Game Skeleton, Systems, and Mechanics [TW3 Megathread]
Let us know your thoughts on specific systems in the game, e.g. gem collection -> guardian aspects, expansions, stock, mercenaries, items, squad upgrades, tower construction, win conditions, overall pacing.
When providing feedback, please use the following format:
- X happened
- It made me feel Y (or I’d like to feel Y)
- (optional) Here’s a suggestion to improve it
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Comments
Once you fight the starting enemies in the base it seems like there is nothing to do until the gem shrines open up.
This makes me feel like I am wasting time or falling behind.
Perhaps opening the shrines earlier could lessen this feeling.
Not sure where this should go so I'll just leave it here.
I feel as though there is a notable difference in the difficulties of playing certain squads relative to others, which is a great thing, but when I hopped into a game with normal bots as Alder after finish up a game with intro bots as Rhyme, I quickly felt like I was drowning.
I understand this is partially due to the fact that I am just don't think I'm ready for normal bots yet, but when the importance of knowing what to do when your units get into combat is so much greater than most RTS's, it was rough to discover that I couldn't any longer just sling ice powers with my biggest decision being which enemy units to cold snap, but instead had to plan which seeds go where, when do I transform them, when and how many do I transform them into healers, which ones do I consume, etc etc. I think having some sort of measure of difficult to play on the squad selection screen would be helpful (though had I bothered to more closely read the squad abilities beforehand instead of jumping on the hype train and diving into a game with the next character my mouse happened to click, maybe I could've avoided that...)
Another thought as I'm playing through, I'm a little unclear on exactly what leveling up gives me. I see that I get a minor scrap reward, but otherwise the conveyance of what else leveling achieves for me is somewhat lost. I'm realizing I'm in game assuming that levels are making my hero stronger (I do know that it'll unlock the heroes second ability at level 8), maybe making my units stronger as well, and that it's boosting my available number of units faster than just waiting will and so on. But then I thought about it and I have no idea if half of that is actually happening or if I'm just making that up.
It seems like since the bots just rush out and are depleting their stock killing titans and getting into mid-field skirmishes over juggernauts as quickly as they can, it makes me feel like that leveling is crucial and a large part of the game is just throwing units to their deaths (as efficiently as possible, but still) so that you can level, clear out your upkeep to make stronger units that you can now make since you've been upgrading while tossing your first tier to the lions AND now you're level 6 which means........I'm not exactly sure what.
So, basically I feel as though leveling is incredibly important but when weighing the options of level or push it's a little difficult to understand what all I'm actually getting from that next level or two.
Leveling Does make your hero stronger and do more damage.
In one of my games I won a juggernaut and didn't realize it was mine, because I'd only thrown in about one gem to try and help out. Yes, it's a different color but that isn't always easy to notice in the heat of battle.
The game offers charms that provide physical or magical damage resistance. However, almost all unit auto attacks do physical damage, and only some abilities do magical damage. This would prioritize physical protection over magical, and with limited charm slots diminishes the desire to have magical protection.
I would anticipate magical "looking" creatures, like the Vex's Spitfire or Rhyme's Glacial Ranger, to be doing magical damage with their basic attack. This would provide some strategy in charm selection based on what squads your opponents choose, and encourage diversifying amongst your team to ensure you don't provide the opponent the ability to dull your entire team's damage.
Vex's spitfires do 10 magic damage per hit to targets that are burning.
I'm guessing you guys went back and forth on this...but theoretically why not just make juggs team controllable?
Let us know your thoughts on specific systems in the game, e.g. gem collection -> guardian aspects, expansions, stock, mercenaries, items, squad upgrades, tower construction, win conditions, overall pacing.
Overall i felt like it is very objective oriented till you get the frontal towers down. When i got my first guardian i felt like the first tower was a free kill to my army. But the process in between was less conflict but the occasional poke or harassment between the two opponents. There was nothing beside your own impulse to attack the other person. I felt like i was just waiting for gems to collect rather than fight over them against the opposing hero.
Mercenaries! Great idea having some middle ground between squads. I have a few ideas that I think might work to make the mercenaries more fun and interesting. (posted on the other megathread, but both say mercenaries so I reposted here"
Things to consider
My purposed Changes
Supply is funky. I feel frustrated that its always capped and there's nothing I can do about it. I thought I would like not having to "CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS" and I do, but I need some way to get a larger army than my enemy. Besides the temporary boost you get from winning battles, there's no way to use overwhelming numbers. Everyone is almost always supply capped, so army composition and micro matter, and MOBA-style objective management, ganking, and pushing matter, but there is no macro, which means my army can never be awesomely huge when I want it to be.
Optional suggestion: If taking expansions provided a flat supply boost, like +10 supply, expansions and attacking enemy expansions would become VERY important, which solves two problems at once. Right now, expansions are just extra juice for your upgrades, they NEVER translate to more units (unless you're suiciding your army), and attacking enemy expansions is a waste, since if you can beat their army, you're better off pushing to end the game.
EDIT: On Pacing
I feel bored when the game starts (like pre-Legacy of the Void SC2 bored). I feel excited when the geysers open and the game actually starts.
I never need to tier up manually. The miscues from hitting "A" to attack-move, but with the wrong selection, always take care of that for me.
A lot of the game feels artificially structured. Prefab structures, increasing pop cap, geyers schedules. Not necessarily bad thing - people play fairly abstract board games. Hard to imagine a fiction for this outside of a sporting event. Mechanics just have be learned because it doesn't feel like there is an intuitive basis behind them.
When there are no opponents around geysers, I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting for 'build' to reload. At the beginning I can spend some time setting up wards, but then it's just waiting. Might give some opportunity to buy upgrades and such, but often still feel like I'm just waiting.
With the geyser mechanic do colored gems still make sense? You're competing for them, so could they be the same?
Also some downtime waiting for respawns.
I played TW2, so I noticed changes in the resource system. Overall, it felt better, but I feel like there needs to be more focus on fighting for crystals. I found that element of the early game really fun, but crystals don't spawn quickly enough, and it felt more worthwhile to go around clearing creep camps. Fighting against npc's is just boring in a PVP game. I would like there to be incentive to go after the enemy team right off the bat.
Fighting over the fountains in bots felt very durdly however in pvp it felt like an interesting dance of pressuring and bullying while not wanting to over extend and get engaged upon, i feel like it favors cc but i thought the dance around it was great. Also I felt that the queueing and deploying of units was good however i felt like sometimes when i was rapidly switching between my army and my units i would accidently set my queue point to where i'm trying to fight, maybe add a button click to the deploy location rather than just right clicking.
Balance of MOBA vs RTS
@snkz mentioned that he wanted us to post about this in the forums, so here's my take on it. One of my issues with the MOBA genre is that the game doesn't feel very organic. The map is very well defined, the places of combat are very clear, I know exactly what my objective is, and everything feels laid out for me. I feel like I have no room to experiment because I have a very small number of options.
Just for example's sake, I'm gonna look at League of Legends: There are three very defined lanes and a jungle, and everybody has their spot, god forbid you try to break that format and put 2 people in the middle lane or whatever. The objectives are very clearly the destruction of towers up to the nexus, and there's actually no other way to win the game, so each game feels scripted to end the same way.
Now, in comparison, I play a lot of RTS games, so I'll look at Age of Empires 3. Say what you will, but I love the game, and these examples hold for the most part for AOE2. I'm thrown into some part of a random map, and I feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere, but I have to build my base and destroy the enemy. Nobody is telling me where to go, what to collect, or how to kill the opponent. Depending on the map, I can decide to fish, throw outposts across the map and greedily gather hunts, or turtle up from mills. Of course, as a metagame evolves, there are things that tend to be better, but I can still feel the freedom. In terms of base building, I can build where ever the hell I want. There is no designated cube telling me that I need to build my barracks here, or a lane that leads me directly to my goal. I can do whatever I want, and it feels awesome. I feel like I'm the mastermind in control of my side of the game, rather than playing into a map that feels like a preconstructed football field.
Now, for the sake of competitiveness, I understand that this freedom kind of has to be limited to make balance easier and whatever. Compared to AOE3, SC2 feels a lot more cookie cutter. there is a well defined spot for my expansion and for my terran wall-offs, but that's about it. Otherwise, I can expand where I want, when I want, and I don't have to take X expansion because the game sort of demands it, although some expansions are more obvious than others. I still remember my first game of SC2, where I hopped on ladder, picked Zerg, and felt so ready to destroy that terran. I built 4 hatcheries in the dead-center of the map, and he a-moved across my buildings.
Anyway, relating this to Atlas's current state, everything feels very cookie-cutter. My units come from a very specific place on the map, my expansions have their little slots, which are defended by camps, there's an exact number of paths to the enemy nexus and victory, etc. The game forces you to do what's most logical, and while this game feels to give more options at the start (taking a second expansion vs. challenging an aspect), it feels like I have to follow a flow chart. Again, as you get better at a game, your decisions will likely end up on a flowchart, but even having the illusion of choice is comforting.
To stress the point, I guess I'll point out that the MOBAs have very defined places in the game for very specific things. You have your jungle camps, the lane towers, the enemy nexus, and the jungle bosses. You're thrown into a field where you have to play by the rules of that arena. In most RTS games, aside from the natural mechanics of where resources are and the features of the terrain, I feel like I'm playing on an open palette, creating the outcome of the game on my own.
With all of this, I feel like the game is headed in a direction to satisfy the MOBA market and give them a taste of RTS gameplay. However, as an RTS fan, I can't say I enjoy the style of game design. I respect it and, quite honestly, I think the game will end up going farther if the game continues with this style, but for somebody looking for the next big RTS as SC2's impact on e-sports and the gaming community fades away, I can't say that I could see my new home in Atlas.
When i saw that killing towers was the only way to get gold, i felt disappointed. That puts a huge focus on killing towers and spawning the aspects, because you can't build an army without gold and you cant win without the army, so everything revolves around killing and defending the towers. I don't want to spend the whole game defending skimpy ass towers. The upgrades and expansions are just secondary. Which means everyone is just running around sniping towers since it helps win the game two-fold, killing towers to crush opponents defense and secondly to get more army to crush their army. When you run out of gold to get an army youre screwed, no comebacks, especially if there are no easy access towers or no towers at all. No one is drop killing workers, or working on expansions and defending them or killing a lot of creeps because it takes way too much commitment. For a more balanced game, it should be tower kills give scrap and expansions give gold, that would give a better overall experience and everyone would be running all around the map instead of just middle and towers. RTS should be about total map control, not tower control, that is more MOBA. Everyone will want to kill both towers and expansions if this was implemented. At least if you made bases get gold, you would always have a main base to get some gold, this would allow for combacks. Everyone needs to kill towers to win, why make it also necessary for it to get an army. Is this game going to be kill the towers to win game?
Maybe an option to share control of a Jugg when it spawns? That way if I'm focused on the other side of the map, my teammates can still use it to help siege the side where it spawned. Have a toggle ability when the Jugg is selected perhaps?
With Starcraft dying I need a new RTS fix, what I think would satisfy this would be one thing. "Please make expansions and harassment fun" Bases just feel like a background thing you just do. There is no 3 base into pool 'funday monday' idea. There is just do the meta because that's what is best. That is what I don't like about it. Moba's are just cog games! I want to think for myself... please let me think for myself when it comes to what I want to do.