I do not like the direction TDS is going right now. I've seen many people say the modern version of the game isn't as good, but to my surprise, the popular opinion on this wiki is that TDS has massively improved this year. The main arguments in favor of that are the large amount of content give this year in a pretty consistent schedule. However, I think the majority of the content added has been harmful in some way to the game, with some features having no benefit or reason to exist at all. I feel that the people who agree with me that this has been a really bad year for the game often can't articulate their thoughts on why or how it's this way, they just feel it and because of the lack of actual reason given by a lot of people on this side, it has generally become stigmatized to think this way and that it's "simply nostalgia". I want to articulate my thoughts and reason for having this opinion based on basic game design principles (Keep in mind I'm not a professional, but I've "studied" it in my free time), what the game used to be and what it did, and what the game does now. Think of this post as a review of the game.
I'll start with the game's balancing. People commonly say that TDS has massively improved balancing with all of the reworks and buffs. The reality is that a lot of reworks (a rework being defined as a change in mechanics and/or functionality) were not necessary at all and the buffs of towers have contributed massively to powercreep. Some buffs of towers weren't problematic such as the Shotgunner buff, but the problem arrives when nothing gets nerfed in return and the devs instead use buffs as a means for towers to catch up the meta. Emphasis on the word meta, because a lot of the buffs aren't to buff the tower to a perfectly usable state, but rather to be on par with the top tier towers. That usually applies to towers with a late game role since that tends to be what's much more important in TDS, but it can happen with early game towers too.
So what's the result of that kind of balancing? Gold Soldier being buffed when it was already a very versatile tower to being good for the whole game, followed by immediately being outclassed by Gold Crook Boss as an even more cost effective option with amazing units that have flying and hidden detection at base level, on top of having very high dps at the max level. And before that, Militant was buffed to have flying detection and was considered a good hardcore option and better than Gold Soldier due to being a better sub-dps, but the Gold Soldier buff just completely outclassed it. It's just a chain of towers one-upping each other and it makes the game extremely easy. That's called powercreep. When new content or changes of any kind make other content irrelevant. There is little reason to use Gold Soldier over Gold Crook boss, and there is undoubtedly no reason at all to use Militant over either of those two. The same logic goes for Accelerator compared to almost all late game options which is also very commonly discussed.
Just remember this: Accelerator and Militant were never nerfed in recent times. They have been kept exactly the same and were considered viable for the same modes we have today. You can still use them and they'll do a good job, but they just introduced even stronger options when the game was already criticized for being too easy and having an unbalanced, powercrept meta.
The solution is simple: Nerf towers. How many nerfs have there been this entire year? Not a lot. How many of those nerfs were immediately followed by a meaningful buff? From my memory, all of them except the very small Engineer nerf and the Paintballer nerf (it did get a buff but it sucks). They don't want to nerf these towers and they're well aware they're overpowered. They gave Engineer a tiny nerf for the sake of saying they did something, buffed Brawler right after its nerf into a more typical dps-oriented role better than Accelerator, and most infamously, reverted the single most important change in the Commander nerf by decreasing the cooldown for CTA back to 30 seconds instead of 40 and even increasing the tower limit to 4 so you can do the perfect chaining strategy. And yet there's so much powercreep that even a 50% firerate support buff with a pretty good spawning ability isn't meta anymore...
This leads to my next point: Why are they not nerfing anything? The community. The developers have made the mistake of deciding to listen to their large, diverse, and very divided community of teenagers and children on the internet. Do you think those are the people that you should be listening to? I understand listening to what your playerbase wants, as it definitely feels like a lot of game franchises don't do that nowadays, but the Paradoxum team is not listening to who they should be listening to and has added very few things of quality this year. They complain about their favorite overpowered being nerfed with this flawed concept of "more time invested = I should be given stronger tool" kind of progression. If that sounds familiar, that's exactly the kind of progression Simulators use, which keep in mind are single-player oriented games (you play with other people in the server, but don't interact with them, so the multiplayer mechanic serves no purpose for most simulators). This is what leads to situations like the revert of the Commander nerf and Engineer getting a nothing burger of a nerf.
Every new thing the developers add seems to have the intention of powercreeping even further simply to increase playtime by adding more things to grind for. Grind coins to gamble for consumables to make your matches easier. Grind for our new overpowered tower, Brawler. Wait no, grind for our newer overpowered tower, Mercenary base. No no, grind for our even more overpowered Engineer tower. Actually, just grind for our newest Gatling gun and win pretty much anything you want. They are not putting any thought into this new content, they simply do it for hype, and slightly older children who review the game like the ones on this wiki say it's wonderful because it's new content with so much effort put into it. New towers in concept is always great, but when they're powercreeping everything else with the intentional simulator-design philosophy of TDS progression then it often brings more harm with the powercreep than good with the new content.
Here's a list of every new feature the TDS devs have added this year that add nothing to the game or actively hurt it and/or its community:
Consumables
Spin wheel
Public matchmaking shadow change to average out the levels in every match (high levels paired with low levels to average it out)
Every single new tower added this year (indirectly; new content in concept is always good and they can be enjoyed, but they're balancing is harmful and seemingly intentional)
Almost every buff for any tower were unneeded
The unnecessary fps gimmick on Gatling gunner (Could of been aimed in third person when you click the tower which is more practical and wouldn't have resulted in the tower being much worse to use on mobile)
Numerous incidents with skins added in updates (the May 4th skins only being obtainable for a day or two with one from the deluxe crate, Patriotic Commander in the same situation, Mako Dj being paid for after a very misleading announcement and hype built, etc.)
The new tower ui that lags your game if you click on and off quickly, sell, or really do anything with it too quickly. They had an opportunity to fix issues the old ui had like the terrible method of using arrows to scroll through targeting options and the weird delay with changing it and upgrading sometimes, but they didn't even do that.
Not only has the game itself been sabotaging itself with thoughtless updates to desperately keep the attention of the playerbase and to attract newer, young players with mechanics designed to keep a baby's attention rather than mechanics designed for a coherent game, but community relations has arguably been worse than ever. TDS has been awful with that since 2021, but it's really showing this year. They give us teasers for what they will do next like the Pursuit rework, but there's no transparency with the community at all after the update actually releases. They don't really give us polls or anything to tell us how we feel on important issues like the design of the game itself with things like the obtainability of event towers, how towers should be balanced, what content we want, etc. We just get polls about "Is X tower good after the rework" and even if the results are something undesirable nothing is usually done for a long time, if at all. The developers don't talk about any clear direction with the game, as it really does seem that they're just going with whatever gimmicky idea or new simulator mechanic they think will grab the most attention from the largest demographic (children).
People can give criticism to the developers directly and nothing is done about it. People can give criticism on a large scale and the server gets shutdown. People can give criticism, have it addressed, and then immediately have it reverted when the underdeveloped majority that Paradoxum has willingly fostered doesn't like it. It's not like they even care about them, because a lot of people who gave criticism for some incidents like the skin updates clearly were part of the majority they try to appeal to, but they likely know letting the controversy die down is the most profitable when they know they're still going to play the game.
Not only has TDS the game severely declined in quality with the exception of QoL improvements and graphics, but there's no sense of community anymore. While you can argue that's not related to the game itself and it's not entirely in the control of Paradoxum, it definitely added to the experience of playing TDS back then and I very well believe Paradoxum can control it. Not to sound like a nostalgia freak, but back then the game really was a lot more difficult and team-centered. TDS back then actually had a lot more meaningful progression then it does now with the incentive to collect medals for every mode on multiple maps for platinum crates, which admittedly were a bad mechanic just like gold crates, but the concept of something to earn through collecting medals on maps like BTD6 black borders was very fun. A lot of the cosmetic features, which I personally like to call "social mechanics" were a lot more prevalent back then. Emotes were actively being made and used by people, such as with smug trains. People were helping each other get medals on all maps, or trying to beat an insane map to use as the map on their profile. The older events in the game, especially Halloween 2020-Solar eclipse added the most iconic fan favorite characters in the game, and with Solar eclipse specifically, alluded to a new story-driven direction for the game's events or possibly the whole game (which ended up never happening after the Lunar overture flop). There was a larger variety of content in gamemodes and the most difficult ones really were a challenge, albeit with a stricter meta than today, but a lot more balanced.
Admittedly, a lot of the issues I describe with modern TDS such as the simulator-progression system have been in the game for far longer, even since the game's conception. Scout and Soldier pretty much have always been outclassed as options for example. However, these problems have gotten to the extreme since it (supposedly) benefits the developers to have that kind of progression (even though other games prove otherwise), so they haven't addressed that problem which only got worse with each new tower added, alongside other problems such as general balance, unobtainable gatekept event content, a lack of content in the main game (though that only really became an issue in 2021), and lack of transparency with the community. It was a lot easier to look past these flaws back then when the game had a lot more going for it and anticipating the next update that everyone knew was going to be massive.
Old TDS really was a Roblox masterpiece, despite its flaws, this game kept its integrity and really tried to provide the best experience, even with very stupid mistakes like the Overhaul update. It had a decent learning curve, was easy to pick up and play, and was a great place to just hang out with friends, people in the lobby, or make friends. TDS appealing to toddlers, removing social mechanics like map medals and making the last few social mechanics like emotes and maps on your profile irrelevant have contributed to there being no sense of community in TDS anymore.
Conclusion
In conclusion, all of the issues I had explained can be summed up with one word: greed. Paradoxum is a business now, and they have the right to do what they want with their game, but it's clear that this direction, or rather, lack of direction for the game itself when their main motive is about statistics over the actual game, have taken the playability out of this game for any mature player who wants a worthwhile game to get into. There's no hiding it anymore, this is a simulator. I hate to only have negative things to say about this game, but it's really sad to see what this game has become and I want the best for it.
I will explain anything I said more in-depth in replies if you are confused on anything or I didn't elaborate on something, though more than likely it's because it's something I had been arguing about hundreds of times in other replies. I will reply to criticism.
