Major problems in HIGH BOUNTY modes

[Dr.McNinja]

The purpose of this is to list and vote on the biggest flaws of high bounty mode.

Add to the list, be more specific that simply saying "imba". Think of what actually happens the most from your own experiences.

► Tank bounty is too high
Feeders make the opposition much stronger in a very short amount of time.
Better players can quickly overpower the enemy team with a few kills, leading to more kills then becoming unstoppable.

► Finishing the game can be painful
Sieging a base can become very hard, where the enemy can rebuild and/or camp.
Late game is actually end game, where the most powerful weapons and tanks are bought by both sides, leading to a 'draw' - leading to excessively long games.

► Creeps are relatively weak.


Thats all i can think of right now.

End game = everyone maxes their levels, weapons, tank, upgrades etc
Late game = time spent playing
Feeder = someone who dies a lot (even if you are doing well, you can still feed)

This isnt about balancing high bounty mode, although that comes next. Theres a lot of discussion about how to balance hb mode but its all over the place and gets forgotten.

[Prog]

The Gold/Xp/Creepstats ratio is different: More gold - less xp - weaker creeps -> destroys the balance becouse some strats benefit from that change.

[Dr.McNinja]

You'll have to say what specific strategies benefit from this imbalance.

Only the most common problems count

I dont see any one strategy being overpowered compared to normal games. The 2nd line 'better players get too strong' is very true if they go short range - cheap dps combined with lots of gold means insane dps. Getting close to enemies can mean instant kill in these games.

Dunno if any other strategies are a probelm though in hb. It does however mean death magic is better.

[horselance]

IMO most flaw is creep level/ hero equipment is too low.
Second is xp gained is too little vs money earned. Tanks become useless with low level even you got them earlier. So weapons are too good to buy.

[Dr.McNinja]

I dont quite understand what youre saying, but im guessing:

Creep level is too low so farming them is too easy, meaning weapons are very powerful and useful.

Anyway, im going to sleep now so ill update tomorrow.

[DerSatan]

just see the creeps/troops

1) the troops you spawn with a troop command for example are much weaker compared to the tanks, because the troop upgrades stay at the same rate while tanks get super strong fast.

2) their bounty is doubled.

nice.


also: not fighting the enemy is the best strategy.

-let them keep their towers at their CP's, they lose much gold for it.
-dont try to capture CP's, the risk is not worth the chance to get it.
-if you got some spare money (with trader or exploder for example), get 3 bombs and take out your base factories. that sets the enemy far behind in gold, as they get the creep gold retroactively every 5 minutes, meaning they are 2.5 minutes behind you in creepgold. 2.5 minutes can make a huge difference in HB (only do this once a noob in your team killed their CP towers, so they would get all the creep gold anyway).
-accordingly, dont kill the enemies base factories before your team got all titans. if you cant kill them fast, you will probably lose.


sounds fun!

[Prog]

Just two short examples:

Scout vs Demolisher in 2v2/3v3 mid, normal mode: Scout needs to buy a hull when the demolisher is lvl 7.

Scout vs Demolisher in 2v2/3v3 mid, hb mode: Scout has enough money for at least air ship/heavy tank when demolisher has just ~lvl 3-5 and never needs to buy a hull against the lvl 3 artillery shot.

Another thing: Long range weapons do have rather low damage and suffer in their creeping from the troop-hp/dmg-ratio in normal mode. In hb you have way more weapons for the same total troop hp, which (over-)compensates the creeping disadvantage.

[GooglyBoogly]

Your forgot one poll option:

[ ] People taking hb mode seriously

It isn't meant to be balanced

[Lezowski]

GooglyBoogly, if you have nothing to contribute to this thread then please stop posting. HB is very serious, you fail to realize that it is what almost everyone plays over here.

Like I said in another thread, the underlying problem is that creeps are underpowered. They have the same capabilities meant for normal, but give twice the gold in HB. That means that tanks will always be about twice as strong as the creeps. This makes sieging harder and items such as factories and troop command useless. Players can just camp in their base when they are losing because they get so much gold from creeps and it is so easy to kill them. Players who manage to creep mid by themselves will usually come out on top of their team. There are two different ways to try to solve this:

1. Creeps give the same gold as in normal. This means that High Bounty will only apply to what it should, bounty. Trade goods will stay have the increased gold unless this happens to be unbalanced itself, maybe a 25% gold drop would solve it. This favors experienced players who can easily kill lesser skilled players.

2. Creeps are twice as strong. This keeps high bounty on par with normal. Tanks and creeps will be about the same strength. It will pretty much be a faster, normal mode which many players already like about HB (They get items faster).


I prefer option 2 because it doesn't promote feeding and it seems that it would be a lot easier to balance.

[Gammagulp]

:D

I think your suggestions is quiet funny Do you tried to fight in normal mode creeps were some noob enemy did 2 armor upgrades ? Its really difficult to creeps as in normal "normal".
Try to host a 3k lvl 10 start normal game and use only 1 level1 ability (not all 10 skill points). I tell you it will be insane hard to kill creeps before your Tower or your teams creeps do it :mrgreen:

Maybe a starting tank without using active abilities would underly 2 zepellin creeps at that moment - really hard :mrgreen:

(another option could be to increase the upgrades to 4 every 5minutes and 60maximum. But the starting creeps would have been only 20% or 30% stronger. But this way you would imbalance the spawning factories and the troop command as they are now to weak)

[Lezowski]

:D

I think your suggestions is quiet funny Do you tried to fight in normal mode creeps were some noob enemy did 2 armor upgrades ? Its really difficult to creeps as in normal "normal".
Try to host a 3k lvl 10 start normal game and use only 1 level1 ability (not all 10 skill points). I tell you it will be insane hard to kill creeps before your Tower or your teams creeps do it :mrgreen:

Maybe a starting tank without using active abilities would underly 2 zepellin creeps at that moment - really hard :mrgreen:

(another option could be to increase the upgrades to 4 every 5minutes and 60maximum. But the starting creeps would have been only 20% or 30% stronger. But this way you would imbalance the spawning factories and the troop command as they are now to weak)

This would be true for 3k HB games, but since almost all HB games hosted are 5k most players will have enough firepower to keep up with the improved creeps. 5k is a good mode as it allows for a wide array of options, but it does give tanks an unfair advantage over creeps. I do agree that starting creeps probably shouldn't be twice as strong in order to scale with 5k mode, unless there is a 6k mode, but upgrades would have to work twice as much instead of there being twice as many. More upgrades would make the last 3 tanks easier to get and upgrading would be much harder.

[Dr.McNinja]

Tank bounty too high
Late game is reached too fast
Siegeing can be too hard
Creeps are relatively weak

Any more?

I believe in reducing tank bounty to stop the major problem of feeding or overpowering, while making creeps stronger but worth much more.
Along with making creeps a little stronger, increase player creep's bounties.
And also increase the 6 base factories' bounties because i think they are the most important structures in the whole game and worth defending properly.

Very high tank bounty is the sauce of most if not all imbalances.

[Lezowski]

It doesn't matter how fed someone is because any smart player will be able to camp in their base and outcreep the fed player. Killing base factories is a lost cause, by killing them you lose more gold in the long run with the lack of creeps.

Sieging is hard because your creeps do squat, give twice as much gold than they're worth, factories just give the enemy more gold, mortars are useless in trying to attack the HQ and two towers where most camping occurs, orbital control is underpowered compared to tanks (Relies on creep upgrades while tanks are twice as strong as creeps), and bomb is pretty weak in general while being too hard to use.

[DerSatan]

Very high tank bounty is the sauce of most if not all imbalances.

Indeed. Bounty is too high, and experience gained is too high. Otherwise its perfectly balanced.

[Dr.McNinja]

@Lezowski

I believe it was said somewhere that every destroyed factory gives the enemy gold equivalent to every creep from that factory being killed. Or something like that.

And its not simply about a 'fed' player. Sure some situations you can realy outsmart them but i dont find this to be the most common situation. I see it this way: either they outpower you far too much gaining more kills, or they make mistakes that you can take advantage of. And when im playing normally, i rarely verse ultra-fed enemies. Its the problem of me and my friends becoming fed too fast, not the enemies.

Anyway, this is how i see it technically:
1. The chance of getting a kill increases when you get an item faster than the enemy.
2. Due to this advantage (1-5 kills) you may possibly get a few easy kills from your new item - up to when the enemy gets their new item (then its kinda balanced at this point)
3. Getting a kill in this period of time further reduces the 'delay to next item'
4. By 5 min or 10 min mark, you have items much earlier than the enemy and your chances of getting a kill are really high
5. If you continue to get kills, your chance will just keep rising++

The chance to get a kill is a general view of your tank value compared to the 'average tank value' of the enemy. The chance to get a kill is highest right after a player gets his new item and steadily decreases (as enemies get their items). Your 4th item could be the enemies 2nd item.

If you are lucky or unstopped, you will eventually gain such a massive 'delay bonus' of buying items/tanks that the enemy cannot take you unless they have 3 or more tanks attacking you at the same time. In pub games, this rarely happens. What happens instead is, they plan to go in together but the first tank gets destroyed before the next tank enters range, so it becomes several 1v1's in a row, with the fed player getting the kills. The benefit of ultra-fed players is they may choose to save for longer, giving you a larger window of opportunity for attack/captures.

I say all this from versing good and bad players many times including against teams of my own friends who are familiar with my style and tactics.

About bomb: its there for a purpose at the cost of 3250. You decide what purpose it will be for, whether your purpose is worth it or not. Just leave it if its too hard to use. Look at strength pack; in all the games ive played since the item was made, ive seen it about three times. And all three times, they were just testing it out. But the item is there as an option. Dont know about you but i like options.