RTS player's first review
I'm not gonna deny it, I am a bit disappointed. I was hoping for a next-generation RTS game, yet instead the game feels like 95% MobA. Sure, instead of autospawning waves you get near-free basic units which you can control yourself and the emphasis on the hero is spread amongst various higher-tier units, which gives the game the nice RTS touch that you can pick of parts of the army instead of having an all-or-nothing kill. But the gameplay is pretty much that of a MobA: Micromanage that one and only screen you have to look at and work with your teammates on various lanes.
The supply cap is low, the battles are slow and you never get the feeling of having a proper army. Even the unit's responsiveness and clunky pathing feels more like that of a MobA instead of a proper crowd behaviour. Add to that a large amount of stuns and slows and unit stats that seem to be created in a way that everyone is always shooting each other and you can hardly ever get shots off without being shot back, hence, there is no real trademark micromanagement for units possible besides using their obvious abilitymicro.
The deckbuilding before the game sounds much more awesome as it turns out to be in my opinion. The core playstyle is determined by the hero and their basic units and it does not feel like reacting to the enemy composition is really important, it is rather important to just have a composition that combos with itself. And that ontop of many units - and heroes as well - feeling extremely similar. I dunno if it is just me, but I just don't really see the big difference between that one assissin hero or that other assassin hero or that third assassin hero or that one midrange+melee or that other midrange+melee guy. I personally would rather prefer more similar choices within one hero or faction (say multiple T1 melee units that only differ a little bit in stats) to create subtle deckbuilding choices, than having lots of heroes whose compositions feel somewhat predetermined and in the end have quite some overlap with each other.
I dunno, I guess I just expected something else. I can very well see this becoming a very wellreceived game, but it just does not excite me enough to really invest a lot of time into learning it at the moment. :/
Comments
While I personally enjoy a number of aspects about this game I also agree on a few points you make:
I do think that at higher lvls of play you will find that battles are actually very fast - huge numbers of troops can and are liquidated in seconds on a consistent basic, though poke wars are much closer to a MOBA when laning against someone. I personally feel this represents a fairly nice tradeoff, but there are also some unit types (like seige) that don't feel like they work well in the current dynamic.
If anything I'd love to see more valuable units at various tiers across the board and less reliance on Tier 1 and hero abilities.
I'm a bigger fan of the RTS genre than I am of MOBAs, though this game does a good job for me of scratching both itches. Fights over the middle feel pretty good to me, though the Titan mechanic feels kind of like a compromise at times for how to reward them. Base fights still feel a little weird, maybe because Titans still feel a little weird, but maybe time will change that perception.
I'm totally in agreement that more RTS elements would be awesome to me, in this new, cool game. However, let's stop saying we're disappointed or else we'll look like crybabies. This game is awesome, it's got it's own unique thing going on and I like it. In fact, we could even say it was inspired by Dawn of War with the squad mechanic.
However, here are my suggestions; do whatever you want with them, I just think it would make the game more fun for me, personally;
- Since battles happen a lot in the, huh, jungle, there is... no real good reasons for lanes. Make them give whatever is traveling along their path a movement speed bonus. I mean, man made roads to travel faster without issues to one place to another, right? Well... that would be a good mechanic to represent that.
- Diversify the heroes; give them more abilities. Right now it doesn't change all that much whoever I choose.
- Limited base building; we choose units outside the match, cool. Now let's give players some more choice than just: go right or left or go help an ally in need. It can be as simple as Halo Wars.
- As much as I enjoy objectives that enables you to push, I think the fact that the Titans only spawn in the middle makes this game too much like just a tug of war. I have no suggestion for this except; don't keep it that way? XD
- Death timers... I hate those. Can we all find a solution to this problem? I'm not sitting on front of my computer to watch numbers. I'm here to move a character around and kill other characters because they look different. Beside, to enable players to learn the game faster you gotta let them resurrect faster. I know we can't really have that because the damn archive is right next to the spawning point but maybe we could arrange it that it is kept somewhere else so when you die the enemy can still push even if they are not at 100% HP and Mana? Maybe the Archive is replaced by a boss? I mean, that's what we liked from that old map from WarCraft 3 before it became it's own game, right? Destroy towers with the promise of an epic battle with whatever dude that made so much trouble in the beloved world of WarCraft, right?
I'll shut up now.
Thanks for the read, have a nice day! XD
I agree about RTS aspect that we need more elements over MOBA. I love how this game looks and i wish we could make that point of Hybrid where RTS would dominate
I think, we are from rts background, so we want more rts game than that moba stuff. U need more strong unist not attach to deathballs, more splitting, and do other things than jungle and gank ppl who jungle. How about bulding base, real base together, real buildings which u can harras and push ? buildings for upgrades ? buildings for units ? and instead of jungle make blue and gold mines !! XD
uhh...dreams....
It is definitely more MOBA than RTS as any of these "hybrids" always turn out to be. That said I was pleasantly surprised by the gameplay and aesthetics. The unit production of building your own "creeps", though there is a variety to choose from they're still creeps, is very fun and having the ability to auto build helps lessen the focus of going back to your base and more on movements on the battlefield.
A HUGE problem for me from a first impression is the resource gathering and as a result the unit production mechanic is just too slow. I often found myself running low on Shards and Energy then going looking into the creep areas waiting for new neutral creeps to pop up, so I could kill them and get enough resources to make more units.
Something needs to be done about this, because I found myself getting bored quickly while needing to do this. Maybe a solution would be to have control points on the map that are captured and gain resources while held, and have the ability to gain extra resources if enemy units, buildings, heroes or neutral creeps are killed, but it's just obnoxious now to HAVE to farm creeps in order to gain resources.
Also I don't see a point to the titans. It seems like they just threw them in there to "spice" things up and differentiate them further from other MOBAS but the reality is it just becomes another tedious thing. "Oh titans spawned, gotta rally everything and try to push with it again, I guess".
in my eyes it has enough rts elements but building additional structures for additional mechanics might please those rts peasants ( sorry
) but honestly so far im having fun , i always had issues with micro managing so this game doesnt screw me over as much as to say starcraft 2 or warcraft 3 , i cant complain but the resource gathering is pretty simple and does bring action early into the game , im not saying that too much rts is bad , but i honestly dont wanna see people camp at base and build huge armies to then roflstomp everyone cough cough zergling rush or protos pylon spawning menace.
shit like this is how you start a flame war :P
Purely intentional , bring the salt from league of legends into this mess , no but honestly as much as i liked warcraft 3 and starcraft 2, the controls always threw me off, and really got on my nerves , and with this game its more or less fixed , wich i appreciate the unit collision and pathfinding screws with me sometimes but its good enough for now
My only problem with this game that I found as the main problem that takes away from the rts part of the game is there are no long term points of interest, I have no reason to defend a certain part of the map to give me an edge in the long term.
Sure I can shoo away some enemies while I kill that heavy creep camp but when I am done I just move away and don't give a shit if my enemy moves in there.
In strategy I expect to have locations which require a long term investment that give me an edge, I also want to be able to harass and deny the enemies from doing the same.
Currently it is less about strategy and more about tactics as there is nothing to strategize about except the unit composition and if we should ignore the titan and charge in while the enemy is preoccupied, everything else is tactics as it is reactive and depends on the immediate situation and not the overall flow of the match.
hm in that case maybe implement capture points that give a resource boost but puts you in danger since the resource boost will only be activated while being near to that location ? does that sound good ? to me it does but not on this tiny 3v3 map honestly
I believe they already tried that and didn't have good results, wasn't around pre alpha so not sure.