Update 2/15/2015

Hail Wanderers!

Most of this week was spent balancing the build some more, helping to refine the active abilities for the resource towers, and then doing some digging into trying to determine what sorts of playstyles players use in WLNA.

It seems like there are three basic styles: steamroller, turtle, and blitz. Within each style there are several variations, and I'm reasonably sure there are more styles in play, but it will take close observation of more QA sessions to really get into them. For now, I'll just give a short synopsis of each style.

Steamroller: This style of player builds up resources early game and focuses a little on defense, eventually shifting to massive barrage style attacks later in the game. There are a few different styles for the barrages, from massive missile strikes over one turn to a continual barrage of smaller missile groups over each rotation. Steamroller is easier to stop early game, where they are focusing more on resources, but gets hard to counter if left to run rampant until late game. They are easily countered, or at least hamstrung, by blitz players as their resource towers are vulnerable early game, but they can overwhelm turtles late game, or just dominate the late game in general.

Turtle: This style of play focuses on shield towers. It is stronger early game and can be hard to break late game as well, but at the same time it seems hard to actually win a game using this style. This is a style of play that I think we want to discourage, because while defensive play is certainly a part of WLNA, the main part of the gameplay is the Armageddon part of WLNA, so we want to encourage more of an active and aggressive playstyle. Turtles seem to be overwhelmed later in the game by steamrollers as they can't keep up with the nuke spam, but they trump blitz early game as an early blitz won't be big enough to pop multiple shield towers at once.

Blitz: This style of play focuses on nuking early and often, with the intent of getting a swift win before the opponent can build up defenses. This style of play is great early game, and can really set an opponent back, but it handicaps the player for the late game if the opponent can defend against the early attacks and build up enough of their economy. This, along with steamroller, are the two main styles we want to encourage, so hopefully the active abilities for the towers will give more flexibility to both styles. Blitz players counter steamrollers if they can cripple them early game, or pull an early win, but they can be blocked by turtles if they don't place nukes carefully.

I'm sure more styles will emerge as we introduce the active towers, and though we want to focus on the aggressive styles, hopefully we can help and aggressive turtle style to emerge, but that seems to be what we have for now. As I said above, more observation of QA testing will reveal more.

Until next time.
Guardian Soul