Playtest 205: Test Weekend #3!
Treisk
Member, Administrator
Playtest 205: Test Weekend #3!
TL;DR - Polish, balance, and tuning for the Test Weekend 3 build!
General Gameplay
- Scrap rewards from Gem collection have been adjusted
- Small Gem: 10 Scrap (no change)
- Medium Gem: 20 Scrap ⇒ 15 Scrap
- Large Gem: 40 Scrap ⇒ 20 Scrap
- Tech Levels now take 60, 90, and 120 seconds ⇒ 40, 60, and 80 seconds to research, respectively.
- Items now take 60, 90, and 120 seconds ⇒ 40, 60, and 80 seconds to research, respectively.
- Squad upgrades now take 60, 90, and 120 seconds ⇒ 40, 60, and 80 seconds to research depending on their tech level requirement.
Mercenaries
- Artillery Cube
- Health: 400 ⇒ 275
- Healer
- Heal frequency: 3 seconds ⇒ 1 second
- Heal Recharge rate: 10 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
- Max charges: 5 ⇒ 20
- Leviathan
- Health: 600 ⇒ 1000
- Attack Damage: 100 ⇒ 160
- Tech requirement: Tech Level 3 ⇒ Tech Level 4
- Blinder
- Tech requirement: Tech Level 3 ⇒ Tech Level 4
- Teleporter
- Tech requirement: Tech Level 3 ⇒ Tech Level 4
- Juggernaut
- Attack Damage: 500 ⇒ 300
- Attack cooldown: 2.5 seconds ⇒ 3.2 seconds
- Tech requirement: Tech Level 3 ⇒ Tech Level 4
Squads
General
- Squad upgrades now more-clearly indicate which unit and ability they affect.
- Squad ability tooltips now more-clearly indicate which unit activates which ability.
Alder
- Living Vines (D)
- Root duration: 5 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
- Seedbot
- Health: 275 ⇒ 235
Celesta
- Celesta
- Cleansing Light (F)
- Delay: 5 seconds ⇒ 4 seconds
- Cleansing Light (F)
Eris
- Sandstinger
- Health: 85 ⇒ 75
- Stinging Surge (Q)
- Cooldown: 9 seconds ⇒ 11 seconds
- Apocalyte
- Health: 100 ⇒ 140
- Armor type: Heavy ⇒ Light
- Destructive Prophecy (E)
- Delay: 2 seconds ⇒ 1.75 seconds
- Radius: 2.5 ⇒ 2.75
Grath
- Terrapin Trooper
- Attack damage: 15 ⇒ 20
- Howling Commando
- Health: 400 ⇒ 300
- Attack damage: 30 ⇒ 40
Ryme
- Glacial Ranger
- Movement speed: 4.8 ⇒ 4.7
- Frostcaller
- Movement speed: 4.7 ⇒ 4.6
- Cryostasis (W)
- Cooldown: 15 seconds ⇒ 20 seconds
- Ancient Ice Frog
- Health: 875 ⇒ 775
- Movement speed: 4.9 ⇒ 4.7
Vex
- Ignitor
- Health: 325 ⇒ 225
- Oil Grenade (E)
- Cooldown: 12 seconds ⇒ 17 seconds
- Upgrade: Living Accelerant
- Radius: 3 ⇒ 1.5
Audio
- We're still on the hunt for any major audio issues. Please report any you might find!
Comments
Quick first impressions: seemed pretty solid. I did okay in many skirmishes but overcommited a few times. Another common personal failing is losing track of the larger war and game progression. I bounced between geyser battles and titans/expansion fortification, and that mostly kept me busy enough that I didn't try attacking/raiding, which may have contributed to us being behind (but I also recognized more names on the other team, so the results were kind of what I predicted)
Still need to figure out something useful to do with the first juggernaut, tower attack didn't accomplish much.
General Notes
Relaxed playtest, relaxed notes: The art and polish is amazing. The portrait work is fantastic, but even just the tool tips and lobby/client UI elements (including the small things like the friend list) fit well.
Played a lot of Vex, health reduction on the T3 hurt a bit, especially when I couldn't get enough scrap to get some extra healing or mitigation. His auto looks awesome now, btw.
I think things in this game have gotten sort of stale. Now that I've had a chance to play it for awhile I am pretty familiar with the systems, how things work, and how most matchups will end up.
The things that excited me the most in this patch was the new art pictures on Squad selection and the graphs + statistics at the end of the matches. I'm a huge fan of statistics and I am very very glad you guys put those in.
What I'm unhappy about is how, "easy" and sorta "slow" Atlas has become. I mean I don't by any means win every game but things seem just so straightforward.
*I never find myself lost for time trying to do too many things at once. So I never feel overwhelmed and that there definitely a skill gap that I need to fill. This may seem like a good thing but I enjoy it to a point because after mastering the skill you feel accomplished and like a better player. (Example: Splitting your time between Micro and queen injects, and larva management as a Zerg player very overwhelming at first, but when you figure it out, you become a much better Zerg player.)
*There aren't very many things that cause me to be afraid in the game. Without fear there isn't intensity, the only time I feel even sort of afraid is when I have to facecheck a bush with my very fragile vela + army, which can of course be avoided with wards. Overall without any fear causing elements in the game I never feel like the stakes are high, or that the game is on the line. (Example: When you are the last player in a CS:GO match and there are 2 or 3 enemies left. It's very intense, very scary, and very very awesome if you pull it off.)
Those are my main thoughts about where the current build of Atlas can improve. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy it compared to where it was at. This game has gone LEAGUES beyond where it was during Test Weekend 1. I just see lots of room that it could grow more and that excites the heck out of me!
I love items, though I wish the tree was longer for later games.
I love Spigots, they give constant hotspots that you need to fight over and I love not being lost at what to do next. Though I do wish they re spawned a little faster.
I love love love love LOVE how much you guys have started investing into better player models and sounds. There's still a long way to go with Audio but I see you guys making strides to give the game a more appealing visual aspects and I love it! The only thing I would love more is if you started introducing story into the game and backgrounds but I understand completely why you would be hesitant to do that before like the game's beta.
I'm a fan of where Economy has gone and I can't think of another game that has the same "Bleed" mechanic where you lose the ability to build units.
Question: Can you please confirm the names of the resources?
Red: Stock
Green: Scrap
Yellow: Is this still food? The Icon has changed and now I'm sorta confused.
Cheers
Art upgrade looks good, and the re-branding of stock really helps it feel more accurate. I no longer feel like I should be able to "mine people" to increase it mid-game.
I didn't experience any serious audio glitches or other bugs in my games.
Okay cool, so it wasn't just me that thought the art was new aha. It looks great!
As for the build (I'm assuming this is the same one that was up last night for the daily test stuff), to me it felt like the best of the new "system" builds with the diminishing food supply. All the games felt close, with tons of teamwork across both sides of the map. This has felt like a great improvement over the previous test weekend-esque builds where there wasn't to much cross map movement (I think this is the first time I've dropped feedback on it since it changed a few weeks ago so figured I'd mention it
).
The two main things that I really noticed though last night while playing with people were:
1) I find that I frequently miss in-game messages because of where they are placed on the screen. This lead to me missing out on team cues a couple of times, which made me feel bad/ like I was hindering the team. I feel like if it was placed more in the center of the screen ala Starcraft or Dota, it would make it much more noticeable - namely because I find that, that is where I focus my attention 85% of the time.
2) Facing Grath as Celestra felt completely hopeless/ was super frustrating at times. Namely when Grath uses his enlarge ability/ turn to stone together. In at least one of my games last night (Replay ID: G9c84c0719eb049be990c9238804e04cf ) Grath around 21ish minutes (or so) single handedly nearly took out 38supply of my army (I think he killed ~30ish of it, and nearly my hero) before finally dying. And before that, killed off as much/ slight more with the hero and a single rhino (though that time, positioning might have played a little bit more into it, as the purifers weren't rooted). While I may just not know how to deal with it properly, in the moment it felt very frustrating/ dumb that a single unit was able to clean up so much of another army, when they were focus firing him down.
Overall though, I look forward to playing more this weekend with the new players!
Edit: And oh, it seems like pressing the play/pause/ fast forward buttons in the replays doesn't work? I could only use the hotkeys for it.
Some initial thoughts after a few bot games, comparing to Test Weekend 2 (Playtest 194):
Gameplay:
I'm not a fan of the economy changes made in Playtest 199. It feels like squads with low-health units like Eris are punished far more, and run out of resources more easily.
Audio:
I'm getting an audio issue where only sounds from the far right side of my screen are actually getting played. I'm not sure if this is on my end or not, so I'll try a few changes and see if I can find the cause.
There should be a fix for this issue in for Sunday.
I only found one bug this playtest, and it occurred in 2/8 of my games. When I surrounded a tower as grath (or sometimes just approached) it would target/lock-on to a turtle over and over, the same unit and placing the sound effect. It wouldn't actually fire a single shot either. I am unsure of what caused it. replay: Gb5c29f15330d4ff08187c4489b45591e Happen at 6:12 middle bottom tower, and at some other points too I think.
Overall my games were a ton of fun, great to see so many new players try things out. Healers saw a ton of play, probably too much. I know I used them everygame (as grath) and my winrate reflected it (7-1).
I had great fun with the build this weekend, played mostly Hydros. Unfortunately several games had people DC but that's par for the course for events like these with lots of new people and stress on the servers. A few things in no particular order:
I think that until a reconnect system is in place, it's probably better to trigger a remake than to have one side fight with a bot if the DC happens early on. The AI is still in too basic state to properly sub for a human and it felt rather unfair even though I happened to be on the winning side of that coin flip.
I really liked the contest area in the middle, to get the Aspect. Prompted a lot of maneuvering from both teams, lots of flanking, vision control fights. It can be a bit confusing to get control of the aspect on the 10th gem though. Sometimes several people cap gems but due to some being denied during the fight I'd get the aspect and didn't realize because I thought my gem was say 8/10. Sometimes I saw people not realizing they had control of it and send it to base or some place else. Maybe make it so one has to assume control of it with T or something more deliberate, or simply have it push the nearest tower automatically like in some hots maps.
Still not a fan of pre-game selection of mercs. It's very frustrating to me to have to decide on something at the point of least information available. About comps, about lane matchups, about anything really. Even if I knew those things, making those decisions in-game, reacting to the opponent's strategy is a big part of what makes RTS games fun. One already commits to a lot by picking a squad. In starcraft one prepicks a race, but each race has the same broad categories available. Stuff like t1 rushes, or tech units, or fliers, or utility harrasment, etc. Those things can be decided based on scouting info to adapt to the enemy. By forcing a pre-pick basically makes it a process of figuring out the generally 'better' option that works for most cases, with the ocassional curveball. My suggestion with this would be to allow picking in game (one does not use mercs at lvl1 anymore I believe anyway) with the option of a merc tech switch with a limitation/cost.