I did a quick test, and ping times from Germany to our game server are 90ms. By contrast, pings from our office (where we play many games every day) to the east coast are about 85ms, and we've been reasonably happy with the latency we experience ourselves. Obviously we'd like everybody in the world to be able to play with 10ms ping, but it will take some time to get there. Bear with us as we build the community up to the point where we can support region specific servers!
Thanks for this, looks interesting I am pretty hyped to try it out. Amazingly this is the kind of micro which would annoy me in sc2, but GoA is designed from the ground up to play out with lots and lots of abilities so i don't have a problem with it there i think.
Btw, as opposed to some other games, the ping feels about 25%-33% lower than the ping actually is. At least that's my experience relative to my experience of playing on NA from EU.
Thanks for this, looks interesting I am pretty hyped to try it out. Amazingly this is the kind of micro which would annoy me in sc2, but GoA is designed from the ground up to play out with lots and lots of abilities so i don't have a problem with it there i think.
Didn't look like those units were using abilities. That was more positioning-based micro from I could tell.
The fire breathing thing is an ability. Look at bottom left, ability goes into cooldown after being used. There is also a cone showing the impact area of the ability just before it is used if you look carefully.
On August 26 2016 08:04 _Spartak_ wrote: The fire breathing thing is an ability. Look at bottom left, ability goes into cooldown after being used. There is also a cone showing the impact area of the ability just before it is used if you look carefully.
Hm, yeah you're right. I didn't look closely.
If I remember correctly, this game was originally set to be an RTS along the tradition of Starcraft. So I guess the switch into a MOBA-RTS hybrid suggests that they don't think there's much of a demand for a classic RTS. That's a shame because I think RTS still has a ton of unrealized potential.
On August 26 2016 02:30 The_Red_Viper wrote: I still don't understand why people say this looks more like a moba than an rts. Do you guys even know what a moba is? Just because it has towers (strong defenders advantage) and a hero unit doesn't mean it's a moba. It surely has moba design in it, which hopefully makes it more approachable for the masses though.
MOBA is a subgenre of RTS. Starcraft, C&C and similar games are in classic RTS subgenre, that is the one with resource collecting and base building.
So while this game is a RTS, it is way more MOBA like than classic RTS like.
MOBA is barely related to RTS at all - RTS is essentially defined by managing both army and infrastructure, MOBAs involve neither of these. if anything MOBAs are more like fast paced RPGs.
on an unrelated note, if this game still only has 1 map i might boycott it purely on principle
On August 26 2016 08:37 -NegativeZero- wrote: on an unrelated note, if this game still only has 1 map i might boycott it purely on principle
fun level should be the prime deciding factor.
i usually don't buy into or spend time on games until they are at least 1 year old unless its a Blizzard game. i rarely make a bad decision that way.
That is great advice for pretty much anybody except game companies. I do not trust Blizzard enough to break the rule. There are no downsides to it except not playing a game now which I sometimes fall for after the hype and research on a title climbs too high. Second criteria one could consider is when DLCs stop releasing as the start of the timer but would not work that well for smaller multiplayer titles in niche genres.
On August 26 2016 08:37 -NegativeZero- wrote: on an unrelated note, if this game still only has 1 map i might boycott it purely on principle
fun level should be the prime deciding factor.
i usually don't buy into or spend time on games until they are at least 1 year old unless its a Blizzard game. i rarely make a bad decision that way.
i've made melee maps for both bw and sc2, maps are directly correlated with fun for me
Maps aren't really relevant to me. Different playing experiences are. Which is why Dota works so well. Minor alternations on the map to keep it balanced and fresh (somewhat) with other factors driving the differences in each game. Most RTS games don't have enough differences between this game and the previous one due to few or very similar races, requiring maps to create new experiences. They also tend to have few places to interact with the map, destructible cliffs being among the most extreme examples show how little interaction there is.
On August 26 2016 11:13 Yurie wrote: That is great advice for pretty much anybody except game companies. I do not trust Blizzard enough to break the rule.
once i stop having fun with a Blizzard game i'll wait until they are a year old. In the last 15 years every Blizzard game i've purchased has been great. also, Blizzard games decline in price very slowly so there is not much money saved by waiting a year.
just watched the gameplay video posted above, it reminds me a lot of wc3 (although i never played or followed wc3 very seriously so idk if the resemblance is anything more than superficial)
i'm against hostile neutrals in RTS games, defensive turrets are maybe ok but definitely not units, since i don't like the idea of having to gamble on the AI and pathing and possibly being able to abuse it.
i kind of like the unit selection system but i'm afraid it might be hard to balance, and it's pretty obviously open to being exploited for microtransactions.
On August 26 2016 16:30 -NegativeZero- wrote: i kind of like the unit selection system but i'm afraid it might be hard to balance, and it's pretty obviously open to being exploited for microtransactions.
Not 100% sure what you are specifically referring to, but I would say that the unit picker leads to a balance situation that is more akin to MOBA's than RTS's. So what I mean about this is that you're not forced to pick up a specific set of units, which means that the bar is lower for balancing. As in, you don't have to have perfect holistic balance between colours, in the same way that you do in SC2. It's okey to have some units that are slightly worse, and gradually balance them unit by unit, without breaking the game. There are some units that fall into this category in SC2 but in the early game SC2 balancing is a lot more fragile.
On August 26 2016 05:09 KeksX wrote: Are you seriously saying that Counter-Strike and DotA2 share the same "target audience"? Or implying that control schemes and perspectives aren't vastly important for the feel of a game?
I get that genres can be misleading, but they are a necessary evil. Especially if the alternative is to throw DotA and Counter-Strike into the same pot.
Atlas will probably be more MOBA than traditional RTS by peoples' standards, but it will also not play like your typical MOBA.
No offense, but duh, of course they have almost exactly the same target audience. It is like feigning amazement at an overlap in fanbase of thrash and power metal, because of the supposed myriad distinctions metal fans can discover between those genres. Pls dont blind yourself by putting too much faith in genre distinctions. Dota, cs, lol, overwatch, they are all variations on the same game. Wow, one is third person and the other first person, such difference, much diversity.
Are you trolling? I'm honestly not sure.
I think he was... or he smoked too much pot before coming to the forum.
EPT
I am pretty hyped to try it out. Amazingly this is the kind of micro which would annoy me in sc2, but GoA is designed from the ground up to play out with lots and lots of abilities so i don't have a problem with it there i think. 
