Aug 3, 2022

Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 32.0

Bloons TD 6 - Tarn

Key New Features

Massive new Event system - Contested Territories!
- We set out to make this big, inspired by Bloons Monkey City’s instanced six player, single challenge framework but pushing it to be truly next level for BTD6. Big was an understatement - we’ve made a whole new game inside the game!
- Now with 90 players per instance across six player-selected Teams (see below), Contested Territories combines a massive map of 150+ unique PvE challenge-based tiles with the PvP competition of vying for the best score
- With a range of difficulties that increase across Regular, Relic, and Banner tiles, the intent is to allow all player levels and styles to participate. Less experienced players can concentrate on Regular tiles, while more competitive players can duke it out over Relic and Banner tiles. Regular tiles give balanced rewards, Relic tiles give more Team Trophies and Relic Knowledge, and Banner tiles give the most points for the competitive leaderboards.
- More details available on our preview reddit post below, as well as the in-event info button: Link
- We’ve spent extra time polishing and balancing this huge new system, so thank you for your patience! As always: feedback welcome on reddit and Discord.
All new player-selected Teams feature!
- To support Contested Territories and other future features, we’ve added a guilds/clans system called Teams
- Up to 15 players can join together, manage membership, set tactical targets, unlock CT-specific boosts, and unlock a range of cosmetic items to customize your Team
- Closely linked with the Friends system to make it easier to invite or join up with in-game Friends
- Earn Team Trophies from Contested Territory to spice up your Player Teams with cosmetics including Team Banners, Icons & Frames to decorate your team page plus all sorts of 3D items to customize your Team Base Tile

New Awesome

New Paragon tower, the Engineer Master Builder
- Yes, your Sentry Paragon is back! We ultimately chose Master Builder for the name as it represents the range of abilities better and relates more closely to the awesome construction exo suit that the art team had fun designing
- Deploying 3 powerful activated sentry types that explode on sell and deploy their own sub sentries, the Master Builder maintains its own powerful nail attack that overclocks itself every round
- Pushing for higher Paragon degrees improves nail gun attacks, activated sentry attacks, and activated sentry explosions on sell
- Master Builder is very expensive, almost as much as the Ascended Shadow, so farm hard and check the nets if you want methods to practice, like Hbomb’s here: The Fastest Way To FarmOr Ethan Reid’s farming comparison here: This is the Best Banana Farm in BTD6! (11.4% Return)
New Intermediate Map, Quarry
- Digging deep into mother Earth usually leads to trouble, and the same is true in the Monkeyverse! Quarry’s zig zag path may look long, but the Bloons move faster on those downslope water channels. Expect the unexpected!
New Hero Skin, Voidora
- Reaching us from the Great Beyond, Voidora makes playing the Adora Hero powerset an otherworldly experience of sight and sound
New Contested Territory Achievements
- Conquested Territory | Capture 5 tiles off other players
- Stage of Empires | Capture 50 tiles
- Territory Sampler | Capture 1 of each: Boss, Time Attack, Least Tiers and Least Cash tiles
New Trophy Store Items
- Heroes: Mountain Obyn - Balfrog Pet
- Monkeys: Monkey Village - Pride Flag
- Co-op: Rainbow fullscreen emote, Need More! emote,
- Game & UI: Avatar 61 - Dart monkey, Avatar 62 - Geraldo, Music Track - Tribes Jaloon Mix
- Competition winners
  - Banner winner by LordTeddington(OG btd style)
  - Banner winner by tricky999tricky (Druid)

Big Changes / Additions

Added a Hero counter to the new Hero Screen as well as a total count to the Achievements Screen for the collectionists
Big behind the scenes refactoring to Monkey Knowledge to improve load time & memory, this includes a number of bug fixes and resolutions to some minor quirks in functionality. Current enabled Monkey Knowledge for a save game will now be locked upon creation of that game
Behind the scenes refactoring to Hero Skin Data to improve load time & memory
Changes to Boss auto-play behavior, if a Boss or its spawn are on screen the game & next round always starts immediately. If a Boss is not on screen then the game does not start automatically, play button is shown, & if you have auto-start toggled off then the game will stop between rounds.
Added a new checkpoint at round 20 for boss events
Restart functionality added to the pause menu in Race modes

Bug Fixes & General Changes

Fixed the bug where v32.0 was not yet released
Resolved an issue where some heroes were not adding their category to your profile to display recorded hero stats
Setup "Add Friend" buttons to player profiles & some general improvements & fixes to friends online status/notifications
Resolved an issue with Lych’s Soul having health and speed ramped up via freeplay scaling after round 80
Resolved an issue with Fortified Golden Bloons causing lives to be leaked
Resolved Audio slider sounds persisting on loop forever if you really specifically tried to go out of your way to break them
Playing challenges from the browser should no longer add attempts to your games played stat
Resolved a UI issue that could occur when returning from buying a hero booster from the fullscreen hero page
Resolved some minor inconsistent UI font size issues across different screens.
Resolved player name not displaying on main menu on first launch of the game on Apple Arcade
Removed "i" info button from sub tower's tower portrait panels
Resolved Ravine easter egg animation issues on some android devices
Resolved incorrect Boss menu UI visuals when viewed from play social menu
Resolved Adoras temple map no longer animating on game start
Resolved an issue allowing players to open a broken boss menu while no boss event was active
Resolved issues where one paragon’s UI could be used to create different paragon
Resolved an issue in which some activated abilities upon being sold could block usage of other newly purchased activated abilities
Resolved currently selected hero upgrade on the heroes upgrade menu being lost when navigating to a skin UI and returning.
Resolved a crash that could occur when logging out of an account
Deleted Accounts will no longer appear on your friends list
Paragon upgrade audio no longer plays on loading a save with a paragon
Resolved some issues with navigating between certain menus causing the background to turn black or blurry
Resolved a number of minor crashes
Resolved a number of localisation issues
Scottish flag is no longer called the New Zealand flag when playing in German
Resolved various minor map specific issues

Dart Monkey

Optimisations made to dart paragon lightning effects
Resolved some inconsistency in Paragon degree results related to the Master Double Cross MK

Glue Gunner

Resolved overlays from xx4 relentless glue’s track puddles using green glue assets instead of pink
xx5 Super Glue new art assets added for Glue DoT

Monkey Sub

x5x Pre-emptive Strike sub passive attack animation should no longer break on crosspath

Monkey Ace

xx4 Spectre no longer missing bonus ceramic damage on darts

Dartling Gunner

Optimisations made to some dartling lightning effects
Resolved some projectile eject marker inconsistencies across Bottom Path

Engineer

Resolved some Invalid engineer foam targeting related to height

Gwendolin

Resolved an issue with Gwendolin’s Lv3 ability not playing it’s voiceline
Resolved the initial hit from Gwendolin’s firestorm not keeping improved value at level 20

Captain Churchill

Resolved an issue where upon reaching level 20 Sentai Churchill would play 2 voice lines at once

Admiral Brickell

Resolved a voice-line conflict on Admiral Brickell when attempting to place her level 10 Mega Mine, where it would also attempt to play a selection voice line.

Geraldo

Resolved placing some items from Geraldo's shop into play, only playing Geraldo's voiceline instead of item placement
Resolved Geraldo's Bunny not rotating and getting stuck on rotating platforms
Resolved closing Geraldo's shop via the hotkey not adding back the 'button' to open it again
When Geraldo reaches level 18 his Genie Bottle description now updates from "Blue Bottle" to Gold.
Resolved a crash that could occur when reassigning Geraldo’s action figure in coop

Desktop Version

Added GlueRatJam emote to the discord server

Balance Changes

Boomerang Monkey

A small price increase to MOAB Press as combinations of this tower with others slows or spam with more of itself is very strong.

xx4 MOAB Press price increased from $2200 -> 2400

Bomb Shooter

Has been a standout tier 3 for long enough, T4 remaining unchanged to still encourage more focussed use over low tier spam.

x3x MOAB Mauler bonus MOAB damage 18 -> 15
x4x MOAB Assassin damage unchanged

Ice Monkey

Ice monkey Enhanced Freeze is too good at low tiers, allowing full stunlock of ceramics for very cheap, as the fire rate increase alone of this Enhanced Freeze is a powerful addition most of the increased freeze duration has been moved up as it makes more sense to have duration with the currently less desirable T2 Deep Freeze. Permafrost was previously reduced to a lower price than we’d like to try increase desirability of this crosspath, but as the reworks to metal freeze have had more success there in pulling this path ahead we want to add a little back on here. Cryo Cannon has now been overperforming compared to any towers that perform similar roles with either of these crosspaths so is also seeing a general reduction.

010 Enhanced Freeze freeze duration reduced from 2.2 -> 1.75
020 Deep Freeze freeze duration remains at 2.2
1xx Permafrost price increased from $100 -> $150
xx3 Cryo Cannon attack delay increased from 1s -> 1.2
xx3 Cryo Cannon price increased from $1950 -> 2250

Sniper Monkey

Sniper middle path is too strong for how easy to use it is, while having infinite range & cash production as well. We have removed the free +1 pierce increase shrapnel gains at T3 in addition to the added bounce. Maim MOABs grouped stun potential when crosspathed with Shrapnel feels it is overperforming too much so the shrapnel will now have a reduced stun amount compared to the initial target hit

x3x Bouncing Bullet shrapnel pierce reduced from 3 -> 2
x4x Supply Drop shrapnel pierce reduced from 6 -> 5
420 Maim MOAB's shrapnel stun reduced by about 33% effectiveness
- MOAB 3s -> 2
- BFB 1.5s -> 1
- ZOMG 0.75s -> 0.5
520 Cripple MOAB Shrapnel stun/debuff duration reduced
- MOAB 7s -> 4.5
- BFB 6s -> 4
- ZOMG 3s -> 2
- DDT 4s -> 2.5
- BAD 0.75s -> 0.5

Monkey Sub

Similar types of camo reveal like Shimmer/Signal Flare/Embrittlement are all pierce limited, but the Submerge sub has practically infinite pierce while also being extremely cheap with a very fast rate and a T4 that is far better at camo removal than those other towers can reach. Giving this upgrade a more reasonable pierce value brings these more in line and allows for the pierce crosspath to have some potential meaning.

3xx Submerge and Support camo pulse pierce reduced to -> 100
310 Submerge and Support camo pulse pierce reduced to -> 120
320 Submerge and Support camo pulse pierce reduced to -> 150
500 Energizer camo pulse pierce reduced to -> 1000

Monkey Buccaneer

Navarch Paragon feels too dominant over other expensive paragons, as such a powerful choice it feels overused even on many low water volume maps

Navarch paragon price increased from $500,000 -> 550,000

Monkey Ace

Neva-Miss has been generally over performing for quite a cheap T3, increasing price here slightly but not carrying that increase up through higher tiers.

xx3 Neva-Miss Targeting price increased from $2200 -> 2800
xx4 Spectre price reduced from $24,000 -> 23,400

Heli Pilot

Heli’s blowback has always been extremely effective from early on, and as players have become more knowledgeable the use into lategame as well only seems to go up especially moving into Super Ceramics. This change shouldn’t really have as large an impact at higher level gameplay as total map length is so much shorter you will often still be blowing back the entire track, but the blowback range has been reduced at T3 leading back into the old value at T4

x3x Downdraft blowback distance reduced from 32-300 to 32-150
x4x Support Chinook blowback distance remains at 32-300

Wizard Monkey

Polishing some crosspaths, 130 Dragons Breath is the only crosspath for Guided Magic that doesn't yet attack through walls, and 011 Fireball also does not benefit from having the pierce crosspath

130 Dragons Breath now target through walls from Guided Magic
011 Wizard Fireball pierce increased from 15 -> 20

Super Monkey

Legend of the Night outside of very specific niche challenges isn’t worth the cost as any more than VTSG fodder

005 Legend of the Night damage increased 5 -> 10
005 Legend of the Night ceramic bonus increased 2 -> 4
005 Legend of the Night moab bonus increased 3 -> 8

Druid

More needed crosspath reworking for the new 1xx Hard Thorns upgrade, as it now upgrades the druid from sharp to normal damage it doesn't make sense for the track brambles on 030 to not require this crosspath for lead popping. Spirit of the Forest's base attack has also had a simple damage increase as it contributes very little to the power of the tower by T5 and the tower lacks in single target.

030 Druid of the Jungle bramble piles dmg type Normal -> Sharp
130 Druid of the Jungle bramble piles dmg type back to Normal
050 Spirit of the Forest base attack damage increased 2 -> 20

Spike Factory

Super Mines DoT damage is entirely insignificant for the price range of this tower.

5xx Super Mines DoT damage per tic of damage increased 1 -> 500

Monkey Village

The Monkeyopolis ‘space saving’ farm absorption shows to be far too much more efficient than the absorbed farms.

xx5 Monkeyopolis generation per $2000 reduced $300 -> 200

Adora

Lv20 True Adora buff increases Ball of Light Ability pierce from 43 -> 48
Lv20 True Adora buff increases Ball of Light Ability damage to 100

Geraldo

Many of Geraldo's items are too strong for the required maintenance, Geraldo SHOULD be a top level hero, he is literally designed to be so as the most rewarding for your player knowledge and reaction to moment to moment gameplay, but too many items reward spammable gameplay over these knowledge & reactions so we are targeting a lot of durations/stock amounts with minimal price increases where it feels necessary. These are clearly a lot of small steps, as we did not want to do too many big changes from multiple angles all at once.

Lv1 Jar of Pickles: Price increased from $50 -> 100
Lv1 Jar of Pickles: Duration reduced from 8 -> 5
Lv3 Invisibility Potion: Can no longer target a number of towers that have no attacks
Lv4 Glue Trap: Now expires from the track after 4 rounds
Lv4 Glue trap: Pierce reduced from 300 -> 100
lv5 Sharpening Stone: Now expires after 15 rounds
Lv7 Maelstrom: Max stock reduced 5 to 3
Lv7 Maelstrom: Price increased from $500 -> $650
Lv12 Genie: Duration reduced from 3 -> 2 rounds
Lv15 Super Maelstrom: No longer increases duration of the maelstrom
Lv11 Rejuv Potion: Price increased from $1000 -> 2000
Geraldo's Moustache will no longer contain hidden Glue Rats

Bosses

Vortex’s Stun radius has proved to be a little too small allowing for some cheesier strategies than intended, but instead of a flat increase at all tiers we have decide to trial a slight increase up throughout each tier.

Vortex tier 2 Stun Radius increased from 60 -> 65
Vortex tier 3 Stun Radius increased from 60 -> 70
Vortex tier 4 Stun Radius increased from 60 -> 75
Vortex tier 5 Stun Radius increased from 60 -> 80

Looking Forward

Thanks again for reading to the end. We did a looking forward message in Update 30 where we announced work on new Bosses and Paragons, Contested Territories, and an in-game Mods system. We’ll continue that effort to keep the player community updated on our plans at least a couple times a year, and since Contested Territories has been such a huge feature to complete it’s now that time!

We’ll keep this caveat in place each time. Unless otherwise noted, what we discuss in this section are plans, and we need to be able to make adjustments to these, as we’ve had to this year based on how much time and effort we put into the Geraldo Hero and Contested Territories. We’ll do our best to give context when we make changes, and as always we appreciate your patience, understanding, and support!

Game Size and Value:
- We celebrated BTD6’s 4th anniversary this past June, and we took a look back on the volumes of work that we’ve added to the game since launch.
- By any and all means of comparison, BTD6 is far bigger and stronger than it was 4 years ago, and all that time we have not changed (outside of currency exchange rates applied by storefronts) purchase price, IAP prices, or introduced any paid DLC. Recently when we compared the current size and value of BTD6 with other games, we concluded that we were underpriced.
- While we do not intend to add paid DLC or change IAP prices, we have decided to raise the purchase price by US$2 on mobile platforms and US$4 on desktop platforms. We feel this change is the best way to reflect the current value of the game while still respecting the past purchases of all existing owners of the game by not changing pricing for them.
- We plan to make these price changes on August 18th, two weeks following this update, so that any of your friends and family or wishlist holders still have time to get the game at the current price. As we understand the current state of inflation and that all households around the world are not equal, we will continue to run periodic sales to give everyone a chance to play Bloons TD 6.
Creators
- We almost got Nexus.gg Creator code support in Update 32; we’re taking more time with it and will release it with a 32.x update - this will allow viewers to add codes to the game that will share part of any IAP revenue with their favorite Creator.
- The Nexus.gg folks have been amazing to work with and we truly hope this will allow a virtuous cycle between player, Creator, and game developer. Ninja Kiwi doesn’t think that paid sponsorships is good for the game-Creator-viewer/player ecosystem, but we think that Nexus.gg and Creator codes can be.
- Stay tuned to our socials for more information. The program will start with a selected group of Creators that we’re already working with for previews and feedback, but Nexus.gg will have a signup page for other Creators who are interested. More news soon!
Update 33
- Ace Paragon: Rounding out the land, sea, and air equation, we’re eager to reveal what could be bigger than the BIG plane.
- New Boss - Dreadbloon: Inspired by the Monkey City boss and even more deadly in BTD6, with damage reduction, recurring shields, and rotating immunity to whole tower categories!
- 2 new maps, pushing for one from the Reddit contest winners
- Quality of life, balance changes, bug fixes, and other improvements we can make
Update 34
- Last update for the year!
- New Tower - Beast Handler: we’re not saying anything but the name for this one, and we look forward to all of the speculation
- 2 more maps - we’re sensitive to community feedback about wanting more maps, so wanting to get another two in for end of year holidays
- More quality of life, balance changes, and improvements
Further Out
- Console: We still have plans to release BTD6 on PlayStation and Xbox this year. Taking heaps of work to make it feel as native as possible but we really want to make 4 player couch co-op happen! Switch is not in production but we will consider after PlayStation and Xbox.
- Mods: Another huge amount of work to get this right, so we have to delay this until next year to get this right. The goal is to allow stat and visual changes to existing towers for even more fun and flexibility with visuals, memes, and Content Browser submissions
- Map Editor: Not sure if we can pull off both Mods and Map Editor in 2023 but we will go for it. In game tools to create and submit maps will be a huge avenue for community creativity that we want to open up!
- Bosses, Paragons, Towers, and Maps: Even with big features planned we will not forget about the core game and will continue to bring out fun and challenging new gameplay all year.
- Teams+: Contested Territories is just the beginning of what we can do together as Teams, so look for more ways to play with Friends, even as we continue to be dedicated to awesome single-player, offline gameplay as always

Aug 3, 2022

Dev Diary #5: Working in New Features and Thinking of New Ideas

Void Marauders - Autarca

Hi

This diary is to talk about what I'm doing right now but also to present a couple of ideas for future development and to see players opinions about them (we are talking long term ideas of features that I could add once all Early Access content and promised features are already done).

Let's start with what is being done right now:

High Ground

Currently all combat scenarios work in only 2 dimensions, there's no high ground to take advantage so I wanted to change that. I'm adding new environment assets like Guard Towers with ladders that soldiers can climb and also modifying the terrain in planetary scenarios so it's not completely flat (I'm also revisiting the layout of some scenarios to make them more "practical-looking"but that's another topic). Of course, this is not just an animation and aesthetic change, having the high ground increases aim chance, critical chance and ranged defense (around 3% per "meter" of difference).
I hope to add more skills (and maybe some traits) that take advantage of this new feature in the future.

Space Combat:

I'm currently working in a space combat system that will work a bit like this:

- Enemy Ship or Armed Cargo ship is encountered.
- The player gives orders to the crew depending of their roles (for example: pilot can be ordered to close distance with the target or maybe retreat, weapons specialist can be ordered to open fire or target something specific, etc).
- Both the player ship and the enemy ship execute their orders simultaneously while a cinematic camera follows the action.
- If both ships are still standing after executing their orders, it goes back to the Orders phase.

Basically I wanted to keep a turn based system but I didn't want to just have a copy of the existing combat system with ships instead of soldiers, I wanted to try something new. I also wanted these encounters to be shorter so having a simultaneous turn system should help.
This system also opens the way to give roles in the ship to soldiers, I'm thinking only soldiers with the right traits should be assigned to systems of the ship, give a bonus during space combat and maybe even get injured if their corresponding ship section is damaged.

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And now let's talk about ideas for the future:

Idea #1: Sandbox Campaign replaces Linear Campaign

This is something that has been mentioned by more than one player in the forum and to be honest at first I was avoiding it because it would be a LOT of work (seriously, it would the biggest change of all, bigger than all the features I've promised so far) but the more I think about it the more it makes sense and it could be the perfect finishing touch to add after I get all other features and content done.
And in that spirit I decided to make a mockup of what an overworld/galactic map could look in the game:

This wouldn't change the way the game is played at star system or squad level but it would replace the linear campaign that the game has right now, making it more "open world" in a sense.
The general idea would be to have a map like this one where you can pick which system you would like to visit, the colors would show if the system is owned by a faction and the map could have some minor changes with time and maybe some effect the player might have.
Factions would be something new too in the sense that systems owned by them should be different, for example: an Hegemony system would be richer but also more protected than Independent systems, stations wouldn't let you access and probably hyper gates would be defended too.
This could also make the game more "free", maybe instead of having a fixed path in capturing "The Omen" you could pick other path or keep playing in an Endless Mode (more on these ideas in a future dev diary).

As I said before, this idea is BIG so I would only start working seriously on it after I add way more features and content to the game.

Idea #2: Survival Features And/Or Mode

Right now the game has an Ironman Mode that does the minimum required which is to block saves but I was thinking I could add a Survival Mode instead where soldiers need to be fed with supplies (looted or bought), space for recruits is limited and things like negative traits (scars, diseases, trauma, etc) are not only added to the game but become more common in this mode (and of course, you only have autosaves).
Now there's always the possibility of just adding these features (all or some of them) to the normal campaign instead of creating a special mode, I want to hear opinions about it.

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This is just a sample of what I have planned for the game, there's still lots of secondary features, content and improvements that I want to add. The downside is that Early Access will certainly be longer than what I expected at the beginning but I think it will be worthy and I hope you agree once you see the new patches I'm preparing.
Like last time, I only ask for patience, these new changes are harder to make than new items or weapons so that's why they take longer.

In the meantime, please share your opinion about these new ideas and features. Getting feedback is the main purpose of these dev diaries.

Regards,
Jorge