Haunted Mines was always one of my favorite maps. I’ll give you a few moments to curse my name…you good? Ok then, on we go. I know it had its flaws but it always stood out to me since it had something none of the other maps had, an above and below ground mechanic. I loved this. I know this gave it balance issues and from what I hear gave the coders/programmers a lot of issues. But since the dev team has become smaller the likelihood of an all new map is somewhat distant. Here are my suggestions to fix/improve the map.
Day/Night Cycle:
The implementation of the day night cycle will feed into the story of the map as well as its new mechanics. With the Raven Lord growing in power he seeks new minions to serve in an army. What better place to acquire already trained soldiers that will instantly obey your commands than those from the grave. However the Grave Keeper isn’t too fond of the Raven Lord coming into his dominion and taking what’s his.
At night the mines open so players can go and collect the skulls of the undead that have risen . The skulls can then be paid as tribute at certain shrine locations throughout the map. This is essentially how you capture camps now. Also during the night, vines grow over the buildings to offer protection and increasing all structure’s armor by 50. And once someone attempts to attack a structure vines will attempt to root them in place (similar to the Grave Golem Bosses on Cursed Hollow). This will hopefully incentivize players to head underground and collect skulls and force team fights. Once daylight returns, the vines return underground to reclaim any undead that were not killed. Heroes with the bribe talent will now earn skulls instead that only they can use.
Shines:
Skulls collected by your team go towards a team total as opposed to being held by the Hero that collected them. This means skulls cannot be dropped upon killing an enemy Hero and anyone can go to a shrine to turn them in. However paying the tribute is a channel and the skulls tick down. Interrupting a channel before its finished will allow the other team to pay the remaining tribute needed to claim the camp. Whichever team pays the last skull claims the camp. Skulls paid stay paid until camp is captured and are not reset on day/night change. Even the vision towers require tribute. Teams can save skulls and pay all camp tributes at once if wanted. Grave Golem (Boss camps) still exist but once a tribute has started, tribute can only be paid for the next minute up to total of 100. Again, team paying last skull wins the camp. There is no reset timer on this camp so technically 2 can be capped back to back.
Anyways, there are my ideas. I’m really open to any kind of change that will make the map fun again as long as it keeps the above/below ground mechanic. What do you guys think?