First impression

From a hardcore DOTA fan

from Demigod Forums

Hi guys,

I just wanted to drop in and congratulate you on a good, solid beta!  As a former hardcore DOTA player, I believe that you have successfully captured the spirit and feel of the game [1] in a way that is very positive (from my perspective).  It is exactly what I was hoping for!  Here are my thoughts so far (since this is an engine test I'll keep my comments oriented towards that):

- I should mention right off that I think my system is a little poor for the game, so I am not sure I am experiencing the average use case.  I have an Athlon 64 3200+ with 2 GB ram and an Nvidia GeForce 6600.  Unfortunately, it performs very poorly on this hardware, and I get around I think 10-15 FPS with low detail prefaults on the lowest resolution.

- It has the feel of a real game, with its own polish and completeness, in a way that mods don't capture.  The detail in the models and animation will be a lot of fun in the real game.

- Mouse wheel zoom is very intuitive and well integrated.  It is very helpful to be able to point-zoom anywhere on the map and may eliminate the need for a radar screen.  The default camera angle is a little extreme by default near some corners of the map.  I might just not know the controls, but it would be helpful to be able to pan the camera (such as by touching the edge of the screen); otherwise it seems like the only way to (say) be able to click ground to retreat or advance is to zoom out.

- The controls are good.  Standard keys for spell positions is a great idea!  Exactly what I've come to expect like from Solar Empire.

- It's fast.  The gameplay is fast paced but not frantic.  The speed seems to give the game more meat.  It's refreshing to be able to hit the base and return to combat quickly.  However, it may be a bit too fast.  The speed of the game might limit the viable strategies -- in particular it seems easy to fall behind in experience if one's not constantly in combat, and it seems difficult to undertake an "economic" strategy (based on accumulating more resources and exp than one's opponent), because one is always in direct combat with opposing heroes.  This may just be a matter of map size.

- The "attack move" command does not always behave as expected.  Sometimes the hero will attack one unit, kill it, but afterwards not continue towards the target location.  I believe I can provide repro information if necessary; I think it has to do with whether the hero AI sees another enemy within range or not.

- It's difficult to target enemy units; the pointer does not always select what is graphically underneath.  In particular, it's difficult to focus fire on a specific unit because the selection might target something else nearby.  Large enemy heroes don't seem to be easier to target.

- The graphics and feeling of AOE spells are good!  I would suggest making it easier to "target" the AOE at a specific enemy unit when hovering.

- Is there a way to "select" another unit?  This may be by design, but I find it's sometimes hard to understand what's happening in combat because I need to frequently "hover" an enemy unit to see its health (as opposed to selecting it).  If there were a selection mechanism, it would be very handy to be able to automatically cast one's targeted spells at that unit with a single keypress.

 

All in all, I think the beta is exceptionally well polished and shows a lot of promise towards really nailing the genre of game.  Keep up the good work!

 

[1] Some people call this genre "Aeon of Strife" after the original Starcraft mod which is said to have originated the concept.

7,148 views 17 replies
Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

I also want to add:  I think the map design (the waterfall one) is really clever and exemplifies the setting (Pantheon-type stuff) very well.  It is exactly the kind of place I'd imagine gods would fight, and evokes in my mind scenes such as Azrael's fortress in the His Dark Materials book series, or alternatively epic Dwarvish cities from Lord of the Rings.  That sort of thing.  It's awesome.

I will probably buy a new computer before Demigod's final release so I can view it in its proper glory ;-)

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

otherwise it seems like the only way to (say) be able to click ground to retreat or advance is to zoom out.
Hold space/right mouse/middle mouse buttons and move the mouse.

 

:fox:

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Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

One thing I would love to see is fog of war limited to the playing field so you get the acrophobic feeling of the screenies.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

What's up xiph! I haven't posted my thorough first impressions yet, but I took down a lot of notes... anyway, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here.

Controls - the QWER is a great standard, and I really think it's essential.  While I've pretty much memorized all the positions of all the spells of dota (as most of the dota players here inevitably have, at least as far as our favorite characters), it's nicer to be able to have a standard hand placement. 

The constant zooming in and out to look at the battlefield is a bit rough as far as controlling the action.  It's fluid and feels good, but the use is too frequent, as is mentioned in other threads.  Mouse-scroll is essential here.

 

Xiph, are you finding it hard to sometimes identify enemy heroes versus your own? I'm not sure if the best way to solve that is a minimap or not, as some suggest.  I personally am having a decently hard time differentiating Regalus from some standard troops.  Not only that, but when I look at a group on the map, it isn't obvious whether the hero standing there is my enemy or not.  The models look amazing, but there's a distinct lack of indicators as to which side they're on, or which player they're controlled by.  Perhaps a change in tint of the characters based on side or player controlling would fix this, but as it stands, in my 4 regalus game, I wasted a ton of clicks on my teammate rather than the enemy.  While it's easier to tell the other heroes apart from the units, it is still very hard to instantly discern whether they're an enemy or an ally.  I feel that to take this game to a highly competitive level, enemies must be readily apparent, and especially distinct from friends.

 

One bug I encountered was that at various points of the game, after fights, some of my units would just stop attacking and stand on their path.  I found that they ended up getting killed often, but it was annoying to have them sitting there doing nothing.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

While it's easier to tell the other heroes apart from the units, it is still very hard to instantly discern whether they're an enemy or an ally.

I've been pushing this idea as a panacea for most differentiation issueds. What about having an icon, trimmed in the team color floating above every demigod's head that can be used to target him, and doesn't shrink with zoom so you can tell where the demis are when zoomed out. Do you have any problems with the coloring of the creeps or are they distinct enough you can target them easily?

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

What's up xiph! I haven't posted my thorough first impressions yet, but I took down a lot of notes... anyway, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here.

Controls - the QWER is a great standard, and I really think it's essential.  While I've pretty much memorized all the positions of all the spells of dota (as most of the dota players here inevitably have, at least as far as our favorite characters), it's nicer to be able to have a standard hand placement. 

The constant zooming in and out to look at the battlefield is a bit rough as far as controlling the action.  It's fluid and feels good, but the use is too frequent, as is mentioned in other threads.  Mouse-scroll is essential here.

 

Xiph, are you finding it hard to sometimes identify enemy heroes versus your own? I'm not sure if the best way to solve that is a minimap or not, as some suggest.  I personally am having a decently hard time differentiating Regalus from some standard troops.  Not only that, but when I look at a group on the map, it isn't obvious whether the hero standing there is my enemy or not.  The models look amazing, but there's a distinct lack of indicators as to which side they're on, or which player they're controlled by.  Perhaps a change in tint of the characters based on side or player controlling would fix this, but as it stands, in my 4 regalus game, I wasted a ton of clicks on my teammate rather than the enemy.  While it's easier to tell the other heroes apart from the units, it is still very hard to instantly discern whether they're an enemy or an ally.  I feel that to take this game to a highly competitive level, enemies must be readily apparent, and especially distinct from friends.

 

One bug I encountered was that at various points of the game, after fights, some of my units would just stop attacking and stand on their path.  I found that they ended up getting killed often, but it was annoying to have them sitting there doing nothing.

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

For controls I'd love to have wasd for camera pan, 1234 for abilities and F1-F4 for items. That would help considerably.

 

Xiph, are you finding it hard to sometimes identify enemy heroes versus your own? I'm not sure if the best way to solve that is a minimap or not, as some suggest.

Put a team colored icon over their heads.

Reply #9 from Demigod Forums Top

Weird, that placed my old reply instead of the one I typed >_<

Anyway, I just went back a bit so I could copy/paste what I actually said:

 

"So far, I can pretty easily tell which side the creeps I'm looking at are on, but I'm not sure if I tell that by coloration or by the fact that they're moving towards my base rather than away.  I only had time to install and play about 3 games before I left town, so I'll look into that more when I get back.  I like that icon idea, at least in theory, because it would let you tell instantly who's on the other team, and who's on your team (possibly even who they were if it were individual colors for players), and the size idea would give you everything you needed from the minimap, without having to actually have a minimap in game.

One thing I have thought about though, is that the creeps for both sides use the same models.  I'm not sure whether I like this or not.  One thing I thought DotA got right was using distinct models for both sides.  I already said this, but I think it's really important for a highly successful competitive game... you must be able to instantly discern your allies from your enemies."

 

I like the icon idea, although I think having colors setup by team or for the individual player and allowing the user the choice.  In DotA, I had some friends that swore by teamcolor minimap, however, I prefered the players' unique colors so I could tell who was on the map running towards me, or in another lane, without having to click and change view from my lane.

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

For controls I'd love to have wasd for camera pan, 1234 for abilities and F1-F4 for items. That would help considerably.

Working my way through threads. This is great feedback and we'll be incorporating it into the next build.

Reply #11 from Demigod Forums Top

I'd say.. let the Players choose. Create a Keysetting menu, where you can set the keybindings to your abilities/consumable etc. by yourself and everyone is happy :)

Reply #12 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting TyoArk, reply 10
For controls I'd love to have wasd for camera pan, 1234 for abilities and F1-F4 for items. That would help considerably.
Working my way through threads. This is great feedback and we'll be incorporating it into the next build.

Oh, please God no, unless it's a settable, because on my keyboard, the F-keys are significantly further out of reach than the number keys. If there's going to be a change, I'd be far more likely to want skills on QWERT and purchased things on 12345, so they're, you know, in actual proximity to each other.

Just solve the whole thing and start with keystrokes being configurable from the second beta, and make the defaults reasonable.

Reply #13 from Demigod Forums Top

Working my way through threads. This is great feedback and we'll be incorporating it into the next build.

Thanks :grin: .

I'd say.. let the Players choose. Create a Keysetting menu, where you can set the keybindings to your abilities/consumable etc. by yourself and everyone is happy

Absolutely, but getting good defaults for most people is still important.

Oh, please God no, unless it's a settable, because on my keyboard, the F-keys are significantly further out of reach than the number keys. If there's going to be a change, I'd be far more likely to want skills on QWERT and purchased things on 12345, so they're, you know, in actual proximity to each other.

Deifnitely a settable, that kind of thing cannot be hardcoded and still be universally good given the variety of hardware out there, but you're kind of rare. The setup I outlined is good on a vast majority of keyboards. The rest can change it to something more ergonomic on their keyboards that may not work on others. The point of defaults is being as good as possible for as many people as possible, not to be passable for everybody but still pretty awkward for everybody.

Just solve the whole thing and start with keystrokes being configurable from the second beta, and make the defaults reasonable.

Exactly what I want to see, and I think that those defaults are more reasonable than most. Most people are used to wasd and wouldn't like to use szxc for camera movement, qwer for abilities and 1234 for items, but that'd probably be something you want.

Reply #14 from Demigod Forums Top

I should mention right off that I think my system is a little poor for the game, so I am not sure I am experiencing the average use case.  I have an Athlon 64 3200+ with 2 GB ram and an Nvidia GeForce 6600.  Unfortunately, it performs very poorly on this hardware, and I get around I think 10-15 FPS with low detail prefaults on the lowest resolution.

 

i also am not getting very high fps with my video card which is a nvidia 6200 i realize this is on the old side but i was (and still am hoping) that the game will be able to run smoothly at some point on my computer. my ram and cpu are no problem.  otherwise though except the bugs ppl have mentioned i have enjoyed the beta so far

Reply #15 from Demigod Forums Top

i also am not getting very high fps with my video card which is a nvidia 6200 i realize this is on the old side but i was (and still am hoping) that the game will be able to run smoothly at some point on my computer. my ram and cpu are no problem. otherwise though except the bugs ppl have mentioned i have enjoyed the beta so far

That's a very low end card if it really is a 6200. I think that with some more optimization it should run more smoothly, but I have noticed that this game, like crysis (inexplicably on that one) seems to be more playable than the framerate should indicate (in this case because the animations are excellent).

Reply #16 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting xthetenth, reply 13
Exactly what I want to see, and I think that those defaults are more reasonable than most. Most people are used to wasd and wouldn't like to use szxc for camera movement, qwer for abilities and 1234 for items, but that'd probably be something you want.

Actually, I use the Strategic Zoom for moving around the vast amount of the time, but I got used to that playing SupCom and miss it whenever it's not present in every other RTS on Earth, now. Space-to-spin is also pretty fine for me, which amuses me in a few ways since it'd seem to be unintuitive, but it's so big and easy to hold ...

At some point I want to experiment with QWAS for skills and 1234 for items, purely to see if the square layout is more efficient for such things, but the visual difference from the screen may be a breaker. Still, that's why we experiment.

Reply #17 from Demigod Forums Top

Actually, I use the Strategic Zoom for moving around the vast amount of the time, but I got used to that playing SupCom and miss it whenever it's not present in every other RTS on Earth, now. Space-to-spin is also pretty fine for me, which amuses me in a few ways since it'd seem to be unintuitive, but it's so big and easy to hold ...

Fair enough. I was just making an example. That kind of variance in perspective is part of the reason no self-respecting strategy game could come without cutomizable controls. I don't really need pan all that much, either, I'm so used to sins, where it is quite literally the only way to move with any semblence of control or speed, so the strategic zoom makes a lot of sense to me too.