Element Shakeup

[Karawasa]

This is the other fundamental gameplay change that I had in mind for Final.

This was suggested by Cisz, and I believe it to be an idea that should be implemented. The question becomes, how?

Currently, there is an unfair distribution of the elements. There are clearly some combinations that are far superior to others (4 at a time, so 15 total). I believe that we should change what elements go into what tower, in an effort to eliminate the "all the good shit is over here," and the "that combination is bad," effects.

At the same time that we want to do this, we have to also redesign & tweak the towers. Perhaps we should do that first, and then tackle this problem. Regardless though, please do give this idea some thought and let me know your ideas.

[Cisz]

If you want to make your own experiments, maybe this open ofice calc sheet might be of help. Award values to towers by inserting points into the blue cells and see what point distribution for 4 element builds you can come up with. You can enter fractions, big numbers, try to improve ballance by awarding some duals points.. But my prediction is, that my suggestion is pretty good allready. >> Build explorer 1.0 <<

My suggestion would look like this:

We would have 8 game decidingly powerfull special towers. All 8 would be triples.

4 AOE slows (aka glacier, ice, storm, nova)

2 armour reducers (aka acid, enchantment)

2 others (aka gold, well)

The number 8 and the distribution within this number is pretty much the optimum imo. I will ask for an example of a distribution of anyone who wants to change this numbers.

All other towers would be either damage towers, single target slows, or have special abilities that can not win you the game, if they are your only support. Any instant kill towers are harmless, as long as they don't work on all waves. They really do their best on rnd, where build balance is unimportant (samerandom takes care of that).

The 8 towers would be spread like this (remember that the actual elements can be exchanged, this is only about the relative position of the towers in the builds):

.   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
(l) +       + + +
(d) + +       +   +
(w) + + +       +
(f)   + + +       +
(n)     + + +   +
(e)       + + +   +

1 - Enchantment

2 - Storm

3 - Ice

4 - Acid

5 - Nova

6 - Glacier

7 - Well

8 - Gold

Acid and enchantment would not share any elements, so to have both armour reducers, you'd have to have all 6 elements. That makes it impossible to have both of them on level 2 (max level), because that would take 12 of your 11 picks.

Likewise you would have to take all 6 elements to have all 4 aoe slows, two of them on lv.2 and 2 on lv.1. And with 4 or 5 elements you would only have 2 of them. Since the 1 extra element gives you 2 more aoe slows, this should be balanced by making them somewhat unnessecary, like them not stacking or not giving more of a slow. Like the creeps are allready on minimum speed with two lv.2 aoe slows and one single target slow.

This is how the 4 element builds would look like:

. 1 (ldwf)  2 (Enchantment, Storm)
. 2 (ldwn)  2 (Enchantment, Well)
. 3 (ldwe)  2 (Enchantment, Glacier)
. 4 (ldfn)  0 <=
. 5 (ldfe)  2 (Glacier, Gold)
. 6 (ldne)  2 (Nova, Glacier)
. 7 (lwfn)  2 (Ice, Well)
. 8 (lwfe)  0 <=
. 9 (lwne)  2 (Nova, Well)
.10 (lfne)  2 (Acid, Nova)
.11 (dwfn)  2 (Storm, Ice)
.12 (dwfe)  2 (Storm, Gold)
.13 (dwne)  0 <=
.14 (dfne)  2 (Acid, Gold)
.15 (wfne)  2 (Ice, Acid)

There are three crappy builds, much like the defn nowadays, and no more extremely good ones (like lfwd or lfwn now).

And here are the 5 element builds:

.  ldwfne
1  +++++ (dwfne) (Storm, Ice, Acid, Gold)
2 + ++++ (lwfne) (Ice, Acid, Nova, Well)
3 ++ +++ (ldfne) (Acid, Nova, Glacier, Gold)
4 +++ ++ (ldwne) (Enchantment, Nova, Glacier, Well)
5 ++++ + (ldwfe) (Enchantment, Storm, Glacier, Well)
6 +++++  (ldwfn) (Enchantment, Storm, Ice, Well)

One extra element gives you access to two more good towers, and you can't max out those two extra towers before wave 50. So it's important to make lv.1 triples abilities weak enough to keep the game in ballance. Getting a good support tripple to level 2 should really make a big impact.

This will lead to 4 element builds beeing weaker for wave 25-35, stronger for wave 35-45, weaker for 45-60; support wise and compared to a 5 element build:

Tripples |  4 element| 5 element
at Wave  |    build  |   build
---------+-----------+------------
Wave Wood| lv.1 lv.2 | lv.1 lv.2
 5     1 |           |
10     2 |           |
15     3 |   1       |   1
20     4 |   2       |   2
25     5 |   2       |   4
30     6 |   2       |   4
35     7 |   1    1  |   4
40     8 |        2  |   3    1
45     9 |        2  |   2    2
50    10 |        2  |        4
55    11 |        2  |        4

This might sound like an unfair advantage for 5 element builds, but at wave 40 the 4 element build allready has maxed out all important tripples and can either turn into a 5 or six element build, catching up with the 5 element build at 45 again, or get extra essence, level 3 element or interest, while the 5 element build can not.

This sounds pretty balanced to me, but is ofc theory.

The way acid and enchantment work today are great examples of towers that get a lot stronger with level 2. Here are some rough drafts for how the other towers could work:

1 - Enchantment: -5/-25 armour

2 - Storm: -7%/-35% movement speed

3 - Ice: -7%/-35% movement speed

4 - Acid: -3/-15 armour

5 - Nova: -7%/-35% movement speed

6 - Glacier: -7%/-35% movement speed

7 - Well: +20%/+100% attack speed

8 - Gold: +20%/+100% bounty

(With maybe minimum speed at 80% speed reduction; so that 2 maxed aoe slows will get you close to that, but the 2 extra lv.1 of the fith element or any single target slow will get you beyond it.)

Maybe we can find a distribution of elements that keeps most of the existing towers on the same or similiar elements, so we don't have to explain why acid has no water anymore.

Here's another rough draft:

  ldwfne
1 ++ +   ldf Enchantment     Identical
2 + ++   lwf Storm           Identical
3   ++ + fwe Ice             Not so good
4   + ++ wen Acid            More or less plausible
5  +  ++ dne Glacier         Not so good
6 ++  +  ldn Nova            Quite good
7  + + + dfe Gold            Not so good
8 + + +  lwn Well            Good

Ofc this will move other towers around too.

Sounds like more work to be done..

So - what do you guys think of the basic concept?

[Guest Sancdar]

Definitely well thought out.

1 - Enchantment: -5/-25 armour

2 - Storm: -7%/-35% movement speed

3 - Ice: -7%/-35% movement speed

4 - Acid: -3/-15 armour

5 - Nova: -7%/-35% movement speed

6 - Glacier: -7%/-35% movement speed

7 - Well: +20%/+100% attack speed

8 - Gold: +20%/+100% bounty

(With maybe minimum speed at 80% speed reduction; so that 2 maxed aoe slows will get you close to that, but the 2 extra lv.1 of the fith element or any single target slow will get you beyond it.)

AoE slows definitely need to be more than 7% to start with, and there's no reason to multiply that by 5 when you upgrade. I'd say make it more like 12%-25(30?)%, with maximum slow being 80% or 85%. Those numbers definitely need more thought than I just put in, but my idea is that while stacking AoE slows would be powerful, it would be overall more effective to get a few high-level single-target slows and micro them a bit. My argument before 3.0 was to drop the minimum movespeed so that there was a difference between the second and third levels of single-target slows, and we all know how that turned out. The change needed there was to reduce the effect of AoE slow towers. Basically, I think you should be able to max slow with AoE slows, but ONLY if you're building them nearly to the exclusion of other towers, like having all four of them.

Shit, you should just listen to Cisz. Look how much he wrote!

[Guest mrchak]

I'm all for rebalancing the tower's abilities, but I feel very strongly that the elements that make up a tower should make logical sense. If we want to find a way so that the 2 armor reducing towers don't share any elements, then that's fine; but if DFL=Enchantment, it would make no sense that WEN be acid; Maybe Water, Earth, Nature could be "Erosion!" or something like that. You catch my drift?

I like the methodical and systematic thinking thats going on.

Word

[Cisz]

I totally agree.

Once we have decided upon an overall structure, the given elements will point us to how the towers should be called and represented. "Erosion" - good point.

But the naming can wait until we agree upon said general structure.

Shit, you should just listen to Cisz. Look how much he wrote!

Yes - the lenght proves my point.

[Guest Sancdar]

Well technically, soil is usually acidic.

<_<

[Karawasa]

I like the massive amount of thought put in. What I think we should do first, is brainstorm all the new towers. They don't have to have names set in stone, but we need their abilities down (at least for the triples being redesigned). That way, we can then determine all the "game deciding," towers.

[Cisz]

I like the massive amount of thought put in.

Thanks. I've been working on this all way since challenge 8. In fact, even before challange 8, because that challenge was meant to provide data for a new build concept.

What I think we should do first, is brainstorm all the new towers. They don't have to have names set in stone, but we need their abilities down (at least for the triples being redesigned). That way, we can then determine all the "game deciding," towers.

I'm not sure if I understand your post.

If you mean, we should decide upon what towers the "8 game deciding towers" should be, then yes, let's get collecting.

But if you mean "decide what tower fits to dfe", then I disgagree. What elements are used for the 8 towers can be changed. The exact combos for each tower are irrelevant, only their relative position in the builds are important.

So as long as we don't know which of the possible element distributions we are going to use, we can't really determine what tower fits what element.

As I suggested in my op, I'd like to go with the 8 strongest special effect towers allready in the map. This will reduce the amount of work to do and people will have an easier time to adapt to the changes.

4 aoe slows, 2 armour reducers, well, gold. They should affect the game more or less equally strong.

Using 8 more or less identically usefull towers is pretty much the only possible way I can think of. If we use towers that affect the game in a different degree, like making some slowers stronger, I see no way to distribute them w/o ending up with one über-strong build again.

Since aoe slow is one of the most needed skills on a tower, it makes sense to have 4 of them (at least one in 10 of the 15 4-element-builds).

But they should be different in the way they slow. Storm, ice and nova are great examples of three totally different ways to slow, but glacier looks a bit too much like ice to me. (Acid and enchantment are diverse enough.)

So we should come up with a new way to aoe slow, to get ice or glacier exchanged with something really different.

[Karawasa]

If you mean, we should decide upon what towers the "8 game deciding towers" should be, then yes, let's get collecting.

Yes, and as a part of that, we need to finish "redesigning," each tower. Once that is done, we can do whatever we want in terms of element makeup, and of course name.

[Twilice]

To much letters, system shutdo.. z Z z

No it was a joke, I actually read the whole posts.

I might not understand all rebalancing things.

But I think i understand.

But I can help test i play alot of diferent games.

And I know about how hard and so on it should be.

And ofcourse i played Ele TD much before so i know about how it was.

But the number one and two:

Don't have any kind of permanent slowing,

And no - 40 armor.

[Cisz]

Don't have any kind of permanent slowing,

And no - 40 armor.

Both is taken care of if you all just follow my suggestion.

[Guest mrchak]

So do we know what the 8 special triples will be yet?

The feeling I get is that for any 4 element pick, you should have

at the very least 1 armor reducer or aoe slow (is this mathematically possible)

no more than 2 special towers from the special 8.

Ideally each 4 element pick would give you 1 or 2 towers from the special 8.... I haven't done the analysis that Cisz has done, but I wonder if this is possible? I hope it is

Requirements:

4 AOE Slow Towers:

At most, each tower can have 1 element in common with others (no two slow towers have 2 elements in common)

In a grid of the 4 AOE slow towers vs 6 elements, each element is used in 2 of the towers only.

(This will ensure that no 4-element build will have 2 aoe slows - is this good? Also, this will leave 3 4-element builds with no aoe slow. No avoiding that)

If possible, keep FNL or FWL, or FNL+WEL

2 Armor reduction towers:

the two towers don't share any elements

If possible, the 3 builds that don't have any aoe slow should have armor reduction. If not possible, then 2 of them should have armor reduction.

If possible use FLD/WNE (enchantment/erosion)

2 extra Special Towers:

the two towers don't share any elements

If one build doesn't have any aoe or armor reduction, it should have both special towers

If possible use EFL (gold) / WND (well???)

All 4-element builds should allow for either 1 or 2 of these special-triples (none 0, none >2).

There are a lot of possible ways to fill out the grid

L F N W D E

slow1___|_|_|_|_|_|_|

slow2___|_|_|_|_|_|_|

slow3___|_|_|_|_|_|_|

slow4___|_|_|_|_|_|_|

armor1 _|_|_|_|_|_|_|

armor2 _|_|_|_|_|_|_|

xtra1 __|_|_|_|_|_|_|

xtra2 __|_|_|_|_|_|_|

So what I propose is that someone should write out some code (if nobody else does it, I will, since I'm now obsessed with it) that will run through each possible grid layout, and test it against all of the requirements. If it satisfies them, then it should save the grid. If there are no possible grid layouts, then we need to re-evaluate the requirements.

[Guest Sancdar]

Based on your requirements and "if possibles", there's only 2 ways to fill out the grid.

    L  F  N  W  D  E
S1  X  X  X
S2  X        X     X
S3        X     X  X  *
S4     X     X  X     *
--------------------
A1  X  X        X
A2        X  X     X
--------------------
X1  X  X           X
X2        X  X  X

The two "undecided" slows share Darkness, and need to be either DEF/DNW or DEN/DFW. Of the three builds that have no AOE slow, in this case DEFL, DLNW, and EFNW, two have armor reduction. The third, DLNW, has only one of the "extra" towers, and is probably the weakest 4-element build. However, every 4-element build does get 1 or 2 special triples, with good expansion for a 5th element.

[Guest mrchak]

You're a superstar. It looks like DWNE would be the strongest build, with a Slow, Armor and an Xtra...

nde (slow)

nwe (armor)

nwd (xtra)

Of course, if the other towers are varied enough to compensate, then it could be a very good balance.

I think my requirements MIGHT be impossible - but even so, it will be a TREMENDOUS balance improvement, Cisz is probably busting a nut right now...hehe.

[Guest Sancdar]

Whoops, I didn't notice the triple there. Easily solved by making that slow and armor redux the worse ones! I assume X2 will be the stronger of the X towers, since it is the one that can be taken alone.

This is all basically what Cisz said in his earlier post anyway.

[Guest mrchak]

A spreadsheet someone can play with if they want to, it shows the layout

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... 5ABXuZa8ZQ

Slow 1 LFN Nova

Slow 2 LWE Glacier

Slow 3 NDE Oil (just my opinion) (Weakest slow)

Slow 4 FWD ???? (any ideas?)

Armor1 LFD Enchant

Armor2 NWE Erosion (Weaker armor redux)

Xtra 1 LFE Gold

Xtra 2 NWD ??? (needs to be a hot abilitiy that makes it stand above the others)

I like it, its coming together.

[Karawasa]

I agree, this is a great idea. Just need to finish coming up with replacement abilities so that we can determine where to insert them.

[Guest Sancdar]

FWD ought to be Storm, I think.

[Guest mrchak]

I can see that - Fire water darkness - its like a stormy night, like a thunderstorm... just need to make the tornado darker.

[Cisz]

The last tower (NWD) could be a version of well.

I like my suggestion better. Your version has 7 builds with 1 strong tower and 1 build with three. Sounds like lfwd all over again. Keep in mind that all three towers in you strong build also show up on "one tower only" builds. So if you weaken one of them, to make the best build weaker, the worst builds get even worse.

Imagine a high level pick tournament. Would anybody play anything but the strongest build?

Whats wrong with my suggestion? 3 builds with no good tower and 12 with 2 of them (plz ignore the actual tower and element names, they can be moved arround without changing the 3/12 ratio):

. 1 (ldwf)  2 (Enchantment, Storm)
. 2 (ldwn)  2 (Enchantment, Well)
. 3 (ldwe)  2 (Enchantment, Glacier)
. 4 (ldfn)  0 <=
. 5 (ldfe)  2 (Glacier, Gold)
. 6 (ldne)  2 (Nova, Glacier)
. 7 (lwfn)  2 (Ice, Well)
. 8 (lwfe)  0 <=
. 9 (lwne)  2 (Nova, Well)
.10 (lfne)  2 (Acid, Nova)
.11 (dwfn)  2 (Storm, Ice)
.12 (dwfe)  2 (Storm, Gold)
.13 (dwne)  0 <=
.14 (dfne)  2 (Acid, Gold)
.15 (wfne)  2 (Ice, Acid)

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
(l) +       + + +
(d) + +       +   +
(w) + + +       +
(f)   + + +       +
(n)     + + +   +
(e)       + + +   +

1 - Enchantment

2 - Storm

3 - Ice

4 - Acid

5 - Nova

6 - Glacier

7 - Well

8 - Gold

Tool used: >> Build Explorer << (requires open office)

[Guest mrchak]

I guess either way I am cool with the idea of this major restructure. The question is, is it better to have 3 crappy builds and 12 more or less equally good ones (although 2 of them have 2 aoe slow towers - do you see that as a concern?) or to have 1 crappy and 1 better than the others...

I'll defer to you Cisz, I'll trust your judgement.

[Karawasa]

1 - Enchantment - Always will be game making

2 - Storm - Always will be game making

3 - Ice - See Below

4 - Acid - Always will be game making

5 - Nova - Always will be game making

6 - Glacier - Being replaced with another AoE slow, so same difference

7 - Well - See Below

8 - Gold - See Below

I like the idea of focusing on 8 game making towers. However, I was thinking that game making towers should only be triples. Can we do this element shakeup if we replace the three duals with triples? I suggest this, because none of the duals can match the triples in terms of importance.

[Cisz]

@Karawasa - Both mine and MrChak's new distributions have 8 triple game making towers and no duals are involved. Those are just the names.

@ MrChak - The problem is, I'm not sure myself.

I have problems with the "one strong build" phenomenom. I've been trying to improve on your distribution with my own spreadsheet by giving the towers different values, like 0.5 or so, but afaik it's impossible with your version to avoid a big difference bewteen the best and worst builds. And I see your version as 7 weak and 1 good, not "1 crappy and 1 better". Right? Maybe it is possible to get two equally strong builds as top builds with your version, but still there would be a big number that would plain suck.

In 3.0 "knowing the game" means knowing about lfdw (and maybe lfwn). Basically everything else doesn't stand a chance. Your version would be a little less extreme, but still a "get the one best build" map. With my distribution this would change to "avoid the three bad builds". Still a problem.

3.0 Original

4 lfwd
2 
1 
2 
1 
0 <=
4 lfwn
2 
2 
1 
2 
1 
1 
0 <=
1 

2x4
5x2
6x1
2x0



MrChak

2 
1 
1 
2 
2 
1 
1 
2 
2 
2 
2 
1 
3 new best
1 
1 

1x3
7x2
7x1



Cisz

2
2
2
0 <=
2
2
2
0 <=
2
2
2
2
0 <=
2
2

12x2
 3x0

Tough decision. I tend towards my version, as I want the map to become competitive (tournaments, ladders..) and a best build would be a problem on pick games. So the "2 towers everywhere" solution might actually evolve to several of the 12 strong builds beeing played in high level eletd games. (Maybe 7 or so. I think it is unrealistic to expect that all 12 could be equally strong on the highest skill level.) Your version would end up "one build only" or with a bit of tweaking "two builds only" at best, even though the advantage of the best wouldn't be as big as in 3.0. Even in the very optimistic case that the builds with two good towers would be valid and stand a chance vs the top build, there would still be 7 that wouldn't stand a chance, while in my version 12 of the 15 would be somewhat promising and only 3 sucked.

But I want more opinions on this. Both new versions improve greatly compared to 3.0.

Can we save non rnd games with my version? Is the price of three crappy builds to high? Is the one extra tower of MrChak's one best build to much of an advantage to allow other builds a chance in a tough high level game?

[Karawasa]

@Cisz: Thanks for clarifying, I was admittedly skimming the thread.

In that case, I guess it is time I contribute to this thread. I have to lean towards Cisz's version, for the reasons he mentioned. I wouldn't go so far as to say "3 crappy and 12 equal though." I think what it will come down to is 12 combinations that are somewhat equal, and three that are not as good. I say not as good lightly though, a lot of towers are getting replaced, so who is to say that a combination without one of the 8 game making towers will suck? It may not be as easy to win as with another combination, but if we can avoid having combinations that actually suck (in absolute terms) then I am not worried about this at all. Besides, with new abilities comes unforeseen consequences. Perhaps one of these "crappy," builds is actually better then all the rest (as a result of someone perfecting a play style)?

[Cisz]

I'm certain that this will not be the case.

Because any great strat or trick that will make one of the 3 not so great builds work will be present in another build with game making towers too. Only if the builds working would depend on 3 of its 4 triples in this exact combination (like some sort of sun/moon/tidal revival), this problem won't occur in a 4 element build. It will ofc occur once some player adds a fifth element to this, all of a sudden having this great trick plus some armour reduction or so.

Afaik it's impossible to add anything to the build distribution proposed by me w/o making it less ballanced. Three sucky builds are required to make 12 evenly good possible. Sucky meaning that you don't stand a chance in a competitive match.