Comments

• Pursuit Member

  January 28 edited January 29

  1. Which squads felt incredibly fun to play and why? Which squads felt unfun to play and why?

  I played mostly Hive today and it felt incredibly fun. Every Hive unit has fun to use, powerful dynamics to them that make the game interesting. Each unit felt complete on it's own but also added to the overall feel of a swarmy frontal assault type squad which I found incredibly fun and satisfying.

  I feel like the Tier 1 unit's ability starts out being very frustrating to use because of the long cool down, but ends up too spammable in late game, where I could always lay all the mines I wanted and still have some left over. It generally seemed too good vs frontline and too weak vs backline units.

  The Scarab felt fun to use albiet too strong this playtest. The problem with melee units that feel 'too strong' though is that they really seem to fall off in late game- as both sides came closer to maxing out on units the Scarabs didn't seem nearly as powerful as the had in the earlier stages. That being said, the Scarab's burrow charge ability was probably the least fun to use, the counter to it for my opponent was always to just run away.

  The Hive Queen has an interseting niche role and I dont feel like I quite figured out how best to use her this playtest. The disabling ability felt incredibly powerful, easily taking a high value target out of the game for a significant amount of time, and the attack generating beetles felt very hive-y but didn't seem to take any particular skill. The nest box thing was cool and fun to use, I'm honestly not sure how effective I found it to be though.

  Alder felt incredibly unfun to play for me, but I think this is mostly just a playstyle thing. I like to play fast moving, multitasking centric playstyles that Alder's slow moving, synergetic, straight up engagement style army simply isn't suited for at all. That being said, it was frustrating how easy it was for Poison to just disable healing and pick off units from afar with it's tier 2 ability. I felt really helpless in general, like I was too slow to retreat and gimped in any straight up fight, and really just had no idea what to do with my army. A large part of this might have been having a Wind ally too that was unable to contribute much in straight up fights due to the amount of AoE that was on the field.

  1. Were there certain matchups where you felt unable to do anything?

  I played one game as Alder with Wind vs Poison / Grath and it felt absolutely unwinnable. We had a huge gold advantage but it didn't matter since poison rendered Alder's healing useless, Poison's tier 2 could easily pick off units from a safe distance with little to no reprecussions and Sprites could never engage Grath's Tier 2 or Poison's Tier 3 (without getting slaughtered). Eventually we were forced to simply give up engaging our opponent's armies entirely and instead tried to play a base race style.

  Hive in general felt like it just bullied all the other squads around with no problem. Open Hornets vs Frontline or Scarabs vs Backline and either way you'd end up in a good spot. I even found myself tower diving with Scarabs and felt sorry for my opponents who just got bullied around.

  1. What is your current least favorite aspect of Atlas that you would like to see improved?

  Currently I feel like the game simply lacks enough significant objectives / tools to incentivize multitasking centric play, which is an important factor of any competitive game for me. One example is that I feel limited by the fact that the same unit both collects gems and spends them, which means I can't do both at the same time. This is especially frustrating because it means the optimal strategy is often to be collecting gems rather than spending them until you have enough to win the game, when I personally find it much more fun and exciting to be constantly spending them.

  Alder_Wind_vs_Grath_Poison.png 1.1M
• Pursuit Member

  January 28 edited January 28

  edit: accidently quoted myself instead of editing, my bad
• CohLysion Member

  January 28

  Squads

  (1.1) - I'm used to thinking of the game from the perspective of a couple styles of matchup, anchored in the blues, so tonight I wanted to push those limits some. Tried Alder, definite high fun level. I find it very interesting how it changes the dynamics of engagements. I'm used to positioning in engagements in a primarily physical sense, getting Hydros in position and walling off areas, kiting with Fire, etc. It felt more like what I was primarily managing with Alder was time, in the sense of invalidating or opening up chunks of the map at certain times. Really cool! Big 3v3 engagements at the end were basically just clicking all the buttons and hoping to hit a seedling.

  (1.2) - Vex would be my second-ranked tonight, after Alder. I love the Sparkbot art, btw. Reading the Atlaspedia, I can see how I was playing the squad, ahem, less than ideally, definitely want to get some more games in on it. But as is, I still cackle with glee at the breath weapons (even with reduced damage).
  (1.3) - Not included here: Mirror Poison, Vela (implication through omission; see also 2.1).

  Vela

  (2.1) - I played Vela w/ Hive, and I felt like I was way too slow in shifting my reference frame to the powerful but high vapor pressure units. The specific challenge of managing eggs and engagement distance was a lot of fun as it felt like micro that reinforced the strength of the squads, but we had a hard time matching the opponents, and so there was little opportunity to exercise this, and we just ended up in lopsided engagements at losing expansions, at which point things just got kind of boring. Having big targets is nice as Vela, and we didn't really have too many of them in this game.

  Difficult Matchups

  (3.1) - The above matchup was tough, particularly as T1 impact didn't feel like it scaled with other units. The attack range is nice, but I feel like they need upgrades to stay viable in high T1 qty matchups. I also didn't feel like the T2/T3 contributed a lot in these large army size engagements.

  (3.2) - Vex vs Hydros was another tough one. It was a fun game though, just tough to do much in direct engagements. The Pyrosaur dmg reduction was very noticeable. Actually, the matchup of player vs. their own pyrosaur damage reduction is a very difficult matchup.

  (3.3) - Swamp Sludge vs. Agro'd Titan Lanes After Spawn ("ATLAS"). I had forgotten to keep track of this particular thing after the last time (I think it was Hydros or Ryme that passively agro'd them?). From what I've heard, maybe this is more difficult here with the ability system, given the sludge doesn't have an attack?

  Atlas' Most Wanted

  (4.1) - I feel like the biggest thing that breaks me out of the zone during games is unit management. Specifically, whenever my captor spawns with regular units, I have to spend a lot of cycles getting just the army into my control groups so that I don't keep sending mixed commands to my captor. Even then, it still tends to get messed up. Further, the unit portraits don't seem to be a reliable way to select the units, as depending on what you have selected, sometimes it won't let you click on the portraits...

  wait. wow.

  ...okay, I just looked at the keyboard settings (hadn't looked at it since the beginning). Remapping Army and Captor to my normal keys, instead of manually creating groups for them==amazed glee. I just played a bot game, and this changes everything. I mean, this is so much better. This game has changed so much within the course of two-ish paragraphs.

  (4.2) - There is a distinct lack of Summer Samba.

  (4.3) - Seriously, though, I'm trying to come up with what would be next on the list. Most of these things feel pretty minor, though:
  - Neutral weapon collision; stacking them breaks the rhythm of the game
  - Getting to the replay you want is difficult. I'd like a more expedient approach to getting to and watching a specific replay, including the squads that were involved.
• Jeekaroose Member

  January 28

  Brief (ok this became somewhat less brief but whatever) opinion after a few Vela games because I'm too tired right now to write more: Vela right now feels like a bad Celesta (a change, at least, from feeling like a bad Eris, so that's something). Mind you Raptors are pretty fun when they work -- and their new(ish) graphics are neat -- but she has like 0 ability to reposition if people try to engage on her, and her units just don't have the offensive value to justify their immobility like Purifiers do (and have no Wisps to screen for them, to boot).

  Getting Windrays makes her start to feel almost functional, in that they make her able to move around at an almost reasonable pace, but it still doesn't really feel like enough against any squad with any ability to engage (i.e. most of them, or if you're me and play against hive every game, all of them) or that can just outrange her (hi celesta). Also, Deadeyes now just feel terrible to me; basic snipe feels way too short range to actually be useful for sniping things and only exacerbates her problem of being ludicrously immobile.

  Against squads without engage tools (fire, poison, other velas, basically) she feels fine, although still not especially strong, and it's fun to just run around with Raptors and shoot things -- it feels really satisfying to finish off targets running away from you with fair warning -> a volley of eagle eye shots. But overall her bad matchups just make me feel so completely helpless -- like there's absolutely no way I can play better in order to not get run over and wiped out continually by scarabs/sprites/wisps/whatever -- from minute 0 through the end of the game that I think in a game with only blind squad selection (aka Atlas right now) I would rather just pick Celesta every time. I definitely think she needs significantly more ways to make a difference/not get owned at the beginning of and during fights (or maybe just an even stronger windray MS aura? that'd make her feel even more reliant on them to function at all, though, which I'm not sure sounds that good) for her to feel reasonable, since the basic rts/moba verb of tactical repositioning just isn't really in her vocabulary.

  Incidentally I have no idea if it's intended, but the interaction between fair warning and hive mines (it reveals them and then a bit later they explode) feels kinda wacky -- it makes the mines even more trivial to deal with than they normally are, which seems a bit unnecessary.

  tl;dr jeekaroose is scrub and can't win with vela and wants buffs pls
• MeltCat Member

  January 28 edited January 28

  Which squads felt incredibly fun to play and why? Which squads felt unfun to play and why?

  I played Hydros, Eris, and Vela in this test. As always, Eris was enjoyable. I don't think Hydros is unfun per se, I just don't like to play him as much. The tankiness and ability to engage super hard are always cool, but I find that if that doesn't win quickly, everything dies. Obviously I'm also very new to Hydros. And as for Vela...

  Did you play Vela? If so, what was your experience like?

  Vela surprised me in how much fun she was. I haven't played Vela since my very first game of atlas vs bots, so I've come a long way in overall comfort with moving units in the game and such, and that probably contributes somewhat to her feeling better, but mostly, that RANGE just felt amazing. The specific matchup was vela/wind vs vela/poison, so I got to experience some of the vulnerability against vela in the same match. Eagle Eye is super cool, and offers a pickoff feel similar to Eris, but from way far away. Lategame, without something like the AoE damage that Eris has, I felt really weak in large fights. Sure, I could stand back and pick off a few units, but in that same time, PoisonMan is capable of just ending the fight, or other aoe cuts large swaths, or alder's tree is just out of my range and keeps me from getting the picks I'd need.

  That said, I still had a blast playing Vela. The skillshot on T2 felt super strong and offered some interesting extra zoning potential if needed, and also just got plenty of picks on its own. I didn't feel a huge need to rush T3, contrary to what I've seen others say. Vela is extremely weak against anything that can get close (like Eris, with whom I was able to wreck a Vela), and I'd imagine swarmy units like Sprites or Wisps would give the squad similar issues. I didn't get a chance to play Vela vs melee, but I'd expect there to be a lot of kiting potential, as I was able to kite somewhat effectively even vs ranged squads.

  Were there certain matchups where you felt unable to do anything?

  I was fortunate to not have any super terrible matchups this test. The game I played as Hydros (in an attempt to bodyguard/engage for my Vela teammate) vs Vela/Vex didn't have a lot of action early, as without Plate my poor crab people got wrecked. After getting T3 and Plate, I was able to engage, but it didn't seem to work out, and a more peel-focused style was likely better. So, it didn't feel like I was unable to do things, it's just that I wanted to do other things and those weren't as good.

  What is your current least favorite aspect of Atlas that you would like to see improved?

  Hero experience and leveling. The whole experience system doesn't feel like it does much of anything outside of grant you your ult at level 6, which is major power spike for every single squad, and hitting 6 before your opponents gives you a significant advantage, and there is no other event in the game where you are likely to have as big a spontaneous power swing as you do there. I know that technically levels increase your hero's power, and improve their basic abilities in some fashion, but those slide under the power radar compared to the big jump at 6. (Edit: with the removal of coin, tying stat upgrades or current unit caps into levels could be an idea)
• Lef Member

  January 28 edited January 28

  I played 2 games as Vela last night. She feels fun to play for me. Others are citing balance concerns but I think she delivers on the core idea of a long range mobile squad. She isn't like Celesta because she doesn't have to worry about being anchored. Vela feels a bit like a boxer. She strikes and then moves to evade a counterpunch. The fun for me was figuring out how to pick my spot and keeping a constant eye on the minimap to ensure I didn't get surprised. I ignored Tier 2 and 3 for the most part and just got a huge army of tier 1 with max AD upgrades. I could see playing against swarmy squads being frustrating given Vela's lack of aoe, but having weaknesses is important so I don't mind that much. I also feel like you have the recourse of maxing out on tier 1 units. As long as I saw the enemy coming I felt like I could at least get off a few volleys to whittle them down. I also imagine the game is going to evolve to have a draft mode at some point, and having Vela as a strong counterpick to armies with fewer more high impact units will be excellent.

  My current least favorite aspect of Atlas is the damn 2x camp on topside. They are in an important spot so they end up aggroed on my army all the time. Its frustrating and I will often commit to clearing the camp for the 2x expansion much earlier than I perhaps otherwise would if that camp weren't so annoying to deal with.

  Edit - I will echo CohLysion's concerns over the lack of Summer Samba. I think we need it to better tie the lobby together.
• ShrikeGames Member

  January 28 edited January 28

  1. Which squads felt incredibly fun to play and why? Which squads felt unfun to play and why?
     I only played Vela and Wind. Both were a lot of fun to play because they reward map awareness and positioning a lot. They play very differently but both seem relatively skill intensive. Sniping with Vela and punishing missteps is extremely satisfying, as is flanking and swarming with Wind. So many little dude to command, it's fantastic and creates an intimating wall of units that limit their movement, threaten to trap and kill them, and force AOE attempts (which can be partially dodged).
     edit:
     I have to add some extra things about Wind/Warpman.
     HIS ULTIMATE IS SO FRUSTRATING. I'll use it and it doesn't go the distance I expect, or goes way farther because it would end up on the void so skips to the other side. More often than not it just ends up splitting your army up and everything gets horribly murdered. It's terrible in team-fights for the most part, only really good for chasing down fleeing enemies mid-game. Its impact seemed so minimal for benefits and could go as far as ruining you for negatives. I should change my least favourite part of Atlas to this ability....

  2. Did you play Vela? If so, what was your experience like?
     She is soooo slow now, but the trade off is fantastic! The damage output is crazy and when combined with the range means you can easily pick off heros, units, and even deny gems safely. Not being able to run away as fast doesn't matter 9/10 times because you are the aggressor. You can tell who is comfortable with this playstyle and who isn't because a good Vela can even 1v2 in some matchups. Aldor stands no chance as you outrange everything he has, even the sprouts that he'll spawn under you. Back off and pick them off freely, or kill them quickly because your damage is insane.

  3. Were there certain matchups where you felt unable to do anything?
     Playing as Wind/Warpman when matched against the T3 poison unit (Swamp Sludge) feels like there is almost nothing you can do to kill it efficiently. Your best bet is to stun, get a few units under it and attack, and whittle it down but it takes a long time. The lack of good range damage means you may as well leave it to an ally and do something else, it's pretty hopeless.

  4. What is your current least favorite aspect of Atlas that you would like to see improved?
     The late game still feels like a complete crap-shoot sometimes. You can dominate all early and midgame but then mess up once getting your army destroyed to this game's nuclear-missile equivalent "cleansing light" and you instantly lose the game (this happened). Perhaps turtling is too strong, and combined with Wind being super hard countered by those late-game AOEs makes him amazing until you screw up once. Early and mid-game are so dynamic and fun but late-game it's whoever gets the enemy to fuck up and then swarms into their nexus. Not to mention the ion cannons (who are super cool early-mid) becomes just a disaster late-game.
• AlienTree Member

  January 29

  Hey guys, I'm gonna keep giving feedback on Poison Squad

  From everything I've heard so far, people still hated playing against me on Poison. When I was ahead, I got further ahead and there didn't seem to be any kind of counterplay. When I was behind, there were still plays I could make that felt good overall (which is actually a first for me in Atlas, and one of the main reasons why I love poison so much). But interestingly enough, I actually do think poison is still currently a weak squad overall, and one that thrives or even possibly relies on a good teammate and good cooperation.

  I'm pretty sure Poison actually just can't take straight up engagements of any kind. I think if the community learns to exploit this, poison will very quickly shift from a dominating force to a non-factor. Pretty much, if you take a small fight against poison and then disengage, you've immediately lost the fight. Poison EXCELS at taking a few extra free advantages off the back side of the fight, more so than I think even Vela ever has. In many of my games, this ended up being exactly what happened. I would poison the enemy army, they would get scared and start to run, I would lay down a few parting caustic explosions, and I would get 3/4 unit kills for free. The thing is, the poison really isn't all that scary. It's 3 damage per second. Whoop de fucking doo. And all of poison's units on this patch are SUUUUPER squishy. Like, painfully so. Any time an opponent just committed their army and fought me, I was fucked. My poison archers melted like sticks of butter on a hot day, my poison shamans have almost no combat effectiveness, especially when alone, and it takes FOREVER to get a swamp sludge out unless you focus really hard into tech, and even then, you need to save up 350 gold, which gimps the effectiveness of the rest of your army until you get it. The thing is, no one fought me. And no matter how weak my army is, if you don't fight me, my two early shamans are going to take every advantage they can get off of a mispositioned enemy army.

  So, long story short, I think Poison still fits my personal favorite playstyle perfectly, and I absolutely love the squad, but I really think it's a lot less oppressive than everyone currently thinks it is. It's scary because you think it's scary, but I think if you just take the time to commit it will start to seem a lot less scary.
• Cycle Member, Moderator

  January 29

  @CohLysion said:
  ...okay, I just looked at the keyboard settings (hadn't looked at it since the beginning). Remapping Army and Captor to my normal keys, instead of manually creating groups for them==amazed glee. I just played a bot game, and this changes everything. I mean, this is so much better. This game has changed so much within the course of two-ish paragraphs.

  This is like the best thing ever.

  ---

  I'm going to be super brief and try to consolidate all thoughts quickly yay tersisity :D

  Goliath Collision

  • I played only Alder with a variety of builds, but played several games dual Goliath rushing. The strat itself isn't great, but I wanted to feel out the collision change. A la official feedback format:
    
    
    • Goliath gets blocked by ally units, staying out of fights and essentially doing nothing
    • feeling of helplessness when I invested so much coin into something I could barely interact with. There were situations were things were fine, yes, but in the climaxes of the game, teamfights, the unit just couldn't live up to its monstrous role being blocked out of combat by lots of little T1s of my own allies. Ended up being a ToL-extender for the most part.
    • possible solution: give the goliath phasing when it's en route to eating something. I think that'd be a pretty cool way to allow for sick re-cycle plays, while still limiting the collision to a special case (ie: bound to using an ability, requires a target to resolve, requires the expenditure of the "cast seedling" cooldown, etc)

  Other Feedback

  • I had less fun on the playtest in general and I'm not sure why. A lot of factors could have contributed to this:
    
    
    • matchmaking and MMR to get even games, not just 3v3 but also within the team
    • Alder's combat quotient being reduced since the T1 unit cap boost + Seedbot Health nerf
    • Alder is not a carry hero. His role has shifted from literal god Tasteless to utility/tank/support/CC, and my playstyle/team coordination has yet to catch up with this.
    • same-race-burnout: I've dedicated myself to mostly playing Alder for 6ish months (I think?) and maybe it's time to try out other squads for a change. For reference, I generally ended up changing races in SC2 every 4 months or so.
    • real-life tiredness: My schedule has changed recently so this 10-midnight playtest is super tough. This could really be the biggest factor because I just don't deal well with tiredness for the most part. On that note, I think I'm going to limit myself to playtesting on just Sundays when I can think clearly and have more stamina, and then see if we can get some more unofficial playtests going at hours that aren't murder :D Thank god (or Eric) for the new Sunday playtest time because that is amazing.

  Least Fav Aspect of Atlas?

  This is actually tough for me. I started typing "economy" and "upgrades" and "how to make a game rewarding" but those are just things that can be tweaked and stuff -- to be clear, none of these are my "least favorite aspect of Atlas".

  To be 100% honest, my least favorite aspect of Atlas is the weight of the team - ie, "I need to work together with my team to win." From my playtester perspective, this seems like a beast of an issue to address because there are so many variables going into it. Skill level of 6 players, the weight of one player's mistake, the weight of top-lane being lost v bottom-lane being lost, the weight of teamfights, etc - these all can come together and make carrying as a single person hard.

  To reiterate, my least favorite aspect of Atlas is that I feel there are not enough tools for one player to outplay the opposing 3. I feel like I should defend myself and reinforce that I'm not trying to imply "I deserve to 1v3 always!", but rather that the skill ceiling and floor in Atlas are pretty close right now. The game is of course young and always changing, but I feel like there are not enough intricacies of both overall strategy and tactical decisions that allow someone to absolutely god-mode a game. Of course I can imagine that with a full playerbase of all skill-levels, the opportunity to be a superbeast becomes much rarer with even matchups, but I don't think there are any opportunities in Atlas like that at all right now. I feel like the closest thing that exists is if a player in bottom-lane out-skills their opponent and snowballs hard, getting many levels while also denying the opponent's level. The issue is super complicated because now, how do you allow someone to carry ridiculously hard but have the person they're beating feel good about it? (My gut says it's something to do with that level of skill being awe-inspiring rather than being perceived as "something is broken" - this probably requires the community to have perspective on the gap between how the game is usually played and what is high-level play).

  The addition of controllable neutral weapons was amazing. I recall typing a few times in feedback posts saying how happy I was that I could finally multitask. I think Atlas can compound on this and add even more awesome components that give strategic options and tactical decisions for players.

  At the end of the day, I think the core reason why I have fun at all in life is because I'm given the freedom to choose my own path, follow through with it, and then see how the results did. And when I choose my own path, it's completely unique to me - no one else has it. When I wing builds in Starcraft, that's when I have the most fun. When I make my own builds for Diablo or Path of Exile, that's what's fun. I loved tinkering and making decks for Magic, exploring different item combos in League, and trying to do weird, juxtapositional stuff in Skyrim that doesn't make sense with lore. I would love to be able to launch up a game of Atlas and have the feeling of unlimited possibility in front of me, not only for the engagements and team fights and not only for my overarching team strategy, but also for my personal build. I want to have the same feeling as when I launch up SC2 3v3s or 4v4s and look at the map and be like "okay I'm going to rush baneling drops + nydus so they don't know where the banelings are coming from" and have it fail miserably.

  I kind of derailed a bit, but I think I helped myself realize that what I'd like to change about Atlas is essentially I want more space for creativity and diversity within just my own build.

  Other Thoughts

  I have no conclusion and have been historically bad at writing endings to things. Also RIP trying to be tldrish.