Bot Play and First Impressions [TW2 Megathread]
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots? Did they help you learn the game? Were they fun to play against? Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
When providing feedback, please use the following format:
- X happened
- It made me feel Y (or I’d like to feel Y)
- (optional) Here’s a suggestion to improve it
Comments
Playing my first game as an RTS noob I felt confused about what to spend my resources on and what my focus should be to ramp my economy. In particular I had amassed a large amount of scrap at one point and didn't know what I could buy with it.
I suspect a proper tutorial would go a long way here, and that you guys are working on it, but as a short term solution maybe some "tooltip tutorials" to point out recommended upgrades or strategies would help new players.
Played my first game against bots.
Initial impression was that there are a lot of things happening at once in a 3v3 game and it was a little overwhelming at times.
I was starved for gems at one point when I wanted to build an expansion and was frustrated when I didn't know where to go to farm them (I learned to figure out what the little blips on the minimap mean though).
I would get into fights with other armies and get wrecked without really knowing what had happened or which units were outputting the most damage. It would be nice to see health and damage numbers.
I spent what felt like a lot of time walking around the map and was bored. A tighter map or faster move speed would be nice.
One of my expansions was blown up and I didn't even realize it had happened. There are a lot of alerts for buildings under attack. I'd like to know when it's an expansion vs. a tower that's under siege. If I'm locked in a skirmish I won't leave for a tower but I'd have to think harder about my expansion under attack.
I loved not having to build resource units.
I loved the tension of waiting for units to respawn while watching the enemy march towards my base.
I loved that all of my selected units abilities are all on one page.
Back to the game!!!
For some context, this is the first RTS I've played since Warcraft 2 in the mid-90's , so I may as well have never played one before. I just got hardcore destroyed by the bots in my first game (no surprise) and here were some first impressions I had during the game:
Made me feel helpless and confused as I waited for what felt like multiple minutes with nothing to do . I tried to upgrade my buildings, but did not have enough resources, so I just ended up watching the other characters move around
A seeming endless cycle of defeat/wait for spawn
Despair. The enemy is attacking parts of my base while I wait to respawn, so as soon as I do, I have to rush back and try to fend them off. I do (sometimes) , but get decimated in the process. So instead of sending a single unit out to get gems(because he's useless on his own) I have him wait by the base while the others respawn. By that time another attack is coming. and I need to throw my newborn soldiers at it. The cycle repeats.
A flurry of dots on the minimap
Confusion. I kept thinking my units were the green dots for some reason (maybe conditioning from other games that green=you) When I finally got it through my thick skull that they were the blue ones, I kept mistaking my buildings for units.
My units respawn and immediately start moving down and to the right. Every. Single. Time.
I'm sure these problems are 99.9% me being an RTS noob, and I'm sorry that I don't really have any suggestions for how to make these things better.
I just want to emphasize that the gripes and whines I had during the game are just confused first impressions that may not even accurately reflect the reality of what happened in-game, and I probably won't feel the same way after Game #2, but I'm pretty sure you guys want to hear what goes through the mind of someone playing their first game, so here it is. I'll probably post a "second impressions" followup after ~10 more games or so.
Intro to my experience: I have played Warcraft II, III, Starcraft I, II, Command and Conquer: Red Alert, Age of Empires II, and some other assorted RTS games. However, I mostly played singleplayer or vs Bots aside from a little bit of casual SCII pvp. I have also played League of Legends MOBA (as well as one of the maps for WC III that inspired Moba). In games I love exploring something new and seeing the story, characters, artwork, etc.
Played my first game of Atlas as the blue freeze team Ryme. (Watched tutorial first and hung out in chat a bit.) I went around fighting neutrals and getting gems if I could get there before my allies. Now and then the enemy would attack and I would help as much as I could, or I would join an ally engaging them wherever it seemed a safe fight. I only attacked one maybe two enemy structures. Then my allies finished the game [before I even knew they were working on it, though I should have know based on fending off an enemy attack].
Feeling of it, fun overall as I like anything new if nothing is jarring or dissonant, which it was not. Playing, it took a little bit to get into remembering to deploy the units once they were ready, but that felt like it was my fault. The UI for it was pretty easy to check, even if it took until my second game to start feeling like I understood most of the upper left part of the UI.
Some feedback I posted in Discord: Finished first game. Felt fairly good. Bots were better at objectives than I was. Had a little trouble telling which units were selected, especially prepping for making control group for army. Otherwise was pleasant with relatively smooth interaction. UI worked well. Sounds were no abrasive. Sprites had fun models. Hard to say much past that on first go.
Another person mentioned feeling similarly, then having selection UI growing on them. This spurred additional response: I could tell there was something there [UI wise], but first time playing it [having trouble reading selection at a glance] was the thing that stood out the most. Other pieces felt like I would need to play more to understand whether they were useful [which feels fine to me]. That top left stuff was helpful, yet oddly vague in my head in terms of what to use it for. Aside from knowing I had units ready, which was nice and clear. [Got better after the second game.] I'm glad my bot team allies were able to carry the weight while I bumbled around. I imagine I'll have a completely new perspective after I have played a few games.
Second game I played as red Eris. (Considered Alder who sounds fun, but also sounded a bit more advanced/micro intensive in terms of minions+plants.) I had a harder time engaging enemies, but I think that was a feeling due mostly to being at best a casual single player RTS player. The high damage burst felt rewarding as did the base small unit's chase potential from dashing. I will need to learn to manage health a bit more if I play these units again, especially for stronger neutral camps. I started building a few more mercenaries, but have not gotten a good feel for them yet.
Game wise, the green.. scrap? resource seemed to build up a lot, while I had a hard time spending it aside from the two upgrades to the mercenary building. Whereas both games I struggled to collect enough gems while getting used to the units and gameplay. The gold felt ok as I needed to save more at times or had a surplus other times. Perhaps scap is used more once I figure out building buildings with workers? I feel a little blind on worker tower building strategy currently.
Suggestion wise, the only thing I know I would like is to be able to hover over for tooltip text on the unit queue for the unit name. I had to look at thumbnail pictures to figure out that there was a builder mercenary type that also has some sort of limit. Before that I kept looking at the other building thinking I had overlooked a unit.
This turned out longer than I planned. The game seems fun enough to want to play more than one game and the install process went well for me. I am not yet able to tell what I think of the art and overall UI assets. There is less pop and shine to the colors than many games, but it has a welcoming feel. I will try to consider my impressions in that area and give more feedback soon!
I hope I remember to attend the PvP portion for Sunday so that I can see how squashed I get against real people
Good overall, but some things were confusing. In the end the lack of pressure from the bots allowed me to go from floundering to ineffective and then finally realize the point of the game is only to attack the middle buildings (and win), all before the AI punished me for my ignorance. They were of course making obvious mistakes, which helped me feel better because I was making mistakes too.
They gave me the time I needed. It quickly became a fairly static environment where I could just build up and explore the game on my own. Especially since you can repair towers, and the AI doesn't, seeming to give you a massive end-game advantage and the feeling that the game will last as long as I need it to.
Yes. Fortunately in the chat window before playing (since I did sit through the 40 min tutorial video) Sean explained where to find the giant lasers. So I played with them, and that was fun as that faction had a high learning curve as well as giant lasers. I can see seven more fun games happening against bots as I learn all the factions, then maybe another with the laser faction, but then I expect it to tire due to lack of difficulty.
Yes. Mostly minor stuff though.
I've only played two games so far and I've definitely enjoyed it however I cant seem to get my control groups working on my mac. I've tried doing it the same way I always have in playing starcraft over the past decade but for whatever reason its not working. Its been immensely harder to keep up with the mechanics of the game since my main macro mechanic wouldnt work easily.
That being said - i felt like my bot allies and opponents were way stronger than I was at different points in the game.
It felt very hard to kill mercenary camps with basic units without being able to reinforce from an expansion base (unless I havent figured out how to do that).
Also - it would be nice to be able to look at hotkeys while not in a game.
I look forward to continuing to play
Oh also -- one bug to mention -- in my first attempt at a game I went to click on the settings button and the entire screen went black. Couldnt alt+tab or exit the game or anything. I had to restart my computer.
First Game Played Shadow Rose
The T1 unit sort of felt disconnected from the theme of the squad. I didn't really feel like the description met the theme until I had a Purifier.
The hero felt disappointing. The scouting ability has a ton of potential, and I imagine in high level play it would be powerful, but as a new player it seemed almost irrelevant.
I think that having more abilities on the hero would be interesting.
The bottom left GUI(control panel?), was difficult to interpret visually. It did not occur to me that it contained all of the abilties for all of my units. However, this feature was great. Eliminating the need to switch between selection within the hotkey group was awesome.
Purifier's are great, once I realised I could root them. Didn't read the tool tips:(
Using Purifiers to pressure from distance and force them into the wisps, seems to create the description of the squad. Although it felt more tactical then offensive. I am skeptical of how offensive the squad can play, with how slow purifiers were.
I started to utilize them to siege towers and control the map. Was very fun. Maneuvering with the Purifiers was great.
The precognitor felt out of place. Why do I want a smoke screen when I have the long range units. What unit on my squad am I trying to shield? I didn't understand how he fit into the squad. The abilties are undoubtedly powerful.
Felt like I absolutely needed a cube to creep. My wisps were so weak, tried microing around the leash range a little bit. Was able to bug out the unit so it couldn't attack, not sure if this was intended.
By the end of game one I was primarily relying on Purifiers and wisps to control space and siege the map. The combination of these two units felt good.
Felt difficult to work the three resource systems together. Was difficult to evaluate the value of each specific resource, and what I should be prioritizing. The mercenaries, in general were almost always a side thought. I built mercs when I noticed I was stockpiling and I did my best to keep them alive.
By the end of the game, I didn't really like the gold trickle resource. It seemed to be incredibly valuable but it was a set income as far as I could tell.
Overall, felt like there was a ton do. This was great. The early combat over gems was fantastic. I was in the thick of it fast and never felt like I couldn't fight for most of the game. The map seemed huge, I never crossed the midsection of the map. I think at least from a "novice" perspective, a more condensed map would be nice,
The mercenaries value, will be an interesting dynamic in future games. I had difficulty distinguishing mercs from squad units, other than my own squad.
Hero felt pretty lackluster until I had ulti. Ulti was sick.
Purifiers, were my favorite unit in the race. Very cool.
Wisps were felt generic.
Precognitor didn't feel cool. His spells didn't seem extremely synergistic with purifiers, which felt like the strongest unit I had.
Finally, after playing this race, I want to figure out how I can use the abilties in this race with the mercenaries and maximize their potential. I was using freezing mines and cubes to start filling the squads weaknesses. Combining the precognitor shield with the cube.
Setting up freezing traps in front of my purifiers.
I love the potential that this game has to offer. Feels very strategic and unit movement oriented.
I am looking forward to continuing to play and learn, cant wait to play people on sunday.
Just finished my first game (40+min) against bots using Vela!
Used to play Starcraft I and II (WoL) competitively and playing SCII HotS and LoV casually. Also play LoL and Heroes Of The Storm casually (non-ladder/ranked)
The units felt very slow the entire game
It made me feel bored for a large part of the game. There were times when I used up all my resources and since isn't a whole lot to do in terms of macro, I felt like I was doing a lot of waiting for my units to get into the right place. Even when using speed boosts, the game felt sluggish It felt like if I saw something happening across the map, I wouldn't be able to get over there to do anything about it.
Maybe increase movement speed/game speed?
I was able to easily farm neutral units guarding scrap. I would leash them but my slow attack speed meant that I would loose aggro and they would start to return to their spawn positions before I would fire again and i'd have aggro again. I didn't have to micro at all to stay alive or to maintain this pattern
It made me feel like I was cheating in a way
Work on aggro release timings?
I killed an enemy hero but there was no "reward" for doing it
It made me feel like I had just killed another unit.
It might be nice to at least have a different death animation or explosion when you kill a hero.
I gained XP by killing stuff but I didn't see an XP bar anywhere on the screen
It made me feel confused because I didn't know how close I was to reaching the next level
I think here was a bar next to my level but maybe it was just a but or not implemented yet.
I gained gold but I didn't know where I was getting it from.
It made me feel confused because I needed gold but didn't know where to get it.
I'm assuming the gold came from killing mercenaries but I wasn't sure.
My army got wiped out and there was nothing to do for ~120 seconds until they respawned
It made me feel frustrated because there wasn't anything else to do while I waited.
I used the Deadeye ability but the outlined path of the shot didn't seem to match up with the actual shot taken.
Made me feel frustrated because I lined up a good shot and then when you see the red laser fire, it didn't follow the marked path.
I enjoyed not having to worry about building multiple kinds of buildings and managing a base, like it starcraft. On the flip side, I sort of missed having to manage my base because after my army got wiped, I had nothing to do but that would have been a good time (at least in Starcraft) to build more buildings or manage something.
It was also nice not having to worry about a unit cap, but it felt like because it didn't exist, it became really easy to snowball the match.
I was a little confused that you couldn't kill the opponent's unit producing buildings. I mean.. it makes sense because you can't build them but I lost my army once because I ran my army into the enemy base and the towers shot my down before I realized what was going on. It just felt odd since I think this is a first RTS I've play where there was a building I couldn't kill.
My game was 40+ minutes (43:55 to be exact) usually in a starcraft game or in LoL, it gets a little monotonous but there's always something interesting happening. In this case at around the 30min mark I felt like I just wanted the game to be over because everything felt like it was moving so slow.
At the end game, I had my unit producing structures maxed out, but I couldn't find any end game units. Maybe it was an oversight on my part but when I was reading the unit tool tips, I didn't see anything that screamed "I'M A SUPER BADASS END GAME UNIT" I didn't see anything super crazy being build by any of the bots either. It's feels a bit frustrating to play 40+ minutes and still be stuck using the same units you had access to 15 min into the game.
I really like having all hotkeys for all selected units available at all times (rather than having to hit Tab until you have the right unit selected like it Starcraft)
Not sure how many of these things are just personal preferences and which ones should actually be fixed xP anyhow, Atlas seems to be a pretty solid game, looking forward to see how to develops!
Preface: I am terrible at RTS games unless I'm following a very specific build order - In SC2 I generally have a losing record in Bronze League and so rarely play against people or even moderate AI and stick to the single player campaigns.
After three games of getting pounded on playing hydros, my fourth game ended just as demoralizing with an Alt+F4 as I was tired of feeling so weak.
I felt my team mate bots were more of a detriment than helpful, I rarely could get any gems as they were being stolen by my team mates while I was trying to fight the neutral things near expansions. There were many times I was killing neutral minions for gems and my team mates would steal the gem and keep walking towards something else and not help me kill the neutral minions
They helped me feel useless trying to play as Hydros. One game I had three bases (a 4/4, 2/2, 2/2) and always felt so broke, despite my enemies seeming to always have a ton of units. Though they did teach me the value of teaming up. Every battle seemed to be 2 v 1, generally with me being on the 1 side. When my friendly bots happened to be nearby and we could get a 2 v 1 the results were similar, but in our favor.
They always seemed a lot more powerful than Hydros, when their AI didn't have them running into a wall allowing me to surround them hoping to kill the hero so their minions would flee before getting trounced.
I was really confused with what to do with all of my green gear resource. I had thousands of it, but nothing to spend it on I could see as I was always gem starved. Hydros' limited anti air made capturing the gem farms nigh impossible while also trying to defend. So I would sit there broke on regular money, broke on gems, and a couple thousand green gear items.
In general I always just felt very weak. I played all of my games with Hydros, and when trying the AA shield makers I never had enough units and just got overwhelemed by too many enemy forces. And when using the other units anything in the air or with a ranged attack seemed to get in a lot of attacks to my melee units before i could reach them, if I could reach them. The initial Hydros units felt like SC1 dragoons, very slow and with terrible pathing when A-moving towards a group of enemies. There were a few instances where they bounced back and forth trying to find a better way to get into melee range without ever finding it, like they were stuck in a local minima and could not escape.
I think for people who are completely terrible, some form of introduction on when to try and upgrade your base for new units could be helpful. For example in SC2 with the Zerg race your tier of units are gated by your Hatchery/Lair/Hive tech. Being able to just make the 'lair' (level 2 base) right away added more confusion as to which units I should actually be trying for.
Scrap appears to be a kind of Tertiary resource here, which is to say you end up with a ton by the end of the game cause it's not all that important.
Leviathan.
For context of my background, I've been playing RTS games from the beginning, with Dune 2 and others from that time frame.
Overall I think playing the vs bot was a great help. I was able to look around the UI, read about the different units in game, look around the map at resources, without having to worry about the play experience of other players.
One factor that frustrated me was I kept wanting to click the portraits on the top left of the screen for the units to either select them or just highlight them for stats/descriptions.
Another factor that was frustrating was of the resources and requirements for building units and upgrades, only gold and gems were fully explained. The tiers were sufficiently explained as to how to pay for them and that units have requirements to level, but it took watching the video a second time to figure out the lightning bar was the tier requirement, and I don't believe the green (scrap?) resource was ever explained how to gather.
Just wrapped up my first couple of bot games, had a very good first impression!
Brief personal intro/background - I'm mostly a League of Legends players as far as current RTS games go, but played ladder in Wings of Liberty SC2 (4 gate 2 diamond!) and casual Warcraft 3 for years.
I came into my first match having watched the Day[9] introductory video start to finish and spectated a random recent replay from within the browser client. Right off the bat, the interface felt familiar, even in its unfinished state. (Will write up more thorough feedback on the interface and controls, elsewhere) Once I had gotten a small force of tier 1 squad units and began to move about and explore the map, I did start to feel that the overall movement and pacing of the game felt somewhat sluggish. It felt like it took a while to respond to enemy movement on the map, but it also took a while for whatever move the enemy was making to feel threatening or impactful. Throughout all of the games I played, I always felt like I wanted more Coin, and never had enough to quite merit diverting it into upgrades instead of getting additional squad units.
In my first game, I wound up with a mountainous stockpile of unused scrap and only built a couple mercenaries. In my second, I made a conscious effort to try and focus on buying and utilizing a few tier 1 and tier 2 mercs, as well as more aggressively seeking out and posturing for control of the middle-spawning gems. By doing so, the scrap and gem income I had wound up feeling way more in tune and meaningful. This also made Coin feel less insanely precious, but not so much that I didn't want more.
I found myself frequently slightly annoyed at the hero 'T' cooldown when gathering gems. Particularly when an allied bot hero and I were both in the area, and both happened to be targeting the same gems in order. With the game being team focussed and gems spawning with specific team alignments, it felt silly to be competing for resources with allies and entering odd standoffs while our hero's both waited for 'T' to come back up. One instance where this particularly felt wrong was assisting an allied force take out a mid-range titan camp. Their hero was busy or had died in the fight, but they were still dedicating their troops to taking down the titans. My army was still small by comparison, but hero was nearby and this allowed me to capture all the reward gems that spilled out as loot for their efforts. Being a robot, they didn't mind, but this seems like a pretty nasty window for griefing between human players. While the I can see the cooldown being important to avoid spamming it onto an oddly placed gem in the middle of a fight for a free dps soaking hp pool or other weird edge-cases, the resource being player-specific doesn't make much sense to me. I'd much rather see gems as a shared-gathering resource (though not as a shared-spending-pool, i.e. the team gathers a gem from the middle worth 10, I spend 5 immediately, my teammates both still have 10 to spend at their leisure) that it's important for everyone to fight the other team for control over, but not worry about managing who gets diverted what on a micro level. At the macro level, it might still be interesting to have gems that come from bases and mining workers still be player specific so that diverting strategies can still be done, but at a scale that's easier to recognize, coordinate, and agree upon.
Overall, I had fun! I felt like I had much more of a concept of everything going on and what to do even in my second game. The bots seemed to lead a good, simple path to follow (Ah, I see they are taking this camp with that much of a force, that seems reasonable. Ah, I see they are now expanding to there, that makes sense. Ah, I see they are pushing down a lane together, I should join. Etc.)
Looking forward to Sunday, can't wait to play with people!
I will keep my responses short and simple, hopefully this will help your QA team.
This is my responses after playing my first game WITHOUT watching the Tutorial
I never figured out or collected a single (pink) gem the entire 52 min match --- I spent a great deal of time trying placing wards and spamming keys with my hero unit(Celesta) eventually just gave up. --- I don't know how you would fix my confusion (I will watch the tutorial and play another game)The Purifier model feels way smaller than its hitbox --- The units seem to collide awkwardly when trying to micro --- I would suggest increasing the size of the model to show the Purifier's actual size.
The temporary shield bar on the towers is pink --- I felt like it was some attack bar before I drew the correlation between the two --- Change the color of the bar to be more mutedI never built Mercs the entire game --- going back to the gems, I felt like the mercs weren't a necessary game mechanic --- my only opinion is that if mercs are important, they should be simpler to understand in game UI
I couldnt close the chat box in the post game lobby --- I felt like I should be able to close the chat box to see the post game lobby window --- make the chat box close-able or hide-able`
I will now watch the entire video Day9tv has on Atlas and study it closely and play another game. Thanks again for the Beta invite :D
I have been playing Grath. With my hero and first three units I have been going up to the titan camp just north of where I spawn and soloing it for the gems. While I am cleaning up the rest of the camp, my bot ally usually comes over to the lane and steals some of the gems that are on the ground, which is annoying considering I spent my time clearing the camp so I could have an early influx of gems. I think it's ok to compete for the gems that spawn in the middle of the maps but I don't like the fact that my allied bots will steal the gems from the camps I clear.
Edit with replay: Gfea6bc0596e341eeb916a1c043e2b50c
Prime example right here. Once I kill the second titan at the camp, my greedy bot friend Hydros sees all the gems on the ground and waltzes over to grab some for himself. It turns out this was actually a detrimental move since he pulls the surviving titan from the camp he was working on into our shared worker line, and it kills workers for the next ~3 minutes of the game as they spawn. You can also see in the replay that he comes back to finish off the titan that is killing the workers, but once the gems in the middle of the map spawn, he immediately pulls away and heads to the middle of the map, leaving the titan to kill more workers. It seems the bots prioritize gathering gems a little bit too much.
Played 3 Atlas games (and was finally able to win!!!). The rts games I played/have experience with: praetorians, wc3 campaign, sc bw (1v1 vs friends), all sc2 games (diamond-ish league), battle for middle earth.
BOT PLAY
x happened
-1) I got destroyed the first 2 games and the third game was around 50 mins. 2) Bots helped me learned because I would look at their army composition. 3) Fun to play against, but I won because they would run away/not fight back and I would destroy most of their army. 4) A little confused, I will mention it my feedback section
It made me feel/or I'd like to feel y
-1) Made me feel sad but I also wanted to keep playing to get better. 2) A little lost on what my army comp should be. 3) But when I won, I didn't feel like it was fair because I would using their ai design against them. 4) n/a
Suggestions to improve
-1) Not sure, there is a steep learning curve. 2) n/a this feeling is expected for playing a new rts (or even a new game in general). This answer also covers number 1). 3) Many games have ai designs that can be exploited. This isn't a problem because Atlas is focused of pvp. 4) n/a
FIRST IMPRESSION
x happened
-1) The fighting gameplay is very fun, visually and strategically. 2) It is awesome to have all the abilities in one spot compared to tabbing through different units. 3) The text in the top left corner in the game is small, especially the numbers for the timer. 4) I felt like I had a lot of scraps. 5) The enemy bots pushed 1 lane and me and my bots were split. 6) There is a lot of choices I can make in the game. 7) Map layout is big.
It made me feel/or I'd like to feel y
-1) Heightened the enjoyment of the game! 2) Not overly complicated even though there are many units with spells. 3) I felt distracted because it was hard to understand what the text represented because I couldn't read it. Another thing that wasn't mentioned was what caused a longer respawn timer for squads. 4) It made me feel like I was playing the game wrong (which I probably was..) In my experience, I would have a lot of scraps then proceed to upgrade everything/buy items to spend it. I think I would have a buildup because the game starts with me "mining" scraps. 5) I felt helpless because my team wasn't together or we were far apart and our units felt slow . 6) Made me feel AWESOME! Even though I haven't played many games, I am starting to see the various timings and strategies I can make. 7) A little confusing the first 3 games I played because I wasn't sure which "camps" to capture or where the lanes connected or where the bushes were.
Suggestion to improve
-1) n/a. 2) n/a. 3) I watched Day9's video and read the text but I wasn't sure if it was the level or game length that causes the respawn time to be longer. I would like an easier way to read the numbers for the upper left box, whether it's physically changing the size or even clarifying what the numbers represent. 4) Not sure. Probably felt this way because I'm still a noob 5) Not sure. This won't be too much of a problem when there are human players because of the interaction/communication. 6) n/a. 7) I would like to be able to preview the map before the game or on this website?? This way, I can study what resources are where, what the lanes look like, where the camps are, etc while I'm NOT in the middle of a game.
IN CONCLUSION...
I enjoyed the game. I would say it has a steep learning curve, even having experience in rts games. I believe I learned the most my third game compared to my first and second. But I can't wait to play another game to learn more! The game does feel a little slow late game with masses of units or a lack of units and trying to catch up. I noticed there was a lot of body blocking, which isn't a bad thing imo. Reminds me of wc3/sc.
With that being said, this is my FIRST impression. After a week of playing more bot games and playing OTHER squads (so stoked to play all of the squads), I am sure that my opinions will change; things will start to click and strategies will fall into place. I am ready to learn a lot! It definitely is hard to have a firm opinion on a brand new rts. I foresee a lot of feedback will say Atlas is difficult to grasp, especially since there are 8 squads (and only 6 different squads maximum are played in 1 game!), a dump of knowledge, and information of the units/abilities. I am very curious to hear players' opinions after playing Atlas for more than a couple weeks (and playing with real people)! I would like to see a feedback thread that isn't a first impression and something like an impression after x amount of weeks/x amount of games. This is an interesting and fun game, looks good!
I definitely agree, I also played three games as Celesta (won all three) and I never even explored the bottom two thirds of the map. It might as well not even existed. The top expands seem important but the shortest rush point is two towers covering the mid north mid lane(the one with the super titan camp) I never really needed to pressure anything else.
All that being said, I question the intelligence of the bots (Celesta's ulti is a nuke of which the AI never seems to micro out) so maybe PvP will open up more strategies)
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
- Cool game style but very confusing once the game started. Even after watching the tutorials which were great at experiencing the game controls, I didn't feel like I learned about the game concept. Maybe a strategy tutorial required? Also gold was never really explained as far as I remember.
Did they help you learn the game?
- No not really. I think more pop-ups similar to the tutorial where Day9 acted as the pop-up during a match, of course only if you want.
Were they fun to play against?
- They were fine but I feel they let me win at the end. I had no idea what I was doing and was able to beat them.
Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
- How I won. My strat wasn't very good, or maybe it was :S, just sort of aimlessly wandering collecting things.
When providing feedback, please use the following format:
X happened
It made me feel Y (or I’d like to feel Y)
(optional) Here’s a suggestion to improve it
So this are my thoughts from the first game I played. I had a rough idea of what to do after watching Day9's explanation of an opener and what to do, but once I actually got in it felt a little overwhelming because of all the things that were going on. However, small design choices like unit creation from 2 buildings and not having to tab through all your units to access their skills make me feel like the game is very welcoming of new players, which I absolutely love.
About the bots, I was playing as the assassin/sniper hero (Vela?, don't know the names yet) and trying to keep my distance from the enemies, and I would just notice that they would try to relentlessly capture one of the small nodes on the ground, despite me being there picking their units apart, and sometimes one of the melee heroes would just walk into my army and sort of get stuck, as if he had only been given a move command.
One of my concerns is the health bar of the units: the color of hp and attack cooldown are so similar it is hard to tell them apart, and my units would often die without me realizing they were low on health, making it hard to try to make them retreat safely. Also, I think it would be helpful to be able to click on units (both yours and other players´) and see their name or some sort of stats, just to know what exactly you are up against, since the models alone don't really tell much, besides how beefy a particular unit may be.
The map was... big but small. The minimap didn't help much as I wasn't familiar with what each thing was, and I noticed I never actually stepped into the bottom of the map, where my third ally was. I took a quick glance at the resources there, and saw that there was only one platform for expanding, so I never actually bothered going there. That place must be the solo territory.
I actually found myself saying "That was actually really fun" after the game, something I haven't done in a while, so I want to congratule the team at Artillery and hope you can keep polishing this game.
Here's my feedback so far on the bot-play. Positives first, than negatives.
PROS:
I really like having all the the macro-management consolidated into three buildings. Not needing to juggle around 15 different structures is refreshing,
I LOVE not having to manage workers.
The core gameplay mechanic of getting players interacting through gems is excellent. I love it as a way to reward constant scouting and maneuvering around the map. Capturing gems feels good,
The unit respawning feels great; I really liked not feeling totally punished for losing a bunch of units.
I thoroughly enjoy the concept of choosing my squad before the match. I didn't feel as if any kind of "Style" was missing from the current choices.
CONS:
I was (and still am) confused about how all the resources work exactly. There are three different types, and they are not entirely intuitive. I get that Gold accumulates automatically, but are my workers increasing the rate it increases? Where is my Scrap coming from? Do I get it from the workers or from killing enemies? The Gems are more straightforward, but what are the differences between smaller and larger gems? I think all of these should be clearer in the tooltips. And do you really NEED Scrap as a resource? It feels a little bloated to me, managing these three things that are all obtained in different ways. I think it would be more elegant to just have one resource that rewards you for expanding your base (Gold) and one resource that rewards you for controlling the map (Gems).
Speaking of Gems: They feel so central to the game, so I wonder why there seems to be no in-game warning/notification about when/where they are about to spawn. It was definitely confusing not knowing when I should be preparing to scout out for gems.
Also RE: Gems- I felt like I was always missing opportunities to take advantage of being near my opponents' gems when the opponents weren't around. It would be really satisfying to be able to pre-emptively deny gems to my opponents in some way, other than just camping them.
I also felt confused by the XP mechanics. I understand that killing enemies gives my Hero XP, but I'm lost without any kind of XP bar to tell me how close I am to a level up, and for the longest time I didn't even know where my Hero's level was displayed. I'm still unsure what Level Ups even do, other than unlock a new ability at Level 6.
It feels very annoying to always have to click back to my base to build or redeploy units. Am I missing some way to hotkey structures/units? If I am I can't figure out how.
I'll mention something other people have too: The map just feels really, really big. For the few games I've played, I felt like if something was happening on the other end of the map, I just had to ignore it because by the time I got there, any kind of conflict would be done by then.
@kromagnon Thanks for the initial impressions! I'm eager to hear how things feel after a few games. I ideally want Atlas to be a game that takes a little bit of time to "get the hang of" before you can start playing the game. Kinda like throwing a frisbee! Takes a bit of time to do a basic throw, but once you can, you can begin playing Ultimate Frisbee!
@Koy super sorry you had such a rough few initial games. Hydros is a particularly difficult squad to solo. His entire set of units is very tanky/supporty, so he really needs a damage dealing ally to support in order to be successful. As you suggest, the bots are pretty unreliable when it comes to helping you out. I might suggest trying a more damage focused squad (Vex/Eris/Celesta) or a more self sustaining squad (Grath/Alder).
In a few months, we hope the core game is nailed down enough to build an excellent on boarding and tutorialing experience. Also, we've been hearing from a ton of people (even in this thread) that scrap income feels a bit too high.
Wow I think you are correct. I underexplained scrap compared to gold/gems. Apologies for the confusion. To answer your question, scrap is gathered from the green pools at expansions!
Oh god! Atlas is a game where, currently, you really cannot function without watching that tutorial. Later on we'll have a more robust in-game tutorial but the video recording is simple enough for our rapid iteration style.
Re: your comments, I completely expect that reaction given the no-tutorialiage. Lemme know how things feel after a few games (and especially at PvP!)
Ok, This is my fourth game and I played as Hydros (three games as Celesta, 4/4 win rate)
Hydros is underpowered --- I made this as a factual statement because Hydros was definitely way harder to play than my three Celesta games --- I guess PvP can change how Hydros plays in a practical sense, but in bot play he needs some more damageThe bots never check the north expand --- The only reason I won this game was because I took the north expand and held it freely, this let me spam 5 Leviathans and push with my ally bot(Squad was still dead) --- if you want the bots to feel smarter, they need better scouting habitsDefinitely having fun, micro still feels awkward and Hydros struggles with this because his T1 unit is a huge melee tank, models dont match my "expected" hitbox
Now that I have had a chance to play a game with each hero. I feel like I can say the game feels "awkward". But only in a sense that it is completely different from the norm (than what DOTA and League are). The game is a good "awkward". It took a few games to definitely get used to the controls and I can not really comment on the balance design just yet without playing PvP. I can feel a huge difference from each squad when I play them.
Both Vex/Eris, Celestal/Vela naturally dominate against bots due to their high damage output. While the other squads take slightly longer for obvious reasons of how their designed. I can't wait to put the squads together to get some really interesting combos going between the squads. On average if I am playing Red or Silver squads the games are taking me 25-30 minutes. While if I am playing Blue/Green squads they while take slightly longer. Just my gut feeling but I am guessing games will go longer if the game mode are PvP, as people play cautiously as they get a feel for the game.
I do feel, however, that the Charms will need some work. I forget the name of the charm without being in game, but the ability to shut down structures for 12 seconds seems absurdly long. I was able to shut a tower down and take it out with a small army. The movement speed buff cool down feels like it should be shorter than it is. That's just my opinion though.
I definitely need to play each squad at least five more times each to get a good feel for them too see if there are any faults or awesome combos to pull off. Maybe even play in parties against bots.
There was one bug I noticed in the interface though. The timer for resource collecting/expanding will flash/disappear after I use the ability.
And I'm not sure if this one is intentional or not but the ability to "leash" the titans from their camps is definitely apparent when you're playing Vela. I even saw some titans just not even react to being attacked. I am not sure if this would give a class a "huge" advantage over the other.
Overall, I do really enjoy the game and I can't wait for PvP so I can get a way better feel for the game and its balance design. You guys are doing an amazing job with this game and I can't wait to play this game as it progresses through the stages of release. ^^
edit: Also gold income feels incredibly slow. Up to you guys if you like faster games or not I suppose.
double edit: (I just keep getting more thoughts). Lastly, I think players should be "punished" a bit more for losing their core hero. The death timer on them is incredibly short.
-Cheers
bliss/Jeremy
p.s. I apologize for the grammar issues haha.
Thanks so much for leaving the feedback @bliss! In a sense, we're definitely going for something "awkward" as you put it :D. LoL/Dota/SC2 are all awesome games and we wanted to do something quite different/unique compared to the existing games out there.
Charms ABSOLUTELY need a ton of work. I'd actually say our entire merc/charm/econ/squad system needs lots of tweaks in the coming months. The goal of these systems is to see if they work as knobs in the game. Should we have charms or not? Did players enjoy getting charms or not? We're hoping to get a clear answer out of TW2 to develop them down the road!
Also, gold inc will very likely change immediately post TW2
I have just finished my 5th game, Ryme (3 Celeste, 1 Hydros)
Ryme didn't seem to have my usual complaints with unit collision --- The ranged units Ryme had never seemed to collide awkwardly like Hydros did --- Make no changesGoing to play all the squad commanders -EmperorRahem
Haha you're a legend EmperorRahem. I imagine you with a radio giving reports to commandHQ at designated times. It's fantastic for us to see the way your opinion evolves! Also 5 games hell yeah!!! :D
I loved using the charms! They were the first items I would get in a PvP game, I feel. They were also the first items I would spend my scrap on since I am still farming gems, and clearing titan camps when I get my first 400 scrap.