EPTGuardians of Atlas - Page 51
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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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lestye
United States4135 Posts
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_Spartak_
Turkey378 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16294 Posts
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mishimaBeef
Canada2259 Posts
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Capresis
United States518 Posts
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SlammerIV
United States526 Posts
And the community tournament was so hype | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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AndAgain
United States2621 Posts
On September 17 2016 07:19 xDaunt wrote: I'm completely unsurprised. I never thought that the concept was ever going to have anything more than a very niche appeal. Looks like the people with the money have seen enough to arrive at the same conclusion. Yeah, same here. I played the game very briefly and all I could think about was "this would be a lot better if I only had 1 unit to control." It almost got me to reinstall LoL after not playing it for 2 years. They thought they could make an RTS without (in their mind) the boring part: base building, while keeping the good part: army fighting. But somehow the latter without the former just didn't feel right. Not to mention that the unit interaction left a lot to be desired. Like I said before, the only way to salvage the RTS genre is with a game has a big luck element. Unfortunately, I don't think any decent developers will want to touch RTS after this disappointing outcome. | ||
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tedster
984 Posts
Virtually everyone who came into the game seemed surprised at what they were playing, and even the ones who really liked it seemed taken aback. That's 100% a marketing misstep - both internal product marketing/management and external PR/communications - and should have been addressed half a year+ ago, not during open alpha. I think they had a good enough piece of software and a fun enough platform that they could have built something genuinely good given the time and player-base, but I have no idea how they were gonna get there with the total lack of press, dev logs, or even concrete info about what type of game they were making. It's a damn shame because that was the most playable Alpha I've ever personally experienced and had a lot of potential for growth. On September 17 2016 06:50 Capresis wrote: Four years in closed development, then open beta for a month with very little advertising, then cancelled. If they were running out of money, surely they would have switched gears and gone public a LOT earlier? Some major investors must have bailed. Sometimes you are out of money and you throw a hail mary as proof-of-concept. There's a good chance whoever called the shot on the open Alpha was fishing for something to hang on to. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
On September 17 2016 04:52 ZeromuS wrote: 100 - 0 real quick. I never even got to try the game out Don't think hype level was ever at 100 though. But I think it was a smart decision for them to end it now to not waste any further money. I bet the investors kinda forced them into open beta in order to see whether players were excited about the game. And quite quickly it appeared that not alot of people thought it was that amazing (50-50 between people who thought it was decent and who didn't really like it. Never heard one guy said it was super fun and addicting). Anyway, they could have listened to my ideas that I presented 2 years ago on how to create interesting micro interactions. Or you know, some of the feedback presented from different people over the last year. Really not sure how they thought a-move a few units+ kiting + a bit of spellwork once in a while could be fun giving bad pathing and not that fast unit speed. | ||
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tedster
984 Posts
On September 17 2016 08:08 Hider wrote: Don't think hype level was ever at 100 though. But I think it was a smart decision for them to end it now to not waste any further money. I bet the investors kinda forced them into open beta in order to see whether players were excited about the game. And quite quickly it appeared that not alot of people thought it was that amazing (50-50 between people who thought it was decent and who didn't really like it. Never hard one guy said it was super fun and addicting). Anyway, they could have listened to my ideas that I presented 2 years ago on how to create interesting micro interactions. Or you know, some of the feedback presented from different people over the last year. Really not sure how they thought a-move a few units+ kiting + a bit of spellwork once in a while could be fun giving bad pathing and not that fast unit speed. I think they could have made the kiting/a-move/spellwork model work if they'd simply embraced the fact that it was a MOBA with RTS elements rather than the other way around, and then been willing to openly explore that space with both design and PR. Once again I think that boils down to product marketing and management because people absolutely expected the opposite. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
On September 17 2016 06:13 _Spartak_ wrote: I don't know how they would expect more hype with no marketing whatsoever. I thought the plan was to keep it small and then go big with marketing when the game is released/close to release, put it on Steam etc. but looks like I was wrong and the writing was on the wall for a while. I knew it. Another game fails and the excuse from the few fans is "lack of marketing, game was great." Maybe it's just time to realize that just because you liked it, doesn't mean that the general feedback or interest was very strong. Most games don't succeed. Developing a game is hard and always a gamble, but that doesn't mean there won't be a few guys who have a different opinion. Also looks like Day9 left a sinking ship at the right time. That adds more room for speculation. Perhaps he really didn't want the game to go into open beta/could see it would fail and just wanted to clear his name from it. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
Or you go for the Sc2-unit control solution and take the Marine-micro potential as the core unit/standard while making the following changes: - Get rid of build order luck/higher defenders advantage - Easier to control different types of units/lower mechanical learning barrier. - Focus on micro not macro. But not a single game developer has attempted that type of game over the last 10 years, and every other RTS game developer has gone diferently and failed big time as a consequence. Everyone who has gone for "micro"-focussed RTS game have showned they have no idea what creates good micro interactions and just been boring a-move games with a very low micro skill cap. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
On September 17 2016 08:14 tedster wrote: I think they could have made the kiting/a-move/spellwork model work if they'd simply embraced the fact that it was a MOBA with RTS elements rather than the other way around, and then been willing to openly explore that space with both design and PR. Once again I think that boils down to product marketing and management because people absolutely expected the opposite. A MOBA cannot succeed. That market is completely saturated. Also MOBA games like Dota, lol and heroes of the storm all have things they do extremely well. Atlas had absolutely nothing going for it in that regard. Like I said before, the only way to salvage the RTS genre is with a game has a big luck element. Game development is not really that much about luck. Sure you can be a mediocre game developer but be a lucky and get something right. For instance Blizzard got lucky when they designed the Marine. The interaction against banelings was accidential. Or you can be insanely skilled and understand all of the factors that makes for a good game, and then implement them properly. If you look at when Riot Games develop champions, every little stat number is refined and tested so champions have a low learning curve but a pretty high skillcap and playmaking potential with counterplay. There is however no real way for investors to seperate between those who are actually skilled and those who can just talk the talk. Thus alot of money are being thrown to the wrong people. It is however just a question of time. Eventually skilled game developers/designers will be able to be identified and better games will be developed. There is still hope for the RTS genre though it's not within 2-4 years. | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey378 Posts
On September 17 2016 08:14 Hider wrote: I knew it. Another game fails and the excuse from the few fans is "lack of marketing, game was great." Maybe it's just time to realize that just because you liked it, doesn't mean that the general feedback or interest was very strong. That's not what I said. I said that "I thought" they were holding back the marketing for now but it looks like it was pretty much over even before the open alpha. Game was pretty good. You can argue what it did wrong and what it could have improved but it certainly wasn't such a terrible game that it had to be cancelled at an alpha stage. I don't know what happened. Maybe they ran out of money, maybe investors thought there was no market for such a game and pulled the plug but it can't be explained by "people didn't like it" when people didn't even play it. Only a very small number of gamers were aware of the existence of the game and only a small portion of that group played it. Some liked it, some didn't but the number of the playerbase was so low to start with that even if it made everyone happy, I doubt the result would be any different. | ||
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tedster
984 Posts
On September 17 2016 08:21 Hider wrote: A MOBA cannot succeed. That market is completely saturated. Also MOBA games like Dota, lol and heroes of the storm all have things they do extremely well. Atlas had absolutely nothing going for it in that regard. You might be right. I'm not and never was totally convinced another MOBA could succeed, though it's possible enough people would be interesting in a hybrid if it were properly marketed as such. However I do agree that there's no way people were ever going to be happy with Atlas with it being marketed as a successor to the RTS genre. They at least would have gotten some feedback if, the moment they decided to push the game more towards a MOBA, they came clean with that to the public and directly solicited that feedback. They didn't, which was a huge mistake that came back to bite them badly when they went public. I don't think the game completely lacked micro, and the later patches were introducing more and more micro that wasn't exclusively "make skillshot/dodge skillshot". The game was improving along that axis and there were progressively more and more interesting things to do and more War3-style micro going on due to pushing units closer to that level of survivability and utility. But early on it was way too binary regarding whether a unit lived or died to make any difference, and that never got completely expunged. One big problem though was that many of the "micro matters" units they initially introduced and focused heavy amounts of design time on were Starcraft-throwback units, which unfortunately did not work at all with most of the units or objectives in the game as it stood. I firmly believe a lot of dev time was wasted on these units and the micro they were supposed to introduce never materialized. The entire Reaver/Shuttle combo they shoehorned into the game, for example, never panned out and all the tweaks and testing spent on that unit could have been spent tuning battles to include more pullbacks, focus-firing, and blocking. As a result you had a bunch of unsatisfying "micro traps" and a lot of units that died too fast to control, at least for a lot of the development cycle. I would not say Atlas was a great game. I think right near the end it was a strong foundation for a good game, and was getting continuously better. I'm not sure the game mode/map they were using was right for the game mechanics and units they were building - I never thought it really was the right map for the job. | ||
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AndAgain
United States2621 Posts
On September 17 2016 08:21 Hider wrote: Game development is not really that much about luck. Sure you can be a mediocre game developer but be a lucky and get something right. For instance Blizzard got lucky when they designed the Marine. The interaction against banelings was accidential. . I meant make a game that has a luck element within it, i.e RNG. It's essential for a game nowadays to give something to blame when you lose. MOBAs have it in the form of your teammates, Hearthstone has it with RNG. I explain it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/51invn/why_rng_is_crucial_to_hearthstones_success/ Of course, RTS devotees are not gonna like this. And it also would take quite a bit creative brilliance to make fun luck in an RTS. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
On September 17 2016 08:35 _Spartak_ wrote: That's not what I said. I said that "I thought" they were holding back the marketing for now but it looks like it was pretty much over even before the open alpha. Game was pretty good. You can argue what it did wrong and what it could have improved but it certainly wasn't such a terrible game that it had to be cancelled at an alpha stage. I don't know what happened. Maybe they ran out of money, maybe investors thought there was no market for such a game and pulled the plug but it can't be explained by "people didn't like it" when people didn't even play it. Only a very small number of gamers were aware of the existence of the game and only a small portion of that group played it. Some liked it, some didn't but the number of the playerbase was so low to start with that even if it made everyone happy, I doubt the result would be any different. If game was good it would gather natural interest. That's what games that alot of people actually find fun do. Small start up companies do not have infinitive ressources to market the game. But good games spread word-to-mouth. You think Riot games had millions of dollars to adverstise the game with when it first launched? Btw, who actually marketed Dota 1? How come so many people logged into Warcraft 3 just to play a custom game? Maybe because it was fun? Game is good is entirely your opinion. I thought for instance it was terrible. But I still checked it from time to time to see which direction they took the game on. | ||
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Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 17 2016 06:50 Capresis wrote: Four years in closed development, then open beta for a month with very little advertising, then cancelled. If they were running out of money, surely they would have switched gears and gone public a LOT earlier? Some major investors must have bailed. 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. On September 17 2016 04:02 The Bottle wrote: May I ask what the game was like at that time, when you found it most fun? Or does the NDA you signed back then disallow you to describe it, even now? 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!". | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
On September 17 2016 08:41 AndAgain wrote: I meant make a game that has a luck element within it, i.e RNG. It's essential for a game nowadays to give something to blame when you lose. MOBAs have it in the form of your teammates, Hearthstone has it with RNG. I explain it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/51invn/why_rng_is_crucial_to_hearthstones_success/ Of course, RTS devotees are not gonna like this. And it also would take quite a bit creative brilliance to make fun luck in an RTS. No that's not neccasary at all. RNG for instance has absolutely nothing with the succes of LOL. It's a minor thing in the game and probably just there because Riot doesn't have other ways to seperate item stats. And it's also a very little thing in CS:GO as its a neccasary evil just to make it some weapons in some situations are weaker than others. But noone actually enjoys randomness. Also not a thing in Heroes of the storm which is reasonable popular (and probably would be more played if it was released before LOL). I want to say your confusion correlation with causation, but the correlation is barely even there... Also, people will always find stuff to blame if they lose. What matters is creating an easy-to-get into playing experience with fun interactions and high skillcap. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. And alot of game-developers - for whatever reason - has started to think that the skillcap is irrelevant. They just need to make it easy to get into and then people will have fun. I really hope - and believe - that over the next 5-10 years we will see a reverse trend: An increased focus on games where you always feel like you can get better and where its so rewarding to honor your skills. | ||
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