My thoughts on Atlas so far
Hey guys, so to introduce my self I am an avid RTS player, mainly Sc2, Littlewargame and the C&C franchise.
I consider myself a very competitive player, my highest rank was masters in Sc2 and I always try to play at the highest possible level I can.
With that out of the way lets get into some of my thoughts on atlas, I hope this is somewhat coherent.
First Impressions:
I should note that I have never played any Moba style game like LoL or Dota and I have a very limited knowledge of such games, in addition one of the few RTS games I have never played is in fact Warcraft3 which seems to be similar in many ways to atlas. At first I confess I was very confused by the game, the resource system took a little while to figure out and the whole gem, creep, scrap system was a bit confusing. In addition the amount of options you are given for unit selection at the start of my first bot game was a bit overwhelming as I had no idea which units would be good. However, once I had played a few games I began to pick up the mechanics pretty quickly, the basic idea of collecting gems for money and producing units was pretty intuitive. Once I learned to hotkey my production and upgrade buildings on 4-5 and 6 I was able to start understanding the macro. It has been a little while since I have picked up a brand new game like this and I have to say looking back I think the game is actually really easy to learn, the basics of leveling up your hero making units etc were actually pretty easy to understand. I think the hardest part to learn was the mechanics of Gems, I wish the tutorial spent a little more time explaining this mechanic.
Gameplay:
As an RTS player I was not sure how much I would love the Moba heavy style of Atlas with the focus on heroes and abilities but I have to say this game has me hooked. The Heroes feel really well done, not too strong, but still very important to your army. The moba elements are definitely there, but the more I played the more it felt like an RTS game actually. Your Hero actually feels less important than your high tech units like Trebuchets or Apocolytes later in the game, which I like. The amount of micro necessary is really fantastic, I loved the how each engagement could swing with the good control and how impactful your micro felt. One of the my favorite parts of the game is how smoothly unit abilities work together. Even as an experienced Sc2 player I still am daunted by controlling multiple spellcasters in one army. For example I shy away from making ghosts as Terren because it is so tricky to control them. However, in Atlas, the way each spell has a different hotkey and the fact that you can control multiple spellcasters at once feels fantastic. I found myself easily able to control multiple spells and abilities with ease. I also love the tactical and positional gameplay in Atlas, the importance of flanking angle of engagement feels very satisfying. Overall the units feel very easy to control but at the same time I get the feeling that the skill ceiling is super high, from the smallest engagement good micro can give you an edge.
Pathing:
There seems to be a lot of discussion about unit pathing and blocking so I would like to input my two cents here.
I REALLY like the way pathing feels in the game right now. I love the way the pathing forces you to really think about your engagements and which units are in front etc. There is no question that if you make a mistake and put your hero in front when he should be in the back you will get punished hardcore by the pathing. But I think this is actually a good mechanic, I can understand players getting frustrated by this mechanic but I think the frustration is worth it because is allows for such an additional layer of micro and positioning. For example when you take a team fight you need to be aware of where your allies units are positioned, which of your units should be in front, etc. Also the more I played the less moments I had where my units were stuck and derping around, I feel like the more experienced you get the less frustrating moments will occur and the more awesome control moments will happen.
Deck building/Unit selection:
I would also like to briefly state my thoughts on Faction, Hero and Deck building mechanics.
First of all I love the basic idea of having the different colors or factions, each with a unique set of units. The Aesthetics of the different factions fit so well, Green using a lot of natural/plant based/chemical units. Red using Fire and raw, angry units. Blue with Ice and water etc. Love it.
In addition I really enjoy the amount of different options and choices available to you. I really feel like you have the freedom to create your own unique army using different units and combinations and I love the amount of tinkering you can do to make an army that perfectly suites your playstyle. Also I think the amount of customization you can do will really help keep the game fresh and interesting, you can always tinker around to make a different army for each hero, and every match will be slightly different as your opponents can pick unique army sets which maybe you were not expecting.
Economy:
I am pretty happy with the economy system, it is fairly similar to standard RTS but with a nice twist. The stock mechanic is actually pretty interesting, and definitely helps to mitigate losing your entire army. I rarely found myself out of a stock bank, so I felt safe to be a bit more aggressive with my basic units as losing them was rarely a very big deal. I like the way your supply slowly builds up, but there is always a tradeoff between making more supply or sacrificing a larger army to rush out scrap for tech units.
Some Things I didn't love:
Over all I am really enjoying Atlas and I think it is in a super good spot. I had to spend a little bit to think of things I really didn't like, and in fact this list is a bit tentative as I am not even sure this stuff should be necessarily changed.
That said, I found the creep camps to be a bit of a chore. In a match I often felt like I was spending half of the game grinding out creep camps. Now I am a bit mixed on this as I do like the mechanic of clearing camps to earn money. but I found myself getting board constantly clearing out the camps around our base. I think part of this may be due to my OCD mentality, I could never leave a camp un-cleared, even if there is action around the map I feel compelled to clean up the creep camps to keep the money flowing. Also I think the hard camps could perhaps use a bit of an overhaul. Early game you cannot clear them because they are too hard, which is how it should be. the issue is that later in the game the benefit of clearing the hard camp is smaller because the easy and medium camps are now giving larger bonuses because they have been cleared so many times. This issue is especially true of the corner camps. I think perhaps the hard camps should just have a flat increase in gems, or perhaps the camps should automatically provide the larger gem bonus after a certain time period even if they have not been cleared before.
One more thing I would like to quickly mention is the strength of titans late game. I found it pretty annoying when you would lose a game just because a late game titan would just walk in and kill your nexus even with your entire team trying to kill it. Even on the winning side I found this annoying as I would have spent all this time building a large army of strong units and before I have a chance to actually take a fight a random titan strolls in and wins the game for me without me having to even fight. I understand that late game is a tricky thing to balance as you don't want games dragging on with no one winning, but I my opinion Titans should be only a supplement to your entire army pushing the nexus, not a unit able to walk in a win one the game gets to a certain point. Also a small side not connected to this I would like if there was some visual identification to show what level the titan is at. Right now there is no easy way to see if the titan is at a level where it will 1 hit your nexus or whether it is not a massive threat.
Yikes this was a much longer post than I expected!! I hope my muddled thoughts make a certain level of sense :P
Overall I am really loving Atlas and I cannot wait to play more of this awesome game.
Cheers!
Comments
Do you think that killing enemy units could grant scrap or stock also? If that was the case you wouldn't feel so compelled to clear camps.
Having an income that is only supplemented by creeps might be smart also.
Did you know that any of your teammates clearing camps helps YOUR Econ also, even if you don't help?
I saw a decent number of people saying that it felt like comebacks were difficult. I think that if killing enemy units gave scrap/stock, that would mean that early game fights would snowball the game even more. Not only would you get the scrap lead from the center gems, a Titan spawn and map/vision control, you'd also have more resources than your opponents.