I understood when I bought alpha to set my gameplay expectations low. however, I did expect it to run kinda like SUP COM. now im not posting a FPS problem here. im saying that the game, even in its MOST early state, is not fast-paced enough. I understand battle tactics and strategy takes long, but there are times when your just waiting for troops to finish building for an ambush, and when you ambush the enemy all your troops die from an overpowered amount of ground cannons. I know people are gonna hate on this post because it's so early in, but the gameplay is considerably long and often lingers on for 30 minutes with no contact whatsoever.
I find myself agreeing. while the game is in alpha and the focus is not on balance right now, I find myself watching videos where the first 10 minutes involve building up your economy and army. Since many people who are interested in getting the full game will no doubt watch the vidoes of others to determine whether they think it looks fun, it may be a problem that it can be quite boring to watch. But seriously this game is amazing and Uber is the best company I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
the longer until contact the more time you have to build up your units and base to defend your self. At least that's generally the way I look at it. I understand your complaints, but I believe they are premature. This is the worst this game will ever be. Look how far they have come over the last 6/7 months, and think about what had to be done. Now think about whats completed, and what they have to spend their time on. This game is not supposed to be playable to play right now, it is just a concept or shell for more features to be added to. If you want to play to have fun, you should have waited for the it to be released as a finished product or possibly the beta.
As for build time, I'm sure that there will be a game speed slider lader. The rest pretty much comes from the fact that every unit explodes on one hit atm. I'm sure the next balance patch will address that, I don't think balance has been focused at at all by the developers at this point, since we are getting a really early alpha here.
You can build a few raiders/scouts in reasonably short order already. The problem is that defense turrets are so ludicrously powerful that in the early game everyone with enough presence of mind to build one or two is an invulnerable turtle.
Many balance problems will be fixed when mass spots work correctly. People can get infinite resources in their bases extremely quickly so turtling is inevitable.
Yep. Also we will be putting in the egg which will allow you to get started more quickly. Of course this is also a side effect of the size of the map. Which I find humorous because a lot of people thought it was "small" when we showed it before. Now it's so big you don't have any contact Anyway sorry you aren't happy with the pace but realistically it's not something which has had any tuning. We are really still implementing basic game features this early in the alpha.
The slowness I feel comes more from the sheer lack of speed that 90% of units have. But as you said, this is alpha, so I'm largely reserving my comments.
People just didn't realize how big a planet can actually be. You see one face and think "wow that's small" but when you realize you have to roam all over the planet it suddenly becomes a much larger field of play. The pacing won't really be fixed until the mass spots are in though, there will be alot of raiding and confrontations when that gets implemented.
I feel the pace has more to do with active play being weaker than passive play (attacking, expanding, etc. is weaker than turtle and eco). The infinitely scaling economy and lack of mass points factor are a big factor there.
At the moment there simply is not much that makes one want to attack. -You have infinite income -You probably don't know all buildings and units yet and just want to build them all -You are bad at the game, just like everyone else because it's the alpha and don't want to rush an attack and die after 10 minutes -Everything dies in one hit and defensive turrets are super effective -No nukes Yeah... why would I want to go out of my base? Of course it gets boring at some point, so in my first game I just took all my bots and my ACU and bumrushed Garat. (everything got killed by PDs)
I believe I won that game. ;-) Yah, without metal spots being required, it really throws all other balance off. That's one of the reasons we have the rule in the office requiring you to use metal spots. So we can start to get a better sense of economy, and to encourage spreading out. All in good time. As for overall pacing.. Also, all in good time.
Very soon we're going to be releasing different sized planets. You should see a difference in gameplay and speed of gameplay the more the size changes. I am looking forward to feedback on that.
I hope metal spots are coded soon. It is just about impossible to have people online pay attention to 'house rules'.
I totally would've stomped you if my launcher hadn't crashed after the failed attack! But yeah, I think metal spots are on the the next things that should be patched because effectively no valid balancing recommendations can be given without having them. I'm curious though: What does a metal spot look like? I thought those weren't even a thing yet but if you guys have used them as a house rule I guess there is a way to see them already? Also looing forward to new planets! Looking forward even more to being able to generate my own gigantic planets. I'll be patient on that
Legit - look for the little silverish swirls all over the landscape.. those are the intended metal spots.
I don't think the problem is the map size, I believe the problem is the awkwardness is scouting it and navigating around it. Hopefully, a working 'Roam' (I'm presuming that button is supposed to do exactly as it implies) will alleviate that. Also, not having any icons showing up after an enemy is scouted results in me often losing track of them or just missing them when I'm playing Simcity in my base and a plane is off of looking for AA Tow-err bases.
I dont know what you guys are doing wrong, but I can kill one player in about 10 minutes with just the most basic scouting. A t1 air scout will find someone and then you just build nothing but t2 artillery bots and GG. Stompers are just ludicrous at the moment with how fast the make everything melt. If you can get radar of someone's base you can destroy it faster since stompers outrange and out damage just about everything except more stompers. Even then you just have to divide your force into smaller groups so that their blob doesn't destroy every unit you have. About 9 stompers can end the game in build 49186.
Will there be as many as there are now? Because from what I've seen when people use them there isn't that much of a difference from layers who don't. I would hope that reducing the amount of metal spots would create more of a conflict for resources.
