@EmperorRahem I agree, bot's could definitely be smarter about which expansions are worth scouting etc. Bot's will definitely check /a/ expansion you have given they themselves aren't super on the defensive. They tend to attack the closest expansion first to help make attacks easier to respond to. The goal of the current iteration of bots is to be fun to destroy and to teach you the mechanics of the game.
Later on we'll definitely spend time on making bots make more strategic choices vs choices that a human player can punish easily.
First thoughts, Alder is a jungler, hardcore --- Alder felt like his plants and rooted playstyle made him a juggernaut in the jungle while team fights struggled --- I'm not sure how to fix/balance this, only time will tell
You can tech too quickly --- now that I kind of have an idea on build orders, i have figured out that you can tech very fast without punishment, spend your first 10 gems on an expand and your last 2 on T2, once you have enough scrap, insta-tier Merc air camp 1 --- maybe increase costs of tiers or reduce starting gems, not too sure where to go with this one
Onto Grath, wish me luck
p.s. thanks for the shoutout Day9
(Forgive the spam but now that I have made it to the second page hopefully I'm not bugging anyone)
7th game played woot Grath in 29:30 (3 Celeste, 1 Hydros, 1 Ryme, 1 Alder)
Grath can tank --- if you wanted a true tank class, look no further. Grath's D makes Hydro's heal look weak and useless --- Grath was fun to play, no real need to change
I find myself conflicted on builds --- I end up only building the 3 units my squad can build because they are free, and the leviathan(the hornet if I cant shoot up with my T1) any other units i build just feel like a waste of gems --- Once again, no ideas on how I would change that, just my feelings
After playing 5 different squads, I find myself liking the squads with T1 units that can shoot up --- This comes from the desire to set up early expansions and in order to get the "gem mines?" you need units that can kill flyers. This means squads who cant shoot up, delay on my macro with no real gain --- to fix this? make a cheap merc who can shoot up T1 low health, low damage, low cost. This might even help some of the weaker support squads
I have work to do but I will finish playing all the squads tomorrow, thx again for the alpha invite -EmperorRahem
@snkz said:
EmperorRahem I agree, bot's could definitely be smarter about which expansions are worth scouting etc. Bot's will definitely check /a/ expansion you have given they themselves aren't super on the defensive. They tend to attack the closest expansion first to help make attacks easier to respond to. The goal of the current iteration of bots is to be fun to destroy and to teach you the mechanics of the game.
Later on we'll definitely spend time on making bots make more strategic choices vs choices that a human player can punish easily.
Sounds good, all my comments are just that. First impressions after only playing a handful of games.
Played 1 game after watching the tutorial. I've played about a dozen RTS and half dozen mobas. This is my first impressions after only a single game.
First, the feedback in the format your wanting in the context of how the game is now.
Spent the first 2-3 minutes of my game trying to figure out if I already had a hero, or if I needed to build it. After clicking every building and pressing 'v' multiple times, I finally realized she was the only unit with what sounded like a first name, so she must be a hero. I was Eris, her only ability was to lower armor. She does not feel heroic in the least. I suggest increasing heroes scale compared to the rest of the units and more particle effects (flaming hair, maybe glowing footsteps left behind, etc).
I spent a good while trying to figure out what leveling up does. Never figured it out in game. Leveling up doesn't feel like anything -- not good, not bad, just not impactful in the least. If the hero isn't going to learn new spells, at least make them look different/stronger or something. Are the regular units leveling up too? Can't tell.
I saw I had a ton of green resource, but couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. I didn't remember to click on trinkets. Felt confused by it. I felt like I had a good understanding of gold and green resource gaining by the end of the game, but not gems. Still don't understand how to get them. Feels overly complicated.
Attempted to attack flying unit. Couldn't attack flying unit. Don't know what units I had. Feels bad man. Why have flying units in the first place, they remove the tactical strategy and increase unit building strategy in an artificial rather than natural way.
Tried to click on the units at the top left, then at the bottom center to select them. Realized a I could not. Feels bad man. Other than making control groups, I suggest making unit management feel more natural. Whether you use SC2 style selection where you tab through unit types (even if you don't have them selected), or CoH style selection where you can click on a list at the top, or some other method is up to you.
Attempted to right click on resource nodes to build expansions and collect things. Realized I have to use 'T' to do it with my hero only. Feels bad man. At least make right clicking with your hero selected intelligently handle commands.
Plowed through the middle, killed enemy nexus without killing their expansions. Feels good man. I like it that you don't necessarily have to go through every base before killing their nexus. Just find a weak point or if their army is out of position.
Built an engineer. Tried to use it to make a cannon, didn't have money. Feels bad man. I couldn't find a way to use the engineer because I was short on funds. Include all costs up front and then make it turning into a turret become free.
Tried to look through the armies after choosing my hero. Not sure how I chose army or if I waited too long or what happened. Was clicking through the mercenary and other tab when game started to load. Feels confusing. Maybe just do a selection where you click on the unit, then "lock selection" or something similar. This way allies can see what you're considering choosing and then can adapt their selections accordingly. There should be some sort of "ready up" tick once you've chosen with a clear cut count-down where game will start even if you haven't readied up.
I like the "Accept game" button at the start.
Selecting all units shows all spells, even ones you cannot cast yet so you never technically have to sift through units to cast spells. Pretty cool feature.
Make a toggle-able option for either have troops automatically re-spawn, or manually. So much of my time was spent just trying to figure out if I had troops in stock or not.
Now onto more general feedback that doesn't quite fit your requested format, specifically on the baseline mechanics. This is more about how your game "could be." A broader vision for the game.
I don't understand why theres so many resources. There experience, unclaimed neutrals, gold income, green income, gem income, random gems on the field, ability cooldowns, respawnable troops in the field, respawnable troops in stock/restocking, 1 time use troops, items, towers, tech trees, physical damage output, magical damage output, flying troops, troops that can hit flying troops, wards, flying wards, walk time for your hero to get resources, places that heal, built turrets, expansions, workers and even more that I haven't thought of yet. Its like you chose every mechanic that sounds good and threw it into a mosh pot. I would like to see this cleaned up. Here is my suggestions:
Accept that balance is going to be hard. Commit to releasing balance updates on a regular basis. Probably once a quarter at first, then every 4-6 months later depending on needs. I'm not going to discuss balance further as that only comes from time and play-testing.
Drop down the resources to only gold and experience. Make all sources of income shared among allies. Killing neutrals drops 1 time gold. If any ally picks up gold, its split evenly. Building an expansion then takes gold which gives gold. You can still balance troops and trinkets around restocking times, build times, damage types, armors, etc. If something seems not viable, buff it until it is viable. Make fast expansions, or straight aggression both viable strategies by balancing the gold dropped by neutrals against the experience gained by attacking enemies. If building expansions becomes the dominant strategy, you can nerf expansions by increasing worker build time, making each base have 5 workers, and make workers kills give more XP so that raiding expansions becomes more rewarding.
Add a special worker unit that builds expansions. By default have it on "autopilot." It will then automatically build expansions and claim resources so that you're not sitting around with your hero. When on autopilot, this unit automatically goes back to the main base. Make autopilot toggle-able so that more advanced players can control this unit as needed. Unit can be subject to balance via setting respawn timer if it dies, giving gold to enemies if it dies, movement speed, build times, etc. Noobs get to focus just on combat and unit building. Experts will use this extra worker to base manage too.
Get rid of "flying units" or let all units hit units in the sky. Screw realism. Seeing someone you can't hurt is probably the most frustrating thing in all of video games. Hard counters are OK, but not when one unit is literally immune to another. By virtue that a flying unit can simply walk over a cliff to be immune to melee attackers or escape ranged units is enough if you want to keep flying units. Keep in mind that flying units reduce the value of terrain though, and therefore make the map itself less important, which is generally a negative thing.
More liberally take advantage of making skills "autocast." Like sandstinger dash. Why do I need to manually cast such a weak skill? Make the units automatically dash towards targets if one is targeted directly, and dash away if they are hit while heading back towards the player's base. Save "on use" skills for ones that require more intelligent decision making.
Make leveling up "feel stronger." For example a high level Eris should have giant flaming hair, move faster, have a bigger attack that leaves craters and the minus armor thing should get more effects like knockback, or slow or something else to make the hero feel stronger. People are going to identify with their hero more than any individual troop, so you need to make leveling, protecting and using a hero feel very rewarding.
Consider making ways to modify the terrain. Dota has trees. DoW1 lets you make craters that you can put troops in. Dow2/CoH1&2 let you destroy walls, buildings, etc. You can have unique ways to build/destroy line of sight blocking areas, etc.
Thats it for now.
EDIT: my confusion on hero selection was that I thought there were more than 2 types of Mercs - 2 types per type of hero.
Hello! Here are my first impressions after playing one bot game as Vex:
Background: RTS/MOBA
At first I focused on the attack path of the bot directly across, as I wanted to learn that side of the map. Once I got a bearing on my surroundings I needed to check the minimap quite a bit in order to see how my bot allies were doing.
When I saw that unit attack cooldowns were visible, that helped me out a lot in order to learn certain unit behaviour, like when I built an ion cannon without knowing what it did. Made me quickly realize its role as long range siege.
When I tried to set control groups, I noticed that they were not visible on the UI. Having some sort of tab showing control groups could help out, but I know there is only so much you can put in the UI before it becomes cluttered.
I'll post some more feedback after I play a few more games.
Here's my feedback of my first game playing as Alder.
The game felt really simple but also had complex elements to it which excited me being not very good at RTS games but liking complex systems. It also had a Moba feel to it which I really enjoyed.
Alder had very interesting mechanics regarding the saplings and how they interact with the other units but they seemed to get lost under other units making them hard to target with the abilities from the other units.
On that point it was very hard to keep track of an individuals health once you had amassed a large army as the health bar part of the circle would overlap other units and make it hard to distinguish what was the circle and what was the health bar and whose was whose. A way to fix that would be so units don't collide as much or create bars to show health.
All in all i thought the game was really fun and different
I played Celste seeing that its a high damage type and the game played out fairly close to my expectations of what the units should do... that is until I baited the bots into her massive aoe ability and proceeded to feel like a god haha
Only real way to improve on that would be to tone down the ego boost, but hey it felt good!
Impressions after four games (Grath,Vela,Eris,Vex)
Tried to shake off the rust after not playing the RTS genre for a few years. Felt slightly overwhelming at first, but armed with the knowledge from the demo I managed to understand the basic mechanics and strategy even for a relatively unskilled player.
When all of the the units first popped out of my building, I felt excited in ready for battle. It was also slightly comical since it reminded me more of a clown car exit than troops exiting a barracks.
When I first used the terrapin trooper ability, I imagined that it would be relative to the unit I clicked. I was also not expecting that it would activate for all units selected but makes sense in the context (was just hoping for one at time since I wanted to chain the stun). All of my troopers zoomed off towards the target bouncing into each other along the way. Only one of my hard-headed comrades landed their stun while the other three scurried into oblivion. Bottom line: If I was trying to plan out a skilled attack, the troopers who missed their target were way out of position and I ultimately lost the engagement because I had unwittingly split my army and cannon balled half of them to their own swift demise.
Realize I'm quickly overwriting so I'll summarize my other experience. Really enjoying the game so far. Minor mechanic mishaps which are more likely due to player error than actual strategy. Great job not overwhelming the lesser skilled players with an inviting skill curve that has me addicted and ready to play more
Coming into my first couple I was a bit lost. Even after watching tutorial video. But It gave me the opportunity to freely explore and learn.
After figuring out the basics and moving forward I started to get a real WC3 vibe. I started to play like I did back in early game with leveling my hero. It made me move forward at a different pace with having that experience.
After starting to get my build order strait I started to feel like the flow was a little clunky at times. Trying to juggle the gem collecting and maintaining money for unit production added an interesting element which made me prioritize things much different than before.
The quick transitions of the game from early to mid to late took me a bit by surprise. Gathering the pacing of the game took quite a few games but it gets better and it feels more rewarding.
The gold intake with two to expansions feel like they should be a bit more. I have extreme excess of scrap and always needing gold. I know with the limited scrap expenses there will be an excess but it feels like the early game can drag out due to the lack of income.
Thanks So Much for the opportunity to give this feed back and enjoy a game that has so much potential.
I watched the tutorial, then played two bot games.
My overall feeling is intrigued but intimidated. There's a lot of depth and complexity loaded into every unit and mechanic.
Initial Gameplay Feedback:
* Fighting over gems with enemies was awesome. Fighting over gems with allies was a major feel-bad.
* It felt odd how the late-game fantasy is built around mercenaries. My squad choice felt like the more characterful and evocative identity, but once you've got that capped out the progression is all about your mercs.
* I really liked the streamlined expansion/base building mechanics. Clearing titans, placing bases, and defending them feels fun and strategic, and contesting gems is way more fun than remembering to build workers.
* It was very surprising to discover that there were no towers on the direct line to the enemy nexus. Probably just my MOBA anchoring, but quite a shock.
Initial UI Feedback:
* Tilde to select army is wonderful. Wouldn't mind a "select my hero" hotkey, too.
* It continually felt weird that my main base was not my largest building. I kept selecting my merc barracks instead.
* I kept trying to double click on units to select all units of that type. I definitely wasn't aware how much I use that, but I kept trying to move my healers/archers/whatever back as a group and kept failing.
* I loved the difficulty markers on the titan camps. Wonderfully self evident, required no explanation.
* More button feedback would go a long way towards making the game feel more responsive. Just something small like a "click" noise when you successfully purchase a unit or upgrade.
* The mini map has a lot of detail and is difficult to parse. The hero locations are wonderfully clear, but the terrain is not. It was inordinately difficult to figure out where the various entrances to each base were.
* Unit health was surprisingly unclear. The circle shape with no color change is pretty hard to parse, and I couldn't see the shield/plate mechanics at all.
Thanks so much for inviting me to play Atlas! Here's some feedback from my first two games:
On my first game I chose Alder, on my second, Vela.
When I first start playing a game, I try for keyboard controls. After listening to Day[9]'s intro, I knew that ~ was select all army. The ping on B was weird, but doable (I am used to ping being G). All of the unit controls were great.
feedback 1
Unfortunately, about 5 minutes in, I wanted to select my base. I hit every button on the left side of the keyboard, and none of them selected my base. It made me feel dumb when I had to go and look up that base was P, and it made me sad when I realized that there was no hotkey for my merc camp or active ability shop.
I would suggest that you add hotkeys for these important buildings on 1, 2, 3, or F1, F2, F3, and that you call out the hotkeys in the building itself, perhaps on the title.
On to the gameplay. Having watched Day[9]'s video, I was aware that core units respawn, where to find the respawn timers, and that V resummons. I knew how to take an expansion, and what to do to get it running. I also knew how to take gems.
feedback 2
In my first fight (as alder), I got slaughtered by an army roughly the same size as mine. It made me feel a little sad, and frustrated that I now had to wait on a respawn timer.
feedback 3
When first I right clicked, I saw the detail that had been put into the ground pointer (cursor animation?). This made me feel happy, and reminded me of the first times I played StarCraft and Warcraft 3. I really love the little circle, and it feels rewarding to click around and pretend my APM is high.
feedback 4
I noticed that all of the base units (and upgrades) cost gold, and all of the mercs cost gems. At first, this made me happy (I'm understanding!). However, as the game went on, it become somewhat frustrating. I felt like I never had enough gold, and there were too few gems loose on the map. Because my units felt weak (and died a lot), it was hard to take any titan camps or hold any expansions which would give gems.
feedback 5
I noticed that I had a lot of scrap in both my starter games. With no option to spend it on mercenaries (not enough gems), I could only buy the extra active skills. However, even those were quickly purchased. Now I'm stockpiling scrap and it feels like a wasted resource.
Suggestion: Perhaps there could be a weak mercenary who costs only scrap. A peasant, if you've played Heroes of Might and Magic 2.
feedback 6
When I came to the hero select screen, I appreciated the level of detail available on each hero and their units. However, I felt a little overwhelmed by the mercenary choice, since the tooltip had a lot of text. I also felt curious about the color coordination between pairs of heroes. I also felt unprepared (even with the descriptions) to properly choose a hero.
Suggestion: Use the extra screen space on the right side to show the mercenary stats in more detail. Give the heroes a high level description, including their focus (e.g. Alder is all about CC, Vela is all about ranged units) and a high level classification such as defensive, offensive, or balanced.
feedback 7
I have a decent system (nothing too beefy), and I was unpleasantly surprised to find that I could not run on the default "high" settings. It felt bad to have about 10-30 FPS despite my quad core 2.7 processor and GTX 750. I bumped the settings down to medium for my second game, and that helped.
feedback 8
I really liked the arcs under the units for health and attack delay. When I first saw them, I felt like I hadn't seen them used well anywhere before. Most games in this genre use a rectangle above the unit. These felt like they didn't obscure the units nearly so badly. I am no micro-genius, but I can see the utility of them for people who like to micro. I felt a little confused by the tower health though. It has (as far as I can tell) a purple health bar and a blue health bar. I don't know what the difference is, and I couldn't figure it out through clicking on the structure.
feedback 9
When I first saw the selected unit details frame, I felt that it was a little small and text heavy. I was frustrated that it was hard to scan for the text I wanted to know about (mostly health and damage) while still paying attention to the larger battle.
Suggestion: Add icons next to the words describing the different stats. Also possibly move the frame somewhere else on the screen. It took me a second to find it the first few times.
feedback 10
Working with my team felt difficult and frustrating. The pings only barely registered because they were mostly sound, and not much visual. Obviously, I was playing with bots, but I felt like they were never in the right place at the right time. They did not respond quickly when bases were threatened.
Suggestion: Add some sound effect cues "Your ally needs help!", etc. when an ally pings for assistance. Make pings more visually attractive (I really like the scouting animation from darkest dungeon, bounded by the minimap edges).
feedback 11
I saw Day[9] attach the rally point to his hero in the starter video. I don't know if I misclicked, or what, but I was unable to do this myself.
Suggestion: Make it easier to rally to a unit by increasing the range that I can click (or adding it back if it was removed). Visually indicate that the rally point is to a unit via a different colored flag and/or a circle around the unit that is selected.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
It was kind of fun but also quite confusing, watching Day[J]'s tutorial helped a lot but there was still a big learning curve. In particular I didn't know about gem waves, that they appeared on the minimap, and was confused about gold for a while (though expansions made it generate faster, they don't appear to). I kind of got crushed by the AI but I learned a lot. Did they help you learn the game?
Yeah they did more or less, though I wish their build orders were a bit more practical/refined. Granted with gems build orders aren't straightforward either. But much better than just playing by myself. Were they fun to play against?
Eh they were fine. Honestly my allies were more annoying (insta casting on cooldown the T thing to steal all my gems ftl) than the enemies. The enemies just crushed me because I didn't know what I was doing. Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
I watched some replays right after (and my own replay to see what the bots were doing) and that was really helpful. I was a bit confused initially on which neutral mobs gave what and stuff like that but that's pretty clear to me now.
I suppose I am passed(?) (past? I never know) first impressions but after my most recent game against the bots I can't help but think that the ion cannon would be way to strong in the 1v1 lane. Maybe not so much in the 2v2 lane since you can coordinate a bit better to take it out. I want to bring up some discussion from my bot game.
1 Ion cannon at my resource tower took out my opponent's resource tower in 4 shots that lasted from 7:12 to 7:40, 28 seconds of real time. You have 28 seconds to respond from where you are on the map take out your opponent's forces underneath the protection their own tower before yours is destroyed. I feel that's incredibly strong. Not only that but it also melts Mega Nodes and Nexi(?). By the time you get to the mega nodes you normally have enough gems for 2-3 Ion cannons.
I suppose I shouldn't complain about something is too strong without suggesting some balance changes to go with it. If we're going to keep the ion cannon where it is without changing it's stats, I had a few ideas.
Keep the range of the Ion cannon where it is at but reduce it's vision radius. (Similar to how a siege tank works in Starcraft:BW/SC2). This forces the user of the Ion cannon to either expose himself near his opponent's tower or acquire vision near the tower with another method (ex: either a ward or sentinel).
and/or
Once the Ion cannon has begun construction, show a mini map notification of the Ion cannon's radius notifying opponents of the incoming threat.
A couple of other things I took notice of:
No reward for destroying a mega node? Or is simply giving access to the Nexus enough reward? Maybe a team scrap reward of +100 from resource towers and +200 from mega nodes? Gem rewards? I don't really know. Just an idea though.
I would love to have a notification either text and/or sound that my resource tower (and mega node) has been destroyed.
Also when I alt+tab out of the game and I alt+tab back in my position on the map has moved from where it was to someplace in the corner of the map. Just a minor annoyance.
I am not sure if any of these things have been brought up before or since the last time I looked at the thread (or somewhere else in the forum) but thanks taking a gander at my feedback!
Just a heads up about the Ion Cannon thing, the radius that shows up for you is also visible to the enemy team, i.e they can see the range/placement of your ion cannon before its constructed. Unfortunately bot's don't have that luxury just yet!
Overall I feel the tempo of the game is very slow and player motivation is scattered. This could be due to the fact that I was playing vs bots but I feel there are underlying issues with the mechanics and balance.
I did watch the video Day[9] provided to get my self familiar with the mechanics before hand so I wasn't blind going into my first experience.
There was a lot going on in the game but I felt detached from a good portion of it. With the map size being so large and the units I had chosen being slow (Celesta). When my allies were attacked or a base of mine was attack I was so far from the position that by the time i would have arrived a the scene the battle would be over. Because of this I ended up largely ignoring my allies and their plight. I feel a smaller tighter map would benefit co-operative and counter play.
I never felt pressed to engage the enemy. When I went out into the neutral zone where gems were spawning I didn't run into the enemy much and when we did encounter each other we did not interact much. This could be my fault but I just didn't feel that forward momentum that a MOBA gives me. Like if they don't stop me from killing units in the no mans land or I don't prevent them they will be positive in position and advantage. This is a much more complicated issue then just say sending units down the lanes though because that would probably prevent them from interacting with expansions, but i think there is a lot that could be done in those fields to improve that. Say if heroes had to stay in lane more often it might make small hit squads more effect for harassment to draw attention to multiple locations and force the player to make choices.
I didn't feel engaged. This sounds worse then it is but, when I'm playing a game like SC2 or LoL I feel when I'm engaged with the enemy i have to be on the ball. In this game I wasn't feeling that it was almost as if there was too much micro. The game doesn't play like SC2 or LoL in combat its much closer to WC3, but in that micro heavy game they still had a large portion of abilities auto cast so the player could focus on more Important micro and use strong situation abilities. I also think a reduction in abilities for units might lead to better interactions and making their core interactions more meaningful.
I felt there was a large problem with resources in general. The most glaring issue I felt was with gold. Unless I missed something in game there was no way for me to change that resource besides waiting. That meant that there was no difference in the value of my composition compared to the other players. This made me feel like their is probably one strong way to build core units and no way to diversify my self as a player. If i had the ability to get gold another way I could optimize a build or devise a strategy that had me focusing on that early but if the player did focus on that they would loose out on other opportunity.
Gems at a certain point in the game were useless as far I could figure out. After I had upgraded my structures fully there was no need for them in the quantities i was getting. I just kept stacking large amounts of gems and with a large portion of the non lane areas focused on gems I felt like my time was wasted in those areas. Not only that but I feel it devalued a lot of the conflict point constructed in the games base mechanics. I think improvements in these areas could really help the game. That way when I get the message not enough gold I as a player can think hmm how do I get more so i can achieve my goals better. Or with gems getting that message more often would make me realize hey I should go out there and capture some nodes. A rebalancing would do wonders. Some abilities needing gems to research or some unit compositions needing much larger quantities of gems then scrap could make it more interesting and make player choice more meaningful.
The game felt like it snowballed easily but it was hard to finish. Snowballing is a problem with most competitive games but i feel its exacerbated in Atlas due to towers being very powerful. I felt very a head for most of the game but was unable to finish because the final towers took forever to kill and took out so many of my units. This mainly just lead to frustration and a decrease in my overall enjoyment. I feel like this could be improved with a similar mechanic to what Smite has done. Where those final 2 towers could respawn but because of this they would have significantly reduced Health. This would allow the defending team a great defenders advantage for come backs but provide a scenario where if the enemy team is too far ahead they couldn't stop the advance for long.
I feel like the game could benefit from from a recall to home base ability or a teleport ability. Say like the wards you could place nydus like devices that let you and your team transport around the field of play faster. A recall that brings all units close to your hero back home every 2 mins or so would be quite useful as well for healing i think. These could be things that are already in the game and i just didn't encounter them or they are counter to the philosophy of the game but i think a more generalized utility with movement options would help the game as a whole.
I'm not sure I fully get the deploy button. Right now it feels arbitrary too me. I never encountered a scenario where I would have preferred me deploying them with the V button over the units just auto deploying. This isn't a big grip but it just felt like a rough edge that needed to be smoothed out.
Overall the game has potential to be great and I look forward to seeing its continued development. If you have any question for me please just send me message.
Context-- I haven't played Starcraft II since launch (ie. 2010) and have very limited experience with Dawn of War 2. I've spent most of my time playing various MOBAs (at least the 3 biggest ones).
After running through the early game a few times blind, the later stages really showed lots of room for some really intricate gameplay. There's a lot going on once the map really opens up, and Gems encourage early risk taking without constant fighting. It was really engaging ^^,
I'd like to mention Gem collecting during early game stages as something that felt negative. At times, I felt like I was competing with the other members of my team (specifically in the 2v2 portion of the map) for Gems, at least within the first 5~ minutes. I encountered a similar feeling when I helped an ally clear a Titan camp which dropped gems and found I myself unable to gather them while my ally could pick them up. As a team mate who helped clear the camp, I felt unrewarded. While there are certainly enough Gems on the map to keep everyone rather satisfied, it felt awkward that I was racing my own allies to the easy Gem spawn locations so I could gather resources for my army. I felt like I was denying my allies.
Thanks for inviting me to play!
These are my (X Happened/ Y Feels/ Z Suggles) framed impressions after watching 90% of the tutorial and playing through a single game with Alder.
I picked Alder because I felt like a mobile, but quickly fortifying character fit my play style, and because I was pretty sure the bots would be terrible against that type of strategy as it usually takes focus fire to kill efficiently. It was able to be played almost exactly as I expected and I found the strategy in the game rewarding.
I was gathering gems and trying to quickly expand in the early game (similar to the tutorial), and I felt impeded by the 'T' timer to build on gems and by the difficulty of the neutral camps after the easy and relatively easy camps were taken out. It felt like I was on a huge map filled with too difficult objectives.
When my computer allies and I were attacked I was confused as to whether I should be moving across the map to defend them (the skirmish would probably be over by the time I got there) or hope nothing too terrible happened (they were always fine and the battles seemed inconsequential.)
When I took many gems uncontested and had around 7 Leviathans (Leviathan + Tree of Life turtle in a bush was too much for the AI) I had been trying to end the game for a while and was confused that I couldn't attack the enemy base. It took me a few minutes to remember that there was a nexus (from the tutorial) and I stopped suiciding my units into the enemy base turret and quickly defeated the nexus. It felt really weird conquering enemy lines to be directed across the map to the actual game ending position. (After playing another game, I noticed that I took a pretty crazy path to the enemy base the first time.)
Over the course of the 30 minute game I bought about one new unit a minute, and that felt pretty slow.
After playing 4 games, the speed of everything feels better but still slow. I'm excited to play against other people because playing against bots has me trying for faster builds that I can solo the enemy nexus with, and not something I'd think remotely good against a real person. I can't remember what the move was called, but I thoroughly enjoyed exploding planting the entire enemy team under my ally hero's blinding cloud thing.
First off, thanks for inviting me to play Atlas!
Here we go—
Q: How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots? A: Overall it was fun and unique. I played as Vela in my first game and didn’t do very well, but that’s expected. The map seemed big to me, big enough that I never spent any time in the whole right side of the map or even shared the screen with my bottom right ally. Early on in the game, I frequently lost many of my units to neutral camps and I felt I couldn’t really gauge at what point in the game I was strong enough to take on the harder ones. I found myself with insufficient resources the majority of the game, even though it felt like I wasn’t building very much. I was intimidated by Mercenaries, it seemed like there were too many to pick from and, from what I experienced, some appeared to be too powerful (enemy bot won the game with a handful of juggernauts). Squad combat felt good, I had very little knowledge of what I was doing at first but by the end of the game I was marking and sniping enemies and kiting them around. Also, the music and environment really stood out to me, it added to the RTS experience for sure.
Q: Did they help you learn the game? A: Yes. Watching them gather gem orbs, attack neutral camps, and assault the enemy teams’ expansions kind of guided me into what I should be doing. The enemies put enough pressure to force me to act and helped with map awareness.
Q: Were they fun to play against? A: For the most part, yes. Allied bots were a little greedy in their resource gathering and were a bit flaky in helping me in neutral camps or large battles. Enemy bots tactics varied from flanking me when I was having a skirmish with another squad to that of just walking into my squad one at a time, single file. But in general they are good enough to learn from and to motivate me to improve my decision making.
Q: Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game? A: Mainly the layout of the map, I felt like I only needed to utilize a very narrow portion of it to do what I needed to do. It felt like there were several neutral camps that didn’t seem like I would ever need to defeat them.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
I think that playing against bots is quite enjoyable to learn the game, it does serve its purpose of teaching players the basics. Because of what Day9 said about how the bots are not very assertive, I think it may initially give me some bad habits, which is fine.
Did they help you learn the game?
Definitely, the hands on experience helped me a lot. A sandbox/custom mode might be cool to have, too.
Were they fun to play against?
It was fun because it felt new to me, but I can't imagine it being fun over the long run. The AI is adequate for a tutorial, but it's perhaps too passive, and careless with mercenaries. I'd say it accomplishes its purpose, though!
Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
Most things to be honest, but I think that's a sign of a good RTS. I didn't know how to use my units, how to be effective. The decisionmaking of the bots confused me at times, but then again my own is probably quite ridiculous. It took 2-3 extra games for me to understand the flow of resources and such. I was not confused in a way that felt game-breaking.
Also, to this point it still feels like an entire side of the map is simply some other player’s domain and I have no business there. In 3v3, it was not possible for me to interract very much with the business of the bot which spawned toward the bottom without worrying about losing some bases.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
I was confused as heck even after watching Sean's video. Although by the 5th game and rewatching the video I finally understood it more. I may not had understood when he said "This is your core army" (the ones where you spend the yellow currency).
I remember easily about deployment of your units but the distinction between the buildings was confusing and I was wondering which units I should buy and didn't even bother buying mercs because they cost the purple gems and getting those gems were a pain to get and felt like each mercs is super important to keep alive where I didn't want to use them at all.
For three games trying to clear creep was a very difficult thing to do. I suggest the tooltip to color code if it can attack ground and/or air units. Also have a color code if the unit itself is a air unit.
When I was playing my first two games, I was thinking "How come I have so much green currency and I spent 800 on items. What else am I suppose to spend them on?" Then on the third game I realized some mercs can be bought with them but the gems again were the killer for me. I might suggest the gold currency to not look like a primary currency because I spent the majority of the first three games figuring out how to make more of them while I was raking up so many of the green currency and not know what to do with them.
When I going around grabbing the orbs for the purple currency it's either the bots just kept taking them or getting destroyed and somehow I wanted to converse the ones I kept otherwise build an expansion but pointless because after I build it, nothing happens because the camps are not cleared yet and cleaning out the camps involved alot of deaths.
Did they help you learn the game? Were they fun to play against?
Playing against bots did help me learn the game and I'm hoping that when the game does release it has a very well designed FTUE.
I do not have an opinion about if they were fun to play against because I was more trying to figure out how to play the game.
Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
Yes, almost everything other than the basic RTS mechanic. Mostly on currency how to get them and spend them wisely. Also when you lose your first expansion from the enemy team, it becomes this snowball effect as all those gems spawn in the middle and so one side will get stronger and stronger as the other side gets weaker.
A lot of the time I didn't know which one was my.... Hero unit??? It would be really helpful to have a level indicator as a selected unit so I know where he is. Reference WarCraft 3. Also I was having a hell of a time distinguishing the attack Cooldown vs the health. The attack cooldown is too easy to see that I had a hard time seeing how much health my units had. I may suggest layering the health above the cooldown.
Just some feedback on the first game i played. I lost, Hard. Playing Ryme, Frozen Sage.
It seems like this game is desperately crying out for a tutorial Even having watched the Day9 ( hey dayj!) intro video, while i had a feel for the structure of the match i felt lost when asked what to do past patrolling no-man's land.
Some of the tool tips seemed a bit wordy and hard to discern in game. Which also caused confusion since all of the abilities on my bar have the same blue motif.
I would say my personal largest problem was just not knowing things. and lacking the ability to easily learn them. The info on selected characters was small hard to read/see/know was there I completely missed my leveling to 6 and getting my ultimate. It took me a very long time to figure out that it was Celesia's Purifiers that were wreaking my shit.
I felt really ambivalent towards my units or at least the glacial rangers and frost callers. They both look similar from above which made it hard to know how i was doing, I did like the frogs though.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
Always exciting to play a new game, especially when it mixes multiple genres. It's also a very confusing and daunting experience for me as well and Atlas followed that trend. Playing through my first game as Vela I felt I had just enough time to glance at tool tips for all the units and buildings while trying to beat my allies to the gems and responding to their pings. My allies carried me to victory, but felt good at the amount I had learned over all. Decided that Vela was not for me at this point and played as Grath and Ryme on following games. Started feeling more comfortable with the flow of the battles and gaining more time in between the action.
X happened
It made me feel Y (or I’d like to feel Y)
(optional) Here’s a suggestion to improve it
Feedback from the games I played:
And the band played on! Selection Screen Music
1. Started a game and heard the selection screen music. Refused to select anything so I could listen more.
2. Outstanding job on this music. Definitely gets you "pumped" for the match ahead.
Oh the humanity! Titan Camp able to see workers (Replay ID Gd99c3da6d3834725851a5e356ac6a1ac ~2:00 mark)
1. Ally attacked titan camp on other side of wall from base. Air titan was able to attack worker collecting resources.
2. Felt that it was not working as intended.
Release the cheese! Pathing issue? (Replay ID Gd99c3da6d3834725851a5e356ac6a1ac ~4:30 mark)
1. First game, playing as Vela, taking Titan camp in NW with the green node. I was able to take them out because of pathing while only losing 1 unit.
2. Felt like this was way too early for this camp and my small force should have been decimated by it.
3. Possible solution is invulnerability while leashed and 2-3 second delay once back at spawn before regen starts.
All that glitters! Gold starved
1. Gold accumulation seems very slow
2. Mixed feelings about this. On one hand it may be that I am still learning the flow of the game and that it will feel better after more experience. On the other, the more I understand of the game, the more I find myself waiting for gold for the next unit before going for an objective. Also felt helpless not being able to have an effect on all parts of my economy.
3. Possible solution is to tie in a boost gained from an upgrade that converts scrap/gems to gold. Costs gold, scrap, and gems to unlock and has multiple levels. Upgrade unlocks the ability to convert X scrap and X gems to X gold with a hefty cool down and gem/scrap cost. Upgrade has 3-5 levels and the cost to level up goes up exponentially each level. Levels can decrease cool down, increase exchange rate, or increase cost of exchange but give more gold. This would give more incentive to capture more expansions and attack enemy expansions.
I feel the need, the need for Speed! Movement speed
1. Movement rate feels sluggish
2. Gives a feeling of huge peaks and valleys in action when it takes minutes to reinforce your army with fresh or respawned units. Returning to base for full heals is too time consuming to want to do so. Also feels extremely difficult to react to far away threats in time to significantly reduce damage. I understand being out of position, but there were multiple times I ignored my lower ally's pings for assistance because I knew I could not get there in time to help. I felt it was more efficient to continue taking my own objective than to run to assist.
Mine! Mine! Mine! Gem node mini-game.
1. Allies constantly taking gem node I am waiting for.
2. Felt I had no allies when I am sitting waiting for a respawn timer on gem node, go to check minimap or macro, and return only to find that my "Ally" has stolen it. I see this turning into a serious point of contention while in multiplayer "solo-queue" games (if that is even going to be a thing).
3. Possible solution is to enable all team members to harvest the same node. Change node to give available gems in batches. Every 2 seconds it is being harvested it gives 1 gem to each player that has harvested the node. This would possibly create an issue of there being more gems in play though. Maybe keep the total gems that a node can give the same.
What is this detail you speak of? Unit artwork.
1. You mean I can see details on individual units?
2. Great art/design for the units so far! I love the personality and the overall feel of each unit and cannot wait to see the fully polished versions!
That's it for now. End thoughts are this is an outstanding start and I am very excited to see how you all take this game to the next level.
Thanks for inviting me to play! I'm a casual RTS/MOBA player. I've played Starcraft/Warcraft/C&C, but never competitively. I've played some older RTS games online, but never better than casual pickup games. For MOBAs, I've played LoL, Smite, and Dota 2, casual, never ranked.
X happened My first mistake was probably trying to play the game without having taken my Adderol, because my ADD was in full force. I watched enough of the Day9 video to hear about the preferred method of feedback, saw that there was still 35min on the video, and said "I don't have much time before the kids wake up from their nap. I'll just jump into the game."
My first game went, predictably, down the drain quick. The layout wasn't confusing, it seemed a good mix of RTS and MOBA layouts that felt fairly familiar. I was able to figure out spawning units and using abilities. Even upgrades were fairly straightforward. This was where the first brick wall in my learning curve came up. I knew from tooltips that I needed gold and gems to upgrade more/get mercs. I had no idea how to get gems, or increase my gold flow. Eventually I figured out the gem gathering, but it took a while, and by the time I had, the enemy bots were steamrolling through my allies and I with much larger armies.
This made me feel Y Much of my first game was spent confused, frustrated, and wishing their was a gameplay tutorial. I understand why there isn't, especially in an alpha build like this. However, coming at this from an RTS perspective, I didn't expect to have to go contest in the middle of the map for resources. There wasn't a tooltip on gold/scrap/gems, which contributed to my frustration since every other thing in the game had a great tooltip explanation.
Suggestion to improve/prevent this I think having tooltips for the gold/scrap/gems resources would help a lot. Something as simple as "Gold is granted automatically according to your bases/expansions/etc (I still haven't figured out how to increase gold income)" "Scrap is generated by collectors going back and forth from the little glowing pools" "Gems drop from your towers in the middle of the map and the jungle camps". Because of everything else in the game having a great tooltip explanation, the fact that there was no tooltip for resources was jarring and frustrating.
Q: How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
A: Gameplay was good, I got beaten, but I figured that would happen. Since I mainly play against the AI in RTS games, I was hoping for tunable difficulty, but for an alpha that's not feasible.
Q: Did they help you learn the game?
A: Yes and no. The teamfighting taught me more about the combat, and I might have learned about gem gathering more quickly if I had followed one of my teambots, but as a turtle style player the thought didn't even cross my mind.
Q: Were they fun to play against?
A: As much fun as bots usually are.
Q: Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
A: Is there a way to increase gold production? I still haven't figured that out. I'm going to go try to sit through the tutorial video. As a kinesthetic learner, having to sit and watch a video to learn the game is frustrating, but that's the price of alpha testing
I like this feedback format. I've shortened it to Experience, Feeling, Solution. EFS. It should be an industry standard.
Experience: I created my profile and found no place to personalize. During installation seems like it may be a good time ask for some background information so you can determine if you're hitting your target market etc. Not saying one testers feedback is more valuable than another but having their perspective may be useful for guidance.
Feeling: I was ambivalent as I'm unsure of what your goals are with this specific test, although it would help me connect with community more. I can share me with them and vise versa.
Solution: Create a bio section. Games played. experience. age. Demographic info. etc.
Experience:I downloaded the game
Feeling: Excited and a little embarrassingly charmed that I'd been selected. Like when your friend tells you that Felicity likes you.
Solution: You can fix this by inviting me to all future testing.
Character Selection:
Experience: I read each one over and gave a quick technical analysis based on the stats of their minions. It was a lot of reading at first and there didn't seem to be any particular order. Maybe it was alphabetical and I didn't notice. For non-readers a more visual representation of the characters according to their traits may be useful. Typically I've noticed that unconscious patterns have developed.
Red and athletic is DPS.
Green and chubby are healers.
Blue/Grey and huge are tanks.
Feeling: I was a little lost. It seemed like a long startup time. A bigger initial investment than what I thought the goal of Atlas was. Easy to understand and quick to get started RTS. It could be just a discrepancy between expectations and reality.
Solution: Send a clear message to the players as to what they should be expecting from Atlas and categorize the roles. Not necessarily in the form that I've mentioned but in some visual non-verbal way.
Experience: Character Class selection was not intuitive for me.
Feeling: The Triangle vs. Square wasn't very intuitive for me. I know they're on top but I didn't really understand them at first or realize they had drastic consequences for unit selection. This is important for a 30-50 minute game.
Solution: Make them bigger or fancier so they stand out and show me that Triangle means long range air attacking end game and Square means Super mech that kills buildings and nothing else.
Experience: Confirm button was oddly located and I didn't at first notice it.
Feeling: I want to play this game! Which of these asshole bots am I waiting on to make a decision. Oh I'm an idiot. click
Solution: Make it centered and huge and flashing "WE ARE WAITING ON THAT SLOW BASTARD SAUCENINJA".
Gameplay:
Experience: Lost first three games against bots getting my bearings and then asked for help after two hours.
Feeling: A little punished beginning to feel hopeless.
Solution: Set clear expectations as to how long it may take to win first game and how long each one takes. The team was super with helpful criticism though.
Experience: Like the huntsman, Ryme ventured through the forest for years in search of my snow white for these purposes we'll call Celeste. After many a sleepless nights and dark forests I've passed through I discovered her back at my castle for she had been slain in battle by the mighty witches scourge.
Feeling: Lost
Solution: Make map smaller or minimap easier to read. Sometimes I confuse uncollected spheres for lost units.
Experience: When setting a waypoint for my base, it was hard to select my leader guy, especially since when the game starts he doesn't automatically pop out. I have to hit V enen though he's ready. Make the target hit box for clicking on my little hero-man Ryme a little bigger. So far it hasn't paid at all to have them go anywhere but with your leader as he's not strong enough without them and they aren't strong enough without them. A two pronged attack is out of the question much less three.
Feeling: Annoyed that it is so hard to get all my peeps in one place. Ask Sean how good it feels even though its a bad habit to hit F2. Edit (nvm. ~ addresses this problem perfectly)
Solution: Autospawn the hero at the beginning. Have a button to find lost/idle units. Make the click area for setting the rally point onto a hero bigger.
Experience: Collecting orbs.
Feeling: Feels good. Especially if you can get into a rythem.
Solution: make the chime for farming them more impactful. I don't really notice and they're mega important.
Experience: Losing a Leviathon
Feeling: Awww it flutters like a leaf. That's sad. I'm making leviathons, so I'll probably still win.
Solution: Increase their death drama. Make the user feel that loss more. I want to hurt. I want to hurt like X-COM Iroman hard mode.
Experience: Setting video options to Over 9000. It split my monitor into 4 windows, two of them diagnal from each other were white but it was all still one screen.
Feeling: This isn't at all what I felt like over 9000 would feel like. I thought I'd get to see little teeny tiny facial expressions or it would crash my game to 5 fps.
Solution: I have no idea. I'm sorry.
Experience: 10 year old (who is silver in SC2 and an aspiring minecraft streamer) walks in and asks me what I'm playing. I say Atlas but you can't tell anyone because they made me agree to an NDA. He said "Fair enough. I won't. It looks kind of like they're little bugs. I like bugs. It's cool that you can control all the spawned help. It's like a mix of LOL and SC2."
Feeling: Proud and a little afraid for the world. The units are small.
Solution: Listen to children. They're brutally honest.
That's enough for now. I look forward to some PVP.
Didn't have a chance to read through all the other posts here, so apologies if I'm repeating what others have said.
I'm sure you guys know this, but there needs to be an ingame tutorial at some point. Even just popups the first time you play would be helpful. The biggest source of confusion I had was not knowing I had to deploy my units. I did watch Day9's very helpful video first, but I must have glossed over that part. Or maybe its just that there's so much information to absorb all at once. Again, a tutorial that teaches you one thing at a time while playing would be very helpful here.
I found it very difficult to see the health bars compared to games like Starcraft or Dota. It doesn't stand out. Also, I didn't notice the unit stats for a long time. Both of these things seems to blend in with the background too much.
It would be great to have some sort of visual representation of which expansions I should take first, or which are more difficult to take. Bigger units, or maybe coloring them green/yellow/red.
GIVE ME A WAY TO GET MORE GOLD
That's a lot of negatives, but I think this game is super promising. Coming from a Starcraft background, I love the general idea of the game. Having your units respawn makes it a lot less stressful. But I like having multiple units to control as opposed to something like DotA/LoL. I feel like there's a gap in the market this game could fill. I'll try to get at least a couple of games in during PvP and post some more thoughts. I also like the interface. Having all your abilities in one panel is great.
Playing vs. bots I enjoyed Alder and Celesta. Whenever I ran into opponents I could dig in and stand my ground, but it wasn't like I could go rampaging around with that power. Didn't work so well in PVP, probably my fault, but people are better than bots at reacting to situational things.
I played in the first playtest and really enjoyed myself. My first game in this playtest already showed some improvements over the previous playtest (so the game has definitely improved in my opinion).
Some of my frustrations in the first test were resolved. I found that the hero pathing was greatly improved. My hero can move through other units, but it requires pushing those units out of the way and those units not being engaged in some other activity. This feels like a perfect balance compared to the first playtest of nobody moving through other units.
Second, I LOVE that gold is the resource required for your squad units and that it comes in at a constant rate for all players at all times. This hinders the snowballiness of the game seen in the first playtest. It also makes my build order feel strategic and intentional.
There were other issues in the first playtest, but I found these changes to be obvious in my first game. My first game also gave me some other new considerations.
In my first game, scrap seemed kind of meaningless, which made me feel quite frustrated. I needed both scrap and gems for everything, so why have both (in a later game I figured out that charms are all scrap only items!).
I still feel frustrated by competing with teammates for gems. There should be some way to make things less competitive and I am sure you already have plenty of suggestions here!
The massive set of options related to mercenaries felt overwhelming. I loved the simplicity of the game in the first playtest. I feel like there are an overwhelming number of options. I am thinking playing more games might change this feeling.
The tempo of combat and movement feels spot on. I love the slower pace compared to other RTS games. It makes it feel more strategic when it comes to micro. It also makes the game both more accessible to less experienced players and can develop a deeper skill cap for better players.
The bots were both good for teaching me about core game concepts, but not amazing at combat. I did have a lot of fun even in my first game.
I will post about what else I learned after my first game somewhere else!
Having only watched the tutorial and playing my first game here are some first impressions I had about the game so far.
First off let me start out with some positives. I love the concept, I really like the idea of a moba, rts mix. Those are definitely two of my favorite genres so seeing those two come together like this is a dream come true. I also really love the idea of having the unique squads, each with their own tactics/mini-games they have play around with. Not only did give me some initial direction of how to play even never having played that squad before but also it made the match more fun trying to get better at utilizing the synergy of the different units.
As for the negatives, one of the big things was probably the coin system (from the other posts and things I've read this seems to be a common feeling). I really felt there was a big disconnect when it came to the coin resource. First off I wasn't really even sure how coin was being produced. There was no real clear explanation of it in the tutorial video and nothing in game to indicate where it was coming from so that was definitely a bit frustrating. I did eventually figure out in game that it was just a steady income not affected by anything else and that is where the disconnect comes in.
In the game there are very obvious ways that you can try to increase your production of scrap and gems ex. creating new expansions or capturing gems. I love the idea of trying to push out to secure resources and potentially put yourself in a vulnerable position for the possible benefit of getting farther ahead in resources than your opponent or on the other end trying to take out your opponents expansions to take that advantage away. However for coin there is nothing really like that, no real way to gain some advantage or take it away and since coin is a main resource for your squad units and upgrades it kind of has negative effect on that part of the game play as well, in my opinion. It felt like some of the power of the player was taken away since there was nothing really I could do about it.
So what to do about it, one obvious solution would be to just make it similar to scrap and gems and have specific coin collecting areas but I'm not sure that would be the best solution. Another thought I had was possibly leaving it as a steady income but on top of that having some way to get bonus coin either by destroying titan camps or killing an enemy hero or building or something. I feel this would not only give the player a little more control over their coin income but would help keep the pace of the game up as players try and collect more coins by either taking out titan camps or initiating fights with the opposing team squads or buildings.
The only other negative thing from my experience so far was that games take a bit longer than expected. Hoping in I expected a game to be about 20-30 mins but my first game ended up being about an hour or more! However, I think this is more due to the fact that I am a new player and have only played with bots and I'm sure as I get more experience with how the game plays and play with other people the games will go faster.
Hopefully that all makes sense and was helpful, I'm definitely a noob when it comes to this game and also in game testing feedback.
Overall though, I think this game has huge potential and I really enjoy playing it. Thanks for letting me be a part of this awesome experience and I am super excited to see how it continues to improve!
Comments
@EmperorRahem I agree, bot's could definitely be smarter about which expansions are worth scouting etc. Bot's will definitely check /a/ expansion you have given they themselves aren't super on the defensive. They tend to attack the closest expansion first to help make attacks easier to respond to. The goal of the current iteration of bots is to be fun to destroy and to teach you the mechanics of the game.
Later on we'll definitely spend time on making bots make more strategic choices vs choices that a human player can punish easily.
Game 6 done, Alder (3 Celeste, 1 Hydros, 1 Ryme)
First thoughts, Alder is a jungler, hardcore --- Alder felt like his plants and rooted playstyle made him a juggernaut in the jungle while team fights struggled --- I'm not sure how to fix/balance this, only time will tellYou can tech too quickly --- now that I kind of have an idea on build orders, i have figured out that you can tech very fast without punishment, spend your first 10 gems on an expand and your last 2 on T2, once you have enough scrap, insta-tier Merc air camp 1 --- maybe increase costs of tiers or reduce starting gems, not too sure where to go with this oneOnto Grath, wish me luck
p.s. thanks for the shoutout Day9
(Forgive the spam but now that I have made it to the second page hopefully I'm not bugging anyone)
7th game played woot Grath in 29:30 (3 Celeste, 1 Hydros, 1 Ryme, 1 Alder)
Grath can tank --- if you wanted a true tank class, look no further. Grath's D makes Hydro's heal look weak and useless --- Grath was fun to play, no real need to changeI find myself conflicted on builds --- I end up only building the 3 units my squad can build because they are free, and the leviathan(the hornet if I cant shoot up with my T1) any other units i build just feel like a waste of gems --- Once again, no ideas on how I would change that, just my feelingsAfter playing 5 different squads, I find myself liking the squads with T1 units that can shoot up --- This comes from the desire to set up early expansions and in order to get the "gem mines?" you need units that can kill flyers. This means squads who cant shoot up, delay on my macro with no real gain --- to fix this? make a cheap merc who can shoot up T1 low health, low damage, low cost. This might even help some of the weaker support squadsI have work to do but I will finish playing all the squads tomorrow, thx again for the alpha invite -EmperorRahem
Sounds good, all my comments are just that. First impressions after only playing a handful of games.
Played 1 game after watching the tutorial. I've played about a dozen RTS and half dozen mobas. This is my first impressions after only a single game.
First, the feedback in the format your wanting in the context of how the game is now.
Spent the first 2-3 minutes of my game trying to figure out if I already had a hero, or if I needed to build it. After clicking every building and pressing 'v' multiple times, I finally realized she was the only unit with what sounded like a first name, so she must be a hero. I was Eris, her only ability was to lower armor. She does not feel heroic in the least. I suggest increasing heroes scale compared to the rest of the units and more particle effects (flaming hair, maybe glowing footsteps left behind, etc).
I spent a good while trying to figure out what leveling up does. Never figured it out in game. Leveling up doesn't feel like anything -- not good, not bad, just not impactful in the least. If the hero isn't going to learn new spells, at least make them look different/stronger or something. Are the regular units leveling up too? Can't tell.
I saw I had a ton of green resource, but couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. I didn't remember to click on trinkets. Felt confused by it. I felt like I had a good understanding of gold and green resource gaining by the end of the game, but not gems. Still don't understand how to get them. Feels overly complicated.
Attempted to attack flying unit. Couldn't attack flying unit. Don't know what units I had. Feels bad man. Why have flying units in the first place, they remove the tactical strategy and increase unit building strategy in an artificial rather than natural way.
Tried to click on the units at the top left, then at the bottom center to select them. Realized a I could not. Feels bad man. Other than making control groups, I suggest making unit management feel more natural. Whether you use SC2 style selection where you tab through unit types (even if you don't have them selected), or CoH style selection where you can click on a list at the top, or some other method is up to you.
Attempted to right click on resource nodes to build expansions and collect things. Realized I have to use 'T' to do it with my hero only. Feels bad man. At least make right clicking with your hero selected intelligently handle commands.
Plowed through the middle, killed enemy nexus without killing their expansions. Feels good man. I like it that you don't necessarily have to go through every base before killing their nexus. Just find a weak point or if their army is out of position.
Built an engineer. Tried to use it to make a cannon, didn't have money. Feels bad man. I couldn't find a way to use the engineer because I was short on funds. Include all costs up front and then make it turning into a turret become free.
Tried to look through the armies after choosing my hero. Not sure how I chose army or if I waited too long or what happened. Was clicking through the mercenary and other tab when game started to load. Feels confusing. Maybe just do a selection where you click on the unit, then "lock selection" or something similar. This way allies can see what you're considering choosing and then can adapt their selections accordingly. There should be some sort of "ready up" tick once you've chosen with a clear cut count-down where game will start even if you haven't readied up.
I like the "Accept game" button at the start.
Selecting all units shows all spells, even ones you cannot cast yet so you never technically have to sift through units to cast spells. Pretty cool feature.
Make a toggle-able option for either have troops automatically re-spawn, or manually. So much of my time was spent just trying to figure out if I had troops in stock or not.
Now onto more general feedback that doesn't quite fit your requested format, specifically on the baseline mechanics. This is more about how your game "could be." A broader vision for the game.
I don't understand why theres so many resources. There experience, unclaimed neutrals, gold income, green income, gem income, random gems on the field, ability cooldowns, respawnable troops in the field, respawnable troops in stock/restocking, 1 time use troops, items, towers, tech trees, physical damage output, magical damage output, flying troops, troops that can hit flying troops, wards, flying wards, walk time for your hero to get resources, places that heal, built turrets, expansions, workers and even more that I haven't thought of yet. Its like you chose every mechanic that sounds good and threw it into a mosh pot. I would like to see this cleaned up. Here is my suggestions:
Accept that balance is going to be hard. Commit to releasing balance updates on a regular basis. Probably once a quarter at first, then every 4-6 months later depending on needs. I'm not going to discuss balance further as that only comes from time and play-testing.
Drop down the resources to only gold and experience. Make all sources of income shared among allies. Killing neutrals drops 1 time gold. If any ally picks up gold, its split evenly. Building an expansion then takes gold which gives gold. You can still balance troops and trinkets around restocking times, build times, damage types, armors, etc. If something seems not viable, buff it until it is viable. Make fast expansions, or straight aggression both viable strategies by balancing the gold dropped by neutrals against the experience gained by attacking enemies. If building expansions becomes the dominant strategy, you can nerf expansions by increasing worker build time, making each base have 5 workers, and make workers kills give more XP so that raiding expansions becomes more rewarding.
Add a special worker unit that builds expansions. By default have it on "autopilot." It will then automatically build expansions and claim resources so that you're not sitting around with your hero. When on autopilot, this unit automatically goes back to the main base. Make autopilot toggle-able so that more advanced players can control this unit as needed. Unit can be subject to balance via setting respawn timer if it dies, giving gold to enemies if it dies, movement speed, build times, etc. Noobs get to focus just on combat and unit building. Experts will use this extra worker to base manage too.
Get rid of "flying units" or let all units hit units in the sky. Screw realism. Seeing someone you can't hurt is probably the most frustrating thing in all of video games. Hard counters are OK, but not when one unit is literally immune to another. By virtue that a flying unit can simply walk over a cliff to be immune to melee attackers or escape ranged units is enough if you want to keep flying units. Keep in mind that flying units reduce the value of terrain though, and therefore make the map itself less important, which is generally a negative thing.
More liberally take advantage of making skills "autocast." Like sandstinger dash. Why do I need to manually cast such a weak skill? Make the units automatically dash towards targets if one is targeted directly, and dash away if they are hit while heading back towards the player's base. Save "on use" skills for ones that require more intelligent decision making.
Make leveling up "feel stronger." For example a high level Eris should have giant flaming hair, move faster, have a bigger attack that leaves craters and the minus armor thing should get more effects like knockback, or slow or something else to make the hero feel stronger. People are going to identify with their hero more than any individual troop, so you need to make leveling, protecting and using a hero feel very rewarding.
Consider making ways to modify the terrain. Dota has trees. DoW1 lets you make craters that you can put troops in. Dow2/CoH1&2 let you destroy walls, buildings, etc. You can have unique ways to build/destroy line of sight blocking areas, etc.
Thats it for now.
EDIT: my confusion on hero selection was that I thought there were more than 2 types of Mercs - 2 types per type of hero.
Hello! Here are my first impressions after playing one bot game as Vex:
Background: RTS/MOBA
At first I focused on the attack path of the bot directly across, as I wanted to learn that side of the map. Once I got a bearing on my surroundings I needed to check the minimap quite a bit in order to see how my bot allies were doing.
When I saw that unit attack cooldowns were visible, that helped me out a lot in order to learn certain unit behaviour, like when I built an ion cannon without knowing what it did. Made me quickly realize its role as long range siege.
When I tried to set control groups, I noticed that they were not visible on the UI. Having some sort of tab showing control groups could help out, but I know there is only so much you can put in the UI before it becomes cluttered.
I'll post some more feedback after I play a few more games.
Here's my feedback of my first game playing as Alder.
The game felt really simple but also had complex elements to it which excited me being not very good at RTS games but liking complex systems. It also had a Moba feel to it which I really enjoyed.
Alder had very interesting mechanics regarding the saplings and how they interact with the other units but they seemed to get lost under other units making them hard to target with the abilities from the other units.
On that point it was very hard to keep track of an individuals health once you had amassed a large army as the health bar part of the circle would overlap other units and make it hard to distinguish what was the circle and what was the health bar and whose was whose. A way to fix that would be so units don't collide as much or create bars to show health.
All in all i thought the game was really fun and different
Going to keep mine short and sweet,
I played Celste seeing that its a high damage type and the game played out fairly close to my expectations of what the units should do... that is until I baited the bots into her massive aoe ability and proceeded to feel like a god haha
Only real way to improve on that would be to tone down the ego boost, but hey it felt good!
Impressions after four games (Grath,Vela,Eris,Vex)
Tried to shake off the rust after not playing the RTS genre for a few years. Felt slightly overwhelming at first, but armed with the knowledge from the demo I managed to understand the basic mechanics and strategy even for a relatively unskilled player.
When all of the the units first popped out of my building, I felt excited in ready for battle. It was also slightly comical since it reminded me more of a clown car exit than troops exiting a barracks.
When I first used the terrapin trooper ability, I imagined that it would be relative to the unit I clicked. I was also not expecting that it would activate for all units selected but makes sense in the context (was just hoping for one at time since I wanted to chain the stun). All of my troopers zoomed off towards the target bouncing into each other along the way. Only one of my hard-headed comrades landed their stun while the other three scurried into oblivion. Bottom line: If I was trying to plan out a skilled attack, the troopers who missed their target were way out of position and I ultimately lost the engagement because I had unwittingly split my army and cannon balled half of them to their own swift demise.
Realize I'm quickly overwriting so I'll summarize my other experience. Really enjoying the game so far. Minor mechanic mishaps which are more likely due to player error than actual strategy. Great job not overwhelming the lesser skilled players with an inviting skill curve that has me addicted and ready to play more
Coming into my first couple I was a bit lost. Even after watching tutorial video. But It gave me the opportunity to freely explore and learn.
After figuring out the basics and moving forward I started to get a real WC3 vibe. I started to play like I did back in early game with leveling my hero. It made me move forward at a different pace with having that experience.
After starting to get my build order strait I started to feel like the flow was a little clunky at times. Trying to juggle the gem collecting and maintaining money for unit production added an interesting element which made me prioritize things much different than before.
The quick transitions of the game from early to mid to late took me a bit by surprise. Gathering the pacing of the game took quite a few games but it gets better and it feels more rewarding.
The gold intake with two to expansions feel like they should be a bit more. I have extreme excess of scrap and always needing gold. I know with the limited scrap expenses there will be an excess but it feels like the early game can drag out due to the lack of income.
Thanks So Much for the opportunity to give this feed back and enjoy a game that has so much potential.
Lothias
I watched the tutorial, then played two bot games.
My overall feeling is intrigued but intimidated. There's a lot of depth and complexity loaded into every unit and mechanic.
Initial Gameplay Feedback:
* Fighting over gems with enemies was awesome. Fighting over gems with allies was a major feel-bad.
* It felt odd how the late-game fantasy is built around mercenaries. My squad choice felt like the more characterful and evocative identity, but once you've got that capped out the progression is all about your mercs.
* I really liked the streamlined expansion/base building mechanics. Clearing titans, placing bases, and defending them feels fun and strategic, and contesting gems is way more fun than remembering to build workers.
* It was very surprising to discover that there were no towers on the direct line to the enemy nexus. Probably just my MOBA anchoring, but quite a shock.
Initial UI Feedback:
* Tilde to select army is wonderful. Wouldn't mind a "select my hero" hotkey, too.
* It continually felt weird that my main base was not my largest building. I kept selecting my merc barracks instead.
* I kept trying to double click on units to select all units of that type. I definitely wasn't aware how much I use that, but I kept trying to move my healers/archers/whatever back as a group and kept failing.
* I loved the difficulty markers on the titan camps. Wonderfully self evident, required no explanation.
* More button feedback would go a long way towards making the game feel more responsive. Just something small like a "click" noise when you successfully purchase a unit or upgrade.
* The mini map has a lot of detail and is difficult to parse. The hero locations are wonderfully clear, but the terrain is not. It was inordinately difficult to figure out where the various entrances to each base were.
* Unit health was surprisingly unclear. The circle shape with no color change is pretty hard to parse, and I couldn't see the shield/plate mechanics at all.
Great feedback guys, these are such a joy to read! Keep 'em coming!
Thanks so much for inviting me to play Atlas! Here's some feedback from my first two games:
On my first game I chose Alder, on my second, Vela.
When I first start playing a game, I try for keyboard controls. After listening to Day[9]'s intro, I knew that ~ was select all army. The ping on
Bwas weird, but doable (I am used to ping beingG). All of the unit controls were great.feedback 1
Unfortunately, about 5 minutes in, I wanted to select my base. I hit every button on the left side of the keyboard, and none of them selected my base. It made me feel dumb when I had to go and look up that base was
P, and it made me sad when I realized that there was no hotkey for my merc camp or active ability shop.I would suggest that you add hotkeys for these important buildings on
1,2,3, orF1,F2,F3, and that you call out the hotkeys in the building itself, perhaps on the title.On to the gameplay. Having watched Day[9]'s video, I was aware that core units respawn, where to find the respawn timers, and that V resummons. I knew how to take an expansion, and what to do to get it running. I also knew how to take gems.
feedback 2
In my first fight (as alder), I got slaughtered by an army roughly the same size as mine. It made me feel a little sad, and frustrated that I now had to wait on a respawn timer.
feedback 3
When first I right clicked, I saw the detail that had been put into the ground pointer (cursor animation?). This made me feel happy, and reminded me of the first times I played StarCraft and Warcraft 3. I really love the little circle, and it feels rewarding to click around and pretend my APM is high.
feedback 4
I noticed that all of the base units (and upgrades) cost gold, and all of the mercs cost gems. At first, this made me happy (I'm understanding!). However, as the game went on, it become somewhat frustrating. I felt like I never had enough gold, and there were too few gems loose on the map. Because my units felt weak (and died a lot), it was hard to take any titan camps or hold any expansions which would give gems.
feedback 5
I noticed that I had a lot of scrap in both my starter games. With no option to spend it on mercenaries (not enough gems), I could only buy the extra active skills. However, even those were quickly purchased. Now I'm stockpiling scrap and it feels like a wasted resource.
Suggestion: Perhaps there could be a weak mercenary who costs only scrap. A peasant, if you've played Heroes of Might and Magic 2.
feedback 6
When I came to the hero select screen, I appreciated the level of detail available on each hero and their units. However, I felt a little overwhelmed by the mercenary choice, since the tooltip had a lot of text. I also felt curious about the color coordination between pairs of heroes. I also felt unprepared (even with the descriptions) to properly choose a hero.
Suggestion: Use the extra screen space on the right side to show the mercenary stats in more detail. Give the heroes a high level description, including their focus (e.g. Alder is all about CC, Vela is all about ranged units) and a high level classification such as defensive, offensive, or balanced.
feedback 7
I have a decent system (nothing too beefy), and I was unpleasantly surprised to find that I could not run on the default "high" settings. It felt bad to have about 10-30 FPS despite my quad core 2.7 processor and GTX 750. I bumped the settings down to medium for my second game, and that helped.
feedback 8
I really liked the arcs under the units for health and attack delay. When I first saw them, I felt like I hadn't seen them used well anywhere before. Most games in this genre use a rectangle above the unit. These felt like they didn't obscure the units nearly so badly. I am no micro-genius, but I can see the utility of them for people who like to micro. I felt a little confused by the tower health though. It has (as far as I can tell) a purple health bar and a blue health bar. I don't know what the difference is, and I couldn't figure it out through clicking on the structure.
feedback 9
When I first saw the selected unit details frame, I felt that it was a little small and text heavy. I was frustrated that it was hard to scan for the text I wanted to know about (mostly health and damage) while still paying attention to the larger battle.
Suggestion: Add icons next to the words describing the different stats. Also possibly move the frame somewhere else on the screen. It took me a second to find it the first few times.
feedback 10
Working with my team felt difficult and frustrating. The pings only barely registered because they were mostly sound, and not much visual. Obviously, I was playing with bots, but I felt like they were never in the right place at the right time. They did not respond quickly when bases were threatened.
Suggestion: Add some sound effect cues "Your ally needs help!", etc. when an ally pings for assistance. Make pings more visually attractive (I really like the scouting animation from darkest dungeon, bounded by the minimap edges).
feedback 11
I saw Day[9] attach the rally point to his hero in the starter video. I don't know if I misclicked, or what, but I was unable to do this myself.
Suggestion: Make it easier to rally to a unit by increasing the range that I can click (or adding it back if it was removed). Visually indicate that the rally point is to a unit via a different colored flag and/or a circle around the unit that is selected.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
It was kind of fun but also quite confusing, watching Day[J]'s tutorial helped a lot but there was still a big learning curve. In particular I didn't know about gem waves, that they appeared on the minimap, and was confused about gold for a while (though expansions made it generate faster, they don't appear to). I kind of got crushed by the AI but I learned a lot.
Did they help you learn the game?
Yeah they did more or less, though I wish their build orders were a bit more practical/refined. Granted with gems build orders aren't straightforward either. But much better than just playing by myself.
Were they fun to play against?
Eh they were fine. Honestly my allies were more annoying (insta casting on cooldown the T thing to steal all my gems ftl) than the enemies. The enemies just crushed me because I didn't know what I was doing.
Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
I watched some replays right after (and my own replay to see what the bots were doing) and that was really helpful. I was a bit confused initially on which neutral mobs gave what and stuff like that but that's pretty clear to me now.
I suppose I am passed(?) (past? I never know) first impressions but after my most recent game against the bots I can't help but think that the ion cannon would be way to strong in the 1v1 lane. Maybe not so much in the 2v2 lane since you can coordinate a bit better to take it out. I want to bring up some discussion from my bot game.
1 Ion cannon at my resource tower took out my opponent's resource tower in 4 shots that lasted from 7:12 to 7:40, 28 seconds of real time. You have 28 seconds to respond from where you are on the map take out your opponent's forces underneath the protection their own tower before yours is destroyed. I feel that's incredibly strong. Not only that but it also melts Mega Nodes and Nexi(?). By the time you get to the mega nodes you normally have enough gems for 2-3 Ion cannons.
I suppose I shouldn't complain about something is too strong without suggesting some balance changes to go with it. If we're going to keep the ion cannon where it is without changing it's stats, I had a few ideas.
and/or
A couple of other things I took notice of:
No reward for destroying a mega node? Or is simply giving access to the Nexus enough reward? Maybe a team scrap reward of +100 from resource towers and +200 from mega nodes? Gem rewards? I don't really know. Just an idea though.
I would love to have a notification either text and/or sound that my resource tower (and mega node) has been destroyed.
Also when I alt+tab out of the game and I alt+tab back in my position on the map has moved from where it was to someplace in the corner of the map. Just a minor annoyance.
I am not sure if any of these things have been brought up before or since the last time I looked at the thread (or somewhere else in the forum) but thanks taking a gander at my feedback!
Cheers,
bliss/Jeremy
@bliss Good feedback, I appreciate the detail.
Just a heads up about the Ion Cannon thing, the radius that shows up for you is also visible to the enemy team, i.e they can see the range/placement of your ion cannon before its constructed. Unfortunately bot's don't have that luxury just yet!
Overall I feel the tempo of the game is very slow and player motivation is scattered. This could be due to the fact that I was playing vs bots but I feel there are underlying issues with the mechanics and balance.
I did watch the video Day[9] provided to get my self familiar with the mechanics before hand so I wasn't blind going into my first experience.
Gems at a certain point in the game were useless as far I could figure out. After I had upgraded my structures fully there was no need for them in the quantities i was getting. I just kept stacking large amounts of gems and with a large portion of the non lane areas focused on gems I felt like my time was wasted in those areas. Not only that but I feel it devalued a lot of the conflict point constructed in the games base mechanics. I think improvements in these areas could really help the game. That way when I get the message not enough gold I as a player can think hmm how do I get more so i can achieve my goals better. Or with gems getting that message more often would make me realize hey I should go out there and capture some nodes. A rebalancing would do wonders. Some abilities needing gems to research or some unit compositions needing much larger quantities of gems then scrap could make it more interesting and make player choice more meaningful.
Overall the game has potential to be great and I look forward to seeing its continued development. If you have any question for me please just send me message.
Context-- I haven't played Starcraft II since launch (ie. 2010) and have very limited experience with Dawn of War 2. I've spent most of my time playing various MOBAs (at least the 3 biggest ones).
After running through the early game a few times blind, the later stages really showed lots of room for some really intricate gameplay. There's a lot going on once the map really opens up, and Gems encourage early risk taking without constant fighting. It was really engaging ^^,
I'd like to mention Gem collecting during early game stages as something that felt negative. At times, I felt like I was competing with the other members of my team (specifically in the 2v2 portion of the map) for Gems, at least within the first 5~ minutes. I encountered a similar feeling when I helped an ally clear a Titan camp which dropped gems and found I myself unable to gather them while my ally could pick them up. As a team mate who helped clear the camp, I felt unrewarded. While there are certainly enough Gems on the map to keep everyone rather satisfied, it felt awkward that I was racing my own allies to the easy Gem spawn locations so I could gather resources for my army. I felt like I was denying my allies.
Thanks for inviting me to play!
These are my (X Happened/ Y Feels/ Z Suggles) framed impressions after watching 90% of the tutorial and playing through a single game with Alder.
I picked Alder because I felt like a mobile, but quickly fortifying character fit my play style, and because I was pretty sure the bots would be terrible against that type of strategy as it usually takes focus fire to kill efficiently. It was able to be played almost exactly as I expected and I found the strategy in the game rewarding.
I was gathering gems and trying to quickly expand in the early game (similar to the tutorial), and I felt impeded by the 'T' timer to build on gems and by the difficulty of the neutral camps after the easy and relatively easy camps were taken out. It felt like I was on a huge map filled with too difficult objectives.
When my computer allies and I were attacked I was confused as to whether I should be moving across the map to defend them (the skirmish would probably be over by the time I got there) or hope nothing too terrible happened (they were always fine and the battles seemed inconsequential.)
When I took many gems uncontested and had around 7 Leviathans (Leviathan + Tree of Life turtle in a bush was too much for the AI) I had been trying to end the game for a while and was confused that I couldn't attack the enemy base. It took me a few minutes to remember that there was a nexus (from the tutorial) and I stopped suiciding my units into the enemy base turret and quickly defeated the nexus. It felt really weird conquering enemy lines to be directed across the map to the actual game ending position. (After playing another game, I noticed that I took a pretty crazy path to the enemy base the first time.)
Over the course of the 30 minute game I bought about one new unit a minute, and that felt pretty slow.
After playing 4 games, the speed of everything feels better but still slow. I'm excited to play against other people because playing against bots has me trying for faster builds that I can solo the enemy nexus with, and not something I'd think remotely good against a real person. I can't remember what the move was called, but I thoroughly enjoyed exploding planting the entire enemy team under my ally hero's blinding cloud thing.
First off, thanks for inviting me to play Atlas!
Here we go—
Q: How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
A: Overall it was fun and unique. I played as Vela in my first game and didn’t do very well, but that’s expected. The map seemed big to me, big enough that I never spent any time in the whole right side of the map or even shared the screen with my bottom right ally. Early on in the game, I frequently lost many of my units to neutral camps and I felt I couldn’t really gauge at what point in the game I was strong enough to take on the harder ones. I found myself with insufficient resources the majority of the game, even though it felt like I wasn’t building very much. I was intimidated by Mercenaries, it seemed like there were too many to pick from and, from what I experienced, some appeared to be too powerful (enemy bot won the game with a handful of juggernauts). Squad combat felt good, I had very little knowledge of what I was doing at first but by the end of the game I was marking and sniping enemies and kiting them around. Also, the music and environment really stood out to me, it added to the RTS experience for sure.
Q: Did they help you learn the game?
A: Yes. Watching them gather gem orbs, attack neutral camps, and assault the enemy teams’ expansions kind of guided me into what I should be doing. The enemies put enough pressure to force me to act and helped with map awareness.
Q: Were they fun to play against?
A: For the most part, yes. Allied bots were a little greedy in their resource gathering and were a bit flaky in helping me in neutral camps or large battles. Enemy bots tactics varied from flanking me when I was having a skirmish with another squad to that of just walking into my squad one at a time, single file. But in general they are good enough to learn from and to motivate me to improve my decision making.
Q: Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
A: Mainly the layout of the map, I felt like I only needed to utilize a very narrow portion of it to do what I needed to do. It felt like there were several neutral camps that didn’t seem like I would ever need to defeat them.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
I think that playing against bots is quite enjoyable to learn the game, it does serve its purpose of teaching players the basics. Because of what Day9 said about how the bots are not very assertive, I think it may initially give me some bad habits, which is fine.
Did they help you learn the game?
Definitely, the hands on experience helped me a lot. A sandbox/custom mode might be cool to have, too.
Were they fun to play against?
It was fun because it felt new to me, but I can't imagine it being fun over the long run. The AI is adequate for a tutorial, but it's perhaps too passive, and careless with mercenaries. I'd say it accomplishes its purpose, though!
Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
Most things to be honest, but I think that's a sign of a good RTS. I didn't know how to use my units, how to be effective. The decisionmaking of the bots confused me at times, but then again my own is probably quite ridiculous. It took 2-3 extra games for me to understand the flow of resources and such. I was not confused in a way that felt game-breaking.
Also, to this point it still feels like an entire side of the map is simply some other player’s domain and I have no business there. In 3v3, it was not possible for me to interract very much with the business of the bot which spawned toward the bottom without worrying about losing some bases.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
I was confused as heck even after watching Sean's video. Although by the 5th game and rewatching the video I finally understood it more. I may not had understood when he said "This is your core army" (the ones where you spend the yellow currency).
I remember easily about deployment of your units but the distinction between the buildings was confusing and I was wondering which units I should buy and didn't even bother buying mercs because they cost the purple gems and getting those gems were a pain to get and felt like each mercs is super important to keep alive where I didn't want to use them at all.
For three games trying to clear creep was a very difficult thing to do. I suggest the tooltip to color code if it can attack ground and/or air units. Also have a color code if the unit itself is a air unit.
When I was playing my first two games, I was thinking "How come I have so much green currency and I spent 800 on items. What else am I suppose to spend them on?" Then on the third game I realized some mercs can be bought with them but the gems again were the killer for me. I might suggest the gold currency to not look like a primary currency because I spent the majority of the first three games figuring out how to make more of them while I was raking up so many of the green currency and not know what to do with them.
When I going around grabbing the orbs for the purple currency it's either the bots just kept taking them or getting destroyed and somehow I wanted to converse the ones I kept otherwise build an expansion but pointless because after I build it, nothing happens because the camps are not cleared yet and cleaning out the camps involved alot of deaths.
Did they help you learn the game? Were they fun to play against?
Playing against bots did help me learn the game and I'm hoping that when the game does release it has a very well designed FTUE.
I do not have an opinion about if they were fun to play against because I was more trying to figure out how to play the game.
Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
Yes, almost everything other than the basic RTS mechanic. Mostly on currency how to get them and spend them wisely. Also when you lose your first expansion from the enemy team, it becomes this snowball effect as all those gems spawn in the middle and so one side will get stronger and stronger as the other side gets weaker.
A lot of the time I didn't know which one was my.... Hero unit??? It would be really helpful to have a level indicator as a selected unit so I know where he is. Reference WarCraft 3. Also I was having a hell of a time distinguishing the attack Cooldown vs the health. The attack cooldown is too easy to see that I had a hard time seeing how much health my units had. I may suggest layering the health above the cooldown.
Just some feedback on the first game i played. I lost, Hard. Playing Ryme, Frozen Sage.
It seems like this game is desperately crying out for a tutorial Even having watched the Day9 ( hey dayj!) intro video, while i had a feel for the structure of the match i felt lost when asked what to do past patrolling no-man's land.
Some of the tool tips seemed a bit wordy and hard to discern in game. Which also caused confusion since all of the abilities on my bar have the same blue motif.
I would say my personal largest problem was just not knowing things. and lacking the ability to easily learn them. The info on selected characters was small hard to read/see/know was there I completely missed my leveling to 6 and getting my ultimate. It took me a very long time to figure out that it was Celesia's Purifiers that were wreaking my shit.
I felt really ambivalent towards my units or at least the glacial rangers and frost callers. They both look similar from above which made it hard to know how i was doing, I did like the frogs though.
How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
Always exciting to play a new game, especially when it mixes multiple genres. It's also a very confusing and daunting experience for me as well and Atlas followed that trend. Playing through my first game as Vela I felt I had just enough time to glance at tool tips for all the units and buildings while trying to beat my allies to the gems and responding to their pings. My allies carried me to victory, but felt good at the amount I had learned over all. Decided that Vela was not for me at this point and played as Grath and Ryme on following games. Started feeling more comfortable with the flow of the battles and gaining more time in between the action.
Feedback from the games I played:
And the band played on! Selection Screen Music
1. Started a game and heard the selection screen music. Refused to select anything so I could listen more.
2. Outstanding job on this music. Definitely gets you "pumped" for the match ahead.
Oh the humanity! Titan Camp able to see workers (Replay ID Gd99c3da6d3834725851a5e356ac6a1ac ~2:00 mark)
1. Ally attacked titan camp on other side of wall from base. Air titan was able to attack worker collecting resources.
2. Felt that it was not working as intended.
Release the cheese! Pathing issue? (Replay ID Gd99c3da6d3834725851a5e356ac6a1ac ~4:30 mark)
1. First game, playing as Vela, taking Titan camp in NW with the green node. I was able to take them out because of pathing while only losing 1 unit.
2. Felt like this was way too early for this camp and my small force should have been decimated by it.
3. Possible solution is invulnerability while leashed and 2-3 second delay once back at spawn before regen starts.
All that glitters! Gold starved
1. Gold accumulation seems very slow
2. Mixed feelings about this. On one hand it may be that I am still learning the flow of the game and that it will feel better after more experience. On the other, the more I understand of the game, the more I find myself waiting for gold for the next unit before going for an objective. Also felt helpless not being able to have an effect on all parts of my economy.
3. Possible solution is to tie in a boost gained from an upgrade that converts scrap/gems to gold. Costs gold, scrap, and gems to unlock and has multiple levels. Upgrade unlocks the ability to convert X scrap and X gems to X gold with a hefty cool down and gem/scrap cost. Upgrade has 3-5 levels and the cost to level up goes up exponentially each level. Levels can decrease cool down, increase exchange rate, or increase cost of exchange but give more gold. This would give more incentive to capture more expansions and attack enemy expansions.
I feel the need, the need for Speed! Movement speed
1. Movement rate feels sluggish
2. Gives a feeling of huge peaks and valleys in action when it takes minutes to reinforce your army with fresh or respawned units. Returning to base for full heals is too time consuming to want to do so. Also feels extremely difficult to react to far away threats in time to significantly reduce damage. I understand being out of position, but there were multiple times I ignored my lower ally's pings for assistance because I knew I could not get there in time to help. I felt it was more efficient to continue taking my own objective than to run to assist.
Mine! Mine! Mine! Gem node mini-game.
1. Allies constantly taking gem node I am waiting for.
2. Felt I had no allies when I am sitting waiting for a respawn timer on gem node, go to check minimap or macro, and return only to find that my "Ally" has stolen it. I see this turning into a serious point of contention while in multiplayer "solo-queue" games (if that is even going to be a thing).
3. Possible solution is to enable all team members to harvest the same node. Change node to give available gems in batches. Every 2 seconds it is being harvested it gives 1 gem to each player that has harvested the node. This would possibly create an issue of there being more gems in play though. Maybe keep the total gems that a node can give the same.
What is this detail you speak of? Unit artwork.
1. You mean I can see details on individual units?
2. Great art/design for the units so far! I love the personality and the overall feel of each unit and cannot wait to see the fully polished versions!
That's it for now. End thoughts are this is an outstanding start and I am very excited to see how you all take this game to the next level.
-Bishop
Thanks for inviting me to play! I'm a casual RTS/MOBA player. I've played Starcraft/Warcraft/C&C, but never competitively. I've played some older RTS games online, but never better than casual pickup games. For MOBAs, I've played LoL, Smite, and Dota 2, casual, never ranked.
X happened My first mistake was probably trying to play the game without having taken my Adderol, because my ADD was in full force. I watched enough of the Day9 video to hear about the preferred method of feedback, saw that there was still 35min on the video, and said "I don't have much time before the kids wake up from their nap. I'll just jump into the game."
My first game went, predictably, down the drain quick. The layout wasn't confusing, it seemed a good mix of RTS and MOBA layouts that felt fairly familiar. I was able to figure out spawning units and using abilities. Even upgrades were fairly straightforward. This was where the first brick wall in my learning curve came up. I knew from tooltips that I needed gold and gems to upgrade more/get mercs. I had no idea how to get gems, or increase my gold flow. Eventually I figured out the gem gathering, but it took a while, and by the time I had, the enemy bots were steamrolling through my allies and I with much larger armies.
This made me feel Y Much of my first game was spent confused, frustrated, and wishing their was a gameplay tutorial. I understand why there isn't, especially in an alpha build like this. However, coming at this from an RTS perspective, I didn't expect to have to go contest in the middle of the map for resources. There wasn't a tooltip on gold/scrap/gems, which contributed to my frustration since every other thing in the game had a great tooltip explanation.
Suggestion to improve/prevent this I think having tooltips for the gold/scrap/gems resources would help a lot. Something as simple as "Gold is granted automatically according to your bases/expansions/etc (I still haven't figured out how to increase gold income)" "Scrap is generated by collectors going back and forth from the little glowing pools" "Gems drop from your towers in the middle of the map and the jungle camps". Because of everything else in the game having a great tooltip explanation, the fact that there was no tooltip for resources was jarring and frustrating.
Q: How was your first experience in Atlas playing against bots?
A: Gameplay was good, I got beaten, but I figured that would happen. Since I mainly play against the AI in RTS games, I was hoping for tunable difficulty, but for an alpha that's not feasible.
Q: Did they help you learn the game?
A: Yes and no. The teamfighting taught me more about the combat, and I might have learned about gem gathering more quickly if I had followed one of my teambots, but as a turtle style player the thought didn't even cross my mind.
Q: Were they fun to play against?
A: As much fun as bots usually are.
Q: Were you confused about anything at the end of your first game?
A: Is there a way to increase gold production? I still haven't figured that out. I'm going to go try to sit through the tutorial video. As a kinesthetic learner, having to sit and watch a video to learn the game is frustrating, but that's the price of alpha testing
I like this feedback format. I've shortened it to Experience, Feeling, Solution. EFS. It should be an industry standard.
Experience: I created my profile and found no place to personalize. During installation seems like it may be a good time ask for some background information so you can determine if you're hitting your target market etc. Not saying one testers feedback is more valuable than another but having their perspective may be useful for guidance.
Feeling: I was ambivalent as I'm unsure of what your goals are with this specific test, although it would help me connect with community more. I can share me with them and vise versa.
Solution: Create a bio section. Games played. experience. age. Demographic info. etc.
Experience:I downloaded the game
Feeling: Excited and a little embarrassingly charmed that I'd been selected. Like when your friend tells you that Felicity likes you.
Solution: You can fix this by inviting me to all future testing.
Character Selection:
Experience: I read each one over and gave a quick technical analysis based on the stats of their minions. It was a lot of reading at first and there didn't seem to be any particular order. Maybe it was alphabetical and I didn't notice. For non-readers a more visual representation of the characters according to their traits may be useful. Typically I've noticed that unconscious patterns have developed.
Red and athletic is DPS.
Green and chubby are healers.
Blue/Grey and huge are tanks.
Feeling: I was a little lost. It seemed like a long startup time. A bigger initial investment than what I thought the goal of Atlas was. Easy to understand and quick to get started RTS. It could be just a discrepancy between expectations and reality.
Solution: Send a clear message to the players as to what they should be expecting from Atlas and categorize the roles. Not necessarily in the form that I've mentioned but in some visual non-verbal way.
Experience: Character Class selection was not intuitive for me.
Feeling: The Triangle vs. Square wasn't very intuitive for me. I know they're on top but I didn't really understand them at first or realize they had drastic consequences for unit selection. This is important for a 30-50 minute game.
Solution: Make them bigger or fancier so they stand out and show me that Triangle means long range air attacking end game and Square means Super mech that kills buildings and nothing else.
Experience: Confirm button was oddly located and I didn't at first notice it.
Feeling: I want to play this game! Which of these asshole bots am I waiting on to make a decision. Oh I'm an idiot. click
Solution: Make it centered and huge and flashing "WE ARE WAITING ON THAT SLOW BASTARD SAUCENINJA".
Gameplay:
Experience: Lost first three games against bots getting my bearings and then asked for help after two hours.
Feeling: A little punished beginning to feel hopeless.
Solution: Set clear expectations as to how long it may take to win first game and how long each one takes. The team was super with helpful criticism though.
Experience: Like the huntsman, Ryme ventured through the forest for years in search of my snow white for these purposes we'll call Celeste. After many a sleepless nights and dark forests I've passed through I discovered her back at my castle for she had been slain in battle by the mighty witches scourge.
Feeling: Lost
Solution: Make map smaller or minimap easier to read. Sometimes I confuse uncollected spheres for lost units.
Experience: When setting a waypoint for my base, it was hard to select my leader guy, especially since when the game starts he doesn't automatically pop out. I have to hit V enen though he's ready. Make the target hit box for clicking on my little hero-man Ryme a little bigger. So far it hasn't paid at all to have them go anywhere but with your leader as he's not strong enough without them and they aren't strong enough without them. A two pronged attack is out of the question much less three.
Feeling: Annoyed that it is so hard to get all my peeps in one place. Ask Sean how good it feels even though its a bad habit to hit F2. Edit (nvm. ~ addresses this problem perfectly)
Solution: Autospawn the hero at the beginning. Have a button to find lost/idle units. Make the click area for setting the rally point onto a hero bigger.
Experience: Collecting orbs.
Feeling: Feels good. Especially if you can get into a rythem.
Solution: make the chime for farming them more impactful. I don't really notice and they're mega important.
Experience: Losing a Leviathon
Feeling: Awww it flutters like a leaf. That's sad. I'm making leviathons, so I'll probably still win.
Solution: Increase their death drama. Make the user feel that loss more. I want to hurt. I want to hurt like X-COM Iroman hard mode.
Experience: Setting video options to Over 9000. It split my monitor into 4 windows, two of them diagnal from each other were white but it was all still one screen.
Feeling: This isn't at all what I felt like over 9000 would feel like. I thought I'd get to see little teeny tiny facial expressions or it would crash my game to 5 fps.
Solution: I have no idea. I'm sorry.
Experience: 10 year old (who is silver in SC2 and an aspiring minecraft streamer) walks in and asks me what I'm playing. I say Atlas but you can't tell anyone because they made me agree to an NDA. He said "Fair enough. I won't. It looks kind of like they're little bugs. I like bugs. It's cool that you can control all the spawned help. It's like a mix of LOL and SC2."
Feeling: Proud and a little afraid for the world. The units are small.
Solution: Listen to children. They're brutally honest.
That's enough for now. I look forward to some PVP.
Didn't have a chance to read through all the other posts here, so apologies if I'm repeating what others have said.
That's a lot of negatives, but I think this game is super promising. Coming from a Starcraft background, I love the general idea of the game. Having your units respawn makes it a lot less stressful. But I like having multiple units to control as opposed to something like DotA/LoL. I feel like there's a gap in the market this game could fill. I'll try to get at least a couple of games in during PvP and post some more thoughts. I also like the interface. Having all your abilities in one panel is great.
Looking forward to PvP.
Playing vs. bots I enjoyed Alder and Celesta. Whenever I ran into opponents I could dig in and stand my ground, but it wasn't like I could go rampaging around with that power. Didn't work so well in PVP, probably my fault, but people are better than bots at reacting to situational things.
Hey Guys,
I played in the first playtest and really enjoyed myself. My first game in this playtest already showed some improvements over the previous playtest (so the game has definitely improved in my opinion).
Some of my frustrations in the first test were resolved. I found that the hero pathing was greatly improved. My hero can move through other units, but it requires pushing those units out of the way and those units not being engaged in some other activity. This feels like a perfect balance compared to the first playtest of nobody moving through other units.
Second, I LOVE that gold is the resource required for your squad units and that it comes in at a constant rate for all players at all times. This hinders the snowballiness of the game seen in the first playtest. It also makes my build order feel strategic and intentional.
There were other issues in the first playtest, but I found these changes to be obvious in my first game. My first game also gave me some other new considerations.
In my first game, scrap seemed kind of meaningless, which made me feel quite frustrated. I needed both scrap and gems for everything, so why have both (in a later game I figured out that charms are all scrap only items!).
I still feel frustrated by competing with teammates for gems. There should be some way to make things less competitive and I am sure you already have plenty of suggestions here!
The massive set of options related to mercenaries felt overwhelming. I loved the simplicity of the game in the first playtest. I feel like there are an overwhelming number of options. I am thinking playing more games might change this feeling.
The tempo of combat and movement feels spot on. I love the slower pace compared to other RTS games. It makes it feel more strategic when it comes to micro. It also makes the game both more accessible to less experienced players and can develop a deeper skill cap for better players.
The bots were both good for teaching me about core game concepts, but not amazing at combat. I did have a lot of fun even in my first game.
I will post about what else I learned after my first game somewhere else!
Having only watched the tutorial and playing my first game here are some first impressions I had about the game so far.
First off let me start out with some positives. I love the concept, I really like the idea of a moba, rts mix. Those are definitely two of my favorite genres so seeing those two come together like this is a dream come true. I also really love the idea of having the unique squads, each with their own tactics/mini-games they have play around with. Not only did give me some initial direction of how to play even never having played that squad before but also it made the match more fun trying to get better at utilizing the synergy of the different units.
As for the negatives, one of the big things was probably the coin system (from the other posts and things I've read this seems to be a common feeling). I really felt there was a big disconnect when it came to the coin resource. First off I wasn't really even sure how coin was being produced. There was no real clear explanation of it in the tutorial video and nothing in game to indicate where it was coming from so that was definitely a bit frustrating. I did eventually figure out in game that it was just a steady income not affected by anything else and that is where the disconnect comes in.
In the game there are very obvious ways that you can try to increase your production of scrap and gems ex. creating new expansions or capturing gems. I love the idea of trying to push out to secure resources and potentially put yourself in a vulnerable position for the possible benefit of getting farther ahead in resources than your opponent or on the other end trying to take out your opponents expansions to take that advantage away. However for coin there is nothing really like that, no real way to gain some advantage or take it away and since coin is a main resource for your squad units and upgrades it kind of has negative effect on that part of the game play as well, in my opinion. It felt like some of the power of the player was taken away since there was nothing really I could do about it.
So what to do about it, one obvious solution would be to just make it similar to scrap and gems and have specific coin collecting areas but I'm not sure that would be the best solution. Another thought I had was possibly leaving it as a steady income but on top of that having some way to get bonus coin either by destroying titan camps or killing an enemy hero or building or something. I feel this would not only give the player a little more control over their coin income but would help keep the pace of the game up as players try and collect more coins by either taking out titan camps or initiating fights with the opposing team squads or buildings.
The only other negative thing from my experience so far was that games take a bit longer than expected. Hoping in I expected a game to be about 20-30 mins but my first game ended up being about an hour or more! However, I think this is more due to the fact that I am a new player and have only played with bots and I'm sure as I get more experience with how the game plays and play with other people the games will go faster.
Hopefully that all makes sense and was helpful, I'm definitely a noob when it comes to this game and also in game testing feedback.
Overall though, I think this game has huge potential and I really enjoy playing it. Thanks for letting me be a part of this awesome experience and I am super excited to see how it continues to improve!
Cheers