Discussion about upcoming changes

Saw a couple of the incoming update on the facebook. Hopefully next time you can post those picture and youtube on the forum as well so that we can comment it on the forum too . Can also put the notification on the game main chat so that more player will know of incoming progress and come to forum give some respond.

Following are the few new development which i deem quite crucial and hoped to see in the next update :-
i) customize tower/creep shortcut (i and u are too close,sometimes sell instead of upgrade, affect games badly)
ii) tower sound control or even better sound theme (since it's possible to customize creep, why not sound right? don't want the pew pew tower sound to spoil the music background as well )
iii) customize tower strategy preference (some player like the tower set at Strongest, some like it at the Farthest, just let them config what they prefer)
iv) numerical display of the creep health/time of creep to exit/tower reload speed/tower damage (for more accurate gameplay. bar display still remains, only display numerical display when mouse over or when option are ticked)

[dcode]

First: Thank you for your feedback. I'll try to get to every point.

i) I am not yet convinced that it's worth the trouble because making the shortcuts customizable would require lots of work. So I guess it will not make it into the next update but maybe a future update will include it.
ii) Yes, it will also be possible to change the sound theme. It's already implemented but there is not yet a control in the options menu to select another set. Supported formats will be WAV and OGG. Furthermore I am still thinking about how to combine a creep theme (e.g. Zombies) with a matching sound set into one package. The implementation might look like that a theme can "provide" whatever customizations are available or just a subset and that the player can chose every provided feature from the same or different themes, just like he enjoys it the most. This would allow to set the Tower theme, Creep theme, Tower sound, Creep sound independently.
iii) I agree that such preferences would be a nice addition. I am thinking about making the XP worth something so that more XP unlock certain additional features - like tower preferences and so on - but I have not yet worked out a realistic feature set for this. Maybe someone else has some ideas on what features could be unlocked by more XP?
iv) Mhh. It might be a problem to pick the creep closest to the mouse pointer from the game view because this requires additional calculations of the distance of every candidate creep to find the closest one. I'll think about that. If I add this I could also think of something like a tower focus, so that if you select a tower (or maybe even a set of towers) it will always shot at the creep closest to the mouse pointer. Wdyt?

Cheers
dc

i) would be nice, but sure if it's to much work now we will wait and hope An Option implementation idea: single shortcut changing (first you need to say the old shortcut, then you need to set the new button (already assigned wouldn't work) and a global "set to default" option if you made mistakes and don't know your setting anymore
ii) i am curios about what creative people can do with this
iii) i will try to find some ideas and collect them
iv) sounds very intresting!

iv) No! It's a strategy game, but not a shooter game.

The other points sound good to me.

Thanks for quick reply. here is some addition suggestion for the following.

ii) I'm thinking player can customize their own preference theme but then again, each map also have their own theme(graphic & music) to give the gaming mood based on map, which player can decide to turn on or off from the option. This will bring the next level of map creation.

iii) I love your idea on XP. this will make players prefer to play with their old account instead of twink! I'm thinking that when each time you level up, u will get certain points. U can use these points to give your tower certain perks such as certain tower fire reload faster or have more damage. Or new feature, maybe one time use per game such one megabomb to kill all creep in the map or superpower to make all tower have double damage on limited time period.

To be on the fair side, there will be new option, whereby when player create new game, they can choose to have these perks activate or not. Just like Red Alert skirmish game, u can turn off the superweapon. In this way, there won't be any one sided gameplay and noobs still can play against elite players. And this will bring next level of gaming

iv) maybe just a shortcut key to toggle on and off numerical display? I understand that those number might overlap each other if there are many creep on the screen but it can be useful for more precise tower building. I like your idea on tower focus, but how about make it creep focus instead? you dun have to click any tower, just mouse over the creep you want and press a shortcut key and all tower will focus fire on that creep/pixel.

Some of my other suggestions would be something nice to have, but won't really change much of the gaming. Just choose the one in line with current game development and put the rest of suggestion as KIV

[Pezinator]

The idea of achievemnts such as new design or sounds is good. But superbomb is definitely a bad idea. That would mean that saving for a killing wave would be useless...

Extra suggestion
==============
Daily Tournament
The server will automatically host 3 game (beginners, intermediate, elite) of random map every few hours. The winner of the game will be get some sort of prize, like maybe more xp compared to normal game. This is to encourage more ppl to come and play at any time, instead of just certain hour of the day.

More thoughts on XP leveling:-
=========================
For the long term of playing this game, there should be benefit of leveling XP. For now, leveling XP are just for ranking and it don't really do much. Not all ppl care for the ranking, they care more about skill. Sure, new maps/new sound/new graphic make things fresh/interesting but sometimes its just a few day excitement. When i just started playing this game, I can play over 10 games. But nowadays, I only play 2-3 games a day as there are no rush to level up my xp/skill.

If we look at some of the successive tower defense game like Bloons TD, Gemcraft, Kingdom Rush. etc, they all have their own points system which keep the players playing their game longer. Most of the current RTS games are also moving towards this direction as well. Game that can keep the players for long time are those MMORPG type of game such as WOW/Diablo which keep release new expansion with new class/mission/map/weapon or hard to archive rare weapon equipment.

Therefore, it is good to give some points that can be used for some upgrading/perks which will give real benefit during gameplay. Benefit of doing having upgrading points:-

i) Curb the habit of making twink account as it gives no benefit at all
ii) Player spend more time per day to play
iii) Retain old player to keep playing
iii) More strategy as it is not only based on tactics during gameplay but also how u spend your points.

What happens when reach top level of Super Admiral? Points are still awarded every ??? xp when reach top level. Some of the upgrade are set at very high points so that even after u had reach the top level, you won't be able to have all upgrade. This will keep top players keep on playing.

As some of the players might fear one sided game, games can be made to have those perk activated or not.

How points can be used:-
1) Simplest way
Give more starting money, free tower building, free creep sending
example:-
Starting money = +50 (? points), +100 (?? points), etc
Free 1 Level 1 Gun turret = ? points
Free 1 Level 1 Tesla turret = ??? points
Free 1 Nova = ?? points

2) Tech Tree
Points to upgrade the towers :-
i) Gives tower more range, more damage, less reload time, bigger radius
ii) give special attributes to the towers
example:-
EMP Emitter
1st upgrade (? points) = more range 10%
2nd upgrade (?? points) = less cooldown 10%
3rd upgrade (??? points) = more damage 10%
Max upgrade (???? points) = Stunning for 2 sec

example of special attribute for max upgrade
gun - hit 2 target
EMP - stunning for ?? seconds
cannon - 10% chances of critical damage 2x
missile - 10% of extra 1 missile
tesla - corrupting/poison effect (give ?? damge for ?? seconds)
ion - 5% chances to kill creep in 1 shot

3) Superweapons (Used only once per game/per cool down)
Jackpot - lose money, get zero money, get 2x money (? min cool down)
Double damage - all tower deal double damage for ? seconds (? min cool down)
Winter bomb - all creep freezed for ? seconds (? min cool down)

Atomic bomb - gives ?? damage, (Used only once per game)
Invisible/shielded creep - creep undamaged for 3 seconds (Used only once per game)
Extra lives - 1 extra lives (added at beginning of game)

4) Buying Parts to upgrade tower
This idea is from RPG type of game such as Diablo. Each tower had a few slot that can be equided with some upgrade parts. Points are spend to buy the upgrade parts. Lower price parts might only have single attributes, more expensive parts have more than 1 attributes. Unique upgrade parts can be win by games hosted by the server. This is limitless type of upgrading which keep on evolving throughout the games.

The idea of daily tournaments is good and is worth a consideration.

A possibility could be to start all over the day games (server side) with special parameters (Random tournament, no veto, counting games with less then 60 seconds). The winners are able to join the Level 2 games and depends on how much would play this level 3 or more to. Maybe this games should be always open and it starts every time if it's full. And each player can only join 1 time per day, if he wins he can join 2nd level.. and so on. (3 or 4 levels should be enough) At the end there are 1 or more "winners" per day (who reached the highest level). Maybe this would be nice for weekly tournament to.. (or instead of daily) so with the same principle but you can try it 7 times a week to climb the levels.

About XP leveling we have the "problem" that CreepTD is a multiplayer Game. It's very important that the games keep comprehensible. So an "endless leveling" would be very unfair, new players would loose even more.
So the best way to keep it fair is to give all players the same resources.

One possibility to make XP more valuable would be to unlock some extras. E.g. => Veto, setting default tower strategies, vector vision, player picture and so on.. This is an idea from dcode.

Things like bombs aren't a good idea for the normal games, but maybe it would be funny for an outstanding new arcade mode.

Upgrading in steps would overtax new players even more, but for the good gamers it would be a nice small tactical addition. The problem would be the comprehensibility again. Actually i see the defense of an opponent and i am able to estimate if my attack is strong enough. But with partial upgrades it would be very hard or impossible to estimate the defense. So i don't think it's a good idea.

[dcode]

The automatic game idea is basically not much different from matchmaking queues. However, I think that matchmaking would be able to actually establish more games successfully and would provide a better long-term perspective because it would - somewhat - also allow us to add any kind of XP leveling on the background that players always play against opponents with a similar skill/xp level (= similar points to unlock stuff). Unfortunately, this idea has not resultet in enough positive feedback yet, so I will not focus on it for now.

[Australis]

"unlocking" features with XP such as the ability to veto i would like to see.

Having an option to set minimum xp requirement to join a game would be handy as well.. set up the same way you can with min/max skill. This would also help "value add" accumulation of xp points.. and hinder twinks.

as for now, it is hard to detect twink until u play with them or check out their profile on the website. possible twink account normally have :-
i) High victories over defeats. (no noobs can win 10 or 20 games and lose only 1 or 2 times)
ii) high skill over xp

Normally u will lose more points when lose to players that have lower xp/skill than u.

So i suggest to display all the information about the player in the small window box (XP, Skill, Victories, defeats). Thus player can easily detect who is twink or not and choose whether they wanna play against these players.

[Seraph07]

Yes ingame userprofiles would be very usefull.
Today we work with the homepage and the explorer need extra resources, what is bad for player with a low computer.

Yes ingame userprofiles would be very usefull.
Today we work with the homepage and the explorer need extra resources, what is bad for player with a low computer.

THIS!

Mein Pc freeeeeezeeed immer ne Minute bis mein Broser zusätzlich offen ist...