I have no feedback yet on balance or mechanics because I'm still new and bad.
I would like to see a few improvements to the interface.
First, it's very sluggish in the late game. I'm only playing against three AI's on a medium map, and when we get to level 4 or 5, the response starts to feel laggy. Popups are slow, and commands aren't registered immediately. For example, if I want to sell eighty units of something, I click the sell button rapidly eight times, but only fifty or sixty units are sold. Sometimes when shift- or ctrl-selling, the modifier key isn't detected. This kind of thing is annoying but tolerable in a turn-based game, but a fast-paced game like this needs to be responsive.
Second, my left hand doesn't have enough to do. At the very least, hotkeys should be added for any actions where you would want to have your mouse ready somewhere other than the button, such as targeted black market actions, bulldozing, or opening the rocket menu. I would even like to see hotkeys for each commodity for buying and selling quickly while your mouse is doing other things.
Finally, I think too much information is behind mouse-over popups, which slow the player down. Maybe this is the intention for things like the in/out breakdown of net resource income, which a good player ought to know by keeping track of what he's built, but it is hard to justify for things like opponents' financials. I understand if you want to keep the main screen uncluttered by a lot of these details, or to make the player seek them out as part of playing the game, but I think a set of hotkey-accessible information windows would be a better solution. Or at least switch from mouse-over-and-wait popups to click-for-details popups.
I love the overall design of the game. I've been looking for another Starcraft: a fast-paced, competitive, short-match strategy game that you can play for years and keep improving. OTC has the potential to be it.
And a bug. In a multiplayer game, I opened the menu right before I got bought out and went to the post-game screen. The menu remained on screen, but the buttons were nonfunctional and there was no way out except to kill the program.
Hi Aeolides,
We're aware of the latency with the in-game interface. Jim (the interface designer) and I are working on making a new version with almost no latency. It will still be a couple of months before it comes online, but we believe it'll be a big step up from the current solution.
As for the left-hand aspect, you bring up a good point. We'll see what we can do to more quickly facilitate player actions with hotkeys.
For the tooltips, I agree we've over-explained in many situations. We've gone for more information in a lot of situations in an attempt to make the game clear. There's a lot of things going on under the hood and we're trying to expose those things as best we can. In the next revision of the interface, we'll try to do more to summarize the information in a smarter way.
Thanks for the feedback!
-Scott-
Thanks for reading and responding. I'm glad to hear the latency issue in particular is being worked on.
I'm afraid I may have been unclear on my third point above. I was not complaining about being slowed down by an excess of unneeded information or intrusive popup tooltips. What I meant to say is that I do want this under-the-hood information at certain times, but having to get it from mouse-over popups is a slow process, requiring the player to move the mouse to the appropriate spot, wait for the popup, then move it again either to take an action in response or to check another popup. I'd like to be able to leave my cursor in a useful place, say, over a buy button, and press a function key to display, say, my resource in/out's or opponents' financials.
In general anything that increases the potential APM of a player who has already memorized the basics is good.
By the way, I tried out the multiplayer last night and had a great time despite getting wrecked. Masquerade is a great idea.
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