The whole difficulty level thing is a mistake

[mumia]

After thinking about it a bit more, I concluded the the whole difficulty sleector thing is a mistake in this game. It's uneccessary. As even worse players can complete the levels only with less cores remaining, which makes the implementation of difficulty levels redundand, mute and unneccessary.

Then they add tower iterms, so you can beat levels that are otherwise impossible on elite, but tower items are random, and can'T even be used in competitive mode. So either we haev them or don't have them, but both? I question even the neccessaty of the separate open / competitive modes.

Then there are the shenanigans with scoring that depends on a thousand insignificant variables that change second by second, which makes the whole going for high scores frustrating and seemingly random.

These problems weren't apparent in the beta with only two dumbed down levels avaialable without any kind of overview of the whole situation.

[mumia]

I mean in DG1 when I wanted to get a higher score I knew what I had to do. I had to do a better job at defending the cores, and if I did I got a higher score usually.

Here on the other hand, on hard and elite you can'T defend the cores they always take them, and here come in the shenanigans with the scoring system. It basically all comes down to blind luck how much score will you end up with, as it's impossible to strategize where aliens willl die with the cores, and which alien willl give a core to another and will it have high health or low, and how far will it take the cores. You just can't account to that in your strategy. And who says otherwise is lying.

So the game in it's current state is extremely frustrating, I try and try, and get nowhere, my score gets worse the harder I try. It's bull that sometimes you can get more score if you even let aliens take cores rather than building more towers to defend them. And whtat I hear that even the number of towers and their upgrade state is accounted for in the score awarded? WTF seriously. It shouldn't matter what I kill the alien with as long as it's dead.

I'm sorry for ranting, but this scoring system just makes me MAD.

[SLMEPHI[GER]]

In the elite mode they did not ever get the cores, i also have gold medals in elite mode with all cores, but it is harder, but i think its always to easy and the difficulty system is bad done. they must chage it and i think a better version were not to make medals for every difficulty level, better were it when on easy you only can get bronze, on normal silver, on ahrd gold when its perfect and on elite gold if you get minimum 80% of the cores.and then on elite you get another gold medal, an goldstar or so on.

The higher the difficulte the more the aliens give points.
Then the difficulty system will be good and everybody wants to get gold and playes higher difficulties, so the gameplaytime will also be higher.
I also think tehre had to be achievments like get 5 gold medals in hard mode, get 5 in elite mode, get 10 in ahrdmode, get 10 in elite mode, make all games in elitemode..... because now the difficulty system has only one thing, come into the highscore. All achievments are makeable in easy mode

I got all achievments in beta which were not buggy, The i played 2 days the final and ot all the other achievment excluding the 100 Gold medals.
And sorry but i did not feel any problems, all achievments done by the first test to get it.
It#s like i get an Goldmedal for a marathon run and only sitting and look at the runners

[Operation40]

Originally posted by PrimeSonic:

I'll also be first to admit that I don't pay attention to the score myself. As long as I finished the level with all cores (and a gold medal) I'm satisfied.

Problem is - all cores doesn't guarantee a gold.. and loosing cores still gives you a gold. I've lost 1/2 my cores on maps and get gold still. score is broken!

[1UP]

Another problem I've noticed is that one of the most successful strategies is to build a lot of Gun towers and probably all Gun towers. It seems that trying to use the right tower type in a certain part of the maze or choosing towers based on the most common types of aliens is pointless. For Hard difficulty, it seems that Guns everywhere is what works best.

[John Wilkes Bluetooth]

Originally posted by Operation40:

Problem is - all cores doesn't guarantee a gold.. and loosing cores still gives you a gold. I've lost 1/2 my cores on maps and get gold still. score is broken!

The same type of wonky stuff was appearant in the beta. I'm giving it a real chance but this new scoring system has yet to reveal itself to me as an improvement. In DG1 it was simple, straightforward, and intuitive. Defend the cores better, finish with more resources, you get a higher score. Doesn't always play out that way in DG2.

I'm most the way through the game, playing on Competitive. I'll beat a level on Normal, then try on Hard. Some I do, some I don't on just move to the next level.

The game is definately balanced to playing with tower items, which now has me questioning the inclusion of Competitive mode in the first place. I don't want to compete against jugglers, but at the same time I would like it to at least be possible to beat all levels on Elite in Competitive mode.

[Operation40]

DG1 wasnt perfect.. Jugglers could ignore the par bonus and spend 20 minutes on a 3minute map, end with 50k resources and get millions of points.

Instead of fixing the formula so that TimeUnderPar*TimeBonus goes negative they decided to introduce these ticks and score zones and % of sell value.. as if any of that has anything to do with "efficiency"..

[John Wilkes Bluetooth]

Originally posted by PrimeSonic:

Or if it must be so, have an "Open (No Sell)" mode. So tower items are there but juggling wouldn't be a thing.

Ding Ding Ding!!!

Great suggestion.

[mumia]

Originally posted by SLMEPHI:

In the elite mode they did not ever get the cores, i also have gold medals in elite mode with all cores, but it is harder, but i think its always to easy

Sorry but I just cannot believe that. I don't know how they did not even touch the cores for you. I can't even beat the first level on elite competitive.

As for the scoring system, it broke the game for me. I finished the campaign on normal, and now I don't even want to play DG2 anymore. I'd rather play DG1.

[Ceryk]

Firstly, the word you want is Moot, not Mute.

Secondly, you don't seem understand the progression mechanic in the game. The point of difficulty levels is to start out at one level and move your way up based on a combination of tactics and the tower items you have found. The whole point of tower items is moving up into the higher difficulty levels and making them more managable. It even says so when you select higher difficulty levels than Normal. If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to use tower items.

Thirdly, if you're concerned about score in a tower defence game, your priorities are completely wrong. Passing the level is the goal, score is primarily an indication of how well you're doing accordind to the difficulty you are playing in. It's not a goal. If you're getting Gold Medal scores, you may be ready to move to the next difficulty. That Score Booster crap in the Booster Tower is just there for people that are obsessed with how bloated and purple certain types of players can get their epeen to show off to their friends.

And fourthly, why are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about tower items in competative mode? You do realize how PvPers are right? They'll ♥♥♥♥♥ and moan if PvP isn't balanced because most of them want to win based on skill, not in game advantages. Competing for score is another form of PvP. And it has to be balanced and everyone playing on the same playing field, especially if you're trying to get a recognized record.

[mumia]

Thanks for being the grammar police. I never saw moot in written form I just went on hearing. Stupid language this english they say one thing and write a completely different thing. They say center but write centre.

Excuse me for getting it wrong.

I'm complaining about tower items because they don't fit in the nature of the game. They're awarded randomly, yet they're neccessary to beat elite levels. This is confusing. Either they should be optional (eg the levels should be beatable without them) or they should be awarded equally to everyone, not to break balance.

As for score I don't care about high score, but I care about doing a level better. But if the score is not an indicator on how good my strategy is, then it's broken. If I have to use a different strategy to better protect the cores than to get a higher score then the scoring is not good.

[SLMEPHI[GER]]

The goal is to protect as many cores as you can from beeing stolen/touched. You have to get a strategy to save them as good as you can, if you have saved them test the next time other strategies, mazes and so on sometimes you build 1 more tower but get a better pointscore because cores aren't touched or stolen. For every core in alien hand you get 2% score less for killing enemies, for every core out of the game you get 4% less. So first test to beat the level on the difficulty and then look for better strategies and better your score. And at the end when you know how to beat it and you don't get a better score, you can test using pointbooster ability if you want to break highscores if booster abilities or anything else is usable in your mode.
I also think the randomly awarded system of the tower upgrades is a bit crap because you have to play around 100+ hours to get all upgrades. But easy, normal, hard are easy beatable without tower upgrades. and elite is build for the people which play much and use their upgrades. Elite is also beatable without tower upgrades but then you must test long time and create a near perfectly strategy. This is for all who have beaten every other difficulty on every level and mode. And sorry but if it is to hard for you or you don't want to test many times why didn't you go down on ahrd and beat it there. Elite and specialy the competive mode is the ahrdest difficulty and it would be bad programmed if everyone would easily beat it. It is the mode for ahrdcore players after hundreds of hours of gameplay which easily beat the normal elite mode on permanently fast forward.
You only played 18 hours your profile said. Play first all on hard and elite.
I also think the difficulty system is not the best, easy, normal, hard is to easy and elite is already much easier than in DG1 But if 1 difficulty is to hard play it on a lower one, test strategies and when you have made it very good there, test it again

[mumia]

How is elite is much easier than dg1? i ELite is impossible even on the first levels. And I beat all levels in all modes in DG1.

What you write is theory, in reality becaose of the complex scoring system, sometimes you get more score if you build less towers and suffer the penalty for aliens touching or taking cores, rather than building enough towers to repel them.

[No Master]

I must say the elite lvl are totaly easy. Bult standart gun tower with aoe item and Lazer tower with slow item. and you win the game instand. the main problem is that the creeps all time time the same and the strong sloe creeps are not tanky enough. super grinder lvl 99 with speed creeps is way stronger then lvl 100 with big slow creeps.

[Polaris2013]

For Open mode, difficulty is fine. But for competitive modes difficulty are harmful because it adds too much confusion about the "correct" format to play. Are you rank 100 out of 1000 or of 1 million? Big difference. It's not much of a competition when there are so many different mode combinations that you can play for dozens of hours and never even enter the same format as another competitor. I'd like to see the menus for difficulty and mode selection combined into one like this:
-Easy (Open)
-Normal (Open)
-Hard (Open)
-Elite (Open)
-Competitive w/ Sell (difficulty TBD, but either normal or hard)
-Competitive w/o Sell (difficulty same as above)

As an aside, the menu flow in this game is really obtuse and I don't like it.

[SLMEPHI[GER]]

Originally posted by mumia:

How is elite is much easier than dg1? i ELite is impossible even on the first levels. And I beat all levels in all modes in DG1.

What you write is theory, in reality becaose of the complex scoring system, sometimes you get more score if you build less towers and suffer the penalty for aliens touching or taking cores, rather than building enough towers to repel them.

Elite is in open mode on Elite very easy i played most of the levels in elite in solo and cooperated and tehre was no problem getting gold. in cooperated we get both gold in 1 game. as competitiv its hard thats sure, because the difficulty is as written and programmed made for playing with tower items, but thats makes it to an super elite difficulty to get gold on elite competitive, its not impossible but very very hard. And when you must built, or when its better to let aliens touch a core is something what you must test and find the right way. so its a part of the system. I will say nothing is impossible but there are some hard things. But thats the part which makes the game to play again and again. You play it to get better, to beat the things you first thought its impossible and than make better scores, play t5o get new tower upgrades and when its to easy beat it without tower items....
How long have you played DG2. I will say who would play 100h or more DG2 if all toweritems would be played free after 2h or if you can take the items which you want, then you only take the 10 you want and after a few hours you have all you want. Then the open difficulties are to easy tahts right. even elite is only a thing of 1 or 2 tries to go gold for beginners. but than competitive mode will be the really elite mode. Because of the long playtimes to get all upgrades and the hard competitive mode i think much players play it for much hours.