Macro balance, AKA make the other maps more like storm-gloom

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Jouven
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Macro balance, AKA make the other maps more like storm-gloom

#1 Post by Jouven »

What I mean with this statement is that the rest of the maps: kedge's landing, Candleburg (maybe candleburg should be an exception in this post) and verdant Falls, the core gaining mechanic is too pvp or "only one gets the prize" centered, or that the map itself is too pvp centered and there is no chance of macro a win, so any army support heroes are discouraged.

With "only one gets the prize" I mean these situations where for some kind of luck/chance one team gets ahead and the other team has it very hard to reverse the situation e.g in Kedge you get the tear and you stay behind the mob army letting it charge up, so you are safe, but for me the problem here is that you can lure-mind game the enemy team and make it even harder for them to get it back because right now there is no penalty, you get no gold-crystals for killing the tear carrier, AND the tear carrier gets his hp replenished to the max when the tear charges up and disappears which can be used to mess up even more with the other team.
Same situation in VF, if you try to run away from a fountain battle, you lose the fountain battle and the situation may get even worse because you are prone to get killed, they get a full hero kill and you have to wait a full dead duration (I know, in this situation the solution is to let them kill you so they get only a few crystals, but it's not an intuitive solution, you have to let them kill you instead of escaping WTF!?)

What I suggest is:

Kedge's landing --> make the "tear spawning" happen more often, e.g add a sun tear or another option, so the team that is more greedy is more in danger. That will speed up the games on kedge's landing, they tend to drag a lot, the core generation in kedge is really slow, only when like 1hour has passed you start getting like 1.x core per tear which IMO is still pretty slow and by that time most of the times the game result has already been decided by the previous pvp encounters.
Another option is to make the captured towers* on the left side of the map generate cores slowly.

Verdant Falls --> Make simultaneous fountain battles able to happen so people has to do some more complicated decision making on how to act, or change it so the core gain depends on showing up AND PER HERO (right now only one hero needs to be at the battle to get the full core gain). Although Verdant has the a core generation mechanic I think it never decides a game like in Storm or gloom where you can "macro win", I think this is because of the lesser core generation of the fountain battles, the chokes and LOS problems of this map that make mob units less good overall, except air units which aren't that good to begin with (the only good thing about them in this map is that they soften the LOS problems a bit).
Another idea that occurs to me is to add a BOSS (time limited?) which gives more cores if defeated at the fountain battle so the teams have to decide focusing on getting there early and killing the boss or regrouping and trying to kill the enemy team. But I don't know if it's doable because it would have to be a thirteen player unit and those kind are prone to break? the game but well in zombie mode that happens when many have spawned and destroyed so I don't know.
Make the fountain battles with a time limit and make the core gain depend on being in the circle and the duration the hero stays within during the time limit so they are more flexible, e.g you can elect skip them, because you are using that time for a push or w/e but still you gain some cores because you have been there x amount of time.
Another issue I have with current fountain battles is that, after many times of playing Verdant falls, I still don't grasp, it is not clear to me, what is the exact window of time when the cores are awarded for showing up, maybe add some kind of cue to make it clearer when that happens (or use the previous solution I mentioned).

Candleburg --> Candle has no core generation mechanic... so add one or leave it like that... I don't mind it too much because it's a small map and it would be hard, if not impossible, to work some solution that lessens the pvp factor.

Add unit upgrades that make them more resistant to hero attacks/skills or make their attack/skills better against heroes?

*Btw that reminds me you should fix the top team captains failing a lot capturing towers, I've seen them many times standing in front of the towers and then a bottom team captain comes walking and captures it.

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Re: Macro balance, AKA make the other maps more like storm-g

#2 Post by watermelon »

If these maps were more like Storm or Gloom, it seems kind of pointless to have the maps in the first place. I think the main point of having different maps in EotA is to encourage a different emphasis on macro or PvP. The three maps that you mentioned are smaller and thus are more reasonable to have a PvP focus since hero fights would be more frequent.
I mean these situations where for some kind of luck/chance one team gets ahead
I don't think this point is strong because there are always warnings of the events. The most relevance this has is in VF's random font battles, but in general, the situation favors the side that is pushing more which is something that can be controlled (basically hero picks).
you can lure-mind game the enemy team
I'm not really sure what you mean here. However the whole point of grabbing the tear is to encourage a ganking fest and I don't think strategies that rely on killing off the tearholder at the last second are bad (since it's riskier but more rewarding).
if you try to run away from a fountain battle, you lose the fountain battle and the situation may get even worse because you are prone to get killed
This is mostly up to player decision and it kind of just sounds like you're arguing that escaping from font battles is risky which I agree with.

I think faster core generation on Kedge wouldn't be a bad thing since it does feel like the map is pretty slow.

@VF: It's mostly the map's purpose you're criticizing. I think the main thing for VF is just encouraging hero fights and giving out some macro so the winning side should get some advantage.
I agree that the core generation is kind of odd though since it allows the first uncontested hero there to get 100% control, which allows dumb situations like no one shows up at the font except one hero at the last second who ends up getting all the control for their side. I think a more gradual buildup is better.
what is the exact window of time when the cores are awarded for showing up
Cores start awarding as soon as the Red/Blue units get phased out and stop after the Tranquility effect is shown on the Font. After that it's basically last hero/team standing that gets the special spawn wave. So it's possible to gain more cores for your side but have the special spawn wave appear on the other side.

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Re: Macro balance, AKA make the other maps more like storm-g

#3 Post by Jouven »

Well I play EotA because of the mechanics, if else I would be playing lol or dota2. I don't mind pvp to certain degree but I prefer the portion of EotA where the winning mechanics aren't pvp related. This post is in essence is about that, to me Kedge and VF are too much pvp centered compared to gloom/storm, but if that's the intention then we can just leave the discussion here.
wm wrote:If these maps were more like Storm or Gloom, it seems kind of pointless to have the maps in the first place. I think the main point of having different maps in EotA is to encourage a different emphasis on macro or PvP. The three maps that you mentioned are smaller and thus are more reasonable to have a PvP focus since hero fights would be more frequent.
What I mean is to be it more macro focused, that necessarily doesn't mean to be the same as. It's like saying that gloom has no purpose/shouldn't exist because it has a macro mechanic similar to storm.
wm wrote:I don't think this point is strong because there are always warnings of the events. The most relevance this has is in VF's random font battles, but in general, the situation favors the side that is pushing more which is something that can be controlled (basically hero picks).
You can't guarantee controlling all the lanes at the same time in VF and the fountain event location is random so in the end IT IS luck based, if you could guarantee that kind of control your team would already have won because if you can manage to control the three lanes at the same time then the other team is doing really bad. In kedge that's not the case though because you can pool all the team heroes together easily and the tear always spawns at the same location. Although in kedge the same situation is less critical it still exists you can DS ultimate everyone on the tear area, making it a question of luck who gets it first, moreover if you are a good player you'll do it more on the enemy side making it it easier for your team to take the tear and they can't do anything about it. Same with rk runepult on a lesser degree (really hard to pull IMO) and I don't know/remember if there are any other kind of skills that let you get away preventing the enemy from doing something in area for a duration.
wm wrote:I'm not really sure what you mean here. However the whole point of grabbing the tear is to encourage a ganking fest and I don't think strategies that rely on killing off the tearholder at the last second are bad (since it's riskier but more rewarding).
Then make it so the carrier has a speed movement debuff or bring back the bounty. Because I see no reason for a ganking fest when the other team only has to play defensively, you get no reward for killing the carrier, carrying the tear makes you play more cautious because you take more damage and he can abuse this fact to kite you and lay you a trap not the other way around, for me that promotes turtling and playing defensively and the other team can't do shit about it, because if we leave the core gaining out of the equation, the situation gets quite weird, you are trying to kill a hero without bounty, yes he takes 200% (or is it 150%?, can't remember) damage but you aren't getting anything out of it, and at the beginning of the game for the most part it is like this because you don't event get a full core for charging the tear.
wm wrote:@VF: It's mostly the map's purpose you're criticizing. I think the main thing for VF is just encouraging hero fights and giving out some macro so the winning side should get some advantage.
So playing a pvp focused strategy also gets you ahead in the macro race.

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Re: Macro balance, AKA make the other maps more like storm-g

#4 Post by Scheba »

Jouven wrote:*Btw that reminds me you should fix the top team captains failing a lot capturing towers, I've seen them many times standing in front of the towers and then a bottom team captain comes walking and captures it.
According to my observations, that doesn't have to do with top or bottom but with the AI. Tower commanders on pure AI teams focus more on capturing towers while those on a team with human players prefer to march into battle and get themselves killed. When I play against the AI, it doesn't matter which side I choose, it always seems like the other side has an easier time taking the left lane.

I disagree with games on Kedge's Landing taking longer than on other maps. Human games depend so heavily on team composition and hero choices that they're probably not a good benmchmark, but games against the AI have a fairly stable duration of one hour and a few minutes. That's about the same duration I get on the other maps (except Candleburg) unless the game is really one-sided. I think the main differences between Stormwail Peak and Gloomreap Mire on the one hand and Kedge's Landing and Verdant Falls on the other are that the first two have generators that allow you to destroy bases from the outside as long as you have enough map control, and the artifact that allows you to win even if you can't break the enemy base.

EDIT: Maybe the planned change to turn fully charged moontears into usable items that have to be activated (with a short channeling time) before granting the tower cores will change the moontear metagame. Attacking at the last second would be less likely to fail just from the tear reaching 100% charge a moment too early. If moontear carriers have to be even more careful, the tears will take longer to charge, making it more likely that a new one drops before the previous one can be activated. How frequently such multi-moontear situations would occur remains to be seen, though.

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Re: Macro balance, AKA make the other maps more like storm-g

#5 Post by Jouven »

Scheba's post has reminded me of something, if you do well in the core gaining mechanic in gloom/storm you'll probably win the game even if the other team heroes are a few levels above or are ahead on hero kills, be it by building lots of cores or getting the artifact, the same doesn't happen in VF or kedge, this fact allows for, sometimes awesome, comebacks.

On Kedge if a team manages to charge all the tears at the beginning of the game... he'll have like 4-5 cores around the 30 min mark?
On VF if you win all the fountain battles, e.g the other team decides to stay on the lanes and keep pushing, leaving the one where the fountain is triggered when it happens, you'll get around the same amount of cores you would get on kedge.

On storm/gloom if you manage to get most or all of the obs/herocircles you'll get like 2x of those figures, maybe more, remember tonight's game? @Scheba, we where at the 4x min mark, SM was starting to wreck our shit, but we still won pretty fast because at around 3x min mark I started building the cores (checking the video we had 8 at the minute 30), and by the 4x min mark we had like 1x cores built, but well, that game really isn't a good example because AC bugged into the castle =S, but the figures are there.

And the main difference between these two pairs of maps is that if you fuck up on a part of the core mechanic on storm/gloom you still can take another obelisk/herocircle in another location, in Kedge/VF the result is pretty binary, in kedge it is, in vf not that much because you still can get the cores without winning the fountain battle but it can be rather hard and the enemy team may get a few bonus crystals if you try to stay for all the required duration.

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