It is sometimes really unfair how the initial spawns of your characters are placed, like in some MP maps a spawn point is really close to a victory point, but you barely missed it because it just happens that your dwarf spawned there instead of your human (while the other guy got a break and was able to get his VP easy). I understand that the random start point adds to the unpredictability of games, but that really isn't what I (we?) want in a strategy game. There are already a lot of randomness (dice rolls, card draws, random discards, etc etc), so why would we want more randomness in a PvP match? Instead of randomly placing our 3 units in the start positions, simply allow the players to place their own units there, don't misinterpret this as allowing the players to place their 3 units anywhere on the map, rather you still have to choose the 3 initial starting positions. You only get to choose which of your units goes in which. This system can be accomplished in two different ways: 1) At the start of each game, give each side 1-2 minutes to place their units in the 3 starting positions. After they are done placing, they can hit done/ready/etc and wait for the other player to do the same. If after 1-2 minutes, a player hasn't placed his units, or not all 3 of his units, the game will simply randomly place them for him. Then the game starts as usual. 2) Players take turns placing their units. Player 1 (P1) has 30s-1m to place his first unit in 1 of 3 starting positions. If P1 fails to place his starting unit the computer will place his first unit randomly. Afterwards Player 2 (P2) will place his starting unit, and rinse and repeat until all 6 units are placed. therefore initial start up time should only be 3m-6m (I prefer 3, but you guys can work on the timing yourself). This system will introduce another layer of strategy, in that you'll have to counter your opponents placement system, while still working on where to best place your dwarf . I think these changes could add a lot of strategy to this game, and will minimize the "$#@$ why did my priest get placed there?!" TLDR: Allow players to place their units in the allowed starting positions.
I would guess that when building a party (race/class-wise), a consideration should be "is this going to suck if my characters get placed on the wrong start tiles?" On a lot of the Celestial maps, my dwarf wizard has trouble maneuvering into a good position. This is a drawback of my party, not of the map. On Temple or Dojo, for instance, there's one starting position whence my wizard can walk to a good spot, and two whence he can't. That's why we put in extra team moves and/or step attacks, in order to help our slow characters get into the game.
I kind-of agree with both sides here: 1)this is an aspect of party composition: the more dwarves in your party, the higher risk of starting placement screwing them; giving an advantage to teams with highly mobile characters is important to balance out the significant advantage that large HP pools give. 2)that said, this is one place where I feel RNG can weigh too heavily on a match, and where are relatively simple interface change (I realize that nothing is simple with a game like this programming, but... relatively) could add some strategic depth. right now the most unbalanced types of effects it has are a) his elf step warrior started up front and my dwarf heal priest started up front; gg 2vp advantage from control points for nothing, or on a different map b) both of our warriors are dwarves but his started right up front and mine started 4 turns away in a corner, and I lost the game before he got in melee. Overall, though, I think the randomness helps forces people into relying on a more well rounded strategy; setting your own spots might occasionally alleviate a headache, but it could also lead to really annoying or formulaic strategies if every team member can be guaranteed to start where they want!
I think the problem is in the map design. I think atm how the game works is good, but we need more and better balanced maps.
