With all of the more or less problematic waves in this game evaulated and discussed, it’s time to put a rest to this project.
I will compile all of the solutions ever proposed for a wave in a dedicated section and then we can talk.
To get this out of the way, I said I would talk a bit about barriers in competitive challenges.
Well, there’s nothing to talk about on my part, @1galbatorix1 already solved the problem by proposing to not award points or clean sweeps when destroying barriers in challenges. (Wave Honing Operation. (WHO) - #17 by 1galbatorix1).
Pulsating Grid: Frustrating and annoying at high difficulties.
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Make the chickens stationary at a certain distance from the center of the safe area. You can see that in this wave the chicken reach toward the middle and then retract. Removing this movement, and subsequently increasing the safe zone, could be a viable solution.
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Removing the inner chicken circle. This could increase the safe zone in a more straight-forward way.
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Having to kill an entire set before the other comes. This issue was brought up by @anon27929001, he stated that when you kill a strong chicken, it will respawn two more times, but by that point the spaceship has already turned away. So I propose a most controversial solution: by having to kill the entire square before the next one comes, this issue will be neutralized, however, it will greatly increase the wave time.
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No blindfold chicks in the inner ring @Enhawk.
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Chickens respawn after eliminating a ring istead of set @kokokokos.
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Swapping the easy template with the harder one for easy missions and viceversa @Stardrone.
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No minibosses before 100% difficulty @Traveller.
Four Lane Merge: Too long and boring.
- Reduce the number of enemies in each of the 3 phases by 1/4.
- Adding 2 bombs, appropiatly spaced, per phase.
- Total overhaul:
Spreading each lane to a different screen border, and making their appearance spot random in that border. For example, a lane could be placed in the upper left border once, and then could reappear another time in the lower left border.
The Magic Flute: Too long and boring.
- Removing one of the 3 first phases.
- Removing 2 enemies from each spawned row.
- Increasing the spawn rate of portals @rata536.
- Make portals have different pitch (do, re, mi…) so it doesn’t sound monotonous.
{ - When a group of chickens are killed spawning on one portal, another group will appear immediately.
- Make groups of chickens vary each other, not only just 4 by 4. There could be as many variations/presets as possible. Example: On one wave, portal two spawns two chickens, then after that, portal two spawns one chicken, etc. On the other wave, portal 3 spawns four chickens and so on…
- Probably make a much harder variation with 8 portals instead of 6. (This last one was barred so It’s probably a joke but sounds pretty legit so I’m gonna include it).
} @Fractorial.
The Weakest Link: Boring.
- Scaling down the healt multiplyer for barries.
- Replacing one barrier in every row with a chick, simmetrically.
- Making the screen zoom out, and designing the wave like a maze, where the chicks act as “fake walls” that you have to destroy in order to progress.
Now that wouldn’t be mundane at all (or at least it would be an improvement).
Rolling Ball of Chickens: Awkard delay between phases.
- Making the delay between phases inexistant, or almost.
Energy Fences: Too long and boring.
- Removing just one row of chickens.
- Making the chickens more static, but not totally.
- Reduce the space between rows.
*Having the rows move down slightly faster. It scales with difficulty @Traveller.
And done. I would like to thank @Recruit_75 first and foremost, for he gave the starting points for this series. Also, thanks to everybody who participated and joined the discussion.