First Game Feedback
My first game was a PVP game, didn't get a chance to do bots.
There were a number of un-clear things. I think the biggest lack of clarity was: When Do Gems Spawn.
Since gold is constant and you don't need to monitor it (other than making a new base) gems is really the issue. I often wandered around wondering why there were no more gems. Then, magically some would spawn. Being able to plan for that would be awesome. I felt like I couldn't do anything while gems were down and I had none.
I felt like the early game was boring-- but it could be because it was my first game. Basically I collected gems, made one expansion. Couldn't make more b/c they were all taken. And had no more gems. And was wandering around wondering when I could beat the neutral sentinal monsters to get more expos. FIguring out no way. Still no gems on the map (I probably missed a spawn). Basically, I ran into two situations: i have no gems, or i have no expansions, and that happened earlier than expected.
The second lack of clarity was the big arc/health bars. There are two. Why? One goes slowly, then there is a big animation on the other one. What is going on here? It feels like I'm supposed to get it, but I don't get it.
I was SUPER happy to see control groups retained, I was worried that would be gone
I was very surprised to see a difference between physical and magical damage. Obviously coming from Moba/champion specific games this makes sense. But coming from RTS games I was surprised. It also made me wonder: "How do I figure out what my units do". And in game I'm not going to stop and read to find out, I'm just going to upgrade each one.
It feels that it makes the game too complex. In a very real way you have stripped down/removed a lot of complexity from SC2. You've lowered the necessary APM required to have a good time. This damage split introduces a requirement of "knowledge in the world" -- e.g. you have to know this random piece of information that isn't in front of you, in order to make the decision directly in front of you. So while you can add a lot of strategy (what team comps do we want to make so we dont have one damage source) I think it pushes the game back into the category of "why did you remove all the APM stuff to make it more fun, while leaving this in, making me have to read and learn and do math just to not get stomped/make the wrong decision".
Comments
SECOND GAME
Another giant point of confusion is the mini map. I don't know if its just an art issue but I have a real tough time determining the difference between enemy unity, enemy gem, potential expansion, and my own turrets.
It was very frustrating that the neutral sentinals would not drop aggro. Basically we tried to kill the middle ones too early and we had to stop. But for the rest of the entire game anytime any allied unit walked within range it would aggro and run out of the camp chasing you around. It made defending the center turret really really hard.
Third Game. I was playing as Aldar and using the support casts on the seedlings was very frustrating. I felt like the commands were unresponsive. I was moving very quickly, and I don't know if it is an issue with cast timing, being out of cast range, or cancelling the spell by trying to move my army around the battle. I was basically never sure that it was working properly and had to continue to retry to cast the spells. It was very frustrating to know if they worked or not as well. Sometimes I would see all the caster spells on cooldown, so they've apparently fired, but wouldn't see transformed seedlings.
I wonder if it might feel better to allow the support caster units to move while issuing spells (e.g. a move command doesn't cancel the spell command). I also wonder if it might feel better for the Bramblethorn R ability to just consume whatever is closest, rather than clicking on a specific one. I think this would make positioning it next to what you want/transforming the correct seedling for the appropriate result important. And it would also prevent two of them running towards one seedling, instead of continuing in battle. With unit collision the issue becomes compounded of course.
Overall Aldar felt very frustrating compared to other groups. It wasn't just frustrating, but ineffectual. I could never tell if I was going to win a battle based on what I told my army to do. And only did I actually win one real battle. I was unable to determine what I did differently in that battle versus every other battle in the game. And that was a very bad feeling, and one I did not have with any of the other battle groups (which had their own distinct feelings, which I very much liked)