Various Suggestions to improve Hero Battles

Append herebelow are some suggestions to improve the current Hero Battles we have of now.

Ideas revised based on Skye Marin's feedback (15 March 2007)

1. Revise the "Points Adding Morale" System.
The objective of the revised system is to discourage builds that are too defensive and encourage more balanced builds, if possible.

1a. Revise the rate of Morale gained.
1 pip : 180s
2 pip : 90s
3 pip : 60s
4 pip : 40s
5 pip : 30s

1b. Revise the capping time for individual characters.
1 pip : 30s
2 pip : 20s
3 pip : 12s
4 pip : 7s

1c. Kill bonus for next kill.
When Morale Bar fills up for the :
1st time, gain +1 Kill Bonus
2nd time, gain +2 Kill Bonus
3rd time, gain +3 Kill Bonus
4th time, gain +4 Kill Bonus
nth time, gain +n Kill Bonus

Kill Bonus is cumulative until your next kill, and you gain that many extra points based on your current level of Kill Bonus.

2. Remove "defensive shrines", replace with "offensive shrines".
Remove Health and Center Shrines, replace them with offensive shrines.

3. Alter the stats bonus of shrines completely.
Shrines give positive statistical bonuses as well as negative ones. Want to capture that shrine? Better think twice.

Carnage : +20% Damage Dealt, -20% Healing received
Blight : +20% Hexes Duration, -20% Enchantments Duration
Berserker : +33% Attack Speed, +33% Damage received

etc


Discuss.

While your ideas have merit, they would completely change how Hero Battles work. Maybe that was the intention. Let's address your suggestions individually to open a dialogue, and we'll see where that gets us.

1) Remove Morale Points

This is an understandable request, but something I think is too severe. Due to the recent change that all shrines give morale progress, a specific degenerative build of four defensive runners is starting to become more popular. I feel that there are other ways to prevent overly defensive builds, specifically reducing the rate of morale, increasing the capping time of an individual character, or even forcing two people on the same team to be on a cap shrine before capping it can start. Another idea would be to have a full morale meter simply give double points on the next kill. If it manages to fill again without the kill bonus being used, then you get one point as normal. This means teams that kill more often get more bonus morale points, and the rate of defensive morale points is effectively halved.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "The benefits for holding the shrines should be more than enough to break any stale mates". If you mean: "in case of a 0-0 game, the team holding the most shrines should win", then I recommend you reconsider that statement. Right now, any defensive build has no problem waiting until the end of the game to win, so nothing would change, except that the defensive team would simply require no deaths. What would stop them from camping their base, turtling to prevent any kills, then capping 3 shrines in the last minute of the game for the win?

While it's true that "This implementation ought to promote more actual combat", it won't promote much of anything else. Team-moving tactics dissapear, and it just becomes a fight between you, me, and the nukes in our pockets.

In a GvG, if your team starts dying you retreat to prevent uneeded DP, but you give up the flag stand and maybe some NPC's. In HB, you should be able to retreat to prevent uneeded deaths, but you give up a shrine or two. If the only way to gain points is to kill, what is there to prevent base turtling? Simply removing the bases isn't much of an option, because then you completely remove all tactical elements to from the gametype.


2) Add Death Penalties.

I feel this change would be detrimental to the overall HB experience. Most people agree that the AI is not especially reliable in many areas, but can be exploited to great benefit in others. Imagine if your monk gets snared under a Meteor Shower, followed up by a Searing Flames or two. Your monk is dead mostly because it just couldn't react fast enough and doesn't know how to run away from a Meteor Shower, but now it is much less likely to react any better because it has that 15% DP. 15% turns to 30% turns to 45%, and you basically never get a solid second chance at victory. Overly defensive builds turn into overly offensive builds.

Idealy, HB works off of a number of scrimages, calling tactics, and occasionally capping shrines to help your tactics pay off. For example, against that previous build I could have capped both health shrines (giving the other team the center and Hero shrine) which gives my monk the edge he needs to survive the temporary intense pressure. He won the first round, and an assessment of tactics can help you turn the game around and give him a party wipe. The element of a second chance now changes the metagame from overly offensive, to a (somewhat) balanced team.

3) Morale to give Morale Boost

While not a bad idea, in the context of the other suggestions, but it's not really a fair trade off. At the current rate of point distribution, on you'd get a morale boost every 30 seconds if you hold two or three shrines. Imagine what that would do to the value of Res Signets or Dervish Forms in HB. You could essentially keep Grenth's up all the time.

Thank you for the feedback, it is much appreciated. Now if you do not mind I will break up your post and reply accordingly.

You are correct. My intention is to somewhat completely change how the current state of the Hero Battles work.

Aye. Perhaps too severe it was. Let us revise the propose ideas based on your feedback and see how it works out.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will append your ideas to the original post.

This sounds like fun, but I do not quite like the later part in which they still get one point if they did not use up their kill bonus. Perhaps let the kill bonus accumulate for a few tiers before they earn their one point as normal? Good suggestion, mate.

I agree. Perhaps that rate can be even halved further. I will append your ideas into the original post and let us discuss on them further.

I am refering to the statistical bonuses applied onto your player and heroes when you hold certain shrines, i.e
Battle Cry : +25% Move Speed, +15% Attack Speed, -15% Recharge Time
Health : +120 Health
Energy : -20% Energy for skills activation
War Song / Cultist / Mystic : Henchman
Siege : Siege Damage

Personally, I feel that the Health Shrine ought to be removed, to discourage defensive builds, though running builds take advantage of the Battle Cry Shrine to their hearts desire.

Aye.

What would happen if shrines like the Health Shrine and Centre Shrine are removed, and much more shrines that rewards offensive builds are placed in the Hero Battles maps.

Would this change encourage teams to capture the shrines that strengthen their offensive capabilities? Add this up with your proposed "kill bonus" idea, what say you?

Noted. 2 terrible suggestions, I will remove them from the original post accordingly and we will discuss on other options.

Again, thank you for the feedback, I will now amend the original post accordingly to remove the terrible ideas and append new ones as proposed by you.

Morale Rate

Current rates are:

* 1 morale point: 80 secs
* 2 morale points: 40 secs
* 3 morale points: 26 2/3 secs
* 4 morale points: 20 secs
* 5 morale points: 16 secs

Practically speaking, having two pips should be twice as strong as having one, and four should be twice as strong as two. Simply doubling the amount of time here would be enough.


Capping times:

Current capping times for 1-4 players goes (12,11,10,9). The objective is to punish lone movement, and reward team movement, and your set of (30,25,20,15) does that, but those times need to be toned down. 15 seconds is an eternaty in Guild Wars. If the other team retreats, would I be better off staying put for that long, or giving chase? Try (20,15,11,8).


Kill Bonus

Having a cumulative kill bonus kind of defeats the point. The intention of the system is to arward players for making kills within certain windows of opportunities. The more shrines they have, the more often these windows arise. The best way to get points should be to kill often and early.

The option for the meter to re-fill to give a point is needed. Otherwise, it just becomes annihilation.


Removing Defensive Shrines

The health shrines were made to help the average team with nearly-competant AI survive the initial volley of overly offensive teams. They don't prevent any damage, they just give a little more reaction time for your defenses to kick in, and only exist on half of the maps. The center shrine isn't explicitly defensive either; in fact, it gives +10% damage and -10 armor when you're standing on it.

Remember, it's all about balance. Not too defensive or offensive. Just right.

Revised the figures. Please comment.

Personally, I think that teams who are unable to score a kill does not deserve a win.

However, defensive teams would take a bit longer to kill.

Please comment on the concept of shrines with both benefits and penalties.

Feedback requested from the community.

Thank you.