I am to this day a devoted Halo Wars fan, I played hundreds of games and loved the variety. As such I developed a comfortability with knowing where the balance was in the endgame strategies. I was able to see the balance between fully upgraded marines vs. fully upgraded hornets, and each type of end unit interaction. I would like to provide the most constructive feedback to the developers possible before the game progresses beyond our input, as myself and many others will have to abandon the beta for family.
My first impression of the beta was one of starcraft and league of legends. I truly hope this game isn’t trying to find itself in that niche, so I want to thoroughly try the new system to rule out me being an uncompromising old fan. The multiple resource systems makes me a little uneasy as it seems a little more like an economy management setting versus the rock/paper/scissors balance of halo wars one with respect to strategy (defend, quick expand, attack). I’m receptive to it for now and would like to give it more time to see how I like it (I like that it balances expansion instead of just focusing on cash producing bases).
The new commander upgrades feels too much like league of legends type upgrade trees with some high potential for ruining the immersion of the game. Having invincibility for your units or a blast capable of wrecking an army if your micro isn’t fast enough? Come on, I liked halo wars over starcraft because it allowed more thought instead of rapid clicking. It allowed time for planning of attack, defense, and successful counter attack. You didn’t win by brute force as strategizing players would carefully anticipate to intercept with counters to a huge army standing by numbers alone. Now invincibility trumps counter units? No thanks.
So far I like the potential for pre-built turrets to prevent marine/grunt rushes (as what killed halo wars 1 online fun for me) and the necessity of marines for capturing points. The demo has such a huge array of possibilities with respect to strategies it is nearly impossible through quick online matches with constant freezing and resetting to fully determine the functionality of any particular class of unit for either faction.
If the beta could be expanded and preferably include an ai for practice I would love to provide more valuable feedback on unit balance, countering, or upgrades many players could provide more in return for the cost of setting up the beta. If you put so much love and effort into the beta it couldn’t hurt to leave it up for a few more days into next week!