The Importance of Good Upgrades
Right now in Atlas, there are two main kinds of upgrades: stat upgrades from the four armory buildings, which I will continue referring to as "upgrades", and squad-specific upgrades from the 5th building available in your base, which I will refer to as "traits" from here on out. At the moment, the effect of upgrades is still somewhat ill-defined, and it's hard to tell how much 10% damage or 8% attack speed really does in any given fight. On the other hand, the impact of traits is very immediately clear. Each one provides a tangible bonus for one unit that has moments of strategic usefulness and moments where it really isn't the right pick. This makes them feel very rewarding as the player.
The problem right now is, most traits suck. With some confidence, I can say that many of the traits for certain squads would only ever be a waste of coin, even far into the late game when coin has already been collected in excess. This means coin is often shunted off to the less rewarding upgrades in hopes that they will have some real effect on the outcome of the game, even if you don't fully understand what that will be. That doesn't feel good at all strategically, and seems more like a mechanic in place only to sink coin away once you have nothing to do with it.
The prime counterexample to this is Alder. Alder has six absolutely fantastic traits. In a perfect world, Alder would collect enough coin by the end of the game to have a full army AND all six available traits, and the imperfect world generally tends to lean towards the side of skipping some units before skipping any traits. That's insane, and feels incredible when playing as Alder. All your coin income feels useful, and each completed trait creates a huge swing in the power of your army. On the flip side of this though, this means that when playing Alder it rarely makes any sense to invest in upgrades. Your coin is much better spent maxing out on units and getting all the traits, and the game almost always ends before that is completed.
Now, it might seem like I'm saying Alder is too strong (which might be true, but that's discussion for another day), but in fact I believe that the correct solution to this is actually to introduce more attractive traits for the other squads. Most squads have two or three traits they feel good about getting, and maybe a fourth that's alright in the late game, but generally the worse half of them are completely forgotten about. This pushes their coin income directly into the armory upgrades, and necessitates keeping armory upgrades somewhat weak, so as to make sure they don't take over and define the pace of the game. But if all eight squads have six good options for squad specific traits, two huge new avenues of exploration are opened. First, strategic diversity can grow and blossom as players try different trait priorities for each squad with and against different compositions. With six viable options, the correct choice becomes less obvious and requires more knowledge about the specific circumstances of the game at hand. Second, with traits being more attractive upgrades from armories can be buffed to have a more significant impact as well. Such a buff would make the effects of these upgrades more visible in game, and would make purchasing them more satisfying, even in cases when it isn't the most optimal choice. This again encourages the growth of strategic diversity, and also fills out a piece of the game that feels flat in its current iteration.
Any thoughts from you guys on upgrades and traits (and whether those are even good names for them) would be well appreciated! I've been thinking about this a lot for the past couple days, and I'd love to hear everyone's take on it.
Comments
Totally agree with this, I've had pretty much the same thoughts. Some upgrades feel very powerful all the time (+4.5 range on Purifiers) while some can be good situationally (+30 HP on Wisps vs lots of AoE), but most of the time I felt like it was a better investment to just get Armory upgrades even if the traits were more interesting.
I definitely agree that most traits are not a good investment right now. For Hydros, it seems like only the Aquadillo splash radius upgrade is worthwhile in most games, and the Quadrapus extra healing upgrade might be okay in heavy Quadrapus builds (but why would you do that?) and the Repel Hex upgrade might be okay versus enemies playing heavily with stuns. But in general I only want the Huge Hammers upgrade... pretty boring.
Agreed, the Hydros traits are not fantastic. What's worse is that attack upgrades are percentage based, but defense are not. Meaning that offensive squads have the option of doing either, but defensive squads can only really build more defense, because giving very low damage +10% just is not meaningful.
I completely agree with this.
It's a requirement that there are a lot of worthwhile ability upgrades if we want to see good build variety in the game. Without these kind of unique abilities, everyones builds will feel somewhat the same.
The foundation for upgrades is strong but they just need some attention before it shines. The ability upgrades should be fewer, possibly take a little more research time than they do, but be significantly stronger/more game changing to the game play.
Right now I know you can look at the tab screen to see completed upgrades, but I also think it would be helpful if there was a way to "scout" what research your opponent is working on (before it is completed). Would give more strategic decision making to the game, and allow an opportunity for the enemy to try to counter with their own tech.
Definitely agree. I think a decent short term solution for introducing some more variability in the upgrades and traits selection would simply be to halve the price of everything and making it so you can only upgrade a single trait at any one time. This makes their value more distinct and makes it so that timings really feel important, adding to the macroeconomic decision making.
This would also balance better when you should be getting upgrades and increase the value of tech. For example, the game vs. devs that you, Pursuit, and Cycle played: no one bothered to spend coin on anything other than T1 units for the first 10 minutes or so. That seems like a pretty broken system, to me.
I feel like a lot of the traits are trying to force various synergies or add in abilities that didn't quite work out well when given innately, for example: everything from Grath. I don't find a single one of those appealing except sort of Devour. And if I really stretch my mind, I can envision a sort of split push style Grath that focuses on taking down buildings with those traits.
@Decency, that first 10 minutes of nothing but tier 1 is also a huge part of the problem. I actually started comparing some of the numbers from the csv @Outbreak posted in general discussion to find what the coin efficiency is of units vs upgrades, and specifically regarding the health upgrade for wisps, it is always a net value loss of coin until you have 15 or more wisps. That's so many that really even thinking about upgrading before you're maxed on T1 units is just a mistake. In general, units are insanely coin efficient, and upgrades really aren't, so getting upgrades first just makes your army less combat effective than the opponent. That's kinda where the biggest change needs to be focused.