As new gods get added to the game and patches buff old ones, I have noticed a design philosophy that I don't agree with and feel like warrants discussion.
With more than 100 gods to choose from, it's imperative to find a way to distinguish them, gameplay wise. This means that each god should have clear strengths and weaknesses, but buffs in recent patches seem to go against this principle.
Take hunters as an example: what distinguishes one from the others? They mainly vary in how good their waveclear is, how well they can escape, and how strong their lategame can be, which mostly comes down to attack speed steroids.
Neith has always been the early game hunter: strong waveclear and crowd control, easily exploitable escape, and weak auto attacks lategame. But since some patches ago, her jump became faster, and Unravel now gives her an attack speed buff, hurting her identity.
On the opposite end of the spectrum we have Artemis: great lategame thanks to Vengeful Assault and Tusky, but weak clear and vulnerable to ganks. She got a very small buff, which gives her slow immunity on her steroid. A bolder decision could have been increasing its duration instead, solidifying her strengths rather than patching up her weaknesses.
Giving every new hunter a movement ability also means that gods like Apollo and Jing Wei don't stand out as much.
One consequence of this design philosophy is that it makes it harder to remember all the things a god does, and therefore how to play against it. Pick an old god like Nemesis: even if you never played against her, just by reading her ability you can learn that:
- She has strong slows but no hard CC, meaning that Sprint is great against her
- She can reflect damage, but you can break the shield through crowd control
- Building lots of defense doesn't help much against her
Now take someone like Cthulu: even if you manage to understand what the hell Torment is, where is the counterplay?
The other issue I have is with items. Every item should have a specific purpose, making it easy to understand which gods it is strong on and against which composition it excels. Hydra's Lament is a great concept: you have to think who can make the most out of it, and it rewards you for slightly changing how you play once you have it. It also helps teaching auto attack canceling.
Spectral Armor is another fine example, though a much simpler one: lots of crit on the enemy team? It's good. No crit? It's bad.
But then you get to items like Charon's coin. It does a lot of stuff, but it's not at all obvious when it's better than the alternatives. You have to first figure out that the coin flipping thingy is nice flavor but not that relevant, and then see that it gives more %pen than most other items. But then... when is it better than Obsidian Shard? Well, Obsidian Shard is only good on gods who want go get one strong hit, like He Bo and Scylla, so Charon's Coin should be better on everyone else? It's not obvious without spending hours in jungle practice. If it was something like the old Spear of the Magus, but with % protection reduction (so a magical executioner), this would be clearer.
Many defensive items also add crowd control reduction, which is quite hard to evaluate: we already have the Cloaks as anti-CC item, Stone of Gaia as anti-knockup and Winged Blade as anti-slow, why is there an additional stat, which helps in no way against half of all CC?
These two issues merge into one when you consider ability scaling: some recent changes have increased the power scaling of some abilities which had low numbers. But this means that buying power is "kinda good" with everyone! I'd much prefer a few gods with high scaling, like He Bo, who prefer high damage items, and others with low scaling, like Thanatos, who get their damage from penetration, Hydra's Lament, or simply being overleveled.
To sum up, my main gripe is that the game is getting more complicated, with lots of text under every item and every ability, but this has not led to an increase in depth: you rarely feel rewarded for picking the right items or exploiting the enemy weaknesses.
Or am I overanalyzing?
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