Game Difficulty

[Karawasa]

I'm more than slightly frustrated with where the map is going at the moment, and it's more of the same from me. I expect I'll be over-ridden again but I'll say what I have to say on what I see with the last beta anyway.

The difficulty in it's current state is a complete farce.

I played a random/chaos today, and rolled F/interest/D/N/D2/interest/F2/N2/E/F3/E2 and that gives me powered up Voodoo, Earthshaker, Roots, and Flamethrower towers, 2 pure fire towers, plus level 2 duals to kill all the middle rounds, and massive amounts of free money, and I still failed to beat wave 60. On easy.

There is absolutely no sane rational arguement that any amount of micromanagement should be needed to beat the game on easy with that roll - hell with that roll of elements I should be able to beat the map blindfolded on "easy". And yes, I know where to position my towers. I've only been playing the map for like two years. The difficulty is simply screwed up at this point.

The towers themselves seem more or less balanced among each other, but their effectiveness vs. the creeps in general should be being seriously called into question if we're talking real release candidates now.

Let me be clear in saying that I'm happy to have your honest opinion. I take it very seriously when a long-time respected member of development is frustrated with the map.

I am not one to forget the audience for our game. I'm sure most testers agree that we want to foster a competitive game as the future brand of Element TD. However, and this is with emphasis, we can never forsake the mass of public players who play on Normal and below. It is unacceptable if an experienced Easy player is struggling to complete the game.

Some ideas,

[*]Nerf the quite possibly ridiculous end game creep hp growth factor. The last ten levels have a factor of 1.23, compared to the starting factor of 1.17. I propose 1.20. I have attached an excel file so you can see what this means. [/*:m:1xd4egsx]

[*]Nerf composite waves to 80%.[/*:m:1xd4egsx]

[*]Consider easy to implement (i.e. bugless things like adding extra armor, speed, regen etc.) creep modifiers in extreme mode to compliment the 0 timer in an attempt to offer a viable mode to competitive players.[/*:m:1xd4egsx]

[*]Buff level 1 triple support to 7%.[/*:m:1xd4egsx]

Towers.xls

[Bhelogan]

[*]Buff level 1 triple support to 7%.

I don't think that alone would be enough to make a difference.

I also have not yet been able to beat this on any difficulty level. Actually, I end up about the same spot regardless of what I set it to.

[Guest M45T3R]

I've been trying to beat the new beta on VH with the LFWN build, and I can safely say that it's virtually impossible to accomplish such a thing without leaking. LFWN is one of the best builds in 22b, yet it's still impossible to beat the game...

[Twilice]

The game is seriously waay to hard now. I think we struggle to much for perfection in terms of exakt number balance. every wave increase by so and so much damage, every tower cost increase by so and so much gold.

I would say decrease the cost of tripples by a mere 17 gold. and standardize all tower cost. It gives in my oppinion a more fresh feeling of the gold cost.

I get the feeling that towers get a to much buff per tier upgrade, so that it is actaully somehow better to uppgrade dual tier 1 towers to tier 3 instead of building other tier 1 duals to face like water vs darkness. (no numbers, nothing, I just get the feeling of it)

Instead of buffing sent elements to "buff" single targets, increase the damage of singles targets instead. ( Lightning tower and hail should be considerred "single" towers, since they doesn't increase in numbers which can be targeted. )

Well, in short terms the game is to hard right now.

[holepercent]

I've been trying to beat the new beta on VH with the LFWN build, and I can safely say that it's virtually impossible to accomplish such a thing without leaking. LFWN is one of the best builds in 22b, yet it's still impossible to beat the game...

Don't be stuck with the mindset of the 'best' build. What used to work well may have changed.. try builds with no support triples (support triples don't dominate the game anymore), or even without triples! (it is doable, just slower and with leaks)

Try other builds... the game can be completed with all, if not most 4-element, 5-element and 6-element builds. noleak would be a real challenge but shouldn't be impossible. get some ideas from build project.. Refine the builds there and you can get somewhere close to noleak, if not 0 leaks..

Upgrading seems to be the way to go.. even against weakness where a weak element tier3 dual is probably stronger than a large mass of strong element tier1 or tier2s.. tier1 duals have almost no damage mid-end game. which probably goes back to game balance and how to best balance the towers and the overall game difficulty.

extreme mode with random buffs would be fun.. +armour, +speed, +1% healing, wave that gives extra gold/lives?

but yes, probably the game is too hard now.. even if it can be completed..

at the start the game was balanced with pick in mind rather than random..

[dvdlesher]

Based on everyone report, almost all of beta leader/tester claims that RC's candidate is very hard to beat.

IMO, this is game is hard too...

Maybe it would be helpful if we pinpoint the major point of this difficulty.

-For me, the new healing wave is really hard. Too much "heal % on death" I think

[jolin012]

Is The Game throughout the game or is it hard lategame or mid-lategame? or "from wave 15 and the rest?

if it Gets too hard later, perhaps it's a good idea lowering ht ehp multiplyer. if it's too hard throughout the game, perhaps nerf say armor to 2VE, 4E, 6N, 8H, 10VH armor, or something (if so maybe a double armor mode for masters who get bored . Note: this is a serious idea. not only cause the game might need to get nerfed, but because it might also be a good thing to make normal hard and vh easier so that most people can learn to master that, so players after 200 games don't have to feel that they suck still unable to beat a mode named easy or normal - cause they don't suck tha badly! if some ppl are just wicked sick good perhaps it's better to hide their difficulty, naming it double armor mode or so (like old extreme mode) so that the regular players don't have to feel sad about how bad they are compared to the very best. This might be kinda' offtopic but, meh!

[Twilice]

I like your thinking about that double armor thing.

But as me and holepercent said it is problary better to uppgrade to tier 3 then to build tier 1-2 to counter an element. But with this Element TD kind of lost it's own personal style, it wouldn't be -elemental- TD. It would only be -play 2000 times to learn when to upgrade- TD which is.. problary not a good idea.

[jolin012]

um you are talking about a build with 2 maxed elements, creating a damage tower of one elemental damage type, in which case you mean it is not worth building a tier 2 of cover-up-element ? if that is what you mean I don't agree, but I guess you mean something else

[Twilice]

Just tested on level 37 light (mechanical though)

Magic towers tier 3 (darkness damgage 50%) vs hydro towers tier 1 (earth damage 200%)

200% / 50% = 4 times more damage vs this level then magic towers tier 3.

Builded 3 magic towers tier 3 (9375 cost) at 4-5 They cleared the level pretty easy.

Builded 19 hydro towers tier 1 (9500 cost) at 4-5 also they also cleared it quite easy, but -almost- leaked a few. (not taken in calculation that is was mech and hydro is a semi splash tower)

The 3 magic towers did much better then the 19 hydro towers that even costed a bit more. And should have had a big advantage.

If hydro had darkness damage vs this level we would have needed 19*4 = 76 hydro towers on a level whe needed 3 magic towers.

Correct me if I am wrong >.<

[jolin012]

um.. you are wrong .

a tier 1 dual has X damage and costs 500gold.

a tier 2 dual has 5X damage and costs 1250gold.

that means a tier 2 dual is twice as effective as the same dual of tier 1.

a 200%dmg tower is 4 times as effective as a 50%dmg tower of the same strength.

that means the correct element is 4 times as strong as the wrong element.

that means 200%dmg tier 1 duals for X gold is twice as strong as 50%dmg tier 2 duals for X gold.

In other words: vs a light wave Hydro should be twice as strong as Sorcery vs a light wave.

Your test proves different due to one or several of the following reasons:

a) you played vs mechanicals so hydro Should get weaker due to splash.

you had bad luck with the hydros

c) the towers are imbalanced.

And NOT

probably better to upgrade

sorry.

Same goes for lv 3 50%dmg vs lv 2 200%dmg. Especially if the lower level is a triple to cover while the upgraded one is a dual.

[Bhelogan]

Is The Game throughout the game or is it hard lategame or mid-lategame?

Late game is where the difficulty ramps up too much. Early game to mid game, it actually feels too easy.

[Twilice]

I used tier 1 hydros and tier 3 magics.

Maybe teoreticly it should work, but practicly it didn't.

[m0rph1ing]

Well, also, 19 hydros is a lot harder to place optimally versus 3 magics for 2 pass. Since you placed at 4/5 instead of 3/6, the hydros would be less efficient simply because half of them would be too close to 5 to be 2 pass.

[Twilice]

hm, didn't think of that. that is possibly true. I will do some quick testing on that.

EDIT: I was obvioulsylu to tierde to do this, and messed it up pretty much.

didn't find any light without specialls. so I used composite instead.

6500 gold hydros tier 1 = 28 leaks (2 killed)

6250 gold magic tier 3 = no leak

don't get me wrong, tier 3 should be much stronger then tier 1 and 2, but maybe because of the low price you don't want tier 1, you just try to stick with arrows as long as you can, until you get atleast tier 2.

failed replay.w3g

[Guest Sancdar]

The hydros give more versatility. They perform at a much worse damage/gold rate than level 3 magics, but they can upgrade to triples or higher level hydros. You're also less locked into a build, because level 3 magic requires 6 element picks and level 1 hydro has only used 2 - the other 4 probably give you more variety that would help out.

Placement matters as well, of course, and for some towers more than others. Because higher level towers pack more gold and damage into a smaller space, they're easier to place well.

Also, I've forgotten exactly how hydro works in the latest betas because of all the PB games I've been playing. I know it doesn't stop creeps, but does it still prevent them from activating divine shield while in the air? Can it affect creeps that are already being launched, and if so, how does the damage apply?

It might be better to test ST vs. ST and splash vs. splash as well. Without AoE slows, hydro ought to be at least somewhat less effective than magic in the current version.

[Bhelogan]

Ok, so I actually was able to beat this on easy. I feel stupid saying this, since my 6 year old daughter can beat PB4.0 on easy. I wouldn't bother posting the replay, but I had two questions.

1) Is it normal for Ronald to just freeze up when taking damage like this? (no slows in build)

2) Not sure why, but Ronald gets stuck at the exit portal after a while, which could make the game endless.

EWF.w3g