Reading back through the forum I see there are a whole bunch of these, but they're mostly just a list of bugs and minor ui/unit improvement suggestions, which I don't find particularly interesting (come on, it's an alpha guys). I'm far more interested in the over all gameplay; and so far, it's been... fine. I guess. Issues: Too many resources There's absolutely no competitive pressure here. You can spread out a little if you like, but even with 4 players, the map is huge, the resources are abundant and there's no reason to do anything except hunker down, build your turrets and send your army of units out to die on your opponents turrets. There should be fewer resources; players should have to fight over them. I've lost 3/4 of my base, including resource extractors, and it's made no real difference. Overwhelming air construction units Mobile flying construction units avoid all the the pathing problems of land construction units, are highly mobile and 'stack' allowing dozens of construction units to rapidly manufacture / repair in a manner that relegates the other construction units to obsolescence immediately. Since the air assault units aren't particularly useful, there's very little to concern your construction air fleet. Terrible. The build rate of these units needs to go way down or they should (imho) be removed entirely. Watching a battlefield swept into a laser/artillery ground by a buzzing hoard of construction aircraft is quite sad. More turrets, everywhere. yay... Biomes I'm sure this is some kind of 'in the works' thing but they serve no purpose what so ever at the moment. 'I'm bored...' How many times have I either had a player say "I'm bored..." or just drop out with no comment? I don't even remember. All the time. I realize this is just an alpha, but I'd be pretty concerned; after playing for an hour, players aren't happily destroying fleets of robots! ...they're wondering what to do next, and leaving the game. I put this down to no late game content at the moment; two entrenched players with roughly even resources are stalemated. There's nothing to break the lock; one player destroys one section, the other player takes a different one. Ships guard against incoming armies. Massive armies of units get chewed up to nothing with nothing to show for it. Overall At the moment: as a tech test, this is fun to play, but it's absolutely uninteresting to me as a strategic battle game. Suggestion I'd love to see something like 'special resources' or DoW style 'strategic' points, that players could fight over; possession of this resource / point would allow overwhelming powerful units that defeats the stalemate. Having these as map points make the game interesting too; for example, put them at the pole and watch all the players race to hold the location; possession of the point comes with late-game bonuses, but holding it means defending against all the other players. The most fun I've had in any of my games has been a 4 way brawl over a pointless land bridge that everyone wanted (for no reason). Unfortunately most of the games I've played haven't ended up that way. :/ Don't get me wrong; obviously (since I'm here) I'm really enthusiastic about this game, and I think what there is at the moment is awesome! ...but I'm a bit worried about the core game play mechanics.
What do you think an alpha is for? If you're more interested in gameplay than bugs, I suggest you skip the alpha, since that's what it's all about, really. A quick look at the bug tracker will show you that balance and gameplay tweaking is still quite a while off.
Metal points aren't working in game right now that's why you can just plop mexes haphazardly wherever you want in your base. TA's air cons work exactly the same way, however they were also the slowest builders by a long shot. IIRC actually they are almost 4-5 times slower than their similar leveled kbot and vehicle cons. I haven't checked in PA if the other cons are faster at building or if all are standardized. Hopefully they are not as that would indeed be a huge balance issue.
Personally, I like sending my fleet of 200+ scout planes at the enemy at the 15 minute mark. They can attack anything, fast to build, and go down in 1 hit.
I agree that two entrenched players are at a stalemate. Defense towers and the advanced vehicle mobile artillery are too powerful. They annihilate every land army in seconds.
Feedback, that's why I'm giving it. To be absolutely clear; there are tonnes are balance issues and bugs (ships! WTF!), but what I'm trying to raise here is that fixing the balance and bugs isnt going to fix the tedious gameplay. There needs to be more here than throwing piles of units against walls of towers. That's a tower defence game. Sure, it's 'mobile' artillery, but it's basically just a big tower defence game at the moment. Once your kill zones are nailed down, that's it. Stalemate. TA and supcom had this issue too; hunker down with your metal makers and your shields until your opponent dies of bordom and leaves the game. That's not where we want to end up~
Wow, it's almost like it's an alpha or something. Also, the "throw walls of units at your opponent until they die" is how some people like to play these games (for some reason, i don't). You don't have to play that way, and once balance gets sorted out you will not be able to do that against a good player. You will get destroyed quickly. If both of you turtle then of course you're going to be bored, turtling is boring.
The presence of: 1) Rapid mobile construction units 2) No limit on tower or tower-like units 3) Unlimited resources with no 'strategic resource' locations 4) Large unlimited size worlds Pretty much assure this result from the game. These aren't balance issues, they're core mechanics. I'm open to hear how a 'good player' can over come these issues. Old school TA on a 4x4 map where the map is too small to let it devolve into that style of gameplay? (this is basically how supcom and ta 'sort of' over came it; by making the map so small that an artillery becomes a game-ender instead of a kill zone weapon). Only... the world is *always* huge here. So, that doesn't work. Just for comparison, here are how other similar games avoid this: DoW: Strategic locations Starcraft: Limited resources, limited turrets, command points TA: Didn't really; tiny maps. Supcom: Super-units (even then with shields the game ended up this way) Supcom 2: Didn't avoid it. Terrible multiplayer. "super" units kind of helped a bit.
This isn't a game. It's an Alpha. Don't play it like it's a game... Your job is to try and BREAK it... not enjoy it. Enjoying the Alpha is a happy coincidence at this point.
Fair enough. I thought they wanted feedback on how the alpha played; but if all they want is bug and crash reports, I'm happy to keep my thoughts to myself for now.
You mean the ones where only half the units/buildings in the game and half the gameplay mechanics have actually been implemented? Cause I'm totally worried about what the game is like with only half the mechanics and units. It worries me greatly and I feel that it's a harbinger of doom for the real game.
Since you didn't read my last post, I'll say it again: metal points are NOT working ingame right now.
It should be obvious to everyone that mex points have not yet been implemented. Until their implementation there is no gameplay to discuss. The best source of income is the basic extractor stacked upon itself as many times as you want, this is clearly not intentional. Battles will be determined by who can run PA the fastest until the expansion mechanics are in place.
