Playtest 174 - Neutral Purchase Overhaul and Polish

starfighter

TL;DR - Tonight's playtest will feature a neutral purchase overhaul and well as some polish!

This playtest build will be run both tonight (Wednesday, November 25) and at the next playtest (Sunday, November 29). For our American playtesters, Happy Thanksgiving!

As polish is critical for our upcoming Technical Pre-Alpha test, we'd love any and all feedback on how to tune down the little annoyances and tune up the polish in Atlas! Let us know little changes you'd like to see!

This week, we've greatly expanded the offensive and defensive options for gem purchases. For offense, each player now has SEVEN option weapon shop, including swarm cubes, ion cannons, and wood cubes. For defense, towers can now be upgraded to be stronger, have more range, or have splash damage. Also, expansions can get temporary turrets! We'd love to know what you think of the new gameplay!

Just as one final note -- We're no longer using the terms "Captor," "Void," and "Grapefruit." We now have Heroes, we no longer refer to the Void, and we've evolved past using fruit as a currency and are more interested in Gems.

If you haven't downloaded the native client yet - please click here (make sure that you're logged in!) - to do so. We will be dropping browser support in the very near future, so please make sure native client is installed ASAP and let us know if you encounter issues.

Game Client

• The allotted time granted to accept a matchmaking game has been increased to 90 seconds.

Gameplay

Neutral Purchase Overhaul

• Expansions may now cast the Gem Fortify! ability, allowing them to attack nearby enemies for 30 seconds.
• Neutral purchases (Glass CAnnons, Cubelets, and Ion Cannons of all sizes) may now attack one another.
• Towers can now be upgraded to three different types, and can be upgraded up to two times (max level 3)
  
  
  • Splash towers will deal splash damage.
  • Range towers have extended attack range, equivalent to the range of a full-sized Glass Cannon.
  • Generic tower upgrades give greater stat increases.
• Specializations have been removed.
• Players now immediately have access to 7 neutral purchases, all made from the Hero's inventory.
  
  
  • Sensor Wards (2 Gems)
  • NEW: Cubelet (2 Gems) - A small, cheap, weak, fast-attacking cube. Collides with units.
  • Healing Totem (3 Gems)
  • Mini Glass Cannon (4 Gems) - Now has 8 Plate. Now collides with units.
  • Mini Ion Cannon (4 Gems) - Now deals splash damage (which squad units are immune to)
  • Glass Cannon (16 Gems) - Now has 20 Plate. Now collides with units.
  • Ion Cannon (24 Gems) - Outranges Range Towers

Map & General Gameplay

• Recall can now be canceled (hotkey is Escape by default)
• Expansion values have been adjusted. Every expansion is now 1x in value, except for the expansion guarded by the Hard (red) Titan camp, which is valued at 2x.
• Pathing improved! Units should now steer better around friendly units.
• Armory (unit-specific) upgrades are now ordered by cost and availability.
• Most structure tooltips have been updated to describe their purpose and function.

Interface

• Squad Selection has had its Confirm button moved to the left of the Squad banner
• Heroes and Units will now have their portraits displayed in Squad Selection
• Hero inventory has been expanded to 8 slots. Please check your hotkeys!
• Chat should now properly capture your inputs as soon as it is triggered.
• The "Link" and "Fullscreen" buttons have been removed.
• Players attempting to modify their ability hotkeys will find that they are now properly labeled!

Squad Changes

Celesta

• Celesta has received a new model and animations!

Grath

• Harden (D) has been reworked.
  
  
  • May now only be cast on YOUR units
  • Now lasts 5 seconds. The unit heals 50 health per second while under this effect.
  • Gains 200 (67% if at 0 base) Physical Resist for 1 second when the effect ends.

Questions to answer:

• Rate the early, mid, and late game on a scale of 1 to 5 and explain
• What are your thoughts on the new map architecture? Likes? Dislikes?
• Did the defensive purchases feel better or worse than previously?
• How did the new neutral purchases system affect your games and strategies?
• Anything else you'd like to share?

Cycle

In line with your request for feedback on polish regarding the upcoming Technical Pre-Alpha test, I'm going to start providing feedback on literally everything I can think of, even if it's not the internal team's current focus or something that can be accomplished in a realistic time frame.

Other Thoughts (Intentionally Starting With This)

I'm writing this section last chronologically but putting it first 'cause it might have more important stuff maybe. Again I'm just gonna say all the things, even the obvious ones that everyone probably already knows.

• I think a new "How to Play" video might be in order so players can jump in immediately.
• I still think the performance of the game is lacking. Even when my latency meter shows ~200ms, it feels like 1000ms. I'm unsure if this is a display error or what, but there's definitely a distinct pause when I take an action. I ran last night's playtest in the client on lowest everything settings. Similarly, whenever there's a lot of stuff happening (ie big fight) my cpu lags a ton, according to the latency meter F9.
• Unit pathing doesn't feel fluid enough to make me want to play a melee hero.
• Pressing the recall button a billion times results in the sound stacking and ripped headphone users.
• I would love to pre-hotkey my Armory (unit-specific upgrade structure) in the settings.
• Feature request: Location hotkeys? :D:D:D:D
• Ping gets stuck sometimes?
• AI loading text still uses Squad names (load up a vs AI game and look at chat)
• Hero is still called "Captor" in hotkey settings.
• Forum Feedback:
  
  
  • The contrast between the text while typing a response and the background is too low and is difficult for my eyes. The real forum text, which is white-ish, is fine though.
  • Bolded text on the forum doesn't stand out too much. The difference between Header 1 and Header 2 is very subtle.
  • Option to disable emoticons? :D I personally feel like forum emoticons tend to be less professional, and I don't think Battle.net or Riot forums implement them (unless they do and I might just be wrong :D)
  • Ability to preview an edit to a post? For example I wish I could see what this giant edit looks like, but I'll have to submit, and then edit again in order to see if the formatting is alright.
  • Character Display when typing a message. I just tried submitting and then it told me that I was ~700 characters over limit. There is currently no way for me to check the number of characters I've typed.
  • I'm able to start Discussions in the "Specific Feedback Requests" subforum, and I should not.

7 Weapons Shop

I feel like all of the current weapons have their place. Homewrecker Beetle is gone though? I do kind of understand the decision to remove it - towers should definitely be formidable.

• Sensor Ward - These are easily the most cost-effective weapon in the game, or at the very least a staple of gameplay. Vision is power. I've personally taken to placing these not in brush and instead in well-defended areas, or areas where my opponent would have to overextend to wipe it out since the vision radius is so great.
• Healing Totem - I very rarely will purchase these, but I usually play Alder who has access to healing, or just kinda stay near Healing Towers. I have bought these before though to top off my units from time to time. My usual thoughts on this while in game are: "Oh, the healing amount is way slow compared to how many gems I have to spend - it's better to wait a bit longer and expand" or something.
• Mini Glass Cannon - Not too sure the differences between this and the Cubelet. Longer range? More damage? The Mini Glass Cannon costs twice as much as a Cubelet, but I'm not sure if it just does double damage or what.
• Glass Cannon - I love this weapon. This is my go-to in many games since it allows me to both snipe other weapons, or multi-prong push my opponent, or distract. It's just so useful. Totally worth the 16 gems that it costs (which is only 2 nodes in the mid/late game!)
• Mini Ion Cannon - I really like this weapon too. Although stationary, the range is so high for the cost and there are some cute setups that have happened. I really like that it exists.
• Ion Cannon - The "I've won the game" weapon. I'm not sure I've seen a game where the players have won because of the Ion Cannon - instead I think the winners just had an overwhelming advantage and happened to make them. At the very least it looks very cool and feels cool to use. (Oh, except in the current build it's broken soooo)
• Cubelet - As I said above, not sure the differences between this and the Mini Glass Cannon. I absolutely love the Cubelet though because it just feels really great to make a lot of little guys. I can speak from experience that sending them all against a big tower is not the smartest idea.

Weapons attacking each other is the best. In the games from this playtest, it didn't come up too much, but I can foresee games getting super complicated much later. The APM ceiling went waaaay up.

I would LOVE to have a spreadsheet of the damage of all the weapons so I can objectively see whether or not it's better pure DPS-wise to make 2 Cubelets or 1 Mini Glass Cannon, 4 Mini Glass Cannons or 1 Glass Cannon, etc.

On that note, clarification request: do my stat upgrades affect my weapons? If I upgrade T2 Attack Speed + Attack Damage, does my Glass Cannon benefit from this?

Upgradable Towers and Gem Fortify! (exclamation mark included)

There is a bug currently allowing players to upgrade from the standard level 1 tower directly to the level 3 tower with no extra cost.

I feel like the upgrade paths for towers are unclear. If I upgrade level 2 range, and then level 3 splash, have I overridden the range, or added splash to range, or what?

I would love to be able to see the attack radius for towers if I select them so I can have an understanding of what the upgraded range did.

Other than those points, towers in general felt very cool. I felt safe when I constructed them, and didn't feel like they were OP when attacking into them. They felt like a discouragement for the enemy to want to attack me, or a stall while my army respawned.

I kept forgetting about the Temporary Expansion Turrets, but used it once to save my base. Very cool. Would love to play more games and get a feel for how it works. I really want to build forward expansions and Gem Fortify them.

Cycle

(cont.)

Map & General Gameplay

• Cancelling recall is the BEST.
• Currently there's no real benefit to go for the yellow expo over the green expo for top lane. On the matter of it being "better defensible", I think there's a spot where you can walk cubes past the pre-built tower and assault those expos with no fear of attack.
• Bramblethorn Goliath behaves oddly when A-moving through units. Other pathing feels improved, but still not fluid enough for me to want to attempt a melee squad.
• Armory (unit-specific upgrades) being in the proper order totally makes sense, and totally messes with my muscle memory :D Additionally, when I hear "Armory" I first think of stat upgrades. Slight disconnect in my brain between "Armory" and "unit-specific upgrades". I feel like it'd be more like a research facility or something to that effect.
• Yay tooltips yayyy

Interface

• Didn't notice a difference on the confirm button. I should mention that on the Hero Selection Screen I still get tonnns of lag and latency or whatever upon loading. Usually after 10 seconds since opening the Hero Selection Screen, there is no latency for my clicks and selections.
• Displayed Hero Portraits look so good :D
• THANK YOU for accurately representing Hotkey Changes in the Settings Window :D:D:D I'm not sure if the game still crashes if you try to change hotkeys midgame.
• In the tab menu in game, Hero portraits are squashed.

Squad Changes

• Celesta looks amazing. Her splash art however seems much crisper and hi-def compared to the other heroes on first glance. Almost felt like she was part of a different game when I first saw her. Her in game art totally fits though.

  • Looking again, it seems to be partially related to how much of her is in frame maybe?
    

  • These can also be compared. Vix and Grath have a stage past a head shot, but all the other heroes are waist-up. And even still there's something that feels like it's separating Celesta from the other heroes, and more than just her femininity I think.

• Grath's basic hero ability is much cooler and much scarier. I love playing against it since it feels like the unit is actually protected now. I think "wow nice shield" when my opponent saves a dude and baits me at the same time. Super cool.

BKcore

Almost felt like she was part of a different game when I first saw her.

This imo is mostly due to the color values. She's the only one with bright and heavily saturated colors.
Then again, all these portraits are just quick in-engine screenshots/placeholders. They'll receive proper splash art in the near future
That said, we may tone down here levels real quick.

In the tab menu in game, Hero portraits are squashed.

Hehe yeah definitely gonna fix that one!

I should mention that on the Hero Selection Screen I still get tonnns of lag and latency or whatever upon loading.

Definitely on our radar, we have some plans for that.

Thanks for all the forums feedback, definitely stuff we want to address there.
I'll let others discuss gameplay stuff.

Treisk

Gonna be a bit more terse than usual here.

Weapons

Still needs looooots of tuning. Very much a work in progress. The main difference between mini-glasses and cubelets is: Cubelets move and attack faster; mini-glasses have longer range and plate.

Green vs Yellow expansions

This is less a "which is better to take first" thing and more a "this is how we softly force sequencing" thing. Might not be doing exactly what we need it to; might also not be clear enough.

Level 3 upgrades from level 1 towers

It's on the list, hope to get it fixed very soon.

New "How to Play" video

New tutorial coming this week!

Pathing as a melee squad

Still making progress on this; likely not big progress until after December's big test.

Investigating pretty much everything else you posted about. Thanks a ton for this! <3