OT: Heroes of Annihilated Empires open beta!

[OG_Gleep]

Ok I figured out what to do...didn't realize those sprites were builders. Totally changes the game.

[PrinzMegaherz]

I'm a bit underwhelmed:

The game gets repetitive very fast. When I finished the level, my hero had around 1200 kills, from killing the same wave of enemies again and again. Standard strategy: Cast healing tree on your front line troops, shoot that Ice Arrow at the weaker blue things and repeat until you have won.
Other things I don't like: The game gives you very few information about what's going on. I'am not quite sure what activating those monoliths does (those with a yellow or red glow). And there is no way to see the names of the enemy troops or their stats, which would be a great help to get a grip on what unit you should use to counter them.

[DominionsFan]

Prinz, this is an open beta test. You dont see most of the game content, only an idea that how the final game gonna look like. 100% that there will be enemy unit descritpions. Also dont forget there will be lot of spells not just the ice arrow of course to attack the enemy, many races/units etc. etc. Even this beta AI is doing great, it is moving mass groups of troops, I think the devs can script the AI easily and maybe the players can script it as well in the final version...example: how big groups the AI will create and attack etc. Btw the ice arrow is really working great against mass skeleton groups in this open beta. I think the final game gonna be awesome, not to mention the multiplayer part.

[Gandalf Parker]

It seems to be a niche game. Some people will love it. My son for example tends to love berserker style games. And for sales purposes I can see the logic of doing that part first and maybe working on the more strategic parts later

[OG_Gleep]

Its simply ok. It lacks polish, and typically these open betas are more like glorified demos. At this stage in the game 99% of the time, they aren't looking for feedback on gameplay, they are looking for technical issues....trying to get it out on as many different boxes as they can. We don't have access to all the content, but its a good indication of what the final content will look like.

The Good -

+ The Setting - Elves, Undead, Swords, Magic + Tanks, Fighter Jets = Very Cool.
+ The Intro/Outro Movie - Coolest since DoW
+ The amount of units you can control and face. I love a game that lets me build as many units as I want. I'm sure theres a limit, but I didn't hit it.

The Bad -

- The Engine. Someone over there made that intro movie, so they have the artistic talent, but for whatever reason, they went with an engine that looks really dated. I have no problem playing a game with crappy graphics if the setting is right. But an RTS is not one of those settings that I really tolerate dated graphics well.

- Pathfinding: Large chunks of troops from a group would get stuck behind a piece of terrain. For instance, if I was trying to move my men east, and they got stuck, I would manually have to grab the stuck units, move then left to get unstuck, down, left again, and then when they were clear, move east. Not good.

- Ranged Units: For whatever reason, a lot of my archers weren't firing. They also use a proximity script, so half of your archers would be aggroed while the other half stayed put.

- Targetting: Another notch in the polish department. When I attacked, at times, nothing happened. Other times, half of the group would attack, half would stay put. Other times, the archers would close to melee range get hit, and then run away.

- RPG system: I played the intro level a couple of times. I could not tell one bit of difference when building a combat character. Attackspeed, Attack, defense...couldn't tell much of a difference. The only effective build I found was + 70 HP, +60 MP and +2 Mana Regen..mainly concentrating on the mana areas, and then exclusively once I got to the RTS segment. Your Magic potential >>>> Combat Potential.

[DominionsFan]

All upgrades what you choose works correctly, for example I was calculating my firing speed after 3 upgrades and it was really that faster.
The pathfinding is really bad for the player's units. The enemy's pathfinding is excellent. This is odd.
Did you noticed that there will be different damage types? Crushing, chopping etc? This gonna add real strategical value for the various units.
The engine is nice imo, also dont forget in the final version the terrain can be formed. Example a big explosion spell will make a hole in the ground, the bigger the power of the spell is the bigger is the "hole" in the ground etc.
I like all parts of this beta tbh. I think the final product will kick some ***.

[OG_Gleep]

Yes but 27% firing speed doesn't make much of an impact on combat results, and neither did 45% or 54% (which I did). However, casting Fear, Summon Allies, Tree of Life, and The Blue Arrow thing, did make a huge impact on combat results.

Point was, that any fight that I won at 54% increased speed, I would have won at base speed. Being able to cast more spells and cast them at an increased rate however was enough to tip the balance in my favor. There is only one combat skill, which isn't that effective...the rest are spells. I felt like I was playing a Mage with a bow, instead of a Archer with magic skills.

[DominionsFan]

Well basically calculate.
+50% firing speed. That means you fire 15 arrows and not 10 in the same amount of time. The attack power of the char is like 20-25, that is 20-25 damage on a single monster - their defense value against this damage type. [I think this is piercing damage]
You dont notice a big difference when you are fighting against mass armies like 100-200 skeletons in group. This kicks in, when you fight against minibosses like that huge ogre etc.
Also I am pretty sure that in the final game there will be an ability for ranged heroes to learn to shoot multiple arrows in the same time, then the firing speed increase will work very well against mass enemy groups as well.

[shovah]

massed druids with a treeman to entangle and hold up and some centaurs to jump in if needed seems to be the best thing i can get to work, along with the hero of course, all other units seem to die to fast to the undead hordes. maybe its because i never fight them on equal terms (4 centaurs, ent, 12 druids and a few archers vrs a few hundred undead)

[DominionsFan]

Indeed, druids are great. However if you take a look, the comp player is using skeletons only in 90% of the battles. I guess this is because of the beta.