WindStrike

But what's worse - a dead puppy or a three-legged puppy? For every bug that isn't fixed by release, a puppy loses its leg. Or more accurately, every time Karawasa magically lucksacks Quake Tower in every single god darn Random Game ever, a dead puppy in heaven loses its leg. Somehow. Fear not, it is coming soon, as we are down to literally just bug-testing. Sit tight! ... or sit loose, whichever helps ya more.

For an idea regarding an alternate set of towers for the game that may get added eventually. Soul Tower (Dark + Fire + Light) Single-target, long range, average attack speed The more targets in the area around the target, the more damage the attack does. Splash Tower (Water + Nature) Single-target, medium range, average attack speed Support tower. Buffs other towers and increases their AoE by a percentage. If the target has no AoE, it gives the tower a small amount of AoE. Range Tower (Fire + Earth) Single-target, medium range, average attack speed Support tower. Buffs other towers by increasing their range by a percentage. Propagation Tower (Fire + Water + Dark) Single-target, medium range, average attack speed Debuff tower. Causes a debuff to a creep that causes up to two random nearby creeps to take a percentage of the damage the debuffed creep takes. Railgun Tower (Earth + Light) AoE, short range, fast attack speed Lightly zaps all creeps around it, dealing minor damage. It charges up as it deals damage, and once it deals a certain amount, it fires a railgun sniper shot, dealing massive single-target damage. This attack has global range. For the lulz, if it kills the target, the target gets sent flying in that direction. Dwarf Launcher (Earth + Light + Fire) AoE, long range, very slow attack speed Literally launches a dwarf at a target, dealing high single-target damage. If it kills the target, the dwarf lives, and it carries the corpse back to the tower, launching both the dwarf and the coprse on its next attack, dealing massive AoE damage by spontaneously exploding.

We're not the developers of that game, so probably not. There is one I'm personally interested in seeing remade from the ground up from WC3, can't remember the name of it. It was a cross between Tower Defense and Hero Defense and was a really cool concept, though it had a number of design issues that prevented it from being an A-ranked game. Heck, it might be sooner. I'm tryin' to push the last of the balance polishing out by the end of the day, and there's a few more tweaks and fixes that need to be done, but that's about it.

Welcome back to the insanity. It is genuinely close to release, and should be out by the end of the month. Although it's similar to the WC3 and SC2 versions (no core mechanics changed), there's a lot of small fixes in there that make it a true upgrade to the previous versions. This right here is a pretty good shot of what to expect: Admittedly, the tower sizes and overlapping have seen a bit of a reduction since. It looks gorgeous and runs smoother than the SC2 version. Expect greatness on release!

As evil as the creep types for the game already are, I figured I'd have some fun and suggest some even more evil creep types. Could be for a potential wars mode game someday, or just for fun. Impervious Immune to debuffs, but moves 15% slower as a result. Bulky Only runs 15 creeps in the wave, but has double health and spawns twice as slow (thereby increasing the space between the creeps) Regeneration Naturally recovers 2% of its maximum hp per second. Sapling When it dies, it drops a short, stacking debuff to all towers in the area, decreasing their damage Monster When it dies, heal and increase the health of a nearby creep by 10%, carrying stacks from one creep to the next. Splitter The entire creep wave is converted into one creep with 3000% hp. When it takes damage, it splits, equally dividing its remaining health. Cooldown of 5 seconds. Can theoretically split an infinite number of times. Undying When the creep would normally die, it receives an effect that prevents it from dying for 5 seconds, also healing it by a total of 10% of its maximum health during that time. Cooldown of 15 seconds.

Hmm, perhaps we could add a feature on the new versions to actually differentiate the sections a bit and notate each by their respective number.

Huh? I thought I said that I believe there would be community support... guess I phrased it wrong. From my testing in the alpha, all the tower effects were in the game, though it was missing tower models (it kinda just used a bunch of existing stuff that didn't really fit), creep waves + types, balancing was rather off, even though we ported it straight from the SC2 version and only modified a few towers... yeah, if it were to theoretically continue back on track, it'd be a good while before it gets to a playable beta, a few months minimum, depending on the manpower behind its development, and depending on whether said manpower decides to go for custom tower assets or not. As for how much what existed broke upon shifting from original 2014 source 2 engine to 2015 reborn source 2 engine, dunno, that was never tested. If you're confident you're able to finish out those things (or can find other mappers willing to do it), poke Karawasa about it, see if he'll be open to re-continuing development.

Personally, I'd really like to see EleTD in Dota 2 cause from what I've seen of the custom map community (I mainly play Imba Dota), they loooooooove to experiment with hilarious and crazy builds, plus it's a lot friendlier than either SC2's community or Dota 2's standard game community. I think if the Dota custom game community got their hands on a Dota 2 version of EleTD, the game could really expand in a whole lotta ways. More towers, creeps, modes, ideas in general. Unfortunately, it's on hold due to focus on the mobile version, which does have a fair amount of progress already and is lookin' pretty good. I don't know if the Dota 2 version is ever coming back honestly, but... one thing we've always wanted is more community support. If there's enough support and desire for an EleTD in Dota 2 to the point that it'd get us a community rather than just a handful of regulars, I put my vote in towards that, regardless of potential successfulness of the upcoming mobile version.

Unfortunately, we lost out Dota 2 programmer, so the Dota 2 version is on hold. Visually, even though it was only in alpha, it was a treat, but unless we get another programmer, then for the time being, we're shifting back to developing the Starcraft 2 version (and using it as our platform of "trying out crazy changes"), with the mobile version being the priority. I do not know whether it'll be free or pay-for though.

Could we have a projectile added back to Runic Tower? I know it lagged the game before to some extent, but we could solve that issue by decreasing its attack speed. Its current attack speed I believe is 0.66. We could jump it to 1.00 AS (and give it a 50% damage buff to keep the DPS the same), and then for its projectile, it needs to be something instant, so for an idea, the Protoss Sentry's laser attack, maybe shifted to a purple hue. As the Runic Tower is right now, it's rather difficult to tell whether it's even attacking or not..... well, save for things spontaneously exploding when its effect goes off.

For EU edition at the moment, hopefully NA gets the patch soon... New laser tower states 0 damage on the damage info. It seems to be including the unit it's firing as inclusive of its effect. Its damage numbers when targeting solo units was 1800 instead of 2000. It also appears to be including your builder, twill test that a little more. Forge and well visual effects are not showing up.

As much as we want it to be out soon, we also want it out looking solid and playing nicely. Given the ten kajillion bugs being found in the Open Beta of Dota 2 Reborn - http://dev.dota2.com/forumdisplay.php?f=475 - I have the feeling EleTD might not be out as fast as we'd like; plus our resources are also going in to the mobile version, so working on two versions at once is pretty daunting. I am hoping we at least get the Dota 2 version out by the end of the year though, and that's probably a more realistic time frame, especially since we still need all the custom models for the game (or at least enough that, combined with the base models in the game, all the towers have decent models).

Now for game modes! Gameplay Mode Selection Screen This screen has 3 menus with 2 options each. After 30 seconds, it will auto-choose a mode. There's a 5 second delay before you can confirm your votes. If you're in single-player, the default is set to Normal, Single Player, Non-Mazing. If you're in multiplayer, the default is set to Normal, Competitive, Non-Mazing. Normal or Extreme Normal Tooltip: Standard mode with 50 lives. Extreme Tooltip: Up for the extra challenge? Fruit points are doubled and everyone gets 100 lives instead! So the old Extreme Mode, aka 1 life and 0 cooldown between waves is being pushed from the second menu to this menu. That way, it can be stacked with the other modes listed on the first screen. Every wave has an ability. That is, every Normal wave is now a Regeneration wave. Including the first five, not that it really matters early on much. Creep HP Scaling is a flat 18.3% increase from the very start. Wave cooldown timers are always 5 seconds, with 45 second breaks every 5 waves. All creep abilities are on steroids. Here's the breakdown! Regeneration Creeps recover 4% of their maximum HP per second. Undead Creeps recover to full HP when they respawn. Mechanical Invincibility lasts for 5 seconds, 5 second cooldown. Speed Creeps always move at double speed and are immune to slowing debuffs. Healing When a creep dies, it heals all creeps nearby by 50% of their maximum hp. Keep the current AoE, I don't know what it is right now. Image Illusions have no duration. They still will not count towards lives, but they don't disappear until they die. Cooldown before a new illusion can be summoned jumps to 20 seconds though. The point of fruit points being doubled is that this would theoretically be the new contender for achieving high scores... if it's even possible to beat. o_O Single Player or Competitive If you're the only person in the game, Competitive mode will automatically be grey'd out and unselectable. Single Player Mode Everyone is in their own sandbox and world. Wave Order modes and Duration modes still apply to everyone, but everyone's difficulties are separated. Wave timers are separated. If one player finishes a wave, it will only continue to the next wave for that player. Competitive Mode Everyone's Difficulty is the same. During the voting process, everyone may choose a difficulty, but the average of those votes is what chooses the overall difficulty for everyone. This will disable Newbie difficulty from being selectable. When one player beats a wave, the countdown timer for the next wave will begin for everyone. Here's a change. For anyone that increases their difficulty manually with '-harder', when that player beats that wave, it will still use the overall difficulty's cooldown timer. I really thought it was silly an experienced player could go into a game, jump their difficulty a notch or two, then do a rush-kill defense with 3-second default cooldown timer for everyone instead of 6 to 9, killing all the newbies off instantly without giving them a chance. Increasing your difficulty in a Competitive game should only be for the sake of getting a higher fruit point score. Also includes the suggestion to Send Boss Creeps at enemies. See the Alternate Version pointed out here - https://forums.eletd.com/index.php/topic/95124-sending-element-boss-creeps/?p=119545 Non-Mazing or Mazing Non-Mazing Standard mode with the pre-determined maze. Mazing Build your own maze! Please add the ability on the Maze Blocks to be able to upgrade directly into Elemental Towers. Costs should be 172 each instead of 175. This way, we don't have to sell a block in order to build a tower, which has cause many people to lose due to creating holes in the maze. Regarding Regeneration creeps... Base regeneration is 2% a second I think. Regeneration creeps would be bumped to 3% a second, and for Extreme mode, they'd be bumped to 5% a second. The mode needs various other tweaks, but until I can figure out a viable way to do so without requiring a complete balance overhaul of the entire game, I'll hold off on suggestions. Hero Mode Remove it from the game. Very, very few people play it, and it honestly isn't that great. Best not to have too many unnecessary options at the players. Perhaps in the future, it could return, renewed with greatness. Team Mode Remove it from the game. Even less people play it, unfortunately. Well, that and it can run into various issues especially when paired with people that think grenade/ray towers are the best and fill every slot on the map. Derp. Wars Mode I don't know if it's still on the menu, but if it is, axe it. It's far from being a viable wars mode, plus the new change to Competitive Mode provides more interaction between the players anyways. Gameplay Options Selection Screen This screen has 4 menus with a number of options each. After 30 seconds, it will auto-choose a mode. There's a 5 second delay before you can confirm your votes. Difficulties Retool on the difficulties! Old set was Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and Insane. This will also redo the scaling juuuust slightly. The numbers will look different, but the results will be roughly the same. New set: Newbie Equivalent to current Easy difficulty. This difficulty is grey'd out if Competitive mode is selected. 75% HP and 0% Damage Reduction. Cooldown Timer = 10 seconds between each wave, 60 seconds on each 5-wave break. You do not get points for killing Fruits on this difficulty. Easy Equivalent to current Normal difficulty. 100% HP and 0% Damage Reduction. Cooldown Timer = 8 seconds between each wave, 60 seconds on each 5-wave break. Fruit Points per kill = 1. Normal Equivalent to current Hard difficulty. 100% HP and 30% Damage Reduction. Cooldown Timer = 6 seconds between each wave, 45 seconds on each 5-wave break. Fruit Points per kill = 2. Hard Equivalent to current Very Hard difficulty. 100% HP and 50% Damage Reduction. Cooldown Timer = 5 seconds between each wave, 45 seconds on each 5-wave break. Fruit Points per kill = 4. Insane Equivalent to current Insane difficulty. 110% HP and 60% Damage Reduction. Cooldown Timer = 5 seconds between each wave, 45 seconds on each 5-wave break. Fruit Points per kill = 6. This is mainly a relabel. Naturally, a lot of players like playing on "Normal" difficulty, but the current normal difficulty is, well... less than average. Very Easy is a really big joke, so axe that and set the new Normal in the middle. Who knows, by bumping it up a level, we may see an increase in overall player skill. High scores for everyone should be wiped. If that's not possible, multiply all of the above numbers by 5 instead. That way, old records will automatically be invalidated due to higher numbers. Element Selection All Pick You can select what elements you get. All Random Everyone's elements are completely randomized. Same Random Everyone gets the same random set of elements. Wave Orders Standard Wave Order The normal wave order is a predetermined set of creeps, which plays out the same every time. Chaos Wave Order Randomization of the standard wave order. Game Length Interest Before The Game Starts The interest timer should not start until the first wave starts. That time you get before the game starts to build your towers shouldn't be spent waiting to get the most out of your gold, it should be to figure out what you're building. Normal Game Length You start with 70 minerals, 0 gas, and you start at Wave 1 with a 30 second timer before the game starts. Short Game Length You start with 1000 minerals, 3 gas, and you start at Wave 16 with a 45 second timer before the game starts. If you're on Single-Player mode and you summon a Level 1 or 2 Element before Wave 16 starts, you will get it automatically. A Level 3 Element will run through your maze. For Random mode, the 3 gas you get is automatically spent on elements. It will not summon a Level 3 Element. Very Short Game Length You start with 6000 minerals, 6 gas, and you start at Wave 31 with a 60 second timer before the game starts. Same note as Short Game Length. I didn't include Race mode because as I've pointed out several times before, it's a pointless mode. Including Extreme Mode is optional, and heck, I'd be happy if we just got all the other changes, but it'd certainly be an interesting super challenge mode. And that wraps it up! It's a large set of suggestions for sure, heck larger than the old massive list of changes I posted last year, though these changes aren't nearly as drastic as some of the ones suggested there. What's people's thoughts on these ones?

Creep changes a-gogo! Regeneration Creep Ability ​A new creep ability that passively gives health regeneration to creeps over time. It takes a creep close to a minute to pass through the whole maze, so let's give them 2% of their maximum hp regeneration per second. Defenses that burst kill creep waves won't have any trouble. However, defenses that bank on creeps getting through most of the maze are going to have trouble, namely the triple-pass location up top, double-pass, annnd the best single-player build Artillery Towers. Rather than redoing the creep order, this'll replace various Normal waves, but not all of them. Here's the list! Wave 26 - Flame Bat, Fire Wave 33 - Jungle Scorpion, Nature Wave 36 - Manta Ray, Water Wave 45 - Goliath, Composite Wave 49 - Infested Marine, Dark Wave 53 - Colossus, Light Wave 59 - Sand Behemoth, Earth Maybe then this wave won't be a complete joke, lol. Speed Creeps Speed creeps tend to be very hard to defend against early game, but once you have slowing, their ability might as well not exist. Right now, there isn't a creep ability that really counters slowing... maybe AoE, but not actual slowing. Change speed bonus from +200% down to 100%, 3 second duration, 3 second cooldown. While the speed bonus is activated, the creep is immune to all forms of slowing. This'll nerf it early-game and buff it mid to late-game. Fruit Wave The balance of Element TD banks around creep abilities way too much. As long as the fruit wave sends just normal creeps, AoE + slowing will win every time and single-target will be pointless. They need to have creep abilities. For each wave of fruit, have it alternate between each of the six creep abilites (including the Regeneration ability above). This should alternate on a per fruit basis using the following order: Image Healing Undead Mechanical Regeneration Speed I don't know what the current HP scaling is per fruit wave increase, but with the abilities, the HP scaling can actually tone back a bit, just not too much. Overall HP Scaling For some reason, the SC2 HP scaling on creeps causes the latter half of the waves to taper off with a lower scaling than the first half. This probably partly explains how expert players are able to only spend half their gold until the fruit wave, which is quite silly. Attached is an Excel sheet with new creep hp values. It starts off slightly easier than the current scaling up through about 30. By 45, it's about 15% harder, and by wave 60, it's about 30% harder. Try saving half your gold now! Up next, game modes! New SC2 Creep HP.xlsx

This isn't completely confirmed, but due to an indefinite delay on the DOTA 2 version as a result of "we have no idea when the new DOTA 2 engine will release", we may be rolling back to the SC2 version in order to A, fix its current bugs and whatnot; and B, test out new features. Ready? GO! Tower Changes Not just balance fixes... actual changes to the towers. This is to fix towers that aren't considered as good, or its synergy with certain combinations actually works *cough Ice*. Laser Tower: A very powerful single-target tower that deals Light damage. However, the more creeps around the target, the less damage it does, down to a minimum damage cap. 2,000 / 10,000 Damage Loses 10% of its damage for every other creep within 6 range of the target. Will not drop below 30% of its damage, aka 600 / 3,000 per shot 1.00 Attack Speed Range - 12 Poison Tower: An AoE tower that deals Water damage. As it attacks, the amount of AoE it hits increases, eventually capping out at a maximum. 30 / 150 / 750 Damage 0.31 Attack Speed Range - 12 AoE - Starts at 1.5 (full damage) Every attack increases it by 0.3 AoE, up to a maximum of 6 AoE (full damage). That said, it takes a total of 15 attacks to hit maximum AoE. After 2 seconds of not attacking, its AoE will automatically reset down to 1.5. Quark Tower: A single target tower that deals Light damage. The more it attacks a single target, the more damage it deals at an exponential gain with no cap. 120 / 600 / 3,000 Damage After the first attack, its damage increased by 50%. This 50% is applied to the most recent damage. At Level 1, its damage per hit would be 120, 180, 270, 405, 608, 911, 1367, etc. 1.00 Attack Speed Range - 10 Mildew Tower: An AoE tower that deals Nature damage. It still hits creeps with a line-drive move, but the higher hp percentage the target is, the more damage it will do. 35 / 175 / 875 Minimum Damage The higher target's HP is, the more damage it does. How this should work is that for every 1% HP it has, the damage should deal an increase equal to that amount. So if the target is at 42% HP, it should deal 42% additional damage. That said, highest damage it should deal is 70 / 350 / 1,750 Damage 1.50 Attack Speed Range - 12 AoE - 2.5 (full damage) Ice Tower An single target bouncing tower that deals Light damage. It fires a frozen orb a target, which bounces as many times as possible to a random nearby creep before the orb disperses. It also gets a bonus versus slowed creeps. 50 / 250 / 1,250 Damage It gains a % damage increase equal to the total % the target is getting slowed. 1.50 Attack Speed Range - 10 Orb search AoE - 2 If there is no other creep within 2 AoE of the target, the orb automatically disperses. Orb duration - 3 seconds Orb movement speed - Should be equal to twice a creep's standard movespeed. Hail Tower: A long-range single-target tower that deals Light damage. It can fire at up to 3 targets at once at the cost of reduced single-target damage. 200 / 1,000 Damage When it fires at up to 3 different targets, damage drops to 140 / 700 Ability Duration Lasts for 3 seconds, has 3 second cooldown Autocast is defaulted to on. Tower Balance Updates The following is just a bunch of balance changes. Mostly buffs. Earth Tower: Damage: 16 / 80 / 400 / 6,000 Down from 18 / 90 / 450 / 6,750 Vapor Tower: Initial Damage: 8 / 40 / 200 Down from 10 / 50 / 250 Flamethrower Tower: Initial Damage: 100 / 500 Down from 150 / 750 Napalm Stack Damage: 80 / 400 Up from 60 / 300 Runic Tower: Ability AoE: 2.25 Down from 3. Flooding Tower: Damage: 310 / 1,550 Up from 300 / 1,500 Range: 12 Up from 10 Haste Tower: Damage: 340 / 1,700 Up from 264 / 1,320 Ephemeral Tower: Damage: 600 / 3,000 Up from 500 / 2,500 Celerity Tower: Distance Damage Multiplier: *750 / *3,750 Up from *600 / *3,000 Torrent Tower: Drop the first two charge levels (80 / 400 and 175 / 875). Caps out at 80 attacks, not 100. Remove Elemental Grenade/Ray Towers So the DOTA 2 version is going to remove the elemental versions of the grenade and ray towers. Why? Because this is the number one reason of how expert players are able to do something silly called Interest Abuse. A mass buy/resell phase up through about Wave 30 that lets expert players have up to 50% more networth than other players even in multiplayer matches. Extra networth above other players should be done through smart spending, not some abuse trick. Remove this, and said expert players might be able to get away with it through up to Wave 15 just using the standard Grenade/Ray Towers. That's fine, cause it's early game. Past that though, it shouldn't be happening. This should also kick players off the intro towers and into actual towers much earlier. Speaking of which, here's another way to do it: Max level Grenade and Ray Towers should be able to directly upgrade into any of the single-element towers. The cost for each would be 118 minerals. Up next, creep changes!

Problem with being able to send any element right off the bat is that in the early game, it'd be TOO easy to counter any given defense, simply because each player doesn't have the proper options, whereas the offensive options are much greater from the get go. Granted, you're covered partially by arrow/cannon towers, but it really isn't enough. Keep in mind that even in the alternate version, once you click the element, you get it period, so... you can hard rush some really awesome defensive towers that have Level 3 elements on them, but there's a catch with that - your offensive options and who you can counter is severely cut until late-game. Having it so your offensive elementals are tied to your elements gives a nice trade-off option. If you really have all elements available from the start though... there's practically no reason not to rush up some defense designs that would normally be impossible in single-player.

Well, the idea was pulled from someone else who thought this idea would be really awesome to add to the game. Problem is, he didn't give me any examples of what to add as items, and when I did ask him to give some examples, he said the game should be redesigned... which... wasn't helpful. Mainly, I'm trying to come up with ideas that add to the depth of Element TD without making it complex as all heck. This apparently came out a lot less awesome once it actually got written down, so yeah, this idea is now scrapped, lol.

Come to think of it, 8 player picks with something like x 3 total picks allowed... even if everyone only had 5 seconds to pick each tower, that's 5 * 96 = 480 seconds + some extra time for everyone to look at the pool of towers at the start of each phase = approximately 9 minute drafting phase. Even the DOTA 2's random ability draft phase doesn't take that long. Perhaps Draft Mode in more than 1v1 would be much better suited to be Ban Mode, aka... everyone gets to ban towers. At 8 players, it'd be 1 per player, so of the total 35 towers, 27 would be usable, which is enough to heavily impact what/how players do things. Why would 1v1 draft mode be easier to organize on the forum? Say the mode really was built into the game, where there's zero interference between the players, but they're in the same replay, thus making it much easier to review, and the mode is built in, so the draft is done on-the-spot, which'd test the players' knowledge of the game. In terms of organizing it, it'd just be "host player invites other player, start game".

Okay, alternate version. You have access to any creep ability to add to the boss from the start of the game, and these creep abilities remain static over the course of the game, only the HP of the boss scales. You have a UI piece with three menus: Choose player Lets you choose which player to send the boss creep to. Also includes a Random option, which will randomize which player it sends the boss to. Any player that is already dealing with a boss will be greyed out, preventing you from selecting him. Choose armor type Lets you choose which armor type your boss has. You can only select the element types of the elements you have access to. You also have access to Composite. Also includes a Random option, which will randomize which element it picks when you send the boss. Choose creep ability Lets you choose which creep ability your boss has. You have access to all six creep abilities from the start, and the mirror the versions that the standard creeps get - Mechanical, Speed, Healing (might need to alter this one), Undead, Regeneration, and Image. Also includes a Random option, which will randomize with creep ability it picks when you send the boss. By default, all of these menus will be set to Random. There should also be an auto-cast on "Send Boss", which will automatically send the boss creep when it can. A note - boss creeps can't be sent during the long cooldowns that occur every 5 waves. That said, the auto-cast send "Send Boss" would then start it when the next wave starts, so Waves 6, 11, 16, 21, etc.

Ehh, if it has no abilities, then slow + splash will still run it over. EleTD is balanced around creeps having abilities in addition to the creep armor. That's why right now, in the fruit round, slow + splash is the only way to go if you want highscore (I'm still advocating the change of bringing randomized creep abilities back). Single-target just falls off really badly and stands no chance. Whereas if the boss has abilities (whether it's tied to your elements or not), you can beat out those slow + splash builds that would normally trump everything else. The way my suggestion sets it up is that it's passive, meaning you don't really think about how to upgrade your boss so much as get your defense elements, and then see what it gives you offensively for boss options, which quite frankly would be far superior to high hp boss with no abilities. In the end, it's still the same menu your simplification has - when to send it, who to send it to, and what element to send it as. The passives are there as an extra bonus, and if you really want to build around countering people with a boss using a certain set of abilities, you can, but you'd have to balance it against your defensive strategy.

In an effort to make Competitive Mode feel, well... actually competitive, that is, players reacting to each other and trying to kill each other asides from camping the entrance and praying it works (seriously), I'm suggesting something that'll open way more gameplay options and builds while the same time giving you the ability to screw your opponent over. Picking elements no longer summons elemental bosses that run through your maze. You automatically get the element. That's right folks. You can totally get away with having Level 3 Vapor Towers starting Wave 31. That definitely wasn't remotely possible before even in single-player, not without losing most of your lives anyways. However, single-target towers will be more important than before... Instead, every time you get an element pick, you also get a Boss resource! Yay! What's it do? Well, you can spend it to send an Elemental Boss at another player! Pretty cool, huh? Here's how it works... At the Element Summoning Center, you'll be able to pick your elements as usual, but as you pick each one, it empowers your boss. By default, the boss summon scales per five waves, not by what tier it is. Pick the boss element Let's you pick which element the boss will be. Regardless of what elements you have, you can pick Composite. Your boss upgrades with each element pick Here's a list of the upgrades that get added to your boss, depending on which elements you have. Fire: ​Healing - When it dies, it will cause a set number of nearby creeps to recover to full health. Level 1 - Gives 3 creep full heal version of Healing Level 2 - Gives 6 creep full heal version of Healing Level 3 - Gives 9 creep full heal version of Healing Nature: ​Regeneration - Every second, the boss will recover a portion of its maximum health. Level 1 - Gives 0.5% per second hp regeneration version of Regeneration Level 2 - Gives 1% per second hp regeneration version of Regeneration Level 3 - Gives 1.5% per second hp regeneration version of Regeneration Earth: ​Undead - After it dies, it will revive to a percentage of its maximum health once. Once it revives, its abilities are removed. Level 1 - Gives 25% creep revival version of Undead Level 2 - Gives 50% creep revival version of Undead Level 3 - Gives 75% creep revival version of Undead Light: ​Speed - At set intervals, the boss will temporarily increase to maximum movement speed, ignoring any slowing debuffs on it. Level 1 - Gives 1.5 second max speed boost version of Speed Level 2 - Gives 3.0 second max speed boost version of Speed Level 3 - Gives 4.5 second max speed boost version of Speed Dark: ​Mechanical - At set intervals, the boss will temporarily become invulnerable, ignoring any debuffs on it as well. Level 1 - Gives 1.5 second invulnerability version of Mechanical Level 2 - Gives 3.0 second invulnerability version of Mechanical Level 3 - Gives 4.5 second invulnerability version of Mechanical Water: ​Image - At set intervals, when the boss is hit, it will disappear for a moment and then reappear with a nearby illusion that lasts for 10 seconds. The position of the boss itself and its illusion are shuffled. Additionally, if the illusion dies, it will not proc Undead or Healing. Level 1 - Summons 1 illusion for Image Level 2 - Summons 2 illusions for Image Level 3 - Summons 3 illusions for Image Up to six different upgrades to the boss (equal to the number of elements you can acquire). Examples of your uber boss at work: 6 Elements: ​Earth 2, Water 2, Nature 2. Let's pick Nature armor type. That gives it 50% Undead, 1% per second Regeneration, and 10-second Image 8 Elements: Light 3, Fire 3, Earth 1, Dark 1. Let's pick Composite armor type. That gives it 4.5 second Speed, 9 creep full heal Healing, 25% revival Undead, and 1.5 second invulnerability Mechanical 11 Elements: Let's make it a nightmare for AoE. Dark 3, Light 3, Nature 3, and Water 2. Pick any of those for armor type. 4.5 second Mechanical, 4.5 second Speed, 1.5% Regeneration, and 2 Image illusions. The HP of the boss should not scale as high as a Level 3 Elemental Boss currently does. I'm not really sure what scaling should work, but combined with all the abilities, taking one down at the end of the game should be quite difficult, especially with the standard waves coming in. Bosses do not provide any gold when killed. When it leaks through a maze, the target player loses 3 Lives. In order to balance this for any number of players, no more than 1 Boss can exist in any player zone at any time. That way, multiple players can't gank up on one guy at once. However, whoever's winning should expect lots of bosses to come his way. You can hoard your Boss Resource the entire game, but using it early will ensure someone can't save money all day long in the beginning. Unlike the elemental picks, you will get a 12th Boss Resource once someone clears Wave 60. The scaling on this last boss summon will increase by much more, allowing you to really screw someone up during the Fruit Round of Death, even if you spent all 11 Boss Resources during the standard wave section. I think this addition would dramatically change strategies in multiplayer games, making it different from your standard single-player Element TD game. Especially since we're moving to the DOTA 2 platform, which has a naturally competitive userbase. Right now, the strategy is either "camp the entrance to start the waves consecutively for all the others players" or "save and hoard for the end, hoping you don't get screwed by entrance campers". That's it. One answer to other players right now. Whereas this version, for one, you can safely go any element combination, pick who you want to die (to a controlled extent), and try to survive as other players try to kill you with their bosses. There's actual responses between players. It also lets single-target towers shine much more... right now, they're kind of useless in the end-game compared to mass slowing + AoE. What're thoughts on this idea? And yes, I'd like this as a straight up change to Competitive mode, aka the standard multiplayer mode. If you're in single-player, Competitive would be disabled and you'd get Single-Player Mode, which is the current EleTD mode.

I have figured out a way to incorporate Draft Mode into the game such that it supports up to 8 Players. For those that don't know, it's normally a 1v1 mode where each player drafts the entire pool of combination towers (15 dual towers, 20 triple towers), picking 5 dual towers each then 7 triple towers each. You can totally pick a tower that you can't build just to deny someone else from building it. Essentially, as more players are added, the more times towers can be picked by multiple players. Here's the list for each player count: 2 Players 10 of 15 total Dual Picks 14 of 20 total Triple Picks 3 Players 15 of 15 total Dual Picks 20 of 20 total Triple Picks Whoever picks last gets to pick any Triple Tower he wants 4 Players All towers can be picked twice 20 of 30 total Dual Picks 28 of 40 total Triple Picks 5 Players All towers can be picked twice 25 of 30 total Dual Picks 35 of 40 total Triple Picks 6 Players All towers can be picked twice 30 of 30 total Dual Picks 40 of 40 total Triple Picks The last two players to pick can pick any Triple Tower they want 7 Players All towers can be picked thrice 35 of 45 total Dual Picks 49 of 60 total Triple Picks 8 Players All towers can be picked thrice 40 of 45 total Dual Picks 56 of 60 total Triple Picks In terms of the order of the picking, it'll randomize the pick order, and then when it reaches end of the order, it starts again from the end of that randomization and reverses the order. Whoever's first and last in the pick orders will have multiple chances to pick two towers in a row. Draft Mode will automatically set the standard gameplay mode to Competitive. Afterwards, the players can set difficulty, creep order, and match duration. Thoughts?

This suggestion would be for the DOTA 2 version and whatever custom interface it's getting. Pretty much, this'd add a shop to the game that lets you buy a power-up item for each tower, boosting its abilities. Here's the list of power-ups that I've got so far. They're pretty basic at the moment. 25% Damage Increase 25% Attack Speed Increase 20% AoE Increase 20% Range Increase 20% Cooldown Reduction (on abilities) These upgrades are for all towers.... but depending on which tier, it costs a different amount. Let's assign tiers. The numbers describe the total gold costs for each set, which is how I'm going to base the costs for the upgrade amounts: Tier 1 - Focused (625), Level 1 Dual (500) Tier 2 - Refined (1,925), Level 2 Dual (1,250), Level 1 Triple (1,500) Tier 3 - Level 3 Dual (3,150) Tier 4 - Level 2 Triple (5,000) Tier 5 - Pure (11,000) Here's the cost for the power-ups at each tier: Tier 1 - 150 (adds 250 upgrading to Tier 2) Tier 2 - 400 (adds 600 upgrading to Tier 3, 1,350 upgrading to Tier 4, 3,100 upgrading to Tier 5) Tier 3 - 1,000 Tier 4 - 1,750 Tier 5 - 3,500 FYI, you can only get one upgrade per tower. Once the upgrade is on the tower, it'll stay on the tower and add upgrade costs towards the next tier upgrade. It may seem like its costs more than what it's worth, but here's the catch - every round that passes will reduce the upgrade cost to the next tier by 5%, so if you're efficient with low tower amounts and upgrades, you'll end up getting better gold/efficiency than without the upgrade. Something else this does is make Focused/Refined much more worth it, since the costs of the upgrades (relative to the total costs of the tower) are less than what the upgrade provides. Refined towers fall off really fast in effectiveness; hopefully this'll help keep focused/refined on the board. Upgrades can be sold individually for 75% its total value. Likewise, if you sell the tower, it'll sell the power-up upgrade as well. Those upgrades listed above are all I've got for now. I'd like more upgrade ideas than just those five basic ones before the idea is really considered. Note this idea is meant as an addition to the base game, and it's not intended as a game mode. Also, the costs of the upgrades are a bit arbitrary and can't really be judged unless they're actually added to the game and tested. Please post your thoughts and comments below!

It's possible, and in fact, due to the fact that DOTA 2 handles movement speed modifier stacking (additive and not multiplicative), something normally impossible like all 4 slowing towers at Level 2 would uhhh... break the game, actually. 22.5 * 4 = 90, so all creeps drop down from 300 ms to 30 ms. Might need to wait till multiplicative is supported, or just stick a hard cap of number of slowing towers you can get.

Just the highest tier. Point is that by the end, excluding your 6 base single-element towers, you have a choice of 11 of 35 random dual/triple towers. Combinations that weren't possible before become doable since you have full access to maxing the level of each tower, but it takes a good knowledge of the game to fully utilize these combos. It is entirely possible to get all 11 support towers, and then just use that + single-element towers. It's not necessarily balanced, just supposed to be fun. Well, Race mode is getting the axe for the DOTA 2 version. I'm just suggesting this as something down-the-road. I think the game could use more silly/fun modes, personally. There's really nothing wrong with a lot of different modes, just so long as each one is genuinely fun to play. A lot of multiplayer games nowadays have 10+ different game modes. A good portion of EleTD's "modes" are more like game settings, ala game length, wave order, the way wave interaction is handled, average difficulty, etc.