Mechanical Creeps

[Karawasa]

I'm sure you have encountered the rather unfriendly mechanical waves. While I love the concept, I understand they can be frustrating to players. The chief complaint is "randomness" even though it isn't really random. To give the player some illusion of "control" I propose a tweak that will benefit everyone.

How about some indication as to how close they are to shielding. You know that they have 12 mana and once they reach full mana they shield. While a good player (with micro ability) could check and negate the need for this, most do not or care not to.

You have a meter system but unfortunately it uses texttags (our enemy). With 30 creeps per player that won't work...

What if when it reaches 9 mana it started playing some blinking (not the actual blink, the verb) effect indicating that it is about to "go off?"

[Karawasa]

If we change MechanicalActivate event to 9 mana from 12, will it go off at 9/10/11/12 or only 9? If the former, then simply play some fast effect at 9/10/11 and activate at 12.

[Cisz]

Am I right that "chief complaint" means "1 random guy"?

In my opinion the chief complaint is "damn thats too hard". We could lower the shield time in that case, if we agree on mech beeing to hard. I don't agree so far. But maybe there are good reasons to convince me?

[Karawasa]

He isn't the only person to complain about the wave. I think complaints are a combination of "it's too hard" and "it's too random" neither of which are true. However, I think a blinking indicator shortly before going off would alleviate both concerns without actually changing the wave type .