First Sunday - Game Feedback/ First Impressions
Inquisitor
Member
First things first, I really enjoyed playing the PvP games today, it felt like time just flew on by. So kudos to the team for whats been created thus far, and I really look forward to trying out the PvP again next weekend!
Onto my impression/ feedback:
UI
In the hero selection phase, the ability descriptions have a tendancy to activate when you are hovering over the portrait of the unit below them. At first this was really confusing as I thought it was telling me the abilities of that particular unit. However as I continued looking at each unit I realized the abilities I was being shown weren't for that unit. (If it's allowed I can try and post a screenshot of what I mean here, since its a more difficult one to write out :P) I think an easy fix would be for the ability descriptions to only appear if the mouse cursor hovers over the specific abilities box/ graphic
In the hero selection phase, it would be nice to see how many of each unit you can actually create in game, and their actual stats. That way if you aren't too familiar with the actual units themselves you can determine what they are good at (i.e. if they are a small numbers tanky unit, or a low damage overwhelming type unit). This would be particularly useful in the first few games people play because it is the key time when one is learning how everything interacts. However, once I had played a game or two either as or against a particular hero it was pretty easy to remember, what type of army they create.
In game it would be wonderful to be able to click on any unit (yours/an allies/ an enemies) and to be able to see their specific stats, namely damage, armour resistances, and HP (though HP isn't as necessary as the bar around the unit creates an easy indicator). As it currently stands I find myself constantly trying to check those skills (possibly just a habit from playing Starcraft) and I always feel at an informational disadvantage over how strong the opponents forces really are. This makes it sometimes very difficult to know whether or not you should take a fight by yourself or pullback a bit to wait for backup or straight up retreat all together.
Going off the point above, it would also be nice to have enemy hero levels (and your own heroes levels) more easily visible. It took me a couple of games to realize that the number in the upper center portion of the screen was the hero levels (or that you could hit tab to see a more detailed view). What this created in the first few games was a feeling of confusion over what level my character was, and when they would reach level 6 for their ultimate. In addition, I feel like the experience bar could be in a better location as it gets easily hidden away at the bottom of the screen, and doesn't feel like a natural place to look for hero xp. My suggestion would be to move it just above the unit interface that is in the bottom center portion of the screen, or to just make it stand out more than it currently is (the current blue colour doesn't create enough contrast like the unit availability bars).
This is a small thing, but I find the gaps between the three lower UI elements just looks off. I think this is mainly because during the game it feels like the UI elements end up blocking just certain portions of what is going on within the map space. More specifically, if a battle is occurring in that lower portion of the screen, you can see some units, but then some are suddenly blocked by the giant center UI element, but then you start to see the units again on the other side of the graphical entity. It ultimately just creates the feeling that you are missing something that is occurring on you screen. I think that moving that center UI graphic either next to the map or the building/ upgrade UI graphic would immensely help this because then there is no sudden new UI graphic taking up part of the screen. (Sorry if this suggestion doesnt entirely make sense, I'm having a difficult time verbalizing exactly whats bothering me about it without using screenshots :P)
Finally it would be nice to have something show what exactly is in each hotkey group you have. Or even what units you currently have selected (more so specific numbers of units, because I know that the units in the lower bar highlight when you have any number of themt selected). I feel like currently it is difficult to create multiple hotkeys of units accurately, which has reduced my desire to micro multiple smaller groups of units around the map. Instead I just find that I am constantly hotkeying all of my units into a single clump because I end up knowing for sure what is in it, and then selecting individual units to move elsewhere. (It would also be nice to have units that are respawned to automatically rejoin the hotkey groups you had previously assigned to them)
Comments
Part 2!
Gameplay
Pathing!! I know a lot of people have already mentioned this so I won't really go into it - But it was really annoying at time when units would get stuck on random edges/ other units and just never seemingly find their way to the point. Or when you would try and retreat but your partner was there and you would each totally block each others movement, ultimately giving free kills to the enemy, etc.
In terms of actual movement, pathing aside, the overall feeling of giving commands to your units feels great. I find that many RTS games I've played recently just never feel... properly responsive?... By that I mean that they just don't feel smooth or that it takes time for a unit to respond and actually get moving. I've always really liked the feel of starcraft's unit movements, and haven't played a game outside of that yet that "feels" the same way - Until this game. In the few games I played today of PvP and against the bots, there never was a time that I went "I wouldn't have lost that unit if the game had responded immediately" and it felt great and almost identical to Starcraft in that regard!
There's something off about the Gems. But I'm not sure what specifically... Against the bots, I had come to the conclusion that they were pretty much useless. I always had a million of them, and nothing to spend them on (i tended to avoid spawning millions of neutral weapons was probably why). But then in PvP that sort of shifted, and I felt like I either had just enough of them or was really starved and needed to get more of them to upgrade my towers with. So I'm not too sure where I stand with them at the moment. With that said, I think it would be nice if there were more options to spend the Gems on (e.g. if the Tier 3 upgrades needed both Gems and gold, because then there would be a reason to not upgrade a tower right away or get as many neutral weapons as you can ASAP).
Upgrade timers seem to be wrong. The army specific damage and resistance upgrades seem to research instantly despite saying they have a creation time (or they may just not appear in the build que along with all other upgrades, which I would find to be really confusing). I also felt, though am not 100% certain on this, that the tower upgrades took less time to build then they specified (however I have yet to specifically time it).
I think that the neutral ion weapons (specifically the giant Ion cannon) should not create vision that encompasses its entire firing range. When these weapons are in play, it feels like they just outrange everything without there being any real skill involved in using them. In all the games I played against them, it was always very frustrating because they could be placed at such a distance away that by the time you could reach the cannon, it would have destroyed your tower. I think that a simple fix to them would not be to reduce their range, but rather to give them less vision, and make it so that the enemy has to create the vision to take full advantage of the neutral weapon. This would allow hero abilities (like Celesta's hawk or Vela's Fair warning) to be used in other ways then just spotting enemy locations and provide more tactical engagements in general. It would also help to force the opponent to stop camping as much at the base of the cannon.
Hero leveling felt off in the PvP. I found in many games that I would easily either begin to lag behind or pull way ahead of my team mates/ opponents. I think this comes down to how units gain xp more than anything, but I found that it didn't feel as nicely paced as when playing against the bots (where levels were always fairly close).
The late end game was an odd ordeal. I happened to play one 74minute game that was immensely fun. Both of the teams felt really balanced and seemed to be roughly the same in skill. The game however hit the point where it felt like no one was going to win, since our team was being much more defensive and they opposing team couldn't break us. After each of their massive attacks, our team would attempt to move out, but would then get stopped and we would attempt to push back, and then this cycle just repeated. While it was a great game, because it always felt like positioning mattered - it also felt like the game stagnated and was going to go on until a team decided to just quit (our opponents offered us a draw at one point near the end because of how long it was taking) or until a team just miss-positions themselves (which is how our game ended). And while, this isn't inherently a bad thing because it made the game feel well balanced, it never felt like a team could take advantage of a dominant opening if the other team decided to turtle up and start defending their nexus hardcore (which is what kind of happened in our game). If there were more late game options for teams (and maybe there is, and they just weren't realized) I feel like it would have been much more exciting of a position - as it reminded me a lot of long Dota games where a team gets stuck defending in their base and tries to make an epic comeback work from there. Except, there seemed to be no way of really advancing beyond a really balanced state where neither team would come out ahead.
Hero Specific
Alder:
Celesta:
Damn apparenly I exceeded the word count xD I didn't expect my brief notes to expand this much, but I hope what I've written is useful to the team in some way!
But as I said at the start, it's a super fun game so far and I look forward to playing more of it during my breaks in studying for exams :P
Cheers,
Inquisitor