Remove gold for killing DGs

and other balance stuff

It merely adds to the so-called slippery slope mechanism present in every strategy game ever created.  Once you are behind, you are likely to fall further behind as enemy comes back even stronger.

It's already quite enough of a penalty to be off the map for 30 seconds.  If it was a big team fight, the whole team might even get killed which will lead to multiple towers falling rapidly to a coordinated and unopposed push, possibly with a critical flag cap (+30% reinforcement dmg/health) and lock.  The game could well be over after a single kill towards the end because of this..it seems silly to additionally award the killer and all assisting teammates with gold.  Exaggeration or not, this would also help to lessen the effect of questionable AI and human players that lead to one team gaining a 50 billion gold advantage in 10 minutes with mageslayerahskandorallfathersringmassroflcopterwithhellfiresandrocketpods.  Oh and in order to keep the economy balanced, the passive gold rate could just be increased.

The second thing is that minions are insanely powerful.  Early game minions are cheap, low mana, and provide a relatively huge dps boost such that an assassin can't do very much to hold a lane vs an army.  Since the general must use mana only to summon at this point, money is saved for better items (not the v-something helm) like say, slayers gloves, so when the assassin comes back with AoE and a mana helmet to spam mines or whatever and hex scroll he finds that he is outclassed in a simple 1v1 fight because you just skilled slows and nukes and bought damage/health.  Should he not get AoE, the general still has his mini-army, along with simple creep support that now is not subject to AoE.  No way can an assassin take the dps of several soldiers, archers, siege archers, and priests that will all be present (but no creeps on his side as the opposing general already wiped them out), I think that is what leads people to underestimate minions.  It's not that you are supposed to get level IVs with every gold piece you have for the first 15 minutes just to get frost nova'd and get singled out with your 2000 health, it's that you will remain ahead with the damage threat that keeps the enemy back until they can counter by which time you already have the counter-counter while STILL having the original threat otherwise.  QoT out of the gate with shield, 2 archers and 2 shamblers is unattackable and does great AoE vs creeps.  Focusing then on spikes and NOT shamblers will throw the opposition off because they still have to deal with minions/creeps with AoE of their own, except that means they have become less effective direct assassins, and are about to lose 1000 armor and get focus fired by everything in the vicinity.

The net of all of this is I feel it's too easy to gain the upper hand as a general without actually commiting yourself to any kind of counterable strategy.  Generals can be half-assassins and half-generals with the threat of full generals, but assassins that are half assassins are just bad.  Probably the best example is UB vs anyone.  Let's say I buy priests and skill into whichever DG-specific minion.  I've already won any sort of direct confrontation as you will be half dead by the time you reach melee.  With spit, you've just given my priests something to do.  You have zero chance of holding a flag until your ooze is high enough to kill minions and creeps faster than minions and creeps will kill you (which is actually never).  You are therefore relegated to the role of tank in a team battle.  Supported by oak shield, you will be unstoppable late game with your permaslow and high dps.  However, team battles provide many opportunites to use things like slow/stun/heal anyway, so really what good does UB do past what any other hero could do?  It's sort of like having a weak rogue in a WoW raid.  You bring dps, but so does everyone else and then some.  You also die too easily.

Thus, point 3 is UB seems weak.

There are additional points but this is long enough.

4,972 views 33 replies
Reply #1 Top

I'd prefer the more dota like thing. less gold for the killer but a huge penalty for the person who dies. Makes it so you can't really save up for items as easily.. keeps things balanced.

 

As for the argument about minions.. it's not really true. Generals who have a lot of minions early on have almost no gear and are really fragile. Don't take them on 1v1, gank em 2v1. An AOE stun and nuke from TB with UB kicking  butt will take down any naked DG, especially with minions stunned. Adjust your gameplay.. it's not smart to 1v1 it. Your towers splash.. so you'll be fine defending your tower. Granted you might have the flag.. but really a few war ranks isn't going to win the day if you gank them enough and out gear em.

 

Reply #2 Top

Removal is a bad idea, dying at level 1 or 2 can be easily overcome, I believe gold is decided by the killer's level and you only get around 600 in the beginning of the game, which will be an advantage but nothing huge.

I wouldn't mind a bit of a decrease however.

UB weak? Haha you've no clue what you're saying there.

Reply #3 Top

You can gank anyone 2v1 though.  Sedna can stun away a teleport just as good as UB can, actually better because she has 2 stuns.  UB has the best slow, which is powerful sure, but gloves or favor items on 2 DGs along with whatever slow skills they already have are going to be effective as well.  Which brings us back to what does UB uniquely bring to the table?  Or what does he bring that is so far above and beyond what anyone else brings to make him the absolute winner in a given situation?  And how often does that situation come up?

An AOE stun at low levels will do almost nothing to an enemy DG unless used to stop a teleport, which is the teleporter's dumb mistake for waiting until that point.  Hero unstuns, backs up, and if he's 2 out of 4 generals they immediately gain health back 1. heal 2. shield.  Minions come back and you have the advantage again.  Okay, so at level 1 you don't have minions AND heal, but how long does it really take to get to level 2?  Also, 4 out of 4 generals are healed by priests.

While your guy leaves his lane to go for a gank against a non-retarded team, that team immediately gains a 2v1 somewhere else, or some other kind of compensation.  I don't see the argument that UB walks across the map, gets a free kill on the general who was somehow not advised by his teammates that UB is nowhere to be seen, then goes all the way back to kill the general in the original lane who obviously was too dumb to know what DG was in the lane with him in the first place.  Sure, those games UB is awesome, and those games cause those generals to post that minions "suck" or whatever because UB is OP.

But when can you ever force an early 2v1 on someone?  There are no lengthy stuns, there is no invisibility, there are no secret teleports with no teleport symbols or behind you where you should've placed a sentry ward.  You are reduced to simply walking up and nuking.  If you are saying you can gank a general by walking up to him with 2 DGs while he's by himself and he waits for you to attack/nuke/stun/kill him, I agree completely.  When I see TB and UB I'm aware that I can be stunned just long enough for speed UB to get in range to permaslow to allow for following permanukecausealwaysinrangefrompermaslow.  That's why I don't stand there.  Your point seems to be more that 1v2s are disadvantageous to try to win, which has nothing to do with either of your guy's arguments of UB being amazing or minions not being amazing.  Two generals can just as easily gank UB, for example.  They can walk over to him, he can continue standing still, and they can chain cast every damage and stun skill they have with their wyrm gloves.

Reply #4 Top

The point of the towers is to give you  a place to defend when you can't take the enemy on their own turf. If you die so many freaking times that they can own you inside your towers, you're in trouble.

I think this would require making items cheaper, but I am not opposed to seeing the dying DG get a penalty. We'd see a lot less aggressive moves tho lol.

Reply #5 Top

Removal = uninteresting

Decrease the gold reward is fair though.

Reply #6 Top

Quoting uraniumbathtub, reply 5
Removal = uninteresting

Decrease the gold reward is fair though.
End of uraniumbathtub's quote

Reply #7 Top

Gold received = 500 + (100 * level of killed DG)

I think maybe tone it down a bit, perhaps to = 500 + (50 * level of killed DG).

Reply #8 Top

Totally bad idea. Getting kills should be a big perk. If you don't want the enemy to get too far ahead in gold than don't die so much...I mean not dying is even more important than getting kills in this game. I especially like how people get money for assists as well.

Reply #9 Top

First of all, in DotA, players do get gold for making kills, so I have no idea where that assumption came from.

Second of all, in every game when you die, you have to wait a while, stratagey or not.

By no means what so ever should stardock even look at this thread for more than 3 seconds before saying no to this idea.  Reward the person who made the kill, punish the person who was out of position/died.

The end.

Reply #10 Top


It merely adds to the so-called slippery slope mechanism present in every strategy game ever created.  Once you are behind, you are likely to fall further behind as enemy comes back even stronger.
End of quote

 

signed! a lower reward in gold would make the game last longer and less frustrating for the loosing team. it´d be easier for them to come back. else the difference between the teams is just getting bigger with every kill.

i would add an increase in death penalty (time) as well. in this case even the death penalty citadelle upgrade, which noone uses atm, would be bought more often.

Reply #11 Top

sry for double post. fault of the bugged page here...

Reply #12 Top

Maybe diminishing returns for killing the same demigod over and over?  This would have the bonus effect of lessening the effect of so called 'feeders'.

Reply #13 Top

the gold is fine.

i totally disagree with everyone trying to lessen the negative effects a bad teammate brings. you cant just hide him under a rug and pretend hes not there. hes is there, he is your teammate so if he dies a bijillion times i should get a bijillion rewards that i can then use to end the game decisively. the last thing a bad team  needs is more ways to prolong the game.

i sorry but your example is very poor. if your whole team dies and my whole team lives, we then go kill your towers, cap your flags, lock your flags, spawn our own troops from your portals  and then throw a bbq in your back yard what more do i need to do to win the game?!!? 

games need to come to a close.

Reply #14 Top

I find the gold given when killing a DG just fine, there is nothing wrong with it.
But your idea is pretty got Dielan ^^

Reply #15 Top

Removal is a bad idea, dying at level 1 or 2 can be easily overcome, I believe gold is decided by the killer's level and you only get around 600 in the beginning of the game, which will be an advantage but nothing huge.

I wouldn't mind a bit of a decrease however.

UB weak? Haha you've no clue what you're saying there.

 

That's totally rofl, because gold is decided by the killed's level.

Reply #16 Top

In further response, I have nothing against giving the killer gold per se. However at the moment it is ridiculous. I don't want every game to be Slaughter.

Reply #17 Top
well, 600 gold at the early levels are a new armor or helmet etc... thats quite an advantage i think. if the teammates help its even more of a ´n advantage.
Reply #18 Top

Yeah it's too much money at the start for killing opponent. 600 gold, as people mentioned above it's 1 basic gear (armor or helmet), 1/3 additional gold, 1/2 additional exp or tower's regen. It's all "for free" just for 1 single kill !! That's a problem, when you think about favors. If someone takes 800 hp favor item (and opponent not), he would win any 1 vs 1 at game start.

Anyway, I think gold at first lvls should be decreased. Now it's minimum 600 gold for kill. It should be like lvl * 100, so if you kill demigod lvl 1, you will get 100 gold (normally first kills starts around lvl 2-3, so it will be 200-300 gold). Demigod lvl 20, would give you 2000 gold (right now it's 2500). It will make game more balanced, even when you had a bad start, like your party was crashed 4 vs 4, and you + 3 of your teammates died. Normally 4 kills/assists for opposite team at game start it's HUGE advantage, hard to come back for team which died (it's free gold, free exp, free towers regen AND free couple basic items for opposite team, not mentioning death penalty for crashed team - that's hell too much !!).

Reply #19 Top

In my opinion, gold for DG's is ok en enough just because making it more, less or removing it would still keep the same balance. To overcome the problem of the losing team not being able to make a comeback, they should adjust the Flag Rules.

So instead of getting a perk ( like +15% health ), a conquered flag should make a team lose a perk ( -15% health ).
That way a team has to choose between gaining War Rank and lose some perks, or a low War Rank with no loss of anything.

This should way the balance would still be intact while at the same time giving the losing team a chance to get back.

The gold earned by killing a DG is just proper and sometimes make players think twice about being a raging m#r#n.
Also, who gets killed at lvl 1, 2, 3 any ways....

Reply #20 Top

There are too many advantages for winning.

 

The winning team has benefits from flags and additional gold / items from killing players, which in turn allows them to kill more.

The losing side tends to be under leveled and far weaker primarily due to the advantages that the winning team is has. The time spent dead is quite a punishment in this game.

 

While I do think that there should be a change of some sort, I have to say that changing gold flow like this would drastically alter the game; the game would become much slower and far less gear intensive (nobody would be able to afford anything). I think the reward for killing another Demigod should be based on how long they've been alive. Someone that dies a lot wouldn't be worth much, but someone that plays well would become worth more than normal.

Reply #21 Top

So maybe they should decrease gold for every kill, but increase gold per second for all players (like +2 gold / sec). All will afford better items sooner then. IMO that's much better solution than rewarding a lot, but just one side (which makes game less enjoyable minute after minute for side, which died couple times at the game start).

Reply #22 Top

My vote goes for lowering the reward based on how many times you've been killed, mabye lower the gold reward by 5-10% for each time down to a minimum of 50-60%.

 

Having it based on how long you've been alive and your lvl also sounds good.

Reply #23 Top

This is a toughie.  I kind of like the idea of the 500 + (50*lvl) formula idea, but I'm not convinced that it's necessary, or the best choice.

However, what if the gold bonus was changed so that the 500 + (100*lvl) were the total amount given out, to be divided among everyone who assisted.  Now instead of a potential 600 + 300x (where x = number of assists) at level 1, one would only divide 600 up between everyone who particpated in the kill.

Anyways, just some random thoughts.

 

Reply #24 Top

I like Pouls original idea, Demigod level * 100 seems pretty fair with no buffer.  So in early game level 1-3 its only about 100-300 gold for the killer.  That's not game breaking, you also of course get the benefit of them off the field not gaining xp and you getting the flags.  Then when everyone gets a head of steam by levels 5-10 you are up into the 500-1000 range.

Alternatively if they want to roll this out more slowly to watch the changes to the game it makes (probably the way changes should be made, not knee jerk reactions like they did with HoL) they could cut the initial bonus down, so maybe from 500 to 200 + demigod level * 100.  See how it changes the game, and make more adjustments as needed.

Reply #25 Top

I'm not sure I'd like to share my bounty with someone who got a couple hits in on someone I took the most time to kill. Putting in assists might actually end up pissing off teammates.

500 + (50*lvl) would simply scale it less, giving less for higher kills, decreasing the chance for a huge landslide and allowing you to come back.

Or maybe it should actually scale more on higher levels? Not sure. I don't feel that strongly about this issue, though.