History YMMV / BloonsTowerDefense

* HypeBacklash: Despite months of excitement for the Engineer's Paragon in the buildup to its release in 32.0, the Master Builder was panned once it finally arrived. It overspecializes in the first path's sentry-based mechanics at the cost of abandoning nearly ''every'' other aspect of the second and third paths apart from buffing itself a la Overclock at the start of every round and being able to pin MOAB-class bloons in place, essentially making it a Paragon-level Sentry Champion. In conjunction with how versatile (and expensive) Ultraboost and XXXL Trap are, it is generally seen as far from a worthwhile upgrade, and players were already clamoring for Ninja Kiwi to rework it mere days after its release. Ninja Kiwi addressed this by saying Paragons aren't meant to be just 5/5/5+ towers and don't equally feature aspects from all three paths, but the generally uncreative result of the final product, with people saying it's more of a Dartling Gunner Paragon, they say they will consider adjustments.

*** A variation of ''Onslaught'', ''The Reality Warper'', is used as the boss theme for Phayze. While at first glance and indeed for sections it is a clone of Onslaught, ''The Reality Warper'' incorporates glitches into its soundtrack and even implements a section of music from ''[[Bloons Super Monkey 2 Mobile]]'' to really tie into the whole "glitchiness" aspect of this boss, since it is in essence a gltihc in reality.

'''Geraldo''': At last - my shop is complete!

* PortingDisaster: The UsefulNotes/DSiWare version of ''4'' was panned for its horrendous performance even by the standards of this series (less than 1 frame per second is the norm later on) that makes selecting towers during rounds nigh impossible and playing the game much less enjoyable. It's telling that ''5'' didn't receive a release on the UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS or even the New 3DS and instead waited until the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch to ensure it fares well.

** Glorious Gold from "[=BTD6=]" is an exercise in tedium. The achievement requires the player to pop 500 golden bloons in total and given that only 8 spawn per game at most, and coupled with how difficult it is to pop them without very specific setups designed to counter golden bloons' abilities specifically and they only spawn on specific days of the week, it will take a lot of grinding to unlock the rewards tied into it.

** Glorious Gold from "[=BTD6=]" is an exercise in tedium. The achievement requires the player to pop 500 golden bloons in total and given that only 8 spawn per game at most, coupled with how difficult it is to pop them without very specific setups designed to counter golden bloons' abilities specifically it will take a lot of grinding to unlock the rewards tied into it. Oh and did I mention that the golden bloons only spawn on specific days of the week?

*** the achievements tied to Golden Bloons only make this issue worse as you have to pop 500 of them (50 of which have to be on Magic Monkeys mode) to earn all the related achievements and considering only a maximum of 8 spawn per game, it becomes a real grindfest.

** Australians as a whole also fall under this, as players occasionally joke about how the Australian flag costs 60% more than other countries flags in the Trophy Store for seemingly no apparent reason.[[labelnote:Explanation]]While the exact reason has never been specified, it is widely believed this is because of a running gag that Australia and New Zealand (Ninja Kiwi's origin country) are national rivals of each other.[[/labelnote]]

** [=BTD6=] as a game gets this treatment, as it has been referred to the final test for testing device processing power. This is because despite the simplicity of the game, if you go into freeplay mode and go all out, there are tons of calculations that the device running the game has to make and it is enough to slow down even the strongest of [=PCs=].

** Australians as a whole also fall under this, as players occasionally joke about how the Australian flag costs 60% more than other countries flags in the Trophy Store for no apparent reason.

** BTD6 as a game gets this treatment, as it has been referred to the final test for testing device processing power. This is because despite the simplicity of the game, if you go into freeplay mode and go all out, there are tons of calculations that the device running the game has to make and it is enough to slow down even the strongest of PCs.

** When [[https://www.reddit.com/r/btd6/comments/y1rbkv/bloons_td_6_update_notes_version_330/ version 33.0]] added a limit to the amount of Paragons you can have and set it to 3, a ''massive'' uproar happened on Reddit.

** The Legend of the Night, a Super Monkey upgrade, spawns a unique [[UnrealisticBlackHole rechargeable black hole attack]] that serves as a OneHitKill any sort of leak for 7.5 seconds upon escaping, recharging every two minutes. Not even [=BADs=], normally having ContractualBossImmunity to this sort of thing, are immune. Sadly, it sees virtually no use except in very few custom challenges specifically centered around this ability for two principal reasons. First, it is too expensive (costing over $200,000 ''on Easy Mode'') for non-freeplay rounds. Second, it is a required sacrifice for the powerful Avatar of the Vengeful Monkey, a tower essential to deep freeplay runs, and if you build such an Avatar, you cannot use the black hole ability ever again unless the Avatar is sold (which is obviously ill-advised). With the Legend of the Night being nigh-unusable in both freeplay and non-freeplay rounds, the black hole (an interesting anti-leak mechanic) goes underused. This became more so after Ninja Kiwi imposed various nerfs to the black hole (to prevent players from using ability cooldown modifiers to sit back and achieve massively high rounds).

** The 38.3 update made the Total Transformation bugged by allowing you to link some transformable towers to whatever you want. If you link something to a dart monkey they become compatible with both Fan Club abilities, which allows you to greatly enhance the attack speed of the tower (Plasma Monkey Fan Club gives most projectiles the texture of the plasma balls, but this is only visual). You can also link almost anything to a bugged Wizard lord Phoenix and have the tower use its ability indefinitely, even if it is an income-based ability where they cut money-generating abilities after 3 minutes from the start of the round. In addition to that [[https://www.reddit.com/r/btd6/comments/164ll20/selling_bosses_with_the_new_bug/ this link on reddit]] shows that you can link the monkey to the boss bloon and then sell the tower to instantly defeat the boss. Finally, the bug also has an effect where linking a True Sun God to a tower and then upgrading that tower enhances the sacrifice power of the True Sun God, potentially allowing it access to damage levels that make the Paragons look like base towers.

** The 38.3 update made the Total Transformation bugged by allowing you to link some transformable towers to whatever you want. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/btd6/comments/164ll20/selling_bosses_with_the_new_bug/ This link on reddit]] shows that you can link the monkey to the boss bloon and then sell the tower to instantly defeat the boss. You can also link anything to a bugged Wizard lord Phoenix and have the tower use its ability indefinitely, even if it is an income-based ability where they cut money-generating abilities after 3 minutes from the start of the round.

** Otherworldy from ''[=BTD5=]'' was actually removed due to its nigh impossibility even when compared to other harder-viewed achievements. Its requirement? That the player wins 365 daily challenges ''consecutively''! That's right, if you missed even one day, you would've had to play for another whole year![[note]]Interestingly, the achievement was removed a few months after the game's launch, meaning it was impossible to achieve it legitimately anyway![[/note]]

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** Spectres and Flying Fortresses have had a poor reputation for missing bloons that do not move directly into their streams of darts and bombs. Update 23.0 has tried to remedy this by not only increasing their projectile size, but also granting the darts slight homing capabilities.
** A nerf making MOAB Glue slow weaker (so that glued blimps moved at 75% speed, not 62.5% speed) that was introduced in 23.0 was soon reverted in 24.0, as the nerf quickly came to be despised.
** In an attempt to stop people from abusing Blade Maelstrom in races, leading to them being banned in most of them, version 24.0 capped its pierce to 100 bloons per blade so that it could no longer pop infinite bloons. The cap was soon doubled after complaints of players [[GoneHorriblyRight struggling to beat rounds 63, 76, and 78 with the cap.]]
** Version 26.0 makes the Co-op Daily Challenge and the Advanced Challenge of the day accessible at the same time. Between 12.0 and 26.0, the Co-op Daily Challenge was available when the player was connected to the internet, and the Advanced Challenge appeared when they weren't. This mutual exclusivity [[ScrappyMechanic irritated daily challenge fans endlessly]], which led to the change being implemented.
** In version 27.0, Tech Terror had not only its ability damage more than doubled, but also became capable of {{Critical Hit}}s with its arm attacks, making it a pretty good endgame option able to vaporize hordes of [=BFBs=] at once. This was in response to Tech Terror's poor reputation of being a MasterOfNone path for the Super Monkey.
** The first Contested Territory event lasted for two weeks. Fans quickly tired of it, realizing that once you're behind, it's very hard to catch up, and repeatedly renewing tiles was too much of a time sink. The next CT event only lasted for one week.
** 33.0's preview announcement made public the controversial change to impose a 3-Paragon limit to promote creativity in choosing Paragons. After feedback from the community, this limit was changed to 4 Paragons while an additional Content Browser editor function allows players to set higher limits or unrestricted in player-made Content Browser games. This was followed by NK announcing that they would like to backpedal further by removing the limit entirely outside of bosses and Contested Territory.

** The Flying Fortress upgrade for the Monkey Ace has been dubbed the "Big Plane" due to its upgrade description memetically solely consisting of a single sentence calling the Flying Fortress a "BIG plane". It is also sometimes known as the "ISAB Plane" due to the YouTuber ISAB using it as an avatar.

* MemeticMolester: The {{m|aniacMonkeys}}onkey in the "Obtain Free Monkey Money" pop-up.

** Australians as a whole also fall under this, as players occasionally joke about how the Australian flag costs 60% more than other countries flags in the Trophy Store for no apparent reason.[[note]]Though, Ninja Kiwi are based in New Zealand...[[/note]]

** Australians as a whole also fall under this, as players occasionally joke about how the Australian flag costs 60% more than other countries flags in the Trophy Store for no apparent reason.

** Similarly, once Quincy got buffed to become a relevant hero, the fandom shifted to making fun of Obyn. [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen Once considered the best hero in the game]], Obyn was done in by a combination of nerfs and PowerCreep — in addition to his increased cost making him unable to be placed as a starting tower, his buffs applying to fewer tower types, and the slowing ability of his totems getting weaker, other support options were added or buffed to make them far more powerful, even with the bottom-path Druids he works best with. Gwendolin, Pat, and Geraldo are all much better options for buffing magic towers, and regular support towers like Alchemists will support the Avatar of Wrath fine without taking up your hero slot. As a result, Obyn is a SkillGateCharacter who's easy to use, but hopeless for beating CHIMPS on the hardest maps. Tellingly, the tier lists for CHIMPS place Obyn in the D-tier — just barely above towers which are completely useless in CHIMPS, like bottom-path Buccaneers, and below Ben, whose money-generating abilities don't work there.

** Tech Bot as a Contested Territory relic is considered virtually useless as CT never has situations where players benefit from automated ability use.

*** Top path Spike Factories in ''[=BTD6=]'' see little to no use due to their slow attack speeds, and in particular Super Mines (the top path Tier 5 spike factory upgrade) is often mocked for having a high price tag of $175,000 attached to such a slow-attacking (it only throws a single spiked mine every four seconds) tower, though it at least deals 1000 damage per mine as of version 12.0. After version 20.0, however, a buff in the damage of spiked balls (the 3rd tier) made them spammable with great effects, even getting them to take part in the standard Quad BB strategy. Spiked Mines and Super Mines, however, still see very little play.

** The MOAB Mauler in ''[=BTD6=]'' has been in both ends of the trope. Initially, it behaved exactly as in previous entries - firing missiles that dealt 10 extra damage to blimps, while everything else took the normal bomb damage. In a game with so many effective ways to deal heavy damage to blimps, the MOAB Mauler was quickly overshadowed... until Patch 12.0 gave MOAB Maulers extra damage against Ceramic Bloons. Alongside the buffs Striker Jones got, MOAB Maulers went from an outclassed option to being heavily spammable. It became so good, that it started to get progressive nerfs on pierce, cost, and Ceramic damage, to the point that, in version 30.0, MOAB Maulers no longer deal extra damage to Ceramics, putting it almost completely back into square one, where the MOAB-popping specialist is once again ignored in favor of other options outside of a few strategies, and even being turned into a MemeticLoser.
** The top-path Glue Gunner upgrades in ''[=BTD6=]'' are very rarely used, due to being OvershadowedByAwesome when it comes to clearing hordes of Ceramic Bloons. The Bloon Solver in particular is often dismissed as a worse The Biggest One — which, for some more money, has global range, better damage, isn't completely useless against MOAB-classes, and has stronger lower tiers as well. Even though the Bloon Solver and all upgrades on its path have received heavy {{Balance Buff}}s over time, they remain underwhelming, one of the main reasons being that the Bloon Solver's glue can override the much more useful glues from [[DamageIncreasingDebuff Glue Storm]], and the powerful slowdown of MOAB Glue and Super Glue.

** The Super Monkey is an elite monkey if there ever was one. He fires faster than a machine gun and can switch to laser blasts when the going gets tough... and then plasma vision when it gets even tougher. He is capable of targeting enemies from far away & can gain ''even more'' targeting range. As of the sixth game, he can turn either into a PhysicalGod that can pummel bloons when given the right sacrifices, a HumongousMecha that is more than capable of holding its own against massive armies, and a Franchise/{{Batman}}-esque superhero with strong bloon knockback that can eventually create a black hole at the exit of the map.