Patch 1.0

[WindStrike]

War... war never changes.

But this time, war has changed.

 

Anywho, for anyone that felt the game was "too ez", we thought so too. Courtesies of everyone's feedback, our team's unfortunate opinions, and copious amounts of testing, we present Patch 1.0. From now on, all patches will use 1.XX. Enough talk.. have at you!

• General
  • There is now a Credits screen at the end, displaying the Developers and anyone that's supported us via donations.
  • Pure Essence gold bonus halved due to pure rush being way too easy.
  • Single Player lobbies will now randomize the starting area (it can still be manually chosen)
  • Improved visuals of Electricity, Tidal, Runic, and Windstorm Towers.
  • The exponential lives lost for creeps leaking multiple times in a row has been removed.
  • Game Settings are now visible for Spectators.
• Bug Fixes
  • Voting will no longer consider disconnected or timed out players for choosing the settings
  • Fixed various potential abuses with upgrade cancelling and ground attacks
  • Well & Blacksmith Towers should no longer cast the same buff on one tower.
  • Life Tower lvl 2 tooltip adjusted to better reflect the ingame behavior (it used to show you gained a life every 2 kills while it’s actually every 1.5 in average)
• Sandbox
  • New setting: No Cooldowns
    • All towers and upgrades build instantly. All abilities don't have cooldowns, so 1 Well Tower can buff all towers in its range!
  • New setting: Zen Mode
    • You don't lose any lives from leaks, but you don't deal any damage either.
  • With this, you should be able to create a galaxy faster than ever before! ... and break your computer in the time it'd take to make some tea.
• Scoring
  • Consecutive combo bonus is going out the window, which is the number one cause of the scores being horribly skewed towards "kill-as-fast-as-possible".
    • After running some calculations, these were causing close to a x3 score amplification. One mistake was capable of dropping it down from x3 to x2 or less.
  • Like Express, Classic Mode will receive a Networth bonus, which applies after clearing Wave 55.
  • Both Classic & Express Modes now receive an Overall Speed bonus, which also applies after clearing Wave 55/30. This is applied additively with the Networth bonus.
  • Rush & Chaos Modes are meant purely for fun and were not intended to be required for top scores. Their Score Multipliers are being removed.
  • The value of each Icefrog has been bumped from 100 to 250.
  • In theory, top scores shouldn't go past 400k, especially after this next change...
• Creeps
  • The HP Scaling has been increased on both Classic & Express.
    • Classic: 18% --> 18.8%
    • Express: 32% --> 33.6%
    • The early game is barely affected, but by the end-game, creeps are up to 40% stronger.
  • Healing Creeps heal 25% on death, up from 20%.
  • Fast Creeps boost to x2.5 speed, up from x2.
  • Regen Creeps recover 3% hp per second, up from 2%. However, it's capped at 75% health, down from 100%.
  • Two new Creep Types are being added to fill in most of the blank waves:
    • Bulky: Half the count (15 instead of 30), half the spawn rate (aka, more distance between each one), double bounty, double the leaks, and 225% hp each. Hard counter to AoE.
    • Avenger: When it dies, all towers in a small radius around it receive a stacking debuff that reduces damage by 10% for 3 seconds. Each stack is on an individual timer. Hard counter to clumped defenses, like entrance camping.
  • OSFrogs are now assigned in a predetermined sequence instead of randomly.
• Towers
  • Nature Tower damage decreased from 80 / 520 / 3380 / 33800 to 72 / 470 / 3050 / 30500
  • Haste Tower being buffed back partially. Max stacks back from 15 to 16, reset time back to 4 seconds, but damage down from 1000 to 900. It's roughly a 10% buff.
  • Gunpowder Tower damage decreased from 32 / 160 / 800 to 30 / 150 / 750
  • Quake Tower single-target damage increased from 600 / 3000 to 900 / 4500
  • Quark Tower now has a stack cap of 20
    • I know this saddens you sandboxers that love seeing 50 million damage Quark Towers. It was nerfed for a different reason though...
  • Obliteration Tower can now Attack Ground

[Noya]

Patch is Live!

[Phoebe Zeit-Geist]

was able to beat insane first try but god damn the game definitely got harder and a lot slower

[WindStrike]

2 hours ago, Phoebe Zeit-Geist said:

was able to beat insane first try but god damn the game definitely got harder and a lot slower

 Yeah, Insane is still beatable, but I have yet to pull off a clean run. Pure Rush worked up till about Wave 45, at which point it promptly fell off horribly.

[PuriPuriKruhs]

I'm kind of confused about the scoring part of this patch.

 

You say :

15 hours ago, WindStrike said:

Consecutive combo bonus is going out the window, which is the number one cause of the scores being horribly skewed towards "kill-as-fast-as-possible".

 

But then you say :

15 hours ago, WindStrike said:

Both Classic & Express Modes now receive an Overall Speed bonus, which also applies after clearing Wave 55/30. This is applied additively with the Networth bonus.

 

So does this mean we should still be trying to kill the waves as fast as we possibly can, or no?

[Karawasa]

20 minutes ago, PuriPuriKruhs said:

So does this mean we should still be trying to kill the waves as fast as we possibly can, or no?

 

That is one way to play. Another way to play would be the high networth/frog kill route. The goal of this patch is to encourage a variety of ways. Consider it a spectrum from fast to cash.

[thecoon]

I know the patch just went live, but is there an ETA on when the Tower info changes will be update?

 

In addition, i know this probably isnt the place to make this complain but the Tower tab's information layout makes it really hard to compare multiply towers that arent in the scaling, can a compare button or a layout change would really help.

 

BIG FAN of the game, mean no disrespect or negativity with my comments guys! Keep up the good work!

 

[Karawasa]

35 minutes ago, thecoon said:

I know the patch just went live, but is there an ETA on when the Tower info changes will be update?

 

The towers page should be up to date now. If you have a suggestion for the layout, please post it here;

 

https://forums.eletd.com/forum/9-site-feedback-amp-suggestions/

 

I'm glad you are enjoying the game!

[BlankMinded]

I'm unsure if this has been updated, but you can try seeing this post.

 

Edited March 8, 2016 by BlankMinded

[Utoko]

Can you tell us the endgame scoring values? 

I think net worth gives 1 % Bonus for ~4000 ? 

 

and endgame speed Bonus has to do with the game time? 1min faster = ?%

 

 

[Noya]

51 minutes ago, Utoko said:

Can you tell us the endgame scoring values? 

I think net worth gives 1 % Bonus for ~4000 ? 

 

and endgame speed Bonus has to do with the game time? 1min faster = ?%

 

 

 

Current endgame (wave 55/30) scores, expressed as bonus %

 

EndSpeedBonus (time in seconds)

On Rush - No bonus

On Express - (20/time*60) - 1

On Classic   - (40/time*60) - 1

 

NetworthBonus

(Player Networth/Base Networth) - 1

 

Base Networth is based on the gold value of the waves of every difficulty & game length

Currently:

Normal                  60805
Normal Express    69483

 

Hard                      79445
Hard Express        89142

 

Very Hard               90861
Very Hard Express 102373

 

Insane                    103951
Insane Express      117564

 

Keep in mind these are subject to future modifications based on feedback, let us know.

[Thunderbolt]

500k points already broken

[WindStrike]

12 minutes ago, Thunderbolt said:

500k points already broken

 

Apparently, on the opposite side of the spectrum for Speed, someone actually beat Insane + Chaos + Rush, but only got about 240k and then no frog waves killed. Also, I totally wasn't expecting people to break past 5 waves on icefrogs, hence why I thought 400k was the cap.

[Utoko]

Just got 535k but somehow the score didn't summit again(last 2 games) ) ;

[Helpstone]

Already everybody is starting to copy each other..

 

So the networth "bonus" can also be negative?

If you lets say have 100k networth on insane at the end, do you get a bonus of (100k/103951)-1 = -0,038 ?

 

[WindStrike]

Yup.

 

... though, that would involve a lot of selling to pull that off, and that'd probably result in you dying before you got to the end.

[Utoko]

1.) Sadly you can't play normal mode with other players if you aim for high score. (because other players make it harder).

 

Maybe consider starting the new wave after the last player finished? I think in Element TD you play to beat the game and not to beat other players. It is just nicer to play together.

 

2.) Frog score might be a little high now. It is exactly the other way around now. I don't think it should be possible that your frog score is higher then your (1-55) score.

 

3.) Quark tower are rly good now!(for frog rounds)

[Helpstone]

@Utoko

About your first point:

That's also what I thought when playing the first (and last) time multiplayer.

The problem with your suggestion is that scores would be higher if the other players kill the waves extremely slow (-> more income for you)

Maybe income has to be somehow frozen when the next wave would normally start.

Other than that, you can't rly aim for highscores in multiplayer matches (with random people) anyway because its very unlikely that everyone votes for the same options as you do :/

Still think the possibility to get highscores in multiplayer would be rly nice!

[holepercent]

old school element TD used to be skilled players trying to rush each other out by clearing the wave faster and flooding the opponents in same-random. The hunt was a forum challenge which most will play in single player for the best score.

[Helpstone]

In WC3 your builder also had special abilities like stealing gold from someone, making their creeps faster or selling one tower from someone else.

Don't know when those were removed but without them the focus already shifted from trying to beat the other players to beating the game itself and getting a good score imo.

[Utoko]

@Helpstone

 

Freeze income after the round ends until the timer for the next round starts. I played insane rush chaos a lot with other players. Open a private lobby and invite players from the Element TD Channel.( "insane rush chaos join lobby")

 

 

Edited March 8, 2016 by Utoko

[WindStrike]

1 hour ago, Helpstone said:

In WC3 your builder also had special abilities like stealing gold from someone, making their creeps faster or selling one tower from someone else.

Don't know when those were removed but without them the focus already shifted from trying to beat the other players to beating the game itself and getting a good score imo.

 Oh man, I barely even remember that version, lol. I'd say the ultimate test of "how good are you" comes down Insane + Random + Chaos + Rush + Express. You have to know the game so well and inside and out and what goes good with what, and with super fact reactions. I've personally never beat it, I did manage that on Very Hard, but not Insane yet. Totally need to run that sucker in multiplayer games, that'd be a hoot to play and watch.

 

We do have multiplayer stuff coming down the road, aka "try to beat each other out" instead of just surviving to the end. Sometime within the next month, we should be getting a new mode that kinda does that, though not fully. I'm working on an idea that's to be implemented down-the-road that's intended to give the experience of Competitive Element TD, but... it's hard. Trying to reinvent the standard Tower Wars mode is quite difficult.

[Thunderbolt]

6 hours ago, Utoko said:

Sadly you can't play normal mode with other players if you aim for high score. (because other players make it harder).

It would be nice to have a mode in which you can play together with others, but your speed of clearing the waves affects only yourself and not the other players. so basically as if you were playing alone, but you can still communicate with others, watch their builds, but also compete with them, you just dont influence each others games any more (aside from copying builds on the fly).

[Helpstone]

@Thunderbolt

I like the idea!

The problem might be that waves would have to start at different timings changing from player to player, because one might be faster others might be slower..

Dont know if that would be too big of a change implementation wise, because the game has to individually spawn creep waves for each player.

[[email protected]]

me likey too that idea. very muc hshould implement, also windstrike looking forward to pvpish pve td