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Dominion: Reaching 0 Nexus health no longer ends the game-

Rebonack··11 votes·929 views

-instead, captured points fire a shot at the wall in front of the Nexus every X seconds, dealing 1 point of damage. Once the wall has been destroyed, the enemy Nexus is exposed and your team has to get in there and smash the shit out of it with auto attacks and spells. Dunno how much health the thing should have, but I'm thinking it would be a good idea for it to take a pretty decent amount of time to destroy it and end the game.

This would do four things.

  1. It would get rid of the 'losing slower' impression that Dominion has.
  2. It would add an additional, final phase to the game that distinguishes itself from everything else that's going on.
  3. It would mean that even when you've got two points to the enemy's three, you're still damaging that wall, just more slowly.
  4. Provide a solid incentive to have 5v5 team fights mid every now and again ( in addition to team fights end-game), something the map is sorta lacking at the moment.

The loss of 2 Nexus health when capping/uncapping points and on champion death would be removed, since the bar at the top of the screen would be the wall/force field/whatever health that's just protecting the Nexus.

Because the damage to the wall is based on the number of points you have rather than simply having more, that means a sixth point could be safely added to the middle of the map without causing things to stall out due to a 50/50 split. This sixth point could take the form of a big scary neutral monster that, when killed, becomes an uncontested point for your team until said monster spawns again some amount of time later. This could cause issues with one team acing the other, taking the Market Monster, and then capping everything else. Thankfully there's a solution to that!

If one team manages to capture all five outer points, a large blast from your Nexus nukes the enemy wall for a bunch of health, then all the outer points go neutral. Typically a 5-Cap is pretty difficult to pull off and hold for long, so making it give an immediate reward is still pretty great while also solving the '5cap and camp' problem that can crop up.

Anywho!

Thoughts on the concept?

9 Comments

Duke Anax7 votes

The idea has merrit. Right now Dominion is very stale with a low playerbase, it could use some freshup.

The fact that the end of game is too timer dependant is one thing that turns me away from the game.

Rebonack4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Duke Anax,realm=EUW,application-id=LFfTlAky,discussion-id=UfoGUJ3t,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-08-25T18:33:56.089+0000)

The idea has merrit. Right now Dominiojn is very stale with a low playerbase, it could use some freshup.

** The fact that the end of game is too timer dependant is one thing that turns me away from the game.**

This is something that a lot of players I've talked to who don't like Dominion have brought up. To many, it doesn't feel like you win so much as you don't lose. By adding a final objective your team has to destroy, it would give the map that final push that MOBA players really enjoy. An aspect of the map that's very much missing.

The other big gripe is that the map's lack of secondary objectives. The big neutral monster/capture node should take care of that nicely. Having a big team objective like that pop up every several minutes will give the teams something concrete to fight over.

Rebonack3 votes

Any other thoughts from the peeps of M&M?

If you don't really enjoy Dominion much, do you think changes like those suggested here might make it more fun for you?

For those who are long-time Dominion players, do you think these changes would preserve the feel of the map while adding a bit of fresh air to it?

RisenDarkKnight2 votes

These seem like good changes. I used to play a decent amount of dominion but I haven't much of late. I think it is more to do with riot's lack of attention to the mode than my enjoyment of it. SR does seem more rewarding to play especially ranked.

Kholdstare132 votes

{quoted}

Any other thoughts from the peeps of M&M?

If you don't really enjoy Dominion much, do you think changes like those suggested here might make it more fun for you?

For those who are long-time Dominion players, do you think these changes would preserve the feel of the map while adding a bit of fresh air to it?

I think it would be bad as stated, but the ideas can be worked a bit into a more appealing "intense" finale.

First, your concept of having both walls constantly taking damage in a 3v2 cap scenario just makes the "losing slower" far worse for players. A better idea is simply to invert the score in the current scenario. Make progress and win faster. No real gameplay change, but the cosmetics of it would improve that one area of player feedback. Owning majority now "charges energy" into your own nexus, slowly unveiling a crystal cannon that, upon victory, fires into the enemy base destroying it in a spectacular fashion. This would be part of a full map VU, of course, to allow for an impressive visual display.

I will use the word "progress" when referring to nexus damage or charge as an interchangeable term.

Your finale of "It's exposed, smash it!" is already being done by Gigantic. I propose an alternative gameplay tweak to create an intense finale. Going with the "weapon charge" idea from earlier, make points above 475 (tweakable value) quickly decay when not in majority control. Evenly matched teams can then have a potential for an intense back-and-forth finale, while also stopping any weird respawn rubberband shenanigans from surviving at 1 nexus health to come back too strong because of it. Thematically, the cannon is fully deployed at 475 (again not final value), and the final 25 energy is charging the actual shot. It cements the idea of needing a final "closer" to end a game, which I think is what you mainly wanted. Think of the intensity at the end of a pl_upward match in TF2. Both carts on the lifts, both teams constantly trying for that final push. That's the kind of intensity this simple gameplay change could bring.

As for your side idea of a contested neutral objective in place of stormshields, I agree, but that's a hard one to design. As you said it needs to avoid snowballing into a 5-cap, which is a likely scenario if a team were to ace in the center of the map only to then obtain an additional buff or progress. Simply "allowing" the 5-cap in exchange for flat damage is a bad idea, and it would often be more strategically viable to just then take a 4-cap and sit on it.

It needs some mechanic to balance out the merrits of success with a cost that makes the team unable to snowball-cap from it. One such idea would have all allies assisting the objective get teleported to base upon success, and ascend into a buffed state. For a flat-progress objective it could be gathering crystal energy which you then need to transport back to base by hand to deposit and use (goes with the "charge" idea). One other alternative would be to leave the neutral objective as a comeback mechanic or equalizer, something a losing team can go for to shake things up. A "kill switch" that nukes the map killing everything, and resetting all points to neutral could serve that kind of purpose. Possibly A blast of flat progress, but at the cost of resetting all points and force-teleporting all champions back to base instead. The latter would give the winning team a reason to contest it beyond preventing their opponents from going for it, but at a cost that's greater for them (losing cap advantage) while favoring the others. The former would add an extra point of stress and awareness to a leading team, while giving additional options to the other. While not as strong as a cap would be, it does a minimum amount of work for the team and may at times be easier to go for.

Kinjishi2 votes

" Once the wall has been destroyed, the enemy Nexus is exposed and your team has to get in there and smash the shit out of it with auto attacks and spells." ...so you want to make it like all the other maps and have to destroy it physically. How bland. No, thank you.

Shard 17712 votes

You seem the be missing the point of all the implications that arise from it, and also how that would positively impact the design of Dominion.

Kudos to you, Mr. Rebonak for the ideas. Also, a Neutral / 6th Point on CS is badly needed. While Dominion is focused on having more skirmishes than team-fights, having an occasional team-fight with more than 6 Champs would be a nice change to the game. Also, with your suggestions, there would be prime team-fight location on the left & right extremes of the map along with the Center.

Also, perhaps instead of unlocking all of the Points when a Tema achieves the 5-Cap, maybe it gives everyone on the other Team an extra Soul-Anchor since Rito insists on keeping that thing...

Rebonack1 votes

Mostly the goal of this topic is simply to encourage discussion about what people think could be improved about the map. I've pitched lots of ideas over the years (some good, some not so good), but the hope is that people will think about the map and what could be improved.

Pinjakri1 votes

I like the idea but instead of the tower firing the shot every few seconds how about: Every time your team captures a turret it fires a shot at a wall that's protects the enemy nexus. The tower then goes into stasis for an X amount of time and may be captured again after the stasis ends. The wall has 10 points of health and is destroyed after it hits 0. Now the enemy can destroy the nexus like you said, but what if two HUGE minions spawn on either side of the wall when it is destroyed to act like super minions and defend the nexus and attack enemy champions that approach the nexus. I also believe the buffs in the middle need some updates so how about having more of them around the map (and decrease the vision so the fog of war isn't only in the jungle) and instead of a shield and damage, they give increased capture speed and reveal the area for, say, 30 seconds. And a final note: update the garrison summoner spell so it takes on the old buff effect and give you increased damage for moderate amount of time and a shield when you land a spell. The regular minions spawn when you capture a turret and help you capture other turrets and target the nexus when you destroy the wall

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