Guardians of Atlas - Page 55

On September 17 2016 08:46 Spyridon wrote:


Considering how tight lipped things are, I suspect it was more than just investors. Probably involved multiple companies or something contractual with the Artillery workers.



NDA for us ended so I believe it's okay.

Many were similar, but at the time it was split in to squads, rather than the squad creation. Each hero had a linked T1-T2-T3 sub unit, and the other units (dropships etc) were available through a separate building (they were called Mercenaries). So think of your squad as your hero/race/core units, and the rest as mercs.

The economy was the biggest difference. You had base locations spread through the map and each one could be taken once, which increased resources over time - basically a traditional RTS base except set at specific locations of the map. There was a few locations near each base, the rest were guarded by creep camps. This income you can think of as your first resource (it was called "scrap" at the time).

Then the gem system - gems spawned near the center of the map similar to the newer gem mechanic. Gems were used mostly for upgrading your army, or for mercenaries. So think of as either upgrades or supporting ur army.

Population, irrc the cap increased over time. Also, rather than the "port in" protoss style mechanic, you hit the B button and tehy deployed from your base to a rally point. The reason for hitting "B" is so units didnt just appear and yuo didn't know about them (it was tested and felt weird without a deploy button, people wouldnt realize they had units in the middle of the map, etc).

And there was shield batteries put around the map as well, destroying them lowered the shields on the enemy nexus (forgot the new name for the nexus but it was called nexus then).

One of the merc types was an engineer which could build or upgrade static base defenses as well.

And the titans or w/e tehir called that spawn (I will call them titans, I do not recall their official name at the time), they were a mercenary for awhile, but right before this phase of development ended, they became "collect X gems and then you get the boss unit", and I believe it was player controlled at the time. Gems spawned in map every few mins, so it was a hotspot to encourage battle, and the titans felt like a reward. (later in development this mechanic became more of a main focus).

But please note, the titan change was pretty much literally the LAST addition to this phase of the game. For most of this phase of teh game, they were purchased as an expensive mercenary (which had it's probs I will discuss later).

There was a "Charm" store that you spent gems at to purchase upgrades for your hero, think like the WC3 shop. You could buy a variety of charms and upgrade them for some sort of active effect.

The biggest differences were the economy (which felt more RTS imo) and "how" you played. Early game was still gems, but by far my favorite aspect was fighting over bases/shield batteries. This was akin to "real" RTS gameplay. It was a place you strategically took, that could change dynamically, that had strategic decision making, something that contributed a lot of risk vs reward. It was basically the "strategy" of the RTS game, that made it more than a brawler.

Man, it was so fun doing RTS team fight over various objectives on the map, especially if you had a team of experienced testers that actually understood the game. In most RTS games, team based battles are "weird" and usually just consist of massing 1-2 units per player, but having a full fledged composition with varying synergies of mechanics was really cool.

The main feedback at this time was 2 things, 1) that there was too many resources - scrap, gems, levels, population, and I feel like there's one more I'm forgetting right now. Our suggestinos in feedback were actually to remove levels (it seemed the least RTS-like, and most snowball-y of the optons). Scrap was basically your "units", similar to Minerals in SC, so that made sense. Gems were basically your "upgrades", so similar to gas. Those made sense. Population growing over time was nice instead of having to repetitively create depots, so that was nice too. Levels...? It wasn't designed in a way that they fit very well.

And 2) It wasn't obvious enough who was winning at times. Often it would go back and forth until a sudden backdoor or solid push would win it. Our suggestions for this were map modifications, and to enhance the zone control/base building aspects of the game so you could simply look at the map and know the status.

The map was kinda the biggest issue, as it was pretty easy to be able to back door the enemy, and of course things like shield energy, etc needed to be balanced. Titans were a big problem, as people just pooled their gems and suddenly spawned a bunch backdooring ur base and it was GG.

But they fixed that with the patch that linked the titans to spawning when X amount of gems were collected, and that helped them fit the game in that current design at the time.

I honestly think this phase was the closest they were to "getting it right". Sure, I wanted to be able to "build" the map more. I thought map modifications with less pre-placed towers and more choke points that could be defended would have been much better - it's a lot more fun if you can strategically build the map rather than same thing every time (that makes ti feel more moba if everythings pre-placed). Base resources needed to be rebalanced, shield batteries needed to be rebalanced, etc. But the most important thing to get right was that you were battling to defend zones of the map, or to take over zones of the map, with a solid risk vs reward factor, and lots of situations for decision making & strategy. And if the intent is to make an RTS that's easy on macro/repetitive actions, but still had strategy & decision making, then they were on the right track to do it. It required balancing, rather than complete overhauls of mechanics.

Scouting was so much more important during that phase of the game. Predicting your opponents strategy & ambushes were important. The map size was pretty big so it wasn't possible to defend everywhere.

We suggested some things as being able to upgrade these bases for higher income - which would make certain bases much more valuable and lead to strategic decisions. Enemies can target your big money maker, or knowing that you will defend the big base first, you can decide to upgrade a few medium size bases instead of 1 big one if it would be easier for your composition to defend, etc. It would add a lot of strategic decision making to the game.

We also suggested removing levels entirely. They were the most snowbally aspect of the game. Levels didnt really fit in strategically outside of getting ur ult move at a certain level. There's no decision making in levels, no risk vs reward. They stole from other portions of the economy.

But ironically, after our feedback for this, they actually made levels MORE important, and changed units to unlock at specific levels. (That's something I forgot to metnion, you had an upgrade of your main building in base to T2, T3 to be able to build ur bigger units).

It was by no means perfect. But the game had only prototype art at the time , no sound effects really, and was still fun. Yeah, it had a few MOBA mechanics at the time (static pre placed towers defending the nexus to win) - but more importantly, it had what mechanics RTS player would "expect". MOBA mecahnics are okay if RTS mechanics are in place. You made bases , you increased ur income with them, you attacked bases, you defended bases, you took out shield batteries, and put together a big siege on their main base, you had risk vs reward along the way, you had many ways to exploit your opponents choices. With balancing & a new map I believe it would have been entirely viable.

Guess it doesn't really matter anymore after the recent announcements... but looking back, THAT game I just described is how I will remember Atlas. Not "Guardians of Atlas". But when it was Atlas, and I looked forward to playing it every Wednesday and Sunday, with memories of Day9 spamming chat with silliness in all caps, and dozens of testers spamming chat with "#BelieveInSteve!".