Core Game Concept Oversight
I feel that Atlas is an incredibly well put together technical and balanced game. It takes ideas from popular games both current and recent and blends them into something unique and interesting.
However,
I feel there is no original creativity. The core concept of the game is "To make a well balanced and technical game", It is very obvious that at no point did anyone have a cool unique idea that they wanted to build into a game. There is no lore, and there is no core concept to get on board. This results in the game feeling very sterile, cold and premeditated. It is very obvious to me that the creators of this game love both starcraft and league of legends, but I fail to see any unique and original concept on which these finely tuned mechanics are built.
For example. Much of World of Warcraft's popularity was brewed from the unique idea of "What if I could go down into this well established and familiar world and experience it first hand?", and NOT "How do we make the best MMO game we can?". This gave a unique character to the franchise that slowly dissipated as the focus shifted specifically to making the best MMO possible, as well as flat out generating profit. This is why people look back fondly on the days of it's origin, in which it had creative integrity.
Comments
Other examples of creative integrity that made games into big success that come to mind include:
"What if we made a game where your character moved as fast as possible?" - Sonic the Hedgehog
"What if we made a game as true to real gun combat as we could?" - Counterstrike
"What if we made a game as vulgar as we could?" - Duke Nukem
"What if we made a game that played with physics?" - Portal
One game that suffers a similar problem that I feel did a superb job in dealing with it is Team Fortress 2. Red team Vs Blue team: FIGHT! Why? Because!
However Rather than trying to pretend there was some depth of concept, the game makes fun of itself in a unique and cartoony way, creating character out of the ironic lack of character.
Hope this helps <3
@Ironkilt thanks for the feedback! We actually have spent some time thinking about lore and the world that the game takes place in, and we want to flesh that out as much as possible. However, our focus has been on creating a lot of fun, strategy, and depth, so the world-building aspect of the game has definitely suffered. Hopefully you'll see improvements in this area as we get closer to launch.
(Also, TF2 is one of my favorite games ever, especially because of its humor and lightheartedness)
@marktillery
I appologize in advance if this sounds like criticism (which is not my intent), I honestly want to help you make the best game possible.
I feel like trying to develop character in the game after the game is designed leads to it feeling superficial. Overwatch is a great example of a game that feels like it was designed in a similar method; with an obviously business oriented and compartmentalized design plan you lose an entire layer of immersion from the player's perspective. While playing overwatch I constantly find myself asking "why are these old friends fighting each other over this meaningless objective?" in ways I never did in TF2, which leads to detachment, and eventually putting the game down prematurely.
If you have an idea that can attract a player (aside from "make the best rts possible) which you then put that design plan over top of, the player can feel like he is on board before he even plays the game, and can drive a player through things like learning curves or lose streaks. This idea can also help shape the mechanics and strategies in a way that then feels intuitive to the player, even if they are inexperienced in the genre or even video games as a whole.
@Ironkilt your feedback is appreciated, and we love hearing constructive criticisms from players, so no need to apologize.
All your points are completely valid. I think it is harder to develop the story and character after the fact. Unfortunately we're a really small team and we've had to make choices to prioritize certain areas over others. But, we're still really excited about explaining a lot more about the world of atlas, and we think we have some fun stuff in store for you.