Re-spawning and hotkeys
Hello friends, Hickory here again.
Today I wanted to point something out that has been bothering me since my first game. When a unit dies (heroes included) they are removed from the hotkey that they are placed on. This means that once you re-spawn them (V) you have to reselect them, and rebind them to the hotkey you originally had them on. In the early stages of a meta, you usually have a bunch more (stronger) units than your opponent to push to win. That's all good and all since it can be accomplished simply with boxing. However, I am already testing split pushing my own units (Purifiers here, Whips here) and it becomes annoying to constantly reset my hotkey. I would love if units remained on their pre-death hotkey after re-spawn, allowing me to re-hotkey them if I wish whenever.
The second issue I wanted to point out is about re-spawn times in general. Like any god-fearing moba (or moba esque game) death timers steadily increase as the game progresses to further highlight the punishment that is your painful death. That being said, in general your hero will be increasing in power and dying will merely stop that temporarily. However, there are several units in Atlas that become increasingly useless as their death timers increase. Vela's raptors are an excellent example. Although you are able to build defensive on Vela, my playtesting is showing dmg, speed and slight defensive being a much more progressive growth choice. Unfortunately, that means that Raptors never really become anymore tankier throughout the game - yet their death timers become higher. Celesta's ultimate will one shot a raptor (or multiple for that matter), meaning a short cooldown (50 sec?) ultimate can immediately wipe up to 18 units off the board for 75 seconds. This EXTREMELY devalues the usage of Raptors throughout the game. Short version, weak units are extra punished by growing death timers. I would love to see some sort of calculation of the death timer based on the value of the unit. i.e. raptors are at 30 sec while howling commando is stuck at 75 sec.
Would love to hear everyone's thoughts on these two topics! Leave a comment and tell me what you think. Make sure to stay tuned for more analysis on the early stages of the game from me (#guides inc).
Comments
Your first point about units not staying on hotkeys is something I've been pretty conflicted on. When you think about it it's basically the same thing as having fresh units spawn in Starcraft - you don't expect those to automatically get added to your control groups, yet in Atlas I get really frustrated that respawned units don't stay grouped. So I dunno - maybe there need to be better tools for grouping units so it doesn't feel like such a hassle, maybe it's a psychological thing that units "respawn" so it feels like they should preserve their state. Maybe there need to be more reasons to split units so that I don't find myself wishing they would stay grouped.
Definitely agree with your second point, though.
I should point out that there is a hotkey for select all units (hero included). That being said, when attempting to split your army and focus to multiple portions of the map, the select all hotkey becomes more and more irrelevant.
There are also hotkeys for select hero, select tier 1, select tier 2, select tier 3 and select army (hero not included). I didn't use these much during the playtest (didn't practice with them) but I've been playing around with them since the playtest. With them you can do things like split / group / reorganize your army without ever having to look at it, even as they're spawning.
I definitely think there is some mechanical difficulty in splitting your army as opposed to grouping it together at the moment, but the reason I enjoy playing multitasking heavy styles is because it takes a lot of skill to pull off with a greater payoff potential. Right now I feel like the game has the tools to split your army up effectively but not the incentive.