30 replies to this topic

[Sayan]

http://www.rtsguru.c...t-Over-HoN.html

Fact is LOL is huge, massive in the E-sports scene but when it first started out it had many hiccups and problems both in features and server stability. Every week LOL has some form of major cash tournament, either online or LAN that involves the top ranked teams in the world.

Does Iron Clad Games plan to push SOADA as an E-sport oriented game? If they do i would suggest going the route of Riot Games and making it as easily accessible for the players as much as the spectators.

KISS: Keep it Simple Silly

[WeReWalRuS]

I hope so. Imagine how popular this game is going to be in places like Korea, where Starcraft reigns supreme?

[IanD967]

It will definantly have a unique presence if they did want to push it as an e-sport!

[EdenSakata]

I would watch it for sure.

[CrimsonDeity]

i'd imagine it would reach critical mass about a year after release. how long did it take LoL to get pro gamers behind it?

[Zid]

Unlikely.

Even though SoaDA has a Spectator mode, I find the idea of matching appropriately ranked commanders and heroes together a bit difficult to be acceptably even. But I'll hold my judgment; I want to see how far APM/strategy and resources/levels are dependent on each other.

It might just work out, but Ironclad isn't the type of developer to have enough money to throw around tournaments at this point. SoaSE only had sinsladder, and that's not around anymore.

[Sayan]

Somehow everytime i take a look at the videos displayed of the game, i feel it is a bit too clunky for a spectator sport and Iron Clad seems to be aiming at the casual market but then again having said that I realise the footage was alpha and LOL was also aimed at the casual market and in retrospect LOL grew to be a rather competetive e-sport once it had the population density.

[CWheezy]

The lol competitive community actually really sucks. There is one reason it is big, and one reason only:

Riot spends a lot of money making it seem huge and awesome

[plasmatorture]

The two most popular esports outside of fighting games are SC2 and LoL. It seems like they're missing out on a great opportunity to get the audiences of both games if they don't treat SoaDA as an esport as well. And I trust Ironclad more than most developers out there to actually do it right... Plus it seems tailor made for teams like SK Gaming who have a LoL team and a single SC player...

Edited by plasmatorture, 19 April 2012 - 10:19 AM.

[Sayan]

CWheezy, on 19 April 2012 - 05:01 AM, said:

The lol competitive community actually really sucks. There is one reason it is big, and one reason only:

Riot spends a lot of money making it seem huge and awesome

It might suck but atleast it exists unlike the HON e-sport community, which btw does not exist anymore.

[CraigFraser]

Sayan, on 17 April 2012 - 05:44 AM, said:

Somehow everytime i take a look at the videos displayed of the game, i feel it is a bit too clunky for a spectator sport and Iron Clad seems to be aiming at the casual market

Thanks for your feedback. Could you elaborate a bit more on this Sayan?

[Sayan]

CraigFraser, on 19 April 2012 - 03:56 PM, said:

Thanks for your feedback. Could you elaborate a bit more on this Sayan?

Something that annoyed me from back in the days of WC3, attack animations and attack timing, are they fast and fluid like in League of Legends or can they be canceled like in WC3 and Dota, The dragon in that video is sorry, no offense, the most horrible animation wise when it attacks and turns, its so large and cumbersome, i feel awkward when i watch it. Is there anyways you can make the dragon smaller and subtle in animation for example like Shyvana from LOL. Best animation I have ever seen in a dragon character in this genre, its unique. I also feel some of the spell animations have either a lackadaisical cast time on them or bad video editing.

Also Unit collision: I see that some heroes have units attached to them by their commanders, yet when they move its bit clunky, so i saw an archer champion in the video and she had ranged units behind, lagging way behind, this might be cause their movement speed is bad but in the next scene the units are in front and the archer is being blocked from attacking. I think the AI when following should like prioritize melee first and ranged after. If in the case of ranged hero ranged units; they should both be moving identical in unison, the units should surround around the hero and protect them. Maybe the hero should have no unit collision, that way they can get inside groups of your units quick and easy?

Also what kind of unit positions can we assign a group of units? I saw in the video, a file of units, can we assign them to V formations, maybe circle formations.etc?

Now we come to UI(HUD); please have KILL Call-outs and make them as easy to understand as possible, think of me as this dumb idiot who can't understand anything and some how you have to explain to me what the hell is going on. I love league of legends minimap features, the fact that I can see the path i take when i click is amasing, please try not to change it.

I don't want a clutter of information, keep as less cluttered as possible, also i don't want their to be a ton of information, so far i've noticed that you guys don't seem to have enemy info at the top like how LOL has info when you click on something at the top, that might be good or bad, I guess i might get used to it but why do u have 2 sets of icon bars at the left and right? Is the icons at the right your enemies health bars? why would you so easily give that info? What purpose?

Edited by Sayan, 20 April 2012 - 11:48 PM.

[FleurDeMur]

Maybe they should have it where the units always move out of the way/are pushed out of the way for the heroes. Cavalry should also have a higher straight move priority than small units.

[Zid]

Perhaps no unit collision with allied units and heroes, but keep collision for enemy units? This will faciliate ease of movement and position for both allied players and AIs.

I'm hoping commanded unit positioning will incorporate a lot of options and allow further unit grouping for heroes. Sacrifice had about 8 army positions in relation to the player, and all the squads could each be positioned differently (like a group of melee units zigzagged in the front, and ranged units in a horizontal line alongside the player, all of which change positions based on the player character's view).

[murdeoc]

can a hero directly control units assigned to him/her? that would be good i think because imo ai positioning is never perfect, no matter how well programmed there can always be situations where you want your assigned units to do things that seem counterproductive for the unit, but happen to be logical in that particular instance. like sending a single archer forwards into a bush to check if the enemy is lying in ambush.

[pedrofirzen]

Sayan, on 20 April 2012 - 11:54 AM, said:

Now we come to UI(HUD); please have KILL Call-outs and make them as easy to understand as possible, think of me as this dumb idiot who can't understand anything and some how you have to explain to me what the hell is going on. I love league of legends minimap features, the fact that I can see the path i take when i click is amasing, please try not to change it.

I don't want a clutter of information, keep as less cluttered as possible, also i don't want their to be a ton of information, so far i've noticed that you guys don't seem to have enemy info at the top like how LOL has info when you click on something at the top, that might be good or bad, I guess i might get used to it but why do u have 2 sets of icon bars at the left and right? Is the icons at the right your enemies health bars? why would you so easily give that info? What purpose?

We only have seen the commander's UI, so most of your concerns are misplaced since they are more important to those who control the heroes not the commander.
I don't think Kill callouts will have to be like LoL, since heroes dying aren't that severe in Sins as in LoL, since you have the commander, you will always have some units to control and affect the battlefield. Maybe only having them in heroes would serve of motivation but for the commander, knowing only hero allies have died is more important.
Also having a clutter of information is fundamental for the commander, since he's playing like an RTS unlike LoL, he needs to see all the Health bars of the enemy and allies to decide to what enemy to focus and who to assist, in LoL you normally don't need to worry has much about the enemies info just a simple health bar is more then enough, but in Sins you can have a lot more units in the same place making it much more dificult to see the health bars, thus the purpose of having the 2 sets of icon bars.

Edited by pedrofirzen, 01 May 2012 - 07:05 AM.

[Sayan]

murdeoc, on 01 May 2012 - 05:45 AM, said:

can a hero directly control units assigned to him/her? that would be good i think because imo ai positioning is never perfect, no matter how well programmed there can always be situations where you want your assigned units to do things that seem counterproductive for the unit, but happen to be logical in that particular instance. like sending a single archer forwards into a bush to check if the enemy is lying in ambush.

That is a good question, can a hero control the commanders units or can he be allowed control of a certain number of the commanders units? If yes, is the answer, is there a way you can decline control of the units and put them back on AI control and not manually control them as one might not want to?

My thoughts on this; fundamentally it will depend on how many units a hero can be assigned control, if i can take control of just enough units to make advanced formations to either block or surround other heroes like the infamous Huntress snare in WC3, for those who don't know, the Huntress snare was employed in choke points during the night time where 4 Huntresses would cloak during the night time and wait until a passing hero would unknowingly walk into the middle of the Huntresses and then the Huntresses would decloak and surround the unsuspecting Hero and trap it inside and then Huntresses would to proceed to killing the trapped Hero.

I'm still on the fence about giving unit control to heroes since I'm not all that good with micro so if I specifically wanted to play a hero role but if I were to be forced to control multiple units, I wouldn't enjoy it, just Sayan, you know...

pedrofirzen, on 01 May 2012 - 07:00 AM, said:

We only have seen the commander's UI, so most of your concerns are misplaced since they are more important to those who control the heroes not the commander. Incorrect there are screen shots of both the Commander and the Hero roles being played.
I don't think Kill callouts will have to be like LoL, since heroes dying aren't that severe in Sins as in LoL, since you have the commander, you will always have some units to control and affect the battlefield. Maybe only having them in heroes would serve of motivation but for the commander, knowing only hero allies have died is more important. They don't have to be like LOL but something to let us know someone has died in your team would be ideal.
Also having a clutter of information is fundamental for the commander, since he's playing like an RTS unlike LoL, he needs to see all the Health bars of the enemy and allies to decide to what enemy to focus and who to assist, in LoL you normally don't need to worry has much about the enemies info just a simple health bar is more then enough, but in Sins you can have a lot more units in the same place making it much more dificult to see the health bars, thus the purpose of having the 2 sets of icon bars.
Yes, accept they have the info for both the commanders and the heroes from what I noticed in the screen shots and honestly that is wasted space.

Answers in RED

Also some screen shots to show you what I am talking about, what is the ones circled in red? Why do we need the icons showing for Hero UI? Also what do those 3 icons symbolise next to the hero portrait and spells?

Edited by Sayan, 01 May 2012 - 03:46 PM.

[Vatticson]

Sayan has some good points there. That right vertical-enemy bar depicting their commander and enemy heroes... I think it would be just useful if it had a feature like showing their items when you put your mouse over their portraits (think of LoL´s TAB key).

If someone needs an example of how does a game with an RTS commander mixed with other genre works, check Nuclear Dawn. An FPS game with an RTS Commander?!? WTH!! that won´t even work!!! (yes it does).

it works so good that no matter FPS soldiers are so good, you can´t win if your commander doesn´t make enough buildings through enemy zone.

I think SoaDA could work very well as an E-sports... It´s simply different enough (for example, HoN is about to die because it IS so similar to Dota, and Dota 2 is fearfully coming nearby... ).

[pedrofirzen]

Sayan, on 01 May 2012 - 03:11 PM, said:

Also some screen shots to show you what I am talking about, what is the ones circled in red? Why do we need the icons showing for Hero UI? Also what do those 3 icons symbolise next to the hero portrait and spells?

I've actually seen those screenshots after I posted here, only saw the gameplay videos.
For the Hero UI in the right of the screen, it's the enemy's Heroes HP, it could be helpful for exemple, instead of having to change the view to see the enemy Hero's HP, like in LoL, you see it on the right side without having to look away from your Hero. It's not really necessary, but the same could be said for the ally champions UI (unless you are the commander or a Hero supporter).
As for the 3 buttons, it could be stances of the Hero, to control his auto-attack like in an RTS, once again not necessary but it's better then LoL, I've seen sometimes, in LoL, champions do wierd stuffs with their auto-attacks, like stop attacking for no apparent reason or start auto attacking when they shouldn't. Personally, I prefer to have the auto-attack controlled then having it decide automatically like they have it in LoL. I mean in LoL they have to sometimes release patches to have the champion auto-attack after he has done a spell or ability, which should most of the times do it.

Edited by pedrofirzen, 03 May 2012 - 03:15 PM.

[Eagle28]

I actually hope IC doesn't push this as an e-sports title, mostly just because it draws these hyper-competitive players who want to win so bad they get abusive of other players.  I want to win, But I don't want someone I've never played with telling me how I should play in a hostile (and usually immature) manner.