Qustion - About Achievement Items?

bump

They'll rip the competitive scene to shreds?  Oh please.  Anyone who is serious about being in the competitive scene will know exactly which item(s) he wants for the hero(s) he wants to play.

 

Make a custom 5v5, fill it with Easy AI, farm kills with a hero you haven't played yet til you get the low-hanging achievements, win, and bam, there's 600+ points with no effort whatsoever.

 

The only thing at risk here are pubs, and even then Favor is so easy to get it'll only be a couple practice games til the true newb has enough to get an item or two.

 

Basically, if you don't play enough to unlock the items you want, I wouldn't worry too much about the competitve scene as you won't be a significant or influential force in it.

I see where you coming from but my concern isnt about the fact that people will not be able to afford the favour items. Thats easy, and as you said can be farmed pretty easily. Its the fact they are freaking unbalanced...and I cant even imagine how unbalanced they will get when they start adding the stronger ones that will apparently allow a 5v2 to be possible.

 

There is a radical train of thought that I subscribe to.  Until I know what is going to be offered, I don't panic over it.  Do you honestly thing that GPG is staffed with n00bs that create items and systems via a dartboard?  Have some faith in them, and when the knowledge becomes available, then evaluate and provide appropriate feedback.

What are you basing this 5v2 claim on?  Not to be snarky, I'm just curious if you have a source behind your claims.

 

And balance is kind of odd to talk about when every hero has access to the exact same items (ok, Assassins get weapons and Generals get special General-only stuff, but you know what I mean).  Are you talking about inter-item balance?

There is talk that items will be balanced in such a way that the 5v2 will be playable in a vets vs n00bs sort of way.

Have you guys ever tried this?  It already works.  Even when you throw a pro into the mix with 4 newbies they will lose almost as fast.  Right now the only thing that can beat 2 vets is 2 vets.  And if one of those teams is 2 vets + a newbie that team will have a much harder time winning unless they can convince the new kid to stay in base and feed pots (and shields, heals, or snipes).

That's because newbies feed kills so quickly that the vets will have artifacts by level 10.  The skill dynamic is almost the same as with 2 players vs 5 easy AI, except the new players will be a little bit better the next game.  

As far as introducing favor items that "allow 5 v 2" go tell the Spartans - we don't need them.  If we do get them it will be even less fair to the newbies.

 

Frogboy.


The favour items so far are certainly unbalanced - but again, I am more concerned about the stronger ones that will apparently be release. Would you rather have +12 vision or have cooldowns reduced by 50%? You see what I mean.


Wyskrmin Gloves are not unbalanced?
Symbol of Purity isnt unerpowered?
Mage Slayer (old one at least) wasnt underpowered?

Just because items are avalaible to everyone, doesnt meant they are automatically balanced.

I also don't like unlockables in competative play.  It's why I quit TF2 untill a 3rd party hack came out to auto-unlock the new gear.  Yes, I could join one of those stupid achievement farming servers and run it for 2-3 hours but that's not fun and I play games for fun.  Same reason I don't play MMOs anymore as well, I want to be able to have fun playing, not grind so I can have fun later (that's what I go to work for).

That's a very good point.

 

Of course 5v2 is going to be possible.  If you've got 4-5 fresh-off-the-boat know-nothing pubs who don't leave the base til three minutes in because they're slowly reading all the skill and item descriptions versus two pros who are on vent using synergistic strategies like TB Ice Nova + Rook Slam (or whatever), yeah, the pubbies are dead meat.

But that's not going to change. I'm not even sure it should change.  As S2 Games learned with Savage 2, you can't out-design bad.

   I think the best favor items right now, are fine.  They are easy to obtain, and not a big advantage since you can get a few of them in a day.  At first I thought achievement items would be done HORRIBLE, but they actually did it right with making them give you points to pick the item you want isntead of "complete this achievement, get this item."

   I'll be a bit ticked if they add in super powerful items that costs thousands of favor, though.