#Feedback and Changes

68 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

pliant knot
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Me and a friend are avid tower defence players along with base building games. We picked up TDS cause i looked amazing and the first 2 sections were great, but then we started to really learn how the game works and it felt kinda bad.

Keep in mind, i don't have all the cardinals but we have gotten to the fourth area of the game and lost the want to play because of the gameplay loop.

What we liked:
The character design is amazing. Each character actually feels unique and plays uniquely.
Cardinals are interesting and add design aspects to the game that can be nice to decide how you play.
The aesthetic is amazing.

What we didn't like:
Some characters feel like they are designed around the absolute most optimal way to play to get any thing out of them.
Map design suffers because of the other issues, the main one being economy.
Economy feels ridiculously slow, and while we understand you need to start slow and ramp up,it feels like you need to know every mechanic in place to ever get past the first hurdle.
Lack of information. Just in general. Having to figure out things by trial and error is fun sometimes, but not for almost every single thing.
Tempered enemies just being the worst thing in the game. Sure, you can bait them or you can build lots of walls but we didn't know that for the longest time and they just destroyed all our economy until we ended up money dumping on walls.
Enemies not dropping resources on kill. Just seems odd

To follow up what we didn't like, we found the best map was the map where you unlock the dog character, because we had so many more resources from the contracts. It's a tower defense game about building towers, and the resources let us do that more instead of most of the time being spent trying to just squeak by with the bare minimum to make sure our econ worked.

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What we would change:
Economy. I'm not sure what would be the best change due to how the game is balanced, but for us there's too much time being worried about getting the resources than spending them. I want to play the game, not spreadsheeting.
Enemies should give some resources on kill. Just a reward for doing the thing and it feels nice.
Tempered enemies should be a bit more forgiving. Rampaging through your mineral line because you didn't memorize when the tempered enemy wave was feels really bad.
When towers die you should get some resources left on the ground you have to go pick up. The all or nothing playstyle is rough unless you know the optimal strats.

The biggest one is probably economy. I want to play the game, i want to experiment with different strats and play in wierd ways but because the econ is one note for most maps, you don't get that option. I would rather be allowed to put more towers down and use the space more , rather than be forced to know EVERY "speedrun" strat to make sure i can even attempt to use some of the space.

Don't get it twisted, we love the game. Just gets almost "tediuous" because you have to setup almost the same way every map because econ is so directly impactful.

jovial storm
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Totally fair! We're working on a easier mode for those who want to enjoy the 'power' aspect of the game more freely.
Generally, TD games are made to feel like a power trip first and foremost, conversely this game rewards learning and exploration which is why it leans harder a lot earlier to help prep you for actual challenges later on.
Not learning + hard levels = recipe for immediate disaster!

While I will note that certain things might feel like theirs only one optimal way because you find them to work. Most thing do end up working out if played with the future in mind, and challenges change depending on your team composition/items. Most characters have atleast 2 'proper' methods of economy, with various other ways to build less conventionally.
Some examples:
Money Bag building is a pretty easy and common late econ tech
Smacky's Scraps is a very strong early contender for snowballling
Hyperfocusing smacky conversion lets you build extremely strong later
Sno Sno has rich sno, snobles, and Soft sno as econ methods

Secondly, enemies do drop resources! You might notice them giving you red on each kill. (Very apparent on the map: Galbass Scaffold where red isn't even a resource available) ALL characters do have a method of generating ALL resources, even if they're not present

That being said, the game has been going in a easier direction slowly! It's much easier to start hard and tone it back rather than make something artificially hard

pliant knot
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It's not so much the difficulty that we have issue with. we like difficult games and having to learn. the issue is how the lesson is provided. I would rather it still be hard as it is but we have more access to more things. It's hard to articulate the finer detail of it, but i think it's mostly we don't want is easier, we want to play it more.
It's an odd thing, but when we "cheese" and stall every one of the early waves, the game feels MUCH better. even if we lose at the same point, we got to play it more instead of staring at number go up.

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The other odd thing is solo feels much better because we start with so much more economy and the early grind doesn't feel like it's there compared to coop.

oak lava
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econ is definitely weird, having to use every tower perfectly so that it doesn't die from tempered enemies/mauls/ballistas and barely having money to place anything

but I guess it's because making econ even a bit stronger can actually render the game really easy, I think?

Not only that, but if you're trying to say that econ is limiting proper building construction and not being able to reach t5,.. well here's the news! Tsunami mode will exist next patch, and the econ there will be genuinely insane

pliant knot
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T5 isn't our problem. we normally lose around tide 12 becasue tide 11 is the tarnished aegis

oak lava
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oh?

oak lava
pliant knot
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red aegis on wave 11

oak lava
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let's see..
tempered enemies, as far you know, target the nearest thing to them.
in this case, having walls that you can replace OR walls that can heal is useful

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either that or units that respawn

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usually using long range towers far away does the job veery easily, but you can still do other methods

pliant knot
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the problem is we have no money to build those defences moon2PH

oak lava
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fair

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you should prob mine the ore that has yel and another aura

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it's always stronger than mining an ore without yellow

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there're also maps with ores that are pure yellow, where you'll be "investing"

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I

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I'll just be clear: mine some more blue aura, and get healing walls/units
(examples: repair team wall - smacky, thin ice - sno sno, batfish - boutman, big dog?? - buster)

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I'm saying how you should counter tempered enemies

pliant knot
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it just feels like you have to fully spreadsheet to exactly know the breakpoints. like i know that there is healing heater for snosno, but they are so pricy that you can only invest in them and if you do and do it wrong, you lose the whole spent cost

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i don't want the game to be easy by any margin of thought. I just think it's better if you have more avenues to approach the difficulty than "the meta" option

oak lava
pliant knot
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that's my biggest issue honestly. when i'm asking for help or ideas, it's always " you need to soft snow launcher to get enough econ" instead of trying new or other things.

oak lava
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any kind of creativity was used to make these meta's in the first place, pretty ironic

oak lava
pliant knot
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like look at other tower defences, if they have options each of those options has multiple strats. The vessels here have "this is your long game strat" and that's it. which is honestly probably where all of my issues come from

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there shouldn't be maps where i look at it and think " this character sucks on this map". characters should always be able to be played at peak performance.

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You should never be fighting your characters kit for difficulty, you should be having to plan around the map to make it hard

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the biggest example is the map where you unlock dog and get contracts. that map we had a duo strat that each of us held one side and it ONLY worked because we had so many extra resources. and actually got to use all the things without waiting forever

oak lava
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I'm not sure if asman would actually like remaking all the things for every vessel's kit, but I do think there's a solution

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what I mean is, manafold and thanh bitterfield proved to be maps that fit sno sno a bit too well, and any other vessels not as much

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the creativity in strats seems to be limited by upgrades and cardinals

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and also positioning I guess

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the man has come

pliant knot
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Its not even remaking really

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Just make contracts a choice for every map.

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And make them randomized

oak lava
pliant knot
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Yeah. I just think that the slow spreadsheet style of econ is hard to handle when you arent optimizing everything. There isnt like " oh i cna build this" its ALWAYS " just build this because then by this time you have something"

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Like we tried uh, monogrove? Using stalling for max time each wave and it felt far better to play

oak lava
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alr so uhh fun fact

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there's actually a weak cardinal known as "checklist"

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which is also hard to obtain

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cuz you have to do 20 whole contracts on bountyward

pliant knot
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In one go?

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We were considering trying that tonight or tommorow

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What does it do

oak lava
pliant knot
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Alot?

oak lava
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also honestly, if checklist would give more aura, one easy way of ignoring econ would be to use a lot of busters

oak lava
pliant knot
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Is there any aura for completing a wave?

oak lava
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nope, just for killing enemies

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also, the aura has to be collected (and despawns in like 3-5 seconds)

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y'know, you can always use plenty of different things for econ, tho it usually seems like it renders to one meta

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for example, you can use sno cannons near ores with sno powder (I think the upgrade is called that), which gives a lot of range for the cannons

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but it's up to you to decide how you wanna play

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(oh and also, bountyward is a very weird map which promotes long range towers. you don't need walls there)

pliant knot
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i'm going to be honest, it's been hard to use most of the snow box upgrades because they get resources so slow you have to get so many to feel any sort of income and by that time you're late enough that you have to build real defences

vagrant zenith
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number 1 soft snow fan

exotic junco
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I like this post, very relatable. I have a friend who is a very casual TD player that got into TDS recently and he got somewhat the same perspective. Even though there IS alot of flexibility and choices in TDS, you'd normally have to learn the "speedrun techs" before braching off to different playstyles. This doesn't personally applies to me but I get where you're coming from

jovial storm
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well, plenty is changing in the next patch so we'll see if it addresses the feelings you got! (which i totally understand)

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and noted!

civic crown
civic crown
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as going for anything that is not optimal just hurts you, you get punished due to power levels of upgrades not being 1:1