NotNinaZerg's feedback

NotNinaZerg

Hello! I feel like i need to preface my feedback because it's kinda coming from a weird place.. I'm looking to Atlas as a successor to broodwar, even if all of its mechanics aren't the same. So i'll cut the bullshit and get straight into it.

What I see in the current build of Atlas is an attempted expansion of big end game fights in broodwar: trying to bring in the fun and excitement of a 150 vs 150 supply army clash to 6 people while still trying to keep the strategic aspect behind the curtains. But instead of having a standard 150 vs 150 clash, now we have 3 players controlling 3 separate armies, trying to achieve the same thing. Throughout my time with the beta, and thinking about the games that i played, I kept thinking back to the defiler in scbw. What makes the defiler such a great unit is that it can do so many things so well, while rewarding good players in different ways.. for instance, one player might excel at placing great defensive swarms, another might be good at manouvering through enemy lines to get a dope plague of 36 marines, another player might just be good at rapidly consuming lings as they run by, letting him effectively have more spells than a player with less skill. The best Korean zergs were good at all three things, while still maintaining the rest of their economies/armies as well..

In Atlas, at the moment, I feel like if I had a defiler and 36 lings I could 1v3 any team. Not from a balance perspective, but from a "i feel like a badass" perspective. Because Atlas currently doesn't have units running around like the defiler. The power level just isn't there. I think there's a few design reasons for it, and it mainly stems from the 3v3 splitting of 1 normal rts race into 3 different ones. I get that the OPness in Atlas will come from wild and wacky race/merc combinations, but for me at least it's not good enough. Idk, maybe I just don't see the appeal of playing a fragmented RTS instead of just playing broodwar, but I think it's important to be honest about this game's feeling as juxtaposed with the elephant in the room. The dev team asked for productive feedback, so i guess my advice would be this: don't be afraid to turn up the power of units from 5/10 to 15/10. You're making a game for RTS players, aren't you? I think most players will have fun with units that properly reward them and honor the genre that they're in.. Like, look at BBS in scbw. i HATE getting BBSed so much, but the only reason I get BBSed is because I go 12h13p13h12g, and kr terrans read me like a book and BBS till the cows come home.. so why don't i stop being so greedy? because greed is so damn fun and it feels powerful, and if he goes 11b15cc i can own him.. so i feel like terran can have BBS, which seems unfair, because i have unfair BS too. so why remove something from the terran toolbox? there's just no reason to, because there's mutual respect in my head.

I was playing Alder when I played, because I found their units interesting.. I really liked the sapling mechanic, it seemed neat any dynamic.. but why don't they have collision?? i feel like that could have made for some cool interplay between units.. Alder's deeproot terror is such a cool ability, because it requires you to set it up with a sapling, and THEN cast the spell on it... but really... 90 second cooldown??? it's not that good, 90 seconds feels like an eternity to me.. Sapling already has a 30 second cooldown, which is a long time in itself (although spamming would be dumb, maybe allow them to cast again while killing the old instanced sapling if it's alive). there's just a LOT of dead time, which just feels boring and drives me to just go back to a different RTS. Like, I'm coming to Atlas to teamfight with my friends, not sit around on cooldown for 90 seconds. 90 seconds! honestly day9, imagine you're playing late game ZvT and you just spawned 12 queens and you're waiting to use them to broodling bomb a tank line.. except, instead of playing the rest of the zvt while you're waiting for the queens (ie defending them with a lower respective resource count and the strategic implications, hiding them from scans, trying to figure out the best place to attack, etc...), instead of all that you just get to stare at the 12 queens... and maybe move them around a little.. until their energy finally gets to 150 and you can use them.. it's just boring, and has a place in BW because it has strategic implications but in atlas it feels like unneeded dead weight.

I'm not sure if atlas maybe just needs more units per player, or weaker units and higher tier spell casters maybe? it just feels extremely boring compared to broodwar. The strategy is there with the race picking combos and the merc picking and that kinda stuff, but the game isn't as fun. i understand that the "fun" that i can expect will only be 1/3 of a real rts as a function of the game that you're making, but i hope that eventually you guys manage to find more compelling ways to reward singular players (since i feel like a lot of the team based stuff is way far along, some of the skills like deeproot tremor are honestly awesome!).

So that's my complaints regarding gameplay. Just turn it the fuck up, make it a 15/10. Day9, imagine you're making a game that you would have wanted back when you were playing bw hardcore! imagine you're making a game with mechanics and abilities worthy of flash, effort, jd, julyzerg, bisu, stork, etc. because that's the game that I wanna play too! and i know that's what a lot of koreans want to replace league.

Anyways, out of the heavy stuff. Why are units stacked into tabs instead of showing individual unit healths like bw and sc2? it makes it difficult to quickly select them and move them back for seemingly no reason. Why isn't there a camera hotkey command yet? shift f2/f3/f4 etc. The graphics need to be tweaked to make everything feel more distinct too... for instance, when my units were getting "ignited" i could never tell by just looking at them, which is something that really needs to be worked on. Art also needs to be more recognizable, but i realize it's just an alpha so everything is probably totally WIP.

Also, this is a really weird suggestion but I think you should be forced to build your base on nodes, similar to how the expansions work right now... so don't have all three critical base structures in your main, force the player to place them on nodes to add additional material harassment opportunities (maybe add the ability to spend scrap on towers to place on nodes to flesh out the economic decision making of the game).

long story short. there's a good game hidden under this post. i think there is a lot of potential with the 3v3 aspect of it, but you need to find a way to not have it be boring as hell. the juxtaposition between lategame bw and lategame atlas can't even be made, because atm they're not in the same league. i hope this post was helpful, and please feel free to pm or whatever if you want to chat some more! you can pretty easily find my TL id given my email