What do you think makes a good TD?

[Romek]

I just want to know what people would like in a TD.
Please don't say the obvious "Good Towers. Balanced. Waves."

But say any features or bonus stuff would you think will make a TD good

+Rep to good ideas.

 

[Ninja_sheep]

Well, funny tool tips.
I don't know how well its translated into english but shopping maul got so damned funny tool tips.

"The new Porche 385-I. As suitable for daily use as a space station in the cellar. But wayne?"


If possible something that makes you look whats going on and prevent you from doing your build order wich you found on a forum to be pro.

 

[Romek]

If possible something that makes you look whats going on and prevent you from doing your build order wich you found on a forum to be pro.

What? Something that makes you look whats going on? You can see whats going on normally.
And about canceling your build order... why would you want to do that?

 

[sjakie]

I personaly prefer properly made towers, with properly made abilities, with properly made tooltips.
Basicly, I just want stuf to be proper

Also I like waves having a name. Not just wave 24, but wave 24: felhounds.
Bosses once in a while is cool too.
Funny towers, like milk shooting taurens and stuf, as long as they are properly made are awsome.
Also I think every tower defence should have the standard towers: Basic, slow, poison, splash, etc.

Just my own oppinion though, doesnt say anything about what the masses prefer in a TD.

 

[Jackal]

humourus TDs are good. Sex maul made me lol (admit it, you played it!)

Also a TD that doesnt make you stressed is good, so team TDs arent great IMO because of the noobs. Solo TDs are fun, seeing who can last the longest.

An interesting TD is a fun TD. Secrets on your TD could occupy a person for hours (say if you get every single tower fully upgraded, you could build a barbie tower and when one is built it plays Aqua barbie girl).

 

[Romek]

I personaly prefer properly made towers, with properly made abilities, with properly made tooltips.
Basicly, I just want stuf to be proper

Also I like waves having a name. Not just wave 24, but wave 24: felhounds.
Bosses once in a while is cool too.
Funny towers, like milk shooting taurens and stuf, as long as they are properly made are awsome.
Also I think every tower defence should have the standard towers: Basic, slow, poison, splash, etc.

Just my own oppinion though, doesnt say anything about what the masses prefer in a TD.

I did say not the basic stuff. "Proper waves. Proper towers" -.-"
Milk shooting tauren would be funny though
And you said so yourself. the "Basic" towers.

humourus TDs are good. Sex maul made me lol (admit it, you played it!)

Also a TD that doesnt make you stressed is good, so team TDs arent great IMO because of the noobs. Solo TDs are fun, seeing who can last the longest.

An interesting TD is a fun TD. Secrets on your TD could occupy a person for hours (say if you get every single tower fully upgraded, you could build a barbie tower and when one is built it plays Aqua barbie girl).

Upload a song to a map just for some secret which isn't gonna happen?

Secrets are interesting I must admit.
The Dota Icefrog secret bosses kept me occupied for a while, as did the Uther Lich.

 

[sjakie]

And you said so yourself. the "Basic" towers.

I ment the map should have those towers, not that the map should only have those tower. I think a map should have a wide varity of towers, but they also need those basic ones.

 

[tom_mai78101]

This will be impossible for you!! Read on.

What makes a TD good? NOTE: This is long.

I don't know much about it, but not only the game has to be good on some place, but the game must have to play a game of monopoly.

Yes, a monopoly. Like the Hasbro Monopoly board game.

My main point is about the monopoly, not about features and stuffs like that. Why? Here's an example: Recalling back to where Dota (ROC version) just been born. How did the developers make such a great game? The answer lies in the timing and advertising. Blizzard just released the game, and patched it up a few. At that time, I believe I'm still studying in elementary school 10 years ago, so I could be wrong.

One of the developers knows how to play hockey. He realized that some rounds have fighting events. During that fighting events, he witnessed a recurring gag between those two. Behind the crowds, two people were fighting for a cup of soda. The developer compared the fights between the hockey players and the two audiences. He realized that it is possible to create a game with that focus of gameplay, because (1) they both were playing on limited friction floors. The hockey players were on ice, while the two audiences were on soda-spilled floors. A hint was given to him when a employee, trying to end the fight, slips on the wet floor. Think of how creeps gather across a wet trail (like some with water in their tracks). The hockey players fall like the slipped employee, the same ragdoll movements that a hero dies when it got killed. (2) On the floors, there were hockey sticks. He suggested that one of them may grab a stick and use it as a weapon. The same thing happens with the heroes, as they use weapons (the items that were used to boost some of their attack damages). Adding that feature to DOTA also leads to the birth of Hero Wars, and a classical footmen wars map.

When he got back from the exciting game, he tell his findings to other developers for their own created game. In turn they have interests in the findings and ended up mashing the findings within the game itself.

Now, back to TD, how or what does monopoly affects the TD of being good or bad? It relies on advertising, as I said before, and money-making schemes with balancing effects of psychology. Too little for me to explain in psychology. First, the map must be set up so it needs the basic functions, like rounds, creeps, workers, towers, and a pathway from start to end. In hockey, the goal is to shoot the puck. In TD, the same principle applies perfectly. In hockey, you need a defensive way to protect your side of the goal, and you need an offensive way to attack the other team's defensive skills. In TD, good games have this point in particular, as they tells the players to think of both ways for oneself to comply with the game. While bad games don't make this principle clearly to players correctly. They might blur the principles a little too far, some says. In hockey, strategies are applied, while in TD, the same applies also. If you had played TD for some time, you would noticed that some people tends to make mazes down the path, or make towers at places where there's more attacking probability. Same thing in hockey, the players defend the puck by passing along three players in the front, one in the back, and two near the goalie (like I saw it on ESPN). The front line makes an advantageous attack on the defensive side, by revealing a row of pathways for a puck to travel (like the maze, where creeps must try to find pathways for themselves through defensive rows of towers)) to other players. That is called pathfinding in computer terms.

In TD, pathfinding occurs more often in complementary skills of defense and the way how towers attack them. The developers must use this pathfinding as an advantageous feature towards audiences, which by advertising their maps on the Internet. That's one part of how monopoly works in TD.

This pathfinding is known to give a player a wide variety of critics and reviews about the game. If the creeps are very good at pathfinding, the game would be categorized as bad, and vice versa. And the pathfindings are the core of Warcraft 3 ROC and TFT, which Blizzard kept since Starcraft. The way to recreate a lot of blocked pathfindings, but enough for at least one is the point of each TD developers' goal. They cannot give the creeps a lot of pathfindings or else the player would lose everytime. Same theory with monopoly, how each players put their houses in a way that makes a game a grand strategy is crucial to success for Hasbro, and the same thing with TD.

The weapons in TD is also another side factor, as in DOTA. In DOTA, the weapons were used to give heroes a boost in attributes. IN hockey, it is used not only as the only way to shoot the hard-cold puck to the goal, but also can be used to whack other people. How fun!

The same thing in TD, but with a different side of its face, would be to upgrade towers. Different towers give different weapons. If a player tends to choose towers with a turning favor towards them, the developers must use this favor to make the game even harder. Like in Crop Circles v10, there's a tower called Ice Tower, attack damage is quite high, and it also has slow ability. Most people tends to use this favor when playing such games. The developers then knows what favor the audience is turning to, and creates a pathfinding for the towers to coupe with the creeps, which meant that on Round 46 or somewhere around there, there is a bunch of immune units. Players with built Ice towers then knew that their slow ability won't work, so they increased their favors towards other towers, like ground, air , and high damage towers. A good TD is what makes a player to turn their favors and odds around a few times. Too much times can cause a problem, like in Crop Circle v3, which some players complained about not being good at all.

If a team of developers knew this issue, they would turn to a different favor, i.e. in Monopoly, hotels and train stations. They would create a different pathfinding version that turns the table around to players, aiding their favors. By increasing incomes (like hotels, it increases your incomes by an estimate of 4x when another player lands on it), it is possible for one to create more towers along the way. If like train stations in Monopoly, more of them would increase your income, then the favors of getting that becomes valuable, something the developers tend to give in-games for players to qualify. If more towers, then the favors of winning becomes more and more valuable, while leaking a creep would become fatal. The developers can use those two favors to create a balanced tax for all players. The financial investment would double in terms of economy. But, again money doesn't count much in nearing the last part of the game. This time, the developers would wish to give all players a hefty blow to them, by placing creeps in their favor by a double step ahead, to create tensions between players. A good map aims for that, while a bad map usually gives it away too quickly, lacking tensions between intervals.

Same in hockey, creating tensions between two teams may double the risk of provoking a fight. Such events would lead to crowds hooting for who's the best. In TD, the hooting is like supporting. The fights would be how players like the maps. In all, the game itself makes a great exciting event to each and every heart of all kinds. The developers main goal is to reach for that.

And so, monopoly plays a role that affects all mapmaking developers, no matter how balanced the game is or how the game is played.

Who cares about balanced units? Sometimes, players tends to use a unit more often and it increased the risk of overturning the balanced table.

 

[Jackal]

Upload a song to a map just for some secret which isn't gonna happen?

It could be just 10 seconds of the best part of the song

 

[MagnaGuard]

What makes a TD good?

- Well one of the most important this is that you can beat it ofcourse.
- Has fun events
- More than 1 play style
- Can play againts other players
- Dosn't do the same thing over and over
- Easy to learn
- Fun models (I think)
- Music/fun noises

- Maybe make a TD where units attack towers and you can put some on a safe zone but you can also make defence towers on the attack zone

 

[tom_mai78101]

So, Humorous TDs wll ever exist?

I'd be dying to see a humorous one, hosted on ROC, and kept us laughing on floor dying.

 

[Jackal]

What makes a TD good? NOTE: This is long.

I don't know much about it, but not only the game has to be good on some place, but the game must have to play a game of monopoly.

Yes, a monopoly. Like the Hasbro Monopoly board game.

My main point is about the monopoly, not about features and stuffs like that. Why? Here's an example: Recalling back to where Dota just been born. How did the developers make such a great game? The answer lies in the timing and advertising. Blizzard just released the game, and patched it up a few. At that time, I believe I'm still studying in elementary school, so I could be wrong.

I believe you are wrong, the old DotA was made before TFT was released and it wasnt that successful, it was only hosted like once every few months.

Of course then Guinsoo came along and polished up DotA and made it into Allstars.

So, Humorous TDs wll ever exist?

I'd be dying to see a humorous one, hosted on ROC, and kept us laughing on floor dying.

Too bad sex maul is TFT only

 

[tom_mai78101]

I believe you are wrong, the old DotA was made before TFT was released and it wasnt that successful, it was only hosted like once every few months. Of course then Guinsoo came along and polished up DotA and made it into Allstars.

I didn't mention DOTA TFT version throughout the article, I'll add a note saying I only meant ROC at the top of it. They were still doing the advertising, as they haven't had enough houses to face the debt they are in while playing Monopoly.

 

[Ninja_sheep]

What? Something that makes you look whats going on? You can see whats going on normally.
And about canceling your build order... why would you want to do that?

no, you misunderstood me. I mean you should prevent people from just doing a build order they read on a forum. Something that always changes the buildings you need. No game is the same.

 

[Terrabull]

Variety, or to put it another way, replay value.
If there are multiple paths, and multiple ways you can do a TD and multiple difficulty levels for that matter, then you can play the map many times and not get bored of it for quite a while.
Multiple TD, Gem TD, eeve TD all make me think of that, because there are many ways to do good, and many more to just win.
Speed Mode is almost a necessity now, because that way you can play w/ noobs and not be bored off your keister.

 

[Jackal]

I didn't mention DOTA TFT version throughout the article, I'll add a note saying I only meant ROC at the top of it. They were still doing the advertising, as they haven't had enough houses to face the debt they are in while playing Monopoly.

sorry, you said that it was such a great game, and I never knew a fanboy of the old DotA, for obvious reasons

 

[Romek]

Ok. tom_mai78102's 'book' was basically about Dota, more Dota, and how a TD should be like Dota.

can we get this back on Topic? TD's. Not Dota.

 

[tom_mai78101]

Ok. tom_mai78102's 'book' was basically about Dota, more Dota, and how a TD should be like Dota.

can we get this back on Topic? TD's. Not Dota.

I made an example of TD by using Dota prominent features. How a TD should be good is by using some of Dota's advantages. How could I not point out that? Unless you didn't read the entire article at all.

 

[ArmedCitizen]

Simplicity. I don't want to try to play 5,000 different races, or see if I can create all 50,000 of your towers. I want a starter builder that is the same for everyone and make the diversity come from upgrades. Don't go over bored with upgrades, either. Having one tower upgrade 40 times is a bit absurd.

I also like the defenses to be short. Twenty to 25 rounds, if you go by rounds. If you really want to make it longer add a few minigames. Don't make the minigames the focal of the game though. I joined for towers, not cutting grass and collecting turtle shells.

That's all really.

 

[tom_mai78101]

A better explanation would be, make TD as close and similar to SD_Ryoko 2.5.

But!!

You must not use at least 1 same trigger from that map. SD_Ryoko will sue you!