Suggestion: In-game Encyclopedia and start wave button

[Krfan]

Greetings,

As you may know, with advent of Kingdom rush: Origins in 2014, Ironhide removed the start wave button and in-game Encyclopedia(the one that used to exist while the player was on a specific level). Soon after, the in-game Encyclopedia for Kingdom rush and Kingdom rush: Frontiers was removed. To my knowledge, this was done to decrease the game size. With Vengeance on the horizon, I thought this would be a good time to bring this topic to light. To put it plainly, the in-game Encyclopedia and the start button were quite useful buttons, and I believe it was a misstep to remove them because, for the end user, it simply removed those options for no significant gain. Going forward, I am mainly going to speak about the effect of this on the iPad, and why I believe those two buttons should be brought back.

The in-game Encyclopedia was useful for the end-user because if a person encountered an enemy that they do not quite remember, pressing on the in-game Encyclopedia would pause the game and allow them to know the enemies stats and abilities. Without the in-game Encyclopedia, that person would have to press on the enemy to know its stats, but not its abilities; because Kingdom rush is a real-time tower defense game, those seconds wasted processing the enemy’s stats makes the game slightly more difficult since they are not focusing on the other enemies walking through, and thus makes the game slightly more inconvenient. Thus, having the in-game Encyclopedia was much more convenient for the end-user than not having it, due to the added information it brought in-game and the fact that it paused the game. While someone who consistently plays the game for many hours on end would eventually know the enemies by heart, this wouldn’t be the case for returning or casual players. Furthermore, the actual button for the in-game Encyclopedia did not take a significant portion of the screen.

The start wave button was also subtly, yet incredibly, useful. Many maps have enemies coming from different locations, and having the start-wave button on the lower left corner of the screen was a consistent way to call the next wave, and worked no matter what map you were on. Without the start-wave button, calling a wave on different maps means double tapping different parts of the screen. This is simply less convenient than the start-wave button, and could negatively impact your gameplay because one would waste that little bit of time reaching the different locations and double tapping the circle. While on any given map a person may get used double tapping that specific area, it is simply not as convenient as the start-wave button.

I understand that re-implementing the those features would take up precious development time and make the game filer larger, Ironhide. However, I do strongly believe that there is no downside for the end-user having those options, and I would like to suggest that you bring those options back, as they significantly improved their respective games.

I welcome any feedback and discussion regarding this topic and would also like to know the community’s opinion regarding this subject.



TL:DR: Please bring back the in-game Encyclopedia and the start-wave button.

[truteal]

[+] SPOILER

Vengeance doesn't have an enemy encyclopaedia either

[BMoneyX1337]

Vengeance doesn't have an in-game encyclopedia??? Nooooooooooooooo

I primarily only play these games on PC/Steam, so I had no idea they removed the encyclopedia from the other games, but it makes me very upset to hear and even more upset to hear vengeance does not have an encyclopedia either.

I know it sounds silly, but the encyclopedia added so much depth to the backstory of the games and really helped to make it stand out from other games of its kind.

#BringBackTheEncyclopedia

[truteal]

I primarily only play these games on PC/Steam, so I had no idea they removed the encyclopedia from the other games

Likewise