Initial Thoughts on Atlas
Hello! Hopefully it's alright to be starting yet another new thread on this, I wasn't sure the best place to put it.
What I've played so far: 2 games vs bots, one as Vex and one as Alder.
Pros:
* Client is good! Everything seems clearly marked and I like that the chat is prominently displayed on entering
* Getting into a match (vs bots at least) was quick and easy
* The different squads all seem unique and interesting
* Thanks to the tutorial videos the game was easy to pick up and play. The game feels much more accessible than your typical RTS
* Interaction between abilities among the units of your squad feels good. I frequently felt like I was pulling off cool combos (even though most were quite obvious and by design).
* Being able to use all of your units' abilities without having to tab through is nice, useful, and simple
Cons:
* Pathing feels a bit clunky and units seem to take inefficient paths (although this feels more like a "being in alpha" thing. I know Day[9] has already addressed this to some degree). I do like the ability to body block units though as it emphasizes unit positioning.
* Progress bars are sometimes covered up by other units and buildings. For example, at first I wasn't sure if stat upgrades were applied instantly, because the leftmost part of the progress bar was covered by another building.
* Inability to see stats on units. It would be nice to be able to click on my units (or my opponent's) and see things like damage, upgrades, etc.
* HP bars can be hard to see. I think this may have something to do with lack of contrast between the selection circle and the HP bar. I often didn't realize units were low on health until it was too late.
* Late game armies feel a bit stale. Hopefully I can do a decent job describing what I mean by this. In Day[9]'s public blog post about the game (I think that's where this came from) he talks about how instead of giving you a more standard ~15 unit race, each squad in Atlas is a subset of a complete race, and thus the 3 teammates together make up one "complete race."
While I like this idea, I felt limited as an individual, especially after reaching the maximum allowed number of each unit type on a squad. In most RTS games, as your units die you have the opportunity to tune your unit composition, but that's not something that can really happen in Atlas because of the way units respawn. While you can slightly tune how you get to your end game army (getting more of your teir 1 unit vs teching to tier 2 and getting some of those units early, etc), your end game army is always the same, with the same units in the same proportion. Although you do choose your squad before the game and thus know what units you're getting, I found myself wanting more choice in my unit composition during actual play.
I put this under Cons, but this one may only be a Con for me. I wouldn't be surprised if other players felt this took some stress out of the RTS equation.
Neutrals/Other thoughts:
* The pace of the game felt slightly slow. I didn't find it slow enough to be frustrating, but I wonder if I eventually would if I got to the point where many aspects of the game became more familiar and second nature to me.
* This game is much more MOBA than it is RTS. That's not necessarily a bad thing! But I think people playing Atlas and expecting it to be Day[9]'s version of Starcraft are going to be a bit disappointed.
* Units feel more like an extension of your hero than actual units. I listed being able to use abilities without tabbing as a pro, and I believe it is, but it has the effect of making your squad feel like the equivalent of a single MOBA Hero/Champion, rather than a Hero with a small army behind them. I personally like the feeling of controlling armies (which is part of the reason I gravitate towards RTS much more than MOBAs), but I suspect this will actually be a positive for many people despite my own feelings.
Anyway, hopefully this is useful feedback! Happy to be testing out the game.