Alpha Feedback: A running list of my experience

Raellisjr

New member
I'm not apart of the private sections, but I still wanted to contribute. :(
This is an Alpha, were here just as much to give feedback as to play. Here is my user experience up to this point. If I have more feedback I will replay in thread.

Overall (TL;DR); I feel like the direction is good. What makes this game fun is that everyone feels powerful. I would like you to keep this direction instead of focusing on weakening things, making them stronger. Many games nerf stuff, but not many make everything feel strong, which could be a draw for players to be happy and in the end profit for the company.

Mcginnis:
- Upgrade Path -
Here is how I optimized my upgrades; Early game I go, Turret > (Turret / Heal) > (Heal / Turret) > Wall > Ult. From here I get the cooldown off heavy barrage then focus everything into turrets. In most cases one point into Medicinal Specter for extra fire rate. Generally 2 Turrets for extra charge, cooldown on barrage, fire rate, then max turrets. If I'm doing well then I focus on getting the fire rate off heal early along with spectral wall's debuff to shred objectives.
- Mini Turret - The power of the turrets in early game is weak, but as you move to mid-game they feel extremely powerful in terms of a zoning and tool. I find I want the turrets to focus and context switch on Champions > Minons > Mobs. The most powerful mechanics of the turrets to me seems to be that you can have extra charges and distance. The extra charges feels like the define this ability where you can setup a forward parameter or defense. This feels like a good direction to me as a user and defines this character. The distance you can move away from these devices feels very far, you can drop them to deal with a wave then run away. The damage of them feels decent late game and they suffer against tanks which is expected. I feel like you have to invest probably too much souls to go into a turret build or other builds like it overshadow it. In terms of weaknesses late game the health and noticeably of the turret's are their weakness. If you can see and your not distracted they can be removed. The first upgrade is very powerful and I feel it defines the character along with buying a battery for another extra charge. The slow in the first upgrade feels like it's not needed, people buy it for the charge, this could be a point of balancing. The second upgrade is weaker and in most cases it's better to put those points into your early ultimate, then to focus on getting this ability to level 5.
- Medicinal Specter - The way this was designed is it is mostly for yourself and not your teammates. I spec into this for two points then mostly leave it alone for the fire rate. I feel like it is a great ability, but I think the heal should have a larger radius towards the later game. If it is your intention, there is no point in upgrading this past the bullet speed vs. the other abilities at this time. If you have the extra points to get to the +5% heal then you use it on yourself to make you tanky, not to help people since you want the fire rate. I might suggest removing the cooldown in place of a radius upgrade. I might suggest splitting the upgrades up also, such as putting more points into this ability over time gives more radius, fire rate, and healing as it scales. This would urge someone to balance more points into this depending on the build.
- Spectral Wall - This is a powerful ability, period. It stops objectives, kills peoples, traps people, kills objectives, shuts down ultimates on a 30s or less cooldown, protects teamates. The versatility of this tool is quite powerful. I don't know everything I'm only human. I'm not sure how to balance this outside of cooldown, deploy speeds, or min deployment range. Make sure you get proper metrics on the use of this ability and be careful of what tweaks you make.
- Heavy Barrage - I like the direction where this is a pressure tool for clumping and objectives. It pushes people off objectives fitting with her theme, then in teams fights a damage dealer of ground enemies. For defined weaknesses hitting over walkways and having a minimum instances peoples bruisers get close to here to punish this actions. I feel like the 50s cooldown reduction is very powerful, it's up every fight. The extra damage is nice at 5 points. I feel like there is no point in the first upgrade, I would rather get fire rate off my heal, damage increase off the wall, or get closer to level 5 turrets.
Stats:
- Ammo -
If you build her right she feels like Heavy from TF2! I love running extra ammo capacity on her this feels EXTREMELY FUN. Along with the increasing bullet speed over time this feels enjoyable as a character to play.
- Stamina - In the current state of this character, DO NOT give her an extra dodge. This adds likely more power to her positioning which is already extremely powerful. They should be forced to spec info extra stamina in her case. If she aquires boots that increase her mobility I fear what would happen with anyone compentent enough to use these dodges properly. This gives her a clear defined weakness also of something that can be punished.
Builds:
- Ability Focus -
I feel like this is an area she falls short. It's extremely expensive to build into ability power unlike weapon damage and her scaling is not the best. She gets damage off the turrets and rockets, but nothing else out of it. To my knowledge from the tool tips, I don't this this helps healing either. This pushes you to build towards a gunner focuses even when team laning. I would suggest some tweaks here to give this character a different build path. This could be damage and healing scaling for ability focus or extra utility as these thing scales such as objective damage. This should also be used to define her weakess between these builds as a drawback. She's more squishy with an ability build, but can drop objectives and groups faster than individuals as a gunner build.
- Gunner Focus - This is the way to build her currently. Build into magazine size, lifesteal, damage, and health. This feels both fun and powerful as her role as an objective breaker. She becomes a mid range threat that becomes weaker at close and far range if you can stay out of her retical. Her lifegain and tankyness with this build might be too strong against someone who knows how to use her compared to other champions. That said getting sniped off by a sniper or melee might be a good direction to keep her in check. She wants to be near objectives, but doesn't like to be alone due to her weaknesses, pushing her to objectives wins the game. Her getting caught solo she has few tools to escape outside the zip line.

This is probably my favorite hero, plays like a mix of Heavy and Engineer from TF2. I like this direction and most importantly this feels fun.

Laning:
- aggression - When the game is released I think the meta will define itself, but there is a clear advantage of those that focus on resources over kills early agression. I think this should be conveyed more in the tutorial for the release of such game. If someone plays agressive such as vindicta then they fall sigificantly behind in solo lanes. If you want this type of style of gameplay the reward for being aggressive should be more pronounced. Just killing someone means they come back to lane. Something like this could be an early advantage to pushing in solo lanes or kills. Otherwise if you want to focus on resources then potentially others items for the players to fight over would help this matter, such as more defined mini objectives.

In the Alpha if you play alone then 95% of all my games I'm a solo lane, which is frustrating for testing different team mechanics. Hard to get into a duo lane. I cannot comment on duo lanes only 1v1 and 1v2 lanes. This is also something I want to mention. It's very easy for a duo to lane swap and push the opposing team due to the extra resources around the map. I could find a good partner, leave my two person lane and move into a 1v1 lane to punish my opponents. If they don't roam, everyone gets early resources on your team. There is no point in not doing this if you know your partner. Change lanes permanently, if they don't change your ahead, if they do you lose nothing since you know your partner is setup to 2v1.

Camps:
- Camp mobs are likely to become a problem in the middle lanes. Champions that can properly farm early mobs can break partity with the opposite team. The problem is that their games is closer to their guardian. They can push in a lane, walk back to the camps, then be back by the time they need to push in the lane again. These locations are safe also with the surrounding building walls preventing these actions from being punished if you can push back fast. Please be careful of this when designing the maps. To be clear I'm talking about the house with three mobs that appears on the left side of the guardian early game in the middle lanes.

Roaming:
- This game punishes roaming very hard and thus some strategies are not viable. With the quick respawn times, lane pushing, distance/speed it takes to setup a gank as a solo lane it's not viable to hunt for these oppurtinities. It's better to just stay in lane and farm until mid game for maximize your throughput. I might suggest some way to make it more fluid to move from lane to lane or some event that promotes this.

This is the end of part one. I'm still dumping my thoughts on the itemization, seven, upgrade paths, and UI. Will reply in thread in the future with more feedback.
 
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