Time invested for reward gained is not enough!

[Arterus]

I am an experienced player, certainly not the best but I have played all of the games and spent a large chunk of time in Unchained (How I wish that was still a thing!).

I like the game. I am enjoying the meta progression and the new challenges that the game gives, except maybe the rift corruption which I wish was not there, I hate it!

Anyway this isn't about that, it's about how much time you invest into a playthrough, which can in some cases go your way and in others you are left with so many; lets call them debuffs to generalise, that you really stand no chance of winning.
The time invested in a complete run is significant, and lets face it you are always going to gamble forward because you need the skulls! Yet if things suddenly go wrong for you in some way on maybe the third mission for instance, you lose a significant amount of skulls by falling at that hurdle.

So lets take this hypothetical example. You have invested a good hour and a half getting through to the third mission with all the planning and fine tuning and then the playing itself. If it goes wrong at this point you are left with 500 skulls (or there abouts). This is not enough to even upgrade one section of the ability tree at higher priced levels. You cant upgrade your traps, you cant afford any Threads and that time, although you had fun, seems too long for such small reward.

Am I missing something here folks? Or is this just the brutal way the game treats you?

I feel that the mission structure, with no alternative is a horrible way to gamble on winning. I have completed a full run twice only and I am experienced! How are new players finding this?

Maybe I need to 'Get gud!' but I don't have time to do that and the time I do put into it seems to reward me so little.

Maybe it's just me, but I wish there was a different game mode where you could just do 'One Map!' Or maybe have difficulties like the game used to have, where you can get more reward for the tougher missions.

What do others think? Interested to know.

Thanks,

[ForeverZero]

Originally posted by Arterus:

Am I missing something here folks? Or is this just the brutal way the game treats you?

Seems to me that you are missing, or ignoring, the choice to withdraw. You choose to gamble forward, meaning you are risking half of your current skulls on the idea that you can beat the next mission and earn even more. If you have stacked up enough debuffs that things are getting "brutal" for you, then take what you have won and withdraw. If you keep pushing yourself under the assumption that you will always win, you are throwing away half of your potential gains.

[Zouls]

"
So lets take this hypothetical example. You have invested a good hour and a half getting through to the third mission with all the planning and fine tuning and then the playing itself. "
then you are immensely slow at going through maps, especially in solo play and especially with how easy it is without difficulty on the first map or almost 2 can just be started ones barriers are down cause it dies so quickly.

you are meant to not keep playing if you are losing, you have 42 rift points solo to learn that lesson.

" I have completed a full run twice only and I am experienced! "

there are 4 bosses and basically the runs becomes longer for each you kill, so they should be fairly mangable before killing them as they get harder per mission done.

I think the most important thing for you to understand is that score = skulls, 1k score is 1 skull so its worthwhile to look at your score sheet after the mission and get an idea, the biggest one being your combo amount massively contributes to skulls, not dying the entire run gives you another 10k. picking up skulls in match gives you 5k. getting sentinel kills gives points too. every rift point you have left at end of mission is +1 skull each.

im pretty sure that rune coins does too but cant remember it offhand.

the difference between a good first mission and a bad first mission without getting skull upgrades ingame is as big as getting from 150 to 300 skulls.

and just did one earlier with the difficulty 5 option on and got 500 for the first mission and abandoning (though its also really hard so i dont recommend it).

basically the further you get the most skulls you get, the first few maps without difficulty should be easier and easier to get used to so how long it takes to do 3 missions is entirely a matter of playstyle.

there are some good upgrades that is worth trying to get in skill tree but it quickly snowballs so you get so much skulls that you dont really need them, as long as you level up the traps you use, and get the trap type benefits in tree you need you should be pretty good.

In general i feel like the only real losses comes from terrible modifiers which you can often see a mile away which is where i stop gambling, anything like dynamite archers and boom sappers is terrible, sometimes i take a bad combo (like stone golems and electric weapon and i did 10 damage per hit) and saw i had to stop, but im just not quite sure what you are doing where you are CONFIDENT in taking the next map, and then losing.

ALSO, worth understanding, you not only lose half what you have earned, anything you earns during the match is also lost.

so say you spend 40 minutes to get do 2 missions and you get 1000 points, which is a while but whatever, and then spend 30 more minutes to fail at mission 3. so you only get 500 because thats half of the original.

Then in the two universes you have 1000 skulls in 40 minutes vs 500 skulls in 70 minutes

meaning 25 skulls per minute vs 7.1 skulls per minute, meaning the expected rate of progression just got lowered to a third of what you had because of gambling forward in a bad situation.

Which is also why they halved the skill point and trap requirements of skulls on day one because they pretty much said that they underestimated how many people gambled and lost.

[Zouls]

"Or maybe have difficulties like the game used to have, where you can get more reward for the tougher missions.
"
also to highlight as nobody is gonna read my commnent above.

you have difficulty 0 - 10 that unlocks from killing every boss, and the update yesterday night unlocked it without needing to kill bosses, so you get 10% more skulls but it becomes furiously hard.

I tried difficulty 5, which to my understanding means that you are playing on "map 5" and by their own difficulty scaling it means that the enemies gets 50% more hp and 25% more damage per map, so you are seeing trolls with 14k hp on the first map, for 50% more exp

[Arterus]

Please don't misunderstand me guys. I do of course get that you can withdraw at any time. I have been, its the only way of guaranteeing skulls.

Perhaps I didnt really explain my points clearly enough, the words to do so explicitly fail me really but the overall point I'm making is that the overall time vs the reward simply doesn't seem to work.

I mean lets take for example that I quit out after the first 2 maps, thats still a significant time sink and the reward seems poor for that effort.

Again, please don't misunderstand, I get completely that the slow progression is intentional. I mean if they gave us 10K skulls every run we would all have nothing to strive for and eventually lose interest when everything is upgraded. It really just feels to me at least that time does not equal reward the way it stands.
I would have to test this and I'm not sure there would be any way to make it a reasonable comparison, but if we take the same time in the last few games (including Unchained) I feel that I would have received a far greater reward for the same amount of time and planning effort... I dunno, I just feel that this balance needs some work.

Not to mention the balance between the second and third map each round. The difficulty spike, even without the game suddenly becoming 'brutal' is massive! Perhaps that is what needs to be eased a little to make that effort to 'Gamble forward' more winnable more often.

I'm enjoying the game but feel it needs a few tweaks here and there and it's threads like these here that might... Maybe... Make a difference?

Thanks for the time and effort to reply guys, it's appreciated.

[Zouls]

Originally posted by Arterus:

Please don't misunderstand me guys. I do of course get that you can withdraw at any time. I have been, its the only way of guaranteeing skulls.

Perhaps I didnt really explain my points clearly enough, the words to do so explicitly fail me really but the overall point I'm making is that the overall time vs the reward simply doesn't seem to work.

I mean lets take for example that I quit out after the first 2 maps, thats still a significant time sink and the reward seems poor for that effort.

Again, please don't misunderstand, I get completely that the slow progression is intentional. I mean if they gave us 10K skulls every run we would all have nothing to strive for and eventually lose interest when everything is upgraded. It really just feels to me at least that time does not equal reward the way it stands.
I would have to test this and I'm not sure there would be any way to make it a reasonable comparison, but if we take the same time in the last few games (including Unchained) I feel that I would have received a far greater reward for the same amount of time and planning effort... I dunno, I just feel that this balance needs some work.

Not to mention the balance between the second and third map each round. The difficulty spike, even without the game suddenly becoming 'brutal' is massive! Perhaps that is what needs to be eased a little to make that effort to 'Gamble forward' more winnable more often.

I'm enjoying the game but feel it needs a few tweaks here and there and it's threads like these here that might... Maybe... Make a difference?

Thanks for the time and effort to reply guys, it's appreciated.

again to repeat a single point i made earlier.

only you can decide how long it takes, cause it aint the orcs moving slowly that decides it. you have an infinite amount of time between waves so you can do like i did earlier and mess around with setups for an hour in a single map, or you can put a simple setup if you are playing on difficulty zero and get through mission 1 in like 15 minutes tops.

[Yarem]

Risk vs. Reward is mostly ok, for 5 you get 4k something and mission 6 is around 6k if you play solo and are limited in regard to bonus points.

Problems are that the player and turret upgrades are almost useless... i don't feel much more powerful with level 50 than with level 20 when I unlocked all turrets.

Turret upgrades are almost worthless, and i don't really feel an impact during missions 4 and 5... during mission 6 CC was more important than anything else, frost lance was the MVT (most valuable trap ;) ).

Another problem is that missions take too long for a random group... in the most groups, the first players leave around mission 2 which dooms the entire run and the time spent.

Scaling for the higher difficulties seems to be way off for the risk... tried a group with 4 skull difficulty and managed to finish the first 2 missions before we lost a player and the mobs had way too much hp to make this a fun experience.

[Caridor]

I absolutely agree. You spend like an hour and get 1k if you do 3 or 4 maps so the grind is going to be excrutiating.

[chuckberts]

It seems the shorter runs are struggling but long runs turn into insane amounts. My first 10 mission run was 1.1 difficulty and netted me 50k skulls so so I went from low lvl w/ incomplete traps to everything I wanted from Gabby along w/ my traps upgraded in one run and still had leftover to work on other traps.

[Arterus]

Update: The recent patch has improved the time versus reward drastically. The buffs put in place now make the game more rewarding full stop.
I think now the game is 'Orcs Must Die', because it's fun and that choice to dip out when you've had enough feels so much better.

Well done Robot Entertainment, an amazing game made that much better!

[Bennyester]

I think I get you. Like the others I don't agree but I get how it feels off since in the past you'd get 5 Skulls + Bonuses per map and anything between 5 and 25 Skulls was enough to get significant upgrades that changed your traps or unlock ne ones of which there used to be way more.

Now, with the example from above if you lose on map 3 and end up with 500 skulls that may not even be a single upgrade to anything other than maybe 50 dmg to one of your traps.

[Zouls]

Originally posted by Bennyester:

I think I get you. Like the others I don't agree but I get how it feels off since in the past you'd get 5 Skulls + Bonuses per map and anything between 5 and 25 Skulls was enough to get significant upgrades that changed your traps or unlock ne ones of which there used to be way more.

Now, with the example from above if you lose on map 3 and end up with 500 skulls that may not even be a single upgrade to anything other than maybe 50 dmg to one of your traps.

you need to combo to get skulls, whatever you do you need to COMBO, its the difference on 100 skulls and 350 skulls on mission 1.

[Bennyester]

Originally posted by Zouls:

Originally posted by Bennyester:

I think I get you. Like the others I don't agree but I get how it feels off since in the past you'd get 5 Skulls + Bonuses per map and anything between 5 and 25 Skulls was enough to get significant upgrades that changed your traps or unlock ne ones of which there used to be way more.

Now, with the example from above if you lose on map 3 and end up with 500 skulls that may not even be a single upgrade to anything other than maybe 50 dmg to one of your traps.

you need to combo to get skulls, whatever you do you need to COMBO, its the difference on 100 skulls and 350 skulls on mission 1.

I wasn't talking to you, I said I don't agree with OP and you missed my point entirely.

Which was not that we need more skulls, it's that skulls feel less impactful.

[Zouls]

Originally posted by Bennyester:

Originally posted by Zouls:

you need to combo to get skulls, whatever you do you need to COMBO, its the difference on 100 skulls and 350 skulls on mission 1.

I wasn't talking to you, I said I don't agree with OP and you missed my point entirely.

Which was not that we need more skulls, it's that skulls feel less impactful.

you also said that if you lose on map 3 you only get 500 skulls which cant give you an upgrade and im saying the reason you get 500 is because you arent comboing so you arent getting any skulls.

your entire premise for "how it works now" isnt true. so i pointed it out.

[Bennyester]

Originally posted by Zouls:

Originally posted by Bennyester:

I wasn't talking to you, I said I don't agree with OP and you missed my point entirely.

Which was not that we need more skulls, it's that skulls feel less impactful.

you also said that if you lose on map 3 you only get 500 skulls which cant give you an upgrade and im saying the reason you get 500 is because you arent comboing so you arent getting any skulls.

your entire premise for "how it works now" isnt true. so i pointed it out.

I only used someone elses hypothetical numbers as an example in no way am I saying you can't get more skulls, please stop making up arguements that I never made.

[Zouls]

Originally posted by Bennyester:

Originally posted by Zouls:

you also said that if you lose on map 3 you only get 500 skulls which cant give you an upgrade and im saying the reason you get 500 is because you arent comboing so you arent getting any skulls.

your entire premise for "how it works now" isnt true. so i pointed it out.

I only used someone elses hypothetical numbers as an example in no way am I saying you can't get more skulls, please stop making up arguements that I never made.

okay, then its a general argument that the premise of "time invested isnt rewarded" relies heavily on how one plays, how much time one wastes, and how many combos ones get.

you are saying you dont agree with him but you agree with his point because nothing can be upgraded with what you get, which is true that if you play badly and lose early and dont get combos you dont get alot of skulls.

but instead of saying that you went "yes i can see where you are coming from because your hypothetical example which i dont agree with indeed doesnt feel rewarding" and i pointed out that the hypothetical is insanely biased.

good? good.