Items for Towers

[WindStrike]

This suggestion would be for the DOTA 2 version and whatever custom interface it's getting. Pretty much, this'd add a shop to the game that lets you buy a power-up item for each tower, boosting its abilities. Here's the list of power-ups that I've got so far. They're pretty basic at the moment.

• 25% Damage Increase
  
• 25% Attack Speed Increase
  
• 20% AoE Increase
  
• 20% Range Increase
  
• 20% Cooldown Reduction (on abilities)
  

These upgrades are for all towers.... but depending on which tier, it costs a different amount. Let's assign tiers. The numbers describe the total gold costs for each set, which is how I'm going to base the costs for the upgrade amounts:

1. Tier 1 - Focused (625), Level 1 Dual (500)
   
2. Tier 2 - Refined (1,925), Level 2 Dual (1,250), Level 1 Triple (1,500)
   
3. Tier 3 - Level 3 Dual (3,150)
   
4. Tier 4 - Level 2 Triple (5,000)
   
5. Tier 5 - Pure (11,000)
   

Here's the cost for the power-ups at each tier:

1. Tier 1 - 150 (adds 250 upgrading to Tier 2)
   
2. Tier 2 - 400 (adds 600 upgrading to Tier 3, 1,350 upgrading to Tier 4, 3,100 upgrading to Tier 5)
   
3. Tier 3 - 1,000
   
4. Tier 4 - 1,750
   
5. Tier 5 - 3,500
   

FYI, you can only get one upgrade per tower. Once the upgrade is on the tower, it'll stay on the tower and add upgrade costs towards the next tier upgrade. It may seem like its costs more than what it's worth, but here's the catch - every round that passes will reduce the upgrade cost to the next tier by 5%, so if you're efficient with low tower amounts and upgrades, you'll end up getting better gold/efficiency than without the upgrade. Something else this does is make Focused/Refined much more worth it, since the costs of the upgrades (relative to the total costs of the tower) are less than what the upgrade provides. Refined towers fall off really fast in effectiveness; hopefully this'll help keep focused/refined on the board.

Upgrades can be sold individually for 75% its total value. Likewise, if you sell the tower, it'll sell the power-up upgrade as well.

Those upgrades listed above are all I've got for now. I'd like more upgrade ideas than just those five basic ones before the idea is really considered. Note this idea is meant as an addition to the base game, and it's not intended as a game mode. Also, the costs of the upgrades are a bit arbitrary and can't really be judged unless they're actually added to the game and tested.

Please post your thoughts and comments below!

[holepercent]

One would think that most of the common buffs/debuffs already exist as tower abilities.. so what does this add to the game besides additional complexity?

How would this be balanced such that there is a trade off between building another tower and adding an upgrade to an existing tower, without one choice being strictly better than the other. The upgrades cannot be too strong such that they force players into a particular strategy to win or too weak to make them not worth the resources.

[WindStrike]

Well, the idea was pulled from someone else who thought this idea would be really awesome to add to the game. Problem is, he didn't give me any examples of what to add as items, and when I did ask him to give some examples, he said the game should be redesigned... which... wasn't helpful.

Mainly, I'm trying to come up with ideas that add to the depth of Element TD without making it complex as all heck. This apparently came out a lot less awesome once it actually got written down, so yeah, this idea is now scrapped, lol.

[Karawasa]

I agree with holepercent. But it's ok because it's better to discuss an idea than not.

@WindStrike: I don't know if we need to add more depth as much as add more interaction between players.