Day 1 Feedback
Day 1 Feedback.
-Base
I felt confused when looking at the buildings. They didn’t feel different enough and I felt needed more character both as a means of visual differentiation, and a motivation to defend them. I wasn’t sure what upgrades came from where. My base felt confusing because it looked the same.
I felt disconnected between my base and my squad. I wish I could quickly toggle between the two easier. Or better yet, upgrade without even looking at it? Maybe there’s a way I haven’t figure out yet.
-Spells
I enjoy being able to cast individual spells without tabbing over to different groups, but I dislike how all of the units seem to blow their load at once brood war style. I felt that when I wanted to cast my tier one spell especially, it felt very tedious to select each unit individually and remember who cast what when. It felt like it defeated the point not having to tab through the units.
After a few races, it seems that some skills do not do this. The inconsistency bugged me. Perhaps it will make more sense later on?
-Squad select
I felt the descriptions of the heroes were succinct and approachable.
-Sound
Wearing headphones. When the units were only slightly off screen, the sound was ALL the way to the left or right. I felt positional L/R fading needs to be smoother to help me orient myself via sound position. For example, in Starcraft 2, I can detect the position of an impending nuke by quickly scrolling around the map. This is with basic stereo headphones. A great deal of refinement is needed.
I may be an exception however. My sense of spatial understanding was hurt by chemotherapy years ago. I’m heavily reliant on my sense of sound means of orientating myself. In this game, I felt like I didn’t have an intuitive sense of where things were happening based on sound.
-Gems
For the first few games, I felt very confused with the rhyme and reason of the gems. I watched the intro videos. I’m confused as to where and when the gems spawn. Why can’t I claim or at least destroy enemy gems? Why are some of my gems closer to the enemy? They seem cool in concept, but as a beginner, it feels random. Plus, they don’t look like gems. They’re just colored circles.
After a few games, the gems make way more sense. I feel dense for not figuring it out earlier. They’re an elegant 2nd resource.
I understand there’s a lot of placeholder art and sounds in game right now, but gathering gems feels unsatisfying. I want to want to be addicted to gemming. I’d like them to be shiny, valuable looking things that you want to fight over. A satisfying noise is also critical, like popping bubble wrap or something. Larger gems should feel more satisfying to pop.
Pathfinding
Pathfinding feels rough at this point. While in battle, my guys take the long way around, and this feels frustrating. “No, why are you going on a long walk? I just want you to go cast a spell like 1 foot to the right.”
Or. “Why is my hero going way over there? Shouldn’t that little tier 1 until nudge over a bit to get out of the way for the boss?”
Or “Ok, let’s get ready for this big engagement! Wait, where’s half my army?” Search for the army…. “Oh, they’re dragooning on that cluster of towers where I don’t want them.”
It feels less like a possibility for micro, and more just clunky and frustrating.
You did well on a lot of the other parts of the control probably because I didn’t notice anything!
-Chat
After a game, I notice that the chat has disappeared too quickly. It’d be nicer to be able to scroll up further to see what I missed. And a time stamp would make it easier to see when what was said.
-Enemy Info
When clicking on an enemy unit, I couldn’t tell what it was. I wish there was a way to see enemy unit info.
-V?
I’m curious as to why the player needs to hit V at all. I don’t understand the strategic choice between pressing V and not pressing V.
-Neutral Weapons
When gearing up to build neutral weapons for a push on the enemy base, I felt the hotkeys to the right side of the keyboard felt clunky. I ended up just clicking on the portraits. I feel something like “press B to bring up neutral weapons window.” Then more hot keys to the left side would be easier for me personally. Right now, it felt like an awkward break in the action right when things should be reaching a crescendo.
-Conceptually, neutral weapons feel brilliant. They feel like a way to end turtling and stale late games without outright crushing your opponents chances of an epic come back. The way they interact with gems is elegant.
-First Multiplayer
After playing with 2 other humans for the first time, I’m pumped about the possibilities. So fun! I’m sure the number could change, but it feels like I could get 2 other friends easier than 4. Maybe this could result a less toxic community overall than a traditional 5v5 moba.
-_*Thanks!**_
The game feels fresh! Thanks for your hard work.
Comments
The base is an ultra simple thing right now. We want to expand its prowess and awesomeness a bit, but we don't really want it to be "a big attackable target" yet. In fact, all of the buildings are currently invulnerable :P. This does feel a little bit weird.
Our intention with the base is to
1. Give a familiarity to how the upgrades/purchases work
2. To ground the player in the game -- have a thing that he is building up
3. Eventually have SOME attackability to it, but not be fully destructable
I'd ask you to play some games over the week and see how things feel. Some abilities make sense as "full group cast," others make more sense as "one at a time cast" (an example would be Stim in StarCraft vs Forcefields in Starcraft)
We literally don't have a sound person right now. As a result literally all the sound in the game is placeholder :D. Either way, I've added your comment to our to-do list for audio tune up.
They need LOOOOOOOADS of polish. As you suggest, little brightly colored circles are not exactly emotionally rewarding to grab :D.
There's a pathfinding mega thread in the feedback sticky threads. Lets move the discussion over there!
Entire game needs more access to information. Information is the exciting part!
The intuitive thing would be to have units "auto-spawn" when they're ready. Paradoxically, this led to a horrible experience for players of all levels. Players had an extremely difficult time keeping track of their army and would often lose units that were rallied out unintentionally. Adding the "V" button solved all of the problems. The only downside is that, if players don't know about the button, they don't get an army
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Yeah don't worry about the hotkeys. The entire keyboard layout is in a "not smart" state because we haven't properly nested/arranged the keys yet. Once we finalize gameplay systems, we'll begin to make that piece better. Until then, FORGIVE US! Also, sorry that B and V are right next to eachother :P.
Thank YOU! :D :D :D