[Discussion] Dominion - Page 2

It says within the description that you are using this system to discourage selfish behavior but I guarantee you that people will find endless loopholes in which they get more points but end up accidentally hurting the team. LoL's system of ELO and secret ELO for normal games is perfectly balanced and you see the best players have the highest ELO because it is related to which games you win. I know this will not effect ELO but it will materialize personal glory ingame as tangible rewards, and at the current moment it is (because of cognitive dissonance) considered a guilty pleasure to revel in your high killcount. Programming in rewards for personal glory justifies selfish behavior in a game that, up until this point, was undeniably either about winning or losing. Some of the things you mentioned, like 'picking up health' (i'm assuming a FPS-style health pack) is very easily turned problematic as soon as two people are near a health pack as it spawns and one 'deserves' it over the other because they have lower health. Or someone sees it spawn and abandons an objective or teamfight to grab it because fuck it, we're going to win anyway. People have already done things like this by refusing to surrender because they think it will give them extra IP. I was searching for related topics and found this, which should show you how much just one random guy who has played for a "couple of months" cares about getting the maximum IP out of his games.

I know this is a long and whiny post but most games companies are very scared to admit they made a balancing mistake, especially if they spent a ton of time creating it. I also know you guys have the integrity to admit to these mistakes and remove items like locket. So i'm hopeful, but here's some suggestions anyway, because it will be easier to convince you to change balance radically before you release the product so you don't look foolish, and so that Dominion will not look like a mistake when it gets released. First of all I think you should make it so that every objective is team-wide, so any health pack you pick up heals the entire team in the manner of a health pot or a elixer or whatever. More importantly, instead of trying to reward undervalued behavior with these rewards ("heroic deaths") you should focus entirely on how exploitable these personal objectives are to avoid selfishness, and try to find ways to make them undeniably good ideas for your team so that it is never a bad time to accomplish them if you want them to always give bonus IP. If collecting these objectives takes as long as a teamfight it must be more beneficial to the team than that player being in the teamfight to be undeniably worth some bonus IP; the only equivalent I can think of in Summoner's Rift is Baron, because even if your whole team dies while you get baron, at least you prevented the other team from getting it. I really would avoid the "heroic death" mechanic because it will be very easily gamed; the other team could stunlock you until your team finishes capturing the point so you don't get the bonus, or inexperienced players could suicide when they see their team is capturing 3 points at once, or a bunch of other opportunities that I haven't even thought of yet. Like i said earlier, LoL has the world's most balanced ranking system because at the end of the day the only thing that matters is whether you win or lose, and because of that you are encouraged to help your team in ways that are impossible to measure and reward. It's important that you understand and protect this principle and not take it for granted, because it is very delicate and much more important than rewarding 'heroic deaths.' I guess my question is, "are you aware of this, and realize how careful you have to be?"

Side note: One of the unintended consequences may be much closer games because as soon as one team begins to win, they will begin to do things not conducive to winning to try to increase their score (in addition to the actually helpful things they would do normally). If the losing team focuses on productive goals they will do better. So in that sense it is nice for balancing in general. However it will be incredibly frustrating for people that are carrying their games hard to see their teams will to win dissipate into selfish scavenging as soon as they think their victory is guaranteed. It is already difficult enough to herd your team into the best decisions, especially at low level, and giving them a bounty of potential IP will make it impossible for lower level players to pay attention to someone giving them experienced advice they are unaware of (e.g. "stop picking up health packs, just kill baron and charge their nexus")