Playtest 201: Earlier Ults, More Adjustments!
Treisk
Member, Administrator
Playtest 201: Earlier Ults, More Adjustments!
TL;DR - Earlier ults, some Merc adjustments, reworked Steel Bangle Level 3
General Gameplay
Hero ultimate abilities now unlock at level 8!
Squads
Eris
- Apocalyte
- Destructive Prophecy (E) has new VFX!
Mercenaries
- Artillery Cube
- Bonus damage to Titans: 400% ⇒ 200%
- Teleporter
- Has a new model and animations!
- Speed Aura Bonus Movement Speed: 20% ⇒ 8%
Items
Steel Bangle
- Level 3
- No longer has the Thorns passive
- Now has Thorns as an active ability. Grants 100% thorns for 4 seconds when activated.
Questions
- How did you feel about gold in the game? How did it change the way you played?
- What did you think of the XP system? What did you think about the "chunks" of XP from various actions? What did you think about getting scrap every level? What did you think about tech level = XP level?
- What did you think about the updated item store?
- What did you think about mercs in this new system?
Comments
I like the fact that Eris got some love, but i think the early game of Eris wouldn't mind a buff, this hero is like millions times harder than Ryme. And a bit more chaos in the ability would be fun, a power even the player cannot predict; like , shoot one random power of other heroes or something crazy like this.
Central time, so only one game.
Had first yellow. Obvious we were outclassed by that point, so it pretty much served the purpose of ending the game. Probably could have just surrendered at that point.
Easily get confused when repurchasing units. Got too many T2s at one point because I don't know the totals yet, saw 2 (total was really 4) and bought 2 more.
Other team worked together to kited titans and set up expansions. There were playing better anyway, more advanced XP made it even easier to win battles.
Also saw them picking off workers on the topmost expansion which borders the center common area, from the center area - it may have actually been a mistake for us to take that titan camp, because it allowed them to farm XP.
At the moment I'm doing pretty much the same thing - damage buffs for damage squads, etc. I think I'll need to get more comfortable with the base game before I start playing with combos.
I still forget to use them. Again feel like I need to get comfortable with the base game before I start riffing. Saw the better players using some cubes.
Possible mechanical smoothing given current systems:
By default rebuild the same units when you lose them. You can reconfigure up until they deploy. Main issue would be interface - you'd need a way to remove or reset pending units.
I have to remember to spend scrap. For items pick a queue before the game; when you get the skill point, it's immediately available. You can reconfigure unreached items during the game.
I think ults did need to be moved to an earlier level, so I like the change. Didn't even get to use my ult sometimes previously.
I like the water by the hard camp. I see you, graphics guys.
Overall, I'm enjoying this build. The changes in the last few weeks have brought most of my games down to under 30 minutes, and it feels possible to end the games without relying too heavily on mercs.
It feels like the gold is in a much better place this week. The threat of running out is more noticeable and it makes picking engagements throughout the game more crucial to how the rest of the game will unfold. Suicide squads are still an option, but you better be damn sure you are putting your team in a good position if you are throwing away units throughout the game.
I was on the fence about XP earlier, but I'm more on board now. It make it clear how XP is being pulled in and how you should be spending your time. That being said, gems collecting doesn't feel as crucial as it once did when I was saving up for a massive juggernaut push (not that I want this back).
I like getting scrap each level, but it might be interesting to be able to earn an additional scrap here or there. Maybe adding scrap to the side bases with a long cooldown before it returns one scrap. That would put additional emphasis on the side bases and give us another point to contest/defend on the map.
I've been terrible about sticking with the same items since this originally got changed over. I need to experiment here, but in general I like those extra options to be there to add some variety to play styles.
I think the limit on the mercs (4) is my favorite part of the current build. It allows me to spice in a few mercs throughout the game, while still maintaining the focus on the squad which is the cornerstone of the game. The fact that they aren't absolutely necessary to finish out a game is another great improvement.
Only thing I really noticed in this build was ults moving to level 8. I think that was great, ults actually play a major part in the game now and you'll usually get to ults before the game ends. Last build the game was ending just as leading players got ults, so they had only token effect.
G814d77c2f16d4dbdb9573a01aca3ebaa is a good game I had on this build. The nexus health from last time really kicked in to allow a back and forth battle with both nexuses taking damage and both players having time to defend. Most importantly, despite resources running down to the wire at the end all players got to their ults and so had those available for a lot of big end-of-game fights.
Shame I had forgotten how to aim pyroblast properly.
It felt good when I played Grath and realized my higher hero level was probably due to harassing workers. However, it's usually hard to judge the significance, both in XP gained and XP denied.
It also felt good to harass healing towers with moderate forces of rocket turtles (4-5). The turtles hit hard enough to force the opponents to deal with it, but not hard enough to kill it before they could arrive. I was able to kill the tower on one such raid (opponents didn't go back to defend) but unable to on another (opponents did go back).
It felt bad as Grath to try to clear camps with flying titans, especially when solo lane or not paired with a ranged ally. As a T1-melee faction, your basic units cannot perform a basic part of the game.
The gold limit was much less noticeable as Grath than as Vela, probably it was easier to press healing towers and harder to lose whole armies.
Army and upgrade selection feel much cleaner in the XP system, and the ability to switch composition is great. The power spike at level 8 feels jarring, especially for heroes (like Grath) whose tier 3 is much stronger than its cost. Your charm power spikes AND your hero power spikes AND your army power spikes, all at the same time.
Collecting gems felt lower impact than PvE now that they pay in the same currency. This added a few minutes of ignoring the other team to the start of every game. If gems were required for important things early (such as building expansions), or even if the cooldowns weren't shared (so your hero could start the expo, then run out to claim gems while your units clear the titans) there would be more reason to see the opponents. (It would also be interesting late-game if gems starting paying out stock.)
Gems usually felt like a thing to pick up because I'm near them or I can't think of anything useful to do, not a thing I'd fight the opponent for. Ward-planting and ward-denial felt like stronger reasons to be out on the map.
Liked the earlier ults, could use it to good effect on at least one game. Had fun battling it out, desperately trying to defend the nexus. Got to play some more Hydros, trying to build it as a tank/support.
Some pain points for me:
* Alder. A squad so ridiculously good at zoning, regen, cc and resource efficiency should at least need some setup in order to be effective. Right now feels like a broodlord that shoots forcefielding marauders, and that's before the aoe root hero power.
* Flying titans and flying wards as melee. The titans I can see being a fair tradeoff. Not being able to clear some jungle camps in exchange for easy tanking of others. Not to be able to clear vision though feels very punishing as its effect ripples through everything else.
* Automatic and unchangeable lane assignments amplify the above.
* Got both tanky upgrades and heal/shield mercs and the squad still felt very squishy. My control is still terrible though and maybe the squad really blossoms with t3's? I'm trying to avoid going damage upgrades because at that point might have as well picked an actual dps squad.
A quick note here -- The last two playtests have been focused less on making major adjustments to the systems (which obviously have their problems) and more on making the necessary minor tweaks to help us continue collecting reasonable data while we work on longer-term solutions to those underlying systems. These last two playtests have basically been "People are ignoring everything and backdooring the Nexus at level 8, let's adjust Nexus HP!" and "Tri-Star is too good for everyone, let's dial it back to the specialist item it was meant to be" and "Ults are coming in too late, let's unlock them earlier." And none of these are deep-rooted systemic issues that we're addressing in these builds. But it's important to note that we're constantly talking about (and working on) solutions to the bigger, deeper systemic problems.
Let's chat balance briefly, because this is fairly important to highlight (and is the bulk of your post)
As recently as a month ago (before we re-added stat upgrades/items, we could get away with a 10-15% imbalance between units. We had also just put focus and energy into adding variance to battles, to kinda shake up those 10-15% imbalances (things like making Vex's Scorch more difficult to hit and doubling down on squad mechanics like Mark). This lead to what was mostly a decent balance. Still not particularly balanced, but we sort of accept that as the nature of things this early on.
Fast-forward to now. These 10-15% imbalances still exist. And on top of those, we just added items that allow units to scale to as much as 350% of their base power. This means that those 10-15% imbalances suddenly become closer to 35-60% imbalances! And that's where a lot of the "super imbalanced" thing comes from. For example, right now, Celesta does outright WAY more DPS than Eris in a stand-up fight. And before, the 10-15% difference was cool because of the Q reset on Sandstingers. Now, though, Stinging Surge doesn't make up for that difference that ends up being almost a 50% DPS difference. And with the health upgrade, they end up more durable, too.
So in short, balance is a pretty big loudspeaker in any game (even a balanced one); and because our game is particularly imbalanced right now at full build (max items), that'll be even more of a loudspeaker. We're not turning a blind eye to those things by any means (and will continue to make adjustments to at least the major outliers in the short-term). But in these particular instances, we're focused on the bigger picture of how items shake things up; and as such, you'll see more adjustments to those than to squads.
Thanks for playtesting and for the post!
Worth noting -- We're discussing some possible loosening and/or untying of Scrap from Levels and how we might go about that, as part of a longer-term discussion about strategic depth to give us as robust and flexible of a system as possible.
WOO! I mean the merc cap thing still needs some work, but this is great to hear! We've still got to answer some questions integral to the Merc system (How do we make sure buying low-level mercs is still valuable lategame? When is it more worth it to buy a Merc than a squad unit, and how do we make doing so attractive?)
Thanks so much for the post!
WOO! Love hearing this! It was a bit of a bummer in previous builds to see one team get ults and the other not, and the game to kinda peter out before a big ult-filled fight got to break out. Having these moments in fights again is exciting. Awesome to hear!
JIMMY NOOOOO
And also thanks for the post and for testing! :D:D
Okay, first, gotta ask: Is it "Severed Evil" or "Severe Devil"? Rad name!
Another eventual goal of fully interfacing everything, even if only in something like a post-game stat screen! :D
Very cool. Love it.
We're actually toying internally with something that should help Grath out against those pesky flying camps. Hydros might continue to feel a little left out though (which we're slightly more okay with for now since Hydros in the 1v1 region is less attractive anyway and has a teammate he can rely on). No ETA but you'll know it when you see it!
Ooh, interesting. Cool to hear this. We've actually been a bit concerned in general with how much faster melee squads can potentially burn through Coin (and how that might make melee unattractive outright). Hearing a contrasting opinion on this is very cool. Thanks!
Yeah, everything spiking at 8 feels a bit extreme, but for the immediate time being, this is kind of okay. I think by the nature of being an RTS, it may be necessary for a power spike to be larger than it is in a MOBA. And this configuration helps us make that kind of decision. :D
It's opportunity cost right now, more than anything. If you get the fast PvE gems, you're missing a gem wave or two in the middle that you won't get back. However, if you contest the gem waves, you might end up with more EXP by, say, the 7 minute mark. This sort of routing is actually pretty cool, I think. That also isn't my way of saying "this stays;" it could totally not :P
So in your experience, everything else (expanding and PvE gemming) just felt more valuable than contesting the gem waves? Or was it just not worth risking Coin/supply to do so? Would love an elaboration on this!
Thanks so much for testing and posting!
I've missed the six tests prior to this, so hopefully I'm not too off-base or repeating things that have been said.
How did you feel about gold in the game? How did it change the way you played?
I like the idea of it, but the way things played out felt kind of bleh. Playing as Eris and Vela, I felt like I was being punished even harder during early titan clears, because before the stock-style updates, the only way to solo-clear titans early was by throwing units at them and using the short early respawn to make it through, whereas now, every unit lost to titans is a permanent setback for the entire game and that just feels comparatively super crappy.
I was also terrified to engage in fights for similar reasons. Sandstingers stopped feeling like my mostly-disposable all-in force, which sucks because in a weird way that's what I liked about them. This felt like less of an issue for Vela because the overall play pattern of "attack from far away because you're screwed if they get to you" was still there, and losing all your shit felt roughly as bad as before.
Another thought here is just how crappy the change from "coin is available" to "zero coin" felt. There's no gradual falloff here, just suddenly you're not allowed to play the game anymore but it's not over yet, like when someone blocks you off entirely in settlers of catan -- there's no way for you to win, but other people are still playing so you just have to tag along until it's over. Obviously in atlas your team could still pull through and win, but you don't get to help.
What did you think of the XP system? What did you think about the "chunks" of XP from various actions?
Love the experience parts. Chunks of XP building up from various sources felt great because progress bars are way more fun than they have any right to be.
That said, it felt weird for gems to be XP. The pull away from actual resource management feels weird too. Those are slightly negative-leaning instances of "weird", btw.
What did you think about getting scrap every level? What did you think about tech level = XP level?
In my three games this test, I only got to meaningfully use my ult in one of them, which also felt kind of butts. Having my higher-tier units locked behind XP also really hurt most of my strategies and playstyles, especially as Eris, because half-rushing those higher-tier units felt fun to me. I never even got to build Apocalytes in my Eris game, and those are usually my go-to for midgame fights to help soften things for Sandstingers.
Largely, tech level being tied to experience made my overall unit composition feel less flexible, or less in my control, or something. Unit composition felt more on-rails, to me.
Scrap every level as an overall squad power boost through items and upgrades, however, felt really great. The scrap itself didn't feel super meaningful, but being able to have these big jumps in power from levels made XP and levels feel really important and fun.
What did you think about the updated item store?
It was a lot to take in, having missed a few tests, but I love it. I missed those raw stat upgrades and having a meaningful gating and decision process behind them made every choice feel important to how my squad was building out. The slot tension between a passive stat boost and a powerful active made things great as well.
What did you think about mercs in this new system?
I didn't experiment with too many mercs. Guardian cubes still feel fun for Vela, and the stat-booster mercs "Motivator and Enhancer" are still my go-to midgame mercs because I feel like they should be helpful for Vela/Eris, even though I'm not 100% sure how much I can feel their effects.
I have half-formed thoughts about how the lowered merc cap makes the choices more important and probably lets more power be loaded into each, and also how it felt kind of bleh having them cut directly into my squad's production, but that's about all I've got on those thoughts so far because I haven't pushed too hard against mercs in this iteration.
Other thoughts
I'm sorry for the largely negative-sounding feedback. Overall I like the idea of an underlying factor that forces games to end, but just straight-up not being able to play anymore until the game ends seems heavy-handed. Gemming felt kind of less important, but the unification of gains between expansions, gemming, and gem titans felt cool and offered multiple approaches for progress.
I liked the changes to the map layout, as well. I noticed FAR more macro-scale map movements in my games, and also felt compelled to push out in a wider array of directions than I have before, so yay!
WOOHOO!
Alder's balance is enough of an outlier that we'll likely be digging deeper into his numbers sooner rather than later (as early as Sunday's build, possibly; no promises).
Definitely an issue that's on our radar. Right now you unfortunately have to rely on a merc or an ally. Sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime!
It's noteworthy that DPS upgrades outscale defensive upgrades, so it is actually a bit rough building as a tank right now. But building in that direction is definitely something we want to properly support.
Thanks for testing!
WELCOME BACK! WELCOME BACK!
Definitely gotta lean on the teammates (or tank with your Hero) against Titans for the time being. On the one hand, Titans feeling properly threatening is nice. But on the other hand, some squads feel little-to-no threat against them. There's probably a better way to tackle this, but it's fairly low-priority for now.
We definitely want you to feel like you can make the decision to go all-in and HAM on a fight, but a core part of this Coin system is discouraging the "disposable army" approach. That's not to say this decision is final, but we also don't think it should ever not be important to get value out of your units.
Yeah, we've had other playtesters refer to this as a very "all-or-nothing" feeling. Definitely something we'll address with the system longer-term (though perhaps not short-term).
A quick re-stating of something I said above -- We're discussing possibly loosening and/or untying EXP/Scrap a bit. When we do, would love to see another post from you on how this feeling changes!
Another thing we're actively discussing is possibly reintroducing tech-rushing, which will be another key facet of whatever scrap/XP disconnection approach we take if we go that route. That is to say: if we untie those systems, unlocking will likely not be tied to XP as it is now.
WOO!
Sidenote: In the next week or so, we'll likely be adjusting the autocaster mercs (Enhancer, Motivator, Chiller, Healer, Phantom).
Looking forward to hearing more!
WOOOOO!
Thanks as always! :D <3!
Victory! \o/
Hopefully we can solve this with some better interfacing. The top-left army model UI should perhaps also represent what's in production. Love this feedback.
We're chatting this week (and early next week) about how to get towers back into the game. Hopefully this'll alleviate that bit of frustration!
I think this is more or less expected. Similarly, you'd seldom see a ranged carry in a MOBA build tanky. Still, we'll be looking to expand what growth-based choices you can make longer-term (maybe more items, maybe more robust inflection upgrades, etc).
I assure you this isn't a playerskill thing, haha, even the designers aren't using them much right now. We need to make sure mercs are a valuable purchase at more (if not all) points in the game. Certainly a work in progress!
This current implementation is simply our first attempt at this set of systems (and will probably not be the last). This particular weirdness is on our radar.
Pre-mapping your build could be useful, but we're going to call this sort of feature low-priority for now.
Thanks so much for testing!
This may be the least productive/concrete feedback I've ever given, so I completely understand if it's too vague to be of use. I don't like writing in this style but I figure it can just be discarded/ignored if it's worthless!
So my games in the past 2-3 patches have been very conflicting for me. In general I like the direction that the game is heading, yet I feel like I'm always awful at the game. This would be fine if I could identify the root cause but I can't. In SC2 or Dota 2, I could pretty reliably point to what I needed to change. Similarly, if I (or my team) was behind, I'd know what I'd need to do in order to claw my way back in. In SC2, I'd hunker down defensively and look for one of my opponents to move out and throw a zergling or muta run-by. Is my issue because I can't be defensive right now (no towers etc)? Is it because I can't do similarly with hornets because they're not as fast as ling/muta? Or am I just terrible at making decisions, not understanding the game/meta as well as I should? 2-3 games per playtest may not do much for my learning curve. I'm not sure, for example, if it's more valuable to snipe a hero when I can vs taking out several T1's to eat into their gold.
I understand that some matchups are just BLECH right now - it felt really terrible to go up against Ryme as Hydros yesterday. The only time I felt good was when I was bottom as Ryme - being somewhat more 1v1-ey, even though I was up against Alder, I held my own. But that's the thing - I never fell behind in that particular case. Once I do fall behind (which tends to happen more in the top lane for me for some reason), the story changes as previously discussed.
Again, I feel like the game is well-rounded, I really like many things y'all have done (the 4-merc limit, oh baby), I love the re-done health bars (so crisp), I love the new bot interaction and I feel like I have a lot of squad customization options. If I have one piece of concrete feedback, it's that tying the mercs to the old A1/B1/A2/B2 structure feels a little weird in the current setup. I go from no mercs, to 2 mercs, to 9 mercs, to 10, to 11. It's such a huge jump there in the middle
I just realized that I've pretty much tuned that piece of UI out; I think it was either confusing or not giving me what I wanted.
There are multiple unit caps in play, and units can be in at least four states (building, ready, out, and respawning) Congratulations on make the code work, but that is pretty confusing for players too. When larger issues are settled it might be worth while to do some tests with less complexity to see if those systems are providing enough value to be worth the mental load on the player.
One issue arising in these recent builds, the economy rework has undervalued expansions. See G30c16429f20b44dca3a94ee44d463213 for a game where our winning strategy was "don't take expansions". With one exception for the brutal middle, which is easy to defend and is near the nexus anyways. But if the Titan AI wasn't so easy to exploit, such that we'd actually have to take hits from them to claim brutal, then it might too be skipped.
The current balance seems to favor just getting XP out of aggression. Destroy your enemy's workers (if they were foolish enough to build expansions!), towers and armies, while getting some of the gems in the middle too, and you can easily hold the XP lead (which is originally derived from taking gem titans over exp titans). Without spending the CD on your own worker generating vulnerability.
I joined in two of these games last night, and I have to say I feel better with regards to competence level - specifically, I don't feel ENTIRELY stupid. It was great to have conversations in Discord about the value of certain strategies - I realized that part of my issues (and why I tended to fall behind in other games) was due to how I was approaching exp gains. I feel like I'm exploiting imbalances now, heh, but at least I better understand why games were going the way they were.
The biggest issue here is that with the numerous sources of exp, it means without really testing and testing, it's not clear what's most valuable. Without that, I'm unable to determine what I should be doing at any given point in the game. Now, after discussion and testing, I know! I bring this up because even if #'s are adjusted for expansion experience rates or whatever, the question will still exist. Maybe that's fine for it to be something that someone has to figure out over time, either by playing or reading a guide? I'd like it to be more intuitive but maybe that's not practical.
Aside from that, certain imbalances are just silly and I feel the need to mention them even though I'm sure you're aware of 'em. In the game @AceAl linked above, I went hornets against @Alyosha 's Hydros. Now, as previously mentioned, that's a really awful matchup for Hydros to being with. But with the hornets too, there was virtually NOTHING that could be done. I was killing his workers with impunity, further increasing the exp gap, while his army couldn't even engage me or I'd pull the hornets back and attack the Scuttlebros instead of the workers. This can get esp bad for a squad like that, if you've already got all 4 mercs. Do you send 1-2 out to die so that you can get an anti-air merc? Ehh.
I didn't read any of the above feedback, I'd rather mine by purely my own thoughts without being influenced by others.
I think gold (and the resource changes in general) are a good change. Things are simplified a bit, which is a good thing, because it was pretty confusing before.
The lower gold caps feel a bit better as you actually run out (I never ran out the week prior). It's nice that it gave value to your units rather than just letting them die needlessly.
One part that had me confused was which units would be more efficient for cost. Especially on the game I played Eris. You'd think her T1 would be most efficient, but they die so damn easy it's very hard to say.
My only worry with this system is that it's basically impossible to have a "good" long game. I know sometimes long games can be very drawn out with nothing happening, but at times there can be "good" long games that have constant back & forth, etc. Seems like with this new system, if 2 teams get a good back & forth going, it's going to come down to who happens to get "forth" when the gold runs out, which may be problematic. Teams may end up exploiting that as the primary strategy, which wouldn't be too "fun".
I am mixed about the respawn changes. A part of me likes that I have to "press buttons" more for rebuilding my army. At the same time, I expected my units to pop up respawn sometimes and it just didn't happen. May just need to adapt, I'm not sure.
Okay lots of thoughts here...
First, let me tell you, before the recent changes (in the build used around the last weekend test) I had very negative feelings about the XP system. Seemed to only contribute to snowballing, and not have much of a point beyond that. I personally felt the game would be better off without XP at all, and if XP were kept in game, the mechanics of the game should actually be built around it.
It seemed like the game had half-measures in many different directions. Somewhat of a traditional resource-based approach, but with much less of a focus on controlling land and defending your bases. Somewhat of a moba style XP-based approach, but XP didn't mean very much. I would have rathered XP be removed to more of a focus on taking control of the actual map - that's the expectation that comes to mind naturally when thinking of a real time strategy game.
Now, thoughts on the current system: I like that XP actually has a point now. It's not removed, but the mechanics have been adapted to a point where XP makes sense. I like that.
Tying tiers/upgrades/etc to the XP system was a nice way of streamlining things. I particularly like how the upgrade points are given to you at intervals through this system. This solves what I felt was a problem in RTS games for awhile - too many things (such as upgrades) are subtle/limited information which removes the ability to strategize around it. I felt it would be better if the upgrades in RTS games were either more obvious, or limited to a point where it was a "strategic choice". Too often in SC2 for example, you may not really know the true reason you lost until you watch the post game graphs and see they pulled ahead in upgrades, then watch the replay to see exactly what upgrades they did.
The system, overall, felt very snowball-y though. Even more than before I think. I'm pretty sure every game I was in, the team who won the first encounter ended up winning the game. Unit balance felt a bit off too along with this, but I'm assuming that's not the focus of this test.
I feel the game is too "spread thin" though, with so many ways to get XP. Sometimes for a couple minutes at a time you don't have any enemies on your map, and even if you scout their location, since hte map is built where the jungle minions are so close to the enemy base, it's not really reasonable to harass them - better off just working on your own XP. Wasn't enough player vs player interaction.
I'm not so sure about scrap anymore. Yes, it's a good way to keep people from turtling. But at the same time, aside from 1v1 harassment on occasion, people pretty much just play passively and farm scrap, rather than actively engage. The 1v1 encounters that do happen tend to be very lopsided based around whos already ahead, and the 2v2/3v3 encounters are won by the team that has been winning since the first phase of the game.
I really don't like the jungle minion system either. I don't feel it adds anything positive to the game. With the cooldowns on dropping expansions, it's not really necessary to slow players down anymore. It keeps players too busy fighting minions, rather than actively playing each other. I think this is one of the major contributors to the game feeling a bit "boring" as being played.
I very much like the larger focus on expansions, though. I like that you get XP from them a lot. IIRC you can take enemy expansions now - I really like that! Ever since the first weekend test, I have been saying that fighting over expansions has been my favorite part of the game. That has not changed. But it seems many times, by the time you can take expansions back from the enemy, you are sacrificing your defenses and the enemy can just push together and end it.
I think attacking/defending expansions should be a primary mechanic of the game. It's a way players can create their own battlefield as they play. It's a "anti-snowball" mechanic in the sense that 3 players can't defend many expansions as easily as few. And most of all, it's one of the few ways (if not the only way) the game "forces" player vs player interaction. Aside from maybe attacking towers. Any other interaction with the other player can basically be ignored - you can just do something elsewhere to make up for hte loss. But losing expansions or towers could be the game.
I went in to this a little bit already, but I didn't think scrap contributed much to the overall game anymore. It's just another XP method, and it's one that can be performed somewhat passively. If scrap is going to stay in game, I feel it should be a central mechanic the game is built around - similar to how XP is now. It should actually force player vs player interaction, rather than "well, i'll farm these until I'm contested, then go for other forms of XP gain". If it's not a central mechanic, then it should be removed.
I did like tech level = XP level. One thing I did miss was the ability to 'Rush T3" as a strategic option. But overall, I think the gain was more than the loss, as rushing T3 wasn't viable in many situations anyway.
I like it, although I worry that the high tier upgrades may be a bit too powerful.
I don't really like the merc system in this build. Mercs were a improvement over the old neutral weapons, mainly because of 2 things in my opinion:
1) They offer the "cool" RTS-style mechanics, such as fliers, anti air, dropships to the game.
2) They actually had tech paths that you could devote yourself to and work in to your build, offering strategic choices.
2 is gone in this build. So one of the major selling points of Mercs is gone. And for 1, tbh those units didn't seem very useful anymore. Mostly just seen cubes.
I honestly wonder what the intent of the merc system is? Why not add these units through tech paths based on squad choice or something like that? I believe that would make much more sense. Because in that sort of implementation,
A) you would see a larger variety of mercs from game to game
it would give more strategy to team composition/countering
C) the mercs can be a bit more powerful than they are right now, as they could be balanced for a specific squad, rather than something potentially every squad can use.
D) It seems kind of strange to see a big menu of mercs to choose from. Shoudl be a bit more straight forward.
My overall thoughts:
I think these changes have overall been an improvement to the game, but I do not believe these changes did anything to fix what is (in my opinion) the biggest problems with the game.
My biggest problem with the game, during the last weekly test, as well as this version, is there simply isn't enough player interaction. This makes the risk vs reward factor completely screwy.
As was discussed in the Discord feedback sessions, outside of squad balance issues, the game feels like "farm to win" rather than "outplay your opponent to win".
Right now it feels like there's no direction leading you towards your opponent, and we're being directed to simply farm farm farm farm. Then once your far enough ahead, go for the final push. It can honestly become boring sometimes, and it makes attacks more "backdoor" or "surprise" attacks, rather than true skirmishes or battles. Even if you win a skirmish or battle, it usually doesn't even matter, unless if your almost out of gold or defending meganode/nexus.
There should be a clear direction that is leading both teams in to conflict the entire game - not just at the final phase. There needs to be more of a reward for defeating your opponent. There needs to be less of a reward and/or more of a risk for playing passively. There needs to be some form of constant "resistance" between the teams, as that will tell you which team is in the lead. If it's highly favored towards one team, it makes no sense that they have to farm for 20-30 mins to finish the game - in a highly mismatched game that's not fun for anyone.
Rabbit's foot feels great on many levels. The effect is really obvious, and powerful enough to potentially save your army (or wipe theirs), but it's also easy to waste (and expensive to waste). The choice to deploy it or not is difficult and impactful, and you make that choice many many times throughout the game. Kick-ass.
And even buying it is a difficult-but-impactful choice. Do I want 0, 1, 2, or 3 levels of Rabbit's Foot? I'm not sure! For some purposes, level one works just as well as level three -- I don't need to be a bajillion faster than the other guy to get out of some tight spots, just a modest amount. But if I CAN be a bajillion faster, maybe I can get in riskier positions, or pin a fragile squad to the wall...
Three points of Rabbit's Foot is clearly better than one point, but the amount by which it's better is very dependent on circumstance and how you play it and all that fun stuff. I'd love more charms like that. Most charms, you put in that first point, you're pretty well committed to maxing it as soon as you can. There's not a decision; it's just the math makes it clearly correct to either spend 0 or 3 points on most charm. More Rabbit's Foot!
@Treisk
Both, but Severed Evil rolls more easily off my tongue.
That's potentially awesome if contesting mid gems vs. clearing gem titans vs. clearing expos all feel like viable alternatives with trade-offs. (Especially if it's reasonable to take mid gems with your hero while your army clears titans or interferes with the opponent's attempts to clear titans...)
Will need to try more stuff, definitely.
I ignored PvE gemming, and felt like expanding was more effective than contesting for gems. But those choices/intuition could easily be wrong. If the options are competitive with each other (and people can get a sense for the trade-off), that's actually cool as hell.