Favor items are cool but give an unfair advantage against players that can't afford one. Even worse, players with many favor items are usually more experienced and have a skill advantage on top of the item advantage. And to make matters, um, worser, the underdog is less likely to gain favor points if he gets so soundly trashed.
Some people will probably argue that you just have to disable favor items in custom games or find one such game, but we all know that this isn't a solution - it's a workaround.
No, fairness must be built-in.
So here's the solution:
- Skirmish games have favor items disabled.
- Pantheon games have favor items enabled.
- Add an beginners-should-skirmish-because-...-advice to the tooltips for the skirmish/pantheon menu items
That way you keep the favor mechanics and all unfairness is removed. After all, if you try a pantheon game, then you know what might face you.
