Mixed difficulty balance

[Aranneas]

Feels quite good to me now on hard. Might try very hard in multiplayer again.

[Karawasa]

Feels quite good to me now on hard. Might try very hard in multiplayer again.

Nice! That was the goal .

[dg86]

The difference between hard and very hard is day and night. I can basically get perfects on hard (no leak--well, maybe a couple) in multiplayer. But if someone rushes the front with normal difficulty, you're basically fucked with very hard difficulty no matter what the heck you do.

Because on hard, you kill everything. On very hard, you end up leaking a bunch of red and orange health units.

Okay, I'll put this blatantly:

Since all the pubbies like to take the lowest possible difficulty level and rush the front because someone else is doing it...

You should not be able to rush a higher difficulty level with a lower one.

The end.

Yes, I realize that if there's one very hard player, he will be able to sell all his towers at 1 creep left and get a kazillion interest. However, I have never ever ever seen this happen in any public game.

So, IMO, hardest difficulty should set the timer. Because right now, the only reward a player gets for choosing a higher difficulty level than is necessary is personal satisfaction.

If you want to rush someone, play the same game as they do. If you want to build in the front, you only set the timer if and only if you play on the same difficulty level as everyone else.

IMO that's the only possible solution to the fact that right now, it's basically suicide to play very hard on multiplayer, and it's a difficulty reserved for single-player-at-your-own-pace games.

[Aranneas]

That's pretty extreme, wouldn't you say? Over a minute hardly constitutes a 'rush'.

[dg86]

Anything else and you will never ever see anybody pick very hard in a multiplayer game. It's like a hidden difficulty if and only if you're playing with either A) other very hard players or B ) alone.

Now if that's absolutely fine with you, sure, keep things as they are. But if it isn't, then IMO the highest difficulty sets the countdown. Hey, everyone else gets interest.

And in the meantime, have adjustable base interests for the difficulty levels.

[Karawasa]

Have you tried it in a real game dg86? Curious to hear if, at the very least, things have improved.

[dg86]

As long as you have a tiny counter dependent upon a single player finishing the wave first, we'll be having issues.

It seems no different in .75

[Karawasa]

I'd say we can call this one fixed?

[Eksentrysyti]

Just an opinion, but is there really a value having a competitive battle with mixed difficulty? As dg86 said, and I agree, as long as you have a player on an easier difficulty push one on a harder difficulty, it will continue to have issues.

Mixed diff competitive is like having a sports league that matches up amateurs with professionals and then punishing the professionals with a huge handicap. What's the point?

The way I see it, standard mode is your mixed difficulty game, competitive mode should have the difficulty either set by host (if host picks the option) or most voted if picked by players. There's no real value in having competitive mixed difficulty.

This way, it also differentiates the game types a bit more. Most games I get end up being standard, precisely because of the mixed difficulty issue on competitive.

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On the semi-related note of difficulty balance, very hard is... incredibly hard. There's no reward for playing very hard because you fall way behind interest-wise against normal players, even with the increased bounty on very hard creeps (which I do agree with). The increased bounty comes far too late in play to push it on par with a normal player with a huge stockpile that's been interest gaining since wave 5. I suggest either an increase of bounty for harder difficulty that kicks in earlier, or a boost in interest rates for high difficulties. If competitive mixed mode stays, make very hard viable with perhaps a even bigger bounty increase, since interest comes even less into play.

Thoughts?

[holepercent]

Competitive should be a non-mixed difficulty match.. unless something has changed...

[Karawasa]

Competitive should be a non-mixed difficulty match.. unless something has changed...

Correct. Only Standard type allows for mixed.

[dg86]

I think everything is fine now in terms of this issue. Now to get replays working so I can see how people get freaking 400k net worth with quake or haste on very hard.

(Tried haste on very hard...and in the words of GSP...I am not impressed by this performance.)

[Megadramon]

I think everything is fine now in terms of this issue. Now to get replays working so I can see how people get freaking 400k net worth with quake or haste on very hard.

(Tried haste on very hard...and in the words of GSP...I am not impressed by this performance.)

Have you tried borderline leaking 'till you have almost no lives?