point system in endless mode is bad

[Ray]

it is slow. very slow. One night gives one point only and it takes several to get one basic upgrade that you get right off the bet in campaign e. g. lobber, military capacity upgrade. This makes the progression extremely slow and it feels like several nights passrd and I just wasted day time waiting and achieved nothing because I lack the upgrade to speed things up. This compared to the insanely fast paced campaign where 4 nights get you from ground to castle is day and night.

thoughts?
anyone like prosperity system over points?
why do you like point system?

[Sparky]

Points gain increases every couple of nights. I'm around night 27 and I'm getting 4 points a night now. It is pretty slow in the beginning, but it does ramp up.

[Ray]

Originally posted by zxzc77:

Points gain increases every couple of nights. I'm around night 27 and I'm getting 4 points a night now. It is pretty slow in the beginning, but it does ramp up.

problem is the game limits your progress. The player cannot do anything more than the night provides and the whole loop puts the player on the passive side.

[(D)ayRavor]

The game feels also way too slow for my taste. I like the Idea of an RTS that focuses just on defence, but please give us faster developement in the run. I restarted way too often already because I did some dumb stuff here and there :) And now the beginning feels unbearable to me. It's so boring because you do the exact same stuff always in the beginning. Please give us maybe some tech-points to start with to make the beginning more diverse. Besides of that I would maybe like 1 or 2 more resources you can do stuff with.

[Morkai_Corvus]

I agree, Either we need to start with some points to get going, or it needs to ramp up way faster.

I think another issue is there is just too many things you need when the waves get harder and its a hard choice what you can do without for longer. Makes me feel like I am just trying to cheese the AI to postpone actual strategy for getting things I need each wave.

[IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

True I agree, also to upprage tier 2 and have the artificier building it's way too slow i'm almost maxed out with 4 warehouse wave 15 can't deal enough dmg I have to take the dmg upgrade building instead when I can afford 2 pairs canon and baliste and i have Max tier walls
same with units cap no way to buy it or upgrade it maybe the monster nodules/nest could give us points or we could level up our units to a veteran like they are billions if they get a lot of kills. but something is definitly missing to make it feel satisfying.

from what i've felt the mid game transition 20 wave ish is super steep and in the end feels more like a puzzle game with the provided map and the AI path that's unpredictable and avoiding traps

[U.D.R]

The idea is good, but yeah this is too slow. And i dont know why i can't upgrade my army. The game dont explain why i cant unlock the thing...

[SylSeries]

I am at wave 60+ and I agree that the points systems needs some tweaking. Right off the bat, the point costs for the early archer/lobber/trapper's passive skills are way too high in my opinion, and should be lowered to 2pts instead. Wood and Stone packs have too much tiers, and should be cut down from 3 packs to 2 packs.

[RyLzEn]

as for me, the point system is fine, the endless mode is a kind of roguelike, where you need to plan your development and sacrifice something. but greedy children can't understand how this is.. you need to choose.. give them everything at once, the system is bad, where you need to choose something.

[Zaris]

I've played so far endless mode on medium and hard one time each and for medium it's kinda easy, small enemy waves and so on. On Hard you have already pick the right upgrades because the first waves are already kinda big. I think i went for something like:
- 4x military limit (all 2/4 pts)
- mist gatherer / bomber workshop / ballistas
- masonary/ elite quarter / partisans
- military limit (all 6 pts)
- enhanced tactical items (great banner)
- military limit (rest)
- the rest

I think i was done with the basic setup (partisans + ballistas) around wave 20-23, after that it's just making your base fancy.

-> The current system already works quite well but yes the start could be made faster in general for example starting with like 10 pts, 5 troops instead 1 but also making the first wave already harder. The first maybe 5-10 waves are so boring.

The pts system also could be totally removed and replaced with another system like having points of interests scattered across the map which gives upgrade points you need to hold them constantly like a currency which would give meaning in expanding your base.

[Reapingsoul77]

I don't think its a game issue, I think its a player issue. Remember age of empires? Its slow but people made mods to suit what they taste. First waves are small and weak to show you a general path set by the enemies. Otherwise you would get swarmed then complain about the game being to hard.

[DigitalMallen]

We're reading you and working in several ways to improve Endless mode. Hope we can share news soon!

[Ray]

Originally posted by RyLzEn:

as for me, the point system is fine, the endless mode is a kind of roguelike, where you need to plan your development and sacrifice something. but greedy children can't understand how this is.. you need to choose.. give them everything at once, the system is bad, where you need to choose something.

Not sure what you mean. A research system also makes player choose and I don't feel like the prosperity system in campaign gives players everything. I consider both of them better alternative to the point system. One problem is they put everything into the same pool for similar amount of points but their significance are not comparable. Troop skill is important but it has cool down and skills alone are not strong enough to be comparable to other upgrades like military capacity or new building blocks.

[Olleus]

I agree that the point system of endless mode isn't great. It's annoying when you've maxed out all resources in storage, but there's simply nothing new worth building. I don't think the whole system needs to be binned though. It would probably be enough for there to be research points you can discover by exploring the edges of the map and defeating the broods.

IE, replace the caches of stone / oxygen / wood you can find there with bonus research points. That would give an incentive to explore early on, and kickstart the otherwise dull star of endless mode.

[DrunkBunny94]

I'm also not a fan of the point system, not only is it slow but its also unintuitive.

I know that i need to upgrade my keep to get access to the stone masons building, that i need to build it to upgrade my keep again, i know that i need to buy the first walls upgrade to unlock the 2nd, etc, i was taught this playing the campaign and playing skirmish.

But when you play endless this isn't the case. You can unlock a building and have it missing units/upgrades, you might have buildings locked with no way of knowing how to unlock them because it might not click at first that you need the mist condensers to build everything, you might buy the advanced tactical assets upgrade thinking you are being efficient and skipping the earlier purchases only to realise that this gives you NOTHING without the subsequent upgrades.

As for it being slow this is also a double edged sword as you often end up with nothing to do during the day but gather materials for walls while you are too low tech / weak to expand but then you cant even skip the days with the skip button because you don't get compensated with those resources and then later on resources become a bit of a non issue because the army cap is so low and theres nothing else to buy/build.

If anything it should have an ending because it really does feel like after about day 25-30~ im just spamming the next day button with fast forward on so i can buy the rest of the unit cap upgrades.

[DrunkBunny94]

Originally posted by RyLzEn:

as for me, the point system is fine, the endless mode is a kind of roguelike, where you need to plan your development and sacrifice something. but greedy children can't understand how this is.. you need to choose.. give them everything at once, the system is bad, where you need to choose something.

The way other RTS's give your choices and slow you down is with build paths and resource management and not floating resources/capping yourself.

However in cataclismo warehouses are insane, they essentially 10x your economy making wood/stone a non issue very quickly and with the infinite(?) skybox you don't need to expand for housing space so what normally limits you forcing to make choices doesn't exist.

So it looks like the point system was a crude/tacky way to try and address some symptoms of a much bigger problem - which feels bad as the only thing slowing you down is what day it is rather than your or the monsters ability...