Long games
Millea
Member
G5f2b1ddaa6d1420ca48964b7700aba23
The current patch's changes combined with #223's changes REALLY added up. I just played the longest game I've ever played the 2nd game i've played on this patch It was 75:51 (it rolls over at 60:00)
Titans are much weaker, combined with it being harder to get a titan, combined with ion cannons being cheaper, combined with nexus hp increase, combined with shield battery hp increase!
Games were too short last week, but there's too many changes that do nothing but make the game longer. The 120 supply proposed change i really did like and think it would help end games but it wasn't implemented.
The real problem with games lasting this long is that when the late game hits, is this:
There's nothing to do in long games.
Titans are rarely up, camps do nothing beneficial (You have all the shards and energy you could ever want). You MIGHT be able to go in behind enemy lines and snipe something, but it ends up just being a boring part of the game. I'd be fine if games like this were epic and had a ton to do as the game goes on, but they just feel like a drag. (We need to wait for next titan to spawn, so let's afkin our base for 5 min..)
TL:DR
Recent patches' changes make games longer in every possible way = 75 minute game.
It feels like there is nothing to do in long games. It feels like I can just remax if my army gets destroyed, and the only limiting factor is production slots.
Comments
My biggest observation is that killing an army, while having a major impact on whether you are going to win or lose in the lategame, does not necessarily help you end the game.
What I mean by this is that my team can get wiped in the lategame, and we're probably never going to come back from that, but as long as we don't get wiped at the same time we can usually rebuild a useful defensive force before the next attack wave comes in. Unlike in most MOBAs, there's very little downtime after a death where the opponent can march in and break your stuff - you'll be weaker when you respawn, but you'll be able to fight, in many cases right away if you had anything banked, and can probably at least partially trade with the opponent's weakened army.
Warp-in speeds feel like they might be a major culprit here. It's not uncommon to wipe a big army, knock down 1 building, and then already be fighting the same player at the head of Army 2. I don't get the feeling that having won a fight against a high-level person means I necessarily have free reign to push toward a win - even though it's usually pretty clear if I'm going to win eventually.
Something I noticed is that all teams' economies are always equal in the end game because energy and shards are practically infinite which makes production slots the only form of resource. Everyone has 6, which prevents people from getting a lead, and there's always defenders advantage, making titans the only way to eventually end a game.
I don't think that every game should be ended by titans because they aren't fun to win with and they aren't fun to lose against.
So I did some digging on stats from the last couple weeks, and average game length is definitely WAY up. Average game lengths ~3 weeks ago were around 24 minutes. Average game lengths last week were around 27 minutes. Average game lengths in the last 5 days are around 36 minutes.
We'll likely be making some adjustments later this week to get ourselves back towards the ~27-29min mark while still achieving what the last suite of changes was meant to. In the meantime, keep a finger on the pulse in terms of what made a game feel like it was dragging on for you. There are pretty solid mentions and leads in here already that we'll be following.
This set of changes was intended to make pushing with Titans more attractive (as you're not leaving it to die as much, and you're more inclined to push WITH Titans). They might be simply dying too fast or might be killed too easily. I haven't jumped too far into watching replays from longer games just yet, but that's my biggest suspicion.
Edit: Got sidetracked and forgot to make my core point, hahaha.
So the idea of Titans ending games is somewhat influenced by how MOBAs end games -- One team takes an objective, has an easier time pushing with the objective because of it, but also some of that reward is pushing in on its own. However, in most cases where the common case of this occurs is when that objective is in the opponent's base, and are rewarded with the extra pressure/power as a "checkpoint" or "milestone" sort of thing (i.e. a team kills an enemy's integral structure and its minions get stronger, thus letting them get back to that point more easily for the next few minutes). So to get Titans to do quite what we're looking to get out of them, we've got some work to do. That may mean some extra reward for making progress in destroying the base, or it may mean something else entirely. But the feeling it creates isn't quite aligned with what we're trying to get from it just yet.
I fully believe that, at a certain point, the map is running out of objectives. This is somewhat desired -- if you have no neutral objectives, a player is likely to be more inclined towards attacking the enemy team. Though, the thing driving players towards actually attacking is having a Titan. So we've got some work to do to make one of these things more true -- either more Titan/objective uptime, or some way to make player-unit pushing without a Titan more reasonable. Lots of things to work out here for sure, but totally agree with what you're getting at.
Nice @Treisk , thanks a ton for the update on the time issues as well as the feel of the objectives. I really agree with your comments specifically on the idea of how a successful push should make it easier to push the next time, and that Atlas doesn't quite feel like it's doing that just yet.
If I was to try to describe the sense I've gotten from playing Atlas so far, it's that a "successful" push does maybe a little too much to prevent the other team from being able to ever again push themselves (due to momentum feeling very strong compared to most MOBAs), but at the same time not quite enough at making the base easier to assault the next time.
These two things feel to me like they are combining together to make games take a long time - If my team loses a fight in the mid or lategame, we seem to fall very far behind in our ability to pursue objectives pretty far into the future, but the game is not necessarily closer to ending. It would be interesting to see these two results reversed a bit in severity, just to see if that's really what is happening.
I'll put in my recent experience for length as a reference point. I feel that my games are decided at the 15 minute mark and either end shortly thereafter or are drawn out for another 20 minutes to the same conclusion. The following games are from oldest (6 days ago) to newest (today).
35:27 - G1040aedfe13e457ea7c1219807c899cc
44:04 - Gf727b9d7be9a43d799006f71d3d3648e
30:55 - Gf0e1020fca2549a8b305025040dce8fe
42:02 - Gc548bbb1d6a34ba888064aafeb7b249d
23:45 - Gf144fa2233334d3bbe8bb151a2c07e76 - This game was lost despite clear advantages for myself and my team, but the heroic efforts from Millea / Kontrast / celphy do not detract from the point outlined above.
25:50 - G43a33449038043cfb65bce6044d70e73
34:59 - Gccedb529eaef431fb53e382eb817a19a
75:51 - G5f2b1ddaa6d1420ca48964b7700aba23 - Infamous
15:59 - Gbc30d7768d0844df8c2087a51bcd211b
42:23 - Gf5b3a954b7574e0490643c534d84b707
18:03 - G1e5a160774204796b80e6a1f8445b85e
The duration of these games skip around quite a bit, but my engagement and excitement follow this line:
Beginning of the Game - Okay, autopiloting the first Easy camp.
First laning session - Intense micro and poking GAH ERIS NO oh man Scuttleguards? The wrektoning is here.
Titans are spawned - RUN AROUND POSITION WARD VISION EVERYTHING MICRO SKILLSHOTS
Medium camps spawn - You know where I'll be, but that's okay.
Ultimates - large army fights, good battles, positioning, tech choices online, insanely interesting
At this point, after 2-3 large army battles, my interest curve splits.
I'm losing this game -> Okay, time to try MORE things and get every edge I possibly can and battle and scrap. Interest level rises, map objectives get prioritized, teamwork goes up.
We're winning -> Whelp.. guess we play safe and not do stupid things. Need to squeeze out the win and follow the advantages to their conclusion.
Losing split -> Either we run away and try to take objectives everywhere (interesting!) or we build Engineers and camp until we eventually die due to lack of map control (uninteresting). Unfortunately, there's a chance that failing to take objectives will result in the aforementioned Engineer choice as the complete lack of vision, staying power outside of our base, and mobility greatly harms expected efforts of "Whelp, group up and go mid or else we just die".
Winning Split -> Keep the pressure up, take Hard camps, but eventually there gets a point where we NEED to grab a Titan to end the game despite advantages and the interest level dies down because the battles feel predetermined in result despite my individual (and consistent) positional errors. It may be a result of the players I'm playing with, but even my mistakes get capitalized on by my allies who turn around poor situations. The game doesn't FEEL like there can be tempo swings following the 20 minute mark.
On the plus side, keeping advantages makes me feel that our team's efforts are worthwhile at all parts in the game. On the down side, I feel that having distinct advantages at the 15 minute mark makes an extremely difficult game for opponents. Games that reached this mark with no significant advantages tended to go very long.
I feel that removing collision for Ion Cannons may help, but does not strike at the core of the concern. Thank you again for the consideration.
I just started playing on July 15, and I only have a couple of bot only matches under my belt, but I thought I would share some of my new player experience regarding long games.
My observation: the titans are too strong late game.
Here is what happened in one of the few games I played. It was very late game and the enemy got a titan. We defended and wiped the enemy team. The titan then proceeded to murder our base while about 2 full armies were pounding on it. The titan alone pushed one structure before the nexus and the nexus itself all on its own. It was one of the most frustrating feelings possible in a game. I was white so my ranged army was not wounded from wining the last team fight. Using an army in 90+ units of supply could not take down the titan. The conduits are powering their beams so hard they are shaking. I used every ability in my arsenal and the titan just didn't give a f**k.
The actual loss wasn't so frustrating as was watching your best possible army (again new player, so it wasn't really best possible, but it was upgraded and supply capped late game which made me think there was not much I could do to improve it) in the game pound on a titan for 2 minutes while it destroys your base. That feeling of helplessness should go away. Imagine having 50 Void Rays in SC2 pounding on a single Ultralisk while it destroys all your buildings (which makes you loose the game with the void rays still alive).
Here are a few suggestions, take 'em or leave 'em...
1
Titans should have penalty for being away from the owning army/hero. The severity of the penalty is up for debate. It should probably be getting worse the longer the titan is unsupported.
Wiping the enemy team should allow for some sort of comeback. In the situation above I would much rather have the game end immediately rather then look at that titan destroy the base alone.
2
Speaking of ending the game sooner, maybe after 30 minutes, the first team to spawn a titan (or maybe have it accumulate 3 times) wins automatically. This rule would very clearly state that end game titan capture is a matter of life and death.
TLDR:
The frustrating feeling of helplessness against end game titans made me and possibly other players frustrated and may turn away some people from the game.
PS: Some of the details of the fight may be wrong/exaggerated, but the overall feeling was clear.
@Mihic The funny thing is, the titans' late game strength is meant to be a temporary fix to the 75 minute games I was talking about in the original post. The game's changed a lot since the original post already.
I do think that a titan should be an aid to army battles winning a game rather than capable of tanking an army for a very long time. It's extremely frustrating to lose to a titan destroying the nexus while being 100/100.