As the title suggest, do you think the changes to shield delay on sentries further encourage snowballing on the map?
As it stands, I find it a little too tough to turn a match around once you lose that first sentry (having experience both sides of the situation). I think this sentry change, while made with good intentions and logic, has the side effect of further decreasing the chances of a team coming back if their first sentry falls. What do you guys think?
I would have more minions on the losing side come out, or decrease the minions on the winning team. The winning side could be like, since you are doing so well, you do not need me to be pumping out minions for you. That is what the sentry could say. 
As it stands right now, the shepards make push backs, even in power play situations with three mercs, almost impossible.
I think the shield on your forward sentry should be dropped if not significantly reduced after you take down the other forward sentry.
Then the losing team can decide between a back door push or turtling against the sheparded forces attacking the primary.
I feel like that would make the battles a bit more exciting. As it is right now it’s either a slaughter or an extended grappling marathon at the primary sentry with teams struggling to put down Shepard after Shepard at their accelerator.
I like both suggestions… I think something should be considered. I’ve never understood why MOBAs have always decided to reward a team that’s leading the game by providing them with more powerful minions.
If they’ve attained a lead in the game, they’re probably ahead in shards/XP and at a natural advantage due to the other team’s 1st sentry being destroyed. There really isn’t a good reason to provide them with minion boons.
Beefing up the minions makes sense because of the extra distance they have to travel, but there’s really no effective way to get your trickle of vanilla minions past the onslaught of shepards and overshielded heroes outside of a lucky break without precision teamwork and an effective Miko to sustain the push to take down the shield.
I see what you’re saying, but it honestly just results in the beefed up minion wave massacring the regular waves and giving the already ahead team an even larger advantage.
In every MOBA the devs make this mistake. All other things being equal, keeping the waves as is (UNbeefed) would simply result in a stalemate closer to the losing team’s final structure/sentry/what have you. That’s still an advantage for the winning team. Why developers think they should beef up the minion waves so they effectively push the lane to the next objective all by themselves is beyond me. I thought that’s what players were for. So now you have the already losing team having to devote more manpower to pushing the lane than the winning team, freeing up the winning team to capture objectives that further push their lane or focus on taking out enemies with all their players, further digging a hole for the losing team to climb out of. It’s all a bunch of advantages that aren’t necessary. A winning team shouldn’t be handed so many advantages. That’s what results in the snowball seen in so many MOBAs.
EDIT- To illustrate:
It would be like giving an American football team the ability to put an extra player on the field for every 7 points they gain over the other team. That wouldn’t be considered fair in competitive play; buffing minions for the already winning team is on that same level of fairness, from my perspective.
On more thought, I withdraw my assertion that unbuffed waves would push a new stalemate closer to the next objective. All else being equal, the unbuffed waves would present the same stalemate position. However, in practice we see that buffed minion waves, instead, decimate the unbuffed ones and push the next objective all by themselves. This is the advantage that’s both unnecessary and contributes to a snowballing effect that’s a detriment to the competitive nature of the genre.
So what is the solution?
From my perspective I can think of a few solutions: A: eliminate or severely limit all buffs applied to bots by the destruction of the first sentry. B: Reduce the spawn rate of the attacking bots. C: instead give the loosing team’s bots a slightly weaker Buff and reduce the spawn rate to say 8/10ths of normal for example. but the buff is lost once the team with the buff destroys the opponents first sentry. I’m not sure which one makes the most sense. suggestions?
I don’t think the CD on the shield is really the problem. I had plenty of games the last few days where we turned it around. Because our team started to play better together in the end.
The thing i did had today: A marquise who somehow just ran past all turrets/towers hid in a corner and snipped bot sentry’s down… The sentry’s didn’t attack him because he was to far. the creeps didn’t agro because he wasn’t near them. And the notice that your sentry is getting attack is barely noticeable with all thats going on, on the screen.
I think a closer look needs to be taken at the buff given to the minions after the first sentry is lost. The overshield effect is just too much. Either weaken the overshield effect noticeably, or find another buff to give the minions. With the buildables on the battlefield, it makes it even worse of a problem.
The ideal should be that the minions simply reach a stalemate halfway between the winning team’s first sentry and the losing team’s last sentry. This still provides an advantage for the winning team, but not so much that their minions, if left alone, will push themselves all the way to the sentry. That’s too much of an advantage, and pulls the focus of the match away from the players and towards the NPCs themselves. The match’s outcome, quite honestly, should be influenced as little as possible by the minions. It’s all about players having control; whether it be a discussion of CC or buffed minion waves, it’s never ideal to take too much control away from the players.
EDIT- Typos, ahoy!
I get the changes on the shield CD, and I think the issue is the minion waves themselves at the core… But the longer shield CD just exacerbates the issue. See my post above: I think GBX needs to take a closer look at the buff minions get and adjust them until it’s not enough to enable the minion waves to push to the sentry all by themselves if left unchecked.
Sure i can understand that. But there will always be a small difference. Just look at any other moba. there will always be a small difference per game on how the creeps meet.
I’m just saying they also need to look at a backdoor protection. Currently there is none.
How about make all the minions equal. But make it if you take outa human. You get a bonus minion. If you can take out two humans around the same time, the minion would be better. Earlier i was playing with randoms, we got pushed hard. We came back and took out all 5 of them. But by the time we bought our stuff back we were just able to pick at there sentry.
So i think with that getting 5 kills so close together would pop out a nice big minion to push hard against the opposing team. That way its more an ebb and flow. They were on offence, we got some good plays in, now we are on offence, instead of being back at the middle again.
In other MOBA’s there is an objective/buff both teams can fight over to encourage team fights, and discourage turtling under sentry. In Battleborn there are mercenary camps…but honestly I find those just as annoying as the enemy when I’m ranged. I feel like the mid camp should be something like a baron (League) or fire giant (Smite). If a losing team got this, they could turn it around. And if there is a defensive stalemate, that could help end it. Just an Idea, although when I scrim with 2 competitive teams it seems necessary.
I think the easiest fix would be longer power plays, then maybe weakened minions during power play or over shields at friendly accelerators only.
If all else fails, backdoor merc with Attikus…
Crazy idea:
I think the last sentry should have it’s fighting potential greatly increased. Such as a super laser with AoE that is only able to fire every 3 or so minutes, but lays waste to minions and battleborns (obviously should have a giant red mark on the ground before impact). Other abilities could include being able to target two players/enemies at the same time, having a farther detection range, and have more firing weapons.
The next step is I think they should have standing pads for all of the team to stand on - like the ones used in story missions to open a gate or launch things. The idea is that if the entire team agrees, they can stand on these and send their remaining super sentry to the location where the front line sentry was. It is a risky play because you are effectively bringing your last sentry closer to the enemy and losing the environmentally siege-resistant location (which btw, I think should have more defense or better structures/weapons), but it possesses stronger abilities than the previous sentry, and thus will hopefully prevent snowballing in terms of currency, mercenary, and location.
I kind of wish there was something like this in Meltdown Mode as well; a sort of high-risk-but-high-ability thing that you could get. Like paying 1800 for a super robot that can wreck battleborns, but if the enemy blows it up, it will spill 1800 on the ground.
Have the team that is in the lead suffer twice the amount of time they are out if killed. Cause baddass people can get cocky.
That way if the lossing team gets a powerplay, they can capitalize on the power play more.
Get rid of the overshield completely its totally unneeded, and make the shepards only sapwn like every 3rd wave.
I have played many games from the loosing side and here are my two cents. I notice the biggest problem after are big bot goes down that even if we do manage to kill 3 of the enemy team we just are not able to make any sort of push because unless its like the last 10 minutes of the match the players will re-spawn before we make any lane progress. This is when we should be able to be doing the most damage back to but it does not happen and i am unsure how to fix that situation. Out of like 10 of these games that i lost 2/3 of them we were able to push back late game and kill there big bot because of the long respawn times but in the end they had a better score because for half the game they had field control of the resources that we were to busy defending to acquire what seems like a horrible way for them to win as well. I don;t know if there is any way to really balance this and that is why there is a surrender button.
I have had that same problem also. Kill 3 of them, and not really a good push back. So here is my idea.
Maybe an extra 5 seconds for every enemy dead at the same time? So if you take out 3 back to back. The winning team is out for an extra 15 seconds.
That way you get a bonus for playing real well. Maybe up it to 10 seconds. Or have the people vote for it?