I feel like the battle pacing is really well done. Battles take longer than I'm used after playing SC2, giving you more time to micro your units. However, I find it hard to tell sometimes when units are getting low on health, due to spell effects, or perhaps very small units, and the attack timer bar (which is an awesome idea, by the way). It'd be nice to more clearly see the health of units, perhaps by having the color change as a unit gets injured, or have the health float above the unit.
The comparison that I feel most suits this game in terms of battle pacing is to the Warcraft III battle style. The health of units, speed of micro, and interaction between armor types and abilities and upgrades really matches well the speed of Warcraft gameplay. Very cool ideas are already in place with a lot of the abilities, and I hope to see more in the future.
To use some of your format, For Pacing:
- I was playing a game vs bots and I was able to micro my sniper units away from the slower more tanky units and saved almost all of them.
- I felt like I had accomplished a lot with my units and that their surviving had set back the enemy heavily.
For Micro:
- I was able to micro my units pretty effectively against the slower enemies, but was not able to do it perfectly because the unit collision I feel is a bit off, and the health bars are not too prominent
- I felt the micro should feel smoother than the old Warcraft game and right now it is only a slight improvement in ease of micro.
- To improve this maybe put numbers over the health bars, make it possible to select individual units to see their current stats, like damage and armor?
For Abilities:
- It was engaging to figure out how each of the classes abilities synergized with each other, and to use them to absolutely wreck the enemy.
- I felt like the abilities on the classes I have played so far are engaging and balanced, incorporating lots of skill shots.
I really enjoy battles in this game, you actually have to pay attention and its not just A-click to victory. I love the fact that you can easily use all of your units abilities without having to tab etc. I really want better visuals as to which of my units is taking damage. Weather its pictures within each tier box that change to yellow or red depending on damage taken. I love how different units modify others abilities i.e. the vine guys Q is modified by the W and E of the T2 unit. Makes you prioritize the higher tier units. I would like some visual as to what control group has what in it. I always bind all my neutral units to 4. Its hard to know that they are still wrecking face away from the battle or if they get rekt by a towers and I need to spawn more. Overall though battles are loads of fun.
I've played a lot of Ryme and a lot of Vela so far.
They play very differently. Like, a lot differently, which is a plus to me. With Vela, I found myself lurking around my allies (primarily in the bushes), waiting for enemies to engage so I could pick off big targets, and it felt like I was maximizing the use of the tools I was given. I look forward to experimenting with Vela in a party so I can coordinate more with allies and they can set stuff up for me.
As Ryme, I feel like I can easily pick off sections of the enemy's shock troopers, and whittle away at a bigger army as a whole. His skill set is to me reminiscent of, say, Crystal Maiden from Dota, with a group of stuns and slows to set things up for his own troops and for others. Like Vela, I think his role is very clear from the skillset he has.
I have to say with ranged Heroes, the battles are fun and engaging. However with Hydros (a melee hero) I find battles to be frustrating and almost best if avoided. I understand he is supposed to be a support hero, but the collision and terrain are not melee friendly. Too often I found myself bottle-necked and only two or three units attacking while the rest were whittled away by a swarm of smaller ranged tier 1 units from across one of the obstacles.
This is dissapointing as I feel that most of the melee units have abilities that make sense (shields for Hydros tier 1, a gap closer for Grath tier 1) while some ranged units (Eris tier 1 gap closer? Celesta tier 1...nothing?) are better left just attack-moving.
It also seems that more effort was made in certain heroes than others. Alder has synergy and relies heavily on saplings and morphing them (and his tier 3 gets boosts from eating certain types). You can even use the saplings as cheap sentries. This is awesome and shows depth. Hydros' units have defensive abilities that benefit himself and his allies, allowing for shields or passive heals. On the other hand Celesta I found plays best zerging with tier 1 units and using the tier 2 as defensive cannons (doing more damage and being cheaper, ie no gems, to renew). Her abilities are uninteresting and require little to no thought or interaction on the players behalf. Even smokescreen, having such a small area of effect, has little use and is easily avoided by proper unit control.
I've only played Grath (man it's hard to not type Garth).
I think that he's quite strong, particularly his ability to heal and protect neutral weapons. I rather like his units, but I have one complaint with the Trooper's stunning charge ability. Namely, the fact that by default all troopers use the ability at once when it's used, and that as a result 50% or more of them tend to wiff. I consider a wiff to be either
1.) The trooper hits no enemy units.
2.) The trooper hits an enemy unit at the same time as another trooper hits the same enemy unit.
This is somewhat frustrating, as it leads me to believe that the best way to use these little dudes is to select them one by one, and execute their charges independently, in a manner that won't lead to their charges being put on needless cooldowns.
I'm sure that fixes to pathing will help this issue immensely (and maybe hit box reductions, but that's another conversation). I also feel like the best way to re-do the use case for this skill would be to turn it into a sort of semi-automatic rifle. Let me toggle the option to place the ability on a sort of 'Smart Cast' system where I can simply tap the ability, and the nearest trooper who has the ability on cooldown will use it in the direction of my mouse. This would only be a small modification to how the Howling Commando ability already works (where the nearest commando fires his slow in the direction of my mouse on mouse click), and I think it would lead to much better situations in almost every case. IT would also make it easier to chain stuns against small numbers of enemies, or against neutral camps.
Battles feel like they have a ton of potential. Right now I find that the units are very hard to micro, which takes away from some of the fun. The big reasons for this is that the pathing is a bit off, unit collision feels a bit too extreme (especially with structures like the ion canons, health bars are hard to identify and distinguish from the auto/cast indicator (especially on the small units), and I have trouble identifying which units I actually have selected. All those seem like things you are likely aware of and have plans to fix in the future.
Overall I really like the direction that combat is going. With the small unit options for each hero it feels like team coordination will be really important.
One thing I noticed is that at times it can be difficult to identify your own units on the minimap. Not your hero of course but there have been a few occasions where I have "lost" a unit on the map somewhere and it isn't dead but I cant seem to locate it. This may be just a result of me not being used to the game mechanics yet but it is a small thing I noticed.
I used Eris's Sandblast and Chaos Bolt and was a bit uncertain about what to expect.
The description makes what should happen obvious, but I wasn't sure how wide the hitboxes would be based on the thin vector on the ground. Also, I'm still uncertain what the targeting circle on top of the vector does for Chaos Bolt.
Using the Take Aim ability of the sniper class puts all other units in that control group on move command towards that point. In the two games I've played, seems like this is the only ability I've seen that does this.
Another thing I noticed that is more building control than unit control: if you hotkey an upgrade building, when you start a new upgrade you lose that hotkey.
Using Vex, I felt very weak when battling other armies with mine. While the ignite mechanic is very smart and enjoyable, the overall power of him and his army seems lackluster. Against an army of similar worth and size, I found my army to be overrun very easily, even while maximizing ability use.
I feel that the bonus damage with ignite is in the right place, but the base damage of the units may be undersold considering how often your enemy units are ignited.
Vex's ult also feels strange in synergy with his army. While I understand that a flat attack damage and attack speed increase inherently synergizes with his units, it doesn't feel very flavorful. If I were to change it, I might make a circle field of a larger size that damages/weakens enemy units and boosts your own unit attack and speed as it currently does.
Grath- Galvanize seems very situational while harden is very nice for saving units. T2 units feel kind of meh. Terrapin Troopers - Rocket rush can feel like a waste if you have multiple allied units in an area that will just end up blocking half of the rushes. Would it be possible to make it rocket jump, and have them rush forward while jumping over allied units (temporarily removing allied unit collision)? Rhino - Very fun unit with the trample.
Hydros - Turn the tide is crazy strong but at the expense of unfun T1 unit. Scutttleguard- very clunky feeling, must avoid chokes at all costs. Aquadillo- they feel very fun jumping into the fray, bright spot in an otherwise clunky feeling squad.
Alder in general - I love the synergies between the units. The only downside to this is losing too many seedbots kills the rest of the composition.
Vex - vex's abilities feel stronger/more useful than a lot of the other squad leaders. Vex ult just seems to be a better Grath ult at the cost of a bit of speed they get better attack. Sparkbots - I'm having the most fun stutter stepping with these units. Probably my favorite T1 with Glacial Rangers close behind. Ignitor - Conflagrate feel a bit underwhelming, there is a ton of time to avoid the explosion by pulling units away from the pinged unit.
Eris - overall feels very strong. Apocalytes - have the potential for a huge swings with destructive prophecy on clumped units. I also struggle to see where destructive prophecy is going to end up landing.
Ryme - the whole team is great against anyone that tries to retreat. Glacial Rangers - It feels like they have one over the stronger T1 abilities. The slow guarantees that at least a few of the opponents units will be picked off if they try to retreat. Frostfall - will be a blender for players with poor micro skill or that are looking in other locations.
Vela- seems strong vs bots but i'm not sure that will remain true vs other players.
Celeste- Cleansing light can be massive and feels good when it lands solidly. I think 5 seconds is perfect on this, anything less would be overpowered. Precog - I'm really liking blinding smoke. Fun to get free pokes out with the wisps. Purifier - I tend to lose them throughout the game. I root them near towers and kind of leave them. I think I just need more time with the champ to correct this though.
In my first game (bot game), I was very frustrated because I had a lot of trouble finding my army. I ended up with units spread randomly all over the map and I couldn't really see them easily on the minimap and had trouble selecting all of my units. The stray units also kept running into enemy towers and dying. I felt like I would win fights vs the bots if I could ever get my army together, but doing so was very difficult.
Edit: Upon further browsing the forums, it seems that army hotkeys do exist, which would likely fix this problem.
I couldn't figure out how to make the Scuttleguard ability actually hit the enemy, the roll duration was extremely short and the unit was often blocked from getting to the enemy by my other units, making the ability wasted. It might be nice to include something like a unit tester where you can test the units' abilities in controlled circumstances and practice controlling your army.
I have to agree. The real struggle is forming my army together and managing respawns. I come from a starcraft background and not having a control group to add new units to means I often leave units behind and have to manually search for where my base is rallying, follow it to the flag, and then shift-add them in a pseudo control group that feels clunky.
I played Celesta (WHO IS SUPER FUN WOW) and having to leap-frog purifiers while also managing my main army and its respawns is a struggle. I CRAVE control groups.
I feel so long as pathfinding and blocking remains so potent, melee units will be at an inherent disadvantage that is magnified at 'low' level play. Allies need to move out of the way, you need to micro your units to where you need them to go.
-OR-
When I see melee units struggle to get into position to attack because of numerous obstacles, especially the larger ones, I wonder if they are balanced with this in mind, or if I need to be a much better player to utilize them properly.
I've been playing Alder and having a SUPER fun time. The one thing that is difficult for me during a large fight is targeting plants to eat them with Bramblethorn Goliath. If they are healing plants, they are in the middle of my army, and so I can rarely get my cursor over it while trying to micro everything else.
I was also looking for a way to track the buffs on my Goliaths, either visually or displayed in stacks on my UI. After munching on many plants, it was difficult to remember what buffs were on.
I'm going to put this here because I'm not quite sure where else to put it:
I'm playing on OSX. Generally speaking, most RTS games I've played on OSX have an option to use cmd+ instead of control+, or come with that as the standard because cmd+ fills the function of control+ most of the time in the basic operating system. Obviously that isn't going to be something Artillery's going to be able to add on the fly in the middle of the pre-alpha, but it would be good to be aware of going forward!
The snipe ability is fun, but it's unclear where I'm supposed to be targeting on the enemy's 3d model. I think my mouse was overlapping their head and the shot missed, while aiming lower made it hit. Maybe highlight the enemy when moused over? Doing this in general and not even just for snipe would be nicer. This ability makes me want to split my squad into her and the rest and go hunting for heroes while being useful elsewhere.
The t2 guys I kinda felt like skipping. Their attack CD is awkward when attack-move microing with the whole army (it seemed like they weren't even attacking tbh). The W ability I never really used unless an important target was body blocked for days. I would like a leash range bigger than the targeting range (or bigger than the current leash range) once a target is selected. It seems like they do more in general when auto attacking instead of sitting there for an hour aiming with a 20% chance the target doesn't die or move before the shot fires.
I like the little t1s. But it seemed like the Q had a duration before it expired which isn't in the description. That or the purple particles stopped showing up even though I still had the bonus, which is misleading.
You can see Vela's Windray's wind AOE sometimes through the fog of war. It gives away their position. It seems like the closer the enemy vela is to you, the more likely you are to see the AOE.
I was missing Ctrl-clicking on a unit to select all visible units of the same type a lot. Particularly to update ctrl groups, like if I spawn a bunch of cubes, they are not part of my army per se. It's not always easy to box them in busy situations.
Box selection and hotkeys felt unresponsive at times where I'm clicking a lot to move. It's like the unit (or my client in general) has a command queue that I was able to fill with move commands so my press of A or my box selection didn't register. It did seem to happen more often in the heat of battle but I've had it happen with T to grab a gem in the early game as well. Would need to test more to repro.
Small Quality of Life thing but it would be nice to be able to set a delay on the minimap for it to register move commands, like in Dota 2. That would cut down on micro mistakes by accidentally clicking the minimap while still allowing to give units orders if necessary. In that game I have mine set to 1 second, which means that my mouse pointer must remain on the minimap for 1 entire second for my orders to register.
Map Size
• Relative to the movement speed of the units, the map feels very wide. If my allies enter an engagement, it will usually be over by the time my squad gets there to help. Perhaps I need to stay in the center of the map more than I have been, and only send small forces to the flanks. Still, I feel that the map could lose 20% of its width.
Unit Abilities
• Suggestion: To counter some of the issues with players being spread out across a large map, it might be helpful to give squad’s some abilities with global range, so that they can provide a modicum of immediate support when their allies enter an engagement.
• Just a small note on Purifiers. Right now they enter siege mode as soon as you press Q, but it would be nice if they first moved to their assigned destination or you could hold Q and click on the spot at which you want them to siege up.
X
In a mid gameish 2v2 hero/army engagement my hero and scuttle guards got caught up in my teammates units and were rendered to be a lot less effective as they couldn't easily maneuver to get within attacking range.
Y
It made me feel a bit helpless and frustrated.
Z
Improvements to unit path finding (which I know is being worked on).
@Deaucalion You can use shift to queue up a siege, just like in SC2. This wasn't possible in BW which was a huge pain in the butt, so I'm glad they didn't keep that aspect. :D
Minor gripe: Options shows control groups like NUM1. I thought NUM was like, num pad, Numlock, etc. instead of Keypad.
I tried grouping my buildings. I got frustrated because I realized every time I made an upgrade, it was a new building.
I tried using a control group after a spawn but it was empty. I felt frustrated and like I was wasting time every spawn re-binding the group (or I didn't get my units back to the fight). If this isn't changed I may just not use control groups except for my main base.
I bound my main base to a control group. I was excited! This gave me a pseudo-camera hotkey on all my upgrade buildings. Maybe camera hotkeys could go on the keypad (num keys).
I was trying to use multiple control groups and I had a hard time telling which were selected. This made me feel bad at the game and frustrated. Maybe a slightly darker shade of blue for selected units would be good. It may be useful even on the minimap. (where'd that unit disappear to?)
I tried to micro back a larger unit (trees) and got blocked by all of my units really easily. It'd be awesome if they could step over friendly units. Even pushing through them would be nice.
Battle Feedback
I really like the pacing. Things feel a lot more strategic (than Starcraft 2).
It was often too hard to see health. Sadly, bars above heads of damaged units may just be the best way to do it.
While playing i tried to stutter step, but felt very clunky, and didn't move fast enough.
Maybe an upgrade that increase wisp move speed instead of battle sense as it would allow for a more micro intensive engagement and make the purifire placement far more important and frankly less overpowered, as i feel that it is a very good unit for 2 shotting hero units or the high value T2/T3 units.
Crystalline hawk seems somewhat useless, it does very little damage, and most of the time you can scout past a bush or wherever you dont have vision by sending a wisp over, and if needed quickly pulling it back, and even if it does die it respawns very quickly.
What i like about Celesta
I love how well the precongitor and purifire work together, the shield allows for it to love longer and for the wisps to clean up the enemies trying to focus fire the purifire.
The units for this character are expensive and use a complex synergy.
I enjoyed this character very much. It adds a lot of depth and strategy to the game.
on the original map, due to high unit cost, Alder feels a bit slow when placed in the bottom position by himself. Other teams seemed to easily overwhelm him in the start to the point where I couldn't really get the game going. He seems to do much better when grouped with allies at the start like in the new map.
Vex
Vex has simple commands and can 1A to victory
Was a simple and fun way to play. Good beginner class to start with.
I found battles very fun in this game.
At first I felt frustrated with unit collision and I felt that the game was clunky; however, after playing a few games it felt fun made me feel like I had to really micro and control my units. I think that this makes the game less of just 1A clicking, which makes it more exciting in my opinion.
During battles, I felt frustrated because I had a really hard time being able to tell what units I had under selection. Eventually I found out that "~" grabs your whole army, but I wish I was better able to see what units I had under my control.
I also felt that my screen felt cramped during battles. The UI at the bottom is very huge and makes it hard to click units downward or do anything. Perhaps, make the unit pictures a little smaller?
Also, I feel that recall should be cancel-able. In the middle of the battle, I would want to press V to bring more reinforcements, but I accidentally press B and that was very frustrating.
When I am playing Vela, I have a very difficult time grouping my units together, resulting in me needing to micromanage units to keep them in a tighter ball to keep my proper position. I expect that when I have all my units selected and I right click in the center between them they will gather, and instead they seem to hold formation and this feels very frustrating.
The one thing I've noticed that sticks out to me is that re-grouping your units tends to be a bit wonky.
I felt like if my units auto-attacking were spread out too much and I wanted to "death-ball" them, I had to clickmash to get them to do what I wanted.
Completely unrelated, a positive that I really enjoy is how each ability shot seems to have an appropriate speed. The ones that just damage/freeze a single unit are quick and nearly "un-dodgeable", and the amazing abilites that do area damage seem to have a speed that can be dodged. That being said, I found myself creeping up my heroes a lot closer to my enemy's army than I wanted, or I'd use the spell to force my enemy to choose a direction. I think it can be used for both effectively, which is cool. You don't JUST have to save up for a perfect moment...you can use them liberally in the late mid-game.
Comments
I feel like the battle pacing is really well done. Battles take longer than I'm used after playing SC2, giving you more time to micro your units. However, I find it hard to tell sometimes when units are getting low on health, due to spell effects, or perhaps very small units, and the attack timer bar (which is an awesome idea, by the way). It'd be nice to more clearly see the health of units, perhaps by having the color change as a unit gets injured, or have the health float above the unit.
The comparison that I feel most suits this game in terms of battle pacing is to the Warcraft III battle style. The health of units, speed of micro, and interaction between armor types and abilities and upgrades really matches well the speed of Warcraft gameplay. Very cool ideas are already in place with a lot of the abilities, and I hope to see more in the future.
To use some of your format, For Pacing:
- I was playing a game vs bots and I was able to micro my sniper units away from the slower more tanky units and saved almost all of them.
- I felt like I had accomplished a lot with my units and that their surviving had set back the enemy heavily.
For Micro:
- I was able to micro my units pretty effectively against the slower enemies, but was not able to do it perfectly because the unit collision I feel is a bit off, and the health bars are not too prominent
- I felt the micro should feel smoother than the old Warcraft game and right now it is only a slight improvement in ease of micro.
- To improve this maybe put numbers over the health bars, make it possible to select individual units to see their current stats, like damage and armor?
For Abilities:
- It was engaging to figure out how each of the classes abilities synergized with each other, and to use them to absolutely wreck the enemy.
- I felt like the abilities on the classes I have played so far are engaging and balanced, incorporating lots of skill shots.
I really enjoy battles in this game, you actually have to pay attention and its not just A-click to victory. I love the fact that you can easily use all of your units abilities without having to tab etc. I really want better visuals as to which of my units is taking damage. Weather its pictures within each tier box that change to yellow or red depending on damage taken. I love how different units modify others abilities i.e. the vine guys Q is modified by the W and E of the T2 unit. Makes you prioritize the higher tier units. I would like some visual as to what control group has what in it. I always bind all my neutral units to 4. Its hard to know that they are still wrecking face away from the battle or if they get rekt by a towers and I need to spawn more. Overall though battles are loads of fun.
I've played a lot of Ryme and a lot of Vela so far.
They play very differently. Like, a lot differently, which is a plus to me. With Vela, I found myself lurking around my allies (primarily in the bushes), waiting for enemies to engage so I could pick off big targets, and it felt like I was maximizing the use of the tools I was given. I look forward to experimenting with Vela in a party so I can coordinate more with allies and they can set stuff up for me.
As Ryme, I feel like I can easily pick off sections of the enemy's shock troopers, and whittle away at a bigger army as a whole. His skill set is to me reminiscent of, say, Crystal Maiden from Dota, with a group of stuns and slows to set things up for his own troops and for others. Like Vela, I think his role is very clear from the skillset he has.
I've played Alder, Celesta, Eris, Hydros and Ryme
I have to say with ranged Heroes, the battles are fun and engaging. However with Hydros (a melee hero) I find battles to be frustrating and almost best if avoided. I understand he is supposed to be a support hero, but the collision and terrain are not melee friendly. Too often I found myself bottle-necked and only two or three units attacking while the rest were whittled away by a swarm of smaller ranged tier 1 units from across one of the obstacles.
This is dissapointing as I feel that most of the melee units have abilities that make sense (shields for Hydros tier 1, a gap closer for Grath tier 1) while some ranged units (Eris tier 1 gap closer? Celesta tier 1...nothing?) are better left just attack-moving.
It also seems that more effort was made in certain heroes than others. Alder has synergy and relies heavily on saplings and morphing them (and his tier 3 gets boosts from eating certain types). You can even use the saplings as cheap sentries. This is awesome and shows depth. Hydros' units have defensive abilities that benefit himself and his allies, allowing for shields or passive heals. On the other hand Celesta I found plays best zerging with tier 1 units and using the tier 2 as defensive cannons (doing more damage and being cheaper, ie no gems, to renew). Her abilities are uninteresting and require little to no thought or interaction on the players behalf. Even smokescreen, having such a small area of effect, has little use and is easily avoided by proper unit control.
I've only played Grath (man it's hard to not type Garth).
I think that he's quite strong, particularly his ability to heal and protect neutral weapons. I rather like his units, but I have one complaint with the Trooper's stunning charge ability. Namely, the fact that by default all troopers use the ability at once when it's used, and that as a result 50% or more of them tend to wiff. I consider a wiff to be either
1.) The trooper hits no enemy units.
2.) The trooper hits an enemy unit at the same time as another trooper hits the same enemy unit.
This is somewhat frustrating, as it leads me to believe that the best way to use these little dudes is to select them one by one, and execute their charges independently, in a manner that won't lead to their charges being put on needless cooldowns.
I'm sure that fixes to pathing will help this issue immensely (and maybe hit box reductions, but that's another conversation). I also feel like the best way to re-do the use case for this skill would be to turn it into a sort of semi-automatic rifle. Let me toggle the option to place the ability on a sort of 'Smart Cast' system where I can simply tap the ability, and the nearest trooper who has the ability on cooldown will use it in the direction of my mouse. This would only be a small modification to how the Howling Commando ability already works (where the nearest commando fires his slow in the direction of my mouse on mouse click), and I think it would lead to much better situations in almost every case. IT would also make it easier to chain stuns against small numbers of enemies, or against neutral camps.
Battles feel like they have a ton of potential. Right now I find that the units are very hard to micro, which takes away from some of the fun. The big reasons for this is that the pathing is a bit off, unit collision feels a bit too extreme (especially with structures like the ion canons, health bars are hard to identify and distinguish from the auto/cast indicator (especially on the small units), and I have trouble identifying which units I actually have selected. All those seem like things you are likely aware of and have plans to fix in the future.
Overall I really like the direction that combat is going. With the small unit options for each hero it feels like team coordination will be really important.
One thing I noticed is that at times it can be difficult to identify your own units on the minimap. Not your hero of course but there have been a few occasions where I have "lost" a unit on the map somewhere and it isn't dead but I cant seem to locate it. This may be just a result of me not being used to the game mechanics yet but it is a small thing I noticed.
I used Eris's Sandblast and Chaos Bolt and was a bit uncertain about what to expect.
The description makes what should happen obvious, but I wasn't sure how wide the hitboxes would be based on the thin vector on the ground. Also, I'm still uncertain what the targeting circle on top of the vector does for Chaos Bolt.
Using the Take Aim ability of the sniper class puts all other units in that control group on move command towards that point. In the two games I've played, seems like this is the only ability I've seen that does this.
Another thing I noticed that is more building control than unit control: if you hotkey an upgrade building, when you start a new upgrade you lose that hotkey.
Using Vex, I felt very weak when battling other armies with mine. While the ignite mechanic is very smart and enjoyable, the overall power of him and his army seems lackluster. Against an army of similar worth and size, I found my army to be overrun very easily, even while maximizing ability use.
I feel that the bonus damage with ignite is in the right place, but the base damage of the units may be undersold considering how often your enemy units are ignited.
Vex's ult also feels strange in synergy with his army. While I understand that a flat attack damage and attack speed increase inherently synergizes with his units, it doesn't feel very flavorful. If I were to change it, I might make a circle field of a larger size that damages/weakens enemy units and boosts your own unit attack and speed as it currently does.
Grath- Galvanize seems very situational while harden is very nice for saving units. T2 units feel kind of meh.
Terrapin Troopers - Rocket rush can feel like a waste if you have multiple allied units in an area that will just end up blocking half of the rushes. Would it be possible to make it rocket jump, and have them rush forward while jumping over allied units (temporarily removing allied unit collision)?
Rhino - Very fun unit with the trample.
Hydros - Turn the tide is crazy strong but at the expense of unfun T1 unit.
Scutttleguard- very clunky feeling, must avoid chokes at all costs.
Aquadillo- they feel very fun jumping into the fray, bright spot in an otherwise clunky feeling squad.
Alder in general - I love the synergies between the units. The only downside to this is losing too many seedbots kills the rest of the composition.
Vex - vex's abilities feel stronger/more useful than a lot of the other squad leaders. Vex ult just seems to be a better Grath ult at the cost of a bit of speed they get better attack.
Sparkbots - I'm having the most fun stutter stepping with these units. Probably my favorite T1 with Glacial Rangers close behind.
Ignitor - Conflagrate feel a bit underwhelming, there is a ton of time to avoid the explosion by pulling units away from the pinged unit.
Eris - overall feels very strong.
Apocalytes - have the potential for a huge swings with destructive prophecy on clumped units. I also struggle to see where destructive prophecy is going to end up landing.
Ryme - the whole team is great against anyone that tries to retreat.
Glacial Rangers - It feels like they have one over the stronger T1 abilities. The slow guarantees that at least a few of the opponents units will be picked off if they try to retreat.
Frostfall - will be a blender for players with poor micro skill or that are looking in other locations.
Vela- seems strong vs bots but i'm not sure that will remain true vs other players.
Celeste- Cleansing light can be massive and feels good when it lands solidly. I think 5 seconds is perfect on this, anything less would be overpowered.
Precog - I'm really liking blinding smoke. Fun to get free pokes out with the wisps.
Purifier - I tend to lose them throughout the game. I root them near towers and kind of leave them. I think I just need more time with the champ to correct this though.
In my first game (bot game), I was very frustrated because I had a lot of trouble finding my army. I ended up with units spread randomly all over the map and I couldn't really see them easily on the minimap and had trouble selecting all of my units. The stray units also kept running into enemy towers and dying. I felt like I would win fights vs the bots if I could ever get my army together, but doing so was very difficult.
Edit: Upon further browsing the forums, it seems that army hotkeys do exist, which would likely fix this problem.
I couldn't figure out how to make the Scuttleguard ability actually hit the enemy, the roll duration was extremely short and the unit was often blocked from getting to the enemy by my other units, making the ability wasted. It might be nice to include something like a unit tester where you can test the units' abilities in controlled circumstances and practice controlling your army.
I have to agree. The real struggle is forming my army together and managing respawns. I come from a starcraft background and not having a control group to add new units to means I often leave units behind and have to manually search for where my base is rallying, follow it to the flag, and then shift-add them in a pseudo control group that feels clunky.
I played Celesta (WHO IS SUPER FUN WOW) and having to leap-frog purifiers while also managing my main army and its respawns is a struggle. I CRAVE control groups.
I feel so long as pathfinding and blocking remains so potent, melee units will be at an inherent disadvantage that is magnified at 'low' level play. Allies need to move out of the way, you need to micro your units to where you need them to go.
-OR-
When I see melee units struggle to get into position to attack because of numerous obstacles, especially the larger ones, I wonder if they are balanced with this in mind, or if I need to be a much better player to utilize them properly.
I've been playing Alder and having a SUPER fun time. The one thing that is difficult for me during a large fight is targeting plants to eat them with Bramblethorn Goliath. If they are healing plants, they are in the middle of my army, and so I can rarely get my cursor over it while trying to micro everything else.
I was also looking for a way to track the buffs on my Goliaths, either visually or displayed in stacks on my UI. After munching on many plants, it was difficult to remember what buffs were on.
I'm going to put this here because I'm not quite sure where else to put it:
I'm playing on OSX. Generally speaking, most RTS games I've played on OSX have an option to use cmd+ instead of control+, or come with that as the standard because cmd+ fills the function of control+ most of the time in the basic operating system. Obviously that isn't going to be something Artillery's going to be able to add on the fly in the middle of the pre-alpha, but it would be good to be aware of going forward!
Vela:
The snipe ability is fun, but it's unclear where I'm supposed to be targeting on the enemy's 3d model. I think my mouse was overlapping their head and the shot missed, while aiming lower made it hit. Maybe highlight the enemy when moused over? Doing this in general and not even just for snipe would be nicer. This ability makes me want to split my squad into her and the rest and go hunting for heroes while being useful elsewhere.
The t2 guys I kinda felt like skipping. Their attack CD is awkward when attack-move microing with the whole army (it seemed like they weren't even attacking tbh). The W ability I never really used unless an important target was body blocked for days. I would like a leash range bigger than the targeting range (or bigger than the current leash range) once a target is selected. It seems like they do more in general when auto attacking instead of sitting there for an hour aiming with a 20% chance the target doesn't die or move before the shot fires.
I like the little t1s. But it seemed like the Q had a duration before it expired which isn't in the description. That or the purple particles stopped showing up even though I still had the bonus, which is misleading.
You can see Vela's Windray's wind AOE sometimes through the fog of war. It gives away their position. It seems like the closer the enemy vela is to you, the more likely you are to see the AOE.
Map Size
• Relative to the movement speed of the units, the map feels very wide. If my allies enter an engagement, it will usually be over by the time my squad gets there to help. Perhaps I need to stay in the center of the map more than I have been, and only send small forces to the flanks. Still, I feel that the map could lose 20% of its width.
Unit Abilities
• Suggestion: To counter some of the issues with players being spread out across a large map, it might be helpful to give squad’s some abilities with global range, so that they can provide a modicum of immediate support when their allies enter an engagement.
• Just a small note on Purifiers. Right now they enter siege mode as soon as you press Q, but it would be nice if they first moved to their assigned destination or you could hold Q and click on the spot at which you want them to siege up.
Battle Micro
I played as Hydros
X
In a mid gameish 2v2 hero/army engagement my hero and scuttle guards got caught up in my teammates units and were rendered to be a lot less effective as they couldn't easily maneuver to get within attacking range.
Y
It made me feel a bit helpless and frustrated.
Z
Improvements to unit path finding (which I know is being worked on).
@Deaucalion You can use shift to queue up a siege, just like in SC2. This wasn't possible in BW which was a huge pain in the butt, so I'm glad they didn't keep that aspect. :D
Control Groups
Minor gripe: Options shows control groups like NUM1. I thought NUM was like, num pad, Numlock, etc. instead of Keypad.
I tried grouping my buildings. I got frustrated because I realized every time I made an upgrade, it was a new building.
I tried using a control group after a spawn but it was empty. I felt frustrated and like I was wasting time every spawn re-binding the group (or I didn't get my units back to the fight). If this isn't changed I may just not use control groups except for my main base.
I bound my main base to a control group. I was excited! This gave me a pseudo-camera hotkey on all my upgrade buildings. Maybe camera hotkeys could go on the keypad (num keys).
I was trying to use multiple control groups and I had a hard time telling which were selected. This made me feel bad at the game and frustrated. Maybe a slightly darker shade of blue for selected units would be good. It may be useful even on the minimap. (where'd that unit disappear to?)
I tried to micro back a larger unit (trees) and got blocked by all of my units really easily. It'd be awesome if they could step over friendly units. Even pushing through them would be nice.
Battle Feedback
I really like the pacing. Things feel a lot more strategic (than Starcraft 2).
It was often too hard to see health. Sadly, bars above heads of damaged units may just be the best way to do it.
Higher skillcap using Celesta
Dislikes
While playing i tried to stutter step, but felt very clunky, and didn't move fast enough.
Maybe an upgrade that increase wisp move speed instead of battle sense as it would allow for a more micro intensive engagement and make the purifire placement far more important and frankly less overpowered, as i feel that it is a very good unit for 2 shotting hero units or the high value T2/T3 units.
Crystalline hawk seems somewhat useless, it does very little damage, and most of the time you can scout past a bush or wherever you dont have vision by sending a wisp over, and if needed quickly pulling it back, and even if it does die it respawns very quickly.
What i like about Celesta
I love how well the precongitor and purifire work together, the shield allows for it to love longer and for the wisps to clean up the enemies trying to focus fire the purifire.
I overall like how the wisp handles.
Alder
Vex
I found battles very fun in this game.
At first I felt frustrated with unit collision and I felt that the game was clunky; however, after playing a few games it felt fun made me feel like I had to really micro and control my units. I think that this makes the game less of just 1A clicking, which makes it more exciting in my opinion.
During battles, I felt frustrated because I had a really hard time being able to tell what units I had under selection. Eventually I found out that "~" grabs your whole army, but I wish I was better able to see what units I had under my control.
I also felt that my screen felt cramped during battles. The UI at the bottom is very huge and makes it hard to click units downward or do anything. Perhaps, make the unit pictures a little smaller?
Also, I feel that recall should be cancel-able. In the middle of the battle, I would want to press V to bring more reinforcements, but I accidentally press B and that was very frustrating.
When I am playing Vela, I have a very difficult time grouping my units together, resulting in me needing to micromanage units to keep them in a tighter ball to keep my proper position. I expect that when I have all my units selected and I right click in the center between them they will gather, and instead they seem to hold formation and this feels very frustrating.
The one thing I've noticed that sticks out to me is that re-grouping your units tends to be a bit wonky.
I felt like if my units auto-attacking were spread out too much and I wanted to "death-ball" them, I had to clickmash to get them to do what I wanted.
Completely unrelated, a positive that I really enjoy is how each ability shot seems to have an appropriate speed. The ones that just damage/freeze a single unit are quick and nearly "un-dodgeable", and the amazing abilites that do area damage seem to have a speed that can be dodged. That being said, I found myself creeping up my heroes a lot closer to my enemy's army than I wanted, or I'd use the spell to force my enemy to choose a direction. I think it can be used for both effectively, which is cool. You don't JUST have to save up for a perfect moment...you can use them liberally in the late mid-game.