A couple of small suggestions.

[Riviute]

This is a list of things that I suggest for the game, most of them are very minor and dont require their own topic, I apologize if any of these have been suggested before but I wasnt aware of them. If these are missing something crucial then I'm sorry since I might overlook things that are obvious to the devs. 

Maps

Encounters with Twilight is a really good introductionary mission. Its slowpaced not too demanding, some bases to take down, an option that allows you to approach the mission how you want it by either defending against an attack wave of doom or assaulting the big base. To finish things of you have a boss. Viridya tells you that you need to take care of the spirits otherwise they empower the Wrathgazer but this mechanic is completely nullified by the fact that you have access to knockback. Could we give the spirits knockback resistance so you have to pay a little more attention to them?

In the mission Sunbridge, is there a possibility to move some power wells and monuments? This is still a very early mission and I have seen many times how new players got overwhelmed here. On player 1 side if he builds up the wall the entire defensive army of the T3 comes to play and the T4 is so darn close to the boss room, that even if you defend it well can trigger so many units swarming out of that base to attack you, but new players probably still have to take down the shrine objective so Mora is invicible and its a losing battle no matter what. Could we place the T4 to the left side and the Twilight Archers at the T3 a bit to the right so they dont trigger anymore when the Wall is built. 
On player 2 side the T3 is in a very tought spot, to be exact the top power well. If that well is built and an attack wave approaches the entire T4 defensive camp pays you a visit and its very hard for new players. I would either change the placement of the top power well or change the attack path for the enemy, that they go the left path directly to the fortress, so  that it actually has a purpose for the player to build.

In the Mission the Soultree on expert difficulty, there is a stonekin rageflame in the enemy twilight base... why is he there?

 

Cards

Is there a possibility to add range radius whenever you try to build a tower? So that you can see how far the range actually is, would help especially with those that have unique ranges like the bombard or hammerfall. Game tells you 50m but I have no clue what 50m are ingame.

I am personally a big fan of the Moloch, alongside Sunderer my most favorite fire unit. But even I can admit that it has its flaws, I once heard that there were plans of a rework of this card, honestly dont feel like it needs that, I love the way it is, but I wish it would have an active ability that makes use of its volcano on its back. Like a minor version of the inferno spell that can also hit air. Something like that and it would be perfect.

Could we overhaul the description of what the card Unholy Power does? I played this game for years and still dont get what this card exactly does, what does strength mean? Appearantly its 50% damage more to enemies and 50% less damage taken for the value of 3000 strenght, but how is that power depleted and is there a way to show the player how much of that is left?

 

Enemies

Please nerf the npc twilight vilebloods, the npc enemies that you find in various missions. Their acid is just way too busted imo. it just shreds through units and buildings alike, either nerf it in general or that it cant affect buildings anymore.

Talking about npc nerfs, I still feel like lost souls is way tougher than any of the other npc factions that can show up in rpve. Lots of long range stuff with dancers and vigils but also some obnoxious buildings and a lot of abilities that limit the players freedom, like using skills, activating spells or even having ranged attack downright deactivated. Whenever I see lost souls in rpve i instantly quit out and start a new one until I dont have souls. Or like in the season when I have to do map of the week or month or whatever and I realize its souls... I just quit. But this might as well be a Me Issue. Maybe they could use some more units that are less impressive than the ones we already have, like some S sized units, because I actually really look that I have a varied composition and that I counter everything, but as soon as I see souls, my S counters become almost obsolete. They just feel really oppressive to me and if the only answer to deal with them properly is to use the third ability of the incredible Mo, then I feel like somethings wrong here.

 

Something different

Have you ever considered to put in Power pickups into the game? They could share the model of the goldchest but coloured white in the same tone as the crystals within the power wells, though can only be opened if no enemies are around. They could just straight up give you some power, it doesnt need to be a lot waging from 50power up to 300power (or something like that) It would be another tool balance pve maps and could also be used for player created content like custom maps. One map where it could be used would be nightmare shard, in the middle of that map there is an area with two power wells, but its in the middle of two paths were the twilight witches go so its a nightmare to defend, maybe remove the wells but put pickups there. Some powerwells on certain maps are just in unfortunate locations that you need to clear first and then also defend while being completely optional makes certain power wells just never being built in the first place and I feel like Pickups could offer a nice solution.

[Metagross31]

- Regarding maps, I don't have much insight personally, but the team has thus far been very careful with bringing changes to existing maps, since they are quite iconic and we have speedrun rankings, which would change with most map changes.

- Tower range indicator would be great! For effects, this is sometimes already there (e.g. Sylvan Gate/Root Nexus radius, Mortar Tower range), but I don't know how easy it would be to implement.

- There was talk about Moloch reworks in the past in the balancing Discord, but none made it into the game. I think none were really satisfactory and if someone would come up with a great rework, it might make its way into the game. Feel free to join the Balance Discord and propose something 🙂

- For Unholy Power, maybe an ammo bar like the one Mountaineer uses could work? But then what if Mountaineer gets buffed with UP?

- Vilebloods mostly appear in Expert missions, which are difficult by design. Its often helpful if you already know where a Vileblood will attack so you can e.g. proactively root it and focus it down before its close to your wells. There might have even been some changes in the past, where early vilebloods have been switched for other units, but I am not 100% sure if I am remembering stuff correctly.

- Power pickups are already a thing. If I'm not mistaking, in Dwarven Riddle for example you get a boost in power once the first bandit base is destroyed. They are also used in several (featured) community maps.

[Riviute]

Maps: I kind of dont like the idea that speedruns have a higher value than general player experience, but I'm also not a competetive player in regards to Speedruns. Maybe my opinion there is in the minority. I mean if bigger changes are made to certain campaign maps, maybe we could have like an option that would allow us to play classic versions of campaign maps. That way map speedruns would remain.

Balancing Discord: I dont really like Discord so Im not very active there and dont have much insight about the things that have been talked about there.

Unholy Power: Yea with units like mountaineer that would overlap, but maybe if you hover your cursor over the current active ability it could not only show the time remaining but also the strength.

Vileblood: Your probably right, but its still one of my most hated enemies to take on in all the rts that I have ever played. The damage feels unreasonable to me.

Power Pickups: Dwarven Riddle gives you extra power? I mean I rarely play that mission, but this seems to be tied to a key map objective that you are gonna do anyway. Im talking about something that is very optional but helpful. So if they already exist then it went over my head and I apologize, but I feel like they could have a bit more presence in the game. 

 

But I also could be absolutely wrong about all of this, wanted to talk about the things I thought about for a while so its just my two cents here.

[WindHunter]

Speed runs do not take precedence when we are designing or balancing any part of the game. At the same time, yes we generally avoid major changes to campaign maps which would make the existing records impossible, though obviously this would be us making a map harder, not easier.

Irrespective of speedrunning, we have maintained a pretty hands-off approach to existing campaign maps, and when we did change things we wanted the changes to be mostly unnoticed. We fixed some major problems, like wave trapping on Guns of Lyr, and also did minor things like moving the T2 wells/orbs slightly on Sunbridge slightly south to prevent accidentally pulling the T3 camp. We did some more substantial changes to maps with long durations and high failure rates (Behind Enemy Lines, Nightmare Shard, Nightmare's End, Convoy). In each case the changes were careful and targeted, and in the case of Nightmare's End we were able to reduce average map time by 20+ minutes while significantly increasing the win rate. As another example, before our changes to Convoy, expert difficulty had a 15-20% win rate, and it is at least double that now. Yet, unless you read the patch notes or obsessively played a map, you likely would not have noticed these changes because they were so subtle. 

Maybe we will change our approach in the future, but for now we mostly want to reduce pain points in maps without changing their overall feel. This is also because making new maps just seems more worthwhile to us than going back and overhauling existing maps. An exception to this is when we feel like a map could really benefit from a substantial overhaul, to the point where it will feel like a new map, and we will soon be announcing a few of these reworks, including potentially one in our next major patch.