Chaos mode easier than normal mode?

[ArthurDent]

Hello,

to me it seems, chaos mode is currently easier than the normal mode, at least all highscores beside the classic "life-gold tower" strategy are done in chaos mode. If you get no waves with your weak element for 5-6 rounds or even only waves with your strong elements for 3-4 rounds, you can save alot of money for income / expensive tower upgrades, and in my experience this happens every game at least 2-3 times.

Also it is easier to cover really hard rounds (haste/heal/vengeance + your weak element) early on in the game with upped arrow towers than later on. I cant recall when those haste/heal/vengeance rounds are exactly in normal mode, but i think during the first 15 rounds you get barely any of them.

 

Anyways, I am not sure if it is actually easier than the normal mode in general or if its just because people play with 4 elements atm, which makes most builds quite versatile, so you dont have to plan to far ahead and it is possible to cover most weaknesses the first 20-25 levels with mass upgraded arrow/cannon towers, since you have 4 elements to choose from.

I guess the cheap Tier1 3-Element-towers right now help alot aswell.

 

What do you guys think? Is it the chaos mode or just because of the 4 Element builds which are quite popular right now?

I dont have much experience with builds based on only 2 or 3 elements in the current version, but i guess they are easier in normal mode.

 

My suggestion to make chaos mode harder would be not to show either the element or the special ability (or even both) before the round started/before the previous round ends, so it gets harder to plan ahead.

[WindStrike]

Blind Chaos Mode has been suggested before (by none other than the evil me!), though it might be considered a little too cruel. Well, usually the only ones that pick chaos anyways are the more hardcore players, and it would be more hectic as a means of "just for fun". Twill look into it for next balance patch, which might happen the same time as co-op, dunno for sure.

 

 

4-element builds have always been versatile and supposed to be able to cover a lot of things... except certain builds, like Fire + Nature + Light + Dark which is almost entirely dark. Not sure if that's something I'd want to even fix anyways.

[Utoko]

It isn't easier on average but the top build atm. has 4-5 "hard" waves.

If you play chaos and random the waves right it is easier(you clear some waves faster).

 

At some point builds are so refined it is hard to improve them. So playing Chaos is an option for most builds to improve the score. (but you have to play several games)

 

[Kpop fangay]

You're not wrong when you say Chaos mode can make the game easier depending on the situation, but hit the wrong level with the wrong element + special bonus and suddenly you're going to have to panic and splash a large amount of your saved up gold to clear the wave. In most cases, yes its extremely frustrating and bad for top score gameplay to see someone RNG a top scoring play which probably won't be topped similar to what I did.

 

However you might be mistaken about the sections where you are basically going to instant clear a level due to easy spawns, in most cases if you were meant to pass the level easily then it would've happened cause in the 2-2-2-1-2-2 Chaos build you depend solely on the Tidal + Enchantment tower for most of the game until you have access to 2-0-2-0-2-2 which only covers 2/6 of the elements while still having the same weaknesses as most other builds, just a little bit less... calculated with the way the Chaos mod works. In order from best to worst elements to deal with in the build it would be Fire/Earth > Light/Water/Nature > Dark, so really outside of the random darkness level being skipped for later the game is just about the same difficulty.

I don't disagree with you about attempting to fix the Chaos mod, but its probably one of the more enjoyable mods as it throws you in for a challenge at random and I have yet to figure out how to pass insane + rush with or without chaos which was the other engaging game mode choice as you would've guessed. The bigger problem above all else would be how the speed bonus is extremely volatile between scores, i've had multiple runs that I thought were fast until the current #1 score and was extremely surprised when I had over 100k more score than my average run. At the end of the day though different builds will come and go, different players enjoy different styles and you might not see a speed build based off 6 elements for a long time in the top 10.

[ArthurDent]

Quark and Ice towers are part of that build aswell and also build up to enchantment and polar/tidal, along with the possibility for upped arrow/cannon towers, I dont think darkness is a real weakness the first 25 levels to the 2-0-2-0-2-2 build. If I remember correctly, in normal mode the first darkness wave is level 9 Darkness waves spawn latest of all elements (at least at the start). So you can say in general, chaos mode favores early darkness waves and the build up for your tidal/ench/polar towers is really strong against earlier darkness waves.

Thats probably another reason why this certain build is stronger at chaos mode.

 

Darkness is defenitely the hardest to beat between level 25 - 45, but earlier on it is not a real problem and as I said, imo in chaos mode you get more darkness waves before 25 compared to normal mode, after 45 the waves dont matter anyways beside lvl 55.

 

On second thought:

 

I think to get a really high score, on top of having some luck with the waves on chaos mode, the more important factor is actually beeing lucky to not kill healer frogs early on when frogs are bulked up at waves 6-7-8. I didnt get my best highscores at the games i had my best lvl 55 score aswell and my endgame build and networth was always the same (+- 1500 gold maybe) while my frogs count had a rather huge spread from around 190 - 220.

 

 

Edited April 27, 2016 by ArthurDent

[Kpop fangay]

Quark towers aren't even worth mentioning in the build since the Ice tower covers the early game much better while also being available 1 element earlier than the Quark tower both for its level 1 and 2 upgrade. In most cases if you do land on a Darkness + Anything but Normal/Regen before level 30 and before 36 then you are kinda forced to buy out for a Ice tower 2 since arrow towers will only be able to take out 1 or 2 of the Darkness creeps since that would be the most vulnerable level in the build. Then from level 36-40 you are kinda safe up until 40-45 where your slow towers are still pretty bad, from there level 46-50 is extremely easy granted that you've already killed the Darkness + Healing wave which is probably straight up as hard as level 55 since you basically have to kill 1 creep that has 30x HP for its level once you have the double 30% slows rolling through.

 

... Its hard to explain but heres a little rundown on what a really good Chaos run is like - Will most likely end up being a mini guide to rolling the dice for high scores

1-15: The more dark levels you approach before your Tidal tower on the easier it will be later on. Ice tower should be built at level 10/11 then upgraded at 15/16

16-25: Should have a Tidal tower and you want to clear these waves as much as possible for your speed multiplier at the end of the game, a few levels that pass through is acceptable. Enchantment and Well tower should be bought somewhere here, get a Life tower if you see the opportunity to steal kills from your Tidal tower (Earth levels)

26-35: Dark levels are a pain in the ass towards the end of each segment of 5 here. Tidal 2 should be completed with Well 2 shortly after with second Enchantment tower.

36-45: Think about how many Healing/Shield levels have passed by, if you think you've cleared just about all of them then you should be set. Upgrade Enchantment towers, buy a Polar tower 2 and another Well 2 then save up for 1 set of double slow towers, upgrade when necessary after level 46. Trickery tower when against a weakness level.

46-55: Stack up cash and pray your day doesn't get ruined by a Healing or Shield wave. Nova, Blacksmith x4 and Jinx + Erosion when available, Injoker tower when required.

 

Tower count should be something like this

2-3x Trickery 2

4x Well 2

4x Blacksmith 1

2x Roots

2x Muck

2x Injoker

3x Laser

3x Incantation

2x Polar

1x Tidal

2x Jinx

2x Erosion

1x Nova

 

20 towers with 4x support and 2-3x clone towers.

 

... Ok so yeah i'm looking forward to seeing dual element towers become a thing again, this patch hasn't been too nice to them from my experience.

[Utoko]

I agree dual element towers seems tot weak right now. The only "viable" 2 Element tower tier 3 is right now well 3 (because of the combination with nature 3 for fast builds).

Imho Tier 2 Dual element towers are fine but Tier 3 towers should get buffed again across the board. They are only a little bit better as the 3 element towers but without access to any support towers they are a lot weaker.  On top of that the pure essence shift(45 ->50) also hurt the duel element builds more than the 2 2 2 2 2 2(-2+1) builds.

[WindStrike]

Whelp, this thread changed from "fix chaos" to 'fix towers", lol. Nah, tis cool. Things I'm getting in general from the playerbase over the last week or so:

• Apparently, despite all charts saying otherwise, Fire Tower is still too weak.
• Likewise, Nature Tower is also a little weak. Somehow.
• Tidal Tower is finally getting a nerfbat for sure next patch. Sorry folks, we know everyone loves it, but it's a tad bit too strong.
• Electricity still needs a bloody buff, probably gonna tweak its bounce range reduction.
• Tier 3 Dual Towers cost needs to go down some more.
• Blind Chaos is so tempting, man I've been wanting to do this for a while, I just wasn't sure anyone else was!

 

In theory, luck actually ends up becoming the winning factor of Element TD, because say you've got this super refined build, and then you play Random + Chaos later and you just so happen to get that build and then you get the ultimate score of all time (which happened to me once for the Starcraft 2 version). There's nothing stopping that except sticking Random on its own leaderboard, which I actually don't know if that's still being done or not, but even then, Chaos has a chance to be lucky for you, in which case we could theoretically do a Chaos leaderboard, which would make the folks programming the leaderboard cry in a corner for all the ridiculous variations.

 

Honestly, the best we can do to fix that is just patching the game up more and more so that as many builds become viable as possible so that luck is less of a factor, which is the point of every balance patch, though as every balance patch has proved, not necessarily the result. However, from the next patch on, our focus is going to be shifting from constantly balancing the game to content releases, because for a lot of people, Element TD has gotten kinda stale. Yeah, it's a refined game, but you can only replay it so much. So, we'll still be listening to feedback and analyzing shenanigans to balance the game, but balance patches are going to be a lot less frequent, unless there's something super broken that needs fixing ASAP.