echinodermata

You might say mixed difficulty is still not balanced, or you might not. But either way, race mode just makes it ridiculous. We have different "delay times" for the spawning of the next wave. I believe the current set is dve=30s de =22s dn =15s dh =9s dvh=4s. (side note: Quadratic?? Seems arbitrary.) We need delay times for race mode too. Otherwise its pretty much instant win for the person on lowest difficulty (that is, if he doesn't die first). For example, rve=16s re =12s rn =8s rh =4s rvh=0s. (Again, rather arbitrary; can be adjusted.) An alternative solution is to give players on higher difficulty more race points per first finish. Discuss.

I agree that hail is rather weak.

What to do with life towers?

Despite that I find superweapons to be an inherently unattractive mode, I still have some ideas. My ideas? It's called super weapons mode. Not regular weapons mode, not mediocre weapons mode, not lame weapons mode, none of that. Super weapons. New and improved: Grants invicibility to target player's creeps for 5 seconds. New and improved: Grants 100% increased movement speed to target player's creeps for 5 seconds. Other ideas: Debt interest: Reduces target player's interest rate by 10% for 30 seconds. Build build build! Elemental reversal: Reverses element weaknesses for all players (or maybe just target player) for 15 seconds. (Darkness > Light > Earth > ...) Obviously has offensive and defensive uses. Summon Boss: Summons a boss unit in target player's lane. Boss strength to scale with the current level. Boss takes 5 lives when leaked. Summon Super Boss: (My weirdest idea yet) Every player will be given 10 seconds notice to prevent the super boss from spawning in his/her own lane. A button will be made for this sole purpose on the elemental summoning center, and a flashing conspicuous buff will be placed over the summoning center. A simple click of the button will be all it takes to prevent the super boss from spawning, but once spawned, attempts to use the Super-Boss-Be-Gone will be futile! (Don't die!)

Is there a min dmg? Let's see if I get this right: 1 target, 100% dmg. 2 targets, 2 x 90% = 180% dmg. 3 targets, 3 x 80% = 240% dmg. 4 targets, 4 x 70% = 280% dmg. 5 targets, 5 x 60% = 300% dmg. 6 targets, 6 x 50% = 300% dmg. 7 targets, 7 x 40% = 280% dmg. 8 targets, 8 x 30% = 240% dmg. 9 targets, 9 x 20% = 180% dmg. 10 targets, 10 x 10% = 100% dmg. 11 targets, 10 x 0% = 0% dmg? I would imagine reduction by 10%is in a geometric fashion rather than an arithmetic one. That is, with n targets, the effectiveness is n*(0.9)^(n-1). So the table would be 1 1.00 2 1.80 3 2.43 4 2.92 5 3.28 6 3.54 7 3.72 8 3.83 9 3.87 10 3.87 11 3.84 12 3.77 13 3.67 14 3.56 15 3.43 16 3.29 17 3.15 18 3.00 19 2.85 20 2.70 peaking at 9 and 10. "Meaning that its [most certainly not] more effective vs a single creep." Depending on what the intent of the tower is, the number will have to be adjusted. Which is easy enough to do.

Now that one looks like an excellent concept.

I thought I would revive this. First of all, on Cisz and Karawasa's general bad feeling team modes: Let me say two things. 1. Element TD is a solo, free for all game. You are players of Element TD. Of course you prefer solo. Nothing personal - it's just selection bias, in a way. 2. The vast popularity of DotA proves in itself the popularity of team modes, whether you like the actual game concept of DotA or not. Now, let me comment on what I perceive are issues with the proposals so far. I will ignore the cluttering details and just focus on the "game concept". Shared maze (and shared elements, of course), normal creep strength and bounty, whoever kills the creep gets the bounty. > This just breeds competition among teammates. Shared maze (and shared elements, of course), normal creep strength and bounty, bounty distributed evenly (or in rotating fashion - same end result). > 25% the gold for everyone, 25% the fun! Shared maze (and shared elements, of course), multiplied creep strength and bounty. > Not enough buildspace. Changing the terrain was proposed, but that just introduces more problems than it solves. "Relay" style modes. > There's plenty of variations on this. Some variations have the problem of making it really really boring for the last player in the line. Some variations have the problem of taking 4 times the amount of time to complete a wave. But all have the subtle balance chance that arises from simply multiplying the creep HP. Subtle effects from the length of the combined-maze being 4 times as long. What changes when single target towers don't do overkill damage nearly as much? What changes when the creep line does not thin out much at all? What changes when the first couple players in the line are expected to use the whole length of the maze, rather than being expected to kill the creeps before the end? How will undead and healing be affected? Subtle balance changes, guys. How will these be accounted for? And even if they are, we hardly would like to do twice the amount of balancing whenever we make any changes to towers and/or other aspects of the game. I say we make the most conservative team mode of all: 2 teams (top vs. bottom). Each player has his own individual maze and his own spawns which are of normal strength and normal bounty. Each player has his own element picks, his own gold, takes all the bounty from his kills for himself, and is independent in every sense from his teammates. The differences, and the only differences, are: When you leak, the leaked creeps pass to the next area, in a circle (this is not relay style because the creeps are of normal strength, and you lose one life when you leak to the next area, not when you leak through all the areas). The team has one combined team life count. Side note on rushing (not central to this proposal, although this is probably where most of the competetion between the teams will come from. I understand there is coding to do for this): When the first player from team A finishes a wave, the next wave starts for team B, and vice versa; but if all players on team A finish wave x and nobody on team B has, then wave x+1 starts for team A anyway. Obviously one team could get rushed very badly this way.) Why should we even make this simplistic team mode? Because, among other things, it is the most natural setting for Hero mode (aka "DotA mode"). Although I do kinda like it for its own merits as well.

Funny, I always found in text advertising more intrusive...

In my view, most people ignore that kind of stuff.

Hmmm. I do like the axe hammer. I'll be taking a look at this soon. We ought to dig up some old ideas from the graveyard of towers past.

I think we're in order for a new a mode. cuz balance testing, while important, can only go so fast and can only take up so much of our attention. A new mode would be some significant new content for our players, and it would be something for us to brainstorm, develop, and test. Now, the first things that come to mind are hero mode and team mode, but it could be something else too. Why not decide on one and get to work?

well nobody claimed no leak.

why not just make trickery work on oblivion in the manner that well and blacksmith do? exactly double the number of dragons in play. the following are all equivalent ideas of how it could be done: trickery copies the tower, all the dragons that the target tower had, and all the dragons that the target tower summons while the copy tower is in play. i.e. the copied tower is just a dummy. all the copied dragons go away when the copied tower goes away. trickery copies the tower, all the dragons that the target tower had, and sets the copied tower's mana equal to the original tower's mana. all the copied dragons and the dragons summoned by the copied tower go away when the copied tower goes away. trickery puts a buff on the tower. all the dragons that the target tower had when the buff was but on, as well as all the dragons that the target tower summons while having the buff, are doubled. all the copied dragons go away when the buff goes away. probably the second option is most in line with how trickery works for normal towers.

no slow plox

curse us for not making things the support towers symmetric on the element circle... (not suggesting we change it, it's too late for that now, and it has been too late for a long time)

I copied the values off the site, divided by 10 and rounded down. What's wrong?

Yeah, the shoutbox doesn't deserve to be at the top of every single page. The forums i know with the shoutbox feature typically only have it on the forum index page.

I think it would be fun if you would do gold cost / 10 for the postcount levels: Arrow Tower - 0 Basic Tower - 5 Amplified Element Tower - 17 Tier 1 Dual Tower - 50 Focused Element Tower - 62 Tier 2 Dual Tower - 125 Tier 1 Triple Tower - 150 Refined Element Tower - 212 Tier 3 Dual Tower - 315 Tier 2 Triple Tower - 500 Pure Element Tower - 1122

Just a shout out: I noticed there's a facebook quiz out there entitled "Which element are you?" Apparently not very good quality... but anyway, it's out there, and it's usin' our old load screen (with the elements not in order).

from the title i thought you meant New Forum Moderators.

and the game message just says "you have received +1 Pure essence" as if that was that, as in interest picks. and then when you see the boss... you panic and forget that you've already received the essence. the players should get some sort of *hint hint*, that the system is a little different than usual.

on the other hand, a lot of our original beta reports were just labeled [beta 1], [beta 2], ... , so we could just call it 4.1 beta 24 despite that the 23 preceding numbers were for 4.0.

I believe our classified archived beta reports can be declassified now.

first XD say, how long have we been working on this thing?

interesting that this thread got bumped. since then i've re-evaluated my position, and i agree that win/loss/rank in game is not the whole picture. unlike chess and melee starcraft/warcraft games, Element TD isn't just played against other players - it's played against the computer too.