Initial Impressions
Here's a list of my initial impressions/questions/concerns. I've only played a few games, so I might be missing some obvious stuff, but these are some of the things that stood out to me.
1) Squad Selection
1.1) The music in the squad selection screen is FANTASTIC. The first time I played, I already felt hyped and all I did was sit around reading about the squads for 5-10 minutes.
1.2) The color coding in the squad selection screen left me confused. It's not immediately obvious why some squads have red/blue/green/white tabs.
2) Targeting
2.1) Node targeting issue:
I had a difficult time harvesting a gem node when it spawned on top of an enemy tower node. It would not let me click on it at all after pressing T, gave an error if i moved closer to the enemy's tower node, and finally worked when I moved my cursor further from the node.
2.2) Eris's Sandblast and Chaos Bolt (i mentioned this in the abilities megathread):
The description makes what should happen obvious, but I wasn't sure how wide the hitboxes would be based on the thin vector on the ground. Also, I'm still uncertain what the targeting circle on top of the vector does for Chaos Bolt.
3) Armories left me confused.
3.1) Progress bars:
The health and progress bars of each armory overlap with the each other. As a result it's difficult to see the progress of a new army upgrade (+attack, +life steal etc).
3.2) Canceling upgrades:
Armory upgrades do not appear along the right side of the screen, so there's no obvious way to cancel an upgrade once you start it.
3.3) Control Groups:
Armories appear to transform into new structures when you start a new upgrade, so if you made a control group selecting one, the control group disappears as soon as you start an upgrade. Each one is individually removed from a control group containing multiple armories as you start upgrades in them.
3.4) Current upgrade vs. New bonus:
It wasn't immediately obvious where to read the current upgrade an armory gave. The structure's tooltip and each upgrades' tooltip replace each other in the same box. Another effect of this is that it's relatively cumbersome to see a side-by-side comparison with what you already have.
Either showing the current bonus or showing how big of an increase an upgrade is in the tooltip would be a quality of life improvement.
i.e. Change:
From - Attack Damage Tier 2: Increases Attack Damage by 25%
To - Attack Damage Tier 2: Increases Attack Damage by 25% (+15%)
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.
5) Tech tier
It's not immediately clear that the lightning bolt indicates a tech tier. In the cost of each upgrade/unit, the other icons have very clear meanings. Gold coins and gems share an icon with the two currencies you have, and a clock is the universal symbol for time.
The icon for increasing your tier is a lightning bolt, but looks vastly different from the blue lightning bolt 'currency' that is listed in the cost of each upgrade/unit.
Maybe consider make the icons match, or maybe this will be explained in a future tutorial.
6) Misc notes*
6.1) Controls:
Without having played blizzard RTS games before, I would have had a difficult time knowing that F10 opened the menu (then again, you can always just press the gear in the top-right). Additionally, you can open a console of sorts with F12, I'm not sure if endusers are supposed to see this. It's also frustrating trying every button on the keyboard to close it after you accidentally open it.
Neither F10 nor F12 are listed under the controls in keyboard settings.
6.2) Sounds:
The in-game music is very relaxing. Unfortunately, it's juxtaposed with an incredible number of harsh pings/alerts/unit effects. Coming from a game like starcraft or warcraft, I'm somewhat used "you must construct additional pylons", but at times there's an overwhelmingly large number of alerts. Many of which don't affect you personally very much. Once again, this might be overwhelming or jarring for a newer RTS player.
6.3) T cooldown:
The T key is your do-it-all button. I noticed that it only has a cooldown after beginning to harvest a gem, and that cooldown applies to all uses of the key. Is this an intended behavior? I can build back-to-back expansions, but I can't start construction on a tower for 5 seconds after starting to harvest a gem. It feels odd.
6.4) Replays:
When watching a replay, if you set vision to "Team", it will shift your fog of war perspective when you click on an armory or expansion etc belonging to the other team. When you click on the starting turrets (not belonging to an individual player, but to the team as a whole), your perspective does not change. Is this working as intended?
*It occurs to me that pressing "Casual" when you first make an account may give you a better introduction to on-screen elements and controls, but I don't know.
Comments
Good examples here. These are polish issues that'll be cleaned up (like ensuring gems dont spawn on towers). It's slightly ugly for now.
All these comments are great and have been added to the to-do list.
Lets move this discussion to the pathing mega-thread! Woo! In short, our intention is to have some body blocking, but that the weird, dragoon esque behavior is undesired.
I literally did not know that it did this. I just hit the gear haha.
All sound is placeholder. Once we focus on audio we shall address all ze thingies
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