I'm sure this will get a lot of people angry, but I'd like to add some fairly level criticism of what we've seen so far, and dull down the ridiculous hype surrounding this game right now.
I'm aware that there has only been one gameplay trailer for the game. But if you're going to release that to the public and claim it as almost finished gameplay, then you can't blame me for assuming that's what the game is going to be like.
Point 1: The Business model. We've now dropped another faction since Dawn of War 2 releasing with 4 races. That was pretty bad but now this is worse; one less faction means less diverse multiplayer at launch and a greater chance for repetitive games.
Point 2: The Campaign. As quoted by PC Gamer, the campaign for this instalment will not be separate for the Orks, Eldar, and Space Marines; instead it will move between the 3 races between missions. This could be an interesting move or a terrible one. I'm hinging on terrible as allowing for multiple endings in that format sounds impossible.
Point 3: Hero Units. I don't have a problem with the mechanic itself, but lore wise I have a problem with it because, so far, the hero units have been blown up in terms of scale so that they tower over other units - Gabriel Angelos looks like a giant compared to a typical Space Marine. And did I mention he can jump across chasms in Terminator Armour?
Point 4: Voice Acting. So far we've only seen 2 voices, one of which is decent, the other one being a crap rendition of Gabriel Angelos from the previous games. Guess which one it belongs to? I have no idea why Relic didn't call back the actor for Angelos, but I wish they had.
Point 5: Base Building. This is the worst sin by far in what we've seen of the game. This is also the most subjective of my points but hear me out on this one. Ask yourself if you've ever said this statement "X strategy game is amazing - the base building carries it all the way!"; base building is imo an obnoxious mechanic that takes you away from the battles going on in the game for the sake of going through red tape to build your units to fight. I didn't like DOW2's system till I played Ground Control 2 (a game I highly recommend to any strategy gamer), where battles are fought over drop zones across the map which are used to carry more units into the fight via a controllable dropship. This meant that time spent clicking for units was kept at a minimum while introducing an interesting dynamic where you could call in units to land in the middle of the map, and not controlling any landing zones meant you had to quickly capture one from your opponent before you ran out of units and lost subsequently. Does that sound like a way better mechanic that is way more fitting of the 40k universe than base building? It does to me.
Point 6: Relic is not what it used to be. Relic entertainment went bankrupt sometime in 2011 or 2012, with Space Marine being one of their last games (another great 40k game I recommend to all readers). Since then Sega has bought all their intellectual property (including Company of Heroes, the game that formed the template for DOW2). Anybody remember Company of Heroes 2 that came out a year or so ago? I don't cos it was a lazy cash in that failed to change anything significant to COH1, in fact lowering the diversity of the original game by removing (you guessed it) another faction at launch. Fact of the matter is Sega is a pretty terrible publisher that has no respect for a lot of the IPs it owns, and DOW3 is set to be its next target.
These are just some of the things I could come up with. I will be very pleased if this game becomes the opposite of what I think it is now. Regardless I'd love to hear anyone's opinion on this and whether you agree or disagree with the points I made.
I'm not sure I understand your point 1. How was DoW2 releasing with 4 races 'pretty bad'? DoW1 also released with 4 races. No DoW game has released with more than 4.
Avatar 720 wrote: I'm not sure I understand your point 1. How was DoW2 releasing with 4 races 'pretty bad'? DoW1 also released with 4 races. No DoW game has released with more than 4.
In technicality it was 5 as the IG featured in the campaign, however they wouldn't become playable until the Winter Assault expansion; Dawn of War 1 was the exception to me as the lack of diversity in the factions was made up with the diversity of units that each faction had to offer.
General Annoyance wrote: Ask yourself if you've ever said this statement "X strategy game is amazing - the base building carries it all the way!"
Actually, yes. Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander I could say this about. But they're a dramatically different type of base building than you're used to, from your described experience.
The Stronghold series also comes to mind; a castle-building sim where base building its pretty much the core of the game.
I will grant you that the Starcraft variation on base building is lame and a detriment to the games that have it in them, but not all base building is like that.
Psienesis wrote:Base-building was part of the original game, and in Soulstorm, as well. Kinda missed that aspect in the other games.
You missed it for what reason exactly? I for one thought it made sense at the time in terms of the continuous campaigns in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm, ad whatever you built each match would remain if you captured that territory, but other than that was pretty tedious.
Melissia wrote:
General Annoyance wrote: Ask yourself if you've ever said this statement "X strategy game is amazing - the base building carries it all the way!"
Actually, yes. Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander I could say this about. But they're a dramatically different type of base building than you're used to, from your described experience.
The Stronghold series also comes to mind; a castle-building sim where base building its pretty much the core of the game.
I will grant you that the Starcraft variation on base building is lame and a detriment to the games that have it in them, but not all base building is like that.
Out of those games I have played Supreme Commander; I can understand the base building mechanic in that as the large "superweapon" style units and buildings needed to take time and effort in order to construct in order to balance the game out. Makes sense in a castle building game for obvious reasons too.
But we're talking about Dawn of War here. If I were to make a comparison, I'd compare the current DOW games most closely to the Command and Conquer series, specifically Tiberium Wars as this kinda had a squad system in its infantry units (DOW2 is a bit of a weird hybrid that I've never really seen before). As much as I love C&C, base building in those games is even worse than in DOW because of the existence of superweapons. If your game needs something to break a stalemate because one player has turtled and created a nearly impenetrable base, then I'd consider that a flaw honestly.
A campaign which moves between factions allows for better pacing and acceleration of the story, however it also makes the story seem pointless as any progress by one faction is undone by the victories of the next.
Melissia wrote: You asked the question, you know, and I answered. The problem is, you asked the wrong question.
Yes you did answer the question, very well in fact. I stand corrected on that one.
Still, does it apply to what I'm saying about the DOW franchise? I don't think it does
G.A
Thus the last part of my sentence. The point of my post was that base building can be done well, even though it usually isn't because so many games are starcrapped clones.
I'm not sure we need an entirely new thread about DoW 3, but whatever - people gon' complain.
Point 1 - Where is it written that four races are a must in order for a game to succeed? For most games of the strategy variety getting more than two generally means you have to pay more for Day 1 release content. Which, given how the market has been progressing, is probably what you'll see - 3 launch races and if you pre-order you'll get Chaos or some other race for free.
Additionally, as you've been told by others, DoW2 released with 4 races, as did 1. And no, the Imperial Guard don't count given that they weren't available for multiplayer.
Point 2 - You said it yourself, they're releasing the game with three races - and the chances of having 3, 12 or more mission campaigns are almost non-existent. There's nothing inherently bad about a campaign that follows three different races, I'd like an example of where this didn't work out before I change my mind.
Point 3 - This is a fluff argument, if you prefer I can list the number of fluff errors available throughout the franchise that would have made every game terrible. Is the terminator-leaping Angelos silly? Yes, and I love ever second he's on screen.
Point 4 - This is a personal opinion and can, in no reasonable way, be used to measure the quality of a game that hasn't even been released yet. But I get what you're saying, the original voice actor for Angelos was amazing.
Point 5 - I think if they wanted to include base building, they should up the scale of the game. Dawn of War it made sense given the enormity of the fighting taking place, DoW2 less so (and why it was scrapped I think), given the small surgical strikes you were tasked with making. Now, DoW3 seems to be a mixture of 1 and 2, I can't say that basebuilding ISN'T necessary, but the scope of battle so far presented doesn't make a good argument FOR a base building mechanic. Also, cover looks stupid.
Additionally, yes I can name several games where the base building MADE the game - but again, their scale was meant to showcase a massive fight over a huge area of operation.
Point 6 - CoH 1 and 2 were amazing games. The competitive scene for 1 moved onto CoH 2 quite easily and is STILL played - the diversity among the armies is actually pretty intense given the generals you can choose. And Sega doesn't need to respect anything - they're a publisher of videogames, they'll make what sells and that's it.
Sounds like your taste in games is entirely different from mine. Luckily you are in the minority, and DoW3 will not cater to your tastes.
Without base-building, an RTS game is not a game at all. When all you have to do is kite the enemy into safe zones and kill them like in DoW2, there is no strategy. There are no tactics. All you need to win is patience. Even Company of Heroes required you to manage resources and build things.
The voice acting in DoW (and all RTS games) has always been campy and terrible, on par with low-caliber Saturday morning cartoons at best. I enjoy the camp and the awfulness, so no issues there. I'm not expecting Shakespeare here.
Space Marine is one of the worst games ever made. Some critics have compared it to Gears of War, but it doesn't hold a candle. It's really trying more to be God of War, but it doesn't come close to that either. It's a cheap arcade game along the lines of Final Fight or Double Dragon, really. Those games were fun in their era but ultimately shallow and empty without friends, and Space Marine has no co-op multiplayer.
As for factions, the fewer the better. An RTS should have three factions at most, but two is preferable. More factions means wasting development resources so none of the factions are as good as they could be, and balance becomes unattainable so the weakest factions will simply never get played. Waste of time and money. The shifting-perspective campaign sounds like a hassle, but it worked in DoW: Winter Assault.
Maybe DoW3 will be an abysmal failure like CoH2, or maybe it will be the renaissance that brings Relic back from the dead. All I know is that they need to stay as far away from DoW2 as possible unless they're trying to make an RPG or an online-only MOBA.
Frankenberry wrote: I'm not sure we need an entirely new thread about DoW 3, but whatever - people gon' complain.
Point 1 - Where is it written that four races are a must in order for a game to succeed? For most games of the strategy variety getting more than two generally means you have to pay more for Day 1 release content. Which, given how the market has been progressing, is probably what you'll see - 3 launch races and if you pre-order you'll get Chaos or some other race for free.
Additionally, as you've been told by others, DoW2 released with 4 races, as did 1. And no, the Imperial Guard don't count given that they weren't available for multiplayer.
Point 2 - You said it yourself, they're releasing the game with three races - and the chances of having 3, 12 or more mission campaigns are almost non-existent. There's nothing inherently bad about a campaign that follows three different races, I'd like an example of where this didn't work out before I change my mind.
Point 3 - This is a fluff argument, if you prefer I can list the number of fluff errors available throughout the franchise that would have made every game terrible. Is the terminator-leaping Angelos silly? Yes, and I love ever second he's on screen.
Point 4 - This is a personal opinion and can, in no reasonable way, be used to measure the quality of a game that hasn't even been released yet. But I get what you're saying, the original voice actor for Angelos was amazing.
Point 5 - I think if they wanted to include base building, they should up the scale of the game. Dawn of War it made sense given the enormity of the fighting taking place, DoW2 less so (and why it was scrapped I think), given the small surgical strikes you were tasked with making. Now, DoW3 seems to be a mixture of 1 and 2, I can't say that basebuilding ISN'T necessary, but the scope of battle so far presented doesn't make a good argument FOR a base building mechanic. Also, cover looks stupid.
Additionally, yes I can name several games where the base building MADE the game - but again, their scale was meant to showcase a massive fight over a huge area of operation.
Point 6 - CoH 1 and 2 were amazing games. The competitive scene for 1 moved onto CoH 2 quite easily and is STILL played - the diversity among the armies is actually pretty intense given the generals you can choose. And Sega doesn't need to respect anything - they're a publisher of videogames, they'll make what sells and that's it.
Apologies for the new thread - I have only just returned to the forums and wanted to start a thread that wasn't already 10 pages in about this already.
One of my favourite strategy franchises is the Command and Conquer franchise, which at most only had 3 factions in any game at any time in the series. The difference between them and the DOW factions is that the Global Defence Initiative, the Brotherhood of Nod, Scrin, USA, China etc. all had a very large roster of units that made up for any lack of diversity created by a small number of factions. The DOW games imo (especially DOW2) do not have that, and thus rely on more factions to make up for it.
I'm praying to the lord that there is not a preorder bonus faction like in Total War: Warhammer - that would break my heart
No there isn't anything inherently wrong about this campaign system, apart from the limited scope of potential to make branching endings; sounds like this campaign will only have one ending, and if it doesn't end with the Blood Ravens being victorious, then I'll eat my shoes.
A fluff argument it is indeed, however I feel this is far more important in games tied to the Warhammer 40k universe than a modern IP due to its very long and detailed history. They can make errors that you would probably miss, a captain jumping across the screen in Terminator armour is a bit hard to pass by.
Again this is also fairly subjective of me, as most of these things are, but I feel like DOW2 made up for the poor acting in DOW1 immensely; hell I still quote lines in my head about it to this day. It just sucks that the previous actor did not return, as he has voiced Angelos for all the games so far.
As discussed before, I realise base building has its place, just not here in a game that owes its heritage to a tabletop game that doesn't have anything like base building - just epic army clashes.
COH1 was brilliant, as was 2, but only because 2 is a carbon copy of 1 with a different skin over it and some fairly disposable mechanics like weather and weapon drops; I didn't bother picking it up for that reason, instead playing it at a friends house. And of course a publisher's first intent is to make money, but a lot of them do (or at least used to) care about the product they're making
Sounds like your taste in games is entirely different from mine. Luckily you are in the minority, and DoW3 will not cater to your tastes.
Without base-building, an RTS game is not a game at all. When all you have to do is kite the enemy into safe zones and kill them like in DoW2, there is no strategy. There are no tactics. All you need to win is patience. Even Company of Heroes required you to manage resources and build things.
The voice acting in DoW (and all RTS games) has always been campy and terrible, on par with low-caliber Saturday morning cartoons at best. I enjoy the camp and the awfulness, so no issues there. I'm not expecting Shakespeare here.
Space Marine is one of the worst games ever made. Some critics have compared it to Gears of War, but it doesn't hold a candle. It's really trying more to be God of War, but it doesn't come close to that either. It's a cheap arcade game along the lines of Final Fight or Double Dragon, really. Those games were fun in their era but ultimately shallow and empty without friends, and Space Marine has no co-op multiplayer.
As for factions, the fewer the better. An RTS should have three factions at most, but two is preferable. More factions means wasting development resources so none of the factions are as good as they could be, and balance becomes unattainable so the weakest factions will simply never get played. Waste of time and money. The shifting-perspective campaign sounds like a hassle, but it worked in DoW: Winter Assault.
Maybe DoW3 will be an abysmal failure like CoH2, or maybe it will be the renaissance that brings Relic back from the dead. All I know is that they need to stay as far away from DoW2 as possible unless they're trying to make an RPG or an online-only MOBA.
I've always been in the gaming minority - seems like I'm a typical contrarian when it comes to these types of discussions.
Your first point makes no sense; go out and play Ground Control 1 and 2, Wargame and any of the Total Wars, then come back and say games without base building lack any strategy. DOW2 shifted strategy to a tactical focus, one which received mixed approval - to me it better suited the manner of many skirmishes that take place in the 40k universe, considering that only prolonged campaigns in this universe build FOBs to fight in the conflicts.
Some "critics" have compared Space Marine to Gears of War cos they are ignorant of 40k's history and how 40k is responsible for the design of games like GOW and even the Terran Marines from Starcraft. You also have not mentioned anything wrong with the game other than making weird comparisons to games that aren't really anything like it; Space Marine was not God of War because God of War is a spectacle fighter - Space Marine is better described as a fighter hybrid that punishes you hard on the harder difficulties for button mashing (unlike the other games you mentioned) and rewards precision and timed combos. The game also featured a co-op mode called Exterminatus (not the campaign if that was what you were getting at). Either way, saying things like it being "one of the worst games ever made" and "shallow and empty without friends" are ironically shallow arguments with no actual evidence to back them.
Multiple factions work in a game if they are well thought out - there's no difference in my mind between making 2 or 3 factions with huge rosters and 6 or 7 factions with smaller rosters. Again multiple factions is a pretty major reason why many play DOW - they want to play the race they know and love if they can. They will arrive I'm sure, but I'm talking about the game at launch, not later
I'm personally super excited for DoW 3. Sure the backflipping terminators are a bit silly, but I'm still looking forward to the game. They have plenty of time left to tweak the game
War Kitten wrote: I'm personally super excited for DoW 3. Sure the backflipping terminators are a bit silly, but I'm still looking forward to the game. They have plenty of time left to tweak the game
Believe me I'd love to be proven wrong on this - DOW2 was a game I played for hours on end. DOW1 not so much, but still something I enjoyed.
The game is scheduled for 2017, so they could make drastic changes. However looking at it the game looks mostly complete (despite being in alpha state rn) - I don't think any major changes to mechanics such a base building will occur, especially when they're promoting it as a key feature.
Joking aside. I don't see the point to this, any game release should be considered garbage until proven otherwise.
Yeah I probably do need to work on my titles a bit
The point of this is that there is proof about the game in the form of their gameplay trailer. I'm not directing this next bit at you, but if anyone puts forward the argument "well it's just alpha footage" or "the footage is staged to make the game look better" - 1. Yes it's alpha footage, but if they're going to release it then they should expect anyone to be able to show legitimate criticism of it, and 2. If the footage is staged, then that doesn't exactly help my opinion when I already have problems with it.
And yes most of my argument is pretty subjective, as are most people's opinions on videogames in various aspects
I was very excited until I saw the base building and the cover mechanic: the way how it seems only certain specific areas can provide cover is such a step-back from the amazing fights we had in DoW2 with your squads setting up behind rubble, rocks, or other kinds of cover.
Now the Knight, the Knight was a thing of beauty. Loved how beautiful the units looked and game looked, very colourful, very bright but still GrimDark.
TheDraconicLord wrote: I was very excited until I saw the base building and the cover mechanic: the way how it seems only certain specific areas can provide cover is such a step-back from the amazing fights we had in DoW2 with your squads setting up behind rubble, rocks, or other kinds of cover.
Now the Knight, the Knight was a thing of beauty. Loved how beautiful the units looked and game looked, very colourful, very bright but still GrimDark.
Not going to deny the graphical fidelity of the game - it has some amazing visuals, in particular the effects from Eldar Shuriken Catapults; I hope they still have that weird noise they had in DOW2. By the looks of it cover can be placed down for your troops, but I agree it looks less interesting than the environmental features in DOW2
Does this thread has a terrible click-bait-y title? Click here to find out. What happens next will leave you speechless. Nah seriously, it will be utter garbage: no SoB in it :â‹…D.
Model quality
Sound and effect quality (weapon sounds etc, wraithcannons! With the exception of bolters)
Cover
Tactical combat
Commander implementation
Absence of base building
DoW2 did bad:
Lore balance (Catachan punches hit harder than Big Choppa nobz and their shotguns hit harder than Warp Spider weapons).
Model scale (Guardsmen are taller than Marines in PA)
DoW1 was hardly better in these regards though.
Ie, DoW2 with the right mods is mostly the perfect game for me.
Model quality
Sound and effect quality (weapon sounds etc, wraithcannons! With the exception of bolters)
Cover
Tactical combat
Commander implementation
Absence of base building
DoW2 did bad:
Lore balance (Catachan punches hit harder than Big Choppa nobz and their shotguns hit harder than Warp Spider weapons).
Model scale (Guardsmen are taller than Marines in PA)
DoW1 was hardly better in these regards though.
Ie, DoW2 with the right mods is mostly the perfect game for me.
But the same might yet go for DoW3. We will see.
Would agree with you on all of that, except you forgot that amazing soundtrack DOW2 came with. Still listening to it to this day!
We haven't really heard any of the new DOW's OST, so I guess that is something I can look forward to (hopefully)
Thought you meant sound as in weapons and environment - my bad!
I think the soundtrack in that game (in combination with the voice acting) was so good to me because for me it encapsulated from that point onward how I think of the races featured in the game in my head; I think they did a great job of realising the 40k universe in that regard, far better than what they did in the first instalment
I'll be honest, I preferred Dawn of War I to Dawn of War II. The basebulding and larger force sizes felt more 40k to me. Not to mention I didn't particularly like the format and general feel of DoW II.
I have no idea how anyone can honestly claim that base building is a 40k thing.
Scale is debatable, but honestly, that's not. Calling down turrets or cover, yes. Base building with research and production on-site? no. The way Dawn of War 2 handled it was as fluffy as you can get while having proper RTS-style bases.
The basebulding and larger force sizes felt more 40k to me.
What? Where has there ever been base building in 40k?
Base building is a relic left over from previous RTS games. In 40k it has only the most niche of places, and should not exist at all as a Space Marine player.
Base building isn't just "not a 40k thing", it shouldn't be a thing anywhere. Remember what that RT in RTS is supposed to stand for? Real Time. This not a genre where it makes sense for your troops to sit in one place digging trenches for hours just to have even the most basic kind of "base", and it's absolutely stupid to have the kind of "we're under attack! Quick, build a tank factory so we can build more units to fight back!" nonsense of games like Starcraft. It's right up there with "clicks per second" and having overcoming terrible interface design be considered an essential component of player skill on the list of bad game mechanics that should have died decades ago.
Peregrine wrote: Base building isn't just "not a 40k thing", it shouldn't be a thing anywhere. Remember what that RT in RTS is supposed to stand for? Real Time. This not a genre where it makes sense for your troops to sit in one place digging trenches for hours just to have even the most basic kind of "base", and it's absolutely stupid to have the kind of "we're under attack! Quick, build a tank factory so we can build more units to fight back!" nonsense of games like Starcraft. It's right up there with "clicks per second" and having overcoming terrible interface design be considered an essential component of player skill on the list of bad game mechanics that should have died decades ago.
Its the only sensible way to draw out the experience though. There are games (and mods for dow) that allow you both to start with a full army and then have at it.
Base building allows you to start with smaller skirmishes, fighting over ground with less units and progress into full blown battles.
You could hold ground and get rewarded with reinforcements but there's no management of resources there.
DOW2 allowed you access to your units in the campaign but you never progressed past skirmishes. Your three marine squads and their commander would fight maybe 10 or so orks at a time. A single ork dreadnought was a dangerous threat, 2 was time to retreat.
Further- the elite strike team model didn't gel well with other factions in Retribution- the Guard and the orks relying on kick ass specialists rather than mobs was particularly grating- even if you did get to buy disposable grunts during the missions with power and requisition just lying around in crates.
Having a base is certainly not alien to 40k- whether in the background or the fortifications shoehorned in in the past few years. You'd expect that the Ork Camp be located a tad further from the Guard HQ but that's an abstraction to keep dismounted infantry relevant.
Finally, in DC, you had multiple ways to win.
Destroy the enemy stronghold- a perfectly viable strategy in 40k lore. Tear down the enemy's production facilities and reduce his ability to make war against you. That should work against any army- even marines need planetside bases when their ships are busy in orbit and cannot redeploy them at will.
You could win by controlling a percentage of the critical points (Victory Countdown has begun!) thus winning without ever seeing the enemy base. This was particularly effective against opponents who were 'castling' and building their base with lots of turrets and so forth, neglecting the land war.
DOW2 missions felt much more rail roaded- there was less player agency during the mission. This reflects the worst traits of 40k on tabletop.
You should go play Ground Control 2 if you haven't already; that game has no base building but resource management too. Each map has 3-4 landing zones that you must capture to send in new units via dropship, while other smaller points are scattered about that add a steady trickle of resources that you need to request for units in the first place (otherwise players would just call in the biggest units they have available). The way to win the game was to destroy the enemy's current ground forces and either deplete them of resources so they cannot request new units or to capture all the landing zones so they have nowhere to land.
You could even upgrade and set your dropship to join the fight after it deploys new units for around 30 seconds to cover your landing zone, but if it's shot down, you're going to be crippled for a while.
So there you are - a game with no base building that has a scale of combat from skirmish to full on battle with resource management. Now picture a 40k setting with Thunderhawks/Valkyries/Orcas/Chinnorks fulfilling the same mechanic. That's a million times more representative than base building
Dawn of War with starting armies is a horrible game, even worse than as it is. The base building fakes tactical depth (in truth having an optimised build order is best) and without it the sheer grindiness of the game becomes evident.
Look at Total War for an example of a game series that does proper tactical combat without on-site construction.
A TW-esque game on a much smaller scale and with more detail and terrain would be excellent. You could easily make the campaign map work in 40k; SM just have ships instead of territories (or better yet, the Imperium is simply a single big faction).
Peregrine wrote: Base building isn't just "not a 40k thing", it shouldn't be a thing anywhere.
There are some games-- like the Total Annihilation series and their spiritual sequels-- that actually do justify base buildings in-universe, through high technology and magic. The fact that in these games, most of the units are either robots or fast-baked clones programmed to only obey your commands helps in that regard. They are built and programmed from a template on the commander, who is explicitly able to create a base in mere minutes or hours of effort.
But in most games, base building is an odd abstraction.
I think doing 40k the way the Wargame series does it would work though.
I really hope DoW3 goes back to DoW. DoW2 just felt like a bad Warcraft 3, and there's nothing quite like building up a massive force then crushing your opponent in one swoop.
I think my point of "basebuilding is more 40k" got mixed up via my own poor choice of words.
Rather, I saw 40k as far larger, less of a personal experience of named characters, and more of armies clashing over battlefields. In my experiences of both games, DoW 1 felt better at that than DoW 2.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I think my point of "basebuilding is more 40k" got mixed up via my own poor choice of words.
Rather, I saw 40k as far larger, less of a personal experience of named characters, and more of armies clashing over battlefields. In my experiences of both games, DoW 1 felt better at that than DoW 2.
I think it fell more in line with the fluff. Not the bases, but the scale of armies. DoW2 felt more Space Hulk level, while DoW1 felt more "Planet war" level.
Whilst I agree with a lot of the what the OP has said, I do believe that Sega are doing a pretty good job...well at least with some studios. Creative Assembly for example have gone from strength to strength and they seem to be doing a good job at making quality games for a number of IPs.
I did however feel sad when I watched a terminator doing back flips and the whole colorful kiddy look to the game is a right turn off. May check out Halo Wars 2 for my Sci fi RTS kicks.
jreilly89 wrote: I really hope DoW3 goes back to DoW. DoW2 just felt like a bad Warcraft 3
... if anything, DoW1 felt like a bad Warcraft 3. DoW2 felt almost nothing like any of the 'craft series games.
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jreilly89 wrote: I think it fell more in line with the fluff. Not the bases, but the scale of armies. DoW2 felt more Space Hulk level, while DoW1 felt more "Planet war" level.
Both of them are perfectly valid interpretations of 40k, but the thing is, to get the larger scale, you don't necessarily need a base building function. Wargame comes to mind, a scale far larger than DoW1, yet there's no base building at all-- at most, you can put supply depots down (the game has an ammunition and fuel supply system that you need to consider logistics for your units occasionally), and that's it.
The amazingly horrible pathing of DoW effectively limits fight size to a queue. I played Tau a lot and I remember the Broadsides requiring absurd amounts of space to move, creating chokepoints in your own army if it consists of more than a few units.
DoW2 did not have big battles (unless you mod it) and DoW failed to do big battles well. Sorry, no points to DoW.
=Angel= wrote: Its the only sensible way to draw out the experience though. There are games (and mods for dow) that allow you both to start with a full army and then have at it.
Base building allows you to start with smaller skirmishes, fighting over ground with less units and progress into full blown battles.
But why do you need to draw out the experience? If you want to fight a small skirmish and then a huge battle just have two separate missions. It's better to have a short mission that is great at all times than a small amount of awesome stuff drawn out into an hour of playing time by adding in low-value filler content.
You could hold ground and get rewarded with reinforcements but there's no management of resources there.
Good. Resource management in the Starcraft sense is a terrible mechanic. An RTS should be about commanding your army, not about micromanaging how many dollars your harvesting units are collecting to pay for new units.
Having a base is certainly not alien to 40k- whether in the background or the fortifications shoehorned in in the past few years.
Having a base is fine. Building a base is not. There's a huge difference between one or more players starting the game in a fortified position and magically building concrete fortifications/tank factories/etc in a few seconds as an enemy force is closing on your units.
But why do you need to draw out the experience? If you want to fight a small skirmish and then a huge battle just have two separate missions. It's better to have a short mission that is great at all times than a small amount of awesome stuff drawn out into an hour of playing time by adding in low-value filler content.
You draw out the experience so that you balance time to react, firefight time and game length.
You don't want the game to be able to end in 2 mins flat, your expert deployment allowing your guys to gun down the enemy in record time- leaving no time for the other player to learn why he lost.
Ideally the game would be paced so that you can adapt to a setback rather than the loss of a few units being an auto failure. You don't want to achieve this learning/adaptation time through high time-to-kill (TTK) firefights or the game becomes boring and static.
DOW achieved this time through ramping up the scale of the conflict gradually. FPS with low TTK achieve this through a respawn mechanic that lest the players try again immediately after they get killed. (Counterstrike is an interesting exception where games tend to be short and sweet, low TTK and permadeath meaning the game is over in a sudden blaze of action.)
In addition- the early steps of the game aren't filler- they are crucial and tense scounting/recon actions. Keeping units alive whilst trying to out maneuver the enemy and secure vital areas- retreat or attack when faced with enemy units- building up a picture of where the enemy is.
Good. Resource management in the Starcraft sense is a terrible mechanic. An RTS should be about commanding your army, not about micromanaging how many dollars your harvesting units are collecting to pay for new units.
40k is (now) about grabbing victory points throughout the game. In DOW you are permitted to introduce new equipment or reinforcements in exchange for your victory points rather than just waving them in your opponents face at the end of the game.
Having a base is fine. Building a base is not. There's a huge difference between one or more players starting the game in a fortified position and magically building concrete fortifications/tank factories/etc in a few seconds as an enemy force is closing on your units.
Whereas in 40k, both players can purchase a freaking castle as part of their army if they so choose.
Base building is an abstraction like Battlefield's control points. The USMC don't defeat their enemies by slowly lowering their flags and raising Old Glory.
I agree that it's silly on the face of it but the purpose it serves and the depth it adds to what would otherwise be a deathmatch amkes it worthy of inclusion, IMHO.
General Annoyance wrote: I'll stress again that Ground Control and Wargame both have resource management, no base building and make sense as well
I haven't played them and can't weigh in on that discussion.
The wikipedia article does say that
Because it is a real-time tactics game, Ground Control does not use the mechanics of resource and economic management as found in some real-time strategy games
and that pre-mission unit selection is very important.
General Annoyance wrote: I'll stress again that Ground Control and Wargame both have resource management, no base building and make sense as well
I haven't played them and can't weigh in on that discussion. The wikipedia article does say that
Because it is a real-time tactics game, Ground Control does not use the mechanics of resource and economic management as found in some real-time strategy games
and that pre-mission unit selection is very important.
That was Ground Control 1. Ground Control 2: Operation Exodus (I linked gameplay above) has acquisition points that you spend to request for more units that are earned by capturing points on the map. Only the first game had a pre mission army selection (much like a certain tabletop game that DOW takes its universe from)
=Angel= wrote: You don't want to achieve this learning/adaptation time through high time-to-kill (TTK) firefights or the game becomes boring and static.
BS. 40k games should take their time instead of rushing down everyone. Marines vs CSM takes time to play out because both are damn tough and IG take time to defeat because they are so damn many.
Every 40k game so far has had a too low TTK. Look at what happens you give a CS TTK to a 40k shooter. You get Eternal Crusade, an utter disaster.
Every 40k game so far has had a too low TTK. Look at what happens you give a CS TTK to a 40k shooter. You get Eternal Crusade, an utter disaster.
Care to elaborate on Eternal Crusade? I haven't managed to get into the early access yet, but from what I'm seeing it looks like a fairly well made 3rd person shooter. Reminds me of Space Marine in mostly good respects
Everything dies insanely quickly. The game does not offer a believable reason for SM to wear armour at all given how quickly you die even with it. The game also heavily rewards camping for that reason.
In Space Marine you could at least take half a magazine of bolter rounds or so before you went down, even at point blank, and that was still a bit harsh considering Marine armor resists their own weapons well. In EC you die in a split second.
This is without touching on all the other reasons that the game is bad, such as excessive developer greed and deception, art direction...
This might shock you, but Space Marines can die. Sure they are tougher than a normal IG soldier, but at the end of the day they are not each infallible super gods they die all the time to stuff. Some of the mary stu fluff makes them insane but I write that off as bad writing and Imperium propaganda.
In real life bullet resistant armor only works for one bullet and sometimes not even that and soldiers still wear it since anything is better than nothing.
Gamgee wrote: This might shock you, but Space Marines can die. Sure they are tougher than a normal IG soldier, but at the end of the day they are not each infallible super gods they die all the time to stuff.
I was saying 'Space Marines die too fast to their own weapons'.
I know daring to say that Space Marines die too fast to absolutely anything is provoking xeno/IG players into telling you to check your SM privilege, but saying that they kill each other too quickly has no effect whatsoever on your Tau and certainly does not imply that they cannot die.
In real life bullet resistant armor only works for one bullet and sometimes not even that
I thoroughly enjoyed the base building RTS of DoW 1. DoW 2 was much less entertaining for me. Sunk many, many hours of multiplayer into the first but couldn't bother do do more than a dozen matches in 2. I don't care if it's not fluffy. It's not fluffy that two armies would line up roughly 50 meters apart and always in (ostensibly) equally powerful forces but hey, that's an average 40k game and no one is decrying it.
Oh and the 'RT' in RTS doesn't refer to the game world but the players. It's in direct contrast to turn based, as in both players are working in 'real time' to defeat one another.
Frankly if this game is more like DoW1 I'm far more likely to buy it than if it echoes 2.
Model quality
Sound and effect quality (weapon sounds etc, wraithcannons! With the exception of bolters)
Cover
Tactical combat
Commander implementation
Absence of base building
DoW2 did bad:
Lore balance (Catachan punches hit harder than Big Choppa nobz and their shotguns hit harder than Warp Spider weapons).
Model scale (Guardsmen are taller than Marines in PA)
You obviously forgot the most important part:
DoW2 did bad:
-WAY LESS FACTIONS AVAILABLE!!![i]
DOW 1 through SS fan, not so much DOW2.
I like building bases and huge armies. i dont play multi player.
Not impressed by what Ive seen. But its early, so i'll reserve judgement. It looks like a Moba, where you get to call in the creeps. If theyre using the same game engine as COH2, It will be crap.
With COH2s lack of mod ability and $ega$, milk them attitude. I expect the same here. With a added in game store, selling commanders with special abilities, skins and other assorted milk.
Now with the Total war people selling races for $20 squigs. They know they can get away with it. It will be Gdubs prices for a video game. Digital crack instead of plastic.
Melissia wrote: Don't pretend to speak for anyone but yourself.
tone done the aggression a tad melissia, he has a valid point, a lot of RTS players like base building, I do, when done right.
Tone down your tone trolling, lad, because I made a valid point as well. He was making a statement of fact about "most" players likes and what they consider an integral part of the experience, without any evidence to back himself up.
And frankly, there's a difference between liking base building and saying "it's not really real-time strategy without base building". I would argue, for example, that there's far more strategy involved in, for example, Wargame which has no base building, than Starcraft, where it features prominently. But I'd also argue there's far more strategy involved in games like Stronghold or Supreme Commander, too. I like base building. I don't like how DoW1 actually implemented it. And I think moving back to the way DoW1 did it will make the game lesser as a result.
Base building is merely one way it can be done. It can be done well, though most of the time it isn't. And IMO, DoW1 did it poorly.
General Annoyance wrote: I'll stress again that Ground Control and Wargame both have resource management, no base building and make sense as well
Ground Control was a Real Time Tactical game, whereas something like Starcraft is a Real Time Strategy game. There's a significant differnece. DoWI was more the later, and DoWII more the former (in single-player, at least).
General Annoyance wrote: I'll stress again that Ground Control and Wargame both have resource management, no base building and make sense as well
Ground Control was a Real Time Tactical game, whereas something like Starcraft is a Real Time Strategy game. There's a significant differnece. DoWI was more the later, and DoWII more the former (in single-player, at least).
I meant Ground Control 2 mate, as I specified after and before with the gameplay
H.B.M.C. wrote: Never bothered with that one. Was it as good as the first?
Check out the gameplay on page two of this thread - they ditched the real time tactics system for real time strategy, and armies are not selected before battle; my argument was that it makes for a much more viable and true to 40k system whereby captured landing zones are used to call in reinforcements. As a game it was better than the first as the UI was much improved, alongside graphics and gameplay mechanics
@Ashiraya - sorry I didn't reply to you, I guess the low time to kill is a result of the need for game balance - if the Space Marines are as tough as they were in Space Marine then nobody would play Eldar or Orks. Plus I guess most of the weapons in that game aside from the bolters can kill a marine fairly quickly.
I think Space Marine did the toughness correctly, since Captain Titus could easily be butchered by a few Orks and even by sustained Lasgun fire, but if you were good with your combos and skills at aiming and dodging attacks, you became an unstoppable killing machine; a perfect balance of fun gameplay and true to universe effects imo
Melissia wrote: Don't pretend to speak for anyone but yourself.
tone done the aggression a tad melissia, he has a valid point, a lot of RTS players like base building, I do, when done right.
Tone down your tone trolling, lad, because I made a valid point as well. He was making a statement of fact about "most" players likes and what they consider an integral part of the experience, without any evidence to back himself up.
And frankly, there's a difference between liking base building and saying "it's not really real-time strategy without base building". I would argue, for example, that there's far more strategy involved in, for example, Wargame which has no base building, than Starcraft, where it features prominently. But I'd also argue there's far more strategy involved in games like Stronghold or Supreme Commander, too. I like base building. I don't like how DoW1 actually implemented it. And I think moving back to the way DoW1 did it will make the game lesser as a result.
Base building is merely one way it can be done. It can be done well, though most of the time it isn't. And IMO, DoW1 did it poorly.
Actually Mel, you made no point at all, you basically had what I would call a snipe, he made available point that a lot of us (as in, a lot of people) enjoy base building, you don't, that's fine, how you word somthing and how it comes across is very important in a polite conversation.
As to the "most players" he may have a point, as base building is in "nearly" every rts game out there, but it's done badly by most of the rts genre, so I don't enjoy it like I used to, I only like it when it's done right.
I don't dislike base building but I do not feel it fits 40k.
A DoW2-esque system where you have drop-in turrets and webway gates is fine but anything more becomes implausible, unless the scenario is a siege.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Right now I am just waiting for the beta. I will get a DoW3 version of my Forbidden Lore mod rolling as soon as possible. I can already tell the game will need it and hopefully the DoW3 game will be more accepting of a scale adjustment, so to speak.
Formosa wrote: Actually Mel, you made no point at all, you basically had what I would call a snipe,
I don't give a damn what you pretend to call it. That was the point I was making, and quite obviously so, no matter how much you'd like to pretend otherwise.
Could you stop focusing the conversation on me, now?
Formosa wrote: Actually Mel, you made no point at all, you basically had what I would call a snipe,
I don't give a damn what you pretend to call it. That was the point I was making, and quite obviously so, no matter how much you'd like to pretend otherwise.
Could you stop focusing the conversation on me, now?
tried to be polite, now reporting for aggressive behaviour.
Gamgee wrote: This might shock you, but Space Marines can die. Sure they are tougher than a normal IG soldier, but at the end of the day they are not each infallible super gods they die all the time to stuff.
I was saying 'Space Marines die too fast to their own weapons'.
I know daring to say that Space Marines die too fast to absolutely anything is provoking xeno/IG players into telling you to check your SM privilege, but saying that they kill each other too quickly has no effect whatsoever on your Tau and certainly does not imply that they cannot die.
In real life bullet resistant armor only works for one bullet and sometimes not even that
And this is not real life.
This.
Space Marine felt like the best depiction of 40k in a video game setting.
The Space Marines felt powerful and their (incredibly advanced and effective) armour actually looked like it resisted damage (unlike TT, where the d6 system lets them down), yet could easily be killed by other Space Marines or 'Eavy armoured Nobz. The game's hardest difficulty, I thought, was the accurate portrayal of how a Space Marine Captain could tear through an army in such a way. He's never solo-ing an entire Waaagh! - instead, he fights through smaller bands, and takes off the head (quite literally).
Whilst melta-shotgunning in PvP was an issue, it still needed you to get close - bolters didn't just gun Astartes in full power armour down instantly like CoD or CS. The PvP kill time could have been reduced, the effective range or fire rate of meltaguns could have been reduced, and I think power weapons (thunder hammer, power axe, power sword) could maybe have been buffed. Each fight should have felt a little longer, but aside from that, it's been the best way to show Astartes durability.
Whilst melta-shotgunning in PvP was an issue, it still needed you to get close - bolters didn't just gun Astartes in full power armour down instantly like CoD or CS. The PvP kill time could have been reduced, the effective range or fire rate of meltaguns could have been reduced, and I think power weapons (thunder hammer, power axe, power sword) could maybe have been buffed. Each fight should have felt a little longer, but aside from that, it's been the best way to show Astartes durability.
You could play with double armor in custom games.
It felt extremely fluffy and was very skill-receptive since it was harder to camp and oneshot. I wish I had more friends to do that with.
Whilst melta-shotgunning in PvP was an issue, it still needed you to get close - bolters didn't just gun Astartes in full power armour down instantly like CoD or CS. The PvP kill time could have been reduced, the effective range or fire rate of meltaguns could have been reduced, and I think power weapons (thunder hammer, power axe, power sword) could maybe have been buffed. Each fight should have felt a little longer, but aside from that, it's been the best way to show Astartes durability.
You could play with double armor in custom games.
It felt extremely fluffy and was very skill-receptive since it was harder to camp and oneshot. I wish I had more friends to do that with.
Same. I wish there were more lobbies on the game, but it seems most people have stopped. Booted it up not last week, but it seemed no-one was playing.
Same. I wish there were more lobbies on the game, but it seems most people have stopped. Booted it up not last week, but it seemed no-one was playing.
The community on PS3 died sometime this February, as that was the last time I could get a game easy. It still runs peer to peer though, so if you got 3 other friends you could still play Exterminatus together
Or solo it. Solo Exterminatus is immensely enjoyable. Going Assault Marine with Swordman's Zeal is the obvious way to do it but literally five minutes ago I beat my record as Tactical Marine - last wave of arena 2, Chaos Invasion, boltgun + frags + serrated combat blade + larraman's blessing. Over 600 kills!
You are not as powerful as Titus in the singleplayer campaign (he has Fury and execute moves, he doesn't need to brace his heavy bolter, his melee swing combos are more potent, etc; he is a captain after all!) but if you handle it well you can still kick lots and lots of Ork butt.
Everytime I tried Exterminatus on my own I died whenever it reached a "stand on this random circle for 1 minute" wave.
Was much better at the Campaign - beat it on hard without switching out the Chainsword and mostly using the Bolt Pistol/Plasma Pistol (until the game thrusts a Thunder Hammer into your arms in the final batch of levels). That shoulder bash combo is so OP in the campaign
General Annoyance wrote: Everytime I tried Exterminatus on my own I died whenever it reached a "stand on this random circle for 1 minute" wave.
You do not have to stand on it constantly. It is true that they are a bit of a difficulty chokepoint (until the game drowns you in Nobz later on) but you can move on and off, quickly eliminate high damage targets and strategically use grenades.
If you're a fan of DoW2 or Space Marine, then you're the sort of person who would rather watch a movie while holding a controller than actually play a game. You're somebody who hates strategy and doesn't like wargames. DoW3 will not be the right game for you. Strangely, the majority of 40k fans seem to have this attitude.
If you're one of the minority of 40k fans who actually play the tabletop game and you enjoy wargames, DoW3 will probably be your kind of game. Believe it or not, DoW1 was a popular game up until Soulstorm.
Real News wrote: If you're a fan of DoW2 or Space Marine, then you're the sort of person who would rather watch a movie while holding a controller than actually play a game. You're somebody who hates strategy and doesn't like wargames. DoW3 will not be the right game for you. Strangely, the majority of 40k fans seem to have this attitude.
If you're one of the minority of 40k fans who actually play the tabletop game and you enjoy wargames, DoW3 will probably be your kind of game. Believe it or not, DoW1 was a popular game up until Soulstorm.
So because we like 2 specific games that you don't like, we therefore are obliged to hate every other strategy game in existence?
I really don't understand how I somehow have that attitude because I'm tired of strategy games with base building in them; it's an old and tired mechanic that has been ditched by a few strategy titles now. But of course I wouldn't know that because I haven't played Total War, Ground Control, Wargame, WH40K Armageddon, Final Liberation etc etc. Man I hate those games
So if you are still playing the TT version of the game, how does this make DOW3 appeal to you? What part of that game in your eyes makes it automatically catch the eye of TT players?
Also if you want to feel better about your statement, I do enjoy playing Telltale games, so I guess I am the sort of person who likes to watch a move with a controller in my hand. I also like pretty much any game genre in existence apart from sidescrolling fighters and horror games. Oh and Strategy and wargames. I hate those for no apparent reason
Real News wrote: If you're a fan of DoW2 or Space Marine, then you're the sort of person who would rather watch a movie while holding a controller than actually play a game.
You should try playing it before you say things this embarrassing.
If you're one of the minority of 40k fans who actually play the tabletop game
I have 9000 points of Word Bearers and I play regularly. Your turn, .
Real News wrote: If you're a fan of DoW2 or Space Marine, then you're the sort of person who would rather watch a movie while holding a controller than actually play a game. You're somebody who hates strategy and doesn't like wargames. DoW3 will not be the right game for you. Strangely, the majority of 40k fans seem to have this attitude.
If you're one of the minority of 40k fans who actually play the tabletop game and you enjoy wargames, DoW3 will probably be your kind of game. Believe it or not, DoW1 was a popular game up until Soulstorm.
So because we like 2 specific games that you don't like, we therefore are obliged to hate every other strategy game in existence?
I really don't understand how I somehow have that attitude because I'm tired of strategy games with base building in them; it's an old and tired mechanic that has been ditched by a few strategy titles now. But of course I wouldn't know that because I haven't played Total War, Ground Control, Wargame, WH40K Armageddon, Final Liberation etc etc. Man I hate those games
So if you are still playing the TT version of the game, how does this make DOW3 appeal to you? What part of that game in your eyes makes it automatically catch the eye of TT players?
Also if you want to feel better about your statement, I do enjoy playing Telltale games, so I guess I am the sort of person who likes to watch a move with a controller in my hand. I also like pretty much any game genre in existence apart from sidescrolling fighters and horror games. Oh and Strategy and wargames. I hate those for no apparent reason
Fair point!
I like strat games with base building, and I like strat games without base building, mainly ones without these days, whats wrong with a campaign map with stacks like total war? honestly can anyone tell me they wouldn't love TOTAL WAR40k???
By numbers and presence, Sisters are more relevant than Space Marines in a TW style game.
Real News wrote: If you're a fan of DoW2 or Space Marine, then you're the sort of person who would rather watch a movie while holding a controller than actually play a game.
Because apparently, people who like a slightly different playstyle than you aren't REALLY gamers.
Seriously? Even Space Marine can't really be called "watching a movie while holding a controller". Hour by hour going through the game, it really has no more cutscenes than Dawn of War 1, you realize. It was not a Metal Gear style game where there were more cutscenes than actual gameplay. It was very much a gameplay-heavy first person shooter. Same with Dawn of War 2-- a strategy game with a heavy focus on gameplay, a game you have even LESS of an excuse to claim that about than Space Marine, because DoW2 did have base building within its limits to begin with. It just didn't have the generic and frankly out of place starcraft-style base building.
The base building in DoW1 was honestly the worst part of it. It's what you quickly tried to get over with in order to get to the action . Other games-- Command and Conquer 3, for example, or Supreme Commander-- actually have base building as an integral part of the game, with much of the action based around it, rather than base building being a speed bump like it was in DoW1.
Or, to put it another way, if as a dev team you really want DoW3 to have base building, then you need to make base building more interesting. You can make a game where base building is both the core aspect of the game, and make the game fun. But you can't do that if you just half-assedly slap starcrapped style base building on a game that otherwise doesn't really need it.
Melissia wrote: By numbers and presence, Sisters are more relevant than Space Marines in a TW style game.
Real News wrote: If you're a fan of DoW2 or Space Marine, then you're the sort of person who would rather watch a movie while holding a controller than actually play a game.
Because apparently, people who like a slightly different playstyle than you aren't REALLY gamers.
Seriously? Even Space Marine can't really be called "watching a movie while holding a controller". Hour by hour going through the game, it really has no more cutscenes than Dawn of War 1, you realize. It was not a Metal Gear style game where there were more cutscenes than actual gameplay. It was very much a gameplay-heavy first person shooter. Same with Dawn of War 2-- a strategy game with a heavy focus on gameplay, a game you have even LESS of an excuse to claim that about than Space Marine, because DoW2 did have base building within its limits to begin with. It just didn't have the generic and frankly out of place starcraft-style base building.
The base building in DoW1 was honestly the worst part of it. It's what you quickly tried to get over with in order to get to the action . Other games-- Command and Conquer 3, for example, or Supreme Commander-- actually have base building as an integral part of the game, with much of the action based around it, rather than base building being a speed bump like it was in DoW1.
Or, to put it another way, if as a dev team you really want DoW3 to have base building, then you need to make base building more interesting. You can make a game where base building is both the core aspect of the game, and make the game fun. But you can't do that if you just half-assedly slap starcrapped style base building on a game that otherwise doesn't really need it.
Sup com is base building done right, and I very much enjoyed it, satellite bases with tiered defences, scout units etc. So awsome
Ashiraya wrote: They would be part of the Imperium faction, just like SM. Neither have the numbers to hold territory like you do in Total War on a planetary scale.
I'd be okay with this, if I can still play Sisters and no Marines .
=Angel= wrote: You don't want to achieve this learning/adaptation time through high time-to-kill (TTK) firefights or the game becomes boring and static.
BS. 40k games should take their time instead of rushing down everyone. Marines vs CSM takes time to play out because both are damn tough and IG take time to defeat because they are so damn many.
I disagree. Astartes combat is described as brutal and fast. Astartes on Astartes combat moreso- they know their own weaknesses and their durability is balanced by their offensive power.
I think DOW I struck the balance just right- SM v SM/CSM fights did last long enough for everyone to be shooting and swinging for a while.
Conversely, I've broken stalemates with orks by pooping out tons of small boyz squads, setting every squad to auto repopulate and rushing the enemy, repopulating squads faster than they can kill my dudes.
Ashiraya wrote: Every 40k game so far has had a too low TTK. Look at what happens you give a CS TTK to a 40k shooter. You get Eternal Crusade, an utter disaster.
Haven't played it. Have played Space Marine- the combat system didn't lend itself to a high ttk there either. Still, you could tank a few boltershells every now and then without being the worse for wear.
Ashiraya wrote: Every 40k game so far has had a too low TTK. Look at what happens you give a CS TTK to a 40k shooter. You get Eternal Crusade, an utter disaster.
Haven't played it. Have played Space Marine- the combat system didn't lend itself to a high ttk there either. Still, you could tank a few boltershells every now and then without being the worse for wear.
You could take a tonne of bolter shells in Space Marine Multiplayer - at least half a magazine - before you fell down.
Bolters with Kraken Rounds on the other hand... I earned many a killstreak in that game with Kraken Rounds and a Tactical Readout.
Compared to EC, Space Marines were far more durable, and subsequently more true to the universe. However, the time to kill in EC is faster mainly due to the need for game balance between SM, CSM and Eldar
In DoW1, Space Marines were ridiculously weak. Fire Warriors were considerably more expensive and powerful. They made Space Marines weaker than their tabletop incarnation. That is not fluffy, that is downright embarrassing.
Havent read the whole thread so apologies if this has been posted before but there was this reddit post about a 4th race that is currently being kept a secret by the devs. It's an awesome theory.
As for the game itself, I just hope the custom games will be good. I love messing around in skirmishes in DoW1 and 2, I liked DoW1's campaign system too.
TBH, it'd be interesting if Orks were the looming threat, the tidal wave of greenskin technobarbarians threatening to overwhelm everyone, instead of them being basically treated as obnoxious natives needing to be put down.
Still thinking of ways which base building could be made more interesting.
Use the Essence 2 Engine still, but model base building on CoH2.
Orks of course get Russian style base building, they build their structures on the spot because that's how Orks roll-- quickly built ramshackle buildings that are tougher than they appear. Imperial Guard gets British style bases, with built in artillery on each building as it's activated, in to their faction support powers; most of the buildings are pre-built, save for one mobile base building that can produce or reinforce infantry on the spot and provide a secondary retreat point. Space Marines get American style base building, a bunker surrounded by ferrocrete barricades wherein they land drop pods and ready the pods' cargo, with the base being upgraded to be able to deploy more advanced units as time goes on. And so on and so forth-- make each one's base building unique, and don't make the faction construct their base on the spot unless it fits with the faction in question (Orks, Tyranids, Eldar). Other factions should either have a single hardened structure (marines, necrons), or a group of preconstructed buildings that they commandeer one at a time for their purposes (Guard, Chaos, Sisters, Tau), or some other variation that makes them stand out as more unique.
I don't think Space Marines should have base building at all. At most they could garrison existing local defenses (preferably with Guard) and set up Thunderfire Cannons in response to an expected attack. Instead of cities, they would operate out of an upgradable strike cruiser, XCOM style.
They would be the equivalent to Horde factions from other TW games.
It wouldn't be too easy to just move them all over the map though, due to the risk of transport interception and similar - you can easily have a system where you can attack and move fast via air transport but AA defenses can make that impossible (unless part of a combined arms assault).
In that case I'd argue your point is very marine-centric and, rather, the main forces of the Imperium should be, as in the fluff, based around Imperial Guardgrunts, with Marines and Sororitas being elites. Shouldn't even be able to get marines at the equivalent of "tier 1" in however they're designing their system.
While DoW1 certainly had a flawed base building system, I preferred the game overall to DoW2 and would prefer DoW3 to go back to the concept of DoW1 and improve on it.
It would be interesting to see a poll of how many people prefer the idea of base building in an RTS to not. I've never been a huge RTS player, but of the RTS games I like most of them had base building involved.
When you take away the base building I think for the most part I prefer TBS rather than RTS.
Melissia wrote: In that case I'd argue your point is very marine-centric and, rather, the main forces of the Imperium should be, as in the fluff, based around Imperial Guardgrunts, with Marines and Sororitas being elites. Shouldn't even be able to get marines at the equivalent of "tier 1" in however they're designing their system.
That sounds OK to me. The concept of increasing tech and stronger units that we have in each RTS could easily be lore justified with war escalation.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I've never been a huge RTS player, but of the RTS games I like most of them had base building involved.
Aside from DoW2, which ones have you played that you consider not to have it then? Because it sounds like you really haven't played many to begin with. And personally, I'd argue DoW2 does have base building, just streamlined. If you really want a game completely without base building, I'd look at the Wargame series (a game which also mimics how an apocalypse-scale DoW game would function).
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I've never been a huge RTS player, but of the RTS games I like most of them had base building involved.
Aside from DoW2, which ones have you played that you consider not to have it then? Because it sounds like you really haven't played many to begin with. And personally, I'd argue DoW2 does have base building, just streamlined. If you really want a game completely without base building, I'd look at the Wargame series (a game which also mimics how an apocalypse-scale DoW game would function).
I was thinking DoW2, World in Conflict, Warhammer Mark of Chaos and Total War games. I haven't played Wargame, but watching videos I don't particularly want to either.
I'm not in any way saying base building games are better, it just seems in the context of RTS, it's what I prefer and I'd be interested to see what the wider population prefers. I don't consider myself an RTS fan even though there's a few RTS's I've played extensively I won't play a game solely because it's an RTS, it will have to be set in a world I find interesting enough to want to get involved with. If you take away my base building I'd rather just swap to TBS so I simultaneously have time to consider my actions more but also spend less time waiting for things to play out.
Melissia wrote: TBH, it'd be interesting if Orks were the looming threat, the tidal wave of greenskin technobarbarians threatening to overwhelm everyone, instead of them being basically treated as obnoxious natives needing to be put down.
Orks were like that in the original Dawn of War. Sure, you'd assassinate a warboss here, stall them there; they still overwhelmed everything and as soon as you beat Sindri the Space Marines evacuate as the Orks conquer the planet. Still remember those loading screens with the red dots signifying Orks getting larger and larger despite your small scale successes.
In that case I'd argue your point is very marine-centric and, rather, the main forces of the Imperium should be, as in the fluff, based around Imperial Guardgrunts, with Marines and Sororitas being elites. Shouldn't even be able to get marines at the equivalent of "tier 1" in however they're designing their system.
I think that'd be great. Would work well with any Chaos faction they add too.
Could potentially do it doctrine style like in the first Company of Heroes. Choose between Sisters of Battle, Space Marines or Adeptus Mechanicus support (as examples).
I'm not looking forward to Dawn of War III really. Will definitely wait for reviews.
Actually that's a cool idea-- a doctrine style like in CoH2, or perhaps like subfactions in CnC3:Kane's Wrath. That'd be a great way to make all factions more interesting and varied in gameplay.
So Gamescon yielded some actual gameplay footage of DOW3 that I thought I'd share here. First a bit of coverage from IGN:
If what they say is true, this game will be a lot of fun at least on the battle side; not lore friendly at all, but for an RTS, a solid game indeed. However this is IGN, and I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.
Next is some raw gameplay featuring the Eldar Wraithknight, which proves that whoever wrote the reveal article for PC Gamer is a bumbling moron who doesn't fact check. Skip to 1:30 for commentary free footage:
Nice to see these almost "mega" units implemented into the core experience, whereas prior something like this in the last two games would come only from unendorsed mods. They seem to play an important role in game as your trump cards to turn the tide of the battle; shame they can just be mashed by whatever that orbital strike thingy is.
thanks for the vids, I can say I wont be buying this game, its gone in a direction that I as a customer don't like, so I will not be spending any money on it.
Ashiraya wrote:Yeah, this confirms my impression so far; we are back to the zergmarines of DoW1...
Though there are also issues I can't fix with mods, like animations and the removal of a cover system. That I disapprove of.
Yup, lore friendliness is out the window with this game
What makes you disapprove of the cover system? I found it to be pretty cool in DOW2, apart from not being very noticeable game wise; if they made it more important then I'd like it a lot.
Melissia wrote:Looks like it is completely without depth, even moreso than DoW1 was .
I don't quite understand what you mean by this; looking at IGN's coverage (assuming its accurate, which it very well might not be), the game seems to feature a lot of mechanics that add depth to abilities, special units and, most importantly, scale of combat - unmodded this game can supposedly hold many more units on the screen at any one time compared to the previous titles.
Ashiraya wrote:Yeah, this confirms my impression so far; we are back to the zergmarines of DoW1...
Though there are also issues I can't fix with mods, like animations and the removal of a cover system. That I disapprove of.
Yup, lore friendliness is out the window with this game
What makes you disapprove of the cover system? I found it to be pretty cool in DOW2, apart from not being very noticeable game wise; if they made it more important then I'd like it a lot.
Melissia wrote:Looks like it is completely without depth, even moreso than DoW1 was .
I don't quite understand what you mean by this; looking at IGN's coverage (assuming its accurate, which it very well might not be), the game seems to feature a lot of mechanics that add depth to abilities, special units and, most importantly, scale of combat - unmodded this game can supposedly hold many more units on the screen at any one time compared to the previous titles.
The vibe i'm getting from the IGN video is that Dow3 SM has become what Dow1 Necrons were; overwatch (build automatically until you hit the cap) the specific hard counter unit to whatever your opponent is using, and jump/drop them where ever your opponent isn't ready to handle them with little to no actual human intelligence required beyond timing the buildup. Add in a genuine supper unit as opposed to the rather underwhelming land raider and the comparisons just keep coming. Stylistically excellent and entirely keeping with space marine fluff sure, but anyone who played DoW1 back when Necrons were the biznitch will know this is not a recipe for a fun or involving game, especially when SM wil be the go-to mirror match faction.
What DoW1 had was a requirement for a lot more control. For 7/9 of the factions, because the delays in outfitting your multi purpose or general purpose units (IG,SM,CSM before DC,SoB etc) meant you had to not only have a good idea what you were facing, but have the timing down to the second for it to be effective. Conversely, Necrons and Eldar would just spam Dark Reapers/Flayed Ones and eventually Warp Spiders/Immortals with Fire Dragons/Pariahs for flavor, since the former just killed infantry with no recourse, and the latter killed everything, also with no recourse.
Since this is from Relic of "Yeah the Eldar super unit just gives you 25% more hard cap than anyone and removes the fear mechanic from your guys, and also 5 guardsmen will cost only 20% less than 4 space marines and take just as long to deploy" faction balance fame, I'm inclined to see this coming product as more of a multimedia entertainment product than a competition quality game.Hopefully i'm wrong.
I'm sure this will get a lot of people angry, but I'd like to add some fairly level criticism of what we've seen so far, and dull down the ridiculous hype surrounding this game right now.
I'm aware that there has only been one gameplay trailer for the game. But if you're going to release that to the public and claim it as almost finished gameplay, then you can't blame me for assuming that's what the game is going to be like.
Point 1: The Business model. We've now dropped another faction since Dawn of War 2 releasing with 4 races. That was pretty bad but now this is worse; one less faction means less diverse multiplayer at launch and a greater chance for repetitive games.
Point 2: The Campaign. As quoted by PC Gamer, the campaign for this instalment will not be separate for the Orks, Eldar, and Space Marines; instead it will move between the 3 races between missions. This could be an interesting move or a terrible one. I'm hinging on terrible as allowing for multiple endings in that format sounds impossible.
Point 3: Hero Units. I don't have a problem with the mechanic itself, but lore wise I have a problem with it because, so far, the hero units have been blown up in terms of scale so that they tower over other units - Gabriel Angelos looks like a giant compared to a typical Space Marine. And did I mention he can jump across chasms in Terminator Armour?
Point 4: Voice Acting. So far we've only seen 2 voices, one of which is decent, the other one being a crap rendition of Gabriel Angelos from the previous games. Guess which one it belongs to? I have no idea why Relic didn't call back the actor for Angelos, but I wish they had.
Point 5: Base Building. This is the worst sin by far in what we've seen of the game. This is also the most subjective of my points but hear me out on this one. Ask yourself if you've ever said this statement "X strategy game is amazing - the base building carries it all the way!"; base building is imo an obnoxious mechanic that takes you away from the battles going on in the game for the sake of going through red tape to build your units to fight. I didn't like DOW2's system till I played Ground Control 2 (a game I highly recommend to any strategy gamer), where battles are fought over drop zones across the map which are used to carry more units into the fight via a controllable dropship. This meant that time spent clicking for units was kept at a minimum while introducing an interesting dynamic where you could call in units to land in the middle of the map, and not controlling any landing zones meant you had to quickly capture one from your opponent before you ran out of units and lost subsequently. Does that sound like a way better mechanic that is way more fitting of the 40k universe than base building? It does to me.
Point 6: Relic is not what it used to be. Relic entertainment went bankrupt sometime in 2011 or 2012, with Space Marine being one of their last games (another great 40k game I recommend to all readers). Since then Sega has bought all their intellectual property (including Company of Heroes, the game that formed the template for DOW2). Anybody remember Company of Heroes 2 that came out a year or so ago? I don't cos it was a lazy cash in that failed to change anything significant to COH1, in fact lowering the diversity of the original game by removing (you guessed it) another faction at launch. Fact of the matter is Sega is a pretty terrible publisher that has no respect for a lot of the IPs it owns, and DOW3 is set to be its next target.
These are just some of the things I could come up with. I will be very pleased if this game becomes the opposite of what I think it is now. Regardless I'd love to hear anyone's opinion on this and whether you agree or disagree with the points I made.
And remember, play nice!
G.A
Point #1: I agree that starting off with less factions is not great: you alienate those who's favorite army may not be there. I want as many as possible from the get-go.
Point #2: Usually a consistent story that is not jumping around is ideal. What is the benefit of the other viewpoint in a campaign plotline? It would be kind of funny say the SM's smash an Ork outpost and your next game is to rebuild it. Could get you all upset with yourself.
Point #3: Depends on how the hero is presented. He could have some scripted bits where he cannot be directly controlled by the player. Or you get a taste of greatness to get you through a particular hurdle and then "I see more of our kin besieged by the evil Xenos! gotta go, see ya!!!!". You know, handle it as a one-shot summoning with a time limit or more like a cameo where he carves a swath of destruction across the map and leaves barely noticing you are there and leaving you with "cleanup".
Point #4: Remains to be seen what happens there. For the cut-scenes (if they have them) the acting will need to be quite good. I go not notice is as much when I am playing the characters on the board (Unless I hear "Have At Thee!!!!" for the 100th time just moving the guy).
Point #5: I happen to like base building. It is nice to have something to fall back to of your own design if things go south or to act as the anvil to your hammer.
What you suggest is promoting a very much "run and gun" method of play which is ideal for marines, maybe not so much for other races. I suppose making use of structures in the field and applying "enhancements" would be less arduous and more true to the tabletop experience. Imagine what a bone weaver, big mech or techmarine can do when asked to touch-up a bunker.
Point #6: What you point out can pretty much happen with any publisher depending on what folks you put at the development helm and what budget you give them. We may have to wait and see on that.
General Annoyance wrote: I'm sure this will get a lot of people angry, but I'd like to add some fairly level criticism of what we've seen so far, and dull down the ridiculous hype surrounding this game right now.
I'm aware that there has only been one gameplay trailer for the game. But if you're going to release that to the public and claim it as almost finished gameplay, then you can't blame me for assuming that's what the game is going to be like.
Point 1: The Business model. We've now dropped another faction since Dawn of War 2 releasing with 4 races. That was pretty bad but now this is worse; one less faction means less diverse multiplayer at launch and a greater chance for repetitive games.
Point 2: The Campaign. As quoted by PC Gamer, the campaign for this instalment will not be separate for the Orks, Eldar, and Space Marines; instead it will move between the 3 races between missions. This could be an interesting move or a terrible one. I'm hinging on terrible as allowing for multiple endings in that format sounds impossible.
Point 3: Hero Units. I don't have a problem with the mechanic itself, but lore wise I have a problem with it because, so far, the hero units have been blown up in terms of scale so that they tower over other units - Gabriel Angelos looks like a giant compared to a typical Space Marine. And did I mention he can jump across chasms in Terminator Armour?
Point 4: Voice Acting. So far we've only seen 2 voices, one of which is decent, the other one being a crap rendition of Gabriel Angelos from the previous games. Guess which one it belongs to? I have no idea why Relic didn't call back the actor for Angelos, but I wish they had.
Point 5: Base Building. This is the worst sin by far in what we've seen of the game. This is also the most subjective of my points but hear me out on this one. Ask yourself if you've ever said this statement "X strategy game is amazing - the base building carries it all the way!"; base building is imo an obnoxious mechanic that takes you away from the battles going on in the game for the sake of going through red tape to build your units to fight. I didn't like DOW2's system till I played Ground Control 2 (a game I highly recommend to any strategy gamer), where battles are fought over drop zones across the map which are used to carry more units into the fight via a controllable dropship. This meant that time spent clicking for units was kept at a minimum while introducing an interesting dynamic where you could call in units to land in the middle of the map, and not controlling any landing zones meant you had to quickly capture one from your opponent before you ran out of units and lost subsequently. Does that sound like a way better mechanic that is way more fitting of the 40k universe than base building? It does to me.
Point 6: Relic is not what it used to be. Relic entertainment went bankrupt sometime in 2011 or 2012, with Space Marine being one of their last games (another great 40k game I recommend to all readers). Since then Sega has bought all their intellectual property (including Company of Heroes, the game that formed the template for DOW2). Anybody remember Company of Heroes 2 that came out a year or so ago? I don't cos it was a lazy cash in that failed to change anything significant to COH1, in fact lowering the diversity of the original game by removing (you guessed it) another faction at launch. Fact of the matter is Sega is a pretty terrible publisher that has no respect for a lot of the IPs it owns, and DOW3 is set to be its next target.
These are just some of the things I could come up with. I will be very pleased if this game becomes the opposite of what I think it is now. Regardless I'd love to hear anyone's opinion on this and whether you agree or disagree with the points I made.
And remember, play nice!
G.A
Point 1: Did they legit say they are only having 3 races or will there be a big faction reveal like they did with sisters of battle during the making of soulstorm or anything really. Also as others have said guardsmen were NPC's in Dawn of War 1 and that doesn't count. It also doesn't count that you counted DoW 2 with 4 factions in your logic because guard were NPC's there as well.
Point 2: I think it's fine how they've got it going actually. It could be bad but it could portray a full story where the tide of battle gets pushed back and forth with the player at all the pivotal parts. It also provides interesting different takes on it. In some ways they probably did similar in Winter Assault. Remember how you could switch back from eldar and imperial guard in one mission and the missions were all one faction or another. It was more of a good guy campaign (guard and eldar) vs the bad guy campaign (orks and chaos). It worked fairly well but my issue with it was the lack of depth of any one faction and the lack of missions overall if i recall right. Chances are your favorite faction or one you wish to play as will get at most 6 missions if that.
Point 3: Kinda goes with the cartoony theme and to be honest DoW 1 though not super cartoony was definitely over-the-top in a big way. I mean do you expect an avatar of khaine to knock back guys 50+ feet high only to fall on the ground and come back up like they fell out of bed. Keep in mind this included guardsmen and fire warriors as well as cultists. Not too thrilled about the chasm jumps and the size but it fits their new cartoony look.
Point 4: That's a total nothing issue actually. A lot of Triple A games don't have the main voices during production. I've seen 'the witcher' series, starcraft 2, Hitman absolution and maybe a couple others do it (splinter cell?). Even if the DoW 1 gabriel angelos voice actor doesn't come back like he didn't in DoW 2 vanilla he still might come back for the expansions. I'd like to add he's the main character again this time and if you're going to have him as the focus because he was so beloved why wouldn't you keep the voice actor.
Point 5: I liked base building and that's personal preference. I just believe you need a base. I think star wars: empire at war did it best. You have a base of one building of each type (light factory, barracks, tech building, heavy factory, etc.) and each one you lost effected what you could build and reinforce with. The only things you capture are reinforcement points to increase population cap, small defensive buildings and income with mining. It's a shame that game never got a sequel and has become mostly forgotten. It was made by the old Command and Conquer team you know.
Point 6: Yeah and Sega was the publisher (not developer) for Total War: Warhammer which has done better than most Total Wars in years. The DLC spam will happen though. I can see DLC for everything in sight from Sega.
----
My only real issue is how cartoony it looks but perhaps that'd fit the over-the-top feel i got from DoW 1. Back then how cheesy it was and over-the-top made me fall in love with the game. The cover system could also use a bit of a tweak though i suppose they're going for more bunker style cover than anything. I kinda wished they did a mixture of the cover system from DoW 1 and 2. Basically some terrain slows units and others makes them easier to kill. Perhaps they could even pop a cooldown on a negative effect like in wargame when a unit gets detracked for a time and it takes a handful of seconds to fix.
malamis wrote: I'm inclined to see this coming product as more of a multimedia entertainment product than a competition quality game.Hopefully i'm wrong.
This is what I currently feel about this game. Looks nice enough for a campaign play and it will be made well enough to be stable, however for a long term PvP games, I feel it will go the way the previous two serious.
A few interesting things here, but the biggest one that a lot of people might miss is that the other hero character shown for the Eldar seems to be Jain Zar.
Interesting that Farseer Macha has returned into the DOW mix - I'm sure she and Angelos will have a score to settle in this game...
I'm all for this hero system much like the DOW2 system (especially if that is Jain Zar in that demo), but that animation and scaling is still grinding my gears. I am starting to see why people are attributing the animation styling to Starcraft.
General Annoyance wrote: Interesting that Farseer Macha has returned into the DOW mix - I'm sure she and Angelos will have a score to settle in this game...
I'm all for this hero system much like the DOW2 system (especially if that is Jain Zar in that demo), but that animation and scaling is still grinding my gears. I am starting to see why people are attributing the animation styling to Starcraft.
G.A
I'm more interested in the fact that Taldeer and maybe brother are piloting the Wraithknight (Driven by one dead/living twin!)
It's funny though, people are saying its looking too much like SC2 and too much like Moba.. which is funny because they've always had strong hero powers in dawn of war, getting locked down by a Chaos sorcerer and getting beatdown by a Daemon Prince is always an.. interesting experience.
Either way, I'm looking forward to it so long as it doesn't play like gak.
Every time I see more of this game what minimal interest I had to see if it would shape up is always let down.
The game has the same amount of units and content on screen as DoW 1. So why only 3 factions and I have a sneaking suspicion a real short campaign compared to the original.
This game looks like its a play it safe cash grab and nothing more. I wish they never made the cgi gak we seen so it could have gone into the games actual budget.
Same amount of content being cut up and charging more for it. Ha Ha Ha. Ah got to love modern dlc simulators.
I'd like to underline coh2's faith since i used to be a great fan of this game, spending some 1100 hours or so on it.
As it started, the game itself wasn't that enjoyable: two armies with ridiculous soviet bias led many to drop. With, a couple of years later, the release of the Western Front Armies DLC, though costy, the game became worthwhile. The gameplay was deep, intellectually head and shoulders over any strategy game, decently balanced and unforgiving so that CoH1's cheese blob and spams were mostly uneffective. At the same time, the game did manage anyway to provide you with variety and allowed you leaps in the darks and creativity. Of course, it went though several harsh periods but remained always decent and quickly corrected.
Unfortunatly, it's success and fame doomed it through gatering more and more kikoos, wahaboos and fanboys who kept so much complaining that the game slowly went deeper into a P2W stage: instead of learning how to play and react in various cases, they were constatly shouting and arguing to the nerf of somethjng and ranting about the asymetrical balance.
Amongst their demands, the most encountered one throughout forums was that of bringing the brits as a 5th army onto the game. From here on, the game was at the very beginning of it's painful death.
A bit before the brits, they released several updates which comitted and undescriptible slaughter raging on the four: they lost vital parts of thheir design, exchanging it for plain factions that looked all the same, in order to prevent us from realizing how pathetic the brit's design actually w1s. As ridiculous as it might have been, it's worth highlighting that if one thing had to be overpowered in the whole history of the game, they were the thing. Then, to match with it, sega put its second step working: pay to win commanders ( corresponding to the companies in coh1) so powerfil that apart from playing them you had few possibilities of having a pleasant battle. This also happened while the game turned into a huge internal advert, creating its own celebrities who were nothing less than their lapdogs, bailing the worst out: the game was almist dead. Almost.
After wandering between balance and gameplay issues alongside with one of the worst communities ever to be met in a RTS, the cured the illness through symetrical balance. Though it didn't cure the problem because of shifting it into the cheese from coh1, it did manage to turn it both dull and repetitive. After this final nail in the coffin, although it's now playable, it's not worth the least second spent on it anymore.
Congratulation if you manage to read this through
As far as dow 3 it IS, definitly, utter trash.
1 graphics and gestures are at the most comparing to smartphone games.
2 the gameplay is utterly trash for it's brainless
3 more than any other, this is nothing but a display window, a shameless publicity pf the last trash by GW.
4 the voicd acting is terrible
5 too few armies available, opening the way for a DLC policy i can't bear any longer since coh2 got victimized this way a year ago
6 fluff is dead. Just take a look at the eldars
7 i foresee it'll be overpriced
8 the community has 90% chances of being hideously bad.
Given the Taldeer Wraithknight development, I'm going to be fascinated by the next chapter of LCB /tg comes up with.
Taldeer (in booming, sonorous voice): "STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD, LOFN. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I SLAVED TO MAKE THAT? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO USE MORTAL COOKWARE WHEN YOU'RE 15 METERS TALL?"
It's funny though, people are saying its looking too much like SC2 and too much like Moba.. which is funny because they've always had strong hero powers in dawn of war, getting locked down by a Chaos sorcerer and getting beatdown by a Daemon Prince is always an.. interesting experience.
That'd take out like, one squad whilst using a late game unit. Not particularly impressive.
It's funny though, people are saying its looking too much like SC2 and too much like Moba.. which is funny because they've always had strong hero powers in dawn of war, getting locked down by a Chaos sorcerer and getting beatdown by a Daemon Prince is always an.. interesting experience.
That'd take out like, one squad whilst using a late game unit. Not particularly impressive.
True enough, I guess I've played the campaign mode a bit too much in Dawn of War 2, doesn't particular bug me either artstyle or having stronger hero powers... Actually It makes me wish Relic had done a 40k moba/continued last stand mode rather then that indie company doing dark arena.
Well it looks a little better, and the colour palette seems much better than what we've seen before. Even so, it still seems to suffer from swarm syndrome, as in you can just mass everything up in one ball and send it towards the enemy, and probably win.
Well it looks a little better, and the colour palette seems much better than what we've seen before. Even so, it still seems to suffer from swarm syndrome, as in you can just mass everything up in one ball and send it towards the enemy, and probably win.
It has my attention back, nonetheless.
Well if Angelos could take a full double fisting from a full Daemon Prince Jonah could potentially survive.
I'm intrigued by this though, I loved War3 and the hero mechanic hasn't been around for quite sometime.
I actually like the base building. I like building up cities in total war, I like the bases in Warcraft 3 and the original DoW's, and games like Black and White 2, Halo Wars, Lords of Everquest (which wasn't too good however), and Stronghold 3.
ZebioLizard2 wrote:Well if Angelos could take a full double fisting from a full Daemon Prince Jonah could potentially survive.
I'm intrigued by this though, I loved War3 and the hero mechanic hasn't been around for quite sometime.
I guess so, but Orion is a secondary character
I think I prefer the way DOW2 did its hero system, both in the campaign and in multiplayer. We'll see how it pans out though.
Frankenberry wrote:Man, the more footage I watch the less interested I become - since when did Eldar get energy shields build into their armor?
I did skip watch the video - maybe I missed where it said that? I can see a blue outline on the Dire Avengers, but it looks more like a UI feature rather than a feature on the models.
blood ravens addiction wrote:I actually like the base building. I like building up cities in total war, I like the bases in Warcraft 3 and the original DoW's, and games like Black and White 2, Halo Wars, Lords of Everquest (which wasn't too good however), and Stronghold 3.
Each to their own, but after going away and thinking about it, I still think that base building is a tired game mechanic that takes you away from actual combat and strategy, and is simply in a lot of RTS games because it feels mandatory.
Indeed. Most RTS games include base building without really thinking about it, because that's RTS tradition regardless of if it's a good idea. And DoW1 was one of those games.
Well I think DOW1 put some degree of effort into it (e.g. Waaagh! Banners, Outposts, Relics), back in a time when the RTS genre was just starting to evolve a little. I think in those times, games that didn't have base building ended up being very niche. Even now, with some of the responses on this thread, it seems that that is still the case.
I'm not really annoyed at a game having base building, but more that Dawn of War has returned to base building; other than cashing in on the licence, I fail to see how 40k promotes a base building mechanic of any kind. Relic should have created a new IP if they were desperate to include such a system, if you ask me.
For a base building mechanic, it was fairly well thought out; the main pro of it was how each faction built and advanced differently, alongside how their structures functioned. However, it's aged pretty poorly against more modern titles that let you control building placement properly, but also can't be considered to be a classic like Red Alert, since old C&C had the advantage of simplicity... and a kick ass soundtrack while you built stuff
I like base building in RTS and the shift away from that is what has kept me away from many titles. It seems like once base building is gone that becomes an excuse to make the whole game about micro, which simply isn't fun for me. Some players like it, some players don't. Certainly I enjoyed DoW1 multiplayer much more than DoW2 multiplayer, though the single-player campaign in the latter was very polished.
Overall, I think people get too nitpicky and high in their expectations in games these days. Just because a game has features you don't like doesn't mean its bad, just don't buy it and move on. Same with DLC. If the game is worth your money, buy it. If the DLC is worth your money, buy it. Otherwise don't. Getting irritated about something that isn't going to change (because the price to make a game has gone up while the base price has remained static) is really only going to make you unhappy with no benefit.
NinthMusketeer wrote: It seems like once base building is gone that becomes an excuse to make the whole game about micro
I think it is because DoW2 was very small scale and units were overall very maneuvrable and responsive, which encourages swift reflexes and precise positioning.
Compare to Total War, whose battles also lack base building entirely (and does not even include decisionmaking in units to pick once the fight has begun), but units are (as is only realistic) rather unwieldy to shift around, which means it is more about having a larger plan than executing the perfect go backwards-start shooting-go backwards-start shooting dance.
I like DoW2... But then I made my own mod for it which changed it very heavily. Vanilla DoW2 served as an excellent starting point but is not in itself enough for me. Aside from the single player which is, as noted, splendid, particularly for its impressive feat in Space Marine personality differentiation.
I like base building in RTS games when it actually makes sense and is well thought out. Games like Stronghold, CnC3, and Supreme Commander where base building is an important aspect of the game and the game is very knowledgable of this and doesn't just slap it on haphazardly, as opposed to games like Starcraft and its legions of clones, where it's mostly just slapped on out of tradition and as a result are total crap.
DoW1 was very muddled in how it approached base building, and DoW2 was certainly better for choosing a different path. You can argue about the scale being wrong for what you wanted out of the game, but ultimately that's not about base building. Plenty of games have had a small scale while having base building, and others have had far, FAR larger scale than any DoW or Starcraft game, but also had zero base building at all (Wargame or Total War both come to mind). I think DoW2's scale worked just fine for the story they were intending to tell, the game was clearly built around its single player.
I like base building in RTS games when it actually makes sense and is well thought out. Games like Stronghold, CnC3, and Supreme Commander where base building is an important aspect of the game and the game is very knowledgable of this and doesn't just slap it on haphazardly, as opposed to games like Starcraft and its legions of clones, where it's mostly just slapped on out of tradition and as a result are total crap.
All those games came out long after SC1 or even Brood War.
Even with that, SC has an important base building aspect, where screwing up can cause one to lose due to rushes or otherwise, whether to tech up properly or even what buildings to build when can cause problems if you just slap them down at random.
General Annoyance wrote: I did skip watch the video - maybe I missed where it said that? I can see a blue outline on the Dire Avengers, but it looks more like a UI feature rather than a feature on the models.
Seems like it's a pink energy bar that decreases with incoming damage but it'll also be drained when using abilities. I like it, it makes things a bit different. Same with Spectres being in the game although they are more rarer aspect, as opposed to warp spiders who were present in the previous iterations.
My favourite way base building was done was in Commander and Conquer: Tiberian Sun and Supreme Commander.
I don't know how 'competitive' players really did them but me myself, I really loved making 'actual' bases. With gates, walls, turrets, roads etc. And the shield mechanic was awesome in SupCom.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Even with that, SC has an important base building aspect
You're thinking of it from the metagame viewpoint and assuming because a metagame developed later from the acitons of h te players in regards to the weaknesses of the game design, that it was intentional. It wasn't. SC had base building because nearly every other RTS game before it did, and it really didn't introduce anything new in that regard. It wasn't even particularly impressive for its time.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Even with that, SC has an important base building aspect
You're thinking of it from the metagame viewpoint and assuming because a metagame developed later from the acitons of h te players in regards to the weaknesses of the game design, that it was intentional. It wasn't. SC had base building because nearly every other RTS game before it did, and it really didn't introduce anything new in that regard. It wasn't even particularly impressive for its time.
That doesn't really make sense to me, right from the start base-building in SC and SC2 has been an integral feature to the game design; the maps are even designed around how/where bases will go. Not to mention the production-vs-econ aspect that is again the core of how the game is played.
Hmm, got some lore stuff for Gorgutz. The reason he's wearin yellow is because he's apparently working Mercenary.. I wonder who he's specifically working merc too.
War Kitten wrote: I saw what Gabriel Angelos looks like now. He looks like he got ran over by a Battlewagon. I love it!
He may as well have been after the brutalisation he took from Kyras It suits an antihero such as him, who has been through a lot more than the average Marine would expect over their lifetime, physically and emotionally.
I once heard a phrase that there are no good guys in 40k. After reading the Blood Ravens omnibus I have to agree, but Angelos is now my favorite Marine character in the lore
War Kitten wrote: I once heard a phrase that there are no good guys in 40k. After reading the Blood Ravens omnibus I have to agree, but Angelos is now my favorite Marine character in the lore
Oh yes, absolutely not But the devs of DOW3 put it right by saying that we can sympathise with such "heroes" in certain aspects, despite their track records making us hesitant from time to time. Angelos certainly has more blood on his hands than most, but we still root for him despite that; if there's one thing that I will say that defines Dawn of War from any other strategy game, and even amongst all of 40k's lore, it is the depth they manage to put into characters who are usually expected to be very one dimensional and very single minded.
General Annoyance wrote: if there's one thing that I will say that defines Dawn of War from any other strategy game, and even amongst all of 40k's lore, it is the depth they manage to put into characters who are usually expected to be very one dimensional and very single minded.
I have only played DoW: Soulstorm (Sisters campaign) and watched the (in)famous METAL BAWKSES and STHEEL REINS video, so I missed it .
General Annoyance wrote: if there's one thing that I will say that defines Dawn of War from any other strategy game, and even amongst all of 40k's lore, it is the depth they manage to put into characters who are usually expected to be very one dimensional and very single minded.
I have only played DoW: Soulstorm (Sisters campaign) and watched the (in)famous METAL BAWKSES and STHEEL REINS video, so I missed it .
To be fair, plenty of people remember several characters from that one as well. I mean after-all you aren't forgetting Carrion and Boreale no matter how hard you try.
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