[Tower Defense] TD with to many concepts

[EarthWormJimmy]

So I've almost finished my TD, Octagon TD, but I feel like there are too many concepts put into it clouding out each other.

1. Random map generation; the map is generated with a random number of waypoints, obstacles, portels, and positive/negative buff runes for each player.

2. Mazing; the player mazes in those area's.

3. Heroes, each player gets a hero to creep with and kill other player's hero's while your waiting for other player's to finish the round. You don't get gold for hero kills.

4. Sends; all units during each wave are sent by your neighboring player. You then send to the player neighboring you. Each send has a 25% chance of also spawning in the hero area with a 8% chance of spawning with an item that can be dropped.

5. Armor, armor is key during sending units. There are 5 armor types and 5 attack types with strengths and weaknesses. FOW is turned off during the round to see what attack types your opponent has to know what type of armor unit to send for the next round.

6. Builder, the builder is the only thing I haven't finished I feel like I should make a builder with 5 basic upgradable towers with the 5 different attack types and 1 mazing tower but that just seems boring.

I have an idea for a tower builder that collects resources(items) using mining machines at the cost of power(mana) then can combine those items into better mining machines and towers sorta like Minecraft tech mods.
I have another idea for a builder that each tower spawns with a random ability and attack type. Those tower's combine and certain abilities combine to create positive abilities or if combined wrong, negative abilities. These teir 2 towers can then be further combined with other teir 2 towers and so on.


Anyway, should I leave some junk out?

 

[cleavinghammer]

I dunno, the core concept of "send attacks while defending from attacks" does sound interesting. Maybe save the hero for a later version.

5 tower types seems like it has good potential, more might get too complicated.

 

[EarthWormJimmy]

I suppose I could get rid of the hero.

As for the tower builder idk, I play games like yellow td or splatter td and they both have simple tower builders so it doesn't have much replayability.

 

[noob]

Do not do towers with random abilities: it can be frustrating for players to lose lives because they did not have the right abilities on their tower to fight the monsters that progress ruthlessly fast.

 

[Leods]

Random abilities?
That's almost a very good idea.
As Noob said, if all abilities are random, you do not know what you are buying. However, this idea can be recycled as a data of just one tower, a "random tower". Beyond that, the randomness is not perfect either. What if, instead of being completely random abilities, was a skill that allows "assimilate" to other units or towers, to obtain a random ability based on the selected unit?
Thus, you could divide the units into several groups, each group with different abilities.
Also, to be fair, I could do the skill like this:
Assimilate: Assimilates a selected unit, acquiring a random ability based on the type of unit and its owner. If the unit is an enemy, the skill costs 50 gold (adapt to balance it). If the unit is an allied tower, the skill does not cost gold and also, it goes up to level two, thus being more powerful. Assimilate kills the selected unit. Heroes or Bosses can not be selected
Each skill should have two levels. A basic one for when an enemy is selected, and one of great difference, more powerful, for when a tower is selected.

 

[EarthWormJimmy]

You're right, full random abilities would be annoying.
That assimilate idea is pretty good. I like the idea of targeting enemy units and gaining an ability based on the enemy. As is alot of the enemy waves have abilities, obviously stuff like divine shield is pretty pointless but I can tweak it.

 

[Leods]

Divine shield= AoE no point light explosion?

 

[cleavinghammer]

Maybe have one tower with random abilities, but the randomized abilities fall in certain categories so even if the actual abilities are different, you still know what to expect.

For example, the random tower has 5 abilities: one debuff (Slow, Faerie Fire, Cripple...), one single-target spell (Acid Bomb, Death Coil, Frost Nova...), one AoE spell (Flame Strike, Blizzard...), one stun (Storm Bolt, Entangle...), and one support aura for other towers (Command, Trueshot, Endurance...)/a debuffing aura for enemies (anti-Unholy, anti-Devotion...).

And have an option to reselect one of those abilities at random if you get two neighboring towers with the same abilities.