Item Draft - Lattyware/itemdraft GitHub Wiki

Core Idea:

Custom game mode for Dota 2 using the new custom game tools in Reborn.
Items are drafted at the start of the game, instead of heros, and skills are bought with gold as the game goes on.

Everything is still up in the air - things may change if they are not viable due to limits of DOTA's modding tools, or because they play badly.

Create custom draft screen where items are drafted in a similar way to ability draft.
Create a custom UI for leveling, where players choose items to level.
Disable the normal leveling, replace with the custom one.
Create a custom shopping interface for buying spells.
Disable the normal shop.

You get experience in terms of item gold.
You can draft items up to X cost during the draft (X a number to balance).
You then get X/25 (or maybe smaller steps) per level.
You can then 'spend' your experience (level up) to 'buy' items from the pool you drafted.
Item slots remain unchanged.

Draft a base hero?
- Maybe costs you out of your base draft pool (reducing 'X' above, better base stats -> cost).
- Maybe buy the base stats/growth too?
Only one person can draft each top-level item.
- Except consumables?
- Exclude recipes? (Only one person can buy any dagon, for example).
Draft order?
- People will get different amounts of items.
- Rotated like ability draft, with people dropping out when they run out of draft money ('X' above)?
Bans?

A core set of consumables are still purchased from the new shop with gold.
- Vision would be too inflexible, obs wards should remain buyables.
- Invis detection is lacking in skills, sentries and dust remain buyables.
- TP/Smoke may also want to be buyables. Playtest to see.
Other consumables, when drafted, give you the item repeatedly over time. Intervals vary.

Skills cost to upgrade each level (like dagon, for example).
Skills will have a one per-team limit (stops horrific abuse, e.g: thundergod's wrath).
Skills will be sellable, for reduced gold, as per normal.
Prices set on skills to balance.
Invoker's invoked skills are there, rather than his base set.
May need some way to stop insanely OP combos of skills (known from ability draft).

Skills have some kind of build up like items (e.g: nightmare + brain sap == fiend's grip).
- Seems too hard to make good build-ups, and build-ups too slow.
Creating items that do what all skills do and skills that do what items do.
- A lot less UI work, reuse existing stuff.
- Allows for couriering of skills, instant items.
- Probably a lot more work, harder to update when changes in core happen, levelling still problematic.