First Bot Game Impressions

FluffyBinLaden

Note: My feedback might be disorganized or rambling, but I'm going to do my best to keep it succinct and helpful

I've just gotten the chance to play through my first game against the bots (I missed this Sunday, unfortunately), so I wanted to get down my first impressions as soon as possible while it's still fresh in my mind.

I opened the game up as Celesta and built all my T1 units ASAP and swarmed mid to grab gems while my first expansion built. I realized pretty quickly that my units weren't very beefy, so I used them as a distraction while I ran around with my hero capping gems. I think I stayed on T1 far too long, as my units couldn't compete and I didn't feel like I was having a ton of impact on the game around me.

Once I jumped up to T2 and got the siege tank like unit I had a holy-shit moment as I realized I could control space like nothing else. Those things are sweet! I used them to deny areas as I gem farmed to build Ion Cannons, which I leap frogged to victory.

The game felt good, my actions had impact, and while it took a little time to get the hang of the economy loop, it was simple enough to manage.

As the game went on, a lot of my thoughts went into figuring out how to manage my base. I frequently took time to move my camera back and check on things like upgrades or look around to find a new expansion to seize. Near the 10 or 11 minutes mark I realized it felt like my gold kind of didn't mean anything. I had already gotten the majority of my units out, and the basic upgrades were complete. There didn't seem to be a lot more to spend it on. In reality, I never even built a T3 unit, and I could have used my Upgrade buildings (I'm not sure what these are called) a bit more, but it didn't feel very meaningful.

Combat itself feels... a little rough around the edges. The game feels a lot like a series of smaller micro battles, which I love, instead of bigger movements. It's wonderful to have the opportunity to control most units in small groups instead of having to spend my APM elsewhere. During the battles themselves though, sometimes it felt like the unit pathing was severely hindering my ability to micro properly or move through spaces that looked, graphically, like they should be ample for my units. There were moments where my hero would throw herself against the wall of my minions and shake around instead of moving to where I'd told her to go, which cost me a fight or two. This seems like the biggest downfall of the combat. Everything else (a-moving, stopping, changing direction) feels fluid, precise, and responsive.

Overall, the game feels fantastic. It's snappy and fairly fast paced, but there's not so much going on that you don't have time to think about your next move or review an upgrade choice. The mix of resource control, on the fly base building with the Gem built weapons, and micro battles really grabbed me, and I'm excited to play some more.

This is a side note based on some graphical "problems" I noticed. I recognize these things are subject to, and probably have already, change, but just in case I figured I'd throw it in.

As soon as the game began I was looking around at the map and had a hard time reading it due to the fog of war. The edges of the FoW are extremely noisy in that it looks a bit like a bunch of colors got thrown in there together. It reminded me of poorly encoded high quality video and made it somewhat difficult to tell what was going on on the edges of my screen until I adjusted.

The UI also has some interesting quirks, mostly on the right side of the screen. The unit building queue extends all the way up the screen? I can't articulate why, but the amount of space it took up when I spammed out units was frustrating to me, though not so much that I couldn't ignore it. The Respawn Timer is very very difficult to parse as well. If two or more units are very close to each other on the line it's nearly impossible to tell what's what and what time they're coming back.

These things aren't massive, but they all contribute to what feels like a very cluttered screen at times, even if there isn't actually a lot going on.

Again, I'm really enjoying it so far, and I'm very excited to go play some more. Thank you all and I hope this has helped in some way!