Cisz Posted January 9, 2008 Ok, here I go, as Karawasa requested. Part one - duals List of all 2-element towers ldwfne Name Does 1 ++ ld Trickery Copies towers 2 + + lw Ice ST slow + dot 3 + + lf Electric. Bouncing dmg 4 + + ln Life Gives life 5 + + le Quantum Warps 6 ++ dw Poison Line dmg 7 + + df Magic Mana Bonus Dmg 8 + + dn Death Killer bees 9 + + de Gunpowder LR Splash dmg10 ++ wf Kindle Aoe Dot 11 + + wn Well Speeds towers12 + + we Hydro Hurls creeps13 ++ fn Flame ST slow, dmg increase14 + + fe Blacksmith Dmg Increase15 ++ ne Rage Has Speed boost List of my observations Ballancea- Name bility Unique Micro Looks Elemental Fit Bugs/Problems 1 ld Trickery Bad Very Tough Ok High Removed from group on transform 2 lw Ice Full Very Mid Ok High - 3 lf Electric. Full Very Low High Very high - 4 ln Life Full Very Mid Eurgh Very high - 5 le Quantum Full Very Tough Nice Dunno Needs extra passes - maybe bad in MP 6 dw Poison Full Very Low Ok High - 7 df Magic Full Very Low Hm High Wastes shoots; needs to regenerate, maybe bad in MP 8 dn Death Full Very None Great Very high - 9 de Gunpowder Full Very Low Hm Maybe Long range - maybe bad in MP10 wf Kindle Good Very None Great High Armour ignoring -> ballancing problems11 wn Well Full Very Mid Hm High Does not work on all towers (eg. poison, electricity)12 we Hydro Full Very Mid Nice Ok Stun, slightly abusable13 fn Flame Full Medium Mid Nearly Well enough Dmg. increaee - maybe breaks rules for strong towers14 fe Blacksmt. Full Very Mid Mostly High Does not affect all towers (eg. poison, electricity)15 ne Rage Full Very Mid Ok Medium Needs to regenerate, maybe bad in MP List of my suggestions Name Done? My opinion about this tower: 1 Trickery If this tower needs ballancing, maybe a dmg bonus/malus on the copy might be needed. 2 Ice #Yes# Done till proven imballanced. 3 Electriccity #Yes# Done till proven imballanced. 4 Life Nearly Change Model for level 1 and 3. Especially 3. 5 Quantum Needs multiplayer testing vs a decent racing build. Might prove wothless there. 6 Poison Nearly Change Model for level 3. 7 Magic Lower firing rate for bonus attack. Needs multiplayer testing vs a decent racing build. 8 Death #Yes# Done till proven imballanced. 9 Gunpowder Needs multiplayer testing vs a decent racing build. I don't like the models but some do, so keep the look..10 Kindle Nearly Transform to non-armour ignoring.11 Well Needs a deep check in all builds for problems with not affecting all towers. Maybe dmg-type changes can help.12 Hydro #Yes# Done till proven imballanced.13 Flame Mostly Fix or change models, level 2 and 3 are to small or pale. Might need a rework someday, a bit close to poison.14 Blacksmith Needs a deep check in all builds for problems with not affecting all towers. Maybe dmg-type changes can help.15 Rage Needs multiplayer testing vs a decent racing build. Might prove wothless there. Summary of my findings: About 8 duals are done or almost done imo. They will probably need some changes in numbers, but I expect them to do well. Trickery might prove a beast if it's not allready ballanced now. The remaining 6 duals suffer from beeing most effective with a slow match, so they might be a bad choice when facing a decent racing build. Do we even have such a build? But if fast paced gaming is possible in 4.0, I forsee problems with those 6. Maybe some or even all of them will need a redesign. Coming soon: Triples All of you, please comment my comments. Does life look ugly? Is long range a ballance problem? Should kindle not be armour ignoring? Go to top Share this post Link to post
0rb3r Posted January 9, 2008 Wow, amazing work Cisz, great. This is my Image summary fo duals: Trickery - needs brainstorm on skill balancing. The tower fits. Quantum - needs brainstorm on concept, tower name and model. The tower does not fit. Gunpowder - needs brainstorm on concept, tower name and model. The tower does not fit. Hydro - the attack type looks weird, it should be water on attack, earth on skill. Flame - needs brainstorm on tower model, the rest fits All other towers are ok. This is my balancing summary: Trickery - needs brainstorm on skill balancing. Well & Blacksmith - should affect all towers. All other towers are ok. Coincidences: You wrote down excelent almost all issues I saw. Differences: I included hydros attack type as not fitting, I didnt included life, it is imo not that ugly but not 100% as well, I wouldnt mind a change. To the questions: Q: Is Ice, Electricity, Life, Poison, Death, Kindle, Hydro & Flame balanced? A: I think so, once Kindle is armor affected and deals slightly more damage compensatively. Q: Do we have a racing build? A: Dunno, im not a racer, it is anyway harder to rush due to new classif. Q: Does life look ugly? A: Not specially, no. In general I don't like efects as "buildings". Same goes for Flame. So, it is not that bad but I would'nt mind if it is changed to buildings, totems or units which fit more in a building role. Q:Is long range a ballance problem? A: I think it is. Not for singles, but for more commonly used duals and triples. Q: Armour-Ignoring? A: If Armour ignoring can be axed it should be it. No tower should be AI for balancing and Esthetic purposes. Go to top Share this post Link to post
Karawasa Posted January 9, 2008 Don't want to bias anyone here (towards a specific tower or balance change), so I'll keep my comments limited. Cisz, excellent job on part one. I look forward to later parts. About Well and Blacksmith, it is intentional that they do not affect some of the towers. This is due either to the nature of the tower, or conflicts. For instance, poison tower casts its carrion swarm every time it attacks. The CD on this carrion swarm is about equal to attack (to prevent people using it more often), so if it were buffed by Well Tower, it would do basically nothing (maybe even hinder the tower, it would attack at say .75 but the spell would still be on CD, so it would take 1.5 sec to cast actually). Go to top Share this post Link to post
jolin012 Posted January 9, 2008 Armor ignoring should not exist imo. I thought Kindle was no more armor ignoring? anyway towers such as Roots and ice i know are. I had a look on the models before too, and i must agree that life has a strange model. the upper levels on it are better. maybe towers such as magic will have problem in racingbuilds, aswell as zeal tower will gain an advantage of racing when playing extreme mode.(creeps spawn fast enough to make the skill never stop. as for the short/long range balance problem a shortrange tower will always be better than the longrange towers on multiplayer and the opposite on single player(except for boss-killing), aswell as a armor reducer or buffing tower such as acid or well gains an advantage from the slowing super towers such as nova and roots on multiplayer as they slow down, which looses speed and gains nothing. This leads to that we can either leave it, or buff the weaker, to be better in singleplayer but still a bit worse in multiplayer. The same is with a longpass tower compared to a 2pass tower The longpass tower(tidal/quaker/Steam) has to be strong enough to work on a longpass, because there is where it's strongest. While beeing strongest at longpass this gains an advantage. it can be placed on area 5 or 8 and speed while the other builds might have to use a 2pass to survive, and get overwhelmed. For cosmetic design, I can begin with my hotkey thoughts. I'd like all hotkeys to be on the left side of the keyboard (as the right hand is on the mouse for most players). That means a boundary at the B for Build button that has to be saved. QWERT .ASDFG ..ZXCVB The towers that have a bad firstletter(hotkey): Ice Life Poison Magic Kindle Hydro Hail Jinx Oblivion Laser Polar Nova Muck Impulse I understand that all these can't be changed, but some could even have a better name that uses the better hotkeys. Towers I don't like the name: Kindle....What was wrong with Steam? better hotkey, better name to elements, model, effect imo. (ok, maybe kndle is better for effect, but i still vote for steam Hydro....to me, water and earth means either clay or erosion/grand canyon tower. but i don't really have a good idea how to mean it stacks with the effect, maybe "a 20% chance that the unit slips in the clay and lands to deal the aoe"and make the jump a bit lower:P. Laser....I dont get it that laser is short range, but i don't have a better sugguestition for a name/model. Windstorm/Muck: My sheet for tower names says that one of these can change back to original names(begginging with S) but not both. First i was about to say Muck to change to sludge because M is a bad hotkey, but then i thought that the most important isn't that, and muck is an all new tower except for the model, so i sugguest Windstorm->Storm About hotkeys i would like the original hotkeys back to normal. Everything is so, except for 2 things. Buffing is not F (inner [F]re, [F]ire up]..i don't know for c[F]loning with trickery:p)everywhere and most important. aRrow! This makes a terrible problem when switching between playing the versions 3.0 and 4.0. The Upgrade hotkey if fine with me, but please change it to [Q]uality upgrade or something, it's a mess to move the hand to the right side and have to look down to see I'm clicking correctly. For supertower balancing, It's a good thing that armor reducers were nerfed and that slowing aoes slow less. But we're not there yet.( Btw, duals price have drasticly been lowered, but were the damage duals nerfed to compensate?) If we follow >Cisz's proposal< MH's sheet The super towers are still distributed over different elements. Maybe you(not pointing at cisz or anyone, dunno who's mistake it is, and maybe im misunderstanding) haven't noticed but you've done something very wrong. While LDF LFW LFN LNE DFW DFN DWE DNE are the strong triples... you've inserted the numbers for LFN LFE LWN LWE DFN DFE DWN DWE... and this is a major miss... the DLFW build actually has 3 strong triples, and LDWN has 1 strong triple...(and a strong dual). Hope this wasn't a nasty surprise.. I have been thinking about a conclution for supertower distribution, and i can show it if i'm proven right on this. there are other major imbalancess with this system. some builds have 2 aoe slows, which don't work equaly good as a slow and an armor reducers. and a slower and a armor reducer don't work equally strong as a super dual for sure. i allready have some of the ideas posted in "tower distribution over elements" topic in major changes. I cannot yet point out the towers that are worthless in builds(where there is always a better choice) because we might have to break the structure, and switch over elements for some towers. a last thing, i would like buildtimes decreased a bit, and mech is too hard, makes spamming nessesary. as gipface said it "RIP 2-pass" Go to top Share this post Link to post
Guest Sancdar Posted January 9, 2008 I personally think it's fine to have Kindle as the single armor-ignoring tower. It makes it unique. While it does work better on VH proportionately compared to other towers, it's not that effective a tower so I don't think it matters too much. Go to top Share this post Link to post
jolin012 Posted January 10, 2008 What i meant was that i liked the name steam more. i agree that there can be one armor ignoring tower... maybe it's too strong and can be spammed tier3, if so, i think it'd not be bad to leave it as the old steam, that it don't stack in spamming, but also the damage has to be increased greatly, as for the old vapor/immolation vas rarely used at all. Also, i forgot to say that i liked the name aicd more than corrosion. Go to top Share this post Link to post
Cisz Posted January 10, 2008 The hotkey "S" is taken by (S)top. And the tower distribution you linked to is outdated, because the towers are on different elements now. WF is a super strong dual on that sheet. Go to top Share this post Link to post
Cisz Posted January 10, 2008 You listed ldf as a strong tripple, thats not true in the actual map. I did a new version with the tool. >> Distribution plan for the 4.0 << The strong towers are: Trickery (LD) Well (WN) Blacksmith (FE) Windstorm (LWF) Polar (LWE) Nova (LFN) Enchantment (LNE) Corrosion (DWF) Muck (DWE) Voodoo (DFN) Roots (DNE) And I forgot two things in the first part: -The model for blacksmith level 3 fails to please me. -And death towers name is not fitting anymore imo. Decay tower? Desease tower? Go to top Share this post Link to post
0rb3r Posted January 10, 2008 Cisz, I assume that by strong towers you mean towers with strong side effects like slow, arm. reductors and amplifiers, I wouldn't consider Tidal or Quaker as weak. I think Blacksmith tier 3 is pretty ok. And Death tower is more like a "plague tower" right now. Edit: @Sancdar's answer: Something like plague, a synonym. I'm not that good in english. Darkness and nature are spreading elements. Maybe "Spread Tower" and "Plague" Skill. Go to top Share this post Link to post
Guest Sancdar Posted January 10, 2008 Plague shares a starting letter with Poison, and they're both built off of Darkness. Go to top Share this post Link to post
Cisz Posted January 11, 2008 No orber, I'm talking about towers that are deliberately to strong to ballance the map. Go to top Share this post Link to post
0rb3r Posted January 11, 2008 Ok, I think I can figure out the point. Go to top Share this post Link to post
