Comparison
So I was in the last beta weekend and I've found the time to play a handful of games. I wanted to compare the two experiences and put the thoughts down before they get away from me.
Generally speaking, I feel like the game flows better. I can point to the map restructuring, the new third resource, and some mechanical tweakage but whatever changes have been made have been an overall positive.
I do miss being able to get a gold lead on my opponent and being able to build up my core army faster. Maybe you can and I haven't noticed. And actually, it means that gold is the in-game incarnation of time as a resource, which is kind of cool and this is getting deeper than I meant to. Point is, I kind of miss being able to get ahead in terms of regular army, but I suppose that's fixed by access to mercs earlier. I'll have to experiment.
I like Ryme's new ultimate a lot better than his last one, but I kept wondering why I was building the frostcaller(sp?) unit. The old freeze-psi-storm move was really solid, and while the heal is kinda cool I guess, I can't really figure out how I'm supposed to use the other ability. It might be great and I just don't get it. The change to the Ice Frog move is probably for the best, as "press R to freeze the enemy army" might have been a little OP.
The gems in the middle of the map felt really far away, and especially really early in the game I didn't feel comfortable venturing that far away from my base that early in the game, especially since my AI buddies seemed to feel the same, focusing instead on neutral creeps. This stands in contrast to last beta weekend, when I was perched ready to start snapping those gems up right at the beginning of the game.
Speaking of AI buddies, there may have been a change in their threat assessment or something, because a few times I was fighting along side one of them, and we were clearly winning, and the buddy just walked away. In one of my games, we were attacking the enemy throne (don't know what to call it in this game off the top of my head) and when he saw the enemy show up to defend, he bailed and I lost my army, leaving the nexus with some 3-5% life left. If he had stayed we probably would have won right there. That said, I understand that the AI is probably not the focus of tweaking the game right now.
The mercs are a lot better already than last time around. The amount of mercs and the way that system advances is a little overwhelming at first, but I haven't used a merc so far and felt like it wasn't contributing, and I haven't been slow-pushed into oblivion by a whole bunch of turret-ward combinations or anything like that. I gotta say I love those little cubes.
Speaking of wards, I kind of missed them (the new wards feel kind of weak) until I discovered the non-observer observer (invis flying scouting unit). That filled the utility void for me.
Flyers add more to the game than I was expecting, especially since most of them seem to be siege or utility oriented. I don't have to worry about getting mutalisk rushed as Hydros or something. Flyers are very hard to select, though.
I do miss having a little spot to heal. I don't know if there's a healer merc I missed other than the active combat takes-damage-gives-heals guy, but being able to deploy a spot on the ground during a lull in the battle to heal my guys up was something I took advantage a lot of, and having units get one shot at the beginning of the next battle sucks. You tend to overestimate your strength going into the next battle. Or at least I do.
Anyway, that's all that stood out that comes to mind for me at the moment. I'm sure I'll remember a half-dozen other things in the next ten minutes but such is life and my brain.
Comments
Welcome back KonTiki! Some notes:
I'm excited to see how PvP feels for you!