Kon-Tiki's First Impressions
For reference:
My computer is a mid-2014 15" MacBook Pro, the one that still has the dedicated Nvidia 750M. I'm playing on OSX (though I do dual-boot Windows).
Technical: no major issues. I do wish I could cmd+tab (alt+tab for you Windows users) in-game, though I suspect that that might be hidden somewhere in the options. The game runs beautifully at 2800x1800 resolution. No other complaints.
Client: I love it. No issues. Though, as much as I love Sean's voice, having that video start over again every time you hit the ATLAS tab is going to get old. Maybe start it on mute?
Gameplay: I feel like the game is absolutely hitting the right note in terms of general design. It seems to be a solid hybrid of MOBAs and standard traditional RTS. Thus, the three players (a nice balance between one player and five players) makes all the sense in the world. I do think that having one player spawn far away from the other two players seems weird. It seems to me that this map wants to be circular, with players spawning next to each other, and the middle player expands up the middle while the other two expand up the sides.
In my first game, I got confused as to the gem-gathering spots and the tower-building spots. It cleared quickly, but I ended up hamstringing myself early on in the game.
Sometimes, the units feel kind of dragoon-ey in their pathing. Additionally, I have more than once body-blocked an inferior enemy army against a wall, taking all of them out and giving them no chance for retreat. That felt a little too powerful at times.
I misunderstood that all races could build the "stangnant offense" buildings. I found myself thinking that whatever race had those satellite+turret combinations felt really powerful before realizing that anyone could do it. When I figured it out though the entire economy made a lot more sense. Additonally, it seems like the AI players have a hard time identifying the threat posed by these units and I find myself all over the map dealing with panic situations that arose because the enemy AI put a single sat+turret down and my allies just sort of ignored it.
It is weird to me that you can take enemy expansions and not their turrets. The most striaghtforward solution to me is that you should be able to not build defensive turrets at an expansion until the actual expansion itself is online.
Along the same lines I mentioned earlier with the third player spawning off to the side of everyone else, it is also funky that the building that you're defending is way off to the side.
Flavor: its great. I love the tongue-in-cheek names for units, like the ancient ice frog (icefrog being the primary developer of defense of the ancients) or the howling commandos et al. The sounds are simple, identifiable, and fun in their own way, though what sounds you can hear at any given point on the map seems inconsistent. The heroes all feel individual and powerful but not so powerful that basic units seem pointless. I love the vaguely-sci-fi voices too.
I am wondering about the colors though in the character selection screen. Are the colors supposed to indicate some sort of position (support, damage, tank, etc)? It seems like they are but is isn't clear yet.
All in all, its a very very positive experience. I look forward to PvP tomorrow. Obviously the game isn't complete, but if the game built up from what is already here, I think it would be a lot of fun!
Comments
Thrilled to hear your enjoyment of the basic gameflow! One of the big things we're looking for is, basically, "does it flow properly?" There are obviously many new mechanics, and we don't want there to be TOO many! I'll respond to some of the highlight points here. Reply if you have any other questions
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Re: pathing -- Pathing is one of our biggest areas of complaint and focus and we will continue to iterate on this over the next 6 months. Our goal is to have motion with some "reasonable" clunkiness to it. We want it to be easier to surround/block enemy units AND for there to be a significant cost/gain to position your units poorly/well. Also, our motion creates variation in army shapes, allowing for some more interesting and dynamic battles. I'd ask that, as you play over the next week, does the pathing feel worse over time? Do you get used to it? Do you start to enjoy it? We don't want it to be too frustrating.
Re: base stealing -- we should probably straight disable construction on the other half of the map. We didn't simply because it happens almost never in PvP games (which is what we primarily test).
Re: colors -- Each color has a rough personality that I'm going to try to condense cleanly (though they have much deeper philosophies). Blue = generally more supportive/spellcastery. Green = solid raw stats, very sturdy, good at engagement. Red = generally higher damage lower health, aesthetic of "bursts" of things (speed/damage etc). White = Mobility, good range, very fragile, generally focused on single target damage.
On pathing: when I played with a party (since the first post, actually), I started to realize that a significant part of the pathing issues were actually ally AI issues. Other humans seem to be able to read my army's "body language" better to allow me to move where I want to in a way that the AI just doesn't . Now obviously I'm not a professional game designer or anything,I suspsect that asyou have more players playing with other players, you'll see pathing complaints a lot less.
Though there are some few spots where the hero looks like it should fit, and seems to think it should fit, but doesn't. I've had my hero get stuck between a mineral patch and a tower a couple of times. It wasn't a huge deal, but I had to manually guide it past.
Base stealing: that makes sense. I realized that I COULD steal a base, but that I couldn't defend it, which seemed inconsistent.
Hope my post was helpful!
Post was awesome :D.
Also, lemme know how the pathing feels once you are in PvP! Hopefully allies will help moar? Or the trolling will be brutal lol.
Hey! So I don't know if you'll get a notification or what, but I'm here to tell you that my pathing complaints in PvP were basically mostly gone. I was still able to wall-block enemy units, allowing me to take out many more units than I feel like I otherwise would have been able to do. I don't know if that's an intended tactic, but it feels powerful and like it would be un-fun for the recipient. There's still a spot or two where a bigger unit (like Vela's T3 unit and most heroes) just don't fit between a tower and a mineral patch. Other than that, it feels like an old-school RTS in terms of pathing, which may be the source of others' complaints.