I like the respawning camps that give you reasons to move armies back to your base and around the map. Being able to physically take enemy resources, rather than just kill a worker and leave, is really satisfying, and makes me feel like a genius when counterattacking.
It's cool that the early game "building phase" feels so much more active than something like SC2 where you build some workers and buildings and maybe send a scout. I get to fight immediately! I like fighting. There's also immediate teamwork and decisions to be made. I regretted not using Discord at times, even for the early game. Should I spawn top or bot? Are we 2-manning or 3-manning the medium camp? Right into the action. This was in previous weekends, but still.
Also happy to see worker units removed, it didn't feel like they were really accomplishing much in the last weekend. I like the constant choice of Supply/Stock/Scrap. It was a pretty hard choice a lot of the time, at least between Supply and Scrap (It's pretty obvious if you need Stock or not..),
I enjoy the titan system and how they give the game a natural progression that you can choose to emphasize more or less. I started out my first few games by focusing on grabbing them all the time, and denying them at all costs. Gradually, I shifted to stealing Titans when people were out of position, and punishing people for not taking them safely enough. I feel like there's a decent range of how much people care about securing them, and that will lead to some decent diversity in strategies. Sort of like in LoL how people will argue if it's better to go for a Dragon or a Tower; that decision has pretty massive implications on how you decide to play the rest of the game. Here, if you're willing to sacrifice a Titan spawn, there are resources to deny or steal, 2v1s to take as your lane opponent 1v0s (and has nothing to kill, as they can't do that nearby Hard camp!), etc.
I do think that Titans should be a bit less able to take bases singlehandedly. When I was running around the map as Eris, sometimes I'd get a Titan spawn, then promptly forget about it and run across the map. It'd go on to demolish a tower or two while also drawing an entire army to deal with it, and my team would get so much map presence as we'd be 3v2ing everyone else. Feels bad, and forcing Titans to need a liiiiiittle more support would help a bit with the snowballing problem everyone is mentioning, I think. Nothing major, maybe something like a small speed or damage reduction if a friendly hero isn't nearby. That'd also make hero snipes more important!
Warp-ins are brilliant for making me feel less tied to a lane, and more able to support my teammates.
Happy with the overall feel of the game. Very different to what is big atm; between LoL, Hots, Dota2, Overwatch, this was a good change of pace.
-I felt excited when I learned this was a "hero" based rts-lane style game.
-When I booted my first bot and saw how the game play was with the WCIII/LoL/Dota2 style creep, I was ecstatic.
-I felt frustrated after killing a creep camp and my teammates would come steal scrap orbs/minerals from me.
-I felt frustrated when creeping because I didn't know the value of the creeps (scrap value) or when the would respawn after they died. I feel like a simple way to fix:
1. Indicate how much scrap value each creep camp is worth, when creep dies indicate on the orb-it's scrap value. In addition the Mineral patch associated with creep camps indicate that it has X scrap and will take X seconds to deplete.
2. Give either a minute timer or timer in seconds to indicate when the creep camp would be available for use again.
3. It would also be beneficial if these things were added to point them out in the tutorial. I felt confused when doing the tutorial. I new the titan orbs gave scrap but didn't know that the camp orbs didn't benefit the titan.
-I felt frustrated/anxious when I had no ping-wheel but instead had multiple different keybinds for different pings. pl0x give us a ping wheel to let my comrades know I am coming or they need to get the hell outta there! pls!!111 <3
I feel like these changes would greatly benefit the overall feeling of the game, and prevent players from being so greedy. I felt like this community would bode well to a Heroes of the Storm type mentality; Team oriented, do what is best for the team. I love the ability to make big plays and there are heroes that show that potential and really, all of them do in their own way! <3 I think lastly in the tutorial giving a better idea of what the orbs and mineral patches actually do for you and what and where they benefit depending on location, i.e. creep camps strictly benefit scrap. Whereas titan orbs benefit scrap and build to making the titan itself. This would greatly benefit the already steep learning curve that currently exists. It will also help new players to either RTS or moba style games stay relentlessly positive!
Overall I felt satisfied in the few games I played, unfortunately. Because of the lack of timers and assistance with map awareness.
Especially when being brought on for a test weekend with NDA in full force I had no way of learning about the game in a timely manner without digging through the forums. All I wanted to do was jump in and play. I didn't have much time to play so when I did find time, I jumped into bot matches when pvp was unavailable. I feel like this game should be played with friends or on voice comms because scrap should be shared and strats should be made. Excited to see where this goes and hope to be apart of it all!
Getting back into this after not playing for a while was one heck of a surprise. I really liked the pacing of the overall game, including the new polish.
I sort of like how chaotic it is during the gem spawning (do we split up? Do we group up? Can we defend 1-2 aspect juggs if we push hard in one of the areas?) along with the way that the map influences play. During the period of no gem spawning, the respawning titans are SO clutch. I love how it gives me and my team the option to either farm up or search for the enemy in that time window and deny their own farming, or even gank them if possible.
Leveling seemed to be at a good clip - I didn't get my ultimate on my hero super-early but it arrived soon enough to use it enough in combat which is always fun.
Personal note, I love love love shadows for blue. Maybe because they're so uncharacteristic for a color that's typically about support/control, but I was so eager to try out different things. Building sniping with Shadows was fun (microing the cloak to a single Shadow when it got low on health). Trebuchet sniping was clutch and a nice counter to a unit everyone was talking about! Even more than that, I always felt annoyed on blue to catch an enemy Jugg aspect on the way and be able to do virtually NOTHING to it even if it was alone. Shadows are a great response to that.
I've been so excited to talk strats with people, and that's even without the opportunity for people to go in with a game plan (due to no parties yet). Unfortunately since I enjoyed so much, it's harder to give specific feedback on certain items like in previous builds so I apologize for broad comments.
I have to say, along with a previous sentiment I didn't miss expansions at all. I liked how the units were basically used to farm resources (exp/scrap) and although I thought I'd miss tower building, I didn't. Overall though I'm not sure on the rest of the economy building aspects (picking between stock/supply/scrap), it still feels a bit cludgy to me to upgrade stuff the way I do. I like having the ability to direct what I'm going for in that way, it may just be something I have to get used to.
I also wanted to address a sentiment that I saw mentioned, regarding disliking the unit picker because it forced the player to know everything ahead of time vs deciding in-game. I don't necessarily agree with this because I either need to know the possibilities upfront or during the game - either way I require basically the same knowledge to make an informed decision. With the deck picker, I always end up picking more units than I build which is fine - that's the flex choice I'm given in order to respond! When team strats and group queuing become a thing, it'll be fun to customize a strategy based not only around heroes but also unit choices. I can't wait for the conversations of "OK so I'll take these units so that we can stabilize early but then we transition and you instead cover the front line while I do this fancy spec ops stuff with these other units".
Overall, happy vibes, fun games! I never felt overwhelmed in which I thought I couldn't respond to what was going on in the field. I didn't have any big comeback games so I don't yet know how likely that is, but even if the games were a slow creep to a win, they were fun while we got there.
The game doesn't stop at the victory screen. The audio cues for unit produced etc. still go off until you close the game. Tried it for ~10 mins after I won, yay :P
@Eric said:
Let us know your thoughts on specific systems in the game, e.g. gem collection -> titans, neutral camps to collect stock and supply, upgrades (items, unit inflection upgrades), win conditions, overall pacing.
When providing feedback, please use the following format:
X happened
It made me feel Y (or I’d like to feel Y)
(optional) Here’s a suggestion to improve it
Day9 spoke about this in a video and I really, really like this; it's fun to know how you guys want to receive feedback! :D
During a game me and my friend outmaneuvered two of our enemies at the start of the game (4:00 and 5:30) and wiped their armies out.
It felt amazing and gave us a clear advantage through the whole game but it still lasted for 44 minutes because the player who wasn't caught out got sludges and catapults that slowed our advance.
It was one of the greatest games I've played but it still felt weird that one player could carry a team that got wiped in the beginning and a couple of more times throughout the game, we had 5000 more shards then them by the end but we still couldn't close it out before the 40 minute mark.
I can understand the 43 minute game if there was a comeback mechanic but they never stood a chance unless we would've fucked up somehow, for 30 minutes they just slowly keeled over and died over.
Just giving some initial impressions as I'm still very new to the game (but I can give a new-player perspective!)
Positives:
Game flow feels good and natural in the early/midgame. I like fighting over creep camps.
I like skirmishing with the enemy and playing with vision (wards in an RTS are cool!)
Unit abilities feel good.
Ratting turrets is satisfying and appropriately difficult (not impossible to do, easy to defend if predicted)
Titans provide a nice "timing" to focus builds on and a natural decision point to base upgrades etc on
Negatives:
I feel like titans currently cause most of my main frustrations:
-Titans feel really uninteractive because they have a billion health and can't be stunned etc. this means fighting them always boils down to: right click everything onto them and wait with fingers crossed
-Winning in strategy games feels best when you defeat your opponents army in a decisive battle. This doesn't happen if a 4th titan just walk dumbly up to the front door and kick it down, feels like a very straightforward and repetitive way to end games
-Taking out a titan in a close fight gives a massive advantage. The enemy titan heals for a large portion which means a titan taken in a 50/50 battle will give the side with a tiny advantage a HUGE advantage, swinging the game heavily. This wouldn't be so bad... buuuut...
-In LoL/DoTA Baron/Dragon/Roshan give a similar advantage, but are nigh-impossible to take without first fighting and beating the enemy team. Titans, on the other hand, don't fight back except from the relatively easy to dodge stun. This means nearly every titan fight I saw just had each team sandbagging down the massive titan healthbar (kinda boring) while dancing around the enemy occasionally poking them. When what would feel a lot more fun would be an all out fight with armies. It's really hard to pinpoint a good reason to ever actually have a direct battle or "teamfight" in the conventional sense, which is a shame because these are usually the most fun part of a game.
I almost feel the game would be more fun exactly the same but without the titans. Not saying they should be removed, but they seem the weakest aspect of the game by FAR to me. just my two cents, and obviously my impressions might change as I play further!
I discovered there is an individual amount cap for each unit type.
It made me feel frustrated, because I capped higher tech units very easily in the same army and still had spare supply, so my possibilities in army compositions with my given 6 slots felt very limited. Thinking of the reason why this limitation was set, it also reminded me of Warhammer 40k, when Games Workshop, after unsuccesful attempts at balancing their game, basically gave up on balance and implemented a similar cap-per-unit-type mechanic to make armies more homogeneous. I enjoy strategy games because they give the players a lot of agency, instead of being a tightly controlled puzzle where developers have foreseen everything for us.
Here’s a suggestion to improve it: remove the caps, except possibly for "mothership" unique units. If the caps are there because you think the game would break otherwise, hire someone with experience in game balancing.
@Paladin
I do not love the idea of unit caps either in an RTS, but one thing I've come to conclude in this game is that Units function, in a way, as an extension of the traditional Hero unit in a MOBA, insomuch as they add additional abilities and capabilities so that a hero + his crew do similar things to a hero in a MOBA in the midgame (and a lot more in the lategame).
What this also means is that the abilities units have access to are effectively "hero abilities" with regards to strength, size, and impact. They do a LOT more than traditional unit spells would do, are available more often, and cover more ground.
As a result, without having limits to unit count, it would be a lot like playing a MOBA where hero abilities had no cooldown. Which, while occasionally fun, results in a tremendously stupid game. I'm not saying units couldn't be rebalanced so this wasn't the case (they obviously could), but if they were they would no longer have the same feel with regards to having "hero-class" abilities and would not contribute so much to creating one cohesive "heroic" force. I'm not sure that's a good tradeoff ultimately.
@tedster
Good point. I suppose that's tied to the idea units only have cooldowns and no mana in this game.
That said, while I understand how amassing a monotarget burst sniping unit or a ludicrous amont of AoE spells might break the game, I'm not sure massing the equivalent of a StarCraft marine, medics, tanks, basic aircraft or charge zealot is really threatening the game's equilibrium. For a lot of units in GoA, it feels like, from my very limited experience, that a cap was put for consistency's sake with a few problematic units ("now every unit type has a number in that stat!") while the majority of them are completely unneeded.
My gut solution would be, instead, to raise cooldown on problematic abilities or, better, to work on ways so that the opponent's agency can counter the problem, which is more satisfying for everyone involved.
Another possibility is that devs simply don't want mass tier 3 units in the very late game. I personally find that prospect fun. :-)
@Paladin said:
For a lot of units in GoA, it feels like, from my very limited experience, that a cap was put for consistency's sake with a few problematic units ("now every unit type has a number in that stat!") while the majority of them are completely unneeded.
That said, no unit should need a cap to begin with. The problem with a cap is that it's an admission that the sweet spot for the unit's utility is at some higher number than the cap. But if units peak in utility when paired with themselves, then that might be an indicator of the underlying mechanics not being very interesting in the first place.
It is possible to design pathological abilities that don't scale. For example "deal N damage to every enemy on the map" is fair for small N and unfair for large N. In these cases, the best way to fix the ability by thinking about what you really want it to do. (In this case, reword as, for example, "Make the map stormy for 20s. When the map is stormy, all enemies take N/20 damage per second.")
In my extensive experience, I think Population Cap is an awesome thing about this game. It allows the creation of very impactful units, even at lower unit numbers. Gameflow in GoA is a lot more directed than in a game such as SC2, hence, you can't really circumvent issues such as e.g. mech being strong only at 170+ supply for example. Siege Tanks would be viable at all if you have to meet in open field every 4-5 minutes. (Of course there is this whole discussion about map design but let's not descend down that rabbit hole) It also allows for a wider range of unit strength in my opinion.
I think it's better to look at it from a card-game perspective, and in some aspects and deck-building perspective. There is a reason that there is a unique card limit in card games. It just allows for the implementation of interesting and powerful things without it getting out of hand being spammed.
I also disagree with your impression that population cap is completely unneeded for a majority of units. In fact, almost every unit cap has been chosen deliberately through a lot of testing.
It seems like you're arguing from the perspective of unit-caps being strictly worse than no unit-caps and not even trying to acknowledge the strengths of the unit-caps and the different context that games such as SC2 operate in compared to GoA.
I will put my two cents in to the above discussion.
If the trade off for removing the unit cap is making every unit with a low cap much weaker I don't feel the trade off is worth it. I have seen a couple of strategy games which made me lose interest simply because many of the units felt weak and no one unit stood out from the other as they were all a bit samey.
If having a unit cap allows for more interesting units and make every unit be impactful instead of having all the units feel like a little stronger type of tier 1 units then I am all for them.
Sometimes unit caps allow more fun and over powered abilities to exist, they are not a sign of bad balancing but rather the wish to have fun toys to play with without making the game unbalanced.
I discovered there is an individual amount cap for each unit type.
It made me feel frustrated, because I capped higher tech units very easily in the same army and still had spare supply, so my possibilities in army compositions with my given 6 slots felt very limited. Thinking of the reason why this limitation was set, it also reminded me of Warhammer 40k, when Games Workshop, after unsuccesful attempts at balancing their game, basically gave up on balance and implemented a similar cap-per-unit-type mechanic to make armies more homogeneous. I enjoy strategy games because they give the players a lot of agency, instead of being a tightly controlled puzzle where developers have foreseen everything for us.
Here’s a suggestion to improve it: remove the caps, except possibly for "mothership" unique units. If the caps are there because you think the game would break otherwise, hire someone with experience in game balancing.
That said, no unit should need a cap to begin with. The problem with a cap is that it's an admission that the sweet spot for the unit's utility is at some higher number than the cap. But if units peak in utility when paired with themselves, then that might be an indicator of the underlying mechanics not being very interesting in the first place.
I was going to post my feedback, but someone had already summed up my main issue perfectly here.
>
> I discovered there is an individual amount cap for each unit type.
> It made me feel frustrated, because I capped higher tech units very easily in the same army and still had spare supply, so my possibilities in army compositions with my given 6 slots felt very limited. Thinking of the reason why this limitation was set, it also reminded me of Warhammer 40k, when Games Workshop, after unsuccesful attempts at balancing their game, basically gave up on balance and implemented a similar cap-per-unit-type mechanic to make armies more homogeneous. I enjoy strategy games because they give the players a lot of agency, instead of being a tightly controlled puzzle where developers have foreseen everything for us.
> Here’s a suggestion to improve it: remove the caps, except possibly for "mothership" unique units. If the caps are there because you think the game would break otherwise, hire someone with experience in game balancing.
>
>
That said, no unit should need a cap to begin with. The problem with a cap is that it's an admission that the sweet spot for the unit's utility is at some higher number than the cap. But if units peak in utility when paired with themselves, then that might be an indicator of the underlying mechanics not being very interesting in the first place.
I was going to post my feedback, but someone had already summed up my main issue perfectly here.
Comments
I like the respawning camps that give you reasons to move armies back to your base and around the map. Being able to physically take enemy resources, rather than just kill a worker and leave, is really satisfying, and makes me feel like a genius when counterattacking.
It's cool that the early game "building phase" feels so much more active than something like SC2 where you build some workers and buildings and maybe send a scout. I get to fight immediately! I like fighting. There's also immediate teamwork and decisions to be made. I regretted not using Discord at times, even for the early game. Should I spawn top or bot? Are we 2-manning or 3-manning the medium camp? Right into the action. This was in previous weekends, but still.
Also happy to see worker units removed, it didn't feel like they were really accomplishing much in the last weekend. I like the constant choice of Supply/Stock/Scrap. It was a pretty hard choice a lot of the time, at least between Supply and Scrap (It's pretty obvious if you need Stock or not..),
I enjoy the titan system and how they give the game a natural progression that you can choose to emphasize more or less. I started out my first few games by focusing on grabbing them all the time, and denying them at all costs. Gradually, I shifted to stealing Titans when people were out of position, and punishing people for not taking them safely enough. I feel like there's a decent range of how much people care about securing them, and that will lead to some decent diversity in strategies. Sort of like in LoL how people will argue if it's better to go for a Dragon or a Tower; that decision has pretty massive implications on how you decide to play the rest of the game. Here, if you're willing to sacrifice a Titan spawn, there are resources to deny or steal, 2v1s to take as your lane opponent 1v0s (and has nothing to kill, as they can't do that nearby Hard camp!), etc.
I do think that Titans should be a bit less able to take bases singlehandedly. When I was running around the map as Eris, sometimes I'd get a Titan spawn, then promptly forget about it and run across the map. It'd go on to demolish a tower or two while also drawing an entire army to deal with it, and my team would get so much map presence as we'd be 3v2ing everyone else. Feels bad, and forcing Titans to need a liiiiiittle more support would help a bit with the snowballing problem everyone is mentioning, I think. Nothing major, maybe something like a small speed or damage reduction if a friendly hero isn't nearby. That'd also make hero snipes more important!
Warp-ins are brilliant for making me feel less tied to a lane, and more able to support my teammates.
Happy with the overall feel of the game. Very different to what is big atm; between LoL, Hots, Dota2, Overwatch, this was a good change of pace.
-I felt excited when I learned this was a "hero" based rts-lane style game.
-When I booted my first bot and saw how the game play was with the WCIII/LoL/Dota2 style creep, I was ecstatic.
-I felt frustrated after killing a creep camp and my teammates would come steal scrap orbs/minerals from me.
-I felt frustrated when creeping because I didn't know the value of the creeps (scrap value) or when the would respawn after they died. I feel like a simple way to fix:
1. Indicate how much scrap value each creep camp is worth, when creep dies indicate on the orb-it's scrap value. In addition the Mineral patch associated with creep camps indicate that it has X scrap and will take X seconds to deplete.
2. Give either a minute timer or timer in seconds to indicate when the creep camp would be available for use again.
3. It would also be beneficial if these things were added to point them out in the tutorial. I felt confused when doing the tutorial. I new the titan orbs gave scrap but didn't know that the camp orbs didn't benefit the titan.
-I felt frustrated/anxious when I had no ping-wheel but instead had multiple different keybinds for different pings. pl0x give us a ping wheel to let my comrades know I am coming or they need to get the hell outta there! pls!!111 <3
I feel like these changes would greatly benefit the overall feeling of the game, and prevent players from being so greedy. I felt like this community would bode well to a Heroes of the Storm type mentality; Team oriented, do what is best for the team. I love the ability to make big plays and there are heroes that show that potential and really, all of them do in their own way! <3 I think lastly in the tutorial giving a better idea of what the orbs and mineral patches actually do for you and what and where they benefit depending on location, i.e. creep camps strictly benefit scrap. Whereas titan orbs benefit scrap and build to making the titan itself. This would greatly benefit the already steep learning curve that currently exists. It will also help new players to either RTS or moba style games stay relentlessly positive!
Overall I felt satisfied in the few games I played, unfortunately. Because of the lack of timers and assistance with map awareness.
Especially when being brought on for a test weekend with NDA in full force I had no way of learning about the game in a timely manner without digging through the forums. All I wanted to do was jump in and play. I didn't have much time to play so when I did find time, I jumped into bot matches when pvp was unavailable. I feel like this game should be played with friends or on voice comms because scrap should be shared and strats should be made. Excited to see where this goes and hope to be apart of it all!
Getting back into this after not playing for a while was one heck of a surprise. I really liked the pacing of the overall game, including the new polish.
I sort of like how chaotic it is during the gem spawning (do we split up? Do we group up? Can we defend 1-2 aspect juggs if we push hard in one of the areas?) along with the way that the map influences play. During the period of no gem spawning, the respawning titans are SO clutch. I love how it gives me and my team the option to either farm up or search for the enemy in that time window and deny their own farming, or even gank them if possible.
Leveling seemed to be at a good clip - I didn't get my ultimate on my hero super-early but it arrived soon enough to use it enough in combat which is always fun.
Personal note, I love love love shadows for blue. Maybe because they're so uncharacteristic for a color that's typically about support/control, but I was so eager to try out different things. Building sniping with Shadows was fun (microing the cloak to a single Shadow when it got low on health). Trebuchet sniping was clutch and a nice counter to a unit everyone was talking about! Even more than that, I always felt annoyed on blue to catch an enemy Jugg aspect on the way and be able to do virtually NOTHING to it even if it was alone. Shadows are a great response to that.
I've been so excited to talk strats with people, and that's even without the opportunity for people to go in with a game plan (due to no parties yet). Unfortunately since I enjoyed so much, it's harder to give specific feedback on certain items like in previous builds so I apologize for broad comments.
I have to say, along with a previous sentiment I didn't miss expansions at all. I liked how the units were basically used to farm resources (exp/scrap) and although I thought I'd miss tower building, I didn't. Overall though I'm not sure on the rest of the economy building aspects (picking between stock/supply/scrap), it still feels a bit cludgy to me to upgrade stuff the way I do. I like having the ability to direct what I'm going for in that way, it may just be something I have to get used to.
I also wanted to address a sentiment that I saw mentioned, regarding disliking the unit picker because it forced the player to know everything ahead of time vs deciding in-game. I don't necessarily agree with this because I either need to know the possibilities upfront or during the game - either way I require basically the same knowledge to make an informed decision. With the deck picker, I always end up picking more units than I build which is fine - that's the flex choice I'm given in order to respond! When team strats and group queuing become a thing, it'll be fun to customize a strategy based not only around heroes but also unit choices. I can't wait for the conversations of "OK so I'll take these units so that we can stabilize early but then we transition and you instead cover the front line while I do this fancy spec ops stuff with these other units".
Overall, happy vibes, fun games! I never felt overwhelmed in which I thought I couldn't respond to what was going on in the field. I didn't have any big comeback games so I don't yet know how likely that is, but even if the games were a slow creep to a win, they were fun while we got there.
The game doesn't stop at the victory screen. The audio cues for unit produced etc. still go off until you close the game. Tried it for ~10 mins after I won, yay :P
Day9 spoke about this in a video and I really, really like this; it's fun to know how you guys want to receive feedback! :D
I feel like I'm constantly killing NPC's and not really engaging with the enemy players for the majority of the game.
During a game me and my friend outmaneuvered two of our enemies at the start of the game (4:00 and 5:30) and wiped their armies out.
It felt amazing and gave us a clear advantage through the whole game but it still lasted for 44 minutes because the player who wasn't caught out got sludges and catapults that slowed our advance.
It was one of the greatest games I've played but it still felt weird that one player could carry a team that got wiped in the beginning and a couple of more times throughout the game, we had 5000 more shards then them by the end but we still couldn't close it out before the 40 minute mark.
I can understand the 43 minute game if there was a comeback mechanic but they never stood a chance unless we would've fucked up somehow, for 30 minutes they just slowly keeled over and died over.
Just giving some initial impressions as I'm still very new to the game (but I can give a new-player perspective!)
Positives:
Game flow feels good and natural in the early/midgame. I like fighting over creep camps.
I like skirmishing with the enemy and playing with vision (wards in an RTS are cool!)
Unit abilities feel good.
Ratting turrets is satisfying and appropriately difficult (not impossible to do, easy to defend if predicted)
Titans provide a nice "timing" to focus builds on and a natural decision point to base upgrades etc on
Negatives:
I feel like titans currently cause most of my main frustrations:
-Titans feel really uninteractive because they have a billion health and can't be stunned etc. this means fighting them always boils down to: right click everything onto them and wait with fingers crossed
-Winning in strategy games feels best when you defeat your opponents army in a decisive battle. This doesn't happen if a 4th titan just walk dumbly up to the front door and kick it down, feels like a very straightforward and repetitive way to end games
-Taking out a titan in a close fight gives a massive advantage. The enemy titan heals for a large portion which means a titan taken in a 50/50 battle will give the side with a tiny advantage a HUGE advantage, swinging the game heavily. This wouldn't be so bad... buuuut...
-In LoL/DoTA Baron/Dragon/Roshan give a similar advantage, but are nigh-impossible to take without first fighting and beating the enemy team. Titans, on the other hand, don't fight back except from the relatively easy to dodge stun. This means nearly every titan fight I saw just had each team sandbagging down the massive titan healthbar (kinda boring) while dancing around the enemy occasionally poking them. When what would feel a lot more fun would be an all out fight with armies. It's really hard to pinpoint a good reason to ever actually have a direct battle or "teamfight" in the conventional sense, which is a shame because these are usually the most fun part of a game.
I almost feel the game would be more fun exactly the same but without the titans. Not saying they should be removed, but they seem the weakest aspect of the game by FAR to me. just my two cents, and obviously my impressions might change as I play further!
@Paladin
I do not love the idea of unit caps either in an RTS, but one thing I've come to conclude in this game is that Units function, in a way, as an extension of the traditional Hero unit in a MOBA, insomuch as they add additional abilities and capabilities so that a hero + his crew do similar things to a hero in a MOBA in the midgame (and a lot more in the lategame).
What this also means is that the abilities units have access to are effectively "hero abilities" with regards to strength, size, and impact. They do a LOT more than traditional unit spells would do, are available more often, and cover more ground.
As a result, without having limits to unit count, it would be a lot like playing a MOBA where hero abilities had no cooldown. Which, while occasionally fun, results in a tremendously stupid game. I'm not saying units couldn't be rebalanced so this wasn't the case (they obviously could), but if they were they would no longer have the same feel with regards to having "hero-class" abilities and would not contribute so much to creating one cohesive "heroic" force. I'm not sure that's a good tradeoff ultimately.
@tedster
Good point. I suppose that's tied to the idea units only have cooldowns and no mana in this game.
That said, while I understand how amassing a monotarget burst sniping unit or a ludicrous amont of AoE spells might break the game, I'm not sure massing the equivalent of a StarCraft marine, medics, tanks, basic aircraft or charge zealot is really threatening the game's equilibrium. For a lot of units in GoA, it feels like, from my very limited experience, that a cap was put for consistency's sake with a few problematic units ("now every unit type has a number in that stat!") while the majority of them are completely unneeded.
My gut solution would be, instead, to raise cooldown on problematic abilities or, better, to work on ways so that the opponent's agency can counter the problem, which is more satisfying for everyone involved.
Another possibility is that devs simply don't want mass tier 3 units in the very late game. I personally find that prospect fun. :-)
That said, no unit should need a cap to begin with. The problem with a cap is that it's an admission that the sweet spot for the unit's utility is at some higher number than the cap. But if units peak in utility when paired with themselves, then that might be an indicator of the underlying mechanics not being very interesting in the first place.
It is possible to design pathological abilities that don't scale. For example "deal N damage to every enemy on the map" is fair for small N and unfair for large N. In these cases, the best way to fix the ability by thinking about what you really want it to do. (In this case, reword as, for example, "Make the map stormy for 20s. When the map is stormy, all enemies take N/20 damage per second.")
In my extensive experience, I think Population Cap is an awesome thing about this game. It allows the creation of very impactful units, even at lower unit numbers. Gameflow in GoA is a lot more directed than in a game such as SC2, hence, you can't really circumvent issues such as e.g. mech being strong only at 170+ supply for example. Siege Tanks would be viable at all if you have to meet in open field every 4-5 minutes. (Of course there is this whole discussion about map design but let's not descend down that rabbit hole) It also allows for a wider range of unit strength in my opinion.
I think it's better to look at it from a card-game perspective, and in some aspects and deck-building perspective. There is a reason that there is a unique card limit in card games. It just allows for the implementation of interesting and powerful things without it getting out of hand being spammed.
I also disagree with your impression that population cap is completely unneeded for a majority of units. In fact, almost every unit cap has been chosen deliberately through a lot of testing.
It seems like you're arguing from the perspective of unit-caps being strictly worse than no unit-caps and not even trying to acknowledge the strengths of the unit-caps and the different context that games such as SC2 operate in compared to GoA.
I will put my two cents in to the above discussion.
If the trade off for removing the unit cap is making every unit with a low cap much weaker I don't feel the trade off is worth it. I have seen a couple of strategy games which made me lose interest simply because many of the units felt weak and no one unit stood out from the other as they were all a bit samey.
If having a unit cap allows for more interesting units and make every unit be impactful instead of having all the units feel like a little stronger type of tier 1 units then I am all for them.
Sometimes unit caps allow more fun and over powered abilities to exist, they are not a sign of bad balancing but rather the wish to have fun toys to play with without making the game unbalanced.
I was going to post my feedback, but someone had already summed up my main issue perfectly here.
Sadly there will be no more development for the game so your feedback falls on deaf ears :/
See https://guardiansofatlas.xyz/forums/discussion/911/end-of-development#latest
Ya, noticed it right after I posted, felt a bit silly. Shame really, game had potential.