Talk:Freeplay

Expanding the freeplay in the articles

we need as much info as possible so the wiki can be fullfilled Pon Arc (Real) (talk) 05:12, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Scope of this article

I think we seriously need to reconsider what this article's purpose is, because it's misleading to attribute all these round-related mechanics to freeplay.

For BTD6:

• All that entering "freeplay mode" in BTD6 does on its own is reduce the amount of XP you gain (until round 100 when it becomes the same for all modes) and allow you to access more rounds after the mode/challenge's round limit. Everything else that is commonly attributed to freeplay is an unrelated system that does often apply to freeplay, but is not specific to freeplay.
• The changes that occur as rounds progress, like income cuts, super ceramics, and health scaling, are not specific to freeplay and affect some modes even before entering "freeplay mode". However, the description for impoppable states that "some freeplay rules and difficulty will apply at later rounds", and patch notes do refer to these as part of freeplay, so these are officially considered part of freeplay in some way even if they aren't directly connected.
• The randomly generated rounds after round 140 aren't specific to freeplay. Apopalypse uses the same system and same set of bloon groups, it just starts using them on round 1 instead of round 141, and custom challenges can use rounds after round 140 without requiring you to enter freeplay mode.

For BTD5:

• In the mobile and console versions, entering freeplay immediately replaces all ceramics with super ceramics, so super ceramics start appearing way earlier on easy freeplay than hard freeplay. In that sense, that is actually an effect tied to freeplay, not just the round number. In Flash and Deluxe, entering freeplay disables saving, which is also unique to freeplay, but super ceramics only start spawning on round 86 as you'd expect.
• All other effects of freeplay are tied to the round number, not freeplay mode.

It should be noted that similar round-based mechanics also exist in BTDB1, BTDB2, BMC, and BATTD (such as super ceramics and health ramping), even though they don't have freeplay modes and their scaling effects aren't attributed freeplay.

I think it would make more sense to move all the information about round-based mechanics, like health ramping, speed ramping, and super ceramics into the lists of rounds (as the BTD6 list and battles 2 list already do) and move all the information about random round generation into a separate article describing how it works in each game that has it. This article would only list effects that are strictly unique to freeplay mode. It could mention those other round-based mechanics as being related to freeplay without describing them in full here, to avoid being redundant. po●la●vux 16:24, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Revisiting this topic. I think the best approach would be to cover the ramping mechanics and round generation on a separate page for each, and change this page so it only covers effects that are strictly tied to freeplay instead of just the round number. Keep in mind that round generation and ramping mechanics exist in multiple BTD games that don't even have freeplay mode, and presenting them as a part of freeplay here is misrepresentative. I know BTD6 patch notes tend to refer to anything pertaining to late-game rounds as part of freeplay mode (and we can acknowledge that on these pages), but that doesn't mean we have to structure our pages according to this. Just like how we actively avoid structuring our coverage of updates to be like patch notes.

I'm not sure what to name the new pages. Normally I'd prefer to use official terminology, but the most common terms NK uses are things like "freeplay scaling" and "freeplay rounds", and I want to avoid using the name "freeplay" for these. I've also thought about treating the term "freeplay" as having two different meanings, one referring to the mode and one referring to the round mechanics, but that doesn't really work because round generation and round scaling are not connected to each other. Polavux (talk) 03:35, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Freeplay income cut

v53.0 changed Freeplay's income cut

• Round 120 income cut increased from 5% > 8%
• Added a Round 140 income cut back down to 5%

What I'm interpreting here is rounds 101-120 now have 8% cut. 121-140 have 5% cut and 141+ is 2%? I'm not sure if this is correct because the patch notes are confusing.

Overclockbtd (talk) 03:50, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Internally, the way they define income cuts is by specifying the last round that an income modifier applies to. It's structured like this (converted from json to a list):

• 50: 1.0
• 60: 0.5
• 85: 0.2
• 100: 0.1
• 120: 0.08
• 140: 0.05
• final: 0.02

Previously, 120 was 0.05 and there was no 140 threshold. Final is still 0.02. So yes, your interpretation is correct. It's just worded oddly in the patch notes because they're going off the internal formatting without explaining it. Polavux (talk) 03:57, 12 February 2026 (UTC)