Hrmmm... Questions & Feedback

[stabbedbyapanda]

Hey nice to always see a WC3 game made into a standalone game :)

I played Battleships and Battletanks (I believe thats what they were called, I preferred tanks personally)

Anywho... I downloaded the Demo and it really felt there was no content in the Demo except Practice mode? Which was pretty disappointing. Definitely will try to play it on steam next fest

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Feedback on Practice Mode
- Oh man this is everything I hate in a tutorial. An obnoxious tooltip that just keeps popping up, but the game doesn't pause. With paragraphs of information. And when you click complete it goes to the next tooltip immediately. No break to practice what it teaches. Just mind dump poured into your brain.
- So of course im going to skip everything single one after the first 3 tooltips. Because its obnoxious.
- Also For the shop tooltips if you close the shop the tooltip keeps talking even though you didnt click complete. So i was like opening menus to figure out things and then this ghost was talking to me for minutes on end... just constantly and i realize it was a tooltip on the weapon tab. So i spammed clicked the tooltips to get her to shut the hell up.
- My suggestion is make the tutorial more organic. Say the controls to move, then tell them to go to a lane. They get to the lane... oh these are abilities you attack with... oh you leveled up this is what leveling up is.... oh you got lvl 4 this is what augments are... oh you are low hp you should go back to heal. Oh hey since you are here, there is a store here too.

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Random feedback
- So I was looking for secret shops or just shops in general and didnt see any on the store, since i couldnt click on buildings to interact with them or highlight them to get a tooltip pop up. I assumed it was like every moba with it in the respawn/fountain which was correct. But definitely led to me searching the map for more.. which leads to my next point
- There not being a secret shop.creeps, or other things on the map. Leads me to believe this will be a pretty 1 Dimensional Moba with the jungle only being for ganking which is a bit disappointing :thinking: I know theres the harvesters but in an actual game that being the only objs besides towers, leaves this to be like... oh Harvesters spawned. Everyone stop what you are doing and rush that. Ok done go back to lane... etc
- I didn't try any of the other ships because frankly there were too many and i didnt want to get in the mindset of "Try them all in a practice match" I wanted one with more weapon slots but I didn't see any sort of stat that did that... which if that really is the case... would be extremely disappointing, since my favorite playstyle in the wc3 games was playing a super slow gunboat with 6 weapon slots with long ranged weapons
- I also noticed I couldnt stack the same weapons.... which is also very disappointing since I like stacking the same weapons, for the lawls and i enjoy being a sniper.

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Questions:
- Is there plans to let you stack weapons?
- Is there plans to have different ships have different weapon slots?
- Is there plans to have different types of shops or Objectives on the map to have more hotspots of fighting besides just lanes?
- Is there plans to have multiple ways to level up or gain experience besides just in lane? Like creeps in the jungle?

[Jack of Boxes]

Hey!! Really appreciate all the feedback.

Re: Practice mode/tutorial
So we had to make this really last minute. I'm not happy with it either and we for sure want to make something more organic. I agree with every one of your points but gamedev sadly is super slow and we had to choose between optimization and nice tutorial and we chose optimization. Not that I expect you to care, just telling you why.

Re: Secret shop
Secret shops are super cool, but very very difficult for new players to grasp. We actually tested with them at one point, but it led to a ton of friction so we decided to keep everything in harbor. It's tricky going to a standalone game because you have to move away from the inherited mechanics of wc3 (as much as I love them). We really try to approach Sirocco from first principles, and we think there are perhaps more engaging and approachable objectives to get people on the map.

Re: Weapons
(pasted from FAQ)
We originally started with 5 weapon slots, but that was before each weapon had unique effects. We’ll most likely never return to 5, as it became too complicated for players to understand how all the weapons and their unique effects worked together. Another issue is that with every weapon you have, you have to dilute its overall effectiveness in order to balance for the amount of weapons you can have at one time. Because we really like the special effects Weapons have, we decided to go for making them more potent and having weapon builds be a core part of the game.
However, we're still exploring the possibility of more than 2 slots. We’ve also considered larger-scale modifications to weapons that could affect all of them at once. So, while there might only be two slots in practice, their functionality can change drastically based on the player's choices.

(my notes)
I hear you. Stacking weapons was fun. But we wanted to push the mechanics further and ton of weapons was just less engaging for players than more powerful and distilled weapons. Hope that makes sense.

RE: Objectives
Yes we would like to have more objectives on the map for sure. We probably won't just do standard creeps, but we have some cool ideas cooking up.

Again, really appreciate you taking the time to check it out. Hope to see you during next fest.

[stabbedbyapanda]

Hrmmm... I see, appreciate the response. Man I really want to give a long winded response but I'll save you with a more hopefully brief response. xD

I'll definitely give it a try in a couple days but I already know I can't take this MOBA seriously :/ Just not enough depth of play for me, which is I think core to what MOBAs are but it's hard because you need it to be easily to get into at a casual/fun level. I do feel pretty much a large majority of gamers have played at least 1 MOBA which does work in your favor of people knowing a lot of basic concepts like secret/extra shops... etc

One last feedback I forgot about until reading your response
- When I was reading abilities it was hard for me to quickly grasp which stats were for the weapon and which were for the special ability the UI doesn't really distinguish the 2 separately very well.


I sincerely wish you the best of luck :)

[stabbedbyapanda]

Yeah sorry but it's just not fun. :/

- I quit basically as we were defending our nexus. 2 of the enemy team members had zero deaths so they definitely knew something we didnt.
- I really dislike how only one person can be a ship, except the starter one. I was stuck with the invisible ship when we unlocked the T1 ships. since it was my only choice.
- I really dislike everyone starting with the same ship and weapons. Like... why can't we start with no weapons or 1 starter weapon and we buy our second one. This really creates a generic first few minutes of the game experience that i imagine feels the same every time you play. Which is a bit antithetical to MOBAs
- I second the feedback i said earlier, where it is really hard to tell what the weapon does, since the whole description is reserved to the trigger. Like How does the basic shot fire and what does it do...
- Oh i really hate picking augments then i switch to a ship and the augments are stuck on the new ship... i switched to a ship after having to play the shroud and my augments for the new ship were awful selections.

Since this game has no real vertical progression of choice for the player, the skill gap is HUGE and can be really felt when there is an experience player or 2 on the other team. It felt like the game was decided after 4 mins. This also ties into all the other stuff i mentioned with only exp is lane exp... etc not enough objectives.


I really do wish you the best of luck, because you 2 seemed nice and responsive. But the fact I got frustrated in one game and wanted to rage quit... usually that only happens after weeks of playing a new MOBA

[Eevee]

Originally posted by stabbedbyapanda:

Hrmmm... I see, appreciate the response. Man I really want to give a long winded response but I'll save you with a more hopefully brief response. xD

I'll definitely give it a try in a couple days but I already know I can't take this MOBA seriously :/ Just not enough depth of play for me, which is I think core to what MOBAs are but it's hard because you need it to be easily to get into at a casual/fun level. I do feel pretty much a large majority of gamers have played at least 1 MOBA which does work in your favor of people knowing a lot of basic concepts like secret/extra shops... etc

One last feedback I forgot about until reading your response
- When I was reading abilities it was hard for me to quickly grasp which stats were for the weapon and which were for the special ability the UI doesn't really distinguish the 2 separately very well.


I sincerely wish you the best of luck :)

As someone who's dumped more hours than is probably healthy into this game, I can say that there is quite a bit of depth. There will be more when secondary objectives comes out, but ship decisions, weapon decisions, etc are far more nuanced than say League of Legends. In League you have 2-3 core items you get every game no matter what first and always first, then maybe a flex item and then the last 1 or 2 items you always get as well.

Even when I'm playing the same ship I'll change up what weapons, ships and looms I'm using based on the type of playstyle I'm going for and also as a response/counter to what the enemy is doing. There is a lot going on here. I'd give it another try tomorrow, the vets like myself will be far higher in the ladder and you shouldn't run into us again. Sorry for the loss. ~

[Luzgan]

For me, I found it much more enjoyable to play on the map in Warcraft 3 than in this version. I feel like the whole thing is much less intuitive, and after 2 hours of gameplay, I still don't understand many mechanics, such as how specific skills affect the game, to what extent particular upgrades improve my ship, the main differences in sailing with specific ships, what the significance of unlocking characters is if we don't have to choose skills assigned to them, or how exactly a given skill works in my case. I didn’t even get the feeling that weapon stats were updated based on the skills I had selected so far.

Additionally, I feel that the game has definitely leaned too much into the MOBA genre, while mechanically not fulfilling its assumptions, such as not being able to target specific enemies and gathering resources in a completely different way.

I was positive about the game when it was announced, but at this point, I definitely prefer to return to the mod in Warcraft 3.

[swightly]

Love the overall artstyle but trying the demo made me want to replay a similar custom game dota 2 had that's so much better than this in my opinion. I'd say the biggest turn off for me was that ships could turn so quickly(you can literally spin like a blender with RMB lol) and it felt like all of them have the same speed without using any speedboost abilities. The UI for the shop could do with a lot of work too, I couldnt figure out how to buy a diifferent weapon for the bottom slot and only good a new weapon for the top one.

[Imp0815]

Originally posted by Jack of Boxes:

Re: Weapons
(pasted from FAQ)
We originally started with 5 weapon slots, but that was before each weapon had unique effects. We’ll most likely never return to 5, as it became too complicated for players to understand how all the weapons and their unique effects worked together.

I come from Battleships of WC3, and I was utterly underwhelmed by having just two options that fire so slowly and do no damage. The weapons didn’t possess any obvious mechanics conveyed in the UI, and all of them felt arbitrarily boring and convoluted.

Where are the multi-rocket launchers? Where are the machine guns and cannons?

You basically took the idea of having ships in a MOBA and threw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s nothing redeeming left from Battleships—only the idea of the ships remains.

I’m really disappointed with this one. I was waiting for someone to make this, and you just made it boring.

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Bring back the 6 slots for weapons and items and let us craft our own builds, allowing us to choose between defensive items or more offensive ones.

Lets us freely stack and choose items.

Bring back bigger and cooler ships, and make them more grounded and less wonky, avoiding the overly fantasy or cartoonish style.

Bring back the weapon combos and tiers.

Dial down on the ship abilities—they are far too overpowered and overly emphasized. Introduce ships with no abilities but with good base stats or additional slots instead.

[Albinator]

Kinda the same feeling here. Weapon choice seems too basic, because you can change weapon for free. The core mechanic I loved in battleships was the strategic weapon choice : do I stack low level weapons (good for early game, but you'll be weak later), or save money on early game (so a hard early game, but with a big reward on mid game) ? Do I play melee or long range ? Do I save money for the bad ass weapon, or the bad ass ship ?
In the actual state of the game, those strategic choices have too low effect, and you can change weapon at anytime (going from long range to melee for free... ). The only choice is between prioritizing ship or weapons.
It is very important to feel powerspikes, and having drawbacks to choices you make. When you rush a high level weapon, you should be crushing small ships. Until an ennemy gets an even stronger weapon. So you have to balance power and survavibility at each time.

[DreXav]

Maybe it's just me being inexperienced yet, but the weapons' impact feel negligible... compared to WC3 classic, where it was satisfying to see your gun combos unload massive volleys :)