My critiques and compliments after my first few games
Hey all! I just want to start by saying I've been itching to play this game ever since I first heard of it on Day[9]'s stream and have so far been having a blast ^^.
Alright, down to the nitty gritty, I'll start with things I disliked or things that just felt off.
I promise to be constructive in my criticism!
- Combat, though fun, seemed underwhelming by presentation
- The fights graphically were underwhelming with what felt like little to no visual feedback. I think something such as slightly more noticeable attack and death animations could help this.
- Again with combat presentation, the audio in fights seemed lacking. It may have been my laziness to not mess with the audio levels while playing, but I didn't notice much of any audible feedback. It doesn't need to be something as extreme as the Quake Arena hit sounds, but something noticeable and unique to each of the units would be nice. Being able to know which units of mine are successfully attacking is nice, and sound effects help that a lot.
- When combat is going on and there are multiple units on top of each other, I noticed it was hard for me to keep track of my hero's HP bar. I think a simple fix for this would be to turn my hero's portrait into an HP bar for them. The smaller units I control show me when I have them on the field (green) when they are dead (red) and when they are ready for deployment (yellow). I think the hero's HP should be shown as their green bar, and any missing health should be shown as red.
- Unit death timers seem a bit punishing at times. I had a few times late game where I would have a fight with the enemy, lose all my stuff at the same time, then be forced to wait for all my guys to come back up. I haven't quite looked through all the base upgrades, but perhaps an upgrade to decrease death timers could help. Another idea is after I have bought the allowed number of units for a specific unit type, perhaps there could be the option to pay gold (earth-coin, if you will) to instantly rebuild those units.
Now for the things I enjoyed!
(This is the part where I butter you guys up and make you all feel special 
)
- Combat! Aside from the things I mentioned above, combat is fun gameplay-wise! The different units working together, each of them having their owns unique abilities, and to top it off, a hero with an awesome ultimate, makes for a fun time in my opinion! ^^
- Objective control! Early game I found myself enjoying fighting around the gemstone nodes with the computer. Being able to get straight into the action like it is loads of fun! Late game this only escalated for me, fighting over pre-positioned expansions was fun and a great strategic element.
- The artwork is great looking! The artistic style you guys chose is really appealing to me and makes the game really nice to look at! (Give yourselves some high-fives art department, you guys have a fan!)
- The hero's I've played and have been up against so far have all seemed to be pretty well designed. The ultimate abilities are fun to throw around and are fun for turning the tide of battle!
- I'm a man that likes his upgrades, and the upgrade system you guys have in place is great! The upgrade choices are really nice, being able to turn my originally bought attack upgrade into an attack/attackspeed, or an attack/lifesteal upgrade is really cool!
- Neutral weapons are an awesome mechanic! I like the idea that my main army is good at attacking and fighting other enemy soldiers, while my neutral weapons are awesome at taking out structures (I'm looking at you Ion Cannon!) Along with that, the added utility out of them is great! I found myself using the healing totem quite often and kiting in and around it was fun!
In closing, I think that the game you guys are working on so far is fantastic, and I'm sure you will all do a splendid job with finishing it ^^.
Comments
Re: dislikes -- we still have a LONG WAYS to go w/ polish things like crunchy rewarding sounds and visuals for fighting/collecting/notifications etc. Those will be coming months down the road when we finalize gameplay systems woot. Also, death timers can feel a bit long w/o other things to do. Rather than decrease the death timers, we're exploring adding extra things to do so that, during dead-army-downtime, you can be playing w/ those systems and considering your next play.
Re: likes -- I'm glad your enjoying things :D. PLEASE track how your joy of these things changes over time. For instance, did you become more or less interested in the upgrade system over time? This will let us be able to contrast the initial impression vs PvP gameplay.