First Impressions - Post yours here » Forum Post by Sir On The Edge

First Impressions - Post yours here

By Sir On The Edge on September 4, 2008 6:29:07 PM from

So here's my thoughts on the game after my first match:

I played through my first game as the Rok or whatever the large castle guy is called. The game was not smooth on my 7400 but I wouldn't ever expect it to on such a card, it was still playable though. And what I played turned out to be a good game that was a little rough around the edges.

I will begin with my criticisms as I believe they will be the most useful to the developers reading this, first there needs to be more confirmation when sending your god to attack.
Secondly, the way you make him attack enemies with his skills needs reworking, so that if it's an area attack (specifically the hammer attack) you click on the skill then you click where you want the demigod to use it. At the moment you click on the enemy you want to use it on and then click on the skill, this is cumbersome and will not work as well zoomed out, nor is it natural for this sort of game.
Next I think the separate shops at the main base need to be consolidated into a single shop with tabs or gotten rid of all together so you can buy items anywhere on the map (maybe make potions the exception). It would work better if you didn't have to click on the shop but you had to be in a certain area drawn clearly on the map. So an area outlined blue for potions, black for armour and red for artefacts would be fine.
What you control should also be better defined, I think if you had a darker and a lighter filter/animation over the textures as they are taken control of would be a nice addition.

Now for what is good about the demo, it is fun (a nice surprise for a beta), it looks good on the lowest settings and the game-play is easy but tactical. Yes it all needs balancing but as it is, balance issues so far have not been noticeable on the first run through.

I hope my input has been helpful and I think it would be a good idea for other people to post their impressions in this thread too (bugs need there own thread) so the forum is less cluttered.

Oh and the game didn't crash during the gaming session.

+2 Karma | 19 Replies

Secondly, the way you make him attack enemies with his skills needs reworking, so that if it's an area attack (specifically the hammer attack) you click on the skill then you click where you want the demigod to use it.

Hammerslam is like this because it's not really an AoE attack, but a direct-damage attack with a splash radius. True AoE attacks like TB's rain spells do indeed work as you ask.

you click on the skill then you click where you want the demigod to use it.

you can do it the other way around. I was selecting the hammer skill, then selecting the enemy to use it on.

It could be optional, like single-click to hammerslam a target, double-click to just do it exactly where you're pointing on the ground...

I found myself wanting to target the ground a lot, when there are a bunch of little guys and you know the splash damage will kill them all and you just want to smash and be on your way, it was kinda of annoying to have to pick a specific target.

I haven't even gotten to play yet.... It freezes when ever I click or hit esc to get passed the movie...

I don't want to post much about the gameplay in beta one, but I'll give *some* of my first impressions.

Fun... haha, even playing against bots.

There were a few texture glitches with the options where they would turn black, I'll take a screenshot next time because this might be more of the type of issue to report in beta one.

It's very hard to cancel attacking and get my unit away, if I click to move away he starts then stops and starts shotting again... ugh!

Are we going to be able to rotate the camera?(Or can we already?)

Looking awesome overall, can't wait for more stuff!

so far my first impressions have been fun, while i know that the beta 1 is primarily for bugs and not balancing, the game needs balancing . but whatev. while i did notice a couple of bugs(which i will try to find if a thread has been made on it yet) the game ran very smoothly for me on max settings and the game never crashed during the gaming sessions

also to rotate the camera its just like in Supcom, hold the spacebar to rotate.

It's really like Dota, but nicer ^^

I don't agree with you for the shops everywere on the map, as it is part of the game : time taken to go buy something, is time you don't get Xp and money

My impressions for the moment :

- Really smooth with a lots of different configurations (1 year old seems ok ) with all details maxed
- Gameplay ok, but I hope in the final version there will be more than 6 heroes !
- Perharps I didn't find it, but are you implementing combined objetcs ?
- Like the map

That's all for the moment ^^

O.k. here we go.

The Rooks normal attack is to strong in certant comibnations. If you buy Gloves of Tlanusi (+200 Weapon damage) and Train Might of God IV (lvl 8 +200% Weapon damage). The normal attack of it does way over 1000 damage (at level 8). That is more than the highes level of the Hammer Slam IV.

The AI does can not handle the short attack range of the rooks normal attack. If you observe AI "The rooks" in the beginning, where they dont have much skills they just stand around for most of the time.

AI does not try to recapture their portal/mine Flags if you capture them.

Langames (over Hamachi) can not be seen by other players most of the time

No general demigods?

Have the general demigod been skipped from the game?

Or are the just not in beta 1?

My first impressions

The game is really optimized, i have Intel Q9450, 2Go DDR3 Corsair and SLI Geforce 9800GTX. With SLI disable and all parameters on High + AA 16x Demigod works fine.

About the gameplay, it's great. Maybe add object while need other object to be complete... There are some bugs, but in general it's good for a beta. Maybe add a configuration panel for controls.

This is my forst impressions, other ones come soon.

I've actually seen 0 bugs or glitches this is amasing since I've never played a beta this good ever before. The gameplay is good but now a bit to similar to Dota can't wait to get my hand on the generals that is what makes this game special and I hop it will turn out great.

So far my experience has been great. Hope to play online soon enough.

Keep up the good work!

My first impression, Rook is too powerful, I tested each scenario where my team was all one demigod and the enemy team was all rooks, each time we lost, did it the other way around, each time we won. Otherwise the game is pretty fun. I think you need to be able to turn the camera at different angles and set it there, the angle we're currently at pissees me off a lot, you also need to be able to move you're gods eye view camera other than the num pad or the arrow keys. And the shops need to have a bit of range or something, I was sitting there for a quite a while trying to decide on to what to buy and by the time I got it the enemies were at my doorstep. Uhm.. lets see... also the AI could be a bit more intelligent, I rand straight to the portals and captured them and won the game, I'm pretty sure if I go try it now with the rook and just give him a lot of health and hp potions I would win in no time. Uhm... there needs to be a list of controls it took me forever to understand that the right click did was the move AND attack button... uhm.... it would be nice to know when your charachter is angry (Like sent to attack) or just talking (sent to move) Also if you could select other targets without attacking them just out of curiosity of the names that wouuld be cool. I think thats all if I have any more i'll get back to ya.

Everything runs smoothly from downloading to playing, so in that respect phase 1 seems to be on track (at least for me). As for actual gameplay, the game seems to be a lot more fast paced than dota, which of course can be a good thing given that theres enough depth. Im having real trouble identifying heroes from creeps (especially regulus but not the rook), and i seriously miss sidescrolling with the mouse. Most of these and other issues i have so far are things i expect will be fixed added later, so the experience so far is a positive one.

I notice that i play like a noob even with countless of hours with dota behind me, imo the games are far from identical to each other.

The game ran smoother than most full release games I have played in awhile which is amazing. Most of my comments are just general interface/gameplay comments.

I think the main thing I need is an easier way to scroll and reposition the camera. The space bar works in some ways but I would still like an easy way to move the camera. The arrow/numberpad for x/y scrolling of the camera is not ideal as any other keys you need to hit are on the other side of the map. Think about a way to implement one-handed camera control from the mouse. Mind out of the gutter on that one, but I found myself trying to manage the camera more than I was namanging my demigod.

The general hero movement/attack ai needs a little refinement. As others have mentioned I found my hero just standing there getting beat on when I wanted to retreat.

An easier way to distinguish friendly from enemy demigods on the battlefield. Especially in this beta where we only have access to 3, it can get confusing. I was trying to attack everything and if I swung I figured it was an enemy.

The graphics look fantastic. I wanted to zoom in and check out every unit but that made my gameplay suffer:P.

I have a 4-year old computer (pre-dual-core 2.8GHz processor + GeForce 6800), and the game runs very fine & fluid at a rez of 1440 X 900.

I disabled V-synch, Shadow fidelity & AA. I'll try again with 2x AA to see if the framerate drops, but without AA, it looks good on my 19-inch widescreen.

Having 2GB of RAM must help. When the maps will get bigger, people with only 1GB of RAM might sometimes see performance drops (when their machine will access the hard-drive virtual memory).

The first game I played I enjoyed not at all. This was partly because I had no idea what I was doing and partly because I couldn't scroll with my mouse at the edge of the screen.

My second game I enjoyed a bit more--I began to get a handle on items, goals, and skills.

My third game was when the game started being really, genuinly, fun. I had a pretty solid handle on what I was supposed to be doing, and had gotten pretty used to scrolling with zoom/middle mouse button (although this is my biggest gripe with the game is not being able to scroll with my mouse at the edge).

Since then I've had 3-4 solid, fun games against the AI.

I've encountered only very minor bugs--occasionally things will freeze for a few seconds, sometimes I won't be able to see the stats of the items in the shops, once I had a ton of overlay text and it refused to disappear for a few minutes--nothing major at all.

Thoughts in improvements that need to be made:

-identifying demigods by team can be very, very difficult unless you mouse over them.

-it can be very hard to click on demigods. Rook is gigantic. I should be able to click on him midway up is body, not just at his feet.

-scrolling with the mouse at the edge of the screen *needs* to happen

-the graphics are beautiful, but it can be easy to lose things (especially instances of Regulus) in them. The smaller demigods should be more visually distinctive or it's very hard to see them unless you're zoomed in. (torchbearer is fine in this respect, rook obviously doesn't have this problem)

Quoting Blaithe,

reply 12

I think you need to be able to turn the camera at different angles and set it there, the angle we're currently at pissees me off a lot, you also need to be able to move you're gods eye view camera other than the num pad or the arrow keys.

You can adjust the camera angle by holding space bar and moving the mouse. Also you can lock onto your demigod by pressing T.

On my Q6600 / 8GB / GT8800 the game runs very smooth, no lockups/ waiting or what ever.
On my P4 3.2 HT / 1GB / Nvidia 7600 machine the game works, but i have to use low settings, some delays occure

The game becomes fun after a few games, i think the single player will be very important to introduce the game and how it works to new people.

I'm ready for the next phase of the beta.

A bug i noticed:
The flag bar stayed on my screen and it took a while before it was gone. I think it was staying after i used the 'tooltip' a few time on the flag.

Quoting Silver2Falcon,

reply 16

The first game I played I enjoyed not at all. This was partly because I had no idea what I was doing and partly because I couldn't scroll with my mouse at the edge of the screen.My second game I enjoyed a bit more--I began to get a handle on items, goals, and skills.My third game was when the game started being really, genuinly, fun. I had a pretty solid handle on what I was supposed to be doing, and had gotten pretty used to scrolling with zoom/middle mouse button (although this is my biggest gripe with the game is not being able to scroll with my mouse at the edge).Since then I've had 3-4 solid, fun games against the AI.I've encountered only very minor bugs--occasionally things will freeze for a few seconds, sometimes I won't be able to see the stats of the items in the shops, once I had a ton of overlay text and it refused to disappear for a few minutes--nothing major at all. Thoughts in improvements that need to be made:-identifying demigods by team can be very, very difficult unless you mouse over them.-it can be very hard to click on demigods. Rook is gigantic. I should be able to click on him midway up is body, not just at his feet.-scrolling with the mouse at the edge of the screen *needs* to happen-the graphics are beautiful, but it can be easy to lose things (especially instances of Regulus) in them. The smaller demigods should be more visually distinctive or it's very hard to see them unless you're zoomed in. (torchbearer is fine in this respect, rook obviously doesn't have this problem)

My experience is almost identical to this. So I echo all the suggestions here.

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