New tower defense idea...would it work? + opinions needed

The concept

The idea is to have a small square map (the playable area of a 32x32 map, perhaps), and both team's creeps start at the top corners and move to the opposite bottom corner. This would add a whole new dimension to mazing, as you would also have the other team's maze to deal with.

The creeps are neutral, so if the way is blocked they can attack and destroy either team's towers. If the enemy team has a nice maze, put one tower in it to clog it and the creeps will take it down for you.
^_^

There are also more direct ways (spells) to blow up enemy towers.

The teams get points for not leaking, as opposed to losing lives for leaking. Otherwise the players would not battle each other, but instead cooperate to lengthen the game, as often happens in Tower Wars maps.

To avoid tricky balance issues (nice vs cutthroat teams, map full of towers vs map full of rubble of destroyed towers), the creep waves do not get stronger over time, but only when they are killed (eg. kill one, +10% HP to subsequent creeps).

This way, a team that was just wiped out would not be forced to watch 20 waves of ever stronger creeps go by while they rebuild their towers, and two bloodthirsty teams that keep destroying each other and have like 5 towers standing after 10 minutes would still be able to kill something with those 5 towers. Of course, the score of both teams would be a lot lower than in a fair-play situation, but whoever has the highest score wins, no matter how low said highest score is.

Map-specific

A direct way to annoy the other team will be the War Room, a building that contains spells to blow up enemy towers. The disadvantage is that it is a huge building, and the map is tiny. Build it in the way of the enemy team.


There will be only 9 different towers, but each of these is upgradable 4 times. At first, only the top row of four towers is available. Build one of those and upgrade it to the max, and the corresponding second row tower opens up. Build all eight towers and upgrade all of them to maximum, and the ninth ultimate tower unlocks, which is uberally strong but can be destroyed like any other tower.

There is a tower that teleports creeps back to their spawn area and one that turns enemy creeps into friendly creeps for the other team to deal with. Both can only be done once per creep.

Most powerful towers attack random creeps, so you have to use some micro to manually attack the creeps hit by the random towers with the towers that can be aimed and finish them off.

Opinions needed

- Would this be fun to play?
- Would ya play a map like this?
- Is the lack of different armor and attack types a problem?
- Should I put in more than those 9 towers?
- Anything else that you think should really be in a TD and is missing from the above?

asjkldf;jkasfh;gkls!!!!!!
I made a long and detailed reply... but it got lost when I clicked post...
So... here I go... again. *sigh.*

I think this map would add some TD goodness to the drab pool of other TDs.
I would play it, test it, and help create if you need. :)
The lack of more then one armor/attack I think will only enhance the game. On such a small map those kind of details can only distract in my opinion.
As long as those 9 towers are unique (which I'm sure they will be) I think it will be a perfect amount. (I personaly hate dealing with mutiple builders, spreading their unique buildings out, keeping them in check, etc. Although Clan MaP's TD did the two builder system well.)
Right now I don't think it's missing anything, it sounds like you've put alot of effort into it. Good luck, and hope you decide to make it! :)

(If not, I might steal the idea. :) )
Well, this post is significantly shorter then my first, but I didn't feel like retyping the whole thing again.

I must say The Concept sounds superb. I especially liked the system how the creeps get stronger; good thinking! I like it so much especially because you are not competing against the map itself, because creeps themselves don't kill you, but against an opposing team of players, which is always more intense.

I would only like to see teamplay encouraged more. Your tower system negates that, because everybody needs to build everything to get that super tower (dunno if anybody would want it, though, not unless you can also have spells that can protect your towers from destruction). Perhaps it would be better if you had more specializations, like upgrades that work for only a group of towers, and good tower combinations between towers of different groups (like, for ex., slow+splash damage), so that players need to specialize and build the maze as a team to get the maximum effect.

Meh, I notice again and again that my ideas of an ideal map always require ideal players, because average bnetters are just too dumb or too selfish to play as a team. :/

Hmm... this ultimate tower business is getting tricky.

First, one has to choose between 1) building one tower and continuously upgrading it to tech to second row or 2) building lots of basic first row towers to actually make the needed maze. Ideally one player should be the 'mazer' and mass cheap towers and everyone else techs to different second row towers. Only later on would players be able to get different second row towers, let alone all four.

The ultimate tower is mostly there because at that point the game is already more or less decided, with a difference of say 100 kills and both sides having a billion towers. At that point the ultimate tower is there to stir things up again.

It can be destroyed, but has a lot of hit points and if the other team has not enough War Rooms to focus on it and kill it, it will be there for a while until the War Rooms recharge.

--> Am I dreaming and would you prefer there to be no ultimate tower?


Hmmm... I have the teleport tower which acts as a pseudo-slow, but I may add a slowing tower too. Thanks!



I wonder if the players will be smart enough to build the tower that teleports creeps back to their spawn area at the end of their maze and not right next to the spawn area.
o_O


True, but won't the players may be be jaded after a zillion mauls with all those different races and a hundred towers (of which only like 3 are useful, of course)?

It's a very interesting idea, but how will you deal with player's building on each other's 'spot'. That's already bad enough in your tradtitional team TD.

Be careful with how you implement competitive elements. The large majority of players do not like directly competitive games (its a fact, there's a strong element of shame in any head-to-head challenge and well, no one wants to find out you're not the best).

I would suggest rewarding a team based on how well they do. i.e. if they constantly best the opposing team for 5 rounds, they get access to a new tech.

The other issue is that players are going to leave real quick. Games aren't going to last very long simply because the losing team will hop out faster than you can blink. The way to prevent this is not to reward a winning team with any benefits. Instead, you keep a score, have an awards presentation at the end of game (best player, worst player etc). Or, both teams could start from scratch each round and each round would play like a puzzle with each team taking a crack at coming up with a solution. Maybe the teams could control the speed of their creep spawns and both teams could compete for time (first to finish to wave X).

Oh a note on towers: the thing about the average TD is that there usually isnt any reason for a player to use more then 3 types of towers. A cheap mazer tower (in TDs that allow mazing), a slow/frost tower and the basic damage tower. Some TDs are even more simplistic.

Do these maps really have hundreds of towers? Like hell they do. Frost tower lvl 1-20 is still just 1 tower. I don't care how you count it, it's one tower.

The key is always in building combos. Tower A should increase the effect of Tower B. Maybe Tower A's effect is detrimental to Tower C's effect so you have to space them out.

On the flipside, most players don't really want to get cerebral when they play a TD. Your typical TD is a lazy gamer's lounge. The average mouseclick rate would be what, 15 cpm? Even in TDs where the mapmaker allowed for micromanagement and specifically designed actively used combos that the player has to target, how often do players actually bother? How many people put their 10 frost towers on a separate hotkey and ensure that every last bleeding critter is freezing its ass off?

It's mainly these issues that put me off developing TDs. People simply do not want a good TD.

Now that was bitter.
:o


Building in each other's way is exactly the point though. :)


...then why did they buy War3 in the first place?
:(


I was thinking of wiping everything clean every 8 or 10 minutes, so that the losing team still has a chance to win next round. I hope this is sufficient...


I laugh at the TD makers who claim that 'one tower does less damage but fires faster'... as if that makes a difference. The key, imo, is splash damage. Perhaps massed single target towers should be unable to kill all of the creeps while massed AoE towers should be unable to do enough damage to kill them all, so the happy medium involves some AoE towers to wear everyone down and then single target towers to kill them. This is theorycraft, of course...


Micro with freeze and poison sucks. There is a difference between pointing all of your direct damage towers at one creep (which many people will do, if they are about to leak) and telling each tower to shoot different creeps (which no one does).


Do people want a good custom game period? All that is played nowadays are Leet DragonbALL!!!! MAUL!!!!!v1.1631745 kind of maps. But that doesn't mean the mapmaker should give in and make his map suck just so it will be played.
:8

Hahaha please don't give in and make a Dragonball TD where you can use one kind of tower and build it 294860249684 times and win with 20398240698 gold left

A good choice will be maybe special levels, for example levels with all units spawning at the same time where splash towers will be better, and levels where one units spawns after the other with about half a second waiting time, where single target towers will be better.

I like the sound of that.
Perhaps allow the host to choose many options, one being like this.
Group spawn / timed spawn / random spawn / etc...
So at the begining of a game the host can select it to be:
100 rounds - random spawn types - no bonus gold - ultimate tower restricted - team play

Anyway, this thread has alot of potential. Keep it up.

Best of luck.

On player pyschology: WC3 in its original formed was designed as it was because of this. Heroes are easily revived. Units move relatively quickly, making it easy to retreat. Best of all, a player can choose not to engage his human opponent straight off in even a standard melee game; he can creep.

If you lose a ladder game below lvl 10, you pretty much don't lose anything. Persistence will eventually get you a wc3 ladder lvl of ~12 (unless you're completely hopeless). Why do you think they use a lvl system instead of displaying raw win/loss statistics? Because they can pad your ego.

If you want proof, simply get on bnet and look for all the FREE EVERYTHING games out there. By the gods, they're still around.

Splash vs fast towers: That depends on your system. If all your creeps (or just some) had hardened skin, fast firing towers with low damage become useless real quick. Additionally, fast firing towers with low damage distribute their damage more often, meaning less "lost" damage that results from really powerful units shooting a target with almost no hp left. There's so many ways you could take the wc3 combat system.

On micro: I fall asleep during TD rounds. There's something wrong with that formula.

The way I see it, TDs are more like puzzle games than anything else. Players should be struggling to get just the right combo of towers placed at the right places to get through the next level. And when it comes right down to it, TDs are not so disimilar from simcity...

th15 certainly knows what he's talking about, and do agree with him.
However, I believe this TD has true potential, and it should at least be brought into a testing stage to find out if it will inface be any good. (In my opinion it will be, if done correctly.)

This is an awesome idea. I've seen th15's skills at map making and I know for sure that he can make it work correctly. The real question here would be "Will it be fun?". Sometimes good ideas get shot down from being boring.

Uh... th15? th15 is retired from tower defenses, and I understand it was because he failed to make them suck enough to be b.networthy.
^_^



The future of tower defense: macromanagement instead of micromanagement.


----

Already found a tiny little loophole in my plans. If creeps increase in hit points on successful kills, then as long as you manage to kill one creep per wave, their hit points keep increasing and you'll never be able to kill more than that one creep per wave.

Maybe they should only increase in life if you manage to kill all of the creeps in a wave. But then players will make sure they kill only #-1 creeps and hover at base hp forever.
Tricky. :(

Heh, actually the only TD idea I had that I thought might work involved adding mini-games to the TD. Not the pointless "Hey, you've got a unit in this small little box" minigames, but something more integral to the concept of TDs.

Eh, what do you mean exactly by macromanagement?

As for creeps, thats not a hard problem to solve. Make the health upgrade increase health by a really, really small amount. Each creep killed would upgrade that health upgrade between 1-3 or so times (depending on the relative strength of that creep type). Of course that would only work if you have a gold bounty for killing or a penalty for leaking.

i like the idea, i personally would play it...

tele tower needs a long kooldown...


i like the idea of tower-racial conflict... ie. a slow tower will cause an arror tower to attack slower... so they must be seperate etc.