After Game Impressions (4 Games so far)
SirColveskey
Member
First Game Experience (Bot):
Playing as Eris
I felt good when I was able to use Stinging Surge to pick off some extra units. While a simple mechanic and fairly straightforward to execute, having an auto attack reset on the ability gives you a very crisp feeling when executing it.
I was a bit confused when casting Chaos Bolt due to the marker for the projectile sending mixed signals. The marker is both a line, and a circle similar to the marker for the third tier unit's ability which proves an issue for clarity.
I felt irritated when I would have to compete with my own teammates over objectives such as crystals and expansion points. With the shared build-able/farm-able locations you run into an issue of having to fight each other for resources -- similar to in league when you have two farming champions occupying the same lane space. This is a common issue in games and I'm not sure if it should be addressed by the game, or by the meta that forms around the game, however it's a thought.
I found myself losing units especially when i would split some off to support the other teammate in the lower section of the map: It would be nice to be able to click on the unit portraits at the bottom to cluster select those units or add a "select all" button.
I was a little confused as to how to push for objectives, given there is a large alley leading to the nexus. What is the motivation to push closer to the enemy's spawn points versus grouping up mid?
--The only answer? Further Testing!
Bug Notes:
Units would sometimes path in the opposite direction of where I clicked
Bottom AI got stuck on its own units for a portion of the game and fell behind as a result
Comments
Game Two: Plants. Plants everywhere. (Bots):
Playing as Alder
It was really interesting to have the seedbot mechanics : I felt like I could do a lot without loosing my units, as compared to the Eris game. The zoning potential of the seeds was really interesting in combination with farming crystal.
It could get irritating, however, when trying to use some of the higher tier abilities, the abilities didn't seem to search for a valid target under the cursor and instead just checked if the unit targeted by the cursor was a valid target or not. That is to say, large units could block the seedlings and keep you from casting abilities on them. Suggestions here include: a. Prioritize seedlings with a area of tolerance around the cursor (the sprites are fairly small as well) and b. Make it clearly defined, through mouse-over highlighting, or some other means, that the seedling is targeted.
I felt disconnected from the action when I would have to go back and select my base in order to reset my rally point. While some experimentation needs to be done in order to evaluate if this problem can be solved with hotkeys it would be convenient to be able to reset your rally point from the global ui, as the game currently has a "don't take your eyes off the action" feel, with the ability to macro with any units selected, the only thing barring this is not being able to change rally points from global.
In a similar vein to the above, I definitely felt like it would help if you could set the rally point to a unit, such as your hero, instead of just a static location.
The "Build your army" portion of the start feels like an unnecessary step gating you to game-play at the moment. While the concept is interesting, the decisions you have to make during that time are rather limited as upgrades are highly expensive -- with regards to your starting resources -- and you only have one unit to build. This game also seems to indicate that starting an upgrade instead of full units can put you behind significantly in the early game therefore it is possible this is more enabling bad decisions than providing diversity at the moment. (More testing needed)
It is irritating when you, or your allies form a concave which keeps you from repositioning your units -- as an example when my glass cannons got stuck in front of the army causing me to lose the vast majority of them for no reason on the second push. My recommendation: Less strict unit collision on allied units.
Overall, this was yet another interesting mechanic, which provided a totally different feel than Eris before. Another set of unique and exciting mechanics, can't wait to try out other squads!
Seriously, this. If one of your allies comes up behind you in a battle, and you realize you can't win the battle, it can be impossible to maneuver any of your units out of the fight. It's especially frustrating in bot games where you can't tell the bot to back off, but I imagine there will be multiple times in pvp where an ally will come up behind you in a tight chokepoint and you'll lose everything because they kept you from retreating.
Game Three: Seige Tank Stalkers. (Bots):
Playing as Celesta
Confirmed the issues with unit collision mentioned in the previous game, as purifiers are susceptible to being pushed to the front lines by wisps.
I found it really cool to blow stuff up with 3-4 glass cannons, and this spurs some thoughts about endgame -- to me glass cannons seem to be the better choice over ion cannons because of their ability to maintain pressure and take advantage of momentum, whereas ion cannons are stagnant.
In regards to wisps, I was a bit disappointed, in that while the previous two base units had cool active abilities which made them each feel unique, wisps are your generic fighter class unit with no abilities, taking away from some of the draw of the game so far which has been unique and distinctive feels over various squads.
The advantage to the wisp though, comes in its price. It may give me cause to redact my previous statement about the pregame army building, because with the wisps being so cheap it is feasible to purchase 1 or 2 upgrades safely, while still getting a good number of starting units. I would even argue that the upgrade purchases are necessary to give the wisps a niche.
Purifiers on the other hand definitely delivered. Probably my favorite second tier unit I've tried thus far the ability to blow up clumps of units is immensely satisfying.
Unfortunately I was not able to toy with the Precognitors very much due to a decisive victory, though it is interesting to have a support class unit as the tier 3. My impression is this class relies on Purifiers and Celesta's ultimate ability for its primary source of damage.
Overall, this squad played much more like a typical rts in my opinion, which while not a bad thing it doesn't have the same novelty as the other two feeling very much so like a protect the seige engines comp with purifiers and glass cannons.
IMO, that seems to be some of the primary concerns I have with this game, there needs to be a way to keep your allies from getting in your way. In a similar vein as having to contest for resource points, etc.
Game Four: Well aren't we squishy. (Bots):
Playing as Vela
I found this match a lot less fun than the others I have played, mostly because vela's squad doesn't seem to hold up well on her own and seems to need to work cooperatively with a tank squad to be effective. It is difficult to use the raptor's long range to effectively kite the opponent because you are fighting for control of the combat zone, so kiting back is effectively giving up resources and objectives making it a less than optimal way to fight.
Deadeyes, overall area cool concept and can help you eliminate high profile threats such as heroes and tier 2/3s, but Vela simply lacks the ability to defend them long enough to get their abilities off consistently, again this would benefit from squadding up and not running solo.
Windrays are a very cool aura buff concept unit, but it seems redundant to have an attack range buff on already high attack range units. Just a thought.
As for Vela herself, her ultimate ability feels frankly lackluster compared to Eris or Celestia. Given, you have the potential to do 800 damage but it is: a. Only a single target ability, b. Can be intercepted c. Needs to have a very hard to land skillshot hit the opposing unit first before being able to dish out the 800 damage. It also feels a lot like it overlaps with Deadeye's ability.
This game I messed around with opening with the Tier 1 upgrade and purchasing Deadeyes with the starting cash; however this was a very delayed start which costs you early gem control and yet again feels like just a potential for a bad decision. More testing is required though.
Overall, Vela feels like a squad that doesn't hit hard enough for how squishy it is. It requires you to give up a lot of gem control if you don't have a complementing squad to go along with it and my initial impression is that it doesn't deal enough damage to make up for it, however this might be due to the fact that there was no tank buffer to let the dps occur.