Initial Impresions on Atlas (TW4)

HighXavier

Hello. After playing in the Alpha and not having fun through most of it I thought I would share some feedback on the game.
I am a player of both SC2 and heroes of the storm which are relevant experience for this game. I was trying to play on an old i3 laptop while away from home for the Canadian long weekend until I switched to a better laptop my dad has.

Minimum specs and Fullscreen: These are two small things but I felt confused because the resolution of my laptop was 1366 by 768 the main page (with chat) couldn't fit on my screenand had no option to fullscreen. I also got annoyed because I had no way of making the graphics worse to try and get the actual game to run on the main page. After switching laptops I resolved this problem and was able to play. A rough minimum specs would help players with less powerful machines know what they can expect.

PvP: I was playing with ryme for most of these games except one hydros game.
I felt very intimidated in my early games as it felt my army was immediately smaller and weaker than my opponents armies.
I also felt annoyed with the fact I had to make the unit 2 times. One building it and the other warping in. Maybe allowing warping in units to move but not attack would ease that aspect.
I also felt disheartened when I discovered artillery in the game as a late game unit. By the end of the game I realized it's weaknesses but until we rushed the area it was parked I didn't even know it was a unit. I thought it was an ability and felt very powerless.
I also felt powerless playing Hydros as his basic melee units with the pathing issues were hard to get use out of. I felt I either needed to commit all my forces or constantly retreat till I could.
I also felt a little bored after all 3 titans had spawned but that got better as I learned about camps and I had battles with the enemy over the camps in the middle.
However I was very impressed with unit creation in general. I loved the idea of having all the buildings set up and all you have to do is upgrade and build units.
I started to get attached to my units (especially the ancient ice frog) and while I wished for more powerful high tech units the ones I had were very cool and very rewarding.
I felt empowered when I learned how my ultimate and the uses of unit abilities to freeze a hero and get a kill.
I also had a lot of fun in my last game as I could see the game Artillery is trying to build peek through in spots. Like the final doom push and getting your teams ults off and getting the titans into the base mostly unharmed was stressful but also very fun.
Also the people working at Artillery were very positive and receptive to support issues and feedback. At one point I mentioned about my lack of fun and that I would keep going they complimented me on my attitude. This made me want to play the game more and write this feedback to try and make the game as best as possible.

Anyway I hope this helps and thanks for inviting me to the alpha. If you keep iterating and improving the ideas in this alpha I have a feeling I will be one of the first to buy it when it comes out.

Treisk

So stoked you decided to keep playing and post!

@HighXavier said:
Minimum specs and Fullscreen: These are two small things but I felt confused because the resolution of my laptop was 1366 by 768 the main page (with chat) couldn't fit on my screenand had no option to fullscreen. I also got annoyed because I had no way of making the graphics worse to try and get the actual game to run on the main page. After switching laptops I resolved this problem and was able to play. A rough minimum specs would help players with less powerful machines know what they can expect.

We do have the min-spec on our support site (which is incredibly tucked away, sorry about that!). https://help.artillery.com/minspec

That said, performance is always a work in progress, and the goal is to get the game playable on as many machines as possible! Sorry about the resolution issues; we've had some reports of this and is another thing we're working on getting to play more smoothly.

I also felt disheartened when I discovered artillery in the game as a late game unit. By the end of the game I realized it's weaknesses but until we rushed the area it was parked I didn't even know it was a unit. I thought it was an ability and felt very powerless.

Particularly with the Trebuchet, I think there are better ways we can communicate that this is a unit doing this for sure. This unit was added pretty close to the start of the test weekend, and we originally weren't going to add it because it was in such an early state. But we loved it so much that we added it for TW4 last-minute!

I also felt powerless playing Hydros as his basic melee units with the pathing issues were hard to get use out of. I felt I either needed to commit all my forces or constantly retreat till I could.

There's a conversation to happening to my right as we speak regarding pathing/collision to resolve exactly this, so we definitely hear ya here, haha!

I also felt a little bored after all 3 titans had spawned but that got better as I learned about camps and I had battles with the enemy over the camps in the middle.

Would you mind elaborating on the first half of this point?

However I was very impressed with unit creation in general. I loved the idea of having all the buildings set up and all you have to do is upgrade and build units.

Wooo!

I started to get attached to my units (especially the ancient ice frog) and while I wished for more powerful high tech units the ones I had were very cool and very rewarding.

Double wooo!

I felt empowered when I learned how my ultimate and the uses of unit abilities to freeze a hero and get a kill.

Triple wooo!

I also had a lot of fun in my last game as I could see the game Artillery is trying to build peek through in spots. Like the final doom push and getting your teams ults off and getting the titans into the base mostly unharmed was stressful but also very fun.

Quadruple wooo!

Also the people working at Artillery were very positive and receptive to support issues and feedback. At one point I mentioned about my lack of fun and that I would keep going they complimented me on my attitude. This made me want to play the game more and write this feedback to try and make the game as best as possible.

We love, love, LOVE the attitude of "I understand that this should be fun and it isn't, and I want to investigate why." It's the heart of what makes playtesting useful in the first place. And that statement you made in chat was the model of an ideal playtester experience. Well, actually, the ideal is that everything is fun and awesome and perfect. But the realistic ideal is that "The player is not enjoying something, and wants to understand why that is before discussing it, and then he wants to discuss it." So, so, so perfect!

Anyway I hope this helps and thanks for inviting me to the alpha. If you keep iterating and improving the ideas in this alpha I have a feeling I will be one of the first to buy it when it comes out.

Awesome to hear it! Thanks so, so much for the post!