Macro balance, AKA make the other maps more like storm-gloom
Posted: August 1st, 2014, 4:25 pm
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.
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.