Monday, August 5, 2013

Game mechanics I should never see in an AoS

1. Last-hitting.
This is utterly moronic. All money earned by the team should be split among teammates. You should be fighting for the greater goal, not fighting each other for scraps. There is absolutely no need to reward twitch-reflexes by giving money only for last hits.

2. Fully passive "abilities".
If every character/hero/champion/lord/muppet has four abilities, then all four should do something. Every ability should have an active component, regardless of any passive benefits or interactions. Kudos to League of Legends for at least getting this right. And bless you, Demigod, for separating passive bonuses from activated abilities in your skill tree.

3. Activated items.
The whole point of the AoS concept is to restrict micromanagement. NEVER give players a choice to use items which give them activated abilities instead of passive bonuses, or if you do, limit such to exactly one or exactly two for every character. Do not reward the leet-kiddies for punching more buttons. Timing, positioning and synergy should be the focus of combat, not twitch.

4. Controllable summoned minions.
See #3, except this even more blatantly flies in the face of the game concept, and it's one thing Demigod got wrong, dead wrong.

5. Bounties for killing other players.
You should not be personally rewarded for the idiotic pissing contest of "pwnz0ring" another player. Killing an enemy player is only a step toward the greater goal of victory for the team and should always be treated as such. Reward the killer's team as a whole, if anything.

6. Experience split.
This is one of LoL's particular failures and was a problem in DotA as well. Though technically players can go anywhere on the map, having to split experience gain with nearby players forced the most spread-out pattern in every match, a 1-1-1-2 split which resulted much more 1v1 dick-measuring than there should be in a team game. Don't punish players for working together. Hitting your enemies' weak points, keeping them off-guard, is in itself a reward for splitting up. There is no need for an artificial penalty for being near each other.

7. Resource loss on death.
This goes for any team game except MMOs. Never, ever, punish the players for dying. Dying in the service of the cause is part of the game. Sacrificing oneself to save teammates or team objectives should be lauded, not derided as "noob" - the resurrection timer is penalty enough.

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