DG wasnt designed or balanced for 1v1 i just got out of a game where both allies and enemies used drops. and never once did a drop lead to gaining map control

 and thats like saying basketball isnt competitive because your shoe came untied so its not your fault

stuff happens you should learn to plan around it

The potions and scrolls are there so that a skilled player does not have to walk back to base after killing a demigod, especially towards the end where the health crystal might be extremely far away and the benefits of the extra gold are minimal compared to the time lost.

YUP!!!   DING, DING, DING, WE HAVE A WINNER!

I play the demo, I lvoe the potion drops, it makes sense to me. Otehrwise I would be bussing back and forth to the base all the frikin time. I would say I would end up probably spending most of my kill money on teleprot scrolls, or I would lose all the time advantage I got killing someone.

Also the healing demigods would be imba.

The trouble I'm having with this post is that far too many people have resigned to the fact that dying is an inevitability when playing Demigod. If you play in a game you will die; this is certainly not the case. My impression of the awards you recieve for killing someone is that they not only encourage team work and strategy, but they also should be an important method of discouraging death. Rather than opting to change the rewards, which are designed to benifit everyone, why not focus on preventing the reason your opponents are receiving them. Preventing your own death is the ideal solution to this problem. Just as players earn more gold for assisting with a kill, the potions and mana scrolls left on the battle field add a pivitol aspect of strategy to the game. All the rewards you receive should be taken as positive reinforcement; You are doing something good, keep doing it! However, the same can be taken for the losing side of a smiter scenario; You are doing something bad, don't do it! Instead of becoming upset that the rewards don't come out in your favor, focus on earning them or preventing them yourself. I'm sure your teammates will be much appreciative.

After all! Killing good, Dying bad!

Jaybuddai, Mayor of Paybacksville

I think you hit it on the head Polynomial. If we had to always return back to the crystal after every fight vs. another demigod this game would suck. It allows you to stay in the action. But another possible reason for having it is simple but I haven't seen anyone hit on it. There has to be a winner. When you're neck deep in the opposing team's base and you're trying to take down a citadel where they have access to their own crystal and towers it's hard to maintian pressure on dropping their citadel because you will be constantly repelled.

If however you manage to get a few kills you can stay in the fight longer. It is a minor difference because near the end game there's so much gear on anyway that it's possible to last for long stretches of time but I think the principle is still the same. It's no different than military armies of the past sustaining their armies by looting the armies they conquered for food, supplies and money. Same concept applies here.

But its not..especially if you got the kills early..

If that is the case, why don't give the killing team the bonus. It seems like some here just wants to side-track the discussion.

I didn't start this to stop reinforcing kills or anything like that. I was only asking for the rationale behind this implementation.

So far, I've heard a few types of responses

- 1: It's to give a boost to the losing team (drops happen near the losing teams base)

- 2: It's to give a boost to the winning team (so they won't have to go back to base)

- 3: It's the game mechanics, deal with it and learn work around it

- 4: It's to make people understand that it's good to make kills

- 5: It's to discourage people from dying, you shouldn't die.

All these taken from above have, in my humble opinion, not addressed the design rationale behind making dying demigods drop a potion or scroll. I think that if any of the above is good reasons, there are other ways to make this happen.

In my opinion potions are a way to encourage a more aggressive playstyle. Demigod already is quite defensive with it's number 1 rule "don't die". Half on HPs? Better retreat even if you might get a kill. The chance of getting a potion can be an incentive to finish a fight even if you'll lose lots of hitpoints and enemy demigods are near as the potion might enable you to continue fighting, to retreat without getting killed or to let of some high mana spells that you otherwise would not have the mana for.

Basically it might just encourage taking risks (like running into towers chasing a demigod) which in my opinion can lead (theoretically, practically at least good players seem to not want to take risks) to more surprising (and in my opinion fun) games as foreseeing enemy moves will be harder when there is an incentive of not playing it safe.

And it just adds some depth. Sometimes you have to have quick reactions to get the potion before the enemy, sometimes it gets quite tricky to remember the potion drop if thinks get heated. You'll have to decide if you want to take a potion even if you're at full life/mana just in order to deny it to the enemy although you might need it later.

In the end the potion drop is only a clear advantage in 1vs1. In situations where a couple of DGs are fighting an enemy DG might get the potion as well.

I don't mind the drops, though would like to see an option to turn them off.

However, I really don't like the jump from 750 to 3000, shouldn't be able to just heal almost all health just by taking a random potion.

Isn't the type of potion that drops random, though?

At first I thought generals dropped mana and assassins dropped health, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I'd be willing to argue that you often require one more than the other, and it's random and luck based whether the correct type drops.

I didn't think of the drops as a reward/punish mechanism, so much as a 'dynamic landscape' mechanism.  Most games I play, when I get a kill, I don't stick around to see what potion is dropped, because his mates are usually rushing to his aid.

His mates are usually healthy enough that they don't need the potion themselves and tend to leave it there also, so then later on, when another encounter happens, there's a potion lying around.  That makes my tactics for that encounter change to take into account another variable.

I don't claim to know what the designers were thinking, but my contribution is that potion/scroll drops are not necessarily a reward/punish mechanic.