Comments

• TheUlf Member

  May 12

  Really enjoying this patch - fighting over the gem spigots feels more meaningful and decisive. The ease of dropping collectors feels very nice when claiming an uncontested area, but the cost of losing a denied gem makes placing a collector in a contested zone feel like a point of strategic/tactical decision making.

  The camps felt really good (also I adore the 'easy'-level caterpillars, love all the art assets coming in), made for a good task to fall back to with teammates after battles over the spigots. Always felt like I could identify something to do at any given point in time and was constantly making decisions about where to send my army.
• wondible Member

  May 12

  Back in the awkward position of trivially winning bot games and getting crushed in PVP

  Yay for no build cooldown. Cuts out waiting around after camps, and a little micro if I manage to split my hero out for collection. Uncertain about when it's socially acceptable to share.

  Buildings: more stuff to hotkey ;^) Defaults maybe? Not sure if incarnation as buildings is really useful, except as a UI feature for players familiar with other games.

  Didn't get a lot of time to appreciate the UI while fighting. Took a little experience to figure out the numbers on the tabs, but the build interface was fairly clear to someone who already know the base mechanics.

  One time my generator queue got really backed up, because I would just queue stuff every time I went to build. Fortunately I didn't want to change directions.
• CohLysion Member

  May 12 edited May 12

  Art/Map Art/UI/Sounds

  (1.1) - Kind of a broad area. Only negative thing I ran into (super minor) was initial confusion at Vex's sound pack, because it sounded a whole lot like everyone in Discord. Other than that, everything is looking really nice. This is the first time I really started to see the change in scale, and I like this a lot more, aesthetically. It seems to fit the squad and battles a bit better. Grand scale could still be nice, though, if you guys end up doing multiple play maps.

  (1.2) - UI is still taking some getting used to. I like the tabbed panels at the bottom, though, once trained where to look. The queue structure isn't too clear until you get enough research and resources to fill the card up, but a tutorial pass would definitely cover that. One can definitely notice the impact on impression of having the more integrated polish in the UI. We've been saying it [edit: "it" being 'that's kind of a polish detail, it'll be worked on eventually as the game gets closer'] for so long that it's always exciting to see polish passes getting put in. Recently, these have been bigger ones than normal, yay!

  Map Design

  (2.1) - I'm still trying to get what games I can in on this new map. I miss the middle expansion from map[-1], but the 150s spawners are much more interesting strategically. I'd keep these "zone plate" mechanics over the broad two-side massive fort expansion.

  Base Buildings

  (3.1) - If there was a vote, I'd vote for main base building units, going back to previous builds. It's a very minor QoL thing, and while part of me likes generators as being the primary focus (via the building that is default selected), but getting the units going still feels like my priority, especially after picking out my deck immediately previous. Could just be our indoctrination to the squad battle, though.

  Balance

  (4.1) - No feedback.

  Keywords

  (5.1) - Like the Unstoppable keyword. Good use of letters, especially vowels. The symmetry of the word is also great in print form. Keep up the good work.
• Nib Member

  May 12

  Only played one game on staging before this playtest but wanted to say that I found it a huge hassle to cancel unit production.
• Leviathan Member

  May 12

  First off, I also enjoyed this update and like where the game is headed.

  I agree with Nib that the unit canceling feature is a bit of a hassle by going to their tab at the bottom, and I often misclicked on research that was nearly completed by accident when trying to click on the one just below/above. BUT that is more of a my bad thing and won't effect many people.

  The map has a good feel to it that only takes two or three games to learn where to go and what is happening. One thing that I did bump into this time, compared to other play tests was drop plays. I had little to no way of quickly responding to seeing an enemy flying unit due to my poor choice in units at the beginning of the match and left me feeling not useful to my team.
• Deaucalion Member

  May 12

  I have mixed feelings about the changes to gem collection.

  I feel kind of compelled to click on all the gems to make sure I get enough scrap, so it feels like I am actually doing more busy work. I guess I could avoid some clicking by dividing the gem claims with my allies, but trying to divide gems evenly is its own kind of busy work. It would not be much of a functional stretch to reward players with a participation cut just for having their hero near a gem when it is capped and/or harvested.

  Permanent gem denial is an necessary feature now that there is no cooldown on T. It did not make me more cautious about capping risky gems. Gems don't persist for very long as it is. If you don't have a window to cap a gem now, most of the time you won't find one before it depops. I felt it was better to think of the gems as baby sea turtles, cap all of them, and force my opponent to spend time picking off the vulnerable ones while the others reached the sea finished harvesting. I could see myself learning to cap and guard gems one at a time in the large middle area, but I think the top and bot fountains are too small for this sort of strategy.

  Small, miscellaneous notes:
  * With the hard and easy camps in the center so close to each other, it is easy to accidentally aggro the hard camp over the cliff with an aoe. I did this once, but realized the second after I had capped the stock patch. I lost my patch and felt sad.
  * New titan art was cool.
  * New scarab art was kind of cool, but doesn't really sell me the hive fantasy. I guess that makes sense now that the squads have been rolled into factions.