Day9 asked me to move these comments to this megathread:
4) Pathing and body blocking was frustrating at times (I know there's a megathread for this too).
4.1) Your allies seem to be able to push your units into enemy cannon range.
4.2) Ally units (your own included) can block your hero from getting in range of nodes when trying to use the T ability.
4.3) Sandstinger's dash (stinging surge) ability has a very difficult time interacting with other objects.
4.3.1) Using the dash to micro a frontline unit to the back of your army fails because it cannot dash through allied units.
4.3.2) The dash often behaves unpredictably as the units don't know how to get around objects on the ground (gold mines(?), walls, etc).
4.3.3) Not an "issue", just a note:
At first I expected the dash ability to have a targeting circle, and it took me a few minutes to realize that it was like an auto-smartcast ability. I Q -> left-clicked quickly, and didn't realize it was dashing in the direction of my cursor without needing the click. This was easy to adapt to after the fact, but I can see how this would be odd for players who aren't used to smartcast mechanics and get used to a large number of targeted skillshot abilities in the game.
Note: The tooltip says "dashes toward the cursor" not "in the target direction", which IS consistent with the behavior.
I feel annoyed at my units when I tell them to stack somewhere. They feel like mutalisks. I'll move into a bush and everyone will be fitting nicely, then they'll just slowly spread apart and pop out of the grass, even when I use stop. They definitely look like they could be fitting tighter together, so this would probably be fixed with any hitbox shrinking that may occur.
A) Pathing is much better with real humans than with AI. Much of my frustration was tripping over my ally's units, and they'd just ignore my direction and park where I was trying to move through.
I think a huge help would be to have each unit group be F1-F4. I know the hero is F1, but sometimes I just want to move my T1 units and no one else. I think having that disparate control without having to re-bind the units to control groups each time they respawned would be super helpful and help us all pull off the clutch plays. (And actually, if the control groups are already the unit groups, having player-bound control groups might become redundant and uneccesary. Who knows?)
C) I've been able to body block as many as six to eight units against the wall with my army, ensuring that they would all be crushed and that there was no escape. It felt awesome to do, but it feels pretty easy to do too and I can't imagine losing 1/3 of your army that way can be fun for the other player.
D) There are a few spots on the map where towers are just a hair too close to mineral patches, and bigger units like heroes seem to think that they can get through, but can't. This is a problem in extended conflicts, when you're expecting units to be showing up, and they aren't.
I think that's all my thoughts on pathing!
EDIT: I've also noticed that the game seems to penalize me for spam-clicking movement in battle, and that greater self-discipline in my clicking alleviated some of my problems.
The pathfinding does feel a bit frustrating at times. I also feel the "scoot and shoot" micro can be a bit unresponsive. I am pretty sure the units are within range to fire, but when I shoot and move they don't fire. Also iv noticed what I believe to be a bug where units will just run into each other infinitely instead of moving around. This also feels especially frustrating when you don't notice it because if you dont tell them to move around they just run in place.
So I do like how there is a higher skill ceiling when it comes to micro and how pathing works in general. However, there were many moments that were quite frustrating as a result. I'm not very good at micro in general so this is part of it but I remember on several occasions especially when interacting with an ally where my units with either get stuck pushing against allies or in some particularly bad cases my units would actually get pushed into towers and enemies when I was trying to retreat. I think for me the most annoying pathing issue I consistently had was just trying to arrange certain units to be in front or back. Trying to open a path for a couple units to move back was really annoying to do as I sometimes had to super micromanage especially in tighter areas. I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that I need practice with micro but at the same time it is something that bugs me as someone who is really just starting to get the hang of playing RTS games better.
-I had placed 2 giant cannons for siege in a bush
-None of my units could move through the bush even though the character model sizes should of been able to make it through
-I feel like making the collision boxes (or spheres) a bit smaller to match the character models will make it less frustrating for pathing
I tried to shift queue to move then attack the Nexus to avoid attacking units along the way for a quick finish.
All my units tried to reach the exact spot I clicked
I cry every time
Seriously though, it seems that the squad move seems to require individual units to reach that exact spot. It is extremely noticeable when using a shift queue (I know shift queuing may be a noob thing to do, but not only pros will play). I would assume that a centroid (average location of all units) at commanded location + variance (average distance from centroid) within some tolerance + individual unit maximum distance limit would work quite well.
If I'm not mistaken, Starcraft solves this by allowing units to overlap while in a shift queue or even a simple move command then forces them to re-expand.
Ally units get in the way quite often.
Was not as much of a problem with PvP or 3PvBots, but with Bot allies, it happened quite often.
Potentially having a timeout until units can be passed through would work. Like X Unit and Y Unit have been in contact for 3 seconds, X and Y unit do not have any collisions for 2 seconds.
I know I'm largely echoing other sentiments, but I'll add in my own notes and view. Like most other folks, I found the base concepts in the game incredibly fun with the pathing being the only thing to really detract from that.
I'll cover this primarily as I haven't seem it explicitly mentioned: Target prioritizing, while not directly a result of pathfinding/collision, is related to this problem. Specifically, say I attack an enemy expansion with a mining building and a tower. I try to move into a reasonable position before issuing the command to attack. A portion of my melee units surround (what I presume they perceive to be) the higher priority target: the tower. They begin attacking, while the rest of my melee units run around like chickens without heads. They portion that can't attack the tower in melee range won't resort to attacking the mining structure. This is detrimental in two ways - first, I feel frustrated that I have to micro for such a relatively simplistic function (as opposed to microing to try and outplay my opponent in a battle). Secondly, I feel frustrated because while the non-engaged units are running around, their giant hitboxes are further impeding movement and making microing individual units elsewhere difficult.
As for the concept of "well both sides have to deal with it therefore it's fair", I feel as though that's not a good enough reason in and of itself. After several PvP games last night, I had quite a few times where I was blocked in by an ally an unable to retreat in time (I had melee units, he had mostly ranged) - unfortunately, I cannot predict his actions, and while you might argue that I can communicate the need to him, I also realize that it's not easy for him to adjust that based on how the units are currently working.
There were several times that units decided to take odd paths or spun around in place, but since I don't have more specific examples to elucidate my unhappiness in those situations, I'll stick with the main point I've made above. In short, those were the times when my girlfriend heard me shouting "No, that's not what I wanted you to do, ugh!". As someone else mentioned, it was reminiscent of SC1 dragoon moments, heh.
I feel like some parts of the map are to narrow and are very difficult to go through (i.e. the place with the 2x expansion.) So if that base is getting attacked I find it hard to defend it or move in to position to defend it.
I remember trying to micro my hero back through my army and he could not get through and got stuck I then tried to go around my army but then got stuck between a tower. Maybe the hero should be able to push my units aside or move through them.
In general I'm not too concerned about the general pathing especially in PVP enrichment (bots another story). I do feel frustrated when I cast a healing totem and send my army into the circle only to have them start spreading outside of it.
@n0el said:
In general I'm not too concerned about the general pathing especially in PVP enrichment (bots another story). I do feel frustrated when I cast a healing totem and send my army into the circle only to have them start spreading outside of it.
@Artillery.Day[9] said:
OK SO I've made a big update to the front post. Please post your concerns now that I've written that. Hopefully I covered a good chunk o' stuff!
Great! Giving us the goals of pathing makes this much easier to understand. Looking at it, I now see how/why everything works the way it does. I do have one suggestion.
What I'm getting out of your post is that you want spreading and blocking à la Broodwar. This, I agree with.
I want to add to this priority list, the ability to retreat individual units.
In SC, losing one unit because you couldn't pull it back well enough wasn't too big of a problem because you could build more, and that unit was probably one of many. In Atlas, one unit consists of 5-20% of your entire army. Losing such a large amount of your army due to a disconnect between what you thought was possible and what was actually possible feels worse.
In Broodwar, IIRC (I didn't play it nearly as much as SC2) You could block a ramp with like 2 zealots if positioned correctly, but you could nudge the zealots to one side and create an opening that you could go through.
In Atlas, I don't think the second case is possible.
In Broodwar, again, IIRC, during a battle, units didn't block the enemy directly, but just made it really, really hard to path through. This, I think, is better. This way, your units aren't technically touching each other (there's space to fit other units between them) but getting through that space is significantly slower than normal. This makes for effective blocking and effective individual unit retreating.
But this can't/shouldn't be done. We don't want that terrible of AI.
So how do we do it? I don't know.
My initial idea was to make it so that units had smaller radii when stationary but revert to the larger radius when moving. This would make it so that still units could be pathed around more easily while maintaining larger spreads while moving. One could also, then, individually move units to that they stand very close together, increasing dps/area. This could be ok, seeing as it would take a lot of time and would act as a defender's advantage.
I don't know how good that would be, seeing as it would create two radii for each unit, confusing new players.
What do you guys think? Is individual unit retreating a priority for you, or do you guys think it's better if pre-spread micro were to be emphasized instead?
Part of the reason it's not good right now is that we are in a bit of a transitional period with the pathing. We knew we wanted white-spacing between units for clarity and ease of micro. If there's a bunch of spacing between units, it's easier to pull units back because there are holes to micro through. So, we implemented a "pushing force" that spread units out so we could see the visual impact on battles. Because it helped readability so much, we left it in while we began to work on next steps for pathing. Unfortunately, as we added logic for units to move around/through eachother and players began to make micro attempts, the "pushing force" began to cause many of the frustrations you've written about.
We'll iterate on it and do more tests to get it right. Tuning radii, having different radii for collision vs pathing vs pushing, changing selectable bubble sizes etc are all part of the plan.
After a few days, the pathing doesn't feel so awful. The game feels more fun to play. I know now that I have to get my ancient frost frogs into the front line before an engaement starts. Ect. And that's cool.
I still feel like my units trip over each other, take the long way around, get stuck ect. But after reading Day9's thoughts and plans, it sounds fair. I'm excited to try out newer versions of the game.
Yeah my main problem with the pathing in this game is the friendly unit collision. I've had fights where my two allies and I are engaged in combat , but I need to retreat but can't because my ally's units behind me in their concave block off my only retreat path. I completely get unit collision and that it makes a game more realistic but at the same time it has caused me my main source of frustration with the game. I think making your units be able to walk through friendly units would solve all the frustration I'm having. I think keeping unit collision with enemies is great because then you can strategically place your units to block off exit paths. I am overall having a great time with the game though. Ryme is my main man.
Today, I tried one of the melee squads(Hydros) for the first time and my opinion on the pathing/collision issue went from tolerable/mild nuisance to so frustrating that I never want to pick a melee squad again just because of it. Allies, admittedly bots, became unbearable to be around. Choke points would force a third of my army have to twiddle their thumbs, making me feel like I could never engage an enemy that wasn't in "open" space. The entire time it felt like I was fighting the game system to do even simple things like attack move, because a lot of the time my units couldn't even get around each other without individual guidance. It was a horrible experience, but probably the worst part of the entire thing was that, when I didn't have pathing/collision issues(was alone against an enemy in open space and my army wasn't playing bumper cars with itself), the squad was one of the most fun to play, but now I never want to play it again.
I'll be repeating what has been said in here a lot but since i've got a few games under my belt now on a melee squad pathing and collision has been the biggest frustration for me.
The collision radius seems too big and it makes me feel frustrated and the micro to get past this is tedious and not rewarding.
Pathing is a major part of this too, I will see units just get stuck behind groups of other units when there is a clear path to being able to attack but they don't seem to be smart enough to find it, they don't seem to be able to figure out how to go around clumps of other units and structures. This can range from mildly annoying too infuriating when your losing.
I'm still a beginner on this game like most of the people testing right now. I'm searching for ways to better manage my army positioning so if there is an answer, it's hidden to the point where just boxing and attacking feels unrewarding for a new player.
I've had a few frustrating path finding issues. Here is one that can I clearly describe:
I issued my army to travel past two unbuilt towers, and while the group (about 7 units) was moving, I decided to build the two towers while my army was in their midst. The towers were close enough together that two of my units got stuck behind them, pushing against each other as they tried to move through the space between the two building towers. I eventually had to select those two units and move them around the towers manually.
Other than that, units push friendly units way too much. I've had units dragged into unwanted combat as friendly AI units moved forward. Feels bad.
Overall after playing just a few games I've felt very frustrated with the collision detection. In skirmishes where I'm facing off another player while my teammates flank around or push an objective it wasn't so bad, however there were times my own units would push my hero unit into some siege fire and it felt a little clunky.
When a 3v3 large battle would occur it was 10x worse. In particular when I want to retreat, but my units merely walk in place while my teammate pushes my units forward towards battle just felt bad. Even trying to micro around the funky collisions wouldn't work much of the time, instead I'd have to path through the enemy.
I think having collisions and not allowing stacking is certainly the way to go, but I think there needs to be some added fluidity for units to pass by each other.
A few more thoughts on pathing after playing several more games.
I do like how the positioning of the army matters. When I play Vex and I get my Pyrosaurs stuck behind my Sparkbots, I feel pretty lousy, but it's definitely my fault and in my control. I like this part of the game. However, when I'm trying to send one unit around a corner, and my hero the other direction to get an extra gem, or something like that, and they just keep running into each other and both make no progress until I notice them, that's frustrating.
It would be nice if units could somehow get around each other eventually so you're not too punished for not noticing, However, I didn't think that this was a problem when controlling my army as a whole. It wasn't too difficult for me to split my army and send a unit through it to avoid pathing issues. This obviously wasn't practical in battle (which I think is intentional), but it was fine when out of combat.
OK, so obviously this thread has a ton of feedback. I'd just like to point out two specific times in a recent bot practice game that I feel exhibit some of the most obviously bad results.
9:25 timestamp: What is the 2nd Aquadillo (the one slightly farther to the west) doing over the next few seconds? As far as I can tell, attack command was given to the east of him, I can't figure out why he walked all the way behind the Quads in the opposite direction.
11:25 timestamp: One of my Aquadillos gets stuck against Celesta. The two of them would literally have stood there smooching for eternity if I didn't force the Aqua to manually take the long way around her.
I don't want to suggest fixes because I'm sure the Artillery team has plenty they're considering, but these two cases really stood out to me.
Obviously this collision stuff has been beaten to death, but I'd like to make one point that I haven't seen mentioned:
I think increased movement speed would be a HUGE improvement within the current structure. Artillery's goals re: collision forcing micro-oriented play are awesome. Yet, as a 1v1 platinum sc2 player with decent micro, I cant seem to implement it. For instance, whenever I want to pull wounded units back or split my army to create an exit for my hero, they move at a snails pace and thusly eat huge ranged dmg.
In warcraft 3 and starcraft, pulling back weak units was always a trade-off (the good kind of trade off that causes tension and strategic choice): you lose the DPS of those units as they run. This meant you always wanted to wait for the CRITICAL MOMENT before running/burrowing/medivacing them. In Atlas currently, however, you'd have to start running your units away VERY early to save them (due to their low movement speed) And thusly, it's often a better choice to sacrifice them.
I think fast units combined with a high collision radius would open lots of opportunities for micro-intensive play and give the player a better sense of agency.
TLDR (in day9 format): When I tried to run my injured units away, they moved so slowly regardless of collision that I felt such micro-management was useless.
Comments
Day9 asked me to move these comments to this megathread:
4) Pathing and body blocking was frustrating at times (I know there's a megathread for this too).
4.1) Your allies seem to be able to push your units into enemy cannon range.
4.2) Ally units (your own included) can block your hero from getting in range of nodes when trying to use the T ability.
4.3) Sandstinger's dash (stinging surge) ability has a very difficult time interacting with other objects.
4.3.1) Using the dash to micro a frontline unit to the back of your army fails because it cannot dash through allied units.
4.3.2) The dash often behaves unpredictably as the units don't know how to get around objects on the ground (gold mines(?), walls, etc).
4.3.3) Not an "issue", just a note:
At first I expected the dash ability to have a targeting circle, and it took me a few minutes to realize that it was like an auto-smartcast ability. I Q -> left-clicked quickly, and didn't realize it was dashing in the direction of my cursor without needing the click. This was easy to adapt to after the fact, but I can see how this would be odd for players who aren't used to smartcast mechanics and get used to a large number of targeted skillshot abilities in the game.
Note: The tooltip says "dashes toward the cursor" not "in the target direction", which IS consistent with the behavior.
I feel annoyed at my units when I tell them to stack somewhere. They feel like mutalisks. I'll move into a bush and everyone will be fitting nicely, then they'll just slowly spread apart and pop out of the grass, even when I use stop. They definitely look like they could be fitting tighter together, so this would probably be fixed with any hitbox shrinking that may occur.
So:
A) Pathing is much better with real humans than with AI. Much of my frustration was tripping over my ally's units, and they'd just ignore my direction and park where I was trying to move through.
C) I've been able to body block as many as six to eight units against the wall with my army, ensuring that they would all be crushed and that there was no escape. It felt awesome to do, but it feels pretty easy to do too and I can't imagine losing 1/3 of your army that way can be fun for the other player.
D) There are a few spots on the map where towers are just a hair too close to mineral patches, and bigger units like heroes seem to think that they can get through, but can't. This is a problem in extended conflicts, when you're expecting units to be showing up, and they aren't.
I think that's all my thoughts on pathing!
EDIT: I've also noticed that the game seems to penalize me for spam-clicking movement in battle, and that greater self-discipline in my clicking alleviated some of my problems.
The pathfinding does feel a bit frustrating at times. I also feel the "scoot and shoot" micro can be a bit unresponsive. I am pretty sure the units are within range to fire, but when I shoot and move they don't fire. Also iv noticed what I believe to be a bug where units will just run into each other infinitely instead of moving around. This also feels especially frustrating when you don't notice it because if you dont tell them to move around they just run in place.
I felt happy and satisfied when my roly polies surrounded an enemy. (Hydros Z units)
So I do like how there is a higher skill ceiling when it comes to micro and how pathing works in general. However, there were many moments that were quite frustrating as a result. I'm not very good at micro in general so this is part of it but I remember on several occasions especially when interacting with an ally where my units with either get stuck pushing against allies or in some particularly bad cases my units would actually get pushed into towers and enemies when I was trying to retreat. I think for me the most annoying pathing issue I consistently had was just trying to arrange certain units to be in front or back. Trying to open a path for a couple units to move back was really annoying to do as I sometimes had to super micromanage especially in tighter areas. I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that I need practice with micro but at the same time it is something that bugs me as someone who is really just starting to get the hang of playing RTS games better.
-I had placed 2 giant cannons for siege in a bush
-None of my units could move through the bush even though the character model sizes should of been able to make it through
-I feel like making the collision boxes (or spheres) a bit smaller to match the character models will make it less frustrating for pathing
Seriously though, it seems that the squad move seems to require individual units to reach that exact spot. It is extremely noticeable when using a shift queue (I know shift queuing may be a noob thing to do, but not only pros will play). I would assume that a centroid (average location of all units) at commanded location + variance (average distance from centroid) within some tolerance + individual unit maximum distance limit would work quite well.
If I'm not mistaken, Starcraft solves this by allowing units to overlap while in a shift queue or even a simple move command then forces them to re-expand.
I know I'm largely echoing other sentiments, but I'll add in my own notes and view. Like most other folks, I found the base concepts in the game incredibly fun with the pathing being the only thing to really detract from that.
I'll cover this primarily as I haven't seem it explicitly mentioned: Target prioritizing, while not directly a result of pathfinding/collision, is related to this problem. Specifically, say I attack an enemy expansion with a mining building and a tower. I try to move into a reasonable position before issuing the command to attack. A portion of my melee units surround (what I presume they perceive to be) the higher priority target: the tower. They begin attacking, while the rest of my melee units run around like chickens without heads. They portion that can't attack the tower in melee range won't resort to attacking the mining structure. This is detrimental in two ways - first, I feel frustrated that I have to micro for such a relatively simplistic function (as opposed to microing to try and outplay my opponent in a battle). Secondly, I feel frustrated because while the non-engaged units are running around, their giant hitboxes are further impeding movement and making microing individual units elsewhere difficult.
As for the concept of "well both sides have to deal with it therefore it's fair", I feel as though that's not a good enough reason in and of itself. After several PvP games last night, I had quite a few times where I was blocked in by an ally an unable to retreat in time (I had melee units, he had mostly ranged) - unfortunately, I cannot predict his actions, and while you might argue that I can communicate the need to him, I also realize that it's not easy for him to adjust that based on how the units are currently working.
There were several times that units decided to take odd paths or spun around in place, but since I don't have more specific examples to elucidate my unhappiness in those situations, I'll stick with the main point I've made above. In short, those were the times when my girlfriend heard me shouting "No, that's not what I wanted you to do, ugh!". As someone else mentioned, it was reminiscent of SC1 dragoon moments, heh.
I feel like some parts of the map are to narrow and are very difficult to go through (i.e. the place with the 2x expansion.) So if that base is getting attacked I find it hard to defend it or move in to position to defend it.
I remember trying to micro my hero back through my army and he could not get through and got stuck I then tried to go around my army but then got stuck between a tower. Maybe the hero should be able to push my units aside or move through them.
OK SO i've made a big update to the front post. Please post your concerns now that I've written that. Hopefully I covered a good chunk o' stuff!
In general I'm not too concerned about the general pathing especially in PVP enrichment (bots another story). I do feel frustrated when I cast a healing totem and send my army into the circle only to have them start spreading outside of it.
Oh god totally. Will be fixed! :D
Great! Giving us the goals of pathing makes this much easier to understand. Looking at it, I now see how/why everything works the way it does. I do have one suggestion.
What I'm getting out of your post is that you want spreading and blocking à la Broodwar. This, I agree with.
I want to add to this priority list, the ability to retreat individual units.
In SC, losing one unit because you couldn't pull it back well enough wasn't too big of a problem because you could build more, and that unit was probably one of many. In Atlas, one unit consists of 5-20% of your entire army. Losing such a large amount of your army due to a disconnect between what you thought was possible and what was actually possible feels worse.
In Broodwar, IIRC (I didn't play it nearly as much as SC2) You could block a ramp with like 2 zealots if positioned correctly, but you could nudge the zealots to one side and create an opening that you could go through.
In Atlas, I don't think the second case is possible.
In Broodwar, again, IIRC, during a battle, units didn't block the enemy directly, but just made it really, really hard to path through. This, I think, is better. This way, your units aren't technically touching each other (there's space to fit other units between them) but getting through that space is significantly slower than normal. This makes for effective blocking and effective individual unit retreating.
But this can't/shouldn't be done. We don't want that terrible of AI.
So how do we do it? I don't know.
My initial idea was to make it so that units had smaller radii when stationary but revert to the larger radius when moving. This would make it so that still units could be pathed around more easily while maintaining larger spreads while moving. One could also, then, individually move units to that they stand very close together, increasing dps/area. This could be ok, seeing as it would take a lot of time and would act as a defender's advantage.
I don't know how good that would be, seeing as it would create two radii for each unit, confusing new players.
What do you guys think? Is individual unit retreating a priority for you, or do you guys think it's better if pre-spread micro were to be emphasized instead?
This is literally priority #1 for us.
Part of the reason it's not good right now is that we are in a bit of a transitional period with the pathing. We knew we wanted white-spacing between units for clarity and ease of micro. If there's a bunch of spacing between units, it's easier to pull units back because there are holes to micro through. So, we implemented a "pushing force" that spread units out so we could see the visual impact on battles. Because it helped readability so much, we left it in while we began to work on next steps for pathing. Unfortunately, as we added logic for units to move around/through eachother and players began to make micro attempts, the "pushing force" began to cause many of the frustrations you've written about.
We'll iterate on it and do more tests to get it right. Tuning radii, having different radii for collision vs pathing vs pushing, changing selectable bubble sizes etc are all part of the plan.
After a few days, the pathing doesn't feel so awful. The game feels more fun to play. I know now that I have to get my ancient frost frogs into the front line before an engaement starts. Ect. And that's cool.
I still feel like my units trip over each other, take the long way around, get stuck ect. But after reading Day9's thoughts and plans, it sounds fair. I'm excited to try out newer versions of the game.
Yeah my main problem with the pathing in this game is the friendly unit collision. I've had fights where my two allies and I are engaged in combat , but I need to retreat but can't because my ally's units behind me in their concave block off my only retreat path. I completely get unit collision and that it makes a game more realistic but at the same time it has caused me my main source of frustration with the game. I think making your units be able to walk through friendly units would solve all the frustration I'm having. I think keeping unit collision with enemies is great because then you can strategically place your units to block off exit paths. I am overall having a great time with the game though. Ryme is my main man.
Today, I tried one of the melee squads(Hydros) for the first time and my opinion on the pathing/collision issue went from tolerable/mild nuisance to so frustrating that I never want to pick a melee squad again just because of it. Allies, admittedly bots, became unbearable to be around. Choke points would force a third of my army have to twiddle their thumbs, making me feel like I could never engage an enemy that wasn't in "open" space. The entire time it felt like I was fighting the game system to do even simple things like attack move, because a lot of the time my units couldn't even get around each other without individual guidance. It was a horrible experience, but probably the worst part of the entire thing was that, when I didn't have pathing/collision issues(was alone against an enemy in open space and my army wasn't playing bumper cars with itself), the squad was one of the most fun to play, but now I never want to play it again.
@Arixa -- Pathing is something we're actively working to improve. Thanks for the feedback on it. We'll keep making it better.
I'll be repeating what has been said in here a lot but since i've got a few games under my belt now on a melee squad pathing and collision has been the biggest frustration for me.
The collision radius seems too big and it makes me feel frustrated and the micro to get past this is tedious and not rewarding.
Pathing is a major part of this too, I will see units just get stuck behind groups of other units when there is a clear path to being able to attack but they don't seem to be smart enough to find it, they don't seem to be able to figure out how to go around clumps of other units and structures. This can range from mildly annoying too infuriating when your losing.
I'm still a beginner on this game like most of the people testing right now. I'm searching for ways to better manage my army positioning so if there is an answer, it's hidden to the point where just boxing and attacking feels unrewarding for a new player.
I've had a few frustrating path finding issues. Here is one that can I clearly describe:
I issued my army to travel past two unbuilt towers, and while the group (about 7 units) was moving, I decided to build the two towers while my army was in their midst. The towers were close enough together that two of my units got stuck behind them, pushing against each other as they tried to move through the space between the two building towers. I eventually had to select those two units and move them around the towers manually.
Other than that, units push friendly units way too much. I've had units dragged into unwanted combat as friendly AI units moved forward. Feels bad.
Overall after playing just a few games I've felt very frustrated with the collision detection. In skirmishes where I'm facing off another player while my teammates flank around or push an objective it wasn't so bad, however there were times my own units would push my hero unit into some siege fire and it felt a little clunky.
When a 3v3 large battle would occur it was 10x worse. In particular when I want to retreat, but my units merely walk in place while my teammate pushes my units forward towards battle just felt bad. Even trying to micro around the funky collisions wouldn't work much of the time, instead I'd have to path through the enemy.
I think having collisions and not allowing stacking is certainly the way to go, but I think there needs to be some added fluidity for units to pass by each other.
A few more thoughts on pathing after playing several more games.
I do like how the positioning of the army matters. When I play Vex and I get my Pyrosaurs stuck behind my Sparkbots, I feel pretty lousy, but it's definitely my fault and in my control. I like this part of the game. However, when I'm trying to send one unit around a corner, and my hero the other direction to get an extra gem, or something like that, and they just keep running into each other and both make no progress until I notice them, that's frustrating.
It would be nice if units could somehow get around each other eventually so you're not too punished for not noticing, However, I didn't think that this was a problem when controlling my army as a whole. It wasn't too difficult for me to split my army and send a unit through it to avoid pathing issues. This obviously wasn't practical in battle (which I think is intentional), but it was fine when out of combat.
OK, so obviously this thread has a ton of feedback. I'd just like to point out two specific times in a recent bot practice game that I feel exhibit some of the most obviously bad results.
Referring to this: https://play.artillery.com/?options={"manifest":"https://gameserver.artillery.com/?manifest=05252945c95d69c640146fd0e67a7c9e&replayGameId=Gbb4cdde2c9be42ea945f9af65f71edad"}#
9:25 timestamp: What is the 2nd Aquadillo (the one slightly farther to the west) doing over the next few seconds? As far as I can tell, attack command was given to the east of him, I can't figure out why he walked all the way behind the Quads in the opposite direction.
11:25 timestamp: One of my Aquadillos gets stuck against Celesta. The two of them would literally have stood there smooching for eternity if I didn't force the Aqua to manually take the long way around her.
I don't want to suggest fixes because I'm sure the Artillery team has plenty they're considering, but these two cases really stood out to me.
Obviously this collision stuff has been beaten to death, but I'd like to make one point that I haven't seen mentioned:
I think increased movement speed would be a HUGE improvement within the current structure. Artillery's goals re: collision forcing micro-oriented play are awesome. Yet, as a 1v1 platinum sc2 player with decent micro, I cant seem to implement it. For instance, whenever I want to pull wounded units back or split my army to create an exit for my hero, they move at a snails pace and thusly eat huge ranged dmg.
In warcraft 3 and starcraft, pulling back weak units was always a trade-off (the good kind of trade off that causes tension and strategic choice): you lose the DPS of those units as they run. This meant you always wanted to wait for the CRITICAL MOMENT before running/burrowing/medivacing them. In Atlas currently, however, you'd have to start running your units away VERY early to save them (due to their low movement speed) And thusly, it's often a better choice to sacrifice them.
I think fast units combined with a high collision radius would open lots of opportunities for micro-intensive play and give the player a better sense of agency.
TLDR (in day9 format): When I tried to run my injured units away, they moved so slowly regardless of collision that I felt such micro-management was useless.
This was posted here in error