DG wasnt designed or balanced for 1v1 i just got out of a game where both allies and enemies used drops. and never once did a drop lead to gaining map control

 and thats like saying basketball isnt competitive because your shoe came untied so its not your fault

stuff happens you should learn to plan around it

I fully agree about the balance issue. It has nothing to do with balance. Equal for all doesn't mean it's fine. Originally, I was curious about the design rationale behind this drop. Just a few replies above Impossible claims that it is there to give the losing team tactical options. To me that sound very wierd and if that is the rationale, surely there are better ways to give the losing team tactical options?

The potions and scrolls are there so that a skilled player does not have to walk back to base after killing a demigod, especially towards the end where the health crystal might be extremely far away and the benefits of the extra gold are minimal compared to the time lost.

exactally

YUP!!!   DING, DING, DING, WE HAVE A WINNER!

Wouldn't a "skilled" player be able to float his health by other means, or know when it'd be best to teleport back for a refill? Wouldn't he know how to incorporate the lack of refills after kills into his strategy?

It's this kind of added-on advantages to the already winning team and whether it's necessary or not that I'm unsure about, and I feel makes the matches often very one-sided when one team starts winning. I'm a very new player myself so my opinion might very well change further down the road.

One mechanic I'm fond of is when the other team buys new reinforcements or captures your portals. It's a disadvantage for you, but you are able to try and benefit from it by earning a little more gold and xp. It's for this same reason I'm not entirely sure about the potions, as there's no redeeming factor or weakness to capitalize on when a guy is repeatedly killing people near your base.

I'm making it sound like a bigger issue than I really think it is. It's not something I fret about, but is one of the things I wouldn't complain about if it got tweaked.

I play the demo, I lvoe the potion drops, it makes sense to me. Otehrwise I would be bussing back and forth to the base all the frikin time. I would say I would end up probably spending most of my kill money on teleprot scrolls, or I would lose all the time advantage I got killing someone.

Also the healing demigods would be imba.

i agree that the winner favoring feedback mechanics in this game are responsible for lopsided matches. i disagree that the problem is with death drops or any other winner rewarding mechanic.

the real issue, in my opinion, is that resistance does not get stiffer as you encroach further into enemy territory. the only noticeable change is that there are slightly more towers to push against. after a certain point in any given game that doesn't matter enough to be an effective deterrent. 

my take on this is that base defenses should be signficantly more potent in general, and in particular the nearer the citadel. 

The trouble I'm having with this post is that far too many people have resigned to the fact that dying is an inevitability when playing Demigod. If you play in a game you will die; this is certainly not the case. My impression of the awards you recieve for killing someone is that they not only encourage team work and strategy, but they also should be an important method of discouraging death. Rather than opting to change the rewards, which are designed to benifit everyone, why not focus on preventing the reason your opponents are receiving them. Preventing your own death is the ideal solution to this problem. Just as players earn more gold for assisting with a kill, the potions and mana scrolls left on the battle field add a pivitol aspect of strategy to the game. All the rewards you receive should be taken as positive reinforcement; You are doing something good, keep doing it! However, the same can be taken for the losing side of a smiter scenario; You are doing something bad, don't do it! Instead of becoming upset that the rewards don't come out in your favor, focus on earning them or preventing them yourself. I'm sure your teammates will be much appreciative.

After all! Killing good, Dying bad!

Jaybuddai, Mayor of Paybacksville

This post exists for solely the sake of arguing. It doesn't "RUIN ANY COMPETITIVE GAME" or break the balance or screw up the metagame.

Demigod is WAY more action oriented than DOTA. Its a fundamental difference between the two games. Demigod has more constant action. Period. Thus, as its said in this thread before, my speculation would be Demigods drop potions to keep people in the fight rather than having to run back to the crystal to heal up. You won a fight and you need to go back to heal? Ugh.

I think you hit it on the head Polynomial. If we had to always return back to the crystal after every fight vs. another demigod this game would suck. It allows you to stay in the action. But another possible reason for having it is simple but I haven't seen anyone hit on it. There has to be a winner. When you're neck deep in the opposing team's base and you're trying to take down a citadel where they have access to their own crystal and towers it's hard to maintian pressure on dropping their citadel because you will be constantly repelled.

If however you manage to get a few kills you can stay in the fight longer. It is a minor difference because near the end game there's so much gear on anyway that it's possible to last for long stretches of time but I think the principle is still the same. It's no different than military armies of the past sustaining their armies by looting the armies they conquered for food, supplies and money. Same concept applies here.

this isn't a useless post...I like the idea of an option to turn off potion drops...personally i Usually dont get that erebus skill anyways. That skill needs to be recognizable by your team as a posioned potion anyways so that they don't eat it.

But its not..especially if you got the kills early..

wow. its obvious u havent played dota before, because demigod plays in SLOW MOTION compared to dota. in this game u dont even need voice chat because u can still type whilst in the middle of a team fight.lol.

not only that. you can start 2v1ing people. 3k INSTANT heals from a potion drop? come on.

If that is the case, why don't give the killing team the bonus. It seems like some here just wants to side-track the discussion.

I didn't start this to stop reinforcing kills or anything like that. I was only asking for the rationale behind this implementation.

So far, I've heard a few types of responses

- 1: It's to give a boost to the losing team (drops happen near the losing teams base)

- 2: It's to give a boost to the winning team (so they won't have to go back to base)

- 3: It's the game mechanics, deal with it and learn work around it

- 4: It's to make people understand that it's good to make kills

- 5: It's to discourage people from dying, you shouldn't die.

All these taken from above have, in my humble opinion, not addressed the design rationale behind making dying demigods drop a potion or scroll. I think that if any of the above is good reasons, there are other ways to make this happen.

Indeed Twinsen, there are many other ways of accomplishing the motives you've list instead of drop items. In fact the game already provides alternative rewards that would easily meet all the qualifications of the above list. That being said, I think your looking for a reason that the drop items are provided when there are other benifits in the game. My most simple explaination for this is that the designers intended the game to be complex. The drop items provide another facet of gameplay that is not only unique to demigod, but to each in-game situation. If a person were to only obtain gold from a kill then the game would have less depth, and in turn, less strategy. The beauty of Demigod as I have come to realize is that there is never one way to do things; no absolute strategy to win every game. There is always a different avenue to pursue in different situations. You yourself have amassed all the explainations for what these items do. With so many options of use, it shouldnt be hard to see why drop items would be a helpful tool to give Demigod diverse and dynamic combat between teams.

In my opinion potions are a way to encourage a more aggressive playstyle. Demigod already is quite defensive with it's number 1 rule "don't die". Half on HPs? Better retreat even if you might get a kill. The chance of getting a potion can be an incentive to finish a fight even if you'll lose lots of hitpoints and enemy demigods are near as the potion might enable you to continue fighting, to retreat without getting killed or to let of some high mana spells that you otherwise would not have the mana for.

Basically it might just encourage taking risks (like running into towers chasing a demigod) which in my opinion can lead (theoretically, practically at least good players seem to not want to take risks) to more surprising (and in my opinion fun) games as foreseeing enemy moves will be harder when there is an incentive of not playing it safe.

And it just adds some depth. Sometimes you have to have quick reactions to get the potion before the enemy, sometimes it gets quite tricky to remember the potion drop if thinks get heated. You'll have to decide if you want to take a potion even if you're at full life/mana just in order to deny it to the enemy although you might need it later.

In the end the potion drop is only a clear advantage in 1vs1. In situations where a couple of DGs are fighting an enemy DG might get the potion as well.

You can't be serious. DOTA has less constant action because of map design. You can't argue this. Just because Demigod is "slower" doesn't mean it cannot have more action.

I don't mind the drops, though would like to see an option to turn them off.

However, I really don't like the jump from 750 to 3000, shouldn't be able to just heal almost all health just by taking a random potion.

So, let me try and understand what the issue is here - dead players drop healing potions, that heal people, and mana scrolls, which give mana. There is an issue this creates... where?

Gold and XP are a great bonus, yay!
... except when you lose them due to travel time for health.

ZOMG he just killed me and recovered 3000 health because of the potion and then killed my team mate!
If you lost, that's your fault. If your team mate lost, on a weakened opponent, that's his fault. If you didn't 2v1 a superior player, thats your combined fault. Removing already established mechanics to allow you to systematically wear down your opponents due to your inability to play the game is moronic.
"Hi, I can't play intelligently or with team work. Please remove the spawn timer so I can suicide rush the enemy's citadel as shielded Oak. KThxbi! !!"

It removes teh skillz by givin n00bz to win where they would epic failz! Don't punish teh skillfullz okayzies!?
In order for them to drop a potion you have to kill them. If you drop the potion, then you lost and your point is muted. Just grab the god damn potion/scroll when they die and prevent them from using it altogether. Allocation of resources and intelligent use of your environment is a part of a skilled players bag of tricks - if I know my enemey is going to go for the potion/scroll - even if I don't need it - I'll grab it. I'd rather waste it then let them use it.

Random elements detract from a competitve game. Fact.
Your a moron. There is no random element. You drop something when you die. It's not random. What is random is the damage numbers that are calculated per hit and critical strikes and their damage output per hit which are generated from within a basic range. You want to remove those as well?

Isn't the type of potion that drops random, though?

At first I thought generals dropped mana and assassins dropped health, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I'd be willing to argue that you often require one more than the other, and it's random and luck based whether the correct type drops.

Whether or not it's a scroll or potion that drops is random, yes. However, considering you often kill a player with a well timed random crit, you maybe unlucky enough to be smited by the Finger of God, or you can forget where Erebus' potions dropped, arguing against such a thing is pointless. You will always need health or mana more in certain situations, the game isn't going to baby you and hold your hands and insta-heal you once you defeat someone. Take what you're given.

I didn't think of the drops as a reward/punish mechanism, so much as a 'dynamic landscape' mechanism.  Most games I play, when I get a kill, I don't stick around to see what potion is dropped, because his mates are usually rushing to his aid.

His mates are usually healthy enough that they don't need the potion themselves and tend to leave it there also, so then later on, when another encounter happens, there's a potion lying around.  That makes my tactics for that encounter change to take into account another variable.

I don't claim to know what the designers were thinking, but my contribution is that potion/scroll drops are not necessarily a reward/punish mechanic.

LOL.

also, on another note to prove your reasoning, how many games of dota have you actually played?

your just proving why random potion drops are stupid.