Expanding and gold collection
TL;DR - keep expansions, scrap workers, change how gold collection works.
I feel like gold collection in the game should change a lot. the small base with two workers collecting resources just doesn't feel right for the way this game plays overall. doesn't seem like much point to have two workers auto build themselves and auto collect. (Scrap the workers!)
how bout making a similar mechanic to a MOBA for gold collection. make it tick per second, and make that amount increase for every expansion you control, and perhaps add a gold bounty reward for the enemy to kill an expansion building. in the matches i played i don't think I or my enemy ever killed an expansion, it just didn't seem worth it.
there's plenty of ways you could change the gold collection, but in its current state it just exists... there should be more to it then existing.
You guys have a great base to what will be a solid game! i look forward to playing more!
-Vhex
Comments
To expand on this, I think it would be neat to have you build like a robot gold mine on the mine itself. I think it could fit the game's aesthetic very well, and it would be clearer what mine spots are and what tower spots are.
Can you explain the "I felt X when Y happened" behind this? You're essentially pitching an idea without any context or motivation. Examples of possibly valuable motivations might be:
There's nothing wrong either with suggesting "Hey, this might be more convenient without losing anything." But, without knowing your motivation behind the idea, it's hard to comment :P
I can't speak for Vhex, but I can at least speak for my own opinions on a similar manner. For me, the problem I had with workers was how slow they built, I'm used to other RTS games such as Starcraft where you can feel a fast direct impact to your economy once that base comes up by transferring a bunch of workers to it. But since the bases took time to build then time to create each worker. I didn't really feel like my economy was hugely impacted by the expansion, since it takes time for it to get rolling. Personally, I like workers. And I feel killing a worker provides the best feedback to the enemy that they impacted the economy. Workers also visually provide the player a way of knowing, "How fast am I getting econ from this?" Do I have no workers? I have no econ. Do I have all possible workers? I have max possible income. For me losing the ability to micro workers between bases makes me sad. I wish I could say, put down an expansion further up and move my initial home workers there. In an attempt to deplete the nodes up there faster. That could be cool.
Vhex's idea could be interesting where each base can increase your gold input instantly. It allows making an expansion to have more direct emotional impact, the downside is that killing workers provides a direct impact to the person attacking the base that, "I killed a worker, his gold income has gone down by one worker." With the base that just farms at a rate, it's more like, "I have to kill this entire structure in order to impact his economy." Which will make it less likely for your opponent to attack your base.
Ah yeah I see what you mean!
We are exploring replacing expansions entirely with "caravans." A worker you can buy that wanders out, collects money from a location, and then returns to a deposit spot to dump the funds to you. My hope is that this would still give you the fun of chasing a small, hapless worker while making the economic growth more chunky.
I'm curious about how this would effect Titan's. Currently their sole purpose in life is to be a DPS check on expansions. If you have a worker go around collecting resources for you, wouldn't that remove the need for their prime directive? I've been rather curious about Titan's in general and would love to explore them more in another thread, but this seemed like a good place to voice one concern on them.
**Please note these are just my opinions. I may be wrong or have a poor understanding of things.
I think it is important to address why the current gold system causes people to be discontent. I don't think we can JUST focus on the gold expansions when analyzing this situation, I think we should look at manufacturing/units as a whole and how it promotes fun or takes it away. Now I know Atlas is it's own game but I feel it helps to make comparisons to other systems in games so bear with me.
What is gold for?
1. Creating units
2. Getting upgrades
Number 2 is pretty standard and well understood because it's the same as in other games. #1 on the other hand Atlas is doing some crazy things with. Let's take two models of how resources can work in games.
"Traditional RTS Model"
Resources are mined. Resources are "Spent" to create units. You EXCHANGE money for soldiers. This means that creating soldiers DOES NOT lower the amount of wealth you have accumulated because the wealth is still there just instead of in Dollars it's now in Soldiers. This is much like trading dollars for Euros. When you lose the unit however you lose two things.
1) You lose the time it took to create that unit.
2) You lose the money it took to make it. That money is gone forever. Before you had just exchanged it for soldiers. Each soldier represented X $'s but when soldier dies the money is also gone. This provides a "Sink" for the resources that you gather.
This is very different from Atlas because in Atlas you don't ever lose money. Let's take the example of a balloon. In scenario #1 when you mine resources you fill up your balloon. When things with VALUE die your balloon deflates. You lost 300 gold worth of soldiers you are now distinctly 300 gold behind. IN ATLAS however your units do not affect your total amount of assets. So in Atlas you can only fill up your balloon because when your units die you lose ONLY the time it took to create them. This means that you don't feel as bad when your units die and you don't feel as rewarded when you kill enemy units since at the end of the day the amount of value lost is 0. (Other than time)
"Traditional MOBA Model"
In a MOBA you don't mine minerals. You are given a steady stream of income and you gain MORE income if you play skillfully and achieve certain objectives. You use this gold to buy upgrades for your hero unit. When you die you don't lose anything (Your balloon does not deflate) But you still feel like the death was meaningful because you are unable to increase your gold income stream. This leads to a feeling of :sad: when you die and a feeling of :happy: when you kill someone else because you can see that by your actions your opponents balloon has stopped inflating and you can continue to inflate yours. (Not to mention you get a substantial boost from eliminating opponent hero units. There is a clear and visible opportunity cost of dying. (Other than time)
This is also very different from Atlas. Because in Atlas when your units die your gold income doesn't decrease. Your expansions are still alive you, you still get passive gold income. Nothing changes. This further takes away from the feeling of substantial impact when you kill an enemy unit or a feeling of great loss when you lose your own units. You also don't get a large boost from killing your enemy.
So what does this point to.
When compared to the two models I have provided Atlas seems to be the bad parts of both worlds when it comes to gold. The mechanic doesn't work to promote fun. It doesn't provide much impact as far as a feeling of accomplishment or a feeling of loss. I feel the mechanic also leads to a "dulling" of excitement and fun in the entire combat system and needs to be revised.
X: There is a gold system in Atals
Y: I feel the gold system takes away from fun of the whole game because it devalues your units.
Let me know if some of this doesn't make sense.
Cheers
@Artillery.Day[9] I have opinions on the caravan idea.
Also a lot of what I say doesn't have as much weight when you throw in gems because you do spend gems to buy units that will die forever. I'm just talking about squad units.
I honestly couldn't disagree much more with most of the gold complaints. Maybe I just am thinking of the other mechanics when playing the game though (as a reward).
I have to debate spending gold on units vs upgrades. By the time you don't have to spend gold on units or upgrades, you should be ending the game.
Killing units gives me XP. Killing units allows me to take more advantage elsewhere by either gaining and denying gems, taking down defenses, KILLING GOLD MINERS QUICKLY (bolded because I'm going to come back to this) or expanding my gold production while I know my opponent can't as efficiently.
The gold miners give a great incentive to harassing my opponents. I can get in, kill them, and get out. This promotes a lot of strategy.
The gold miners in Atlas take time to build. This is important for harass to have value and also makes expanding early and often important. In Starcraft I can instantly populate a command center, but building those units ahead of time took time and money. Building the command center itself took time and money too. More in depth example:
If I get up to 24 workers on my main CC while building my expansion and then transfer over 12 workers, I'm not gaining a ton instantly. Those workers I built early took time and money. Do you know how long it takes to break even on that (last I checked it was like 5 minutes)? If I build up to 32 on my main and then transfer over, I'm getting a huge boost instantly, in appearance. I've really put a lot of time and money into that ahead of time. It wasn't actually instantaneous.
The gold mechanic in Atlas feels ok to me. You invest early to get an advantage in the near future, just like other RTS games. If anything I'd say early expanding is cheaper and achieves MORE in Atlas. You start with enough gems to do it right away and an easy camp can be cleared quickly during the lower value gem spawns (with some teamwork). It's actually faster than Starcraft if you look at the numbers:
Atlas:
Base gold rate 1 gold/second.
Time to build an expansion 60 seconds.
First worker built after 30 seconds with a mining rate of .5 gold/second.
2nd worker built after another 30 seconds with a new total gold rate of 1 gold/second.
That's doubling your initial income for 2 minutes of build time. Compare that to building a base.
Starcraft 2:
Command center - 71 seconds.
16 workers - 192 seconds.
Lets say you do it all concurrently, that's still 3 minutes in SC compared to 2 minutes in Atlas.
I think people just need to learn the system better.
IF I have a complaint about gold it's:
I cleared a camp by myself because my teammates were busy across the big map. It took longer than I felt it should and made me feel like I was wasting time on PvE when I want to be playing PvP. I would suggest getting rid of some/all of the neutral enemies and upping the expansion cost of said points.
Edited for a couple of typos and clarifications.
ADDITION:
A happy medium might be ditching the workers but making the expansions have lower health so they can be harassed well still. Instant gratification for the builder and harasser?
Shaidar I have a really hard time following what game you're talking about when you jump between games.
Thanks. I'll try to add some titles or something.
I really hope Artillery gives some consideration to this. Even when your teammate does help you take down the neutrals at your third. At this point in the game respawn times are getting to the point that loosing a guy or two to the neutrals makes you feel bad, because it makes you think your going to be at a disadvantage to your opponent.
Linear growth in gem cost per expo makes sense. Something like cost of expo = 10+ 2(X-1) where X is your number of bases. It still makes taking a third a decision, and you don't feel like you are out of the fight.
I do not know about removing all neutrals though. At least with current map design. If 2x gold expos are positioned better I would be for total removal.
sidenote: In the current state is is really easy to tell when the enemy is fighting neutrals. When you look at your map and 2 are missing. You can immediately infer bases are being taken because of the small amount of things that can pull you away from gem collecting.
I have to say though I agree with a lot of stuff said here about gold as a system. I have stated my opinion on it a few times, but essentially my feelings boil down to not feeling like you are getting any stronger economy wise throughout the game. I think there is a lot that could cause this. A few things that I think cause this for me is income speed (how much your mining through out the game feels to low to notice expansion income), and the low amount of things to do with gold in comparison to gems are the big ones for me.
I understand that to change either of those two things would take considerable amount of work so Ill just state my x and y and leave it to the aether.
x: through out a game I never notice a growth in my gold income despite how many bases I have.
y: This makes me feel like I can neglect taking expansions when my army starts getting to a nice size. Even if this statement is false
Gorlak, do you think the gold growth isn't very noticeable because in the beginning you're trying to buy multiple ~100 gold units and by the end you want to buy a ~250 gold unit or two and it feels long either way?
I think there is a lot of contributing factors that play into my opinion. Yes I would say that is definitely a part of it. I have faith in Artillery's tenacity to make the gold system feel good.
The workers definitely confused me at first. I thought they were there to do other things than just be visual representations of gold income. I think that workers could be the ones that build bases / towers for you instead of your hero. This gives them something to do while taking something off your hero to do. This would make more sense as the hero can be the gem collecting unit and your workers are the building units. It also gives a higher risk of taking expansions / towers as you could have a worker killed off while trying to do so.
If this was done the starting worker count would probably need to be set to 3 in order to give you one to build with. The downside that might happen with this is that it could trivialize expanding if your hero doesn't have to be the one to do it. It might be too easy to expand while pressuring your opponents / defending. Right now it feels like you have to separate a core part of your army to expand which could be what adds that extra layer of tension and strategic maneuvering.
Just for some clarification on how mining works after testing it out with @Cycle and @AlienTree yesterday (I apologize in advance for any typos, doing this from my phone)
If any devs have the actual numbers for all of this I'd appreciate seeing how close our rough estimates were!
Edit: AllenTree might have better numbers written down than what I remember off the top of my head.
Yeah to go a little deeper into the numbers I had written down, I calculated that a regular expansion holds 360g and mines out in just under 12 minutes from placement, or 11 minutes from the completion of the structure. Once it has two workers, it gives just around 32 or 33 gold per minute, so a little more than half the main. The main base actually gives 58 gold per minute, and we are currently under the assumption that the 2x bases do the same but have yet to test it. I believe 2x bases might actually provide a little more than the main base, maybe giving 64 or 66 gold per minute which would be strictly 2x a normal expansion, as we calculated a 2x base to provide a full 850g before expiring. 2x bases also probably last a little bit longer than regular expansions for that to be true as well, but I could also be slightly off on the time estimate @Cycle gave me for when he reached full build with Alder on 3 2x bases hahaha
Wow (at me). I did not realize that a regular expansion mined differently than the main. I didn't even think to check that. That definitely through me off.