I wish I was able to better judge how I played, my teammates played, and enemies played. It was hard for me to tell who was winning. I couldn't really tell if my team had the advantage or the disadvantage. At the end of the game, I couldn't really tell what parts I was lacking or could do better. I just felt like, "well... looks like we won/lost" and that was the end of it.
Perhaps some in-game indicators to show that the enemies have upgrades or something. Maybe some post game stats to show how we did.
This is going to sound stupid, but after playing the art map for 5 games, I still have no idea what the zone in the center does. I always prioritized it, but I never actually paid attention to the result it had. Maybe this is more of a UI issue than a game systems issue, but it just felt weird to play so much but have no idea what one of the game systems was.
I'm sure you guys have plans for this, but Atlas currently feels very lacking in the customization/finding a niche playstyle department. I think part of this is that there just isn't a lot of systems complexity yet, but partially also it's that the systems that do exist are pretty...well-regulated? Somewhat related to Arixa's comments; you're only allowed a fixed number of each type of unit, you need to get them in a specific order (well, sort of, you can research t2 and t3 and build 0 t2 units but you get the point), you can only build towers/expos in specific spots, gold income feels very monotonic and you can't really do anything to spike it/destroy it, etc. The core collect gems/fight/respawn loop feels fun and satisfying but it definitely feels like it's lacking ways to express my personality in my play by doing niche/goofy/otherwise unusual things like my habit of using ludicrously glass-cannon item builds in LoL (a fairly successful strategy, all said ) or indulging my addiction to immortals in sc2 (a less victory-inducing tendency but equally hilarious), which is something I personally find super compelling in games, especially moba-type games where those kind of expressions can interact in fun ways with your teammates.
As more systems get added this will hopefully gradually become more of a thing, I'd just personally like it if you guys kept it in mind.
@Artillery.Eric said:
Let us know your thoughts on specific systems in the game, e.g. gem collection, respawn, recall, weapons, armory/upgrades, tower construction and upgrading, win conditions, overall pacing.
When providing feedback, please use the following format:
X happened
It made me feel Y (or I’d like to feel Y)
(optional) Here’s a suggestion to improve it
X happened: The game is going to end. I'm just there to watch it happen.
Y the feel: I feel like I had no impact on any part of the game.
I have a few reasons as to why I feel this way. I don't know for sure if they're real issues. But I want to at least put down something here. I didn't enjoy playing the game. And I want to help by saying why I think that.
Very often during the game I felt I had little to no decisions to make. The game felt like it railroaded me down a path of progression and my actions simply decided whether the game would be ending at the 25 minute mark or the 40. Win or lose, I feel I didn't have much impact on that outcome either.
Early game: One option: get gems. I feel like I had no choice or any other options otherwise. I'd like to draw a lot of comparisons to my two most played games in the RTS and Moba genres, Starcraft 2 and League of Legends, to base my feedback on.
Starcraft 2 early game: I have a thousand different choices to go here. My opponent is on the exact same
standing as I am, and our many many choices at the very opening of the game open an infinite combinations of outcomes that will branch out and define the mid game. In Atlas I had one option. Get gems. There weren't a lot of choices for different build paths, or unit composition, different tech strategies, extra expansions to take, or early aggressive moves I could make on my opponent to somehow change my position later in the mid game. We were all going to get gems and slowly move along the same steps to get to the same mid game every game.
League of Legends early game: Very similar to Atlas. Not a lot of optimal options to go on that are going to change the mid game. But just because a dedicated Moba style game doesn't have options doesn't mean its early game isn't giving me direct feedback that I am changing my mid game experience. I can feel my actions are having a positive impact on my success or failure in the coming mid game. Atlas didn't give me that same feeling. My early actions weren't giving me obvious feedback that I was impacting my success or failure of the mid game. However this can't be taken to seriously as a fault in the game, I believe I'm too new a player to understand the fundamentals in Atlas and I just wasn't seeing the direct impact of actions and the role on the coming mid game. So, if I had spent more time playing, this point may be moot.
I would like to point out though, that in League of Legends, I did have some early to mid game options that I could act on. There are objectives I can capitalize on if I either: A: Made a spectacular move against my opponents that put me in a particular advantage over them. or B: I decided to make a big risk/reward choice that I wanted to act on. Atlas gave me neither of these options in the early to mid game. I had to get gems. If I didn't I was falling behind. If I made a big move on my opponent I didn't have an objective I could really move to capitalize on efficiently to put me more ahead. I could just get more gems. If they were even there to be got anyway.
Mid game: three options: Get more gems. Push on my opponents tower/defend my own. Or risk engaging on a titan camp to secure an expansion. None of these options felt rewarding as I was unable to feel any impact from the outcome of any choice.
Late game always felt the same in every game I played. Everyone reached a point of maxed out armies. Max levels. And repetitive directionless fighting.
Basically I guess I never knew what I was doing, what I should have been doing, whether what I was doing was correct, or if anything I did had any impact on the outcome of the game whatsoever.
Wow I hope that's helpful. Thanks for making me an alpha tester guys! I loved being a part of this.
I thought the battles were very fun but it seemed you couldn't take much of an advantage after a victory. I think this is partly because of towers. When I would do a push I tended to find if I won a battle and killed a tower most of the time my squad would be pretty weak so I'd have to retreat. Then by the time I came back the tower was already back. I think towers should either be stronger and permanently killed or kept the same but have a cooldown to rebuild. That was the main problem for me was as soon as a tower was killed the enemy would just instantly rebuild it with only a two gem punishment. If you want to keep the ability to rebuild towers I think a cooldown on being able to rebuild the tower would help a lot. That way at least it would give players a gap of time to take advantage of there being no towers.
The unit-specific upgrades for Grath are underwhelming. There is one that I get [almost] every time, and the rest almost never:
1. Devour (the second Rhino ability) - really good because for finishing off weakened units without waiting for the attack cooldown, and the healing is a plus as well
Simian Smash - I am not a fan of the Howling Commandos, so perhaps others like this upgrade, but a 25% increase on just the splash radius of just the Commandos (max 4) seems to make not only an uninteresting upgrade, but also a low-impact upgrade
Beatdown - Just like Simian Smash, the numbers of this upgrade seem sub-par (also it is unclear whether this affects all units, or just all of your units), and again, does not create an interesting effect or situation or strategy
Crack the Foundation - I can't imagine a situation in which this upgrade would prove very useful, because at the point in which I am assaulting enemy buildings (and I have to be at Tier 3 already so we are not talking about early game poking) I usually don't need extra firepower (and can spawn weapons if I do). I would much rather have an upgrade to help me in other parts of the game.
Running Shoes - a 10% speed boost is underwhelming enough, let alone that it is only for the Terrapin Troopers.
Siege Rhino - Just like Crack The Foundation, I think upgrades that help me take down buildings faster are not terribly impactful because they are trumped by weapons and they help me in a situation in which I don't need help.
Comments
I wish I was able to better judge how I played, my teammates played, and enemies played. It was hard for me to tell who was winning. I couldn't really tell if my team had the advantage or the disadvantage. At the end of the game, I couldn't really tell what parts I was lacking or could do better. I just felt like, "well... looks like we won/lost" and that was the end of it.
Perhaps some in-game indicators to show that the enemies have upgrades or something. Maybe some post game stats to show how we did.
This is going to sound stupid, but after playing the art map for 5 games, I still have no idea what the zone in the center does. I always prioritized it, but I never actually paid attention to the result it had. Maybe this is more of a UI issue than a game systems issue, but it just felt weird to play so much but have no idea what one of the game systems was.
I'm sure you guys have plans for this, but Atlas currently feels very lacking in the customization/finding a niche playstyle department. I think part of this is that there just isn't a lot of systems complexity yet, but partially also it's that the systems that do exist are pretty...well-regulated? Somewhat related to Arixa's comments; you're only allowed a fixed number of each type of unit, you need to get them in a specific order (well, sort of, you can research t2 and t3 and build 0 t2 units but you get the point), you can only build towers/expos in specific spots, gold income feels very monotonic and you can't really do anything to spike it/destroy it, etc. The core collect gems/fight/respawn loop feels fun and satisfying but it definitely feels like it's lacking ways to express my personality in my play by doing niche/goofy/otherwise unusual things like my habit of using ludicrously glass-cannon item builds in LoL (a fairly successful strategy, all said
) or indulging my addiction to immortals in sc2 (a less victory-inducing tendency but equally hilarious), which is something I personally find super compelling in games, especially moba-type games where those kind of expressions can interact in fun ways with your teammates.
As more systems get added this will hopefully gradually become more of a thing, I'd just personally like it if you guys kept it in mind.
X happened: The game is going to end. I'm just there to watch it happen.
Y the feel: I feel like I had no impact on any part of the game.
I have a few reasons as to why I feel this way. I don't know for sure if they're real issues. But I want to at least put down something here. I didn't enjoy playing the game. And I want to help by saying why I think that.
Very often during the game I felt I had little to no decisions to make. The game felt like it railroaded me down a path of progression and my actions simply decided whether the game would be ending at the 25 minute mark or the 40. Win or lose, I feel I didn't have much impact on that outcome either.
Early game: One option: get gems. I feel like I had no choice or any other options otherwise. I'd like to draw a lot of comparisons to my two most played games in the RTS and Moba genres, Starcraft 2 and League of Legends, to base my feedback on.
Starcraft 2 early game: I have a thousand different choices to go here. My opponent is on the exact same
standing as I am, and our many many choices at the very opening of the game open an infinite combinations of outcomes that will branch out and define the mid game. In Atlas I had one option. Get gems. There weren't a lot of choices for different build paths, or unit composition, different tech strategies, extra expansions to take, or early aggressive moves I could make on my opponent to somehow change my position later in the mid game. We were all going to get gems and slowly move along the same steps to get to the same mid game every game.
League of Legends early game: Very similar to Atlas. Not a lot of optimal options to go on that are going to change the mid game. But just because a dedicated Moba style game doesn't have options doesn't mean its early game isn't giving me direct feedback that I am changing my mid game experience. I can feel my actions are having a positive impact on my success or failure in the coming mid game. Atlas didn't give me that same feeling. My early actions weren't giving me obvious feedback that I was impacting my success or failure of the mid game. However this can't be taken to seriously as a fault in the game, I believe I'm too new a player to understand the fundamentals in Atlas and I just wasn't seeing the direct impact of actions and the role on the coming mid game. So, if I had spent more time playing, this point may be moot.
I would like to point out though, that in League of Legends, I did have some early to mid game options that I could act on. There are objectives I can capitalize on if I either: A: Made a spectacular move against my opponents that put me in a particular advantage over them. or B: I decided to make a big risk/reward choice that I wanted to act on. Atlas gave me neither of these options in the early to mid game. I had to get gems. If I didn't I was falling behind. If I made a big move on my opponent I didn't have an objective I could really move to capitalize on efficiently to put me more ahead. I could just get more gems. If they were even there to be got anyway.
Mid game: three options: Get more gems. Push on my opponents tower/defend my own. Or risk engaging on a titan camp to secure an expansion. None of these options felt rewarding as I was unable to feel any impact from the outcome of any choice.
Late game always felt the same in every game I played. Everyone reached a point of maxed out armies. Max levels. And repetitive directionless fighting.
Basically I guess I never knew what I was doing, what I should have been doing, whether what I was doing was correct, or if anything I did had any impact on the outcome of the game whatsoever.
Wow I hope that's helpful. Thanks for making me an alpha tester guys! I loved being a part of this.
I thought the battles were very fun but it seemed you couldn't take much of an advantage after a victory. I think this is partly because of towers. When I would do a push I tended to find if I won a battle and killed a tower most of the time my squad would be pretty weak so I'd have to retreat. Then by the time I came back the tower was already back. I think towers should either be stronger and permanently killed or kept the same but have a cooldown to rebuild. That was the main problem for me was as soon as a tower was killed the enemy would just instantly rebuild it with only a two gem punishment. If you want to keep the ability to rebuild towers I think a cooldown on being able to rebuild the tower would help a lot. That way at least it would give players a gap of time to take advantage of there being no towers.
The unit-specific upgrades for Grath are underwhelming. There is one that I get [almost] every time, and the rest almost never:
1. Devour (the second Rhino ability) - really good because for finishing off weakened units without waiting for the attack cooldown, and the healing is a plus as well