General Feelings After Some Bot Games and the PVP Test
I posted this in the PVP Megathread and then realized it is probably out-of-place there due to just being sort of general feedback that came after the PVP test. It's probably more useful here.
- I felt like the wards gave wayyy too much vision. And it felt weird that they could see over walls. This may be my League of Legends background speaking. Just seemed weird (and super strong!) to be able to place things on the map that worked like SC2's Xel'Naga Watchtowers when I expected a tiny Vision Ward.
- Denying gems felt good, but it was difficult to tell how effective that was (if at all).
- During large fights, I felt kind of frustrated by how I couldn't really tell what was going on. This may be just a lack of experience with the game/spells/effects, but my instinct is to pin this on the health bars being below units and obfuscated by units in the way.
- That said, I felt like the health/selection/attack-cd bars were cool, though perhaps small given how much information they are trying to convey.
- I felt like once I started getting behind, there wasn't much I could do. I imagine that this would be a point at which you might want to start on defensive upgrades, but without complete knowledge of incoming damage types, it felt like guesswork as to what to upgrade.
- The "massive damage" ultimate abilities (Eris and Celeste in particular) feel fantastic to land. Ryme's, on the other hand, while probably tactically very powerful, just never felt as impactful. Maybe I'm just a Timmy, or Ryme is better with proper team coordination.
- Speaking of Celeste, I really had no idea how to deal with Purifiers. Day9 mentioned in Global chat that internally, Purifiers weren't much of a problem, but all my PvP losses during yesterday's test were to a Celeste that just became rather overbearing with strong location control using Purifiers before dropping a bunch of ion cannons.
- I felt like units (especially the tanky ones; plate feels pretty strong) took FOREVER to die sometimes, but were extremely squishy other times. I assume this is due to a disparity in upgrades, but I feel like a way to actually view a unit's stats in game (enemy and ally) would combat this to an extent. That would let me go "hey why isn't that guy dying? Oh, this unit has like 50% physical damage reduction due to armor upgrades, I should upgrade my abilities". I know the tab screen shows upgrades for all players, but memorizing unit base stats and applying these varied % modifiers mentally can be taxing.
- Something something visual feedback. I'm noticing a couple of my points deal with information availability and just an overall feeling like combat is a black box of random unit death.
- Overall, I feel like the game fills a very unique space somewhere between a MOBA and an RTS. Combining the army-micro and resource-collection aspects of an RTS with the team strategy and more streamlined individual progression of a MOBA plays out very cool, and having access to depth of gameplay and strategy from both of those sources leads to a game where I feel there are far too many possibilities to develop a proper strategy and "meta" in just four-hour windows.
Anyways, I had a ton of fun during yesterday's PVP test, delays and all. I'll be planning and practicing to try and do better next week!