Was this free to play once?

[Scorcher24]

The whole game kinda hints towards it :D.

[THM]

Lol. Yeah got to collect dem gold stars!

[Kelson]

LOL well you do have a point. But it's more of a setup that F2P games adopted: grind a bit to unlock stuff. It's really not THAT much grinding, unless you get super unlucky with the tower drops and store specials. I mean, it took me awhile to get a couple of the nicer towers, but I was able to keep doing hard random missions to upgrade other towers in the process, which I needed to do anyway for the harder levels.

But honestly, it doesn't take long to get all the talents. After that, the stars are really only good for buying tower packs to use to get the towers you're missing or evolve the towers you have.

[Scorcher24]

I am unable to beat any hard booster missions and it is a huge grind for me.
I need like 2500 coins to get my upgrades and it is really annoying to get like 140 silver per medium mission.

[THM]

Scorcher24님이 먼저 게시:

I am unable to beat any hard booster missions and it is a huge grind for me.
I need like 2500 coins to get my upgrades and it is really annoying to get like 140 silver per medium mission.

I was in a similar position 2 days ago. I was easily destroying the random Medium levels and couldn't even finish the first few waves of Hard. But yeah you do need to grind a little to get some silver and cards. There is no getting around it.

It definitely is harder starting out and gets easier when you get decent towers. My advice stick with it. Get as far as you can in the story and once you can't beat the story grind the randomly generated maps at that point.

Just out of interest what towers are you using and at what mission are you on? This is all pretty fresh in my mind as I only started playing about a week ago.

[Segal]

Some gameplay mechanics were drawn from free-to-play games, but random levels and card system were there almost from the beginning :)

We took daily rewards and three currencies (XP + silver + stars) from f2p games.

[Scorcher24]

May I ask why you decided this way?
It seems kinda odd for me to go for such mechanics if you have a fully paid game.

[RiO]

Scorcher24님이 먼저 게시:

May I ask why you decided this way?
It seems kinda odd for me to go for such mechanics if you have a fully paid game.

You would rather have a short game or have a game that artificially inflates game play time by stacking on more waves or ridiculous challenge modes that do stuff like doubling wave spawn size?

Admittedly, the gold stars could use a bit of a boost. I've mentioned before that their scarcity is the number one contributor to the F2P stink of which the odor manages to linger. However; the experience building and upgrade purchasing goes a very long way to making the grind and replayability of the game fun, because for a long period of time you can set and fullfill real goals by achieving upgrades and strengthening yourself to challenge harder and harder levels.

Compare that to Defense Grid, where -- though the gameplay is admittedly quite good -- other than the short story mode, there's really nothing the game offers you other than hunting for medals or leaderboard ranks or completing certain non-unique, rehashed challenges. All of those require grinding a single level until you master it inside and out and bend it to your will, or you can just replicate what's found in How-to-play videos. (Seriously; there are entire galleries of videos on how to gold star everything in Defense Grid; it's borderline ridiculous.)

In contrast, Prime World Defenders doesn't place most of the additional grind at the end, but smears it out over the game's actual length. Add to that the randomized nature of the card system making for playthroughts that are semi-unique per person and you're looking at something that offers a much more coherently lengthened gameplay than some simple tacked on challenge modes could give

Also; the card collecting aspect speaks to a certain subset of the gaming population that has OCD tendencies regarding collectibles and min/maxing, which gives those people something to do as well. (And speaking of OCD collectibles; I really wish those Steam achievements would finally be fixed properly...)

[ Darth Chocula ☠]

At first the game is a challange, but once you find some power cards it becomes pretty tame. Personally I think it is a fine TD, though the dragon, lightning and ice towers make it almost too easy, I did not find any use for other cards after completing about 1/2 of the game besides the damage boosters and detect hidden, and rarely used spells.