0rb3r

I was before on 3.0 more a vh player, not a good one, but i could keep things up on solo games. Now on 4.0 I am more than challenged to survive hard mode, so, to me it's like the game would have now one more difficulty level, the new vh. vh has becomed really vh now, and normal difficulty isn't as far a sleep pill as it was on 3.0, if I want a challenge I dont need to go for extreme anymore, vh is a real damn challenge right now. Btw, the extreme mode on 4.0 affects now mainly the game speed, its a must-try mode now. It makes sologames closer to the speed you experience on multi games.

The only advantage I see is merely cosmetic. You hava a strong visual feedback of your difficulty (or the difficulty of other players), that could oc be replaced by something else. But I disagree that it would be easy to implement as values, denying handicap and extreming the armor differences between difficulties would mean to rebalance many things again to keep the whole thing as it is, not to mention that it would mess up the way armor reductors work right now.

As cisz said his replay was in a private beta, so you wouldn't be able to open it anyway unless you were in the testing team. Atm, I don't know of anybody else finishing 4.0 vh noleak, it looks like you'll have to be a bit patient though or try it yourself By saying that the game was extreme enough to win what do you mean, Normal difficulty or vh or extreme mode?

This would be armor affected. The thing is that simply being the actual life water damage would leave almost all of the creeps alive. I ex: 1 creep at 2000 life, 10000 maxlife and 15 water armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = 2000 water damage 2000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to water armor 100% damage; 2000 x (1-0,47) x 1 = 1060 real damage. Creep alive with 940 hp. 1 creep at 2000 life, 10000 maxlife and composite armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = 2000 water damage 2000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to composite armor 75% damage; 2000 x (1-0,47) x 0,75 = 795 real damage. Creep alive with 1205 hp. So, if the skill is unable to kill creeps under normal conditions, whats the point on having an instantkill skill? What we are trying to achieve is that: 1) The instant kill chance is adequated to the difficulty, remaining constant for how hard it is to damage creeps due to difficulty. If the chance is multiplied by handicap it should do the trick. 2) That the damage bears in mind the armor type of the creep, not instant killing at all in some cases, i.ex. darkness. water damage = (actual life) x 1,34 x (1/armor reduction% (0,47 on vh)) would kill all creeps except darkness, and water damage = (actual life) x (1/armor reduction% (0,47 on vh)) would kill all creeps except composite and darkness, which would survive with low hp. The question just is what exactly you want to achieve by making the instant kill damage water damage. Doing it right away would make instantkill a "nearly instantkill"-skill. What we could do is use the (max hp-actual hp) as a water damage, like: 1 creep at 2000 life, 10000 maxlife and 15 water armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = (10000-2000)= 8000 water damage 8000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to water armor 100% damage; 8000 x (1-0,47) x 1 = 4240 real damage. Creep dies. 1 creep at 3000 life, 9000 maxlife and darkness armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = (9000-3000) = 6000 water damage 6000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to composite armor 75% damage; 2000 x (1-0,47) x 0,5 = 1590 real damage. Creep alive with 1410 hp. Still, this wouldhave the inconvenience to leave alive creeps with a low max hp value. Which brings me to the point, what sense does it make to spare the life of weak creeps? The best solution is that instant kill does a fix amount of water damage, like 15000 water damage on instantkill, which is affected by armor type and difficulty. A weak creep at full health, element armor; 1 creep at 10000 life, 10000 maxlife and 15 water armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = 15000 water damage 15000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to water armor 100% damage; 15000 x (1-0,47) x 1 = 7950 real damage. Creep alive with 2050 hp. Same creep at full health with weak element armor; 1 creep at 10000 life, 10000 maxlife and 15 fire armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = 15000 water damage 15000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to fire armor 200% damage; 15000 x (1-0,47) x 2 = 15900 real damage. Creep dies. A stronger creep almost dead, element armor; 1 creep at 5k life, 100k maxlife and 15 water armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = 15000 water damage 15000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to water armor 100% damage; 15000 x (1-0,47) x 1 = 7950 real damage. Creep dies. Same creep, with oposite element armor; 1 creep at 5k life, 100k maxlife and 15 darkness armor. Instantkill --> Waterdamage = 15000 water damage 15000 damage, armor reduction 47% (15 armor), water attack to dark armor 50% damage; 15000 x (1-0,47) x 0,5 = 3975 real damage. Creep alive with 1025 hp. This way the skill would be: -Longer useful on easy games or on harder ones combined with armor reducers, would after a certain point not instant kill on harder difficulties -Be longer useful against fire waves, and start sooner being useless against darkness -Some kind of critical strike skill with chance depending on current health more that just instant killing regardless conditions -Still be usefull and not ignoring armor So my suggestion is: Multiply chance% x h (handicap) Make the tower deal 15000 water damage instead of simply killing the creep.

thinking about it, i think the best way to rebalance this tower should be adding a compensator to the trigger. Being h the handicap as ve=0,5 and vh=1,0 (50% life to 100% life) %instakill = 3000 life/creep actual life better would be: %instakill = (3000/creep actual life) x h this would at least remove the advantage from the skill itself. Then just apply the instakill damage: water damage = (max creep life - actual life) x 1,34. This way a darkness creep would survive the instakill with near to 0 hp. Enough to finish him off with arrows. A composite creep wouldn't, leaving the skill very useful.

The key is that now you have to go for a triple to have instakill, the new gold is as well a triple and far less useful then in 3.0 where it was a dual. Im going to test it. Tested, a good rusher could rush between waves 22-42, Well+Drowning is a good rusher build and can rush on VE. Replay: http://rapidshare.com/files/88302909/Po ... B.w3g.html Sorry, you need to have the map in "...\Maps\Beta Testing" to be able to see it. I choosed the wrong copy of the map. As you see you can rush badly on VE if you are good (better then me, oc). I think that this concearn is real.

Yeah but don't forget that we have now much better damagers, a general damage amount buff and less weak towers/builds. Its a pretty good deal imo.

I don't mean the armor type reduction, I meant the armor strength reduction. I think it was on b7 the armor strength was changed so each point of armor means more damage reduction%. On VH (15 armor) it changed from 46% to 48% or so. Ok, nevermind, it really isn't much of a difference.

Yeah, but I think it was on one of the internal betas before the damage reduction% was readjusted, dunno, it may be harder right now in the public beta. Maybe he has already a vh noleak replay for the public beta being cooked in the oven . You should ask him directly.

I think to remember that element to element was always 100%. element to neutral was 90% and is now 75%. Previous element to element (ex. earth to light) was and is 200% while next element to element (ex. dark to light) remains on 50%. So it is undoubtfully harder now on 4.0 then previously on 3.0. The only change is composite which has dropped from 90% to 75%. An single element tower did in 3.0: Single element: (4x(8x100%))+(1x(8x50%))+1x(8x200%))+1x(12x90%))=6280/60 waves= 104,6% average damage the whole game A single element tower in 4.0 does: Single element: (4x(8x100%))+(1x(8x50%))+1x(8x200%))+1x(12x75%))=6100/60 waves= 101,6% average damage the whole game Both versions, 3.0 and 4.0, have 8 waves of each element and 12 waves of composite armor.

I think echinodermata meant that "Nature" is hard to translate accurately as a concept, rather than the fact that it is wrong in your translation vinxu. I think thats pretty normal, I work sometimes as translator and it is sometimes very tricky to translate something without having it lose part of its sense, some things just do not have a word in certain languages.

That would be really a good thing. If we want to have ppl know one good day that the RC's are unofficial maps we definately need a public list with the official ones.

I bet with you that if you let Gipface get Death tower on wave 10 he will rush you so badly you won't forget, same goes for kindle. These towers are just useless if you build them late, but 2 of them early can mean your doom if you are on multi, specially if you are not expecting the rush.

We plenty discussed about adding more classifications like "tank", "resistent", "persistent" and such, the main problem is that we need creep models that fit these classifications and need to put them in without messing the game. We didn't found a way. And I disagree, exactly after wave 40 you start having money excess, midgame is the hardest part. After wave 40 you just have to prepare earlier. EleTD 4.0 PB can be beated no leak on vh, Cisz did it once, so it is possible with certain builds to beat it. I finished once normal with 49 lives, and the one I leaked was before wave 20. So i'm 100% certain it is possible to do it on normal dif. without being uber. I wouldn't mind to have healing waves to be a bit harder, if you give me +0,5% starting interest rate

yep, the green part is where he credited himself, not an explanation about nature. Sometimes I just forget the range of our work and thinking that somebody at the other face of earth is enjoying the game makes me all excited. It's just amazing if you think about it. Great job vinxu, thanks for your contribution and for sharing it. Kudos. (then I maybe move from time to time to the chineese server for a gg , as soon as I learn chineese that is)

Jolin is right. I think the new stuff of 4.0 is less newcommerfriendly, it takes some time till you get used to all, but there is no doubt that it is better than 3.0. I think the results are excellent, It would be mad to believe that we could release the beta and wouldnt need further polishing; bearing this in mind the first impressions of ppl seem to be 5 points of 5.

Wow, i'm impressed.

The main purpose behind the composite armor reduction is to force the player to treat it like a special wave like undead or mechs are. It is no longer possible to ignore the components of upcoming waves. This is imo a good thing because it makes the tendency to overbuild much stronger, you have to build extra on about half of the waves and have to keep your build weak on the other half to make enough interest. Now you have to keep an eye on: - If the next wave comes an elemental - If the element of the next wave is strong against your main damagers - If the next wave is composite - If the next wave is undead or mechanical -Or if many of the above stated things come together Thus it requires much more skill then before to manage all and it requires more experience to know how much needs to be built extra on each situation. The actual values make the game much more active and make it nearly impossible to stay long with the same towers, all good things imo. When I first started I thought as well they were too strong, but I got pretty much used to it after some time. I think that the formula should be that a composite unclassified wave should be about as hard as an element mechanical wave. So, something between 75 and 80% reduction, i really wouldnt mind if it stays the way it is, you have more money then before to compensate on all difficulties below VH.

On 4.0 the easy and very easy difficulties make, due to increased amount of spawns (which is now the same for all difficulties), insane amounts of cash endgame (if you dont overbuild too much, that is), if you go for quaker+nova or quaker+well+zeal on long passes you can make about 3600 ronalds. For that you need about 160k gold at wave 60. There is really no comparison right now between VE & VH. It really requires some skill to finish VH, I think to remember that my maximum was about 50 ronnies on 4.0 VH, I never had enough savings to face them properly, and as there is now no interest after wave 60, you just can sit down and pray.

Sure.

Maybe it's just the crab-builder what they adore. .

Btw, talking about kg's kilograms... Shouldnt the game provide some extra cash if you get interest in the first 3 picks of "short"? At least, if you would have played the picks you would have made extra cash on your interest ticks. Maybe +75/+50/+25 gold is ok depending on if it is the 1st, 2nd or 3rd pick that is an interest pick. So, if you play short + allrandom i.ex. and get as picks i$+F+i$, you get 1100 starting gold due to interest picks instead of just 1000 gold. I've choosen the 75/50/25 amounts pretty randomly, feel free to suggest more realistic ones.

^^LOL this forum is running crazy... Actually, what Cisz says about the amount of played games is a reason of weight, I didn't thought about it this way but it seems logical that it would harm more ocasional players and benefit the advanced ones. Still, Short+Multiplayer ends up in a 30 min. game, surely not 80 min. (unless you agree with everybody to stall 1 hour, oc). I think the impact on hosted VE or N games will not be that big, probably even not worth mentioning as they are not likely to use the feature; but it is possible that there will be less VH hosted games. But good players know anyway to host and will host themselfs if theydont find public games hosted by others, so, I think the risk is not that big and a try worth.

That's why it is so important to provide replays on crash-games.

tesard is right, it is not possible atm to go for short & competitive at the same time. If you want -random, -extreme, -chaos, ..., it should be possible before wave 20. I dunno how it works with pick+short right now, didn't tested it yet.