Megadramon

If we make difficulty selection after modes are selected, it'd be easier to emphasize whether you're choosing a difficulty for everyone, or for yourself. Sounds like a good idea.

Quite frankly there are very few players who can play Very Hard, and the majority of players are new comers; however, I'm also opposed to the modes being 100% player vote; I believe Karawasa is aware of this as I've brought the issue up to him before. Veteran players need to have fun too!

I think Mafia had check box options.

Yeah I agree. Legitimate new players wouldn't know what to do with the extra cash; thus there shouldn't be a need for them to have a crazy amount of minerals. I feel the only thing helping newer players are the fact that the creeps are weaker, and not the extra minerals. If players did know what to do with the extra cash, I feel they should be playing a harder difficulty.

The Cannon Tower (Earth, Dark)?

How would you be able to show off those achievements titles? I know Karawasa was thinking with rank titles that he could put it on the leaderboard somewhere, but for all these different achievement titles, where are we gonna put them? What I'd like to see are customizeable cosmetic/visual content such as unlocking different builders, unlocking new building effects such as different sell/build animation, and unit effects such as aura effects around your builder or creep waves. All these cosmetic/visual effects should also be customizeable to the player's tastes, such as being able to switch between the effects, or the ability to toggle them on or off. Beside the Element Summoning Center should be a shop building listing all the available unlockables, and how to get them. At first they should all appear grayed out, and once you've accomplished the task of an unlockable, it will become available to you, allowing you to either enable it or disable it. I feel these cosmetic/visual effects would be noticeable and stylish, making people crave for them. If this idea would be considered, some task ideas for the unlockables on Standard mode could be beating the game on each of the difficulties, beating the game on each of the difficulties without leaking, and even beating the game on each difficulty on random with leaks, and without leaks. But for convenience sake, I personally would like that if you are able to beat a Very Hard game on random or all pick, with or without leaks that you'd simply just unlock anything under it.

Oh so you wanted to eliminate interest pick from the elemental summoning center? I wouldn't mind that change, though your suggestion to have players having over 3% interest doesn't seem like a good idea. But the idea of having different % of interest for each level of difficulty seems like an interesting idea. Currently people on easier difficulties are able to farm so much unnecessary income it's silly. If you want more interest, go on a higher difficulty. That'll hopefully force people to attempt them.

If towers can't have cosmetic auras around them, perhaps the creeps waves can? You can toggle them on or off, or switch between them through a new unit building interface that allows you to control your rewards, just like how the Element Summoner building (#2 hotkey) interface allows you choose your elements when the time comes. Also since people are starting to understand the value of income reselling, maybe you can unlock new resell animations?

Currently Short Mode starts you at lvl.16 with 1000 minerals and 3 gas. For anyone who knows how to income properly, they can easily get higher than 1000 minerals. I'd check how much I normally get, but I can't due to lack of memory for such a thing, and replay bug. Though honestly I'm getting tired of early levels of Element TD that I'm too lazy to play a game at this very moment to prove a point. I have some ideas to improve Short Mode so that people who can interest properly get rewarded with shorter games without losing out on minerals, and new players don't get that advantage. Once point/rewards system is up, experienced players should be able to start with slightly more minerals in Short Mode. Since we've played enough games (on perhaps a specific difficulty (VH?)), the game should recognize that we're capable of getting over 1000 minerals at lvl.16, and start us (experienced players) accordingly. Though I realize this provides an unfair advantage, I feel it's necessary, and it's not broken at all, and ironically more fair. My other idea is for the game to record in our data bank our highest networth we've accomplished towards lvl.16 in a non-short mode game without leaking. Once it's stored, the next time we play a game on Short Mode, it'll start us off accordingly from our highest recorded networth. Of course this should only be relative to the level you were on, and for safety purposes only be used on Standard Mode. Oh and just in case you somehow put yourself in a bad position after level 15 is over just to achieve that much more networth for short mode and you start leaking creeps afterwards, you have to stay leak free 5 or 10 levels after you completed level 15 for it to be recorded. What do you guys think? Oh yeah, and everything mentioned can all be applied to Extra Short Mode as well. Edit: Added a screenshot to prove a point (I chose income first to achieve the networth). Edit2: The game should save data based on variables like difficulty and whether or not income was chosen. If I was able to accumulate x amount of networth with interest before level 16, it should record it, same goes if I were to achieve that same goal without interest. The game should know how much minerals to give me based on data it records, and under the respective circumstances I've opted for.

Ok well the result of proper towers, placement and resource management leads to the ability of potentially filling up the map. I just tried a build that allowed me to fill like 99% of the map of the highest tier towers on VH (I forgot to fill up areas in the crappy / and - positions). I was able to obtain a 442k networth using $ D L D W W D W L E E or something in that order. I leaked a bit in the beginning on various levels where I underestimated the creeps, thought I'm confident I can do the build again without leaking and maintaining around the same networth (most likely less). My main towers were (believe it or not) mass Pestilence (DW) for dmg, Glacier (EWL) for hp reduction, and Mire (EDW) for slow; though I had Comet Towers, they were mainly used for creeps leading to fruit level, covering up the weakness of my Pestilence towers. This build utilizes the the longest double pass at position 8, income farming to the max, so even if I was solo, I'd still be able to income farm well. A replay would be futile, so I'll show you some screenshots of the nearly maxed map. Also note that even though I didn't fill positions / and -, I still had 100k leftover, and i was able to fill them up after I took the screenshots. EDIT: Honestly I was pretty shocked, especially since I screwed up the build. I originally wanted lvl 3 dark, water and nature with one fire so I could give the DW tower a huge atk speed boost, along with 10% debuff Corrosion gave.

The gap between Very Easy and Very Hard is far too big. Anyone capable of doing the harder difficulties can easily break the easier levels. That's how big the difference is. If you ask me, we need to work on this, though a solution might be hard to come up with. Something needs to be done so that anyone who has an idea of what they're doing shouldn't be able to do this. Very Easy, and the easier levels should be for the lesser skilled people, but not so much that the gap between skilled and lesser skill is big enough to abuse the game. I believe we need to find a way to fix the problem of higher skilled players abusing easier difficulties. So far I believe we fixed the issue of Very Hard being able to fill the map with the highest tier towers; now we gotta find a solution for the other difficulties. And just so people know, Element TD is not about filling the map full of high tier towers. It's about proper towers, proper placement, and proper resource management. It's just that on easier difficulties this skill is far too easy, easy enough to abuse the difficulty, and the game.

Though the replay bug still exists, nonetheless, you'll be able to watch a good technique to tower reselling for the first 7 mins and 48 seconds. I've noticed a lot of people grasping the concept of income reselling, but can't seem to do it properly/effectively. I've decided to show one of my replays of me reselling on Very Hard taking advantage of the 7 and 5 single passes; through my experiences, I've found it best to watch someone do the technique before putting too much effort into learning it yourself. Unfortunately I don't believe you'll be able to see how I change it up against speed and shield. Also keep in mind I take full advantage of my opponents time. If it were just me solo, creeps would spawn right after I finish each wave, and despite my opponents being on easier difficulties I am able to clear them more effectively and efficiently. Hopefully this will help you all and give you a general idea of how to resell. Good luck! Oh yeah I'm red in the replay. Interest Reselling Very Hard.SC2Replay

So... Red = 1, Blue = 2, Teal = 3, etc?

How does this command work? I tried -kick <name> and it didn't seem to work.

I gotta say it was the worst idea I've ever had... going purely three element with interest >.> and essence as filler.

So I'm trying out a DEL build with Laser/Phasor Tower and noticed they're basically the same tower except one's smaller than the other. No attempt at making it look different. I suggest Phasor gets a new model.

Ever since 0.81, I've noticed the public trend is to faceroll the default options, even with difficulty. There seems to be a misconception in the public eye that players are voting for the default difficulty for everyone to play on. For anyone who doesn't already know, THIS IS NOT TRUE! You are voting for your own difficulty when you choose your difficulty on Standard mode. Only Standard is mixed difficulty; therefore, allowing you to vote for your own difficulty. Anyways, if you notice any other trends in public Element TD games, or interesting stories, post them here!

Dunno if I like the idea though. I'm aware that you don't like DLW due to too many light and a crappy water. Currently I'm indifferent about the idea to change hail to water or ice to water and etc, but if you wanted a specific elemental damage that badly, I suppose you could mass a lot of composite towers, and change the element damage to your likings. I feel this is too big of a change to the game for it to be implemented.

I feel reselling is needed in VH. Other difficulties I believe you can just keep your initial composite towers there until you get your elements. Reselling is not just for interest, but to defeat waves more effectively by selling older towers and essentially moving them downwards to catch the wave again. It's the basic skill you'll need to play on that difficulty if you ask me. If we were to go by your idea to change things up a little, we'd have to find a suitable substitute such as the stuff you've suggested; though, I don't know what to say about them, and I currently have no alternatives. I still like to use composite towers later in the game if I'm doing an AP build to kill off lvl3 bosses, so I still like to take advantage of reselling later in the game.

Allowing towers the ability to change it's element damage is a big change. Even if the tower had a big cooldown, if you were on random, it would just be quicker to resell the tower into the same one but with a different element. Triple towers would be able to potentially have 3 different element damages, leading to uncreative random builds. The meta game would be build the most effective tower and just change the elemental damage to suit the level, and then resell for another effective tower that suits that level and etc. This change would change the way of how we would play random.

Now it finally feels like the creeps are getting debuffed XD Though there's still problems with the Biohazard Truck not showing it's debuffs just to let you know. Another thing you might consider is when you're building a building, during it's warp-in phase, to cancel it should also be 'x' instead of "Esc". Countless times I've built in the wrong position and needed to cancel it right away, but the hotkey wasn't 'x'. This just makes the game slightly more convenient and faster for the speedy reseller.

Reselling composite towers is necessary and would ruin gameplay if the resell value were to be put at 75%.

Not exactly sure what happened. I assumed someone was afk during the voting process, but after the voting timer finished, the game didn't start, and we were stuck. There was one leaver at the very beginning. Here's the replay. game not starting after vote timer finishes.SC2Replay game not starting after vote timer finishes.SC2Replay

Have you tried borderline leaking 'till you have almost no lives?

Does anyone know the cast range of these towers?