Some things that bother me for a 2019 game

[Dreepa]

So, just to start it off positive: I like the game play so far. Typical AOW3 game, but with a lot of civilization flavor. Got some Alpha Centauri vibes. Even though the art style is a bit too cliche (in terms of 70s sci fi). There are only 2 factions I really like to play (from a visual stand point). Could be less "vintage" overall and a bit more "modern" or "cool".

Anyway, things that I think could be improved so far:

-Controls in combat (Right click left click confusion).
History lesson: RMB to move was made for RTS games, since with a standard Command and Conquer RTS control scheme (LMB to move) it could happen that you misclick when wanting to select one of your units, and the misclick resulted in ordering the current selection to that spot.
This issue was solved with RMB to move.
However, this has no merrit in a TURN BASED strategy game. ESPECIALLY since you can see a preview of your move and use "first click to show path, click again to move" mechanics. So the whole "activate an ability with RMB" thing is just useless in the context of TBS games. All it does is add to the confusion.
I cannot count the amount of times I (or my friends telling me on discord when playing multiplayer) I accidentally send a unit somewhere.

-Animations. Most of them.
Be it units falling to the ground (looks funny, way to fast, does not feel like correct physics). Units shooting. Projectiles flying. Basically anything that is not an idle animation feels like it is either too fast, too abrupt, or just plain low quality.

-Kind of hard to read map
Very homogenous look of the map makes it a bit boring overall. And also harder to read. Few things pop out. Few stark contrasts. When I compare it to the nice AOW2 or even AOW1 maps (2D just had more "vibe" and different color feel to it). For me, the map is kind of... "too realistic"? maybe? (in art terms). I don't know. I just feel it is bland and to homogenous. Reading the map is not visually distinct.


Okay, that is my top3.

Ofc just my subjective viewpoint.

Cheers, and
keep up the good work

 

[LemurFromTheId]

I mostly agree.

I feel like just about every space game tries to go for some kind of nostalgic/retro sci-fi look and rarely tries to do anything really original (which, admittedly, is not easy). This is even more common in fantasy, and the previous AoW games were hopelessly average and unoriginal in that sense with elves and dwarves and dragons and knights and all that. I was hoping that a sci-fi theme would lead to a more innovative and distinctive approach, but... I guess it has been an improvement, but not to a massive degree. (And really... space dwarves with soviet steampunk look? *sigh*)

The controls don't really bother me, but you're absolutely correct in that there's just no need for RTS-style mouse commands. But at least in this game the controls seem quite consistent, whereas in many games you still use the left click for some actions (such as special abilities) which can be really confusing and frustrating.

I don't care much about animations, and to be frank, find it hard to understand why so many people seem to care so much (not that I'm judging, I just don't understand). I have no need to ever zoom very close, so most of the time the units are tiny and it's hard to see any animation details beyond "this unit is moving/acting right now". I prefer it when animations are crisp and relatively short simply because I don't want to wait units to finish animations I hardly pay any attention to.

I think the maps looks gorgeous and I really like the look of some structures (like Amazon colonies, for example), but most of the locations just aren't very distinctive, and when you put units on top of them, I often find it practically impossible to figure out what I'm looking at without clicking everything. Oh well... I hope that in time I'll learn to identify stuff more easily, but often units and buildings just meld together to form one unrecognisable blob. This was a big problem in AoW3 already.

I really have no problems with the map when it comes to recognising terrain features and biomes and such; all that reads quite well, I think.

I hope all that didn't come out as too negative. I'm loving the game so far, but nothing's perfect.

 

[IloveSteak]

I think the sound matching the actions could be better. Like when my guy shoots, sometimes the sound comes after the animation OR like when they fire twice but you only hear one shot sounding. Things like that. I do agree about the unit dieing animation haha, they just kinda fall over xD

But i DO love the game though.

 

[Vind7]

Well animations is poor and terrain blocking is awfully unexplained. Some "hills" can be overshot by grenade and some dont - you dont know beforehand. Same with walls/archs etc. Looks like combat UI is half-done. Also you cant define exact route you units must walk to avoid fire/poison/electro spot. Still this is all easily fixable.

 

[agent_catnip]

I find the style of the game refreshing actually. Usually if it's a space game it's a new frontier, clean and utopic. Here we have almost a post-apoc scenario, with ruins covering the map, remnants of old civilizations, scavengers, survivors and all that jazz. And the factions are distinct enough.

-Animations. Most of them.
Be it units falling to the ground (looks funny, way to fast, does not feel like correct physics). Units shooting. Projectiles flying. Basically anything that is not an idle animation feels like it is either too fast, too abrupt, or just plain low quality.

Ah, a fellow aesthete. I don't know why, but people don't seem to appreciate the value of presentation, or understand it on a very basic level (usually, texture quality). Poor animations are one of the major reasons I could not force myself to continue playing AoW3. Coupled with awful sound and visual effects it killed the joy of playing it for me. Thankfully, Triumph have improved in all of those areas with Planetfall, but it's still far from being even adequate. Off the top of my head:

- basic Indentured units shoot comically quickly, have no recoil animations, some of their shots don't animate at all and the sound gets messy and cuts off itself;
- in contrast, Paragon soldiers have a very long shooting animation, with recoil and normal sound effects;
- Syndicate sniper rifles shoot lumps of faintly-blue spiderweb that doesn't align with the gun's barrel;
- Syndicate runner bolas have no projectile animations;
- some weapons have no shooting/projectile/sound at all, it's just silent damage numbers;
- Arc sword animations are hilarious;
- In contrast, Syndicate enforcer melee animations are... fine.

The disparity in quality between different units is apparent, which leads me to think poor centralized quality control. Overall, just like with AoW3, many units lack punch and don't feel powerful even when they are.

I believe that depth and presentation can and should go hand-in-hand. I enjoy both, and if one of those is lacking, it sours the overall impression. Especially if you see that there are some good animations/sfx/vfx, meaning they had the capability, but couldn't make it uniform.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Ah, a fellow aesthete. I don't know why, but people don't seem to appreciate the value of presentation, or understand it on a very basic level (usually, texture quality).

Just wanting to throw in, while i agree with the poster saying it's not really important in a game like this, that the animations are simply not good.
And it isn't even the fact that they would need to be overly complicated, games like "battle brothers" as an example are incredibly simplistic but in the end they work way better than PFs animations.

As said, for me it does not really detract from the experience i'm speeding up combat all the time anyways, but yeah the animations are suboptimal.

 

[Ethorin]

...I have no idea why people paying attention to this sort of thing never mention Gunk Shot, just compare the hit animation to Battle Vomit, then realize only one of them is AoE.

 

[Dreepa]

[...]
Ah, a fellow aesthete. I don't know why, but people don't seem to appreciate the value of presentation, or understand it on a very basic level (usually, texture quality). Poor animations are one of the major reasons I could not force myself to continue playing AoW3. Coupled with awful sound and visual effects it killed the joy of playing it for me. Thankfully, Triumph have improved in all of those areas with Planetfall, but it's still far from being even adequate. Off the top of my head:
- basic Indentured units shoot comically quickly, have no recoil animations, some of their shots don't animate at all and the sound gets messy and cuts off itself;
- in contrast, Paragon soldiers have a very long shooting animation, with recoil and normal sound effects;
- Syndicate sniper rifles shoot lumps of faintly-blue spiderweb that doesn't align with the gun's barrel;
- Syndicate runner bolas have no projectile animations;
- some weapons have no shooting/projectile/sound at all, it's just silent damage numbers;
- Arc sword animations are hilarious;
- In contrast, Syndicate enforcer melee animations are... fine.
The disparity in quality between different units is apparent, which leads me to think poor centralized quality control. Overall, just like with AoW3, many units lack punch and don't feel powerful even when they are.

[...]

I agree.
1. Mostly hardcore fans are around the forums. The other more casual people just play. Hardcore strategy fans have a different perspective (gfx are not so imporant to them, usually).
2. I would not say it is necessary a matter of QA, but usually more a matter of time. This is a HUGE game. A ton of idle animation, attack anims, hit anims. Just so much stuff. I would rather say it's a matter of prioritization. We have some REALLY good idle anims, and then again we have some stuff that is plain insulting (no offense, j/k a bit).
But for real, look at the APC shooting. Nothing...nothing..nothing..moving backwards...AAAAAANNNDD: *poof*
When I saw it the first time I was like: Srsly? I mean, you really want me to be immersed in that??

The overall thing is, that it's not even really animation all the time, but the general level of polish intertwining sound FX with anim and VFX.
Take the Vanguard OWL for example. It got a really good PEW PEW sound fx, it's properly in sync with the shooting, the projectiles look good, the speed of the projectiles is nice, and there is a muzzle flash at the weapon when the projectile spawns. It just feels good.
The APC though...
Troopers also feel "weird". Like when they go up and down with their stance, and shoot... like dancing. Adding to that you have the gun fire sound not 100% in sync with the muzzle flash, which breaks the "suspension of disbelief". All of a sudden the guns are not heard anymore, but you still see them fire for a short duration. Things like that are subtle, yes, but it's what makes the difference.
In the end it's a matter of getting a good physical "feel" to what's happening. Troopers could just do much shorter bursts, with higher fire rate instead of wobbling the trooper dance.

On the other side we also have anims, that do not seem to have properly synced with game designers, as their anims take soooo long, you wonder if the animator knew what kind of game he was doing. Like the one fish that spins on it's place when shooing the mind blast. You just have to skip that, it's too long for this kind of game.

Overall the challenge is to make "to the point" animations, that are quick yet feel physically correct and show "impact" and "force" in alignment with what is happening, where VFX and audio is synced precisely.


I mean, does it kill the fun of the game? No, not really. But it definitely makes the game "drag me in" less. I do not anticipate the attack visually or from a immersion view. I just click and want to get rid of it, just see the outcome, and move on. (=Fast anim mode).

 

[HousePet]

I think there are a few bugs in the animation system that are making them sync worse than they should.
That said, there are many that could be better, but it is also a huge amount of work to get through.

 

[MyLego]

The game is, from a mechanical stand point, fine. The polish on the other handis not. Some techs are voiced, a few are not. Some tech symbols don't match their descriptions or their names. The Syndicate jetbikes and some other units spin around 360 degrees before firing, some animations don't match up with the models, some models don't interact with terrain and stand inside terrain even when alive. Most of them don't interact when dead. A bunch of UI things are not where they should be etc.

A few of these aren't a problem but together they give a distinct feel of being unpolished. Hopefully they won't ditch the game after release and iron out these bugs, including some of the animation bugs. The models interacting with terrain is probably going to be impossible to fix without tinkering with the engine to an unacceptable degree.