Patch 1.8

[DogBollocks]

If the poison stacks slow per hit, I would recommend on increasing the movement speed of the wave. The reason is, when you have two level 2 slow tower, it is pretty slow. If you add a minor slow again, the wave will not move unless its a single target slow.

 

I agree that the lightning doesn't seems much different than before.

 

I don't really agree with reverting the hp for the frogs, as the frog should have been a boss wave. Instead of reverting the hp, how about reducing the amounts of frog. If reducing the frog would decrease the difficulty, then how about decrease the wave but the frog has 2 abilities just like challenge mode.

[GoatAss]

2 hours ago, DogBollocks said:

If the poison stacks slow per hit, I would recommend on increasing the movement speed of the wave. The reason is, when you have two level 2 slow tower, it is pretty slow. If you add a minor slow again, the wave will not move unless its a single target slow.

 

I agree that the lightning doesn't seems much different than before.

 

I don't really agree with reverting the hp for the frogs, as the frog should have been a boss wave. Instead of reverting the hp, how about reducing the amounts of frog. If reducing the frog would decrease the difficulty, then how about decrease the wave but the frog has 2 abilities just like challenge mode.

 

Since frogs will eventually win... the difference is whether everyone loses at lvl57 or lvl60 on average. Boss is of no relevance. The difference though is source of scoring. By making frogs ever difficult, only means that the source of points should only be from speed, which is how it is right now. It's also less interesting being able to only clear 2-3 levels of frogs. This simply implies that at present, all strategies should entirely focus on speed-clearing. By making more points available from frogs, players can create their strategy around frog clearing too.

 

I think people get around 100k points from frogs, often less right now.

[DBX_5]

19 hours ago, GoatAss said:

Better to create something overpowered right now, than have the same old towers dominate. We can always nerf it later.

the typical game is usually buff new content, balance old content, rinse and repeat.

 

if some towers are too over powered and moving into the next patch other towers should be buffed to accommodate the balance of picking strategy or the over powered towers should be nerfed to balance properly with other towers given it doesn't make the game impossible.

 

a tower shouldn't just be buffed at random just because it will change things up, don't think it really helps the over all balance of the game or the strategy.

[GoatAss]

6 hours ago, DBX_5 said:

the typical game is usually buff new content, balance old content, rinse and repeat.

 

if some towers are too over powered and moving into the next patch other towers should be buffed to accommodate the balance of picking strategy or the over powered towers should be nerfed to balance properly with other towers given it doesn't make the game impossible.

 

a tower shouldn't just be buffed at random just because it will change things up, don't think it really helps the over all balance of the game or the strategy.

 

so has been any game. buff this hero, nerf that hero. new metas are made. new things are made. new trends are made. for me at least, i think changes makes things interesting.

 

imagine if dota2 never gets any updates. what happens then?

 

also right now, it isnt that a tower should be buffed at random, quite obviously no one builds vapor tower, hydro tower, and actually quite a very many number of them. to one way look at things, you can nerf overpowered towers. but one can also say, there are too many underpowered towers.

 

nerf them all, game becomes hard

buff them all, game becomes easy.

 

but at the end of the day, easy or hard, people just pick the current strongest towers.

[DBX_5]

coming from beta testing for DotA that was the typical system that ice would use for balancing make new content that may be over powered but typically not insane based on what play testers show in their games during testing phases and balance old content that has issues in the current public patch, very rarely would he actually drastically change older content to make it get used more often.

 

with Eletd its obviously harder because I doubt kara wants to have some 100+ towers in the map, but, idk doesnt seem like the right way to go about making old content get used more by just swaping things around constantly because at some point wont it become stagnate?

[holepercent]

Back in wc3 or even sc2, most top players played same random where the aim was to flood the opponents with creeps to force leaks and eliminate them, not so much getting to boss. Boss wave was simply a means of determining a final winner if multiple players survived the rush. The game was more on how to best use whatever towers you had available. 

 

The introduction of the leader boards gives players a visible "reward" to work towards. Players going for top scores will settle on the strongest combinations of towers very quickly with the ease of access to replays. The "ideal" balance is multiple builds being very close to power level rather than one strategy simply dominating (to hell with 203032).

 

This also brings up a long-running debate: is element td better designed as a competitive player vs player tower defense or a player vs wave solo game?

 

One aspect that used to be popular which the team hasn't pushed is forum challenges, typically imposing certain restrictions on towers and/or elements.

[DBX_5]

honestly I have been really into the competitive side of this game more so then just playing for fun, I find figuring out how to reach to 10/20 of the leaderboard makes the game much more satisfying.

[WindStrike]

3 hours ago, DBX_5 said:

honestly I have been really into the competitive side of this game more so then just playing for fun, I find figuring out how to reach to 10/20 of the leaderboard makes the game much more satisfying.

 

Likewise, trying to develop for balancing the leaderboard is a pain and not really worth it. To some extent, I can drop balance patches that help fix it, but without new content, the game's playerbase is going to drop off until there's only literally "the top 10/20 of the leaderboard". Also, infinitely refining something over and over is incredibly not fun at all. I do have some balance thingies I wanna try to apply for next patch like blowing up the per-wave speed score bonus that's been screwing over all my calculations all this time (might do a 1.8.1 next week), but ultimately, most of our focus is going to be on actually adding stuff to the game, adding more ways to play, more ways for people to play for fun while also expanding the number of viable builds for leaderboard. Patches are going to be slower than the initial release rush of patches, but that's because it takes a lot of time to add these things.

[GoatAss]

The game is fairly new still, all aspects of the game requires improvement. However, if a certain build/strategy is being spammed, well, I do feel some changes need to be brought about. But of course, the essence of any game is reward. If tetris had no measure of improvement or progress (levels or scoring), I don't think anyone would have even know about the game. So I feel.

 

Quote

This also brings up a long-running debate: is element td better designed as a competitive player vs player tower defense or a player vs wave solo game?

 

By covering the  competitive aspect, the rest should be covered too.

 

For me, the overall competitive balance of the game should be addressed first before all else -- aka before looking into complete tower remakes, new features. At least so for 1.8. Remakes and new features require more development and time.

 

I really would like to strengthen many towers -- atom, disease, water, earth, so many more. Watch them get abused if at all and then we can see how to improve in the next major version. The problem with current version is not that the current build is strong, but rather there aren't really any other viable builds. There's only one obvious route to the competitive side of it.

[WindStrike]

8 minutes ago, GoatAss said:

The game is fairly new still, all aspects of the game requires improvement.

 

For me, the overall competitive balance of the game should be addressed first before all else -- aka before looking into complete tower remakes, new features. At least so for 1.8. Remakes and new features require more development and time.

 

Except that this is a remake of a remake of the original. Although it's latest incarnation is relatively new, it's actually really old, and not a whole lot has been changed in that time, it's mainly be endless amounts of refining.

 

19 minutes ago, GoatAss said:

For me, the overall competitive balance of the game should be addressed first before all else -- aka before looking into complete tower remakes, new features. At least so for 1.8. Remakes and new features require more development and time.

 

On the contrary, refining takes waaaaaay more time in the longrun. We can release 10 patches in the next 2 weeks addressing refinements and balance, but the problem is, with a game with this much depth and complexity, hitting that ultimate level of balance where everything is viable is incredibly theoretical. It does exist, but in reality, it's a trap. I've fallen victim to trying to find this ultimate level of balance, not just in EleTD, but other games. It seems like a quick fix at first, but in order to refine this level of game, it takes a ton of analysis, theorycrafting, and testing. Aka, thousands of hours of grunt work that causes an endless loop of "hey, we fixed this, but three more things need fixing now because you change one thing, you affected a bunch of builds thereby making this or that underpowered or overpowered".

 

 

Point is, we're still going to do various amounts of refining, but it takes a lot of time than you'd think. It's not simply "buff this, nerf that, game is fixed". In the meantime, as we balance the game, we're also still going to add to the game and develop it further. That sounds counterintuitive towards finding ultimate refinement, but as someone that personally knows how nearly impossible that is, I'm not aiming for that.

 

 

32 minutes ago, GoatAss said:

I really would like to strengthen many towers -- atom, disease, water, earth, so many more. Watch them get abused if at all and then we can see how to improve in the next major version. The problem with current version is not that the current build is strong, but rather there aren't really any other viable builds. There's only one obvious route to the competitive side of it.

 

Next patch will be buffbats! Buffbatman, that's what we'll call it.

[GoatAss]

thumbs up

[GoatAss]

6 hours ago, WindStrike said:

 

Likewise, trying to develop for balancing the leaderboard is a pain and not really worth it. To some extent, I can drop balance patches that help fix it, but without new content, the game's playerbase is going to drop off until there's only literally "the top 10/20 of the leaderboard".

 

this i wouldn't quite so agree. every top played successful game in the pc gaming market were focused on the competitive side rather than fun stuff. but i do suppose there are "fun" games out there..... xcom? but perhaps its just me, i find challenges and scores more fun. maybe someone else should share their opinion on this.

 

we could setup a poll why people play eletd on the main page of eletd.com

 

things can become clearer then. btw, is it possible to setup an in-game poll? would it work at all? perhaps vote at game-end phase or pre-game maptyep selection phase.

[WindStrike]

We can actually set up an in-game poll next to the patch notes while the game is loading. We've already got a set of things we're going to work on and add for the next big patch, and potentially for the one after that, but we could set up the poll anyways.

 

"Why do you play Element TD?

• For fun
• For score"

 

Something like that.

[GoatAss]

 

Actually, come to think of it, I take what I said back, I think majority of people would actually want more features, more new stuff. When I first started, I was totally oblivious to scoring. But of course it may differ if somewhere during pre-game phase there is a more obvious announcer or list of tables of everyone's highest score. Does make me wonder if majority of dota players play ranked or unranked.

 

Perhaps top 500 players may take pride in the rank they have. Once you're far too low in rank, I don't think anyone would care. rank 5214 and 4999 who cares right? At rank 250, it's already a 1% minority.

[DBX_5]

5 hours ago, GoatAss said:

 

this i wouldn't quite so agree. every top played successful game in the pc gaming market were focused on the competitive side rather than fun stuff. but i do suppose there are "fun" games out there..... xcom? but perhaps its just me, i find challenges and scores more fun. maybe someone else should share their opinion on this.

 

we could setup a poll why people play eletd on the main page of eletd.com

 

things can become clearer then. btw, is it possible to setup an in-game poll? would it work at all? perhaps vote at game-end phase or pre-game maptyep selection phase.

I think a better way of looking at it is see where the games medium/player base is coming from, DotA is an extremely competitive game even when you just want to play for fun, this is even more so the case now in DotA2 since the whole thing revolves around massing MMR.

 

A lot of players in DotA2 even when they jump to custom games are still in that competitive vibe but still want something a bit easier to focus on, tower defenses like ELETD are great places for that where you can still have a competitive edge but not so much so that you get stressed out by it like you do with games such as DotA or CS for example.

 

fill that hole that DotA players want, keep the content relatively fresh for the most part and players will always come back.

 

The biggest issue I see with Eletd is that its rich history, age and general design stop it from being able to create too much new content before the game is no longer recognizable and turns into something like wc3s YouTD.

Edited May 27, 2016 by DBX_5

[WindStrike]

3 hours ago, DBX_5 said:

The biggest issue I see with Eletd is that its rich history, age and general design stop it from being able to create too much new content before the game is no longer recognizable and turns into something like wc3s YouTD.

 

Ahh, the glorious weakness of games with incredible nostalgia factor - change 'em too much, even if it's a step in a good direction, and people will rage. Things I personally wanna change but can't/won't due to the playerbase being simply too attached to something that's just an established standard:

• Screw interest abuse
• Heck, screw interest in general
• Remove Cannon & Arrow Towers
• Remove pointless first 5 waves
• Make it purely about the elemental towers, screw composite.
• Add elemental based stage hazards for the lulz
• Replace frog wave with more and more waves, specially designed with multiple abilities, boss creeps, etc. Make the game theoretically impossible to win, and it becomes more about how far you can get.... which might actually be what Challenge Mode ends up being.
• Various other shenanigans

The only possible way major changes to the core game could actually happen and be justifiable to the current playerbase would be to develop an Element TD 2....... which isn't happening for a looooong time.

[DBX_5]

#ELETD2 #MakeELETDGreatAgainDifferent?

[GoatAss]

6 hours ago, DBX_5 said:

#ELETD2 #MakeELETDGreatAgainDifferent?

 

Hes right though, its better to create a whole new game. People aren't very accepting of huge changes generally speaking.

[DBX_5]

oh I agree but I am not sure if thats really worth while when it comes to TD based games, isnt it simpler to just make a whole new td instead one that perhaps isnt so restrictive rather then building off of a pre-established player base, cough youtd cough..?

[DogBollocks]

On 27 May 2016 at 2:30 AM, GoatAss said:

Once you're far too low in rank, I don't think anyone would care. rank 5214 and 4999 who cares right? At rank 250, it's already a 1% minority.

Yes, I agree that most people have a low rank would not care about the score because they feel like they can never beat those top 100 peeps.

 

On 28 May 2016 at 10:06 AM, WindStrike said:

 

Ahh, the glorious weakness of games with incredible nostalgia factor - change 'em too much, even if it's a step in a good direction, and people will rage.

Yes, some people will rage once changes are made and some people will like those changes. Changes are usually for the better good. Since, it's going to balance out the towers. When the changes are made, people will rage at first but after awhile they will get used to the gameplay.

 

In other words, adaptation is they key for winning the game. For example, there is a game that I have no good tower except for Vapor. So I have to make a gazillion of those just to defeat the wave. Hence, don't over think about making those changes. 

[WindStrike]

7 hours ago, DogBollocks said:

In other words, adaptation is they key for winning the game. For example, there is a game that I have no good tower except for Vapor. So I have to make a gazillion of those just to defeat the wave. Hence, don't over think about making those changes. 

 

What's that you say? Vapor sucks and I'm reverting it to SC2 balance level which makes it blatantly OP early? Yeah, for next patch, half of it is a bunch of temporary fixes that potentially make various towers a little too strong. Everyone else on the dev team is on break, so asides from Earth tower ability reversion, everything is just gonna be numbers changes, aka everything I'm capable of doing myself as a dev, lol.

 

Also, I found a hilarious way to make Haste Tower good without making it horribly OP early. Yay science!