Upgrading towers

I don't get why we are getting so little mana to upgrade towers but mobs hp/dmg/count increasing every wave, at the end of a run only a few towers/traps are max rank and i just find it super odd. 

 I Feel like it should be enough mana to get at least 80-90% towers to max rank, not the 20% we have now. I have no choice but to upgrade the stuff that is gonna kill bosses to max rank and ignore everything else. which is completely silly. We have to ignore walls and other utility just to make sure things die.

The game expects you to have a tier 5 walls at wave 7 cause bosses are doing 50% more damage but you can not waste mana getting them to tier 5  cause that would mean a dps loss on traps and other defense units, instead you have to pocket a few hundred mana to repair walls so bosses won't tear through them in which they would be able to withstand a bit easier if we had more mana, which also would let us upgrade other defenses to do more damage while bosses are speeding to your walls.

I'm super bad at wording things but I hope you guys understand what I am trying to get across here :)

@Kevo149 quote:

 I Feel like it should be enough mana to get at least 80-90% towers to max rank, not the 20% we have now. I have no choice but to upgrade the stuff that is gonna kill bosses to max rank and ignore everything else. which is completely silly. We have to ignore walls and other utility just to make sure things die.

I also found that a bit disappointing at first, having come from DD1 survivals, but I've come to terms with it.  The limited mana provides important strategic choices - do I upgrade a few defenses to the max or everything a bit?  Do I upgrade walls or damaging defenses?

Personally, I tend to go with the offensive route and concentrate my upgrade at the high threat and/or boss lanes.   I also use my hero to distract bosses so my walls take less damage.  It's worked fine up to insane at least.  I'm in the process of farming the last gear upgrades I need to push into nightmare.

It creates another barrier to multiplayer.  If you open your games up to randoms on anything challenging then you have to constantly be badgering people about how not to waste the limited mana.  In contrast, DD1 had so much mana that you couldn't effectively get it all yourself (it would despawn due to the limit on how much mana could be present) which meant more players where always helpful no matter how bad their decisions where. 

Also keep in mind that the number of defenses can drastically vary. If you have 1000DU, that's either 20 ballistas or 50 explosive traps. If you're using mostly traps and upgrading them all evenly, you'll probably see a max of tier 3-4 whereas if you're using a bunch of 50DU defenses, you'll be able to get a solid portion of them to T5 by the end.

It is also a big part of the strategy check which lane has the biggest threat at the end of the round and apply up0grades accordingly. Also ensure you pick up mana before anyone opens a chest or the mana on the ground disappears.

@Zuqual quote:

It creates another barrier to multiplayer.  If you open your games up to randoms on anything challenging then you have to constantly be badgering people about how not to waste the limited mana.  In contrast, DD1 had so much mana that you couldn't effectively get it all yourself (it would despawn due to the limit on how much mana could be present) which meant more players where always helpful no matter how bad their decisions where. 

Matchmaking issues should be solved through other means than making everything easy enough for any beginner to handle.  Competitive games commonly have rating-based matchmaking, maybe we could use something similar here too to avoid the frustration from being forced to play with much lower skilled players?  Or perhaps some kind of qualification for each difficulty that you need to complete solo in order to enter public matches?

@Fozzie quote:

It is also a big part of the strategy check which lane has the biggest threat at the end of the round and apply up0grades accordingly. Also ensure you pick up mana before anyone opens a chest or the mana on the ground disappears.

Where is the strategy when you have 3 other players and mobs hp and attack increasing but not enough mana to counter this? I Will agree it's enough mana for solo but when more people are involved you can not prepare for bosses and such properly cause you don't have the mana to counter the inflated hp/attack. 

Maybe the mana count needs to be more when more players are present. 

[[31834,users]] I agree but even when i decide to only use harpoon the same problem persist, mostly in multiplayer cause towers are not gonna do enough dps once mobs hp gets inflated.

If you guys are interested in a history lesson among this, there was a decent-sized thread in the defense council forums right when green mana was very first introduced (early 2014). There were some people who wanted in-map progression to do away with defense units, and instead give players the constant choice between summoning a new tower and upgrading an existing one; both would be equally viable. Then there were others who wanted the same model as DD1 where you start the game with enough mana to fill all DU, then spend each wave upgrading existing defenses until they're all max level by the end of the mission.

What ultimately resulted from that conversation was sort of a hybrid of the two - fill all (or most) DU before wave one, then prioritize what you upgrade. It's not a terrible system in my opinion, but I would have preferred more freedom on the choice between an army of T1 towers and few T5 towers in a lane.

In my NM3 builds I don't think I'm able to get any defenses except 2 AA's past t3 (2 upgrades)... I don't recall if it's been lowered since the last patch but it sure makes it intense :) (which isn't always a bad thing).

I've tried to pay attention to when green mana drops from mobs and sometimes entire lanes will be w/o green mana until the last group of creeps. It's odd. Especially horde waves it seems they drop very little mana. So I wondered if there was a specific amount of mana per wave designed to drop, or if it's per enemy wave group and maybe they just miscalculated.

I would prefer it if enemies didn't drop mana and you just got everything from the chest.  I might feel differently if I was on a dps hero but, because I play solo, I have never had that experience.

@Zuqual quote:

I would prefer it if enemies didn't drop mana and you just got everything from the chest.  I might feel differently if I was on a dps hero but, because I play solo, I have never had that experience.

ye but then there is a problem, how can u repair if u don't have mana? There are alot of situations (like boss who don't die) where the mana of mobs save u to repair the walls... And i think i'm too stupid to keep mana just in case, so let mobs drop mana (and pink unicorn).

Only certain mobs drop a significant amount of mana, the rest are negligible or non existent. So unless you get a big wave of spear throwers/drakin/orc the mana dropped won't even be worth the time to pick it up.

And then there's that problem with the mana limit on the map, where sometimes you are in a duo and someone goes and open that chest just as it's available, wasting every single drop of mana, decent or not.

Actually, the total mana dropped from any given wave is constant.  It's distributed according to the strength of enemies.  So if you're solo and the high threat lane spawns kobolds, the goblins will drop fairly large amounts of small mana crystals.  If there's a few drakins, they'll drop big crystals but goblins will drop hardly any.

I haven't observed chests eating mana in multiplayer, but it always happens to me when playing solo.  Except on Gates of Dragonfall.  I hope it's just a bug and will get fixed, because it's annoying to have to first do a round to collect all the mana, then open a chest, and finally do another round to repair and upgrade defenses.  It's not like build phase is time-limited anyway so why not just have the chest automatically collect all the loose mana and give it to me?

Awesome topic, glad it's getting a lot of feedback, thank you OP!

I personally dislike the idea of micro managing Mana. I feel all the creative energy should be put into building defenses, testing their limits and defining how they function with your character(s) and items.

Fabricating another means of difficulty through restricting Mana lowers the "learning curve" by forcing people to Fail Forward as others have mentioned in previous threads. It is extremely difficult to correct your mistakes now more than before since you potentially waste anywhere from 10-25 minutes of your time, if something doesn't fit in your build.

Ultimately, this makes the game very boring for myself because you'll never truly gauge your gear level potential and you're constantly focused on simply enforcing the strategy of Damage output vs Defense ... I would rather be constantly upgrading Defenses in a game rather than sitting  behind the lines standing guard and playing "Repair Blockade Defense 2" (yes I will continually use that line until it sinks in with everyone)

I really wish Trendy would do away with these limitations as it only creates an unfair atmosphere for Newer players to the game and only creates a fabricated challenge to Veterans and Hardcore players. You should be able to change your build on the fly and upgrade your defense to the max by at least Wave 3 imho without the stress of Micro-management.

Players should have the liberty and freedom to do what they want with their Mana instead of constantly looking to hand it off to the builder.

My 2 cents, Cheers!

@Zuqual quote:

It creates another barrier to multiplayer.  If you open your games up to randoms on anything challenging then you have to constantly be badgering people about how not to waste the limited mana.  In contrast, DD1 had so much mana that you couldn't effectively get it all yourself (it would despawn due to the limit on how much mana could be present) which meant more players where always helpful no matter how bad their decisions where. 

This is so true. This is a great inconvenience when playing multiplayer. When teams use the strategy of "everyone take their lane", people tends to only upgrades defenses in their lane even if the lane is already overpowered, which cause weaker lanes to suffer. This also cause the mana/player actually decrease, therefore limiting strategic upgrades. 

If i have 1000 mana from chest, i know where the dangerous lane(s) is(are) and will upgrade my towers accordingly. 

However, when playing with 3 other people, i only get 250 mana from chest to upgrade the dangerous lanes and what assures me that other players will upgrade the right strategic towers? 

I agree that an an increase of the mana granted in chests should be boosted when playing multiplayer to counter the increase number of dangerous lanes.

@nuzo quote:

I really wish Trendy would do away with these limitations as it only creates an unfair atmosphere for Newer players to the game and only creates a fabricated challenge to Veterans and Hardcore players. You should be able to change your build on the fly and upgrade your defense to the max by at least Wave 3 imho without the stress of Micro-management.

At the moment there isn't really any need to change builds on the fly, except maybe in onslaught with the themed rounds.  If I can beat the map with a generic build and it's upgraded to the max by wave 3, what is there to do for the remaining waves?

I'd rather see a sandbox mode where you could build defenses with infinite mana and throw enemies of your choice at them.  Obviously it would not give any loot or XP, but it would be perfect for tinkering with builds.

@tdb quote:

@nuzo quote:

I really wish Trendy would do away with these limitations as it only creates an unfair atmosphere for Newer players to the game and only creates a fabricated challenge to Veterans and Hardcore players. You should be able to change your build on the fly and upgrade your defense to the max by at least Wave 3 imho without the stress of Micro-management.

At the moment there isn't really any need to change builds on the fly, except maybe in onslaught with the themed rounds.  If I can beat the map with a generic build and it's upgraded to the max by wave 3, what is there to do for the remaining waves?

I'd rather see a sandbox mode where you could build defenses with infinite mana and throw enemies of your choice at them.  Obviously it would not give any loot or XP, but it would be perfect for tinkering with builds.

no one wants towers upgraded by wave 3 we just need more mana when more players are present, a few more solo to upgrade walls and other utility towers. Right now the only thing you can do is upgrade dps towers and stand far away from ogres and keep the blockade repaired so it wont stomp and one shot your wall or anything behind it. Right now when ogres spawn DD2 becomes pure strat mode from DD1 except the mobs can kill you. 

Remember before the NM Revamp mobs had the same hp(I think attack stayed the same too could be wrong tho) solo or 4 players so the mana we got then was fine. Now that mobs damage and hp scale with players and rounds the mana we get now is not enough plain and simple. 

One more thing to note: When i play with 4 players I have to upgrade less cause walls need far more mana to sustain in a 4 player setting than it does solo, meaning even less damage is being put out and walls still dying just as fast. 

@Kevo149 quote:

no one wants towers upgraded by wave 3

Well, [[62273,users]] clearly seemed to want it.  Or how do you interpret "You should be able to [...] upgrade your defense to the max by at least Wave 3" (his words, not mine)?

@tdb quote:

@Kevo149 quote:

no one wants towers upgraded by wave 3

Well, nuzo clearly seemed to want it.  Or how do you interpret "You should be able to [...] upgrade your defense to the max by at least Wave 3" (his words, not mine)?

Exactly. What's the point of playing a Tower Defense Game when you can only play half the game in half the maps with half your stats and half of everything else ...

My point wasn't to dwindle on numbers as well, the point I was trying to make which eluded myself even was to play the game to is Max potential. Why even have a stat system or tier 5 upgrade level when the only chance you'll fully use that potential will be in Onslaught and the odd chance 25% of your defenses reach tier 5 in a normal game ...

The same issues arises with the Enchantress, I believe a majority of people (in it's current build) will never upgrade their gear to it's max potential since the cost is simply too high.

If features exist in the game, I would love to be able to maximize their use and take full advantage of my gameplay, otherwise, it feels very fabricated and controlling which makes the game very boring.

Cheers!

@nuzo quote:

@tdb quote:

@Kevo149 quote:

no one wants towers upgraded by wave 3

Well, nuzo clearly seemed to want it.  Or how do you interpret "You should be able to [...] upgrade your defense to the max by at least Wave 3" (his words, not mine)?

Snip

Good points they should just scale mobs assuming your are gonna have tier 5 everything. 

@nuzo quote:

My point wasn't to dwindle on numbers as well, the point I was trying to make which eluded myself even was to play the game to is Max potential. Why even have a stat system or tier 5 upgrade level when the only chance you'll fully use that potential will be in Onslaught and the odd chance 25% of your defenses reach tier 5 in a normal game ...

I wouldn't mind a slight increase of mana (and scaling of enemies so as to not make the game too easy), but upgrading everything to top tier by wave 3 is going overboard.  To make it work there would need to be drastic changes in the game.

To build 30 defenses and upgrade them to tier 5 would take about 16000 mana, so let's say the income is 5000 mana per wave.  Selling defenses gets you 75% of the investment back, which amounts to 12000 mana.  Put these together and you could sell and completely rebuild and upgrade your defenses every wave.  What sort of mechanics would make that work?  Perhaps they could have the lanes toggle resistances at every wave; magical lanes changing to physical or vice versa.  Or there would only be enemies on half the lanes, but they'd be so powerful you'd have to devote all your DUs on defending them, and then on the next wave the set of lanes with enemies would be different.

@tdb quote:

I wouldn't mind a slight increase of mana (and scaling of enemies so as to not make the game too easy), but upgrading everything to top tier by wave 3 is going overboard.  To make it work there would need to be drastic changes in the game.

-- snip --

In a map of 5 waves, being able to see your defenses at Max by wave 3 and 4 would be ideal. Or in a map of 7 waves, have it at wave 5 or 6  etc.

Ideally, imho, the last 2 waves of the map should be testing your limits and the endurance of your build. 

@tdb quote:

To build 30 defenses and upgrade them to tier 5 would take about 16000 mana, so let's say the income is 5000 mana per wave.  Selling defenses gets you 75% of the investment back, which amounts to 12000 mana.  Put these together and you could sell and completely rebuild and upgrade your defenses every wave.  What sort of mechanics would make that work?  Perhaps they could have the lanes toggle resistances at every wave; magical lanes changing to physical or vice versa.  Or there would only be enemies on half the lanes, but they'd be so powerful you'd have to devote all your DUs on defending them, and then on the next wave the set of lanes with enemies would be different.

Now you're getting it! Exactly, this sounds more of a challenge, rather than the limits of micro managing Mana. Great idea! Hopefully more people read this snippet because it sounds like a fun challenge to the game!

Cheers!

@nuzo quote:

Now you're getting it! Exactly, this sounds more of a challenge, rather than the limits of micro managing Mana. Great idea! Hopefully more people read this snippet because it sounds like a fun challenge to the game!

It sounds a bit tedious TBH.  I haven't clocked my build, but I'd guess that out of a 20 minute map the initial build takes 3-4 minutes and subsequent build phases 1 minute each.  If the resistances kept changing and I'd have to do a complete rebuild before each wave, every build phase would take 3-4 minutes.  Maybe even 5 minutes, because pressing q and clicking each defense four times takes a few seconds per defense too.  Suddenly a 7 wave map would take 45 minutes, out of which 30 minutes would be build phases.

How else could we sink the excess mana?  Perhaps there could be nearly invisible saboteur goblins which would get behind your lines, target a defense and instantly destroy it.  That would be a more engaging mechanic than forcing complete rebuilds through resistances.  It would be problematic for single player though - what if the saboteurs destroy your cannons but you have your huntress out?  Maybe the destroyed defense could leave behind a wreckage that could be repaired by anyone but it would still cost 90% of completely rebuilding the defense.

I'm still of the opinion that fully upgraded defenses are better suited for epic maps though, like survival was in DD1.  Onslaught has some potential, but one of the most disappointing things about it currently is the lack of mana.  Another is that most rounds have the same low numbers of enemies as normal maps.  It feels more like attrition than an epic war.  The problem in DD1 survival though was that it took half an hour to get through a single wave with 4000+ enemies in it.  The sweet spot is somewhere in between these extremes.

Incursions are another candidate.  They currently feel more epic than normal maps, with hordes of enemies coming from everywhere.  I'm a bit disappointed that they only have 5 waves though.  I wish there was a tool with which I could design my own enemy schedules for maps and see if I could discover something cool (obviously tweaked maps would give no loot or XP).

@tdb quote:

@nuzo quote:

Now you're getting it! Exactly, this sounds more of a challenge, rather than the limits of micro managing Mana. Great idea! Hopefully more people read this snippet because it sounds like a fun challenge to the game!

Snip

Also Here is another thing. If they increase mana they could actually make sub cores harder to protect, because right now if they blow up you might as well leave the game and restart because you won't have enough mana to counter this. 

For instance i was playing greystone plaza and the spear throwers decided to kill the gate lock below them(this is north west spawn) instead of my barricades so i just had to quit and restart. Since there is no extra man there was no way for me to adjust to this outcome. In DD1 i could adjust if something leaked through and  map would still be hard.