While I understand the fun aspect of it I think this is a bad idear.

When stars are needet for upgrades then how would you balance the stages ?
Do you make them so hard that you need the upgrades to have a good time or do you make them so easy that you don´t need the upgrades at all or only need minimal upgrades ?

No matter how you do it you will make the expirience for one part of the players worse becourse "good" or expirienced players will get all the upgrades without a problem and "bad" or new players will very likely barely get any upgrades.
This means in case that balance is made with the expectation that upgrades are needet beginners will hit a hard wall pretty fast while in the opposite case players with all the upgrades wont have fun becourse everything is too easy.

The version we have right now where stars are only a show of how good you did without any function at all is the best we can get becourse the devs know exacly how strong the player can be at what stage of the game and balance the stages based on this information.

Originally posted by Agreus:

While I understand the fun aspect of it I think this is a bad idear.

When stars are needet for upgrades then how would you balance the stages ?
Do you make them so hard that you need the upgrades to have a good time or do you make them so easy that you don´t need the upgrades at all or only need minimal upgrades ?

No matter how you do it you will make the expirience for one part of the players worse becourse "good" or expirienced players will get all the upgrades without a problem and "bad" or new players will very likely barely get any upgrades.
This means in case that balance is made with the expectation that upgrades are needet beginners will hit a hard wall pretty fast while in the opposite case players with all the upgrades wont have fun becourse everything is too easy.

The version we have right now where stars are only a show of how good you did without any function at all is the best we can get becourse the devs know exacly how strong the player can be at what stage of the game and balance the stages based on this information.

Stars were previously used and it was a good system.

Originally posted by Mustang:

Originally posted by Agreus:

While I understand the fun aspect of it I think this is a bad idear.

When stars are needet for upgrades then how would you balance the stages ?
Do you make them so hard that you need the upgrades to have a good time or do you make them so easy that you don´t need the upgrades at all or only need minimal upgrades ?

No matter how you do it you will make the expirience for one part of the players worse becourse "good" or expirienced players will get all the upgrades without a problem and "bad" or new players will very likely barely get any upgrades.
This means in case that balance is made with the expectation that upgrades are needet beginners will hit a hard wall pretty fast while in the opposite case players with all the upgrades wont have fun becourse everything is too easy.

The version we have right now where stars are only a show of how good you did without any function at all is the best we can get becourse the devs know exacly how strong the player can be at what stage of the game and balance the stages based on this information.

Stars were previously used and it was a good system.

They were presviously used and all the problems I mentioned did apply.
If you can´t refute what I said I have to guess that you can´t.

If it was good why did the devs change it ?
I would say becourse some or even all the things I mentioned were seen as problems that are solved with the newer system.

Originally posted by Agreus:

If you can´t refute what I said I have to guess that you can´t.

I usually ignore comments from people with private, level-0 Steam accounts—they always give the impression that they haven’t even played the game and are just sharing opinions pulled from thin air.

Originally posted by Agreus:

If it was good why did the devs change it ?
I would say becourse some or even all the things I mentioned were seen as problems that are solved with the newer system.

What exactly is solved with new system?

The game’s difficulty can always be adjusted to match what you can handle, so your point doesn’t apply here. Whether it’s easier for some or harder for others isn’t the issue—my post was focused on adding more progression to the game.

The new system suffers from a lack of progression—you max everything before completing most levels. Playing without meaningful rewards (actually no reward now) results in little to no dopamine stimulation, which is a proven fact not just for KR, but for games in general. A well-designed mid-to-max progression system can keep a game alive far longer than one without it.

Originally posted by Mustang:

Originally posted by Agreus:

If you can´t refute what I said I have to guess that you can´t.

I usually ignore comments from people with private, level-0 Steam accounts—they always give the impression that they haven’t even played the game and are just sharing opinions pulled from thin air.

Originally posted by Agreus:

If it was good why did the devs change it ?
I would say becourse some or even all the things I mentioned were seen as problems that are solved with the newer system.

What exactly is solved with new system?

The game’s difficulty can always be adjusted to match what you can handle, so your point doesn’t apply here. Whether it’s easier for some or harder for others isn’t the issue—my post was focused on adding more progression to the game.

The new system suffers from a lack of progression—you max everything before completing most levels. Playing without meaningful rewards (actually no reward now) results in little to no dopamine stimulation, which is a proven fact not just for KR, but for games in general. A well-designed mid-to-max progression system can keep a game alive far longer than one without it.

So you are ignorant becourse of the preferences of people ? interesting. But I have to admit that a lot of trolls have a private profile.


Then what is the use of an upgrade if you only get it close to the end ? Especially if its nothing that gives you an extreme power-up which at least in Kr-games is close to never the case becourse of the free choice of what upgrade you pick.

It is the issue becourse upgrades have a strong influence on the difficulty of the game.
You get progress by beating the stages why should there be more when you did what the game wants you to do ? Especially if this controlled way of progress makes for a better game for everyone instead of a good game for some and a frustrating or boring game for others.
Getting all the stars is a challange wich is the reason the heroic and iron challanges exist.
You don´t do challanges becourse you want a reward you do challanges becourse you want to be challanged.
For people that want to be challanged the challange is the reward in itself there is a reason that except for I believe an archievement there is nothing you get for playing on the highest difficulty and people still do it me includet.
If a reward is all you care about why have different difficultys when easy is the fastest way to your reward ?
Then there is the question if it is still a reward if it was easy ?

When it comes to progression: It has to has a use.
Progression for progressions sake makes it useless and turns games into an endless (but if done correctly quite addictive) grind a good example are most isometric hack&slay action rpg´s like diablo they exist only for progression without any endgoal at all.
While I don´t say these game are bad they (and that is probbably just a me problem) get boring really fast becourse of it.

The only thing I give you is the dopamine argument becourse this is a mobile game first and everything else second so it might get people "addicted".
But at that point we can build gatcha mechanics into the game and make 100 towers and heroes in different power levels so we get a dopamine hit if we hit that legendary 0.0001% chance hero.

Now that I read through all this again... I don´t know about you but I was never like "year another upgrade" while playing any KR games not even when they were flash games on armorgames what gave me that dopamine hit was just the feeling of having beaten a stage with 3 stars.
Maybe I´m strange.

OP is right, the game should have more progression, you are done too quickly

To summarise it quickly: some people are good at the game, some people are bad at the game. The people who are bad at the game need to at least get some stars even if they play badly, otherwise they will get stuck because they can't buy any upgrades. This has the side effect that the people who are good at the game will have extra stars that they don't need.