Board 8 > Anyone playing Dota Underlords? (official auto chess game)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I haven't had a chance to play yet myself but I'm excited to download the open beta later! Hearthstone kinda fizzled out for me so this looks like a fun little game you can pick up and play for an hour or so every now and then.

Has anyone had any experience with the Dota 2 auto chess mod or the new LoL auto chess game Team Fight Tactics?
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I played a little underlords earlier.

I play on mobile and had played the other autochess mobile game (the one by dragonest), and underlords is kind of hard to play imo (at least on a phone).

Menus are a bit too clunky. It's hard to tell what things are a lot of the time. Swapping pieces around is not as quick, etc. Stuff is also a lot harder to read. I know it's in beta so some of this stuff might be cleaned up soon. But I think the biggest problem is that right now the game has like zero personality to it.
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I played tft on pbe for a bit. It's pretty fun but they really need a mobile version
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Dafuq is auto chess?
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Waluigi1 posted...

Dafuq is auto chess?

The next hot trend, ala battle royale
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I love Auto Chess and I love Underlords. I spend large amounts of time each day writing feedback to the Underlords devs and then by the next day they have put my suggestions into the game

I'll probably try Teamfight Tactics when it's off the PBE. I wont have too much familiarity with the units like I do with Auto Chess and Underlords since they are based on Dota (WHICH I LOVE), but I dont' think that'll be a big deal. Everyone else had that issue learning the Auto Chess/Underlords units.

I think it's interesting people seem to be really taking to these games on mobile - these are 45 minute matches, I can't imagine wanting to play a game on my phone for that long? Either I'm out of the house and a phone game is meant to pass the time while I'm waiting around somewhere which probably won't last that long, or I'm in my house.... and I'd rather just be on my PC. But maybe other people have a different perspective on what mobile gaming is to them.
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I think I like Auto Chess more than Underlords.

Underlords is snappier and looks better, but I seem to get 2 and 3 star units way less often.
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CoolCly posted...

these are 45 minute matches

Ew...
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Auto Chess is the first game that I have ever watched a decent amount of footage of and been completely unable to understand why anyone would find it fun to play. Like literally any other game, even if I dislike it, I can find a reason why people would like it or want to play it. This genre looks completely uninteresting and not fun and I just can't comprehend what the attraction point is for all the people who love it.
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WazzupGenius00 posted...

Auto Chess is the first game that I have ever watched a decent amount of footage of and been completely unable to understand why anyone would find it fun to play. Like literally any other game, even if I dislike it, I can find a reason why people would like it or want to play it. This genre looks completely uninteresting and not fun and I just can't comprehend what the attraction point is for all the people who love it.

I mean it's basically a draft format of a card game I don't know why that seems impossible for someone to enjoy. You have to improvise and change your strategy based on the cards you're getting, not to mention the strategy around positioning and items you receive. It's basically trying to maneuver and strategize around 50 different RNG daggers getting thrown at your face. Some people don't like RNG but it definitely keeps things fresh. It's almost like a roguelike version of a trading card game honestly, even moreso than regular draft formats.
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Waluigi1 posted...

Dafuq is auto chess?

I never heard of it either, so here you go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota_Auto_Chess
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I stand behind the match length. The game is very time intensive and you always feel under the gun getting things done as quickly as possible. I never feel "stuck in a long match", I'm begging for more time to make the perfect moves, the games progress and it's over before I know it. And then I want to go again.

Though if you solo queue and lose earlier you can just leave so you don't have to be in there that quite that long

It does kinda suck from a "i need to have this much time available incase I go the distance" perspective, but if I'm going to spend that much time playing (which I am), I think it's better in this longer format than making the game squish in half the time and playing two games in the same amount of time. They are thinking about a "turbo mode" that would go faster though. (which exists in Dota and, just like it will in underlords, gives you a watered down version of the actual game)
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WazzupGenius00 posted...

Auto Chess is the first game that I have ever watched a decent amount of footage of and been completely unable to understand why anyone would find it fun to play. Like literally any other game, even if I dislike it, I can find a reason why people would like it or want to play it. This genre looks completely uninteresting and not fun and I just can't comprehend what the attraction point is for all the people who love it.

I think if you look at this game and you just don't really get why someone would find it fun, to the point that it looks to you like there is no gameplay.... you should give it a try!

Ultimately, it's a game about building up the best team you can based on unit strength and team synergies with other units, over a period of time with a limited amount of income. It's very satisfying to do well.

I have a friend who's been saying "wow, you dont even control your units, how can that possibly be fun. units only have one spell, i wanna see them use all 4 spells, etc" and largely because he just has never tried anything like it and can't wrap his head around it. I sing it's praises all the time so he asked me to watch a guy streaming Underlord with 2 viewers with him and commentate on everything that happened. I spent the next 45 minutes nonstop talking about every choice the guy was making - what units he was choosing that aren't strong, what synergies he was building up and why they were good, and also commenting on the easy synergies he was missing from easy unit pickups that he wasn't going for. How the guy was positioning his board poorly but it was working out for him anyways against easy bots, how he was making poor economy choices by investing too much gold into units on his bench that he wasn't going to use anyways and missing out on valuable interest, when he was making good choices to reroll and what were bad choices, how the opponent in the end game ended up stomping him and how that lineup worked, and how that guy was actually much weaker than it should because his Troll Warlord carry didn't even have 1 other troll to buff him up. Then we watched Kripp play a game and I commentated on all of the MUCH better choices Kripp was making compared to the first nobody we watched. Over an hour of watching and I don't think I stopped talking about what was happening once. So he's finally installed the game.

It's a very deep game with a lot of decision making to put yourself in the best position. There is plenty of RNG to play around, but ultimately it's all making the best decisions to set yourself up no matter what the RNG chooses to do

As a loose comparison point, why would anyone ever find turret defense fun? You just put a thing down and watch it kill stuff as they walk by. What's fun about that? You aren't doing anything. Well, there's a lot people find fun in that sort of gameplay(....though I personally don't like turret defense)

Personally for me, one of my favourite games of all time is Ogre Battle 64, a game where you don't directly control your units, you just put them in a position to succeed and they play out the combat for you, so the idea of "you aren't even controlling your units" doesn't make me blink at all - I already know how great a game like that can be.
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Like here's a win screen of one of the best games I've had
https://imgur.com/a/AkYvy3f

I mean I've only been playing for like a week, so I'm still in a pretty low elo right now. I'm hoping to hit Bishop shortly.

The match itself though really came together for me at the end. It was like super rough for me early game as I was unable to get units I really needed. I was originally going the normal beast/warrior, but the game pushed me into druid. But it still took me a while to get even two stars of several of my non druid units up. But once I did I basically didn't lose a round.
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It's so strange to me that this genre is breaking out just now.

I remember it existing as a brood war custom map in 1999
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I played it for a bit, but without a chat or way to contact the other players it felt so bland.

I'd rather play the mods in SC and Dota where I can at least talk to people.
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Yeah I put a lot of time into Dota and never played LoL so I'm familiar with the Dota characters but Team Fight Tactics just looks like a better game right now. The presentation is way better and they actually introduced some nice ideas like the shared draft every so many rounds. Underlords seems fun but it's so bland and lifeless
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ViolentAbacus posted...

I played it for a bit, but without a chat or way to contact the other players it felt so bland.

I'd rather play the mods in SC and Dota where I can at least talk to people.

This is valid complaint for now, but they've said they will likely be adding chat

I'm not sure if we've made this clear, but both Underlords and Teamfight Tactics are essentially early access alphas that they've put out to compete with eachother because they both don't want to miss out on capturing the audience for this new genre by delaying release. So features wise, they have a long way to go. I would expect both of these games to be quite different 6 months from now. Underlords is shipping major UI changes basically every day or two. I don't know what kind of changes TFT is making so far, but honestly I'd expect at some point they'll increase the board size.

If you have quality of life issues, they are definitely reasons not to want to play it now, but I'd caution against writing off the games or genre as a whole.
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Yeah also worth noting that the specific auto chess mod that got really popular was released in Jan 2019. So Valve pumped this game out in under 6 months, probably closer to 3 or 4 until the mod was actually on their radar and big enough to try to make their own version. Sure they already had all of the assets but it's still pretty impressive they were able to make anything at all that quickly.
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I'm not writing it off, I actually found it fun other than that. If they add an actual chat I'd be more likely to play it consistently. But, for now I'll probably wait and possibly play team fight tactics when it's available to the public... Unless the chat feature gets added first.
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I like it, but its kinda repetitive and requries that luck in getting the right heroes to turn your current ones inton2nand 3 stars. I think something needs reworked there
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I've been playing more. Hit Bishop 3. I heard on PC the matchmaking kind of sucked before, but on mobile I'm consistently getting matches with people in low to mid bishop. I've also noticed a pretty significant bump in player quality since I got to Bishop.
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Metal_DK posted...

I like it, but its kinda repetitive and requries that luck in getting the right heroes to turn your current ones inton2nand 3 stars. I think something needs reworked there

Personally, just from watching some streams of TFT, it seems to me that the luck element has a way bigger impact on the items than on the champions. There's plenty of opportunities to get and reroll champions, not so much with items
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Peace___Frog posted...

Metal_DK posted...

I like it, but its kinda repetitive and requries that luck in getting the right heroes to turn your current ones inton2nand 3 stars. I think something needs reworked there

Personally, just from watching some streams of TFT, it seems to me that the luck element has a way bigger impact on the items than on the champions. There's plenty of opportunities to get and reroll champions, not so much with items

It's like this for auto chess too. It's better in underlords, but items and such in that game are not quite as interesting and you dont have as many things you can do with them, so there's a trade off. Like sometimes in my matches in autochess i go through the entire 3 round creep wave with only 1 item and other times I get like 4.
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I have a 100% win rating across 20 games of Auto Chess, and I cant win a game of Underlords to save my life.

I think Ive gotten a 3* unit twice in 7 or 8 games.
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by 100% win rating do you mean literal first place because that's pretty insane
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also i won my first game of underlords by getting a pudge 3 and giving him radiance

his 4500 hp with that kind of aoe just by existing is insane. i got to 17 hp at the bottom of the pack and slowly killing every other player one by one and ending the game with 17 hp, with the other teams helplessly trying to roll and improve their synergies to beat him the next time they run into him. but it was for naught. he was unstoppable.

my team wasn't even good besides pudge. i got the "humans count as heartless" passive and just got every human and undead i could.... instead of strategically picking the best 6 humans/undead combo and building good physical damage to take advantage of the aura. i wonder what the best lineup with that passive would be?
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I just played my first game of tft, got 2nd place. It's pretty fun.
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I played another game of underlords and went full elusive, basically walked through the entire game once I hit 9 (also had the start invisible passive).

Idk that seems kind of busted. I guess true damage doesn't miss? So that's a counter I suppose.
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Just installed LoL to try TFT. Will try after baby is asleep.
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I should point out that although I created this topic I've only played 1 game of Underlords against the tutorial AI. Something about actually playing more seems a little overwhelming but I'll jump in eventually.
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I've been playing a lot of tft. Never played any of the other auto chess games but I'm really enjoying tft so I'm glad this got popular enough for me to find out about it
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CoolCly posted...

by 100% win rating do you mean literal first place because that's pretty insane

Yeah I mean literal first place.

It makes my inability to even Top 3 in Underlords maddening.

I just had a game where the FIRST pvp Battle was against a dude with two 2*s, and after spending the entire match getting destroyed, I re-rolled the shop 10 times in a row without getting any matches.

Then I quit.

I dunno, I feel like RNG makes it not fun. I cant build a strategy when I literally cant get units that can hang.
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I feel like getting matches does seem a bit tougher in Underlords but I'm not sure why

I played some TFT last night and it was pretty fun. I feel like there is a big lack of information. I don't think I can tell species and class before i buy something or i pick it from the carousel? How much damage is each piece doing? There are items that affect crit - do pieces normally have a crit chance?
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CoolCly posted...

I feel like getting matches does seem a bit tougher in Underlords but I'm not sure why

I played some TFT last night and it was pretty fun. I feel like there is a big lack of information. I don't think I can tell species and class before i buy something or i pick it from the carousel? How much damage is each piece doing? There are items that affect crit - do pieces normally have a crit chance?

From what I've noticed, the carousel is based on sight only. If you hover over a unit otherwise though, it should give you some information. You can def see the race/origin from the lineup view, but I don't think you can see HP/Mana/exact damage output until you buy the unit.
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I've tried TFT and Underlords, and I think I preferred Underlords more. The UI seems nicer, and it's easier to figure out what each unit does. Also, don't like how random the items are in TFT.
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I've played tons and tons of TFT the last few days because it's the one a league friend was willing to try

I think I like the feel of it all really well. The Carousel is a great idea and the items are a much better version of the auto chess items. Games are I think around 30 minutes vs 45 minutes in Auto Chess/Underlords

But I have some really big annoyances

- Courier damage seems much higher in this. I'm not sure at all how it's calculated, but I know at least there's extra damage coming from the courier itself in addition to each surviving unit. I don't know if the units are calculating differently but I don't think that happened in Auto Chess. The late game is annoyingly short because you take so much damage - you can be at 35 health and have one really bad round and you are out of the game. I don't feel like that happened to me in Auto Chess

- Units get mana and deal insane damage REALLY fast - so fast that rounds are often over in literal seconds later on. I feel like I don't have much influence on what's happening. It's just a matter of who attacks who at the very beginning first. and then it's over. Auto Chess I always felt like I could see what's happening at a reasonable pace and then adjust things to directly change the outcome as units took a little longer to go crazy. Underlords feels a little more like TFT in this regard too I think, but I need to go back and play it a bit more to see if it's as bad.

- Items combine with every other item to make something, and when you put it on someone it's permanent like Auto Chess. It's nice that every item combines so you dont end up with useless items like in Auto Chess, but the right items on the right unit turns a mediocre comp into an insane comp, so there's a lot of pressure IMO not to waste your items. I'm extremely reluctant to combine my items or put them on someone because if I combine them into the wrong item (you can't uncombine) that I don't need late game or I put them on someone who I don't want to sell but doesn't need the item late game, I'm in real big trouble. So I end up with a bunch of items on my bench that I'm afraid to use and not sure what item would be the best item to make. Underlords has by far the simplest item system which makes it lack a bit of depth but it also allows you to use what you have without fear you are screwing yourself over. So Underlords is the best on items right now.

For reference, this is the item combination chart. So I usually get into a circling headspace of "should I combine my needlessly large rod with the chainmail for the 200 aoe shield? that will really make me win the early game, but my carry needs the 3% attack speed stacking sword... should I wait until I get a recurve bow? " I talk myself in and out of these choices non stop which is especially annoying because it uses up mental bandwidth I'd prefer to be spending on thinking about what units to buy and how to arrange my team.

https://progameguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/tft-full-item-cheat-sheet.png
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welcome to the league of draven
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haven't played in any form, but from watching various streamers play TFT the item rng seems really swingy

looks pretty cool other than that (And is a fun watch), but nothing I care to install league/dota over

TFT you gotta install league launcher but Underlords is its own game to install, it's not in the dota client.

TFT is definitely item swingy. They are taking steps to add guaranteed drops to reduce the RNG but i think stacking items on carries is way too strong right now anyways.
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Have played a few bot games to get the hang of it

Against medium bots I always dominate in the beginning but then around mid game I just... Stop winning ever. I suspect I'm underspending on experience and/or overspending to dig for copies of my dudes
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I played 4 games of Chess Rush (dota auto chess ripoff made by Tencent) and won all 4. Some of the localization is like really bad, but it plays pretty well. A lot of the units are pretty much copy and paste from autochess but there are some minor differences in synergies and such as well as some having more bonuses for upgrading.

There is some good QOL stuff like being able to have the game alert you to heroes that fit your game plan by picking a comp you are trying to go into, how many of each hero in the shop you currently have, if they fit a synergy you have, etc. Items also have a drop down that let you know if you can put it on a suitable hero. In addition, once you put an item on a hero and you get one of the same you can upgrade it so it doesn't take a new slot. That said, there is a lot going on and the UI scaling is pretty bad. The chess board itself needs to take more of the screen on mobile. It's just a lot harder to identify a unit by just looking at them due to the size and that's a pretty big issue.

While I don't think the actual character models are that great overall, the attack animations are stuff looks amazing for the style of game. Like in normal autochess mobile the legendary wizard guys attack is not very visible on screen, but in this game you see this huge orb just bouncing around the enemy team. It's a lot easier to tell when your big hitters are doing the damage you want them to do. Same with the lightblade night (luna in dota). In autochess mobile her attack has like almost no real animation effects but you can clearly see it here.

There is also English voice acting right out of the gates. There are only like 4 little avatar things right now and they have unique voices from what i understand. I mean some of them are behind paywalls, but the game has to make money some how. You start with this cute... bear? I think or maybe a dog? I'm not quite sure but when you start a game all the player models go through like fly through a warp zone.

The games themselves move a little faster than normal autochess and you have a new turbo mode with double gold and xp (haven't played it yet). But games still take between 25-30 minutes overall on the normal mode. Still, you tend to get more gold, you start out using more heroes, and you get more xp for spending gold on xp so you can boost to higher levels faster. The creep battles you get are also much easier than in autochess. Some stuff needs to be cleaned up like you can drag to sell or drag to equip etc.
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