In-Game Tutorial/Help

[Rangefear]

I've been playing alot of ID in the past few weeks and I've noticed alot of new players. I'm glad that we have a chance to grow the community but I think we're losing out on keeping those players interested past the first few games.

This is because ID has no tutorial. I know if you hit F9 you get some instructions but that's not really working.

It seems at in almost half the games I play there's a titan who has never played ID before. I try to tell them to leave mid and find bases but of course, they camp.

I think something built into the map could help this. I'm thinking a -new command that gives helpful instructions to new players.

For titan it would say stuff like "search the map for feed" and an explanation of how staying in mid is a bad idea.

For builders it could explain the concept of feeding. It could also explain walling with a 1x1 and 2x2 explanation. Maybe a bit more info on how gold works. And how to not build in the open.



I think this could go a long way towards helping new players get better and into the game, but it would also ruin fewer games for experienced players.

[narbtit]

Yeah I wish that was the solution. But who reads the tutorial?? Even on mobile games with popup tutorials I click through fast as possible.

[Rangefear]

My hope would be that new players would be prompted to type -new and get some tips. Otherwise they are doomed to feed for several games until someone coaches them.

[Lynx]

The solution is adding a new way for builders to get gold, and removing the gold mound or reducing gold farming capability from the mound by a shittone.

[Burn]

When builders type -obs or -minion, they immediately respawn on tutorial island, where there are many helpful tips and tricks you can practise on the tutorial island, from beginner to advanced.

All players can have vision of both the tutorial island and the rest of the map, but only observers can play on the tutorial island.

On more complex tips or tricks, there is a reddit thread that'll teach them, like item jumping, with a link to a youtube video.

E.G.: https://www.reddit.com/r/islanddefense/ ... ump_guide/

-Burn

[Rangefear]

Perhaps something like a -l2g which does the opposite of -g2l but is more expensive?

Or have several randomized gold mounds around the map?

What about gold mounds that appear for 1 minute or so and then move? Is that possible in wc3? or would it change the game too much?

[Lynx]

What I would love would be having camp which spawns creeps once every 2-3 minutes, creeps should be powerful enough to kill a single titan hunter, but not a squad of them. Creeps would only give gold to builder players, not the titan. But the titan knows when they spawns so there will be structures and units around the camp to feed of off.

This would make creating a titan hunter more lucrative. Ogres towers would be more useful, support builders would be more engaged in the game instead of afking at mound. Making titan hunters to have more support utility would be a cool thing to add with this, for example, faeries hunter would have the ability to burn non-hero units mana, ogres hunter would be able to bloodlust friendly hero units, trolls hunter could chain heal friendly units.

Maybe every 3rd creep spawn could be larger with a big gold bounty and perhaps drop a powerful artifact for the titan that isn't invulnerable so there's a war between the players. Titan wants to kill the creep camp for the artifact and to deny builders gold and builders want to kill the camp for gold and to deny titan the artifact.

I think the camp shouldn't yield too much gold, that way there would be plenty for everyone. Instead builders would have to team up and pool gold to a select few builders so they can in turn build a merchant or something else that benefits the entire builder team.

just an idea i've had for a while, mightve posted something similar a while back.

[Rangefear]

That's a very interesting idea. I would change the game alot though. I reminds me of creep camps in LoL.

[Lynx]

Just to add to this.

The gold mound is an incredibly flawed idea as it makes ID a hell to balance. There is no way of knowing how much gold builders are getting, thus making it near impossible controlling their power spikes. With the gold mound each builder is making 0-60 gold per minute. If you have a different system of giving builders gold you could know exactly how much they are making.

[Hash]

"no way of knowing how much gold builders are getting"

you can type -gs at any time in the game to see how much gold has been stolen from the mound.

[Lynx]

That is not how I meant. When balancing you roughly want to know how much resources builders have to know their "power", in order to make the titans "power" on par with the builders. Since builders can make 0-60 gpm, it's hard to balance it out, do you assume builders make 30gpm and games that deviate from that 30gpm will end up unbalanced in either titans or builders favor.

[Stealer]

? If you sit in middle long enough the builders will risk it and die.

I think you guys don't know how to play.

[Remixer]

Never really understood why every builder had the same rate at golding. I think a big problem with many builders is that they wait and they actually have to wait for that magic moment that breaks the bridge and that moment is very unforgiving. For both: the titan and the player.

Let' s say Goblin wants a certain amount of gold, since he wants to have 35 towers in his base, because 35 is the exact amount he will need to hold the titan.

He needs that exact 35 and BOOM he has a base, with no warning to the titan. The same thing happens with many other builders, like Faerie, but not as much as Goblin.

Instead the case with Goblin could for example be that he advances Gold Mining Technologies, allowing him to boost his gold mining to become more efficient. Let's say that Goblin harvests gold at 0.2 gold per second until he has harvested let's say 10 gold. (That would be 50 seconds of golding) Then he progresses and gains 0.5 gold per second, until he has harvested 35 gold in total (that would be 30 seconds more golding). After which he improves to harvest 1 gold per second. He can then make a research in his RC to enable even further advancing in golding (lets say costs 20 gold and 1500 lumber), and if that upgrade is done, when he has harvested another 50 gold AFTER the upgrade is done, he advances again and gets 2 gold per second.

The important part is that each time he improves in golding he gets visual upgrade, at least while he is mining, lets say a bigger golding effect is played on him (but this would have some problems). So the Titan would know that the goblin has harvested a certain amount of gold, and might soon base. Or if he does advance the upgrade to even further advance in golding the titan could tell that the goblin is surely going to gold some more, since he would not research the upgrade otherwise.

This type of new research and gameplay paths would ease the titan's part a little bit, and grant more balance, as the Titan could have at least a little less vague idea of what a specific builder is doing or going to do and what they have been doing. Also, it would slow down the Goblin's progress and make it more ramp-up, so that it would not be just (Just Golding) (Golding Continues) (BOOM a Base).

This idea can be developed further so that it does not necessarily have to always boost golding only, it could unlock something else too. But I just give this idea here to play around it a little.

[FollowingPath]

I like the general idea of making gold worth less/harder to acquire in the early game. I think instead of making an individual change for each builder, overall lowering the goldrate early (then increasing it to the standard speed after 5-10 minutes) would make a much more balanced early game. Many of the builders benefit too strongly from a titan who's having bad luck scouting or getting a minion.

Speaking of minions, the endgame would benefit greatly from a reduced amount of minions available. A titan who gets more than 3 minions barely needs any gold to break bases full of super towers in the early game. Because of this, very few people spend gold on the g2l funtion before GP, unless they've already gotten the gold they need. There's just no incentive to maximize your base strength early on because of how easy it is to break a full super base. I personally think 2 or 3 minions should be the max. This would also add more value to increasing your hp pool as builder, since titan could no longer get great value from skilling both heal and nuke. At the moment you can just spam level 1 nuke on 6 minions to take out a strong base supporter, while still getting full value out of your heal. And since most people skill windwalk on their minions (lol ikr) they would have to prioritize either heal or nuke depending on how the game is going.

Or pick Glacious and get a minion to level 7 for ez win.

[Remixer]

I like the general idea of making gold worth less/harder to acquire in the early game. I think instead of making an individual change for each builder, overall lowering the goldrate early (then increasing it to the standard speed after 5-10 minutes) would make a much more balanced early game. Many of the builders benefit too strongly from a titan who's having bad luck scouting or getting a minion.

Speaking of minions, the endgame would benefit greatly from a reduced amount of minions available. A titan who gets more than 3 minions barely needs any gold to break bases full of super towers in the early game. Because of this, very few people spend gold on the g2l funtion before GP, unless they've already gotten the gold they need. There's just no incentive to maximize your base strength early on because of how easy it is to break a full super base. I personally think 2 or 3 minions should be the max. This would also add more value to increasing your hp pool as builder, since titan could no longer get great value from skilling both heal and nuke. At the moment you can just spam level 1 nuke on 6 minions to take out a strong base supporter, while still getting full value out of your heal. And since most people skill windwalk on their minions (lol ikr) they would have to prioritize either heal or nuke depending on how the game is going.

Or pick Glacious and get a minion to level 7 for ez win.

The reducement of every builder's golding ratio at the beginning is not so great idea, I see what you are trying to achieve, but I'd still rather go for individual player's researches. Let's say that the pure basers can only gold to gain lets say 0.2 gold per second (1 gold / 5 seconds) but their research center had an upgrade which changes it to 1 gold per second. That upgrade could take lets say 5 minutes to complete, meaning that until the main basers can actually gold the game is at least at 7-8 minute mark. This would change the fact that those early level 2 minions are always getting killed for every builder, even basers managed to get that 20-50 gold before the game strikes 3 minutes. I think if changes are made, I'd go for Titan Hunters costing 5-10 gold, just because in my eyes it would be more balanced. Also note that basers would have less interest in wandering around the mound before those 5 minutes on the upgrade have passed, meaning they are lurking somewhere the Titan is also wandering around at.


Speaking of minions, I agree, the current system of having 6 minions is just game breaking. In my eyes minions and the titan have too little difference, but that is also the case with the titans themselves. I've brought this topic up several times before, and we'll see where Neco takes this matter, he seemed interested in changing Titan(s) (at least Voltron).