The battles are really slow and not exciting, in WarCraft III battles where slow, but the micro and the abilities made them really interesting to watch and to play. Currently in Atlas I have not found any excitement in the engagements. The feel of the battle is absent, for example in StarCraft II when your Immortals or Marauders shoot, you can feel that it is a "big shot" or when you cast your psi-storm you "feel" it.
Another problem is that, it is really hard to micro, and not because there is a challenge between me and my opponents, but because the unit's movement is extremely clunky. You should aim to a unit responsiveness at least near to what StarCraft II has, actually it seems really similar to Dota 2, and that's not a good thing, having just one hero to control is one thing, having an army is really different.
When I tried to micro individual units in and out of the line of fire to get more value out of my army I felt frustrated. I have pretty good Stalker micro in SC2, but I struggle to pull off the same things in Atlas.
I feel like everything I try to click is small. I think part of it is the artwork. Stalkers are famously "too fat", but a lot of the units in Atlas look like they are on celebrity diets. Thin lines and tapering forms look really cool and unique but hard to track visually. I keep wanting to squint and move closer to my monitor. Maybe offer an option to zoom in?
The time to live of a lot of things also feels low relative to the speed at which they can move out of fire. Maybe I'm just working with fragile units and other ones would benefit more from that kind of micro. I have not played enough kinds of units to know.
I'm actually kind of surprised at the disparity between the two previous posts: battles either seem too slow for people or too fast, which seem mutually exclusive.
I actually have experienced a lot of what @philosotoss has mentioned in that battles feel too fast to micro many of the units. Some of them can be microed decently well but model size absolutely plays into the difficulty for me, in addition to how fast things get gunned down/how many slows/snares seem to make retreat difficult.
But I'm wondering what types of games the people who feel the battles are slow are playing. Are these primarily experiences with bots? PvP with low level players? Specific factions? It's interesting to see this huge disparity and I wonder what's causing it, personally.
"I'm actually kind of surprised at the disparity between the two previous posts: battles either seem too slow for people or too fast, which seem mutually exclusive."
Nah they are kinda the same thing in this context. With the current TTK you need to very clean and responsive units where its easy to move injured units back for micro to be rewarded. Unit speed must also be much faster than what it is currently.
Wc3 got away with slow movement speed because it had a very very high TTK. It also got away with slow movement speed but a pretty high micro skillcap due to having a tons of abilities in the game.
Project Atlas on the other hand has a medium-level TTK and a slow movement speed along with unclean pathing. Unit counts are also very low and thus the micro skillcap is extremely limited.
Game sound for units being attacked is not there or too silent.
I like the Playstyle of Splitpushing with siege units, but when I'm looking at my main army after issuing commands and the split pushing units get attacked I rarely notice it. You have to focus on your main army in big fights, so I cant look at the minimap to pull back my units on the other side of the map.
It would be really helpful if there would be a clear warning noise when units outside of your current vision are getting attacked.
@Hider said:
"I'm actually kind of surprised at the disparity between the two previous posts: battles either seem too slow for people or too fast, which seem mutually exclusive."
Nah they are kinda the same thing in this context. With the current TTK you need to very clean and responsive units where its easy to move injured units back for micro to be rewarded. Unit speed must also be much faster than what it is currently.
Wc3 got away with slow movement speed because it had a very very high TTK. It also got away with slow movement speed but a pretty high micro skillcap due to having a tons of abilities in the game.
Project Atlas on the other hand has a medium-level TTK and a slow movement speed along with unclean pathing. Unit counts are also very low and thus the micro skillcap is extremely limited.
I feel like it's also a point that abilities and attacks make the battles feel very fast (and fun imo) as abilities are quick to cast and units can be vaporized in seconds.
But the movement speed makes the actual engaging, flank maneuvers and ordinary movement feel much slower in comparison.
@BadWolf said:
But the movement speed makes the actual engaging, flank maneuvers and ordinary movement feel much slower in comparison.
Funny you should say that -- we're actually doing a couple tests internally over the next couple days that bump movement speed values up a bit across the board. If it goes well, you should see this in-game fairly soon!
A thing shot a thing. If no nuke/artillery was involved, HP bars barely moved and sound effects were really tame.
I felt like combat was uneventful. Now of course I understand you can't speed up things withou crucifying accessibility, but I felt like teddy bears were having a pillow fight.
Suggested fix: rework sound design so that impacts feel satisfying. Everybody who's heard it recognises a Mario jump or a Starcraft marine shooting, even though the actions associated to it are were mundane in their respective games.
Comments
I feel like the map in general and the battles are cramped.
The battles are really slow and not exciting, in WarCraft III battles where slow, but the micro and the abilities made them really interesting to watch and to play. Currently in Atlas I have not found any excitement in the engagements. The feel of the battle is absent, for example in StarCraft II when your Immortals or Marauders shoot, you can feel that it is a "big shot" or when you cast your psi-storm you "feel" it.
Another problem is that, it is really hard to micro, and not because there is a challenge between me and my opponents, but because the unit's movement is extremely clunky. You should aim to a unit responsiveness at least near to what StarCraft II has, actually it seems really similar to Dota 2, and that's not a good thing, having just one hero to control is one thing, having an army is really different.
When I tried to micro individual units in and out of the line of fire to get more value out of my army I felt frustrated. I have pretty good Stalker micro in SC2, but I struggle to pull off the same things in Atlas.
I feel like everything I try to click is small. I think part of it is the artwork. Stalkers are famously "too fat", but a lot of the units in Atlas look like they are on celebrity diets. Thin lines and tapering forms look really cool and unique but hard to track visually. I keep wanting to squint and move closer to my monitor. Maybe offer an option to zoom in?
The time to live of a lot of things also feels low relative to the speed at which they can move out of fire. Maybe I'm just working with fragile units and other ones would benefit more from that kind of micro. I have not played enough kinds of units to know.
I'm actually kind of surprised at the disparity between the two previous posts: battles either seem too slow for people or too fast, which seem mutually exclusive.
I actually have experienced a lot of what @philosotoss has mentioned in that battles feel too fast to micro many of the units. Some of them can be microed decently well but model size absolutely plays into the difficulty for me, in addition to how fast things get gunned down/how many slows/snares seem to make retreat difficult.
But I'm wondering what types of games the people who feel the battles are slow are playing. Are these primarily experiences with bots? PvP with low level players? Specific factions? It's interesting to see this huge disparity and I wonder what's causing it, personally.
"I'm actually kind of surprised at the disparity between the two previous posts: battles either seem too slow for people or too fast, which seem mutually exclusive."
Nah they are kinda the same thing in this context. With the current TTK you need to very clean and responsive units where its easy to move injured units back for micro to be rewarded. Unit speed must also be much faster than what it is currently.
Wc3 got away with slow movement speed because it had a very very high TTK. It also got away with slow movement speed but a pretty high micro skillcap due to having a tons of abilities in the game.
Project Atlas on the other hand has a medium-level TTK and a slow movement speed along with unclean pathing. Unit counts are also very low and thus the micro skillcap is extremely limited.
Game sound for units being attacked is not there or too silent.
I like the Playstyle of Splitpushing with siege units, but when I'm looking at my main army after issuing commands and the split pushing units get attacked I rarely notice it. You have to focus on your main army in big fights, so I cant look at the minimap to pull back my units on the other side of the map.
It would be really helpful if there would be a clear warning noise when units outside of your current vision are getting attacked.
I feel like it's also a point that abilities and attacks make the battles feel very fast (and fun imo) as abilities are quick to cast and units can be vaporized in seconds.
But the movement speed makes the actual engaging, flank maneuvers and ordinary movement feel much slower in comparison.
Funny you should say that -- we're actually doing a couple tests internally over the next couple days that bump movement speed values up a bit across the board. If it goes well, you should see this in-game fairly soon!