moba game with no stuns
None
2022-10-07
<div><div>
	<main>
	 <div>
 
 
 
<article>
 
 	
 	
 
	
 <div><p><strong><em>Causeway</em></strong> is a lane-pushing game which "<em>makes teams feel like teams</em>"<em> </em>for everyone.</p>
<p><em><mark>Exchange opportunities</mark></em> — Quickly get to know your team and where they're open to collaboration. Your in-game choices leave a <em>trail of opportunities</em> which bring like-minded team members together.</p>
<p><em><mark>Inspire strategies</mark></em> — Use and discover a wide range of tools which enable inventive tactics — especially when used with coordination. Learn them once, and enjoy combining them in new ways for years.</p>
<p><em><mark>Nurture momentum</mark></em> — Guide your team towards victory by empowering them, whether that's by raising your team's maximum level, choosing to use your abilities supportively, or by making friends with neutral camps!</p>
<p><em><mark>Feel good about gaming</mark></em> — Our optimistic and inclusive community is invested in everyone's growth as leaders and team players. <em><a href="/inclusion">→ and here's how!</a></em></p>
<hr />
<div><p></p><h2>The Causeway Vision</h2>
</div>
<blockquote>
<p>"We are made for unending meeting and exchange."<br />
— David Whyte</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lane-pushing games are amazing, and we believe their best moments happen when a group of people are <em>"participating in a shared vision"</em>.</p>
<p>It might be a tightly knit team in a grand finals, a few friends on voice, or even a group of strangers who get talking.</p>
<p>It could be in an amazing team-fight where minds wordlessly align, a carefully practised strategy that hits its timing, or the delight of discovering and toying around with a new idea.</p>
<p>We want Causeway to be a game which <strong><em>accelerates</em></strong> players into that space. We believe it's an experience that should be available to anybody.</p>
<p>We approach the design of our game and community to bridge as many gaps as we can, so you can just dive in and enjoy!</p>
<hr />
<div><p></p><h2>Key Features</h2>
</div>
<ul>
	<li>Lane-pushing gameplay for PC, enjoyed from a top-down viewpoint.</li>
	<li>Play 5v5, or dive into our co-op '<em>lane-pushing survival</em>' mode.</li>
	<li>20–30 minute match times.</li>
	<li>A welcoming space which celebrates inclusive play and positive leadership.</li>
	<li>Deep gameplay with an accessible entry-point.</li>
	<li>Ongoing story with a beginning, a middle and an end.</li>
	<li>Fair monetisation which is not pay-to-win.</li>
	<li>Rich modding support included.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<div><p></p><h2>Journey With Us</h2>
</div>
<p><a href="#modal-mailing-list">Sign up for Alpha!</a></p>
</div>
</article>
 </div>
	</main>
	</div>||||I|||| Causeway

 A lane-pushing game which "makes teams feel like teams" for everyone.

 Sign up for Alpha!
 Latest:
 Branching Pathways
 Dev Blog — Oct 07, 2022

 Causeway

 Causeway is a lane-pushing game which "makes teams feel like teams" for everyone.

 Exchange opportunities — Quickly get to know your team and where they're open to collaboration. Your in-game choices leave a trail of opportunities which bring like-minded team members together.

 Inspire strategies — Use and discover a wide range of tools which enable inventive tactics — especially when used with coordination. Learn them once, and enjoy combining them in new ways for years.

 Nurture momentum — Guide your team towards victory by empowering them, whether that's by raising your team's maximum level, choosing to use your abilities supportively, or by making friends with neutral camps!

 Feel good about gaming — Our optimistic and inclusive community is invested in everyone's growth as leaders and team players. → and here's how!

 The Causeway Vision

 "We are made for unending meeting and exchange."
 — David Whyte

 Lane-pushing games are amazing, and we believe their best moments happen when a group of people are "participating in a shared vision".

 It might be a tightly knit team in a grand finals, a few friends on voice, or even a group of strangers who get talking.

 It could be in an amazing team-fight where minds wordlessly align, a carefully practised strategy that hits its timing, or the delight of discovering and toying around with a new idea.

 We want Causeway to be a game which accelerates players into that space. We believe it's an experience that should be available to anybody.

 We approach the design of our game and community to bridge as many gaps as we can, so you can just dive in and enjoy!

 Key Features

 * Lane-pushing gameplay for PC, enjoyed from a top-down viewpoint.
 * Play 5v5, or dive into our co-op 'lane-pushing survival' mode.
 * 20–30 minute match times.
 * A welcoming space which celebrates inclusive play and positive leadership.
 * Deep gameplay with an accessible entry-point.
 * Ongoing story with a beginning, a middle and an end.
 * Fair monetisation which is not pay-to-win.
 * Rich modding support included.

 Journey With Us

 Sign up for Alpha!

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 You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form.
 I'm also interested in beta testing.
 Include me on the newsletter.
 We respect your privacy. Read more.
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Causeway — The Game
https://playcauseway.com/
None
2003-01-01
<div><div>
 <tbody><tr>
 <td> </td>
 <td>
 <div>
 <h2>
 FrontPage
 </h2>
 <div>
 <p><a href="http://riseofwinterchill.pbworks.com/w/page-revisions/7014362/FrontPage">
 Page history
 </a>
 last edited
 by Softmints 2 years ago</p>
 </div>
 
 
 <div>
 <p>Welcome to the <strong>Rise of Winterchill</strong> Homepage!</p>
<p>This game now has a standalone sequel called <strong><a href="https://playcauseway.com/">Causeway</a></strong>! Go check it out!</p>
<p></p>
<hr /><table><tbody><tr><td>
<h2>Introduction:</h2>
<p>Rise of Winterchill (RoW) is a custom scenario for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_III:_The_Frozen_Throne">Warcraft III</a> of the AoS genre (commercially known as a MOBA, or lane-pushing-game). It was developed from 2007-2014 by Softmints.</p>
<p>Here is a quick list of how RoW differs from similar games:</p>
<ul><li>Thirty well-crafted heroes with an emphasis on complicated skill-shots.</li>
<li>There are no stuns. </li>
<li>There are no wards. </li>
<li>There are no last hits.</li>
<li>There are no random effects. </li>
<li>The jungle is a team-oriented objective, rather than a solo pursuit.</li>
<li>Towers give team gold as they are damaged, rather than on death.</li>
<li>A varied selection of items, including several which customize hero abilities. </li>
</ul>
<p>The <strong><em>Sidebar</em></strong> on the right contains other useful links for navigation.</p>
<hr /><h2>Media:</h2>
<p>Some gameplay highlights compilation videos by user <em>Separation</em>:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For more RoW videos, visit <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/shields118">http://www.youtube.com/user/shields118</a></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><em>Click to enlarge</em></p>
<p><a href="/w/file/fetch/101452867/row_4.png"></a></p>
<p><a href="/w/file/fetch/101452861/row_2.png"></a></p>
<p><a href="/w/file/fetch/101452864/row_3.png"></a></p>
<p><a href="/w/file/fetch/101452855/row_1.png"></a></p>
</td>
</tr></tbody></table>
<hr />
<p>The <strong><a href="/Characters">Playable Characters</a></strong> aspire to provide a variety of fun playstyles which reward player skill. Unavoidable, easy-to-use abilities such as Storm Bolt are kept to a minimum, as are complete disables such as stuns. Abilities often have ludicrously abstruse (but hilarious and very-satisfying-when-you-nail-it) aiming, such as Caber Toss which requires alignment with a tree, Thunderbolt which needs a unit to be standing exactly between Tempest and where he wants to hit, and Arc Arrow, which curves more based on how much Pythoness turns before firing it.</p>
<ul><li><strong>Disables</strong> are at best effort <strong>not stuns</strong>. Heroes will find ways to limit your options without removing all of them at once, which keeps gameplay more dynamic.</li>
<li><strong>Trees</strong> and other terrain features see a lot of interaction. <strong>Knockback</strong> is a major contributor (as being knocked into trees deals hefty bonus damage), but several heroes have special interaction with the landscape.</li>
<li>Some abilities are classified as '<strong>attacks</strong>', and benefit from attack modifiers such as life/mana leech, or cleave. This allows for much greater item customisation.</li>
<li><strong>Powerup items</strong> such as the coins which are dropped by troops can be picked up remotely by some abilities, and some heroes and items can create powerups which heal or restore mana.</li>
<li>Ability effects (most commonly damage) can vary based on stats, and several items can additionally customise abilities to improve their damage, duration, radius of effect, or add extra effects such as inflicting poison.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p><strong>Resources</strong> come in from a few routes:</p>
<ul><li>As the <strong>troops</strong> die, they give gold and experience to nearby enemy heroes (no killing blow required).</li>
<li>The troops occasionally drop a <strong>coin</strong> when they die, which can be picked up by anyone! Coins give gold, but disappear after a short time, so it's a race to grab them.</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Player kills</strong> gives a nice gold bonus, which is evenly split between all participants. The experience from hero kills is weighted offset level advantages.</p>
</li>
<li><strong>Towers</strong> give gold to the enemy team for every point of damage they take! This mechanic is called '<strong>Pillage Gold</strong>', and it makes pushing (early or late) very lucrative and encourages offensive, risk-taking gameplay.</li>
<li><a href="/w/page/7014356/Camps"><strong>Creep Camps</strong></a> are hostile monsters in the jungle which can give gold and experience when killed. They have a special set of mechanics.</li>
<li>Players will receive some<strong> </strong>gold and<strong> </strong> experience per minute <strong>passively</strong>.</li>
<li>Players can pool or be pooled up to 200 gold from their allies. This creates the potential for more starting item choices, as well as allowing lending to finish an item quickly, without making pooling rampant.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p><strong><a href="/Items">Items</a></strong> can be difficult to learn in any lane-pushing game. RoW likes to keep it simple. There are currently 83 items, and none of them have compatibility issues like "attack modifiers" or "orb effects". It's usually okay to buy the same item more than once, which means more potential builds with less learning curve.</p>
<p>In most other lane-pushing games, it is rarely viable to buy the recipe of an item first. In RoW, recipes have an auto-complete function which will check the items you have and your current gold, and finish the recipe if you can afford it. Not only does it make shopping quick and easy; this feature can be used anywhere: buying a recipe as a placeholder to later complete the item on-lane is a common tactic. This replaces the need for a courier and its micromanagement. RoW also introduced the very handy <strong>-i</strong> command, where typing "<strong>-i dmg</strong>" buys the basic +damage item.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Gameplay:</h2>
<p>Firstly, RoW does not have a large (or competitive) enough community for there to be a well established meta. The following are simply common trends:</p>
<ul><li>Matches last for about 50 minutes.</li>
<li>Roles are much less concrete than in other genre-games, because heroes are generally versatile. Players can comfortably stick to playing a small pool of their favourite heroes. </li>
<li>Laning is often exclusively focused on killing or zoning out enemy players (attacking enemy heroes does not draw troop aggro + no last hits).</li>
<li>Team fights tend to last longer and are largely decided by who lands their abilities. Fights typically cover a lot of ground as heroes manoeuvre or flee.</li>
<li>Pillage gold from towers means that (unusually for the genre) a <em>pushed</em> lane is optimal for gold income. </li>
<li>Pushing wins games much more reliably than hero kills.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Other neat stuff:</strong></p>
<ul><li>If you hate shuffling teleport scrolls around your inventory at base, RoW's <strong>Autoportal</strong> makes life a lot easier.</li>
<li>There is no unconditional invisibility, and no passive anti-invisibility. There are much better mind games surrounding the mechanic this way.</li>
<li>Rather than an announcer for kill streaks, RoW rewards players for getting particularly difficult kills with their aimed abilities. Often even the dead player can appreciate that at least they died to a good shot.</li>
<li>Plenty of bonus and hidden content for fun.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2>Background:</h2>
<p>RoW is the successor to Softmints' old project, DotA Outland, which was started in 2003 and ended in 2006 (when work on RoW began). Some content has been carried forward, but most importantly the style in which it was made. Dota Outland was never a success in terms of bugs, balance, or efficient coding, but many people loved the character of the map, and it served as a great learning experience.</p>
<p>There have been over 550 versions of RoW released to date (many of them deprecated after a Warcraft patch), and the project file has undergone over 12,000 saves. <strong>All</strong> of these versions are available for download in archive format from the <em>Files &amp; Pages</em> tab on this site.</p>
<p>For insight on RoW's development process, and other lane-pushing game design, check out <a href="http://lanepushinggames.wordpress.com/">Lane-Pushing Games</a>.</p>
<h2>Browse the wiki: </h2>
<ul><li><a href="/Characters">Characters</a></li>
<li><a href="/Items">Items</a></li>
<li><a href="/Structures">Structures</a></li>
<li><a href="/Community">Community</a>  </li>
</ul>
<hr /><p>Views:  </p>
<p>Rise of Winterchill is free for anyone to play. It is not free to be redistributed commercially (that includes any website with advertising or any form of making profit), to be altered, or to have any of its content copied or used in any manner without <strong>explicit permission from Softmints</strong>. All rights reserved! If you wish to contact me, my details are available from the Lane-Pushing Games site.</p>
<p>The game file includes short audio segments from various sources, which belong to their respective owners and are included under Fair Use.<br /></p>
 </div>
 </div>
 
 
 
 </td>
 <td> </td>
 </tr>
 </tbody></div>||||I|||| * Rise of Winterchill

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 View          
 FrontPage          
          
 Page history last edited by Softmints 2 years ago         
          
 Welcome to the Rise of Winterchill Homepage!         
          
 This game now has a standalone sequel called Causeway! Go check it out!         
          
 Stable Versions:          
 Useful Stuff:         
 RoW_71n.w3x (July 2016)         
 How To Play         
 RoW_57w.w3x (December 2010)         
 Hosting Bots         
 RoW_43h.w3x (May 2008)         
 Streaming on Twitch.tv         
 Other Versions          
          
          
          
 Introduction:          
          
 Rise of Winterchill (RoW) is a custom scenario for Warcraft III of the AoS genre (commercially known as a MOBA, or lane-pushing-game). It was developed from 2007-2014 by Softmints.       
          
 Here is a quick list of how RoW differs from similar games:         
          
 * Thirty well-crafted heroes with an emphasis on complicated skill-shots.         
 * There are no stuns.         
 * There are no wards.         
 * There are no last hits.         
 * There are no random effects.   Click to enlarge       
 * The jungle is a team-oriented objective, rather than a solo pursuit.         
 * Towers give team gold as they are damaged, rather than on death.         
 * A varied selection of items, including several which customize hero abilities.         
          
 The Sidebar on the right contains other useful links for navigation.         
          
 Media:          
          
 Some gameplay highlights compilation videos by user Separation :         
          
 For more RoW videos, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/shields118         
          
          
          
 The Playable Characters aspire to provide a variety of fun playstyles which reward player skill. Unavoidable, easy-to-use abilities such as Storm Bolt are kept to a minimum, as are complete disables such as stuns. Abilities often have ludicrously abstruse (but hilarious and very-satisfying-when-you-nail-it) aiming, such as Caber Toss which requires alignment with a tree, Thunderbolt which needs a unit to be standing exactly between Tempest and where he wants to hit, and Arc Arrow, which curves more based on how much Pythoness turns before firing it. 
          
 * Disables are at best effort not stuns. Heroes will find ways to limit your options without removing all of them at once, which keeps gameplay more dynamic.       
 * Trees and other terrain features see a lot of interaction. Knockback is a major contributor (as being knocked into trees deals hefty bonus damage), but several heroes have special interaction with the landscape.      
 * Some abilities are classified as 'attacks', and benefit from attack modifiers such as life/mana leech, or cleave. This allows for much greater item customisation.       Navigator 
 * Powerup items such as the coins which are dropped by troops can be picked up remotely by some abilities, and some heroes and items can create powerups which heal or restore mana.       
 * Ability effects (most commonly damage) can vary based on stats, and several items can additionally customise abilities to improve their damage, duration, radius of effect, or add extra effects such as inflicting poison.      Loading… 
          
 Resources come in from a few routes:         SideBar 
          
 * As the troops die, they give gold and experience to nearby enemy heroes (no killing blow required).        Characters 
 * The troops occasionally drop a coin when they die, which can be picked up by anyone! Coins give gold, but disappear after a short time, so it's a race to grab them.       
          Items 
 * Player kills gives a nice gold bonus, which is evenly split between all participants. The experience from hero kills is weighted offset level advantages.       
          Terrain 
 * Towers give gold to the enemy team for every point of damage they take! This mechanic is called 'Pillage Gold', and it makes pushing (early or late) very lucrative and encourages offensive, risk-taking gameplay.      
 * Creep Camps are hostile monsters in the jungle which can give gold and experience when killed. They have a special set of mechanics.       Creep Camps 
 * Players will receive some gold and experience per minute passively.         
 * Players can pool or be pooled up to 200 gold from their allies. This creates the potential for more starting item choices, as well as allowing lending to finish an item quickly, without making pooling rampant.      Forums 
          
 Items can be difficult to learn in any lane-pushing game. RoW likes to keep it simple. There are currently 83 items, and none of them have compatibility issues like "attack modifiers" or "orb effects". It's usually okay to buy the same item more than once, which means more potential builds with less learning curve.     Download 
          
 In most other lane-pushing games, it is rarely viable to buy the recipe of an item first. In RoW, recipes have an auto-complete function which will check the items you have and your current gold, and finish the recipe if you can afford it. Not only does it make shopping quick and easy; this feature can be used anywhere: buying a recipe as a placeholder to later complete the item on-lane is a common tactic. This replaces the need for a courier and its micromanagement. RoW also introduced the very handy -i command, where typing "-i dmg" buys the basic +damage item. Recent Activity
          
 Gameplay:         Loading… 
          
 Firstly, RoW does not have a large (or competitive) enough community for there to be a well established meta. The following are simply common trends:       
          
 * Matches last for about 50 minutes.         
 * Roles are much less concrete than in other genre-games, because heroes are generally versatile. Players can comfortably stick to playing a small pool of their favourite heroes.       
 * Laning is often exclusively focused on killing or zoning out enemy players (attacking enemy heroes does not draw troop aggro + no last hits).        
 * Team fights tend to last longer and are largely decided by who lands their abilities. Fights typically cover a lot of ground as heroes manoeuvre or flee.       
 * Pillage gold from towers means that (unusually for the genre) a pushed lane is optimal for gold income.        
 * Pushing wins games much more reliably than hero kills.         
          
 Other neat stuff:          
          
 * If you hate shuffling teleport scrolls around your inventory at base, RoW's Autoportal makes life a lot easier.        
 * There is no unconditional invisibility, and no passive anti-invisibility. There are much better mind games surrounding the mechanic this way.        
 * Rather than an announcer for kill streaks, RoW rewards players for getting particularly difficult kills with their aimed abilities. Often even the dead player can appreciate that at least they died to a good shot.      
 * Plenty of bonus and hidden content for fun.         
          
 Background:          
          
 RoW is the successor to Softmints' old project, DotA Outland, which was started in 2003 and ended in 2006 (when work on RoW began). Some content has been carried forward, but most importantly the style in which it was made. Dota Outland was never a success in terms of bugs, balance, or efficient coding, but many people loved the character of the map, and it served as a great learning experience.    
          
 There have been over 550 versions of RoW released to date (many of them deprecated after a Warcraft patch), and the project file has undergone over 12,000 saves. All of these versions are available for download in archive format from the Files & Pages tab on this site.      
          
 For insight on RoW's development process, and other lane-pushing game design, check out Lane-Pushing Games.        
          
 Browse the wiki:          
          
 * Characters          
 * Items          
 * Structures          
 * Community          
          
 Views:          
          
 Rise of Winterchill is free for anyone to play. It is not free to be redistributed commercially (that includes any website with advertising or any form of making profit), to be altered, or to have any of its content copied or used in any manner without explicit permission from Softmints . All rights reserved! If you wish to contact me, my details are available from the Lane-Pushing Games site.    
          
 The game file includes short audio segments from various sources, which belong to their respective owners and are included under Fair Use.        
          
          
          
          
 Comments ( 0 )          
          
 You don't have permission to comment on this page.         
          
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FrontPage
http://riseofwinterchill.pbworks.com/w/page/7014362/FrontPage
None
2023-01-01
<div><div>
	<main>
	 <div>
 
 
 
<article>
 
	
 
	
 <div>
	<section>
 <p>
</p>
 	
	<table>
	<tbody>
	<tr><td>Title</td><td>Rise of Winterchill (2009)</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Aliases</td><td>
 <div>
 <p>Aliases</p>
 <div>
 <p>RoW</p>
 </div>
 </div>
</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Server Status</td><td>
 <div>
 <p>Moba Server Status</p>
 <div><p><a href="/taxonomy/term/79">Playable (Community Edition)</a></p></div>
 </div>
</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Developer(s)</td><td>
 <div>
 <p>Developers</p>
 <div>
 
 
 
	<a href="/taxonomy/term/88">
 <p>Softmints</p>
 </a>
	
 </div>
 </div>
</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Publisher(s)</td><td>
 <div>
 <p>Publishers</p>
 <div>
 
	<a href="/taxonomy/term/77">
 <p>Not Commercially Published</p>
 </a>
	
 </div>
 </div>
</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Activity Period</td>
	<td><p>2009 – 2014
	</p></td></tr>
	<tr><td>Links</td><td>
 <div>
 <p>Links</p>
 <div><p><a href="http://riseofwinterchill.pbworks.com/w/page/7014362/FrontPage">Official Wiki</a></p></div>
 </div>
</td></tr>
	</tbody>
	</table>
	</section>
	<section>
	<div>
 <p>Description</p>
 <div><p>Emphasises rich and engaging hero combat. The game has many unusual skill-shots, and there no stuns or randomness. Combat instead focuses more on displacement and environmental or situational damage.</p>
<p>The jungle is a persistent team objective rather than an economic space for a single hero to occupy, and a variety of different creep camps and reward structures have appeared in the game over the years.</p>
<p>The game had an unusually refined item system, with a fullscreen shop interface, typed shortcuts, recommended items, recipe autocompletion, all items stacking with each-other (at reduced efficiency), and custom item stats like bonus ability radius or duration.</p></div>
 </div>
	<div>
	<table>
	<tbody>
	<tr><td>Heroes</td><td>
 
 </td></tr>
	<tr><td>Lanes</td><td>
 
 </td></tr>
	<tr><td>Players</td><td>
 
 </td></tr>
	<tr><td>Teams</td><td>
 
 </td></tr>
	<tr><td>Platform(s)</td><td>
 
 </td></tr>
	</tbody>
	</table>
	</div>
	</section>
	<section>
	<p>Heroes</p>
	</section>
	
 </div>
</article>
 </div>
	</main>
	</div>||||I|||| User account menu

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 Celebrating MOBA History and Design

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 Articles Games Resources About

 Rise of Winterchill (2009)

 Title Rise of Winterchill (2009) 
 Aliases Aliases 
 RoW 
 Server Status Moba Server Status 
 Playable (Community Edition) 
 Developer(s) Developers 
 Softmints 
 Publisher(s) Publishers 
 Not Commercially Published
 Activity Period 2009 – 2014 
 Links Links 
 Official Wiki 
 
 PreviousNext
 Description

 Emphasises rich and engaging hero combat. The game has many unusual skill-shots, and there no stuns or randomness. Combat instead focuses more on displacement and environmental or situational damage.

 The jungle is a persistent team objective rather than an economic space for a single hero to occupy, and a variety of different creep camps and reward structures have appeared in the game over the years.

 The game had an unusually refined item system, with a fullscreen shop interface, typed shortcuts, recommended items, recipe autocompletion, all items stacking with each-other (at reduced efficiency), and custom item stats like bonus ability radius or duration.

 Design Features
 Interactive Terrain (3.0)
 Innovative Heroes (3.0)
 Pillaging (2.5)
 Buff Camps (2.5)
 Mercenary Camps (2.5)
 Shared Laning Rewards (2.0)
 Powerup Drops (2.0)
 Jungle Camps (2.0)
 Gadget Camps (2.0)
 Infinite Troops (1.5)
 Recall Ability (1.5)
 Rune Powerups (1.5)
 Items (1.0)
 Recipe Items (1.0)
 Core Victory (1.0)
 Overhead Camera (0.5)
 Point-and-Click Controls (0.5)
 2D Gameplay (Isometric) (0.5)
 Loyal Heroes (0.5)
 Heroes Number of Heroes 
 32 
 Lanes Number of Lanes 
 3 
 Players Number of Players
 10 
 Teams Number of Teams 
 2 
 Moba Platforms 
 Platform(s) Linux 
 Windows 
 
 Heroes

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Rise of Winterchill (2009)
https://lanepushinggames.com/moba/rise-of-winterchill-2009
Softmints
2016-09-20
<div><div><p>Stuns are one of the most common forms of disable in lane-pushing games. Right now, genre-wide, around <strong>50%</strong> of heroes have a stun, and this plays a substantial and understated role in shaping the gameplay and hero combat of these games.</p>
<p>In this article we'll discuss what stuns are, how they impact gameplay, and why my game <em><strong>Causeway</strong></em> adopted a "no stuns" policy.</p>
<h2>Stuns and Stun-like</h2>
<p>The scope of this article isn't just stuns, but those disables which give the "experience of being stunned". I'm going to call these <strong>stun-like</strong> disables, and we can identify them as those where <em>all</em> of the following are true:</p>
<ol>
	<li>The affected unit has <mark>heavily limited choices</mark>.</li>
	<li>The affected unit is <mark>vulnerable to further attack</mark>.</li>
	<li>The duration of the effect is long enough to <mark>interrupt the player's flow</mark>.</li>
</ol>
<p>Using this definition, we would count a <em>sleep</em>, but not a <em>mini-stun</em> (too short) and not a <em>slow</em> (not limiting enough).</p>
<p>With experimentation, we can assess other disables and see that these criteria are effective for identifying the "experience of being stunned".</p>
<figure><figure>
	
<figcaption>A range of mildly to heavily limiting disables.</figcaption>
</figure>
</figure>
<p>This chart shows a loose hierarchy. The top two circles are usually limiting enough to count as stuns, but it will depend on the individual game.</p>
<h2>The Three Peeves</h2>
<p>The three conditions for a "stun experience" also happen to correspond to the <em>problems</em> that stuns create.</p>
<p>These three problems are something we should examine in detail:</p>
<div>
<h2>Problem 1: Heavily limited choices</h2>
<p><em>"A game is a series of interesting choices."</em> — <em>Sid Meier</em> (of Civilization fame)</p>
<p>In every possible moment of gameplay, from drafting their heroes to deciding the exact moment to use a spell, we would like players to be faced with <em>interesting choices</em>.</p>
<p>As game designers this feels implicit, and we could propose many arguments in favour of it. Indeed, "choosing among interesting choices" is not far from a description of <em>playing</em> itself.</p>
<p>A player who is stunned or chain-stunned cannot choose; they can only suffer from their previous choices. And what worse time to deny a player choices than during the most decisive moments of gameplay: in the middle of team-fights.</p>
</div>
<div>
<h2>Problem 2: Being vulnerable to further attack</h2>
<p>Many players enjoy being tested on their aiming and timing: their ability to predict an opponent's movements. Unfortunately, having stuns in the game creates many situations where landing spells is trivialized, because the victim cannot react.</p><p>
This denies <em>everyone</em> in the game of opportunities to aim, dodge, juke, and make clutch plays.</p></div>
<div>
<h2>Problem 3: Interrupting a player's flow</h2>
<p>Brief moments of pause or transition are inevitable during gameplay, but sustained inability to act (particularly during the crucial moments of a team-fight) is likely to spark frustration, which in turn can break immersion. We'd prefer to minimise this wherever possible.</p>
</div>
<h2>More on Flow</h2>
<p>To back this up, we can look at the psychology of <em><mark>flow</mark></em>. <em>Flow</em> is a state of mind where a person is fully engaged with the activity they are doing — they are free of distractions and completely immersed in the moment.</p>
<p>This happens naturally when people are rock-climbing, painting, competing in sports, and many other activities.</p>
<p>Flow is particularly applicable to games. Having players who are deeply immersed in gameplay (or <em>achieving a flow experience</em>) is testament to great game design!</p>
<p>However, flow only happens under certain conditions, and not all activities or games qualify. For example, most people will never achieve flow while filing their taxes. A primer about the conditions of flow can be read <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HazelBradshaw/20160525/273468/Gameplay_Flow__Designing_for_Player_Immersion.php">here</a>, though I've picked out the three relevant which to this topic:</p>
<ul>
	<li>The individual should be actively <em><mark>exercising control</mark></em> over their situation.</li>
	<li>The activity must be <em><mark>challenging</mark></em> and require or test skills at an appropriate level.</li>
	<li>The individual's <em><mark>attention is absorbed completely</mark></em> by the activity.</li>
</ul>
<p>It is easy to see how the absence of these things would cause problems in a game: look no further than a game with poor controls, a mismatched difficulty setting, or a clunky/distracting interface.</p>
<p>Earlier, we established a definition for identifying <strong>stun-like</strong> disables. Looking closely, we can see that this definition is the <em>inverse</em> of the conditions for flow. Stuns stop players exercising control, trivialize challenges, and interrupt immersion. They oppose flow <em>definitively</em>.</p>
<p>If we're aiming to have a fluid and immersive gaming experience, stuns probably don't have a place in it.</p>
<div>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> Stuns don't always have to oppose flow, and the RTS <em>Warcraft III®</em> is a perfect counterexample. Players control entire armies, and when parts of an army are stunned, there are plenty of other soldiers and tasks to manage. The player is still in control, and can still take actions around their stunned units.</p>
<p>The issue in lane-pushing games is that players control exactly <em>one</em> character, and a stun causes complete loss of control.</p>
<p>If our stuns only affect non-player controlled units, there should be no problems.</p>
</div>
<h2>The Maximal Disable</h2>
<p>My focus on stuns and their removal from <em>Causeway</em> is because they are particularly bad for flow experiences, and <em>flow</em> is something I value highly. But for a balanced discussion, we must also consider the <em>positive</em> influences of stuns:</p>
<ol>
	<li>They reward good <mark>game sense</mark>. If a player slips up and is out of position, stuns let you <em>keep</em> them out of position while unloading more spells and damage without reprisal. To survive, players have to sharpen their senses and think a few steps ahead to avoid stunlocks before they happen.<br />
	This <em>game sense</em> is a skill that many players enjoy demonstrating and being tested on.</li>
	<li>They increase dependence on <mark>teamwork</mark>. Disables create points of weakness where a hero is less able to act independently, creating a window where the importance of allies is increased. Since stuns take away the maximum possible actions (all of them), they similarly maximise a player's dependence on their allies during those moments.<br />
	In a small way, stuns also encourage coordination, since <abbr>staggering</abbr> stuns is more valuable than staggering most other disables.</li>
	<li>They increase the importance of <mark>immunities</mark>. Being stunned at a crucial moment is a big risk, so players must invest in understanding and leveraging any mechanics which can mitigate that risk.</li>
	<li>They create more <mark>reliable and diverse structure</mark> in fights.<br />
	Stuns temporarily reduce the number of possible actions an opponent might take to zero: which makes it easier to execute a team fight, or fight in a structured way. Without stuns (or at least hard disables), it may not be possible to create real openings that make a fight advantageous.<br />
	Similarly, if it's not possible to stop individual heroes from using their spells, then <em>"generally"</em> all heroes can use all the spells they want during a fight, and fights suffer in diversity.</li>
</ol>
<p>The above properties apply to disables in general, but are seen at their most extreme with stuns. In removing stuns, the potency of these factors in overall gameplay would be diluted.</p>
<p>Is improving flow worth the uncertain outcomes this would have?</p>
<h2>A Different Approach</h2>
<p>Rather than simply removing stuns, the real challenge lies in <em>replacing</em> them: finding alternative mechanics which preserve their best properties while removing those which inhibit or interrupt flow.</p>
<p>For Causeway, the closest equivalent to a stun is a <strong>knockback</strong>. Many lane-pushing games have knockback, but Causeway's implementation is special: bonus damage is dealt for <strong><em>each obstacle hit</em></strong> by the unit during their trajectory.</p>
<p>Depending on the angle and obstacles that a victim hits, that could be 4% of a unit's maximum life, or 40%.</p>
<p>This "variable bonus damage" mechanic creates interactions where:</p>
<ul>
	<li>Bad positioning is still punished</li>
	<li>The displacement is quick enough not to interrupt flow or leave a window for further attack</li>
	<li>The victim immediately reclaims control and can resume making choices</li>
</ul>
<p>Great for flow, great for gameplay!</p>
<p>Some of the other positive influences of stuns are trickier to replace directly, but can still be manifested using other mechanics or game systems.</p>
<h2>Afterword</h2>
<p>Causeway's implementation of knockback has been a player favourite for a long time. I can say that because I first came up with it while modding a game called <a href="/moba/rise-of-winterchill">Rise of Winterchill</a> (2007–2014), where I learned many of the lessons that are being applied in Causeway: including this one about stuns!</p>
<p>As I was researching this article, I was interested to discover that the saturation of knockbacks in <em>Rise of Winterchill</em> at the end of its development was about the same as the saturation of stuns in other lane-pushing games (~50%).</p>
<p>Importantly: this does <em><strong>not</strong></em> imply that <em>Rise of Winterchill's</em> characters were simply heroes from other games with stuns switched out!</p>
<p>Instead, <em>Rise of Winterchill</em> had a fundamentally different and unique ecosystem in which heroes are designed and interact. The mechanics and geometry of the game were different.</p>
<p>For example, I can share that while there was lots more displacement in the game, <em>Rise of Winterchill</em> almost always had <em>push</em> effects rather than <em>pull</em>. Any 'hook' ability would have been crazy overpowered!</p>
<p>I am excited to be curating similar ideas in our new game, and look forward to writing about those some day too.</p>
<hr />
<p>The<strong> </strong><em><strong>Crafting Causeway</strong></em> series aims to introduce the features of <em>Kybolt's</em> upcoming game <em>Causeway</em>, while sharing insights about lane-pushing game design and encouraging discussion about how to improve the genre as a whole.</p>
<p><a href="/article/topic/crafting-causeway">See more articles</a> or leave a comment below.</p>
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 Lanes Without Stuns

 20th Sep, 2016 By Softmints 6 minutes

 Stuns are one of the most common forms of disable in lane-pushing games. Right now, genre-wide, around 50% of heroes have a stun, and this plays a substantial and understated role in shaping the gameplay and hero combat of these games.

 In this article we'll discuss what stuns are, how they impact gameplay, and why my game Causeway adopted a "no stuns" policy.

 Stuns and Stun-like

 The scope of this article isn't just stuns, but those disables which give the "experience of being stunned". I'm going to call these stun-like disables, and we can identify them as those where all of the following are true:

 1. The affected unit has heavily limited choices.
 2. The affected unit is vulnerable to further attack.
 3. The duration of the effect is long enough to interrupt the player's flow.

 Using this definition, we would count a sleep, but not a mini-stun (too short) and not a slow (not limiting enough).

 With experimentation, we can assess other disables and see that these criteria are effective for identifying the "experience of being stunned".

 A range of mildly to heavily limiting disables.

 This chart shows a loose hierarchy. The top two circles are usually limiting enough to count as stuns, but it will depend on the individual game.

 The Three Peeves

 The three conditions for a "stun experience" also happen to correspond to the problems that stuns create.

 These three problems are something we should examine in detail:

 Problem 1: Heavily limited choices

 "A game is a series of interesting choices." — Sid Meier (of Civilization fame)

 In every possible moment of gameplay, from drafting their heroes to deciding the exact moment to use a spell, we would like players to be faced with interesting choices.

 As game designers this feels implicit, and we could propose many arguments in favour of it. Indeed, "choosing among interesting choices" is not far from a description of playing itself.

 A player who is stunned or chain-stunned cannot choose; they can only suffer from their previous choices. And what worse time to deny a player choices than during the most decisive moments of gameplay: in the middle of team-fights.

 Problem 2: Being vulnerable to further attack

 Many players enjoy being tested on their aiming and timing: their ability to predict an opponent's movements. Unfortunately, having stuns in the game creates many situations where landing spells is trivialized, because the victim cannot react.

 This denies everyone in the game of opportunities to aim, dodge, juke, and make clutch plays.

 Problem 3: Interrupting a player's flow

 Brief moments of pause or transition are inevitable during gameplay, but sustained inability to act (particularly during the crucial moments of a team-fight) is likely to spark frustration, which in turn can break immersion. We'd prefer to minimise this wherever possible.

 More on Flow

 To back this up, we can look at the psychology of flow. Flow is a state of mind where a person is fully engaged with the activity they are doing — they are free of distractions and completely immersed in the moment.

 This happens naturally when people are rock-climbing, painting, competing in sports, and many other activities.

 Flow is particularly applicable to games. Having players who are deeply immersed in gameplay (or achieving a flow experience) is testament to great game design!

 However, flow only happens under certain conditions, and not all activities or games qualify. For example, most people will never achieve flow while filing their taxes. A primer about the conditions of flow can be read here, though I've picked out the three relevant which to this topic:

 * The individual should be actively exercising control over their situation.
 * The activity must be challenging and require or test skills at an appropriate level.
 * The individual's attention is absorbed completely by the activity.

 It is easy to see how the absence of these things would cause problems in a game: look no further than a game with poor controls, a mismatched difficulty setting, or a clunky/distracting interface.

 Earlier, we established a definition for identifying stun-like disables. Looking closely, we can see that this definition is the inverse of the conditions for flow. Stuns stop players exercising control, trivialize challenges, and interrupt immersion. They oppose flow definitively.

 If we're aiming to have a fluid and immersive gaming experience, stuns probably don't have a place in it.

 Note: Stuns don't always have to oppose flow, and the RTS Warcraft III® is a perfect counterexample. Players control entire armies, and when parts of an army are stunned, there are plenty of other soldiers and tasks to manage. The player is still in control, and can still take actions around their stunned units.

 The issue in lane-pushing games is that players control exactly one character, and a stun causes complete loss of control.

 If our stuns only affect non-player controlled units, there should be no problems.

 The Maximal Disable

 My focus on stuns and their removal from Causeway is because they are particularly bad for flow experiences, and flow is something I value highly. But for a balanced discussion, we must also consider the positive influences of stuns:

 1. They reward good game sense. If a player slips up and is out of position, stuns let you keep them out of position while unloading more spells and damage without reprisal. To survive, players have to sharpen their senses and think a few steps ahead to avoid stunlocks before they happen.
 This game sense is a skill that many players enjoy demonstrating and being tested on.
 2. They increase dependence on teamwork. Disables create points of weakness where a hero is less able to act independently, creating a window where the importance of allies is increased. Since stuns take away the maximum possible actions (all of them), they similarly maximise a player's dependence on their allies during those moments.
 In a small way, stuns also encourage coordination, since staggering stuns is more valuable than staggering most other disables.
 3. They increase the importance of immunities. Being stunned at a crucial moment is a big risk, so players must invest in understanding and leveraging any mechanics which can mitigate that risk.
 4. They create more reliable and diverse structure in fights.
 Stuns temporarily reduce the number of possible actions an opponent might take to zero: which makes it easier to execute a team fight, or fight in a structured way. Without stuns (or at least hard disables), it may not be possible to create real openings that make a fight advantageous.
 Similarly, if it's not possible to stop individual heroes from using their spells, then "generally" all heroes can use all the spells they want during a fight, and fights suffer in diversity.

 The above properties apply to disables in general, but are seen at their most extreme with stuns. In removing stuns, the potency of these factors in overall gameplay would be diluted.

 Is improving flow worth the uncertain outcomes this would have?

 A Different Approach

 Rather than simply removing stuns, the real challenge lies in replacing them: finding alternative mechanics which preserve their best properties while removing those which inhibit or interrupt flow.

 For Causeway, the closest equivalent to a stun is a knockback. Many lane-pushing games have knockback, but Causeway's implementation is special: bonus damage is dealt for each obstacle hit by the unit during their trajectory.

 Depending on the angle and obstacles that a victim hits, that could be 4% of a unit's maximum life, or 40%.

 This "variable bonus damage" mechanic creates interactions where:

 * Bad positioning is still punished
 * The displacement is quick enough not to interrupt flow or leave a window for further attack
 * The victim immediately reclaims control and can resume making choices

 Great for flow, great for gameplay!

 Some of the other positive influences of stuns are trickier to replace directly, but can still be manifested using other mechanics or game systems.

 Afterword

 Causeway's implementation of knockback has been a player favourite for a long time. I can say that because I first came up with it while modding a game called Rise of Winterchill (2007–2014), where I learned many of the lessons that are being applied in Causeway: including this one about stuns!

 As I was researching this article, I was interested to discover that the saturation of knockbacks in Rise of Winterchill at the end of its development was about the same as the saturation of stuns in other lane-pushing games (~50%).

 Importantly: this does not imply that Rise of Winterchill's characters were simply heroes from other games with stuns switched out!

 Instead, Rise of Winterchill had a fundamentally different and unique ecosystem in which heroes are designed and interact. The mechanics and geometry of the game were different.

 For example, I can share that while there was lots more displacement in the game, Rise of Winterchill almost always had push effects rather than pull. Any 'hook' ability would have been crazy overpowered!

 I am excited to be curating similar ideas in our new game, and look forward to writing about those some day too.

 The Crafting Causeway series aims to introduce the features of Kybolt's upcoming game Causeway, while sharing insights about lane-pushing game design and encouraging discussion about how to improve the genre as a whole.

 See more articles or leave a comment below.

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 2 
 
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<div><div><main><header></header><span></span><span></span><span><div><div><p></p></div><div><p>Anima Squad Event</p><p>New Game Mode: Swarm</p><div><p>Grab your squad and battle waves of enemy forces in this brand new PvE game mode.</p></div></div></div></span><span></span><span><div><div><p></p></div><div><div><div><p>CHOOSE YOUR</p><p></p><h2>CHAMPION</h2><p></p><div><p>Whether you like to dive straight into the fray, support your teammates, or something in between, there’s a spot for you on the Rift.</p></div></div><div><ol><li><div><div><p></p></div><p>ASSASSINS</p></div></li></ol></div></div><div><p></p></div></div></div></span><span><div><div><p></p></div><div><p></p><div><p>SLAY WITH</p><p>STYLE</p><div><p>Make it personal by changing up the look of your favorite champions with skins.</p></div></div></div></div></span><span><div><div><p></p></div><div><div><div><p>MULTIPLE WAYS TO</p><p></p><h2>PLAY</h2><p></p><div><p>Whether you like to dive straight into the fray, support your teammates, or something in between, there’s a spot for you on the Rift.</p></div></div><div><ol><li><div><div><p></p></div><p>ARENA</p></div></li></ol></div></div><div><p><span>CALLING ALL DYNAMIC DUOS</span></p><div><p>Throw down across a series of maps, draft augments and items, and climb to the top with your partner in this 2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2 tournament.</p></div><div><p>Throw down across a series of maps, draft augments and items, and climb to the top with your partner in this 2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2 tournament.</p></div></div></div></div></span><span></span><span><div><ol><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkbUdOabzWw"><span><div><div><p><span></span></p></div><div><p>MSI 2024 Play-In Stage Opening Tease</p><div><p>It’s time to Enter the Unknown. MSI 2024 kicks off today!</p></div></div></div></span></a></li></ol></div></span><span></span></main></div></div>||||I||||          PLAY FOR FREE

            Anima Squad Event

            New Game Mode: Swarm

                    Grab your squad and battle waves of enemy forces in this brand new PvE game mode.

                LEARN MORE

        FEATURED NEWS

                   1. Game Updates
                      4 weeks ago
                    Aurora Champion Spotlight
                          Jump down the rabbit hole with the Aurora Champion Spotlight.
                   2. Media
                      4 weeks ago
                    Fight for Final City
                          When Anima Squad stands together, the Primordians don’t stand a chance.
                   3. Game Updates
                      last month
                    Patch 14.14 Notes
                          Calling all Anima Squad recruits, it’s time for patch 14.14!

              CHOOSE YOUR

              CHAMPION

                      Whether you like to dive straight into the fray, support your teammates, or something in between, there’s a spot for you on the Rift.

                Discover More Champions
                Play Now
                     1. ASSASSINS
                     2. FIGHTERS
                     3. MAGES
                     4. MARKSMEN
                     5. SUPPORTS
                     6. TANKS
              Akali
              The Rogue Assassin

            SLAY WITH

            STYLE

                    Make it personal by changing up the look of your favorite champions with skins.

                PLAY NOW

              MULTIPLE WAYS TO

              PLAY

                      Whether you like to dive straight into the fray, support your teammates, or something in between, there’s a spot for you on the Rift.

                PLAY NOW
                     1. ARENA
                     2. SUMMONER'S RIFT
                     3. ARAM
                     4. TEAMFIGHT TACTICS
              CALLING ALL DYNAMIC DUOS

                    Throw down across a series of maps, draft augments and items, and climb to the top with your partner in this 2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2 tournament.

                    Throw down across a series of maps, draft augments and items, and climb to the top with your partner in this 2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2 tournament.

          More To

          Discover

                   1. Esports
                      3 months ago
                    MSI 2024 Play-In Stage Opening Tease
                          It’s time to Enter the Unknown. MSI 2024 kicks off today!
                   2. Esports
                      3 months ago
                    Hall of Legends: Faker Trailer
                          What does it take to be a Legend? Watch the trailer for the full film now!
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