Sargeras77 Sargeras77

Hey Folks, Thought I would give my updated impressions.

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Hey Folks, Thought I would give my updated impressions.

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

After giving ashes a little bit of time to get to know itself I thought I would make a brief post regarding some of my thoughts at thus point in time.

 

     Firstly, the movement speed feels greatly improved compared to the early builds.  I still feel as if the units are a bit too "floaty" (even for hovercraft :P) however and I don't feel as if I really have enough fine detailed control over their movement.  Usually this is fine and I wouldn't want to micro all the time in a game of this scale. However, it is the little things that help create a skill gap and differentiate between good players and great players.  Once example that comes to mind is microing my air superiority fighters in Supcom or TA.  Although they were competent on their own when given a target a skilled player with some time to spare could micro them to give a slight advantage.  Although the slowdown in battle is interesting I would like to see it evolved more to where you can choose to put your units in maneuver mode and have them stop firing/slow their firing while increasing their movement speed to base values. 

     Secondly the scale.  Although there is no denying that Ashes is massive, it really doesn't "feel" that way to me.  I believe I mentioned this is a post early on in development as well but the scale of buildings/units compared to their surrounding terrain just seems off to me.  I know that the units are supposed to be massive tools of war however they still just seem way too large.  The dreadnoughts I think could be 50% of their size and still be damn impressive with the remainder of the units dropping down to 10%ish of their current scale.  The buildings especially just seem way too large.  In Supcom/TA I could fit a gigantic metropolis of factories/resource units/defenses into my starting area where in ashes I struggle to fit more than my starting command center, a few factories, and a couple turrets.  I just feel that right now the size of even the starting units are closer to navy battleships in size instead of large tanks (which is IMO where they should be scale wise) without the accompanying feeling of power/weight.  This also makes the terrain look rather odd as if someone used a reverse shrink ray and blew everything besides the terrain up which makes the mountains/valleys/choke points just look rather unimpressive.  

     A quick side note, I feel as though aircraft suffer greatly from the scale issue.  They are simply so large that at their current flight speed they look lethargic, and very unlike the quick strike units they are.  With their current flight speed and a reduction in model size coupled with an increase in maneuverability/microability I believe they would feel much nicer.

     Third, the point control aspect. Although I personally am not a fan of this kind of "dev made objective" type gameplay I don't think that it will be going anywhere as it has been a core part of the game since the beginning.  I think that a less is more mentality should be adopted regarding the capture points.  Maybe make it so there are 4-5 strategic capture zones which can be held as free quanta generators.  I personally strongly dislike the current reliance on these capture points as a method of gathering core resources.  Just having metal extraction points would be enough incentive to hold the areas IMO.  This would mean that a fast expanding player would have free quanta without having to build generators while also allowing a turtle player to gain quanta by expending extra resources to build generators.  This allows for more variation in strategy.

 

I know I am being quite critical and if you made it through my wall of text THANK YOU, I love RTS games (specifically the TA esque sub-genre) and just want Ashes to be the best it can be.  Forgive me for all my comparisons to TA/Supcom however there is a reason they draw me back frequently even after all of this time.

Oh and everyone on the dev team even if you ignore my ideas (I'm no game dev I just hate critiquing without at least trying to help solve the problem), you are still pretty freaking awesome and I am still stoked that I decided to be a founder!  Especially you Frogboy, keep up the interaction!

Anyways, just my $0.02 :)

Sarge 

 

P.S. running on no sleep for going on 30 hours, forgive the lack of great formatting please!  If I have time I will try to make it more readable after some sleep.

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Reply #26 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

An idea I had,  what if we had a feedback system in place where players and/or founders can submit ideas about different categories (graphics/scaling, balance, strategy options, UI, etc) and then vote the ideas they want to the top?  The top ideas would get responses from devs such as yourself as to why or why not they are good/bad ideas and why/why not they should be implemented.  Very early on in the friends and family alpha for Firefall they had a suggestion system similar to this and personally I loved it.  It allowed me to quickly look at the top suggestions and see if my concerns were already raised.  Then if the devs liked a suggestion they could mark it with "in progress" followed by "complete" when it is done or "denied" if it won't work.

I may even be able to help get something put together along those lines if anyone is interested?  Just a thought since although the founders forums are great it is sometimes hard to find out if you are beating the same dead horse or if your idea hasn't really been talked about.  The search feature works to an extent but different people use different wording to suggest the same things often.  

I think this might help with the strategic zoom/sea of icons/other common issues as well because as we all know it would get submitted and voted up near the top (for good or bad) and this would provide a final way for the devs to respond with the reasons it is not good for AOTS.  As it is I still see alot of discussion about it and I think some of it is just new players who haven't seen the 1000000 forums posts with dev responses stating why it is not the direction they want AOTS to go.

Just kind of a side thought I had while out and about.

Reply #27 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I should also add that the unit cap needs to go up more each time you upgrade it. At the moment there is no choice about what to spend the Quanta on until late game as early to mid game you essentially always have to increase the logistics.

+1 for transports.

If you added rivers then I would suggest you somehow make it so that only T1 can cross certain size rivers. It would add a lot to strategic options in the game and would keep them more relevant longer. No rivers and all hover units make this hard to do though - perhaps another day.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #28 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I also like the idea of rivers, however at the moment I think they are holding off due to the lack of naval craft which is probably the right call as water would make everyone scream for ships and they probably aren't feasible this late in development.  However if they do add rivers they could make it so that the larger craft cant cross due to having too much mass vs the smaller lighter vessels. (even though they all hover)  This could be solved by building something along the lines of a dreadnought which could deploy into a bridge and allow larger armies to cross later in the game.  However again, I have a feeling this is probably too much to add at this moment.

Reply #29 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Currently playing another game to get ideas for suggestions and while playing I noticed again, I think that there are far too many capture points at the moment.  I was playing on I believe its Frosthaven and it seems like there is barely any space between them.  I think they would have much more meaning if the number of capture points was toned down to maybe 50% of the current number but increase the number of extractor spots per zone. (not double more like a 40% increase)  This would lead to a little more time spent securing each zone, and make capturing one/losing one a much bigger deal.  I think that Dawn of war did the capture points pretty well, there weren't all too many and each one you gained/lost meant alot.  

This would lead to another reason to secure your existing zones before venturing out and spamming capture points.  If you still wanted to get greedy you could be however it would lead to easier punishment as losing one of your zones would be a much bigger deal.

 

One other thing I've noticed is that alot of the models/textures look fairly blurry and not crisp.  I know that it isn't the models/texture detail as I've seen your up close renders of individual units and they are drop dead gorgeous.  I'm not sure if this is something on my end (I am running only a 660ti for gpu) or something with the engine/shading.  Some screens I've seen from you guys and in the founders vault are very crisp and clear which I love while other in game screens I've seen also seem to experience the same kind of blur effect. It actually kind of reminds me of the dynamic resolution tech employed in many current gen Xbox One games when alot is happening at once. It is something I can live with but if it is an option I can tweak somehow I would love to know.  It may also just be that I can't crank up the AA to what it needs to be at?  But normall that only affects the edges of objects whereas it seems that the whole view is a little grainy/blurry.

 

These ones looks pretty crisp so I know that it is possible.

https://stardock.cachefly.net/www_ashesofthesingularity_com-assets/media/screenshots/101915/Ashes_Screenshot_05.jpg

https://stardock.cachefly.net/www_ashesofthesingularity_com-assets/media/screenshots/120215/Ashes-ea2.jpg

 

These ones have the kind of blurred/seemingly dynamic resolution thing I'm referencing. 

https://draginol.stardock.net/images2014/Ashes-screenshots-December-2016_11235/Ashes-Jan16-c.png

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yz10vd008wi5ebi/AABsflgMi6aWXVMv-8ATygVCa?dl=0&preview=Ashes-screenshot-May2015-tinyskirmish.png

 

Edit: I made a quick paint sketch of what I think zones should look like.  Each red circle would be a zone, and the metal extraction points would be spread out throughout them. Some zones (the harder to capture/hold) ones would have more points for metal extraction etc. 

 

http://imgur.com/zFcS46G

 

Edit2: As I keep seeing it brought up in the forums  as well, strategic zoom... instead of zooming all the way out maybe make it so that if you scroll the scroll wheel out 3-4 more times ( or zoom out while pressing an alternate key and the same time) after already at max zoom out distance you get the abstract view shown whilst pressing space.  The main thing I miss about strategic zoom was the ability to move around the map by simply zooming in and out.  If the abstract view in this scenario took up your whole screen you could mouse over an area and zoom in again just like we are used too from previous game of the same scale.  This would also be a good place to maybe include the heat maps of units/engagements.  Although in the abstract view I would like to see maybe a high res screenshot of the map from far up with the various heatmaps/radar/patrol paths etc shown instead of the completely different view you get whilst holding space. 

Reply #31 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

A small thing, but when you win the Nexus should blow up in a massive and satisfying explosion before the end game screen comes up. Need a moment to soak up the victory, or indeed reflect on the loss.

Are you sure you don't want to give T1 a simple AA unit? If all the air units can shoot ground units then everyone is just gonna have to build air at the beginning. Building AA turrets everywhere is too costly and time consuming and it also takes a while to get T2 anti-air too. I am not sure forcing everyone to go air at the beginning is what you wanted.

T2 anti-air also has other abilities like anti-drone so it would not just be a "same but better unit" than T1 AA and I could see a place for both throughout a game.

Reply #32 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

The game overall looks way better in the video than it does on my system. Makes me want to get a new video card (running a GTX 770).

Based upon the video, I agree that the Engineers look big. However I think it is wise to keep them looking big so they are easier to pick out on the screen. This is a case where I think gameplay has to trump immersion. I do like the tree scaling in the video.

What exactly happened at 13:05 to 13:15? Initially most of the army hung back in formation around the Artemises because of their leash. But after a few seconds and some key presses, they pushed forward. Did Brad de-army them? What happened to get them to push the objective? Because I want my units to do that some/much/most of the time.

I didn't see any enemy air, though I could have missed it. Also, Brad mentioned that players will get punished for leaving regions undefended, but the AI did not appear to try to take advantage of Brad's many undefended regions. Perhaps I misinterpreted his meaning?

Pan and Fury air-to-ground looks interesting. I am a bit worried about how that could significantly increase micro, but maybe that is a way to differentiate noobs and experts. It's probably the right kind of micro too, as opposed to the wrong kind which includes having to click and build each extractor.

Reply #33 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting tatsujb, reply 36


Quoting Sargeras77,
reply 27

as someone watching this game the lines between mexes are just really intrusive to my immersion.  I've mentioned this before but I would like this to be a toggle-able option.  Maybe make the actual territory outlines be faint lines on the terrain and have the individual mex connections be a toggle, I believe this would look alot cleaner.



Iagree 

 

we never really commented on the aesthetic of node connections but I don't like them as is.


Quoting Sargeras77,
reply 27

3)It doesn't really seem that units are responsive enough to commands especially t1/t2 units (dreads I understand, they are large and unwieldy)  I won't go into this very much as I already talked about it above.

yeah this is really bothersome.


Quoting Sargeras77,
reply 27

scale trees up a tad bit more, maybe like 15-20% smaller

problem

End of tatsujb's quote

 

Good point, i understand why the lines are there to help get into the notion of expanding and knowing where to go.

But they do feel a bit intrusive on a artistic level.

 

About the trees yes it would be cool if they could be scalled like 5 to 10 percent more.

 

Quoting Sargeras77, reply 27

It doesn't really seem that units are responsive enough to commands especially t1/t2 units (dreads I understand, they are large and unwieldy)  I won't go into this very much as I already talked about it above.
End of Sargeras77's quote

I Agree, i think its a mix of issues.

1) - First the right click Symbol on the ground snaps rigidly to the ground, usually RTS games make it a 2d texture symbol that can be clicked anywhere including unpassable terrain with an animation attached to it if you can or not move towards it, its mostly a UI issue here. This makes it so when you click sometimes you dont get any kind of response from the game or it snaps to a place that isnt where you clicked, and since you cant click everywhere and get an instant response you kinda have this fake feeling of the game not being responsive UI wise.

2) - Some units have some acceleration deceleration issues when responding to commands, i think the movement speed options are more than fine, their responsivness to move commands need bit of change. The turn rates are fine the acceleration feels a bit strange, sometimes they accelerate instantly other times they take forever to do so. Some people have noticed this is because of the in combat move speed. I think it is related to how there are other units surrounding them regarthless of being friendly or not. There isnt this flow pathfinding algorithm where units pass each other seamingly pushing other's asside.

3) When building stuff, buildings also snap rigidly to the ground, and it feels very rigid and not smooth, afterall there is a building grid on the ground, starcraft 2 behaves this way i know but they provide a squared grid ui below their buildings with red and green colors, allowing players to know where you can or cannot place buildings. This also affects a players notion of responsiveness when building.

Also since sometimes when you order an attack command on a enemy unit if theres a meta unit in there, it might just pull back and keep shooting at range. Which also contributes heavily to the feeling of the game not being responsive. You can always disband but even there it feels like UI wise there should be a clear distinct symbol that would allow players to know if a unit/squad is within an army or not.