What's NinjaKiwi up to?

[Lawlzer]

Past Updates (pre 4.8)
Here are examples of what "past update" things need changed, still.
It's mostly taken months inbetween updates, and even years before any actually requested changes or features. Take for instance, the "ranked" that everyone has wanted in the game. It's been years since it was wanted, and first we got the "arenas" and "leaderboards" which are basically: Any decent player can go into the arena, and do that for hours and hours every day, and get #1 in the world, even if you only have a 55% win ratio. So, this wasn't the "ranked" anyone wanted. After that, NK added the "prestige" leaderboard. - which is practically the same thing as the other leaderboard.. and also took many, many months before it was implemented. All of the players that grinded to #1 or close, could easily do the exact same thing for the prestige leaderboard. (Which, is proven - literally go check the leaderboards right now).
I'll be honest, here. It's not hard to add an elo system to a game. Instead of arenas, it honestly might even be easier to make an 'elo' system (if you're lazy, you could literally just go online, look up a 1v1 elo algorithm, paste the algorithm, and have any semi-competent coder finish the elo system within a couple of hours at max).
the "balance updates" have been entirely focused on the wrong things. For example, chipper was nerfed into the ground (which is fine, as it was practically the god of towers, but they OVERkilled it.. now it's almost entirely useless), and the dart has been constantly getting nerfed, and it's still an insane top-tier tower. (The only thing that can really beat it now is heli or dartling, which is nearly unbeatable). Besides that, the "balance updates" really don't help and are nearly insignificant... You could watch a single YouTuber that's semi-decent at the game, and they will likely explain what balance changes need to happen, and that's be much more helpful - Or, you could even "reach out" to the YouTubers, and ask them what changes THEY think are required, for the game to be better.
Or, the "fourth tower in boss arenas".. really? It's been a very, VERY long time since the arenas (and boss arenas) have been added, and it's taken an incredibly long time for NinjaKiwi to implement this extremely simple change, to some arenas.
Also, small thing: On the Google Play[play.google.com], they’ve literally always had pictures of illegitimate gameplay (Also, you literally can’t die on r3. You have ~135 lives left by the time r3 starts (yes, I just tested that).
Update 4.8 to 4.9
It was about 3.5-4 months inbetween updates 4.8, and 4.9, which is fine - The thing is that there was virtually nothing new (two maps, and some balance changes) - but the balance changes were extremely neglegible. The nerfs changed pretty much none of the meta, and the update just.. didn't add anything new or really special.


Update 4.9 to 5.0
This is the reason I actually made this thread - this update, today.
It's been apprximately five and a half months for this update to come out, and it's an entirely new version - (You know, starting from 4.0 to 5.0? That's usually a big change).
So, first of all... the advertising (and/or news: we need “news” someplace so that we have other places to know what’s happening). What?.. it's been at least five months, and here's the advertising I've seen for the new update:
Yup, nothing. Not even today - Nowhere on the NK forums, nowhere on the Steam forums, no video, not on their Facebook[www.facebook.com], literally nowhere has this been advertised, whatsoever.
Well, that's just advertising, right? I'm just hating that they haven't advertised it? Alright, lets go past advertising.
Looking at the changes so far[prntscr.com]:
Alright, some tourney fixes, only about 10 months since tournaments were released... alright.
Oh, awesome! Support Chinook double stacking was patched! Wait, this is almost never used? (It's used on very "small tower space" maps on r30+, but that's about it). Oh, okay.. sure. It's probably only an extremely tiny code "fix" aswell (changing the graphics and the hitbox should literally only be removing about two lines of code, not even adding anything).. alright.
Oh, okay, a description fix.. I guess that's not terrible? Except any semi-competent player knows every upgrade by heart, but, we can't forget about the new players. Sure, that's not bad.
"Monkey Sub could become more powerful than intended"...? I've never seen anyone ever mention this (and considering I have easily over 10k matches, and have watched thousands of hours of this game)... huh, okay. Interesting.
Fixed a crash, cool.
And fixed another crash (though, this crash I've actually seen is pretty common).
So, after about five months, we've gotten... zero actual importance whatsoever?

OH WAIT! I FORGOT SOMETHING! I forgot the most important part of the update!
There's a new "tourney" kind of thing! Right!
Alright, so from this new update, we can see this image[prntscr.com] (I opened the game, saw the option, this is all I can do). (Also, bug I realized while writing this: sometimes if you click on the "Join" button and don't have enough "tokens" for it, the button sometimes doesn't come back. Nice.
Anyways - So, 4096 players can join. That makes sense, 2^12, that honestly makes sense. Not sure why exactly 4096 as opposed to, say, 2048, but whatever.
We can figure out that the mystereous globe-feather-thingies are called "tokens"[prntscr.com] (picture of what happens after you click join).
It seems like you also have to grind arenas to get the "tokens" to do it.. alright, so a reason to grind! Awesome! So if we grind to get (presumably top 4096 consistently, since then we'd THEORETICALLY have enough tokens to join) good enough, then we'll most likely be able to get 1 out of 4 badges, IF we can beat about nine players in a row. Cool.
Also, just since I mentioned grinding: You can grind for leaderboards #1 (which means nothing), for decals (so like, one bfb colloseum match for all the decals & towers), or for silver/golden projectiles.. which are much easier gotten by joining a top tier clan and buying amps. (Weren't the projectiles supposed to be for the best players? Not grinders/chest amp buyers?)
There are four "prizes" (which are cosmetic badges I believe), and that's about it. Seriously.
NinjaKiwi hasn't given us any information whatsoever, except this update, so...


So, summary of the last update?
No advertisement, and we got an update with virtually useless updates overall, and a new tournament that we know nothing about. Which took five months to make.

So, seriously. NinjaKiwi, I ask you, what are you doing? It's obvious you're focusing on BTD6, but.. still. Don't forget about BTD Battles! (Either way, even before BTD6 was in development, the BTD:B was lacking updates).
So... is Battles ever going to be updated, so that it's worth it for any of us "competitive" players to play? Are you even going to make a Battles 2? We NEED a battles 2, or some insane updates and changes to this game. Players have been playing this game for years, and it's virtually the same as it was back then. (Besides flash to the "Steam"/"Mobile" change.. which ALSO took years before it was implemented (albeit, that honestly was a lot of work)).
If there's a Battles 2, would you tell us? Maybe give us a like "hey, it'll be out within a couple years" or something, so that we have something to look forward to?

Also, anyone who reads this: Please respond! Tell me what I said that's wrong, please! If I said something incorrect, I'd love to fix it and credit you for it, so that other people don't read something and assume it's true (if it's not). Or, if I said something that you really agree with, say that you agree with it.
And, anyone who reads this.. I ask everyone else who reads this, to suggest ideas for NinjaKiwi to implement, or things to fix. I've wrote ~8k characters in this thread so far, and I've already said everything I want fixed, many times before. So, I'll let everyone else say: What do you guys want changed in the future updates?

[I'm bad at games :(]

Sounds like ur hyped to get dcd from this new tourney xd

[Lawlzer]

Originally posted by I'm bad at games :(:

Sounds like ur hyped to get dcd from this new tourney xd

lmao no, my in game name is enough to get dced from the tourney I bet :(
But, seriously. Do you agree with what I've said, do you disagree, what do you think about it?
edit: typo

[I'm bad at games :(]

Every time they roll out a new content update it’s extremely buggy (ie clans tournaments) and so they have to update again to fix everything and that’s when they add the balance changes.

[Lawlzer]

Originally posted by I'm bad at games :(:

Every time they roll out a new content update it’s extremely buggy (ie clans tournaments) and so they have to update again to fix everything and that’s when they add the balance changes.

Yup.
But, again, the updates are months apart.. such as, tournament crashes were fixed yesterday, after what.. 10 months of having common crashes?

[Lilith Vampy]

I honestly do not understand what were they thinking when they released this half-baked update, you would expect the transition from 4.9 to 5.0 to bring some major changes to the table or at the least have all the complained bugs sorted out by now. At this point I feel like NK doesn’t take this game seriously anymore, so I have to ask, NK, are you in the hacker pool? Because this looks like a troll update to me.

And yes Lawlzer, the leaderboard and prestige are fundamentally the same thing even though they had a completely different focus, grinding is all it takes to be at the top. Ninja Kiwi’s devs are very disconnected from the community, they have been making questionable changes trying to balance the underused towers and made a big a big mess making towers that were not weak (just underused) over the top OP and the rest that actually needed real buffs are still undesired even as a 4th bonus, not knowing what a few price buffs would do to certain upgrades you managed to unbalance the game in some ways, it’s okay to admit you took the numbers out of your butt NK, but at the very least, test the towers after the changes, compare it to everything else, take each tower’s strongest and weakest traits and add it on top of the scale. It’s a scientific method, you can directly measure weather it’s balanced or not, so much so, that anyone can install a sandbox mode and test how the current Heli fares against Dart and you can objectively measure how much Heli is more cost/efficient than Dart in almost every possible scenario.
Dartling is not overpowered, Village makes it that way because of the double explosion glitch that you don’t seem to know how to fix, you guys have been breaking the Village for the past two years now, like c’mon. Once this is fixed, people won’t have a real reason to use Village with Dartling besides making it cheaper and getting a much higher eco using the 3-X upgrade which is vital for this strategy to work, if you don’t know, Dartling/Village/Ice requires a tremendous amount of eco in other for you to afford the late game upgrades as well as being able to rush. Without Village pig backing you in every step of the way, this strategy will not longer be unbeatable but will instead be just another average, where it should’ve been in the first place.
My opinion on 4th tower is one that I share with anyone who wants to play clean on a RGN free environment, 4th towers not only shouldn’t be on Boss Arenas but it shouldn’t be on BFBC, it shouldn’t be on Moab Pit and honestly it shouldn’t even be on Ceramic Crucible, besides the fact Boss is a joke, Boss maps are one of the longest and easiest in the game, you can’t even kill noobs early and it’s so prom to go late every time, you literally play harder maps on yellow stadium. People like Jajajosh love it! He can use glue as his main DPs and still win, because there’s so much room for mistakes and at the end of it, people will be “WOW Josh, sugoi, glue is the new meta!”.
Yay, we’re getting new badges guys, but this time they’re uglier, I talked about this in the past, NK needs to give some purpose, something that we can do with all these medallions instead of the old boring bloon decals and the “unachievable” gold projectiles that by the way, every scrub that was in a clan has it now, I understand this is a business NK but you killed the magic behind these achievements that were supposed to be something hard, something special when you brought up Clan Amps, I don’t know about you but hiring someone to make textures and some models for customizations shouldn’t be too expensive, even throwing in some twists into the game like BTD5 agents (balanced of course) would give more dynamic to the matches and a purpose to the currency in the game that you over inflated yourselves.
Overall, I think the new Tournament addition is a good thing, a gives a reason for people to play and it filters the best players into a perhaps more competitive environment instead of the random encounters we have in the arenas. Still there’s a lot of things that I want to see that probably won’t be implemented at all, a best of 3 tournament instead of the “you lose a game you’re out”, that would make the results much more accurate than “you choke you lose”, otherwise this new “skilled” based tourney won’t be too different from the path prestige took, having a chat in the main lobby like the one you find in Clans would be very appreciated, be able to see the opponent’s record, no 4th towers, have an actual unique reward instead of a new lame badge no one will care for, these simple things in my opinion would make a much more pleasant environment for everyone.

I’m hoping that this unprecedented update without warning or explanation is not the end of the story, it couldn’t possibly be THE update we waited 6 months for, I’ll be very disappointed if it is when there’s still bugs to be fixed and things to be balanced and I have no reason to come back to Battles if that can’t be sorted out after so much wait.

[Lawlzer]

Originally posted by Fake Hero:

I honestly do not understand what were they thinking when they released this half-baked update, you would expect the transition from 4.9 to 5.0 to bring some major changes to the table or at the least have all the complained bugs sorted out by now. At this point I feel like NK doesn’t take this game seriously anymore, so I have to ask, NK, are you in the hacker pool? Because this looks like a troll update to me.

And yes Lawlzer, the leaderboard and prestige are fundamentally the same thing even though they had a completely different focus, grinding is all it takes to be at the top. Ninja Kiwi’s devs are very disconnected from the community, they have been making questionable changes trying to balance the underused towers and made a big a big mess making towers that were not weak (just underused) over the top OP and the rest that actually needed real buffs are still undesired even as a 4th bonus, not knowing what a few price buffs would do to certain upgrades you managed to unbalance the game in some ways, it’s okay to admit you took the numbers out of your butt NK, but at the very least, test the towers after the changes, compare it to everything else, take each tower’s strongest and weakest traits and add it on top of the scale. It’s a scientific method, you can directly measure weather it’s balanced or not, so much so, that anyone can install a sandbox mode and test how the current Heli fares against Dart and you can objectively measure how much Heli is more cost/efficient than Dart in almost every possible scenario.
Dartling is not overpowered, Village makes it that way because of the double explosion glitch that you don’t seem to know how to fix, you guys have been breaking the Village for the past two years now, like c’mon. Once this is fixed, people won’t have a real reason to use Village with Dartling besides making it cheaper and getting a much higher eco using the 3-X upgrade which is vital for this strategy to work, if you don’t know, Dartling/Village/Ice requires a tremendous amount of eco in other for you to afford the late game upgrades as well as being able to rush. Without Village pig backing you in every step of the way, this strategy will not longer be unbeatable but will instead be just another average, where it should’ve been in the first place.
My opinion on 4th tower is one that I share with anyone who wants to play clean on a RGN free environment, 4th towers not only shouldn’t be on Boss Arenas but it shouldn’t be on BFBC, it shouldn’t be on Moab Pit and honestly it shouldn’t even be on Ceramic Crucible, besides the fact Boss is a joke, Boss maps are one of the longest and easiest in the game, you can’t even kill noobs early and it’s so prom to go late every time, you literally play harder maps on yellow stadium. People like Jajajosh love it! He can use glue as his main DPs and still win, because there’s so much room for mistakes and at the end of it, people will be “WOW Josh, sugoi, glue is the new meta!”.
Yay, we’re getting new badges guys, but this time they’re uglier, I talked about this in the past, NK needs to give some purpose, something that we can do with all these medallions instead of the old boring bloon decals and the “unachievable” gold projectiles that by the way, every scrub that was in a clan has it now, I understand this is a business NK but you killed the magic behind these achievements that were supposed to be something hard, something special when you brought up Clan Amps, I don’t know about you but hiring someone to make textures and some models for customizations shouldn’t be too expensive, even throwing in some twists into the game like BTD5 agents (balanced of course) would give more dynamic to the matches and a purpose to the currency in the game that you over inflated yourselves.
Overall, I think the new Tournament addition is a good thing, a gives a reason for people to play and it filters the best players into a perhaps more competitive environment instead of the random encounters we have in the arenas. Still there’s a lot of things that I want to see that probably won’t be implemented at all, a best of 3 tournament instead of the “you lose a game you’re out”, that would make the results much more accurate than “you choke you lose”, otherwise this new “skilled” based tourney won’t be too different from the path prestige took, having a chat in the main lobby like the one you find in Clans would be very appreciated, be able to see the opponent’s record, no 4th towers, have an actual unique reward instead of a new lame badge no one will care for, these simple things in my opinion would make a much more pleasant environment for everyone.

I’m hoping that this unprecedented update without warning or explanation is not the end of the story, it couldn’t possibly be THE update we waited 6 months for, I’ll be very disappointed if it is when there’s still bugs to be fixed and things to be balanced and I have no reason to come back to Battles if that can’t be sorted out after so much wait.

+1
I'd put this as the "answer" but this isn't actually by NK, so I can't. We still need a response from NK, so.
I'll email NK and ask them to check out this thread and respond after I send this~

Yeah, I mostly agree with everything you said. Dartling itself isn't a good tower - not that good in itself to be honest - but paired with the village glitch, it's nearly unstoppable if they can get to late game. You don't even need good eco with the loadout, to be honest. 3k or 4k eco with dartling ice village can usually survive until rounds 45+. (Though, having 6k+ eco is usually preferred of course)
Yeah, 4th towers should be removed from ALL top arenas.. The only reason I can see them being allowed in the highest arenas, is if they add a duplicate version of it, just with/without fourths.
e.g having two BFB colloseums, except one has 4ths and one doesn't. It just adds to much RNG to the game, where if two players with equal skill are battling and one has a better tower, it's just complete bull trying to win. ESPECIALLY paired with the fact that your opponents towers are hidden - Because of this, I could face someone equal to my skill, and then we survive until r32 and he pulls out ice.. if I knew he had ice beforehand, I'd have been more aggressive earlier and had a chance. So, an alternative idea (albeit not a great one) is to show your opponents fourth tower.

Yeah, golden projectiles are a joke. Just join the #1 clan and buy an amp or two lmao.


I don't really see the point in "being able to see the opponents record" in the new tourney? What's the point of that?

I do remember a reason for them not having a chat in the game - (Steam and mobile integration, mobile chat would be a joke lol).. I'm not sure if that's the true reason or not, but that's a reason I heard about.

[Lilith Vampy]

I hardly doubt we'll get any response from them in regards to this when not even SJB got anything before hand this time.
I don't play with dartling but assuming you're playing on a long enough map (as you should be if your objective is eco and go late) then I firmly believe 6K BEFORE round 32 is very attainable even if your opponent is being aggressive throughout the game and that is solely because of the monkey town upgrade, that’s how good the thing is.

“Yeah, 4th towers should be removed from ALL top arenas.. The only reason I can see them being allowed in the highest arenas, is if they add a duplicate version of it, just with/without fourths.”

I don’t think this is a good idea, 1. Game is has a fairly small player base, so making more arenas and spreading this player base even more doesn't seem like a good idea, 2. Most of the times they won’t even add two BFBCs or two Moab Pits arenas when they have it club, it’s either club or it’s regular rules, hardly both, so thinking they’d duplicate the same arena again just because of 4th is rubbish.
Also asking them to remove 4th is a dream that won’t ever come true, you might not believe this but, a lot of people actually like having 4 towers instead of 3, they like the RNG aspect of things and a lot of people heavily rely on what they get as a 4th, more than you can imagine. As for being able to see their 4th tower you can use your phone, but the best method is to download the windows store version so you can use it in parallel with your steam version, get them tack ni-ggers all the time.

“Yeah, golden projectiles are a joke. Just join the #1 clan and buy an amp or two lmao.”

I’m not ever in clans because I don’t play consistently enough to stay in one for long, but I do know if someone buys an AMP the entire clan gets the benefits and bonusses it gives, I’ve seen people get 20 Million meds from AMPs (20M for all the members) no wonder we have noobs nowadays showing off silver or even gold projectiles even though they clearly didn’t deserve it.

“I don't really see the point in "being able to see the opponents record" in the new tourney? What's the point of that?”

For the same reason we can’t see each other’s actual record on private matches, we only see the percentage, not the number of matches played, percentage is not the full story. It would also be a cool addition to be able to click on the names before the matches start so you can peak on everybody’s records.

“I do remember a reason for them not having a chat in the game - (Steam and mobile integration, mobile chat would be a joke lol).. I'm not sure if that's the true reason or not, but that's a reason I heard about.”

I’m not asking for an in-game chat, I’m asking for a lobby chat before and in between matches so people can talk to each other while they wait for their next match. I don’t know what you’re really talking about because if you mean clan chat like I gave it as an example, both mobile and steam have a working one (somewhat working…).
On the same topic it would be fantastic if we could also send a friend request to people we played on arenas, often I play someone good and we match one another multiple times but we can’t really say a word or ever find each other again once we leave the lobby. I know adding someone on steam by clicking on their names wouldn’t make any sense when you have people on mobile as well having people that actually use an email instead of connecting with steam. My solution to that would be a built in PM box system where you can send messages, kind of the same way it works on consoles.