ChronoFrost - Impressions and Ideas
ChronoFrost
Member
Things I like:
1. Automatic resource collection.
Feels great. With character spells to manage, upgrade paths, and units to micro, this really takes some stress off the player so they can focus on map control.
2.Wide variety of hero roles.
Going to be very important when PvP comes around. Supports, tanks, mobile assassins. Each character fits to a role and sticks to it. You know going into the game how you're supposed to be playing on the team.
3. Unique Unit Upgrades
The individual unique upgrades all feel important and very impactful. These are great. I love these. I think upgrading those are far more satisfying than the standard combat upgrades.
4. Replay System
Ohmygodyesplease. After almost 6 years of League of Legends experience, this was great to see. I'm SO HAPPY you guys are making replays a top priority. Love it.
Things that could use improvement:
1. Placement of Nexus, didn't feel important.
It just seemed like another building plopped down in the middle of nowhere. I feel it needs something to stand out more. It's the game winning building, Make it special.
2. A system for travelling the map.
Either I'm bad at this game (plausible) or it feels like I'm confined to my own zone on the frontline since units aren't that mobile and collide easily. Perhaps be able to channel a long teleport to warp to a friendly tower, or alternatively give a massive movement speed boost to your units when you recall to your base.
3. Standard Combat Upgrades
Having three levels of standard combat upgrades with different build paths that can overlap if you've continued development into the next tier... it all feels a bit overwhelming. I'd personally prefer if units would just passively gain strength and resistances relative to your champion level. Reserve the tech buildings for unique unit upgrades.
4. UNIT COLLISION
God damn this frustrated me. I'm scared to even go near the big bruiser melee units for fear they're all going to get caught on each other. With all the units getting stuck in a big cluster, pathing feels weird as well. Being able to micro effectively is hard, and by no means should you EVER collide with teammates units. It's one thing to blame yourself for poor positioning, but you don't want to enforce a mechanic that will cause players to be frustrated with their teammates for blocking them in a game when combat roles are established (frontline tank, backline dps and suppport, etc.).
My suggestion would be to allow units to ignore unit collision while they're walking, but as soon as they start interacting (using abilities/attacking) they all kind of gracefully spread out from each other again.
TLDR: Unit collision feels terrible and that mechanic on its own would turn me away from Atlas entirely.
Things I want:
I'm not a game developer, I have no experience in the field. But these things would still make me a very happy boy.
a) Holding space to lock the camera on your hero and actively follow them while it's held down.
b) Shortcuts to select my upgrade buildings (if those exist, I haven't found them. Perhaps make them more noticeable in that case).
c) A "select all of my combat units" key.
d) Hero select screen has some bugs with the spell info dropdown boxes. Just needs to be cleaned up a little.
e) More of a reward for killing champions or claiming your opponents territory. I love the idea of slowly moving your frontline forward and conquering your opponent's land. Right now it just doesn't feel that satisfying. Ideally, I'd somehow like something stationary (buildings/towers) to be able to place in your opponent's conquered land to say "You know what, this is mine now".
f) I don't know how I feel about the cooldown on the "construction" spell. Feels a bit too long, like I'm wasting my time waiting for it to come up to claim a base or capture a gem when I want to move out and pressure something else.
One last thing for consideration
Were there any thoughts on sharing and dividing your team's collected resources? There would be no fights for expo locations or gems, more reason to be a team player and help keep your allies' bases alive. Better teamwork for clearing the rich mineral fields since it impacts everyone having the better resources.
I don't disagree or dislike your system you currently have, I'm just curious is all.
Anyways, that's my input after a few games. If you have any further questions I'll be actively reading the comments and can give my input. Thanks a lot, guys. Hope this helps.
Comments
These two pieces connect together quite a bit. In short, the map is not as "connected" as we want it to be. It feels like "a top, a nexus lane, and a bottom," each of which is a little island separated from the rest. We are already planning a map re-design to help connect pieces together and build better map flow, both in terms of pushing towards the nexus and traveling to help your ally.
We could let units passively get stronger over time. We've chosen to make the power growth economically related (as it feels more RTSy and I like saving up money to buy stuff). I think there'd be nothing bad about unit power growth being passive, we've just chosen to go the purchase route.
As for our implementation, I agree it has some problems. I don't mind the idea of the system being "overwhelming initially" and taking some time to get used to, such as a MOBA item store or Path of Exile skill tree. However, MOBA item stores and Path of Exile skill trees are totally awesome and exciting to explore around. Our system might not be currently as exciting to explore or impactful.
Can you tell me a little bit more about what you feel is "missing" from the system? (Aside from the initial overwhelmedness).
I hear you here xD. Pathing is already the #1 thing discussed by people playing right now :D. Precise implementations are tricky to describe since pathing and motion is all about "feel," so lets focus on intention.
Our intention is for pathing to have SOME REASONABLE stuckiness/clunkiness to it. For example, if an enemy is running away and you manage to cut him off. It should feel like you are able to body block without him "slipping through." Or, if you have some units at a choke, the enemy shouldn't be able to cleanly slip through. You SHOULD NOT feel like you are scared to fight ever because the pathing might kill you. You SHOULD have to consider your angles before a fight.
Regarding allied collision, we definitely can't have units pathing through one another. Though it sounds reasonable on paper, it just completely breaks battle dynamics and looks/feels totally weird. Battles are completely unreadable because things are stacked and effects are flying everywhere.
That said, allied collision needs to be better. We are exploring a huge variety of "special cases" for allied to allied unit interaction that's different than enemy to enemy.
So there's some of our thoughts on that! Obviously, there is a HUGE amount to talking about pathing, so allow me to re-emphasize:
Added to to-do list.
Already on the roadmap
You can do this now by pressing "~"
Can you provide screenshots?
We've had horribly degenerate games when you can do offensive towering. We aren't fundamentally against it by any means, we just haven't arrived at a good solution for it yet. Still investigating outside of the pre-alpha test you're in.
We might have a bit too much focus on the Hero doing everything. We're carefully watching this during playtest
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We've had shared income rates in the past. Simply put, the game wound up being not as fun. Players never felt like what they did mattered -- I never felt like I was kicking ass, and If I attacked the other guy, I never felt like I had an impact. But, with individual monies, you can get way ahead in money OR completely shutdown one player on the other team. It makes decisions in the game feel more meaningful.
I'm sure it's possible to make a game with shared resources be really fun, but we've chosen to focus on the individual route based upon our experiments
PHEW I hope I answered thoroughly enough for ya
As for the shared resource thing... how about a way to trade resources between allies... Maybe one person is better at gem collecting, another is better at creating physical expansions?
I captured a gif here of what I mean. https://gyazo.com/3ffe30f1f8982de263ce06d6c517476e
The advanced breakdown appears when you hover over where it WOULD appear. I'm assuming it should only give the advanced breakdown if you hover directly over the spell icon.
If this is intentional, it feels clunky to me.
After some reflection, you may be correct. Build orders and upgrade understanding are going to take some time to develop. First few games I was overwhelmed, but with enough practice we should be able to get this system under control. I'll put some more time into the game and get back to you.
I really do appreciate the time you took to read and respond. Your dailies and talks on positivity guided me through highschool and built me into who I am. I'll do whatever I can to help make this game the best it can be.
Oh that gif is fantastic! Saving an added to ze to-do list!
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