CDT Update 3 Beta - The Tavern Expansion Discussion

@Twistedsoul85 quote:

Might have missed it but has there been an upgrade to how many items you can have in your bank? I'm a hoarder :(

We did not increase the shop or inventory count.  We only doubled the amount of items you can drop on the floor and the amount of characters you can create for now.  All of these changes increase the size of the save file.  Some already have data loss issue when trying to sync their save file with the Ranked server.  So we have to be careful about how much we increase the size of the save.

@Black Mamba quote:

Also, I have a question --

Suppose I were to switch back to the actual Ranked game and not Beta, would it delete the additional Beta files that were downloaded on my PC? Mainly I want to switch back and forth between v8.2 and v8.3 beta without having to download the entire beta content again and again. Please let me know if this is possible. If that it not possible then are there any local files I can backup to copy-paste later when I want to re-switch to beta? Right now I'm in v8.3 beta.

You should look at setting up sandboxie.  It is like having a second install of of the game.  I have a guide here.  Just make sure to make a copy of the folder and dont use the main folder.

@Black Mamba quote:

BTW -- is the Top Hat & Bow rolling will be made to Santa Accs standards? Also, any update on whether the Pirate Hat will be included in Buc Bay or Pirate Invasion?

The top hat and bow should be rolling the same as they do in lab.  We did not buff them outside of that.

The pirate hat was not added this time around.  We can look at doing that in the next update.

For the Santa CSB, we did have more flurries and bigger during testing but seemed like too much after a while.

I tried a bit of temple of polybius and I had some questions/remarks. 

- The bosses during the first phase of the final gauntlet don't have any health bars (demon, goblin thing, spider queen, kraken)

- The krakens during wave 17 get stuck on the map, don't ask me where cause it seems to be everywhere. They fly into the ceiling, under the bridge whatever and never come back sometimes which equals losing the map

- How much hp does the kraken tentacles have exactly, cause it seems like a lot and they are hard enough to hit already. Also are they elemental immune?

any 0s you see on hitting the kraken in purple are hits on its body while it's protected. It's just a regular kraken although the HP values may be different..

There werent any pathing problems (any really CRAZY ones at least) in the version I uploaded, so we're looking at this, it might be a build issue.

There can only be one boss health bar on the screen, so if you have multiple bosses, we have to use the regular kill count bar.

@Alhanalem quote:

any 0s you see on hitting the kraken in purple are hits on its body while it's protected. It's just a regular kraken although the HP values may be different..

Lets say on the normal krakens in boss rush and the seahorse can take all tentacles pretty quickly, however this kraken lets you poke it with a seahorse for a few minutes while the tentacles are removed 1 by 1, which makes me wanna know how much health they actually have. When I tried with the chicken nothing seemed to happen at all as he only pecks the kraken his body I assume.

@Alhanalem quote:

There can only be one boss health bar on the screen, so if you have multiple bosses, we have to use the regular kill count bar.

I assumed that was the problem, is there any way to give them a small health bar like the other mobs when you look at them? Or is that not possible.

I love the tavern <3 great job! I love that I can remove items from my shop that have been there for years, ever since my item box got full! Thank you!!  

I was worried about my save file because of the amount of items I have and everything is saving fine for me.  The save file beta is using actually has more items than I currently do >.<

I like the new map Dread Dungeon, only played it once, but I like the feel of a smaller map.

At this moment I can't provide any feedback related to the Temple Of Water Maps, I can't seem to get them to load even once -- it just crashes anytime I launch the map.
I've crashed 6 times in a row now while trying to play them no luck. 

Update:
Tested out the accessories buff on Halloween Spooktacular 2, it works fine! Thanks for that!
Also, can someone please explain what this setting does::


I don't want to play around with it coz I'm skeptical if it will mess sommething up! :D

@Kirbykiller quote:

Lets say on the normal krakens in boss rush and the seahorse can take all tentacles pretty quickly, however this kraken lets you poke it with a seahorse for a few minutes while the tentacles are removed 1 by 1, which makes me wanna know how much health they actually have. When I tried with the chicken nothing seemed to happen at all as he only pecks the kraken his body I assume.

The tentacles do have more HP.  Mischief may be able to comment on how much compared to boss rush since he set that up.  But yeah they are beefy.  The event was like that so not sure that changed from the event.  As far as gameplay, I think it was just harbingers that were added.  

The parameters for the challenge are set very high, because the original challenge was very difficult (and intended to be so). We did not want to nerf it because we wanted people to be able to experience it in all its evil glory. It is actually possibly a bit more difficult (particularly right now due to a bug) thanks to the addition of the harbingers.

While it can be cleared solo (we've done it), the challenge was designed for a group. Also, if you can beat it with Hardcore on, well, you da man, I'll just say that now :)

I am excited to try the diamond making machine ^.^

Anyone want to team up and pool some coal together?  I have around 30 coal to contribute.

Downvote

• Fenix / Pony boost... I've got quite good Trans Fenix' / Ponies which are closer to Chicken/Seahorses than to weaker pets like Tiger, Cupid and so on. No clue who actually checks DPS numbers on new pets.
• General upscaling of several weapons / rewards... Why adding something challenging like Ember Volcano and now more and more powerful equipment to make it easier? Practice will make it easier by its own...
  

Upvote

• ToP/W [will we see a forth Temple map to introduce a new boss like Old One?]
• Colorized Item marker
• Hero Info button!!!

Needs to be looked at (once I've got time)

• DST target priority Djinns over Wyvern... unlike Mambo stated ["Let's not change something for good because it will break my build"]... the behave of Wyvern and other enemies differs. You are able to replace a whole stack of auras [5+5+3DU] + buff beam [4DU] for a single DST [8DU] on some maps... If you are using the regular NM builds [aura stack + tbb + some other ****] then I agree that old orders seems silly... the use of DSTs is mindblowing once you leave the common way... 
  
  This needs a lot of testing!!!
  
  
• Golden Enemy Boost... way more reasonable than before needs testing though

other stuff... great work/I don't mind  (may changes with more testing)

Tavern Expansion:

   Absolutely love it, great job Nexus. A bit annoyed that you lose the theme ewvery time you reenter tavern, but as I understand that's just the way it is atm. Also, since there is a small trophy shelf in the upper floor, could we get a taller one in the second level? Most Monk, Apprentice, and Squire weapons will be too tall to fit (visually) in that small little alcove.

Temple of Polybius/Temple of Water

   Redesign looks great, plays just like the open map and the rewards look sweet. I do have a  concern though.

   The spawn rate on non-HC Poly (challenge) is dismal. it took me 12, yes twelve, runs to get an ult Kraken Kannon. For a map as long and difficult as Polybius where you can only get 1 per run I'm not sure I like that drop rate at all.

   I like Temple of Water, but I wasn't able to quite figure out a build and just got the weapons via other means. I still really like the map.

   I'm not sure I like reusing the Ember Crescent model so early. It still looks cool though.

   Temple of Water has some nasty pathing issues on the North(?) end of the map. (Near the "sun roof" that fish wyverns and copters enter from)

   The water level acts as a ceiling that stops projectiles from passing through and messes up your aim.

   For the survival rewards, I'd keep them as they are. (At least the fairy; I think we should have dedicated places to farm certain pets)

  Overall the weapons just look pretty awesome. The Staff of Elders seemed a bit underwhelming since its low on both DPS and stats (from a 286^ that I got so still not 100% on that). Kraken Kannon blows both Mobys and Pawns out of the water with a monstrous 504/^; I am going to farm the *** out of them. Undertow is Roger's Revenge but trades size and some stats to look a lot cooler and gain 0.75/^. I'm not sure if Mischief Maker is any good. You have to get one from NMHC if you want good stats (ludicrously good stats from HC by the way). I didn't exactly get a good Ult, so I wasn't able to get a good test of the fire damage going, but the 250^ or so  that I got wasn't terribly impressive. Need to farm some more I guess.

Dread Dungeon

   Other than the AI issues that Mambo already pointed out it seems a good map to me.

Glitterhelm looks a lot better with the update.

Fusion Rift damage change - Thank you so much, now we know how badly Classics are getting embarrassed by Rifts

@EagleOne quote:Practice will make it easier by its own...

Strongly disagree...

Not sure if this is a bug or oversight but -- apparently the WW core drop weapons are also getting the damage increase buff. Ideally it should just be the reward weapons that get the buff, right? 

Also on all maps (NMHC[+MM]) the item drops are totally goofed up -- every map just drops cursed torn, polished, amazing etc. items. Earlier in my Dead Dungeon post I mentioned about this problem, but I was assuming it was related only to Dread Dungeon, but turns out this is an issue across all maps. So becasue of this, I can't test out:

Fix for armor being removed more than weapons (weapons were rated higher in quality)

Rest, I still can't play either of the Temple of Water maps due to crashing soon as I launch them. Game settings are at low with VSync enabled and Multi-threaded thingy turned off. Drivers, .Net dependables etc. are all updated & latest. So any suggested fixes for this? 

Also for the Nth time, can someone please clarify what the new transparency options are supposed to do? Does it affect the minimap tower display or the actual tower display? Changing the sliders does nothing for me, even after restarting and re-building towers in the Tavern.

@Caimen0 quote:

Strongly disagree...

I remember times, every new map was unbeatable... Temple O'Love was the hardest map one time... Nothing has changed for such a long time but people figured strategies and it got easier by its own. Same with Lab Assault when you play it regular instead of the cheesy BF Drill. And nowadays I run Ember solo with 3 afks while I've build the map with trans-armored builders...

Adding harder content but in the same way adding more and more powerful stuff is totally shortsighted. Sadly we do have a lot of "vets" with several thousands of hours who think they still have to progress -.-

Rest, I still can't play either of the Temple of Water maps due to crashing soon as I launch them. Game settings are at low with VSync enabled and Multi-threaded thingy turned off. Drivers, .Net dependables etc. are all updated & latest. So any suggested fixes for this?

I can't reproduce this crash. Can you give us a dxdiag?

@EagleOne quote:
Sadly we do have a lot of "vets" with several thousands of hours who think they still have to progress -.-

Cut the Ad Hominem. Seriously. Can we have a discussion without you insulting people who disagree with you for more than 1 post? Apparently not, but I tried. Literally all I said was "Strongly disagree", and somehow that requires insulting my capability in this game?

Also this entire game is about "progressing". Making big numbers bigger. Am I missing something?

@Alhanalem quote:

I can't reproduce this crash. Can you give us a dxdiag?

Here's the default one: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0h7THVY-TDteEhxcXc4MHo2WTQ
Here's the one that said Run 64 Bit DxDiag: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0h7THVY-TDtejV4VUwtWlo4SjA

BTW, earlier in morning I tried the beta update in the Sandboxie mode as suggested by Acen to have access to both beta and the current version. Oddly enough from the Sandboxie launch, the Temple Of Water map loaded nicely, but it crashed when I hit return to tavern. 
I'll do a verify integrity cache and test out without Sandboxie when I return home, running the game and watching my desktop via TeamViewer is laggy as hell lol.

@Caimen0 quote:

@EagleOne quote:
Sadly we do have a lot of "vets" with several thousands of hours who think they still have to progress -.-

Cut the Ad Hominem. Seriously. Can we have a discussion without you insulting people who disagree with you for more than 1 post? Apparently not, but I tried. Literally all I said was "Strongly disagree", and somehow that requires insulting my capability in this game?

Also this entire game is about "progressing". Making big numbers bigger. Am I missing something?

I'd like too see the part with the insult highlighted. Just curious because I DID NOT insult anyone. If you feel offended by my posts, just ignore them?

About progression... are you really discussing with me now that players with several hundreds if not thousands of hours have a right to progress farther and farther? The game will be always cut to the latest maps -.- How about balancing it a bit better so players actually have a reason to play other maps than the latest?

There isn't anything unbalanced about the current process with which content is updated. There is usually at least 1 hard map and one beginner to intermediate map with every other update the CDT has produced so far.  The CDT's goal is ultimately to not force any one to have to play content.. it is up to the players to choose what they want to play, always.  New content is always entirely optional, with the exception of the lobby level in this particular update.  

If your mouse finger is experiencing some issues when selecting what maps to play I suggest contacting technical support and then maybe seeing a physician or perhaps a priest to exorcise the demon/biased entity that has taken up residence within your appendage.. perhaps your mouse as well.  You may also consider duct-taping a weight to your non-mouse hand to see if the balance issue you're experiencing is leveled out by putting more weight on the escape key.  

@EagleOne quote:

@Caimen0 quote:

@EagleOne quote:
Sadly we do have a lot of "vets" with several thousands of hours who think they still have to progress -.-

Cut the Ad Hominem. Seriously. Can we have a discussion without you insulting people who disagree with you for more than 1 post? Apparently not, but I tried. Literally all I said was "Strongly disagree", and somehow that requires insulting my capability in this game?

Also this entire game is about "progressing". Making big numbers bigger. Am I missing something?

I'd like too see the part with the insult highlighted. Just curious because I DID NOT insult anyone. If you feel offended by my posts, just ignore them?

About progression... are you really discussing with me now that players with several hundreds if not thousands of hours have a right to progress farther and farther? The game will be always cut to the latest maps -.- How about balancing it a bit better so players actually have a reason to play other maps than the latest?

I'm just guessing here but I think the person took issue with you putting "vets" in quotation marks, as if to suggest most so-called people aren't really veterans of the game.  I don't think you intended any harm to anyone, so just be careful how you word your posts.

One QoL change request if it might be possible to sneak it in --
Update the Moby's Mobile Launcher max Shots per Second(SpS) to correctly display it as the Pawnshot equivalent.
Moby's max SpS displayed is 4, whereas Pawnshot's max SpS displayed is 8, whereas in practice both fire at the same speed. Seen plenty of people getting confused becasue of it.

Rest, tomorrow I have a lot of free time(yay for weekends) so I will update this post or make a new one for DSTs and other changes I haven't tested yet.

@Black Mamba quote:

One QoL change request if it might be possible to sneak it in --
Update the Moby's Mobile Launcher max Shots per Second(SpS) to correctly display it as the Pawnshot equivalent.
Moby's max SpS displayed is 4, whereas Pawnshot's max SpS displayed is 8, whereas in practice both fire at the same speed. Seen plenty of people getting confused becasue of it.

Rest, tomorrow I have a lot of free time(yay for weekends) so I will update this post or make a new one for DSTs and other changes I haven't tested yet.

This was discussed in the Buccaneer Bay update - it's actually the pawn shot that had its attack speed messed with.

Ahh ok, then we can have the Pawnshot SpS be displayed as 4. 

Are the crash dump files in the \Binaries\Win2 folder any helpful in determining the cause of the crashes?
I did a clean install of DD on both my main Steam & Sandboxie Steam, now the Temple of Water maps crashes less frequently, but in every 1 out of 4 attempts to launch the map it still crashes. So going forward I will be keeping those crash-dumps should you need it.

In my limited testing of the Temple of Polybius map, it appears that the DSTs are crazy fast and near instant, making it very hard to dodge if playing with characters having slower movement! :D I think this is because of the DST buff so it is applying to this map as well. I was getting knocked off all over the place in my first couple of attempts LOL. Apart from that it seemed fun. Crashed on the Arch Kraken wave for some reason soon as the 2nd Kraken arrived.

Couple of bugs I found out:

• Copters get stuck on ToP at these locations -- http://i.imgur.com/PMLhrJu.png
• Not sure if actually a bug, but some of the SnDs have crazy HP compared to others. Mainly the SnD stack.

Rest I'll update this post if I find any bugs or have any other feedback. Only 2 feedback for now would be fixing the random crashing soon™ and tweaking the DST speed on ToW a bit. Apart from that my only minor complaint would be that the map has a very monotonous approach for the 1st wave.

DST Feedback.
Did some extensive testing on Sky City(pretty much the best map to test DSTs out). Here are my thoughts and feedback:

• Overall impression -- really well done.
• The amount of random misses due to bouncing mobs has reduced drastically due to increased speed. Which almost feel near instant. Its still not hit-scan(sigh), but its close enough.
• Didn't have a single shot miss on bouncing Ogres. Previously it would miss 2-3 out of 5 shots, but now in my 3 survival runs it was bang on target.
• Skeletons and Spiders tend to make it miss a few shots when they are bouncing(primarily coz these 2 have smaller hit-boxes).
• Copter Flares are almost a non issue now. It still ends up targeting the flares, but since the speed is fast it ends up hitting the Copter, well most of the time depending on the angle or from where the shot was fired.
• Having said that I would still prefer Copters bumped over Wyverns in targeting priority and have their Flare not distract the DST shots.
• Firing rate felt a tad bit higher than normal, but I think it was a perception due to the faster speed.
• As for damage -- I didn't check it out much yet, I'll have to grab the current live numbers and then compare the two(anyone willing to help out message me[here or on Steam]).

If I find anything else with DSTs I'll update this post.

(PS: Testing was done at 5-6k stats. I do intend to test out again with 1.5k to 2k stats)

I dont know if those files would help.  However we knew on release about the crash and what is causing it.  Just havent got a build with the fix in yet.  However we intend for it to be fixed in the next build.