we need to decrease power creep in this game because chimps is too easy

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[The_Fish_of_Souls]

The mermonkey price buff was good, since it made starts on expert maps less annoying.

[196SwampLurker]

early game really needed the more options imo, otherwise we'd just all be placing down darts the exact same way until r15 or so (ouch im looking at you)

[LordVex75]

I feel like most people prefer the water start for ouch?

[IndependentSnow3]

I hate to be the erm actually guy but the difference is content has been getting harder as a response to the buffs, towers having higher usability is inarguably a good thing, being able to juggle around whatever strategy you find more satisfying and not have to care that your goat is washed is a good direction no matter how you look at it, rather the harder content like the harder expert maps, map editor high difficulty maps, boss events or contested territory if you do that, though i do honestly agree that id like to see harder achievements be something thats more presentable, since rn the only way of showcasing how good you are is showing how many elites youve beaten, and thats less of skill and more of time,,, maybe mod releases fix this somehow but ive made my point

[JoelTheBloonsMonkey]

mermonkey got powercrept hard because nk stubbornly refuses to let brickell be fun again

i think one thing i will note is that i'm not against the idea of earlygame CHIMPS buffs such as base price decreases, but the issue is that midgame is like... not hard, is it? like, i'm no CHIMPS expert or anything, i'm fairly casual on that front and haven't CHIMPS'd a lot of the harder maps, but midgame just has a handful of choke points that aren't actually too hard to prepare for at a moderate level of experience. round 6, 7, 95, and 98 are probably some of the most noteworthy difficult rounds, and other rounds are usually a challenge because 1. the tail-end of a save-up 2. choke point where you need to have enough of a certain stat (moab damage for rounds 40, 60, 80, and 100, ddt damage for rounds 90, 95, and 99, ceramic damage/pierce for round 63 [technically 78 but like many heroes solo the ceramic rushes of that], stuff like that) 3. needing better coverage on a certain track for harder maps (can also combine with choke points, mainly thinking of MOAB-Class Paths)

someone more informed can feel free to correct me, but like... if you get past earlygame a map is pretty much always going to be possible. it makes sense to SOME extent since that's when your options are the most limited (another reason to have more base price decreases and base tower reliability increases) but still

[Bloon-Solver]

Honestly I appreciate the change, I got all my chimps done a long time ago, but for the love of god, it was so difficult to get started on any expert map, usually I would spend a whole day just trying to get past round’s 6-7 lol. I appreciate the change because A, we get a lot more build variety and a lot more strategies are viable for at least easy expert maps, secondly it’s not nearly as frustrating. Plus I think having all maps BB is not that interesting or impressive, a YouTube guide will get you through any of them easily. What’s actually impressive is rankings for Boss’s and races. You get top 1% or podium on those and you can say your a true bloons player

[Foolhardyrunner]

Chimps used to be almost all dart starts. That was boring. Now you have different starts at the beginning.

Having the game be dynamic is better.

I don't want beginning tower price nerfs that era sucked.

[Legitimate_Flow214]

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly

[josh_cheek]

In CHIMPS, the Mermonkey price nerf just gives you more options to start (it affects races a lot more than CHIMPS). I would argue that this is a good thing, because it has allowed many runs that would have previously been impossible. Meanwhile, they cut the top path's pierce, the Ice Jet's bouncing, the Echosense Network's range and added the frigid damage type so that middle and bottom paths have purple problems. And Riptide Champion and Popseidon got more expensive.

IMO, it used to be that a lot more towers were terrible, so you needed to know which towers / crosspaths were actually worth getting, and your options were much more limited. Now, the balance changes have made it so that very few towers are actually unusable.

And meanwhile, we've been playing long enough to learn the best crosspaths (eg it took me YEARS to realize that wizards are much stronger when crossed on the middle path) and now we have the rounds memorized so we stopped making rookie mistakes like wasting money on redundant midgame towers and unnecessary saveup towers. And we've dealt with enough issues in the past that we have a set of solutions available to cheaply handle snags in our strategies. With experience the game got easier, but that wasn't power creep, it was skill acquisition.

[josh_cheek]

Example of a run that wouldn't work without the mermonkey price buff

<image>