Basic Upgrades

Comments

• Pandapownium Member

  June 15

  After thought... In a game you have to ask yourselves why you have a certain mechanic? Is it because we need it... or because every game has it.. and I think the basic upgrades kind of fall under the "Because RTS's have basic upgrades."

  I KNOW, artillery has talked about this and they see a reason, so I would LOVE to be more informed on the importance of. However, my belief that we need a lot more unit upgrades is very strong.
• Millea Member

  June 15

  There are some pretty big differences which attack upgrades can make. For example, wisps will be 4 shot rather than 5 shot by a +1 sandstinger, which can easily turn the tide of an early fight. This feels pretty impactful to me.

  I definitely would agree that armor, magic resist and magic damage upgrades feel lackluster though. Magic resist and armor work very differently in this game than they do in sc2, where you can feel the impact of having magic resist and armor more. This game's LoL-style armor/magic resist system would feel more effective if there were more ways of boosting defense, but currently there is not. A starcraft-style system, that is, reducing the amount of damage taken by a flat amount, makes it much easier to see what armor is doing for you rather than it being relatively invisible like it is currently in atlas. You can easily tell if the enemy army has armor upgrades if you're using marines or zerglings. This is not necessarily a better system, just more visible.

  Magic damage upgrades don't seem to make much sense to get to me unless it's a change from a 2 shot to a 1 shot or a 3 shot to a 2 shot, for example. I have not done the math on specific units to see whether these are worth it yet. These probably will be situational upgrades regardless of what happens. For now, it's sometimes difficult to do the math on some important units like apocolytes, as it says it does 250, but they do not 1 shot purifiers, which have 200. Until the math can be done more easily to figure out when it's worth it to get this upgrade, I don't think people will use this upgrade.

  Overall, I agree with your sentiment. However, in my head, I have separated damage upgrades and other types of unit upgrades into two completely different groups, so in my opinion, one does not necessarily affect the other.
• excal Member, Administrator

  June 16

  Hey Panda!

  I absolutely agree that stat upgrades are less impactful than unit-specific upgrades (which we're call "unique" upgrades internally), but as Millea pointed out, they can certainly co-exist. Unit upgrades are definitely here to stay - we love them and will soon be adding a bunch more!

  For stat upgrades, however, the question really comes down to whether or not we're getting enough value out of the extra overhead of having them in the game. This is by no means a settled issue, but I also don't want to give the impression that we're actively considering removing stat upgrades from the game. If we got enough consistent feedback that it's doing more harm than good, we'll certainly take a real look at what removing stat upgrades would do for us.

  With that said, we think we're getting some value out of stat upgrades, so I want to give you some insight into what we do like about them (after setting the cost of the system aside)! I think most of the value doesn't come from the same kind of visceral game-changing impact that we can get from unit-specific upgrades; instead, the value is a bit less obvious:

  1) RTS player expectation. This has always been a little odd to me, but before even playing a game of Atlas, most RTS players just expect statistical upgrades to exist. And beyond that, they even list statistical upgrades among their favorite concepts. Now it's totally possible that after playing a few games of Atlas, this desire fades in light of other systems.

  2) Game-ending scaling power. If players are naturally getting statistical upgrades over the course of the game, their destructive power will continue to scale past the supply cap, helping the game become increasingly volatile and easy to end. Note that the offensive upgrades are designed to slightly outscale the defensive upgrades. However, this is just one of many systems in the game-ending equation - so it might not be strictly necessary.

  3) Production planning. Players have found it fun to optimize and plan around trying to get statistical upgrades out as fast as possible alongside the rest of their production concerns. This mostly comes from having the stat upgrades be cheap in cost, but expensive in time. It feels nice to have level 1 upgrades finish right as tech level 2 pops and to be able to immediately start the level 2 upgrades.

  4) Timing windows and breakpoints. At a very high level of play, this gives players another knob to optimize; they can look at the particular tradeoffs and breakpoints to better plan how they spend their resources and when they pick their engagements. Again, we get this from other systems as well, but we will eventually get some value here.

  So with all that said, the flip side is that there's obvious cost to having stat upgrades in the game: it's a effectively whole additional system. As always, we'll be keeping our ear to the ground and go from there.

  Hopefully this gave a little bit of insight! As always, super super thanks for the feedback! <3

  Bobby
• wondible Member

  June 16

  @excal said:
  1) RTS player expectation. This has always been a little odd to me, but before even playing a game of Atlas,

  I've mainly played Planetary Annihilation, and find this mechanic utterly bizarre whenever I see it.

  3) Production planning. Players have found it fun to optimize and plan around trying to get statistical

  I'll grant that having something clogging up the production queue is an interesting tradeoff.
• Pandapownium Member

  June 16

  @excal I really wouldn't mind if they co-existed. I know I said the complete removal, but the more I thought about it, I guess I suggested the removal of stat upgrades to avoid clutter. The last thing I want as a player is another building to manage. I would like it so (in theory) every unit has an upgrade. Let's say your Deadeye snipe is 'w' then I would like my upgrades building hotkey for 'w' to upgrade the deadeye. If that makes sense. I was more concerned for a clutter thing. Also the late game scaling is important, but it can maybe (theoretically) be achieved through getting more and more 'unique upgrades' over your opponent but I do agree they are important. I guess I just want it clean and not clunky! :D

  Thanks for the replies Bobby and everybody else! :D
  <3

  -Panda

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