Playtest 195: Travel Speed and New Eris Ult!
Treisk
Member, Administrator
Playtest 195: Travel Speed and New Eris Ult!
General Changes
- The movement speed of ALL UNITS in the game (with the exception of the Worker) has been increased by ~15%!
Squads
Eris
- Eris
- New Ultimate: SandStorm - For 12 seconds, Eris's attacks fire line shots. For the duration, her movement speed is slowed by 30%. Can be reactivated to end the effect early.
Comments
Awesome, was hoping for the movement speed change for awhile!
The new movespeed was SO SICK™! It made the map not feel so huge and battles were a lot more fun!
Seems like the games pretty much played out the same way as before, though; just a lot more fun in the midgame.
Movement Speed Increase
(1.1) - I definitely had more key errors with the movement speed, simply from the pace of engagements getting into the bulk of the fight being faster. That aside, the speed was fun. One side effect I hadn't thought of was that it de-syncs the expansions and first gem wave, one game we got to the middle quite a bit ahead of what I would have expected based on our comp.
(1.2) - I personally didn't mind the slower movement before, and now I would almost say I prefer the slower movement speed, as during this test it was feeling like I had less time to think. With slow movement, units and decisions feel heavy, like a strategic consideration. With the faster speed, it feels much more reactive. The old balance of vision radius, mini-map use, and movement speed felt more balanced for my skill level. Tonight, it didn't feel like vision was enough for me to react quickly.
(1.3) - However, I can see benefits in this. Games felt a bit faster (though game time might seem to indicate they stayed about the same). It felt more throwaway (in a positive sense).
Sandstorm
(2.1) - Definitely took a couple tries to figure out this ult. It was confusing because there wasn't obvious feedback when it was activated, and so it was very easy to reactivate and cancel the ult before a first shot was fired. However, once one knew what to expect, it was pretty fun to use, as it felt like it had a very high risk/reward factor. Despite being fun, it didn't feel like it was that useful. This is mainly due to the combination of activation time (maybe it was just activated far away from the next normal attack?) and the movement slow. You get very few shots before surface area reduces the benefit of a line shot.
(2.2) - I'd like the ult more if it fired an initial shot immediately (attack reset), so you got at least one initiative shot out of it.
Movement speed was, in general, a great change. It made crossing lanes a much smoother process and I saw much more cross map play. However, specifically for Celesta, its absurd. Wisps are unreal fast. Chasing them down to try to do damage to them was virtually impossible, so no fights happened that the Celesta player didn't want to happen.
There's been enough feedback about the current state of mercenaries and the end game, so I won't pile onto that beyond saying that the game currently feels solved.
I find some amount of fault with the idea that the most important aspect of games is that they end. Rosewater's 10 Things Every Game Needs address the problem the best under the heading inertia. That games have some inherent thing pushing them towards conclusion. In Atlas, that's having more and more powerful units available. However, if the units at the top end outclass everything before them, than its not a game anymore. Its a race. There's no choice currently, its build exactly these units, as many as possible, as fast as you can. The game ends, but at the cost of having any real gameplay. I would argue that number one on MaRo's list, having a clear goal, is the most important aspect of games. Having a way to accomplish that goal is important, but not as important as understanding the goal in the first place. Other games with simply stated goals: Reduce your opponent's life total to 0, Destroy the enemy nexus, Plant the bomb/defuse the bomb. Having player's get frustrated that the game goes on too long is more a function of having unclear goals than having unclear paths most of the time. When the path is too obvious and 'built in' than everything between the start and the end of the game is irrelevant.
Hey!
Speed Changes
I did not explicitly notice the movement speed changes. I did feel like the game played smoothly and don't recall thinking "I wish my units weren't so slow" a single time.
A couple times during the game I lost some units or had a few poor engagements because I was busy doing something else on the map and I got attacked. I think this is because I didn't expect the units to travel that fast and so my timings were a bit off. By the end of my first game I felt this less as I got more used to the new speed.
Now while I didn't notice the movement speed DIRECTLY "like whoa my raptors are super quick" I did feel less restricted to go to another lane and did in fact perform some "ganks" I also saw my opponents go into other lanes more often.
Eris
I played against an Eris but I didn't notice her ult.
oooh, one other note, for whatever reason last night, bottom side, 2's lane, middle early expansion, one of the titans prioritized workers on the starting base (across the tree line). Will look for replay when home.
It does that for me too when I try to kite. I think its because workers at the expo can be closer or "in range" of the titans while your kiting units aren't. I don't complain because it makes it easier to kite but yeah.. Titan mechanics
I, too, did not really notice the movement speed changes. I only had time for one game and played as Hydros. I can't say I ever felt frustrated by speeds for engaging/disengaging, but I did still feel somewhat helpless when my bottom ally (Lef) pinged for assistance. I'm not saying I'd want even faster movement speed to compensate, I think that can probably be better addressed with map updates.
To put down into writing something which we talked about yesterday, combat in the game definitely feels pretty fun to me, but ultimately it feels somewhat pointless right now. It's not hard to take and defend expansions, so we're just biding time until our resources are high enough to get the end units to kill the nexus. It doesn't matter if I get good engagements and repeatedly save my units while chipping away at the opponent's because hero level doesn't really seem to impact the flow of the game. It feels like the game will be decided after time x:00, everything before that is just for giggles.
I completely understand that having a game go long is even worse because I start to feel more nihilistic as time goes on, so I do think having the capability to end the game is absolutely the lesser of two evils! I'm also aware that y'all are aware of this and working on it, I just wanted to put my thoughts down in a reference-able fashion than having it be something that was said to Treisk in Discord.
I also enjoyed the slight movement speed increase. It didn't feel overwhelming, but I had an easier sense of moving about the map. It felt a bit more fluid engaging and trying to establish unit positions.
I love the speed increase.
Other notes/topics
* The short circuit charm is awesome, I really like the design. It allows squad units without much (or any) merc support take towers down efficiently.
A few people have already given their feedback, and I have similar things to say. I mostly played Hydros on Wednesday night.
That final point should be really paired with a Replay of when I tried to use Hydros independently, and while in the game he felt like he was most effective when I moved him into the 2v2 zone, away from his starting point in the 1v1 zone. In the 1v1 area, he was paired against his dirty evil twin brother Ryme, a ranged support with the ability to do damage, but lacking staying power as compared to Hydros. GameID: Gc07c4abe649a4802a3d96a78b23028ba