I have a lot of feedback on this game but I want to focus first on a single point which I believe is the most critical problem with this game: the fact that waves spawn either after a random time, or on a hidden timer, whereas in DotE they would only ever spawn on door opening.

(Disclaimer: I'm a long-time DotE fan so all of my reaction to ED is coloured by that and I'm sure has aspects of change aversion, but I want to say this all the same.)

DotE's core loop is as follows:

1. Downtime. Take as long as you need to build structures, assign upgrades, decide on research, allocate dust, buy items, allocate items, position heroes, and decide which door to open next.
2. Open a door. Hold your breath. Maybe nothing happens, in which case back to downtime. Or maybe...
3. Action time. A real-time battle with enemies pouring in from everywhere, which lasts until all of your heroes, or the crystal, or all the enemies, are dead. Take a deep breath, it's back to downtime.

It's an immensely satisfying core loop including elements of turn-based strategic planning and frantic real-time action.

ED has what appears to be almost the same loop. But because waves can spawn at any time, the "downtime" phase isn't really downtime at all. You need to do all those things as quickly as you possibly can, to reduce the total number of waves you're going to face.

You're going to be in the middle of considering one of those above decisions, when suddenly a wave is upon you so there's no time to do anything but scramble to the spawn points. It's an immensely frustrating experience to have my decision-making process interrupted by a wave. The only thing I can equate it to is playing Diablo but every few minutes the town gets invaded by demons while you're trying to decide which sword is better.

It's weird that resource generation is still per-door rather than per-time. In DotE, door opening is an intrinsic risk-reward mechanic: get an allotment of resources, but risk a massive invasion. Especially in the later parts of a level once the exit is found, opening doors is a huge gamble, when the safe option is to take the crystal and run. You can lose a run because you greedily opened one door too many. Whereas in ED, opening doors doesn't (seem to) trigger waves, only time does. So there's no reason not to simply open all the doors on the level.

(I haven't yet figured out if opening doors actually influences the wave spawning in any way, or if it's purely based on a timer.)

If this timer-based mechanic is kept, then I would suggest:

1. Make resource generation based on a timer as well (earn resources every N seconds, rather than every door open), which means the same trigger (time) affects both resource generation and wave spawning.
2. Make the wave spawning timer explicit (or at least the warning timer much longer) so that I know how long I have to do my "downtime" things before the next wave arrives.

That wouldn't fix the main problem, but at least would be consistent and fair. I would much rather that ED returns to the beautiful balance of decision-making and action, by making waves spawn only when a door is opened.

I noticed that too and found it really confusing, especially coming from DotE. Can't tell if the bug is that waves are spawning with a delay or when they shouldn't.

This is probably my least favorite "feature" of the game currently.  (With the Dust economy coming in 2nd place for my least favorite feature.)  It just breaks the game's flow.  I would like to see things go back to the way that the were in DotE.  Enemies come from new and un-powered rooms.  Of course, in order to do this they'll have to rethink the Dust economy and at a minimum allow you to move Dust Shards from one room to another.

I fully agree with mgiuca on this issue.

In DotE, it was a simple and understandable mechanic. And it was always a satisfying experience to open "just one more door" before attempting to leave the floor. (IIRC, all doors would automatically open when you took the crystal and this would yield the corresponding resources, so you would always maximize resource gain from the current floor and setup.)

In ED, this satisfaction is denied. I think that mgiuca's suggestions if keeping the timer mechanic, would make the game more enjoyable than it is right now. But you would need to make sure that you cannot exploit time-based resource generation (for example: what if there's not yet a spawn location and I already have a generator?).

A solution might be to keep the mechanis as it is now, but clearly indicate timer progression and how actions (such as opening doors) influence the timer.

I also would be very happy got get back the mechanic as it was in DotE, but I think a different mechanic could work as well.

There's also a bizarre issue that pops up because of this feature. If* (and I say 'If' because I am not sure about this) the enemies do not get increased with each new wave and their numbers are dependent on number of doors open + the biome you're on, then technically speaking you could farm them to restore your HP for completing a wave. This can create a weird situation where players who took damage could just camp it out with a strong fortification to slowly heal back their lost HP. Which is rather dull.

Timed waves are just a lazy design. Cheap way to create difficulty, but instead multiplies players frustration. DotE gives that sutisfying feeling that you are in control of the pace, yet you fear to open new doors and trigger new waves as game goes. ED sets you on timer, and you really are not in position to hasitate and rethink your planning.

Probably my least favorite and dissapointing game feature, aside of inconvinient aiming and unresponsive hero controls (and I'm telling that as a peson who almost completed full campaign of Alien Swarm on Brutal Onslaught Hardcore difficulty).

Sublustris wrote:

Timed waves are just a lazy design. Cheap way to create difficulty, but instead multiplies players frustration. DotE gives that sutisfying feeling that you are in control of the pace, yet you fear to open new doors and trigger new waves as game goes. ED sets you on timer, and you really are not in position to hasitate and rethink your planning.

Probably my least favorite and dissapointing game feature, aside of inconvinient aiming and unresponsive hero controls (and I'm telling that as a peson who almost completed full campaign of Alien Swarm on Brutal Onslaught Hardcore difficulty).

I won't call it 'lazy design', I think they wanted to make the game fast-paced and keep the tension going. Forcing players to move fast instead of standing around methodically placing things. BUT I think most people here that played DotE like the fear that comes from opening a new door. I'm one of those people. I think their intentions were good, and I think they might have underestimated how much people might miss the door opening/fear of enemies spawning mechanic from DotE.

Sublustris wrote:

You know how I spend my time before opening new door now? Waiting for wave to spawn, so that I wouldn't be startled with another spawner behind it, or trader, that would immidiately be killed.

Same here.  So the end result is that I'm basically spawning a wave every time I open a door anyway.  The difference is that I have to wait 2 minutes or whatever until the game decides to spawn a wave for me which makes the "action" component of this mechanic meaningless.

Interesting that people are "abusing" this to make waves spawn (either for free healing / XP or to prevent surprise waves happening right after opening a door before you set up defenses). I've always rushed through to try and minimize the number of waves, but maybe I should be taking my time more.

Either way it seems bad though: either it's forcing you to rush so you can't play at your own pace and make decisions (I realized today that I've never actually read the details of a weapon I've found or bought because there's no time, I just look and see if the big number is green or red). Or it's letting you farm, which kills any sense of tension or pacing.