(Burdock) Personal Feedback
Now that I have the Discord server fokes feedback on the forum, I would like to get to some of my on thoughts and ideas.
Obviously this represents only my thoughts, and not anyone else listed in said posts 
What I think the Game Does well
Fresh and Familiar ::
At it's core this game feels awesome. The "engine" is very much like a MOBA. This is amazing! Mobas have some of the most intuitive gameplay engines of any genre. You move in a direction! The more you can move in that direction, the closer you are to winning! Fantastic.
But the mechanics, the units, the "feel" is much more like a RTS. You get all the micro, and tactics of a game that plays like Starcraft, but without the unintuitive engine of killing bases! This avoids the awkward moments of newer players just amassing armies and upgrades until one big A move to end the game. It's a really cool hybrid, and could easily spawn a sub-genre of it's own.
Squad design, mhhh, squad design ::
I remember the moment when I realized this game was awesome. It was my 4th game playing Vela, and I felt like I was getting about as good as I could get with her. I had won the last 4 games, and was feeling pretty good. But this time was to be different. I was vs Nib.
Playing Nib was like playing my first real game of starcraft after 5 easy placement matches. The shit hit the fan. Early game he was using Stinging Surge not to engage or nuke my hero... No, Nib was a baller. Nib was using Stinging Surge like one would use blink to micro stalkers, and it was recking my shit!!
After a short minute of panic, something clicked! I COULD USE Eagle Eye to counter micro Stinging Surge by sniping the weak unit! So I promptly took a fight, as soon as he pulled back his first Sandstinger BAM I snipped the shit out of it! Sadly there was no time to rejoice as his next Sandstinger was getting weak and about to pull back! I look down at the UI to check if the ability was off cool down. "Shit" I said, as I noticed the extremely disappointing 5 over the tool tip. I had to pull back. But the next engagement I played a little bit better, instead of Eagle Eye sniping with my whole army I would box and snipe with only half or a 3rd. It felt fantastic and super rewarding. I had made this seemingly simple stat buff into my own secret weapon! For the rest of the playtest I was sure to put fear in the hearts of anyone who dared micro against my Vela!
That's when I realized this game really had something special.
Look and feel ::
I have been building full stack Node.js systems for about 3 years now, so from a technical perspective this game makes me super excited.
In addition the artstyle is really cool. It really does a lot to reinforce all the heros unique style. My favorite is the Windray with its transformations @Artillery.Archibob . Also the Purifiers reload is a massive standout @Artillery.AnimateXYZ
The game feels responsive and clean. While this may be less so with the arted map, for a pre-alpha it's down right impressive.
Teamwork ::
I never thought this would be a major selling point. But going back to sc2 now just feels a bit lonely. There were moments where My teammates and I were yelling into the discord "IT'S WORKING" when we got our crazy mass glass cannon rush to finally work!
This has caused a lot of really cool moments, including the now almost meme of a fuck up in the "FireFerret tosser of games, Cycle giver of names" game. I can't think of a game ever where everyone was laughing so hard at our own mistake.
Comments
It's always nice to have fans <3 but I don't think that was me. Only game I was against you I was Ryme and you were Celesta
That does sound like an incredibly fun game though.
Oh yes thats right! Shoot, I am going to have to go back and check the replay :P
I am so thrilled to read this. The engineering team has worked really really really hard to get the game to run smoothly!
And YAY @ neato squad combat! We still need to continue to iterate on our core 8 squads to make the battles feel really snappy. We do a little change every few days to adjust the feel -- making things 15% faster, or 5% more health, or swapping a T2 ability w/ a hero ability etc. Those types of mini games are EXACTLY what we're going for <3!
And your comment on teamwork was a TOTAL surprise to us as well. Very early in the iteration of Atlas, we tried out a 2v2 instead of a 1v1 and immediately had a blast because of exactly what you're saying. So, we spent a while fiddling with 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and a teensy bit of 5v5. We eventually chose to settle on 3v3 because it's a nice balance of the team fun + individual impact.
And THE ION CANNON THING IS NOT YOUR FAULT WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR HOTKEY SETUP AAAAHHHHHH.
<3