Island Defense Feedback Survey - Neco Read

[Lynx]

Can't agree more

Change to make game more fun

[1337hamburger]

I have adapted a play-to-win play-style, and all my friends and clan-mates I play with likewise, which is early AFK basing and farming elo.

It seems like what is really happening here is that people are letting their weird obsessions with elo control how they play. I'm not here to name and shame, but quite a few top ranking players have said to me that they wouldn't play without an elo system. What I'm getting at here is that these select people will never be happy with the game, because they don't actually like playing the game anymore. . . just getting the elo.

[Remixer]

I have adapted a play-to-win play-style, and all my friends and clan-mates I play with likewise, which is early AFK basing and farming elo.

It seems like what is really happening here is that people are letting their weird obsessions with elo control how they play. I'm not here to name and shame, but quite a few top ranking players have said to me that they wouldn't play without an elo system. What I'm getting at here is that these select people will never be happy with the game, because they don't actually like playing the game anymore. . . just getting the elo.

Actually if a game has an ELO system it is very straight-forward and interesting. This would work with Island Defense too, the problem however is that the game is so unbalanced right now that it forces to do certain actions and avoid other actions. If it would be balanced competitive play would be really interesting.

[ShadowZz]

Please don't be mad at me....

ID is not competitive. Sorry to be the debbie downer of this conversation but it's a 10v1 game and it is inherently unbalance-able. If 12 years of tweaking this game hasn't showed that I don't know what will. ID is at heart simply a casual game. It's concept doesn't support the super high gamer quality of competitive competitions, it's more like minecraft with pvp (you can pvp, its balanced, but its still not competitive, its casual). We can't have it both ways, its either 10v1 casual or "something else" and that "something else" requires a complete concept change which we simply don't have the player base for (on Wc3). There was a old post somewhere by a bunch of analysts about the wc3 -> sc2 jump from blizzard talking about how 4 races is completely impossible to "balance" and that's why they wouldn't be continuing it [moving onto sc2 with 3 races]. The only way to even remotely make ID balanced is to have all titans very similar (like it is now) or make 12 builders for each specific titan and then change the map layout for each specific titan and then change the titans abilities completely for each specific titan (had that conversation before.....fun and joy). It's a lot of work for something that would still end up where we are now. With similar problems just on a bigger scale. Also it wouldn't really be ID anymore :/

ID as it stands - If we learn to accept that it is a casual game and not some competitive ESport (e.g. remove ELO) then maybe we could focus on making things for "fun". I say that very lightly because I doubt it will ever happen.

Reality checks:
Fix to stalling - Already exists, would take 6-12 months and like 20-30 versions to even get it working properly with Wc3. Player-base would dwindle throughout with major changes. As already mentioned some people will just hate it and stop playing and Wc3 doesn't exactly have an influx of new players.
Titans too similar - No choice. Titans have to fulfill specific roles in the game, it's hard to make them different and when you try to people refuse to even play those titans. Take bubo, easily the most unique play style and no one will even play him because he's different.
Fun - No one wants fun. I say that very seriously. Most long term players at this point just play to win and farm ELO. ELO is probably the worst thing to happen to ID because throughout most versions is just caused crap games like 6 natures rushing spears and having 80+ spears at mound at the 5min mark. That was removed using -up and a bunch of people see that as removing "fun". When most people talk about fun all they really mean is "winning with dumb shit". More specifically winning with builder. e.g. wall walking, mass toxic tower bullshit, 2000hp fortified armor taurens, mass spear army 5 natures, 1min early bases with 3 people, 15min full mega quad bases, 400 gold supports "i think we'll froff the level 6 titan now to help him out".
Side thought - Maybe just active froff/exp based off of gold stolen. Idk, just a thought.
Titan fun - Making titan fun would be great, probably not going to happen because everybody wants titan to be elite-ist only. Anybody with half a brain can play builder to a decent standard. Only a select few play titan well.

The point is, if we accept it's casual and allow it to be a casual game instead of a super hyped up play to win 1000 wins / 90 losses then maybe people can actually try to enjoy the game.

[Remixer]

Yes well you do have a point on the ELO thing. It's very hard to balance and in fact is impossible to balance, but notice that so are a few competitive games such as League of Legends or CS:GO. They both have balance issues, surely the got the 5v5 team aspect, but I don't think 10v1 should be any different, the way we give and earn ranking should just be different. For example if some one played only builder and won 80% of the games, it cannot be compared to some one who plays both titan and builder and wins 80% as well. But as we can probably all see, having ELO especially in the current state of ID (balance being WAY OFF, I mean WAY OFF) it makes no point.

As for the difference of Titans. What you mean no choice? I see some people playing Bubo, and some play other Titans. For me specifically I have always fancied Voltron and Lucidious, third coming Demonicus, and I'd really love to pick one of those, thing is I usually pick random for variety. (And yes, intact I do ban Bubo, but that is not because he is any different to the others, I just hate him for same reasons I hate Granitacles and Glacious: boringly slow nukes, caused by the ridiculous cast/swing points set in the editor that makes no actual sense, not to mention their short ranges. That added Glacious and Granitacles nukes do not even bounce, which makes it even worse), as for me I never really recognised any difference in the Titans stats-wise. Does some titan actually build a lot differently than the others? Does every titan get pretty much the same items? I guess so, but that is partly because there is very few actually good items to get - which is a really sad point to be honest.

Then again I never really understood the point of having -froff and -exp in the game. The only point I was sometime able to see was to enable them in private PRO games (back when there still was pros to fill up an entire game), since Titan had literally no chance of winning without them.

But for public? How off must the balance be to actually require those systems to help out the titan? And sadly, in 90% of the games I've been to in the past week, they have been used. And to face the hard truth, only around maybe 2 of 10 games the titan has won - which as a fact is quite sad. Which makes it even worse is that Only maybe one game of all those games I've played during past 2 weeks, the titan WON. Like actually WON, instead of winning after some foolish playing around and getting froffexped.

Personally I haven't really seen much play to win, or getting ELO. In most games builders want to -froff -exp the titan and have fun around for a couple more minutes, until killing him at the mound or just wait for the moment that the Titan leaves the game because there is no point in it anymore. Back in the days, in the pro games, builders actually had to deny even walls if the game did not go horribly wrong for the titan.

Lets take an example from one of the games I was in. The game started, me getting makrura, and soon after the first golders struck Titan's mound the titan attacked my lumber base, walled off by 4 upgraded walls. He was determined to get in, and I did not like the idea and teleported back to my lumber base and repaired the walls, adding a couple of layers of more walls. Breaking one wall took the titan.. .what maybe 10? seconds adding around 5 seconds spent trying to nuke me (as a makrura I can always wall walk dodge that Bubo nuke (ye... the lousy bubo nuke strikes again)) and that counts up to 4+2=6 walls = 60 seconds + 5 seconds plus destroying the 2 shelters that I did not deny took maybe 10 more seconds for him to catch. That adds to around 1 and a half minutes! And after that I trapped him in and he tried to get out, realising it would take too long to re-destroy 4 layers of walls, and teleported out. That was around 2 minutes for the titan to get around 10 gold and give 9 builders 2 free minutes to gold. Guess what happened? The titan left soon after, since we as builders could have killed him right at the mound.

Now the question is... should the builders be prohibited from doing such thing? Or should the game somehow be more balanced so that it did not really matter that much to the titan? I think it's the latter.

[ShadowZz]

Bottom line is, titan needs to be easier to play and his decisions need to carry less impact. If 3 builders play like trash then the other 7 can still win pretty easily. If titan misses an early kill or a nuke then it screws his entire game. If he walks top right and finds no feed but gives builder 100+ gold while walking there the games over. If he does anything but find easily nukable lumber bases and easy feed then hes in for a long, dumb, hard time. Assuming he doesn't make a tiny mistake that eventually costs him the game and somehow gets 2 minions by the 10min mark then he now gets to have fun dealing with the panicking builders who just triple and quad based. That pretty much sums up titan in ID lol.

Last version Neco did exactly what everyone wanted. He nerfed exp gain, nerfed froff, nerfed titan lvling, nerfed feed rates globally, nerfed worker feed and reduced the build up from people who feed an entire lumber base as requested in the vote and literally everyone I spoke to within a few weeks after hated the shit out of that version. So now we know that what people have been saying for 2 years just simply doesn't work, can we just ******* buff titan already and make him easier to play.

For clarity, I don't particularly care if 3-5 people win every titan game they play in pubs. Not one bit at all. I don't care if foss, _rus_hafk, shibumi and cookies have 95% win rates on titan after the changes. That's just the way it should be. I just want average titans to have average win rates vs average builders and currently. They don't.

[Remixer]

I played a couple of games a few months ago and I remember that in every game after 3 or 4 minutes the Titan was already level 6 or 7 which was insane and made no sense. Not matter what builders did. However the changes have made it the other way around - titan cannot win, unless it is played by an experienced player against... not so experienced players.

And indeed. The game is more balanced if more people get average score. Instead of looking at one or two good players who constantly win doing the same thing over and over again does not give us balance.

And like ShadowZz mentioned it is very frustrating to play as a Titan in game where you do well, and when every body is dead the remaining three or four people managed to base up quickly, meanwhile you hunted for the others and stay in the same base, indestructible. It is insanely lame that builders can dod that so easily. Why do so large bases exist? I've played in game where there was 4 supporters for one single baser. And here we meet trouble again: either titan shuts down the builder from harvesting lumber or he (titan) prevents the golders from getting gold. OR if the titan is good player, he uses the noobs for his advantage and gets an early minion and denies the builders' attempt to even start a base.

In case the builders manage to make base and the titan does have a minion or two, he can surely wait for the builders to make a mistake and probably nuke (bounce) them off.

Note: in the past in the private pro games this was allowed. But only for one reason I guess. Because the builders were aware of the titan's skills and potential and for that same reason they were waiting for the titan to make a mistake - ready to set up a worker block or wall jump behind the titan to wall him in. But now... I don't know. Builders do not do that.

i guess the reason is A) Most of the builders do not know such things exist or are too bad to perform them. and B) If the builders are good they "should win" without such hax-mechanics and for that reason for example I don't do those things. However nowadays it is seen as stalling if Titan camps a base and does not die - because the builders are not even trying to kill him. They are just waiting for the titan finally to give up. Is it just me or is something wrong here too?

[ShadowZz]

I'm not going to reply to the bulk of your post because I feel we have a mutual understanding and are on the same wave length in that regard (titan balance etc). I don't want the posts to become huge and just skipping from point to point might actually give us a quicker overview etc.

So, the last thing you said, "Titan camps a base and does not die - because the builders are not even trying to kill him. They are just waiting for the titan finally to give up. Is it just me or is something wrong here too?".

There's two things to point out here. Is the titan stalling, or are the builders? Most of the time this situation comes from two things. Either the titan fell behind and can't break bases OR one or two builders made a good base and everyone else just camped sitting in the back of those bases with 30k wood. In both situations people see it as "titans stalling" when realistically builders are. This happens in almost every game when titan does remotely well. He gets a minion or two early and then 2-3 people base and the other builders just sit in the back. GG no feed = titan banned for stalling or suicides and games over because other builders basically refuse to play due to the play to win mentality.

Personally I've seen A LOT of suggestions for this and I want to give props to @Burn for A LOT of the suggestions for end-game even though personally I don't agree with the timer based ones.

I think a better one is being able to build a gold mine in your base after the 45min mark that generates 1g per second. The idea of the game just ending via a global event at a certain time feels really bad when playing and forces bad decisions. This way you would just build a couple gold mines and be given a choice. Choice 1 would be to not end the game and buff you base with gold towers etc (you choosing to stall and thus not complaining about it). Or choice 2 would be buffing your titan hunter via a new shop for titan hunters that would be available after the 45min mark. You would literally hunt the titan and the game would be over every single time by the 1 hour mark without exceptions but only in the situation where the players wanted it to be. I feel like this is better because it allows builders to choose whether they want the game to end due to stalling or whether they prefer to be seiged endlessly (gives hunters more use too and would actually feel like "you" won rather than "titan suied" or left....).

That would fix the QoL problem with stalling and make it so that wins feel more like wins rather than just "titan giving up". Also forces builders to actually do something to win other than being afk or stalling.

I feel this would also encourage people to do something other than camp in a base. You would require your own base to be able to build the mine and buff your hunter so it would force players to actually play the game rather than afking a base. Thus creating more feed and more fun and more opportunities for both titans and builders without inherently ruining the game.

[Burn]

I didn't read the last few essays, so I'll just respond do these quotes that I've read:

Actually if a game has an ELO system it is very straight-forward and interesting. This would work with Island Defense too, the problem however is that the game is so unbalanced right now that it forces to do certain actions and avoid other actions. If it would be balanced competitive play would be really interesting.

It is not balanced, but the game is balanced enough for ELO. It gives something for good players to strive for and was the reason why StiD didn't die out earlier than it did.

StiD would've died out much earlier if it wasn't for ELO. I wouldn't even have a game in the past year if it wasn't for trying to top the leaderboards. I'm not playing right now partly due to ELO system being fucked up and not giving enough ELO per game.

ID is not competitive. Sorry to be the debbie downer of this conversation but it's a 10v1 game and it is inherently unbalance-able. If 12 years of tweaking this game hasn't showed that I don't know what will. ID is at heart simply a casual game. It's concept doesn't support the super high gamer quality of competitive competitions, it's more like minecraft with pvp (you can pvp, its balanced, but its still not competitive, its casual).

It's this type of thinking that will kill a game.

Island Defense can be balanced. Vampirism fire was balanced (enough), Sheep tag was balanced.

Sure, it's harder to balance than traditional 1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4 5v5 games, but it's very very possible to get it balanced enough for competitive play. Hell, as long as we get a 50% win ratio for decent titans vs decent builders in in-houses, it's considered balanced, and we reached that with 309d entid inhouses when the euros were still alive.

-Burn

[ShadowZz]

@Burn Saying stuff like "this thinking will kill a game" is just plain ignorant. There's tons of casual games with tons more players than ID. It's just narrow-minded and ignorant to say shit like that. Even with the examples you give, Vamp fire does not have ELO and is not seen as "competitive". Neither does vamp speed, vamp zero, demonic defense, ID like games in general. Vamp Fire is more popular than ID and even has a more elite-ist player base. Saying that, as of the past year there entire player base of older players has dwindled because they are sick of the changes happening in Vamp Fire to make it into something it's not. It's casual and it always has been and Unholy has got a lot of shit for trying to do something different.

Same goes for Vamp Zero. It's a casual game and people love it as a casual game and when Roar tried to make vamp black (competitive version) it got shunned by there community. ID has the opposite problem. The majority of players don't care about ELO but the ones who do are the ones who are vocal about it. Building a game around it is what will kill ID. Not the opposite.

I swear to god if anyone else sits here and says that 3.0.9d had a 50% balanced win rate I'll actually lose my shit. This has to be the most bullshit comment to ever have existed anywhere on this entire forum. Total bullshit. Not even close to the truth. ID has NEVER had a balanced win rate in over 8 years. It has never EVER achieved that at any point in it's entirety. Sure you can say that at some points it may have felt more "equal" (using that loosely) but it has never ever had a balanced 50% win rate ever for any skill level. It has never had a balanced win rate for bad builders vs bad titans or average builders vs average titans or good builders vs good titans. Never. Because it's not possible. It's legitimately impossible. There are 0 ways of making that happen with any version of ID that has ever existed or that ever will. 0. none. Zilch. It's a 10v1 game. This is not shocking. The concept will never allow this to work.

Even if you could guarantee that games would be played with the titans skill level being equal to the skill level of the builders (which you can't). You would still have to have a separate map for each skill level. @FullMeltHash had this explained on mic in its entirety and it ends up as 50-100+ versions for different skill levels. Due to the fact that the builder income in every skill level never changes and that gold value does not change whilst titan gold income is drastically reduced and titan exp income is drastically reduced at higher levels it simply does not work with all skill levels. The opposite is true too. At lower skill levels feed values have to be reduced because there is too much and titan would scale way too quickly.

Example: In a game with average builders the titan will gain feed from walls, shelters, fruits, worker nukes, shit bases, nuking repairers etc etc literally everything you'd expect. In a game vs the top 1% of players your talking about only getting feed from walls. If you break a lumber base you gain maybe 3-5g from walls and they full deny. If you try to nuke it should always be walled off. The point is that the amount of feed on the map for titan changes drastically but the amount he needs to viably win does not. He has A LOT less feed on the map and no way to fill that gap whatsoever. It just simply does not work. You have to adjust the values in the game so as to ensure that he is still able to effectively farm. 80-90% of all feed in the first 10mins in lumber bases. Vs a set of pro builders that means you get 0 feed. No workers, no fruits, no shelters, only walls. It's unrealistic.

[Burn]

Please name five games that isn't competitive and more popular than Island Defense in WC3.

"There's tons of casual games with tons more players than ID. It's just narrow-minded and ignorant to say shit like that."

It's also narrow-minded and ignorant to think that ID is not unbalance-able and not competitive.

If it was neither, we wouldn't have had so much success with entidih 309d. I want to also reiterate again that it was close to 50% win rate in inhouses, not pubs. Please read more carefully.

I'm not arguing with you, as usual it's a waste of time, so I will ignore further messages from you. But please, do name 5 of those games.

-Burn

[ShadowZz]

Seriously saying that five casual games with more than 200 consistent players don't exist? I agree, there's no point in us talking.

[Burn]

In WC3. Nice try in trying to answer. Please try to talk without taking my words out of context and then maybe I'll bother responding to any of your other points.

-Burn

[ShadowZz]

You want to talk about game balance and only use Wc3 as the context? Deciding if a game is casual or competitive rolls over all games, not just Wc3. The same as deciding whether a game's concept or aim should be casual or competitive. Wc3 has nothing to do with whether ID is casual or competitive.

[Burn]

It obviously wouldn't be a fair test if you listed games on other platforms.

My point is that there are thousands of games on wc3, and you can't list one game on the same platform that is more popular than Island Defense that isn't competitive. You could argue that TDs weren't competitive, but I am still competing against peers in TDs between each wave. The nature of modern gaming is to compete with others, comparing titan skill, builder skill, etc. Your joke that Island Defense can never be competitive is quite a good joke.

Competitive gaming drives a game. To have an unattainable goal to be the very best at everything drives the best of players to the top.

Casual gaming can be fun and entertaining, but without a team of developers shipping new content every week, it gets old quick and dies out.

A good example would be WoW. There is only so much you can play WoW if you play solely for PvE. It gets old running the same dungeons over and over and helping out clan-mates when you've got all the items you want/need. There is so much content that casual PvE players can play for hours and hours until they get bored and quit. PvP will last a lifetime, discovering new metas, things changing every patch. Most of the popular games have competitiveness in it, just look at twitch games: https://www.twitch.tv/directory.

-Burn