Discord community feedback part 2 :: Stages of the game
Hello everyone!
The Discord has been ripe with awesome strategy discussion and feedback lately with people spending hours talking about everything from overhauling core mechanics to changing a single ability's cast hotkeys.
After the play test, many lovely people spent until 11:00 distilling ideas and writing down everyone's feedback in the channel!
This list includes :: Aqua, Nib, Berler, Cerebral, Decency, Xemmes, Adroitly Sinister, Cycle, FireFerret, Dirak, Hair on fire, Rook, Chromatikat, WyScion, CygnusX1, and Trfel. In addition to the wonderful devs ImmutableMan, statico, and Treisk!
So before I go further, I want to thank all of them for putting so much time and love into this game! Show them all some love in the chat next time you see them for me 
Stages of the game ::
It's Very easy to take hard camps with 1-2 heroes at the beginning of the game with low teamwork and micro
Submitted and edited by :: Breler, Burdock, Chromatikat, Aqua, FireFerret, and Cycle
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Why is it an issue ::
Units respawn very quickly in the early game. Running around the healing towers make it super easy to kite the camp creeps as well. You can take the 2x hard camp with one ranged hero with only a basic understand of the game.
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How did it make me feel ::
Fast x2 expansion feels less like the coordination masterpiece of a level 1 Roshan (Dota) and more like watching a especially cross eyed calico cat chase a lazer pointer around a poll. In addition, there isn't even a major punishment for messing up the simple micro. it just doesn't feel nearly as awesome as it could.
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Possible Solution ::
We got nothing good currently, though we have been talking about general camp reworks. More on that in part 3.
For some Heros the early game feels awesome. For others it feels scrappy
Submitted and edited by: WyScion, Burdock, and a few others
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How did it make us feel:
We all kept being killed by Eris early game, obviously there is a bit of a balance issue there. But what really stood out is how much more fun it was to play Eris and the other heros that have strong early game skills/spells.
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Why did we feel this way :
Squads like Vex, Celesta, Grath, and Hydros struggle early game due to lacking the movement, and range effects of the other Squads. In the early game, it seems like positioning is king. So when you are being kited around as a melee hero, all you feel like is a feeder. Team work helps, but they just aren't as fun early game.
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Possible Solution:
Instead of nerfing/buffing stats. Try improving and tweaking the tools available. Something like adding a very small dash to wisps that lets them move through units. Or increasing the cast range of the Terrapin Trooper's Rocket Rush. These kind of changes could not only balance the early game, but also make it more dynamic and fun.
Late game, dying is extremely punishing, often causing people to turtle on top of their neutral weapons and siege units
Submitted and edited by: Chromatikat, Decency Burdock, and Breler
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How did it make us feel:
Sad that we couldn't really be as aggressive as we wanted to be. Losing after a final push with no way to combat it can make you extra salty.
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Possible Solution 1:
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Add a ‘buyback’ that allows you to speed individual units through the respawn queue at the cost of gems/gold, with a cost varying based on position in the queue and number of times used.
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Possible Solution 2:
Allow the respawn queue to be accelerated. For example, for 100 gold it works at 6x speed for 10 seconds. This would allow your army to get back in the fray defensively, but wouldn’t be an instant “I f*cked up but save me anyway” button. The buyback could be on a cooldown to prevent constant use.
Comments
A slight tweak to this suggestion, which was originally from me. I strongly think it should be coin based, because allowing gems to be spent in this way would discourage the use of neutral weapons and would allow players to overly concentrate on pure army. It's common for players to stockpile a lot of gems- it's not common for players to stockpile gold, and they should have to make that choice meaningfully if they want to do so. Because gold is a much more tightly limited resource, this also causes a player that uses this to fall behind slightly each time in upgrades or units, which is much more of a concrete advantage.
I would also envision the boost as being less dramatic, because that way you still have to be mindful to deploy units as they come in to get the full benefit, and can't just pop an entire army out super fast. The numbers I threw out (obviously subject to change) were 150 coin for 4x speed for 20 seconds, which saves you a minute of net time on each unit in the queue, meaning you're still going to be waiting at least 20-30 seconds if you get crushed in a fight.
@Decency Chromatikat and I had also brought up the idea of using gems to get faster spawns (due to gems being the temporary resource).
After reading your post I must agree, I think gold would make buy back much more of a deliberate decision late game.
OP Updated to reflect this
Not sure where else to say this; It seems odd that the Super Ion Cannon(?) can be placed out of range of the mega towers and still hit the nexus.
We have some suggested changes for that as well in part 3 or 4.... If I remember right It was reducing the vision of Ion Cannons.