I Love "Punchy" Abilities
I've said it before, but it is incredibly relevant to the contents of this discussion, so I'll preface the whole post with it again here: I have played League of Legends more than any other game over the last 5 years. I have somewhere between 1500 and 2000 hours in the game, and have sincerely enjoyed every part of its evolution. So, when coming to Atlas, a lot of the Moba elements have felt very nice to me.
That being said, I think currently there is a big disconnect between the types of squads that exist. I think the best way to categorize this is squads with "punchy" abilities and squads with "passive" abilities, and my personal enjoyment of squads directly follows the ordering of how Punchy or Passive they are.
Punchy
These are the squads whose abilities pack a punch. Their usefulness is defined by how their abilities are used moreso than by how their armies are positioned or how perfect their DPS output is. The two forefront examples of Punchy squads are Ryme and Alder.
- With Ryme, all of his first four abilities have very clear uses and feel incredibly satisfying when used right. His basic ability has amazing pick potential, the auto reset on glacial rangers provides satisfying burst damage and incredible kiting, frostfall brings decimating AoE when used correctly, and absolute zero feels AMAZING when used to combo with other players on your team. The only unsatisfying ability in his kit is the ice breath oh the frogs, but currently I chalk that up to me not liking any of the conic abilities as they currently are. Breaking away from controlling my army to position one unit in a better cone just doesn't feel great to me. Overall, using Ryme's abilities creates what is compelling about his gameplay, and that feels really fun.
- With Alder, his usefulness is ALL about his abilities. His basic ability is a massive AoE snare, which is perfect for catching an army out of position or stopping an advance in its tracks. Then, all of his units focus around the saplings. Combat with Alder is placing saplings in advantageous positions, watching those saplings to see when they should be grown into needleferns, trees of life, or deeproot terrors, and then watching THOSE to see when they should be re-cycled. If you spend more than 2 or 3 seconds in a fight as Alder without pressing one of your abilities, you've probably lost the fight. As a LoL player, that feels SO rewarding. I feel directly that my choice what abilities to use when, and what upgrades I've purchased, decide the outcome of each fight.
Passive
These are the squads that end up behaving a lot more like a Starcraft 2 army. They either don't have many abilities, or their abilities are unable to be used as a part of active combat. The two examples here are Celesta and Vela.
- With Celesta, I think Pursuit has described it best to me in that your army feels exactly like playing Marine Tank in Starcraft 2. With no ability on the wisps, and the abilities of the purifiers just being stance changes, Celesta can be played well without ever pressing a button on the keyboard other than "a". Now, certainly using her basic ability for some extra DPS and the granted vision can be useful, but it doesn't feel like much has been accomplished, and I often forgot about it entirely. And then her ult can be used for some incredible game-changing moments, but that's only allowed on a long cooldown, and it comes with an insane and dodgeable cast time to boot. So overall, Celesta's gameplay is not about her abilities. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but as a LoL player, I just end up finding this boring. It's like playing a caster as a marksman. Sure, you have lots of damage in your auto attacks, but where other marksmen have a suite of useful abilities to boot, you can only keep auto attacking. That's just kinda disappointing honestly.
- With Vela, there is not a single punchy ability in her kit. Eagle eye is powerful, but lacks any real visual of its effect. In fact, your opponent might not even realize they've just been eagle eyed when you use it. What's the point of an ability when your opponent doesn't know you've wrecked them with it? Take aim is just... entirely useless in skirmishes. if you've stopped your deadeyes to point a visible red line at an enemy, you've both given away your position and invited your enemy to walk on top of you and crush you. Finally, the windrays are aura bots. That is the definition of passive abilities. All of this combined leads to a squad that I don't think I would ever play again, despite the fact that I know it is plenty strong and has lots of fans. I just don't feel compelled to use Vela's abilities when playing her, and therefore will always chose a punchier squad where I can see the effect I'm having on the game.
Finally, here is the list of squads from most to least Punchy in my opinion, and therefore most to least likely for me to play:
- Ryme
- Alder
- Hydros
- Grath
- Eris
- Vex
- Celesta
- Vela
Comments
Haha very interesting to hear your opinion on this! I find Celesta to be extremely fun to play precisely because her units are more based on moving around and engaging smartly than spamming abilities. Celesta seems to open up more strategic / tactical plays than other heroes because of her ability to control space with the Purifiers and move around the map quickly with Wisps.
That being said, Ryme is also one of my favorites to play because his units are both very fun to control and have a ton of utility and a really high skillcap. I agree that Vela feels a bit boring to play, but I disagree that Vela's abilities don't feel "punchy"; her ult is basically a one shot kill against any hero! I think her Tier 2 feels too similar to the rest of the abilities though and is the least interesting of all of them.
Really interesting discussion point.
One thing we definitely want to avoid is units being interesting purely because of their ability. Basic damage is such a critical piece to traditional RTS play, so we wanted to make sure there was a balance of the two. Part of the way we achieve this is to have the auto attack of some units functionally behave like abilities. The simplest example is Celesta's Purifier (huge AoE blast) or Vex's Ignitor (lights units on fire). Another piece is simply by not doing too much fancy w/ a unit (wisp, sparkbot).
An area that needs work is basic ability attacks. For instance, it's SUPER exciting in something like StarCraft when a bunch of zerglings are trying to set up a flank to avoid the zealot/archon and hit the dragoons. That entire play feels like a "punchy moment" despite not being an ability. We believe that if we have a combination of auto-attackers trying to move into position to maximize damage AND we have some really punch abilities / autoattack abilities, battles will be extremely dynamic and require a lot of post-match analysis and practice to get right.
Can't wait to keep stepping forward. I cannot stress how UNFUN the battles were at many times. This is the best its been AND there's lots more room to improve them :D