Update Coming

[Karawasa]

An update is long overdue. What do you guys want to see? This might be the last chance to get something in so...

[WindStrike]

I'll poke around and have my suggestions list up within a week. I take it no big suggestions due to simply too much work? I will, however, support a sandbox mode for the game for people to screw around in. As handy as the tower placement tool is by TowerFun, it will only do so much. So be it the "tutorial" for the game that allows it or an option that can be turned on within the first 5 waves in single-player, I am strongly supporting and pushing for a sandbox mode.

Question, will you be supporting a Heart of the Swarm version with new features or just keep it Wings of Liberty?

[Karawasa]

I'll poke around and have my suggestions list up within a week.

I'm looking forward to it. Thank you!

I take it no big suggestions due to simply too much work?

Yes and no. A big suggestion wouldn't make it into this version but it could appear in a future standalone product.

Question, will you be supporting a Heart of the Swarm version with new features or just keep it Wings of Liberty?

I won't be adding new features but I'll make sure it's playable.

[Twilice]

An overhaul of the ray/grenade tower models. And ray missile model. But it could possibly be more fitting to have that in aim for HotS.

[haupty]

I love the idea of a sandbox mode. Right now if you want to compare towers or placements your only option is very fast mode or get far without spending elements, saving, then buying elements in a hurry with waves going too. This way you could repeat the same wave over and over again with whatever towers or placements you want and have measurable results.

[WindStrike]

An overhaul of the ray/grenade tower models. And ray missile model. But it could possibly be more fitting to have that in aim for HotS.

While we're at it, I think the Earth tower model (the basic level) and the quark towers (all levels) could use a refit, as they're rather plain compared to everything else.

Something else that I think would be cool would be if the flamethrower's napalm effect would be more visible when it goes off. Like in the Warcraft 3 version, you just see this giant explosion of awesomeness, whereas in the SC2 version, it looks so passive... except in maze mode when building a spiral, though that's very specific. Not asking necessarily for it go back to giant explosion, but just something more noticable. Should make it easier to tell how much the napalm stacks are affecting things, which is currently hard to tell.

[holepercent]

Draft Pick #3!

(oh wait.. where's the text.. seems like it's not on the forums yet...)

[Karawasa]

Ok, I'll include a sandbox mode! You'll have to be alone and you'll have to type -sandbox before the first wave comes.

Commands present;

• mineral
• gas
• terrazine
• essence
• lives
• max (all elements)
• wave
• clear (kill creeps)
• kill (remove towers)
• pause/resume (timers)

[WindStrike]

Woot! Regarding the command list, there should probably be a greyed out menu on the builder that, once sandbox mode has been activated, it then serves as a command list.

How exactly does the kill tower command work? Does it remove all towers or just the ones selected? It also seems counterproductive to even have that command given the sell button, lol. Also, will it be possible to skip to particular portion of the fruit wave? Say, wave 8 of the fruit wave.

[Karawasa]

Woot! Regarding the command list, there should probably be a greyed out menu on the builder that, once sandbox mode has been activated, it then serves as a command list.

Agreed.

How exactly does the kill tower command work? Does it remove all towers or just the ones selected? It also seems counterproductive to even have that command given the sell button, lol. Also, will it be possible to skip to particular portion of the fruit wave? Say, wave 8 of the fruit wave.

It would remove all towers. A command would be faster than selecting all of your towers and selling them. You could skip to a particular portion of fruit by clearing each wave via the command.

[voidex]

Infinite game mode with no limit for number of waves

[WindStrike]

It actually does exist. Fruit caps off at a certain point, so if your defense can infinitely live it, then that serves your case. Unless you mean that there's no cap, in which case I have no idea.

[ender]

Infinite game mode with no limit for number of waves

it's already on with no cheating and no leaks, in maze you can run fruits even in VH up to max witch is 500k hp(50% dmg reduction) fast mech healing regen undead illusion, 60 fruits/wave . with the right maze and tower combo you can kill them without leaks and run them forever.

[ender]

i have a suggestion, but it may be too much for a small update.

first a few bugs that happened due to sc 2 patch 2.0.5 some towers attack animation is not showing properly now, they show some random texture.

second the towers have a bad targeting AI, so bad that if you micro them the difference is so huge you can;t believe it.

ok you can say a "little micro" will make the difference between pro and new people, but the fact is that some towers attack speed don't allow you to easy micro them. anyway what i mean by micro is spamming your right click on what enemy or group you want to focus while you select all your towers. witch is not fun when u think that some towers have more than than 0.66 AS.

this is hard to explain you must play 2 games and see the difference live of what i mean. is best seen in fruit levels(any difficulty) if you let your towers auto attack vs then play same game, same build, same settings, same towers, same money, position, but at fruit level select all towers and spam right click on your desired target(witch should be the second/3th fruit depending if you play aoe/single target/ how big of an aoe). it will give you errors for towers that don't reach that target but at long as you have some towers in range spam that lowest target or group until is down. the idea is to target first set of fruits even if is only 1 with illusion, so you will kill them rather than do some splash dmg but kill 0 or too little.

why i say that towers have awful targeting(with 1 exception laser. and single target towers have better but still weak targeting AI) is because at fruit level you get composite, fast, healing, illusion, revive, even regen, and mech later on with tons of hp, and if the towers don't focus a certain group until it goes out of range they waste dmg, and in the end you get all fruits/illusions at some % hp but none dead.

also in current game condition in multiplayer/ or with some tower type/ pc/ internet the game gets laggy and low fps at fruits levels, making the micro even more difficult. and i bet most of the people don't micro fruit levels, and don;t know that the dmg difference is so big with micro.

laser tower has a nice AI with 3 modes and it will be really nice to implement something like that for all towers. not exactly like that but close to that AI, will help alot. and i think that the power and uniqueness of laser tower is not from the AI options is rather from the fact that you have 1 normal attack witch is 1/9 of tower power and 8 more attacks that are the rest 8/9 of dmg each with 1/9 dmg, and they can switch targets mid air, and stay there until there are no enemy in range, making it a semi aoe tower or strongest single target.

so the solution now for bad targeting AI is spam clicks, but that is not fun, you still miss alot of attacks based on tower AS, is hard with the lag and low fps that can be generated in multiplayer either by your pc or from others that slow down the game, and the difference in score is so big(i managed to get almost 400 more points with same budged/tower/placements/all things with micro vs no micro, in very hard from 800ish to 1200ish).

i just say you should look in a mode to improve the towers targeting AI, even if you will make it easy like implement the laser AI to all towers, that will be available to all players so it won't make the game imbalanced the only risk is that will make laser a little underpowered, but if all towers get same "buff" the game will stay balanced, will be like a +10% dmg to all towers.

also a problem is the ion tower witch is the weakest slow tower, almost not worth getting. all slow towers water or nature have an aoe slow based on the attack, so lets say muck has 10 range and 6 range slow from where it hits, it could cover > 10 range with the aoe slow by hitting the last and first creep at max range, and +3 range i suppose from the aoe after or before that creep. but the ion has a field that moves too slow, or can be placed by micro cast, and is only 8 range. and again same problem as targeting AI, while rest of slow towers have 10, 12 range and at least 6 range aoe slow, and is automated, no micro required, ion has only 8 range and alot of micro required witch again can become hard in lag/low fps multiplayer games. add to this the fact that you now have to decide to i micro a weak slow, or i micro the dmg towers to kill fruits faster, and more efficient.

another problem with ion is that it makes nature support build stronger than water support build, just because 1 slow tower is underpowered, and i want to go water based triples for dmg but can't because of the ion tower that will give me the weakest slow compared to nature based towers. in theory the ion could cover way more than 8 range by moving the field, but again same thing as above micro dmg towers vs slow tower, lag and low fps that almost guaranteed in multiplayer if not from you from other players.

anyway i will like to know your opinions on this, if you prefer to micro the towers attacks at fruit levels or will like a better targeting AI, and how about ion tower.

[Karawasa]

first a few bugs that happened due to sc 2 patch 2.0.5 some towers attack animation is not showing properly now, they show some random texture.

Which towers?

anyway i will like to know your opinions on this, if you prefer to micro the towers attacks at fruit levels or will like a better targeting AI, and how about ion tower.

I'm updating fruit to remove all of the special abilities. Fruit will soon gain only HP and Armor (new). I will buff the ion movespeed.

[WindStrike]

Ooh, laser's targetting AI for all towers? That'd be nifty. Currently, all units aim the closest target. Probably wouldn't be prudent to give all towers the "random" targetting, because in most cases, it's not going to do well. However, I'd be personally for having three options - closest (default), highest hp, and lowest hp. I agree that constant clicking really just adds an unnecessary component of APM and repetitiveness. There's a game on Steam called Tower Wars, which focuses on tower placement, mazing, tech tree strategies, economy, and summoning soldiers and the like to break through the enemy defense and take their castle. It does not allow you to micro towers to take down the enemies, instead relying on placement and the types of towers you have.

Now, I'm not saying that EleTD shouldn't have micro abilities. However, given that there is a heavy emphasis on placement, something many players don't realize (at least initially), it would be helpful if each tower had these options. Quite frankly, there's already a huge micro element of the game, one that can't be removed - intensive micro abuse w/ ray/grenade towers, not to mention random mode. Having a giant clickfest on top of that is quite frankly, kinda annoying. That said, I am all for having all towers w/ laser's targetting AI options (save for Ion, Quark and Nova of course, lol). This wouldn't break celerity towers either, because it'd not necessarily say to target the farthest target. Some people try to optimize their range for just dealing as much damage as possible; some use them as finishers. Disease towers, they really should just shoot the lowest hp guys, cause they're useless otherwise.

Having all towers optimized with the options won't remove manual targetting from the game. It'll just help out immensely when, as ender has mentioned, there's too much on screen, lag, lag and more lag. Very few people can actually handle the lategame EleTD to even do micro based purely on technological restrictions, and it's not something that can be fixed on the user's end. Those that have better computers automatically have a huge advantage. Granted, this is true for many games, but by providing these options, it'd help even out this advantage.

Also, regarding the fruit buff, will you be increasing the number of fruit points gotten from very hard or nay, due to how the damage reduction increase works? Probably something that needs to be tested though.

[Karawasa]

That'd clutter up the UI. What I can do instead is alter the default targeting behavior for specific towers. For instance, Disease could be lowest HP instead of closest. Let's discuss it here;

https://forums.eletd.com/index.php?showtopic=3371

Speaking of lag...I've stumbled upon a solution;

https://forums.eletd.com/index.php?showtopic=3372

[ender]

i can't name all towers i haven't see all, but it seems a general bug from sc 2 2.0.x eg single target support towers attack(incantation, polar), money tower.

nice change for fruits, i mean a simple armor/dmg mitigation/hp vs lots of abilities will be easy to balance and easy for people to understand how to kill them. now is a little too complicated to theorycraft, given fruits have all abilities in game.

i suggest tune the new fruits different for maze and non maze. non maze is currently kind of balanced, but in maze they are too weak, compared to the amount of money you can get and the maze length.

also i forgot to mention, hero should use a better targeting ai also as is awful without micro. and all abilities are awful as well, besides the 3 ones that are on attack/ kill and do not require casting. one problem with hero i say is all cast abilities are under powered, or could use a auto-cast or on hit mechanic. again cast abilities may be good but is hard to micro in late game, and is arguable even with the 1000% buff and lvl 3 spell that they are worth over the 3 abilities that are on hit/ on kill.

currently people hate hero thinking he is under powered, witch is half true, as i said casts and mana upgrade are bad, but AS, and dmg % amp is godly, + the life on kill, money on kill, and that aoe on hit with 20% chance.

and another bug or just not showing properly the laser towers don't get affected by well speed buff, they have the buff on them but there is no increase in speed in the tooltip, is this a visual bug or they actually don't get help form well.

[skarnet]

What I would really like to see is a way to select mazing or non-mazing mode in the SC2 Arcade game lobby, instead of in the game itself.

Most players have never played mazing mode and it's very hard to find a mazing game ; since the loading time is pretty long (any idea what is taking so long to load btw ?) if people don't vote for the mode you want, it ends up being really frustrating.

The SC2 arcade system seems to support several game modes for the same map, so would it be possible to take advantage of that ?

Thanks.

[Karawasa]

What I would really like to see is a way to select mazing or non-mazing mode in the SC2 Arcade game lobby, instead of in the game itself.

Most players have never played mazing mode and it's very hard to find a mazing game ; since the loading time is pretty long (any idea what is taking so long to load btw ?) if people don't vote for the mode you want, it ends up being really frustrating.

The SC2 arcade system seems to support several game modes for the same map, so would it be possible to take advantage of that ?

Thanks.

I'll look into it.

[Xeamax]

I'm not sure if this was suggested elsewhere, but maybe a mode where the next wave starts where the wave starts when the guy in last place finishes clearing his wave? Maybe limit interest to proccing like twice a round or something? (sounds complicated :x)

As Ele TD noobs, my friends and I just want to chat while making complex or simple mazes, but usually the simple mazes clear too fast and the guy with the complex maze gets quickly overwhelmed.

[ender]

sc 2 update and the game now is completely unplayable, can you do a hotfix please. all stuff in game look like param/value/and a vast number of numbers and letters combo

[WindStrike]

Game is running fine on my end. Then again, I'm not seeing a SC2 update. Guess NA hasn't updated yet.

EDIT: Just looked up the patch, it's 2.0.5, the one that adds Global Play. According to NA side, it says the game is updated in the corner where it says the update is, but there's no news of it in the loader, and there's no region change button on the login screen. It'll probably hit NA servers later today.

Looked up some more about the patch, it's having issues everywhere. No wonder they haven't added it to NA servers yet, probably doing a hotfix first.

EDIT2: Kay, I stand corrected, NA has it, it just doesn't OFFICIALLY have it. You need to press the account entry button so that the region button will appear. Anyhow, loaded the game up on EU servers, game ran fine.

Oh, and I'm gonna look like a complete newb on EU servers. Level 0, 0 Exp. BE CAREFUL, IT'S A TRAP!

I'll run the game again when the patch officially releases on NA side and see how it runs.

EDIT3: 5 seconds after I said that, officially updated. Game runs fine. What server is it not running fine on?

[ender]

i tried playing on US server as a EU player(original license) and game run with random codding text instead of normal information. didn't try it on EU witch is original server.

[WindStrike]

What I would really like to see is a way to select mazing or non-mazing mode in the SC2 Arcade game lobby, instead of in the game itself.

Most players have never played mazing mode and it's very hard to find a mazing game ; since the loading time is pretty long (any idea what is taking so long to load btw ?) if people don't vote for the mode you want, it ends up being really frustrating.

The SC2 arcade system seems to support several game modes for the same map, so would it be possible to take advantage of that ?

Thanks.

Now that the open games list notes what mode it's in, it'd probably be a good idea for both mazing and wars. That way, the voting screen can be narrowed down to just one in-game - the standard settings screen along with whether heroes and/or teams should be on or off.