A Series of Radical/Practical Suggestions™

[MOTHER]

I will try to be as succinct as possible in explaining these suggestions and the logic behind them. Feel free to criticize and help improve these ideas or contribute your own radical/practical suggestion to this list.

 

I've been jotting down ideas as they came to me over the last few months and I haven't had the time to expand on them and put them into writing until now. Some ideas are stand alone and others related (meaning that it would be better to apply them both at the same time). I don't necessarily take credit for coming up with them, only for bringing the pieces together for your reading pleasure.

 

 

Suggestion: Accumulative Rating System

 

Explanation:

 

Accumulative Rating is a rating system that isn't based around win/loss ratio and more about player performance during a game (which isn't the same as winning/losing). Your "badge' would be determined by *your* performance *during* a game much more rather than winning against or losing to other players at the end of it.

 

Your badge/rating accumulatively are (Kills + Assists + Towers). Only deaths and rage quits would reduce from your rating. Kills could count as they are, assists and destroying towers would count twice as much, deaths would count as they are but rage quits would reduce your rating by 10, 25 or 50. Of course these numbers are subject to debate and change.

 

W/L ratio would be a separate thing that is shown at the end of the match and would not add to or deduct from your actual rating. Alternatively winning could constitute as +1 rating (or much more) but losing would be 0. it would not be -1.

 

So based on the previous example of numbers, Rating = [K+A+T(2)]-[D+Rq(50)]; +W if you win and no points rewarded or deducted if you lose. K = Kills A = Assists T = Towers D = Deaths Rq = Ragequits W = Win.

 

The main reason behind this idea is the lack of match making in SC2 and the current rating systems inability to properly reflect a player's skill in the pub scene.

 

A rating system based on individual performance would be more useful for the pub scene while the factors that make up the rating such as K/A/T would give incentive for cooperation and team work. It also makes everyone responsible for their own rating and other player's performance could not as directly negatively influence your own rating.

 

Factoring Assists and Towers into the rating gives a better picture also of a player's performance in a team environment, a high rating would be more indicative of skill, cooperation and sportsmanship and a low rating would reflect the opposite.

 

Basically rating would not (and should not) be about whether you win or lose, rather about how you play the game.

 

 

 

Suggestion: "GANGKILL!" (aka Maximum Gank, Gang Bang, Takedown, The Rape.)

 

Explanation:

 

If you're familiar with Blizzard's new MOBA, rumor has it that they are getting rid of kills and assists, replacing them completely with a new system called "Takedowns". The idea is to give a stronger incentive for a team to gank by rewarding all members of a successful gank equally.

 

I think their heart is in the right place but the idea is perhaps too radical. So I have modified it in a way where it can find a home in AoS.

 

So in the spirit of Monster Kills and Ludicrous Kills, let's call it GANGKILL(!) for now. The idea is simple and situational; if every member of your team successfully assists in killing an enemy hero (in a 5 man team, that's 1 kill + 4 assists), a "GANGKILL!" is announced. A GANGKILL equally rewards every member of your team an additional X minerals (arbitrary example: 100 minerals) on top of the usual bounty.

 

Alternatively, a GANGKILL could equally reward every member of your team a static Y minerals (arbitrary example: 200 minerals) instead of the usual bounty. In this scenario, it won't matter who got the killing blow.

 

The idea behind a GANGKILL is to offer an economic self-serving incentive for players to cooperate and gank as a team. If you want pub players to work and gank together, winning isn't enough incentive it seems, reward them for their cooperation in their wallets.

 

The strict GANGKILL condition of having every member of your team participate could be made more lenient; for example a successful GANGKILL could be 1 Kill + 3 or more assists (in a 5 man team) instead of ALL team members. Although personally I prefer the condition of having ALL team members participate.

 

This suggestion may have to be adjusted in 3v5 games (leaver bonus and a smaller team would unfairly allow for higher chances of getting GANGKILLs).

 

 

Suggestion: Positive Assists

 

Explanation:

 

If you directly/actively buffed an allied hero that got a kill, that's a Positive Assist. And as such, you should be rewarded with an assist on that kill (just like if you really assisted in the kill).

 

For example, if you heal an allied hero or replenish their energy, if you amplify their shields, AS/MS or damage as they are about to get a kill, when they do get that kill you get an assist. Even though you did not directly participate in killing the enemy hero.

 

The idea behind positive assists is to reward support heroes for being supportive, for indirectly assisting in getting a kill, by ensuring the survivability of their allies through heals and positive buff spells.

 

Passive buffs on allied heroes do not count as Positive Assists. But this point is open to discussion.

 

 

Suggestion: Vespene Gas

 

Explanation:

 

This idea is directly related to the next one as I imagined them together. However, they can also be introduced separately.

 

Vespene Gas would be introduced as a secondary resource that can only be obtained from the killing of enemy heroes, towers, and neutral bosses. There would be no other way of obtaining Vespene Gas (except maybe GANGKILLS? See above).

 

Vespene would not therefore gradually increase like minerals every second.

 

Vespene Gas would be scarce (i.e. you wouldn't be rewarded much per kill). Its scarcity and value would offer an incentive for players to work together to obtain it (ganks/neutrals/towers all need require cooperation).

 

Vespene Gas would be used for tier 3/4 items and/or Upgrades/Boosters (see next suggestion).

 

An alternative take on this resource is creating a Vespene Pool for each team. All Vespene collected by the team would add up together (the opposite of minerals which accumulate individually for each player). This may be a good idea if Vespene is to be used for upgrades.

 

 

 

Suggestion: Upgrades/Boosters

 

Explanation:

 

The idea of introducing upgrades has been floating around for a while so let's put pen to paper (or text to screen). In a way we already have upgrades in the form of destroying enemy suppressors but this is slightly more complex.

 

The purpose of Upgrades is to add a new dimension of pushing/counter-pushing strategies that rely on good timing and team coordination.

 

First, Upgrades should ONLY apply to non-heroic allied units. They benefit the team creeps as a whole and not the individual heroes.

 

Upgrades come in two forms, Incremental Upgrades or Boosters. While they can be introduced together, they can also be modified and introduced separately.

 

Incremental Upgrades are like those seen in the regular Starcraft. Their effects are permanent. They must be upgraded incrementally and take time to be researched. (i.e. Melee Attack 1/2/3 and Ranged Attack 1/2/3)

 

Booster Upgrades are temporary like potions, instantaneous in their effect, lasting only a few seconds, or a few minutes or a few creep waves.

 

Examples of Booster upgrades are temporary shields for all towers and artifact, extra melee/ranged creeps, temporary + physical/spell resistance for creep waves, temporary + AS/MS for creep waves, temporary increased regeneration for allied units or structures, etc.

 

Booster Upgrades stack (like potions).

 

While some upgrades are limitless, others must have a limited stock for the entire match. This is intended to ensure that a team thinks twice about which upgrade to use at which time. Even the limitless upgrades take time to regenerate their stock.

 

Upgrades are to be purchased/researched at the Suppressors. Destroying enemy suppressors limits them from purchasing upgrades (until they respawn).

 

Finally I think it is best to make Upgrades cost Vespene only (see previous suggestion) and not minerals.

 

 

 

Suggestion: Tower Assists

 

Explanation:

 

Not only is destroying towers a fundamental part of MOBAs, it is paramount to do so if you want to win. One could argue that destroying towers should be recognized as something as important if not more so than killing enemy heroes.

 

This suggestion comes in three parts.

 

1- Tower Assists is the game recognizing the heroes that destroyed a tower by proximity. 'Heroes in X radius within last Y time' all receive tower assists.

 

2- The game will henceforth keep record of Tower Assists much like it keeps record or creep kills, kills, assists, and deaths. This harmless data helps better keep track of player performance during a game. It can also be used for rating. (see first suggestion.)

 

3- Should Tower Assists be rewarded as well? It would certainly offer a stronger incentive to cooperate and push as team if you receive an additional X minerals (arbitrary example: 50 minerals) on top of the usual bounty for a Tower Assist. Your allied hero who is farming neutrals on the other side of the map will only receive 200 minerals.

 

Tower Assists could also be announced to other players like hero kills.

 

Example: Hero X, Hero Y, Hero Z of the Protoss have destroyed a Zerg Tower.

 

 

 

Suggestion: Buyback Elixir (aka Revival Elixir, Lazarus Extract, Elixir of Life)

 

Explanation:

 

The Buyback Elixir is a different take on the familiar concept of buyback in Mobas, which is exchanging money for an instant respawn.

 

The difference though is that the Buyback Elixir must be purchased AND consumed prior to dying for it to take effect.

 

The desired effect of this potion is an instant respawn at your base upon dying. It allows the player(s) to anticipate events and plan ahead with a strategy.

 

However, an undesired side effect of taking this drug is that the next time you die, your respawn time is doubled.

 

What happens if you buy the buyback elixir twice in a row? Several things could happen:

 

The second potion has no effect, your respawn time is doubled regardless when you die. (you wasted your money or the game simply won't allow you to buy it twice in a row)

 

-OR-

 

The second potion takes effect and you respawn instantly when you die (again!) but the next time you die, your respawn time is quadrupled! Purchasing the potion a third time will have no effect (see previous point).

 

To limit abuse, the Buyback Elixir should be available in a limited stock of 5 (under consumables) per team for an entire match. This stock does not regenerate when it depletes to 0.

 

Heroes that consume the Elixir will glow in a certain way, alerting everyone that they have in fact consumed the Buyback Elixir.

 

The price of the Buyback Elixir is open to debate but an arbitrary example would be 1200 minerals. It could also cost Vespene Gas (see above).

 

[Adversary]

I like the Vespene idea. Makes that shadow that's been farming everything on the map think twice about how he's going to get his items when he has no hero kills but 300 creep kills and has no vespene to buy his T3 item. Most importantly, it actually promotes team play in both Pub/IH play. If this were to be introduced I hope a tutorial will be implemented into the game as well. The tutorial should be at the start of the game and should be skipable for veteran players ( this will be calculated by amount of games played). Trying to explain the game to a noob at the beginning of the game is like trying to explain to old people how to use a smart phone. They don't learn anything. Whereas if there is a long and detailed tutorial I believe they can get a grasp of things.

 

TL;DR

I like the Vespene idea.

Add a tutorial to the start of the game.

You should stop reading this, it's getting very long and long and long and long and long and longggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggflobyouggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg

 

 

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

lol

why are you reading this? i thought you didn't like long posts.

[mynhauzen]

I love every single itea. TBH it would make this game completely different, but thats something that needs to be done IMO.

 

I dont really love the rating idea. It pushes people play carries. A shadow player for instance will kill 2-4 towers per a game, and sometimes will get 20-30 kills per a single game. Another player will play micro, will be actually teamplaying the whole game gettin 0 kills or 0 tower kills, but thanks to him the team will actually win the game. Giving same amount for assist is good, but making tower kill cost twice more is a huge bonus for all those "i play shadow (darpa/nova/boros etc)" players.

 

the rest ideas r rly cool

[Ironsights]

Rating:I don't think getting the last hit on a tower should count as 2 kills. More often than not, killing a tower is a joint effort of at least 2 heroes. Perhaps you should factor in a "tower assist" that is equal to one kill, thus everyone involved in killing the tower (within a certain time frame) gets something and the one who actually drops the tower gets a larger bonus. Additionally, I would say that since a drop is the same as a rage quit in the system, the punishment shouldn't be quite so harsh as 50. Perhaps 20?

 

Gangkill: meh. Honestly, I am afraid it would back fire and just get the majority of pubs to refuse to lane properly at all...could be a neat idea, could backfire...would need thought out.

 

Positive Assists: yes.

 

Vespene: no. I don't want to have to spend gas on items, and I don't approve of the "boosts". If you insist on the Gas, maybe it should be usable for hero buy-back (respawn) or rebuilding base structures? That could be cool.

 

boosts/upgrades: I don't think this is needed and would only serve to pro-long games.

 

 

[Midknight]

Have assists count for something big like 5-10 points or so to balance out the important of assist gameplay. The Grav getting a good 20 assists or so will get 100-200 points for it while the Shadow gets 25-50 points just for kills and maybe 50-100 more for fewer assists. I was gonna say something about tower assists, but Ironsights beat me to it. Honestly, I think the whole idea is a wash because this is, inherently, a team game. You could get 500 kills but if it doesn't earn you a win, it's all for naught. Whether you win or lose is, fundamentally, a more telling statistic since playing well tends to lean towards wins and playing poorly tends to lean towards loses; regardless of number of individual kills, assists, towers, and abstract concepts like "teamwork" that can't really be unitized

[ANARCHY]

have to agree with midknight on the rating system, trying to quantify someones ability to play a team based game using individual stats seems ridiculous

(its like asking the stock market to improve your share price because you are the best business person in the world, but the company you work for is going broke)

i would much rather just have a bonus for wins added to current system to ensure that it offsets the amount lost from leavers and bronze star worshipers

i.e. ELO + X points

 

if it really was to be implemented it wouldn't be fair to hero groups as explained as everyone would want to play the carry, you would then have to try and create a system based upon hero chosen = X role (tank, dps, support etc) then give X points based upon assists or kills for that class

but then you run into really risky territory of classifying how each hero should be played according to 1 person and the game loses its variety as people must choose between playing how they want and enjoying themselves vs sacrificing what they want to do just to get points

my guess is people just wont care and do whatever the heck they like & then tell you they are trying to get bronze medals

 

gangkill concept is good in theory

but lets face it its just an added bonus for killing the noob feeder who has no idea what he is doing and is solo pushing long lane when the whole enemy team is mia.... as if it wasn't bad enough already

the game will end up being who can counter gank or use there noob as bait best

 

tower and creep upgrades would work but ONLY if the current creeps are nerfed severely

i.e. you could push a tower with 4-5 heroes or 2 heroes if you got boost

(im still unsure if it would be a wise mechanic to introduce to a game that already has a high learning curve or even if it would make the game more enjoyable)

 

tower assist should be heroes in X radius within last X time

 

i like the idea of vespene gas making some high end items, but it could just make this game snowball even more then it already does with a fed carry and how does that relate into points for assists?

[residente]

If you insist on the Gas, maybe it should be usable for hero buy-back (respawn) or rebuilding base structures? That could be cool.

 

How can be cool to prolong unnecessarily this game even more?

I mean, the base is small enough to make "turtling tactics" aviable and prolong a game 30 mins. Making an option to rebuild towers/barracks would make this game even worse.

 

A buyback option would be nice Imo, but if it came with a lose-money-when-killed mechanic.

[ANARCHY]

A buyback option would be nice Imo, but if it came with a double or nothing-killed mechanic.

so if you die you get double respawn time

[Muto]

I disagree with the rating change, mostly because I don't think rating is important and every previous installment of visable rating has always turned into an ugly mess when it comes to pubs. Rating just leads to ragers and self-important a-holes. IMHO rating based on past performance is worthless. The only thing that is a concern to me is how good you are playing and contributing to the team in the current game. There is also the fact that save-files are extremely easy to manipulate even without hacking them directly, so rating could easily be cheated.

 

I find your idea of positive assist and Gangkills interesting and would like to see them at least tested to find out how viable they are.

 

However, I disagree strongly with both vespene and boasters. Vespene would have multiple issues with it's implementation. The first and most obviously is snowballing, something the creators of this game have tried very hard to stop over each consecutive generation of SotiS/AoS. This would allow a hero with quick early farm (going a quick 0-3 or so) to rapidly become unbeatable without any chance of comeback. Secondly, it would disproportionately favor carries and nukers leaving support heroes and initiators to rot. If anything, it would bring back to extremely competitive KD scene where every player calls "KS" regardless of the situation.

 

Likewise, boasters would serve only to snowball the currently winning team to be unbeatable. In other MOBA's where they've experimented with such a tactic it's only served to make pushing as a team trying to make a comeback a living nightmare. Part of the game's balance is that creeps will cancel each-other out and heroes make the difference. Adding boasters shifts control away from the players and back into the hands of creeps. It's a lazy upgrade that would only simplify game-play and result in more snowballing.

[residente]

so if you die you get double respawn time

 

What?

[CoolNoob]

nhaaa

[MOTHER]

The current Rating system is a complete mess and simply does not work in the conditions that AoS is in right now (a pre-dominantly pub driven game on the SC2 platform). We already quantify a player's performance during a game with factors such as K/D/A and creep kills, why not follow that to its logical conclusion and use it to quantify a player's performance over several games. Yes ratings can be manipulated and people already choose AA carries all the time in pubs, but that won't change because of introducing this or the ELO rating system.

 

I added a Tower Assists suggestion to the list, thank you Ironsights and Anarchy. I think by increasing the weight assists, tower assists, and wins have on your total rating, it could offset the urge to just worry about K/D and pick carries all the time.

 

 

Vespene for buyback could work if you lost a portion of your Vespene upon death (unlike minerals). That way you can't hoard vespene until end game and use it to be effectively immortal.

[ANARCHY]

What?

i.e. use booster to buy instant respawn at the cost of next time you die its double the respawn time

 

re rating;

making any large changes will impact the system hugely, i suggest adding a small bonus to winning games and see how it goes, the average rank is meant to be gold, this is clearly not the case in pubs

the maximum won or lost in the current ELO is 24 points per game, adding a 2 point bonus for wins should raise stats across the board

[residente]

 

i.e. use booster to buy instant respawn at the cost of next time you die its double the respawn time

 

re rating;

making any large changes will impact the system hugely, i suggest adding a small bonus to winning games and see how it goes, the average rank is meant to be gold, this is clearly not the case in pubs

the maximum won or lost in the current ELO is 24 points per game, adding a 2 point bonus for wins should raise stats across the board

 

That sounds fair too, but money buyback sounds better for me

[MOTHER]

It would be riskier and introduce a more strategic element to gameplay (preparation, foresight, surprise) if the buyback had to be purchased BEFORE you died, like a potion. The catch is of course that you may not die (waste resources) and that if you do die (after buyback), your respawn time is doubled like Anarchy said. A hero that consumed this elixir could glow in a certain way (something similar to Levi's buff or TS) to alert everyone that they drank the buyback potion.

 

This suggestion may be radical/practical enough for the list... I will add it.