This game shows an obvious case of Winner Keeps Winning syndrome. What this means is that the players who are doing better get benefits that help them do even better. Examples:
-Winning team has more flags and therefore more bonuses
-Winning team gets more kills and therefore gets more gold
-Winning team spends less time dead and therefore gets more XP and even more gold
You then gain levels and equipment that the losing team doesn't have, giving you a bigger advantage than you already had, and continue to win. This can get very pronounced in some games, and it's just not fun for the losing team. They feel like they're fighting a hopeless battle, and they are! So how to combat it? I've got a few ideas.
As a general rule, I don't want each mechanic to be incredibly pronounced. Each should gently push the losing team to equality in its own way. These are intended to have greatest effect in casual games where one team has a significant advantage over the other while minimizing impact on higher-skill games that are more even.
Desperation: In which the death timer is increased or decreased based upon how many flags the team holds at the time of death. If the player's team controls the map, then the death timer is increased by 30%. If the player's team holds no flags, it's reduced by 30%. This will make the final holdout harder on the winning team, but not enough to make it impossible. Even if they don't win then and there, the decreased death timer gives them a chance at more gold from DG kills. More importantly, it gives the losing team a better opportunity to fend off the winning team and perhaps get a few flags back while they're dead.
Learning From Past Mistakes: In which a bonus to experience is conferred based upon how many times you've died this game. Both the magnitude and duration would scale based on the number of deaths. Say +5% experience for 15 seconds for each time you've died up to a maximum of +50% for 2.5 minutes if you've died 10 times. This gives the losing team a chance to catch up in levels. More even games involving more skilled players will see less of this since less people die in general.
Bounty: In which the losing team will hopefully make use of their other benefits and actually kill one of the opposing DGs. DGs will gain a bounty of 200 gold for each level above their target for each DG they kill. To prevent suiciding, the bounty will be split amongst the other team if a DG with bounty is killed by NPCs or structures. You cannot gain negative bounty. Example: In a 3vs3 game, a level 10 DG kills a level 7 and gains a bounty of 600 gold. He is then foolishly killed by a tower, so 200 gold is given to each of the other team's DGs. In even games, not much gold will be gained from bounties.
Alternatively, you could devalue DG kills that are of a lower level than you so the winning team doesn't end up with a huge gold advantage in the first place. I think a good scale would be 1 below = 90%, 2 below = 70%, 3 below = 40%, 4 below = 0% (that might be a bit too quick ). Or you could do both so the losing team can also try to make up for their experience deficit with some items from the extra gold they get.
Really, the only one that worries me from these 3 is Desperation because it will also affect games that are evenly-matched. The problem with Desperation is that, in Conquest, flags will inevitably be captured no matter what. It's generally what happens before victory, and I don't want it to elongate games too much. Any input on reducing its impact would be great, but I believe there should be something to help losing teams who are getting overrun, though the good old "they will crack under wave after wave of myself" defense that desperation kind of promotes leads to feeding.
Numbers are, of course, always capable of being changed. These are just what I've come up with for now. It's not the numbers that are important at this point, it's the mechanics behind them. When should we reward one team for sucking and penalize the other for being too good and how?
Any input would be great.
agreed.
desperation is bad imo, id prefer if the death timer scaled per level, if u die at lvl 1 u are dead for 10 secs, at lvl 20 you are dead for 90 secs.
I agree that some system needs to be incorporated in atleast Pantheon or skirmish. These options should be optional in other tournamens and custom games for Pros.
Another way to make a sort of bountysystem would be to have the gold you get from a DG kill altered by the amount of time the killed DG has been alive. Say that a superplayer hasn't died once in 10 minutes then his bount gets multiplied by for example 10%/minute meaning he is worth roughly double the gold as if he would just have died.
On the other hand this could work in the oposite way by doing the following; Each time a DG dies their worth in gold are decreased by say 15%. If dying multiple times withing 5 minutes or so that effect is stacked meaning that after 3 deaths a DG would only be worth roughly 50% of his original gold. This would make it a bit more noob friendly and prevent the oposing team from feeding of new players or AIs.
The game always starts with same chances for team, I don't see any reason why the team that plays worse should get any chance to compensate for low skill (many deaths).
this is how it is i thoguht, at least this happend back in beta and i've never thought about it again.
I like the bounty mechanic. Also, the "winner keeps winning" phenomenon is called Slippery Slope.
Bounty is the best, a demigod at a higher lvl than you should give you more gold and vice versa.
Also how about a revenge system: you get more gold from the player that keeps killing you (+5 times).
Heh, my friends and I have always called it winner keeps winning. Amusingly enough, we first used the term to describe custom Starcraft maps.
All these idea's are un-needed, and don't make any logical sense. There's no reason why if you are winning a fair fight, somone should get an opportunity to catch up unfairly. You have a fair way to catch up, PLAY BETTER. It's very rare a game is decided over 1-2 deaths unless its the last minutes of the game. TBH, this is spoonfeeding newbies, and ruins competitive play.
let them be options - the 'pros' can play without them, whose who want it can have it. lot of people are complaining about premades- that means a lot of people play casually(don't want to get serious people to paly a ton). this offers those casual players a way back in the game when their team is down - people make mistakes, casual players arn't gonna be experts, if they can learn form it they can get better and actualy compete in the match
Yes, this game has a slippery slope. Every game does. Without any slope the game would never end. It's got a higher degree in longer games like this, and obviously gets frustrating for weaker players. That doesn't mean the game should be changed.
Keep in mind that good players are still going to beat bad players. That's how competition works. Implementing these kinds of things just adds another layer of details for the good players to master.
Short answer is: L2P
The options are about as pointless as those racing games that let the loser catch up in the end and win even though the loser raced the game perfectly. I see no point in rewarding failure, game option or not. They can make mistakes and still win, they don't need the game to autobalance so whatever you do the entire 30 minutes doesn't matter.
Slippery slope is used more often with generalizations in arguments - ("He has't cut his grass in two weeks, next thing you know we'll be living next door to a jungle"). The term used most often in board games is "Runaway Leader Syndrome."
Deaths are a big deal - they get EXP and gold. You don't get EXP and gold while you're dead. They get the advantage in flags. Is this a bad thing? Not entirely, but I do think that decreasing some of these things (for instance, cutting the gold received for a kill) would help a lot.
this game can't be called competitive - rooks tower don't place half the time, oak's wards don't place, i still have abilities just not work when target leaves range
once, these bugs are worked out this game can be played competitively, until then, there should be options for the more casual so they too can enjoy the game, not get punished cause they haven't mastered work arounds for ward placements, or that after an ability you have to spam move and try again, etc
also, don't act like it's a mulligan, and the only racing game i'm familiar with that allows that is mariocart(i hate those powerups), and i think demigod is a tad bit different. those options are to make early game less punishing. the better team still should win, this just adds some wiggle room - wiggle room so that when your demigod doesn't chase down the fleeing enemy cause attack commands suck and a kill for a kill situation turns into a death doesn't end the game. wiggle room for when rook won't place his towers and you waste 10 seconds finding a spot instead of attacking. wiggle room so that when your pug team get's off to a rough start cause lack of understanding allies build you can come back
so, add them as options, you pro's can turn them off, casual people can enjoy. the game is too often decided by the first kill, some may like this, but to a lot it's a turn off(ragequitting), so adding these rules allows those who hate losing a game for one mistake actually get a good match
Wrong.
And why would you want them to take development time away from fixing the BUGS, instead of rewarding people for losing consistently?
your asking a loaded question - good try
again, we already talked about this, i'm starting to question your ability to read - the rules are to be added to help give wiggle room, not to help the worst team win. everyone makes mistakes, a lot of people don't like losing because one mistake. so please, i want this to be the last time i say this about this topic - it's not to help the worst team win
now that that's out of the way, i'm gonna answer your question as if worded as so - would you rather them fix the bugs, or add these rules?
and as for bugs and rules, they could do both - gpg is a big boy company. however those bugs have been in since beta so i'm used to them, it'd be better to offer these new rules because that allows wiggle room for bugs, and it helps casual players. fixing bugs is great, but if they couldn't do it 5 months ago, why now?
so would i want those bugs fixed, yes. i'd still want these rules
in all honesty, i'd rather them give up with demigod and work only on supcom2, sry stardock and demigod fans
No, what ruins competitive play is the runaway domination of one team over the other simply because they started winning first, giving the other team absolutely no chance to make a comeback ever.
potions appear randomly on death
pooling items to one player
OP demigods
bad minimap display
no replays
OP items
bad map design
no minion/ally ui
I agree with the problem, but I'm not sure I agree with the suggested solutions.
The rarity of comebacks is definetly present in this game but I have no idea how to fix it.
The only idea that I thought had some merit was the "bounty" or "revenge" mechanic suggested in the original post.
most of the games are decided rather early, but you can not reward a team that is just bad. The better aspect is if you create some sort of actual ranking system to put noobs vs noobs and pros vs pros. The games will be a lot closer in skill and hopfully be closer games. also they need to remove all AI from everthing but custom. That will keep games a lot less one sided.
This is only the case with imbalanced teams imo. In an even matchup, momentum swings are common.
Silence!!!!! I kill you!!! ^^
QFT
I have to agree with giving the game some kind of rubberband mechanic, where the further you are behind the stronger you become. This isn't about punishing the team that is excelling, as they will probably win anyway, but it will make the matches more interesting and exciting the whole way through. Let fun prevail, because the better team will anyway, and it's easier to bring the loser back into the fold if they're having a good time. I'd hate to see the community dry up with only veteran experts remaining because the rest were tired of dying repeatedly. You can still lose and have fun.
Take a relatively recent fighting game like Street Fighter 4. It has something called the revenge meter, where as you take damage it fills up and allows you to perform a devastating ultra attack that can knock sometimes 50% or more of an opponents life off. This let's the less experienced or skilled players have some means to stay in the match and also creates really dramatic and exciting come backs that people in the community will talk about for years (see SF3:TS). However, you didn't see a bunch of noobs at Gamestop's world championship... it was the usual suspects because superior skill inevitably wins almost every time.
Also, to whomever gets aggravated about this in Mario Kart... Did you really want to have your friends over and just obliterate them every time, getting nothing but bananas because you're #1 the entire race? No... It's way more fun when you're changing positions and launching red shells and having a good chuckle when the leader gets exploded by the flying blue shell. So you lost one because of this--who cares? You still placed first in 75% of the races and have a higher overall ranking than them.
The problem isn't matchmaking. In fact, these "slippery slopes" (where one team gets a lead and uses it increase their lead even more) is most prominent in high-level matches, where both teams are so skilled that none of them will ever let their opponents catch up. Better matchmaking could ensure that the games stay even longer, but it won't change the fact that as soon as one team gets a sizable lead, the other team might as well type in gg.
I've won a game in which the opponents were beating us from early on in kills, war rank, and gold. However, my team maintained a higher level through creep farming. We were able to come back and win by reinforcing our towers and using them to kill the enemy demigods.
This was on Exile. We held the choke point and they never took our health flag. War rank was close enough so they only had Giants about 5 minutes longer than we did.
That said, I agree that so long as you play smart (don't get cocky and over extend yourself if you're winning), there is no reason you should lose if you get the advantage early on. The best games are the ones in which there is no clear winner for a long time.
Your suggestions will have to be implemented very carefully. Learning from Past Mistakes can lead to a person suiciding against towers many times early on for that bonus. Higher level demigods already give more experience and gold when killed.
It seems to me that so long as someone keeps at least one of the three commodities (war rank, gold, level), there is a chance of winning.
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