My Feedback on TW4
Hey guys! I just wanted to give my thoughts on the TW4 build so here we go. (Huge post ahead)
DISCLAIMER: I haven't had time to play a lot of games; only the tutorial, ~10 bot games and ~3 PvP games. So this will be more of a first-impression from a new tester (yay!) than a review from a player who's had a lot of experience in the game.
Gaming Background
I have played a lot of Starcraft BW, SC2 and Warcraft 3. While I've never been 100% hardcore competitive in those games, I still enjoy learning all the different strategies and watching/analyzing pro play and applying what I learn. I also picked up for fun a bunch of other RTS games like Red Alert 2-3, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth 1-2, Age of Empire, and some more obscure games like Three Kingdoms: Fate of the Dragon and Seven Kingdoms 2: Fryhtan Wars.
I also enjoy playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, Hearthstone and occasional indie success.
Performance
Don't know if this is going to be really useful but won't hurt to add this I guess.
I am playing on the 13-inch Mid 2012 MacBook Pro (but on Bootcamp with Windows 10), with a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Memory and a Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB integrated graphics card.
I am getting a relatively constant 60FPS at low graphics and ~30FPS (but drops when there are big fights) at medium graphics. Honestly I'm pretty surprised Atlas runs this (relatively) well, considering a lot of games are simply unplayable on my laptop.
However when I'm playing on the Mac Yosemite OS (not the bootcamp), i get 30FPS at low graphics and drops really easily.
And the low graphics are still pretty nice to look at (doesn't feel like I'm watching a video at 144p on YouTube).
I haven't had any bugs that I can think of (only bug I encountered was a pathing bug which I'll talk about later), and lag was very very rare and lasted for ~2 sec.
Tutorial
It would be nicer to adopt a more "learn-by-doing" tutorial rather than heavy blocks of text, but from what somebody told me in chat this tutorial was just a rough draft so players aren't completely lost so all in all it was fine. One weird thing though is how I could walk past the blue circle where I had to walk to (after the pyrosaur spawns) to go kill the nexus.
UI
During hero/unit select, it's hard to coordinate with the other players when I can't see which units they are picking.
Sound Effects
There is so much satisfaction that can be gained from really good sound effects, but I feel like Atlas didn't quite hit the mark yet. Let's take a look at Starcraft 2's sound effects compare them to Atlas'.
In Starcraft 2, the attack and spell cast sound effects from your very basic unit all the way to the big tier 3 units make you feel like a badass. For example take the zealot; the FSSSUIT sound they make when they attack, albeit simple, still feels impactful and stays in your head. You get the feeling that "Oh I'm a warrior with psi-blades and I wreck s**t on the battlefield". Also, sound effects help with the identity of the unit. The dark templar has a attack sound effect similar enough to the zealot's to make you think "I also fight using psi-blades" but feels a lot more heavy so match the DT's high damage. Additionally, Blizzard seems to have picked the sound effects so that if one were to listen to a 2-second clip of a fight, you would know which units are in the fight and in what relative amounts. For example, the marauder's and the medivac's higher-pitched sound effects pop out from the marines' gunfire. It's similar to the contrast between a violin and a cello in an orchestra.
In Atlas, sound effects are generally lackluster. Only a few units have very satisfying sound effects (some examples being the apocalyte's and the pyrosaur's abilities). Most units have a very forgettable and weak-sounding pewpew-like sound effect. Because of that, instead of feeling like I'm controlling this powerful army, I feel like I'm controlling toys and I'm left wanting more. This feeling of "meh..." is even worse for units like the plated armor who provide virtually no audio or even visual feedback. So while in practice they may be tanking a lot of damage, it feels like they aren't doing anything. Also, I don't get the feeling of "orchestra" that I mentioned earlier. During battles, it's impossible to distinguish the various units from the sound effects.
(NOTE: I understand that the issue of sound effects is a matter of polishing and that the Artillery team may not be focusing their effort on polishing yet. But I figured that this is still valuable information to make a game FEEL good)
Pathing and Unit Control
Ok this is a biggie.
I would say that pathing definitely has its share of issues. 2 situations popped up way too often that made me go crazy.
1. Units couldn't go through what looked like a gap between units or between units and terrain
2. Unit tries go walk through other units and end up failing.
These two problems made microing feel really bad. At some point I thought that moving individual units or small groups of units during a battle was almost not worth worth it. When I tried to move my near-death units to safety, they'd get stuck and die. When I tried to dodge enemy abilities, my units would move to weird places or die. This led to the micro game being much more focused on abilities and where/when to use them and took away from the moving part of micro. At some point I even found myself preferring to take some abilities to the face and continue outputting DPS because trying to move the units away wouldn't work.
I also found a pathing bug where my kingpin kept trying to walk through a wall and so was essentially stuck there until I gave him another movement input (see pic). (I posted this bug on the Help & Support board already)
I don't know if this was a conscious design decision (if so what is the idea behind this decision?) but I noticed that generally, units in Atlas move at very similar speeds (until you get the speed buff units). I don't know if I like this lack of variance in movement speeds. It makes any speed buff unit really strong since the opponent will have no chance to outmaneuver you.
Snowball Effect
The game feels very snowbally in my opinion. Once you start losing, it becomes so hard to mount a comeback. The game ends up feeling like a struggle to stay afloat, but you'll eventually drown unless there's a miracle. There are a few factors that make the game snowbally. Here's my reasoning:
(For this part, I will call the team with the titan the "attacking team" and other team the "defending team"
Titans are really strong
Titans are strong enough that the defending team has to send a significant portion of their army to defend their base otherwise they lose valuable structures. This grants a massive amount of map control to the attacking team, who can take away a lot of camps with no retaliation (since most of the defending team's combat power is invested in killing the titan). The attacking team can also send a small part of their army (which they can afford to lose because they get the camps) to kill some the defending army while they are busy dealing with the titan. This leaves the attacking team with better map control (since the defending team lost their map presence), better economy (from all the camps) and better armies.
Need an army to get mo' money
A big part of Atlas' economy comes from killing neutral camps. But to get the resources, a team has to invest some combat power to killing the neutral camps (while in Starcraft you can get resources passively and send your army to battle)
After the defending team deals with the titan, they generally have 2 options: farm the camps that haven't been taken, or contest the titan shrine area. Contesting the titan shrine area is really hard, because the attacking team has already set up shop in the area, has a better economy and army. So the defending team would generally have to outplay the other team to win that fight (and the issues with micro and pathing makes the struggle even harder). If the attacking team managed to get out siege units, then forget about taking back the shrine at this point. If the defending team decided to take camps instead, then not only they ended up getting less camps than the attacking team (who can get those near the titan shrines) but also they can't prevent the next titan from spawning so they dug themselves in a bigger hole. This situation feels like I have to choose between two poisons.
Units die too easily and are expensive
Units in Atlas are really fragile. It barely takes any hits to kill a unit (expect for the dedicated tanks). However, they are really expensive.
Because the defending player ends up with the worse economy, it makes every unit so valuable to keep alive because they can't afford to produce new ones. Now this is normally fine in an RTS because that is the normal result of losing a fight/objective. The problem arises when the player has to get the maximum value out of his units, but the micro game feels bad. Like I've said earlier, microing a unit back to safety during a battle feels almost punishing because of the wonky pathing. So trying to conserve units feels like an impossible task for the defending team. Also, because there's no "fast units" in the game, the defending team can't outmaneuver the opponent to try to get an edge, and they can't afford the speed boost units.
Titan shrines and neutral camps are in the same area
Because the neutral camps are in the same area as the titan shrines, the attacking team who got control of the area can both boost their economy and threaten summoning another titan at the same time. This makes holding that area way too rewarding for not much risk for the attacking team since they can just put their whole army at that spot. Maybe if the camps were separated from the titan shrines, it would make the games feel less snowbally since the attacking team would have to divide his army as well.
Only one avenue of attack
The defending team has no reasonable way to make the attacking team leave the titan shrine by threatening other stuff. In Starcraft, a player who's behind could force an army to move back by threatening something they own, for example harassing the mineral line or dropping in their base to attack production structures, etc. This could force the opponent into a dilemma and allow the player to come back into the game.
However, in Atlas, it feels like there's no good way for a losing team to force this sort of dilemma. You can't threaten the opponent's economy, since the titan shrines and the camps are in the same area so they can both be defended at the same time. You can't attack production building since they're invulnerable. Attacking the enemy base/towers feels like suicide because of how a losing team cannot afford to lose too many units.
So yeah, snowball, baby
So all in all, these factors combined makes the game feel really snowbally. It feels like the only real way to come back from a losing situation is if the opponent were to make a big blunder rather than me outplaying the opponent. Some of the snowballiness is due to technical issues (pathing) and some of it is game design decisions (like titan/camps in same area).
Thanks
So that's it for my thoughts on the game. Just a big thank you to the Artillery Crew, I had a blast trying out the game! Atlas looks like it's going to be a great game! :D <3
Comments
These are all very simple "Version 0.2s" of our audio, for the most part. So the underwhelming feeling you get from the current sounds is pretty expected. This will also end up being a much heavier point of focus down the line. Still, you did a great job of putting the importance of this into perspective, so thanks for that!
Totally agree! This is a key piece of information we want to expose to the player, to help you make more informed choices with your team.
Weird issue. I'll pass this on to our perf team and see if we can't track this down.
Pathing is a work in progress as well, and one we're actively making headway on as I speak! Thanks for the report re: Kingpins getting stuck. Will investigate!
Thanks for the post and for testing! Hope you enjoyed :D
@Treisk I just finished adding some more stuff for why I believe the game feels snowbally. And I had a really fun time testing! :D
@MinSO Nice, reading up now!
Edit: Just read up. All excellent points, my favorite of which was the section on, basically, misdirecting your opponent if you're behind (with thinks like drops or runbys).
Snowballing is definitely an issue. Fortunately, it's less of one than it used to be; but it definitely still exists, and we'll be chipping away at that and making sure the ability to fight back when behind is an option!
Thanks again!