Pool purchasing of Citadel upgrades

By Deepjay on May 7, 2009 12:00:19 AM from

Alright we all know that the Citadel upgrades are another layer unto themselves. What i do find though is that some of the more expensive ones can really cripple a player who is more intent on teamplaying than saving up for an artifiact. A few times i've had enough gold for an artifact and really wanted it but instead dumped huge amounts of gold into an aspect of the citadel purely for my team to utilise it.

What i think would be an absolutely awesome way of taking the burden off a single player in regards to Citadel upgrades is allowing an option beside each purchase to choose how much you want to put towards it.

For example(and apologies i am at work and have no specific price lists in front of me)

Say buying Catapultsaurus is 6000 - beside it you can choose to pay 2000 towards the 6000 cost. This would be visible beside the upgrade.

This then allows anotehr teammate to pick up the remaining 4000, or themself drop 2000, so the third guy finishes off the purchase at 2000 and the upgrade is bought.

This way you could do things like - early game, the tower health or dmg upgrades @ 500g - depending on what you like to buy first, you could perhaps buy an early item then drop the remainder of your gold - 150ish or something onto one of them, making it cheaper for the next teammate etc.

I dont think this would be overly complicated and would be a perfect way to further split the costs of upgrades across teammates in an intuitive way. I don't think anyone likes to be spending all their hard won gold knowing their teammates are being selfish and ignoring the citadel in favour of bettering themselves.

Alternative to this, it would be good to see a players name assigned to an upgrade when purchased so its crystal clear whose pulling their weight. Sure i agree that artifacts on certain classes can make or break the game, but the citadel is likewise highly important and should be shared across all team members. (2c)

+16 Karma | 26 Replies

Great idea. Some karma for you, good sir. I fully agree this should be implemented. Hope Stardock, GPG, and the modders see this.

I also agree with this idea but with a change. Instead of having there be a list of gold applied next to the item how about if it were something like this:

Left click to buy Giants 6000

Right click to vote even spread among team. Then like a vote box comes up. Something like we have seen in Left 4 Dead? Like if the hosts wants to change a map then a box comes up asking everyone yes or no. Just my opinion.

Absolutely agree with the "Who bought what" idea. When your in the lobby everyone has a color. When an item is purchased it gets a ring around it and darkens. Maybe that ring that goes around it can be the players "color". Meh. my 2 cents. Anyway great ideas Deepjay

Yeah the colour ring would work.

I think the pop up vote would drive you nuts though - like imagine you are microing in a really intense fight, where a mis-click can totally screw you, and a box pops up wanting some kind of input...perhaps if it was to the side of the screen. But yeah, i think that would achieve the same ends anyway.

If i was stardock, at the very least i would implement the way of identifying who has bought which upgrade as that would have to be easy - then possibly look at ways of expanding how players can choose what to buy and what not to buy.

I think paying a portion might be better rather than outright voting as not everyone agrees on upgrade choices - they can be very tactical. This way rather than getting a definitive and distracting yay or nay vote, a player could clearly show what he was interested in buying and either 'pay it off', or have someone finish it off for him.

I mean imagine you had a 6k upgrade and your teammate had put 3k on it - would you be inclined to finish paying it off? Very likely. Imagine then you're faced with the whole 6k - particularly if the game is close or you're losing, it can be a very difficult decision to pay that amount of money in one hit.

I had a simillar thought and love the idea.
Perhaps a percentage ring around the icon for the upgrade that fills up as your purchase to give a clear indication at a glance as to where the team is - incase you have multiple team members part paying multiple upgrades. Also, taking the remaining cost into consideration in the tool tip for the upgrade would be helpful.
I'd kind of like to see a system where if you have 123 gold, and you click to buy an upgrade that is 1800, the price is lowered to 1,677, rather than buying in pre-determined blocks. Just my preference, though - I'd be happy with either system.

I don't like the voting idea though, no offense, as in the middle of combat if someone decided we needed priests when I don't agree that we do, it'll be an annoyance to click no and then try and explain why, where as if he can just click and use his own money to part-purchase the upgrade this allows him to make his decisions and if I agree I can purchase the rest of that when I get back to the Citadel, if not I can purchase or part-purchase another upgrade.

Say buying Catapultsaurus is 6000 - beside it you can choose to pay 2000 towards the 6000 cost. This would be visible beside the upgrade.

This then allows anotehr teammate to pick up the remaining 4000, or themself drop 2000, so the third guy finishes off the purchase at 2000 and the upgrade is bought.

Awesome idea!!

Perhaps an extension of this for when the clans come into effect is that we could have a clan treasury. Thsi would work much the same but you could perhpas click to buy with your own money, or click to buy with clan money.

Either way your idea is great and i hope a dev is watching!

(going to jump to GC2 where i can give 2 karma... )

Anyway, as it says in MY post , lets say you want Giants; you've only got 2k gold. You can just click on the "Giants" button, and it puts the 2k into that slot. Or a shared team bank of some sort (you can put any amount you want in it). OR, a setting where half of what everyone gets goes into a team bank (stops "ball hogs" in their tracks, and you can use your half on whatever you want). These are just options/settings, they could be turned on/off at will.

No offense taken. A voting system isn't necassarily ideal and I understand that. I just know that things like that have been done before though so I know its possible. To me it sounds like the best would be the blending of two ideas. Able to buy a percentage of an item that has rings around it. And the percentage part of the ring you filled up is your color? I really like the idea of sharing citadel upgrades as opposed to what we have now which goes something like this:

OK guys we have priests already. I have 8k gold. If i upgrade to Catapults can someone catch giants? ... i mean it works... but we waited till all the way in. And I've also had times where I have sold most of my gear to catch up with the enemys creeps because no one wants to upgrade. Oh well. I guess its all part of team play though.

Yeah i read your post after I had made mine, while what you are talking about is a little different to the way I would implement it, it's essentially working towards the same ends. I think we all agree it'd be nice to share the costs of these expensive citadel upgrades - or find some user-friendly intuitive way to allow players to 'pay them off' - lay-by if you will

Your link is for this thread mate

Quoting dyingsole,

reply 7

And the percentage part of the ring you filled up is your color?

I hadn't actually thought of that...
I mean, yes, yes thats exactly what I meant

It's ok Zeh, we will just share all the profits SD makes by implenmenting some form of our ideas

Haha, well, I'm teaching myself to program so I can make a particular program for Demigod - which I hope to link to a mod eventually. It's all very hush hush right now... which means I probably shouldn't be posting it on here

Good idea.

Darn, didn't see this thread soon enough. I'll just post here what I wanted to post as new thread a few minutes ago:

Improving Teamwork: Citadel Upgrades

Citadell upgrades can easily turn the tide in a match but it is hard to purchase them at the right time at the moment and to plan ahead if you are not on VoIP.

1. You can't see which citadell upgrades are already purchased if you are not in your base.

You can't tell if one of your teammates has already purchased the gold or building health upgrade unless you run back to the citadell. Sometimes I go back to purchase a crucial upgrade only to find that it has already been purchased and maybe you don't have enough gold to purchase the next logical upgrade.

It would be very helpful if you could display the citadel upgrades at any time to plan ahead and get the upgrades for gold, catapults and giants as soon as possible.

2. You just lack a few coins to buy the upgrade you really want.

Your teammates and you have enough gold to buy giants if you would throw your gold together but you can't buy them just yet? You could sell some gear or drop something for a teammate to sell but another solution might be easier and more player friendly. Why not buy half now and half later? (upgrades in image are chosen arbitrary)

Instead of purchasing the whole upgrade at once you could just buy half of it and your team can pay the rest. Of course the upgrade only becomes active after it has been purchased 100%.

3. Suggest a strategy.

You could suggest the next upgrade to your team this way too. Maybe there is a newbie player in your team and he is not sure which upgrade to buy next. If he sees the half-purchased giants upgrade...

I really like this idea but..

You really have to take into consideration the effect it will have on balance. Getting to giants will be so much easier and it will take away that teamwork aspect of someone saying, "ok ill priests - angels, you get cata's - giants all at once" which is a move i really like

I really like the idea of being able to pull up a window showing current citadel upgrades, without having to trek back to your base. It really interrupts the flow of the game when I have to stop battling and go back to the base just to see what citadel upgrades have been purchased.

i like the idea, but agree with Dalzk that this would mean teams rushing giants and fingers of god a lot faster. something that might ballance this would be either to make upgrades more expansive (something like 1.5X more should do it) or to make it a lot harder to get War Score so it takes at least 20 - 30 min to get to lv 10 on your citidel.

other than that it would be a nice addition.

This

Balance and more importantly momentum balance go right out the window when you can pool gold on cit upgrades, imo. (Leaving aside that you can achieve the same thing anyway with a 20% markdown and a couple more steps)

I like it how it is now. If you focus on just buffing yourself then your team suffers, if you focus on buffing the team you suffer. That's what team work is about, finding that balance and working it out between eachother.

Pooling your money can lead to ridiculous upgrades early on. It'd ruin the game balance.

I dont know, I somewhat disagree with it making upgrades easier. Why is that neccessarily a bad thing? People are inheritantly selfish and it is often left on the backs of 1 or 2 individuals to basically carry the team in regards to citadel upgrades, even when you ask them.

I tested this theory the other day and late game as we were getting pushed into our base couldnt believe no-one had shelled out a penny beyond the one tower health upgrade. That's it, nada. We had enemy catapultsaurus coming at us yet no-one had the nounce even when asked to shell cash into upgrades.

At the very least you need to be able to see the upgrades from anywhere on the map, and you need to see WHO bought them so they get some credit and recognition. I think showing who bought them will go a long long way towards encouraging people to buy them even if no kind of pooling method is implemented.

Im'a post this from a different thread I put it in, someone referenced it there.

I like the contribute gold to the citadel idea, but I don't know if that would be too much. Maybe you would have to lose like 20% of it during the transfer to make it so you can't all just pool to win. Give it two options as well, amount to deposit before and after the tax. Like if i want to deposit 2000g it will eat that down to 1600g. But if I wanted to deposit 2000g and have it actually be 2000g I could put it in a field that will automatically deposit the amount necessary for me to deposit a full 2000g, assuming i have that much. Like i said, this would be a dual option box so that people wont make the mistake or atleast have the option to do it quickly rather than fuck with the math. I actually went to 4chan to get the math on it. I know i knew the equaiton necessary to get it, but for some reason it just escaped me. I sat here for like 20 minutes trying to get it lol. Basically:

x = value before the deposit

y = value after depost

% = the percent we are being charged.

x - %x =y

Basically just put in y, 2000 as the amount you want to end up with, and the equation will tell you that you need 2500 to deposit 2000 with a 20% tax.

A tax on pooling - i like that idea.

I imagine this as being more of a vault a'la guild bank style thing. Not a thing to buy it in steps. The only way taxing would work is as a bank style feature. You tag the money to a specific purchase and the guy who buys it absorbs the money you put in and then it dips into his without a tax because he is not depositing anything. You can't pick abilities with right-click so I assume the citadel is the same, sounds like the perfect command to pull it off.

Could we get the announcer to berate the selfish? like LUGH has not purchased any citadel Upgrades after someone else does ?

I have an idea let's make all upgrades for free, how about that? And make other aspects which 'cause noobs to lose go away, so they are happy. No, the upgrade mechanics are just fine, you don't buy 'em, you most likely lose. Besides If you buy some first upgrades, which I always end up doing, just tell you team mate to buy some of equivalent value, most off people will do so, if not he is an idiot and you're gonna lose anyway. And I don't remember a game actually needing artifact to win, on the contrary many of my games were won by upgrading our citadel.

The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Pool purchasing of Citadel upgrades