Just played the map for the first time, and you were totally right man. I loved it. It is by far the most balanced TD I have played in SC2 yet. I mean, I was really, really, really impressed. Good job man, and good job to everyone on your team, you guys did a great job.
Although I have only played on easy and medium so far, I have noticed that the life giving towers are a bit OP early game. Perhaps that is because going for them limits your options for late game stuff, but I have been having 70+ lived through round 30 on easy and medium. Just a thought.
Also, a couple of towers have the "missing" icon for their armor, which I assume is something that was there before but you decided to take away. You just left if on a couple of towers, that is all. (Most towers don't have an armor icon at all)
The actor work isn't as bad as I originally thought. Most beams fire from their appropriate locations. The only suggestions I would make, is for towers such as the spire and greater spire towers (Stationary with no animation), is to add a turret floating above them. For example, have a mini scourge model or something that rotates and faces the target, and then launches the missile from there.
Hmmm trying to think of anything else I noticed... Nothing else really. I didn't notice anything that was good against composite, but then again I'm assuming that they are meant to have low health the begin with anyways so that doesn't matter, and I'm sure was intentional. Hmmm... Oh ya, spamming the pure towers is a bit OP. If you get 2 income, then 3 of whatever, then 2 essence and get 4 pure towers and place them properly, even against creeps they are weak against get destroyed pretty much immediately. I personally think that to discourage this, make pure towers weak against 2 things, and make them REALLY weak against one of them, as in like 1/10 the damage or something. Right now (on medium at least), that's a fairly OP build.
Other than that, great game man, and I am going to be playing it some more.
I agree with TacoManStan.
Your 'helpers' really knew their job and you for leading them to shape this great mini-game. I played 6 games on row of EleTD and I can't stop x}. Maybe because it is the first time I play a Tower Defense that I really understand and love ->because of the element inspiration. Thought, I have learned that there are only four primal elements dating from Ancient Greek time { air, earth, water, fire ; darkness and light are just primordial energies... but ah xP whatever... more 'elements' can make the game more interesting and large}.
I'd speak good luck and good inspiration to you for your next intriguing mini-games :) !
This is the best TD since Riley's Sorcerer's Defense. Too bad that project died. This has really occupied a good deal of time, though. :P
I only have a little bit of nitpicking to do:
Some of the colorized icons are really out of place. I made some new ones if you want to use them.
I noticed that you changed the grenade tower's launch sound, which is awesome, but the upgrades still sound like photon cannons.
I think that the fungus tower's projectile should be tinted green, and maybe the sound could be changed to something more Zerg-ish or natural.
The clone towers are really, really powerful.
The vapor towers are pretty weak, especially when compared to other AoE towers like earthquake or tsunami (which is probably my favorite tower).
'Seism' is not a word. :P
Perhaps the descriptions for summoning level 2/3 bosses should warn the newbies that they are much stronger :X
I'm only suggesting all of this because you seem to be updating very frequently, but this is already much more polished than most games on bnet. Very well done. :)
EDIT: another aesthetic suggestion. Some of the towers that do not move could really benefit from playing their 'work' animation when attacking or even standing. Examples would include the Focused Light, Forge, Trickery, and Tsunami towers.
Given my time constraints, I managed to try the map out for a bit(about 15 minutes).
Based on initial impressions. I have a few things to add:
1. Difficulty does not scale too well. Seemingly.
Certain points of the game are almost too easy, and then suddenly you can feel resistance and increased difficult on Wave X.
I think the transition could be a bit more transparent to keep the game flow interesting.
2. I really feel(and this is opinion based) that elements Nature and Earth should have been joined/made as one entity. There are currently 6 elements I think. While the others are very distinct, its somewhat confusing and almost redundant to see a `Nature` and `Earth`.
3. Too many dialogs and options at the start. Im not really a fan of having too much choice in a game.
4. I encounter massive lag near my Xel`Naga tower area(where the creeps spawn). Could have been random or just my pc, Not too sure.
5. A visual `lives depletion` status/warning would be nice. Did not notice one.
Such as, Lets say when three creeps escape
On screen would be
"44 lifes left"
"43 lifes left"
"42 lives left"
Then after 5 or so seconds, The warnings disappear.
6. The "AD" In-game on the Xel-Tower is annoying/stupid and unprofessional. You should consider removing it.
7. Better descriptions of the advantages and disadvantages of each element?. I would assume you maybe would want players to experiment or seek the info out on your website or something like that, but some additional basic element info-ingame would be nice. There was a "tips" thingy which I could have clicked on but did not...maybe the info was there.
8. Creep waves are too continuous. There is literally no time to breathe. This may be intentional, but personally I prefer a small time-window between each wave.
Thats just initial impressions.
The game does seem varied(and interesting). I did like the creep spawn units. Their implementation was done really well.
Visuals are good from what Ive seen thus far.
Terrain was good. Given your format.
Overall I think it has a lot of potential. Well designed.
I'm only suggesting all of this because you seem to be updating very frequently, but this is already much more polished than most games on bnet. Very well done. :)
EDIT: another aesthetic suggestion. Some of the towers that do not move could really benefit from playing their 'work' animation when attacking or even standing. Examples would include the Focused Light, Forge, Trickery, and Tsunami towers.
Makes sense. Please expand on this list when possible.
Looking good. Please feel free to continue making more :).
Hohoho. I see what you did there. These icons aren't colorized; they were drawn over using Gimp's airbrush tool... with a mouse, which is quite inconvenient. If I make any more, it definitely won't be on a consistent basis... or even of consistent quality.
These were actually my first attempt at coloring/creating icons, and even using the program. I did make one more test (attached) that isn't any of the icons you're using, but it would make a lot of sense if it was your hail tower's ability (attack 3 targets at once).
Better idea for the fungus tower- the boomerang could be a Mutalisk glaive.
Towers that could use work animations, from looking at towers on the site (some may already be animated): Refined Fire, Light, Dark; Forge, Foundry, Factory; Trickery, Masquerade, Deceit; Disease, Decay, Death; Mildew, Fungus, (Mold could use an unload animation to fire); Tsunami; maybe Celerity and Velocity (they just sway a little).
If I missed something, it's because I have not seen every single tower in game :P
Work animations will make the towers feel more active/powerful/alive, as opposed to plain buildings that will just mark your towers' effect. The Barrack's pulsing lights, for example, will really make it feel like a forge.
in reply to number 8
next wave starts off the first person to clear the wave
it is competitive survivor after all. if someone wants to win by trying to crush waves early and overwhelm other players rather than build interest he can.
1. I think that each difficulty should have it's own game going. In other words, people playing on super easy kill creeps in 2 seconds while experienced players have to deal with three waves at once. Perhaps when the first medium player completes the wave, then all the medium players do to. Also, I think that all players on a lower level should be affected as well. That way if a hard defeats a wave, then anyone playing on hard, medium, easy, and super easy all get the timer. It is incredibly annoying when people on super easy can win so easily, and put you at such a disadvantage.
2. There are still towers with a blank icon as the armor. I can't remember which ones, but it is fairly annoying.
3. The earth towers are way, way, WAY UP. I think that nature and water suffer from the same issue, but not as bad. Water is almost impossible to use correctly. I would say that water is almost completely useless until fully upgraded, and then fire is still way better. (For the splash category)
4. You shouldn't be able to copy pures. Not sure if you fixed this or not, someone said you did, but I haven't tried recently.
5. If you get 2 of the periodic towers, you win. 3, you super win. 4, you super duper uber win. However, on anything higher than medium they are so hard to get that it almost doesn't matter how OP they are because you will be dead before you get it anyways.
6. I think that getting interest should have no limit, but be exponentially beneficial. The first could increase income by .5%, then 1%, then 2%, then 4%, then 8%, then 16%, and so on. Then a "get interest and 1 element tower" could be a strategy for noobs.
7. Perhaps an infinite mode, where creeps just get periodically more powerful? I have some formulas that work fairly well for this.
8. The ad thing is fine, it really doesn't do anything.
9. "Random Mode" should not be able to pick interest, but give you like 3% or so instead of 2%. You should also get 1 supply every 15, and then that shouldn't be able to be picked either. Otherwise it is just waayy too hard to play on random.
6. I think that getting interest should have no limit, but be exponentially beneficial. The first could increase income by .5%, then 1%, then 2%, then 4%, then 8%, then 16%, and so on. Then a "get interest and 1 element tower" could be a strategy for noobs.
If memory serves correctly, interest wasn't limited in WC3. Even with a 1% per upgrade, single element and interest was one of the most effective (read: horribly overpowered and boring) ways to play. I'm pretty sure that's why we limited it in SC2.
As for copying pures, I know it "feels" overpowered, but really it's a very comparable benefit to the Well/Forge towers. In some ways it's even weaker depending which pure you're copying - the copy won't always end up in a good firing position.
As for certain elements feeling particularly weak, I definitely get that impression as well. The door is by no means closed on balance so please keep that feedback coming :)
Despite what a lot of people have said, I think the towers look pretty good. I know the tower models in the game are limited, and you did well with cool models and projectile patterns to make it look great.
Back in WC3, my favorite strategy was to focus on the money towers and it worked well. It works pretty well in this version too.
Overall, great job on this project. It's the best SC2 tower defense so far, very polished with good gameplay. I am sure there are many new things in this version, but I can't really pinpoint many difference between this version and the WC3 version. But I think that's fine since this project wasn't about doing something new, it was about reincarnating that same popular game in SC2 for the next decade.
A few thoughts:
-From time to time I'd see a number in white on the body of a creep (3, or 1), and I had no idea what that meant. Bug? Does it just mean something I don't know about?
-Long range towers near the sides of one player's formation can attack enemies in another track. I can't think of a good solution for this, but I think it could be a real problem.
-I would like to be able to read an armor tooltip on the creep itself that tells me what it is weak to. Maybe this isn't possible given the matrix of damage types?
-Why is every tower a model of some kind with a projectile launching from it? Maybe I haven't tried enough tower types yet, but I didn't see any of the normal tower units in the game (missile turret, auto turret, etc). Was this done intentionally?
-From time to time I'd see a number in white on the body of a creep (3, or 1), and I had no idea what that meant. Bug? Does it just mean something I don't know about?
That's the reincarnation timer for Undead creeps :)
Overall, great job on this project. It's the best SC2 tower defense so far, very polished with good gameplay. I am sure there are many new things in this version, but I can't really pinpoint many difference between this version and the WC3 version. But I think that's fine since this project wasn't about doing something new, it was about reincarnating that same popular game in SC2 for the next decade.
-Long range towers near the sides of one player's formation can attack enemies in another track. I can't think of a good solution for this, but I think it could be a real problem.
This was fixed a few versions ago. May I ask which one you played?
-I would like to be able to read an armor tooltip on the creep itself that tells me what it is weak to. Maybe this isn't possible given the matrix of damage types?
I would too. I couldn't figure out how to do it though.
I played it once now, and I have to say its very well made so far. I will not comment the balance for now, because I did only play one difficulty setting and never was particularily good at element td or tower defenses in general (played on normal and reached the last level quite easily, though).
Stuff I liked:
Terrain is very well made for your usual tower defense. Each of the areas has its own unique feeling. Btw how did you do it? I did not count, but you seem to use more than the 8 (or so) available textures in your map, and you certainly use more cliff types.
The map catches the element td feeling. It feels just like we are back in WC3.
I did not discover any major or minor bugs so far
Stuff I did not like, or could be changed:
I am sure you are aware of it, but every single one of your towers uses the same attack sound. It annoys the shit out of me! Especially for fast attacking towers like the fire tower.
You could make use of some features of SC2, instead of using the same methods like in WC3. Some custom dialogs to display your current elements and available towers with some tooltips and stuff would be great, instead of just displaying the stuff with text messages. Also I dislike the mode selection, could look so much better and organized, if its combined in 1 dialog and makes use of list boxes/dropdowns or the other possible dialog items.
You could also make a standard options board, which only lets you choose difficulty and random mode, and unfold an advanced board for additional stuff.
The overview leaderbord as well: This can be done so much better. You could add hover tooltips to the icons displayed for the waves, explaining what they mean etc etc..
I played it once now, and I have to say its very well made so far. I will not comment the balance for now, because I did only play one difficulty setting and never was particularily good at element td or tower defenses in general (played on normal and reached the last level quite easily, though).
Glad to hear it. Balance is still a work in progress.
Terrain is very well made for your usual tower defense. Each of the areas has its own unique feeling. Btw how did you do it? I did not count, but you seem to use more than the 8 (or so) available textures in your map, and you certainly use more cliff types.
Kudos goes to Zarakk for that. He did an amazing job. Nothing special was done, i.e. 8 tiles. He just rocks :).
I am sure you are aware of it, but every single one of your towers uses the same attack sound. It annoys the shit out of me! Especially for fast attacking towers like the fire tower.
You could make use of some features of SC2, instead of using the same methods like in WC3. Some custom dialogs to display your current elements and available towers with some tooltips and stuff would be great, instead of just displaying the stuff with text messages. Also I dislike the mode selection, could look so much better and organized, if its combined in 1 dialog and makes use of list boxes/dropdowns or the other possible dialog items.
You could also make a standard options board, which only lets you choose difficulty and random mode, and unfold an advanced board for additional stuff.
I will take this under consideration. I'm sure we could make some improvements.
I dont like the damage reduction for higher difficulties. Why not increase the hit points instead? Same effect, but more intuitive. Right now, you see your tower has 8 damage, enemy has 5 hp and he survives 1 hit.
Is it just me, or do the waves spawn a lot faster in singleplayer than when playing multiplayer? It feels very hectic from time to time
just like EW said, most of the time there are 5-6 very easy waves, and suddenly you cannot kill the next wave (and not just because you have the wrong element - they feel a lot stronger suddenly).
Discuss.
Just played the map for the first time, and you were totally right man. I loved it. It is by far the most balanced TD I have played in SC2 yet. I mean, I was really, really, really impressed. Good job man, and good job to everyone on your team, you guys did a great job.
Although I have only played on easy and medium so far, I have noticed that the life giving towers are a bit OP early game. Perhaps that is because going for them limits your options for late game stuff, but I have been having 70+ lived through round 30 on easy and medium. Just a thought.
Also, a couple of towers have the "missing" icon for their armor, which I assume is something that was there before but you decided to take away. You just left if on a couple of towers, that is all. (Most towers don't have an armor icon at all)
The actor work isn't as bad as I originally thought. Most beams fire from their appropriate locations. The only suggestions I would make, is for towers such as the spire and greater spire towers (Stationary with no animation), is to add a turret floating above them. For example, have a mini scourge model or something that rotates and faces the target, and then launches the missile from there.
Hmmm trying to think of anything else I noticed... Nothing else really. I didn't notice anything that was good against composite, but then again I'm assuming that they are meant to have low health the begin with anyways so that doesn't matter, and I'm sure was intentional. Hmmm... Oh ya, spamming the pure towers is a bit OP. If you get 2 income, then 3 of whatever, then 2 essence and get 4 pure towers and place them properly, even against creeps they are weak against get destroyed pretty much immediately. I personally think that to discourage this, make pure towers weak against 2 things, and make them REALLY weak against one of them, as in like 1/10 the damage or something. Right now (on medium at least), that's a fairly OP build.
Other than that, great game man, and I am going to be playing it some more.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@TacoManStan: Go
Glad to hear it :).
I agree with TacoManStan. Your 'helpers' really knew their job and you for leading them to shape this great mini-game. I played 6 games on row of EleTD and I can't stop x}. Maybe because it is the first time I play a Tower Defense that I really understand and love ->because of the element inspiration. Thought, I have learned that there are only four primal elements dating from Ancient Greek time { air, earth, water, fire ; darkness and light are just primordial energies... but ah xP whatever... more 'elements' can make the game more interesting and large}.
I'd speak good luck and good inspiration to you for your next intriguing mini-games :) !
@TheHolyArk: Go
Indeed, I enlisted the help of some great people. I'm quite happy with the result. Thank you.
This is the best TD since Riley's Sorcerer's Defense. Too bad that project died. This has really occupied a good deal of time, though. :P
I only have a little bit of nitpicking to do:
Some of the colorized icons are really out of place. I made some new ones if you want to use them.
I noticed that you changed the grenade tower's launch sound, which is awesome, but the upgrades still sound like photon cannons.
I think that the fungus tower's projectile should be tinted green, and maybe the sound could be changed to something more Zerg-ish or natural.
The clone towers are really, really powerful.
The vapor towers are pretty weak, especially when compared to other AoE towers like earthquake or tsunami (which is probably my favorite tower).
'Seism' is not a word. :P
Perhaps the descriptions for summoning level 2/3 bosses should warn the newbies that they are much stronger :X
I'm only suggesting all of this because you seem to be updating very frequently, but this is already much more polished than most games on bnet. Very well done. :)
EDIT: another aesthetic suggestion. Some of the towers that do not move could really benefit from playing their 'work' animation when attacking or even standing. Examples would include the Focused Light, Forge, Trickery, and Tsunami towers.
@Karawasa: Go
Given my time constraints, I managed to try the map out for a bit(about 15 minutes).
Based on initial impressions. I have a few things to add:
1. Difficulty does not scale too well. Seemingly.
Certain points of the game are almost too easy, and then suddenly you can feel resistance and increased difficult on Wave X.
I think the transition could be a bit more transparent to keep the game flow interesting.
2. I really feel(and this is opinion based) that elements Nature and Earth should have been joined/made as one entity. There are currently 6 elements I think. While the others are very distinct, its somewhat confusing and almost redundant to see a `Nature` and `Earth`.
3. Too many dialogs and options at the start. Im not really a fan of having too much choice in a game.
4. I encounter massive lag near my Xel`Naga tower area(where the creeps spawn). Could have been random or just my pc, Not too sure.
5. A visual `lives depletion` status/warning would be nice. Did not notice one.
Such as, Lets say when three creeps escape
On screen would be
"44 lifes left"
"43 lifes left"
"42 lives left"
Then after 5 or so seconds, The warnings disappear.
6. The "AD" In-game on the Xel-Tower is annoying/stupid and unprofessional. You should consider removing it.
7. Better descriptions of the advantages and disadvantages of each element?. I would assume you maybe would want players to experiment or seek the info out on your website or something like that, but some additional basic element info-ingame would be nice. There was a "tips" thingy which I could have clicked on but did not...maybe the info was there.
8. Creep waves are too continuous. There is literally no time to breathe. This may be intentional, but personally I prefer a small time-window between each wave.
Thats just initial impressions.
The game does seem varied(and interesting). I did like the creep spawn units. Their implementation was done really well.
Visuals are good from what Ive seen thus far.
Terrain was good. Given your format.
Overall I think it has a lot of potential. Well designed.
Looking good. Please feel free to continue making more :).
Thank you.
Makes sense. Please expand on this list when possible.
@EternalWraith: Go
1. Indeed, we are working on this balance.
6. Huh? What do you mean.
7. A tip regarding this and other helpful info is coming soon.
Glad you like it :).
@EternalWraith: Go
in reply to number 8
next wave starts off the first person to clear the wave
it is competitive survivor after all. if someone wants to win by trying to crush waves early and overwhelm other players rather than build interest he can.
1. I think that each difficulty should have it's own game going. In other words, people playing on super easy kill creeps in 2 seconds while experienced players have to deal with three waves at once. Perhaps when the first medium player completes the wave, then all the medium players do to. Also, I think that all players on a lower level should be affected as well. That way if a hard defeats a wave, then anyone playing on hard, medium, easy, and super easy all get the timer. It is incredibly annoying when people on super easy can win so easily, and put you at such a disadvantage.
2. There are still towers with a blank icon as the armor. I can't remember which ones, but it is fairly annoying.
3. The earth towers are way, way, WAY UP. I think that nature and water suffer from the same issue, but not as bad. Water is almost impossible to use correctly. I would say that water is almost completely useless until fully upgraded, and then fire is still way better. (For the splash category)
4. You shouldn't be able to copy pures. Not sure if you fixed this or not, someone said you did, but I haven't tried recently.
5. If you get 2 of the periodic towers, you win. 3, you super win. 4, you super duper uber win. However, on anything higher than medium they are so hard to get that it almost doesn't matter how OP they are because you will be dead before you get it anyways.
6. I think that getting interest should have no limit, but be exponentially beneficial. The first could increase income by .5%, then 1%, then 2%, then 4%, then 8%, then 16%, and so on. Then a "get interest and 1 element tower" could be a strategy for noobs.
7. Perhaps an infinite mode, where creeps just get periodically more powerful? I have some formulas that work fairly well for this.
8. The ad thing is fine, it really doesn't do anything.
9. "Random Mode" should not be able to pick interest, but give you like 3% or so instead of 2%. You should also get 1 supply every 15, and then that shouldn't be able to be picked either. Otherwise it is just waayy too hard to play on random.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@TacoManStan:
7. Perhaps an infinite mode, where creeps just get periodically more powerful? I have some formulas that work fairly well for this.
wave 61 is infinite.
If memory serves correctly, interest wasn't limited in WC3. Even with a 1% per upgrade, single element and interest was one of the most effective (read: horribly overpowered and boring) ways to play. I'm pretty sure that's why we limited it in SC2.
As for copying pures, I know it "feels" overpowered, but really it's a very comparable benefit to the Well/Forge towers. In some ways it's even weaker depending which pure you're copying - the copy won't always end up in a good firing position.
As for certain elements feeling particularly weak, I definitely get that impression as well. The door is by no means closed on balance so please keep that feedback coming :)
Despite what a lot of people have said, I think the towers look pretty good. I know the tower models in the game are limited, and you did well with cool models and projectile patterns to make it look great.
Back in WC3, my favorite strategy was to focus on the money towers and it worked well. It works pretty well in this version too.
Overall, great job on this project. It's the best SC2 tower defense so far, very polished with good gameplay. I am sure there are many new things in this version, but I can't really pinpoint many difference between this version and the WC3 version. But I think that's fine since this project wasn't about doing something new, it was about reincarnating that same popular game in SC2 for the next decade.
A few thoughts:
-From time to time I'd see a number in white on the body of a creep (3, or 1), and I had no idea what that meant. Bug? Does it just mean something I don't know about?
-Long range towers near the sides of one player's formation can attack enemies in another track. I can't think of a good solution for this, but I think it could be a real problem.
-I would like to be able to read an armor tooltip on the creep itself that tells me what it is weak to. Maybe this isn't possible given the matrix of damage types?
-Why is every tower a model of some kind with a projectile launching from it? Maybe I haven't tried enough tower types yet, but I didn't see any of the normal tower units in the game (missile turret, auto turret, etc). Was this done intentionally?
That's the reincarnation timer for Undead creeps :)
Glad to hear it :).
This was fixed a few versions ago. May I ask which one you played?
I would too. I couldn't figure out how to do it though.
I played it once now, and I have to say its very well made so far. I will not comment the balance for now, because I did only play one difficulty setting and never was particularily good at element td or tower defenses in general (played on normal and reached the last level quite easily, though).
Stuff I liked:
Stuff I did not like, or could be changed:
You could also make a standard options board, which only lets you choose difficulty and random mode, and unfold an advanced board for additional stuff.
Glad to hear it. Balance is still a work in progress.
Kudos goes to Zarakk for that. He did an amazing job. Nothing special was done, i.e. 8 tiles. He just rocks :).
Sweet! That was the goal.
We are definitely working on this.
I will take this under consideration. I'm sure we could make some improvements.
More stuff:
@Kueken531: Go
Agreed.
Great to be back and part of the community again!