First Impressions - Feedback - Bugs

[Alfonsay]

Just got a key off of the Twitter giveaway, so thanks for that. Thought I'd help out and leave some feedback and report bugs n' stuff.

Gameplay

Most of this feedback for gameplay will be based on the 1v1 mode, as I played the majority of games with a friend who also had the game. The only 2v2 experiece I got was with the Training/Practice mode with the AI.

Warping

I'll start with the main mechanic of the game, it's namesake. 'Warping'. This feature is obviously what the game is designed around, and it's main appeal. Obviously the ball goes faster when you kick it, so ideally to cover ground quickly with the ball, you want to pass, then blink. This works some of the time. The blink is a fixed distance, which means the thing you need to perfect is the charge time. The problem is, their seems to be occasional input lag for blinking/sliding, which messes up your timing and feels sloppy. We only had a input delay of 10ms according to the game, and that was constant, so lag wasn't responsible for that delay, not sure what was really.

Outside of the occasional input delay, pass warping feels rewarding. I'm personally not a fan of infinite spam blinking, as it gives people an easy out for getting caught out of position or making a mistake. I'd like to see it changed to either an energy bar that recharges, or x amount of warps that fills up over time. But again, that's just my personal preference. Which might be influenced by the brainmelting noise spamming the warps creates.

Sliding

Not much to say about sliding, it works on a variety of levels. It allows you to regain control of the ball, do some interesting shot/tackles to prevent any defense, and works as a good catchup mechanic if you don't want to spam blinks. My main problem is the fixed distance of it, sometimes you just want to do a quick tap tackle, not go sliding miles away. The distance you can gain by doing a huge slide tackle doesn't matter because of infinite warps, so I'd like the option to do a small steal. This would also make it easier to defend near your goal so you don't accidently slide miles away or tackle the ball into your goal. And on the topic of goals..

Goals

The first major problem is the delay in scoring. Mainly because there's no efffect, nor audio effect, as far as I can tell. This is easily fixed as it's more of an immersion thing. The other major problem with the goal, and again this is a personal opinion, is the ability to score the ball from behind the net. With how awkward tackling is, and how possesion of the ball changes, more often than not, getting it behind the net seems like a guaranteed goal most of the time. Ontop of that, I'm also of the opinion that it shouldn't count as a goal if you walk the ball through your own net, this would make dealing with behind the goal situations easier.

Bugs

Bugs, glorious bugs. Thankfully, other than the input lag, I've only encountered two major, major, severe gamebreaking bugs. The first one involves two people being in a 1v1 lobby, the game starting, then one of them leaving. The game will never actually start, and you'll be stuck on the pitch unable to do anything, forced to alt f4.

The other severe bug is with the new addition of the skins system. If you get an alpha box, you can infinitely open it by going to the main menu, and then returning to the box section. Having tested this bug numerous times, I've opened 178 boxes. Number 178 was the box that netted me the Brushed Pixel Mint skin. Unfortunately, I'd recently opened a Scrolls Mint skin, and was dissapointed to find out that these were the exact same skins. There was also a skin named SK_RedCamo1_NAME or something along those lines.

The other bugsI found was in the training/practice mode. The bottom right reads that you can hit M to disable bots and B to end match instantly. As far as I could figure out, these buttons don't actually do anything. The other bug was the fact that my powers didn't work in training/practice. I tested out the Phase Ball and the one that left a clone, but neither of them worked. I would have tested more, but having to always AltF4 was an effort and a half.

Feedback

Skins

Having been able to open as many boxes as I wanted, I was able to get a glimpse of how the system really worked and get a look at a good number of skins. The first thing I realised was the fact you can get dupllicates. This renders your box completely useless, as there's no benefit or gain to getting a dupe. It also seems that from the Poor - Good - Fine - Near Mint, theres very little change in actual condition. So those qualities may as well be the exact same thing.

Gameplay

The warp system feels both rewarding and punishing. Pulling off 2-3 consecutive warp passes to yourself feels really good, but even if you make distance from it, your opponent can just spam blink their way back into a defensive position.

What do the Pillars with the orbs do exactly? As far as I can tell, they switch colour when you hit them, do they charge powers for the team with them capped faster?

Overall, I really enjoy the game, and think with a few tweaks it could be even better. Sorry if some of the feedback/bugs/ideas don't make much sense. I'm kinda garbage at putting ideas onto paper. Pleasedon'tremoveallmyskins I swear I worked hard for them!

[Vethan]

Hey dude! This feedback is awesome, there's a lot of stuff that's actionable in here. I really wanted there to be a big difference between the poor->near mint qualities, so I might tweak how those come out, potentially make the poor qualities ones even worse looking. I'll have to have a look see.

Also, figuring out something to do with dupes... Maybe a "disenchant"-style system?

Hold on did you say brushed pixel was the same as scrolls?! That's a mistake in the setup, they're meant to be different!!

That 1v1 bug is a good one. Mind reporting it in the bug system over here:

The goal issue is fixed in the build we took to an event recently but still needs some work. we'l probably release a patch soon!

Might investigate the effects of adding a bar to the warp to limit how much you can warp

Sorry we took so long to reply, been a bit busy preparing for Insomnia58, then got food poisioning XD

[Alfonsay]

Oh man, Insomnia58? Are you UK based? I'll have to look into dropping by Insomnia59 if you're there! Hope the feedback helps, looking forward to how the game progresses!

[Vethan]

Yup UK based! We're definitely gonna try and make it to Insomnia59! Seriously the feedback is really helpful :D Thanks a lot!