echinodermata

Can somebody explain exactly what bnet 2.0 did to kill modding?

Yet again, the old Red Alert 2 prism tower. You know, the one that nobody has gotten to work yet. I think.

Agree. The problem with that is the middle difficulty players. For example, if there's players on all the difficulties, the players on normal are getting gipped compared to the easys because they're playing at harder difficulty but can't influence the timer any more than the easys. Good idea.

For consideration, a ridiculously symmetrical distribution (but not the only), if that's really what you're going for: Here Hmm, some of you may not even know what "symmetry" I've been talking about this whole time... I think its most sound to spread the damage type distribution and support tower distribution as symmetrically as possible (the fundamental stuff), while different "styles" of towers for different style builds (necessarily asymmetic, obviously, otherwise they wouldn't be different at all!) comes in later.

In the past I've always made passing remarks about how the support towers aren't distributed symmetrically on the element circle (for example the two element support towers are FE, WN, and DL rather than a symmetric WE, DN, LF). That could be interpreted as a "problem" for fixing. On the other hand, if there's anything we've ever learned from Starcraft, you don't need symmetry for balance. I'm not sure if this was part of what you meant by tower distribution.

Partly in response to https://forums.eletd.com/index.php?showtopic=2027&hl=, higher difficulty players should get more offensive weapons.

First of all I would really like to express my appreciation to Karawasa, for producing this update, even through a period of low activity on the forum; and I encourage you to continue your dedication. Just want you to know we're still behind you. I like the new "image" creeps. It's a good concept. I haven't found any bugs in it, but I will say that they tend to cause the "piling up" effect that occurs when there's a lot of creeps in a small amount of space (just like what happens when you use slowing). I haven't decided whether that's undesireable or not. I'm iffy about the new "speed burst" creeps. They're not all that different from regular old fast creeps, and if I were to choose between the current speed burst creeps and the old fast creeps, I'd choose the old. Plus 100% speed for 1 second every 3 seconds (it's 1 mana per second right?) is not large enough to make it significantly distinct from regular fast. To really pursue the burst concept, if that is the point at all, it has to be more dramatic. Like teleporting forward every 5 seconds by a good chunk of distance. (Just an example; I'm not implying that it should be changed to a teleport.) That's all for today.

imo the links at the top and bottom should be colored.

"The Straw Man of Balance" You know, I'm getting sick of this reasoning. "Yes, but you'll die in fast VH games." I'm sure most people die in fast VH games, period. The fact of the matter is that a disproportionate amount of noobs (not necessarily on VE or E) use life towers all the time. And get away with it. Speaking as a non life tower abuser, I'm quite tired of seeing this. And I'm even more tired of people suggesting that it is somehow my fault for not rushing them fast enough. Or that it's somehow my fault for playing the pubs, where games are overwhelmingly not VH only (and for good reason). I want balance all the time, not just in these fabled games of legend. Remember, mixed diff VH rushing doesn't work anymore. Not since 3.0. Let's go back to first principles. A long time ago in galaxy far far away, it became gospel on these forums that Let us trace the origins of this gospel: 1. It was neither desired nor practical to test and balance the game at every difficulty. Hence one would be chosen as the laboratory standard. 2. This laboratory standard was chosen to be VH, to cater to high level competitive play; for high level competitive play is the quarantined vacuum sealed chamber, by definition. 3. In the wide world outside the laboratory, there are innumerable factors which we cannot keep track of; but we apply the results in the laboratory as a model. As long as the outside conditions do not bias, as long as they are the same in essence if not in scale, as long as H, N, E, and VE are in a precise sense "proportional" to VH - only then does balance in VH imply balance in every difficult. And this is premise of the gospel. You do say that life towers are strong (strong, meaning strong in comparison to other towers, meaning too strong), but you refute this by saying that they are no longer so in these fast VH games. No, sir. The lab is not the arbiter of the universe; the universe is the arbiter of the lab. For as you say yourself, the premise of the gospel is false here. So don't you use the gospel on me.

Font size is the problem, I think. A half point smaller should do.

You need a better font. The guy at the top is creeping me out.

In warcraft 3 we happened to have the convenience of having a boatload of element related icons and models and effects and whatnot. Unless somehow we have the same convenience in starcraft 2, it's not going to *click* as well.

I don't even see the purpose of having the big ? and ! there.

Which is why we will be doing sc2-eletd. (I mean, come on, they featured it. They're just begging us to make it.)

Put it in the quests menu anyway. 1. Nobody uses the "tip" thingy, but have the first tip say "check the friggin quests menu" 2. Don't a ton of games put info in the quests menu? And we already list the towers there anyway, so just add descriptions. 3. Weren't there descriptions in 3.0? Or maybe that "version 2.5". 4. There's nowhere else.

Hmmm. the game sometimes closes unpredictably and without warning for me, too. I have no idea whether it's correlated to anything in particular though. (like I said, unpredictably and without warning. maybe like every 5 games)

I do agree that a list of short descriptions each tower's effect should be available in game. I wouldn't say it should show up every time you press tower query though (I think that might actually be kinda annoying).

I am not going to click "Tower Query", then click "Draft Query", then compute their set intersection in my head. Tower query exists so you can do that for me. Tower query can't just say, "here's the towers you can build... except the ones you can't".

DRAFT PICK Arrgh, it's just confusing. I can't put my finger on anything in particular, but I suspect it's overall too difficult to try and keep up with everything. One thing I would like to see for the voting phases is a text command alternative (e.g. -vote blacksmith, -vote water, -vote random) Tower query doesn't reflect draft picks. ZOOM First of all, we all need to recognize that anything outside of 1500-2500 is essentially useless, and anything upwards of 2000 has that weirdish look. It's severely detracting from this feature. In fact, if you really want to hear what I think, zoom doesn't deserve to exist at all. ELEMENT QUERY Too slow. I need to be able to see the whole thing on one screen. Ideally it should look like this: Portion of Build Composite: 12% Darkness: 9% Water: 30% ... Against this wave Composite: 9% Darkness: 7.5% Water: 50% ... which takes up 16 lines and fits exactly on one screen. Also, 3 decimals places is way too much. 1 would be more appropriate. HOST SELECT DIFFICULTY I want you to skip the "minimum difficulty" selection when there's only one player (i.e. pick VE for minimum difficulty by default). Cuz picking your difficulty twice on single player, is quite frankly ridiculous. (It just makes you go, "wait, what??") NEW TOWERS They're awesome. My only objections are that 1) oblivion tower needs a new name; and 2) you call them "boomerangs", but they don't look much like boomerangs to me. HOLEPERCENT BUILDER Ok you clearly don't understand how to arrange 6 items in a rectangle. *wink* 2 rows 3 columns is where it's at, yo. Like this: EHJ MKC

So should I assume 18-24 months from now?

Better question: When will there be an OFFICIAL FLASH version?

It's random. You asked for a flip of a coin.

Why cap it at all? Give it a logarithmic growth rate and just keep on letting the hp go up up up.

I guess this system is fair. Host can force a minimum, but each player can choose to make life harder for himself if he wants.

I consider this a serious problem.