Gem Collecting
Icebound34
Member
Accidentally posted this in the General forums
This idea may have been bounced around a bit but I haven't seen it in the brief time I've looked so I thought to make a post.
So far, I really like the game BUT something that I'm a bit iffy about is the individual gem collection. From a balance perspective, I understand. However, from a game-play perspective I've felt moments where I'm running to get a gem and an ally either:
A: Pings me away from it
or
B: Gets to it first.
This puts me into a position where I either take it and possibly deny a partner a crucial upgrade or I give it away and lose an upgrade myself.
Obviously communication is huge here but I feel that being in direct competition with my allies for resources just feels... Bad at times. Not all the time, mind you. Just when that certain situation arises.
Perhaps a way to fix this is to make gem collection share throughout the team but raise the cost of everything? Or maybe something I haven't thought of yet. Others may have better ideas.
Thoughts?
Comments
A similar situation occurs when the team troll takes both expansions after you work as a team to kill a difficult mob. I think shared coin and gems would in theory make sense.
My team had really good communication (we were in the discord server so we were talking real time, this made a huge difference I think) and agreed that we should both collect 10 gems by the end of the first two waves (so we could both expand). I had been worried this would be an issue but thanks to our communication it wasn't at all. I could see how this could create frustration during solo queues though.
I think various cooldowns could automatically help with auto sharing.
Another idea. Perhaps if you could see your teammates resources in game, you'd know not to deny them their 10th gem when it's time to expand.
First, let me note that the "how do we share resources?" is not well answered at the moment. As you suggest, it can be suuuper frustrating to have some snatch your stuff away from you at the last second. Ideally, we'd like a subtle, elegant solution. For instance, in StarCraft 2 team games, often each player on a team has a VERY clear natural expansion. In this way, it's implicit to 90%+ o' players which expo is theirs. And, coordinated teams can STILL do clever things like give one player ALL the natural expansions. Currently, we're changing map layouts and tuning gem numbers/cooldowns/collection mechanisms to give both players in the 2v2 region a fair share.
Re: resource sharing -- Sharing income DEFINITELY fixes a TON of gameplay problems. (For anyone else reading, note income not total money. Players sharing a bank definitely sucks haha). In fact, we've had many past experiments where players straight up shared income as you suggest. There was no fear of stealing or improper motivation throughout the game.
However, in our experiments, income sharing resulted in more muted impact and less emotional satisfaction. It was hard to know what your individual contribution/success was AND hard to know if you had really hurt the other team. With shared income, if you kill a single base, you've maybe dropped their income from 7 to 6 bases, a relatively tiny shift. But, with individual income, you've dropped a single player from 2 to 1 bases, a significant enough hit that you can see the impact on that one player. Similarly, if you do a great job snatching up all the gems, you can feel your own economy booming relative to your other games.
Despite there being many problems w/ individual income, we're going to focus on it to make it work. We like the idea that a Grandmaster player could bring his buddies on and wow them with his awesomeness.
The direct emotional response is not something I had considered until you mentioned it. It makes complete sense to want to preserve the "I have X gems because of MY efforts" feeling. I agree wholeheartedly with this because I always love having stats that tell me exactly how I'm doing.
Unfortunately the mechanic that causes that "feel good" feeling for your direct actions is the same mechanic that leads to the possibly frustrating allocation of resources. Coordinated teams will be able to split effectively (leading to some cool possibilities) while uncoordinated teams will possibly have a player that has been shafted (through sheer circumstance or by not playing at the same level as their teammates and therefore not actively getting their fair share).
I agree with resources not being shared - I am playing devils advocate to the consequences of that and seeking solutions.
Idea: What if each player had their own color gems? But the minimap would only show their own + opponent's. In addition to that, perhaps players could send each other gems (and by proxy, maybe a "request X gems" feature). This would allow people to funnel resources to a particular player if they want while still letting them collect their own gems and have that direct emotional response.
This is just an idea, of course - and gem timings, placement, etc would all have to be tinkered with heavily but I'm just throwing stuff out there :>
I agree that it can get awkward with deciding who takes what expansion and especially with the gem collecting but I don't think resources should be shared either. Heroes of the storm does this with experience and that is one of my bigger frustrations with the game. In league of legends its fun to have the occasional game where you are wrecking and way ahead of everybody. In HoTS you have games where your team is doing well but I never get the same feeling I do in league of legends because atleast half the players in the game are level with me.
Regarding player-colored gems: I'd be a little worried that that could cause toxicity in the opposite direction, in that it could become a VERY visible sign that one player is not pulling his or her weight. If that player is leaving gems uncollected, the team is falling behind. With team gems, others can collect that player's share, so at least they aren't being wasted.
Maybe you can adjust the level up bonus based on who's getting the gems - if you're collecting a bunch of gems, your allies' bonus increases when they level up. So if you're doing your fair share then you get the benefit of immediate gem income, but if someone's hogging all of them you aren't just screwed. (Also, strategically speaking I'm in favor of shared income since it allows for role specialization within the team - e.g. one player focuses on gem while the rest of the team can clear objectives)
I can understand that concern. Perhaps the first half of the gem's duration it can be color-coded and the second half its collectible by the team?
Edit: Or to expand on the "emotional feedback" that Day[9] was referencing... Maybe resources could be shared BUT create a scoreboard that shows gems collected? This would allow for the new player to look at the grandmaster and say "damn, look at how many gems they collected!"
I'm not entirely convinced about that idea (considering I actually agree about the individual division of gems... But I'm trying to be productive with ideas :> )
I think sharing of income/resources is a bad idea. For one in public games it will lead to greedy players who will put themselves before the team. All 3 players will know they need to expand, but none of the 3 will want to spend their gems on the expansion if they think they can out wait their teammate to give in first.
To further clarify my point let me give you a thought experiment. Imagine you have 3 people sitting at a table. You take $1000 dollars and place it at the center of the table. You tell the three people sitting that at any time one of you can get up and take the money. If you do the $1000 will be split among the 3 people sitting at the table. The only stipulation is the person who does the work to take the money will only get 20% of the cash while the other two will get 40%. If no one stands up and grabs the money within 30 minutes. no one will get anything.
This is essentially what expansion taking would boil down to in public games. Note that I say public games because even though coordinated teams will distribute expansion taking most pub games which is a large portion of games will suffer from this.
I do think that the gem system could use a little work. In its current form teammates could starve you whether accidental or intentional. I watched the A.I gobble up the gems while I so desperately ran my hero over to try and get some. Also in its current form you can deny opponents their crystals which is awesome. It also creates a lot of skirmishing along the dividing diagonal. So their are positives and negatives for the current system.
Is there a way we could keep the gems along the dividing diagonal, stop teammates from hording all gems, and still allow you to deny opponents gems. The idea of player specific gems seems like trying to use tape to to stop a leak. It just feels anti team to do anything player specific in a team oriented game.
My idea is to make gems apart of expansions. Every generic expansion would have a gem and a gold farm. however, gems from expansions aren't a teams best way of getting gems. Along the dividing diagonal their should be big gems that are not team specific, and their should only be a few maybe 2 or 3 that spawn at a time. A team can start to cap on of these gems in much the same way we do now. However the cap timer is a little longer, because both sides are fighting over these same gems. If a team caps one the gems get split among the team.
Now I know what you are saying to your self. I started off by saying I am against income sharing. I am against income sharing in the scenario where it is the teams entire income. In this case your income is very much your own. If I have 4 bases and you have 2 I will have much more income then you.
The difference being now their is something along the dividing diagonal that creates team fights, creates snowballing towards the better team, allows you to deny your opponents gems, all while not denying your teammates gems.
It also gives the players something concrete that is very easy to understand fast is important. If you let the other team keep getting these gems; things are going to start going bad real soon. It gives teams something to work together on even if we never communicate to each other through out an entire game. It also gives you something to gauge who is clearly ahead or behind. It rewards teamwork and coordination.
I also think their is more design landscape when it comes to expansions. Much like how you have the 2x gold expos. If every base spawned with 2 resource markers. Most expos on the map would be 1 gold 1 pink. However you could have 2 pink expos and 2 gold expos on the map as well.
I appreciate your thought experiment but I do not think you understood what I meant by "sharing gems." I specifically meant sharing gem INCOME. This means that in your thought experiment, if an individual takes the $1000, all three people get $1000. I am sorry if I did not make this clear in my original post.
This is beside the point, however. I have rescinded my original thought on shared income (note: income. NOT spendable gems held by the player). This is specifically for the reason Day[9] outlined in that shared income denies emotional attachment to your available wealth.
I understand your idea of guaranteed gem income with the caveat of not being the most prosperous form of generation. This creates a way for people to actually have an income if they're completely denied from gem collection in the center of the map while rewarding those who actively try to fight for them. I respectfully do not agree with this system, however. I feel that the current system allows for tension in the map that is unavoidable. This tension is healthy for the game because it creates a dynamic environment where both teams are constantly butting heads. With a guaranteed source of income, a player may think "I do not have a strong enough army to fight for gems, so I will stay content with my base and just wait it out." This method of play is somewhat unhealthy for the game because it is a literal representation of "The Waiting Game." I understand that a counterpoint to this, however, is that competition would just transfer from gems in the center of the map to neutral expansions. Despite that, I think that a system with guaranteed gem income is definitively less interactive than both sides "gem hunting" so to speak.
Just my thoughts.
Ohh my fault I was thinking overall income sharing.
What is important to me is to be able to deny my opponent gems, while being able to maximize my gem production without starving my teammates. I don't know what is the perfect way to accomplish this, but If it could be done I think gem collecting would be a solid system.
What about just having the ability to send/request gems from your teammates? Similar to how in Starcraft you can send/request gas and minerals.
Instead of say trading gems, what if we have gem collection shared? Like when a gem collector finishes, everyone on your team gets one gem, and you buff up the gem prices a bit to compensate. I feel like this could alleviate the struggles of working with your team mates and hoping to not get starved, as well as it gives players more incentive to protect your allies collectors as well since you benefit from them. While it still also gives some benefit to denying enemy gem nodes. Any thoughts on this?
The only problem I feel this may cause is that it may cause players to be a little more passive since their gem income is more guaranteed. Although I feel like it won't be that bad since you need to support your team mates anyway. I feel like this might be something worth testing.
This was the idea I had stated in the original post
As Day[9] pointed out, this form of income does not give each individual player the emotional response of "I earned my gems."
Yeah sorry man, I often forget things as I read long threads. Day9 and I actually spent some time discussing that. Personally I feel like Heroes of the Storm is a good example I like to reference for sharing resources, as xp is shared among the entire team. Despite not having as much emotional response of "I earned my xp" it creates less tension among teammates, and also opens new strategies and one teammate can try flanking as he won't be punished for focusing purely on gems. I personally feel like it'd be worth a shot to test it with a larger player pool.