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Today I (along with fitzeh and mad doc grotsnik) attended the Dawn of War II community day, where a bunch of people from the wargaming community got to play Dawn of War II for four and a half hours. First off, though I started taking pictures, I learned as I took my last picture that pictures were prohibited, so no pics from me I am afraid. free pizza and a free tshirt buys some loyalty.

So where to begin.... Dawn of War II is indeed a squad based game, in which you control up to 4 units at once (at least in the Space Marine campaign). The campaign we played had a tactical squad, assault squad, devastator squad, scout squad and commander, and you were forced to leave 1 squad behind. There are no build it yourself bases in the single player game. There are hack and slash / RPG style drops which will give you powerups that let you drop a limited number of turrets in to place, and you can capture some strategic buildings which give you bonuses such as additional orbital bombardments, but it is a very different game to DoW1.

Each squad has an experience level that goes up with each kill and each victory. Squad members can die but they are reinforced at strategic points that you can capture on the map. The last member in a squad does not die, but gets KOed and can be revived by other troops or healing abilities. Power ups are gained either by experience points being allocated to abilities (health, ranged damage, melee damage, will - aka mana, etc) or by getting actual items dropped when key enemies are killed (bosses at the end of each level), or random drops from killing enemies. Squad members can be equipped with weapons including upgraded weapons like longer range heavy bolters, more powerful chainswords, etc. They can also have abilities like orbital bombardment, heal all troops, frag grenades (which are very powerful), demolition charges, and so forth. Finally, they can have better armour and additional bonuses like purity seals.

I didnt get to play multiplayer but I did play the skirmish mode. This is more like DoW1, but instead of having a big base that you can build up, you just have one building that produces units (at least for Orks anyway), and a couple of gun turrets. You can build units and go and capture requisition and power resources, until you have got more points than the enemy in a sort of points based tug of war.

(more coming soon)

What are the missions like? Any idea as to how varied they will be? One of the downfalls of the RTS is they all seemed to revolve around wipe-out the opponent's base. This is fine, until you've done it literally for 10-12 years.....

The campaign starts off against the Orks, then moves to the Eldar and finally the Tyranids. The Orks were quite fun to battle, and the AI is a lot better than DoW1. The Eldar were a little more annoying to fight, but I had geared up all my troops for brutal firefights and they couldnt respond as well to the warp spiders jumping all over the place. After I tweaked the next batch of experience points the Eldar became a lot easier and a bit more fun to fight. Finally, the Tyranids came along and were quite brutal. There were a few levels where they felt like they were without number (mainly thanks to the ripper swarms), and only some violent assaults by jump pack held them at bay.

The gameplay was quite addictive, I went about 2 hours before I got a little bored and had a break, but then when I went back to it I was very into it until the end of play. The levels are a little bit formulaic, each consisting of level up, fight some enemies, get some objectives, fight a big boss, win. Fortunately, the array of environments makes it a bit more exciting and the usual RPG-ish addictiveness of leveling up and getting drops keeps the smaller conflicts interesting. Some of the boss fights went on a bit too long, and there never seemed to be any real danger of dying as you can fall back at the click of a button to the nearest point which will heal you and replace any dead squad members, so the fear of death is not really there to keep you on edge. Cover is critical and you have to plan every move to take cover into account or you will get ripped apart. The cover system is very good though, and you can destroy cover with the more powerful weapons. You can also destroy cover by smashing enemies through it with a grenade as well which is very cool to watch.

The one thing that was very very cool were the Tyranid battles. Perhaps it is just because I spent hundreds of hours playing DoW1 and never saw a single Tyranid, but when they first came on screen I was very excited to finally fight them. They move like you think they would and are much more like insects than zerg which makes it as far as can be from a starcraft clone. Their weapons are all very cool too, and the narrative for fighting them is provided by a member of your scout squad who was in the Deathwatch which adds to the atmosphere a lot. Mowing through a horde of gaunts with a heavy bolter equipped devastator squad is very satisfying.

The squad based combat is quite different to other RTSes and it leads to a lot of moments similar to an actual game of 40k. The whole game structure lends itself quite closely to 40k and it feels a lot more like the actual boardgame than DoW1 did. You remember moments in the game rather than actions - in DoW2 I can think of loads of cool little things that happened in squad vs squad combat, where terrain was destroyed or where a frag grenade ripped apart a whole squad which let me flank the rest of the defenders, whereas in DoW1 the more memorable moments were capturing bases or sectors of the battlefield. I prefer the way things are handled in DoW2 as it seems like it would become less repetitive over longer term, and would lead to some really memorable events in multiplayer.

edit: I'll be adding more later, but this is enough for now. Any questions, please ask. Fitzeh and Mad Doc Grotsnik will no doubt chime in with their opinions later as well.

So does it seem like Multiplayer/Skirmish will be similar to the DOTA mod for Warcraft, or have the possibility of being easily modded into a DOTA clone?

Because I could totally get on board with that.

How do the handle the drops? I have this horrible picture of 'Commando' from the eighties in my head with flashing drops all over the screen. Sounds....unappetizing.

I'm very disappointed to hear that multiplayer and skirmish are smaller scale, or at least have almost no base building.

Sounds very 'Warcraft III' inspired.

How many COH-style morale effects survived? e.g. hitting dirt, keeping a squad pinned until they run away, etc. Is it, like I fear, only applicable to non-marines while the marines run around fearless?

The single-player campaign sounds like Diablo 40k like was said in the previous DOW2 thread.

Gabe wrote:So does it seem like Multiplayer/Skirmish will be similar to the DOTA mod for Warcraft, or have the possibility of being easily modded into a DOTA clone?
Because I could totally get on board with that.

Somewhat similar. There is no single central objective, but there is one hero (commander), and a bunch of smaller units.

Amen Brick wrote:How do the handle the drops? I have this horrible picture of 'Commando' from the eighties in my head with flashing drops all over the screen. Sounds....unappetizing.

The drops are decent enough. They are just things that you click on to pick up. You dont even need to move a unit there, just click on one if you see it. Some are in ammo crates that you have to shoot before you can pick them up but it is not very intrusive.

stonefox wrote:How many COH-style morale effects survived? e.g. hitting dirt, keeping a squad pinned until they run away, etc. Is it, like I fear, only applicable to non-marines while the marines run around fearless?
The single-player campaign sounds like Diablo 40k like was said in the previous DOW2 thread.

I didnt play COH (to my shame) but it is the same engine and from what I understand very similar. Squads can be pinned by heavy fire which makes them move very slowly. They can have morale broken (if not space marines - marines can break on purpose though) in which case they run really quickly back to their last captured objective. Squads can also be effected by other things like blind grenades or some annoying eldar ranger grenade that makes you move annoyingly slowly until he picks you off with his sniper rifle. Marines still get suppressed by heavy fire but some abilities can void it - it is possible to affect their morale but it is harder than doing it to other forces.

The single player campaign really is like Diablo 40k.

This does not bode well for the multiplayer aspect of this game, which is at the heart of the RTS experience. :(

http://kotaku.com/5108704/warhammer-40k-dawn-of-war-2-+-tyranids-battle-strategies-and-smack

This is a good description of the multi-player action.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

i dunno, base building got boring especially as half yth etime it was just same old same old (coming from a fammed turtler t hats saying somthing....

sorry but that just sounds a load of absolute crap.

Lego - My biggest concern with the game is if it really has any strategic or tactical depth. Let me explain.

In DoW, you eventually reached a point where it didn't matter what your guys were armed with. Anything could destroy anything in that game, so given enough time a Bolter Marine could take out a Land Raider. By the late game in each mission it wasn't a case of carefully using your units, it was a case of 'Select All > Attack until Dead > Select new target'. Because everything caused damage to everything, when you had loads of squads you'd just click on one target and then the next, draining their health bars until they were dead. And this process repeated over and over and over and over and over again.

It was dull, and is one of not just DoW's failings, but a lot of RTS's.

My fear with DoW II is that this will still be present. It won't matter if a certain unit is better against another, because just selecting everyone and attacking it until its dead is always the better choice, thereby removing all depth from the game.

I'm interested to hear what you think about this based upon your experience.

BYE

DoW:SS is a great RTS, with a lot of tactical depth and really fun to play. Is it perfectly balanced? No, but it is pretty good and still being patched.

My main concern with DoWII is obviously multiplayer (single player looks fun). I really hope that the multiplayer keeps (and hopefully improves) the tactical nature of DoW and puts emphasis on using your units well.

I really can not judge till seeing and playing a final copy.

Can you give a list of new squads for space marines please?


EDIT: Just remeber DOW2 doesnt have chaos.

Sounds fun.

Also sounds nothing like Dawn of War whatsoever, so I find it curious that they're getting people's backs up by naming it as such.

Phazer

sorry but that just sounds a load of absolute crap.

A brilliant and well stated opinion with a supporting argument!

DoW is a great RTS, with a lot of tactical depth and really fun to play.

I love the game and own all of them, but no. It does not have a lot of tactical depth. It is a rock paper scissors game of board control where the crux of it involves building an armada faster than the other guy then selecting everything and wiping the opponents base. Unlike more strategic games like starcraft or the CnC games (I also own all of those, I'm an rts fanatic) once the game starts hitting its max build queues the strategy basically stops.

n DoW, you eventually reached a point where it didn't matter what your guys were armed with. Anything could destroy anything in that game, so given enough time a Bolter Marine could take out a Land Raider. By the late game in each mission it wasn't a case of carefully using your units, it was a case of 'Select All > Attack until Dead > Select new target'.

The CoH engine dynamic tends to fix issues like that, and having such a limited number of units on screen would almost ensure a higher level of tactical involvement. By all of the writeups I have seen it really is a very tactical game, and IGN and kotakus writup on the multiplayer note that its use of the CoH engine is in fact better than its use in CoH. If you have never played company of heros before it's an RTS where units take cover, can get pinned, need the correct weapon loadouts to win the day, and have a control structure that lends itself to army control rather than economic micromanagement (which is what DoW1 was all about).

H.B.M.C. wrote:Lego - My biggest concern with the game is if it really has any strategic or tactical depth. Let me explain.

In DoW, you eventually reached a point where it didn't matter what your guys were armed with. Anything could destroy anything in that game, so given enough time a Bolter Marine could take out a Land Raider. By the late game in each mission it wasn't a case of carefully using your units, it was a case of 'Select All > Attack until Dead > Select new target'. Because everything caused damage to everything, when you had loads of squads you'd just click on one target and then the next, draining their health bars until they were dead. And this process repeated over and over and over and over and over again.

It was dull, and is one of not just DoW's failings, but a lot of RTS's.

My fear with DoW II is that this will still be present. It won't matter if a certain unit is better against another, because just selecting everyone and attacking it until its dead is always the better choice, thereby removing all depth from the game.

I'm interested to hear what you think about this based upon your experience.

BYE

Hi chaps, thanks to Lego I got to go too !!

I think if you're looking for a direct comparison between games, DoW II is a heap closer to CoH than to DoW I - cover system, reinforcement, lack of base building in the campaign. I don't happen to think that's a bad thing - CoH is one of the finest RTS games ever made.

HBMC - regarding the "shoot everything" query, I'd say it's more complex than that. That would be true if you were facing just one oponent type at once. With the nids you've got a bunch of gaunts running at you, rippers being a PITA and then some big beasties fething you up with stranglers, which pin you in place. You really have to shoot the right gak and the right targets. The combined arms aspect is also awesome - pin or suppress the enemy with your devastator squad, and then jump a assault squad in. For extra kudos lob a frag grenade timed to perfection so it detonates just before your assault squad lands, enemies knocked on their butts and then chainsworded up. It's really awesome fun.

On top of that there are a lot of activated abilities to make sure you are getting the most out. Your force commander has a range of buffing abilities which affect his mates, or he can buff himself, scouts have special sniper shots, the Devs have focus fire abilities and stuff. I think the closest thing I can think of comparing it to is like controlling a whole RPG party on your own.

I have to say that the Campaign had me hooked right in the whole afternoon. The guys at Relic have done a really good job of developing attachments with your squad. In an RPG you might have one character "levelling up" every so often. In this you have 4+ squads and your FC who are all potentially developing, needing decisions made on abilities and equipment, and which ones to take with you. Its really, really cool.

My only gripe is that it uses essentially the same graphics engine as CoH - which actually still looks dead good, but I like my eye candy. Also means you can play it on a 3/4 year old machine pretty well I suppose.

I really can't comment on the MP aspect of the game since I didn't play it (too addicted to the campaign), but I've played Relic games competitively online since the release of Homeworld in 1999 (HW, HW:C, DoW, CoH and HW2) and they haven't let me down yet. Have faith brothers.

sounds kinda like battle for middle earth 2

I hope it's not like WC3 or DOTA, both played very poorly to me at least. The original DoW is awesome.

CoH: 40K, now that sounds like music to my ears

H.B.M.C. wrote:LegoIn DoW, you eventually reached a point where it didn't matter what your guys were armed with. Anything could destroy anything in that game, so given enough time a Bolter Marine could take out a Land Raider. By the late game in each mission it wasn't a case of carefully using your units, it was a case of 'Select All > Attack until Dead > Select new target'. Because everything caused damage to everything, when you had loads of squads you'd just click on one target and then the next, draining their health bars until they were dead. And this process repeated over and over and over and over and over again.

It was dull, and is one of not just DoW's failings, but a lot of RTS's.

To be fair, DoW made greater effort to decrease the effectiveness of certain weapons vs. certain units than most RTSs do. That said, I agree completely that some guns just shouldn't do anything to some units. Surround a land raider with guardsmen firing lasguns and they should do no damage at all. Just like in TT. If S10 has a 50% chance to get through the armor, S3 should have no chance.

It didn't seem to work that way though. If I had 6 HB turrets set up and four squads with 4 Heavy Bolters, and someone rushed me with a pair of Predators and a Land Raider... I'd still win because the damage output would be enough.

In DOW certain weapons were more effective against a specific type of target rather than certain units simply being immune to attacks. So a plasma gun was better against a Marine than against a Land Raider, but it still did damage to the Land Raider, so if I got enough of them, I didn't have to worry.

BYE

Vaktathi wrote:I hope it's not like WC3 or DOTA, both played very poorly to me at least. The original DoW is awesome.

It is similar to WC3 in description, but feels completely different. It is a lot more tactically in depth than WC3, and just feels better. I never got into WC3 as much as WC or WC2, and I would say DoW2 is certainly better than WC3 (at least what I have played of DoW2 so far).

H.B.M.C. wrote:In DOW certain weapons were more effective against a specific type of target rather than certain units simply being immune to attacks. So a plasma gun was better against a Marine than against a Land Raider, but it still did damage to the Land Raider, so if I got enough of them, I didn't have to worry.

DoW2 certainly seems to have a lot more focus on this than other RTSs, and it seems like it has the most out of any RTS that I have heard of - certainly better than DoW1. Although weak weapons still damage strong targets, you wont win due to the limited numbers of troops you can throw at things - the maximum we had under our control at any time today was 11 troops from 4 units.

Like it has been said, Relic makes very good games, with numerous game of the year awards. Those guys know video games and have a great development and design team. Even if it's 100% different from dow1, it will still be a good game.

H.B.M.C. wrote:It didn't seem to work that way though. If I had 6 HB turrets set up and four squads with 4 Heavy Bolters, and someone rushed me with a pair of Predators and a Land Raider... I'd still win because the damage output would be enough.

In DOW certain weapons were more effective against a specific type of target rather than certain units simply being immune to attacks. So a plasma gun was better against a Marine than against a Land Raider, but it still did damage to the Land Raider, so if I got enough of them, I didn't have to worry.

BYE

The land raider relic unit of the space marines could take heavy bolter turret fire for like five to ten minutes before going down. It had very heavy antipersonnel armor and close to twenty thousand hit points. As for it being damageable at all, thats something that is required in an RTS system, engagements aren't as detailed or pre prepared as they are on the tabletop, and that kind of inherent complication doesn't work on largescale realtime battles. People just aren't quick enough for it. If the average tier 1 unit in force can't take down a top tier unit then the game scales poorly across the board and becomes a rush to research higher tiers and equip for fighting that upper tier metagame. That sounds good and realistic in concept, but does not translate well into enjoyable gameplay. This is afterall a real time strategy game, not a digital tabletop equivalent.

I'm not asking for a tabletop conversion. I'm asking for a 'makes sense' approach to weapon damage.

If I walk up to an Abrams armed with a 9mil, shooting at it will do no damage. Having 30 of my closest friends also with 9mil's shouldn't change that. That's what I'm getting at. Certain weapons should do nothing to certain targets.

My usual squad setup in Dark Crusade was a full Marine squad w/2 Missile Launchers, 2 Heavy Bolters, a Plasma Gun and a Vet Sergeant w/Plasma Pistol. I usually had 4 such squads. When a tank came along it wasn't as if the Missile Launchersd allowed me to fight the tank, they just sped up how quickly it died. If I had taken 4 HBs in each squad the result would have been the same, it just would've taken a little longer.

So in a game like DoW II, where you can level your guys, you can just go all out on damage output, so that whenever you encounter something you just select all>attack and watch their health bar drain, and while they're off doing that you can micromanage abilities (probably healing abilities in this case, so that your guys can keep up their damage output).

If I'm wrong then great, but as soon as I saw the Ork Warboss' health bar appear in one of the first demo videos, I got worried.

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:I'm not asking for a tabletop conversion. I'm asking for a 'makes sense' approach to weapon damage.

If I walk up to an Abrams armed with a 9mil, shooting at it will do no damage. Having 30 of my closest friends also with 9mil's shouldn't change that.

That's what I'm getting at. Certain weapons should do nothing to certain targets.

BYE

But thats what was required within the framework of the game. It technically shouldn't have taken a dozen railgun shots to bring down the land raider either, but the land raider is supposed to be the final tier megaweapon of the space marine side, so concessions must be made in order to make the game playable. Besides I think you're over inflating the point a bit, it takes a ludicrously long time to kill an armored unit with boltguns and shurikan catapaults. The landraiders own damage regeneration will outpace twenty guardsman shooting lasers at it. This is kind of a mountain out of a molehill. If you're going to take exception with anything make it the fact that anti vehicle weapons like the lascanon do practically nothing to infantry.

Concessions like damage scaling are things you will see in every adaptation game, if you don't have them then it becomes very hard to make an actual enjoyable experience from the source material. If I have six defilers and 40 chaos marines I can't be bothered to attempt to pick out every anti tank weapon my opponent is fielding. I don't have the capability to do so in a pitched battle. A real time game with largescale battles must be operated fundamentally differently then a turnbased tabletop one. However if it assuages your fears at all this is exactly why they have chosen much smaller scale battles, as you don't need to dumb down the experience when you focus on a tenth as much stuff at once.



Also the real gripes about dawn of war 1 should be the horrendous pathing, the million expansion packs, and the poor game balance.

o in a game like DoW II, where you can level your guys, you can just go all out on damage output, so that whenever you encounter something you just select all>attack and watch their health bar drain, and while they're off doing that you can micromanage abilities (probably healing abilities in this case, so that your guys can keep up their damage output).

Popular gaming press doesn't have a problem with the current format, and all the videos and writeups suggest that being carelessly aggressive serves to get you killed. So I'm not too worried.