New Obelisk Locations

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New Obelisk Locations

#1 Post by Reaper »

SeasonsOfLove wrote:I absolutely hate them. In every game which I've played, they've been a huge factor. They're hard to take down without some skilled players, and skilled players can easily defend them for enough of the game to make a huge difference.
Discombobulator wrote:Yeah, the new position sucks. A huge factor in every game is decided by a pretty stupid and unimportant thing.

I'm starting to dislike how much of a game centers around these 2 obs. I like the idea of fighting more over them, but they seem to be way too important where they are now.

I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to add more obelisks (maybe at the corner bases?), or maybe reduce the amount of energy per ob.

Ideally there would be a solution to make them less important while not making top and bottom completely useless. The mines definitely help with that already

On another note, I buy a command tower almost every game now to take out the obs I need.
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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#2 Post by BustroQuick »

I agree. A lot of games seem to be determined by whoever wins the obe race. Particularly if one team has speedy heroes and can get both- it gives them a core advantage that is very difficult to recover from. In the early game there is simply nothing a team can do against the obelisk towers.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#3 Post by Reaper »

Discombobulator wrote:It's not impossible, you can send summons or mercs or spawns using Tact/Rue/Battleplans, but it certainly requires a disproportionate amount of skill, effort, money and team coordination, compared to laying the obelisks first, or even defending them.
A valid observation
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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#4 Post by Elreth »

The bad part about this is that a) even if you have decent players they might not be decent enough to know how to race to them well enough and b) if for some reason one side gets both it can be a huge advantage for a long time.

I propose two solutions
a) make each side start off with its close ob on top/bot
b) make each side build obs on its close lane faster

A is a little more heavy handed while B allows for them to still give up the ob if they so chose (for the 500g/time to place it) while not punishing the other team (ie making theirs build slower). The potential downside is that one team could wait until the other side places theirs first and then rush in and place theirs to make them waste their 500g/mini ob, although you could consider that a 'risk' for going for 'their ob'.

That said, I am extremely in favor of refunds for obs that cant be completed because there is another ob tower there. Two people walking by their safe ob, lag lag lag, suddenly two ob towers are going up is p annoying. At the very least refund cancelling or partial refunds or some kind. I dont feel like there is a lot of room for abuse here and it would be in line with say place a mini ob too far away.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#5 Post by Luftwaffles »

Adding a neutral ob to each side pretty much brings us back to last version. I don't necessarily disagree with this, but if Yak wanted to change he'd simply be changing back to how it was.

There are good and bad things that have come with the new obelisk locations.
- Battle Plans, Command Towers, Skellies, Sludges and Goblins have become very common among both pubs and non-pubs. Before I saw these things largely restricted to EotA veterans or wily pubs, but now every second game I see someone buy one or the other and try and use it. I've also learned a few of the nuances of WC3 agro (to pull units from my lane to attack the tower), though it's inconsistent (I don't think it's programmed by Yak, just regular blizzard stuff).
- It makes the beginning of the game very fast. Sometimes I even skip buying potions just to get to an ob. The game really starts off with a bang.
- Makes the game generally more interesting, as sometimes one side ends up completely harassing the other who got both first obs. I've seen massive successes and fails on both side.
- It unfortunately has put a huge emphasis on heroes with innate speed abilities, heroes who can port, invis or otherwise get away (after harassing a tower), farm chars (who can afford to smash obs all the time). It has revived siege heroes a bit in my opinion, as getting a hero like Gravel is not only good but awesome in many games, since he can usually solo take-down an Ob by 20ish.
- It creates a lot of stress on newer players, or veterans stuck on a team with noobs. That was always stressful but now you have to deal with both obs being taken.

I actually kind of like the new locations to be honest though. It is not impossible to take down an ob but it totally depends on who you're playing against and how they're playing. I don't feel personally that they need to be removed, but having neutral spawns near the ob or something that could kill an Ob placed would perhaps make it a bit more balanced (adds a bit of capture mode into the game =p). However, with that said it might end up being the same, except disclude heroes with speed bonuses and simply lay down huge benefits to heroes with lots of AoE.
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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#6 Post by Dekar »

I could live without the very very early race for the obes. Its kinda stupid to be in such a rush from the first second. And in addition rank code gives another unfair advantage through this because you dont have to transform your scroll.

If there would just be some neutral creeps preventing obes to be placed or something else with the effect of delaying the placing a bit into the game, I would be more than happy.
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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#7 Post by Mills »

Dekar wrote:If there would just be some neutral creeps preventing obes to be placed or something else with the effect of delaying the placing a bit into the game, I would be more than happy.
This.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#8 Post by DarnYak »

The dislike of the change seems to be primarily centered around the difficulty in taking one down once its up (or even just placed). Not to say its impossible, just unfairly difficult.

I'm somewhat torn on how to handle this. Putting neutral creeps there to delay an early cap may not be ideal. I actually do like the early aggressive starts, but in this case it's no doubt slightly too early. I'm not sure if any of this should apply to all obelisks, as while their easier to take down with spawn support it can still be really rough early on.

Further, I wonder if obelisks need some sort of scaling done on them in general, to prevent really fast takedowns later in the game. However, this is somewhat of a rebalancing issue in general and not sure it should be discussed here.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#9 Post by Mills »

It might be a good idea to have a set amount of time pass before you are able to capture the bottom and top obelisks. You could play it off and say they just weren't discovered yet and put big rock piles there to cover them up.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#10 Post by Luftwaffles »

That's a good idea. Or you could have it so excavators on each team go out to ob and have to dig it up or something.
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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#11 Post by BustroQuick »

I'd like to reopen this topic for discussion. They're still a problem and I remain in agreement with most of the posts above.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#12 Post by DarnYak »

Not ignoring this, but I'm not liking any current options.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#13 Post by Sparda963 »

im pretty much on the same page as yak. it seems no matter what ya do, something about it just sucks ass. either its to easy to get to and gets rolled by the lane back and forths, or they are to far out of the way and you get penalized by lack of exp for going out there to kill one.
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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#14 Post by Dekar »

I think its often impossible to protect an obelisk when 2 enemy heroes attack it, as it will go down rather fast. Im not sure but I think even some level 15 heroes can solo an obelisk pretty fast, and these heroes tend to be hero killers making the defense especially hard, as obelisk towers are no real threat to any hero.
Teleporting in alone gets you killed, giving the enemy an additional huge advantage.
Teleporting to a nearby outpost to possibly time the arrival it with an obelisk teleport from a second hero will give the enemy a lot of time to finish the obelisk.
If you are lucky you have hero killers on nearby lanes, but even then they are probably either far away from pushing the lane or busy defending the lane and cant leave to protect the nearby obelisk in time.

Thus I would try leaving obelisks at their current location and buffing their damage to heroes while reducing the damage taken from them, making spawns the best way to destroy them. Giving them 2 teleport possibilities ( which arrive at the same time ! ) would probably imbalance the other obelisks too much.
Or maybe a debuff aura? They are oozing with magic after all, but again tipping the balance scales on the lanes.
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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#15 Post by BustroQuick »

I'm fine with their current locations, I just wish there were something in place to prevent early obelisk stealing. Having the north/south obes defended in a minor regard by creeps (team owned, not neutral) would prevent the early advantage while still leaving them open to attack later.

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Re: New Obelisk Locations

#16 Post by DarnYak »

So here's the way I see options:

#1 Adding neutral creeps: This will obviously delay the early game rush, but can easily end up with similar results if a team makes na early plan to take down the enemy's neutral creeps and take the tower first (or possibly even just delay until the tower finishes). It could even make things worse if people start buying consumables to tank the creeps and then leave htem there as additional guards. This assumes teams don't start ignoring them from it being too much of a hassle to deal unlock. It would, however, have a small advantage of allowing the creeps to be worth gold/exp so clearing them might not hurt leveling process.

#2 Forced Delay: This would probably just end up with similar results, just later in the game (maybe with players camping/fighting over the spot when it unlocks). Sure, players are more in a position to deal with it later in the game, but it still ends up with similar faults as to the entire ability to backdoor obs (which, admittedly, is another topic entirely).

#3 Weaken Ob Towers: This would obviously be changing far more than just this particular problem. I'm currently on the fence if obs are too hard or too easy to take in their current state. A possibility I believe i've discussed is giving them mana shiled but starting at 0 mana so they aren't really established until they've been alive a significant amount of time (this would also result in them being far easier to destroy while building).

#4 Remove Mini-Ob Towers: Force them to be built by a peon, and early game heroes can kill those. The obvious downside is it means the starting scroll in general will be removed, which I'm not sure is desirable (not relevant to existing players though obvously). A lesser alternative item I came up with is make the mini obs into some sort of capture wand, something like you channel it for 5 seconds and it takes over the ob for 5m or so without a tower. Could also provide more generic early game consumables for all maps (health pots or something)

#5 Removing Ob Towers completely: Change the system to something else akin to Verdant Fonts. I'm not sure exactly what the system would be, but I'm open to considering it.

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