Item Upgrades

[technicalwaffle]

Some essential items that you would ideally never sell in the late game now build into useful 6200's, but it feels pretty bad to have to hold on to a crucial 1250 or even 500 item even when the game hits ultra-late game stages. A system that allows you to basically increase the stats of an item at a slightly negative cost to effectiveness ratio could be both a QOL change and a new strategic avenue for players to look into.

Basically how it works is items can be upgraded to only improve the base stats they give and their active/passive effects. Upgrading is not quite as cost efficient as simply just buying another item, so you would really need to play around a core item if you're looking to upgrade it early. For example, you can upgrade Fleetfoot like so:

(Every item would have a 6200 version, so in this case there would be a Fleetfoot III, 500 soul items would have a IV tier and 3000 soul items would only have a II tier)


The idea is to provide every single hero a satisfying endgame build without making every single 6200 item have a cheaper component, while also maybe providing new itemization strategies. While it's not optimal in most cases to tier up cheaper items, this could be the solution to keeping one-ability funnel builds around with the new diminishing stacking on ability duration and range. You would still get diminishing returns if you stack these stats on multiple items, but since tiering up cheaper items can be more specifically tuned, stats gained from one source could only offer diminishing returns if stacked on top of other unique sources.

 

[Rosgath]

While the concept of items that can be upgraded isn't a bad idea, I think making every item upgradable is. Item's like the Riftshards (not sure what it was in DOTA, but it's an upgradable item in HoN that gave crit chance and bonus crit damage) or the Codex (again, an item in HoN that dealt a large burst of single target magic damage, upgrades increased damage and reduced CD) are something that I think should be looked into.

Making every item upgradable gives players a way to work around the diminishing returns that are meant to be a limiting factor on the power of things like bonus Range, Duration, and CDR. It's counterproductive to implement a system that keeps the power of those stats in check, then immediately implement a workaround.

A select few items having upgrades isn't a bad idea, though.

 

[gibnewitems]

Not every item should be upgradeable. Most of the items good enough to carry into late game tend to be actives with really good effects, which adds an interesting tradeoff scenario that would disappear if fleetfoot got fleetfoot II.

 

[technicalwaffle]

While the concept of items that can be upgraded isn't a bad idea, I think making every item upgradable is. Item's like the Riftshards (not sure what it was in DOTA, but it's an upgradable item in HoN that gave crit chance and bonus crit damage) or the Codex (again, an item in HoN that dealt a large burst of single target magic damage, upgrades increased damage and reduced CD) are something that I think should be looked into.

That's interesting! I've never heard of these sorts of concepts in other mobas, and yeah this might not be the best implementation but as you said it's an idea that's worth expanding on.

Making every item upgradable gives players a way to work around the diminishing returns that are meant to be a limiting factor on the power of things like bonus Range, Duration, and CDR. It's counterproductive to implement a system that keeps the power of those stats in check, then immediately implement a workaround.

A select few items having upgrades isn't a bad idea, though.

The problem that diminishing returns seemed to aimed to fix was that you got a lot of the same stat from a lot of unique sources, which wasn't a great lever for the devs to keep things in check. But upgrade ratios for items could be tuned per-item and if the only way to funnel one stat was to upgrade an item specifically designed to boost that stat then you could very easily tune that one source without having too much affect on other elements of the game.

Though this may not be the best implementation. It's a bit of a workaround seeing as how I both wanted to discourage players from buying upgrades early game and then incentivize them later on.

 

[technicalwaffle]

Not every item should be upgradeable. Most of the items good enough to carry into late game tend to be actives with really good effects, which adds an interesting tradeoff scenario that would disappear if fleetfoot got fleetfoot II.

I didn't really express it well, but I definitely still wanted this tradeoff to stay. The value to upgrade ratio is meant to be deliberately pretty unoptimal, though that's not communicated clearly to players as the price of the item would still be the same, if not more expensive than selling and buying a 6200.

I think if I made another pass at this concept I would definitely make it more clear that it's a late to end-game build option that lets you hold onto valuable early game actives like Fleetfoot while keeping their stats viable, but still missing out on more powerful and impactful purchases later on. The main problem I was trying to tackle was that honestly it just felt BAD to hold onto a 1250 like Fleetfoot to do stuff like HMC even if I knew it was the correct play. Like MOBAS are designed around continually getting stronger and it just felt weird that I couldn't find a justification for replacing an item I bought 20 minutes ago.

 

[nathanieljbrill]

This is a good idea! As long as it's inefficient souls wise of course.