Trying ZK again for like the 7th or 8th time since the early days of CA and it's finally stuck. The effort you guys put in to make this thing a fluid experience for the Steam release is what all Spring games need to even have a chance at being somewhat successful imo - It's hard to imagine how anybody could get into a game with the third-party lobby experience it used to be.
That being said, there's still some things that could be improved and I'm sure there's already a todo list with some of these things on but I'll mention them anyway:
- The player list is kinda weird and I still don't understand how it works. Sometimes it's sorted alphabetically and sometimes it looks sorted completely random. All the players online aren't listed either, it feels like a limited list. And what's with the orange players that don't have a user page or level or anything at all - just usernames?
- The party system -> matchmaking feels pretty borked. Sometimes people accept a party invite but they don't get added to the party, and when finding a match, the lobby sometimes acts as if a player refuses to accept or something and we've been banned from matchmaking a few times (albeit only for a couple seconds), even though we've all hit accept every time. The explosion noise when a game is found is useful, but gets pretty irritating when you have to spam the accept button every second and it starts playing over itself...
- Matchmaking 1v1 balance feels off. I realise the system does what it can to balance games as best possible without making people wait forever for a perfect match, but the system allows for people playing their very first game to be matched against Godde or rANDY. Not sure what the best solution is here when the player queue is so small, but I kind of like the idea of having people playing their first game required to beat easy AI in one game before playing against humans.
- Map pool feels a bit small. One of the best things the Spring community has going for it is the giant collection of maps it's accumulated over the years. If it's just the case that nobody has got time to go trawling through every map to see if it's suitable then I'd like to see some sort of suggestion thread or something. There's enough maps to even have seasonal pool rotations. Would be happy to help here.
- Map pool for team games? Is this even a thing? Currently it feels like there's just one pool because we've been playing 1v1 games on team maps and 4v4 team games on 1v1 maps (via matchmaking).
- Is it possible to change unit hotkeys for constructors/labs?
- Chill with the music volume. First load of the lobby and I've got deafening music blaring in my ears to the point where I need to chuck my headset off to prevent permanent eardrum damage. Then I turn it right down and get the same thing as soon as my first game loads
- Not sure how I feel about the smart AI/auto-micro stuff. Sometimes I'm thankful for it and other times I'm cursing it as my Ronins are just sat in Lotus beams soaking up the heat. I appreciate all the steps you guys made to make the game more noob-friendly, but one of the most enjoyable parts of Spring games for me has been using custom formations to out-micro opponents. Interested in seeing what top players think about it, especially in competitive 1v1 ladder.
- As for other noob-friendly changes, I really like the change to flat tech-tree and unit costs having equal energy to metal. The grid and overdriving mexes also a really cool mechanic, as is windmills having different min-speeds based on height. The little metal icons below each mex that denote how much metal a spot has when placing an extractor needs to be a bit more obvious I think. Didn't notice them till somebody pointed them out.
tl;dr: will probably have more to say as I keep playing, but so far, gud gaem
