[Beta 5] First report

[Twilice]

The magic tower seems awesome even tought its like the same as before. But it had lots of mana at the first creep, didn't like that. Maybe should have this sort of rage ability so it gained mana per each shot but it should NOT lose mana if it doesn't attack anything (if so incrase the mana cap by 30-100%)

(small edit before submit:) could have a slighly reduced speed and slightly more main damage.

The laser seems pretty fine. If placed on the bottom on a lane so it will be more far away from the creeps that come the first time but when they go around they will deal more damage, so it is a pretty god tower to catch leaks. But anyway to the ideas; either more range or shorter range. More range so you can micro it easyer but also lose some effectives when not (wierd thing coming from me huh? ) but if closer range it would be more of a first attacking tower (more spreaded out damage) but also deal more damage but more spreaded out. (would not be such as god leak cathcer after that if there is a single one with much hp, but god if many leaks with low hp)

Thats allmost all I tested. Magic don't get so much boost from forge remember that.

[Guest Oblivion.IV]

Ok, this is my same post from the kindle topic...thought it would go better in this topic.

With the Fluxor tower, it can be teleported into opposing teams areas...can cause kill stealing. Also, idk if this is a bug or i just got unlucky, but i was playing the beta and had just finished level 16 when the game timer started for 17, when it got to 0, it just stayed there and no units came out. I tried changing level to see if would trigger anything but it didnt. If you need to know wut i did b4 this happend...during level 16 i sold alot of towers really fast if that has anything to do with it. Other than that...i love the new version...especialy the laser and phasor towers dmg equation thing. And love the Necromancy towers hehe they own. And a tower is named the same as my wc bnet name Oblivion.IV ...well almost scratch the iv lol. But all togther, really fun.

In the picture...its the level that just stopped...see it says current level 16 and theres no timer for 17 and theres no creeps on map...as seen the towers arent attacking and minimap is clear.

[electronX]

Hi everyone,

I'm reporting my first three games.

General:

- The game runs smoother. Previously I had around 10-15 fps, now it seems to be over 20. (AthlonXP 1900+, 1GB no swap)

- "An elemental has been summoned for you." -> "Interest rate..." The elemental message shouldn't be shown if interest is auto-picked.

- Towers lose target if they get out of range even for 1/INF second and the tower has just fired. I targeted a leaking candidate, and... well, it leaked, although I had the chance.

- I never experienced the undead bug. Neither with beta4 nor with beta5, neither online nor alone.

- Interest has a lag. It doesn't occur exactly when 0 or 14 appears, but somewhere between 0.9 and 13.5. It is very bad when I'm trying to interest sell but I also need to find my builder and wait for the interest value to appear.

- Death tower: description states "equal with percentage", what means it has a damage 0-100, but it shows 1980. Should state "damage percentage is equal to hp percentage", something like this.

- Electricity tower (or every complex one): it upgrades too slow. The game requires extreme sell & rebuild to reach even level 50 and then the upgrades cost 2-4 seconds... huh! Either have good build times of 2 to even 60 seconds and not require selling or build as fast as possible, even the best towers (pures, periodic, 33, 222).

- Windstorm: has no (visible) effect at all. Ice has at least a good damage, but this windstrom should be 11 tower instead of 111. Just cash thrown out of the window. Described above, shouldn't build before level 50 or so.

- I always run out of cash around level 40, even with some sell 'n' rebuild. Healing, mech and maybe fast around 30 gets very strange, I always leak those and only those levels, sometimes even 25 of them, even after a clean previous one. At least some notification should help (siren?) because I always see that I have a good amount of cash but no time to build up on more stronger tower, or rebuild. (One more... hahaha. 20 leaks instead of 25.)

- I don't like to play this game because I can't win it. This is why I also don't play wc3 although I see it's beautiful, interesting, anything. While playing, I want joy. Losing causes pain. This time I vote for eletd v3.

Game 1: DEN - Death on level 40-41

http://web.t-online.hu/nocturna/e058.w3g

Summary: The game started funny, didn't go well, and later on I experienced that my best available towers are all nature, so fire levels... go bad.

Towers:

- DE (Gunpowder): long range, but extremely low damage, doesn't work well, compared to some other towes.

- DN (Death): too weak, must micro it as hell if want to achieve good results (average damage around 800).

- EN (Rage): works well. Should auto-cast rage if I want it to do so (Right click to activate auto-casting.) Late-game, as I have 20-30 towers or just trying to follow, what's happening, it's no time for me to look for the towers and see that it's not ready yet.

- DEN (Roots): works very well when built but can only build a few of them. Don't know whether the 500 is nature or composite, I vote for composite.

- Build: the build starts out good but around level 35 started to get extremely bad. Reason: out of cash.

Game 2: FWED - Death on level 46

http://web.t-online.hu/nocturna/e059.w3g

Summary: started to be 3 element build too, but then received a fourth. That saved me for some time (this is the longest of the three!). Got confused, surely mismanaged some towers. As usually, around 35 I began to strongly run out of cash, then attacking power and then died. Unlike the previous one, this game was 45, so shorter.

- FW (Kindle): Should show its burning effect. It works. Sadly, only one can be built per region, so becomes totally useless as it can't even keep healing levels down. It requires distributed build (5139) but for healing waves that is pain in the ass.

- 111 towers worked well.

- Build: may be playable.

Game 3: LF++WDLD - Death on level 43

http://web.t-online.hu/nocturna/e059.w3g

Summary: this is the first game I thought I will be able to finish. Must laugh, looking at the result. Tried some more sell & rebuild techniques, including checktable build. I didn't leak until level 30 or so (what never happened before), except one small failure (building an electricity costs me around 5-10 seconds, so if I notice that I will leak, get there with the Acolyte, start to build, and when finished, the leakers are just left). Level 42 or 43 then leaked 25 then 2 (15?) and I flied away.

- Build (LFWD): not too bad, but didn't impress me. Windstorm is useless crap, anyway.

[Guest Sancdar]

Kindle stacks properly, but it still seems to have a little less AoE than the tooltip says - I'm guessing 650 or 700 rather than 750, but it's really hard to be sure.

Autocast abilities (Well, Blacksmith, Magic, any others?) on illusionary towers cannot be turned on. They can be manually cast, but this is a pain and isn't really viable for towers like Magic.

Periodic Towers can still be cloned, and still will block the path.

Cloned Eidolon towers are larger in size than the originals. I haven't noticed this with any other towers.

The Laser tower does increase damage when buffed by a Blacksmith, but does not seem to be dealing elemental damage - if it is, it's not reflected in the floating numbers.

- Windstorm: has no (visible) effect at all. Ice has at least a good damage, but this windstrom should be 11 tower instead of 111. Just cash thrown out of the window. Described above, shouldn't build before level 50 or so.

Windstorm does slow a bunch, but the AoE slows don't seem all that strong at level 1, and are better as later support towers instead of being able to solo waves like before. Sidenote: while tornadoes and novas don't stack slow with themselves, both now stack damage.

Edits:

I wasn't able to replicate the Undead bug, no matter how hard I tried.

The -level command has a range from -99 to 999. Unsurprisingly, this is not so good for the game.

[electronX]

Kindle stacks ...

Well, you mention cloning periodic. I won't ever build one. Please, could you upload 5-10 replays with more people who are achieving better results then me? Testing replays, for example.

I'm too much embittered now to try it anymore... now I also tried and I understand why people use the 1M cheat. Sometimes I tend to decide to leave the beta team, my problem is not solved and it seems it won't be, and the game remains unbeatable, unenjoyable for me. Such a game must be wiped out from my universe, burned, broken, cursed. However, the towers and ideas are so good, that I can't delete it. Yet.

Like the girl you love but she hates you. Even when she leaves, you have her picture.

I should forget eletd4, should I?

[Guest Sancdar]

Uh...you act like something is bad because it is a challenge. I don't think I understand your mindset, because I think it's a waste of time to play and replay something if I already know the outcome will be in my favor. Maybe you should drop back to an easier difficulty level (also convince Karawasa to fix low-difficulty healing levels).

[Twilice]

Yepp it's hard I know. I cleared the map once (and first of all without cheats) and I don't even remember how.

[tesard]

I don't really find that a game needs to be 'beatable' in order to be considered good.

I think Ele td is more about competition and lasting longer than everyone else (especially in same random games) than it is about whether or not you can beat level 60.

The later levels aren't too fun anyway, imo, there's less micro involved and it depends mostly on the amount of gold you have since everyone has mostly the same towers available.

[Twilice]

Involves pretty much selling in same random, so thats micro in one way.

[electronX]

I don't really find that a game needs to be 'beatable' in order to be considered good.

Well, slept since that Anyway, at least the "no one had the cojones to beat? I'm ashamed..." text should be removed. In eletd3, if you couldn't finish the game after some tries, you were bad, but here you aren't definitely.

Playing easy vs. veryhard. Well, if I play easy, aside from the suffering, around level 50 I will have around 5 towers. Very hard is at least good in giving a chance to build some interesting towers (except 222 and 33, which have never ever happened to me... maybe one supernova once).

Btw, we don't have to think the same You talk about playing it online, when after being the Remaining One it's no fun to continue. I'm talking about playing offline, where you can set goals like doing better, beating a level that was unbeatable before... and seeing those Ronnies with whom Kara so much worked. I will never. And I'm sure, 99% of the players who play this game won't ever see them, nor pure towers and such.

So, okay, while eletd3 was beatable and then the Ronnies came, eletd4 is unbeatable but this way provides better differentiating between players mid-game. Like many other TDs. That's a choice

Thank you for replying!

[Guest Sancdar]

Seriously man, it's not even unbeatable on VH. I do think that the lower levels should be a bit easier - with gold costs ramped up so much this version, you barely get to build anything.

[0rb3r]

@electronX:

First of all thank you for your sincere and honest post, not many have the nerve to post negative commentaries on forums, i really apreciate that.

I tried today myself 5 games on noramal dif. random, and was just in 2 games able to achieve wave 50. One ended at level 60 and the other one on level 57. I remember I massed lvl2 gold and electricity and had lvl1 nova and windstorm towers to slow, I played on 9 to have enough gold to beat the game, didn't work at all.

I'm not a good player, just average, and I admit that being used to beat the game in VH most times in 3.0 and see now that I cant on normal difficulty in 4.0 is a bit odd.

But we claimed for a redesign for 4.0 in which the difficulties are made that way that you need to be good to finish normal difficulty, and have to be a pro to finish VH. For now, it seems to me we got what we wanted, it is damn challenging. I just think that we need to find a way to make VE and E easier without spamming others on multiplayer, for now, easy difficulties are not newcomerfriendly and we are imo barricading new players way to have fun.

[Karawasa]

Keep in mind that the *new/modified* towers have only had preliminary balancing (i.e. mathcraft) done to them. They may very well be too weak (or too strong), and that should be taken into consideration.

However, from my own experience on normal the game does seem too hard. If VE and E are posing a challenge to inexperienced players then we have a problem. I am thinking about making all difficulties start out with 70 gold, and also to have all difficulties spawn 30 creeps.

I am open to other suggestions, if you have an idea on how to better balance the game (without making VH any less difficult) let me know.

[Guest Sancdar]

Maybe start lower difficulties with a higher interest rate - they shouldn't get enough gold early on to rush the players on harder difficulties by an overwhelming amount, but by the end of the game they'll end up being able to build more towers and have an easier time of things.

[Karawasa]

That idea has potential. Perhaps something like 4/3.5/3/2.5/2% starting. The problem I foresee is that inexperienced players may not understand the concept of interest, and thus this balance will be lost on them.

[electronX]

I am open to other suggestions, if you have an idea on how to better balance the game (without making VH any less difficult) let me know.

I think the 30 spawn, 70 starting gold would be good. This way you have the same gold, but it's easier. The only problem is, that while it removes the healing wave problem, introduces a new one: what if I'm a pro but play ve? I have an advantage (I will spam the others).

Addressing the healing waves problem can help, too. So that their healing rate is balanced by that 48-61-74-87-100% as well. I was really close to enjoy my normal or very easy game - except the fact that I had to wait 20 seconds between rounds -, but those late-game healing waves tended to leak 30 of 30 I managed to reach level 50 or even more, but then died very fast.

@Sancdar: I know that it's beatable. I saw one single replay, where Cisz did that. With work for what I have to be paid As for now, I have accepted that I won't win it, only with luck (=such a set of elements that results in the ability of building such towers that allow me to handle the hardest levels, which otherwise mass leak).

@0rb3r: Thanks for these words. Does it mean, that claiming I'm 'good' (not 'pro') is an illusion, even while beating 90%+ of vh games? By the way, Kara said he made later levels harder. Don't know, by how much, but if this amount would be a little bit lowered... Or it can happen that this amount isn't too much alone but the introduction of 75% composite damage, ~75% mech damage (they are 3/12 immune), more rapid healing, so this alltogether can mean that we have only a little bit over the line, and 1% change in all these stats could make the game easier enough. I would really be happy to test it, but I can't...

@Kara: although I'm long I'm supporting your work on this hard but really beautiful game!

Idea: it would be good to test the game on very different machine configurations. Or, if a bug is present, reporters should write the config down as well. It's interesting that while some are crying sad, I really didn't experience the undead bug in 20 games (beta4), even in cases that were noted (earth towers, for example).

[Guest 1mpulse]

i thought the bug resulted in undead happened when you killed a just revived unit too fast.

try this electronx,in beta4 by first undead wave (nature) mass fire towers and own it and see if it bugs. if it doesnt, im wrong. since using one amplified fire on that level bugged every time