4Game

One of the most consistently requested items in the next patch (and the last patch) is map changes, here are a few of my ideas please comment your thoughts and what changes you'd like to see!

No creep slow zones/abnormal pathing…

I think they might bring back Sideshops. I would love that for nostalgia value alone. Salves and Clarities might need old cancel rules back (any damage including creeps). With Stout Shield gone I think they could be added back without too many issues.

Outposts/Shrines gone. Its nice having contestable teleport targets, however they never sat right with me. I have a replacement listed below, however I think there's also room for something like an Experience Rune. 1/4 or 2/4 of the current Bounty Rune spawns randomly become an Experience Rune. This might be too power creepy, then again so were Outposts.

General map changes: more low ground ingress points on river. There have been a few patches with "kill box" staircases that take the form of a small stream or inlet going into the jungle, I would love to have those back, going deeper into the jungle even.

Ancient camps a little closer to bases – I really like the risk/reward of having the small (triangle) jungle vs the big jungle, and they've become arguably the most important area control point on the map. It seems prudent to move the ancient camps to almost behind tier 2 towers, making it riskier for the enemy to contest stacks there.

I also think its high time for a complete review of terrain, and tree density/placement, more trees overall, more pronounced clearings, cleaner angles surrounding towers.

Instead of having Eagle/Cliff ward spots, what if you could buy a 200-400 gold item (Rooftrellen's Acorn?) that consumed a tree and it grew into a ward with unobstructed vision? Destroyed in 3-5 hits from a Quelling blade, or 10 hero attacks. Special, large model only visible under True Sight, or if enemy tries to destroy it as they would a normal tree (Quelling, Tango, Spells "reveal" it). Gold bounty equal to cost. Starts with 0 vision, takes a full minute to reach normal Observer radius, has 8-10 minute duration. Maybe there's a second, more expensive version that offers True Sight, no vision delay, is tankier, is targetable as a friendly structure for town portal, and has a small pathable area to cliff people with..

Accompanied by the new "Rizzrack's Tinderbox": channel it for 10 seconds on a tree to burn and eventually destroy the tree. Doing so grants low AOE flying vision around the burning tree for 15-30 seconds, jumps randomly to nearby trees up to 5 times. Special rules required for the Acorn ward.

Finally, I have been thinking about how to borrow Brush from League of Legends. I settled on this: patches of tall grass (think gen. 3 Pokemon) that slow movement when you're inside them. Maybe they're like a more condensed Bramble Maze, with a large clump in the middle, maybe they're just straight blocks of ground cover.

Had one more idea after posting, what if they put Outposts where old Sideshops were and controlling them gave access to the Shopkeeper?

Thanks for taking the time to read!

edit: grammar and formatting

TLDR: bring back Sideshop, new EXP Rune, more dangerous jungle design, rework tree and terrain layout, Ancient camps closer to base, flying vision tree wards, temporary vision tinderbox item, steal Brush from LoL