Sorry that I dindt announced the changes enough before and didnt explained it.
Why did I changed the survivor values?Let us start at what I think is the key element of survivor. Live long enough to survive the other players and climb in the highscoreladder to the highest rank possible.
But there are some issues.
We have three problems which destroy the highscore. One is a bug which will lead to endless games and one will change the KI so the players will only face a weaker combination of creeps.
The last problem is endless games. The KI on Big Combo Easy does not work correctly in its endgame. It should send motherships and raptorwaves but it instead it only sends a few raptors.
Endless games are games on which the player reached fulldeff and does not die anymore. The player can survive untill he leaves the game or sells his deff. The automatic timeout is after 480 rounds (120 minutes!). The fulldeff is mostly finished at round 130 which lets the player doing nothing over 350 rounds. This will make the highscore obsolete and makes no fun to "play".
So I tryed to avoid endless games by raising up the level of difficulty.
How did I changed the survivor values?All maps have survivor values which will be set at first when the map is added in the
Testingarea. The survivor values orientate on the length of the map and the rank of good deffspots. The mainfocus lies on Big Combo Hard. This is the values I choose while setting the values. If I choose a value for Big Combo Hard I will look for the other values in a
list Example
4STOPS has the survivor values
Easy: 116
Medium: 120
Hard: 124
Highscore
4STOPSMode Round
Hard 85
Medium 87
Easy 105
It is a very dense map with very good deffspots but only 57 pathsegments.
So it gets some high values for hard and some for medium not so far away. Nothing changed in the difference between hard and medium.
4STOPS also features a lot free space. This space will be used for ions in the Big Combo Easy mode which is usually a fulldeff of ions and slowtowers. So I have to avoid it that players will reach fulldeff. Because on most maps fulldeff equals endless games.
Thats why I changed the surivor values for Big Combo Easy.
The distribution was
Easy / Medium / Hard
early distribution (08.04.2013)
101 120 124
first update (20.12.2016)
112 120 124
current values (29.12.2016)
116 120 124
The easy values climbed very high in comparison with the old ones.
All maps where updated in the
31.12.2016 which should have resetted the whole Big Combo Easy Highscore. But it didnt! Only a few players lost their place in the highscore and I am very sorry for this massive bug. This should have been a clean cut. It is always easier to change the values from to hard to more soft. Because if you make the survivor values harder the highscore will be cleared. If you lower the values it is easy to reach a new highscore and the old ones will stay.
Big Combo Hard changed too.We had very different versions of survivor values in our maplist. Because I
added all the old ones and some which never leaved the testingarea there was no continuos distribution of the survivor values. So there was a need to change the survivor values to have equality for all maps.
My goal for the big combo mod is
Hard -> 80 ~ 100 rounds
Medium -> 90 ~ 110 rounds
Easy -> 100 ~ 130 rounds
So I looked at the highscore, many maps had more than 90 rounds on hard and some could be played endless on hard too!
Example
Two games on the map Defcon
First a game from the best player at the time Rambo196
http://www.creeptd.com/en/games/qnmcryi ... vyxrive72cdied at round 96
![normal.png](./download/file.php?id=4977&sid=463123b78219455b7fce0281da985f3c)
- normal.png (174.62 KiB) Viewed 86653 times
Second a game from two normal players
![endless.png](./download/file.php?id=4976&sid=463123b78219455b7fce0281da985f3c)
- endless.png (176.27 KiB) Viewed 86653 times
So I changed the values for hard too. I dont know exactly on which maps, you could look it up for all maps wich have a new highscore on big combo hard (concider that we have over 300 maps).
The current ladder for
DEFCON
![hard.png](./download/file.php?id=4978&sid=463123b78219455b7fce0281da985f3c)
- hard.png (46.66 KiB) Viewed 86653 times
![medium.png](./download/file.php?id=4979&sid=463123b78219455b7fce0281da985f3c)
- medium.png (46.69 KiB) Viewed 86653 times
![easy.png](./download/file.php?id=4980&sid=463123b78219455b7fce0281da985f3c)
- easy.png (30.55 KiB) Viewed 86653 times
Why is this a problem?The values orientate on the highscore but is the highscore a legit source? As I explained in the beginning of this essay the survivor mode has some awefull flaws. Some players are bugusing the mode and cheat to gain better stats.
So I was looking at a maybe corrupted point of reference. This maybe caused harder values for the maps on which Big Combo Easy had to suffer the most. The value distribution changed and the reference point for hard was raising up too. This leads to a way more harder gameplay.
While setting new values I would always have to consider: "how long could the best player survive" to prevent unnecessary endless gameplay. If you play solo survivor you gain more xp if you reach near the tophighscore. But if the tophighscore is 100 rounds away from your normal gameplay you gain only 1xp, which is frustraiting too.
That is the reason why we have new survivor values, the process and the flaws.
My personal cencts on the new values.The values are now different, yes. But they are different for everyone.
The highscore is resetted which is bad, I lost some ranks too but now it is stable again. We are gaining new maps every month and can fight for rank 1 again. A question from the view of life.
Endless survivorgames are hopefully gone now.
Alternative waysAdding blocked fields on the maps.
Reducing the buildingarea will end games earlier and prevents endless gameplay.
Con:
Adding blocked fields will affect every mode.
They will be invisible, if you look on a map you dont know where you can built (besides you bought
PRO).
Adjust every map with the best values
We tryed this method earlier. It is one of the mainreasons why we have
maptester. Never heard of them? You can apply to this usergroup and write in the internal mapforum about the new maps in Testing. We had some maptesters - there mission was to test the survivor values so we can give every map the perfect values. It didnt worked.
![internalmapforum.png](./download/file.php?id=4981&sid=463123b78219455b7fce0281da985f3c)
- internalmapforum.png (5.78 KiB) Viewed 86653 times
![reaction.png](./download/file.php?id=4982&sid=463123b78219455b7fce0281da985f3c)
- look at the views
- reaction.png (73.14 KiB) Viewed 86653 times
----> we can bring this back to life. You tell me which maps are to hard and I will change them individual.
We have massive displeasedness in the communityAs we can see in this thread nobody likes the changes. So what do we do now?
Change every map individual or change the distribution of the maps?
I startet from this list
over
to this
The first change
Hard: as before
Medium: as before
Easy: Medium - ((Hard - Medium) x 2)
Bsp: 107 - (110 - 107) x 2 = 101
the secound current change
Hard: as before
Medium: as before
Easy: Medium - (Hard - Medium)
Bsp: 107- (110 - 107) = 104
ConclusionChange the survivor values back from the current to the first update. If endless games are still a thing for some maps the values for hard, medium and easy will get higher for this specific map.
Big Combo Easy will be more easy to play again.
We will review the change after a month or two and consider if more changes are necessary. This will not resett the highscores and milder/repair some of the current problems.
I am sorry for every rank on the highscore you lost due to this change. It is unfair that it didnt hit everyone the same and I am looking for a way to fix this. Please excuse me that I didnt discussed it before with the community.
I am very happy that so many of you raised their voice and are discussing the situation. Hopefully we can find an agreement which fits for everybody. Please tell me if there are other issues which we can solve together.