Feedback on my PvP day experience 12/06
ZenoSpyridon
Member
I would just like to say up front that I am very thankful for the opportunity to test this game at such an early stage & actually give feedback to developers that will listen. I am a life-long gamer, and I have dabbled in game design & development as a hobby for many years, so I'm going to try to make the best of this chance to try to give you guys the best feedback I could (Be prepared for a huge post! lol). Thanks for actually caring about the game!
Core Issues
Overall, my impression of the design behind the game was positive. For such an early state, the game is actually very fun to play, which is a great accomplishment. Controls are logical and make sense, and should feel great once the mechanics and pathing get patched up a bit. Will be comfortable immediately for a huge percentage of the PC gaming player base. The constant action is fun. The "unique" things you bring to the table are nearly all a success.
This section will focus on feedback for the design itself.
Ever since PvP went down, I have had 2 major issues bugging me that were with the core design of the game in it's current state, so I thought I should mention these 2 issues first.
Siege Units/Neutral Units:
These units were the result of much of my frustrations in the game.
Units that can attack each other and structures but not enemy units, just feels kind of off-ish. Doesn't feel good or natural to control/utilize/strategize with as I used them in game. This may have been worse than it would be in a real life situation due to the lack of full art & collision not being smooth yet, this made them easier to mix up with your other units or inadvertently get them in the way. Didn't feel as easy as it should to try to work together with/defend them.
Speaking of getting in the way... Players were also trying to exploit the collision by stacking them up to block corridors, and considering they have pretty high health, it was a pretty annoying tactic that didn't seem to have much counter play. Simply taking up so much space is so strong... I worry using them to exploit collision is going to become more and more of a problem as players learn to harass.
I felt the health was way too high on them at many stages of the game. Felt like they could pretty much suck up the aggression while you did the fighting, rather than feeling like you had to actually defend them. In my opinion, it would be most logical for them to be allowed to do heavy damage if the siege units were defended/protected, but relatively little to no damage if left unattended. On paper it seems it would be fair in risk vs reward terms.
In general, I did not like how much of the game felt like gems directly translated in to unit pressure on your enemies towers, on demand. I do think gems should give an advantage, but gems = direct pressure does not feel right. Makes the game feel very snowball-y in either scenario. Early game if 1 team gets solid map control on the center gem spawns they can put overwhelming pressure on early for a ~10 min domination, alternatively if it goes to late game it seems both teams stock up a crap load and then summon them all at once in the same area, and it could lead to unexpected wins. It's not very apparent at the mid-late stage of game which team is actually ahead or who is winning, until you suddenly see 40 little bots going towards your meganode/nexus. If you are in an advantageous position or in trouble, you should at least have somewhat of an idea before being surprised by a horde of robots. But I was reluctant to use them as I got them, because it seemed if you tried that, the player who saved them for the big late game push had the advantage...
It feels weird as siege are the only units on the field who cost gems to create instead of gold. It's hard for me to put this feeling in to words, but in a way it makes them feel off sync... just like they are synchronized differently from all the timings & everything else in the game, especially since the gems can be saved & used on them at any time. Make them feel kind of... imbalanced?
I did not enjoy the variety of neutral units either. Did not feel a fun synergy or metagame between their interaction, nor did I find their synergy with the heroes/units very fun. Basically it was just, static is stronger than mobile in most cases.
One part of the "neutral items" that I did feel was a success was the sight and regeneration wards. I liked that the sight wards were relatively easy to find, and placing wards on each other while strategizing to position yourself to take out your enemies felt very fun. Regen wards need a stronger effect, it takes far too long to make a difference, but the idea is solid.
All in all, trying to figure out the intent of the design here, I got the impression that these siege mechanics were put in place to prevent standoffs? Maybe encourage/force a group fight? Or possibly be a gem-sink? But for me it did not feel like it accomplished any of those purposes very well, at least in a way that feels satisfying or strategically rewarding. It tended to lead to longer standoffs of people saving up them to use all at once then a sudden break/win, and led to another problem of snowballing. I seen people leaving sieges behind to keep the opponent busy while they are elsewhere more often that use it to encourage interaction, and on defense it feels like a waste of time to fight units that you can't attack with most your army. And rather than a way for players to spend gems, it led to stockpiling gems.
As a solution for these problems, I feel if "siege" type units are needed, they should be implemented in a way that feels more natural to the game. Not being able to attack certain units does not feel good at all.
A suggestions is each squad having a siege unit that is unique to their squad, and making sure it's play style has synergy with the squad as a whole. Alternatively, could have siege abilities as an upgrade on one of the squads units.
Gems should not equal direct pressure on your opponents bases imo. Gems felt much better to spend on expansions , teching, or even building towers than it did on these units, and it was more fun to interact with opponents expansions/tech/towers than the siege units as well. Those things offered inadvertent pressure on your opponent rather than a bunch of artificially created units banging at your opponents door.
More inadvertent pressure that could be used strategically by both sides, or force players to make decisions, rather than just stacking units at your door, would be a welcome change.
Maybe siege units would be better off purchased with gold, or acquired by other means, if they had a unit cap and respawned like regular units do, to prevent themselves from being stockpiled/spammed? Would fix the problems of people stockpiling them to exploit collision as well.
Comments
Towers and Expansions:
I felt the overall focus was far too much on towers, and not enough focus was on expansions.
Expansions in general did not feel as rewarding as I expected. Many times after taking an expansion I was wondering if the gold gain really increased much at all?
But even at that, the funnest moments I had during alpha were battling over expansions. They felt like something I actually built/placed on the map (a map which was filled with mostly pre-placed objects), kind of like we were building the map up ourselves, shaping the battleground, rather than fighting in the middle of a pre-placed arena.
Then fighting to try to take out the enemies expansion, while defending your own, was very fun. Sight ward range was high which made it reasonable to scout to see your enemy coming, and one time I can remember both me and the enemy were able to see each others actions. Which kind of upped the intensity level, since we both wanted to take out the others expansion. We slowly creeped forward playing a lil bit of mind games, trying to jock for better position. Fun strategic gameplay!
The Gem system feels spot on during this type of game play as well! At one point I had my expansion taken out, and was not at 10 gems, knowing I needed to get more gems to rebuild mine... but I also know my opponents entire army just died, and I had an opportunity to choose to work on rebuilding my own, or going out to try to take his expansion. This opportunity for strategic decision felt perfect, and can lead to even more fun strategic game play (and this is only factoring 1 player on each team!).
Rather than spending all gems on neutral units, we were actually starved on gems. So it was time to start making some hard decisions on the fly. This felt much better, much more natural and much more strategic than the typical tower/neutral siege unit game play.
I was wishing for more of that strategic gameplay, and less tower-centric gameplay. Expansion-battling triggered that feeling that I've only gotten in RTS games in the past, that mobas are not able to give.
Towers, they don't feel very particularly rewarding to take or defend. They are pre-placed with the map, and their entire purpose seems to be to slow the enemy down. They don't give the player very much strategic opportunity aside from "lets work as a team to take out this tower". Defending or taking expansions contributed a lot more strategically. Whether you successfully defended ur expansion or lost it, could completely change the strategy/goals for both teams. If you are the loser it brings a sense of urgency, or if you take the land for yourself it gives you a sense of victory.
The time I did enjoy towers? When they were built by players and used to specifically defend the base. Again, it feels very good when you and your opponents are "shaping the battlefield" as you play, rather than playing the same setup every game.
My ideas for solutions to this? Mostly to change the map design. It would be awesome if expansions were more important! They should be more central to the map, rather than found mostly on the exterior. They should be some of the main hotspots for battle.
Conclusion on Core Issues
My opinion right now, the game feels a little more like a MOBA with RTS elements, rather than a game that was designed as an RTS at its core. It's not the controls, or the fact that you have a hero, just the lack of strategic decision making & the type of decision you do make being based around towers. The issues I discussed are what I think is really holding it back from being a great RTS (for what I enjoy, at least)..
Siege does not feel right. Focusing on towers over expansions does not feel right. Gems being spent on siege units more than infrastructure does not feel right. The way those couple systems work drastically reduce the possible opportunities for strategic interaction.
If you were able to alleviate these feelings for me, I would have absolutely no issues with the core design of the game. Everything else feels like it is at an early implementation, but is a great foundation to grow in to the future.
General Feedback
Now I will give feedback based on all the specific mechanics/systems of the game.
Runspeed: Felt a little too slow. Seemed like it was limiting scouting (without wards) a bit. Also made the map (which is pretty large) seem even larger than it was. I do not think attack speed needs to be upped, just run speed.
The current run speed would be understandable early game, but should accelerate a little bit as you go in to late game. No matter which race you play in StarCraft, or no matter which moba you play, they all have something to give players to make it feel like things "speed up" and feel faster later game and/or with upgrades.
Not sure if a global runspeed increase, or unit-specific increases, would be best. But right now almost everyone feels slower than marines without stim.
Upgrade Interface: One thing that constantly bugged me was the interface for upgrades. Particularly the ability-upgrades. I realized they were separated by tier, but then I found myself confused as to which unit the upgrades were for. Also 6 seemed pretty limited (but I seen you mention possibly expanding this in the future).
For example, I was trying an early aggression build focusing on my T1 units, so I wanted to quickly figure out which upgrades were for that unit, and there was no way to easily tell. Had to look mid-game through all the tooltips, and refer to the units ability names, to be able to tell.
My suggestion for this: Separate upgrades vertically by tier (t2 upgrades on top, T3 on bottom), and split them horizontally by unit (1st , 2nd, 3rd). This way, even first time players of the squad will know which section belongs to which unit.
Upgrade Options: I know from reading other posts you plan to expand on this, but I would love it if individual units could have different upgrade options that actually change their play style. Meaning a unit could be played a number of different ways. With so few units in this game compared to other RTS's, it seems all the more important that the few we do have allow us more choices than you typically see in other RTS games.
Maps: Aside from the problems I discussed about towers/expansions, the map design seemed kind of unintuitive. I am wondering if there is going to be different maps? Hope so!
Expansions should have been more clearly marked on the map. The uneven-ness made one player feel disconnected at times (which sometimes worked, sometimes didnt).
The map was pretty big, and with the slow run speed, it felt like it took too long to travel the map. I am aware we do not want to cross the map too fast so that smart positioning matters, but this is a little too big.
Map seemed too... "round", rather than built to encourage hotspots for action.
As many have said, one player did definitely feel a little "detached" from battle. If I was that person, at times I tried to go assist the rest of the team. But with runspeed being slow and maps being relatively large, it took too much time to be worth it.
Health Bars: The overall idea is good, but during larger battles I found myself wanting to know which units were getting focused, and it was kind of hard with all the animation on the health bar. Maybe separate colors or animations would help this a bit. Needs to be a little clearer. Works fine in small battles, but late game I had some trouble with them.
Unit Cap: I think the idea of a cap on individual units could work, but I am not sure of the current cap. Felt like every game I was able to "max" my army, didn't really feel like much options aside from which I am going to get first, at which point I did mostly the same thing every game. At this point it seemed like there was no reason to need to improvise.
Controls: Aside from the issues that have been discussed a million times, they felt spot on. I think you are in a perfect place once fixing known issues. Any RTS or MOBA player will feel comfortable immediately, and there is a noticeable improvement in this area compared to other games.
Stat Upgrades: I do like the idea that some of the stat upgrades are not the traditional ones you see in RTS's (life drain for example). Longer term I would like to see some synergy between build options & stat upgrades. Could be a way for players to differentiate their playstyles. Current implementation seems early, but should be fine with some evolution.
Game Length: Games tended to feel like they went on a little long for me, although I did have my share of very short ones. I feel most the issues I discussed in core contributed to this.
Team vs Team: Felt pretty good. Sometimes was working as a team, sometimes was off solo. I think a good variety keeps the game feeling fresh.
Long term, I'm sure some players are going to want some sort of 1v1 mode though. Maybe eventually make a special mode for hardcore players where they can control 3 squads as one player where f1-f3 switches between players =p
Gems: Idea is good overall. I like that it forces encounters between teams. I feel they are a bit too spread out though, especially late game. Kind of weird to be pushing in to an enemies base with a bunch of siege on the field and finding gems spawning in front of you. Shouldn't be so easy to collect while holding your opponent back. They would be able to collect easy enough with control of the center of the map, but it's not too fair if they can keep full pressure on while doing it.
Expansions: Touched on this in core. I really would like to see more. It's too easy to fill up all the expansion spots. They don't feel as important or rewarding as expected.
NPC's Protecting Expansions: I am mixed about these. After the first one, seemed like more of an inconvenience than anything, and am not sure the intent for them (aside form the ones protecting the 2x multiplier expansions, those make sense). You can't expand without gathering gems anyway, seems like they are just intended to slow players down? It makes the game feel more like WC3 or a MOBA, I'm undecided if that is in a good or bad way.
As discussed earlier, I believe allowing players to be able to shape their own battleground is exciting. So my first impression is to think, if these NPC's werent there, fast expanding would be a more viable strategy, and would make scouting more valuable, which sounds like a good thing for the strategic side of the game.
Might make more sense to me after more play time. For all I know, these NPC's may have been added because fast expands were too easy to get =) but for now, I am undecided on how I feel about them.
Respawning System: Felt pretty good to me! I liked how the army grew as time went on. I like how action was pretty much non-stop. I like how dying still felt damaging if you wiped your own army.
Hero Leveling: I am not sure how much of a difference levels give exactly, but there was a few times that the opponent got a 2-3 level lead and it felt like there was no way to catch up. Not sure if this was because of an advantage of squad overall, if I simply failed my micro/tactics during the encounter, or if the level lead made that much of a difference. My only concern is that snowballing isnt too strong without a chance to come back.
Harrassment: Felt like this part of the game was basically missing outside of fighting over the gems. Along with the expansion complaints, I just wished there was more ways I could try to damage my opponent outside of towers.
Feedback On Specific Squads/Heroes: Eris was, by far, my favorite hero to play. Sandstingers are very fun to use, love the dash. Feels sorta like squishy Stalkers. Love the synergy of all of the squads skills. Love using them as weak fodder to trap the enemy so they can not escape the nukes. Love the mobility of the aura (even though I'm not very good with it yet).
Celesta felt fairly fun to play positionally, but I was Eris most the time, and when I went against Celesta I found her & the Purifiers easy targets. I heard some people claiming she was in every game and felt strong, but didn't feel so bad to Eris. Maybe she's a good counter.
Alder seemed quite a strong opponent. Bramblethorns were hard. I think I lost every game against a player who used them. Sometimes, fighting him almost feels like a Protoss player cannon rushing you.
As Hydros and Grath, I felt like the controls on their T1 units was not very accurate. Would like to see some improvement here. Didn't feel as effective playing them. May need to L2P.
Tried Vex but he was more "damage over time" than I expected. My planned build completely failed. I did not see many good Vex players. I do not have good feedback for him.
Did not try Ryme or Vela, but Vela felt very easy for Eris, and Ryme felt quite powerful.