My thoughts and suggestions for ETD

[JustSomeGuy]

First and foremost, I know where I stand. I have only played the game on Very Easy and Normal difficulty.

These are my thoughts, I'm sure the vast majority of people will completely disregard them because I'm not the same caliber as them.

- The switch from very easy to normal to very hard results in increased interest rate (1 to 1.5 to 2). This is bad because it literally teaches you nothing. Easy is supposed to get you comfortable with the game so that you can increase the difficulty and be prepared for the increased difficulty. Instead, you are awarded a higher interest rate which changes the game slightly. On top of this, it encourages tower selling, which is deemed a strategy by the more experienced players. The only way to practice selling your towers for the increased interest is to practice on Very Hard, where an interest of 2% is given. Do you see where I'm going with this? Practicing on Very Hard will likely cause you to lose, multiple times. You're unable to practice tower selling on Very easy or even normal difficulty because the decreased interest percentage makes the entire effort worthless.

Suggestion: Set the interest refund to 2% for all difficulty modes.

- Whenever everyone completes the wave, the countdown timer will jump from (example) 30 seconds remaining to 5 seconds remaining. This is infuriating because I will glance up at the time remaining and think I have 30 seconds remaining. Then out of nowhere, units will begin spawning. This has f*cked me more times than I can count.

Suggestion: When everyone completes their wave, do not force start the next wave in 5 seconds. Let the countdown timer do its job. This would be like me going up to your oven and changing the timer to 5 seconds when you have 10 minutes left on your pizza. Enjoy a doughy undercooked nasty pizza.

- There are a total of 60 waves, a vespene is given every 5 waves. This means, you will receive a total of 11 vespene throughout the game. Lets do some math.

All 6 elements = 6 vespene

2 refund = 2 vespene

That's 8 so far.

Then 3 essence upgrades.

That's 11.

We're missing 1 essence upgrade.

This means you can only have 3 pure composite towers by wave 60. The only way to get more is to not get full refund.

Suggestion: Remove refund upgrades entirely. They're f*cking useless.

Suggestion alternative: Grant a 12th vespene at wave 60 so that we can get a 4th pure essence upgrade.

Suggestion alternative alternative: With each pure essance upgrade, double your pop. First upgrade lets you get 1 pure tower, 2nd lets you get a total of 3, 3rd lets you get a total of 7... so on and so forth.

Suggestion alternative alternative alternative: Completely do away with this pure essence cap bullsh*t. It's stupid. You're already being penalized by an extremely expensive tower, why the f*ck is there a f*cking cap on this sh*t? Makes no sense. It's jacked up.

- The so called pros would have you believe that selling your towers is a strategy. I disagree with this philosophy. Every 15 seconds, you are presented with an opportunity to get 1-2% interest depending on your difficulty. This encourages players to do a full refund strategy for a large portion of the game. Every other 14 seconds, players will sell their towers for a better interest result, just so that they can frantically rebuild their towers. This is absolutely f*cking retarded. I saw a video of this being done by somebody on very hard difficulty and he was good at it no doubt, but if you think this kind of gameplay is desirable by a majority of players, then you (speaking generally here) rank up there amongst the morons. That's my opinion, if you prefer this kind of gameplay, then you are a moron. Plain and simple.

Suggestion:

Step 1: Totally remove interest. This will discourage people from selling their towers.

Step 2: Remove the refund upgrades. Kinda pointless if you remove interest, agreed?

Step 3: Make all towers refund 100%. There's no benefit now, so why not? Just do it.

Step 4: Play the game like a normal f*cking person. You're not asian and if you are, what the f*ck are you doing playing this sorry sh*t? Go practice pro 1v1 where you belong.

Sorry if I sound like a douchebag. It's just the way I communicate. I adamantly believe my suggestions will make the game better. Please disregard the excessive cursing and snarky remarks.

[ThyGuyX]

Another solution would be to have a interest or no interest option at the beginning of the game. Don't like interest, you don't have it now. problem solved.

"But other people still can buy interest and even though it doesn't effect me in any way. I want it gone. STOP LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE!"

And thank you for breaking your own map to give these jackasses what they wanted. Didn't the map get played even less after this was changed? Your only hope now is when the new custom update comes and if it's going to be like we think, you're going to have a swarm of players begging for the interest increase.

By the way, usually pissing off the majority to appease to the few is a -really- bad idea.

[Cypher]

I'll start by addressing the possibility that this is just an awesome troll job, and if it is I'll say again great job heh, that said I'm going to procede as if this isn't.

Where to begin... First you don't get to buy more than 2 essence upgrades. After you buy a second essence it's removed from the menu so a 12th vespene at wave 60 wouldn't serve the purpose you suggest. You get one essence for free at wave 51, another at wave 56 and so you're limited to 4 essence if you buy the other 2. Also let's pretend you could buy unlimited essence, you wouldn't be limited to just 3, or 5 by not purchasing resell, you'd actually be able to have 8 essence by getting one element to level 3 and then spending every vespene after that on essence.

For the countdown timer there are actually a set of options already available. If you play the game on Competitive the next wave starts for everyone (even if you still have creeps on your board) once the first person finishes the wave. Competitive not only gives you some control over the spawn timer it also nearly eliminates the interest farming you seem to find so distasteful. Next up is Race, race gives each player an independent wave timer that starts when you finish your wave with the winner being the first to finish wave 60, this setting also pretty much eliminates interest farming.

Interest is a funny thing, it's a big part of what makes this such a good game. Some people exploit it, others just use it as an innocent mechanic. Either play style is equally valid in my book, I sometimes manipulate interest and sometimes I don't. As far as only being able to practice interest farming on a certain difficulty I can tell you I learned to do it on normal and quite easily was able to do it on very hard when I decided to make that step up (I skipped over hard). Your difficulties doing it seem to be just that, your difficulties. By the way, not only do you get better interest rates on very hard you also get more minerals per kill giving you more money to play interest with.

I'd also like to point out that resell upgrades aren't just for interest farming, to think that is pretty closed minded. Imagine you have a leak and you need to build a stronger tower at the back end of your track but you don't really want a large investment there, with resell you can build that tower for the situation and get rid of it. Also try to imagine playing a counter element strategy where you build a bunch of light towers for darkness rounds but when an earth round comes you want to get rid of those light towers in favor of nature. Use your imagination. Side note: you actually get both resell purchases for free as a balance measure for playing on -random.

Something your buddy said (I have to assume you two are friends) struck a chord with me.

By the way, usually pissing off the majority to appease to the few is a -really- bad idea.

Isn't that what you're trying to do. Why do you assume everyone hates interest, just because you do?

[Karawasa]

1. Countdown timer jumping to 5 seconds in Standard was meant to eliminate long periods of waiting. Sometimes the entire time is needed, sometimes it is too much time. Perhaps 5 seconds is too short, or perhaps there is another method?

2. We already said somewhere that resell is getting the boot. There will be no interest upgrades. I will return 2% interest for all difficulties.

[JustSomeGuy]

1. Countdown timer jumping to 5 seconds in Standard was meant to eliminate long periods of waiting. Sometimes the entire time is needed, sometimes it is too much time. Perhaps 5 seconds is too short, or perhaps there is another method?

2. We already said somewhere that resell is getting the boot. There will be no interest upgrades. I will return 2% interest for all difficulties.

Countdown timer should simply stay the way it is now, but it should not jump to 5 seconds. If everyone finishes the wave, you will be waiting 30 seconds, give or take. This is not a problem, those who would have you think it is are simply impatient and shouldn't be playing these kinds of games.

I'm not talking about dragging this game out for an extra hour, I'm talking about dragging it out by a few extra minutes. Is that REALLY a big deal? I think it isn't.

As for resell getting the boot, that's a good decision. Interest upgrades simply subtract from the available vespene that you could spend on other elements. Returning 2% to all difficulties is a good decision.

I'll start by addressing the possibility that this is just an awesome troll job, and if it is I'll say again great job heh, that said I'm going to procede as if this isn't.

It is what you want it to be. It's a troll post for people who are ignorant, but it's not if you're willing to entertain my suggestions... which you seem to be willing, therefore it's not for you.

Where to begin... First you don't get to buy more than 2 essence upgrades. After you buy a second essence it's removed from the menu so a 12th vespene at wave 60 wouldn't serve the purpose you suggest. You get one essence for free at wave 51, another at wave 56 and so you're limited to 4 essence if you buy the other 2. Also let's pretend you could buy unlimited essence, you wouldn't be limited to just 3, or 5 by not purchasing resell, you'd actually be able to have 8 essence by getting one element to level 3 and then spending every vespene after that on essence.

There's a simple way to solve that problem. The essence upgrade shouldn't disappear, it should let you continue to upgrade your essence cap however many times you want to. I do not see a problem with this. However, I would much rather there *not* be a cap at all. To me this seems pointless. If you have the money to buy really expensive pure towers, then you should be able to do it. Right now you're being double penalized, once for the expensive towers, and a second time for having to use your valuable vespene on an essence upgrade... and hell while we're at it, you get penalized a third time because you can only build at max 4 pure essence towers. It's ridiculously restrictive and for no good reason.

Also, 8 pure towers does not seem unreasonable to me. If you have the money to do it, then by all means knock yourself out. The lack of minerals will put a dampener on the amount of pure towers you can afford. That's a cap by itself.

For the countdown timer there are actually a set of options already available. If you play the game on Competitive the next wave starts for everyone (even if you still have creeps on your board) once the first person finishes the wave. Competitive not only gives you some control over the spawn timer it also nearly eliminates the interest farming you seem to find so distasteful. Next up is Race, race gives each player an independent wave timer that starts when you finish your wave with the winner being the first to finish wave 60, this setting also pretty much eliminates interest farming.

None of these are good. My opinion is they are all bad because they do not have the most obvious option--A normal mode. Normal mode should make it so that when everyone finishes their wave, the countdown timer will continue to countdown until it reaches zero. Then the next wave will start simultaneously for everyone. All 60 waves should begin at the same time, every time. This gives you time to spend your vespene on an essence and kill the unit without having to worry about a flood of units rolling in. Then, as an added bonus, the fruit wave acts like any other wave and the units eventually end. Why?

Why would I want the fruit wave to behave like this? Because the fruit wave (as it stands right now) is like this -- "who has the most points? He does. He wins"... You are all trying to play a casual game for 59 waves and then suddenly, EVERYONE IS AGAINST EACH OTHER ON WAVE 60. This is f*cking retarded! That is what Race / Competitive modes are for, you are *competing* against each other.

Normal should *not* be a competition against other players, it should be a personal competition against the custom game.

Interest is a funny thing, it's a big part of what makes this such a good game. Some people exploit it, others just use it as an innocent mechanic. Either play style is equally valid in my book, I sometimes manipulate interest and sometimes I don't. As far as only being able to practice interest farming on a certain difficulty I can tell you I learned to do it on normal and quite easily was able to do it on very hard when I decided to make that step up (I skipped over hard). Your difficulties doing it seem to be just that, your difficulties. By the way, not only do you get better interest rates on very hard you also get more minerals per kill giving you more money to play interest with. wink.gif

If you design something a certain way and somebody finds a way to exploit it, does that make it valid? I would hope not. The game is being played in an unintended manner (at least I hope it is)... and therefore changing the game to prevent exploitation is in order. My opinion is exploitation is an invalid way to play the game and efforts should be made to end exploitation.

My difficulties stem from the countdown timer skipping to 5 seconds when everyone completes the wave. There are 1 of 2 ways this problem can be solved. 1. Fix the countdown timer, prevent it from skipping to 5 seconds. or 2. Prevent interest farming altogether. I prefer both. So while I may find it difficult, that does not mean that the problem is limited to just me, it means I'm a typical gamer who sees interest farming as unnecessary and because of this, am unwilling to improve at it. So read into that however you want, it seems at this point you're willing to ignore literal interpretation.

I'd also like to point out that resell upgrades aren't just for interest farming, to think that is pretty closed minded. Imagine you have a leak and you need to build a stronger tower at the back end of your track but you don't really want a large investment there, with resell you can build that tower for the situation and get rid of it. Also try to imagine playing a counter element strategy where you build a bunch of light towers for darkness rounds but when an earth round comes you want to get rid of those light towers in favor of nature. Use your imagination. Side note: you actually get both resell purchases for free as a balance measure for playing on -random.

Just because I mentioned one way resell upgrades are bad doesn't mean I'm a complete dunce. It means, I didn't bother to type out every way a resell upgrade might be useful. You are saying that rather than spending your vespene on element upgrades so that you can get better towers, you would occasionally prefer to spend a vespene on a resell upgrade so that you can save yourself from leaking on a critical wave... or so that you can sell light towers and build nature towers against earth units. That seems like a legitimate thing to do, except given the current countdown timer problem, you only have 5 seconds to do that after you complete your wave. You have 5 seconds to sell your light towers and build nature towers.

You are more than welcome to frantically do stupid crap like that, but I would much rather only sell my towers when I accidentally misplace a tower. To me, that's the proper use of tower selling, to fix a misplaced tower.

Here's the thing, I recognize the resell upgrade is not being *entirely* useless, but what happens if the creator removes interest in a new version of the map? The resell upgrades become 90% useless and retain about a 10% usefulness. Then, if the creator makes it so that all towers refund 100%.... that remaining 10% usefulness transforms to uselessness. It's 100% useless.

So, while you would like to frantically sell your towers and change them into something to have a slightly better chance for the upcoming wave, most people would much rather build a variety of elemental towers and not abuse tower selling. And no, that doesn't make us bad at the game, that makes us sensible.

Something your buddy said (I have to assume you two are friends) struck a chord with me.

I do not know who he is.