Weekend 4 in Review (My houghts as a new tester)
I played a bunch of games so I thought I'd post some general thoughts.
On being a new player:
- I think a new player/tester has a rough time being introduced to the game. The tutorial does not feel encompassing, specifically from a macro perspective. I think a longer segment detailing things like control groups, upgrades, tech and such would help. I also think players should be introduced to the concept of choosing their army units (I saw a few players in global who were unaware that they could customize their army).
- I think the atlaspedia and gameplay FAQ should be front and center. From a UI perspective I completely missed it. I saw Day9's face and then immediately after that I saw the big glowy play button. I didn't realize the learn tab existed until after PvP had closed. New players glaze over stuff. There is just so much information being thrown at you. I think it is all in the presentation. For example, in Hearthstone when a new expansion or nerfs come out an overlay appears over the client which tells you about the changes using a graphic. I think something like this is needed for new players in Atlas. Hold our hand all the way from first booting the client through our first bot game.
- And on that topic, I think intro bot games should have more hand holding. Pretend I am literally babby.
On bot games:
- Most bot games end very quickly. It is very difficult to practice builds that incorporate higher tech when your bots are pushing the nexus with your titans. Some PvP games I played went on for 40 min. I don't think that the bots should necessarily be harder or easier, but I think their priorities are too rigid. I'd like to see more defensive play from them so that bot games are a little closer to PvP games, things like retreating from fights they can't win and not blindly throwing themselves into towers.
- And on that note, I didn't really get to test higher tech units outside of long PvP matches - the bot games just don't go on long enough. I could get to that tech rushing it but then I don't get to experience the transition from mid to late game.
- I realize bot behavior may not be a priority but its things like this: G9b8e4e9b26b141da9627f85165fe0719, at the start of the game that really just feel bad. I experienced many issues like this, where bots were generally being unhelpful or just broken. I played a PvP match where a person dropped and the bot that replaced him was stuck at our pylon doing nothing (G8db1cae7d05c4fe0b87596a293e22e1e).
On debuffs:
- There are mechanics like ignite and toxicity that involve stacking a debuff. I think it seeing this information is important, even if it is just a (toggle-able?) placeholder for the moment. Maybe like the +1's that appear over gems.
On allied unit pathing:
- This was something I saw on the post-test survey. I played mostly melee heroes this weekend and I sometimes had issues with pathing. For example, an ally would have their ranged units fanned out around a camp. None of my units can pass. I can do no damage and contribute nothing. I think this is problematic but I'm not sure how I would go about fixing it. You have two commands from two players that want to happen concurrently but prioritizing one over the other (to potentially improve pathing around allies) could have some nasty emergent effects.
- Another issue I had microing melee units was in the camps. Sometimes you are locked in place by allies and can't dodge things like smash attacks. It feels pretty bad to be actively trying to micro units and then be denied because your ally has a-moved and gone to click on the generators.
On control groups:
- Generators bound to control groups needs a reminder. I have played an absurd amount of starcraft but for some reason with the generators I didn't make the connection that keybinding them was even possible until after a few games (and after having gone through the keybind option page).
- I hate ~ because I learned it first. I became dependent on it and it became a horrid habit. I think encouraging players to use control groups is a good thing.
- On that note, control groups need a UI element. I'm no Atlas bonjwa (yet). I need visual feedback to see whats where. It was very disorienting playing without it.
- Also, a way to remove units from control groups on the fly would be swell.
On units:
-Transports feel very flimsy. I both like and dislike this. I think that transporting troops across the field should be risky, but I also think that it they are so easily sniped at the moment. I ran a build with hydros that rushed kingpins with a transport. I'd like to be able to drop micro with them ala shuttle/prism/medivac micro. It feels very risky to even bring the transport that close though. Maybe increase their pickup range slightly? I feel that between the health and unloading time they already have a lot of things going against them.
On generators:
- Cancelling anything that is queued up is a pain. Auto casting starting as soon as you cancel an upgrade can be frustrating if you're trying to empty the queue. It just doesn't behave as intuitively as you would think.
- From a UI perspective having the generators on one side of the screen and production on the other can be confusing. I often queued up tons of scrap instead of making basic units because I wasn't looking at which generator I had selected - I was looking at the production tab. I think having them closer together would fix the problem. Maybe some more graphics would help too (like how starcraft shows a factory and units being produced in it).
- Units being on separate keybinds from game to game really threw me off. I guess it is because keybinds are based off the order that a unit is selected in the hero/army selection screen, not off a general production bind. I'd prefer if there was an option to make them static.
On game start:
- I think it is strange that you can queue up army before warping in your hero. The first thing I want to do in the game is set up my binds. I think having a little bit of a buffer so that everyone can queue up their units together wouldn't be a bad thing.
On hard camps:
- The flyers are difficult to target. Something is not intuitive about the place I should be clicking.
On bugs:
- The only thing that really stood out to me was the Nexus beam animation targeting my units when I was far out of its range (across the map). I wouldn't take damage, but the animation would target my units and I would see the beam briefly.
- I had memory leaks while watching replays on fast forward.
- The replay interface could use some loving. I had lots of problems trying to change speeds. The speed of the replay did not match the visual number. The number would bounce up and down on the UI, making it hard to click. The control elements are very small.
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I love this game. I think it has amazing potential and I'm excited to be able to test and play it. Keep it up Artillery, you've got something special here.
Comments
You're off to a great start with a BTBAM-influenced name. =)
Totally, totally agreed here! We've got a lot more to tutorialize than we showed here. This was just the start.
Great stuff here, love this feedback!
You can technically direct your bot allies, but that isn't made terribly clear at any point. Also, I've passed this feedback on to the guy that works on our bots. Thanks!
Oof! Yeah, lots of cleanup stuff to do here around bots. Thanks for the reports!
Do you mean, like, floating the damage it's doing? Unsure what you mean here.
Collision/pathing with allies is our first-order set of tasks coming out of this test weekend. These reports are super helpful, thanks! <3
Unsure what you mean. Are you saying that you wished you had a more persistent onscreen visual representation of your generator queue and of your command groups? That was my takeaway, sorry if I misunderstood!
Love this feedback! We should likely be including command-group behavior in the tutorial similar to the way we feature tilde.
Totally agreed here, and we've heard this one a fair bit. Definitely on the to-do for the UI!
Also on the roadmap! :D
We've got a few things to tackle in terms of making transports feel right in the final game. For this test weekend, though, we erred on the safer, more conservative side to ensure that transports weren't dominant. We've had previous builds where they were just that!
Completely feel you on this one. This is another area of the UI that we'll be improving!
Love this feedback, great points!
We did something similar to this (static hotkeys) for abilities and, for the most part, we like how it plays. We might do something similar for units down the road as well, but haven't discussed anything just yet.
Gotten this a bit too. The first 10 seconds are a bit weird, yeah -- you usually want to be doing the same things in those first few seconds. There's some smoothing out to be done here, for sure!
Agreed. Flyers in camps do feel a bit weird. We tried adding "flyer helpers" to flying units, but they may not be doing quite enough, particularly in this case. Need to add more clarity here.
Oof! Could you grab a replay where this happened for me?
Oh, not good at all. I'll forward this on and see if this is a known issue. If not, we should probably solve this even if we're not giving a ton of attention to replays yet.
And continuing from that last point -- we're not giving a ton of love to the replay system yet, and are mostly content with it having basic functionality for now. The priority is getting the game in good shape before putting a ton of time into replay support. But getting the replay system looking and feeling good is certainly a longer-term goal!
WOOO! Thanks for testing and for posting!