holepercent

pretty much the most intense way to play ever. hopefully you don't get randOOmed instead..

mostly, from a competitive point of view, all random can't be considered to be balanced. another reason is to keep the voting menu shorter and simpler.

The single element pure towers are one of the highest damage towers besides the 6-element build which gives you access to periodic tower. The 4 slow towers give the same slow %. With certain placements and setups, the effectiveness of the slow will differ. There is really no good/bad elements in the game. With any combination of 4 or 5 elements, the focus is on proper tower selection and placement.

Remember grenade tower defense? One critical aspect here would be the design of the interface. One possibility is to have a popup but that might be too disruptive to game play and the player. Most players rarely read text prompts. So this is something to look into and test out various options

The old school 4 or 5 player forum draft series actually had players vote to ban 5 duals and 7 triples total, then pick the elementals allowed, which led to some hilarious builds. As in, waiting for just your opponent to post the next pick on the forums is usually shorter than waiting for 3 other players to post their picks before your next pick. (What we usually call forum draft series is a draft with picks posted on the forum with myself as draft host. The mode in-game is referred as draft pick.)

it's only 1v1 for forum draft series just to make it easier for the host to organise. for the actual mode in game, repeats will have to be allowed. the main consideration is whether to allow players to pick duplicates up to the limit from the start or every tower must be taken first before a fresh set is added to the pool.

One would think that most of the common buffs/debuffs already exist as tower abilities.. so what does this add to the game besides additional complexity? How would this be balanced such that there is a trade off between building another tower and adding an upgrade to an existing tower, without one choice being strictly better than the other. The upgrades cannot be too strong such that they force players into a particular strategy to win or too weak to make them not worth the resources.

This should be interesting to implement. alternate should be easier to balance The boss needs to have the creep abilities to be counter to defenses that are too focused on certain aspects.

All support tower ain't that bad. Haven't you already proven all support tower build can clear? Plus you will have tier2 of all the triples available. Would be interesting to see if this is as (im)balanced as all random..

This looks interesting. So you can build whatever the tower you received upgrades to/from? Or just the higher tier of that tower you were given? Something to consider.. do we really want or need so many modes? Sure. They give more options to play. But we also don't want the votes to be too long. Reminds me of the hours I spent with a player trying to get a decent set of random towers using uther in 2player extreme mode burb td.

Quite sure we've all seen basic arrow and grenade towers still in play at fruit. that said, that screen shot is awesome..should get a preview video of sorts recorded soon...

seconded. it's a fun challenge and really forces the player to plan for difficult waves and the late game from the start. that said, it can make the game pretty unforgiving for less experienced players. players will definitely be more aware of elemental weakness and tower upgrade paths.

the 'fruit hunt' is deliberately aiming to kill as many fruit as possible (as opposed to simply reaching wave 60 or rushing your opponents out of the game). You must upload the replay for records to be verified and eventually uploaded to the channel.

Recording both games for channel.

The series demands opponents. Are you one of them? Join the fun and experiment with different builds!

Just pointing it out. It may happen that players lose too fast and quit early.

that's a pretty long list to go over. Some balance changes will be needed. heard that there are plans to remove most of the modes (maze, hero, wars, team?) for a new mode still in design phase. the last post is definitely risky. It will change the way games go. We've all seen players who have no idea of the elemental summoning center and just lose. Shorter game length will allow players to experiment more. For skilled players, the early game is too easy. Most do get by with semi-randomly building ray and grenade towers. In normal mode, this hardly matters anyway. short mode was introduced but not many outside of in-house games makes use of the option. One possibility is to make short mode the default and add a 'extended' mode into the menu. The only downside of totally removing grenade and ray towers is there is little option left to catch creeps that get away with low health in the early game. Right now, the more usual play for skilled players is to save up for 2 dual element towers at 15/6 or a triple at 18 or even later. Back in the days of the forum draft series (a competitive replay-based tournament), players were known to stay with interest, ray and grenade towers up to wave 30 even! Starting with 2 element towers will change the way builds are set up. Early game builds will have to be much tighter to avoid leaks.

This will be interesting.. Anyone left up for a draft?

In fact, this view new content is better than the previous one. You can now click to see new posts from new unread, last 24 hours, last week and further back (the previous one only allowed you to see further back if there was a new unread post only).

the one in the wc3 version is based on the original draft pick (forum version was done with 4/5 players), with 5 duals and 7 triples being banned (each player voted a dual and 3 triples for bans) and the element tiers picked by the players. (not the 1v1 draft pick league #2 which you played in). Not sure what kara actually implemented, but the template submitted was if there were more players, the game would randomly pick the towers to be removed out of the votes.

For reference, here is the original tower wars. This had many issues, most of which was the mode was too complex for regular players (anyone remembers grenade tower defense?). Manually sending each wave of creeps is annoying and puts too much emphasis on spam clicking. Just a reminder that ideally, the system is easy and logical for new players but provide strategic depth for experienced players. The original failed hard on the former but did well on the latter.

Whoever reads this first, post your choice for mazing mode and first dual (2-element tower). Use of mazing mode requires both players to agree. Otherwise, the game is played non-mazing. Please wait until your opponent has picked before announcing your next pick. All picks are in pairs, with the exception of the first and last picks. Remember that you are only allowed to build the towers you picked for yourself. You are not allowed to choose a tower which another player has already selected. There is no restrictions on elements (the duals you pick do not determine your elements). Triples must be upgraded from one of the duals you have picked. You are allowed to pick a tower which you may not be able to build just to deny your opponent that tower. Draft would go as follows: Player A Dual #1 Player B dual #1 Player B dual #2 Player A Dual #2 Player A dual #3 Player B dual #3 Player B dual #4 Player A Dual #4 Player A dual #5 Player B Dual #5 Player B Triple #1 Player A Triple #1 Player A Triple #2 Player B Triple #2 Player B Triple #3 Player A Triple #3 Player A Triple #4 Player B Triple #4 Player B Triple #5 Player A Triple #5 Player A Triple #6 Player B Triple #6 Player B Triple #7 Player A Triple #7 When the draft concludes, agree whether the match would be played online or single player.

Want a few days to test the new balance first? or call the draft now? In either case, the draft thread is already up. Once ready, feel free to start the draft. Good luck and may the best drafter win.

With global play, is it time to get some drafts going? post your IGN in this thread and get the games going!

Draft Pick #3! (oh wait.. where's the text.. seems like it's not on the forums yet...)