I pre-ordered Alliance this week so I could try out the Alpha and while the objective based PvE style gameplay is quite fun and a welcome change to PvP team deathmatches, it sometimes felt no more than skirmishes against bots.
An the biggest reason for it, in my opinion, is PRESENTATION.
By making the mode selection a toggle and getting into a match pretty much the same as th skirmish mode, it's harder to appreciate the difference. There is a beautiful map interface, but I played several matches before even looking at it.
Here are some suggestions to better lead the user :
- Do not use a toggle for mode, use 2 separate play buttons : "Skirmish Play" and "Alliance Play"
- Include the world map in the new game mode selection: "Alliance Play" should take you to the world map, and when you select a battle to deploy to, you go to the match lobby
- Put a menu on the world map to select difficulty instead of voting once people are in lobby; nodes could also have a set difficulty and changing it could diplay different battles and missions
- Have match map selection be based on the world map battle selection; it will speed up the process and increase immersion
