I am hoping you fix the mining. It's pretty useless. The returns are too small to justify the high investment. When you are low level that upgrades are expensive.. When you have enough money and level high enough the mining is crap.
First off, this game is a work of art, like everything else you do FM. Dropped $5 within an hour or so simply because you guys did it and deserve support. Will probably drop another 5-10 if the long-term viability seems to be there. Enjoying the game, but there's some frustrations as well. I'll try to stick to stuff others haven't really talked about much. (Suggestions bolded for ease of reading) *Melee units make enemies strafe sideways in an attempt to get at them. Enemies also go sideways a bit attempting to get to the outside towers sometimes. This causes the bulk of the dps units (gunners) to show off how horrible they are at leading a target. Most of my deaths are because my melee guys AI breaks (They often stand around doing nothing after a kill) and they're sitting on the left side of the map stationary, and there's an enemy going from right side to left after the melee guys and my gunners are all focused on it and continually missing. 2-4secs of this greatly increases the chance of something killing me due to tons of missed DPS. I'd like to see either a way to improve their leading, or prioritization, but either way it's kinda silly how badly these critters miss enemies moving sideways. (fireflies later on darting all over the place can accentuate the problem, altho they're not really dangerous) *As others said, the progression is nifty as anything, but ultimately pretty slow. I'm 11th gen lvl 46 max (money doubler but no damage doubler), and it takes bloody forever to grind through the lower stages (tip for peeps: don't get the melee guys until you absolutely NEED them... they lower global DPS a ton because of all the missing your units do, and add time on to even early levels because enemies are "dodging" gunfire by strafing sideways). I also feel punished for playing so well... i don't have access to the better units that others do simply because they reset a lot. Not sure on staying power of the game unless there's some way (besides me forking over more money) to speed up the early game. Suggestions: (1) Perk that reduces wave amounts by 1, max of 5. Perhaps only works on beaten stages (rounded to 10 levels so if current best is lvl63, levels 1-60 are 5 waves and 61+ are all 10) (2) improve AI so there's less misses, perhaps AI improvement/tracking comes with wep upgrade? (3) [edit] increase bullet speed perk, which would cause stuff to die significantly faster (4) Reduce +level purchase to something more affordable in the long run, but honestly i prefer this option the least since i'd rather see these levels go FASTER, not skip them entirely. Maybe there's a carpet-bombing unit (or hero!) I haven't unlocked yet? *Dmg perks and +starter money are complete garbage, since they pale in comparison to even a junky run & reset. You said in patch notes that perks now scale, but it sounds like it's not retroactive? Either way, the only perks that have any value atm are the +money earned and the +range/aoe splash size ones. Everything else is a total waste... hopefully first update addresses this, but for the meantime I'd urge players to go for distance/money earned perks. *Personally (and taken with a grain of salt since no one else seems to have this issue), I find machine gun damage to DRASTICALLY fall off in viability. Maybe it's because of my 11gen/46lvl ratio, but even with a bunch of perks spent on machine gun early on (before i knew better, currently at 140% machine gun dmg), I find I do next to nothing in active play with machine gun, which sucks because I LOVE the feel of shooting gunners and stuff, but after a while I do bumpkis with machine gun and depend entirely upon my support units (secondary weps are saved for high hp/high dmg ranged units, and imo machine gun should be able to take out the glass cannons super easy). At some point it becomes silly to upgrade machine gun anymore because it's so cost-prohibitive for a 1-2% upgrade to damage. *Rework armor plz. A flat chance to avoid taking full damage sucks. Like others said, the burst is real, and it's not fun going from 100 to 0 in an instant. Let us mitigate some of it... once you're about maxxed out on a run it's stupidly apparent it's only a matter of time, so the one-shot kills on us are unnecessary. *Just a suggestion on aesthetics, but maybe slow down the time of day change that happens once per world. It's kinda weird how quick it gets dark... All that being said, you guys knocked it out of the park again, as usual! Fun little idle game... I just wish there was more reward for active play since the core gunplay elements are in (headshots plz!). I don't want better secondary weps or more activatables, I want my machine gun to feel viable at all times! I should be able to FAR outpace support units for damage, with the limitation being that I can't be everywhere at once. Again, tremendous game and I'm impressed as always!
@Cronk I definitely agree with you on melee causing enemies to strafe to be a noticeable issue. I've also found that the small mouse gunners love to fire their shots into the ground, which is mildly irksome when they have a burst weapon but seriously a problem when they have a single shot upgraded weapon. I had believed that the % damage to individual weapons/support units was multiplicative with the "%dmg to everything". That would be the only way it would be useful, since as you correctly state 100% added to 15000% is hardly noticeable. Has anyone paid close attention to their numbers before and after getting a perk?
This is definitely not just you. Once you pass level 40-50 the machine gun is completely useless. The damage is far to small and expensive. Really needs a weapon upgrade option to dramatically increase damage like some support troops. Makes manual aiming almost useless but auto aiming is sporatic. I can use autoaiming and make it to level 70+ without dying and next play through get shot with an instant kill shot at level 30.... Even with Lots put into health and armor. Even if I was manually aiming, the instant kill shot happens so fast, my more powerful primary weapon takes so long to fire it does no good either. Speaking of which it would be nice if the auto aim used the other primary weapons. Don't want to come across as putting the game down. It is an outstanding game by all accounts. But the main weapon of the game is quite useless pretty early on and the one hit kills are annoying as someone who put a good amount into health and armor and still just instant death. Serious props to the devs though. Like someone else said, your activity and communication with players is top notch. You and butterscotch are two of the best there are and for that I thank you.
Appreciate the time to give some feedback! This is just some of the rationale and our perspective on some of the issues - but that doesn't mean we're still not looking into them! - Granted the strafing thing does happen, but I've played up to and through level 100 (with neither double damage or double money, and spending no IAP) and haven't really seen it as a huge issue, personally. We'll look into some things though! - Also, you're definitely rewarded for playing well... by constantly beating your best your +starting money must be VERY high compared to someone who just next gens constantly whenever they're able. As for speeding up the early game, there is nothing faster than completely skipping the waves with the 'Head Start' perk! Also, the Head Start perk scales up as you keep buying it... after a few times it starts skipping 2 waves per token, then 3, etc. - I don't get how damage perks are "garbage"... I mean literally they mathematically are not I get that money perks might be better right now, but that is a different issue; I can pretty much guarantee that without any damage perks you would not ever progress very far Also correct, the perk scaling will not be retroactive... that would pretty much break the game, as you'd keep progressing further, then keep getting stronger automatically, then keep progressing further, etc... if the game automatically scaled your perks up to the level that you're on, the difficulty would stay the same forever, and you'd play forever, never having to Next Gen. With the scaling only applying to newly generated perks, you will always generated perks that feel appropriate to your current progress - in other words, the overall percentage will stay more consistent as you progress (instead of the % of a new perk becoming less and less and less as you progress and keep increasing your damage). - Are you getting the critical upgrades for MG? These are the primary late game scaling system, as each critical does 10x damage, so it ends up being a pretty big damage buff overall. - Re: Armor and health... I'm just not imagining you're upgrading health enough. The damage modifier on enemies at level 50 is 7.25 (you're on level 46). The highest damage weapon in the game is a sniper rifle, which does 425 base damage. That means we're looking at 3081 damage per shot... This basically means you need to be around L.30 health or so (4000 health) to take a hit. Looking at the cost of the upgrades, this is a very feasible number for this point in the game. Also keep in mind the heavy hitting enemies are designed to be: "kill or be killed"... they have longer aim times precisely to but the gameplay on killing them as quick as possible before they kill you. I believe there are only 2 heavy hitting ranged units with high HP: a racoon and a rat devastator (which you can kill with one sniper shot). Thats just some of the rationale... all of that said, I've added a bunch of this stuff to our list to discuss!
This confuses me a little bit. I have no idea how the starting cash bonus actually applies. For example, I am now on level 57. My previous best is 52. If I next-gen now, I get +1204% dmg and +$10660 starting cash. But what does the following text mean? --> "+$8188 starting cash at level 58". I'm certainly not seeing that applied anywhere. I just did the next gen, got my +$10k, but none of the bonuses for beating 53, 54, 55, and 56. Where did they go? I upgraded my Howitzer Beetle perk from +25% dmg to +100% dmg. It's supposed to be a 60% boosts in output, right? (125% -> 200% of base damage). However, upgrading their damage jumped from +20k dmg/level to +21k dmg/level. That's a 5% boost. Where did the other 55% go? There are also Lvl 3 fireflies. They zip in, give little-to-no warning that they're targeting you, and shoot almost instantly after giving the lock-on message. And they hit like a truck. I've also had devastators and snipers shoot me within the first three seconds of a wave starting.
The bonuses are already built into the display of what you're actually getting... if it says you're getting +10k starting money, that already has all the previous bonuses built into it. The +8k is the TOTAL bonus you're getting over the "base +starting money" you'd be getting if you had no bonuses, not necessarily 8k more just for that level. The bonus value goes up exponentially for every new level you beat your best by, meaning it is always better to "power through" to the highest level you can, than to next gen as soon as possible. Of course, you can play either way and ultimately end up in the same place, but if you were going to maximize your bonuses based on time, its always best to try to progress as far as possible each generation. Re: Howitzer beetles, you're not taking into account all the other perks applying to them as well. All the damage perks stack via addition, not multiplying on themselves. This is one of the reasons we'll be scaling up generated perks as you progress, in order to keep new perks more relevant. Re: Fireflies and devestators... T3 fireflies have a 5 second aim time. T3 Devestators have a 12 second aim time. T2 Devestators have a 5 second aim time. Just double checked, tested and confirmed that to be the case in game. I'm guessing its more a case of you just not noticing them in time! Note that we're marking T3 units with red exclamations to better notice them in the 1st update.
I still do not quite get the rational to some of these. Even if you take into mind upgrading the critical hit on the MG. The damage is almost nothing compared to other items. I have purchased a lot of lv 10 perks so my example numbers will be large. My machine gun is lvl 82. Damage is 74,983 with critical hit at 20% which means that every 5th shot should have a damage of 749,830. However my gun carriage is a level 67, and does a damage of 4,094,000. Almost 6 times the damage of just one critical hit shot. Bumblebee Drones do 6.3 million at lvl 45 and Biggin Mouse squad does 10 mil at lvl 18. Which like I said in comparison makes the MG very small damage for its cost. Which goes to the kill of be killed enemies, I am constantly being killed in one hit by something that I dont even know what is doing it, sometimes within 5 seconds of starting a new wave. I like playing this game as tower defense so I usually have it on auto attack. Even if I was manually doing it I would not be able to aim and fire a more powerful primary weapon in time. I am instantly killed with over 20k health and 50 armor at level 70ish(game level not turtle level). I get the instant death for boss battles, but when trying to progress through the normal stages trying to grind out and do better, the instant death shots by something that you do not even know what is doing it that quick in a stage is frustrating. I wouldn't care as much if all the support troops aimed at the enemy that is capable of ruining your strategic planning and upgrading with one shot by default. Then I know my troops were not strong enough. But they seem to aim at anything closest while an enemy destroys me with one shot from a great distance before I can do much. Not trying to complain, just giving you the point of view from MY experience playing the game. I am getting burnt out watching it progress to the same stage and getting instantly killed repeatedly knowing for a fact my troops and tortoise is strong enough to be making it past that. Would be better if there was a secondary bar under health bar that displayed armor (or a colored armor overlay over the health) and the one hit kills when doing the standard rounds wiped out armor first then health. Im ok with you then having to rebuy the armor to build it back up and I get that you would have to scale it, as in one level of armor for every five game levels. But to me that would be more fair as I should be losing rounds by being overun by strong troups rather than instant death by something other than the manually chosen boss battles. Just my opinion, I am fully aware that if I am part of the few that has it, it makes no sense to spend time or energy changing the game when it is not affecting most others.
Re: damage, right... that's bc primary weapons display damage, everything else display dps. MG has a base rate of fire of 3+ shots per second with essentially no reload time, so that means its dps is 3x the damage value... which of course is further modified by the rate of fire upgrade. Then when you take into account critical, at 20% that essentially means you're getting +20% damage, overall. The other thing is that you're not taking into account cost at all. A biggin mouse squad costs 1000 to upgrade 20%. An MG costs 50 to upgrade 40% damage. They both scale up the same in cost, so you can't just compare level and damage numbers without taking into account cost... And don't forget all those unit DPS numbers include squad size... its not the listed damage for a single unit. Re: getting one shot at level 70 with 20k health - that is literally impossible barring some kind of obscure bug... the math just doesn't add up. The highest damage dealt by anything at that stage of the game is 8.4k by a T3 racoon gunner with a heavy plasma. The next highest damage is 4.4k damage by someone with a sniper rifle. Are you using the 2x damage store item, by any chance? Also anything that CAN one shot you (apart from a raccoon, an albatross blackbird and a devastator), has such few HP you can kill it very quickly even with the basic MG. And the units with more HP have a MUCH longer initial aim time to compensate for higher HP. Just as an example, a T3 rat has 22k HP on level 70... you're MG deals 76k damage in ONE shot... that means you can one shot most T3 heavy hitters with just a single shot of your MG. Its kind of a moot point anyway, as we're tweaking a ton of stuff for the update, so we'll have to revisit a lot of these discussion points later and see if they still apply I'll also run some numbers again to double check everything is working ok.
@User53 I'm with you on this. I'm not enjoying this kind of game logic. If they can sort it out - my $10 going their way. If not....
I am using the double damage upgrade, did not mention that since you already said there was a bug. I will pay closer attention next couple times I die. I made it to level 80 and it was the first time I saw some of those hopping enemies reach me after their second hop, so maybe I was not paying close enough attention close to me and I would just see the warning that something was targeting me and then I was dead. For all i know a couple of things made it close and I was too busy looking further down the field. If the math says that should not be possible, then I believe you on that. Like I said, not really trying to complain and I think your team does a wonderful job. I do still stand by the MG damage needs tweaked. Your example of costing only 50 to upgrade 40% goes out the window pretty fast. The cost scales up, but the damage stays constant. After I spend 40k upgrading the mg it has a damage of 53,000. Where as if I spend that same 40k to unlock the biggin mouse squad in the example above, that gets me a damage of 315,774. Which means that even when multiplying the MG by 3 it is half the damage of the gunner squad at the same cost. Also, my next upgrade for the MG is now 4,749 for the same amount of damage increase, only now because of the level it is only increasing 2.8% not 40%. The MG gets really expensive really fast for a small amount of damage increase compared to the cost per damage of basically all other secondary and support troops. I just think there needs to be a power upgrade for it like other troops. I cant see the cost effective logic of putting money into the MG upgrades when it starts to cost 50k on up and you are only increasing it by the same amount of damage as the very first upgrade. Which is why I think it needs weapon upgrade like other items or ratio in which the cost starts to skyrocket needs adjusted since it is the main weapon the player actually gets to use and interact with, but overall has the smallest effect on enemies. When added in with high costs to get it to a good damage number forces me to concentrate on all other weapons. To others, keep in mind my numbers in the example are different as I have spent quite a bit of money on the level 10 upgrade perks and I wanted to support the devs. Almost NO ONE spends this much time and effort answering players opinions. I do not expect them to change a thing. I feel satisfied they are listening, that is much more than most do!
I'm really enjoying this game, even spent a little money on some perks. Here are my observations: * It seems like it's possible to get stuck between the timer and the 'next generation' if you make some bad choices early on (say testing the war zeppelin). * I agree w/ the poster above on MG scaling, the return doesn't justify the cost * There should be a better mechanism for accelerating the early levels, as it becomes increasingly tedious (read that as un-fun) to play through them over and over. * A mechanic to micro-manage target designation per group would be helpful (put beetle howitzers on large targets for instance) * Some back story, mouse condos behind the line, or something to give what's taking place context would be cool * an FTL-style map to progress against would make things interesting * damage taken seems very 'spikey' * Mining towers are a complete afterthought past level 10 or so - maybe the gems should scale with level, as it stands I don't bother clicking them at all (what's $300 every 10sec when I'm getting closer to 5k in the same time form enemies?) * I'm really looking forward to the update! All in all a very enjoyable game.
Hey love the game and thank you for taking the time to answer questions. I'm getting stuck around level 50 and I thought the machine gun was useless. I'm on gen 18 level 52 max. My support units pretty much carry me to this point. Any tips for dealing with the hoppers those always get me. Also when I use tokens for perks at what point should I use them. Each 10 levels Increases perk level? Been trying to figure it out. Also the generated perks can only be 1-3? Thank you Lastly bosses are once every 24 hours? I've had one that was level 57 and I had no chance of beating him
Your balance will change DRAMATICALLY once this update hits. The implications for the bugged 2x damage perk are far reaching I hate to say. We're really pissed this bug got through which is now why we've dropped adding anything else to the update in order to finish testing and get this thing out! We've also gone back and flattened some of the enemy damage. Meaning, generally, lower tier units will do more base damage, however, enemies now scale less over time (meaning that top end heavy weapons wont do as much damage later game) - damage is now purely on a linear scale so if you keep up with health upgrades (again, 1 per level/10 waves), you'll be good to go. Which basically means you're more likely to get whittled down than one shot killed.
Good suggestions. Just a note on the mining tower... you're numbers are kind of way off You only get $960 per wave on level 10. With a level 3 mining rate and a level 2 value, you're getting an extra $450 every 15-20s - ie a 35-50% increase in money generated depending on how fast you're blowing through waves - thats the equivalent of having a +50% money perk at that stage in the game... which is quite good. So yeah... the under powered mine thing is definitely a bit of an exaggeration until you get much further in the game and the cost to upgrade the mine value becomes too prohibitive (this will likely happen around level 50+ or so and when the mining value gets to level 4-5+). I agree with MG having some scaling problems, but the mining tower is actually not that bad (even though they're still getting buffed in the next update, mostly by having their upgrades scale at a significantly lower cost). Perks are generated randomly. The ad perks are lower levels. However, in the next update all generated perks will scale up based on your progress, to keep them more relevant as you keep playing! Bosses generated every 12-18 hours I believe, and last for 24 hours. They are always generated higher than you current position - the idea is that you have 24 hours to progress far enough to take them on. You should stand a good chance once you get to level 57-60.
Thank you, one last question, when I spend tokens to get perks. Is using it when I'm on level 50 will generate a higher level perk? Sorry if I misunderstood your answer before I believe you meant of the 6 hour one Reread your post, so it's possible to get level 10 perks now?
Correct. This is exactly why we have it randomly generate the level instead of automatically scaling it up as you progress, so that you dont "waste" buying perks if you buy them early on in the game.
We're using the weekend to do the final round of testing, and then we'll submit on Monday I think. Last update we had in a different game went through in 3 days, so hopefully this will be a quick one too!
