining more gold for the player. It mostly involves killing creeps.
Feeder - A player who is constantly killed by other players, which in turn feed them with gold, experience and kills, allowing them to level faster and buy better items. Not to be taken as a compliment.
Harass - To force the player to heal by dealing small, continuous damages. This depletes their stock of potions, either granting you an easier kill or forcing them to run back to their base, allowing you to push.
Hero/Champion - A player controlled unit which has special features than that of a normal mob/NPC/creep.
Humiliation - Being killed by a computer controlled creep.
Juke/Juking - Fooling your pursuers or chasers.
Jungle (Noun) - An area between lanes where player controlled units jungle.
Jungle/Jungling (Verb) - Attacking neutral creeps outside of the lanes.
Lane - Road-like areas typically being the pathways of heroes, creeps and towers. Lanes lead to the opposing enemies bases. Typically found in AoS/MOBA games.
Passive - An ability that performs certain effects without needing to be casted. Passives are mostly not shared, unless they are auras.
Push - Making your ranks go forward to reach the enemy base.
Silence - Preventing the hero from casting spells for a duration.
Snowball - An item/skill that grows with kills or even over time.
Spell - A special form of combat you use which typically requires the usage of Mana or some other secondary resource. Spells are typically stronger than your normal attack.
Squishy - Having low Health or Armor/easily killed.
Stun - Preventing the hero from doing any actions by stopping them for a duration.
Role - The function of a hero in a certain game. There are numerous roles for a hero to take on. Most heroes take on 2 or more roles.
Stacking - The adding up of effects to form a larger one. Ex.: 5 items gives off +2 attack, and stacking them up gives a total of +10 attack.
Synergy - The ability for the hero to link his abilities in order to perform a successful task.

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Rules
In everything you do, you follow a set of rules to properly execute the task. The same goes with Hero Idea Generation. Idealists should follow a certain set of rules in order not to screw up or "power up" the hero. Here, I will give the "Unwritten Rules of Hero Idea Generation."

Give your hero strengths and weaknesses. Giving strengths makes a hero feel needed and weaknesses balance the hero. A hero lacking both shouldn't be called a hero and has no place in any decent hero-focused game.
Heroes should be functional. Make them have roles and the ability to be unique.
Balance your hero. The golden rule of hero creation.
Synergize your heroes with other heroes and within themselves.
Visualize hero strategies to create an effective hero. Visualization is the best way to achieve synergy, guides and tactics for the hero.
A Hero should HAVE a place in a team.
Fit your hero for the type of game you are making. An RPG and a Dota-like would have different needs for heroes.
Your spells should fit your hero. A spell called "Fart Bomb" on a hero named "Enforcer" is bad.
Add newbie-friendly heroes. They make your game more enjoyable for beginners.
High costs and cooldowns are sometimes bad.
High costs and cooldowns are sometimes good.
Fans are your heroes best friends, allowing them both to further improve it and make strategies for it.
Finally, take all of these rules with a grain of salt. Only apply those that actually fits the project.

Hopefully these are as concise as possible and serve to guide you in creating heroes. Remember - good game design is player-centric. Always begin with the player in mind and never something like a cool 3D model or some random spell in mind. Make heroes for the player.

Roles
Each hero should have roles to make them feel needed. Roles is one of the most important yet most neglected aspects of a hero. A good example is when one wants to make an Elf hero, they stack with Elf-sounding abilities and yay you have a hero! THIS IS WRONG. Heroes should be made according to their role and map type.

The Map Type is a very important factor to consider. Hero Arena/AoS or a competitive map, you should make abilities to help killing enemy heroes, defending your own base against those heroes, or supporting other heroes fulfill their roles. Hero Defenses should have abilities for killing creeps. Melee maps should have abilities for helping the army in command.

Another important factor is the strategy of a hero. On creating hero ideas, imagine in your mind a game occuring with that hero. This makes you formulate strategies for the hero and create more for it. The process makes you both a better player and designer. Pin down this hero with other heroes. See how they stack against each other. If one wins over the other, it's fine, as long as the losing hero doesn't always lose.

On every role, I will give an example of a hero fulfilling its role, not from myself, but from another game/map. Note that this will have a primary focus regarding Dota-like games.

Carry

A Carry has one purpose in a game - to "carry" their teams to victory, hence the name carry. There are two types of Carries - The physical and the magical, as I would define it. Physical relies on their physical damage, attack speed to carry the game to their favor and use their spells to compliment these bonuses. They are usually easier to use than magical ones. Magical on the other hand rely on their spells to deal out most of their damage, in the form of magical damage. They use their spells as their main source of damaging their foes. There are also hybrid, some which rely on their spells to deal physical damage, and some which rely on their auto-attacks to deal more damage, but in the form of magical damage. These hybrids seem rare, but there are also "fused" versions, which share both of these types. They have spells that both deal physical and magical damage. Most carries tend to be squishy, but not all are.

Now, when making a carry, you should always one or two of these spells:

Gap closer. Though a carry usually does not start a fight, after the tank comes in to start it, carries usually follow with their initiation skills. It can be a form of increasing their attack speed/movement speed/attack damage, a sort of blink or warp spell, an area or single damage typed spell. Initiation skills are usually any skills that can weaken foes to allow a carry to easily make use of them.
Survival Mechanic. As I said, carry heroes tend to be squishy to provide balance. So, you need away to survive. It may not typically be your HP increase, but it can be those Spell Immunity, Lifesteal, Blink/Warp, Passive damage. It can be anything that makes the carry somehow invulnerable.
Damage. Carry heroes should carry the game into victory during the late game. In order to do that, they must be able to dish out heavy damage at any enemy hero trying to stop them. A damage-type spell allows them to shut down these enemy heroes trying to stop them.

Again, this depends on the context of your game. Pick which matches your game best. These spells can overlap with each other.

An example of a good carry hero, following my rules:

Bloodseeker

Support

Supports, well assist allied heroes in fulfilling their own respective roles. Support heroes tend to not be the toughest on the block, making them stick with the sturdier foes. Supports never go on their own and stick with other allied heroes, except support ones. Carries tend to be the prime targets for supports, making their games much better and allowing them to better carry the game to their advantage, especially when the carry cannot handle fights at its own. There is what I call pseudo-support, any carry/tank which has supportive functions, but only in a small way.

Now, a Support needs to have:

Crowd Control. Spam or fill them with stuns, disables, silences, and other sorts of Crowd Controls. Its best when these effects stack up each other, showing how good a Support hero is. CCs allows everyone to beat your foes while you just sit back, watch them die while your allies kill them for you. Its the life for you. Your Crowd Controls can also be used defensively. If there is an occasion where you are being smacked at and almost dying, you pop up your CC at them, and easily escape.
Heals, it may not be HP/Mana regeneration, but something that allow the a stat of the hero to be regenerated. You obviously cant cast CC spells for 100 consecutive times, making it essential for a hero. Mana boosters are best placed with this hero so he doesn't need to rely on items, preventing further micro-ing for players who do not like it. This is entirely optional for a support, and you may remove this if you are making those "hard to use" heroes. Can overlap with CCs.
Self-defense mechanism. Supports don't tend to mix at the heat of the battle. Self-defense mechanisms are good to help the hero defend himself against stronger threats. CC's and Escape spells can be used here.

An example of a good support hero, following the four principles:

Lich

Tank

Tanks are what you know as the buffed up, macho men of the game. A tank is the defensive and sometimes offensive backbone of a game, being always in front with the Carries striking from behind for from further lines. Most tanks, like carry heroes, have dual functions/roles. Tanks tend focus in team battle and follow support heroes, allowing them to deal more damage and sometimes even land kills. Tanks are best at the early game to mid game, but tend to be overpowered by hard carries or late game "bloomers". There is also a tank-carry hybrid, having the some of the high health of the tank and some of the power of a carry (to strike a balance). Tanks should follow these rules:

Defenses. Tanks soak a lot of damage, therefore, they should have good defenses. High armor, hp is good for the development of a tank. Even just having a way to deflect this damage is good.
Damage. Asides from having high armor and hp, Tanks should have high raw damage and abilities to deal more damage as a way of self defense.
Backlash. Hey, you cant live forever can you, but you can always live longer. How, you may ask? By making your enemies damage backfire at them. Be noted that this is optional.

An example of a good Tank hero, following the four principles:

Axe

Those three are the basic roles of a hero in a game. On those three, many more branch out, such as Nuker, Disruptor, Chaser, Ganker, Jungler and more. If you also may notice, most examples are from DotA. I do not play Dota, but their hero ideas are very nice, and I use them as basis mostly.

Synergy & Balance

Synergy

Synergy and Balance are yet the two most important factors, in my opinion, for hero development. They play an important role on the overall build of the hero. A proper synergy and balance creates an effective hero. First, let us discuss how we can achieve synergy.

Synergy, as I defined it, is the "The ability for a hero to link its abilities, whether individually or in unison, in order to perform a successful task". In short, synergy is a link for success for a hero. A good synergy makes a good hero. Synergy is commonly limited to the abilities of the hero, but in some cases, the raw attack damage as well as items are involved too. To understand how one can achieve this, let me give four abilities, from my own ideas. Here they are:

Bob, Battery Man - INT (Carry)

Shock! (Innate Passive) - Every few attacks would give the enemy unit a Shock Buff. Buffs stack and have a maximum limit of 5.
Battery Clink (AoE Target) - Stuns all units for a half a second in the target area. Units affected get a Shock Buff.
Discharge (Point Target) - Fires a large concentration of electricity, dealing moderate HP damage to the nearest. Units with Shock Buffs gain a small amount of damage for every Shock Buff on them.
Lightning Transfer (Unit Target) - Grasps the target unit with electricity, sapping an amount of mana, slowing them for half a second, and giving a single Shock Buff.
Overcharge (On/Off Target) - Once activated, all units take double Shock Buffs. When Bob attacks a unit with a Shock Buff, 0.1% of the damage taken by the unit is restored in Bob's hp for every 2 attacks. It continuously saps his mana. If his mana drops below 10%, it is turned off and he is stunned for a few seconds.

The first skill provides Bob with a Gap Closer. The second and fourth skill provide a damage output , and finally the third skill provides a form of survival mechanic.

A good synergy here is using is Overcharge as much as possible, but not spamming it. Battery Clink is a good CC and way to place Shock Buffs. With Overcharge, spam it as much as possible (but not enough to stun you) and use Discharge to enemy heroes as well as Lightning Grasp for chasing heroes or to mana-focused heroes.

That is an example of synergy (while not the best one). Its the teamwork of the abilities. Synergy becomes easier to achieve if you have a well thought-out hero.

Balance

Balance is a hard thing in life. What more in hero idea creation? When creating a game, you always visualize its final output. And that final output must have balance. A balanced gameplay gives extreme replayability and joy to its players. But how is balance best achieved?

I would say again, in a successful game or map, there is always balance. But im going to be straightforward - be simple. Simplicity is the essence of balance. A spell having a Volcano shooting out lava, which then shoots out smaller buts of lava gives out massive damage for a single spell, making it overpowered. But a spell with a Volcano shooting out just a few amounts of non-branching lava is balanced. Another greater way to achieve balance is to make it stat-dependent. If the hero has 20 STR, level 2, and casts a spell which has a multiplier for the STR would give a good amount of damage.

The main phase of balancing is testing out the hero. Try playing games, either alone or with friends, and test each and everyone of the heroes. Try all the skills to see if there is anything too powerful, too spamable or both. Try to recreate any situation where the balance of a hero can be tipped off. After testing, list them. Use the notepad. In that way, you can easily keep track of their imbalances. Your intuition can also help here. If you feel something is too strong or weak, take the action and test it.

Counters are a good way of balancing. If a hero is always dominating the game under certain conditions, provide something to stop those conditions from happening or serve as a direct counter for that enemy hero. This can be another hero in an AoS game, a form of buff/spell/creep in RPGs or something in like that. This tips the game in the favor of that hero. However, when making a counter-hero, make sure a hero counters that counter hero. This is to make players who start using counter-heroes use the counter-heroes counter and start playing with more characters of your game. Riot Games's League of Legends does this very well.

However, the golden rule of balancing is that it all depends on the game you are making. All games would have different needs and requirements, so just keep on playing, keep it simple, and achieve balance!

Behind the Idea

Now that we've talked about the rough basics and tips on idea creation, now lets get our hands dirty and talk about making the idea, or better yet, Behind the Idea. This is by far the most important section of this guide, so be sure to give a lot of thought and understanding to it. But, some prerequisites would be to get the general thought of how heroes work, by reading the previous parts of my guide. Ill try to go in-depth here without scaring you about hero idea generation.

So first, how do we create a good hero idea? If you would ask me, I usually build my hero not around a faction, race, look or characteristic I want it to be, since I can just adjust these factors to the overall hero itself. So whats important for me? The Mechanic/Playstyle of the hero. You don't make a Dwarf hero and add some abilities for your stereotypical dwarf (ex.: Storm Clap, Bash, etc.), but you create something based on their mechanic. If I want to make a Hero that has Electric/Fire powers, I should think of his general playstyle first then pick his appearance, faction, etc. If I want the Electric/Fire guy to be a dwarf, I can make him one with some fancy word magic. I can even make him a, say Magical Walking Book who also happens to be a dwarf! Appearance is the least of your priorities here, since its just for an aesthetic purpose.

First, we explore a single mechanic. Lets say that the hero dominating an AoS game is now a hit-and-run hero who happens to absolutely destroy everything. In order to provide balance we make a counter hero.

Say this hero is squishy at the early game but dishes out heavy damage at the late game. Stereotypical carry. In response to this, make a tank/carry hybrid to allow it to deal significant damage to this hero and still live. Since this hero is a hit-and-run hero, we need a chaser-type hero in order to close that gap and destroy that hero. So, I want to make a hero that is a durable chaser, whose job is to pick on fleeing enemy units or hit-and-run heroes and finish them off. After that expand that thought once more, on multiple mechanics appropriate for that hero. In order to close the gap, we need the fleeing unit to be slowed or just stop. A slowing ability would be great here. A movement speed bonus and also help further close this gap. So, I make Ability A, which slows an enemy unit down and and speeds myself up. Lets note that down below:

Hero A
Skills:
1. Ability A - Slows down the target enemy unit and increases Hero A's movement speed depending on the slow on the enemy unit for a short duration.

You don't need to be incredibly verbose when making these tooltips - just get straight to the point. Newer players to the certain hero would often find themselves reading a certain ability time after time, especially if it doesn't make that much sense. If a player constantly reads this, they waste a few good seconds of game time, which can be used for a kill. So tip - be as concise as possible in tooltips and use special effects to provide visualization.

Next, is the second ability. The next spell should be a way to finish fleeing foes while not sacrificing much time in chasing them. This means that spells with delays on casting or taking effect are inappropriate. So, ideally what has zero casting time? Passive spells. The next step would be to create a passive spell which would compliment the hero's great speed. Many ideas could come into your mind, but mine was this - Attack Damage bonus for a few seconds per movement speed increase. So here is my current idea: Ability B - increases the attack damage of Hero A by a percent of his own maximum Movement Speed. Then, you know whats next? Write it down, or type it down.

Hero A
Skills:
1. Ability A - Slows down the target enemy unit and increases Hero A's movement speed depending on the slow on the enemy unit for a short duration.
2. Ability B - Increases the Attack Damage of Hero A for a few seconds for every Movement Speed increase. Has a short cooldown.

I added a short cooldown to make the ability stack enough, but not enough to make him a massive fighting force.

Now, we cant rely on boosting his own Movement only, right? We would need a hard CC for this guy, preferably, a stun. Stuns for me are an excellent gap closer, so if you tag his Movement Speed + Slow spell plus a stun, you would definitely reach this enemy of yours and shred him with your Attack Damage bonus. So our next ability can just be something as simple as a War Stomp, from the regular WarCraft 3. Write/type that down now. However, this ability if used too often with Ability A may have some serious repercussions for the game's balance, namely spamming the two skills together in order to make the enemy not move. In order to counter this, give Hero A low mana and mana regeneration and this ability high mana (relative to Hero A) and cooldown.

Hero A
Skills:
1. Ability A - Slows down the target enemy unit and increases Hero A's movement speed depending on the slow on the enemy unit for a short duration.
2. Ability B - Increases the Attack Damage of Hero A for a few seconds for every Movement Speed increase. Has a short cooldown.
3. War Stomp - Deals damage to all units in a small radius around Hero A and stuns them for 1.5 seconds.

Making the stun a constant which doesn't increase also helps keep the hero's kit balanced.

Now, what if we have a foe that is so tanky or has a massive hp pool that you didn't take down? We need either a damaging spell or a pseudo-blink spell. The hero has too many gap closers right now, so a damaging spell would be great. Since the hero has high natural HP and armor, taking advantage of this may prove fruitful for the hero.

Hero A
Skills:
1. Ability A - Slows down the target enemy unit and increases Hero A's movement speed depending on the slow on the enemy unit for a short duration.
2. Ability B - Increases the Attack Damage of Hero A for a few seconds for every Movement Speed increase. Has a short cooldown.
3. War Stomp - Deals damage to all units in a small radius around Hero A and stuns them for a short duration.
4. Ability C - Hero A uses his weapon to the enemy hero, depleting a portion of his health and dealing an increased amount of that depleted portion to the enemy.

This makes his item builds biased towards increasing his health, movement speed, and maybe his attack damage.

Although I usually write 5 abilities, with one Innate Passive, I chose to go 4 for now.

Now that we are done with the idea generation, here comes the most daunting task for me - Ability and Hero names. Personally, I am weak at these areas. Before going to ability names, first pick a Hero Name and Hero Title for this guy. Plus a race, in order to base our Ability names. I picked him as Steve, the Centaur Outrunner. But why Centaur? Because Centaurs are fucking awesome.

So here we go with the final output, with out ability names:

Steve, the Centaur Outrunner (STR)
Skills:
1. Downgrade - Steve channels mystical energies of the earth, which slows down the target enemy unit and increases Steve's movement speed depending on the slow on the enemy unit for a short duration.
2. Adrenaline Rush - The thrill of chasing increases Steve's fervor, giving bonus Attack Damage for a few seconds for every Movement Speed increase. Has a short cooldown. Bonuses stack.
3. Earthshake - Steve slams the ground and releases a wave of energy which deals damage to all units in a small radius around Steve and stuns them for 1.5 seconds.
4. Reckless - Steve deals a charged tackle towards the enemy unit, depleting a portion of his health and dealing an increased amount of that depleted portion to the enemy.

Steve is a placeholder for any fancy Centaur name you have. Be noted that when creating ability descriptions you need to choose either using their Name (Steve) or Title (Centaur Outrunner). You should use hero names if a hero has one, if the hero can be controlled by multiple players. Use titles when the hero can only be used by a single player.

You might have noticed my bad Ability names, and that I have changed War Stomp to Earthshake, since Earthshake sounds like 20% cooler. Also, when your usually done with your ideas, you add a little flavor to your ability descriptions. By flavor, I mean small amounts of details that would give the players a description of how the hero would achieve this effect, in Earthshake I wrote that he would slam the ground and release a wave of energy to deal damage, since placing deal damage sounds very bland and unimaginative, which is contrary to the objective of this tutorial.

After that we write a short summary of this hero and a little background. I personally never write hero background story, so you can go make your own to make your creative juices flow. For hero summaries, maximize and minimize. Cover as much as you can and try to go a little in depth but not making too lengthy and leaving the player no room for build ideas. Try to explain all your abilities, how they work with each other, your synergy, general playstyle, unique factor and a tip on how to build this hero. Heres my summary:

"Steve is built around using your own immense speed against your foes, allowing you to pick off fleeing foes in battle, especially in team fights. His abilities compliment his overall role as a chaser, with his high strength gain. His durability allows him to be a tank/chaser hybrid. His first skill, Downgrade allows him to efficiently chase fleeing foes and use this slow against them by adding it on his movement speed. The movement speed bonus scales very well with his passive, Adrenaline Rush, which makes him stronger the faster he is. A regular Steve use would usually follow his Downgrade with a Earthshake, stunning his foe and dealing damage. His stun allows him to catch up on his foe and use the gain from Onslaught and Downgrade to chop his foe down. Reckless serves as a great finisher. Coupled with Steve's rather high base HP, he can easily take down foes with ease without any scratch. If you love chasing and chopping down your cowardly fleeing foes, go for Steve."

Admittedly, I'm not the best at this, but I think that summary is good enough for a hero. Noticed how I included general playstyle, build hints, how abilities relate to each other and more.

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Recent Updates:

02/01/13 - Revised nearly everything.
10/02/13 - Fixed some terminologies.
27/03/13 - Minor changes and added indentation.
16/04/15
Changelog is in a Date/Month/Year format

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Well, thank you for reading, visiting or even replying to this tutorial. It is the first one I have made, but dont worry, I plan on making more. I hope that I have taught you the valuable and basic ideas on how to also create ideas, particularly, hero ideas. I also hope you enjoyed reading it as I enjoyed writing it for 4 straight hours. I might also add more content the next time around. Please be noted that every hero idea here may NOT be used for your projects and are strictly for basis only. If you want some hero ideas like these, please visit my Modders Idea Factory so we could help you in generating an idea for your next big or small project.

Please also note again, this is all based on my point of view, experiences and opinion. If you feel that something is wrong, please tell me.
Cheers,
S[ub]lime

moyack · **Reply #1 on:** July 22, 2012, 09:47:05 AM

Awesome tutorial!!!! That's something that any hero /unit developer should take into account in order to make great maps.

Hugs!!!

s[ub]lime · **Reply #2 on:** July 23, 2012, 05:48:43 AM

Glad you like it :{D
Any suggestions, reactions(violent or not) though?

SonofJay · **Reply #3 on:** July 23, 2012, 11:11:11 PM

Holy mother of, good job sub!

s[ub]lime · **Reply #4 on:** July 25, 2012, 04:47:31 AM

Thanks hurr :{D

s[ub]lime · **Reply #5 on:** December 17, 2012, 12:20:54 AM

I was bored, so I updated this guide, with a new section.
Check it out! It expands the development process further.

moyack · **Reply #6 on:** December 18, 2012, 07:23:20 AM

Man!!! Again... Awesome tutorial!!! that's what I call a good procedure to develop unit/hero ideas

SonofJay · **Reply #7 on:** December 19, 2012, 01:46:26 AM

Sometimes, i'm thinking of killing Sublime so I can take his brain. *maniacal laugh*

s[ub]lime · **Reply #8 on:** December 19, 2012, 02:55:37 AM

Not if I kill you first! *even better maniacal laugh*

SonofJay · **Reply #9 on:** December 19, 2012, 03:20:51 AM

D:

Anyway, this really is the best tutorial for making heroes.

This should be follow by all of the AoS map developers.(And I also think games that need balance heroes/characters, most likely MMORPGs)

s[ub]lime · **Reply #10 on:** December 19, 2012, 07:55:48 AM

Hyuk hyuk hyuk

Thanks for saying that, means a lot

Well for best, I dont know. There are only a total of three ones in the internet that I know of (mine, and two from hive), but mine covers a larger area.
Maybe I could add more sections, but I dont know what should I cover. Any suggestions?

s[ub]lime · **Reply #11 on:** December 24, 2012, 01:02:32 AM

I plan on adding a section that concerns spell idea creation this time. Expect it next year, as my new years gift for you guys!

Give me a cool name for that section. I'm thinking Spellcraft. What do you guys think?

SonofJay · **Reply #12 on:** December 24, 2012, 01:20:21 AM

Spellcraft is too Warcraftish. Lets name it The Library! Or just library.

Also i thought i already posted it, but it looks like i forgot to. But i suggest a small section, where it explains the role of the Tank,Carry and Support a real battle together. I know it was already explained on their respective side. But explanation on how they blend will be lovely.(And can be called a "Summarize" of the whole thread)

s[ub]lime · **Reply #13 on:** December 28, 2012, 02:13:59 AM

Sure. It would be my New Years gift for you guys!

SonofJay · **Reply #14 on:** January 02, 2013, 03:13:29 AM

This thread is so useful I rated it 5/5!

Anyway still waiting for the new section!

s[ub]lime · **Reply #15 on:** January 02, 2013, 06:55:58 AM

I just realized that I nearly covered spell idea creation at the "Behind the Idea". Did a minor update, revised hero roles.

On the ingame action with all those heroes, it would all be assumptions, which would look bad. Maybe I could post a video instead of heroes working together and the actual outcome. It would be less of an assumption, and more of skill.

SonofJay · **Reply #16 on:** January 02, 2013, 08:15:19 AM

Hmm, yeah a video will be more appropriate for a preview of their actual roles.

Let me guess... dota replay? Well the dota developers really did a great job on hero synergies.

s[ub]lime · **Reply #17 on:** January 02, 2013, 08:45:36 AM

Well, i'd go for a League of Legends. Enjoy it a lot more

Expect it maybe by the weekend.

moyack · **Reply #18 on:** January 02, 2013, 02:36:04 PM

YAY!!!! Verry good

Improve this tutorial, it must be the best of the best!!

s[ub]lime · **Reply #19 on:** February 10, 2013, 04:36:33 AM

I am working on a new tutorial called "The Science of Abilities", which would basically be an extension of this one. I would try to make it as formal, informative and be broader in this tutorial, so meaning it would take a really long time, gathering research and stuff. Expect it to be in two weeks - one month.

What I aim to cover:
- Kinds of Abilities
- Proper Usage of Abilities
- Countering certain Abilities
- Counter-Play
- Balancing for Skill

and other stuff. It would be very detailed if you'd ask me.

SonofJay · **Reply #20 on:** February 11, 2013, 10:50:27 PM

Oh great! Can't wait to see you finish this tutorial.

moyack · **Reply #21 on:** February 12, 2013, 09:47:44 PM

I'm pending too

s[ub]lime · **Reply #22 on:** February 13, 2013, 08:18:38 AM

Meh, change my mind, im covering Crowd Controls instead.

After that I plan on either covering general Game Design Topics, which could be "Horror in Games".
For Horror in Games, no, there would be no jump scares. They are the lowest form of scaring someone in a game.

SonofJay · **Reply #23 on:** February 14, 2013, 01:44:49 AM

Fuck, oh well. I'm not really interested about CC. But I'm looking forward your tutorial about Horror in Games. I advice you to put that on a separate thread.

s[ub]lime · **Reply #24 on:** February 14, 2013, 05:21:09 AM

I dont really know what to cover - CC or Abilities. Abilities is really scary to go in detail.

Inside The Hero - A Guide For Hero Idea Creation