Source
r/underlords•
brkello

Feedback/State of the game

Talking to my friends who player underlords, we all agree the game is in a really good state right now. We are having a lot of fun playing and feel there are multiple viable builds. We are glad the jail system is gone. It seemed like a good idea, but in reality it just made certain builds nonviable leading to just the one strong build of the day or good stuff. I think having a hero rotation with weekly bug/balance fixes is the way to go. So good job changing things back when something didn't work.

Just wanted to give a little constructive feedback on what I see as issues. I think the biggest thing is this game needs more food (i.e. players). Most the people playing are pretty dang good. Matchmaking puts a game together fairly quickly (which is great) but as a middling big boss player, I am getting matched with top lords. I hear streamers complain about this because if they lose as a high lord in a BB lobby, they are penalized harshly. I feel the same in the opposite direction. I am the only BB in a lord lobby, feels unfair to gain only 100 points if I get first.

So the solution would be either having more players so the matchmaking works better. Or having some MMR factor going in to BB to get them in to lord faster if they are beating lords.

I have read that Steam games don't tend to get promoted very well. Please reconsider, this game is in a great state right now. Watching 1437 play lately has been a ton of fun and great content. If you can sponsor some other big name streamers to play, you will bring more people in and encourage the health of the community.

This is probably a hard sell since you haven't monetized the game yet, but I believe you will see the returns if you invest some in the game. I'm already ready to throw money in to the game with the amount of enjoyment I get out of it.

My only small balance complaint is that druid is still a little too strong in the early game with tree. It's hard not to be too strong when you can get a 3 cost unit to 2* with two different one cost units.

In any case, there may be better solutions than I have thought of to the BB/Lord issue. Just thought I would throw out the one part of the game I find a little frustrating and some potential ideas that would fix them.

Posted Jan 28, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

2729
BeniCG•

Its unlikely that they promote the game at all until they leave beta. Many players are waiting for the release of season 1 to start playing again.

21
brkelloOP•

I agree and understand. Then maybe moving back to more of an MMR system would be more viable at this point.

3
MayweatherSr•

im sorry, but did the dev or valve said they would promote/market the gamr after they leave beta? or is it just popular assumption among redditors? because leaving beta in no way indication that they would promote the game

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

2
MayweatherSr•

That probably means some sort of a promotion.

I see. I'll put that under popular assumption category.

1
BeniCG•

Valve is known for not promoting games with potential, I dont expect it to be different here but there is no chance they will do it during beta.

1
MayweatherSr•

that didnt answer my straight and simple question

0
Soph1993ita•

Valve doesn't really spend any money in marketing their games, but you could see some interviews and videos released.

5
MSTRMN_•

This is not how a game should be released in 2019, it's not enough to gain enough audience. Valve should rethink how they approach community management and/or marketing.

3
[deleted]•

[deleted]

2
brkelloOP•

Yeah, and that's unfortunate. I know I got in to a game for awhile that was much worse than this one thanks to a streamer I like who was sponsored to play the game for a few weeks. I can't imagine it is that much to get a decently well known streamer to give it some time and I think they would get much higher returns...of course, it isn't monetized yet so they won't. But I can dream.

The other option was just to help BB players move up faster so that we aren't draining the high lord players so much and BB players don't have to play top lords and be stuck in limbo.

1
WUMIBO•

I think they're closing in on what they want the final product to look like. They're probably busy developing Season 1 features like City Crawl, Enno, etc. but I'm glad we still get balance patches. They said they would try to reach out to a wider audience when Season 1 starts so I feel like they'll do some form of advertising and try something they haven't with their other games, probably focusing on the mobile market.

3
sarsar2•

I don't like how much early game RNG impacts the late game. A person who gets lucky rolls early on with certain builds will demolish builds that come online later. They really need to work on this aspect of the game

2
brkelloOP•

I think that is unavoidable. Early game luck will always be impactful.

1
sarsar2•

It's not even just early game. You can see people who get 2 or 3 three star heroes mid game, who go on to completely dominate everyone else. It's frustrating beyond belief and needs to be meaningfully addressed. RNG shouldn't guide so many games.

2
Miniminimimimi•

This 3-star player would steamroll everyone, so you just play your best to get top2. It's viable strategy and goal.

4
sarsar2•

That's not good game design though. That's simply rewarding the luckiest person in the lobby as opposed to the smartest, or the one with the best strategy.

1
heartNswitch•

I definitely agree. I've just gotten into it, went blind, never played autochess. It's a lot of fun and I have managed top 2 with a crazy variety of build structures. Seems like pretty much everything is viable.

Just have a couple thoughts myself.

I've seen a lot of complaining and people saying the game is bad / the newest 'big' update was bad. Since I didn't play before, I wonder why / how valid this is, from a more reasonable perspective than 'I hate that it's different'. Due to the amount of negative posts/reviews I feel like there has to be some more nuanced arguments that I'm missing. For example, one thing I've seen is that some dislike that creep rounds were removed. That seems like a good thing to me though? The games already take long enough, and pve seems kind of unnecessary in this gametype. I'm sure it must be more than that though?

As a new player who's put in a lot of time recently (about 130~ matches in) and gotten kind of hooked on it, I have a couple critiques of the gameplay loop itself though.

One, it seems like it's often over too fast. Which can be unsatisfying whether you suck out or place well. The 'end game' doesn't last long enough most of the time - only a handful of times have I gone back and forth multiple rounds with 1-2 other people. You barely get to see what you've built really play out at full-ish strength. This is a minor gripe though, and might just be the way it has to be.

The other thing is that sometimes the in-between rounds feel a little frantic, and could perhaps benefit from 5-10 more seconds imo. I get that making quick decisions is part of the game and that having reasonable length games is what they're going for. But just a little more time to think, particularly in the mid game might feel a little better.

Other than that, the game is pretty fun and seems reasonably balanced which is pretty impressive. I went to try the other popular variants after playing this for awhile and this is the cleanest and most engaging experience by far. Really looking forward to seeing where they go with it.

2
lerussianspy•

"So the solution would be either having more players "

lol not happening, I don't plan on playing again until another major patch

1
vidomina89•

I enjoy that there are mixed lobbies of big boss and lords. If you advance to lord, you don't get in the basement and you should be able to get consistent results against lords when you promote. Also, now there are many big boss players that are better than some lords who advanced earlier on, forcing OP units or favorable jails. Now every game feels hard after passing boss and this is perfect. Means that the ladder skill gap stabilized and all players in the lobby can get casual wins or even 8th places.

1
SourWind•

If you need to sponsor and advertise that much, the game is not in a good state, even if you enjoy playing it. But there's still time to make changes, but the window is getting smaller and smaller. I feel like this gonna be a forgotten game easily(as we know from the previous steam game artifcat). Too bad, I enjoyed playing some matches every night, but at this moment there's really not much of a difference between underlords and other chess games.

1
cromulent_weasel•

I think having a hero rotation with weekly bug/balance fixes is the way to go.

I think having underplayed heroes get temporary 'powerups' to encourage their play is better. Each buff could expire at the end of the day. Some examples:

  • Shadow Shaman got a double damage rune

  • Lich got a Bounty rune ($1 cheaper to buy)

  • Jugg got an Illusion rune (starts combat with something like an Arc Warden clone, but it doesn't respawn when it dies).

  • Dragon Knight got an Arcane Rune (reduces cooldown 30%)

0†
AngelTheTaco•

this sounds horrible

6
cromulent_weasel•

You don't like the idea of buffing underplayed heroes?

1
AngelTheTaco•

the idea of just going the heroes with the best daily rune just sounds like a dumb jail that punishes builds by making them statistically worse

4
cromulent_weasel•

I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Buffing weak or underplayed heroes IS a very very tiny nerf to everything else that wasn't buffed. But I would argue that that is better than just slamming nerfs onto the top heroes, which is the same as handing out tiny tiny buffs to everything else.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

0
Stealth3S3•

Those games you describes are far better than whatever garbage Valve puts out these days, including Alyx which will probably be another failure.
Don't think there's any game making talent left at Valve.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
cromulent_weasel•

So the solution would be either having more players so the matchmaking works better.

The devs don't have a magic button to make more people play the game.

-1
brkelloOP•

That is why I said other things!

1