Citadel upgrades got majorly overhauled in 2 and it was A Good Thing. I'm seeing alot of them creeping into irrelevancy again though. It seems like every team game I've played in 3a upgrades some variation of
- XP
- Grunt Weapons and Armor
- Gold
- Grunt types
You ignore everything else, and you don't bother with most of these until your team has some basic kit items.
No one buys Death Timer unless they are playing a 1 v 1 Draconic penalty game on Crucible and being dead too long means you lose your portal.
Tower offense and defense lines are useful if you are losing for slowing your enemy down slightly. Nobody uses them, though, because they stop being useful when your enemy has catapults or actively pushes a tower.
No one buys the Trebuchet line of research.
Some thoughts on how to make these upgrades viable - they are too basic. Each upgrade should incorporate either an area or team buff. As examples -
Death Timer - level 1 decreases penalty time 10% and increases movement speed on respawn 10% for 10 seconds
Tower Offense - level 1 increases tower damage and also buffs damage of all units within radius of a tower 5%
Tower Defense - level 1 increases tower health and hp regeneration and also buffs health and regen for all units within radius 10%
Trebuchet - I suggested in an earlier thread that trebuchets would be more useful if they prioritized enemy installations rather than DGs..I'd like to see this line incorporate upgrades to Forts too, since they don't do anything right now...Maybe all units within radius of a Fort get 5% buff on all stats at level 1..
Making the gold upgrade follow this model as a team buff like the XP upgrade would be good as well. So level 1 increases gold income 8% and it affects grunt, DG, and tower kills, rather than just being a flat rate...While we are at it let's incorporate buffs to each citadel upgrade. Grunt Weapons at level 1 increases ALL units attack speed 5%, Priest upgrade increases ALL units health regen 5%, etc...
That way the awesome tower buffs above can be countered with excellent offensive buffs, but it makes one thing more important:
- Flag control and exponentially higher war rank become really crucial. You can't let your enemy have the time or the flags to build up his buffs or you will be fighting uphill.
You start to see some really interesting item and buff combos too. I'm going to buy all attack speed items and upgrade Weapons to the max to boost DPS for my whole team. You will invest in Armor items and Armor upgrades to counter, etc...
It makes the game deeper and it isn't too much work for the Devs at this late hour, I don't think...
What do you think?
