The infamous issue of poorly placed towers + my thoughts on a potential solution

[TransGans]

Given that we are on the forums, I am going to assume that the people reading this, are all familiar with the basic concept of Tower Defence.

We have all had teammates who have no idea what they are doing. They don't know how sending troops works, but most importantly, they have absolutely no idea how to place towers correctly.

Now I know that this is annoying, but let's cut them some slack. It's not their fault that they have yet to master the game of TD, because they haven't played it before or for whatever reason. But, however innocent these players are, towers placed as shown in the picture above, sure are annoying as hell.

What I am wondering, is why this is an issue at all. I am going to try to show you all what I mean with this extremely basic suggestion, using the help of my good ol' friend Paint. If you are colorblind, this is going to be a tiny bit harder to comprehend.

You all know that if you want to place a tower the right way, you have to right-click the orange-marked square. The tower will then be placed on top of the green-marked square.

This also means that if you right-click the wrong block, in this case the blue-marked one, the tower will also be placed in the wrong way, in this case on top of the pink-marked square.

But why not make it impossible to mess up placing towers in the first place? Why not make it, so that if you click any block in the orange-marked square, the tower is placed upon said square, instead of the 1-block radius around it?

Let's also put this into visual perspective. I mean that if you click any of the grey-marked blocks, that the tower will always be placed on top of the purple-marked square?

I genuinely hope that I have been able to make my stream of thoughts comprehensible.

That'll be it for today. I have to do some grocery shopping.

(edited)

 

[benc_]

I like this idea in the sense that it will make it a lot easier to place towers where they should be being placed and would remove the possibility of even just accidentally placing towers.

(edited to remove content no longer in thread c: )

 

[TransGans]

However, I think sometimes placing 5x5 on 3x3 can be quite useful for when you want a lot of turret towers

Since this isnt what I originally wanted to discuss, I removed it from the original thread.

I like this idea in the sense that it will make it a lot easier to place towers where they should be being placed and would remove the possibility of even just accidentally placing towers.

Thanks xoxo

 

[CrystalDrop]

I get why this is a common thought and it's not a bad idea, however this should be toggable on/off for people who want a free range to place towers for advanced strategies.

Overall, nice work on this thread.

 

[Shopri]

yea i really like the idea, although i dont rlly play td that much. id like to see it happen so it can be easier and not to mess up with the towers

 

[11Ls]

Post 1
Post 2
Throwback to a year ago when Story suggested this and said that it was not difficult.

From what I've seen: TD looks for blocks below where someone clicked to place a tower. (red or blue terracotta) and it also makes a cuboid to check around (in a 3x3x3 or 5x5x5 depending on what was requested to build) and see if the tower can be built. This could be the very reason that Candy used to have an issue where there was a tower spot but it wasn't able to have a tower placed on it because it didn't have the necessary red terracotta below it (Literally one of the easiest map fixes of all time imo). This could also be the reason why Pandora Falls has some tower placement available very close to the castle despite it not being clearly visible.

You might ask, how is this all relevant to your post? There is no real easy way for a developer to make sure towers are placed in the right spot with TD's current placement method. It doesn't really care where the heck you're placing a tower.

 

[benc_]

That's understandable tbf - I think it would mean TD requiring a rework to how castles could be placed, which would obviously be problematic.
Although it would be nice to have something like this introduced I don't think it would actually be very good anyway because sometimes awkwardly placed towers allow for other 5x5 towers to be placed in 3x3 zones and additionally, it's part of how the game is played I guess, new players will eventually learn how to play it

 

[Foodie]

If you took out all the programming issues, I think it's a good idea, however there are sometimes when you want to place a turret in one of those spots. Including all the coding issues it's probably difficult to get it quite right. And from what 11ls said, it seems like you would need to recode a fairly big chunk of the game, so it's unlikely I think.

 

[11Ls]

Here's an example of how much the game doesn't care about where you're placing a tower:

Gyazo Screen Video

gyazo.com

In this gif, I was able to click on some coral as if it were an area that could have a tower on it just because it's made of blue terracotta (and I was on blue team).

 

[KitsuneToru]

This has been suggested god knows how many times and honestly I don't think they're gonna add it (not because they think it's a bad idea). They asked for a collation of ideas for a TD update a year and a half ago and we've not had any signs of one at all. Since promising a TD update, they've massively restructured the staff team, quite a few devs have joined and left the team and they asked around a month ago for PvP update suggestions. This is honestly something that's just so essential to quality of life and it's just disappointing that they're likely not going to have this update any time soon. I guess the best we can do is yell at people every game when they inevitably place towers wrong.

 

[TransGans]

I get why this is a common thought and it's not a bad idea, however this should be toggable on/off for people who want a free range to place towers for advanced strategies.

Overall, nice work on this thread.

If the default setting is that this new setting is turned on, sure. This would also continue to allow people to use their 'advanced' strategies by misplacing towers on purpose.

 

[TransGans]

This has been suggested god knows how many times and honestly I don't think they're gonna add it (not because they think it's a bad idea). They asked for a collation of ideas for a TD update a year and a half ago and we've not had any signs of one at all. Since promising a TD update, they've massively restructured the staff team, quite a few devs have joined and left the team and they asked around a month ago for PvP update suggestions. This is honestly something that's just so essential to quality of life and it's just disappointing that they're likely not going to have this update any time soon. I guess the best we can do is yell at people every game when they inevitably place towers wrong.

Honestly, this thought and many previously mentioned issues did cross my mind, but then I thought: who cares? It only took me 15 minutes to put this thing together, and imo it was worth it.

 

[craftinggamer999]

Given that we are on the forums, I am going to assume that the people reading this, are all familiar with the basic concept of Tower Defence.

We have all had teammates who have no idea what they are doing. They don't know how sending troops works, but most importantly, they have absolutely no idea how to place towers correctly.

View attachment 172803

Now I know that this is annoying, but let's cut them some slack. It's not their fault that they have yet to master the game of TD, because they haven't played it before or for whatever reason. But, however innocent these players are, towers placed as shown in the picture above, sure are annoying as hell.

What I am wondering, is why this is an issue at all. I am going to try to show you all what I mean with this extremely basic suggestion, using the help of my good ol' friend Paint. If you are colorblind, this is going to be a tiny bit harder to comprehend.

View attachment 172804

You all know that if you want to place a tower the right way, you have to right-click the orange-marked square. The tower will then be placed on top of the green-marked square.

View attachment 172805
This also means that if you right-click the wrong block, in this case the blue-marked one, the tower will also be placed in the wrong way, in this case on top of the pink-marked square.

But why not make it impossible to mess up placing towers in the first place? Why not make it, so that if you click any block in the orange-marked square, the tower is placed upon said square, instead of the 1-block radius around it?

View attachment 172806
Let's also put this into visual perspective. I mean that if you click any of the grey-marked blocks, that the tower will always be placed on top of the purple-marked square?

I genuinely hope that I have been able to make my stream of thoughts comprehensible.

That'll be it for today. I have to do some grocery shopping.

(edited)

yeah i agree its not cool to have teammates that dont know what they are doing and its hard to solve this problem for real tho thanks this might help alot of people

 

[klqus]

Another really annoying thing about placing towers wrong is that if you didn't place it you can not remove it. Or in some cases you can't upgrade them if that player hasn't upgraded it the first time. If you ask "said player" to remove their tower or to upgrade it, they most likely won't because they are new to the game and don't know how to do it or don't even know how to type back in chat to let others know. I personally don't play TD that much so I could be wrong on this, but its just what I remember when I would play it.

 

[TransGans]

Another really annoying thing about placing towers wrong is that if you didn't place it you can not remove it. Or in some cases you can't upgrade them if that player hasn't upgraded it the first time. If you ask "said player" to remove their tower or to upgrade it, they most likely won't because they are new to the game and don't know how to do it or don't even know how to type back in chat to let others know. I personally don't play TD that much so I could be wrong on this, but its just what I remember when I would play it.

Might as well make a setting out of this as well;
"Click here to disable allowing players to choose your tower paths"

 

[404Owl]

This is t we need solo, so we dont have to deal with noob teammates. Rn td is basically only playable if ur lucky and hav good teammates, or r in a party with friends who actually know what their doing

 

[benc_]

If the default setting is that this new setting is turned on, sure. This would also continue to allow people to use their 'advanced' strategies by misplacing towers on purpose.

The whole tower placing system, as someone mentioned already, would probably need a huge re-work if this was ever to be implemented.
Although it's a great idea and would possibly help new players, I think there're other ways that something like this could be implemented - perhaps even a tutorial or a brief explanation at the start of every game to show how it works?

 

[Foodie]

The whole tower placing system, as someone mentioned already, would probably need a huge re-work if this was ever to be implemented.
Although it's a great idea and would possibly help new players, I think there're other ways that something like this could be implemented - perhaps even a tutorial or a brief explanation at the start of every game to show how it works?

I wondered whether a brief tutorial would work at the beginning of the game, I think it could be quite useful for new players. I remember when I first started playing TD, I had no idea what I was doing. And I don't think it would be difficult to implement.

 

[TransGans]

I wondered whether a brief tutorial would work at the beginning of the game, I think it could be quite useful for new players. I remember when I first started playing TD, I had no idea what I was doing. And I don't think it would be difficult to implement.

Wasn't there a tutorial in the main tower defence lobby when the game was first released?

 

[Foodie]

Wasn't there a tutorial in the main tower defence lobby when the game was first released?

I'm honestly not sure, I don't think I was around when it was released. I think joined a while ago but then I didn't play for ages.