I felt compelled to keep all my units together to avoid bad trades due to numberical disadvantage. This in turn highlighted control/pathing issues particularly on the left side of the map where I spent more time trying to avoig getting in my teammate's way than I did engaging the enemy.
Fighting over gem spawns 1v1 on the right side of the map was great fun. However (and this is of course due to my own ignorance about the game), even though I felt I won the micro battles for these resources I didn't see how to convert those into an advantage that helped my team, partly because I didn't know the best unit to buy with that money and partly because all those small gem spawns we fought over were offset later by bigger gems spanws.
Neutrals felt like a trap for misclicks as some lie in transited areas. I tried once to aggro them on purpose to have their bombs cover my retreat but they just kicked muy ass They are there to provide an unlock mechanic for high yield expansions I imagine, but I think the risk of those expos being closer to the enemy should be enough to warrant defense efforts without requiring some annoying PvE.
Gamer Type: Several hours per week of 1v1 Starcraft, diamond level
Favorite Bits
Solo Side: I loved playing the solo side because: I felt fully engaged by the well-defined role, unhindered by needing to make partner-based decisions; I could see the consequences of the strategic decisions of myself and my opponent; the outcomes of skirmishes were due to strategic decisions and micro skills rather than a rescuing teammate or opponent; and, I had time to assess and tackle challenges presented to me by my opponent. I did wish there was a way to choose the solo side in future team games and especially bot games (maybe there is already); I could see players specializing in particular positions.
Community: The client's chat system and overall interface facilitated a sense of community. Supplemented by the forums, the Discord chat, and especially the positive attitudes of the developers and participants, the social aspect made the PvP test highly enjoyable.
Expansions: The expansion mechanics heightened my engagement with the game. As I played more, I gained a sense for how and when to take expansions, increasing the overall flow and momentum of the match. The guards at the expansions provided opportunities to execute micro (gave me a pleasurable sense of mastery!) and provided interesting strategic options for trapping the opponent.
Being punished for bad decisions: I liked that enemy units could trap me when overextending. This encourages careful decisions and cooperation among team members. I suspect future enjoyment will come from learning how to set up traps and execute "big moves" as a team.
Least Favorite Bits
Undersatisfying kills: I didn't experience the same levels of enjoyment when picking off enemy units or heroes that I do when killing an enemy in Counter-Strike or enemy units in Starcraft. Likely this could be remedied with different visual and auditory feedback... more explodey?
Lack of momentous events: Although games could certainly snowball (a reasonable outcome if one side is playing much better), I rarely noticed when my teammates would take out big towers, kill heros, or even kill the nexus unless it was on screen (a few victories came by surprise!). I think the game would be more exciting if there were different/more obvious rewards for big events, whether practical (gold, gems, XP, structures) or aesthetic. I like another player's suggestion that expos be viable respawn points; then taking an enemy expansion would be a "momentous event".
Sources of friction: The gem-taking cooldown timer felt annoyingly close to the amount of time it takes to walk from one gem spot to another on the map. It was long enough that I would choose to divert my attention from gem collecting, which resulted in the collection of gems feeling tedious rather than pleasurable. It was successful, however, in ensuring a teammate couldn't be a gem hog - maybe awarding all teammates the gems and removing the cooldown would remedy this? Also, movement felt overall a little sluggish. I'm not sure if this would be better fixed by speeding up the game or by some alteration to the movement animations.
Lack of defensive options: At times, I had LOADS of gems, but the opponent was pressuring us hard (and succeeding), and I felt I had a lack of options for using gems effectively. Maybe this was a result of my own inexperience, but because the cannons outrange the towers, it felt a waste to build towers, especially if they already had cannons up. If I could have spent gems to reduce respawn delay, or otherwise effectively combat their big armies, I would have been pleased. Perhaps the nexus or main towers could activate single-use AOE damage abilities at the cost of gems (maybe all three teammates are required to activate this).
Long respawn delay late game: This was especially problematic for squads with fragile units. I could accept this if there was more for my hero to do while I waited - small gems on the home side, late game, for instance? Or perhaps I could spend gold or gems to reduce respawn time.
Ambiguous damage types: I know it says somewhere which attacks are magic vs physical, but I had little to no idea in-battle how to decipher the two, and correspondingly wasn't sure how to choose upgrades or use defensive abilities. I assumed big hero abilities were magic type, but was less certain whether different squads had magic attacks as their T1 standard.
Little bit late on the feedback, but I just got time to write it up.
I feel like the map doesn't really give any reason not to just push up mid to win the game. There is so much more to the map, but it only ever gets used just to grab the occasional gem. I assume there are more map layouts in progress and it would be great to have one the incentivizes more split pushing rather than a huge death ball right down the middle every game.
I don't think I have lost a game yet where I rush 4 purifiers and range. Then my team just balls up mid with the purifiers and a couple ion cannons. Pretty simple and boring strat.
I think that putting more focus towards expanding would make the game much more interesting. Currently you spend 20 gems, maybe 30 if the game goes long, on expansions. This leaves you with a ton of gems that you just spam weapons with. If you made expansions weaker and had more of them, it would lead to players actually needing to make interesting decisions about whether they should expand with their gems or build weapons. Gems would be a bit tighter and it would also lead to actual use of the edges of the maps, rather than just using the middle.
Giving weapons their own upgrade building would also be really cool. You could have upgrades for range, build speed, shot speed, reduced cost, there are endless possibilities. It would also lead to an interesting dynamic where you could have one player on the team focus on weapons and everyone else just goes for expos/units.
Resource sharing would be nice. Might make the game unbalanced if you can rush tier 3/ion cannons with someone, but it would be nice.
AOE spells seem like a necessity. Since all of the units clump together really hard and it takes forever to push past units. If one player on my team screws up and blocks me in a choke for 5 seconds, I have a chance to lose my entire army to AOE immediately. If we were all on voice chat it might be easier to avoid, but in random pub games it can be a problem.
I still have no idea how I level my hero. Is it based on units my hero kills? My units kill? Being nearby kills of my teammates?
Probably forgot something, but that seems like plenty for now.
Things I liked:
-This is a very unique RTS game and involves quite a bit of strategy and rethinking of my play style from other RTS games. There is definitely more forced interaction with the gem nodes being scattered in the middle of the map, and troop respawns allows me to be more aggressive and not afraid to lose my whole army.
-I love the different hero and squad options. They feel very unique and it was fun to learn different sets.
-The simple hero/unit abilities feel really good and are powerful when used appropriately. I also like not having to tab between units to use their abilities. (I wish there was maybe one or two more abilities for the hero units).
Things I didn't like as much:
-My play style in other RTS games was more of a turtle/CC style. In Atlas I missed building my structures and setting up a "base". I felt very limited only being able to construct basically 2 buildings, and only on the nodes.
-The games I played yesterday were very long. (I didn't keep track of the time, but they seemed to take over 30 minutes). (This also might not be the norm...) In all of my games, everybody had teched up at about the same rate, and would just run our full armies into eachother, then wait for respawn and try again. It was also hard to tell if we were winning or losing, (and a couple times when I felt like we were losing, all of the sudden GG, victory). Normally a closely fought, come-from-behind win would feel exciting, but it sort of felt like it dragged on... ---To summarize this point, it was hard to gain an advantage in the late game---
-I got a little frustrated trying to get my melee units to the front of the pack, lots of small spaces. (This is probably due to my level of experience, poor micro, etc.)
-Didn't love that I was limited to 10/4/2 (ish) units per tier. (This goes back to the stagnant late game) I had a ton of cash and wanted to spam my tier 3 unit.
-Wished the UI had more info on units as I clicked them. Would be interested to see how my upgrades change the numbers.
-Didn't totally understand how to best use the glass units and weapons, or their behaviors. (I suppose I could have just read more carefully or done some experimenting).
Conclusions:
-The game feels like it was designed for hardcore RTS players. Emphasis on micro, positioning, etc., not as much emphasis on economy, base building, macro. As more of a casual RTS player (Silver/Gold league) I didn't feel like I was BAD at the game, just wasn't able to play it the way I wanted to.
-I really like the Hero unit and squad units, and gameplay surrounding team battles is fun. My fav RTS of all time is Warcraft 3, and the Hero unit in Atlas gives me a taste of that.
I felt like the wards gave wayyy too much vision. And it felt weird that they could see over walls. This may be my League of Legends background speaking. Just seemed weird (and super strong!) to be able to place things on the map that worked like SC2's Xel'Naga Watchtowers when I expected a tiny Vision Ward.
Denying gems felt good, but it was difficult to tell how effective that was (if at all).
During large fights, I felt kind of frustrated by how I couldn't really tell what was going on. This may be just a lack of experience with the game/spells/effects, but my instinct is to pin this on the health bars being below units and obfuscated by units in the way.
That said, I felt like the health/selection/attack-cd bars were cool, though perhaps small given how much information they are trying to convey.
I felt like once I started getting behind, there wasn't much I could do. I imagine that this would be a point at which you might want to start on defensive upgrades, but without complete knowledge of incoming damage types, it felt like guesswork as to what to upgrade.
The "massive damage" ultimate abilities (Eris and Celeste in particular) feel fantastic to land. Ryme's, on the other hand, while probably tactically very powerful, just never felt as impactful. Maybe I'm just a Timmy, or Ryme is better with proper team coordination.
Speaking of Celeste, I really had no idea how to deal with Purifiers. Day9 mentioned in Global chat that internally, Purifiers weren't much of a problem, but all my PvP losses during yesterday's test were to a Celeste that just became rather overbearing with strong location control using Purifiers before dropping a bunch of ion cannons.
I felt like units (especially the tanky ones; plate feels pretty strong) took FOREVER to die sometimes, but were extremely squishy other times. I assume this is due to a disparity in upgrades, but I feel like a way to actually view a unit's stats in game (enemy and ally) would combat this to an extent. That would let me go "hey why isn't that guy dying? Oh, this unit has like 50% physical damage reduction due to armor upgrades, I should upgrade my abilities". I know the tab screen shows upgrades for all players, but memorizing unit base stats and applying these varied % modifiers mentally can be taxing.
Something something visual feedback. I'm noticing a couple of my points deal with information availability and just an overall feeling like combat is a black box of random unit death.
Overall, I feel like the game fills a very unique space somewhere between a MOBA and an RTS. Combining the army-micro and resource-collection aspects of an RTS with the team strategy and more streamlined individual progression of a MOBA plays out very cool, and having access to depth of gameplay and strategy from both of those sources leads to a game where I feel there are far too many possibilities to develop a proper strategy and "meta" in just four-hour windows.
Anyways, I had a ton of fun during yesterday's PVP test, delays and all. I'll be planning and practicing to try and do better next week!
EDIT: Oh shoot, I misinterpreted this as "Feedback from during the PVP test" and not specifically "Feedback directly related to PVP", so it's kind of a mishmash of stuff that shows in the other category megathreads. My apologies
My biggest issue with PvP was the bottom lane. It made me feel disconnected from the other two players while I was busy harassing/being harassed by my bottom position opponent. Being that both of us were Celestia didn't help, being pretty evenly matched until the 25 min mark or so, where his/her skill was marginally higher than mine in micro and I started losing conflicts.
I also felt that both teams having the same squad would put those two players at a stalemate, trading unit for unit, often coming down to a question of who was better at macro/who shot first. A free upgrade for your units at the beginning of the game (a la Heroes of the Storm?) might change that somewhat, however I realize the upgrade system is due for some changes from reading other posts.
However I would like to point out that PvP made melee units far more useful, no longer chasing the bots back and forth across the mid-section of the map. This made me feel happy, as I love the different feel of the melee squads and wanted desperately to play them more efficiently during bot games.
[First impressions]
+ Game feels a lot like Warcraft 3.
+ Hero levels up, relatively small set of units (12), generally most efficient to have in 1 control group, non-trivial PvE interactions (fighting creeps for expansions, collecting resources from map)
+ Games felt like they took a long time.
+ I didn't time them, but they "felt" like they took half an hour. While there was frequent combat, I guess the combat "felt" the same and pretty repetitive. I think the main reason for this is that killing and losing units generally "felt" like it had low impact, but it did not immediately transition into a push, just into more map control + resource collection.
[Timing]
What is the intended duration for a single game? It looks like Atlas is gearing towards traditional RTS time lengths (5 min, at the super low end, to 40+ min at the high end, median around 20).
source: http://www.statista.com/statistics/251222/most-played-pc-games/
The most popular competitive games (LOL, CSGO, Dota2, World of Tanks, Hearthstone, ...) fall into two categories.
+ Super short rounds (<<20 min: Hearthstone, World of Tanks, CSGO), possibly chained in succession.
+ Long rounds (30-60: min LOL, Dota2) with a heavy focus on cooperation (5+ player teams).
Theory 1: Short games good because people have short attention spans. Short games are easier to commit to. Stringing together a series of short competitive games can itself add a lot of complexity to the strategy of a game (fighting games, hearthstone, etc.)
Theory 2: Long games are primarily interesting because of the co-operative element. For obvious reasons, games have positive feedback loops. Player skill tends to have low variance over the course of a single game. As a result, a slight difference in skill tends to result in a very fast snowball in one direction or another (consider 1v1 variants of Dota2, LOL) The reason that these games can sustain really long play times is because the game focuses more on cooperation and team-play, so even if the team is currently doing poorly, they have a real chance of coming back because cooperation is /hard/.
In this lieu, I have two proposals for the Atlas team to mull over:
(1) Why not make games shorter? The most trivial example would be to speed up in game speed 3x.
(2) Why a 3v3 format? Why not 5v5? Some of my favorite memories from SC1, SC2, and WAR3 come from giant team games.
[Combat]
I didn't like combat. It felt too much like WAR3.
Characteristics:
+ Unit mobility is too uniform.
+ Unit sight range >> unit fire range.
This leads to two effects:
+ Ranged units >> melee units, since there are insufficient gap closers.
+ Combat becomes an extended version of [WAR3 micro wars custom map]. It mostly consists of kiting back and forth, while micro-ing single weak units to the back and toggling unit abilities as they come off cooldown.
I can't think of any games that do small squad (~12 units) micro-management well, so we don't have any good examples to draw from here. Let me provide some qualities that I associate with fun RTS micro:
+ It should be possible to get behind the enemy (at a cost), even if they're aware of the maneuvre.
+ Engagement should be possible (at a cost) even if one side isn't willing to engage.
+ Engagement and disengagement should be costly, at least for one side. (Prevents back-and-forth kiting).
+ There should be high variance in movement speed, as movement speed translates to map control, ability to be in the right place at the right time, and ability to split army.
Here's a set of changes you may want to test out, patterned after SC1 marine vs zergling micro.
+ Give all T1 melee units 50% movement speed increase.
+ Make T1 melee units 50% cheaper, and have 2x unit cap.
+ Give all T1 ranged units 2x damage.
The exact numbers may have to be tweaked, but I suspect that the flavor of the combat will be completely different (as well as the role of mobility and map control). The goal is that the melee player should win an engagement (given two skilled players) only if the ranged player is out of position. The goal of the melee player is to abuse map control and force the ranged player to be out of position.
[Diversity in Strategy]
I'm surprised that this got brought up, since strategy typically doesn't develop for quite some time (weeks, months?) after a game has stabilized. Looking through the posts, it looks like the major problem people had was that setting up tanks in the middle to deny resources was too powerful.
I suspect the real concern these players had was that after tanks get set up in the middle, there's a slow grind to the finish. There was nothing (that they could see) that would change the condition of their slowly losing side.
Let me pose several thoughts:
+ If there really is nothing that the losing side can do, then the game should already be over. e.g. Having two tanks in the middle ends the game (king of the hill style). I think that would still be an acceptable game, but I suspect that the Atlas team doesn't want to make that style of game.
+ Add a forfeit option. Let players use it to end their misery, log metrics, and find ways to reduce that option being picked when the game isn't clearly over.
+ Mobility might be a partial answer to this problem. (e.g. the weaker side, if they are more mobile, should have the ability to counter-attack out-of-the-way expansions of the stronger, either pulling the stronger side out of position, or equalizing the expansion count).
But most importantly:
+ Overwhelming advantage should translate quickly into end of game. Let's say that one side is more mobile, has twice as many expansions, has a larger and better teched army. They should trivially be able to win in a minute or two. Victory should not require advancing a siege line.
+ Why have super powerful towers that can't be taken down without a giant army of cubes and units or else siege tanks? That was the design I found most confusing about the game. If there's an overwhelming advantage at minute 3, let the winning side end (or try to) end the game.
+ I think the goal of the small towers is to prevent the game from ending after a single fight. I don't understand the goal of the large towers.
Let me present a reworking of the current mechanics that prevents the game from ending after a single lost fight, but without towers.
I have the choice of reviving units instantly for a gold cost (1/10? of the original cost). Each unit type has its own "revival" cooldown, let's say 120s. The goal is that if I have 12 marines, the first 12 marines that die are instantly revived. The 13th that dies takes 120s to revive. (think dota2 buyback)
This has the following results:
+ When a player loses a combat (whole army), his opponent tries to push down his expansion and maybe gets some damage in. The player's revived army meets there, and another fight ensues. The player should win, since he inflicted some damage earlier - situation stabilizes. Player encurs gold cost for having lost a fight.
+ If his opponent can win two fights in a row (on unfriendly turf), then the game ends shortly after.
@SaveHolt said:
My biggest issue with PvP was the bottom lane. It made me feel disconnected from the other two players while I was busy harassing/being harassed by my bottom position opponent.
Definitely on the docket to be addressed. Our plan is currently map redesign!
I also felt that both teams having the same squad would put those two players at a stalemate, trading unit for unit, often coming down to a question of who was better at macro/who shot first. A free upgrade for your units at the beginning of the game (a la Heroes of the Storm?) might change that somewhat, however I realize the upgrade system is due for some changes from reading other posts.
Mirror matchups have rarely been intuitively awesome in any game I've seen. It tends to take a while for the awesomeness (or lack thereof) to suss out. Currently, we don't have any plan to address mirrors unless we begin to see it as a much more spoken about issue.
However I would like to point out that PvP made melee units far more useful, no longer chasing the bots back and forth across the mid-section of the map. This made me feel happy, as I love the different feel of the melee squads and wanted desperately to play them more efficiently during bot games.
I have a hard time getting to the core of your feedback, as most of it comes from a conclusions/proposal angle rather than a reaction -- "I felt X when Y happened" format. A reaction format helps us make sure we understand the problems that you're facing. Since the solution to such a problem could vary widely with testing, the thing that really matters is that we both make sure we're focusing on the same problem.
As an example, you state
Engagement should be possible (at a cost) even if one side isn't willing to engage.
It's more useful to first give an example of what you were experiencing in game. For instance: "In this replay at 6:15, I began trying to engage my opponent but he continued to run away. Over the next 3 minutes, I felt that there was literally no way for my squad to engage his squad. I feel that engagement should be possible even if one side isn't willing to engage. So, I might suggest you implement upgrade X that would address this." In this fashion, we have a clear place to look at, understand what you mean, and then create a test experiment to step forward.
I can address some of the questions you asked though!
(1) Why not make games shorter? The most trivial example would be to speed up in game speed 3x.
It's a bit tricky to simply "make a game shorter." Rather, we playtest lots, see the current timelength, and then add systems and continue to re-evaluate. We'd like the gamelength to be about 25ish minutes.
I say "ish" because gamelength is not exactly the correct thing to focus on. Rather, it's engagement during a period of time. A 15 minute game can feel like it drags and a 30 minute game can feel too-short. Though we are shooting for something 25ish minutes, if we wind up with engaging longer average games, we're happy!
(2) Why a 3v3 format? Why not 5v5? Some of my favorite memories from SC1, SC2, and WAR3 come from giant team games.
With our other systems, when we stepped into 4v4 and 5v5, things were simply chaotic and unstructured. We want a small enough number of elements to where players can process and then make strategic decisions. For instance, in a 5v5, there would be 20 unique units/heroes on EACH side. It's hard to imagine reads and counterplay working neatly in that context. Also, 3v3 provides a good balance of teamplay and individual impact.
I think it's definitely possible that we could have made a fun 1v1 or 5v5 game, we simply chose 3v3.
It's perhaps not the biggest issue right now, but about the game format (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, etc...)
I'm worried for those times where I'm playing Atlas with two friends, and having a blast, and then another friend asks me to play too. I'd really love to see multiple queues, or at least something for friends to do together when there's a group larger than three, or really for any number of people. Not sure if this is something that is planned, but this feels really important for anyone who knows more than two people who play the game.
At 15mn this game was lost, but no one want to leave, after that it was just a long (bit boring death).
I do not know if it would be possible to propose a defeat when hero level are more that a few level of differences.
Anyhow, i was bored enough that i could take the screenshot and wonder , why am i not leaving already ^^
I overall really enjoyed PVP. I liked it when the armies met up and battled it out. I also enjoyed the beginning where you have a good incentive to push to the enemy and try to deny the gem collecting. I feel that this incentive falls off later in the game.
Around 20ish minutes or so, I started to feel bored and I just felt like I just wanted the game to end. When any of the games got to 30+ mins, I just didn't want to play anymore. It felt like no one really wanted to attack and it felt like we just kept rotating till we can attack towers and expansions without having to fight the enemies. It felt like we were just doing base races. I feel it would feel more rewarding if we had more incentive to go for head on battles.
I did not like it when I was the lone guy at the bottom of the map. Just felt like I was doing my own thing and not really playing with the others.
I felt like the gems and neutral weapons all made much more sense the moment I played my first pvp match. It was a complete change in my value of the gems from having only played against bots.
I felt like I was being greedy when harvesting gems around other team members. I somehow felt like we were competing for them. I started thinking that maybe it would be a good idea for us to share harvested gem gains from nodes.
I felt like I was being greedy when i started expanding past the obvious second base. I played zerg in SC2 very greedily. I always felt weird taking expansions without getting everyone's approvals in team matches, which is the biggest reason I didn't like playing team matches in that game. I started to feel that way too in this game, but I never said anything. It felt like it would be odd to have to ask about that.
After playing several more games, both versus bots and versus other players in today's playtest...
Wow, there is a huge variety in squads. Some of the squads play really differently from others, and it's great to find a squad that fits my playstyle well. However, a lot of units felt situational or not really useful, I'm not sure if this was my lack of knowledge about how to use them, or just they weren't useful. For example, when playing Vela versus swarms of enemies, I didn't feel like Deadeyes and Windrays very useful, which was frustrating because I was only building and focusing on my Tier 1 unit for the majority of the game. In contrast, Vex's squad felt like all of the units were useful all of the time. The Ignitor had value against swarms (conflagrate) and single targets (ignition), and the Pyrosaur could act as AOE damage or as a damage tank (with molten scales). I really liked the variety and options of this squad, in addition to the control/positioning challenge (not sure how challenging Vex is to play for everyone else, but it was challenging for me, I feel like it would take a TON of time to work on my micro as Vex, but it's something I'm excited to try and do).
The Siege Titans accomplished their role nicely. I was able to break sieges that I don't think I could have broken before using a few siege titans. I felt like I wasn't able to steal games with them, I was able to use them to close out games against turtling enemies who had no map control (in normal games, I'd prefer ion cannons to attack). I spent the past few days playing purely with ion cannons (and siege breakers), in contrast to the first playtest where I built purely glass cannons, and it seems that ion cannons are better in almost all circumstances. I felt like glass cannons would only be better when you have a surplus of gems and wanted to push a weakly defended location to get to a stronger location later. Glass cannons were very powerful for counterattacks at unexpected angles, however when I had enough gems and map presence to do this, I felt like it was better to just use ion cannons for a big push to win the game. So I didn't really feel that there was much difference between the different neutral weapons.
I played against Grath for a few times today, and I don't remember playing against him before. It was frustrating because I didn't know how to react, and he kept stunning my entire army and killing me. I think I have better ideas as for how I could have won now (mostly better control/positioning), and how I played incorrectly, but it was frustrating at the time because it felt like there was nothing I could do. Losing my army in most fights was a bit frustrating, but having it stunned and being helpless and watching it die was much worse. I didn't mind playing against slows and attack speed/damage reductions, but complete stun was annoying to fight against.
I also started using healing wards and vision wards more. Healing wards felt really useful, and having a good amount of healing wards (but not putting too many to avoid gems) was an interesting dynamic. However, the use of vision wards seemed limited, since in most cases when I'd want to push over brush, I would just build an ion cannon, which gave me the vision instead.
To be honest, I didn't feel much different queuing in party versus random queuing. In general, I was just hoping for allies that didn't mess up and didn't lose the game for me, instead of trying to work with allies. I found my games on the bottom lane more enjoyable, because I would be able to do what I wanted without worry of walking into a 1v2 (and when there was, I could retreat and hope that my teammates could capitalize on the opportunity). Perhaps a greater familiarity with the game could help this, but most of the time I didn't find myself enjoying the team play. It felt really good when I could get a flank with a teammate, or when they defended something that I wasn't able to, but most of the time I was just hoping that they wouldn't mess with my plan or leave me alone to fight multiple enemies.
Overall, the game was really fun. I still felt like there were lots of opportunities for comebacks and that I wasn't too punished for single errors, which was amazing. I absolutely loved the micro opportunities and depth, I feel that this game is great at allowing players to show off their unit control and army positioning/movement. I'm definitely looking forward to the next playtest, great game!
Comments
About Me
Favorite Bits
Solo Side: I loved playing the solo side because: I felt fully engaged by the well-defined role, unhindered by needing to make partner-based decisions; I could see the consequences of the strategic decisions of myself and my opponent; the outcomes of skirmishes were due to strategic decisions and micro skills rather than a rescuing teammate or opponent; and, I had time to assess and tackle challenges presented to me by my opponent. I did wish there was a way to choose the solo side in future team games and especially bot games (maybe there is already); I could see players specializing in particular positions.
Community: The client's chat system and overall interface facilitated a sense of community. Supplemented by the forums, the Discord chat, and especially the positive attitudes of the developers and participants, the social aspect made the PvP test highly enjoyable.
Expansions: The expansion mechanics heightened my engagement with the game. As I played more, I gained a sense for how and when to take expansions, increasing the overall flow and momentum of the match. The guards at the expansions provided opportunities to execute micro (gave me a pleasurable sense of mastery!) and provided interesting strategic options for trapping the opponent.
Being punished for bad decisions: I liked that enemy units could trap me when overextending. This encourages careful decisions and cooperation among team members. I suspect future enjoyment will come from learning how to set up traps and execute "big moves" as a team.
Least Favorite Bits
Undersatisfying kills: I didn't experience the same levels of enjoyment when picking off enemy units or heroes that I do when killing an enemy in Counter-Strike or enemy units in Starcraft. Likely this could be remedied with different visual and auditory feedback... more explodey?
Lack of momentous events: Although games could certainly snowball (a reasonable outcome if one side is playing much better), I rarely noticed when my teammates would take out big towers, kill heros, or even kill the nexus unless it was on screen (a few victories came by surprise!). I think the game would be more exciting if there were different/more obvious rewards for big events, whether practical (gold, gems, XP, structures) or aesthetic. I like another player's suggestion that expos be viable respawn points; then taking an enemy expansion would be a "momentous event".
Sources of friction: The gem-taking cooldown timer felt annoyingly close to the amount of time it takes to walk from one gem spot to another on the map. It was long enough that I would choose to divert my attention from gem collecting, which resulted in the collection of gems feeling tedious rather than pleasurable. It was successful, however, in ensuring a teammate couldn't be a gem hog - maybe awarding all teammates the gems and removing the cooldown would remedy this? Also, movement felt overall a little sluggish. I'm not sure if this would be better fixed by speeding up the game or by some alteration to the movement animations.
Lack of defensive options: At times, I had LOADS of gems, but the opponent was pressuring us hard (and succeeding), and I felt I had a lack of options for using gems effectively. Maybe this was a result of my own inexperience, but because the cannons outrange the towers, it felt a waste to build towers, especially if they already had cannons up. If I could have spent gems to reduce respawn delay, or otherwise effectively combat their big armies, I would have been pleased. Perhaps the nexus or main towers could activate single-use AOE damage abilities at the cost of gems (maybe all three teammates are required to activate this).
Long respawn delay late game: This was especially problematic for squads with fragile units. I could accept this if there was more for my hero to do while I waited - small gems on the home side, late game, for instance? Or perhaps I could spend gold or gems to reduce respawn time.
Ambiguous damage types: I know it says somewhere which attacks are magic vs physical, but I had little to no idea in-battle how to decipher the two, and correspondingly wasn't sure how to choose upgrades or use defensive abilities. I assumed big hero abilities were magic type, but was less certain whether different squads had magic attacks as their T1 standard.
Little bit late on the feedback, but I just got time to write it up.
Probably forgot something, but that seems like plenty for now.
Things I liked:
-This is a very unique RTS game and involves quite a bit of strategy and rethinking of my play style from other RTS games. There is definitely more forced interaction with the gem nodes being scattered in the middle of the map, and troop respawns allows me to be more aggressive and not afraid to lose my whole army.
-I love the different hero and squad options. They feel very unique and it was fun to learn different sets.
-The simple hero/unit abilities feel really good and are powerful when used appropriately. I also like not having to tab between units to use their abilities. (I wish there was maybe one or two more abilities for the hero units).
Things I didn't like as much:
-My play style in other RTS games was more of a turtle/CC style. In Atlas I missed building my structures and setting up a "base". I felt very limited only being able to construct basically 2 buildings, and only on the nodes.
-The games I played yesterday were very long. (I didn't keep track of the time, but they seemed to take over 30 minutes). (This also might not be the norm...) In all of my games, everybody had teched up at about the same rate, and would just run our full armies into eachother, then wait for respawn and try again. It was also hard to tell if we were winning or losing, (and a couple times when I felt like we were losing, all of the sudden GG, victory). Normally a closely fought, come-from-behind win would feel exciting, but it sort of felt like it dragged on... ---To summarize this point, it was hard to gain an advantage in the late game---
-I got a little frustrated trying to get my melee units to the front of the pack, lots of small spaces. (This is probably due to my level of experience, poor micro, etc.)
-Didn't love that I was limited to 10/4/2 (ish) units per tier. (This goes back to the stagnant late game) I had a ton of cash and wanted to spam my tier 3 unit.
-Wished the UI had more info on units as I clicked them. Would be interested to see how my upgrades change the numbers.
-Didn't totally understand how to best use the glass units and weapons, or their behaviors. (I suppose I could have just read more carefully or done some experimenting).
Conclusions:
-The game feels like it was designed for hardcore RTS players. Emphasis on micro, positioning, etc., not as much emphasis on economy, base building, macro. As more of a casual RTS player (Silver/Gold league) I didn't feel like I was BAD at the game, just wasn't able to play it the way I wanted to.
-I really like the Hero unit and squad units, and gameplay surrounding team battles is fun. My fav RTS of all time is Warcraft 3, and the Hero unit in Atlas gives me a taste of that.
Anyways, I had a ton of fun during yesterday's PVP test, delays and all. I'll be planning and practicing to try and do better next week!
EDIT: Oh shoot, I misinterpreted this as "Feedback from during the PVP test" and not specifically "Feedback directly related to PVP", so it's kind of a mishmash of stuff that shows in the other category megathreads. My apologies
Awesome stuff guys! I'm going to collate some answers in the top level post! Woohoo! Efficiency! <3 :D.
Ok I just made a big front page post. Am I missing anything?
My biggest issue with PvP was the bottom lane. It made me feel disconnected from the other two players while I was busy harassing/being harassed by my bottom position opponent. Being that both of us were Celestia didn't help, being pretty evenly matched until the 25 min mark or so, where his/her skill was marginally higher than mine in micro and I started losing conflicts.
I also felt that both teams having the same squad would put those two players at a stalemate, trading unit for unit, often coming down to a question of who was better at macro/who shot first. A free upgrade for your units at the beginning of the game (a la Heroes of the Storm?) might change that somewhat, however I realize the upgrade system is due for some changes from reading other posts.
However I would like to point out that PvP made melee units far more useful, no longer chasing the bots back and forth across the mid-section of the map. This made me feel happy, as I love the different feel of the melee squads and wanted desperately to play them more efficiently during bot games.
Feedback:
[First impressions]
+ Game feels a lot like Warcraft 3.
+ Hero levels up, relatively small set of units (12), generally most efficient to have in 1 control group, non-trivial PvE interactions (fighting creeps for expansions, collecting resources from map)
+ Games felt like they took a long time.
+ I didn't time them, but they "felt" like they took half an hour. While there was frequent combat, I guess the combat "felt" the same and pretty repetitive. I think the main reason for this is that killing and losing units generally "felt" like it had low impact, but it did not immediately transition into a push, just into more map control + resource collection.
[Timing]
What is the intended duration for a single game? It looks like Atlas is gearing towards traditional RTS time lengths (5 min, at the super low end, to 40+ min at the high end, median around 20).
source: http://www.statista.com/statistics/251222/most-played-pc-games/
The most popular competitive games (LOL, CSGO, Dota2, World of Tanks, Hearthstone, ...) fall into two categories.
+ Super short rounds (<<20 min: Hearthstone, World of Tanks, CSGO), possibly chained in succession.
+ Long rounds (30-60: min LOL, Dota2) with a heavy focus on cooperation (5+ player teams).
Theory 1: Short games good because people have short attention spans. Short games are easier to commit to. Stringing together a series of short competitive games can itself add a lot of complexity to the strategy of a game (fighting games, hearthstone, etc.)
Theory 2: Long games are primarily interesting because of the co-operative element. For obvious reasons, games have positive feedback loops. Player skill tends to have low variance over the course of a single game. As a result, a slight difference in skill tends to result in a very fast snowball in one direction or another (consider 1v1 variants of Dota2, LOL) The reason that these games can sustain really long play times is because the game focuses more on cooperation and team-play, so even if the team is currently doing poorly, they have a real chance of coming back because cooperation is /hard/.
In this lieu, I have two proposals for the Atlas team to mull over:
(1) Why not make games shorter? The most trivial example would be to speed up in game speed 3x.
(2) Why a 3v3 format? Why not 5v5? Some of my favorite memories from SC1, SC2, and WAR3 come from giant team games.
[Combat]
I didn't like combat. It felt too much like WAR3.
Characteristics:
+ Unit mobility is too uniform.
+ Unit sight range >> unit fire range.
This leads to two effects:
+ Ranged units >> melee units, since there are insufficient gap closers.
+ Combat becomes an extended version of [WAR3 micro wars custom map]. It mostly consists of kiting back and forth, while micro-ing single weak units to the back and toggling unit abilities as they come off cooldown.
I can't think of any games that do small squad (~12 units) micro-management well, so we don't have any good examples to draw from here. Let me provide some qualities that I associate with fun RTS micro:
+ It should be possible to get behind the enemy (at a cost), even if they're aware of the maneuvre.
+ Engagement should be possible (at a cost) even if one side isn't willing to engage.
+ Engagement and disengagement should be costly, at least for one side. (Prevents back-and-forth kiting).
+ There should be high variance in movement speed, as movement speed translates to map control, ability to be in the right place at the right time, and ability to split army.
Here's a set of changes you may want to test out, patterned after SC1 marine vs zergling micro.
+ Give all T1 melee units 50% movement speed increase.
+ Make T1 melee units 50% cheaper, and have 2x unit cap.
+ Give all T1 ranged units 2x damage.
The exact numbers may have to be tweaked, but I suspect that the flavor of the combat will be completely different (as well as the role of mobility and map control). The goal is that the melee player should win an engagement (given two skilled players) only if the ranged player is out of position. The goal of the melee player is to abuse map control and force the ranged player to be out of position.
[Diversity in Strategy]
I'm surprised that this got brought up, since strategy typically doesn't develop for quite some time (weeks, months?) after a game has stabilized. Looking through the posts, it looks like the major problem people had was that setting up tanks in the middle to deny resources was too powerful.
I suspect the real concern these players had was that after tanks get set up in the middle, there's a slow grind to the finish. There was nothing (that they could see) that would change the condition of their slowly losing side.
Let me pose several thoughts:
+ If there really is nothing that the losing side can do, then the game should already be over. e.g. Having two tanks in the middle ends the game (king of the hill style). I think that would still be an acceptable game, but I suspect that the Atlas team doesn't want to make that style of game.
+ Add a forfeit option. Let players use it to end their misery, log metrics, and find ways to reduce that option being picked when the game isn't clearly over.
+ Mobility might be a partial answer to this problem. (e.g. the weaker side, if they are more mobile, should have the ability to counter-attack out-of-the-way expansions of the stronger, either pulling the stronger side out of position, or equalizing the expansion count).
But most importantly:
+ Overwhelming advantage should translate quickly into end of game. Let's say that one side is more mobile, has twice as many expansions, has a larger and better teched army. They should trivially be able to win in a minute or two. Victory should not require advancing a siege line.
+ Why have super powerful towers that can't be taken down without a giant army of cubes and units or else siege tanks? That was the design I found most confusing about the game. If there's an overwhelming advantage at minute 3, let the winning side end (or try to) end the game.
+ I think the goal of the small towers is to prevent the game from ending after a single fight. I don't understand the goal of the large towers.
Let me present a reworking of the current mechanics that prevents the game from ending after a single lost fight, but without towers.
I have the choice of reviving units instantly for a gold cost (1/10? of the original cost). Each unit type has its own "revival" cooldown, let's say 120s. The goal is that if I have 12 marines, the first 12 marines that die are instantly revived. The 13th that dies takes 120s to revive. (think dota2 buyback)
This has the following results:
+ When a player loses a combat (whole army), his opponent tries to push down his expansion and maybe gets some damage in. The player's revived army meets there, and another fight ensues. The player should win, since he inflicted some damage earlier - situation stabilizes. Player encurs gold cost for having lost a fight.
+ If his opponent can win two fights in a row (on unfriendly turf), then the game ends shortly after.
Let me know if this feedback was helpful.
Definitely on the docket to be addressed. Our plan is currently map redesign!
Mirror matchups have rarely been intuitively awesome in any game I've seen. It tends to take a while for the awesomeness (or lack thereof) to suss out. Currently, we don't have any plan to address mirrors unless we begin to see it as a much more spoken about issue.
Yaaay! :D
@pavolas
I have a hard time getting to the core of your feedback, as most of it comes from a conclusions/proposal angle rather than a reaction -- "I felt X when Y happened" format. A reaction format helps us make sure we understand the problems that you're facing. Since the solution to such a problem could vary widely with testing, the thing that really matters is that we both make sure we're focusing on the same problem.
As an example, you state
It's more useful to first give an example of what you were experiencing in game. For instance: "In this replay at 6:15, I began trying to engage my opponent but he continued to run away. Over the next 3 minutes, I felt that there was literally no way for my squad to engage his squad. I feel that engagement should be possible even if one side isn't willing to engage. So, I might suggest you implement upgrade X that would address this." In this fashion, we have a clear place to look at, understand what you mean, and then create a test experiment to step forward.
I can address some of the questions you asked though!
It's a bit tricky to simply "make a game shorter." Rather, we playtest lots, see the current timelength, and then add systems and continue to re-evaluate. We'd like the gamelength to be about 25ish minutes.
I say "ish" because gamelength is not exactly the correct thing to focus on. Rather, it's engagement during a period of time. A 15 minute game can feel like it drags and a 30 minute game can feel too-short. Though we are shooting for something 25ish minutes, if we wind up with engaging longer average games, we're happy!
With our other systems, when we stepped into 4v4 and 5v5, things were simply chaotic and unstructured. We want a small enough number of elements to where players can process and then make strategic decisions. For instance, in a 5v5, there would be 20 unique units/heroes on EACH side. It's hard to imagine reads and counterplay working neatly in that context. Also, 3v3 provides a good balance of teamplay and individual impact.
I think it's definitely possible that we could have made a fun 1v1 or 5v5 game, we simply chose 3v3.
It's perhaps not the biggest issue right now, but about the game format (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, etc...)
I'm worried for those times where I'm playing Atlas with two friends, and having a blast, and then another friend asks me to play too. I'd really love to see multiple queues, or at least something for friends to do together when there's a group larger than three, or really for any number of people. Not sure if this is something that is planned, but this feels really important for anyone who knows more than two people who play the game.
Hello All,
At 15mn this game was lost, but no one want to leave, after that it was just a long (bit boring death).
I do not know if it would be possible to propose a defeat when hero level are more that a few level of differences.
Anyhow, i was bored enough that i could take the screenshot and wonder , why am i not leaving already ^^
I overall really enjoyed PVP. I liked it when the armies met up and battled it out. I also enjoyed the beginning where you have a good incentive to push to the enemy and try to deny the gem collecting. I feel that this incentive falls off later in the game.
Around 20ish minutes or so, I started to feel bored and I just felt like I just wanted the game to end. When any of the games got to 30+ mins, I just didn't want to play anymore. It felt like no one really wanted to attack and it felt like we just kept rotating till we can attack towers and expansions without having to fight the enemies. It felt like we were just doing base races. I feel it would feel more rewarding if we had more incentive to go for head on battles.
I did not like it when I was the lone guy at the bottom of the map. Just felt like I was doing my own thing and not really playing with the others.
I felt like the gems and neutral weapons all made much more sense the moment I played my first pvp match. It was a complete change in my value of the gems from having only played against bots.
I felt like I was being greedy when harvesting gems around other team members. I somehow felt like we were competing for them. I started thinking that maybe it would be a good idea for us to share harvested gem gains from nodes.
I felt like I was being greedy when i started expanding past the obvious second base. I played zerg in SC2 very greedily. I always felt weird taking expansions without getting everyone's approvals in team matches, which is the biggest reason I didn't like playing team matches in that game. I started to feel that way too in this game, but I never said anything. It felt like it would be odd to have to ask about that.
After playing several more games, both versus bots and versus other players in today's playtest...
Wow, there is a huge variety in squads. Some of the squads play really differently from others, and it's great to find a squad that fits my playstyle well. However, a lot of units felt situational or not really useful, I'm not sure if this was my lack of knowledge about how to use them, or just they weren't useful. For example, when playing Vela versus swarms of enemies, I didn't feel like Deadeyes and Windrays very useful, which was frustrating because I was only building and focusing on my Tier 1 unit for the majority of the game. In contrast, Vex's squad felt like all of the units were useful all of the time. The Ignitor had value against swarms (conflagrate) and single targets (ignition), and the Pyrosaur could act as AOE damage or as a damage tank (with molten scales). I really liked the variety and options of this squad, in addition to the control/positioning challenge (not sure how challenging Vex is to play for everyone else, but it was challenging for me, I feel like it would take a TON of time to work on my micro as Vex, but it's something I'm excited to try and do).
The Siege Titans accomplished their role nicely. I was able to break sieges that I don't think I could have broken before using a few siege titans. I felt like I wasn't able to steal games with them, I was able to use them to close out games against turtling enemies who had no map control (in normal games, I'd prefer ion cannons to attack). I spent the past few days playing purely with ion cannons (and siege breakers), in contrast to the first playtest where I built purely glass cannons, and it seems that ion cannons are better in almost all circumstances. I felt like glass cannons would only be better when you have a surplus of gems and wanted to push a weakly defended location to get to a stronger location later. Glass cannons were very powerful for counterattacks at unexpected angles, however when I had enough gems and map presence to do this, I felt like it was better to just use ion cannons for a big push to win the game. So I didn't really feel that there was much difference between the different neutral weapons.
I played against Grath for a few times today, and I don't remember playing against him before. It was frustrating because I didn't know how to react, and he kept stunning my entire army and killing me. I think I have better ideas as for how I could have won now (mostly better control/positioning), and how I played incorrectly, but it was frustrating at the time because it felt like there was nothing I could do. Losing my army in most fights was a bit frustrating, but having it stunned and being helpless and watching it die was much worse. I didn't mind playing against slows and attack speed/damage reductions, but complete stun was annoying to fight against.
I also started using healing wards and vision wards more. Healing wards felt really useful, and having a good amount of healing wards (but not putting too many to avoid gems) was an interesting dynamic. However, the use of vision wards seemed limited, since in most cases when I'd want to push over brush, I would just build an ion cannon, which gave me the vision instead.
To be honest, I didn't feel much different queuing in party versus random queuing. In general, I was just hoping for allies that didn't mess up and didn't lose the game for me, instead of trying to work with allies. I found my games on the bottom lane more enjoyable, because I would be able to do what I wanted without worry of walking into a 1v2 (and when there was, I could retreat and hope that my teammates could capitalize on the opportunity). Perhaps a greater familiarity with the game could help this, but most of the time I didn't find myself enjoying the team play. It felt really good when I could get a flank with a teammate, or when they defended something that I wasn't able to, but most of the time I was just hoping that they wouldn't mess with my plan or leave me alone to fight multiple enemies.
Overall, the game was really fun. I still felt like there were lots of opportunities for comebacks and that I wasn't too punished for single errors, which was amazing. I absolutely loved the micro opportunities and depth, I feel that this game is great at allowing players to show off their unit control and army positioning/movement. I'm definitely looking forward to the next playtest, great game!