PVP Gameplay Feedback (Game by Game)
SirColveskey
Member
Game 1 (PVP):
Playing as Alder
Playing in PvP brought up items of contention that I'd never even thought to consider before. Making teamfights that happen away from torrents super interesting, and IMO game deciding as compared to the bot games. The other team was able to obtain a significant lead against us in XP causing them to have their ultimate abilities well in advance which dictated the remainder of the fights so there's my first concern:
Point 1: How do you make a comeback if the other team hits a lvl 6 powerspike ahead of time?
I believe that the reason we lost was because we were too greedy going for the gem mine expansion, and this caused us to lose out on xp and waste gems as it was taken down almost immediately. I feel like this objective is similar to a gold expo in SCII
Point 2: However, XP gain was unclear! this is another concern.
Overall the game showed new dynamics in pvp and was very entertaining. ONTO ANOTHER!
Comments
Game 1(PVP)
Playing as Alder as well. I cant tell if saplings are too strong or if the other side just didn't target them down when I buffed them. I felt the biggest thing that was off was that the 3rd person solo bottom felt isolated from us. I maybe fought along side them 1-2 times total over 28 minutes. Most of the time I was with my closest member and we did a lot of 2v2. Large cubes seem to be too strong, as we burst through 4 towers and killed their main building between 2 of us with our armies + 8 large cubes. When the other enemies are on the other side of the map, it just was too fast for them to deal with.
When we attacked or were attacked, I felt towers were just slight annoyances. Towers have upgrades, but I don't recall any being upgraded as I think it takes away from other areas. Maybe we weren't utilizing them correctly, but they didn't feel too impactful other than keeping the enemy away early game. Post 15 minute I felt I could rush most of them down if needed.
Small units do not give a lot of EXP, so I usually sacrifice them to trade a hero, and that is a lot of EXP which will translate into a significant lead in EXP. I like to use the melee Tide-knight? hero, his bigger T1 units are extremely good at tanking and blocking along with mini-stun, if you get to get behind an enemy it is extremely easy to trade them with hero units. A surprise attack on bot position enemy can up your bot hero get 2-3 levels ahead, if not it is a promised win.
So far, I only had 2 games, but my team had a 2-3level lead because of early game hero snipe and blocking. End game usually is just at 6,7 Lv. With the ultimate ability you can force push anything.
I am concerned with to how to come-back as well, because I don't see any favorable trades or harass strategy that you can do with such a small army size with restricted map control.
PvP does bring a lot of excitement but there are still clear dry periods where the team is not incentivized to do anything but to wait. A lot of engagement is not for clear purpose, because unit lost beside heroic unit is rather pointless, and upgrades so far seems arbitrary, because melee units can beat 2-3 ranged units without them anyway.
I feel like the biggest difference between pvp and pve is that in pvp there is a team that ensures a certain degree of coop, but such experience is hard to measure, because if a team is full ranged, it just seem to be a random mass pile of units that don't serve a particular function in a team structure.
Game 2 (PvP): The long one.
Playing as Ryme
I played as Ryme and skewed full tank, in order to fill in our Celesta Alder team comp that we had running, and I have to say it was definitely an interesting experience. This game was definitely a game of learning what to do and what not to do.
I had my game graced by the valiant @Artillery.statico in which they proceeded to use nefarious rush strategies and take out some miners in the home base in the early game. This didn't feel like it had too much of an impact however, as the game eventually evened out and ended up running for 43 minutes and change.
Overall, for playing a new squad for the first time I have to say the learning curve for squads isn't difficult at all, and you quickly come to grasps with how the squads are supposed to play. This is helped by you only getting one unit at once till you tech up, which gives you time to familiarize yourself with units as they come into play instead of all the units being dumped on you at once.
Skewing full tank definitely highlighted the emphasis on teamwork. Being paired with a celestia on the top side of the map I noticed immediate success whenever we coordinated in order to take down armies and objectives, indeed if we had done this more i feel like we could have succeeded.
Another important tool that I noticed this game was vision wards. Sacrificing my crystals for vision so that the celestia could siege out the opposing team, as well as keeping us aware of the troop movements of the enemy was definitely worthwhile. I love that the vision wards give you full vision of the terrain in such a wide area, making them not feel worthless and separating them from healing wards.
Overall, I felt like this was a great evaluation of how team coordination can work in this game, and how you will fail if you don't coordinate properly. I'm really interested to play as the bottom player as I'm curious how a 1v1 situation will work out - presumably if you don't pick a balanced squad you could end up falling flat on your face.
Two games in, first as Vela and then as Ryme.
Early game
Early gem collection feels like a "roamy" laning phase from a MOBA. Versus bots this has always felt dry, but PVP makes it much more dynamic, and IMO very enjoyable.
Midgame
Teamwork clearly pays off here, and sniping an expansion or routing a lone player's army feels really good. However, I'm a bit concerned that some periods between gems are too long – right now I have no real plan during this phase except to try to snipe whatever I can, for as little cost as possible to my own units. Depending on how things are going it can feel like nobody's making real progress toward anything at this point, which is why I wonder I'm concerned about the downtime between gem spawns.
Endgame
This feels fairly normal for an RTS. Armies bunch up, poke and maneuver until one side commits, and then the winner makes some solid gains or possibly wins the game. The respawn times make me hesitant to just throw away units, but they're not so bad that I'm afraid to lose them in order to make progress.
Neutral weapons
I really like the wards, but I'm not sure yet how I feel about the actual weapons.
Healing wards can be really helpful when things turn into a big scrum, and vision wards are just great in any game that allows them. The problem with the cannons is that they seem to be good at ending games, but even against bots I haven't felt like they win them. Instead, one side very securely takes map control, plops down some glass/ion cannons, and then uses those to push for the win. I haven't encountered cubelets yet so I can't comment on those.
Pathing
Way less of a problem when I have people as allies instead of bots. I still have occasional trouble moving units around in dense spaces but that doesn't feel frustrating at this point.