@snkz said:
After one or two games did all those mechanics listed to you become more intuitive?
Honestly, I didn't realize the intro bots were an option my first few games because the selection is grayed out and I thought it was locked like PvP is right now.
I won my third game and have actually had very little challenge vs. bots since I started using a fast Tier 2 unit build for Grath. It only took two more games to learn enough that my RTS and MOBA instincts fused into a new Atlus metamind.
Does the end game now make more sense to you after playing a few more bot games?
Yea, end game makes sense, except that the upgrade shop is still kind of baffling. Grabbing all the cheap damage boosts seems better than choosing one or two paths, but I have had some success concentrating on life steal tech, so that may just be a matter of learning the game. I don't think a new player should have access to ALL those upgrade options on their first playthrough (I ignored upgrades entirely my first few games because I couldn't spare the time to read through every choice). You could probably start with two upgrade choices and give us two new ones every level.
I have also realized that Terrapin Troopers actually become good late game when you can swarm them, and they're solid support if you have a human ally massing glass cannon units, but on their own they're kind of awful. I would suggest listing Grath as an intermediate hero if this is intentional or rebalancing the troopers if not. Initially I thought they would be as good as zealots, and that's why I lost so bad my first game.
It's great to hear that you have found an upgrade path you like. I usually have my upgrade paths pre planned except when I run across a squad that counters my path. (i.e say a strong ability power squad like vex, usually that forces me into a defensive build) In bot games that nuance isnt that dramatic since usually youre build is OK regardless of their build.
If it helps, hit tab during your games to 'scout' their build paths. Each bot has a their own path (either offensive or defensive) which might effect your choice.
Out of curiosity, have you been assisting you bot ally more? Or are you comfortable soloing top lane?
I dropped in to my first game after watching the tutorial video. I was an avid SC2 player and am a current League player.
At first, I was pretty overwhelmed. By overwhelmed, I mean I didn't know what objectives to push, what my skillshots were, when they would become available, if my hero dying had any consequences. Just in general, I felt pretty confused. I originally thought I had a decent grasp of everything from the video, but apparently not. Instead of doing the smart thing and trying again to learn the basics, I went on in to some regular bot games with a friend where we got our asses handed to us twice before we asked for some recommended openers in global chat. But I am not certain what made me feel so overwhelmed. Perhaps it was my own impatience. It was several hours ago, but I don't remember reading tool tips or anything. If information was provided for me, I missed it. I followed my bots on their course of actions, but I didn't really know what was going on. However, I do think this will be easily resolved whenever a full interactive, step-by-step tutorial is available.
One thing I would like to talk about is the Gem Geyser. I've only played 4 or 5 games, but as of the moment, I don't quite like the feel of it. I found myself consistently ignoring it. It didn't feel important and I wasn't motivated to protect it. I only went to that area to engage is some battles with the bots. Perhaps if I understood everything better I would feel differently. I DO like the concept of neutral, time based objectives. I think I just find a gem-spewing tower a bit boring.
I have played many many hours of RTS games such as SC1, SC2, Rise of Nations, Age of Empires, Warcraft 3, etc. as well as many many hours of MOBA games such as DotA 1, DotA 2, HoN, and LoL.
The following feedback comes after I have watched the Test Weekend Tutorial #3 and played through 2 Intro Bot games with victories.
My first experience in playing against the Intro Bots was very satisfactory. They were not difficult and I would imagine newer players to be able to handle them adequately. I enjoyed that they would ping the mini map and announce their actions to give a feel to the player on what the important objectives are throughout the game.
The Intro Bots were not particularly enjoyable to play against, but they did their job of allowing me to take my time reading tooltips, scanning over the map objectives, and observing unit interactions.
The first thing I was confused about after the first game was once my Juggernaut had reached the enemy main base area, the tower there did immense damage to units. The Juggernaut moved to engage the tower, but all my other units were unable to deal damage to it. I have come to an assumption that the enemy player's actual main base is not something that can be destroyed and that tower serves as the "fountain" that players might recognize from other MOBA's such as LoL or DotA. Perhaps make this more clear during the tutorial. I know that it tells the player the main Nexus is the building that must be destroyed to win the game, but I do not remember hearing anything regarding the main bases of the enemy players. Coming from the RTS world, that would seem more important to siege/attack than the Nexus.
The second thing that confused me was that after the turrets were destroyed, larger gems would pop out and I could use the "Build" command on them. After they were collected, I noticed a blue "+1" appear, but did not notice what that actually did or added to whether it be scrap or one of the middle obelisks that summon the Juggernaut. A suggestion would be to either tell the players what this is during the tutorial or give a better visual update to show the player what happened once it was collected. For example, if it were a scrap reward, simply put "+X" in green where X is the number of scrap rewarded.
To summarize, I had a overall good experience in my first two games. Atlas' concept as a hybrid between MOBA and RTS intrigues me. Nothing seemed obviously unbalanced or overpowered. The amount of micro and macro that are required seem reasonable. I am looking forward to being able to play this game in the future. I enjoy some of the quality of life additions to this game such as the spells can all be cast at anytime instead of having to select the specific unit to cast its spell compared to other RTS games that include spellcaster units.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to participate in this Alpha Test Weekend.
Here are my impressions after reaching profile level 5 playing against bots.
First couple games were confusing because I didn't watch the tutorial, but I got the gist of it at least.
After watching the tutorial, I had a lot more smooth of an experience in game.
For the most part, the game is enjoyable. I was trying out different heroes and they all seemed balanced. At times, the friendly bots didn't do what I wanted them to do it, which was a bit frustrating, but that's probably because I play too much 1v1 sc2. Obviously with cooperative teammates, communicating my thoughts would make life easier.
One thing that hits hard with me is that the game feels too much like a moba. Maybe that's a good thing for most people. The big problem is that most often the armies are clumped up, and since you can cast all spells while you have all the units selected, it makes the variety of units feel meaningless. I feel like, "why not just give all the spells to the hero?" And those automatic wave of units that we find in other mobas would suffice. Basically, there is no good reason to split up the units, or, I haven't found a good reason anyway.
One major thing I think would help is removing the towers, or at least some of the towers. The problem with the towers is that they provide too much protection. Armies tend to gather around these towers during battles, and if you don't have a big enough army, you have to retreat. Even though fighting with big armies is very fun, it does not provide enough of a variety. It kind of feels like playing a long drawn out macro game in sc2 every time, or always selecting a control deck in hearthstone. Personally, I like macro oriented games in starcraft, and control decks in hearthstone, but I feel it would hurt the game in the long run.
If the towers were removed, we would be able to put pressure on the opponents at any time during the game. It would keep all players on their "feet." Players would have to send out scouting units to see if the opponents are macroing up or moving out to attack. Additionally, teammates would have the opportunity to assign roles for each other. For example, one player could macro up for the late game units, while the others would constantly harass the opponents. - just an idea.
At first glance, cheesy builds might seem like an issue, but that is unlikely to happen. First, the map is large enough, where a few units would have a long while to get to the opponents base, and players could muster up a few units to defend. Moreover, the nexus has its own static defense. Plus, players could use the workers to put up their own static defense. Lastly, allies bases are close enough together, where they would be able to help each out against any cheesy players quite easily.
What's more, the slowly growing population cap already limits the players' options, adding the defensive towers slows down the game too much in my opinion. In a way, having both these systems is a bit redundant. Do they not serve the same purpose? Or am I missing something?
Lastly - this is not related to the maps or towers - when I a-move my entire army, then try to micro only my hero back, I would like to have him push the other units out of the way, as opposed to clumsily try to walk around them and die in the process.
Anyways, that's my $0.02. Thank you for allowing me to play the game. I hope my participation will help you guys somehow.
And a special thanks to Mark Logan for helping me through some technical difficulties, he was very patient.
I've made it to lvl 6 playing bots, I found they were good for learning the game and figuring out how things work, but don't really present too much of a challenge after that.
I did notice a couple strange things about bot behavior though, the first one being that when you spawn in top position with a bot, the bot will help you clear the titans right next to your base, then the ones on the close expansion but won't expand there themselves and will instead head up to the medium titans put an expansion down and then clear them. Frequently the bot will also just let all of their units and hero die to the titans even if I'm helping them. Sometimes later in the match the bot will then proceed to put an expansion at the top middle point but then not clear the titans, however most of the time the bots would never take more than one expansion.
Another thing I noticed that seemed odd to me was once the enemy bots run out of stock they will just run their hero at your healing towers individually (sometimes running past an alive tower) and die over and over again rather than trying to group up. (in one case I took a nearby expansion and built towers in range of the healing tower and the bot would just attack the healing tower till they died)
Sometimes when a bot would gain control of a juggernaut they would use it like they don't know what it does and not attack enemy buildings with it and instead just walk it back and forth across the middle area.
A couple times when a friendly bot would say "I'm going to go attack these titans" or something along those lines I would go over the help them and by the time I did the bot and seemed to have forgot about the titans and decided to go do something else and I would end up killing the titans by myself.
When I was playing celesta and used my ability on 'F' the bots would make no effort to move out of the circle and just end up taking tons of damage every time. I think this made the ability a lot more effective than it would be against players.
Overall the bots were good for getting to know the basic game mechanics and figuring out what the units do, but didn't present much of a challenge.
How was your first experience in atlas against bots?
It was good, and I kind of expected it to be pretty painful as a new game and everything. There are some major differences between Atlas an other RTS's that i've seen. It feels like a combo between dota 2 and SC2, I think there were a few main things that really stuck out to me and I'll talk about them in turn.
Did they help you learn the game?
I start with a normal game, so i neglected the tool tips, I took me a few games to really get used to the interface and the options. It is unfortunate that somethings that make big differences like items and upgrades don't have visible effects which can make them harder to plan with etc. The enemy bots also seem to be smarter than the ally bots...
Were they fun to play against?
Yes in the sense that RTS's are fun, however I felt a push/pull between there being a large amount of information (6) races w/ heros, but also less hero diversity. I'm not sure that I like the active abilities being spread around different units, It can make it micro intensive. The ally bots also don't seem to be good at coordinating.
Experiences & Suggestions for Improvement
My biggest area of frustration has to do with the minimap, When I have my hero or unit selected I often get lost since I can't snap the camera back real easy, so camera management would be an improvement.
The tutorial also doesn't really talk about some of the important elements of the game for effectively winning. For example, items and upgrades make a huge difference, as well as tech levels. I think it would be very helpful to have a second tutorial for more advanced players who want to talk about tech/item build strategies.
I see many people that are talking about unit movement and collision, I think this is actually good to have in the game, HOWEVER, In my experiences the hitboxs of the unit don't often correlate with the unit model, or with the environment. This leads to confusion when you run into an 'invisible plant' or small unit, additionally, my creeps have poor pathing. I think a good way to improve this would be to have an item like phase boots from dota2, or have the general boots in this game, once added to the hero apply to the creeps?
I will also note that I think the base structures should be customized to each hero/race, right now it looks very similar and this could be a good opportunity for the game art to show through. While i'm on the topic, neutral creeps and tower's attacks are really hard to see, this makes engaging them confusing for me.
Maybe I didn't play enough games, but I always spawned in the bottom left during bot play. When switching to PvP, I had a bad habit of selecting my ally's base instead of mine (since I did not spawn bottom left), which was confusing for a while.
I felt as though bot play was not quite as interactive as PvP. I never really had any serious teamfights in bot play and the number of engagements felt somewhat reduced. I understand that bot play is designed to allow the player to learn the game without being too overwhelmed, but I felt bored after a certain amount of bot play.Maybe you already have this planned, but having a higher difficulty setting for bot play (i.e., more aggressive bots) would make it more fun for me.
The movement speed felt good and allowed me enough time to feel my way through micro-play. However, in macro play, movement speed feels slow; being out of position is very easily punished in the game.
Bot play: At the beginning bots are hard however after I started picking up the game flow, it got fairly more simple however when i moved over to playing pvp the 2 weirdest things to pickup the feeling of was being on the other side (starting on top and pushing down) which felt disorienting, and learning to play around the animation of ultimates that you hadn't used (or even ultimates/abilities you had used but hadn't gotten used to facing)
I've reached level 6 playing mainly normal bots. My major observation was that after killing a titan camp, harvesting the experience gems (by building the collectors) felt like a waste of time due to the cooldown of the build ability. To me it seemed that the time had already been invested in clearing the camp, so spending extra time standing around the spheres was a little frustrating. I imagine the idea was to be able to share experience with allies that helped with the camp or allow the enemy to contest the experience gain, but I feel that being able to instantly build the collectors, and then having the collection time a bit longer would achieve this while also allowing the player to move away if the gems are not in danger of being stolen. However, I do believe the cooldown is necessary for the central gem fountain objectives. Maybe the solution is splitting the two mechanisms up? Anyway, that was the main thing I kept noticing during my 10 or so games.
@Shadow said:
Bot play: At the beginning bots are hard however after I started picking up the game flow, it got fairly more simple however when i moved over to playing pvp the 2 weirdest things to pickup the feeling of was being on the other side (starting on top and pushing down) which felt disorienting, and learning to play around the animation of ultimates that you hadn't used (or even ultimates/abilities you had used but hadn't gotten used to facing)
Very interesting observations Shadow! The intent was to have bots not use ults as its not fun for new players to get hit by them. However im sure its just as unfun to get hit by ults you've never seen before.
So far played 4 games, won two, lost two. (Haven't played in any other weekends, if that's not clear) The first game I played without watching Day9's tutorial. I picked Vela/Raider, because hit and run is my style. I was utterly, utterly lost as to what was going on. I might have been able to figure it out but it was very confusing. Part of this was that my first instinct as an RTS player was to start macroing - building workers, infrastructure, supply depots. I looked around for all of the above, and I couldn't find any of it. And I sat around flailing because I didn't realize that this is more of a MOBA, not an RTS. I say that because I feel like the above are the defining characteristics of an RTS, and all of that is largely automated in Atlas. The other big thing here is that units don't cost resources. Just supply. And everyone gets the same supply.
After an embarrassing loss, I watched the first half of Day9's video, at which point I said to myself, OK, so the way to do the things I was trying to do is to... not do them. I can do that I guess. Went back in with a bit more understanding and it was intuitively obvious to me that a dominant strategy was going to be unit preservation and starving the opposing team of stock. So I still went with Vela, but I picked up whatever Merc class has the healers. And I chewed through the bots with ease. Step 1 -> Immediately tech to level 2. Step 2 -> Get 4 snipers and 2 healers. Step 3 -> Snipe enemy units with hit and run tactics behind your towers until they're out of stock. Step 4 -> Win. I didn't need to get any expansions, I didn't need to get any upgrades, (Although I did just to try them out, once I had already all but secured my victory), I didn't need to get any gems. I probably didn't even need to get the other units I did, although I rounded out my supply in any case. I genuinely believe I could win (although it might actually be hard) with only snipers, healers, the hero, and good micro. (I'm actually going to try this and post replay if I can win)
The stock mechanic needs to be vastly reworked, or some form of the above strategy will always be dominant. If you're married to the stock idea (which I don't see why you would be) I would significantly rework it. Double, or maybe even quadruple the stock bonus you get from destroying towers, and then give additional stock for gems captured, or something renewable. This way a defensive player can't beat someone who's controlling the game just by sniping units every time he attacks.
@Baisius said:
So far played 4 games, won two, lost two. (Haven't played in any other weekends, if that's not clear) The first game I played without watching Day9's tutorial. I picked Vela/Raider, because hit and run is my style. I was utterly, utterly lost as to what was going on. I might have been able to figure it out but it was very confusing. Part of this was that my first instinct as an RTS player was to start macroing - building workers, infrastructure, supply depots. I looked around for all of the above, and I couldn't find any of it. And I sat around flailing because I didn't realize that this is more of a MOBA, not an RTS. I say that because I feel like the above are the defining characteristics of an RTS, and all of that is largely automated in Atlas. The other big thing here is that units don't cost resources. Just supply. And everyone gets the same supply.
After an embarrassing loss, I watched the first half of Day9's video, at which point I said to myself, OK, so the way to do the things I was trying to do is to... not do them. I can do that I guess. Went back in with a bit more understanding and it was intuitively obvious to me that a dominant strategy was going to be unit preservation and starving the opposing team of stock. So I still went with Vela, but I picked up whatever Merc class has the healers. And I chewed through the bots with ease. Step 1 -> Immediately tech to level 2. Step 2 -> Get 4 snipers and 2 healers. Step 3 -> Snipe enemy units with hit and run tactics behind your towers until they're out of stock. Step 4 -> Win. I didn't need to get any expansions, I didn't need to get any upgrades, (Although I did just to try them out, once I had already all but secured my victory), I didn't need to get any gems. I probably didn't even need to get the other units I did, although I rounded out my supply in any case. I genuinely believe I could win (although it might actually be hard) with only snipers, healers, the hero, and good micro. (I'm actually going to try this and post replay if I can win)
The stock mechanic needs to be vastly reworked, or some form of the above strategy will always be dominant. If you're married to the stock idea (which I don't see why you would be) I would significantly rework it. Double, or maybe even quadruple the stock bonus you get from destroying towers, and then give additional stock for gems captured, or something renewable. This way a defensive player can't beat someone who's controlling the game just by sniping units every time he attacks.
Replay G90112952386745549c37997d5bb9a61c
I didn't research a single upgrade, I never built anything except 4 snipers and 3 healers. I did get gems at the start, because I wasn't thinking, but they didn't make a significant difference.
Edit: was working during the PvP hours or I would have tried Vela out there too. Maybe the above strategy is only effective versus bots, I don't know. Sure seems incredibly op though.
@snkz said:
Did you find the ult telegraphs clear?
I understand the intro bots not using abilities however for normal bots I was expecting them to use the resources at their disposal similar to how a player would, without necessarily the same players veiwpoint, strategy, or coordination for the game. The reason i mention this is because while playing with bots atm can help you recognize the ult you are using, however it doesn't help you learn the feeling of counterplaying that ult. I'm a person who tends to micro poorly in large fights as a baseline and will eventually get better as i put more time in since i eventually pick up the feeling of dodging the ult. For example the first time i got ulted by vex in pvp my team got rekt and i was like "OH CRAP", however vex was played in a number of the games against me so i got better at seeing the symbol on the ground and splitting my army or getting out of range so by the end i would only lose 1 or 2 units, (10 games still didn't quite have the feeling down but was getting there). Likewise with non-combat based ults in some of my games people were buying the observers (forgot actual name) as a counter to vela's ult which was something i hadn't thought of simply because i never needed too despite once i saw it happen it was obvious.
In terms of ult telegraphs, i felt most of them were visually clear. The only one i'm not sure of since i haven't played as him and didn't notice anything ultlike in game was Grath which is odd since I faced Grath multiple times.
I have only played one game (I'm in the middle of exams but couldn't resist at least trying the game out!! :D)
First Impressions: Love the pre-game lobby music! Love the colour scheme of the game as well. In general I wanna say job well done to the art/design team on overall style! Reminiscent for me of a hybrid of Warcraft 3 and DOTA 2 style-wise
I liked the idea of limited compositions chosen in the pre-game lobby. That made me feel like there would be cool opportunity to coordinate compositions with teammates in the future. Will there potentially be ordered/draft picking to create composition/counter-pick scenarios like in DOTA or League? If not, totally cool, I can understand why it would also be important to give players to freedom to play whatever composition they want.
I like the numerous ways to progress/constantly do things, this lends itself to multi-tasking which I think is crucial to RTS games. However, I sometimes felt only a vague sense of progress. By this I mean, I was aware that I was making progress/achieving things, but unaware of how relatively significant/momentous these things might be. I'm sure that that awareness would come with a greater number of games-played, but I did feel that with SO many possible objectives/ways to progress, I was unsure when I had really achieved something big or tide-turning on which I ought to capitalize.
I felt very powerful when I had a bunch of Deadeye's (I played Vela i think her name was) and could use my hero power to scout, and then drop a bunch of the Deadeye's skillshots on an approaching army! Very satisfying.
On the whole, I am definitely excited to play more games and try more stuff and tinker and ALL THAT GOOD STUFF! Congrats guys on a game than genuinely has me wanting to play MORE!
@wolverinero79 said:
I'm on the fence with this. I recognize the comparison to siege camps in HotS, but I think this added flexibility is an interesting idea. I think it works better with this game...
I am now leaning towards that conclusion as well. Given more time and a skilled player I think the Jugg being controllable is a good thing. For example, maybe a team wants to clear out enemy expansions rather than pushing to take a tower. Also, Juggernauts are a buildable unit in one of the Merc trees which I didn't realize initially.
I only got a chance to start playing tonight since I was away for the weekend, but here are my thoughts after a couple hours of play and several bot matches:
-I felt overwhelmed at first when I was presented with how much is going on in this game. I had watched the tutorial video and thought I was pretty prepared but watching and playing are two very different things. Luckily I picked things up alright after the first couple of games so I definitely think the game becomes more intuitive the more you play it. A good tutorial will be very helpful for new players.
-I felt like there was a lot of opportunity for both overall strategy when picking heroes and tactics when the game starts. However, since I haven't had the opportunity to play this game for more than a few hours combat did feel like ctrl-A, ctrl-A, rebuild, repeat. I think the micro is tough to flesh out in such a short period of time. Maybe after more plays during the next test weekend it'll be easier to flesh out the micro possibilities.
-I felt annoyed when I looked at some of the pathing of the CPU squads. There was an instance or two where the units just ran along the walls to go around corners in a relatively disorganized way especially with unit collisions cluttering everything up.
-I felt hopeful after playing for a while that this game has a lot of potential. The marriage of MOBA and RTS seems natural and Atlas seems to hit on the best aspects of each. Each hero seems unique and the squads + mercs really makes me feel like I can carve out my own strategic niche to call my own.
Thanks for letting me participate and I'm looking forward to seeing where this game goes!
Comments
Honestly, I didn't realize the intro bots were an option my first few games because the selection is grayed out and I thought it was locked like PvP is right now.
I won my third game and have actually had very little challenge vs. bots since I started using a fast Tier 2 unit build for Grath. It only took two more games to learn enough that my RTS and MOBA instincts fused into a new Atlus metamind.
Yea, end game makes sense, except that the upgrade shop is still kind of baffling. Grabbing all the cheap damage boosts seems better than choosing one or two paths, but I have had some success concentrating on life steal tech, so that may just be a matter of learning the game. I don't think a new player should have access to ALL those upgrade options on their first playthrough (I ignored upgrades entirely my first few games because I couldn't spare the time to read through every choice). You could probably start with two upgrade choices and give us two new ones every level.
I have also realized that Terrapin Troopers actually become good late game when you can swarm them, and they're solid support if you have a human ally massing glass cannon units, but on their own they're kind of awful. I would suggest listing Grath as an intermediate hero if this is intentional or rebalancing the troopers if not. Initially I thought they would be as good as zealots, and that's why I lost so bad my first game.
It's great to hear that you have found an upgrade path you like. I usually have my upgrade paths pre planned except when I run across a squad that counters my path. (i.e say a strong ability power squad like vex, usually that forces me into a defensive build) In bot games that nuance isnt that dramatic since usually youre build is OK regardless of their build.
If it helps, hit tab during your games to 'scout' their build paths. Each bot has a their own path (either offensive or defensive) which might effect your choice.
Out of curiosity, have you been assisting you bot ally more? Or are you comfortable soloing top lane?
I dropped in to my first game after watching the tutorial video. I was an avid SC2 player and am a current League player.
At first, I was pretty overwhelmed. By overwhelmed, I mean I didn't know what objectives to push, what my skillshots were, when they would become available, if my hero dying had any consequences. Just in general, I felt pretty confused. I originally thought I had a decent grasp of everything from the video, but apparently not. Instead of doing the smart thing and trying again to learn the basics, I went on in to some regular bot games with a friend where we got our asses handed to us twice before we asked for some recommended openers in global chat. But I am not certain what made me feel so overwhelmed. Perhaps it was my own impatience. It was several hours ago, but I don't remember reading tool tips or anything. If information was provided for me, I missed it. I followed my bots on their course of actions, but I didn't really know what was going on. However, I do think this will be easily resolved whenever a full interactive, step-by-step tutorial is available.
One thing I would like to talk about is the Gem Geyser. I've only played 4 or 5 games, but as of the moment, I don't quite like the feel of it. I found myself consistently ignoring it. It didn't feel important and I wasn't motivated to protect it. I only went to that area to engage is some battles with the bots. Perhaps if I understood everything better I would feel differently. I DO like the concept of neutral, time based objectives. I think I just find a gem-spewing tower a bit boring.
Overall, I am really enjoying the game!
I have played many many hours of RTS games such as SC1, SC2, Rise of Nations, Age of Empires, Warcraft 3, etc. as well as many many hours of MOBA games such as DotA 1, DotA 2, HoN, and LoL.
The following feedback comes after I have watched the Test Weekend Tutorial #3 and played through 2 Intro Bot games with victories.
My first experience in playing against the Intro Bots was very satisfactory. They were not difficult and I would imagine newer players to be able to handle them adequately. I enjoyed that they would ping the mini map and announce their actions to give a feel to the player on what the important objectives are throughout the game.
The Intro Bots were not particularly enjoyable to play against, but they did their job of allowing me to take my time reading tooltips, scanning over the map objectives, and observing unit interactions.
The first thing I was confused about after the first game was once my Juggernaut had reached the enemy main base area, the tower there did immense damage to units. The Juggernaut moved to engage the tower, but all my other units were unable to deal damage to it. I have come to an assumption that the enemy player's actual main base is not something that can be destroyed and that tower serves as the "fountain" that players might recognize from other MOBA's such as LoL or DotA. Perhaps make this more clear during the tutorial. I know that it tells the player the main Nexus is the building that must be destroyed to win the game, but I do not remember hearing anything regarding the main bases of the enemy players. Coming from the RTS world, that would seem more important to siege/attack than the Nexus.
The second thing that confused me was that after the turrets were destroyed, larger gems would pop out and I could use the "Build" command on them. After they were collected, I noticed a blue "+1" appear, but did not notice what that actually did or added to whether it be scrap or one of the middle obelisks that summon the Juggernaut. A suggestion would be to either tell the players what this is during the tutorial or give a better visual update to show the player what happened once it was collected. For example, if it were a scrap reward, simply put "+X" in green where X is the number of scrap rewarded.
To summarize, I had a overall good experience in my first two games. Atlas' concept as a hybrid between MOBA and RTS intrigues me. Nothing seemed obviously unbalanced or overpowered. The amount of micro and macro that are required seem reasonable. I am looking forward to being able to play this game in the future. I enjoy some of the quality of life additions to this game such as the spells can all be cast at anytime instead of having to select the specific unit to cast its spell compared to other RTS games that include spellcaster units.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to participate in this Alpha Test Weekend.
Here are my impressions after reaching profile level 5 playing against bots.
First couple games were confusing because I didn't watch the tutorial, but I got the gist of it at least.
After watching the tutorial, I had a lot more smooth of an experience in game.
For the most part, the game is enjoyable. I was trying out different heroes and they all seemed balanced. At times, the friendly bots didn't do what I wanted them to do it, which was a bit frustrating, but that's probably because I play too much 1v1 sc2. Obviously with cooperative teammates, communicating my thoughts would make life easier.
One thing that hits hard with me is that the game feels too much like a moba. Maybe that's a good thing for most people. The big problem is that most often the armies are clumped up, and since you can cast all spells while you have all the units selected, it makes the variety of units feel meaningless. I feel like, "why not just give all the spells to the hero?" And those automatic wave of units that we find in other mobas would suffice. Basically, there is no good reason to split up the units, or, I haven't found a good reason anyway.
One major thing I think would help is removing the towers, or at least some of the towers. The problem with the towers is that they provide too much protection. Armies tend to gather around these towers during battles, and if you don't have a big enough army, you have to retreat. Even though fighting with big armies is very fun, it does not provide enough of a variety. It kind of feels like playing a long drawn out macro game in sc2 every time, or always selecting a control deck in hearthstone. Personally, I like macro oriented games in starcraft, and control decks in hearthstone, but I feel it would hurt the game in the long run.
If the towers were removed, we would be able to put pressure on the opponents at any time during the game. It would keep all players on their "feet." Players would have to send out scouting units to see if the opponents are macroing up or moving out to attack. Additionally, teammates would have the opportunity to assign roles for each other. For example, one player could macro up for the late game units, while the others would constantly harass the opponents. - just an idea.
At first glance, cheesy builds might seem like an issue, but that is unlikely to happen. First, the map is large enough, where a few units would have a long while to get to the opponents base, and players could muster up a few units to defend. Moreover, the nexus has its own static defense. Plus, players could use the workers to put up their own static defense. Lastly, allies bases are close enough together, where they would be able to help each out against any cheesy players quite easily.
What's more, the slowly growing population cap already limits the players' options, adding the defensive towers slows down the game too much in my opinion. In a way, having both these systems is a bit redundant. Do they not serve the same purpose? Or am I missing something?
Lastly - this is not related to the maps or towers - when I a-move my entire army, then try to micro only my hero back, I would like to have him push the other units out of the way, as opposed to clumsily try to walk around them and die in the process.
Anyways, that's my $0.02. Thank you for allowing me to play the game. I hope my participation will help you guys somehow.
And a special thanks to Mark Logan for helping me through some technical difficulties, he was very patient.
I've made it to lvl 6 playing bots, I found they were good for learning the game and figuring out how things work, but don't really present too much of a challenge after that.
I did notice a couple strange things about bot behavior though, the first one being that when you spawn in top position with a bot, the bot will help you clear the titans right next to your base, then the ones on the close expansion but won't expand there themselves and will instead head up to the medium titans put an expansion down and then clear them. Frequently the bot will also just let all of their units and hero die to the titans even if I'm helping them. Sometimes later in the match the bot will then proceed to put an expansion at the top middle point but then not clear the titans, however most of the time the bots would never take more than one expansion.
Another thing I noticed that seemed odd to me was once the enemy bots run out of stock they will just run their hero at your healing towers individually (sometimes running past an alive tower) and die over and over again rather than trying to group up. (in one case I took a nearby expansion and built towers in range of the healing tower and the bot would just attack the healing tower till they died)
Sometimes when a bot would gain control of a juggernaut they would use it like they don't know what it does and not attack enemy buildings with it and instead just walk it back and forth across the middle area.
A couple times when a friendly bot would say "I'm going to go attack these titans" or something along those lines I would go over the help them and by the time I did the bot and seemed to have forgot about the titans and decided to go do something else and I would end up killing the titans by myself.
When I was playing celesta and used my ability on 'F' the bots would make no effort to move out of the circle and just end up taking tons of damage every time. I think this made the ability a lot more effective than it would be against players.
Overall the bots were good for getting to know the basic game mechanics and figuring out what the units do, but didn't present much of a challenge.
How was your first experience in atlas against bots?
It was good, and I kind of expected it to be pretty painful as a new game and everything. There are some major differences between Atlas an other RTS's that i've seen. It feels like a combo between dota 2 and SC2, I think there were a few main things that really stuck out to me and I'll talk about them in turn.
Did they help you learn the game?
I start with a normal game, so i neglected the tool tips, I took me a few games to really get used to the interface and the options. It is unfortunate that somethings that make big differences like items and upgrades don't have visible effects which can make them harder to plan with etc. The enemy bots also seem to be smarter than the ally bots...
Were they fun to play against?
Yes in the sense that RTS's are fun, however I felt a push/pull between there being a large amount of information (6) races w/ heros, but also less hero diversity. I'm not sure that I like the active abilities being spread around different units, It can make it micro intensive. The ally bots also don't seem to be good at coordinating.
Experiences & Suggestions for Improvement
My biggest area of frustration has to do with the minimap, When I have my hero or unit selected I often get lost since I can't snap the camera back real easy, so camera management would be an improvement.
The tutorial also doesn't really talk about some of the important elements of the game for effectively winning. For example, items and upgrades make a huge difference, as well as tech levels. I think it would be very helpful to have a second tutorial for more advanced players who want to talk about tech/item build strategies.
I see many people that are talking about unit movement and collision, I think this is actually good to have in the game, HOWEVER, In my experiences the hitboxs of the unit don't often correlate with the unit model, or with the environment. This leads to confusion when you run into an 'invisible plant' or small unit, additionally, my creeps have poor pathing. I think a good way to improve this would be to have an item like phase boots from dota2, or have the general boots in this game, once added to the hero apply to the creeps?
I will also note that I think the base structures should be customized to each hero/race, right now it looks very similar and this could be a good opportunity for the game art to show through. While i'm on the topic, neutral creeps and tower's attacks are really hard to see, this makes engaging them confusing for me.
Just several quick comments
Having fun so far, though
Feels like bot games always come down to who runs out of stock. Didn't see it as much during pvp
Healers made a pretty big difference, at least in some squads; harder to tell effect in PVP since opponents vary so much.
Bot play: At the beginning bots are hard however after I started picking up the game flow, it got fairly more simple however when i moved over to playing pvp the 2 weirdest things to pickup the feeling of was being on the other side (starting on top and pushing down) which felt disorienting, and learning to play around the animation of ultimates that you hadn't used (or even ultimates/abilities you had used but hadn't gotten used to facing)
I've reached level 6 playing mainly normal bots. My major observation was that after killing a titan camp, harvesting the experience gems (by building the collectors) felt like a waste of time due to the cooldown of the build ability. To me it seemed that the time had already been invested in clearing the camp, so spending extra time standing around the spheres was a little frustrating. I imagine the idea was to be able to share experience with allies that helped with the camp or allow the enemy to contest the experience gain, but I feel that being able to instantly build the collectors, and then having the collection time a bit longer would achieve this while also allowing the player to move away if the gems are not in danger of being stolen. However, I do believe the cooldown is necessary for the central gem fountain objectives. Maybe the solution is splitting the two mechanisms up? Anyway, that was the main thing I kept noticing during my 10 or so games.
Thanks for allowing me to participate
Very interesting observations Shadow! The intent was to have bots not use ults as its not fun for new players to get hit by them. However im sure its just as unfun to get hit by ults you've never seen before.
Did you find the ult telegraphs clear?
So far played 4 games, won two, lost two. (Haven't played in any other weekends, if that's not clear) The first game I played without watching Day9's tutorial. I picked Vela/Raider, because hit and run is my style. I was utterly, utterly lost as to what was going on. I might have been able to figure it out but it was very confusing. Part of this was that my first instinct as an RTS player was to start macroing - building workers, infrastructure, supply depots. I looked around for all of the above, and I couldn't find any of it. And I sat around flailing because I didn't realize that this is more of a MOBA, not an RTS. I say that because I feel like the above are the defining characteristics of an RTS, and all of that is largely automated in Atlas. The other big thing here is that units don't cost resources. Just supply. And everyone gets the same supply.
After an embarrassing loss, I watched the first half of Day9's video, at which point I said to myself, OK, so the way to do the things I was trying to do is to... not do them. I can do that I guess. Went back in with a bit more understanding and it was intuitively obvious to me that a dominant strategy was going to be unit preservation and starving the opposing team of stock. So I still went with Vela, but I picked up whatever Merc class has the healers. And I chewed through the bots with ease. Step 1 -> Immediately tech to level 2. Step 2 -> Get 4 snipers and 2 healers. Step 3 -> Snipe enemy units with hit and run tactics behind your towers until they're out of stock. Step 4 -> Win. I didn't need to get any expansions, I didn't need to get any upgrades, (Although I did just to try them out, once I had already all but secured my victory), I didn't need to get any gems. I probably didn't even need to get the other units I did, although I rounded out my supply in any case. I genuinely believe I could win (although it might actually be hard) with only snipers, healers, the hero, and good micro. (I'm actually going to try this and post replay if I can win)
The stock mechanic needs to be vastly reworked, or some form of the above strategy will always be dominant. If you're married to the stock idea (which I don't see why you would be) I would significantly rework it. Double, or maybe even quadruple the stock bonus you get from destroying towers, and then give additional stock for gems captured, or something renewable. This way a defensive player can't beat someone who's controlling the game just by sniping units every time he attacks.
Replay G90112952386745549c37997d5bb9a61c
I didn't research a single upgrade, I never built anything except 4 snipers and 3 healers. I did get gems at the start, because I wasn't thinking, but they didn't make a significant difference.
Edit: was working during the PvP hours or I would have tried Vela out there too. Maybe the above strategy is only effective versus bots, I don't know. Sure seems incredibly op though.
I understand the intro bots not using abilities however for normal bots I was expecting them to use the resources at their disposal similar to how a player would, without necessarily the same players veiwpoint, strategy, or coordination for the game. The reason i mention this is because while playing with bots atm can help you recognize the ult you are using, however it doesn't help you learn the feeling of counterplaying that ult. I'm a person who tends to micro poorly in large fights as a baseline and will eventually get better as i put more time in since i eventually pick up the feeling of dodging the ult. For example the first time i got ulted by vex in pvp my team got rekt and i was like "OH CRAP", however vex was played in a number of the games against me so i got better at seeing the symbol on the ground and splitting my army or getting out of range so by the end i would only lose 1 or 2 units, (10 games still didn't quite have the feeling down but was getting there). Likewise with non-combat based ults in some of my games people were buying the observers (forgot actual name) as a counter to vela's ult which was something i hadn't thought of simply because i never needed too despite once i saw it happen it was obvious.
In terms of ult telegraphs, i felt most of them were visually clear. The only one i'm not sure of since i haven't played as him and didn't notice anything ultlike in game was Grath which is odd since I faced Grath multiple times.
I have only played one game (I'm in the middle of exams but couldn't resist at least trying the game out!! :D)
First Impressions: Love the pre-game lobby music! Love the colour scheme of the game as well. In general I wanna say job well done to the art/design team on overall style! Reminiscent for me of a hybrid of Warcraft 3 and DOTA 2 style-wise
I liked the idea of limited compositions chosen in the pre-game lobby. That made me feel like there would be cool opportunity to coordinate compositions with teammates in the future. Will there potentially be ordered/draft picking to create composition/counter-pick scenarios like in DOTA or League? If not, totally cool, I can understand why it would also be important to give players to freedom to play whatever composition they want.
I like the numerous ways to progress/constantly do things, this lends itself to multi-tasking which I think is crucial to RTS games. However, I sometimes felt only a vague sense of progress. By this I mean, I was aware that I was making progress/achieving things, but unaware of how relatively significant/momentous these things might be. I'm sure that that awareness would come with a greater number of games-played, but I did feel that with SO many possible objectives/ways to progress, I was unsure when I had really achieved something big or tide-turning on which I ought to capitalize.
I felt very powerful when I had a bunch of Deadeye's (I played Vela i think her name was) and could use my hero power to scout, and then drop a bunch of the Deadeye's skillshots on an approaching army! Very satisfying.
On the whole, I am definitely excited to play more games and try more stuff and tinker and ALL THAT GOOD STUFF! Congrats guys on a game than genuinely has me wanting to play MORE!
-Guru
I am now leaning towards that conclusion as well. Given more time and a skilled player I think the Jugg being controllable is a good thing. For example, maybe a team wants to clear out enemy expansions rather than pushing to take a tower. Also, Juggernauts are a buildable unit in one of the Merc trees which I didn't realize initially.
I only got a chance to start playing tonight since I was away for the weekend, but here are my thoughts after a couple hours of play and several bot matches:
-I felt overwhelmed at first when I was presented with how much is going on in this game. I had watched the tutorial video and thought I was pretty prepared but watching and playing are two very different things. Luckily I picked things up alright after the first couple of games so I definitely think the game becomes more intuitive the more you play it. A good tutorial will be very helpful for new players.
-I felt like there was a lot of opportunity for both overall strategy when picking heroes and tactics when the game starts. However, since I haven't had the opportunity to play this game for more than a few hours combat did feel like ctrl-A, ctrl-A, rebuild, repeat. I think the micro is tough to flesh out in such a short period of time. Maybe after more plays during the next test weekend it'll be easier to flesh out the micro possibilities.
-I felt annoyed when I looked at some of the pathing of the CPU squads. There was an instance or two where the units just ran along the walls to go around corners in a relatively disorganized way especially with unit collisions cluttering everything up.
-I felt hopeful after playing for a while that this game has a lot of potential. The marriage of MOBA and RTS seems natural and Atlas seems to hit on the best aspects of each. Each hero seems unique and the squads + mercs really makes me feel like I can carve out my own strategic niche to call my own.
Thanks for letting me participate and I'm looking forward to seeing where this game goes!