Error Code BROCCOLI (bryce.dll) BRYCE... YOU AWESOME!
Sorry, I've had... a few glasses of wiskey, and I couldn't resist posting this. Feel free to delete, rename and/or move this post. Haven't played the game yet, but I will soon, despite having 5 new games from the steam sale that I may or may not ever play.
The RTS genre needs fresh blood and everything I've seen about atlas looks damn promising. I'll do my best to keep track of my thoughts when playing and give my feedback. I'm a huge fan of RTSs, from playing every one I can get my hands on to having prototyped one or two myself. Expect my review to be biased and self centered.
Before playing the game, my biggest piece of feedback, or question rather, is how do you play to develop a community of players? Starcraft has the benefit of a brand, so charging $40 is something they can do. Is F2P something you are leaning towards? Personally, I would auto-buy for $20 if I wasn't worried that it would die 3 months after release... and for that reason alone I would prefer that it was F2P, even though I'm not a fan of the model per-say. My biased, strictly personal preference is a F2P model where you get a massive permanent benefit when paying money. For example TF2 is the single F2P game I've ever spent money on... and it was to get the extended backpack... after which I've never crafted a single item or cared about my inventory space ever. The point being, my irrational view of value is that "being able to spend money to permanently unlock features that are not available to F2P players, are not strictly cosmetic but are also not balance breaking, feels good. Even if it is somewhat irrational."
:wq
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MOD note: Moved this into the feedback forum. Though admittedly we got a chuckle out of the joke. =)
Before anything, shout out to "bryce" from me, Cake. You rock. Here is our game together: https://play.artillery.com/?options={"manifest":"https://gameserver.artillery.com/?manifest=d4aa8a3cbd9fc2f41006a5fa4a81272b&replayGameId=Gb034dd859c6611e5ab4c0bcd6df8ed26"}#
It was super fun and you rocked. We won, despite me. I had a blast that game. It was close, back and forth. Who won doesn't matter (spoiler we did, because of bryce undoubtedly.)
So as promised, here's my feedback after a few hours of bliss.
First, a few suggestions/criticisms:
I would like if hotkey assignments carried over from death. For example, I hotkeyed my hero unit to control group 1, after resurrection, said hero did not answer the call. (Said with the voice of Artanis.)
I'd like to be able to customize the colors for myself and teammates. Maybe I want to be green with my teammates being blue? Who knows?
Pathfinding. Fix this. It's alpha so I assume it will be fixed. But seriously... pathfinding....
When all three players team up to take on an enemy, your teammates can unintentionally screw you over. Because path finding.
Next up, think I LOVE:
The all army hotkey '~'. I Actually set this hotkey to select all army in SC2 YEARS ago. It is awesome that I'm not the only one that has seen the light. Pressing the tild key for all army is intuitive and whoever's idea this was (besides mine) deserves a bonus. (If this was Day[9]'s idea I will sub to his twitch.)
I LOVE being able to operate all unit abilities regardless of what units are selected. Why doesn't SC2 do this?! If it did, I'd be at least one league higher.
In general, I really like the control scheme. It screams "the player's intention is important, not my arbitrary ideas of how things should be done!"
And lastly, what I'm worried about that's strictly personal
Teammates. In team games, such as mobas... I'm either holding others down or being held down by others. I solo queue (read: don't have friends). I actually like SC2 1v1 format. I stop playing because I get stressed from winning too much /humblebrag. But seriously, I prefer being the only one to blame when things go south.
It's a moba. It't not an RTS. It's a moba. There, I said it. It's OK, but it's a moba. I thoroughly enjoyed the games I played, I don't like mobas and I love RTSs, but this game is a MOBA... and I'm ok with that. Long live the ATLAS!!!!
Hey Crake! No, you rock! That was my favorite game of the test, too!