The "whys" of TotA

I will revise my own assessment of this being the "worst" mechanic ever. It is actually kind of a fun aside once you get past all the downsides. However, apart from perhaps the early days of heist league, it is certainly the LONGEST mechanic and I wouldn't consider that a positive, considering how much of it is simply wasted time.

@above: You seem to be making a lot of excuses re: opportunity costs. There are plenty of better ways to achieve everything you defended (with the exception of your dps comment...I'll give you that one). Wasting time in the form of walking is never a good design decision (see D4...). Wasting time in the form of watching yourself dead on the ground for sometimes an extended length of time is NOT a good design choice, whether it provides "impact" to poor decisions or not. I would RATHER instantly lose the entire encounter than what they have right now.

Opportunity cost as a form of wasted time is just dumb, that is a poor excuse and you know it...unnecessarily extended walking is not a "cost", it is poor design. Watching the game being played without being allowed to play it is not a "cost", it is poor design.

With the exception of this whole "channelling" thing, I believe my initial why's still stand, as even though there may be a REASON behind them all, they are poor superficial reasons and could have been done in a much more fluid fashion.

Examples: our npcs being wet noodles compared to enemy. Above's defense of this is that we don't want to be able to steamroll the enemy. Our npcs can be a LITTLE weaker than the enemy to avoid this outcome, but they should AT LEAST respawn at the same rate and be stronger than they are now. Additionally, all the WALKING: once the arena battle is over, the reward window should pop up automatically. I'm not opposed to walking around the npc area again after battle, but walking through the entire arena just to exit it once the battle is done is stupid. Make the npc area smaller, and have the waypoint be INSIDE the npc area.

I had high hopes for this mechanic as i love auto battlers. This one is currently terrible and not fun to play due to the fact that your team mates suck, they always die in one hit to the enemy units, and the only way you can do this content with kind of regularity is to have a gigachad totem build to keep them busy while you have insane movespeed and can blink around doing tiny taps on each totem before you get shot from an arrow/spell from offscreen. This could be a great league mechanic and i don't even care how much 'time' it wastes. If its fun its fun. Currently this is NOT fun.

Also, the bugs with invulnerable towers not allowing you to even win a match even if your 'strategy' is spot on, is just salt in the wound.

I'd like to add another BIG "why":

Given all the current punishments against our team and teammates...

WHY WHY WHY are we blocked from resurrecting if our tower is being channeled? If an enemy happens to target your personal tower FIRST, its an automatic loss because your npcs are too weak and too stupid to get rid of them, and you can't resurrect while the tower is being channeled. If the reasoning for us having far weaker NPCs is to give the other team an "edge" balanced by our own tactics and power...then WHY are we entirely shut down in this way and reliant on our totally subpar npcs.

This also exacerbates another "why": the fact that we have to SIT there while dead and watch the entire battle. I've had enemy teams take out my own tower first, leaving 10 other towers for them to destroy while I'm dead and sitting there for minutes at a time....OY.


Look...its fine to weigh the mechanic against us, since we are human and will ultimately out-think the AI in almost every situation. But when literally everything is HEAVILY weighed against us its just unfair and frustrating for no real reason.

1) Our team's resurrection times are WAY longer
2) Our NPCs are WAY weaker
3) Our DPS is meaningless in the actual tower destruction part of the game
4) The other team will ALWAYS out-tank us, even our main dps source.
5) We can't revive if our tower is being channeled.

This is just too much...literally #2 would be enough. Maybe even #2 and #3, but all 5...

I would like to add, can I please at least watch the game, after I have died...

I dislike the way the floor looks at me...

"

King_Yoshi wrote:

I would like to add, can I please at least watch the game, after I have died...

I dislike the way the floor looks at me...

So true! We can't even spectate properly like a true MOBA lol.

Some faults I’ve noticed in plying this league:

1 enemy field master and all your units spam attack the walls while your totems die.

1 giant turtle on the other teams defense and all of the totems are invulnerable.

1 shot by every enemy once your above roughly 250 rating, on top of lag spikes that run you into these attacks.

Enemy ai much smarter, ex: enemy attackers will turn and defend if your character crosses over.

Unknown/random revive times after you get one shot.

Friendly flankers will randomly leave totems they’re destroying prior to finishing and move to a different one, while enemy ones will commit to finishing off totems and sometimes not even get stunned when you attack them.

Why is the enemy leader a completely Uber boss tank, while I’m basically a juggergnat that can’t even do damage to any units.

Aoe fire attackers will just farm your revive because the fire dot damage is insane.

Too many units have further attack visibility than my entire screen. Mystic profit, death guy, some bosses even shoot defensive aoe spells while they’re on the attacking side of the map so you can’t telegraph any of this.

Sometimes you get stunlocked on a totem a lot longer than 5 seconds

Why does it seem the enemy has thousands more in points for units by mid to late game? I even try to tackle the ones getting the largest sponsorship to try and avoid them accruing and yet they’ll enter the final match with majority 1,000+ cost units.

This could really use some serious tuning. I’m not sure what testing went on for this, but it seems very limited with this many imbalances.