Chiquihuite

Because despite their name, "Interest" upgrades are in no way interesting. They're essentially a no-brainer pick, and that means that people are playing "element TD" for the first 15 minutes without actually having any elements. I don't think it's a problem if that's a viable option, but when it becomes the ideal way to play (best fruit killer by far), then we have a serious issue on our hands. I'm very curious to see how this change plays out.

https://forums.eletd.com/index.php?s=&s...ost&p=21398 I kind of like what Vyce posted there. Is there a compelling reason not to eliminate interest upgrades entirely?

This.

As cool as some of this sounds, TDs are inherently more macro-intensive games. We don't want to draw too much focus away from that aspect or we risk diminishing the type of gameplay that draws people to TDs in the first place. So far, community feedback has been overwhelmingly in favor of making our existing "micro" towers easier to manage than they currently are (with added Attack Ground abilities, etc). I'm a fan of having to have some user input for a tower to reach their peak effectiveness, but we're generally looking for the delta between base effectiveness (with no micro) and peak effectiveness (with ideal micro) to be fairly narrow - about 20 to 25%.

And that's because people just faceroll the standard options. @Mav: Yes, there is. Build grenade towers. Rays if you're interest whoring long enough to hit fast waves. That's *all* there is with no variety. I think it'd be quite easy to balance the waves such that it's not any more of a stress to new players, and still leave the options open. Even if we cut the first 5 waves and let you start with a single element, it'd be an improvement. Also, what about gating interest? Any thoughts on forcing at least the first 1-2 vespene to go to element picks? It seems genuinely FUBAR to me that the optimum way to play is to take interest for your first two picks and not even use any real element towers 'til like wave 15-20. To be perfectly honest, it's boring.

Honestly, filling the map with anything will cause lag. My work computer is similar to what you describe and will chug as well when the map gets that packed with towers. We could gut the animation and it might help a little, but I think the underlying issue is that it's possible to fill up the map with the most high end of towers because interest is just too potent.

Yes, it should. Please let us know if you encounter any situation where that is not the case.

I don't know if Kara's confirmed it as a certainty, but it's definitely something we're thinking about. I'm personally a fan of doing this.

I rebuilt this tower last night. It should be working correctly in the next release.

We're adding a channel advertisement on the loading screen in the next version

Well Kara did say the role is up for grabs. I imagine we'd be open to a good pitch for a splash tower

Bank files are stored client-side. If I play Star Battle from work, then play from home, I end up with 2 independent W/L records. Same goes for Mafia and any other game with a bank system. That's what makes them so unreliable- a player can edit their own bank file and, if they can figure out the right values to change, will be able to set their points/rank/whatever to anything they want.

Alright let's face it: after you've played a few games, the first 10 or so waves are pretty much a snoozefest. You're playing "Element TD" but all you do is grab interest ups and resell grenade towers. YAWN. In fact, Short Mode exists specifically because the early levels are boring. The idea being that more experienced players can pick it and get right into the hot elemental-y action. But how many of you have actually played a pickup game on Short Mode? It pretty much doesn't happen. And the fact that it's needed in the first place is a problem. So what if... We cut the first 5/10 waves and started players with 1/2 vespene accordingly. Elements summoned before the first wave would get...I dunno nuked or something. This gets you right into the meat of things.IF we do the above: Cut the lowest level of grenade/ray/single element towers (you'd start with advanced/amplified at 20/175 mins respectively.) They'd be kind of pointless without the first 10 waves.We gated interest upgrades until later in the game OR made them less important such that only dual element builds would be likely to grab them early. This would help people not feel like they *have* to interest-whore. I feel like the game would be dramatically more fun with these adjustments. They'd be major changes and won't happen lightly, but I'd love to see some discussion on them. What do you guys think?

Yeah insta-kill is one of those things where it's either awesomely OP or complete shit. There's very little in-between. I'd like to get confirmation from Kara as well about whether we're open to changing this tower's role before I start throwing out mechanics proposals. The knock-up with temp invulnerability is a cool suggestion

Oh hi there, comment avalanche. @Maelstrom: This isn't the only change we're evaluating. I'll get a thread up on it in a bit, but it's along your line of thinking. @alguemx & Megadramon: Let me clarify the intent with these modes. Standard is the mode you play when you just log in and decide to jump into EleTD. It creates an environment where everyone can more or less play their own game. Mixed difficulty, no timer rushing, etc. The only real competition here is fruit points. Competitive, Race, and Extreme are all for seasoned players who want to play serious games. You'll use these modes for community organized events, games with friends, or games formed in the Element TD Chat channel (More to come on that last part). @Nachoraver: Every other top map has stats and every other top map relies on insecure bank files to do it. As a result, every one of them has been a victim of hacked stats. We're not opposed to adding these kinds of things, but they're a bit lower priority while we focus on gameplay issues and try to come up with a ranking/trophy system that's at least somewhat resilient to cheating issues.

This is one of my least favorite towers. We already have a random chance effect in the game with Quake/Seism. Problem is, need some idea to replace it with. Why didn't you say so? Brb drawing board.

These towers will not autocast on towers with the "support" attribute. Ie: ion, jinx, trickery, etc.

Improve it

The debuffs are supposed to validate against each other. I'll check it out.

Lmao

The longer reload cooldown is tied to a design concept of "saving the player from himself". If we give you power on a 7s cd, you're going to do one of two things- #1: Use it every 7 seconds. #2: Not use it every 7 seconds because it's a hassle and feel frustrated because you're not getting max power. Both situations kind of suck. If we give it a longer cooldown and balance accordingly, you still have control but it's less of an attention drain. We don't want to force you into 24/7 babysitting. You'll see more of this philosophical shift in the ephemeral rework next release.

Yes, this is possible. Dialogs can be resized on the fly. Honestly our whole UI needs love, though. We might want to sit on this pending a rework.

Reworked the way this tower targets in the latest version. It should have some very interesting uses now. How do you guys like it?

I like the increased base and reduced range idea a lot. It'd really move toward the goal of "good for people who can't micro, but optimal for people who can" idea in a very easy-to-understand way.

Correct. You can clone an individual tower every 60 seconds.