Cisz

Thanks. I've been working on this all way since challenge 8. In fact, even before challange 8, because that challenge was meant to provide data for a new build concept. I'm not sure if I understand your post. If you mean, we should decide upon what towers the "8 game deciding towers" should be, then yes, let's get collecting. But if you mean "decide what tower fits to dfe", then I disgagree. What elements are used for the 8 towers can be changed. The exact combos for each tower are irrelevant, only their relative position in the builds are important. So as long as we don't know which of the possible element distributions we are going to use, we can't really determine what tower fits what element. As I suggested in my op, I'd like to go with the 8 strongest special effect towers allready in the map. This will reduce the amount of work to do and people will have an easier time to adapt to the changes. 4 aoe slows, 2 armour reducers, well, gold. They should affect the game more or less equally strong. Using 8 more or less identically usefull towers is pretty much the only possible way I can think of. If we use towers that affect the game in a different degree, like making some slowers stronger, I see no way to distribute them w/o ending up with one über-strong build again. Since aoe slow is one of the most needed skills on a tower, it makes sense to have 4 of them (at least one in 10 of the 15 4-element-builds). But they should be different in the way they slow. Storm, ice and nova are great examples of three totally different ways to slow, but glacier looks a bit too much like ice to me. (Acid and enchantment are diverse enough.) So we should come up with a new way to aoe slow, to get ice or glacier exchanged with something really different.

You seem to believe that we would have an official host for every game.

Since I'm about to host an eletd tournament, my answer is pretty obvious. Not only gem td but many other tds have a "slowest player sets speed" mode, Blizzard TD for example. Those tds actually punish good players. As for tds with totally independant maps, like yellow, I don't really like them. Whats the point playing multiplayer if the only interaction is "you have lost" or "you have won"?

Hm - like the wdfn tournament? Interesting... But it might end up a big replay ckecking nightmare.

Clan etd presents: The very first Element TD Test Tournament on 14. Juli 2007. Meeting time: 5pm gmt+1. Starting time: 6pm gmt+1. (Including daylight saving time.) Check out your time zone here: Timezones. The goal is to celebrate our clan, to try out a tournament to learn in the process, and to have fun. Don't take this first one too serious, many things might go wrong. The mode will be three rounds off vh sr ffa. Since this is a test, only the winning player of each match advances. We will end up with crowning the etd master. In future events this might change (best 2 advance or so). We will play on Northrend (europe). Important rule: I need a replay of every game. I love replays. PS: I plan not to play in the event, to dedicate my time to organizing it. But if enough people assist me with the work, and enough players think it woud be fun to be stomped by one more decent contestant, I might change my plans.. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Edit - List of interested players: Sancdar jolin012 xSolmyRx 13est energig kingzor hyperprimate Tigershark]T-T[ j`4`c`K`i`E Ubernuber OcMass_Reo Warcryptic xxHerrRuinxx (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edit 2 - Its over, and hyperprimate won. Check out the results: Players killler-beast Good WarCryptic kingzOr jolin012 energig megaman_mega MagicalHacker Eckschen hyperprimate OcMass_Reo 13est Kekschen Round I Game1 - killler-beast, WarCryptic, jolin012 => WarCryptic wins Game2 - Good, energig, 13est => 13est wins Game3 - Eckschen, hyperprimate, OcMass_Reo, Kekschen => hyperprimate wins Game4 - kingzOr, megaman_mega, MagicalHacker => kingzOr wins Round II - Semi Final Semi Final 1 - hyperprimate, kingzOr => hyperprimate wins Semi Final 2 - WarCryptic, 13est => 13est wins Round III - Final >> Replay Pack: Tournament 1 <<

I totally agree. Once we have decided upon an overall structure, the given elements will point us to how the towers should be called and represented. "Erosion" - good point. But the naming can wait until we agree upon said general structure. Yes - the lenght proves my point.

I don't want to spoil it for holepercent, so let him answer your question. If you really can't wait, check out the challenge 8 in the old forums.

Feel free to make fun of me anytime, as long as it doesn't get insulting. I'm not that good, I just don't post my bad replays. Last time I checked, Sancdar was the better player.

Agreed. My dino games usually require aoe slows and/or well to work. And w/o water, the nature damage of dino is leaving me dangerously weak vs fire.

If you want to make your own experiments, maybe this open ofice calc sheet might be of help. Award values to towers by inserting points into the blue cells and see what point distribution for 4 element builds you can come up with. You can enter fractions, big numbers, try to improve ballance by awarding some duals points.. But my prediction is, that my suggestion is pretty good allready. >> Build explorer 1.0 << My suggestion would look like this: We would have 8 game decidingly powerfull special towers. All 8 would be triples. 4 AOE slows (aka glacier, ice, storm, nova) 2 armour reducers (aka acid, enchantment) 2 others (aka gold, well) The number 8 and the distribution within this number is pretty much the optimum imo. I will ask for an example of a distribution of anyone who wants to change this numbers. All other towers would be either damage towers, single target slows, or have special abilities that can not win you the game, if they are your only support. Any instant kill towers are harmless, as long as they don't work on all waves. They really do their best on rnd, where build balance is unimportant (samerandom takes care of that). The 8 towers would be spread like this (remember that the actual elements can be exchanged, this is only about the relative position of the towers in the builds): . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (l) + + + + (d) + + + + (w) + + + + (f) + + + + (n) + + + + (e) + + + + 1 - Enchantment 2 - Storm 3 - Ice 4 - Acid 5 - Nova 6 - Glacier 7 - Well 8 - Gold Acid and enchantment would not share any elements, so to have both armour reducers, you'd have to have all 6 elements. That makes it impossible to have both of them on level 2 (max level), because that would take 12 of your 11 picks. Likewise you would have to take all 6 elements to have all 4 aoe slows, two of them on lv.2 and 2 on lv.1. And with 4 or 5 elements you would only have 2 of them. Since the 1 extra element gives you 2 more aoe slows, this should be balanced by making them somewhat unnessecary, like them not stacking or not giving more of a slow. Like the creeps are allready on minimum speed with two lv.2 aoe slows and one single target slow. This is how the 4 element builds would look like: . 1 (ldwf) 2 (Enchantment, Storm) . 2 (ldwn) 2 (Enchantment, Well) . 3 (ldwe) 2 (Enchantment, Glacier) . 4 (ldfn) 0 <= . 5 (ldfe) 2 (Glacier, Gold) . 6 (ldne) 2 (Nova, Glacier) . 7 (lwfn) 2 (Ice, Well) . 8 (lwfe) 0 <= . 9 (lwne) 2 (Nova, Well) .10 (lfne) 2 (Acid, Nova) .11 (dwfn) 2 (Storm, Ice) .12 (dwfe) 2 (Storm, Gold) .13 (dwne) 0 <= .14 (dfne) 2 (Acid, Gold) .15 (wfne) 2 (Ice, Acid) There are three crappy builds, much like the defn nowadays, and no more extremely good ones (like lfwd or lfwn now). And here are the 5 element builds: . ldwfne 1 +++++ (dwfne) (Storm, Ice, Acid, Gold) 2 + ++++ (lwfne) (Ice, Acid, Nova, Well) 3 ++ +++ (ldfne) (Acid, Nova, Glacier, Gold) 4 +++ ++ (ldwne) (Enchantment, Nova, Glacier, Well) 5 ++++ + (ldwfe) (Enchantment, Storm, Glacier, Well) 6 +++++ (ldwfn) (Enchantment, Storm, Ice, Well) One extra element gives you access to two more good towers, and you can't max out those two extra towers before wave 50. So it's important to make lv.1 triples abilities weak enough to keep the game in ballance. Getting a good support tripple to level 2 should really make a big impact. This will lead to 4 element builds beeing weaker for wave 25-35, stronger for wave 35-45, weaker for 45-60; support wise and compared to a 5 element build: Tripples | 4 element| 5 element at Wave | build | build ---------+-----------+------------ Wave Wood| lv.1 lv.2 | lv.1 lv.2 5 1 | | 10 2 | | 15 3 | 1 | 1 20 4 | 2 | 2 25 5 | 2 | 4 30 6 | 2 | 4 35 7 | 1 1 | 4 40 8 | 2 | 3 1 45 9 | 2 | 2 2 50 10 | 2 | 4 55 11 | 2 | 4 This might sound like an unfair advantage for 5 element builds, but at wave 40 the 4 element build allready has maxed out all important tripples and can either turn into a 5 or six element build, catching up with the 5 element build at 45 again, or get extra essence, level 3 element or interest, while the 5 element build can not. This sounds pretty balanced to me, but is ofc theory. The way acid and enchantment work today are great examples of towers that get a lot stronger with level 2. Here are some rough drafts for how the other towers could work: 1 - Enchantment: -5/-25 armour 2 - Storm: -7%/-35% movement speed 3 - Ice: -7%/-35% movement speed 4 - Acid: -3/-15 armour 5 - Nova: -7%/-35% movement speed 6 - Glacier: -7%/-35% movement speed 7 - Well: +20%/+100% attack speed 8 - Gold: +20%/+100% bounty (With maybe minimum speed at 80% speed reduction; so that 2 maxed aoe slows will get you close to that, but the 2 extra lv.1 of the fith element or any single target slow will get you beyond it.) Maybe we can find a distribution of elements that keeps most of the existing towers on the same or similiar elements, so we don't have to explain why acid has no water anymore. Here's another rough draft: ldwfne 1 ++ + ldf Enchantment Identical 2 + ++ lwf Storm Identical 3 ++ + fwe Ice Not so good 4 + ++ wen Acid More or less plausible 5 + ++ dne Glacier Not so good 6 ++ + ldn Nova Quite good 7 + + + dfe Gold Not so good 8 + + + lwn Well Good Ofc this will move other towers around too. Sounds like more work to be done.. So - what do you guys think of the basic concept?

Hey, great work.

I've been working on that problem too. As you might remember, there is a certain clan going on. Anyone who wants to work on this problems can have my results pm'ed to them.

No need for that, because with proper placement it never spawns on the wrong side. But on the other hand, it wouldn't make things worse otherwise, so why not. I have encountered many of the problems and difficulties the storm tower has, but for each of them, there allready is a sollution. It allready does slow two lanes, if you move it a bit to the side of the lane. It allready can switch lanes, if you place it close to a bend (aka long pass). It allready can affect a huge area, if you manually cast it uppon a ledge. So imo there is no need to give it new properties, it allready is the most versatile and interesting tower on the map. Bows to mrchak (and to Karawasa for making it stop as a default).

Ronald has a meaning. He should slowly wear down the remaining players, to find the winner. Letting them attack the towers sounds nothing like that. (And I'll keep building single arrow towers, while making interest from 100k networth, all other towers sold. So they will never get me. Never!! Bwuahaha. )

Perfect opportunity to show some poison placement. >> Challenge 1 with wfde <<

Well, I consider myself to have beaten him.

Also removing control from the player means lowering the skill level of the map.

All abilities that have an aoe, like buffs/debuffs, could unbalance the higher difficulties. Everything that does aoe will be used to improve a cluster of pures or debuff a tight clump containing an entire wave. Imo, only single target effects won't ruin the balance. And that includes a single target attack, as long as it has a long cooldown.

How about this: For every ronald after the first, say, 200 that entered the section of your map, you lose a life. Maybe 100? Never counted them, but a few tests should give a good value. So stacking them would be as lethal as it is now, but much faster (you don't have to wait for the ronald overflow), and with less workload for the hardware. And noone would have to remove the problem from the map, it's just up to the player to build sensible.

I like the concept. Much better than chaos V.1.0.

As you might allready know, we now have a bot.

The trusted old lfwd-n build: wfldn-wlfd-w-* Ronald hunting, countering spammers, racing, you name it, it's got it. Lately I've started to like dinos with storm, nova and glacier too. Oh, and sludge/acid/flamthrower/earth (dwfe).

If I have wdl, ice, poison and tidal are natural choices and moon gives some slow and helps against dark. So I have them quite often.

I'm an all eletd player. So don't you mess up my favourite map.

My build is no secret. Single player, no interest, no disables, just good ol' lfwd-n. Here is the replay: >> 72k hunt << (tft V.1.20e, 12mb filesize, running time: several days on 8xspeed)