Feedback

[Tman]

You've got quite the addictive game but I feel there are areas that can be improved. Below I'm listing things I would lobby to change, things I like and things to tweak:

Changes I would like to lobby for:

1) Maze-ing should be rewarding, not punishing.

In TD, the ability to maze and to have enemies go by positions that can fire on them multiple times as they pass within a zone multiple times is a way to stretch out your spends. In this game, trying to build mazes that loop is:

a) Too difficult because of the card drops: Suggestion: Have multiple choices to pick from to build your maze.
b) Too punishing because of air units that ignore the map. Suggestion(s): i) have spawn points called out so you know where air units will spawn and ii) air units must not fly over areas without a map square.

Note: Currently you can "game" Tower Dominion by building a straight and narrow path where you wait for tiles to reconnect branches back to the main "trunk". This is not rewarding nor any real skill and it's solely done b/c of air unit problems.

2) Re-Roll is pointless. I will NEVER spend to re-roll b/c it is far too valuable for towers and see the note above.

3) This should not be a game where you are picking a 1-2 tower strategy. Is that your game design choice? The way it is currently, you can "game" it by only picking 1-2 towers and sticking with those. IMO, it is more compelling to choose 5-10 towers to go into battle with. Rogue Tower (RT) has this problem and despite a "hack" that allowed you to game it and years of trying to convince the dev to change it, he never did.

What I mean is to allow the player to "pick" the 5-10 towers they will get as drops during the round so they can try different strategies. Right now, everything is random and once you pick a card, you start getting the efficient and cost improvements and cost is only good if you want to further limit the number of tower types you employ. Of course, you should continue to have to unlock towers and this "selection" phase would be limiting at the beginning, but as you unlock more towers, you can at least limit the randomness to those towers.

What I like:

A) I wasn't convinced after trying the first two commanders that they added anything different but after trying the 3rd where the infantry and commander actually can do damage *and* be a lane blocker, I am looking forward to trying more commanders in the full game. I also like that each commander has a different HQ. This wasn't evident with the first two commanders.

B) I really like the random buildings that give bonuses. This is a dynamic change that causes you to rethink how you might maze / place towers.

C) You are forcing the player to make real decisions on whether to spam more towers or to upgrade the tower and/or troops and/or HQ. But I think this is held back by the maze problems mentioned above since the adjacency bonuses on HQ are rarely employed.

D) I can sell towers and get funds back when I get an interesting card drop. For example, getting a "all towers gain XXX" while only having ONE YYY tower" introduces a dynamic where you can change your strategy and I like that the game allows me to dynamically respond. (or sell a tower to raise more $$ to deploy a different tower)

Things I would like tweaked:

i) Give me an undo button on tile placement. I have lost count of how many times I accidentally clicked

ii) Give me spawn counts by entrance so I can see what is going to spawn at which entrance.

iii) Sound design is weak. Weapon sounds are not distinctive and the music feels like filler.

iv) Let me click on an enemy during a round and bring up the info card on that enemy so I don't have to wait till the round ends to go to the codex.

Thanks, wishlisted and looking forward to where you take this.

[julienb]

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us!

Some of your concerns may already be addressed, or your perspective might shift once you experience the full game—especially regarding rerolling and its value. You'll see that at higher difficulties, it becomes a pivotal part of a successful run.

We also recognize the need for clearer information on enemies and their paths, as you’re not the only one who has pointed this out. We’ll look into how we can improve this!

[Tman]

Originally posted by julienb:

...especially regarding rerolling and its value. You'll see that at higher difficulties, it becomes a pivotal part of a successful run.

Granted this is not the full release and many things will be revealed, but with the current 3 commanders, I rarely have enough recon for more than one re-roll when scouts cost 75 just for the basic detection and you typically need at least two to cover the map and if I want any upgrades to scouts, that cost recon.

There are just too few ways to get recon with the existing commanders. Are there other things that are in the works or will you have to utilize unknown commanders (with buildings and upgrades that generate more recon) for more difficult runs?

Am I missing something with the existing commanders? I only see the +8 recon on the training building and then the other recons are only random card drops you are not guaranteed.

[Game Familiar]

Originally posted by Tman:

Originally posted by julienb:

...Am I missing something with the existing commanders? I only see the +8 recon on the training building and then the other recons are only random card drops you are not guaranteed.

With the difficulty increases you get more HQ entrances, that initially are disconnected (no path from one another) you should have seen some references to battlefronts (that's what that means) in there the main use of recon is to make sure you have a path that is effective in channeling the enemies towards your buildings, one thing to consider that may not be mentioned is you cannot re-roll into the same tile type, you could get a flat tile (although there are a lot less flats that of the other types), this gives player enough control to at least get map that is viable.

As you go up in difficulty the runs take longer as well, with 35 waves being the standard game and then there is endless mode, so you will have more time to build a maze or long corridor, loops and whatever fits better in the map you are playing.

I agree, that the path building is more tense that it is fun at least for me. I would have preferred if players were able to build more freely and then compensate by making enemies more threatening.

The faction you have not seen, does start with 20 recon and you got one of the HQ paths that provides it as well. And there are two commanders that also start with additional recon production.

Then there are a couple of doctrines related to recon: Mirador Expertise (in order to get it you need to reach level 3 in either discounts or damage/fire rate), it gives 10 recon a turn, and then there is one that has the condition if you have one Warwolf you get 10 recon.
There are several buildings as well that have it although generally they are higher tier blueprints and they don't start appearing until 8 for II and 10 for III, since the demo goes to wave 25, that is a lot less time for you to interact with them so maybe you have not seen one, and since you cannot check them in the draft screen may have selected something else. Another way to get recon is through neutrals, there are two buildings that give production +5 and +10.

While you can certainly aim for mono-builds at least until Diff 4 generally you'll have to interact with later enemies a lot more and building a good path seems more important, i tend to play more re-actively and draft a bunch blueprints to cover different enemy types and possible scenarios but a couple of other players I talk to, like to aim for specific things. The important note is: as long as our choices are consistent within the context of the run we are playing things turnout well. And you feel like you earn your wins and losses.

A few patches ago a new mode was introduced, Frontiers where you get a heat (Hades) style modifier selection. You can select them all (18), right now the balance is being worked on, so it can be unfairly hard, after testing it a bunch I don't see aiming for specific builds or even using a few types as very viable save for the luckiest of starts.

The commanders themselves also provide a lot of variance even if it seems like a couple of abilities (one of them generally just a small bonus) would not make a big difference, but they are huge, and you really feel when playing them.

As for scouts they are good, currently they seem to have a targeting issue if it gets resolve they might become even better, but it is hard to go full Hideouts unless playing a particular Green Commander, that doesn't mean it cannot be done, except with here (Delcia, she starts with extra recon production and Scout Hideouts), however is far from reliable at least at the start of the run where you don't know what are you going to see.

[Darkbridger]

Agree with much of what is pointed out in the original post. I will add, flyers are absolutely sucking the fun out of this. I've seen them show up on wave 2, before I have any reasonable defense against them. Having them fly across lots of empty space is also pretty much an auto-lose situation if the map is against you.

Also, there is a late game tower (don't remember the name) with a 'restricted' firing area that is ridiculously far away from the tower. This tower also reinforces the suggestion that you should build a linear path at all costs. The fact that the tower is so expensive makes it unlikely to see much use. Even the mortar tower does this to some degree.

Definitely need better indication of where enemies come from and definitely need to rework Recon points, because re-rolling is bad value, even when you get a boost that gives you something along with the re-roll.

This game has a lot of similarity with Crystal Guardians and shares some of the same problems. In that game, you can choose towers freely, while the randomness here can give wildly different experiences from one run to the next. Some will be easy (where you get a good path layout or package drops) and others will be a nightmare (where path and random reinforcements just never give you any synergy).

Additional suggestion: Give an option for map start with 1 out path, 2 (seems to be the current default), or even 3 for more difficult starts. Maybe start the game with only 1.

[Game Familiar]

https://youtu.be/CGCb9_dMPQE?si=hTLw_t40lf4PAByN

[Tman]

Congrats.

You proved my point 1) by gaming the system and building a straight and long path.

You proved 2) by never re-rolling

You prove 3) by doing a 1 tower strategy

Thanks for showing the devs exactly what I was talking about.

[JackThejil]

Eh... it's kind of a interesting thing with the demo options, but in a certain sense "1 tower strategy" isn't, like... actually possible? In that the faction passives make it very literally impossible to only use one tower. No matter what you do, there's going to be some baseline support from infantry, and two of the three commanders actively lean into it.

It's more noticeable with the reds (the blue infantry's stronger with investment, I think, but without? The red baseline is significantly more powerful with the available commander.), but it's quite influential either way. Just did a red mirador-spam attempt (I've done blue before, but with heavy infantry investment on the side), and it probably would have failed without it. Closest I've come to losing without actually losing (my two non-intentional-ish losses so far were with extreme build attempts; one without upgrading, the other without building anything without fully upgrading), the commander squad body blocked a lot of wave 25. Kinda' makes me think the mirador specialist is actually the worst commander for a mirador-only run, ha! Combined arms definitely makes for a much, much smoother attempt, though. So nice to be able to use light mortars for neutral capturing, heh.

Also used rerolls for a nice bit of boost; got both the damage boost and supply on roll doctrines. You can roll a good dozen or so times if you're not building scout towers, apparently, got me a few percent of global damage boost and a few hundred supply. Not huge, but not nothin'.

Path did try to go long initially, but it wasn't cooperating much and after a point I got a doctrine that boosted damage based on entries, so I stopped trying, heh. You do want the area nearest the base looped in and extended a few tiles out, but after that it stops mattering much and how far out you go doesn't really seem to make much of a difference. Want a bit of space to bugmulch but it don't take much in practice.

Difficulty 1 mostly just feels really forgiving, ha. You have a lot of room to do silly stuff like not build anything but type of one tower, fewer starting points to build long, so on and so forth.

[Game Familiar]

Originally posted by Tman:

...You proved my point..

I did mention you could just aim for mono builds in difficulties below IV quite effectively (pretty much every time) as long as you make choices that are consistent you should be good at that stage.

I did reroll in wave 19 after I saw the Krylos (Straight flyers) in the reveal at 18 to make sure I could push the spawning further away and into the Miradors range. Maybe we have different definitions for what a long path is, since to me that map has loops, perhaps because I was thinking a really long corridor to do Air Strikes or Omega Emitters.

Maybe I should have posted the link to the playlist, that video is on, with the rest of the runs at higher difficulties, not trying to push anything or be confrontational, sometimes is hard to get that across when writing, just in case you want to see how the game plays a later difficulties, how the map look and the sort of decisions you have to make later in the game. It could provide a bit more information about the end product.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkN7TwfjiJ1WKCagtLDZepX5_VM5gTSs_