Chiquihuite

Too bad the actual game is like watching paint dry But yeah, we're definitely working to improve our UI - we just haven't had much luck recruiting a UI specialist so it's been slow going figuring it all out.

The lightning is purely cosmetic. The projectile damages all enemies it passes over. I'll agree that it feels a bit weak for a triple now that I've had a chance to play with it a bit - I'll talk to Karawasa and see what he thinks about it. Oh, and you don't even wanna know what kinda math went into making the visual work correctly. This is our first tower that has a trigger-driven visual and I'm pleasantly surprised that it came out so pretty

Awesome! I'm glad you like it

I think the best way to get our feet wet on this might be to start with a strictly "PvE" introduction of these items/weapons. We can evaluate how much people enjoy using them against creeps first, and if it's a success then we can revisit the PvP aspect down the road. Thoughts?

This is one of my biggest concerns. I feel this system would introduce a tremendous amount of "anti-fun" to the game, as well as substantial additional complexity, in exchange for gameplay that I suspect will only feel meaningful to the most hardcore players. Dealing minor damage to your opponents once every 60-90 seconds at the cost of making your own towers better strikes me as a very intangible form of satisfaction. Sure, once it's down to you and another guy competing for the win, it might make sense (Except that heals are more powerful than damage, so you'll never be able to outdamage their heals 1 on 1). Until that point, it'll feel like a clusterfuck. At the same time, when someone does something to screw you over, you'll suffer the full amount of dissatisfaction whether you have 1 opponent or 7. I don't think we're lacking for complexity, just variation in gameflow. We could totally accomplish that by introducing "items" into the mix without turning it into some crazy free-for-all of OMFGWTFBBQ. Just off the top of my head, I'd propose making it so every player is given a specific "target" to focus on. If your target is wiped out, you inherit his target. Knowing that you have someone specific gunning for you will make it more practical to get whatever defends against the spells they have, but at the same time you'll have a target to overcome. Suppose you even get a reward for your "target" suffering, like gaining lives when they leak. Maybe there'd even be a periodic reversal of targets so you have a chance to get back at your tormenter? Second, I think it'd be beneficial to make a clear distinction between "attack" and "defense" time - perhaps only allowing use of spells when all your creeps have been cleared? That'd create an interesting rhythm where you'd get to be aggressive on waves that favor your elements, and more defensive when your elements are not favored. Just some thoughts. I'd really like to see more people posting their opinion

I'd be strongly in favor of going in a somewhat different direction with this. That said, the most glaring issue I have is with the two "hard disables" (Sleep builder and hide UI). 1 second is too short to be meaningful, and 7 seconds is long enough to make the average player want to punch their monitor. Also, why is the one creep heal % based, when the other is flat numbers? I'll leave it to the hardcore number crunchers to do the math on the damage abilities, but something tells me they'll be utterly unsatisfying unless you're coordinating a beatdown (and completely broken in that scenario).

I rebuilt and optimized tsunami a few weeks ago and ended up with one of our most efficient triple towers. It's surprising to think it would be especially problematic. I have an idea for a way to implement optional "cheaper" spell effects which may help us narrow down this issue.

No, slowing towers of the same triple element have mutually exclusive slows. Muck 1 will not stack with Muck 1. Muck 1 will not stack with Muck 2. Muck 1 will stack with Ion 1 OR 2, Barb 1 OR 2, and Nova 1 OR 2.

The 10% and 30% slows of each respective tower type are mutually exclusive. Additionally, the required elements are distributed in such a way that you can only ever achieve level 2 in the elements for 2 of the 4 towers at any given time. In other words, the maximum slow possible is 2x 30% + 2x 10%, which works out to around 60% movespeed reduction. Oh, and it doesn't matter which one hits first. The multiplicative reduction will be the same.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I think right now we're leaning more toward using "builder weapons" as a means of deepening the solo survivor gameplay rather turning this into a direct PvP game. The PvP idea is not off the table, but we're really looking to strike a balance between broadening content and preserving enjoyment of the game as it is now.

It's only available if you have Starcraft 2. You can download it on Battle.Net.

lol...9 hour replay. that's amazing.

Yeah, if we're talking infinite fruit kills, that's kinda broken. They should very rapidly scale up in difficulty more or less indefinitely - unless you reached some kind of limit. We'll have to check this out.

It's on the agenda, just below a few other items on the list at the moment (namely, Radius tower).

I've pitched the idea of allowing this mechanic for 1-2 specific towers to Karawasa and it's something he feels very strongly about not doing. I'd still be open to the idea in theory as long as we can be sure it doesn't rock the balance boat.

Not saying I disagree with you, but for the sake of discussion... What makes them necessary? Could we meet that need in a different way that could perhaps be more fun? What if Tier 1 element towers also sold for 100%? (Flexibility in early waves) What if composite towers did only 80% damage to non-composite targets? (Promotes transition to appropriate element towers after early waves) OR What if all towers sold for 100% for the first X waves, and sell value slowly declined from that point? (Flexibility in early waves, but you're eventually forced to commit) The idea of initial freedom to build/sell with an eventual need to commit really sounds attractive to me. It allows for meaningful gains from early micro while still placing an upper limit on late-game complexity.

What are you talking about? Element TD is serious business.

Mass auras on all towers would eat up framerate. We probably want to avoid stuff like that. Problems to be considered with career stats- #1: If you switch computers, you lose them #2: If your bank file wipes for any reason, you lose them #3: The more simple the system, the easier it is to understand - and the easier it is to hack #4: Rewards need to be compelling, but can't provide tangible power or have negative side-effects (like lag) I'm in favor of offering various rewards like new builders, but I'd suggest doing so along two tracks - one for number of games played/XP, and one for special achievements or competitive goals (like winning VH Random, winning X number of games, getting a certain # of fruit points, etc) I'd like for them to be fairly non-linear so that if, for example, a player's HD gets wiped, he can focus on re-acquiring his favorite builder model pretty quickly.

Yeah, those kinds of stats are very powerful at driving repeat play behavior. I never realized just how large a percentage of players get hooked on that sort of thing. It's definitely on our radar. Oh, and we recently reduced our load time by about 10-15% with some tweaks to how certain aspects of the map are handled

Umm, yeah that should be plenty good enough. It'll chug a bit on late waves, sure, but it shouldn't crash. Any chance I could get a copy of the error text you're getting? Is there a crash log with details, or just a pop-up message? What's the exact wording of it?

The tower has an ability called 'Respite' which forces it to stop attacking for 3 seconds. You even get a nifty progress bar while it's "resting".

Odd. I'd expect to see a crash like that on XP with memory management issues, but Vista's generally a lot better about that sort of thing. Any chance you could post your full system specs for reference?

What if we cut the other interest pick and just increased the base rate to 3%? Seems like that'd address both concerns.

Are you using Windows XP?

Care to explain how reducing available interest picks homogenizes strategy? Given that the ideal way to play is to take as much interest as possible, as early as possible? Limiting interest picks opens up element choices for players much earlier in the game and allows more total element picks to be a viable option. I'm pretty sure this will actually lead to *more* strategic diversity. Personally, I'd be in favor of killing interest picks entirely as the base 2% is still quite compelling and accomplishes the goal of rewarding players for good resource management.