Boss Camps replacement

[Softmints]

The merc camps (Golem, Wolf, Hawk) have been a great success. They reward reconnaissance, encourage fights, add strategic options, and stay in line with the goal of the game: pushing.

The boss camps were intended to be a fair objective for either a solo jungler, or a team. I don't feel they're good at either, so I am looking to replace them with another trio of creeps. As usual, the last one to die will provide its effect. Some ideas:

• A "powerup drop" trio:
  
  • Thief: Drops riches
    
  • Wizard: Drops lightning rod
    
  • Healer: Drops strong tonic/ether
    

The powerup drop trio would be weaker than the mercs (because mercs are a team objective) and would replace the periodic lightning rod and riches spawns. I would remove the mechanic which stops heroes from picking up powerups when enemies are nearby, as this makes stealing powerups too difficult.

• A "buff" trio:
  
  • Ghoul: Walking near a corpse consumes it to heal
  • Fletcher: Damage output increased by 15%
    
  • Magus: Increases experience gained by 30%
    

I could add a third camp location to accommodate the buff trio. I am undecided about what buffs to use, how long they should last, or how strong they should be. I can afford to be more specific with buffs than League of Legends, because there's three to choose from. This camp will also be weaker than the merc camp.

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I would generally expect to see a jungler take out the buff camp first to make the other camps easier or more rewarding. However, it might make sense to leave the buff camp for last so the buff can see more use outside the jungle.

The rewards here are just ideas for now. Thoughts/ideas welcome.

[Grumbletok]

Great ideas! Really like how a camp would replace the spawning of Lightningrod/Riches, making it into a more interesting objective than just walk-and-pick. Also, having three camps on each side would make the jungle deeper, and since these camps would be easier to solo, it could be interesting how it would affect people in the choice of actually going for the role of jungle. I do assume these buffs from the third camp are personal to the one(s) who kill it, not team wide?

[Dracula]

My only real problem with the creep camps currently is that they're so strong, almost no one in the game can really be a "jungler" because they take too long to kill to be efficient. I've seen the golem's health go well above 2000, and few characters have enough DPS to deal with that at level 15, much less an actual boss camp. It's certainly not worth it for someone to solo a boss camp at this point, and it's certainly not a viable alternative to pushing if you wipe the enemy team (pushing gets you much more map control + gold than the riches do).

In general, I like the idea of consumables dropping from creeps instead of being bought from shops. The factor that consumables are basically uninteresting staples in the shop that are virtually mandatory at high levels of play in most other lane-pushers is rectified by introducing non-trivial, non-purchasable consumables that can only be obtained from jungling. While I think the new merc camps are cool, consumables give a bit more direct control over your reward. That having been said, if you go the buff camp route, I think it'd be cool to see buffs that play off of some of RoW's mechanics and concepts. Could even give a knockback buff.

[Softmints]

The current strength of the merc camps feels just right, for the kind of objective that they are (a team objective). Some heroes can use %maxlife damage to clear them faster, if you have opinions about that let me know.

I have mentioned before that the revive system used in RoW requires both camps to die before the 60 second respawn timer starts. I didn't think too much about this, but the idea is that you can't hole up in your jungle for ages without moving around the map and doing other stuff. I think the principle is fair, and it will be applied to the new camps too. Keep this in mind when thinking about the 'jungler' role: it will be synonymous with roaming.

Another point of note is that a jungler can clear a buff camp twice, and take a different buff each time. I feel like the buffs will have to stack partially (in case of accidentally taking the same buff twice, and because everything stacking is a recurring theme in RoW).

[Softmints]

Update: I've fully implemented the above outline for new creep camps, but I'm not happy with the results. I don't feel they meet my criteria of being contestable, or promoting as much action as I'd hoped. I dislike Lightning Rod being such a reliable pickup.

I'll include them in 69x so that we have a (hopefully) more stable version available for regular games, but already I am planning changes for them.

[Grumbletok]

I'll try to be around for testing it, if you plan to host sometime soon, give it a Shout!

[Softmints]

Creep camps have been implemented for two weeks now, and as I expected they don't influence gameplay much. I'm considering some refinements:

1. Having everything as buffs is cleaner and doesn't require inventory space.
   
   
2. Each camp should be themed around something in particular. For example, we might have:
   • A resources themed camp, offering a choice of [+100% gold on hero kills / +100% damage against towers / +15% experience gained]
   • A utility themed camp, offering [silent faster teleport / +15% damage dealt to heroes / undecided sustain buff]
     
   
   
3. Vi. mentioned to me: "why not make buffs permanent (until death)", which I'd considered, but discarded because there's no way to counter or play around a permanent buff. But with four relatively easy buff camps on the map, I would expect most players could have a buff most of the time, evening things out a little. Getting a second buff would overwrite the first.
   
   

Implementing all three of these refinements, we get the following system:

• At the start of the game, teams can squabble over which four heroes are going to get buffs, much as they do over riches. 60 seconds later, the next set of buffs becomes available.
• A freshly revived hero will be sans buff, and will need to make a predictable detour into the jungle to pick one up. In particular, teams will be at a disadvantage after being wiped, because the enemy team can claim their choice of buffs while the dead team will have nothing. There might be room to lower revive times if this becomes a problem.
• Heroes who would rather not deal with the jungle might feel forced to after a death.
• Items which assist in securing buffs could be helpful.
  
• Teams might argue about how to allocate buffs; part and parcel of any scarce resource. Offering a modest secondary award to players who assist with clearing camps, or making every buff an aura (applying only to allies without their own buff) might solve this problem.
  

Feel free to post your thoughts.