The Cave - RPG [3.0-Final]

Map Showcase
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The Cave - RPG
By Glorn
Discord: https: //discordapp. com/invite/c9yzK34

“A classic-style RPG game that blends the styles of World of Warcraft with Diablo II, created in the Starcraft II engine, using Warcraft III art; and inspired by decades of playing classic Blizzard games.”

A mysterious cave, a cast of wonky and unusual characters, and no idea how you got tangled up on this mess. “The Cave - RPG” will lead you on an epic adventure to figure out “Why am I on an adventure?”. Tears of frustration and awkward looks from loved ones as you sit in your chair and giggle to yourself wont be your only take-away from this game; I hope. Designed by a gamer, for free, for gamer’s. If you enjoy RPG games, then this was made specifically for you.

Primary Features:

Heroes - As you progress through the game, your heroes have evolution paths, with 15 final-tier heroes, touting 10 abilities each, and different stat allocations based on which path they took to get there.
Items - RNG based loot with hundreds of potential combinations, unique mods, and high enough drop rates that you are never just “grinding for that specific item.”
Customization - Heroes are able to customize/alter the effects of their abilities with glyphs; they have ample stat points to allocate as they wish, special item modifiers, and more abilities than you can shake a stick at, allow you to create and play a hero how you want it.
Balance/Meta - The game is designed in a way that there is no “meta” for builds. No blowing up monsters 2 screens away, no perfect builds. The situations are loose enough and variable enough, that there is no set way to do things. Play how you want to and remember, “You cant DPS if you’re dead.”
World - 35 large zones with a “simple” boss per zone; and 11 dungeons containing 3 unique bosses each, designed to scale and allowing 1-5 players to complete them.
Quests - 140 quest, create thick quest density. You will never need to “hang out and farm for a while” to progress. At worst, you may need to explore little, or party up for a tough one. quests are rewarding, and progress the story.
End Game - The story is fun and cute, and not too challenging. The real game begins when you complete the game. Designed to test players skills over their gear, all regional bosses and dungeons are re-invigorated as “Heroic” forms, with additional strength, abilities, and AI, as well as a further “Legendary Mode” which is designed to really test your skills. Raid bosses bring that concept to an entire new level, as they spawn randomly in the world, and scale from 7-10 players, and have intricate mechanics and strategies.
Repeatable Content - Though the game is intended to end, A few things freshen up the game, if you have invested 1000 hours and just want to keep going. Legendary dungeons have random modifiers to them, and cycle through every hour. A “Endless Waves” dungeon allows you to see how far you can progress against randomly generated waves of monsters and bosses.

Testimonials: (Asked my beta testers what they felt the “Selling Points” of the game are)

  • “It has the nostalgic feel of old warcraft 3 RPG’s while blowing every other SC2 RPG out of the water. You can build any hero at least 4 different ways and it be viable, the progression to end game is fun and doesn’t feel grind heavy at all, end game dungeons are a real challenge and very rewarding and raid bosses give you and 8-9 friends a real challenge.”
  • Definitely the way you choose your character, e.g. the evolving and the possibilities that come along with that.
  • You can literally say you made some advanced AI mechanics since your bosses abilities are so diverse and well randomized so hard to predict in some cases.
  • RPG, old style, Diablo 2 with World of Warcraft dungeon gear hunting. Epic create your own personal style with many different build for each class, skill2win.
    (The above sparked a lengthy debate of RNG loot vs predetermined stat loot and whether the loot styling more similarly resembles Diablo or WoW)
  • Over 150 quests, 10 dungeons, 1000’s of hours of replay value in the End Game hard modes, 5 man team play with 10 man raid missions, insane boss fights with skill being a major selling point on boss fights at your party level, 15 final classes to choose from.
  • I dunno how to sell it, but its like an RPG game that’s not been on the custom lobbies before. even in REFORGED RPG, it’s nothing compared to this.
  • ''Old School." Customize your builds and optimize them for the situations.
    (This led into a lengthy debate on the value of surviving multiple attacks VS just barely surviving 1)
  • Games Epic As Sh*t, that’s how I sell it.
2 Likes
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Self-Bump Promo:
Even though sc2 is dead, and this forum is so dead the flies have all moved on, it is kind of my paste dump for this wall of text.

Updating the text to reflect the current state of the game and plans moving forward… Because… Fanfare…

Release date is set for this Friday, August 2nd. I hope the few lurkers who end up here are able to find the game; on all servers, The Cave - RPG

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I just happened to check this forum randomly right after you posted this! I told my friend Kaito the news, he’ll be happy to hear as a big fan of the map.

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Dude your map is awesome, even with a dead sc2 community keep up the good work!

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I’m loving this map and I hope it gets updated. Friends love it too.

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Just to keep any lurkers in the loop:

The Cave is a hosted project over on the Hive Workshop. I update a bit more frequently over there.

The map is still treading water, despite wearing out its welcome for most; and I have been working on the next major patch; while improving the base game play. the next (big) patch is hopefully gonna be in April, and should increase the game content by 5-6X. Combining additional content, a broader variety of content, and dozens of quality of life improvements; I plan for an amazing user experience.

I’ll be back to self promote as I near the finish line!

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Some feedback so far.

My friend and I have been playing this map for about 6-7 hours so far and we’ve enjoyed it, but we have a couple issues with the game that is hindering our enjoyment of it.

  1. The siege is scaling really weird with levels and/or players both in cost and strength. My friend and I throw every resource we get into the defenses of the castle but the strength of the siege goes up extremely quickly together with the cost of the defenses. Them costing over 60k when it being the second or third upgrade is way too much, we shouldn’t have to stockpile resources several games just to be able to leave the defenses alone.

  2. Siege timers need to be visible constantly with the 60 second timer popping up when it’s only 60 seconds left. It’s nigh impossible to get back in time for the siege when you’re too far away from a waypoint, it would be nice if we could get either a recall function or a timer visible at all time.

  3. Stacking health is inefficient due to barely no heals scaling with max health (unless more healing oriented classes have % healing). Due to this it takes forever for the huntress to heal her pet and the tanks to regain health. I didn’t go the brawler-line due to health being one of their strengths which in the map is a weakness, it’s much more efficient to reduce damage taken than being able to take a large number of damage.

These three are the primary issues right now. Currently it’s primarily the sieges we dislike due to the fact that they’re not rewarding to play and they scale obscenely fast. Would be nice with being rewarded for the completion of each wave/attack or for each enemy dying rather than each last-hit we get.

Great job so far though.

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Hey, thanks for leaving your thoughts; I will attempt to address them.

  1. The siege mechanic is intended to get the player involved. There is a lot of gold/materials awarded if you take part in a siege. It is also intended that games do not last forever; and that you save your resources to spend wisely. As the game goes on, the items at the vendors become more rare. If you hold out long enough, even twilight class items become purchasable at the blacksmith. The scaling on the siege is pretty simple; the cost is directly linked to the siege level; which is based on the average level of players in a game. It increases exponentially with each purchase.

  2. You are correct. The siege is becoming more important with 3.0 (the next big patch) and you will be able to get a scouts report of upcoming waves in advance. However, various RNG events may mean that you will need to return to help defend the castle.

  3. I think that is a 1 sided observation. From the point of playing with a pocket healer at all times, maybe. Armor has diminishing returns with each point; while life grows exponentially. A brawler with 50,000 HP and 80 armor has far more EHP than a paladin with 12,000 HP and 130 armor. Higher HP also improves your ability to tank, as many target sorts are based on the highest HP heroes. HP also combos well with styles of tanking that are based on regeneration; since you have more time to take damage, thus more time to regen life before you die. It is pretty easy to maintain 400, and reach 800 HP/s with a brawler. A greater health pool allows you to survive burst damage better, and regen before the next burst. I feel the line will become more visible in 3.0 as stat values increase, and the diminishing returns of armor, and exponential gains from life, are reached sooner.

  4. If you were rewarded the gold/materials from waves that you dont personally kill, I would simply have to greatly increase the cost of everything in the game. Waves are a great way of obtaining income. They would come close to paying for themselves if you were to earn all of the materials from the kills. You are however, awarded honor for each wave survived, based on the level of the wave; and for each purchase of an upgrade.

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Haven’t seen the cave around much. What happened to it?

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The map is currently down on all servers, and has been for a little while. The majority of new content for version 3.0 is complete; and I am starting to move into features that interfere with existing parts of the game. Rather than trying to maintain 2 separate versions, it is far easier for me to take it down.

April is the planned release month for version 3.0; which should offer 4-5X the existing content.

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Alright, been a little bit since I’ve given an update, and this one is gonna be… As good as I can remember.

All 8 new regions added, with creeps and bosses. 3 new multi purpose regions.
6 new dungeons added.
Dungeon 9 and 10 are complete; but 10 still isn’t balance (Crippling imbalance) tested.

All of the quests (140) are complete; including about 15 end game quests; and about 20 quests filtered back below level 35 content.

The story line is complete. Overall, I feel as though it brings the whole game together and answers any questions players might have.

An ending cinematic has been added, for when a team with a player completing the quest for the final dungeon, hits that mark.

Stat point purchases have been reworked, to increase the number of stats gained per purchase as upgrades are purchased; and to further increase the total number of stat points. Totals are increasing from 200, to ~420.

Players will now be able to reset their stat allocations for FREE! However, they will lose all stat purchases, and have to re-buy all of their stat levels. :Evil Grin:

Increased performance within triggers related to very frequently firing events. None were bad at all; but some were frequently running during peak times. I haven’t tested the in-game results yet, but the trigger debugger thinks I did a fine job.

The beastmaster system has been mostly created. I still need to create monsters for him though.

The system for spawning heroic world bosses has been added and tested; but I still need to create heroic forms of the 35 world bosses.

The Glyph system has been added and tested; but I still need to create all ~300 of the glyph upgrade modifiers.

The glyph vendor has been added.

The rarities vendor from crossroads now has a quest line that leads up him opening up shop.

Hearthstone and mount systems added, unlocked through quests, and upgrades are available for it.

The dungeon stat screen now also displayed total, un-reduced damage taken and dealt; along with the actual values.

Purgatory has been reworked a little to be more rewarding; and to occasionally spawn bosses.

A new command panel UI has been commissioned, and added to the game. Similar to the normal AI, but allowing for additional playable view.

Game world map has been greatly improved, and updated.

There have been a bunch of smaller things as well; that I cannot recall off the top of my head. But I am getting a lot of the framework updated to handle the new version. I have a few more small projects to wrap up; then I will be starting on the heroes, an the glyphs. at which point a private beta will start for testing. Prolly a month from now. I will be back when they are done!

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Hey guys, just letting everyone know that I have been very hard at work over the past… 7 months… Getting this map from 2.0 to 3.0 ready. I updated the primary post to give a better outlook of the game. For returning players, the game is going to be quite different later on. There is 8X the content, easily. 2.0 was a beta, 3.0 is a game.

I hope to see you all out there when I release within the next week. You can stop by my discord (link in initial post) or check out some updates and screenshots over at the hive: www.hiveworkshop. com/threads/progress-updates-showoff.318801/

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discord link says it’s expired.
Also are you taking feedback on balance at all?

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Hey Kessler,
I fixed the invite link, so it should work now. And I am always taking feedback (On the discord). We have a great community built around the game, and it is community driven. While I am firm on my stance that the game is intended for “RPG Players” and not the mass public, I try to make it available to as wide of a group as I can without alienating my core players.

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Game is fun and well done, but the community is (mostly) toxic. You either get forced to playing a Rev and solo or you need heroic gear to even be invited into d8+ in games meant for leveling/gearing up.

If you do decide to play, highly suggest getting real attached to anyone who is new like you, otherwise when you hit level 50 nobody will look your way.

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Hey guys, can anyone tell me how to find the “stronghold” in the “Enemy Strongholds” quest? I look everywhere in the Arid Hills and all I see is rocks and Kobolds. Thanks!

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i want move the bank from eu to us, could u help or tell me what to edit in bank?

if i simple copy the bank it tells corrupt.

ty