There are so many good mode possibilities, it's exciting. Who wouldn't love a mode where you play as the monster side, RTS-style? Haha.
270 hours played and that's news to me. There has to be something very, very wrong for an entire wave to last an entire hour.
Entire survival runs can take a few hours that's true, but going through 25-35 waves in that time and with breaks after each wave (you can make the break last long as you want it to last).
It was a range. My thinking was that since I've had rounds go for over 30 minutes even at earlier stages, they could probably go up to an hour much later (I think my max is round 17). Of course, my main character is an Apprentice on the PS3, and according to Hitmonchan his towers are borked. That could contribute to how long the rounds take.
And you saying you never see Squires using block, that more to do with who you play with and the situations players find themselves in during a game.
Unless mobs are going to 1-shot you, it seems like being an offensive player would pay off more when dealing with masses of mobs. It's not like you can block an attack and then counterattack in huge waves as you can with a single Ogre.
I agree about survival taking so long. It's my own only real major complaint but even so, it's survival mode. I think many folks would be disappointed if you could simply zip through it in a few minutes.
Survival mode doesn't mean "takes a long time". For example, one way of doing survival mode, which likely would not work well for Dungeon Defenders, is that of fighting games: you don't heal between rounds (or your crystal), and once you die, you're done. This would make the mode more about making consistent, smart decisions, and not simply AFKing.
Then, there are mob upgrades, which are another way to scale survival difficulty. There are also ways to scale difficulty via numbers that doesn't essentially mean "double the number". For example, a lot of levels have at least one survival wave that has a moment which is pretty much "all wyverns". You could structure the waves more like that, with specific and difficult hurdles to overcome instead of just waves of generality.
Trendy could also implement bosses into waves. Why NOT have the Goblin Mech show up as part of the wave?
Another idea is to go with a Diablo II-style mini-boss system for each mob, where each one generated has abilities which are randomly pulled from a list (extra fast, elemental immunities, huge HP allowing for "Mega Necromancers", etc.). Every 5 waves, add another ability, and the waves become much more difficult to deal with without radically increasing the duration on each level.
More enemy types. This is obviously happening all the time, and it's great for increasing survival difficulty. The easiest challenges in this game are Raining Goblins and Ogre Crush, IMO, because I only have to worry about one type of enemy, which means I can specialize against their type. New enemies with abilities like teleportation can help make levels active and fresh feeling all the time. Personally, I would love a mob that has a large tower shield in front of him that blocks ALL projectiles. Thus he would draw a lot of fire and make waves difficult, and you'd have to maneuver behind him to get the job done, turn him around, or have towers that fire in multiple directions. How about a sniper mob which intentionally keeps his distance and only attacks players? The Djinn can move towers; why not a kind of mob that can lock a tower down and disable it as long as he's alive?
I'm not saying any one of these is the perfect, or even a good, idea for survival mode. Rather, I'm trying to show that there are a huge number of ways to make each successive wave in survival mode feel more challenging without having to massively increase the number of mobs.
Survival mode isn't essential when it comes to playing the game. I think the better loot found in survival helps you progress further in survival only and the majority, if not all, of the game's content can be completed and enjoyed without touching it.
Pet farming, yah?
I think are various options that could be explored in what could be done with it without taking away from the core of what that mode is suppose to be about.
Clearly, I agree!
