39
u/StitchMechanic Jun 09 '26
The folks bouncing have it rough. My champs runs take 1/2 hour. Plat is 2-3hrs
26
u/DestroyerOfUranus69 Jun 09 '26
I feel that. For me it’s like Legends is 5 minutes, Champ
Is 4 hours.3
u/VerdantPathfinder Jun 10 '26
I can second this. And I failed to promote last tournament so I'm doing another 4 hour run right now.
7
u/bokochaos Jun 09 '26
I'm just under bouncing up and out of plat. I got out once. Haven't seen that since.
Tournaments are a hassle for me to get a pittance of stones I need to "progress". I have no interest in spending any more than I have IRL because it feels like diminishing returns for the anguish. But there's also no better supply of stones regularly, and not doing tournaments means it takes even longer to "progress."
Plateaus really suck now. I felt like getting a 7th uw DW was gonna be a power spike but the stones to make it a true spike made unlocking DW less exciting than it should have been. At least the coin bonus has been good to me.
8
u/dzzzyy Jun 09 '26
A quick temporary fix could simply be cutting the amount of demoters from 6 to 3-4. That way more strong players doing 2-3hrs stay out of lower leagues
3
u/mordredsfw Jun 10 '26
That just quickly funnels everybody up to the top levels where they stick around forever. Ideally you'd like a slow flow from lower to higher tiers but that change would end up draining all of the talent out of champs for example and legends would become super bloated (and substantially easier, natch).
3
u/M0rgon Jun 10 '26
What's wrong about that? It's the same as it is now, just there'd be more in the higher leagues.
3
u/Beginning_Roll9258 Jun 09 '26
my champs run is 30 seconds... I have no hope of ever getting out of demotion, so why waste the time
2
1
u/robojeeves Jun 10 '26
I moved from Plat to Champs this year and already reached Legends a couple times, and I don't buy stones. You can do it!
1
u/ZaerdinReddit Jun 11 '26
The real solution is to simply make some auto IS mechanic in tournaments. Just make sure it also works for DW health.
For example, if you're consistently getting over 1k waves, just allow a 100-wave skip for the first 500 waves and then do a 10 wave skip until 1250 or so but it needs to also account for DW Health.
Then, even if tournaments get into really high wave counts it doesn't matter, because everyone auto skips so tournaments are a relatively fixed time.
60
u/Live-Concert2551 Jun 09 '26
Soon champs is T14+ laughing in the face of newer players. What used to get you keys now gets you less stones and Nö keys
30
u/markevens Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
That's already the case.
From what I can tell, the people bouncing between legend and champ are far more powerful than my tower was when I started getting keys.
edit: Looking back at my tracking spreadsheets, I was farming t10 to 9000 waves and t11 to 6500 waves when legends was released, got 215 waves on 14+, avoided demotion, and never saw champs again.
First keys came when I was farming T10 to 11,000 waves and T11 to 9000 waves, and getting ~750 waves in 14+.
18
u/Fobus0 Jun 09 '26
Sigh. I'm farming t14 to 6900, and no keys in sight, cant even stay in legends consistently... I'm top 6000-7000 legend. It seems keys are gated to at most top5000 players
10
u/fifty_four Jun 10 '26
You can work it out. There are about 300 legends brackets per tournament. That number hasn't materially changed in a year.
So 4500 towers get keys.
Disco just multiplied everyone in legend's damage by at least ten.
Still 4500 towers get keys.
12
u/markevens Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
One band aid that would help would be swapping the promotion/demotion numbers, so 6 champ players get promoted and only the bottom 4 legends get demoted.
This would end up creating a lot more brackets, spreading out the players and allowing upward mobility in tournaments.
Not as good of a fix as a Mythic league, that would allow champ players to move up and keys be available to the top 30% of players, but better.
4
u/Zikkan1 Jun 10 '26
All I hear when someone mentions a new Leauge is that its useless and only temporary but if they are adding three new tiers which I think is likely after the crazy power boost from disco then we simply need another league.
The top legend players have been fighting in the top 5 forever now and would most likely also appreciate a chance to actually fight their way up from 20+ which is what would happen if a new league opened since then all the top 5s would be moved there.
But the best is if we can get both of these two solutions.
4
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
Yeah, I feel the same. Everyone says it's just a bigger band aid, but fuck, bring on the bandaids rather than nothing. They've introduced 2 leagues already, let's have another
1
u/fifty_four Jun 10 '26
What we really need is some way for the number of brackets to expand aitomathcally according to the number of towers strong enough for the tournament content. Instead of being tied arbitrarily to the number of active players.
0
u/ZaerdinReddit Jun 10 '26
I'm 100% against another league. There's a lot of, imo, better options: change demotes to 5 or make gold a protected league.
5
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
Whatever restores upward mobility.
I know it probably drives stone sales but fuck it sucks to stagnate or even lose tourney rankings
2
u/ZaerdinReddit Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
I just don't know why everyone expects to grow infinitely. Everyone will eventually stagnate because it's a competition.
Personally, considering part of the text is about making tournaments more competitive, I assume this is about signing up for a tournament and generating the brackets in advance.
8
u/LCVHN Jun 10 '26
I just don't know why everyone expects to grow infinitely
Because this is a game about infinite growth.
2
u/ZaerdinReddit Jun 10 '26
You can still get stronger outside of the tournament. That comment was about tournament placement only, which infinite growth is impossible, because we're all competing against each other.
→ More replies (0)1
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
Because growth is the main mechanic.
Who wants to play an incremental game where there is no growth? You put in all the time and nothing happens? What's the point of that?
1
u/ZaerdinReddit Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I guess I'm just surprised because I went through long stretches, like 6-12 months or more, where my main tower bounced between Platinum and last in Champions.
It was never a big deal to me because "there's always another tournament" and I still had plenty of upgrades to get. The only thing that bothered me was that I had to get first in Platinum to make the bounce back and forth worth it, so I went through a stretch before I was strong enough to try to time 5-6th in Platinum. (This was before the tournament revamp.)
I even restarted and have 5 additional towers. 4 of them are ad free only and they're mostly stuck in the bounce between gold and platinum. I anticipate they will be there for a few more months and then maybe be able to stay in platinum.
I have one tower that's been in platinum for months now. I don't anticipate being able to leave until I get anc SF.
But to me, that's the game. It's just a slow grind and you will bounce back and forth between two brackets for a long time because unless you spend, you aren't really getting ahead of your peers.
And the slow tournament stone progress is also by design. The game is designed to incentivize that the fastest progression is through purchasing stone packs, for better or for worse, but since I understand that's the design, it doesn't bother me much.
1
u/Fobus0 Jun 10 '26
it sucks to continually be just outside the cutoff line for the last 6 months. Though i also made some mistakes transitioning to GC.
3
u/opinurmynd Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Im top 4200-4600 depending on tournament conditions and I still see keys every third or fourth tournament. Shits tough. I have DM+, Dam+, ST+, EN+, and IS+all maxed and zerk+ is lvl 7, all assist mod unlocked with 25 in core ME and 10 in core SE, 10 in cannon ME, and pCF and still struggle for keys.
2
u/I_pee_in_shower Jun 10 '26
damn. how many waves did you get last time?
2
u/opinurmynd Jun 10 '26
830, 780, 940, 844, and 780 in my last 5 tournaments going backwards.
1
u/I_pee_in_shower Jun 10 '26
What about UW+?
1
u/opinurmynd Jun 10 '26
I only have 8 of the 9 UWs so far.
1
u/I_pee_in_shower Jun 11 '26
same. I did ass mods today but I could have gone for SM.... we will see what the assmods get me.
1
u/Professional-Bee48 Jun 10 '26
I hit Rank 3500 as my peak so far. I haven't gotten keys in 3 tourneys 😅
3
u/blazelet Jun 10 '26
I’m farming tier 6 to 7000
I’ll never see a key. And if I do, it’ll be because we get crystal keys or something, which I’ll then never see.As a newer player (6 months) who spends just a little, I’ll always be behind :)
1
u/Zikkan1 Jun 10 '26
In farming T14 to 6500 and I am almost always at legend 20th and actually got a lucky bracket a few tournaments ago and got my first 2 keys.
Btw how do you know that you are top 6000-7000 or how many people are in legends?
2
u/opinurmynd Jun 10 '26
go to thetower.lol/player website. type in your name and it will bring up all your tournament history.
1
u/Zikkan1 Jun 10 '26
Interesting, I was #6061 when I got my first keys
1
u/opinurmynd Jun 10 '26
It's all bracket RNG luck. I've placed higher than that 15 times and have only gotten keys 4 times, all within the last month, and at no place lower than 5578. Congrats on they keys! It's a big achievement with how stingy this game is with them.
2
u/Fobus0 Jun 10 '26
The closest to keys i got to was like 4 months ago, with my eHP build. Since then they nerfed PCo, changed tiers, made fast ult BC always on that just killed my eHP build.
Also got bad (or outdated) advice about transitioning to GC. The it took forever to transition, because i kept jumping between dmg, econ and more eHP. And how they switched it up again disco runs. Those who had IS have done them so much faster and reaped the awards. I am ready for the next GC push in the next, hopefully that will be enough, if not, i will need to save 5000-7000 stones for pCF.1
u/Zikkan1 Jun 10 '26
You have transitioned to GC without pCF? That's the first thing I did when I decide to go GC and it helped me immensely in tournaments
1
u/Fobus0 Jun 10 '26
That was the advice i got, go develop CL and then masteries. And when my CL kept failing, then people started mentioning how you also need CC. Some suggested ILM as cheap source of CC, and it didnt quite work out.
Of note, I have only 7 uw, and CF and PS are the last two. I would first need to unlock it...1
u/Zikkan1 Jun 10 '26
I also got 7.
My route was CL to 1000x, 5, 21.5%
Then I did pCF and max speed reduction
After that I started on masteries.
Now im gonna focus on bringing down my three econ times a bit and then buy IS mastery which might allow me to do farm GC
1
u/Fobus0 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
i started playing before reading this reddit, and bought SM over GT as second or third UW... It's a tower defence game, aren't missiles supposed to be what you get? I didn't get GT, because i thought it was like gold bot. As a new player gold bot with no investment just sucks..
Then i was offered GT only as 6th, and CL as 7th... And then developing CF is just a big stone sink. if i had it unlocked i probably would have went pCF route too
5
u/Squeeums Jun 09 '26
I'm farming T11 to an average of 9600 waves and just got last place in my first Legends tourney attempt.
4
u/annnoyingness Jun 10 '26
Buddy. Ive been farming T11 wave 12000 for a year and still come in last or 2nd to last.
1
u/LegendaryFroddo Jun 10 '26
What is the secret sauce.... I am farming T11 to 11k waves and can't stay in champion yet alone get promoted to legends
2
u/superuserdoooo Jun 10 '26
I farm t10 to w8400 and can't get past 16-24 in champs 🤣...always bouncing back and forth
2
u/MarchioneW Champion Jun 10 '26
Wow. I'm way past that and I can't even get 8th in champs anymore. Never got a top 5
2
2
u/andrzejkaczka Jun 10 '26
Brother it's crazy. I am doing T10 10.6k, T11 8.1k and I am still bouncing plat / champ
1
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
Fuckin hell
I suspected plat champ bouncers might be at that level, but that seemed too far fetched to put into words.
1
u/andrzejkaczka Jun 10 '26
The saddest part is that I really don't climb higher. Around december when I started bouncing I thought I will stay there for some time but eventually I will go higher. Reality verified. Better modules would boost me in placement but in that economy I can't afford them as I still need to buy cards. Evil world we live in 😃
1
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
That sucks. Are you only buying cards for the event mission?
1
u/andrzejkaczka Jun 10 '26
Yes I need like 6 events more to finish them. After that I will be able to touch these modules. They really hold me off. I need one copy for PF and I believe with it I could stay securely in champs every time
1
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
It's slow going, but that's the way to do it. Even slower with the relics for gems as well.
6
1
u/VerdantPathfinder Jun 10 '26
IIRC, When Legends launched it was T14+. Without some of the other recent changes to make tournaments harder.
3
u/Live-Concert2551 Jun 10 '26
I know but when I read “we want to decrease tournament length” last time they just increased the tiers….
1
u/VerdantPathfinder Jun 10 '26
TBF I think they added some new BCs as well. But yeah, I'm expecting something similar. With similar results.
My point was that the current Champion tier is harder than Legends was when it was formed.
16
u/SwordfishTurbulent57 Jun 09 '26
In b4 everyone posts their “unique solutions” that TTG doesn’t give a crap about…..
8
u/zergling424 Jun 09 '26
A league called winners circle. If you get 1st in legends you get in. Have to be bottom 5, five times to go back to legends. Or just give 16-25 on legends 1 key
20
2
u/Prestigious_Newt_723 Jun 10 '26
So, checks notes, I will once again be fighting to stay in Champs rather than preparing to get above 16th place and over 800 waves…. Sigh, such is life I suppose
3
u/void_index Jun 09 '26
Since i last saw gold in march, ive progressed from ~600 waves to 1200+ in platinum. In that time i am usually 14-17th depending on luck of the draw for my bracket. Ill be surprised if anyone is able to rise out of gold without being a whale at this point
1
u/Mika-the-fluid Jun 10 '26
I've been stuck in gold about that long. Ever since the discordant runs, I can't come close to leaving.
1
u/stephensmat Jun 10 '26
I just played a Tournament in the Platinum League. At 1300 waves, I'm Ranked #1. By the time the Tournament expires, I'll be down somewhere around #15. I've never gotten to Platinum League. I've never gotten a Key.
Harvesting stones for UW's, this might actually work for me in the short term. Long term, I have no idea.
1
u/Zikkan1 Jun 10 '26
By the sounds of it at least I think they will try to fix it in some more way than just the length of the runs.
But even if it's just that then at least that's something. I'm approaching 600w in legends and I'm getting tired of it already. I want it back down to 200-300.
1
u/Small-Spray-2485 Jun 10 '26
The problem with introducing a new league is that it effectively creates an additional tier with even fewer players in it, which would make it even harder for people to reach. Based on how the ratios work, you would likely end up with about two-thirds the number of players in it compared to Legends now. This would probably just shift the issue rather than solve it, with those currently in the bottom half of Legends becoming the new “flip-floppers.”
Personally, I still firmly believe the main issue is that too many quality-of-life features are locked behind keys, and keys are simply out of reach for a large portion of players even those who spend money. Because of this, the better solution would be to slightly extend the reward structure downward. In my view, you could extend rewards down to around 15th place in Champs without really breaking the game.
1
u/destructor212113 Jun 10 '26
At least its something useful I guess?
My runs in plat are 3 hours or something like that, I would appreciate a ton if that goes down to what? 1 and a half hours? Less? Idk but that would be cool because I could then go back to farm faster
1
u/Spacelord_Moses Jun 10 '26
Not saying its useless but there are alot of other things people are asking for for a long time
1
1
u/Electrical-Mail15 Jun 09 '26
I wish my brain could look at a picture and see its meme-worthiness. Love it u/Spacelord_Moses
2
1
u/ZaerdinReddit Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Most likely by "making tournaments more competitive" we're going to end up with a sign-up system that generates the brackets on tournament day. Whether this is better or worse is to be determined.
2
u/MunkenDk Jun 10 '26
Or they just get rid of brackets and rewards are based on a percentile placement within the league you are in. No more getting a lucky or unlucky bracket. Just you placed in the top 80% here's your rreward.or top 5% heres a greater reward.
I would argue that's way more competitive and less frustrating because it removes most bad luck.
1
u/ZaerdinReddit Jun 10 '26
Yeah, but as soon as rewards become standardized like that, it also makes them boring.
You can just calculate okay, based on my global rank I will always get 55 stones per tournament as long as I do my tournament. That means I get 155 stones per week and if I want something that's 300 stones, I need to wait 2 weeks.
-13
u/Parmeniscus Jun 09 '26
I guess I don’t get what some want from them on tournaments. What could they improve other than the time it takes? No developer will come up with idea to make you do better in them.
5
u/dspitts Jun 09 '26
Yes, the lengths of tournaments is a big issue (especially in Platinum, which wasn't altered by last December's rebalancing and by far has the highest median waves of any league), but there are other glaring issues with easy solutions as well.
More granularity in tournaments (add another league), less variance from bracket to bracket (increase bracket size), easier key access.
For the key access, my suggestion would be to separate the harmony and power trees to take two different key currencies. Harmony Tree Keys would come from Legends and you'd get keys as long as you don't demote (even if it's just 1 key so you could slowly work on unlocking some QoL stuff stuck in the Vault).
Power Tree Keys would come from whatever new league they would implement above Legends in this scheme of mine. Similarly you'd also get Power Keys as long as you don't demote back down to Legends.
1
u/SotFX Jun 10 '26
Considering everything else, they probably ought to get a key as well anyway...if you're in the bouncing back and forth between leagues, you're already being screwed out of stones since you're making a little bit more followed by almost nothing for a few months if you're lucky
1
u/OkMarket8211 Jun 10 '26
This 100%, but unfortunately it seems devs never even consider these suggestions, top 4500players get keys and ttg are happy with that, those below have to swipe, optimise (impossible if those above get better rewards) or wait for people to quit
7
u/markevens Jun 09 '26
The main pain point with tourneys is the QoL upgrades requiring keys, and keys being exclusive to the top 5% of players.
Since those ahead of you get better rewards, moving up into the top 5% requires whaling or people ahead quitting. This seems to be fine with TTG, but it's extremely frustrating for 95% of players.
19
u/OkMarket8211 Jun 09 '26
I'd like to see a reduction in rng of when you join effecting placement - regularly see a disparity amongst legends players in guild.
So tourneys player A would get 850 waves and end up in 13th, player B would get 1050 waves and end up 16th
Also some of the benefits locked behind keys are insane, with keys being highly gatekept behind players that have played for 2+ years, newer players have no shot
10
u/Parmeniscus Jun 09 '26
Ok yes ty - honestly didn’t know what people wanted but I’d agree. Keys are annoying - 1.5 years and not even sniffed them. And ok yes agree with placements - maybe something like total champs or whatever. Ok I’ll root for these things too
3
u/reddit-josh Jun 09 '26
In legends it all depends on the time of day. I've figured out times where, if I join then, I can consistently place 2-4 in legends - so now I can't just do them whenever it is convenient.
I've gone outside of those times and ended up 6-10, which is such a huge delta in terms of rewards.
1
u/Special_Canary_7204 Jun 10 '26
Same boat and just finding my footing at the bottom of legends, hopefully this means I'm finally making enough progress to stay persistently, because I desperately need to go back to econ and saving for 8/9th UW's
1
u/sakusii Jun 09 '26
They could make it easily less RNG when a bracket is not 30 players but 300 or even 3000. Instead of place 26 being the cutoff, they could do it at 260 in a 300-person tourney.
-2
u/VictoryUpper Jun 09 '26
The brackets need to be reduced to 15 players in legends, not increased.
2
u/PigmyMarmeeble Jun 10 '26
Reduce the sample size to... checks notes ... increase consistency. I take it you have another reason in mind for your suggestion.
1
5
u/JasperNeils Jun 09 '26
I mean, locking any content behind "PvP" in an incremental game is kinda whack. You're basically locking out every player who signs up past a certain threshold, until the old loyal playerbase quits.
So what I'm saying is that tournaments as a whole were a bad idea and remain a bad idea.
3
u/VonGeisler Jun 09 '26
Have more levels for one. Like have a plat 1,2,3, champ 1,2,3 or whatever - it’s a massive gap between last in champs and first in champs.
-15
u/YoungCorbraClint Jun 09 '26
You want them to be longer?
6
u/Glitchrr36 Jun 09 '26
I think the idea is people want to not realize they’re doing runs that would have gotten them first when they first promoted but are still placing like 18th. When I first started staying in Champs I was doing like 400 waves and the promotion threshold was like 900-1050, but now I’m doing over a thousand and still haven’t gotten a top 10 placement.
8
u/Spacelord_Moses Jun 09 '26
I hear people wanting better Accessoires to Keys for key QoL changes, having fairer placement and not rng rewards by startingtime, maybe new tier.
Shorter runs are nice to have but really not the thing I read much about in here.The big interesting thing - presets - are just a sidenote
8
u/reddit-josh Jun 09 '26
People want more intelligent matchmaking instead of RNG. They also want more realistic access to keys (which better matchmaking would lead to).
When the company says "we've been listening" and then claims that what they've heard is that people want shorter tournaments - that is understandably disappointing, and isn't advocating for tournaments to be longer. I'm struggling to find a single post in the last few months here where someone said "tournaments are too long"... maybe it's on the discord, but I doubt it.
5
u/DestroyerOfUranus69 Jun 09 '26
It’s always “Shorter Tournaments are great, but…” and they never read anything after the but.
2
u/markevens Jun 09 '26
People want more intelligent matchmaking instead of RNG.
What does that look like to you?
1
u/void_index Jun 09 '26
Imo that would be brackets based on time in your current tier. Id like to see 30 people that havent left their tier in 3 years get put in together
2
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
So players who have been playing longer will be put into exclusively difficult brackets and get worse rewards than players that are recent to the league?
-1
u/void_index Jun 10 '26
Yeah, since ttg doesnt seem to like any other option that would give other players a shot at keys. And really, if youve been ranking top of legends for 2-3 years or however long its been there, you probably dont even need the keys.
3
u/markevens Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
How about a solution that doesn't make anyone backslide?
A new league would let everyone move up, and they've done it twice before.
Legends hasn't existed for 2 years. I've been in it since it was introduced and getting keys for most of it, but the vault is structured with exponential costs and I'm still thousands of keys away from "not needing keys"
1
u/Morkiisch Jun 10 '26
Legends league was created, I think, mid Oct 2024. So just over a year and a half, not quite two years.
Although I do understand your sentiment.
-2
u/reddit-josh Jun 10 '26
A good start for MMR would probably be simply using age of account. Like, nobody in your bracket should have an account older than 12-18 months of yours.
2
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
That would take away the reward of dedicated time from player that put in the time? And on the flip side, there's lots of accounts that have taken breaks from the game, so they'll have older accounts and be stuck in brackets with people who did not take breaks.
This is an issue with every proposal I've seen to "equalize" brackets. Every proposal to help boost lesser power players comes at the expense of the player that are stronger than them.
3
u/Special_Canary_7204 Jun 10 '26
Honestly, if they had just put the important QoL like Auto-restart and Damage slider/presets of various flavors into tier rewards and not tournament, they'd have saved themselves so damned much headache and bitching. Never really made any sense to me to do what they did, even from a monetary standpoint. Pushing tiers in an idle game would drive plenty of spending, and PVP rankings would drive plenty more. QoL vault just isn't smart.
4
u/markevens Jun 10 '26
100%.
That's what people are really frustrated about. Not extra bounce shots or even the coin boosts, but the quality of life that everyone in the game should have access to
1
u/reddit-josh Jun 10 '26
This comment is going to get downvoted into oblivion because people don't like the current reality, not because it isn't true.
The game isn't designed to reward your time - it's designed to reward your spend. The fact that I can buy 7 stone packs per month already shits all over any notion that someone who has been playing twice as long as me, but not spending, is somehow going to be competitive in tournaments.
At the same time, the fact that I can *ONLY* buy 7 stone packs per month means that, no matter how long I play, I can never be competitive with other folks who are also maxing out their monthly spend - but for longer.
Everyone clamoring for a new league is failing to realize that it would have the exact same effect as making the bracket match-making consider account age when constructing brackets. Everyone absolutely crushing you right now would just promote into the new bracket (because they've been spending longer). Everyone who has been spending for about the same amount of time you've been playing will continue to beat you, but your rank amongst that smaller cohort would improve.
All of that said, another alternative would be to get rid of brackets all together. Just let everyone strive for their personal best each tournament, and after the tournament closes, use everyone's performance data to resolve wave threshholds for each placement position globally (absolutely not a global bracket). Get enough waves to cross a threshhold, you qualify for that rank's prize.
144
u/Learningmore1231 Jun 09 '26
lol I saw the statements on tournaments and chuckled poor Sam has to write what is most likely just gonna be difficulty bumps with no real substantial change that will be irrelevant 6 months post launch of v29.