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Some notes on exp, bounty, uneven teams, and bad players in HLW:
-HLW suffers greatly when games are played with uneven teams, or if a team has some bad players on it. While this certainly is a team game, the game is usually made far too difficult for the good players because of how much the bad players will influence the game.
-In 2v2 scenarios, it was not uncommon to let one player on each team get all the kills to boost that player's income substantially
-In a game with even teams and players of equal skill level, heroes will gain the appropriate amount of exp, and teams should basically be even in income, bounty gained, and levels
-Problems occur when this is not the case:
Consider these games as ten minutes into each game, with players of equal skill level:
-1v1, each hero is level 16, and each team has gained 10,000 gold in bounty, and each player has 8,000 income
-this will be considered normal for this example
-5v5, each hero is level 16, and each team has gained 50,000 gold in bounty, and each player has around 8,000 income
-this means that each player has gained about an equal share in bounty from creeps, and that no one player was fed kills
-2v2, each hero is level 16, and each team has gained 20,000 gold in bounty, but one player has 10,000 income while his teammate has 5,500 income, the other players have 8,000 income
-this means that, while each team has gained the same bounty, the 10,000 income player took most of the kills on his team, and his teammate suffered for this
-income is one of the most important things in this game, so preventing income imbalance is important, but not something that other HLW maps really address
-1v2, the solo player is level 24 and the team of 2 are each level 12, the solo player has 10,000 income and the team of two has 5,000 income, and the solo player has gained double the bounty of the team of two
-a scenario like this is almost inevitable with uneven teams
-creep exp and bounty greatly influence hero levels and player incomes, so uneven teams produce results like this
Bad players will influence the game differently, in that bounty and exp is SO important that bad players can actually give advantages to their team through rather unexpected ways.
Consider this scenario:
5v5
Team 1 has 1 person sending creeps
Team 2 has 5 people sending creeps
Team 2 is only getting the exp and gold from the sends of one person, but must be shared among all five players
Team 1 is getting the exp and gold from the sends of all five players of team two, which means team one is getting 5 times the amount of exp and bounty as team two
This clearly creates imbalance in favor of the team with 4 bad players that aren't sending any creeps. That team will gain more gold from bounty, and more exp for the levels of their heroes.
The only saving grace for the good team of 5 people is that those 4 bad players won't be much help in defending their side, forcing the one good player to do most of the work. Unfortunately, that good player will have been fed so much gold and exp from the team of 5 that the good player won't have any trouble soloing his entire side.
From this information, we can find out a few things. The one person that was sending on team 1 needs to have his/her creeps reward more exp and gold to balance out the loss of gold and exp from his useless team. This allows team 2 to have a fair shot at competing against team 1, since team 1 won't have a mega-fed player.
Since the 4 bad players won't have any income, we can now base exp and gold rewards from each individual creep on the sender's income and the team's total income:
A unit that gives +50 income is sent, with a base reward of 100 exp and gold,
the sender now has 6,000 income, and his 4 teammates each have 40 income,
this means the entire team has 6,160 income (6,000 + 40 + 40 + 40 + 40),
now adjust the exp and gold reward of the creep based on the sender income and the team income (100 * (6,000 / 6,160), which is 97.402),
the creep now gives 97 gold and exp when it dies
After that, a bad player sends the same creep!
The unit gives +50 income, and it still has a base reward of 100 exp and gold,
the sender now has 90 income,
now add the sender's income together with the rest of his team (6,000 + 40 + 40 + 40 + 90 = 6,210),
this means the entire team now has 6,210 income,
now adjust the exp and gold reward of the creep based on the sender income and the team income (100 * (90 / 6,210), which is 1.449),
the creep now gives 1 gold and exp when it dies
Since the good player has been doing all the sending, he gives nearly 100% of the exp and bounty to the opposite team while the bad players give close to no reward (until the bad player sends more)
The team of 5 good players will give similar amounts of exp and gold, but each player will give about 20% of the exp and bounty to the opposite team, adding up to 100% for all five players
Exp is already shared globally with each hero, so now we just need to share bounty in a similar fashion and balance can be achieved.