echinodermata

I see no reason why there would be bugs. Explanation please?

Then at the very least we should be nonmisleading (hydro, jinx).

I disagree with that attitude completely. We shouldn't have change because change is confusing? Because people won't be used to it? "Oh, 3.0 was OK, you know we're all used to it and such, and if we change it we'll have to learn some stuff all over again, maybe we should just leave it as it is, right?" Do I really have to say this? We may as well be in the middle ages. If you think my suggestions are an improvement, or if you have suggestions of your own, or if you think the existing names are best, then that's up for discussion. Other than that there is nothing to say. Just saying. Now then, I would like to know what the verdict is on ice, disease, and poison.

Is the probability of getting a certain element pick equal to that of getting an interest pick (i.e., 1/7 chance of getting D [an essence if you already have D3], 1/7 chance of getting L [an essence if you already have L3], ... , 1/7 chance of getting interest), for the entire game?

Yes I agree now, Tidal is fine.

So, in summary: You will get no more than 2 interest picks You will get a level 2 elemental no earlier than lvl 25 You will get a level 3 elemental no earlier than lvl 45 And that's it? Is that right? Can I get a definitive answer?

What are the rules that determine how the game chooses elements for random mode (i.e. when it is allowed to begin picking lvl3 elementals, when it stops picking interest)?

Yeah, I'll back off on trickery.

I will now suggest some new names for these towers. (Suggestions given with first letter in red cannot be level 1 names due to hotkey conflicts.) Hydro --> Eruption (change the animation too!) Trickery --> Cloning, Replication, Duplication, etc.; Mirage Quark --> ??? Jinx --> Orb Oblivion --> Minion Zealot --> Rage, Wrath Assuming Ice, Disease, and Poison won't change (but I hope they do), Ice --> Helix (the name will work assuming Hydro will be changed to something not beginning with H) Disease --> ??? Poison --> Swarm, [bug related stuff] Locust, etc. Flamethrower can stay as is. Edit: Tidal and trickery are also okay.

ID: Individual Team Defense (kind of an oxymoron ) My concern is that if you're on a four player team, one fourth of the time there's going to be no creeps in your maze. Wouldn't it be boring for all four players, not just the last one?

I am now going to take the time to single out some towers with misleading, undescriptive, outdated, or otherwise unfitting names. Disease, Poison, Ice >http://www.eletd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1170 Hydro >This has seriously been discussed a billion times. Hey Einstein, "hydro" isn't a real word. "Erupt" (the name of the ability) sounds pretty good. Quark >Quark doesn't teleport anymore. I can't think of anything though. Flamethrower >It's fine as it is, but I'm thinking something along the lines of "Incinerate" would better describe the effect. Not the only possibility. Jinx >It sounds the same as Voodoo. Nowadays, Jinx is more like "Orb" tower. Zealot >The first thing that comes to mind is a protoss dude, doing light damage of course. How about "Rage"? "Frenzy"? Tidal >I haven't ever used tidal before, and that's probably because tidal sounds lame. I think it could do better than "Tidal" though. Oblivion >I thought it was called "Summoning". I dunno. I'm reading this name off the main site. If it's not called "Summoning", it should be. Trickery > I guess it's fine, but we might as well just call it what it is, a cloning tower.

But hydro is earth damage, so its animation should also be changed, so that its current animation can be given to disease. To sum things up: Hydro should have an earth-like animation (and be given a more earth-appropriate name) Disease should be changed to [DW] and have hydro's animation (and be given a more water-appropriate name) Poison should be changed to [DN] Okay?

I kinda like the idea of race mode. Deciding a game with endless ronalds doesn't make much sense. Maybe race mode should replace ronalds altogether in multiplayer. Or not. In any case it does not deserve another pop-up at the beginning of the game. One small detail: race mode will have to have a level 61, composite with hp based on the same growth model for all the other levels, to be used when a tiebreaker is necessary. For level 61, the creeps should be... ronalds.

I was working under the assumption that the quests menu is going to have short descriptions of all the towers (which btw is going to happen, right? right?). What I tried to say was: I would much rather remember three letters (D,E,F) that are all right there on the same page, instead of three names (Fire, Blacksmith, Flamethrower) that most importantly would require looking on the duals page in addition to the triples page.

Here is my perspective on how people learn the game. A player new to the game, whenever getting a new element, will look in the quest menu and see what he can build. (He will use the quest menu and not tower query because the quest menu will have descriptions of the towers.) He will decide which tower he wants. Suppose our example person, for whatever reason, wants Flamethrower [DEF]. He builds a Darkness tower and upgrades it to Amplified Darkness. Then he looks for an upgrade to his Amplified Darkness that says D+E or D+F. He upgrades to DE or DF (whichever he finds first), and from there looks for the upgrade that says D+E+F. He must remember the element combination because he doesn't know the names of the duals he needs to get to the triple. He must resort to looking at the tooltips for an upgrade that contains the elements he needs. (He could have looked up the name of the intermediate, but the element combination is listed right next to the tower in the tower descriptions list, and so is more convenient for him.) In short, the thought process that led to the building of the tower was based on the set of elements that were in the tower. The point of this exercise is that, with the proposed system, even a player unfamiliar with the majority of the towers could take advantage of hotkeys. The guy from the example would have instantly known the hotkey sequence straight from the quest menu. ----------------------------------------------- I think it is a problem that the majority of players aren't using hotkeys. Hotkeys ought to be easy to learn for the guy that is starting off by building on a tower by tower basis. I'm not saying it would be faster to use in practice. It would probably be slower because Effect <--> Name <--> Elements is one more connection than Effect <--> Name. Also, as holepercent noted, upgrading multiple different towers at once would have a high chance of misbuilding. It would be certainly be hard to adjust to for all the players that are already familiar with the game and are already using the current hotkeys, because these players don't have that same connection between tower and its composition. Overall, the goal should be to create a strong association between what a tower does, its element composition, and its hotkey sequence, because these are the three properties of a tower that affect gameplay.

I agree that both systems have their advantages. For example, the problem with the proposed system is that, if you have a Gunpowder sitting around that you want to upgrade to Flamethrower, it may be easier to think of the name of the tower that you want (instead of thinking of what elements are in the tower you have and what elements are in the tower you want, then finding the difference). The problem with the existing system is that, if you were going to build a Flamethrower, you would have to know that the tower you want has elements DEF, but you might not know the names/hotkeys of DEF or its intermediates (DE, DF, or EF). I would say that the second case is more common though. I don't think the possibility that change would "twist ppls brains" is a reason not to make a change. First of all, if the new system is better, then we should implement it; if the new system is not better, then we should not implement it. Secondly, change would only twist the brains of a small minority, most of which are devoted to the game enough to be able to adjust to such a change anyway. So I think the issue is about whether it will cause performance issues, whether it will take a lot of time, and mostly, whether it makes more sense -- and I think it does.

Towers would no longer have hotkeys as they are now. As for Napalm (I'm sure you meant Flamethrower [DEF]), you would press F if you were upgrading from Gunpowder [DE], press E if you were upgrading from Magic [DF], and press D if you were upgrading from Blacksmith [EF]. Possible conflicts with ability hotkeys would of course be dealt with appropriately as well.

My biggest wish -- and this is the one thing that I think EleTD absolutely needs to have -- is a hotkey system that is simply based on what new element is added to the tower (as proposed by Sancdar in http://www.eletd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=46). For example, to build the tower FLN, the hotkey sequence is F (fire) U (amplified fire) L (lightning) N (nova), except of course that you could add the elements in any order (F then L then N, or F then N then L, or L then F then N, etc.). Would it take time to implement? Of course. I don't see what's so hard though: You hit the hotkey. A generic dummy upgrading tower takes the place of the initial tower, and stores the information associated with it (what tower it was upgraded from, what tower it will upgrade to). When the upgrade is complete, the upgraded product takes the place of the dummy. I think this would be intuitive, fast, and overall worth the effort.

If we do add this feature, how about bringing out all the elementals too?

The tier-pick system is ostensibly for "diplomacy", but in actuality it has no effect on the result whatsoever. Since "floating tiers" are downgraded anyway, the following two cases, for example, are in fact the same case! > I pick Earth-1 and nobody picks any other Earth > I pick Earth-3 and nobody picks any other Earth Or, another example: > I pick Nature-3 and someone else supports me by picking Nature-2 > I pick Nature-1 and someone else upgrades to Nature-2 and once again the two cases are identical. ---------------------------------------- For the purpose of real diplomacy, I suggest the following new system for element picks: For each pick, choose interest, essence, or an element. Also choose a tier to go with that pick. This includes not only element picks, but interest picks as well. (Don't choose a tier to go with essence.) Continue picking until 13 to 15 applicable picks have been drafted. A pick is not applicable if the tiers under it have not yet been picked. The order that the players pick is entirely randomized, but the same player cannot pick twice in a row. --------- Example: 1. Darkness-3 2. Earth-3 3. Nature-1 4. Earth-2 5. Water-3 6. Earth-1 7. Light-2 8. Light-1 9. Water-1 10. Interest-2 11. Interest-1 12. Fire-1 13. Interest-4 14. Darkness-2 15. Interest-3 16. Water-2 At this point 14 valid, applicable picks have been made, and the host decides to cut it off here. Pick summary: -LDWFNE I 1X-XXXX X 2XXX--X X 3-XX--X X 4 X 5 - The resulting element pool: Light-2 , Water-3 , Fire-1 , Nature-1 , Earth-3 , Interest-4 No Darkness, no essence. ---------- What do you think?

Having 2-4 people on the same player field shouldn't be too bad.

I think it'll work. A few details might have to be worked out. But team vs. team: that could be even better.

Speaking of hero mode, why don't we bring it back?

I think the key to making this tower is finding an appropriate growth rate model. The way it currently is, the player is given an incentive to simply build one damage golem and as many boost golems as possible. However, I do agree that we should buff it and test before making any changes.

I think I was thrown off by several things: The name "link mode" is misleading. It boosts other flesh golems... so call it boost mode. The tooltip is LONG. I can't tell the boost golems apart from the damage golems. I can't make much sense out of a growth rate of x(a^x). But that's the practical portion. As for the concept itself, what does boosting have to do with golems? They move... and they can get boosted? What's the point of having both? The problem with only boosting themselves is that they don't work well with other towers. You'll either build lots of them or none of them. That's not balance. If we want to keep this general idea, we are going to have to rethink the growth model.