Experimental Update (and what’s to come)

Hello all!

I apologize for the sporadic blog posts. Family/work consumed most of my December & January, but I’m back at development. I’m hoping to put in a good 60+ hours in February.

I’m starting to realize that I work best in bursts. Occasional breaks let me salvage what’s remaining of my work and family life after the destruction caused by my obsession over Stream Defense.

Today’s Update

I just put out an experimental change to how tower buffs are distributed. I’m unattached to this change, and will remove it if it proves to be unwelcome. However, this change would allow me to make several other changes, so I want to start testing it now.

Instead of tower buffs being distributed to lower-performing towers, they will now be distributed randomly each round, as follows:

• Round 1: 0 Buffed Towers
• Round 2: 2 Buffed Towers
• Round 3: 4 Buffed Towers
• Round 4: 6 Buffed Towers
• Round 5: 6 Buffed Towers

In the first version of this, the buffs were static and never moved. However, this quickly resulted in players camping towers to avoid losing their coveted position. Now they’ll randomly relocate each round.

Recent Balance Changes

• The Deathdealer talent, “Splosion” has been reworked and renamed “Seed” (See class page for details)
• The Scout now provides 50% more xp to the barracks on kill
• The commander’s damage has been lowered from 150 to 100
• The commander’s attack speed has been increased from 2s to 1.5s

What’s to come?

From here, I have 3 medium-sized updates I hope to get out in the next 1-2 months:

New Firemage Spec

I realize the Saboteur spec and Ignite talent are both quite unpopular. I’m planning on doing one of the following, either:

1. Make Saboteur a Pyromancer talent to replace Ignite, then make a new Firemage spec to replace Saboteur.
2. Rework both Saboteur specs, then make a new Firemage talent to replace Ignite

Highpriest Rework

There are a few counter-intuitive elements around highpriests, and I’m hoping to alleviate a few of them:

• I plan to make tower buffs last forever, but limiting them to 1 active buff per highpriest. I’m thinking it would cost ~10 mana to cast so that it’s worth moving or changing the buff as necessary.
• I plan to rework turret buffs (Boulder turret, Armor turret, Slow bubble)
  • Instead of adding a turret, the spell would imbue a specific property into the tower’s ammo
    • Boulder: remove a percentage of the enemy’s total health
    • Armor: remove a percentage of the enemy’s total armor
    • Stun: would replace Slow bubble, and would stun the enemy
    • Fire: a new spell, which would deal 50% damage in an area
    • Oracle? I’m thinking about making !ora a turret buff as well
  • The turret buff would last forever, but would be limited to 1 active buff per highpriest
  • The cost would be lowered. I’m thinking 1 orb
  • Perhaps each cast will add ~20 ammo to the tower. I haven’t decided
• As these 2 changes will result in an overall buff to the highpriest – and I believe the highpriest is already a bit overpowered – expect a few nerfs to accompany them. I haven’t decided yet, but I might raise the mana cost of other spells.

Progression Update

My main focus is still on the run progression. I have 2 big changes I plan to put out soon:

1. Limit runs to 5 games

   Many players would like to be able to play an entire run in a single sitting. However, currently runs can last 15+ hours. I’d like to bring that down to 3 hours or less.

   My plan is to make the first 4 games work as they do now. Beating game #4 would mean you “beat the run”. However, there would then be a 5th game which is endless. The game would ramp up in difficulty quickly, and your “score” for the run would be determined by the wave on which you’re defeated. (There’s a good chance I’ll have to block certain maps – 2, 7, 9 – for that 5th game)

2. Add an end-of-game reward vote

   Instead of automatically earning 300 supplies for beating a game, there will be one more vote between 2 possible rewards. The rewards would be randomly selected to make each run feel unique. My plan is to add dozens of reward options that you can unlock, but here are the ones I plan to start with:

   1. +Supplies (could take multiple times)
   2. Increased power from power orbs
   3. Increased drop chance of power orbs
   4. More/Better tower buffs (could take twice)
   5. More/Faster ammo from each “reload” before a boss fight
   6. +3 starting levels (could take multiple times)

1. Assure you I’m still focused on finishing the game
2. Get your feedback on my thoughts. You guys have pointed out errors in my thinking several times which has saved me many potential hours.

Please leave a comment below, or make a post in the forums with any thoughts!

Thanks!
Archon