What was the design rational behind DG minions not awarding exp?

good question.

Minions cost a lot of gold. Also, by design they're in a separate category than creep.

During the betas, the generals were weakers than the assassins (the whole thing was remarkably rebalanced one week before launch, creating the balance we have now).

The devs have made a lot of things to cover the power gap between the 2 kinds of demigods, so maybe they didn't implement the xp for the minions in order to make them a bit more powerful.

u spend lots of money on grunts too... infact much much more.  1800 + 3600 + 4800 + 6000 = 16200 gold.  and what its for minions? like 12000? plus you get a bunch of other minions that you get for free.  erebus get an extra 10 other minions for basicly free.

Easy question. Because you dont have to think where to command your minions too. It would be shit if they gave exp. That would feed the enemies. Instead of this they should nerf the HP of Ebs minions.

If a General Demigod is using minion and holding a lane against a Demigod who doesn't use them, the rival demigod gains level faster. Thus in effect taking minions becomes a negative for your team. And no one would use them (Like when the game first came out.)

Reinforcements are consistent for both sides. Minions are exclusive to generals.

If minions gave xp and gold, the team with the most generals would be at an innate disadvantage. An Erebus or Oak planting his flag would be a boost to the opposing team, as it's difficult to micro your new minions the instant they spawn in order to prevent them from dying.

I also feel minions are perfectly viable as cannon fodder or soakers, and making them be rewarding to kill would remove that aspect. I think minions should remain expendable, and you shouldn't be punished for using them as such.

If minions were to give xp and gold, I want the same reward for stepping on Regulus' mines.

Minions "belong" to the generals. It's as if you would get exp for every second or third hit you give an assassin. I think it's OK this way.

Well your question was what do i get out of killing thier minions... so here it is... so thier minions are dead and they are easy to kill.

Or as for the tower question... so your tower is not destroyed.

Minions die alot, especially without HoB, the game wouldnt be balanced like that, and minion builds arent invincible, and minions die against towers. Like anything though if you leave your towers undefended it will go down evntually.

I think this applies mostly to Erebus and Oak minions and perhaps idols. If you kill a Yeti from Sedna or a Shambler from QoT it costs them quite a lot of mana to get them again, so there you "damage" your opponent by killing the minions.

If Oak or Erebus minions gave gold/XP it could be quite hard to balance how much that should be. For example, if the Erebus Nightwalkers gave the same amount as a standard soldier it would mean an 80% (max. Conversion Aura) gold/XP increase at the lane where Erebus fights.

These are definitely the best answers.

This

The cost of minions for generals seems to be balanced against the fact that assassinss cant have them, hence generals can spend 2k (x3 potentially if all minions are taken) and not have the same equipment that assassin could could potentially have. two or 3 different 1500g items makes quite a difference.

In regards to unit dg specific minions?

Probably the same reason that people are complaining about minions now, they are too easy to produce. It gives a negative benefit to using minions vs your opponennt at a lower level, much like priests used to be.

I still think the best option for minion spam builds would be to have a cheaper option to add a %cleave attack. Even if only a marginal attack but say 25% chance, im sure it woul be a good counter. Perhaps with +500 armour as well.

Well isn't your issue really with the fact that minions can be sent halfway across the map and still be effective? I think it would make a lot more sense to put a range limit on skills and items that improve minions. Snipe has a 90 yard range, so I think 45 yards would be sufficient.

ok, i can live with that answer.. seems fair enough.  only problem i can see is if u count minions as being part of the demigod then think about this:

Erebus: each minion has 730 HP and 20 damamge.  that means that when all 10 of them are together they have 7300 HP and do 200 damamge a sec.  that is in fact an entirely new demigod (basicly)  once u add items and more skills they become something like 12000 HP with 380 damage (and that doesn't include idols).  now there is currently no demigod in the game that can reach that amount of HP and with erebus u still have the actual character.  erebus basicly has a free demigod that he can run (alone) into enemy structures of units and do damamge equal to that of a demigod but once the minions are killed the other team receive no reward for was basicly seems like a DG kill. 

i agree though that making them grant exp AND gold would just be rediculus and i have not suggested in the OP that that should happen.  if i think of a non game breaking idea i will let u knwo i was just asking the question that no one has asked yet.

This 'extra demigod' is pretty easily countered due to taking up to 10x damage from AoE's, losing DPS every 1200 HP, having no skills, and requiring at LEAST 2 waves of creeps to get up and running (if you get minions 100% of the time). Then there's the fact that getting this requires you to build your Demigod a certain way (minion damage/HP stacking) which is known to be slightly less efficient than typical HP-stacker builds, as well as investing 2-3 entire skill trees in minions. The extra Demigod can also be stunned for 10 seconds by frost novas and the like, and has trouble attacking while moving.

Seems prefectly reasonable to me.

Make higher level minions cost more mana. 200 mana at level 1 minion and 300 for level 4's? The lower tier mana cost is good but stronger minions need to cost more mana to summon.

Imho this is just a bad design mechanic.

GPG just didn't got any ideas how to balance minniion properly.

Because of this problem they just made them to cannon fodder with no gold/xp for kills.

If you take any spiritual ancestor of Demigod (rpgs, rts etc.) one fundamental balancing method is:

Punishment for death of your own units.

Strangely Demigod is the only game with units/summons that I know that has no real punishment for losing your own units.

In every RTS the punishment involves a COST to buy the unit which you totally lose with the death of the unit.

In demigod you just resummon your units.

In every RPG the punishment involves a LOSS OF POWER or HARSH RESUMMON RESTRICTIONS.

In Demigod the mana cost is very low especially coupled with the easy ways to acquire high mana reg (compared to DotA).

The summons have no life timer (unlike to DotA, Guild Wars)

The CD to resummon is very low (compared to WoW Warlock, Hunter or just DotA again ).

I really would like to see any punishment added BUT only coupled with a buff for the strength.

That way they would be more than just cannon fodder which would imrpove the deepness of strategy/tactic of demigod.

The way how Idols and Minions work currently dumbs the strategy involving them down to thinking like this:

I also think it's a bad idea to give Generals Idol slots while Assassins don't get anything comparable.

Cheap items have a far better gold/effect ratio than more expansive ones. So you are best off with filling every slot first.

Generals got 3 Item slots more and their Assassin builds are also playable which throws especially priests as best HP/sec item out of balance.

Every RTS is balanced around the assumption that all players are going to be fielding units either to support a 'commander' or because traditionally, those units are all you have.

DG isn't every other RTS.  Here, we have 4 characters that supposedly depend on unit assistance being balanced against 4 characters that don't.  Now, whether or not that balance is being appropriately handled is certainly open to debate but the point is, there are different mechanics in play here that you won't find in your standard RTS - Not one that I've ever played, anyway. 

As far as RPG's are concerned, summoning mechanics are far from standard.  Games like Diablo and Titan Quest and whatnot, by my recollection, handle most summons in the same way as DG - They're just disposable minions that follow you around until they die and the cooldowns are hardly prohibitive.

a lot of gold?

considering erebus and oak got infinite of them totally free...

i think the opener is right after all, a very low amount of gold and/or exp should be awarded cause with pet builds the risk is ZERO and the advantage is becoming big

let's say you want to assume that generals personal minions are considered part of their powers, and thus reward no xp. i still don't see why summoned idol minions shouldn't be considered like creep and reward xp (ie they could be treated seperately).

The only I see with awarding XP/gold to non-idol summons is that now EB and Oak would need to be able to have control over whether their minions are created or not. They need to be able to have the choice to feed gold/xp from thier minions that Sedna and QoT would have by summoning them directly.

I just don't get why they need to give exp. If you do 2k damage to Sedna and she heals it and then gets healed by a priest you don't get exp. You don't get exp for destroying shields, surviving fireballs, etc., so why for minions?

cause shield and heals can't be walked across the map without their creater to do massive amount of damamge.  if minions were actualy cannon fodder and did no damamge what so ever then sure i'd accept them not giving reward... but since they can 3X or ever 4X ur dps i feel there is a small problem