Initial Reaction After Playtest (Dec. 6th)
First of all I had a fantastic time playing this game. It was a pleasure playing with everyone. The Artillery crew were incredibly nice and so were the playtesters. I'm going to organize my thoughts with a pros and cons list to hopefully make things easier to go through since I know you are all very busy people.
Pros:
-I love the warm up period where you can build up units and just mentally prepare yourself before the game starts. This allows the action to start right away once the game starts since you already have a small force built up. I really appreciate that.
-There are hero units/squad units that fit pretty much any play-style I could think of making this game accessible for any type of player.
-The gem patches are such an ingenious mechanic. Since they are necessary for tech and expansions everyone is going to try and get them and since they are in the middle of the map it causes conflict. This puts players into the action right from the get go. Such a fantastic and intuitive feature.
-My favorite part of an RTS is choosing when to engage and finding good locations to actually engage and just the flow of combat in general. The macro aspect of the genre while still fun to me is less exciting. Since you can build units without having to click on a building or setting up a hot key it makes macroing so much easier and gives you more time to focus on the micro making games much more exciting in my opinion.
-I like the fact that the base game mode is 3v3. In the RTS genre the main game modes are generally 1v1 and while I love 1v1 it can be very stressful. In Starcraft I actually for a long time had ladder anxiety just because if you lose a game it's all on you. Eventually I overcame this fear but with a 3v3 mode your teammates can pick up the slack where you make mistakes which is a breath of fresh air to me.
-Neutral weapons I think are implemented very well. It's another point of contention when they are being built since neutral weapons are pretty much necessary for pushing on the nexus.
-I like the fact that there are other things to defend than just friendly bases but the Nexus and Mega Nodes. That is a very interesting idea to me and opens up more strategies for conquering enemies.
Cons:
-The pathing has been a little bothersome for me (I mentioned this in another comment and is being addressed in a different part of the forum so I won't go to much into this).
-Piggy-backing off the last point my hero unit has been killed many times because they've been blocked off by my own units or my teammates' units when retreating. I think the hero unit should at least ignore friendly unit collision.
-In the games that I've played around the 3:30 to 5 minute mark there seems to be a kind of dead period because everyone is still trying to collect gems to expand and tech up but there aren't a lot of gem patches. Increasing the amount of gems in that time frame could easily fix that problem.
-I've noticed that gem bases aren't taken very often in the games. In the later stages of the game there are so many gems to pick up I think players feel it's not worth the risk. Maybe adding an extra incentive for grabbing those bases might make more players want to grab them. This might not even be a case that it's not worth it, but more players don't know if it's worth grabbing or not this early on. I'm not exactly sure. Out of the games I played in PvP I think 1 person grabbed a gem base after playing probably close to double digit games.
Finally, I'd just really like to thank you all for your time reading these comments. I know you guys have a lot on your plate and taking the time to read long comments like this from the testers I can only imagine is very time consuming. So thank you so much for using your time to hear our thoughts and also thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to try out your already amazing game this early in the process. I love RTS and MOBA games. I just find it so fascinating that this game is a perfect blend of RTS and MOBA. MOBA's originated from RTS games and now this RTS game is blending ideas from MOBA games and making the ultimate game.
Comments
Thank YOU so much for the lovely feedback <3. In particular I really love that you've broken down the pros/cons so clearly. Just as important for us to know what needs fixing, it's great to know what you're liking! A few comments