I had an interesting idea about item purchasing mechanics. Anyone familiar with Dota knows all about recipes and so far they seem conspicuously absent. I think the simple buying mechanic is okay but I'm still hoping to see something a little more interesting as well. However, recipes are a well known for being very unintuitive and difficult for new players to pick up.
My idea is that a system of tiered items is implemented and instead of recipes items are purchased using other items of certain tiers are part of the purchase price. Just for example lets say there are tiers 1-3. tier 1 items simply cost gold but a tier 2 item costs a certain amount of gold and a tier 1 item (maybe even 2 tier 1 items). Tier 3 naturally would either cost more gold + a tier 2 item+ 1-2 tier 1 items or something like that. The notion I'm thinking of is like card games where to play a certain powerful card another card must be discarded.
At a glance this is similar to a recipe but it isn't because any tier 1 or 2 items can be used as payment for the the item requirement. This is purely a cost as items don't combine and give bonuses to the new item. This presents many interesting choices for item builds. Which items in your inventory do you sacrifice? Is it better to buy the cheapest items to build your t2 item fastest or do you buy t1 items that are the most helpful for you now and trade them out later?
Anyway, the point of this is to provide a way for items to be built which is simple and doesn't require memorized formula's but still results in interesting and deep choices. It would be very dynamic allowing many possible paths to upper tier items.
