[Suggestion] Scroll of Teleport

By tadrinth on January 4, 2009 1:44:34 PM from

I have some ideas for changing Scrolls of Teleport.

1) It needs a blindingly obvious cast animation. This is a general problem actually, I have a very hard time telling when enemy DGs are casting due to playing with details really low and the fact that you can't have a zoomed in, top-down view. Its especially annoying with teleports, because if they get the cast off they get away and you don't get the kill.

2) I would prefer that scrolls of teleport automatically target your citadel. The best use for these seems to be escaping from a fight while near death, in which case you probably want to get to the health crystal ASAP. Porting to the citadel gets you near the heath crystal, and it removes the need to zoom out and target the citadel or health crystal manually. My computer is pretty slow and zooming out drops my framerate. This is the primary item that requires zooming out to micro effectively. Also, when you're about to die, you want to be able to cast teleport ASAP.

3) Autotargetting the citadel would prevent players from porting back into the fray. This encourages players to buy speed items and discourages running away, since the penalty is greater. It could be solved by making separate scrolls of town portal that autotarget the citadel, or by making scrolls open a one-shot use, 15s duration portal that takes you back out to the front lines.

This is really a separate suggestion, but the generals desperately need indicators in the UI for their current minion counts. I hate having to select my priests to figure out if any of them have died, especially since there doesn't seem to be a hotkey for reselecting your general afterwards.

I feel like units aren't as visually distinctive as they could be. This might just be that my machine sucks and I have the graphics really low, or that I tend to play pretty zoomed out, but most of the units are just sort of blobby. They have distinctive outlines, but when you have a big mass of units you can't see the outlines and its just a blur of color. This might just be my low graphics settings, or that the forces of darkness are colored similarly to the background of Prison, which I play a lot.

Valve's TF2 developer diaries talk about how they used the art style to make edges and units jump out at you very effectively. This is even more crucial in DG where you play so zoomed out.

0 Karma | 10 Replies

I think it's important that you can port onto flags, its the only way to ambush atm.

I think tele scrolls are fine as they are because tele scrolls are alot quicker than running away so u have to pay for that. I thinks this balances it, because right now If I'm hunting an enemy DG I dodn't want them to quickly tele away. Yet many times they do get away because their smart enough to tele before they have like no health. Also when some one teles I usually no because its pretty obvious when they have have the blue stuff around them their teleporting. If they mad uit more obvious it would allow the enemy DG's to kill the teleporter to concentrate on him/her.

Also stunning stops you from porting out. For those with crappy comps that cant zoom out quick enough maybe double clicking on the tele scroll should automatically port you back to base.

Good idea for the teleport double click idea. I'd like this sort of behaviour on nearly everything. If I doubleclick snipe, it should target the closest demigod for me, etc.

my main prob with douubleclick is that I dodn't want to acidentally doubleclick when I'm trying to ambush a DG

I agree about the teleport animation: I often fail to notice it. Maybe it could pulse a bit or have a more striking colour?

Well, meaby it is just me but it is pretty obvious when someone use a teleport scroll. You will see blue lightning under that dg and the fact that he is doing nothing anymore.

Anyone remember the town portal scroll effect from warcraft 3? That's the kind of animation i'm thinking of: twice as tall and twice as wide as your hero. The whole point is that a DG trying to teleport out should be focus fired, stunned, and otherwise killed. If you can't see it, you can't respond appropriately. Now, whether its currently too easy or too hard to teleport out when focus fired is an entirely different question.

What about an alt modifier for autotargetting things?

I definitely think that there should be a way to teleport onto flags to ambush enemy DGs. It doesn't necessarily have to be via the same item that's used to escape from battle, though.

Actually, what might work better is an ability common to all demigods that teleports you to the citadel, with a 1-2 min cooldown. That way, you don't have to spend money just to be able to port home to buy items and upgrade the citadel.

Another UI tweak that would be awesome: Health bars for all allied DGs, and health bars for all enemy DGs that are visible. Ideally they should be clickable for targetting.

I think its really obvious that someones leaving. really blue lighting and the fact that their doing nothing isn't good enough for u.

I agree with soccer on this one. The light is very obvious if you are chasing him, and not obvious if you are zoomed out or looking somewhere else. I like it the way it is.

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[Suggestion] Scroll of Teleport