4Game

A frequent complaint that pops up about the state of DotA is about the overall game having some stagnation, and not just regarding a lack of map changes. For a while the overall objective order and priority in the game has been somewhat unchanged regarding taking T1 towers, Roshan, T2 towers, T3/rax and eventually ending game. Something I think about frequently is an opinion Synderen expressed on his and SUNSfan's podcast a while ago on the issue with new objectives Valve is adding compared to the older ones in the fact that they feel forced compared to the more fluid existing objectives (towers always up, Roshan with a variable respawn versus outpost XP gain occurring on each minute mark).

I had an idea for a new objective and mechanic in the game that has more of a variable aspect to it and was curious to hear other people's thoughts on it. Without further ado, I present the concept of

Empowered Neutrals

• Starting at 5:00, and continuing every 5 minute segment of the game after, a random special neutral will spawn in a specific jungle camp (or both camps for the first spawn) and persist until killed by one team. Killing an empowered neutral will bestow a temporary benefit to the killing team's creeps depending on the neutral that was killed.
• Each team's primary jungle would have a designated spot for this neutral to spawn (my idea is to replace the outposts) and the spawns would alternate each jungle starting at 10 minutes. This would mean if an empowered neutral spawns in Radiant's jungle between 10:01 and 15:00, then the next neutral would spawn in Dire's jungle between 15:01 and 20:00. At 20:01-25:00, the neutral would spawn again in Radiant. This continues until the end of the game.
• The first spawn would be at exactly 05:00 in both jungles and the team that kills a neutral first will secure the 10-15 spawn in their primary jungle. (I couldn't think of a better way to make the initial spawn more fair and less RNG based so early in the game. This could also promote some invasion shenanigans to try and snipe both spawns.)
• Killing an Empowered Neutral grants a small gold and XP bounty to the team that scales with tiers and time, similar to Roshan.
• On every x5-minute mark the difficulty of the neutrals will increase (see table below) up to tier 5. Each tier is harder to kill and bestows stronger benefits to your creepwaves. Their difficulty would follow an exponential curve, with T1 being able to be killed by 2-3 heroes on a team in 10-20 seconds and higher tiers requiring more of a team effort to not prolong the kill. (I have not thought about or fleshed out this part of the mechanic as much because it involves game balancing I do not understand as well.)
• Tier 5 Empowered Neutrals killed after 60 minutes will spawn a strong version of their ally (see proposed neutrals chart below). This would function with the same intention of Tier 5 neutral items to attempt to force a game ending by pushing waves incredibly well.
• If an Empowered neutral is not killed before the next one spawns on the same side, both will occupy the same camp.
• Once killed, the Empowered ability is applied to the next 4 creepwaves spawned following the kill. Multiple abilities can stack if neutrals are killed in succession.

Neutral tiers and spawn times

I also made up a list of creeps I think could be candidates for the empowered neutrals. Each one is based on a camp spawn with the small, medium, and large camp spawns inspiring tier 1-4 progressively and ancients inspiring tier 5. The flavor is that each Empowered Neutral is some type of leader or commander for each available camp. I put what I thought would be interesting benefits to creeps for each tier but didn't heavily compare the numbers to check how balanced certain things are within each tier or compared to other tiers, and was focused more on the flavor of each tier.

Proposed Empowered Neutrals available to spawn

What are people's thoughts on this concept? The idea would be that each tier progressively helps push in your creepwaves as time goes on, enabling winning teams controlling areas to have an easier time pushing highground and losing teams that are able to sneak in a neutral kill a way to relieve some lane pressure. Because the spawns are variable in a 5 minute period and would be in a known location it would encourage teams to ward around each other in an area and play close to contest the spawn, which would be more important as the game goes on. The kill can be sniped just like Roshan and give the benefit to the sniping team, another way for losing teams to try and stage a comeback.