Thoughts on 12/2/2015 Test

Heyo!

Been a while since I was able to play. Last time I was here generators were being introduced! I was not able to play consistently around then due to a combination of browser issues, adopting windows 10 before the client supported it, and not having time in the evening. However, the stars aligned and I was able be around for a test! On that note, I'm happy to report that nothing broke for once, at least not on my end.

Since my knowledge of the gameplay was so outdated, I approached the evening from the perspective of a new player. I opened up the client and took a look at the "Learn" section while I was waiting for the game to finish downloading. Below are the steps I went through until reaching the point where I was able to start thinking more about strategy and less about controls:

1. I watched both tutorial videos over about 40 minutes. Special thanks to Sean for those! They were entertaining, informative, and helped me want to play despite the potentially daunting task of jumping into an RTS.

2. I spent about 10 minutes staring at the squads on atlaspedia and trying to associate them with concepts from other RTS I've already played. (Like Celesta and siege tanks from sc2.) I used this to give me some idea of what I should play first.

3. At this point, I was advised to just play by the call so I went for it! Played with a couple people against a trio of very good players and got slaughtered pretty hard. I felt a bit bad that I probably contributed significantly to that loss, but otherwise felt pretty good. The information in the tutorial armed me pretty well so that I didn't spend too much time lingering in the interface.

4. The second full game had some awful problems where my teammates had to drop out. But I got to stick around and play with two AI against a team of players! It lasted about 38 minutes and by the end of it I was more or less able to use the mechanics to the point where I could start thinking of strategy.

I imagine this normally would have taken another game, but not having teammates to worry about (and having little to no chance of winning lol xD) may have contributed to my learning a bit quicker. I feel that I probably could have gotten to this point with a few AI games as well.

From here I'm moving on to the actual questions that were in the email!

Is the video game fun?

Yes! I think I like this quite a bit more than the previous versions of Atlas from the long shadowy past of 6 months ago and beyond. Running out to the map to pick up gems and dueling with the other team over them was very entertaining. Additionally, I found the process of base building straight forward and reasonable, while still having enough depth that I couldn't immediately grasp how to play optimally.

(To be clear, I do not really consider this a criticism. I like having something I feel like I can work on when I'm done with a game.)

From here, I want to pursue some rudimentary build ideas for a couple squads and begin learning how to cooperate with other players better. I'm looking forward to this big test coming up!

What impact did the network code changes have on your experience?

It was very smooth! I'm on the east coast of the United States and I felt almost no lag. There was some toward the end of the first game I mentioned as all the armies were packing into our core and many neutral cannon minions had been summoned by the other team. The game began to become choppy at this point, but it was still playable. (Sasquatch and his party vs Omega, Trumpet, and Lef.) I think this match was around 20 minutes.

In the second game I had no problems. Though this is to be expected since half the players lagged out near the beginning.

Other comments:

Vex's unit abilities are fun to use! But I had a hard time seeing most of the effects in combat. In particular, the ignite effect from Vex seemed to get a bit lost if there were swarm style enemies fighting against me.

I found it pretty difficult to tell who I was fighting. At the beginning it was clear based on the scoreboard, but as the game went on my opponents sometimes would move around and I had no idea who was attacking me. I imagine this might get better as I learn to recognize squads. But this might be a problem for people in their first set of games in the upcoming test.

Vex's tier three unit is extremely satisfying to use. Flamebreath for the win!