EPTGuardians of Atlas - Page 44
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Development ended, game appears to be dead. https://forums.artillery.com/discussion/911/end-of-development -Jinro | ||
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Endymion
United States3701 Posts
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
I still think the gamedesign itself has potential, but yeah the unit interactions need work and it probably would be a better game if the hero would matter more. | ||
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The Bottle
242 Posts
Now, there is potential to this game, and I can think of a few things that would make it substantially better. But I am definitely in the "disappointed" camp, especially having heard that Day9 was on the team and it was meant to be an RTS with a high skill cap but lower barrier of entry than Starcraft. It definitely feels a lot more like a MOBA to me than an RTS (and I never really took to MOBAs). Now, the thing is, I figured from the design that there would be a lot of WC3-style micro battles, which is something that definitely appeals to me. We all know that WC3 is much less base-building intensive than SC or SC2. Most games are 1 base vs 1 base with rare expansions, and the production buildings you build in order to determine your army is replaced by the resource collecting mechanic in GoA, which I guess allows you to focus on the micro battles better. I won't say that WC3 is more micro intensive than SC2 (because it isn't) but it's differently micro intensive. There's a lot less emphasis on positioning, and flanks and such and more emphasis on using your abilities or moving your wounded units back to some extent. I figured this would be the focus of GoA but it barely is. For one thing, it takes quite a while before you get any interesting units, so the vast majority of units you get for a while are just spam focus fire units that follow your hero around. I think because the game sacrificed much of the strategic aspects of RTSs (base building, resource collection, harassing resource lines, etc) it should go all-in on the unit micro aspect. Don't make the tier 1 units too spammable, so there's a lot more emphasis on pulling the wounded ones back. Give more units with interesting abilities, so that a mid-game engagement is all about fast intense high apm usage of your units. (I remember having fun with trebuchets, maybe more things like that.) Create situations where it's beneficial to split your army up. (I imagine this would be much easier to do in a 1v1 mode, which I wish there was.) From what I've played, and from everything I've seen, it seems like the vast majority of army engagements are just 1A-fests with the heroes doing the majority of the interesting work. Hell, I'd be super interested in a mode with no heroes, and a lot of diverse interesting units. Or if the hero had more things to do... whatever it takes to make the fights more interesting and micro intensive. As it is, I'm not too interested in the game. But I will stick around to hear what the new unrevealed mode is like. | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey383 Posts
For one thing, it takes quite a while before you get any interesting units, so the vast majority of units you get for a while are just spam focus fire units that follow your hero around. This changed a lot. You tech up a lot faster after the last patch. You can easily get tier 2 armies before the 3 minute mark. Most players tech straight to tier 3 and build only tier 2-3 units. If anything, at it's current iteration game allows you to get tech units too easily. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On September 09 2016 00:54 _Spartak_ wrote: This changed a lot. You tech up a lot faster after the last patch. You can easily get tier 2 armies before the 3 minute mark. Most players tech straight to tier 3 and build only tier 2-3 units. If anything, at it's current iteration game allows you to get tech units too easily. The problem isn't how fast you tech, the problem is that tier one units are massable, boring units for the most part. I said it somewhere else before: The game would be more fun if armies in general were a lot smaller but each unit would be more impactful, aka have interesting abilities for example. Also heroes atm are kinda meh, they should definitely develop the hero aspect a lot more | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey383 Posts
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
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_Spartak_
Turkey383 Posts
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Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 08 2016 12:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I like how Artillery released the game on Friday and the following Friday paid Grubby to cast the game. It gave the game a super shot in the arm starting off a weekend. Its a great way to test players/viewers "attachment" to the game as the weekend progresses. in general for all video games ... playing peaks on Sundays. Well, viewers/players are just not attaching to the game. Less than 1000 twitter followers. Reddit is a ghosttown with less than 500 subscribers. This game has zero chance of financial viability. As I've mentioned before, I find it so frustrating that the majority of your posts are about financial viability based upon assumptions. We get it. You are 100% convinced that RTS's are "dead". Despite the fact that RTS developers (including Blizz) are still working on RTS's actively. And you will actively try to prove the "RTS is dead" assumption with every single post on here. But do you really want the truth? Truth is, no major RTS (outside of a moba) has been able to attain a 9.0 user meta rating in more than 12 years. When in 2003 there's at least 3 RTS games per year with that high of a metascore. It's not that there's not RTS players out there. It's not like players don't WANT a good RTS. There's still a big population that would play - MOBA's are basically a type of RTS. The truth is simply that there has NOT been a GREAT RTS in that amount of time. Absolutely none of them did not have some sort of lingering major issue. Including SC2. You can argue with us all you want, but you can check the user review metascores for the truth. The users have spoken & we have evidence - not assumptions. RTS games just aren't as good as they used to be. Regarding Atlas, sad to say but I do think it was a bit more fun a few tests ago in alpha. It did improve a bit since then, but the direction changed. On the Alpha tester discord, way back probably in March-April? A group of us put together a very in-depth feedback analysis of the game with suggestions. We wanted more base building, rather than towers. We wanted the map to be more "built up" by the players, rather than static placement before the match starts. My favorite parts of the game were defending bases & fighting over them, as it had higher risk/reward, and things like drops were a lot more viable/useful. And if your economy was based upon defending many bases across a map, given it's a large 3v3 map, you had to be spread thinner, and that provided opponents an opportunity to strategically take some of them and perform a come-back. Around that point, I had the most fun in Atlas that I've had. But after that, some major economy changes were released for the next weekend alpha test. Also a big problem that they worked on fixing was making it more "obvious who was in the lead". Now to make it clear, the new economy did fix some issues with the old economy, but it just never felt right to me. But in the end, based upon feedback, they went with this new pattern. So for now, I'm still following Atlas and do hope for it to do well, but like some others have said on here, it's just not the type of game I'm looking for. The battles over bases were by far the most fun aspect of the game for me, and now that the focus isn't based upon that anymore, it's not the same. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16298 Posts
the game bores me. however, its probably not my kind of game any way. Neither is WoW. Last i checked WoW is doing fine. a MOBA and an RTS are not the same game type. its already been discussed so i'm not re-hashing the solid comments made by other users. One thing RTS and MOBA have is this: RTSs and MOBAs contain an element of action AND an element of strategy. So does NHL '94 hockey. Do we lump NHL '94 in with MOBA and RTS? NHL '94 is 5 on 5 with a special unit on each team called a "gOALie".  i'm pretty sure Goalie is actually short for "Goliath".i use cliff ronning to rag the puck when guys like Roenicke and Gretzky are on the ice | ||
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Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 09 2016 03:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i've played the game and i'm impressed how smoothly it runs on really crappy hardware. from my cursory 10,000 foot examination its a solid piece of software engineering. it runs nicely. the game bores me. however, its probably not my kind of game any way. Neither is WoW. Last i checked WoW is doing fine. a MOBA and an RTS are not the same game type. its already been discussed so i'm not re-hashing the solid comments made by other users. One thing RTS and MOBA have is this: RTSs and MOBAs contain an element of action AND an element of strategy. So does NHL '94 hockey. Do we lump NHL '94 in with MOBA and RTS? NHL '94 is 5 on 5 with a special unit on each team called a "gOALie". i'm pretty sure Goalie is actually short for "Goliath".i use cliff ronning to rag the puck when guys like Roenicke and Gretzky are on the ice NHL '94 hockey did not start as a custom game in a RTS, using 100% RTS assets, mechanics, controls, etc. Moba is an action focused RTS without base building/unit macro. That does not mean it's not an RTS. You forget that Dota was considered an RTS until LoL wanted to differentiate itself and came up with the name "MOBA". Just like when Heroes of the Storm came up with another new name to differentiate themselves from MOBA. But realistically, Heroes is the same style/genre of game as LoL. Just became developers come up with a new term to promote their game, doesnt mean it's not the same genre. FPS games do it all the time too (see Overwatch). This is besides the point anyway. Your grasping on a comment rather than the overall point of my post. The point is, there has not been a RTS rated over 9.0 in over 12 years. Before that point they were extremely common. This does not indicate that RTS "died" or there are no more "RTS players". RTS players all moved to Moba games (I seen every friend leave SC2 for LoL, because they were horribly disappointed with SC2's differences from BW, and even more disappointed by Blizzards direction of SC2 after release). The reason for this is because the quality of RTS has degraded. We have evidence of this - not assumptions. It can not be argued. There has not been a major RTS with user score over 9.0 in the last decade. That's why RTS is declining, not because of the lack of players, or players willing to pay. Even your graphs for Atlas support this. They had huge spikes of players, but an extremely low retention rate. This is not a sign for the genre being dead (as what your trying to use the evidence for). This is evidence that there IS a high amount of interest in the game, there IS a lot of people who WANT a good RTS, but they simply do not ENJOY the game. Just like every other major RTS since 2003-2004. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16298 Posts
speaking of lol.. what was LoL's metacritic rating when it was released in 2009? what was Dota1's metacritic rating? these ratings are all subjective any way. where are the geniuses in 2009 who predicted LoL would be what it was? or WoW? or NHL '94 hockey for that matter.when the RTS genre was fresh and new you could make lots of money developing a crappy RTS game that got crap ratings. The buzz of watching dozens of units shoot and kill each other is gone. It was novel and new in 1995 and super cool. its not any longer. Now you can make a really good RTS game and lose your shirt. People play Mobile Strike and CLash of Clans on their phones and Tablets now when they want to see tiny units kill each other by the dozens. Consumers have choices now they didn't have in 1995. RTS has been pushed out due to new choices offered to consumers by improving technology. This has happened to many other game genres for decades in the video game industry. the entire genre is declining and its outside the scope of influence of all the software makers who've either abandoned the genre or devoted far less of their resources to it. i'm talking MS, EA, Blizzard and Relic. It was a mistake by Artillery to try to appeal to RTS fans with this game. RTS fans have moved on to other games that were not technically possible in 1995. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
I think people haven't heard about the game so comparing it to Heroes of the Storm is ridiculous. Either a strawman or you didn't understand my point. About Grubby: He said "he doesn't know yet" when asked if the game is good because he had played like 1 game at that point. How can he give an impression when he didn't properly play the game? That's what he meant. Here's his impressions towards the end of the stream: It's very easy. You find the game fun when playing it for the first time or you felt it was directly boring or meh'ish. I found a ton of games to be very fun the first time I played them. I found Heroes of the Storm fun. I found Lol fun. I found Sc2 fun. I found OW boring, but a ton of other people were extremely excited about that game (based on their first impression), hence why I presumed I was in the minority. Atlas, it seems to be more 50-50. 50% are midly positive as in "it's kinda fun/potential". Other 50% are "it's boring". But I haven't seen anyone who are really excited/found the game to be insanely fun. Some people talk about "potential" but how can you talk about potential in a game with no micro skill cap? potential would imply it needs some tweaking/small redesigns. But this isn't the case here. The game is just fundamentally designed to be a game where you a-move around in a block of units with a bit of kiting. And that's why I believe those who thought it was "kinda fun" after playing it for 0-20 hours are more likely to be increasingly bored once they get closer to 100 hours. (That's my theory at least - not 100% sure). | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey383 Posts
Grubby said he didn't know yet when asked about the game within an hour or so of playing. That was because he didn't know about the game enough to make a judgement because when he was asked about it later on he did answer and it was a positive first impression. So he didn't avoid answering the question first time because he was bored like you try to imply. I also don't understand your a-move comments. You can't a-move any army in this game, a-moving is a lot less efficent than it is in SC2. I was high masters in SC2 when I played it regularly and I feel like I am microing a lot more in GoA and that my micro has more effect on the result of the game. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
I thought your point about HotS was on marketing, my bad but I never said that the lack of interest in game was due to no base building. I read so many comments from fans of HOTS saying that the game is just a superior alternative for all those who don't like (boring) last-hitting. Whereas there are other more obvious reasons for why people prefer LOL/Dota. Hence the idea that Atlas is a better game (or has more potential9 than Sc2 (or Wc3) for the people who don't enjoy base-building is just nonsense. I also don't understand your a-move comments. You can't a-move any army in this game, a-moving is a lot less efficent than it is in SC2. So you do micro stuff that has the same skill cap as splitting or any type of drop micro or attacking multiple locations at once? I was high masters in SC2 Either it was 4 years ago or you played zerg or you played a deathball toss protoss style in HOTS/WOL. I bet you didn't play bio in HOTS/LOTV or protoss in LOTV. | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey383 Posts
So you do micro stuff that has the same skill cap as splitting or any type of drop micro or attacking multiple locations at once? I would say yeah. I wouldn't really say dropping multiple places at once too micro intensive, it's more about good multitasking. The point is you can a-move your army and win in a lot of situations in SC2 (not all situtations of course) but I haven't seen many cases of that in GoA. Skill shots alone prevent that. You may not enjoy that type of micro but it is certainly not a-move.I played Terran by the way. | ||
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Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 09 2016 03:59 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Zealot Hockey was made with RTS assets using the MOD Kit of an RTS game. Is Zealot Hockey in the same genre as RTS? lol. speaking of lol.. what was LoL's metacritic rating when it was released in 2009? what was Dota1's metacritic rating? these ratings are all subjective any way. where are the geniuses in 2009 who predicted LoL would be what it was? or WoW? or NHL '94 hockey for that matter.when the RTS genre was fresh and new you could make lots of money developing a crappy RTS game that got crap ratings. The buzz of watching dozens of units shoot and kill each other is gone. It was novel and new in 1995 and super cool. its not any longer. Now you can make a really good RTS game and lose your shirt. People play Mobile Strike and CLash of Clans on their phones and Tablets now when they want to see tiny units kill each other by the dozens. Consumers have choices now they didn't have in 1995. RTS has been pushed out due to new choices offered to consumers by improving technology. This has happened to many other game genres for decades in the video game industry. the entire genre is declining and its outside the scope of influence of all the software makers who've either abandoned the genre or devoted far less of their resources to it. i'm talking MS, EA, Blizzard and Relic. It was a mistake by Artillery to try to appeal to RTS fans with this game. RTS fans have moved on to other games that were not technically possible in 1995. The RTS genre was around for about 10 years at the point I mentioned, your talking about how it was super cool in 95, but I mentioned 2003-2004. You may claim there's been so many really good RTS games, but the general public is in disagreement with that statement, just like many of them are in disagreement with your beliefs about SC2. People are different. But the part that remains a FACT is that absolutely no major RTS has been considered "really good" in the time I mentioned. It takes more resources to make a good RTS game. Much more testing time, much more balancing work, etc. So they can follow trends rather than make a good game. And EA is notorious for doing that. On the topic of EA, look at how many RTS games they have made (that were SUB PAR) in the last 10 years, how can you say they "abandoned the genre"? They were stil investing, tehy were just "pulling an EA" and dumbing down the genre for quick cash-grabs rather than making solid games. And this has happened for more than a decade. The reason Blizzard was so successful in the RTS genre is because they actually allowed themselves the resources to make a good RTS game. Which is something that even Blizzard does NOT do anymore. They even shot themselves in the foot last year when tehy claimed LotV was going to have "by far the longest beta they ever had" and then pushed up the release date to the exact amount of beta time hots had. I know it's pointless to bring these points to your attention, your mind is already made up. But just letting you know, that part of you makes it very hard/frustrating to communicate with you. You ignore facts and put in presumptions & treat them as fact. When the fact is, the public has not been happy with an RTS game in over 10 years. It's a shame too, because I'm a hobbyist game developer on the side, and I too follow the industry. We would probably be able to have some good conversations. But I find it extremely frustrating to read/reply to your posts... they are all doom & gloom about the RTS industry, when there's so much evidence (even from the developers you mention) against the point you are trying to prove. | ||
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Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 09 2016 05:31 _Spartak_ wrote: I would say yeah. I wouldn't really say dropping multiple places at once too micro intensive, it's more about good multitasking. The point is you can a-move your army and win in a lot of situations in SC2 (not all situtations of course) but I haven't seen many cases of that in GoA. Skill shots alone prevent that. You may not enjoy that type of micro but it is certainly not a-move. I played Terran by the way. There was actually a lot of that type of micro at one point of Atlas alpha. Was my fav part of the game. But once they added shield batteries, the bases had less focus on them, and then the economy changes shifted attention away from bases. At one point there was many resources to manage - like 5 or 6 of them if you include "levels", and we actually had a suggestion in our Discord feedback post recommending to remove "character levels" from the game, with more of a focus on RTS-type gameplay. More of a focus on bases, and economies linked to bases, possible upgrades for the bases that increase income at the specific area. The way you would be able to tell "Who is winning" is by the distribution of who owns which parts of the map. This would have stuck with the general idea Atlas had, of giving us RTS gameplay, but easier to pick up with less "macro" - the macro would be mostly limiited to base structures, rather than spamming a larger number of buildings on a time table (as traditional macro in RTS games works). These type of changes would encourage more participation on the map, allow players to "build" the map (instead of pre-placed towers), and would give a lot of new strategic opportunities (ex: Do you think a comeback would be more realistic by attacking on the outskirt bases on opposite sides & splitting the enemies army, or would that be better as a diversion when your main attack target is their upgraded base in the center of their land). It would also help solve their "snowballing" problem. More bases are harder to defend, where a player who gets ahead in levels is basically ahead in everything, and there's not really much of a comeback factor w/ how creep XP etc works. I really wish they kept going in the direction they were going at that point, and at least given our feedback a try. We put in a lot of work in to discussing & providing feedback. But they had other plans for the economy, and it turned in to the "booster" economy we have now, and they put more emphasis on "levels" rather than removing them. And I'll be honest, something about the new economy has never felt "right". In the end, I think Atlas split in to "too many directions" and tried to keep everyone happy. Now we have more action, and less strategy. Moba players will still stick with mobas, and RTS players will not have a lot of the strategic choices they come to expect from a strategy game. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
On September 09 2016 05:31 _Spartak_ wrote: I would say yeah. I wouldn't really say dropping multiple places at once too micro intensive, it's more about good multitasking. The point is you can a-move your army and win in a lot of situations in SC2 (not all situtations of course) but I haven't seen many cases of that in GoA. Skill shots alone prevent that. You may not enjoy that type of micro but it is certainly not a-move. I played Terran by the way. Show me a clip where you are rewarded for 400+ EAPM in Atlas. E.g. where someone with 200 EAPM is overwhelmed during an engagement. I have 200 EAPM in most terran bio battles and I constantly feel like I could do so much better if I was faster/had better mouse precision. Also skillshots are not just skillshots. Skillshots needs to be properly designed w/ fast movement speed and clean pathing to actually reward skillful micro. | ||
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