First Impressions + Suggestions

[gingerbear]

Hi there!

Having tested the game for about 3 days now, I'd like to share my first impressions about it. I would also make some suggestions, which are - hence the word - are merely suggestions: stuff I could gladly see in the game. I know that most of these have been suggested and I'm aware of the roadmap too, I just think one more feedback wouldn't hurt.

Single Map Gaming
I think this is great. Not bothering to select a realm, or organizing a group to raid/look for action. If there were many people online, the map could have a constant "dizzy" feel of people moving around shooting and shouting, like an anthill, which is kind of cool. However, I don't know how many people can a server hold simultaneously but I suspect it won't be a large number so the single battlefront will have to break down to several fronts eventually. That, or the game remains a mini game, for about 2-500 people who are staring at the login-queue in order to get into action.

AI targeting
The most interesting part of the game for me, and I also think decisions made on the AI targeting could steer where the game is heading.
Option A) as of right now, the AI decides what to shoot, and we have to adapt to it completely. This is an interesting way to play and I like it, there are two small problems with it, though: 1) targeting becomes irrelevant when 3-5 people sticks together, as they melt through everything 2) there is a very limited arsenal (pre-made tanks) and target types to choose from, which makes targeting (and adapting) kind of bland
Option B) another approach would be if we could customize the AI a little bit: main gun aims at toughest/weakest, lateral guns focusing on 1 mini target or shoot at as many as they can, turrets always track 1 enemy or aim at the nearest/farthest available, etc... This would make the dependence upon the AI lighter. However, people could tweak their tanks to fulfill the roles they think-up to them (these tanks supposed to have a role, right?), allowing them to experiment with efficiency and builds. (See: tanks)

Tanks
So far, I like the tanks. Haven't unlocked all yet and mainly playing 4-5 of those, but there is a tangible difference among them, which warrants having so much types.
Two exceptions:
- Generally when you want to ensure killing something, you move right next to it (except for snipers). This is the case of most tanks and most enemies, which kind of makes the targeting (or the variety of tanks) kind of moot. A bigger diversity on AI behavior, equipment or target could help this.
- Sometimes I get the feeling the abilities they have aren't working properly or not helping them much. For example I percieve no significant speed difference when I use the Trailblazers boost, the Hercules' sensitive mine seems to drop a bit too random, Vikings shield regeneration is not really doing anything, etc...

Cities
The concept of having cities in the grid is great. After some chiseling, I'm positive they will be fun to visit, and will be more important than just spots to dump or shards into or to teleport safely. I see the building trees will be reworked, could I make some suggestions here?
- Instead of having an entirely pre-built layout for the city, there could be just "core type" slots randomized, and the players could decide what to build on them. For example "Defensive" slots would allow to build barricades and turrets, "Economy" slots could increase shard drops, "Jammers" weaken enemy vehicles and "Inhibitors" debuff buildings... So basically the same as now, but people could decide what to build, helping to defeat a sector more efficiently. (This could be also bound with events)
- So far I can't see any building messing with triangles, will that stay so so triangular enemies remain "op" for the rest of enemies? Also it could be interesting to have buildings specifically designed against ground/air enemies.
EDIT: I've just seen such buildings, nvm.
Enemies
I like the variety, the organization and the style the enemies have. Defeating them happens mostly in the same way, though (circling, barging in, or sniping), it could be interesting to think up ways to differentiate a bit these.
- There could be support enemy buildings too, like shield weakener, allied vehicle booster, etc, so basically some "rouge" buildings on their side too, maybe even rogue cities!
- The enemy is kind of static. If they were patrolling an area or periodically attack certain cities, they would be much more interesting to fight against, and players would have more things to consider rather than just blindly expand everywhere...

Events
There aren't any events in the game yet, which makes it feel kind of a solitaire-like passtimer. I'm aware it is early in development and will surely have awesome content, still, adding 1-2 events soon-ish could help it shaping up faster. Other than the aforementioned Enemy zerg-rushes/raid patrols (a portal opens in a cleared area spamming enemies like no tomorrow), there could be optional quests like "clear 50% of a barionic region for 100k shards", "defeat 10 delta towers vor 5VP", "build a huge ion cannon in origin", etc.

Tank Suggestions
- Tailblazer is good for scouting, but could use some minor tweaks. As said, I didn't notice the speed boost much, maybe giving it a constant +20% speed? The slot could become either a passive slot, or for example there could be a "particle trail" ability that leaves a patch after the tank for a short period, to get rid of unwanted "followers".
- Customizable order/hotkey for the abilities. If it is a feature already, sorry, didn't notice yet.
- Custom building tanks. Not sure if this ever will be an option (or partially done with the lens slots), but would add a lot to the fun. It would also bring up some questions regarding the AI targeting system, too.

I'm sure I wanted to say some more stuff and I apologize for already making suggestions to a game I'm not involved deeply, but I think more ideas to choose from (and to disregard at leisure) is always better than the possibility of running out of them.

[Duco]

And this is one of the reasons that all I do is test, I suck at writing walls of text and it feels like there is no need for me to write one.

[rob]

Single Map Gaming
We plan to create more worlds and have several going at the same time. The single server we have now is just because traffic is low and we haven't built multi-server capabilities yet. We'd like to cram lots and lots of players into each map, but we won't know how many we can get until later on.

AI targeting
We currently have a mix of autofire and manual-fire abilities. We've tried to keep the autotargeting simple by having the guns shoot at the closest target; in order to keep the UI simpler we've not allowed people to "paint" priority targets or specify preferred target types. You are certainly not the first person to complain about this decision!

As I see it, large enemy fortresses use their many minions and outbuildings as a type of shield which must be blasted away before you can target the main enemy. This is unlike, say, Skull Shrine where you could run/sneak into the middle and quickly DPS the main skull down without having to deal with the minions. Since all of the Grid12 testers are former RotMG pros, the question is, do people hate autotarget because it sucks, or do they hate it because it's different from Realm?

As for tank customization, we are planning a new system (modules) for this, but we haven't finalized the details or started building it yet.

Cities
I'm not happy with how cities are working out; expect many changes in this area over time.

Enemies
We have plans to re-introduce armadas, the wandering fleets of enemies. I like your idea of destroyable enemy buildings that debuff players.

Events
We like to get to this soon. Having some global (yet optional) quests might be pretty cool. Armadas will fill this role at first.

[gingerbear]

Apr 3, 2013 9:34:16 GMT -5 rob said:

AI targeting
We currently have a mix of autofire and manual-fire abilities. We've tried to keep the autotargeting simple by having the guns shoot at the closest target; in order to keep the UI simpler we've not allowed people to "paint" priority targets or specify preferred target types. You are certainly not the first person to complain about this decision!

As I see it, large enemy fortresses use their many minions and outbuildings as a type of shield which must be blasted away before you can target the main enemy. This is unlike, say, Skull Shrine where you could run/sneak into the middle and quickly DPS the main skull down without having to deal with the minions. Since all of the Grid12 testers are former RotMG pros, the question is, do people hate autotarget because it sucks, or do they hate it because it's different from Realm?

Ah, don't get me wrong, I like the auto targeting (even the way it is now). What I'm saying is right now the only working way to use (or abuse?) the auto target is to get close to the thing you want to shoot at, so as if a RotMG realm were only full by knights/warriors/paladins. It certainly works, I'm just thinking whether it could be tweaked somehow for a more diverse gameplay.

I'm glad to hear the other things you've said.

[amitp]

Some tower defense games let you customize/upgrade the tower AI by telling it "weakest first" or "closest first" or "strongest first". They're still auto-targeting but it gives the player a small amount of control without being able to choose in battle what happens.

[rob]

In many ways Grid12 is a "tower offense" game. I guess you'd "strongest | weakest | farthest | nearest" per-turret, and only in town?

We'd also considered clicking on an enemy to make it a priority target. But this would prevent the use of double-click mouse driving.

[gingerbear]

Apr 5, 2013 12:46:34 GMT -5 rob said:

In many ways Grid12 is a "tower offense" game. I guess you'd "strongest | weakest | farthest | nearest" per-turret, and only in town?

If you plan on adding a system where the player can tweak the tank, there could be an AI module in it. Whether it has immediate changing options (target switch), or finetuneable only in cities, is up to you. (The latter one would make it's use a bit more cumbersome, though.)

I don't know whether it would be neccessary to make it a "per turret" decision, seeing as all the tank abilities go by the scheme "buff main weapon" vs "buff secondary weapons". Same could apply to AI logic, which would fit in the current system smoother.

Apr 5, 2013 12:46:34 GMT -5 rob said:

We'd also considered clicking on an enemy to make it a priority target. But this would prevent the use of double-click mouse driving.

Wouldn't this basically just kill the autoaim concept?

[quicklite]

[quote author=rob board=general thread=148 post=1414 time=1364999656We have plans to re-introduce armadas, the wandering fleets of enemies.[/quote]

Wha? Re-introduce? You mean these existed at some point? What were they like? Is there any image/video of them? Why'd you take them out?

But aside from that, I agree with most of this. I actually like how the AI targetting currently works, because due to the simplicity you can get your AI operated guns to prioritize certain enemies simply by rotating your tank correctly, which is a game mechanic that I've grown to love. Though I feel like I should add that I definitely notice the trailblazer's speed boost, and that the reason that you don't see the valk's shield regen have any effect is that the shield regen stops once the shields are damaged. The point of that trigger is to fall back, hit the button, watch your shields become full, then jump back into the action.

Something I'd like to see more of is enemies as threats, not meat shields. For the exception of the small triangle minions (which pack a punch ), and sorta the plane minions, minions are not really threats per se, but more obstacles confusing your guns and protecting the fortress, which is the thing that does the actual damage. Take the fortress away, and minions are nothing. It would be awesome to have a few weaker fortresses (like the small triangle one) that rely on the minions they produce to kill the enemy instead of just to shield the fortress with their expendable bodies.

[hypevosa]

Apr 13, 2013 13:41:47 GMT -5 quicklite said:

Something I'd like to see more of is enemies as threats, not meat shields. For the exception of the small triangle minions (which pack a punch ), and sorta the plane minions, minions are not really threats per se, but more obstacles confusing your guns and protecting the fortress, which is the thing that does the actual damage. Take the fortress away, and minions are nothing. It would be awesome to have a few weaker fortresses (like the small triangle one) that rely on the minions they produce to kill the enemy instead of just to shield the fortress with their expendable bodies.

I'm actually strongly opposed to this. As it stands one of the important skills in this game is maneuvering to make the best use of your shields, and the problem is that a whole bunch of high threat minions just entirely negate this important user honed skill by depleting all your shields at once by attacking from all different angles. Triangulums are enough on this front, we don't need a large group of enemies that do this.

I would, however, support a new enemy where the minions flew in formation like how the eyes in realm of the mad god do, and where they'll use combined strength to attack from a single front demanding a player be quick to see the attack coming and adjust their facing accordingly.

I would also support enemies where instead of just having scrambling AI they attempt formations like pincer maneuvers and whatnot to outsmart the pilot.

[quicklite]

Apr 13, 2013 14:04:21 GMT -5 hypevosa said:

I'm actually strongly opposed to this. As it stands one of the important skills in this game is maneuvering to make the best use of your shields, and the problem is that a whole bunch of high threat minions just entirely negate this important user honed skill by depleting all your shields at once by attacking from all different angles. Triangulums are enough on this front, we don't need a large group of enemies that do this.

I would, however, support a new enemy where the minions flew in formation like how the eyes in realm of the mad god do, and where they'll use combined strength to attack from a single front demanding a player be quick to see the attack coming and adjust their facing accordingly.

I would also support enemies where instead of just having scrambling AI they attempt formations like pincer maneuvers and whatnot to outsmart the pilot.

Although I agree that enemies that attacked in formation and whatnot, I disagree with your statement that powerful enemies that aren't in formation will be able to easily surround you and deplete your shields. The reason that minions do this now is that we can get away with it; we blast a small hole in the minions, and then run through them to get to the real threat (fortress), and thus they surround us. However, if the minions themselves were the threat, we wouldn't do this; we'd attack from a distance, keeping the horde of enemies on one front to allow us shield and turret rotation possibilities. By doing this, we could easily kill the horde and finish the fortress (providing that the fortress has a very slow spawn rate, which we should assume it does if the minions are powerful to balance things out). Think realm; in the godlands there were lots of tough minions, and if you tried to run through a whole bunch of em to get to a place/enemy you wanted to get to, you'd usually die (with a few exceptions ofc, but most people would die :. So what did we do? We kept the gods in front of us, herded them, wore them down, controlled and dodged their assaults, and then killed them. And then we moved on to the place we were getting to. Or we teleported, but let's just ignore that .

The same thing would apply in grid. It's perfectly possible to fight in the rotation-based manner that you and me and (I think) everyone on grid loves against un-organized but powerful foes. You'd just need to play a little bit differently, which is good, because that mixes things up a bit.

[gingerbear]

Apr 13, 2013 14:04:21 GMT -5 hypevosa said:

I would, however, support a new enemy where the minions flew in formation like how the eyes in realm of the mad god do, and where they'll use combined strength to attack from a single front demanding a player be quick to see the attack coming and adjust their facing accordingly.

I would also support enemies where instead of just having scrambling AI they attempt formations like pincer maneuvers and whatnot to outsmart the pilot.

This. I support this. Then it would require more people to be efficient, for example a tank luring away 1 formation while the others get through, or something. You could also play with composite enemies there (shields front, long range back) so players have to outmaneuver them to be efficient.

Also in this case buildings that jam communications disabling the minions to get into formation (for example instead of a 4x4 box they could only get into 4x 2x2 boxes, moving separately) would be also useful.

[hypevosa]

Apr 13, 2013 16:54:02 GMT -5 quicklite said:

Although I agree that enemies that attacked in formation and whatnot, I disagree with your statement that powerful enemies that aren't in formation will be able to easily surround you and deplete your shields. The reason that minions do this now is that we can get away with it; we blast a small hole in the minions, and then run through them to get to the real threat (fortress), and thus they surround us. However, if the minions themselves were the threat, we wouldn't do this; we'd attack from a distance, keeping the horde of enemies on one front to allow us shield and turret rotation possibilities. By doing this, we could easily kill the horde and finish the fortress (providing that the fortress has a very slow spawn rate, which we should assume it does if the minions are powerful to balance things out). Think realm; in the godlands there were lots of tough minions, and if you tried to run through a whole bunch of em to get to a place/enemy you wanted to get to, you'd usually die (with a few exceptions ofc, but most people would die :. So what did we do? We kept the gods in front of us, herded them, wore them down, controlled and dodged their assaults, and then killed them. And then we moved on to the place we were getting to. Or we teleported, but let's just ignore that .

The same thing would apply in grid. It's perfectly possible to fight in the rotation-based manner that you and me and (I think) everyone on grid loves against un-organized but powerful foes. You'd just need to play a little bit differently, which is good, because that mixes things up a bit.

Realm is a different bag altogether though because enemies don't lock onto you for 100% hits. In grid we're talking about enemies that automatically lock onto you and WILL hit you unless they're using missiles. I would be fine with enemies who hit heavy but are just using missiles so that fancy driving will save butts. I would also be fine with enemies who generally have a slow turret rotation so they can be outmaneuvered as well (kinda like the painfully weak drill minions). However, I just really don't like the idea of more swarms of instant shield chewing, high ROF laser enemies which was what I imagined since it's most in line with current minion standards (on this front the triangulum is enough).

[gingerbear]

In my experience you are not even really avoiding the missiles either. At least I tried to check closely, and to my eyes it looked like that you lose HP/shield at the moment a missile has been launched, and the bullet flying towards you is just fluff. Heck, the bullet is never even reaching your tank, stops somewhere outside the green direction-arrow...

[hypevosa]

Apr 15, 2013 8:48:15 GMT -5 gingerbear said:

In my experience you are not even really avoiding the missiles either. At least I tried to check closely, and to my eyes it looked like that you lose HP/shield at the moment a missile has been launched, and the bullet flying towards you is just fluff. Heck, the bullet is never even reaching your tank, stops somewhere outside the green direction-arrow...

I had a sneaking suspicion this was the case though I didn't take the time to verify it -.-

[quicklite]

Apr 15, 2013 8:48:15 GMT -5 gingerbear said:

In my experience you are not even really avoiding the missiles either. At least I tried to check closely, and to my eyes it looked like that you lose HP/shield at the moment a missile has been launched, and the bullet flying towards you is just fluff. Heck, the bullet is never even reaching your tank, stops somewhere outside the green direction-arrow...

After reading this, I did some testing and can completely confirm that this is legit, and that missles are unavoidable. I don't have any recording software, but I can tell you what I did so that you guys can replicate.

1) Find a medium triangular fortress (the one with the rocket turrets)

2) destroy all but 2 rocket turrets and destroy everything else. Avengers/hornets work best for this due to their ability to focus fire.

3) Once this is done, quickly switch to hornet. Move backwards into the range of the turrets so that they can shoot you, but you can't shoot them.

4) Stay just inside the range of the turrets and begin to slowly circle them. They should be able to constantly shoot missles at you due to the slowness of your circling, but since you are circling, none of the missles are supposedly hitting you

5) Watch as your hornet slowly loses life, despite being under the illusion that nothing should be hitting it.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just whoever is in charge of the visuals (I think that's rob?) being a little cheap, but a fix might be nice ^^.