DatonKallandor,

Good point with Limb Counts (!). The same applies to wielding a gazillion weapons or wearing multiple cloaks (2 cloaks max. would be fine...). Of course, some measure of allowance might need to be made concerning the exact physical nature of the Demigod, whether or not it is a standard human form. Maybe that would get complex fast? 

Frogboy,

Demigod or entity-specific items could be problematic to balance, purchase-wise and therefore game-wise. I am hopeful to assume that randomized item arrays will be hard-coded into the Demigod experience. I proceed from this basis.

(...btw, there are some things that ought to be hard-coded in the game, for the sake of sanity in choosing online game types and for presenting a certain baseline Demigod experience...)

If you have 'X' item with effects 1 and 2, selling for 5000 gold, and you add a Demigod specific supplementary effect to it, does that item have its cost increased? By how much? In other words, does the specific effect get reflected in the item`s cost, and is that a fair assessment of that item, even when its target is not in play? Perhaps a minor point, but... .

[SUGGESTION] A compromise: if you introduce such items, make them unique. And to balance one somewhat devious tactic, make it so that the target of special abilities *cannot* purchase that item. For example, a Vampire Lord on either side could *not* purchase the Ring Of The Crucifix.

I imagine I could accept such with the aforementioned randomization of items in place. Uniqueness would be good, to avoid everybody and his dog on the opposing team having a counter to (ostensibly) you; the player with that item now has a role to play due to that item possession. He`d be a fireman racing from area to area to try to counter Player 'Y'.

Purchasing items is of course an important part of Demigod. I just don`t want to see such purchases eclipse tactics, strategy, and abilities.

You shouldn`t be able to win the game in a shop...

I still think the whole Demigods going shopping thing breaks the game's flavour, and needs a bit of a rethink.

But on the specific matter, personally I think I would rather see items targetted against general abilities than particular Demigods (so a weak stun resist rather than a strong Rook boulder resist). Bonuses against a particular enemy seem like they would make battles a bit...arbitrary. Perhaps some way to increase a particular ability's cool down period if you think you're being cheaply one-shotted?

But, it's a beta, if you think it could work then put it in. If it isn't fun then you can always take it back out.

One thing I think would be quite interesting would be some specific tower killer or creep killer items. Not too powerful though, so as not to push out the Demigods with abilities in those particular area. Maybe just some little thing like resists arrows or whatever.

Also, have you considered having the trebuchet flags upgrade over time along with the other buildings?

Edit: I missed this the first time though:

"[SUGGESTION] A compromise: if you introduce such items, make them unique."

What if all artifacts were unique? It would bring a long-term useful benefit to controlling the artifact shop flag - get the item you want or deny it to enemies. As it is you just have to make a push in that direction when you have enough gold to buy your artifact, and ignore it the rest of the time.

I`ve been a proponent of that for a long time...

(grin uniquely)

Slackers..... Well the ring idea may be good, but very annoying to the person who built their demigod to their liking. If someone where to build a demigod's skills such as stun based, and his or her enemies had rings that shut down the demigod he was using then he would be useless on the attack or defend. I think that these rings must be highly expensive when they are incorporated in the game because it sucks when you build your assassin or general and it is useless because of a measly ring.

Yes, make all artifacts both unique and directly counterable, please. 

At this point I'm hoping the artifact shop is a placeholder.  It breaks immersion and also really dumbs down play to have a one-stop-shop for all your insanely powerful item needs.  

Give me bunch of shops in neutral territory that offer only a few items each, require completion of miniquests or control of multiple flags to access, or simply make them dangerous to get to.  Make unique neutral bosses that drop unique artifacts or guard the entrance to artifact shops.  Drop a big rejuvenation pot when we kill our third DG in a row, give us the Unmaker when we kill our tenth. 

Gold is good, but allow us the option of obtaining artifacts in other ways, and make it an actual challenge.  Right now the connection isn't there.       

In other news - I like active flags.  Defensive structures, creep routes, mana trees, all very nice.

Specific Offensive Anti-DG rings are getting a lot of heat, but as previously mentioned, the idea could be implemented and if we still hate it *after we've played it* then they can take it right out again. 

As a general issue to bring up, take a step back and let's discuss the programmatic capability.

So let's talk about the rings of power in a more generic light:

One option we've talked about is:

Ring of X: Does N veruses Demigods but does 2*N versus <Specific Demigod>

Ring of Y: Reduces damage by N% by enemy Demigods but reduces damage by 2*N% versus <Specific Demigod>

So programmatically, you would give the capability to have items that target specific Demigods.

Now, based on the responses here, some people don't like the idea of having items that are specifically targeting a Demigod.

So what kinds of items would you envision with the understanding that you can't go and make a huge chunk of code for each specific item. They have to be able to be developed much like what I explained above.

Certainly there ways to program defensive powers:

Ring Q: Reduces the effect of <Spell Type> by N%.  

But the effect there is that it simply nerfs. We don't want the game to get into a stalemate but rather ways in which good players can magnify their damage too.

Frogboy:

It sort of depends on how the Rings of Power [ROP] are being implemented. 

Are they the sort of thing any player could have mid-game? 

Also, would each ROP be an IWIN button vs. a given DG, or would direct counters exist?

Finally, have the devs actually played a build with ROP or is it just a theoretical at this point?  

Peace 

But really, it's the same general idea as the first way, only you buff instead of nerf. In the first case, the TB player gets ring of 2x damage vs Rook, and the Rook player gets ring of 2x damage against TB. Now they both do more damage, but are still "equal". In the second case, TB gets ring of -physical damage, Rook gets ring of -spell damage and again, they're equal. The potential for a stalemate is just the same either way.

They are too.. specific, I guess is the word I would use. And because of that, they tend to feel artificial. Why not a general ring of "increases duration of stun effects" as one of its properties, and some other item that reduces them? Both rings are useful in their own right without targeting any specific Demigod. What about an item that "deals extra damage to all living targets"/"non-living targets"? This would at least give some more variety, we have some living Demigods (Regulus, Unclean Beast, Sedna, Queen of Thorns) and some non-living ones (Rook, Vampire Lord, Oak, Torch Bearer).

Anything that's a bit more general in use and application and can be rationalized in "lore" terms, basically. You can quite easily describe how a ring can bestow a magical barrier that helps shield the user from negative effects (thus shortening durations of debuffs), but how do you rationalize some ring that for some unknown reason deals 2x the damage against Unclean Beast but not Regulus? Is it coated in special rat poison that hurts the Beast more than Regulus? You see, it's kinda silly that way, and that's what makes it a bad fit, in my opinion.

Right now, it's just a concept we've internally been considering.

Right now, the tactics to kill other Demigods are the same as killing the reinforcements (creeps).  What we want to do is introduce some skill/player experienced based elements that make dealing with opposing Demigods more interesting and more skill based. 

But at the same time, we don't want to introduce such an element that would delay the game or require a lot of foreign translation work.

I just don't like the idea of having a ring to specifically "pick on" a specific demigod. A team might decide to all get a ring to gang up on a specific demigod and it could totally ruin the game for that one player.

I just came up with this idea. I haven't thought through many pros or cons yet, so let me know what you think.

maybe make 2 offensive rings of power and two/three defensive ones? in all these examples, x<y

offensive 1: increase dmg to assassins by x% and increase dmg to all generals' minions by y%

offensive 2: increase dmg to all generals' minions by x% and increase dmg to assassins by y%

defensive 1: decrease dmg recieved from assassins by x% and decrease dmg recieved from all generals' minions by y%

defensive 2: decrease dmg recieved from all generals' minions by x% and decrease dmg recieved from assassins by y%

(maybe) defensive 3: decrease damage from creeps by z%

and any person can only get one of these rings?

OK, thanks for the quick response.  I like the idea that tactical skill comes more into play when facing off against other DGs.  A few more questions when you have a moment:

1.  Does it take strategic skill to obtain the rings?  As in, am I gonna have a Ring at about the same time as a more skilled opponent, or is the gap going to be significant?

2.  Would the Rings be active or passive in their buff/debuffs?  I'm thinking it would be interesting if the Rings were (expensive but not prohibitively) single-use items or had extreme cooldowns and cast spell for 15 seconds or so. 

At this point I'm sorta envisioning Rings as a target-specific 1b Bestial Fury, where two UBs face off and timing your Fury cast is essential if you want to come out on top.  Only it becomes complex because if you have the wrong ring (or no ring) then you had better just run.  On that note, if this is implemented, or even if we keep some of the massive damage buffs we have now, we need much, much more obvious signals to let you know that you need to run, right now, or when I catch you I will inflict 24k damage per hit...2d Auras a la WCIII?

See, the trouble is that in this scenario, you're advocating effectively forcing people to play as different Demigods, just because someone else already took that Demigod. That is a sucky, sucky reason to not play your favourite DG.

The thing is that here, this is already an inherent advantage. You don't need to be able to buy an Aurora that does 3x damage to Mantis to make this the case.

Additionally, there are some strategies where a dual team has the advantage, here I'm mainly thinking fast Jester.

OTOH, as previously mentioned and both team's skill being equal - a traditionally well-balanced team game will almost always give an advantage to the team that diversifies.   

Im 100% ok with those Rins item / active flags.