The key to getting new players into a game is balance. Skill should decide whether or not you win or lose. They should learned this lesson badly from WoW. Favor items are not only a minor edge, but absolutely crush new players with the head start you get. The 15% run speed is not just amazing, it's godly versus a new player. Not because of skill but because in close matches even 1 kill can decide the game. If 3 random people had 15% run speed versus 3 other randoms with no or much weaker favor items there would be little chance of the 0% run speed team winning.
We saw this in WoW. You can't create necessary homogeny. If everyone has the minor speed, boars speed, or ____ speed enchants it simply becomes redundant to have them. And the fact is everyone did have them. I don't know about later on because i've played a bunch of single player and some MP and well you can't kil what you can't catch. Doesn't matter if you can hit for 1,000,000.
Anyways i'd hope to see NO favor games to encourage players or change the favor system. THe idea that you have to grind any sort of points as a new player is a turnoff. When i first bought this game i thought it would be fun because the favor system was an easy grind. But it's not. YOu'd have to spend 10-20 HOURS to get the best item. WHat is this? A fkin MMO? GImme a break. I don't play MMOs because they are grind trash.
Cry more that you don't have all the favor items? Find the ones you want most, and go for those. That's called strategy, because while your salivating over +15% runspeed I've got -20% cooldowns, health, and mana. Its strategy in an rpg sense, its on a very small scale (10-20 hours? try 3-4 to earn them all) and it adds to the game. I'll be leaving your no favor item games.
Case in point.. When i first started with no favor items i was losing about 90% of games. Now with boots i've won every single one since.
it's ridiculous that one item giving you such a good head start should win games. It does not lend favorably for new people to play to play.
"I like favor items, when they start working it gives me an alternate reason to keep playing the game, a goal to work towards to help keep me intrested when I begin to lose intrest."
Seriously go play WoW if you want this crap. I'll give you a new item everytime you do my laundry too. it will be a colorful sticker that will display your achievement. It's amazing you fall for that psychological mindfk
RainFall, I couldn't agree with you more. I finally learned in a mirror match against a Rook how devastating it can be when some other a-hole has a powerful favor item and you don't have dick. In this match I equipped the two armors I could equip at the game start, picked hammer slam, and ran out to my first flag. I met the enemy Rook there (10 seconds into the game). I moused over his hit points - they were identical to mine. We just stood there and fought each other blow for blow. There was no fancy "micro," no "skill" or anything else involved, just stand there and whack each other. Not only did I get the first blow in, but I also got more hammer slams in than he did. Guess what? I got killed, but that wasn't the bad part. The bad part was, he had half his hit points left, LOL.
Yeah, I despise the whole concept of favor items. What BS that is.
The first game 2 or 3 multiplayer games I played online, I won with 0 favor items...
'Winning' or 'Losing' have jack all to do with whether you have the swift anklet thing or not... besides the fact that the thing is damn cheap and won't even take you one hour to buy (that is until the - favour points stuff started happening)
In my opinion favor items provide an interesting skew on how to build your character...
If you really don't want to deal with it, then just play custom with favor items turned off... which is what some people do anyway...
either way, favor items are available to both factions, and you have as much chance of someone in your team having high level ones, as the entire opponent's team not having any...
Did you ask him what favor item he had, or if he had any regular items. This reeks of being exagerated greatly.
It's not exaggerated at all. In fact, what I didn't state above is that this happened twice in a row. In other words, after I reincarnated, I ran out again, met him again, and the exact same thing happend again. I'd love to post a replay - it was that ridiculous. Unfortunately, to my knowledge this game doesn't have any.
No, I didn't ask him what items he had, I just laughed and quit the game. But my mouseover indicated that he had the same hit points as me. Since I believe at least one of my armors (I got the first two available) gives hit points, that is a clue that he was similarly, if not exactly, equipped as me, with the only difference being a favor item.
Right now I don't see any need of having favour items as part of the game. Just give DGs an extra item slot and make all the items purchasable.
After playing for 20hrs you will probably have all items available for FREE at start of game. All it does is to create imbalance to the game right at the beginning.. How does it match up for a beginner to face a veteran who can teleport, who can move 15% faster.. who can heal his HP to full in a few seconds..?
This makes this game very noob-unfriendly... At least in DOTA, everyone starts out fair and square. Why create imbalance unnecessarily?
Someone who has access to those items has many more hours of gameplay than you do. You will get crushed regardless of Favor items or not.
They are a nice gimmick to keep playing, that's it.
Well I think favour points should be used as a guide to matching players in Patheon.
As new players should be matched against new players, this way they don't get owned because of their lack of favor items.
I seriously don't get why the really upset folks don't just change the game.prefs file and get over it, it takes a couple of goes to stick but it does work for multiplayer too (that it even works is more of an issue). The more expensive ones are not inherently better, I have the 2k finger of god unlocked for example and I never use the damn thing.
I was more than happy with the very cheapest life pendant while I built up favour. (+400 life, +4 regen) Strangely I won 90% of my games with just that favor item, but I had past experience of demigod. Perhaps it wasn't lack of favor that made you loose but lack of experience agent of kharma?
I'm pretty much in favour of inociv's idea of equal cost across the board though, it'll stop people valuing them by cost rather than effectiveness. As long as new players start with 1 already unlocked, so no-one is stuck in their first few games with no favour item at all.
So... how do you even know it was a favor item he had and not regular items?
In my experience only about 10 mp games so far and over 20 hrs in single player favor items don't really make much difference in a game. I have won 7 (fat fingered kb) games and lost 3. The only times I have lost is when I am in a game with a team mate that doesn't play as a team (rare) or the opposing team just was very good and worked very well together. Just my person belief.
Well if you can tell me how experience possibly came into play in the battle I recounted, I'm all ears.
I dunno, you tell me. What regular items will cause one rook to slaughter another rook in the battle I recounted?
1. Increased damage item. Which means he deal more damage than you, hence you die faster than him.
2. Regen item, which regenerates life during fight.
3. Healing potion.
4. Higher armor factor than you.
There are many more items that can lead to the result you described.
you have problem with speeding fleeing DGs? throw some mines maxed out behind them
FAVOR ITEMS DO NOT RUIN THE GAMEthe add to a characters diversity, a tb without swift anklet has a quite different playstyle to one with one, and pharm ai's online if u care that much, after 6 games (2 hours max) ull be able to afford any item. hurr durr.
Exactly, favour items add diversity and basically opens up more available builds. There are decent favour items available after 1-2 games that close most of the gap until you can save for 1-2 of the more expensive ones.
Fact is, new players won't lose to experienced players because of favour items, they will lose because of the experience difference. General gameplay knowledge like which flags are which on the map, knowledge of both your own and your oponents likely skills/builds, as well as which item combos from the store work and which don't are far bigger factors than the favour item. This assumes that the new player actually has experience playing this time of game, if they arent familiar with basic rts tactics/controls they have even bigger things to worry about.
Anyway +1 keep favour items, hell i'd like it if they diversified even more, added a tab for dark/light aspect favour items linked to winning pantheon and things like that. As long as they keep their power somewhere in the range it is now, and continue to tweak the stats on them if needed, the positives of favour items far outweigh the negative.
I hadn't played Demigod in beta or anything like that, and had played next to no DoTA. For most of this week I couldn't even buy a Favour item as I was stuck in negative favour with none unlocked (I bought an Assassin only item, played a general next, was in negative favour with no items cause of bug. Next time on an assassin I didnt have access to the item I had bought, leaving me nothing and unable to gain favour). During this time with no favour I won at least 90% of the games I played. Just understand that you will be weak early game, and don't go suiciding on the enemy is straight up 1v1.
There is only 1 item in the game that i think ruins it TOTALY and its not even a Favor ItemIts the Heart Of life, not only that it restores you in 1 sec to full HP and MP it also got a VERY short cool down!
Increase the price a bit and move it to artifacts and the heart of life is ok. You can't use it in combat (though the health regen bonus is awesome) and it takes a lot longer than a second to fill your health & mana.
Also, Agent of Kharma needs to stop posting. Seriously. First he complains about exploits which he doesn't bother describing and then proceeds to get his ass handed to him by a better player than him, resulting in all this forum whinage.
Favor items do add a little depth, but I think the grind for them is crap. Particularly what sounds like a 'resetting' grind for them.
Sure, people with experience would win anyway, so.... let's give them even more of an edge? WTF?
Keep the items, but kill the stupid time sink currency system to 'buy' them.
do not nerf heart of life......it's so cool using it like
Oafighting fighting fighting.....
Oak low ohp
UB stands next to Oak and wan'ts to kill him
Oak uses Shiled (no dmg) Oak uses heart
Oak is fine again and can imba limba kill UB
longe life the Heart!
I like the favor items and favor points as my post above states.. What I really would like though is more diversity of favor items per a character and more favor items over all. For me at least some favor items are worthless for a particular charater where others are very suited to that same character. For instance for a particular char only have those favor items that would be benefical to that char show in the list. Its fun to play around with them for different builds.
I like favor items in general, but I think the 15% runspeed anklet needs to go. It is so vastly better than anything else that it makes all the other favor items obsolete. Other than that one the rest are minor advantages. I also think that cost should not be included in balancing them, as you can easily save up for whatever is "the best one" and just use that forever. They should be balanced only on their abilities, so you choose the one most suited to your build, instead of just picking X because it was expensive and thus has the most stats.
I play this game roughly 2 hours a day, if even that. If it wasnt for the bug that keeps reseting my achivements and favour items that i buy. In those 2 hours i often get around 500 points to buy for. I would have what i want. Now i just quit trying and dont even buy them, still i win most of my games.
So yes, they are good to have. But its not IMPOSSIBLE to win without them.
But ya, i play with all characters so i know what to look out for and att the same time you unlock alot of achivements.
I think it adds a nice depth to the game, offers different builds and so on. Maby they could be cheaper so its even easyer to get the points needed. Like many have said, the most expensive 1 are harder to get.
But maby make the favour items more expensive to buy (gold) when you unlocked them, so that you cant start with them.
New players that keep loosing should just read forums more and train if they want to get good. Its not the items that does it all you know
What i often see ppl do is they run and die in the begining of the game. This gives the killer 600 gold right away, that you wont have. This way he gets hes items before you, making him stronger....
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