Scenario 1)
What happened? I got into a matchmaking game with other testers on discord, where the opponents were most likely not in voice comms.
It made me feel... bad for the other team. The coordination advantage, even without a party mechanism, was nigh overwhelming.
Scenario 2)
What happened? I got into a matchmaking game where the opposing team had at least 2 members in discord voice chat, and nobody else on my team was in the discord chat, or on mumble.
It made me feel... insignificant vs the might of the enemy coordination. Partially due to still learning the game, but there's no other way to put it: we got utterly stomped, and the effects of the enemy coordination were obvious. (the way they moved together, the flanking attacks, etc etc)
Suggestion to improve both?
In game voice chat is a necessecity for launch. One does not simply survive a fight if they pause micro long enough to ping, much less type.
Feedback 1:
Communication felt like a rather difficult endeavor and when I tried to communicate properly via pings, I felt like my team wasn't getting the message. This could be fixed by 1) Implementing voice chat, 2) implementing a chat wheel, or 3) implementing a ping system similar to what league of legends has, where there are different types of pings.
Feedback 2:
The mercenaries feel like a forced feature. Perhaps I wasn't using them correctly, but when I built them it felt like they weren't pulling their weight compared to the squad units. I just feel like the synergy isn't there with the squads I was playing (vela and vex, mostly).
Great game though, feels pretty good for a prealpha.
The other team was using advanced tactics such as sending a couple units to kill our workers, while fighting us head on. This generally proved to be too much to handle for my teammates and I to handle as we never split our own individual armies to up deal with ratting. Everyone just kept their clumps and ran from one attack to the next, not actually accomplishing anything. I did not enjoy playing those 3 games, because it felt like it was too much work. Every game I ended up having to play defense because we were either being raided, or because my team never wanted to group up and smash the enemy head on. It felt like I never got to enjoy the game.
A lot (though not all) of endgames feel a little like who blinks first, barring games with obvious imbalance. People are getting mutually raided, towers going down. Actual end often seems like a team grabs a jug once it's powerful enough. I did see some late game ones taken down when the opponents were in position. Maybe how to coordinate final strikes is a higher level structure that will develop over time.
Saw some interesting strategies, not quite doing them myself. A few flyer raids on workers (I split some units to take care of them, yay me) One person using dropships. Didn't really realize what was happening during the game; at first thought it teleporter not taking one flying unit. Hopefully effects will eventually make the dropship function more obvious.
A player dropping in the back of the base won their team the game.
It made me feel frustrated, because I had seen this player do this tactic before, but still I was not a quick enough learner to stop it.
Part of this is just due to being new to the game, and not realizing that the right mercs could effectively stop this tactic. Though in one game, a teammate remarked that we couldn't build anti-air turrets near our nexus, which would have also been a useful defense. At one point I did use some air wards, but they lasted only a few minutes, and then we were blind again.
Search for PresidentTime's replays, he did this in every game I played with him (4 times). They got quite adept at this strategy
I played about 5 PvP games today. When attempting to defend my team's bases, I found it difficult to journey across the map in time to have an impact on Defense. I'm not sure if my units were just slow, or my team had lack of information, but I definitely felt helpless when my team was on the defensive.
Had a lot of fun with the playtest! The units all seemed to beg for experimenting with different strategies and army compositions, so I look forward to the chance for more pvp matches. Also, Vex's dinosaur flamethrowers were awesome and felt like dinosaurs that were flamethrowers, which rules.
Speaking of, they also seemed to get stuck behind my t1 squads. It actually felt pretty good to have to properly arrange my units before and during engagements and not have ai that just cleared the way for them. Also, DINOSAUR FLAMETHROWERS.
Something I think could use some work are the spell casts. During teamfights I had a difficult time noticing every spell cast, especially those on allied units I was not directly paying attention to. I often looked over to notice an ally was frozen or on fire, and I didn't respond quick enough to be able to take some pressure off of them. The spell casts, to me felt more like just another click instead of som kind of big event. While they certainly could have a big impact. Blowing up a bunch of dudes with pyroblast, for example, was cool, but it didn't give me the kind of AWWW SHIT feeling I've gotten from big ultimates in games like Warcraft 3 or dota 2.
I think sound effects might be able to help with both of those issues. The sound effects help make spells more recognizable without making the screen too cluttered with particle effects. Something like lion's finger of death from dota 2 comes to mind. It also has the side benefit of generating an EXTREMELY satisfying BWAAAAP sound, so it feels GREAT when you press your ult button.
I played TW2 and TW3. It is hard to tell what to describe for this... In all except a few of my PvP games today, the early game had exciting back and forth with what seemed like a number of good options for both how to play and how to counter. If my opponent(s) in an area were too strong to engage, I had other objectives I could work on that seemed necessary for game progression. For instance sometimes I could dominate the fountains and get a Juggernaut or, if I was pushed out, I could poke at their army, of if that was not going well, I could go work on neutral camps. My one PvP win was a great example of this with full army trades back and forth around the fountain backed up by the extra edge of my full team being in voice chat.
This early game interaction felt engaging and enjoyable. Even as a lower skill player there were tradeoffs that I could understand. I could see how, between one game and another, I had played poorly or where the opponent(s) had done a thing that I saw as being better than what I had tried. This felt smooth both as 1v1 area and 2v2 area. Even losing everything to just one or two of Vex's fire lizards several times felt ok, because my team was able to step in or in the next fight I was able to pick them off (until my opponent built several at once).
Late game, in all except 2 games (one win and one loss) there seemed to come a point where one side had armies that were almost certain to crush the other side's armies. This seemed to be heavily connected to the teams getting behind taking healing towers, although I had trouble telling exactly what the factors were that lead to this. At this point, several engages later, the game would end even when the defender tried different approaches.
This felt demoralizing. I could see what the problems were, yet I had trouble finding a way to introduce counterplay. This may have been partly that as a lower experience RTS player, I had a hard time keeping up both with army/objectives and keeping my scrap spent. I regularly found at the end of the game that I was surprised by how much scrap I had left, but then even in the next game working hard to remember to spend it, I still had leftover. I want to say that this was because that tipping point would be reached and then I had to spend more focus to micro to have any chance of surviving and being in position to slow the end of the game...
Sorry that this feedback is not well structured nor precise about the details. From TW2 to TW3, I felt that this weekend was much more fun in the early game and that the endgame, while still lacking strong counterplay, felt more like I could point to exactly what points of team cooperation and/or my personal RTS skill execution had caused the outcome. I will say that voice chat makes a HUGE difference, but even when my teammates were not in the voice chat, this iteration felt more rewarding for the bulk of playtime during a game. It was only towards the end where I could see the end coming without knowing what I could do to affect the result. I think part of it was that the towers couldn't delay or create enough risk to end game armies such that I had an opportunity to execute a response when defending.
PvP is good! I went 1-3 and I can't say that any match felt unfair due to the games mechanics or squad selection. I ended up in the 1v1 lane every game though, so I can't say I got a full feel of what transpired. Also, I had been playing almost exclusively Hydros prior to PvP and I didn't get to pick him in 2 of the 4 games. The 1 game that we won I was Hydros though. That being said, I did make sure to win at least one bot match with every squad in the first few days of TW3 so I wasn't entire ignorant in my off-squad games.
AoE damage (Pyrosaurs) and Deadeye snipes felt bad. With all 3 players in a lane or expansion, AoE damage gets tons of value. Deadeyes are strong, but with Hydros I found I could still trade evenly in the lane. Overall, the balance felt good outside of mismatched MMR and voice communication. I'm going to go back and watch replays now :-). Gg
I thought the playtest was amazing, I played every pvp game that i had the time for. Playing against people feels great I felt that the waiting for game wasn't bad because it was clear how long you'd be waiting. Then in game i thought it was alot of fun to work with people. Playing against the playtesters was an especially fun challenge.
As i was playing though i felt like i wasn't being aggressive enough in fighting for the fountains since usually i was playing a squishier character and they tended to have a tank. If i was working with a tank then this worked out perfectly however when i was solo or there were 2 squishies it felt alot more like we were all waiting for an opportunity against a team of tanks where even if we capitalize, they could possibly survive and run away at which point we will have already fallen behind. Then once we fell behind it would get harder to capitalize due to dealing less damage while lacking cc and without a tank it was very hard to do other objectives as well. This led to squishies usually feeling like you were hoping the opponent would mess up rather than playing proactively. In general it just felt like tanks/semi-tanks were alot better unless you were with someone else who knew what they were doing and coordinated.
Went 1-4, still had boatloads of fun which is definitely a good sign.
Early Game:
Feels good, not as boring as I thought it would be since coordinating with team mates on which expansions to take and when to go to the geysers is surprisingly challenging. It gives you a chance to get your bearings, see what your teammates are building and get some sense of their skill level and how they play.
10/10 - would't change a thing
Mid Game:
This is where I felt like I could express myself as a player. I went for a fast Howler build for Grath that I saw no one else do (didn't notice any fast teching, even though its super viable), and I chose Guardian cubes and Enhancers for support pretty much every game. This gave me the powerful, slow, durable, protoss-style army I wanted and was very satisfying to use, particularly against swarms of red units. Being able to create my own viable strategy made me feel like a special snowflake.
I prioritized expansions over geysers, since I could usually kill a juggernaut before it did anything. I tried pinging to tell my teammates, but not once did they listen. Someone even apologized at the end of the game for not noticing the soft, low ping sound and dark purple rings on the map. Can you make this more obvious somehow? This was really frustrating (as in I got angry at the game itself).
I tried a number of upgrade combos and settled on attack>lifesteal>health, which worked pretty good. I feel confused by the upgrades since too many of them do the same thing (either attack or defense). I also feel frustrated because they don't seem to matter until the end game. Even then, it seems more important to have at least one attack choice and one defense choice and it doesn't matter what they are.
I mentioned this to Day9 in the chat, but the inability to macro out bigger armies was pretty disappointing. I felt great teching to faster T2 or T3 units, but that's really all you can do when you take a second expansion. I know you guys want to prevent a-move wins, but the current solution is cramping my creativity. If expansions or something else provided a boost to supply (even a small, temporary one), I could go for extra units instead of extra upgrades as needed.
The moment-to-moment gameplay was still super exciting. Unlike in RTS games, where I feel wedded to my opening, I felt a lot of freedom being able to move between pushes, harassment, geyser collection, and creeping. I could always be making progress without a direct confrontation with the enemy, which made me feel powerful even when I was outmatched by better players. I was also able to adjust my army composition after losing units without losing too much momentum, which was a joy and a relief. This is the part of the game I love and I'll be coming up with another new strategy in the downtime until TW4.
Late Game:
This is where things got a little wonky. Half my games ended with someone death-rushing my nexus as soon as they got to tier 3. This made me angry at the game, since the normal progression of tower pushing is so satisfying and this feels so cheap. Please consider upping the damage of the nexus weapon, increasing the shield capacity and recharge time of the nexus, or both.
However, matches seemed to end very abruptly even without nexus rushing, which felt unsatisying on both sides. If I was on the better team, I could lock down a geyser, push a lane, and rinse repeat to victory without much of anything the enemy could do. Having a fully formed Tier 3 team seemed to make me unstoppable. Conversely, against an enemy who was pressuring and harassing all game, they would push, my army would evaporate when hit with an AOE ultimate, and then I'd vote to surrender. This made me feel hopeless. I think ultimates and Tier 3 units should decisively end the game, but some of them seem to do this a little too well.
On the plus side, in my first game there was also an epic Tier 3 army clash that could have gone either way and came down to positioning and attack lines, like it should. This felt amazing to be a part of and really encapsulated why I like Atlas so much more than a cookie-cutter MOBA. I also felt like I was cheating (in a good way) when I resummoned my entire army less than a minute after a push that burned down all the towers in a lane.
This lets me know satisfying finishes can happen in Atlas, and it might just need better matchmaking to happen more than a quarter of the time.
Overall PvP Impression:
I LOVE Atlas. I only play SC2 for coop anymore, because it's so stressful, and I never play MOBAs anymore because they're so boring. Atlas really defines a sweet spot for itself in between those genres, and I'm really going to miss playing it again until the next test. The game already has tons of fun, viable strategies I can't wait to explore and I'm very thankful you guys invited me.
The Good:
I really liked playing Atlas so far. I am pretty upset I can't play anymore! I think that the game is surprisingly balanced all things considered. I also just had fun playing in general, the unit interaction felt dynamic and made me feel like I had potential to change fights.
Things That Could Be Improved:
I really think the map could be improved to make resource gathering/harass more important. In some of my games it felt like having an economy advantage wasn't all that important because one upgrade was not too game changing. I think it would be a good idea to start with less stock (maybe 100) and then have players mine stock/supplies as the game goes on, so that harass and expansions are very important. It was also hard to tell who was ahead because the stock limit limited everyone so everyone had the same amount of stuff. The only differences (until everyone starts running out of pop) is really in upgrades/tech due to scrap mining.
I also felt like defender's advantage was not as strong as it could have been. I think having one more tower per lane could help a lot so that it isn't so easy for a push to catch your team off guard.
TL;DR (also easier to read than the above)
-I'd prefer more economy management and more strategies around securing and denying my opponents economy. Right now it doesn't feel all that impactful to have a better economy.
-I'd like a little more defender's advantage later on in the game. After the first tower falls defender's advantage is almost completely gone outside the main base area.
-I stil really enjoyed atlas and I really can't wait until the next playtest! Unit interaction felt fun (pathing was sometimes frustrating with units blocking each other) and I feel like it's already really close to being a great game
Hello! It's your boy Pandapownium!
PvP was enjoyable. The feeling of clockwork with your team is almost unbeatable. There are definitely some changes I would like to see in the design, but since this is about just PvP I'll keep it about the whole experience. When I queue into the game and pick my hero I get excited, I lock in an I know what I'm going to be doing at the beginning of the game and my fingers are ready to max out my APM. I finally load in and queue up my guys and set my hot keys and then I wait for the match to begin. When it starts I immediately spam v and ` to get my hero out and onto those titans. Watching my enemies minions come out with mine and crush the titans feels soo good. When I heard about the v to summon minions I was like what? Why? Now I see a side benefit of watching your minions flood out of your building ready for war. Then we march over to the titans and I place an expansion and kill it. We then travel to the Medium camp for some sweet gems before the aspects spawn... and then the game begins.
These starts feel very fun, but after a couple games... there isn't much mystery as to what you or your opponent is doing, you lose that paranoia of 'What if the enemy is going for a three man 6 pool?!?!" This paranoia all though wouldn't be described as a happy emotion, it's a strong emotion, and I play games for strong emotions. I don't want to just sit and be brainwashed into rinse repeat (Get it? BrainWASHED.... rinse repeat... alright I won't try to joke again) anyways those strong feelings is what I was hoping to get out of this game, I could only find those feelings while playing SC2 (and tetris, 1v1 me br0!) I have played Smite, Dota, and Heroes of the Storm on a serious level, never pro, but still passionate about the games. However, none of them gave me the same adrenaline rush as pulling off Stephano's 12 minute max roach build. Nothing gives me the edge of the seat chills like when I had banelings flanking my enemies MMM and they were ready to explode. When I heard that Sean was working on his own RTS I got excited that I might feel those feelings again, but after playing I see there is soooooo much potential to have these strong emotions, I just haven't really found them. I know there are definitely those feelings... but there are a lot of dull moments that water down those moments.
I don't have solutions to these problems yet, but I know that you guys can provide those rushes, you just need some fine tuning .
Comments
That is all
Scenario 1)
What happened? I got into a matchmaking game with other testers on discord, where the opponents were most likely not in voice comms.
It made me feel... bad for the other team. The coordination advantage, even without a party mechanism, was nigh overwhelming.
Scenario 2)
What happened? I got into a matchmaking game where the opposing team had at least 2 members in discord voice chat, and nobody else on my team was in the discord chat, or on mumble.
It made me feel... insignificant vs the might of the enemy coordination. Partially due to still learning the game, but there's no other way to put it: we got utterly stomped, and the effects of the enemy coordination were obvious. (the way they moved together, the flanking attacks, etc etc)
Suggestion to improve both?
In game voice chat is a necessecity for launch. One does not simply survive a fight if they pause micro long enough to ping, much less type.
Feedback 1:
Communication felt like a rather difficult endeavor and when I tried to communicate properly via pings, I felt like my team wasn't getting the message. This could be fixed by 1) Implementing voice chat, 2) implementing a chat wheel, or 3) implementing a ping system similar to what league of legends has, where there are different types of pings.
Feedback 2:
The mercenaries feel like a forced feature. Perhaps I wasn't using them correctly, but when I built them it felt like they weren't pulling their weight compared to the squad units. I just feel like the synergy isn't there with the squads I was playing (vela and vex, mostly).
Great game though, feels pretty good for a prealpha.
I played 3 games of PvP. I lost 3 games of PvP.
The other team was using advanced tactics such as sending a couple units to kill our workers, while fighting us head on. This generally proved to be too much to handle for my teammates and I to handle as we never split our own individual armies to up deal with ratting. Everyone just kept their clumps and ran from one attack to the next, not actually accomplishing anything. I did not enjoy playing those 3 games, because it felt like it was too much work. Every game I ended up having to play defense because we were either being raided, or because my team never wanted to group up and smash the enemy head on. It felt like I never got to enjoy the game.
Will a 1v1 game mode be available?
A lot (though not all) of endgames feel a little like who blinks first, barring games with obvious imbalance. People are getting mutually raided, towers going down. Actual end often seems like a team grabs a jug once it's powerful enough. I did see some late game ones taken down when the opponents were in position. Maybe how to coordinate final strikes is a higher level structure that will develop over time.
Saw some interesting strategies, not quite doing them myself. A few flyer raids on workers (I split some units to take care of them, yay me) One person using dropships. Didn't really realize what was happening during the game; at first thought it teleporter not taking one flying unit. Hopefully effects will eventually make the dropship function more obvious.
A player dropping in the back of the base won their team the game.
It made me feel frustrated, because I had seen this player do this tactic before, but still I was not a quick enough learner to stop it.
Part of this is just due to being new to the game, and not realizing that the right mercs could effectively stop this tactic. Though in one game, a teammate remarked that we couldn't build anti-air turrets near our nexus, which would have also been a useful defense. At one point I did use some air wards, but they lasted only a few minutes, and then we were blind again.
Search for PresidentTime's replays, he did this in every game I played with him (4 times). They got quite adept at this strategy
I played about 5 PvP games today. When attempting to defend my team's bases, I found it difficult to journey across the map in time to have an impact on Defense. I'm not sure if my units were just slow, or my team had lack of information, but I definitely felt helpless when my team was on the defensive.
Had a lot of fun with the playtest! The units all seemed to beg for experimenting with different strategies and army compositions, so I look forward to the chance for more pvp matches. Also, Vex's dinosaur flamethrowers were awesome and felt like dinosaurs that were flamethrowers, which rules.
Speaking of, they also seemed to get stuck behind my t1 squads. It actually felt pretty good to have to properly arrange my units before and during engagements and not have ai that just cleared the way for them. Also, DINOSAUR FLAMETHROWERS.
Something I think could use some work are the spell casts. During teamfights I had a difficult time noticing every spell cast, especially those on allied units I was not directly paying attention to. I often looked over to notice an ally was frozen or on fire, and I didn't respond quick enough to be able to take some pressure off of them. The spell casts, to me felt more like just another click instead of som kind of big event. While they certainly could have a big impact. Blowing up a bunch of dudes with pyroblast, for example, was cool, but it didn't give me the kind of AWWW SHIT feeling I've gotten from big ultimates in games like Warcraft 3 or dota 2.
I think sound effects might be able to help with both of those issues. The sound effects help make spells more recognizable without making the screen too cluttered with particle effects. Something like lion's finger of death from dota 2 comes to mind. It also has the side benefit of generating an EXTREMELY satisfying BWAAAAP sound, so it feels GREAT when you press your ult button.
I played TW2 and TW3. It is hard to tell what to describe for this... In all except a few of my PvP games today, the early game had exciting back and forth with what seemed like a number of good options for both how to play and how to counter. If my opponent(s) in an area were too strong to engage, I had other objectives I could work on that seemed necessary for game progression. For instance sometimes I could dominate the fountains and get a Juggernaut or, if I was pushed out, I could poke at their army, of if that was not going well, I could go work on neutral camps. My one PvP win was a great example of this with full army trades back and forth around the fountain backed up by the extra edge of my full team being in voice chat.
This early game interaction felt engaging and enjoyable. Even as a lower skill player there were tradeoffs that I could understand. I could see how, between one game and another, I had played poorly or where the opponent(s) had done a thing that I saw as being better than what I had tried. This felt smooth both as 1v1 area and 2v2 area. Even losing everything to just one or two of Vex's fire lizards several times felt ok, because my team was able to step in or in the next fight I was able to pick them off (until my opponent built several at once).
Late game, in all except 2 games (one win and one loss) there seemed to come a point where one side had armies that were almost certain to crush the other side's armies. This seemed to be heavily connected to the teams getting behind taking healing towers, although I had trouble telling exactly what the factors were that lead to this. At this point, several engages later, the game would end even when the defender tried different approaches.
This felt demoralizing. I could see what the problems were, yet I had trouble finding a way to introduce counterplay. This may have been partly that as a lower experience RTS player, I had a hard time keeping up both with army/objectives and keeping my scrap spent. I regularly found at the end of the game that I was surprised by how much scrap I had left, but then even in the next game working hard to remember to spend it, I still had leftover. I want to say that this was because that tipping point would be reached and then I had to spend more focus to micro to have any chance of surviving and being in position to slow the end of the game...
Sorry that this feedback is not well structured nor precise about the details. From TW2 to TW3, I felt that this weekend was much more fun in the early game and that the endgame, while still lacking strong counterplay, felt more like I could point to exactly what points of team cooperation and/or my personal RTS skill execution had caused the outcome. I will say that voice chat makes a HUGE difference, but even when my teammates were not in the voice chat, this iteration felt more rewarding for the bulk of playtime during a game. It was only towards the end where I could see the end coming without knowing what I could do to affect the result. I think part of it was that the towers couldn't delay or create enough risk to end game armies such that I had an opportunity to execute a response when defending.
PvP is good! I went 1-3 and I can't say that any match felt unfair due to the games mechanics or squad selection. I ended up in the 1v1 lane every game though, so I can't say I got a full feel of what transpired. Also, I had been playing almost exclusively Hydros prior to PvP and I didn't get to pick him in 2 of the 4 games. The 1 game that we won I was Hydros though. That being said, I did make sure to win at least one bot match with every squad in the first few days of TW3 so I wasn't entire ignorant in my off-squad games.
AoE damage (Pyrosaurs) and Deadeye snipes felt bad. With all 3 players in a lane or expansion, AoE damage gets tons of value. Deadeyes are strong, but with Hydros I found I could still trade evenly in the lane. Overall, the balance felt good outside of mismatched MMR and voice communication. I'm going to go back and watch replays now :-). Gg
I thought the playtest was amazing, I played every pvp game that i had the time for. Playing against people feels great I felt that the waiting for game wasn't bad because it was clear how long you'd be waiting. Then in game i thought it was alot of fun to work with people. Playing against the playtesters was an especially fun challenge.
As i was playing though i felt like i wasn't being aggressive enough in fighting for the fountains since usually i was playing a squishier character and they tended to have a tank. If i was working with a tank then this worked out perfectly however when i was solo or there were 2 squishies it felt alot more like we were all waiting for an opportunity against a team of tanks where even if we capitalize, they could possibly survive and run away at which point we will have already fallen behind. Then once we fell behind it would get harder to capitalize due to dealing less damage while lacking cc and without a tank it was very hard to do other objectives as well. This led to squishies usually feeling like you were hoping the opponent would mess up rather than playing proactively. In general it just felt like tanks/semi-tanks were alot better unless you were with someone else who knew what they were doing and coordinated.
Went 1-4, still had boatloads of fun which is definitely a good sign.
Early Game:
Feels good, not as boring as I thought it would be since coordinating with team mates on which expansions to take and when to go to the geysers is surprisingly challenging. It gives you a chance to get your bearings, see what your teammates are building and get some sense of their skill level and how they play.
10/10 - would't change a thing
Mid Game:
This is where I felt like I could express myself as a player. I went for a fast Howler build for Grath that I saw no one else do (didn't notice any fast teching, even though its super viable), and I chose Guardian cubes and Enhancers for support pretty much every game. This gave me the powerful, slow, durable, protoss-style army I wanted and was very satisfying to use, particularly against swarms of red units. Being able to create my own viable strategy made me feel like a special snowflake.
I prioritized expansions over geysers, since I could usually kill a juggernaut before it did anything. I tried pinging to tell my teammates, but not once did they listen. Someone even apologized at the end of the game for not noticing the soft, low ping sound and dark purple rings on the map. Can you make this more obvious somehow? This was really frustrating (as in I got angry at the game itself).
I tried a number of upgrade combos and settled on attack>lifesteal>health, which worked pretty good. I feel confused by the upgrades since too many of them do the same thing (either attack or defense). I also feel frustrated because they don't seem to matter until the end game. Even then, it seems more important to have at least one attack choice and one defense choice and it doesn't matter what they are.
I mentioned this to Day9 in the chat, but the inability to macro out bigger armies was pretty disappointing. I felt great teching to faster T2 or T3 units, but that's really all you can do when you take a second expansion. I know you guys want to prevent a-move wins, but the current solution is cramping my creativity. If expansions or something else provided a boost to supply (even a small, temporary one), I could go for extra units instead of extra upgrades as needed.
The moment-to-moment gameplay was still super exciting. Unlike in RTS games, where I feel wedded to my opening, I felt a lot of freedom being able to move between pushes, harassment, geyser collection, and creeping. I could always be making progress without a direct confrontation with the enemy, which made me feel powerful even when I was outmatched by better players. I was also able to adjust my army composition after losing units without losing too much momentum, which was a joy and a relief. This is the part of the game I love and I'll be coming up with another new strategy in the downtime until TW4.
Late Game:
This is where things got a little wonky. Half my games ended with someone death-rushing my nexus as soon as they got to tier 3. This made me angry at the game, since the normal progression of tower pushing is so satisfying and this feels so cheap. Please consider upping the damage of the nexus weapon, increasing the shield capacity and recharge time of the nexus, or both.
However, matches seemed to end very abruptly even without nexus rushing, which felt unsatisying on both sides. If I was on the better team, I could lock down a geyser, push a lane, and rinse repeat to victory without much of anything the enemy could do. Having a fully formed Tier 3 team seemed to make me unstoppable. Conversely, against an enemy who was pressuring and harassing all game, they would push, my army would evaporate when hit with an AOE ultimate, and then I'd vote to surrender. This made me feel hopeless. I think ultimates and Tier 3 units should decisively end the game, but some of them seem to do this a little too well.
On the plus side, in my first game there was also an epic Tier 3 army clash that could have gone either way and came down to positioning and attack lines, like it should. This felt amazing to be a part of and really encapsulated why I like Atlas so much more than a cookie-cutter MOBA. I also felt like I was cheating (in a good way) when I resummoned my entire army less than a minute after a push that burned down all the towers in a lane.
This lets me know satisfying finishes can happen in Atlas, and it might just need better matchmaking to happen more than a quarter of the time.
Overall PvP Impression:
I LOVE Atlas. I only play SC2 for coop anymore, because it's so stressful, and I never play MOBAs anymore because they're so boring. Atlas really defines a sweet spot for itself in between those genres, and I'm really going to miss playing it again until the next test. The game already has tons of fun, viable strategies I can't wait to explore and I'm very thankful you guys invited me.
The Good:
I really liked playing Atlas so far. I am pretty upset I can't play anymore! I think that the game is surprisingly balanced all things considered. I also just had fun playing in general, the unit interaction felt dynamic and made me feel like I had potential to change fights.
Things That Could Be Improved:
I really think the map could be improved to make resource gathering/harass more important. In some of my games it felt like having an economy advantage wasn't all that important because one upgrade was not too game changing. I think it would be a good idea to start with less stock (maybe 100) and then have players mine stock/supplies as the game goes on, so that harass and expansions are very important. It was also hard to tell who was ahead because the stock limit limited everyone so everyone had the same amount of stuff. The only differences (until everyone starts running out of pop) is really in upgrades/tech due to scrap mining.
I also felt like defender's advantage was not as strong as it could have been. I think having one more tower per lane could help a lot so that it isn't so easy for a push to catch your team off guard.
TL;DR (also easier to read than the above)
-I'd prefer more economy management and more strategies around securing and denying my opponents economy. Right now it doesn't feel all that impactful to have a better economy.
-I'd like a little more defender's advantage later on in the game. After the first tower falls defender's advantage is almost completely gone outside the main base area.
-I stil really enjoyed atlas and I really can't wait until the next playtest! Unit interaction felt fun (pathing was sometimes frustrating with units blocking each other) and I feel like it's already really close to being a great game
Hello! It's your boy Pandapownium!
PvP was enjoyable. The feeling of clockwork with your team is almost unbeatable. There are definitely some changes I would like to see in the design, but since this is about just PvP I'll keep it about the whole experience. When I queue into the game and pick my hero I get excited, I lock in an I know what I'm going to be doing at the beginning of the game and my fingers are ready to max out my APM. I finally load in and queue up my guys and set my hot keys and then I wait for the match to begin. When it starts I immediately spam v and ` to get my hero out and onto those titans. Watching my enemies minions come out with mine and crush the titans feels soo good. When I heard about the v to summon minions I was like what? Why? Now I see a side benefit of watching your minions flood out of your building ready for war. Then we march over to the titans and I place an expansion and kill it. We then travel to the Medium camp for some sweet gems before the aspects spawn... and then the game begins.
These starts feel very fun, but after a couple games... there isn't much mystery as to what you or your opponent is doing, you lose that paranoia of 'What if the enemy is going for a three man 6 pool?!?!" This paranoia all though wouldn't be described as a happy emotion, it's a strong emotion, and I play games for strong emotions. I don't want to just sit and be brainwashed into rinse repeat (Get it? BrainWASHED.... rinse repeat... alright I won't try to joke again) anyways those strong feelings is what I was hoping to get out of this game, I could only find those feelings while playing SC2 (and tetris, 1v1 me br0!) I have played Smite, Dota, and Heroes of the Storm on a serious level, never pro, but still passionate about the games. However, none of them gave me the same adrenaline rush as pulling off Stephano's 12 minute max roach build. Nothing gives me the edge of the seat chills like when I had banelings flanking my enemies MMM and they were ready to explode. When I heard that Sean was working on his own RTS I got excited that I might feel those feelings again, but after playing I see there is soooooo much potential to have these strong emotions, I just haven't really found them. I know there are definitely those feelings... but there are a lot of dull moments that water down those moments.
I don't have solutions to these problems yet, but I know that you guys can provide those rushes, you just need some fine tuning .
I hope you liked my story btw :D