For those who owned SoulStorm, at least. Everyone else must wait until January 27th to try the game (countdown located here). :p
http://www.thq-games.com/uk/news/show/6063 has instructions on how to get the beta right now if you have a SoulStorm CD key. It is available through Steam - so getting it is relatively easy (my download is currently on 27% for it). Again, it can also be downloaded by anyone on the 27th.
As there have been very few RTS games as of late, thought this might be of interest. At the very least - a free, new game for a couple of weeks. EDIT: Oh, and my Steam ID is u77Bluewolf and Windows LIVE is Bluewolf1983 if anyone wishes to play.
UPDATES:
Click Here for a site giving out 3,000 SoulStorm CD-keys Saturday to get early beta access.
DoW2 Minimum System Requirements: * Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista SP1 * P4 3.2 GHz (single core) or any Dual Core processor * 1 GB RAM (XP), 1.5 GB RAM (Vista) * A 128MB Video Card (Shader Model 3) - Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT / ATI X1600, or equivalent * 5.5 GB of Hard Drive space
DoW2 Recommended System Requirements: * Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista SP1 * AMD Athlon 64×2 4400+ or any Intel Core 2 Duo * 2 GB RAM (XP and Vista) * A 256MB Video Card (Shader Model 3) - Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900, or equivalent * 5.5 GB of Hard Drive space
To Save / Watch Replays: * Find the temp.rec here: C:\Documents and Settings\"YOUR ACCOUNT HERE"\My Documents\my games\Dawn of War 2 Demo\Playback
* Playback is found under the option "gamehistroy"
* You cannot play the replays by clicking the "play replay" button... however, you CAN play them by double clicking on the saved replay in the list of reps.
DoW was fun to mess around in...though the game was pretty imbalanced...apparently space marines are like completely useless competitively... -____-;;
I have to admit though...those gameplay videos floored me...the graphics look absolutely insane. A hellofa lot better than SC2 is looking atm. I wonder how the gameplay will turn out...
i was not around when Relic released DoW, but i know the guys on this one quite well, and i'm really excited to see what comes of it. It's a definite mix between COH and DOW, and a bit of another direction as well - i'm really curious what the RTS community will make of it.
starcraft 2 must suck so badly compared to this (or to even RA3) for someone who wasn't a fan with sc 1. If I'd be a casual, i'd totally choose the other two titles over starcraft 2.
The only appeal of sc2 over these is the possible better balance. It has definitely worse graphics, and it really doesn't have any innovation. Just the good ol RTS stuff.
On January 21 2009 18:29 freelander wrote: starcraft 2 must suck so badly compared to this (or to even RA3) for someone who wasn't a fan with sc 1. If I'd be a casual, i'd totally choose the other two titles over starcraft 2.
The only appeal of sc2 over these is the possible better balance. It has definitely worse graphics, and it really doesn't have any innovation. Just the good ol RTS stuff.
With the way RTS games are being made nowadays, it'd be safe to argue that balance IS an innovation... -_____-;;
On January 21 2009 18:29 freelander wrote: starcraft 2 must suck so badly compared to this (or to even RA3) for someone who wasn't a fan with sc 1. If I'd be a casual, i'd totally choose the other two titles over starcraft 2.
The only appeal of sc2 over these is the possible better balance. It has definitely worse graphics, and it really doesn't have any innovation. Just the good ol RTS stuff.
With the way RTS games are being made nowadays, it'd be safe to argue that balance IS an innovation... -_____-;;
lol.
It's cos of the bullshit idea that more races = better. How the hell is Soulstorm gonna be balanced when there's 9 races!?
This beta has 4 so there's hope at the moment. But you still can't control individual units which is just a massive flaw. Regardless I'm interested to see how it plays.
On January 21 2009 18:29 freelander wrote: starcraft 2 must suck so badly compared to this (or to even RA3) for someone who wasn't a fan with sc 1. If I'd be a casual, i'd totally choose the other two titles over starcraft 2.
The only appeal of sc2 over these is the possible better balance. It has definitely worse graphics, and it really doesn't have any innovation. Just the good ol RTS stuff.
With the way RTS games are being made nowadays, it'd be safe to argue that balance IS an innovation... -_____-;;
lol.
It's cos of the bullshit idea that more races = better. How the hell is Soulstorm gonna be balanced when there's 9 races!?
This beta has 4 so there's hope at the moment. But you still can't control individual units which is just a massive flaw. Regardless I'm interested to see how it plays.
Yes, it's nearly impossible to have a balanced RTS that has 9 races. However if you do not include all the 8 major 40k races, you do not have a complete game.
Last I checked, they couldn't even decide if they wanted to keep the game down to 1 building per race or many buildings per race. And that was like 2 days ago. I'm not expecting much.
On January 21 2009 20:15 zer0das wrote: Last I checked, they couldn't even decide if they wanted to keep the game down to 1 building per race or many buildings per race. And that was like 2 days ago. I'm not expecting much.
Yeah that's right. Watching the gameplay vids they talk about minimising the time you have to look away from your army. In other words... no macro.
I think that's pretty stupid, if you make the game all about one or two squads then you're massively reducing the scope for ingenuity and basically... skill. If it gets too easy players get close to the "perfect game" at which point the most imbalanced race always wins.
On January 21 2009 17:14 NeonFlare wrote: Downloading, balance will probably be wacky in beta, so time to go hunt all those OP builds.
I'm not sure if you're gonna have ANY builds there. What I've heared about DoWII so far is that you don't have a base at all.
And I don't really understand some of you, DoW was quite awesome game (up until SoulStorm which sucks balls real hard).
What you talking about? SoulStorm is by far the most balanced, the previous versions were horrible.
Edit: I don't know myself how balanced SS is, I've only heard it is and having played it for a short while it seems much better.....but Dark Crusade was hideous in terms of balance.
That would be a funny claim to make without personal experience, because everything I've heard indicates it just unbalanced the game again. Logic dictates if you add a race or two for every expansion and have 3 expansions in about as many years, and then add new units in almost every expansion as well, not only do you screw up the current racial balance, but you add even more imbalances because instead of just Space Marines, Eldar, Orks, and Chaos you now have Imperial Guard, Tau, Necron, the Dark Eldar, and Sisters of Battle on top of that. How can you even begin to sort through racial balance?
From what I played, it seemed like things were kind of approaching a point where things could be considered mostly balanced after Winter Assault, and then it's like "Surprise expansion!" and not too long after that "Hey, let's throw yet another one in to milk the franchise just a bit more before DoW2!"
Of course I'm saying that as someone who has never played Dark Crusade and Soul Storm.
Well my Brother play a lot and he says people on the forums say SS is the best version. Although they added DE and SoB they aren't anything new. The difference between 7 and 9 is not a lot.
I played Dark Crusade a lot and space marines and tau were hideously overpowered. Then I've played the DE, Tau and space marines campaigns since I bought SS and it seems better. Space marines are certainly more balanced.
The difference between 7 and 9 is quite a lot. If you have one imbalance between each race it goes from 21 imbalances to 36. That's nearly double.
If Soul Storm is indeed more balanced, it's probably a product of the fact that they've had another 2 years to balance the game since their last patch. Of course it's easy to say at the end of the tunnel "Soul Storm is more balanced than Dark Crusade," but looking at the patch history it took nearly a year before Dark Crusade had even one patch (and apparently, that was on the only one). Soul Storm has had two in the same amount of time.
To me that says they neglected Dark Crusade because they knew Soul Storm was in the pipeline.
On January 21 2009 23:23 zer0das wrote: The difference between 7 and 9 is quite a lot. If you have one imbalance between each race it goes from 21 imbalances to 36. That's nearly double.
If Soul Storm is indeed more balanced, it's probably a product of the fact that they've had another 2 years to balance the game since their last patch. Of course it's easy to say at the end of the tunnel "Soul Storm is more balanced than Dark Crusade," but looking at the patch history it took nearly a year before Dark Crusade had even one patch (and apparently, that was on the only one). Soul Storm has had two in the same amount of time.
To me that says they neglected Dark Crusade because they knew Soul Storm was in the pipeline.
IDD with the second part of what you said....
But the 7 to 9 thing is nonsense because DoW just doesn't work in that way. There aren't major differences between the races like there are in SC... because you have very limited macro/micro choices it's more obvious where imbalance lies. If a basic squad... Space marines... cost the same but is all round better than another same tech squad then it's clear they are too strong.
Basically what I'm saying is in SS they realised the only way to balance all the races was to make them basically the same! Now space marines are weaker and compare with all the other tier1.5 squads.
Edit: please continue to argue, I can continue to make largely uninformed vague replies for at least another 40 minutes ... by which point my DOW2 download will have finished ^^
On January 21 2009 20:23 Plexa wrote: Heres hoping blizzard swoops in with SC2 and shows the world that graphics =/= great game
That and good graphics =/= good art direction. You can make a game that looks great without lots of technological innovations and you can make a technologically great game that looks really bad.
That said I still prefer the graphics of starcraft over most new rts games nowadays, it's just so nice and clean.
As someone who has played the previous games (2nd WCG USA finals 2006, 2nd GGL SoulStorm ladder) - the original games were never balanced at any point in time. Nor were they ever really close to being balanced - it was always 2-4 races that would be clearly superior to the others. All of the leagues and tournament results in the past would support this (too lazy to find links to the information :p).
But being suited for competition isn't what DoW is about. It doesn't care to be spectator friendly or about things like balance. It is just meant to be a casual fun game that breaks the usual RTS mold - which is why they can get away with squad based combat or long death animations.
Basically one shouldn't go in expecting something like SC2, but rather, something much lighter and shallow. In short..... it is the RTS designed for the casual gamer and it does usually succeed at being fun for awhile due to its fresh approach with things SC2 cannot do with its competitive focus. So while SC2 will be better in the long run, the DoW series is still decent in its own right when played non-seriously for fun.
Lol you have to make a windows live "gaming" account to play. Since I have to make an account I may as well use this opportunity to troll the x-box fanboy forums.
"Poll: Game of the year Metal gear solid 4 or Wii Music?" etc....
Or post under the Halo section... "why don't you pussys play a real game?! I'd like to take the time to introduce you to less primitive forms of gaming... involving a hand held device that relates 1to1 motion on screen! No longer do you have to use crappy analog sticks... ladies the MOUSE has been invented."
On January 22 2009 00:12 [-Bluewolf-] wrote: As someone who has played the previous games (2nd WCG USA finals 2006, 2nd GGL SoulStorm ladder) - the original games were never balanced at any point in time. Nor were they ever really close to being balanced - it was always 2-4 races that would be clearly superior to the others. All of the leagues and tournament results in the past would support this (too lazy to find links to the information :p).
But being suited for competition isn't what DoW is about. It doesn't care to be spectator friendly or about things like balance. It is just meant to be a casual fun game that breaks the usual RTS mold - which is why they can get away with squad based combat or long death animations.
Basically one shouldn't go in expecting something like SC2, but rather, something much lighter and shallow. In short..... it is the RTS designed for the casual gamer and it does usually succeed at being fun for awhile due to its fresh approach with things SC2 cannot do with its competitive focus. So while SC2 will be better in the long run, the DoW series is still decent in its own right when played non-seriously for fun.
Was SS better than WA and DoW?
I was under the impression that SS patches fixed most of the large issues. While i can agree that it [most likely] not close to being balanced, i thought the consensus opinion from the community was that it was a great step in the right direction.
On January 21 2009 20:23 Plexa wrote: Heres hoping blizzard swoops in with SC2 and shows the world that graphics =/= great game
For someone who usually speaks with some fore-thought, i find this comment very disparaging.
I'm crossing my fingers that DoW2 will show as much as CoH did that an RTS can still be a very engaging/enjoyable RTS experience without having to be Starcraft.
Soulstorm was a terrible expansion that shall be forgotten as soon as possible. DoW 2 is ok but nothing more than that really. Think I will just stick with Company of Heroes when it comes to Relic games.
On January 22 2009 02:06 FrozenArbiter wrote: Klive wtf -.-
If you troll people it should be people who deserve it imo, not "x-box gamers".
Mm, game looks so pretty, makes me want to play :0
How do they not deserve it? They pay $50 a year for something you get free with Steam. Then they post on their forums about how lame PS3 owners are. All console fanboys are VERY annoying.
If I have to sign up for a Microsoft live account I may as well get some fun out of it.
Well having played DoW2 for a few hours it is pretty fun and it looks very nice. There's a little bit of multitasking but not loads. It plays oddly like DotA in that it's 3 a side and you basically push one of the 3 lanes to your opponent. You use cover LOADS like in CoH to avoid dieing.
Doesn't seem like there's any real depth, for example there's no "buildings" as such. You just get a HQ which gets upgraded in a simple "pay this many resources" way to go tier1 -> tier2 -> tier3 which unlocks more units ALL of which are built at that same building, which of course has 1 rally point.
As someone who enjoyed the original Dawn of War, I'm somewhat disappointed initially. This is more like Company of Heroes rather than a sequel to DoW. There's no base building at all. It's heavily focused on small amounts of units and heroes, everything levels up. It feels like a mini RPG rather than an RTS. Not being able to reinforce requisition points also means that most games I have played normally involve the opponent and I running around capping and uncapping points over and over instead of fighting.
On January 22 2009 02:22 Mora wrote: Was SS better than WA and DoW?
I was under the impression that SS patches fixed most of the large issues. While i can agree that it [most likely] not close to being balanced, i thought the consensus opinion from the community was that it was a great step in the right direction.
Did you play CoH bluewolf?
At the middle to lower levels, yes, SoulStorm brought balance improvements. However - it failed to address the top level of the game. It gets complicated as to why this is so - but most of the high APM players only competed due to WCG originally, and when that ended, they went inactive. Relic didn't try to get any inactive players into their closed balance beta for the game (I was even promised a beta spot for SoulStorm that was reneged upon), and hence it was balanced for people with an APM under 100 (seriously).
I can't speak for the "hotifx patch" that was released 6 months after SoulStorm's release. I quit shortly after GGL's ladder for the game since the automatch system was messed up. One starts with an ELO of 1000. Once a person reaches 1200+, it will only match them up with people under 1200, and so it forces one to simply n00b bash with no decent games. Bugs like that combined with a lack of support combined with a dead competitive scene didn't give one much reason to continue playing.
going to be fun seeing all the kids trying to put their sc1 skills/mechanics to use in this game wich plays completely different, then complaining that the game is bad, when they're just playing it wrong.
On January 22 2009 06:03 Disarray wrote: going to be fun seeing all the kids trying to put their sc1 skills/mechanics to use in this game wich plays completely different, then complaining that the game is bad, when they're just playing it wrong.
You don't know shit. If you didn't suck, you would realize that a good RTS player is a good RTS player, not just a good SC player.
Having played for a while longer, there are some aspects that are Starcraft like. You really can lose or win a game in 10 seconds, despite them dragging on longer. Basically there is very little tolerance for error, which is kinda cool.
On January 22 2009 06:03 Disarray wrote: going to be fun seeing all the kids trying to put their sc1 skills/mechanics to use in this game wich plays completely different, then complaining that the game is bad, when they're just playing it wrong.
On January 22 2009 06:03 Disarray wrote: going to be fun seeing all the kids trying to put their sc1 skills/mechanics to use in this game wich plays completely different, then complaining that the game is bad, when they're just playing it wrong.
You don't know shit. If you didn't suck, you would realize that a good RTS player is a good RTS player, not just a good SC player.
this is not true.
being a good starcraft player and switching to COH was a very difficult move for me. The skillset that a good Starcraft player has is more than adequate to be good at COH - this is true. However, the approach to the game and the willingness to understand that different =/= bad, are far more important to enjoying the game. If you don't enjoy the game long enough to play it, you can never be exposed to its depth.
I became an expert in CoH, and i truly love the game. There are some problems with it (which i hope to improve/fix!) but it's a really great game.
A starcraft player typically comes to Relic games thinking that high APM, macro, and micro, are the cornerstones of RTS games. Coming with this attitude invariably leads to not understanding the game. The cornerstone of RTS games are strategy and tactics, which [Company of Heroes] has. Its micro is more tactical than reactionary (the rampant opinion that squads = no micro is a great example of the Starcraft simpleton.)
I am not slighting Starcraft in any way - it is still my favourite RTS. But i love Company of Heroes as well; it would be a lesser game if it had more base building, more macro, and didn't have squads. They're 2 different creatures and beautiful for their differences.
You don't know shit. If you didn't suck, you would realize that a good RTS player is a good RTS player, not just a good SC player.
Very untrue. People get good at various mechanics that apply to all RTS games, like handspeed, camera control, unit grouping, general strategy, etc.
But then you find a new RTS game like sunage and can't fucking move your units properly, or go back to an older rts game like dune 2000 and lose tons of games because you've completely gotten used to your units having effective auto-attack and attack move commands. Or you can go play netstorm and totally trip fucking balls because you don't know what the fuck is going on.
A lot of RTS 'skill' involves more than just interface control too; timing, build orders, etc all change a lot between games. I can understand how to play a perfect USAF in zero hour, then completely be fucking terrible at a game like CnC2.
Obviously a 'good' player brings more to the table than most other players when they start out building their skillset, but to level off or plateau still requires a substantial game specific investment. This isnt' just RTS games either; I can't fucking play source, but i rape balls at 1.6.
On January 22 2009 04:30 FrozenArbiter wrote: Aww man, 50kb/s, that can't be the normal Steam DL speed, right?
It is when you have several thousand other people downloading the same file.
Guh, I restarted steam and now it wont even start dling
It just seems like Steam should be a big enough site to be able to provide better than 50kb/s ffs And since it's not downloading *at all* anymore.. Did me restarting steam like, bump me down in queue or something? Booh.
On January 22 2009 04:30 FrozenArbiter wrote: Aww man, 50kb/s, that can't be the normal Steam DL speed, right?
It is when you have several thousand other people downloading the same file.
Guh, I restarted steam and now it wont even start dling
It just seems like Steam should be a big enough site to be able to provide better than 50kb/s ffs And since it's not downloading *at all* anymore.. Did me restarting steam like, bump me down in queue or something? Booh.
Occasionally it randomly stops and you need to right click and "pause download" then "continue downloading" to get it to restart.
On January 22 2009 06:38 Mora wrote: being a good starcraft player and switching to COH was a very difficult move for me. The skillset that a good Starcraft player has is more than adequate to be good at COH - this is true. However, the approach to the game and the willingness to understand that different =/= bad, are far more important to enjoying the game. If you don't enjoy the game long enough to play it, you can never be exposed to its depth.
I became an expert in CoH, and i truly love the game. There are some problems with it (which i hope to improve/fix!) but it's a really great game.
A starcraft player typically comes to Relic games thinking that high APM, macro, and micro, are the cornerstones of RTS games. Coming with this attitude invariably leads to not understanding the game. The cornerstone of RTS games are strategy and tactics, which [Company of Heroes] has. Its micro is more tactical than reactionary (the rampant opinion that squads = no micro is a great example of the Starcraft simpleton.)
I am not slighting Starcraft in any way - it is still my favourite RTS. But i love Company of Heroes as well; it would be a lesser game if it had more base building, more macro, and didn't have squads. They're 2 different creatures and beautiful for their differences.
This man speaks the truth, listen to him.
And I do agree that CoH is an amazing game with a lot of depth and really nice ideas. I'm looking forward to playing DoW2 because it not only looks very nice in the videos but some mechanics shown there seem to kick serious ass (like the importance of cover, derived from CoH clearly).
The 4 races in this game really are unique, I've been playing pretty much non-stop and it's still fun.
The biggest improvement I see from DoW is that you can't reinforce squads out on the battlefield.
I like Eldar the best, mainly because of the jump mechanic. It's a really fast CD instant teleport. I find the warp exarch to be the most powerful leader, with decent micro he's almost untouchable.
I'm still not sure if this game has depth though, the last couple of games I haven't changed my play style very much.
Basic BO is: Shuriken Cannon, Shuriken Cannon, Guardian squad. ->tier2 Upgrade the leader with the top 3 items, (longer range, more HP/energy and toggle suppressing fire). He's then set for the game, and very powerful. You can jump behind enemies then suppress them. Then you get a few more squads til you have 400 of the red stuff and summon warp spiders. Then get a wraithlord. I just keep reinforcing my squads and getting more wraithlords with brightlances until I win.
On January 22 2009 03:42 Klive5ive wrote: Well having played DoW2 for a few hours it is pretty fun and it looks very nice. There's a little bit of multitasking but not loads. It plays oddly like DotA in that it's 3 a side and you basically push one of the 3 lanes to your opponent. You use cover LOADS like in CoH to avoid dieing.
Doesn't seem like there's any real depth, for example there's no "buildings" as such. You just get a HQ which gets upgraded in a simple "pay this many resources" way to go tier1 -> tier2 -> tier3 which unlocks more units ALL of which are built at that same building, which of course has 1 rally point.
Oh man this is exactly what I thought. It is really similar to Dota in that you take 3 different lanes and then also trying to ambush heroes.
On January 22 2009 09:44 Kennigit wrote: Mora do you work DoW or purely CoH?
i was on DoW for a few months assisting with some single player design stuff.
unofficially i have contributed to DOW2 multiplayer systems in conversation/debate. My roommate is on the MP team, so we will often bounce things off each other in off-hours. i am hugely optimistic about DoW2.
On January 22 2009 08:13 L wrote: Obviously a 'good' player brings more to the table than most other players when they start out building their skillset, but to level off or plateau still requires a substantial game specific investment. This isnt' just RTS games either; I can't fucking play source, but i rape balls at 1.6.
I'm going to group what you and Mora said together. It's just wrong.
Have you heard of Pillars? He was fucking good at a lot of RTS, ranging from the AoX series to SC. The best players that really understand RTS are going to be good at any RTS because they know how to solve and play RTS, not just that game.
In a sense, I'm just begging the question by doing this - since if I define someone good at RTS to explicitly include the ability to solve and think about RTS in general, then clearly they would be able to be good at RTS.
Just played a 3v3 today with some friends on some map without Victory Points and here are some things I noticed:
- The army sizes are really really small. I think I had 3 squads of 3 guys each (playing Space Marines) + 1 dread + 1 pred + my Force Commander and I was maxed out on pop cap. That's 12 guys or so, I might not be remembering exactly. Will take some getting used to but I kinda like bigger army numbers at the moment.
- The 1 building that players have takes a very very long time to kill. I had practically the entire map but that didn't mean much since I was maxed out already so I had to go in for the kill. I had my entire army pounding away plus orbital bombardments whenever I had them and just ignored them capping the rest of the map with stray units. They took the entire rest of the map and I was only half way through kill their HQ. I then killed their units they brought back to defend and proceeded to attack the HQ for a good long while. I actually got up and got lunch, leaving my afk army on top of his HQ and eventually I won.
The game seems alright and I don't want to be too harsh or sound like I actually know what I'm doing since it was literally my first and only game played thus far. Just my first impressions.
On January 22 2009 08:13 L wrote: Obviously a 'good' player brings more to the table than most other players when they start out building their skillset, but to level off or plateau still requires a substantial game specific investment. This isnt' just RTS games either; I can't fucking play source, but i rape balls at 1.6.
I'm going to group what you and Mora said together. It's just wrong.
Have you heard of Pillars? He was fucking good at a lot of RTS, ranging from the AoX series to SC. The best players that really understand RTS are going to be good at any RTS because they know how to solve and play RTS, not just that game.
In a sense, I'm just begging the question by doing this - since if I define someone good at RTS to explicitly include the ability to solve and think about RTS in general, then clearly they would be able to be good at RTS.
Did you bother to read my last post?
to summarize in point form: * i agreed to the idea that it is not uncommon for players who build up their 'skill' in one game, to go to another thinking they're going to be great at it, fail, and blame the game instead of themselves. * i claimed that the skillset to be good at one is very similar to the skillset of another, but * players will often not get past their scapegoating, and will never have a chance to explore their skillset in the new game * i explained this further: APM, Micro and Macro are not RTS skillsets. transferring these assets, while helpful, is often confused with transferring RTS skillsets. When these skillsets don't transition into skill at the new game, they resort to scapegoating the game.
Pillars is a great example to use, as he is the exception to the rule. Pillars does not go from game to game blaming the game for his lack of skill; on the contrary, Pillars is fascinated by game design, and so welcomes these new systems with an open mind. He is good at RTS - not to be confused with micro or macro - which is why his skill is transferrable.
On January 22 2009 14:38 Phyre wrote: Just played a 3v3 today with some friends on some map without Victory Points and here are some things I noticed:
- The army sizes are really really small. I think I had 3 squads of 3 guys each (playing Space Marines) + 1 dread + 1 pred + my Force Commander and I was maxed out on pop cap. That's 12 guys or so, I might not be remembering exactly. Will take some getting used to but I kinda like bigger army numbers at the moment.
- The 1 building that players have takes a very very long time to kill. I had practically the entire map but that didn't mean much since I was maxed out already so I had to go in for the kill. I had my entire army pounding away plus orbital bombardments whenever I had them and just ignored them capping the rest of the map with stray units. They took the entire rest of the map and I was only half way through kill their HQ. I then killed their units they brought back to defend and proceeded to attack the HQ for a good long while. I actually got up and got lunch, leaving my afk army on top of his HQ and eventually I won.
The game seems alright and I don't want to be too harsh or sound like I actually know what I'm doing since it was literally my first and only game played thus far. Just my first impressions.
I think the game is modeled best around Victory Points. I would suggest checking those maps out - the experience may feel a little different.
I'm still enjoying it, I've even managed to get my Eldar to Rank4.
Last game was epic, it went right down to the wire but we JUST won. One of my team mates had never played before but he picked it up really fast. At the end I had a level 10 Warp Exarch and a level 4 squad of warp spiders... sweeeeeet. Jumping around raping everything, lots of fun.
The game is surprisingly balanced, I'm still learning of course, but it seems good.
A few balance things I don't know if others agree?: 1) The techmarine turrets seem slightly overpowered. I don't mind them being suppressing or the damage they deal but they are just too strong even when you do get near. If you get behind them you're still firing for about a week. 2) I don't like the "uberstrikes" from any of the races. It's just quite lame, especially when there's lag. One well placed hit and you kill everything. For instance I've destroyed an entire Tyranid army with it. I guess I'd rather there were cheaper weaker strikes, or maybe you use your red stuff to summon powerful troops. 3) Terminator squads.... they seem OP, nothing can kill them, and they have an ability which one shots tanks?!
On January 22 2009 11:50 Tropics wrote: So to anyone who played CoH, how does DoW 2 compare? I liked CoH quite a lot but I quit after a few months and long before the expansion
dow 2 has been on my mind but I didn't like the first all that much, although if it's anything like coh it's definitely in consideration for me
Its a bit like coh, but with alot more variety in the units, or so it seems, and much smaller maps, faster paced action and alot more spells/micro than coh. I think it's what coh should have been, more fast paced.
On January 22 2009 11:41 Bosu wrote: What is the best/ most popular DoW 2 community site and or sites?
http://www.dowsanctuary.com is the best one out there for English speakers. One must register to see the forum posts which has most of the information. There is a larger one for the German community, but I no longer remember that address.
As an unrelated aside, I'll update my post with information that was posted there about how to save / watch replays in the game.
On January 23 2009 03:09 rob3dj wrote: Just been playing with frozen and klive the last few hours, massive like 8 game killing spree, we destroyed everyone. GG frozen nice nid play.
Yeah GGs, the more I play it the more I like it. I was in doubt about the skill cap at the start but playing with Frozen and Rob totally changed that. We literally demolished everyone and I can see loads of ways I can improve, I fucked up many times but we still won.
On January 23 2009 04:01 JudgeMathis wrote: The concept of the RTS is nice. But, the balanced suck in DoW1. Not willing to play unless friends want to play on a lan.
Have you tried playing it yet? Seriously its a totaly different game. It's Company of Heroes meets Defence of the Acients. It's nothing like the original DOW. It certainly seems much more balanced than DOW1 but its hard to compare because it's so different. Just try it out seriously.
You don't know shit. If you didn't suck, you would realize that a good RTS player is a good RTS player, not just a good SC player.
Very untrue. People get good at various mechanics that apply to all RTS games, like handspeed, camera control, unit grouping, general strategy, etc.
But then you find a new RTS game like sunage and can't fucking move your units properly, or go back to an older rts game like dune 2000 and lose tons of games because you've completely gotten used to your units having effective auto-attack and attack move commands. Or you can go play netstorm and totally trip fucking balls because you don't know what the fuck is going on.
A lot of RTS 'skill' involves more than just interface control too; timing, build orders, etc all change a lot between games. I can understand how to play a perfect USAF in zero hour, then completely be fucking terrible at a game like CnC2.
Obviously a 'good' player brings more to the table than most other players when they start out building their skillset, but to level off or plateau still requires a substantial game specific investment. This isnt' just RTS games either; I can't fucking play source, but i rape balls at 1.6.
I'd say you are wrong. I good RTS player is indeed a good RTS player period. Obviously you can't switch to a completely new game and start raping good players after a week. But you have a huuuuge advantage over someone who hasn't played RTS in general. Handspeed is always useful but more importantly you bring an entire different attitude to the game: You will immediately start looking for "builds" and ways to efficiently "micro". They will obviously not be the similar to what they were in whatever game you played orginally but that doesn't matter so terribly. I once had a friend who used to be one of the world's better age of mythology/ age of titans players. I introduced him to sc, he was D+, having beated one C- player after like 1-2 weeks. Someone used top play at 200 apm while multitasking etc will simply soar past the inital learning phase.
On January 22 2009 08:13 L wrote: Obviously a 'good' player brings more to the table than most other players when they start out building their skillset, but to level off or plateau still requires a substantial game specific investment. This isnt' just RTS games either; I can't fucking play source, but i rape balls at 1.6.
I'm going to group what you and Mora said together. It's just wrong.
Have you heard of Pillars? He was fucking good at a lot of RTS, ranging from the AoX series to SC. The best players that really understand RTS are going to be good at any RTS because they know how to solve and play RTS, not just that game.
In a sense, I'm just begging the question by doing this - since if I define someone good at RTS to explicitly include the ability to solve and think about RTS in general, then clearly they would be able to be good at RTS.
Did you bother to read my last post?
to summarize in point form: * i agreed to the idea that it is not uncommon for players who build up their 'skill' in one game, to go to another thinking they're going to be great at it, fail, and blame the game instead of themselves. * i claimed that the skillset to be good at one is very similar to the skillset of another, but * players will often not get past their scapegoating, and will never have a chance to explore their skillset in the new game * i explained this further: APM, Micro and Macro are not RTS skillsets. transferring these assets, while helpful, is often confused with transferring RTS skillsets. When these skillsets don't transition into skill at the new game, they resort to scapegoating the game.
Pillars is a great example to use, as he is the exception to the rule. Pillars does not go from game to game blaming the game for his lack of skill; on the contrary, Pillars is fascinated by game design, and so welcomes these new systems with an open mind. He is good at RTS - not to be confused with micro or macro - which is why his skill is transferrable.
I never said that APM, micro, or macro are skillsets. I don't think they are important skillsets to transfer. Knowing how to think and analyze RTS is a skillset and that's what someone like Pillars is good at. It may happen, though, that in order to be able to think about RTS properly, you have to be able to execute at a certain level too.
I would also wager that anyone at A rank in SC is also good at that sort of fundamental analysis and could easily pick up another game.
Nothing I said has to do with technical ability, or scapegoating based on it.
Just me or does the 1v1 search take FOREVER? 3v3 really fast, 1v1 just keeps going and going, "Found 10 games, 5 matches" then just keeps counting down.
On January 23 2009 05:17 FrozenArbiter wrote: Just me or does the 1v1 search take FOREVER? 3v3 really fast, 1v1 just keeps going and going, "Found 10 games, 5 matches" then just keeps counting down.
Problem connecting to people?
I'm getting the same problem and it's infuriating. Well at least it isn't my router I guess.
Guys, this game is really, really, really good for 3v3. Like *sooooooo* good.
Just had a really amazing 25 min 3v3 where our team was down to 14 pts (!!!) vs their.. 250-270 (watching the rep now so I'll check exact numbers). 15 minutes later we 14, they 0.
So. so. very. cool.
It's not in any way competition for SC2, but not because it's a bad game, but because it's a DIFFERENT game, it's like hockey / soccer or something.
There are some minor issues with the hotkeys but not that big.. For replays I would like: 1) Neutral view (ie view all map) 2) faster playback than 2x 3) Being able to watch them with others (don't think you can?)
Ah yes, one more thing before I forget - tunnels are verrrrry hard to select in the thick of things, which is quite annoying when you want to get your units out of them
I'll post this in the official forums as well (http://community.dawnofwar2.com).
lol i think this is most excited for a game ive been in a while. Played the demo for a while today at a friends house and it's really fun - like FA said, not really competition for SC because its different but still really fun even in beta.
So I just played another game today, this time with Victory Points, and it was far more entertaining. What Mora said about the game being designed with VPs in mind was definitely on the money. The game was much closer and more tense. As always though, with some more game time I come with some more critiques:
1) I was looking around for some kind of damage numbers on my units and then realized that there really aren't many numbers anywhere. The only thing I remember seeing was the HP of units. I personally would very very much like to be able to see how much damage a unit does. This would be extremely helpful on all the various upgrades.
Right now I can't really tell which upgrade is better than another since they use vague descriptions like "This wargear grants more hp" and "This wargear grants more hp and more damage." Not the exact wording but you get the idea. So video game logic dictates that the +hp wargear should give more hp than the one that gives both +hp and +damage right? Well, if that's the case I'd really like the numbers to compare. +100 hp vs +90 hp and +50 damage for a comparable cost would make the choice pretty clear cut. Or it could be +1000 hp vs +500 hp and some damage. Without the numbers you just don't know. Descriptions in general could really be more descriptive and specific. I can tell you right now that a few weeks after DoW2 is released officially there will be damage tables posted all over the internet and any decent player will have perused them. This shouldn't be necessary, I really think I should be able to find this out in game.
- One big thing that set DoW apart from SC and other RTS's was that practically all infantry and walkers have a melee and ranged attack. DoW1 handled this pretty easily with the use of Stances. If a unit is far more useful in melee it was easy to set it to a Melee Stance and let it do it's thing. In DoW2 there are no Stances, there is just a Melee command similar to the Attack or Stop commands. So if I tell a Dread to go melee a squad it will melee it then resume ranged combat afterwards. That's kind of annoying but I suppose it will just take some getting used to. I still liked the stances though, it seemed like a more elegant and useful solution.
- The really low pop cap is still bothering me. When I've got the whole map capped including the Victory Points my job is basically to camp the VPs until I win, which is fine. However, due to the really low pop cap my enemy is able to crank out an army similar in size to my own without too much difficulty and then come out to pose a serious threat despite the fact that I have the entire map and won a number of battles. I really dislike comparing this too much to SC since they are different games going for very different feels but I can't shake the fact that I feel like I'm not being adequately rewarded for my superior battle performance and map control. In SC if you've won a few major battles and controlled 90% of the map you generally feel pretty confident your opponent can't pose a major threat to you in a straight up confrontation and I feel like this makes the most sense to me. Granted I still won these matches but I feel perhaps it was a bit closer than it should have been come late game. Perhaps this is intended or I just don't know how to solidify my advantage correctly though. I sure make that mistake enough in SC as well.
Just my collection of thoughts after game 2 day 2. Complaints aside it's still pretty fun.
Companies struggle to even balance 2 different races properly, blizzard managed to "balance" 3 different races, how do they think game will be played with 9 races? This is a game for fun, nothing else..
On January 23 2009 18:56 Samurai- wrote: Companies struggle to even balance 2 different races properly, blizzard managed to "balance" 3 different races, how do they think game will be played with 9 races? This is a game for fun, nothing else..
DoW2 has like 4 races? That's as much as WC3 and Blizzard managed to balance it out quite ok (there are some annoyances but not many major flaws).
@ Phyre: I didn't get to play the game yet but isn't it that if you win several battles and capture whole map, then reach maximum pop that enemy is screwed? I mean, it doesn't matter if he can get up to max pop too really since you can just win any battle with superior control/decisionmaking and stuff like that? (+ you should be able to reinforce/buyback faster due to better economy)
I usually prefer playing 1v1, but 3v3 in DOW is a ton of fun. I like it much more than CoH. Mostly because tanks can't run over my infantry. I hated that.
On January 23 2009 18:56 Samurai- wrote: Companies struggle to even balance 2 different races properly, blizzard managed to "balance" 3 different races, how do they think game will be played with 9 races? This is a game for fun, nothing else..
On January 23 2009 18:56 Samurai- wrote: Companies struggle to even balance 2 different races properly, blizzard managed to "balance" 3 different races, how do they think game will be played with 9 races? This is a game for fun, nothing else..
On January 23 2009 18:56 Samurai- wrote: Companies struggle to even balance 2 different races properly, blizzard managed to "balance" 3 different races, how do they think game will be played with 9 races? This is a game for fun, nothing else..
dow2 has 4 races.
Honestly, by the next expansion they'd have 5. :o
afaik his comment was directed at dow2, not dow2exp.
On January 23 2009 18:56 Samurai- wrote: Companies struggle to even balance 2 different races properly, blizzard managed to "balance" 3 different races, how do they think game will be played with 9 races? This is a game for fun, nothing else..
dow2 has 4 races.
Honestly, by the next expansion they'd have 5. :o
I really hope they don't do that. 4 is just about alright, anymore is not gonna work. With the expansions they should just add more units. The game does lack a lot of stuff.
Nah I hope they add a new race with the expansion. The forces of Chaos are really missing from this game. With the new hero system they would be awesome.
On January 24 2009 08:22 Roxen000 wrote: Is anyone else finding some REALLY laggy 3v3 games? To the point where you can barely play? =S
If your connection doesnt suck and your FPS is fine then it's because somebody else is lagging and causing everyone to lag. Usually if the game lags from the start somebody will drop early. Only once out of 20 or so games so far has it lagged the entire game and nobody was dropped.
On January 23 2009 19:19 Manit0u wrote: @ Phyre: I didn't get to play the game yet but isn't it that if you win several battles and capture whole map, then reach maximum pop that enemy is screwed? I mean, it doesn't matter if he can get up to max pop too really since you can just win any battle with superior control/decisionmaking and stuff like that? (+ you should be able to reinforce/buyback faster due to better economy)
Superior control and decision making did let me win my games but my point was that I think it should get easier since I've achieved such a large advantage. In SC if I had a similar situation where I had 90% of the map and won a few major battles it would simply be a matter of playing safe and waiting for the opponent to GG or you go in to finish him off. In this game I could give the opponent most of the map and retreat (with the handy dandy "get out of anything" card called the retreat button) from most battles and still have a pretty damn good shot at beating him in a straight up fight later in the game. Like I said before, I don't feel like advantages add up like they do in other RTS's.
As for reinforce/buying back due to a better economy, I personally haven't noticed. Simply having your main base does give a trickle of resources for free which seem like plenty to simply reinforce your squads now and then. Also, you can't reinforce on the field anymore. You can only reinforce at your main HQ. In DoW1 if I had the whole map I could practically a-move an opponent to death by just overwatching all my production buildings and reinforce on my squads and steamroll him with my superior econ.
After spending a good portion of today playing some test games against the comp though I'm finding that to solidify your advantage you don't really do it with unit numbers so much as upgrades and veterancy. After I've maxed out I sink the remainder of my resources into upgrades/wargear and it seems to give me that advantage I was looking for. I'm still getting used to it. I wish I had some numbers on how much of a boost veterancy gives my units.
On January 23 2009 19:19 Manit0u wrote: @ Phyre: I didn't get to play the game yet but isn't it that if you win several battles and capture whole map, then reach maximum pop that enemy is screwed? I mean, it doesn't matter if he can get up to max pop too really since you can just win any battle with superior control/decisionmaking and stuff like that? (+ you should be able to reinforce/buyback faster due to better economy)
Superior control and decision making did let me win my games but my point was that I think it should get easier since I've achieved such a large advantage. In SC if I had a similar situation where I had 90% of the map and won a few major battles it would simply be a matter of playing safe and waiting for the opponent to GG or you go in to finish him off. In this game I could give the opponent most of the map and retreat (with the handy dandy "get out of anything" card called the retreat button) from most battles and still have a pretty damn good shot at beating him in a straight up fight later in the game. Like I said before, I don't feel like advantages add up like they do in other RTS's.
As for reinforce/buying back due to a better economy, I personally haven't noticed. Simply having your main base does give a trickle of resources for free which seem like plenty to simply reinforce your squads now and then. Also, you can't reinforce on the field anymore. You can only reinforce at your main HQ. In DoW1 if I had the whole map I could practically a-move an opponent to death by just overwatching all my production buildings and reinforce on my squads and steamroll him with my superior econ.
After spending a good portion of today playing some test games against the comp though I'm finding that to solidify your advantage you don't really do it with unit numbers so much as upgrades and veterancy. After I've maxed out I sink the remainder of my resources into upgrades/wargear and it seems to give me that advantage I was looking for. I'm still getting used to it. I wish I had some numbers on how much of a boost veterancy gives my units.
I think you're nitpicking and I can't really work out what you're complaining about. If you play the game on take and hold, as it's designed to be played, then you never get close to maxing anyway. I've played probably 50 games and never maxed. It's a non-issue.
I wonder what their priorities are, because I really like this game at the moment. If they stick with these 4 races and really balance them properly then I reckon it could have a real following and potentially a competitive scene. But I don't know if I want to commit my time to this when they might just churn out a bunch of weak expansion packs and ruin the game.
I'd really like a report on the mulitplayer lobby and the netcode of DOW2
One of the things that killed COH and DOW imo was the horrible netcode and gamespy match making systems. People would drop all the time and in order to find a match in DOW you had to wait sometimes 5 minutes to get into a game, even though you the auto match maker found 2/2 people to play. it was really annoying.
Other than that, if this game is like COH then it will be a good game (provided you can mirror match)
Mora, please make sure the developers also clean up the ToolTips on all the abililties. Both COH and DOW had horrible tooltips and some of them were just plain wrong. More information is always better.
For example...
ToolTip1 = Damage Upgrade for Space Marine.
ToolTip2 = Damage upgrade for the basic space marine attack.
ToolTip2 is clearly better because it tells you exactly what the upgrade does. DOW had all kinds of these problems. For example the dakka dakka upgrade was for your basic shoota weapon, banners etc. but the Blastier upgrade also greatly increased the basic shoota weapon, and was the better of the two, but the tooltip doesnt really tell you that.
One of the things that killed COH and DOW imo was the horrible netcode and gamespy match making systems. People would drop all the time and in order to find a match in DOW you had to wait sometimes 5 minutes to get into a game, even though you the auto match maker found 2/2 people to play. it was really annoying.
People drop a decent bit.. maybe once every... 5 games? I'm not sure. I've never dropped and none of the people from TL that I've played with have dropped tho, so it's probably an issue on THEIR ends and not the game.
The 2/2 people to play but no game = still there, still annoying (didn't play CoH so for me I guess it's just annoying for the first time).
You can mirror match.
There is NO lobby at all at the moment, I've complained about that at the DoW2 forums ( http://community.dawnofwar2.com ) and hopefully I'll get a response.
On January 24 2009 07:55 LordofToast wrote: Nah I hope they add a new race with the expansion. The forces of Chaos are really missing from this game. With the new hero system they would be awesome.
Yeah even as someone who barely played the first game I did find myself missing them a little bit
On January 23 2009 19:19 Manit0u wrote: @ Phyre: I didn't get to play the game yet but isn't it that if you win several battles and capture whole map, then reach maximum pop that enemy is screwed? I mean, it doesn't matter if he can get up to max pop too really since you can just win any battle with superior control/decisionmaking and stuff like that? (+ you should be able to reinforce/buyback faster due to better economy)
Superior control and decision making did let me win my games but my point was that I think it should get easier since I've achieved such a large advantage. In SC if I had a similar situation where I had 90% of the map and won a few major battles it would simply be a matter of playing safe and waiting for the opponent to GG or you go in to finish him off. In this game I could give the opponent most of the map and retreat (with the handy dandy "get out of anything" card called the retreat button) from most battles and still have a pretty damn good shot at beating him in a straight up fight later in the game. Like I said before, I don't feel like advantages add up like they do in other RTS's.
As for reinforce/buying back due to a better economy, I personally haven't noticed. Simply having your main base does give a trickle of resources for free which seem like plenty to simply reinforce your squads now and then. Also, you can't reinforce on the field anymore. You can only reinforce at your main HQ. In DoW1 if I had the whole map I could practically a-move an opponent to death by just overwatching all my production buildings and reinforce on my squads and steamroll him with my superior econ.
After spending a good portion of today playing some test games against the comp though I'm finding that to solidify your advantage you don't really do it with unit numbers so much as upgrades and veterancy. After I've maxed out I sink the remainder of my resources into upgrades/wargear and it seems to give me that advantage I was looking for. I'm still getting used to it. I wish I had some numbers on how much of a boost veterancy gives my units.
I think you're nitpicking and I can't really work out what you're complaining about. If you play the game on take and hold, as it's designed to be played, then you never get close to maxing anyway. I've played probably 50 games and never maxed. It's a non-issue.
I wonder what their priorities are, because I really like this game at the moment. If they stick with these 4 races and really balance them properly then I reckon it could have a real following and potentially a competitive scene. But I don't know if I want to commit my time to this when they might just churn out a bunch of weak expansion packs and ruin the game.
Yeah, my gripe about the low pop cap really only applies to Annihilation mode. Been playing only Victory Point games as of late and it really does remove that problem.
I never really stopped to look closely at the amount of req you get from RPs but after looking over the numbers that were posted my earlier feelings about map control not conferring much advantage seem to make more sense.
If I'm reading their numbers right, you could have all the points on the map and the increase in resources over what your nigh invincible HQ starts you off with is near negligible. You get +264 req/minute from your HQ, you get +11 req per RP you control. With around 8 RPs tops on a map, that doesn't seem like much. Sort of like making a Starcraft map where you had a FMP main and all other expos had 4 min patches or something. They do give your a benefit but it's very very slight.
a bit offtopic but I know you're somewhat related to relic.
I was into COH big time, me and my partner were really into it playing good 2v2 -both of us decent bw players, b2,b3 from good ol wgt days-. and I can say we beat almost all upper ties axis and could hold our own aagins the say top 10.
our BIG probmel with COH is the fucking RELIC SERVER. countless times we got to level 10, level 11, with nice streaks and else, only to get robbed in a game where a pair of IDIOTS level 1 or 2 got into it with either some insane motherfucking lag from motherfucking hell, or they disc and beat the crap out of our statts sending us to level 7 back again in just 1 loss ??
in frustration we eventually quit playing it about 4 months ago...... is this still going on in relic server ???
i am sorry to hear that your experience was so negative.
we're constantly trying to improve the efficiency and stability of our servers. As to the matchmaking, the only reason you should be matched up with some with that great a disparity in levels is because you've been searching for a long time and it finally seeded you with someone. This occurs because of a small player pool.
That being said, there are more people on COH than ever before, so it should happen less often.
I'm not sure this is a bug but I was playing a custom SM vs SM match on the desert 1v1 map (forget the name ) and for whatever reason the hotkey for the Scout Squad didn't work, or at least I don't think it did..
Just to make sure, before I report it as a bug, the hotkey IS G right? Because it's a bit hard to tell since it blends into the portrait of the unit >_<
Before this game I though the idea of leveling in an RTS was flawed. But somehow Veterancy in DOW2 is very cool, it definitely adds an interesting dimension to the gameplay. It is a shame there's no exact number, but I'm guessing someone will work that out.
I'm just sort of beginning to factor veterancy into my play, particularly when it comes to Banshees and Assault Marines. Those are two squads you simply cannot let level.
Earlier I lost a game against a Marine player... purely because his AMs leveled a few times.
But 5 minutes ago I played this epic game against an Orc player. Although I thought Orcs were weak when I first played, now I've flipped 180 and I reckon they are the most powerful! They just never stop attacking. I was definitely behind. (Guardians just don't stand a chance against Orcs) But luckily I'd recently changed my build and was making 1 squad of banshees before tier2.
At one point he had all 3 victory points, but he just didn't deal with the banshees effectively. He raped my free warp spiders (lot's of people on DOW2 forums say WS are imbalanced, I think they're weak!) all my guardians and weapons platforms so all I had left was the banshees.
Anyway when my first falcon tank came out my Banshees had hit Level 4. At which point no size of Orc army could deal with them! At the end he charged a full new nob group, his Warboss and 3-4 groups of other shit into them. But 2falcons, my banshees and my commander tore them apart and I won the game with about 34 VPs left xD
It was awesome. (by the way does anyone know if there's a way to save replays?)
1) Yes. 2) Mmmmm, I'm not 100% sure but I just use my MSN ID :o (Although I think I had to do some additional registrations, but I don't remember any authenticity checks).
1on1 in this game is actually pretty poor... I mean: Of ALL the replays between 2 rather good players.. Search the ones that have T3 units in it and the ones that take over 25 minutes... If it's over 1%, i'm astonished.
On January 28 2009 05:15 Velr wrote: 1on1 in this game is actually pretty poor... I mean: Of ALL the replays between 2 rather good players.. Search the ones that have T3 units in it and the ones that take over 25 minutes... If it's over 1%, i'm astonished.
Well, 1v1 ranked ladder is played with 3 Victory Point Locations - and either yourself or your opponent will control the majority of these. As controlling these makes your opponents 500 victory points decrease and with no way to increase it, the game basically has a "win timer". Someone eventually loses all 500 points - and close games of say 27-0 will end around 22 minutes.
Not necessarily a bad thing, imo, as it does mean one can play a quick game during lunch or something without worrying that it will go on too long.
Something does need to be done about T3 though. One must first have to pay for the tier 3 upgrade, and then due to lack of an ability to increase one's resource rate in the game at this point, wait for over a minute to be able to afford a single T3 unit. By the time this unit gets to the field of battle, someone would already be basically out of victory points...... It just isn't viable in 1v1 at the moment.
I have to say that after playing a couple of games I love the game so far. Would be much better though if it didn't freeze sometimes (the music plays, I can alt-tab and everything but the game itself just stops)
On January 28 2009 05:15 Velr wrote: 1on1 in this game is actually pretty poor... I mean: Of ALL the replays between 2 rather good players.. Search the ones that have T3 units in it and the ones that take over 25 minutes... If it's over 1%, i'm astonished.
Well, 1v1 ranked ladder is played with 3 Victory Point Locations - and either yourself or your opponent will control the majority of these. As controlling these makes your opponents 500 victory points decrease and with no way to increase it, the game basically has a "win timer". Someone eventually loses all 500 points - and close games of say 27-0 will end around 22 minutes.
Not necessarily a bad thing, imo, as it does mean one can play a quick game during lunch or something without worrying that it will go on too long.
Something does need to be done about T3 though. One must first have to pay for the tier 3 upgrade, and then due to lack of an ability to increase one's resource rate in the game at this point, wait for over a minute to be able to afford a single T3 unit. By the time this unit gets to the field of battle, someone would already be basically out of victory points...... It just isn't viable in 1v1 at the moment.
I think the games are inherently short because of the way the maps are designed. Small map = short game. Its a bit like starcraft when you think about it, the outcome of a game greatly depends on the type of map you play.
Im sure relic will release some bigger maps fof 1v1 that will allow players to reach T3.
Guys, let's post our ingame names and I'll add them to the OP. I'll start: FrozenArbiter-> qqqoooqqq Klive5ive -> Klive5ive LordofT0ast -> LordofT0ast (I hope I got the zero right will double check tomorrow).
On January 28 2009 15:06 Disregard wrote: Shruiken cannons are OP!!!
Totally sweet*
Assault Space Marines are a bitch and a half, however!
ID: TRR82 Let's play! (I hope you don't play Orks, as it seems that my DoW only hangs up when there's Orks on the screen )
Edit: Ok, the game gets better and better, it doesn't hang up now (got some good streak) and everything seems fine.
Some things I don't like: - automatchmaking system - would be better if you could de-select some maps (I don't know most of them yet but in the future I guess I won't like some of them) and if it would actually match you against someone of similar rank (and not 3 rank 1 guys vs 3 rank 20+ like I got today) - if one person lags or has performance issues it affects everyone (me no like watch slideshow cuz of some noob who can't get his settings right) - ranks don't save sometimes (I'm at 4k rep now and made rank 2 with SM twice already - didn't lose any games in the meantime) - maybe I'm just noob with them but nids seem seriously underpowered, Zoanothrope is fine but for example Hive Tyrant is way too slow and too squishy, basic units are very squishy (including warrior brood) or very slow and I haven't noticed them comboing well (like SM hb suppresion + am jump = pure ownage) - I don't like the steam ingame pop-ups (only at start though) - I don't like games for windows live stuff (having a lobby for multiplayer games would be awesome)
Things I like: - I'd give a lot to see the face of a guy whose Carnifex got soloed by my Apothecary - devastator squads with heavy plasma (hell yeah!) - although the game feels really slow at times it's not that you're just standing there doing nothing, most of the time you're moving around the map capping/decapping and looking for some opening you could use to gain advantage
And I don't get people who say T3 is too costly and you can't reach it before the game ends. It's there to break the stalemate when the game's been going on for too long or if it's a close one and you need something extra to seal your victory, it fills this role perfectly.
On January 28 2009 21:18 Manit0u wrote: ID: TRR82 Let's play! (I hope you don't play Orks, as it seems that my DoW only hangs up when there's Orks on the screen )
Yeah lol, Orcs are a lag nightmare. The Warboss has this rofl item called the Bosspole which creates this crazy animation on anything friendly in a massive radius. I was playing with FA's Nids as Orcs and the game practically froze when my Warboss walked past his Nid army.
On January 28 2009 05:15 Velr wrote: 1on1 in this game is actually pretty poor... I mean: Of ALL the replays between 2 rather good players.. Search the ones that have T3 units in it and the ones that take over 25 minutes... If it's over 1%, i'm astonished.
Well, 1v1 ranked ladder is played with 3 Victory Point Locations - and either yourself or your opponent will control the majority of these. As controlling these makes your opponents 500 victory points decrease and with no way to increase it, the game basically has a "win timer". Someone eventually loses all 500 points - and close games of say 27-0 will end around 22 minutes.
Not necessarily a bad thing, imo, as it does mean one can play a quick game during lunch or something without worrying that it will go on too long.
Something does need to be done about T3 though. One must first have to pay for the tier 3 upgrade, and then due to lack of an ability to increase one's resource rate in the game at this point, wait for over a minute to be able to afford a single T3 unit. By the time this unit gets to the field of battle, someone would already be basically out of victory points...... It just isn't viable in 1v1 at the moment.
Hmm this post will be my first negative one.. I'm getting slightly bored :S
I do agree that T3 is a waste of time, especially for my race, the Eldar. There's no reason at all to go that far. With banshees, warp spiders and falcon tanks you can counter anything. I think the tier's should reduce your upkeep, increase your unit cap or at least give more gear to your units. The only real reason to go to T2 is so I can upgrade my banshees and commander, but T3 doesn't give any further upgrades.
I have to say the game to me is already becoming very repetitive. I know the maps now and I'm just doing the same successful moves over and over and over. There's no real depth to the game.
And the matchmaking system sucks, I keep getting weak players who refuse to leave and just stretch the games out for no good reason. I'm 23-4 now, with 3 of those losses coming in my first 6 games and I guess I'm bored already.
On January 28 2009 23:27 Klive5ive wrote: I have to say the game to me is already becoming very repetitive. I know the maps now and I'm just doing the same successful moves over and over and over. There's no real depth to the game.
And the matchmaking system sucks, I keep getting weak players who refuse to leave and just stretch the games out for no good reason. I'm 23-4 now, with 3 of those losses coming in my first 6 games and I guess I'm bored already.
Hence why the DOW series is a casual fun one. :p But I can recommend either: A) Trying out the other races and figuring out how to win with them for a new experience, or B) Playing in the ESL 1v1 tournament this weekend. The games in a tournament usually end up being more challenging and closer than those on the ladder.
Must be pretty difficult to balance against timer - suddenly you aren't just balancing econ/armies, but having to restrict a lot of possibility to make sure that stalls and such aren't destroying matchups.
Just downloaded and installed and after some annoying Windows Live issues I've played my first 3 matches
2-1 so far as the Eldar... Pretty fun, but i can certainly see it becoming very slow and repetitive once teh metagame has developed. I prefer much faster paced not-squad-based RTS games.
If anyone wants to play a few matches, I still don't have any idea what i'm actually doing, but i'm definitely down to play.
My steam is "sfleet" or "Motiva" or PM me if you want to game some. I'd be interested in doing some 3v3 teamliquid matches and such.
Edit: Also runs like garbage on my comp with every settings turned down. :O
Okay... question. Does bringing back units to the main structure let you heal? I can't really tell, but my opponent kept bringing back a nearly full health force commander after I kept almost killing it and it was annoying. I know you can reinforce near the command structure.
Annoying like shit is, that you don't get an "under attack" command until the first unit died... If a Squad of Orks just walked into some heavy fire (devastator, shurriken) they are dead until you actually know whats happening... Probably you can look like the Nob dies but thats abut is.
Just lost a game because of that... :/
enough for today... Orks > Spesmarines... Couldn't to shit with marines, with ork i had close loses (except one) and clean wins... That poor SM guy was truly hurt as my 3 stickbommas killed his tactical squad :p.. 330/10 vs 500 req? ouch :p
Man, this kinda sucks now that I have an idea what to do. Everyone I play is a complete newb... takes longer to find a game than it does to play one. :/
I'm really looking forward to this. The only thing they have to get right is balance. If they manage to do that, I won't play SC2 but DOW2 instead. The game is generally more appealing to me - cooler universe, great soundtrack , focus on micro, tactical battles, lots of terrain modifiers, and of course the WH40k races are cooler than the Starcraft copies. Plus, I'm not too happy with some of the new units in SC2, and I still don't like all graphics (although they have improved, some things still look like toys), while DOW2 looks absolutely amazing. If there is a competitor for "better RTS than SC1" apart from SC2, it's this game. And we really need a new "best RTS". Because unless you love every aspect about SC1 to death, chances are high that you're (by now, after all these years...) sick and tired of some of the more annoying aspects of SC1 (like me), and you really want a better game without such flaws, but unfortunately there is still none.
Been messing around with Tyranid... can't for the life of me figure out how to do anything useful with the Hive Tyrant (so freaking slow, not even all that good at combat, synapse isn't that good... people just avoid him in general)... heroes in general seem pretty unbalanced. Each race has one hero that has gains hitpoints at a substantially faster rate than the other heros, and it doesn't seem like the abilities the other heroes even come close to making it up except for the Warp Spider Exarch. Maybe I'm missing something.
On January 29 2009 15:22 zer0das wrote: Been messing around with Tyranid... can't for the life of me figure out how to do anything useful with the Hive Tyrant (so freaking slow, not even all that good at combat, synapse isn't that good... people just avoid him in general)... heroes in general seem pretty unbalanced. Each race has one hero that has gains hitpoints at a substantially faster rate than the other heros, and it doesn't seem like the abilities the other heroes even come close to making it up except for the Warp Spider Exarch. Maybe I'm missing something.
Hmm i don't think you can say which of the tryranid or space marine commanders are the best. I haven't play enough orks or eldar to know wether thier heroes are balanced.
I've been experimenting with nids lately. Here's some stuff that might help you about the heroes:
Hive tyrant: Starts to shine around T2, before that try to avoid combat with him. Later on get him the venom cannon upgrade and watch him wreck havoc.
Ravener: I guess this will be the most 'pro' hero in the retail as he gives you the most possibilities. Tunnels are awesome they're like webway gate for free, mine drops are teh shiznit, burrowtraps are very nice too.
Lictor: Flesh hook + leap are his best skills. Best used for pulling out stuff and solo hunting for capping/decapping/protecting points. (my choice of wargear for him: - dunno the names so I'll just post effects - kill -> hp, leap, loner)
Meh, its fun for few days, but after you are over the graphics, cool unit models and wow effect it really gets boring.
Best strategy is to always be aggresive and use attacking style of hero. Agresivly take all points early on and use the early advantage to defend your points until you can overwhelm ur opponent or wait it out until opponent looses all victory points!
On January 29 2009 22:16 SlickR12345 wrote: Meh, its fun for few days, but after you are over the graphics, cool unit models and wow effect it really gets boring.
Best strategy is to always be aggresive and use attacking style of hero. Agresivly take all points early on and use the early advantage to defend your points until you can overwhelm ur opponent or wait it out until opponent looses all victory points!
It's as boring and repetetive as any other rts game out there. You can't really judge it after a couple of days of beta playing with random noobs.
And what you've described could be a good strategy against casuals but I've met some pretty god damn good players who sure surprised me a lot (like once when I was playing SM and I've put my hb squad into a building and he made a tunnel with ravener right next to the building and started pumping spore mines through it which obliterated my squad). There is a shitton of possibilities in this game that have yet to be discovered. When the beta is over and some more people with more skill and better attitude will start playing it I don't believe it will be all over suppresion spam early game -> t2 walkers any more.
I've played a lot of RTS in my time. I'm an accomplished DoW1 player and the creator of the DoWpro mod which is currently available for SS. I'd like to think I know a fair bit about how to get the gameplay mechanics of an RTS working together and would offer the current release of DoWpro as an example of my work. However, in compiling this article I have sought the learned opinions of many players and taken onboard the ideas of individuals such as Vaul (the illustrious VoD caster), UltraSimon, KoMMoRRaGH, Yaoquique and many others.
DoWII is an interesting intellectual challenge. My current thoughts on it are mixed - there's both positive and negative elements to the game. It has potential, particularly as a team game but it needs some revisions to reach it. I'm inherently an elitist when it comes to RTS (and make no apology for this - I did make dowPRO) - I love deep strategy with multi-dimensional units but also really enjoy the tactical elements that exist in the faster paced games like DoW1.
My assessment of things at present is that DoWII is lacking in depth and needs more polish- a conclusion I believe many have also reached. If this is true then a further question must be posed.....how can it be fixed? Now I posed this exact same question with DoWpro and it led to a diversion from some of the elements of the key game. What I'd like to do this time is to stay AS CLOSE TO THE ORIGINAL AS POSSIBLE, making changes in areas that need reworking but doing so in a manner that it is not terribly difficult to implement. Ideally I'd like the recommendations discussed here to be considered for implementation in an official patch from Relic. I'm not convinced I'm really interested in going off and making DoWpro 2.
I guess the final point to raise is why does it NEED to be fixed? For starters, many of the issues raised in this article will annoy even the most casual player. Now the prevailing attitude is that games should be simple to get into so as to appeal to casual players. However, even the most casual player will rapidly determine after only a few games that certain units are far better (compare your ASM to tacs) and that capturing Req points etc doesn’t really matter at all.
The premise of DoW2 is a sound one – make a game that anyone can jump into and enjoy. The reality is that everyone will. However, many will lose interest in the shallowness of the gameplay – many of the talented RTS gamers here immediately saw the profound issues with DoW2 within hours. They’re plain to see for anyone who knows how to look. DoW2 has promise, however SC2 is coming and if DoW2 wants any kind of long term community in the face of that kind of competition it needs to reach that potential FAST. Additionally, I don’t think Relic can afford for DoW2 not to be a hit. If DoW2 isn’t a great game that sells by the truckload – I wonder whether Relic can really survive the worsening economic climate.
There’s high stakes here. There’s reputation of a franchise and a company. The faith of fans. The looming shadow of mighty competition and the worrisome problem that DoW2 probably isn’t good enough yet to really put paid to these questions.
So the question is this: How does one "fix" DoWII without a complete redo of the game that could be readily implemented in a small number of patches by Relic?
This article goes beyond these lists in scope and assumes Relic is already aware of the aforementioned list.
Exploring the Problem
DoWII's problems are multifactorial but the key summative effect is that ultimately it’s not particularly deep as a RTS and that 3v3 play totally outshines 1v1.
The gameplay elements inherited from CoH are all implemented with varied degrees of success and I believe the only real way of truly exploring the problem is by going through EACH gameplay element one by one and highlighting individual difficulties.
In addition to gameplay elements I will be discussing UI, online lobby, visuals, maps and DLC implementation.
So without further ado.....lets start by breaking down the problems into manageable pieces.
Problems with the Lobby
Interface/lobby - Generally needs a lot of work.
The online lobby is woeful and very "console". The lack of a chat lobby is stunningly poor. The join casual game lobby text is LARGE and the lobby auto-refreshes ..... making it difficult to scroll through the huge list (since the text is SO big) before it freezes and resets to the top of the list.
The NAT overall offered me better connectivity than previous Relic games (first Relic game that didn’t need router port tweaks) - which is great. However, this may not be applicable to all users.
The Beta did not come with a small connectivity/net testing tool - honestly there's been 3rd party community small apps written for previous Relic games to test net connectivity. The failure to not include similar simple tool that helps less savvy users is an unfortunate oversight. If users could readily test their system, be given tips by the app on what to change or where to look for info that’d be a big step forward in connectivity troubleshooting.
I have noticed MANY drops/lag issues whilst playing online. There clearly needs more work to be done on netcode to improve this.
Finally, Relic are still relying on users to upload replays manually. Other RTS's such as supcom manage to employ an integrated upload tool. Surely DoW2 could've gone for a more progressive approach here.
Problems with GFWL
A lot of ppl are reporting being dropped from GFWL. Whether this is DoW2 crashing or GFWL is difficult to determine. There are reports of packet loss by GFWL – if this is true the code needs tightening up.
GFWL has pro’s and con’s. One difficulty I've found is getting a 3rd player for a 3v3 ranked game when none of your friends are online...I'd love to know a better way of doing it than randomly looking for someone who's online in the player tab and sending pm's :S
The trueskill matching system is nice in concept.....but we still have lvl20 guys being matched vs lvl1 guys. I’d argue a bit more tweaking is required.
The whole “if a teammate drops.....the game no longer counts for points” issue is a concern. One that needs fixing for release otherwise it’ll just result in drop abuse and annoy anyone even vaguely interesting in levelling.
I’m sure more ideas can be added here over time but there’s probably more pressing issues and I don’t have much faith in Microsoft doing too much adjustment here.
Problems with the In-game Interface:
A lot of polish work required here......
Hotkeys:
The lack of grid keys is poor - when will Relic learn that naming a hotkey based on an ability's name is a bad idea. Grid keys means that you only need to get used to one set of keys and it works on all races.
Missing Functions:
No delete function!!! Nor is there an ability to retire your units ie. return them to the HQ for a % cost back. At the moment the only way to get rid of units to free pop cap is to sacrifice them and give the enemy XP. This needs rectifying.
There doesn't seem to be an overwatch function with regards to reinforcing units - I miss it already tongue.gif
There’s no way to view the console.....I miss the console!
Minimap:
The minimap is lacking in detail and audiotriggers. It could be enlarged to take more screen space in order to be more visible - something many players complain about currently. Pinging is fairly discreet....failing to actually draw you to the pinged area. Moreover, CoH had a more developed array of pings (Attack Here, Defend Here, Capture Here).....surely a boon in a team based game like dow2. Better audio cues are needed as well – for example at present I’m not convinced that there’s a “unit under attack” audio cue + visual minimap ping, something that DoW1 had and alerted the player to new combat.
Finally, the resolution of the minimap combined with the size of the VP/power/req points makes it often difficult to see your units. Revised icons/large minimap is needed to improve utility.
UI:
The UI itself has a reasonable layout (some will disagree)....that's made very clunky by the fact that there's no grid keys. However, even with grids stuff like ordering a unit to melee a squad is tedious....made even more so if you misclick the enemy since the delineation between different squads is not as clear as dow1 was. Thus if you misclick you must again Z+Click on the squad you originally meant to attack. The toggle stance system of DoW1 was superior.
It could be argued that the UI is a tad “busy” – Relic have packed a LOT of info into the bottom right corner. Perhaps eco could be shifted to be on top of the minimap to reduce clutter. This is not a critical issue as overall, the UI does its job of displaying the info properly. My recommendation here is to keep considering it for possible tweaks to maximise its visibility.
Not being able to see individual hp bars for squad members is problematic and there should be a hotkey etc way to display it.
I liked the hero wargear system etc which works well once u know what happens. Again lack of grids makes this fiddly however, I believe it'd work quite nicely with a better hotkey array.
A case could be made for a slight enlargement of the icons - at 1920x1600 they're really quite tiny. However, this isn't essential unlike prior points.
Unit control is a step back in DoW2 over CoH. In Company of Heroes you could assign multiple squads of Riflemen to one hotkey, and then micro them through the UI to use their abilities at different times.
In CoH, if you had multiple units selected, you could order all of them to do the same thing with one click. Alternatively, if you highlighted one squad in your Selection List then issued an order; only that unit would perform the specified action. You could go back to having all units in your selection perform the same order by clicking on the little shield icon (basically highlighting everything).
In DoW2, if you have multiple units selected, giving an order will result in all the selected units to perform the task regardless of which one is highlighted. There's no way to switch between having all units do the order, and having just the highlighted unit.
This should be changed and in addition there should be a visual notification on the unit as to which is the selected squad within the group on the field to further improve the intuitiveness of selection.
In-game chat communication:
In-game chat is really poor.
The networking lag issues clutters the chat which makes it difficult to see messages from team members.
Moreover, the actual amount of chat you’re allowed to write is tiny – a small sentence at best. Not everyone has mics and this should be rectified with more chars allowed and the networking stats moved to a better location.
Finally....there is no audio cues for when a team member chats to you or an enemy -> there should be one.
In-game voice communication:
Whilst mics are a great feature. Not having push-to-talk isn’t. Add it!
Also there should be an easier way to mute a player once you’re in game rather than having to go through gfwl >.< EDIT: I'm silly there is...just click the mic button from the player list tongue.gif
Vote Kicking:
Vote-kicking needs to be a consistent option throughout the game. I have now played a good 10 games of team games where an opponent or team-mate has lagged or dropped, a kick menu has arisen, people have said no the first time, but no other opportunities to kick have raised. A more robust solution is needed that provides more information and a more transparent kicking system. The lag issues we’re experiencing may be due to beta code – however, as I mentioned previously there should be a way to test your connection and tweak it with a small application to avoid user net problems whilst Relic fixes and code issues in the game. Finally, the in game system should be more robust. *Credit to Ultra Simon for some of these points*
Unit Stats in the UI....MIA:
Unit statistics are missing. I know the difficulties in generating unit statistics – manually doing it is a nightmare and needs revision with every patch. In DoWpro we had an EXCELLENT tool called the AutoWiki that generated an entire wiki’s worth of information automatically – a similar tool could generate data files that could be imported into a revised UI. Alternatively Relic could choose to omit in-game unit data and just go with an AutoWiki or something similar themselves. Unit data needs to be accessible somewhere however. Relic should contact the DoWpro team if they’re interested in developing their own tool – we’re happy to give tips etc.
Loading screen enemy list:
In DoW1 your opponents were displayed on the loading screen. Either this is an omission or intentional. Given that you can readily find out who you’re facing once the game starts it seems there isn’t any real good reason not to put it on the loading screen. EITHER remove the icons showing player race for opponents in the player list OR add in loading screen races.
Play Modes
There is currently no observer mode - there should be an observer mode. Additionally there is no 2v2 play....this is a decision to streamline finding games. In DoW1 you had 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, Automatch, team auto and QS -> I believe the reasoning to cull some of these options was that was hard to get games with so many modes flying about. The question is whether removing observers and 2v2 is a good decision. I'm not sure if I can answer that yet.
Problems with the Replays
- When you swap viewing players, the acceleration speed of the view rate reverts to x1 irrespective of the speed.
- When viewing a player, any player in red's HQ/building will flicker unusually
- When viewing a player, control groups show in top corner, but not heroes.
- Occasionally, if a unit is selected on the team side viewing before/whilst an upgrade, research, or production is made, then when it is executed, it will appear in a panel in between the units/buildings portrait and the minimap, rather than where the research/unit in-production bar is. All production bars should be visible at all times.
- If you switch which player you are watching all unit icons are removed.
- Invisible units are just that, invisible. No matter what side you're watching in the replay.
- Speeds of x4 x8 should be possible
- Watching as observer is missing
- You don’t see the timer of nades
- You don’t see wargear or upgrades
- You don’t see what the players are building in hq
*Credit to Ultra Simon, Santiago4ever, IKnowShade for some of these points*
Visuals
Overall models are great. Textures sexy. UI shiny.
One thing that IS fail is the lack of unit randomisation. DoWpro/Fok/DoWxp etc etc in DoW1 had it. It DOES look great and really helps make your army feel more individual. The fact that its lacking in DoW2 is something I can only urge Relic to change asap. There are already players who are complaining about units looking too similar/lacking in recognition, especially in team games. This will mitigate this to a certain degree.
Fx's whilst nice don't appear to have the "Impact" of CoH. There appears to be less camera shake. Sounds are more muted. Death screams softer. Finally booms just don't appear as HUEG.
For whatever the reason this contributes to the combat feeling more generic. Bring in more terrain deformation. More auditory cues. Bigger visual effects.
The lack of persistent bodies we all loved so much in dow1 means that dow2 lacks the “horrors of war” feel that dow1 had. Without fields of slain warriors to march over I’m just not sure I’m playing 40k tongue.gif
Visual Performance issues
Seems a fair few issues revolving around performance here. Code should be improved. Perhaps some others can comment more specifically towards certain issues here, though I think Relic is aware of the issues of current through the technical hardware forums. *Credit to Ultra Simon for some of these points*
Ranked Matches Rules/setting
Once a game is starting its count down, the count down cannot be cancelled for any reason. This needs to be changed. Sometimes games will freeze just as count down ends. Sometimes a player will leave but the count down will continue.
There seems to be a bug where it says count down cancelled, when in fact it hasn't at all. Rather confusing.
When a player drops for some random reason during the count down, the game will replace with a different person looking for a ranked game - this REALLY needs to be fixed.
*Credit to Ultra Simon for these points*
Gameplay
Gameplay as ever is the most difficult area to critique - its analogous to a living creature and thus biological terms can be used to describe and analyse it. There's more factors having interplay here than any other area of the game and the only way to really work out the “phenotype” of the gameplay is to break it down and look at the “genetics” and environmental factors behind it.
I’ve already spoken about some of the issues regarding the game overall (ie. its phenotype) but to summarise:
DoWII currently plays much better as a 3v3 game than 1v1. Its overall strategic depth is lacking. Whilst there is a rich tactical metagame, more depth could be achieved with tweaks to specific mechanics. Maps are generally small and despite the implementation of deformable terrain/cover etc the current maps don’t really provide many opportunities to really interact regularly with the map environment. Whilst there are balance issues present the real issues with dow2 are the gameplay mechanics that underpin the gameplay – fixing balance issues alone will not make dow2 as good as revision of its mechanics.
DoW2 is a game with promise. With some key tweaks and adjustments it could succeed in being a game that new/casual players can readily get into (as they can now) whilst offering more serious players the depth and challenge they need to keep them interested long-term.
Gameplay Genetic Factors:
ECO:
Currently Eco is one of the KEY issues with DoW2. Many players have realised that req points are fairly useless compared to VP’s – its almost always better to cap a VP and worry about killing the enemy and THEN going for the REQ points. The HQ, with its huge req rate allows you to focus on VP’s and ignore reqs. Due to the cheapness of tiering in some situations this means that the static, stay-at-home player can successfully tech to higher power t2 units and slaughter their opponent who has gone and contested the map and invested in t1 units. Whilst fast techs are always nice – DoW2 offers one of the most lenient eco systems I’ve ever seen and due to turrets makes it near impossible to rush.
Moreover, without any real way of securing points DoW2 has been criticised as an online game of tag. DoW1 avoided this by allowing LP’s to be placed on points. CoH similarly employed this mechanic to a lesser degree as they were not weaponised.
The Eco situation is further complicated by the small maps and sheer number of points on a given map. There’s loads. There’s no real way of securing them without camping and ultimately req points don’t really matter – its more cost effective to wipe out your opponent’s troops.
1. Power:
I’d say that overall the power mechanic is fairly fun and reasonably well implemented. Although – I still think powerscaling as applied in DoWpro should be considered to encourage more serious and fastidious eco management and reward players for gen harass. In DoWpro power gens became progressively more expensive after the first, costing req AND power. This worked extremely well and I’d urge you to see its implementation in DoWpro to help illustrate my point.
2. Req points:
As mentioned. They’re superfluous. The HQ generates LOADS of income and doesn’t really reward contesting the req points in any real way due to their meagre reward.
HQ income should be reduced. Starting req could be increased to comensate for the lower income over the first 1-2 minutes and finally, req points must become more of a feature.
3. VP’s:
By far the most important capturable in the game. Power coming in second. As a mechanic I have no problem with it – my issue is mainly that they’re SO important in the game that the team/individual that secures them early invariably wins. Victory is typically decided early in the game in DoW2 even if games drag on for a bit. VaulSC has made numerous posts and discussions in his vods regarding this and I agree completely.
Until there’s a way of offsetting VP dominance – I’d postulate here increasing the impact of req points – games will continue to be decided by who takes the VP’s early.
4. Race zeal/waaagh/psy/synapse eco’s:
Another underdeveloped economic mechanic. The 3rd resources are generated by kills. Unfortunately most of the abilities are t3....and horrifically expensive such that they’re almost never seen in a 1v1 game.
There’s no way of increasing your income here either beyond killing – there’s no relic points or the like that could serve as a supplemental point.
One option could be to make req points give a tiny amount of zeal etc although this is probably diversifying the mix here.
More robust ideas are needed for the 3rd reasource – it remains a novelty at present and must be expanded to permit more utility.
Unit Upkeep:
As it stands the player who actually manages to keep their squads alive is penalised for doing so. Its often better to simply shed weaker, lower tier units in favour of higher tier units.
A revision to the upkeep rates is probably required OR perhaps tying upkeep into veterancy – where veteran squads require LESS upkeep. This would be a more interesting use of the mechanic and also reward the savvy player.
Maps:
Currently a weak feature in DoW2. They’re small. They’re loaded with points and cover....but have few structures and afaik NO other interaction with environments. Eg. There’s no destroyable bridges or rock formations.
The small maps, hundreds of points and inability to secure the points without camping VP’s help contribute to DoW2’s “game of tag” feel. The lack of map interaction is also disappointing.
Relic should release a map editor now and offer free copies of DoW2 for top notch maps. Something must be done because the current crop are uninspired and serve to further the more tedious aspects of gameplay such as suppression spam and the exciting “lets play capture point tag”.
Finally, we’ve been told not to expect more than 9 maps in total on the PATCHED release (correct me if I’m wrong).
Game modes (take and hold, annihilate):
Annihilate is currently a joke. Turrets are dominant. HQ’s have incredible HP. I could go on but this problem is obvious to even the most casual gamer. Something needs to be done. Remove the game mode or do something even vaguely meaningful.
DLC:
We’ve been teased with DLC promises. I hope we’re not going to be asked to pay for maps etc when the initial release will contain <10. DLC should value add DoW2. Not add to DoW2 what it should’ve had on release and ask for extra cash.
Online Ranks:
Currently Ranks offer visual tweaks. Pretty limited change but better than nothing. I’d be interested in a more exciting implementation. We’ll see on release.
Combat mechanics: (1-16)
1. Suppression
An interesting mechanic that allows a single HW team to have an impact unlike DoW1 where you needed a critical mass of HW’s to overcome melee units (before they could disrupt your ranged squads). The current difficulties with suppression is that its excellent. The units not only slow down units A LOT but they also do SUPER damage for a relatively inexpensive squad. There’s not a very developed mechanic in getting out of suppression short of retreating.
A lot more brainstorming needs to flesh out the tactical counter to suppression short of pure flanking and retreating. As it currently stands you cannot typically fall back unless you use the retreat function even if you’re in cover. I’d be interested to see how higher cover bonuses vs suppression speed nerf would function (ie. you could get units into cover when suppressed, to disable or reduce it).
Alternatively, the degree of suppression could be ranged based (or more obviously ranged based). Even at the extremes of HW range suppression causes a huge speed nerf. Perhaps a less severe nerf could be applied at longer ranges.
Finally, all the suppression causing units have excellent line of sight which makes it difficult to scout against them because as soon as you come into range you’re near instantly suppressed. Perhaps a slight LoS nerf once setup relative to regular units to permit some degree of scouting vs HW suppression dealing units.
2. Deployable weapons
When meleed a HW team will move to engage in CC. Once melee is over they will setup in whatever direction they’re currently facing rather than the original direction. This is suboptimal
Heavy weapons that use set up arcs need a button (if there isn't already one) so that you can swivel the arc of the heavy weapon team. To elaborate: Not that this would mean no un-setting up/resetting up, but this would optimise time and pathing so setting up with the least amount of movement is possible.
Whilst using a Set-up weapon, and placing the arc, you cannot scroll the screen using the mouse (not sure about keyboard). It would be nice if you could look around, since you cant cancel the action either.
When a setting-up arc weapon is setting up/repacking, you cannot cancel the animation. Sometimes a player will want to go back on the decision to unpack; it would be nice if the stop button at least allowed the weapon to reset-up from the % in which you hit the 'stop' button. This would stop people 'faking' unpacking/repacking, and would also clear some of the frustration behind on-field use of it. *Credit to Ultra Simon for these points*
3. Retreating
Currently this mechanic works well except that it is very vulnerable to knockdown. Indeed this makes the use of knockdown weapons one of the best options to employ in dow2. No other ability/weapon has the ability to so thoroughly deny the opponent’s ability to retreat and slaughter squads wholesale.
Whilst debate will rage as to what % conceal is appropriate for the retreating function – ultimately balance testing will dictate this.
4. Infiltration
There’s not a whole lot of units that can infiltrate and the effectiveness of infiltration is largely determined by the effectiveness of the unit which employs it. Eg. Scouts are excellent with shotguns + infil since shotguns are excellent.
There’s no real added benefit to infiltration and it’d be more interesting if an extra mechanic were added eg. A first hit “backstab” melee bonus (rangers knifing Tac HB teams).
Finally....using tooltips only to represent detectors is a fairly poor system. DoWpro used small icons on the unit icon to represent units which could detect. Far more intuitive that trawling through tooltips. DoW2 aims to be casual player friendly – something that’s immediately obvious as a detector is needed.
5. Cover
Cover is much more interesting in dow2 than dow1. However, there are issues. As I’ve described later in this article, the “auto-seek” for cover is often problematic with unit pathing and behaviour. I’ve described this more fully later.
The key issues with cover is that it becomes almost redundant once vehicles come out as they can destroy it at whim. Give that so little new cover is generated during the course of a game from environmental damage, this is a key issue for later game infantry combat as HW + mass spam becomes more important with more units fighting in the open.
There needs to be a revision either on how cover is destroyed OR have it such that much more cover is generated during a game – thus preserving later game infantry combat.
6. Line of Sight (LoS)
A relatively poorly developed mechanic. Most units have HUGE line of sights which makes scouting units fairly redundant unless the individual scout unit is great (ie. shotty scouts). Combine this with decent LoS from captured points and tiny maps and you really don’t have much of a need to have a dedicated and ongoing scouting effort. Given that you’re always better off capping rather than scouting, that HW’s see just as far (or near enough such that it doesn’t matter) and that your pop for certain races should be spent elsewhere on your scouting units – scouting as a mechanic really doesn’t get much love.
I have noted that scouts do seem to have larger LoS than HB’s – but this is purely anecdotal since there’s no readily available stats at this stage. At any rate the mechanic is fairly undeveloped overall (eg. There’s no LoS modifiers for being in cover, or whilst moving, or garrisoned etc).
7. Garrison buildings
When you actually FIND one of the few buildings and garrison it you can make an impact. Unfortunately there’s not many buildings around and invariably its always better to just mass units to attack a garrisoned structure rather than use the dedicated anti-garrison HW upgrades because they’re fairly useless.
Units in structures die reasonably easily and only HW teams like tac HB’s are going to have much dmg output.
There’s not enough buildings on the maps. The maps are small anyway which would probably make adding more a bit campy. Counters aren’t really that effective and don’t have much utility against other units in other situations and invariably you’re always better off either massing + overwhelming now OR teching to t2 and getting your walker unit to dominate the structure and those inside.
Neat idea. Let down by implementation of counters and maps.
8. Wargear and Unit upgrades
A great mechanic. Hero wargear works well. Offers a possibility for strategic depth (.....which dow2 is sorely short on).
Unfortunately.....for heroes the upgrades are NOT created equal. This effectively means that there’s only a few viable combo’s and as such the depth of the system actually falls short of its potential.
More concerning is that only heroes have this system. ALL units that have upgradeable heavy weapons should be able to refit with other ones rather than being relegated to a single role. Timers could balance this out for problematic units such as WL’s but the fact remains that until all units with upgrades use hero style wargear we’re going to have a fairly shallow and uninspired relationship with basic units. Your uber-tacs are only ever going to be used for AV if they’ve got a rocket – it boxes them into a single role, decreases the interest for the player in the unit and also may force a player to sacrifice said unit to free up pop.
One of the most important changes needed and it applies to many units:
Scouts, Tacs, Nid warriors etc etc
Furthermore, units such as platforms and Devastator squads should be MERGED into a single unit and given the option of upgrading their weapons. A timer modifier applied in the base could allow this to be done rapidly to avoid issues of deploying a counter – whilst keeping field refits balanced with a long timer cost.
9. Abilities
The abilities should be reviewed for initial timer values to ensure they all occur in a timely fashion. Moreover, there’s obviously many issues regarding balance and power levels of various abilities – I think this is best discussed in balance issues.
Until grid hotkeys arrive – abilities will remain fiddly and frustrating to use.
10. Unit Levelling
A fun mechanic. Everyone likes being rewarded for using their units well. Unfortunately this becomes fairly superfluous since ultimately you will need to deploy certain counters eg. Tac rockets and this suddenly relegates your elite veteran squad to a fixed role and reduces the potential flexibility and interest you’d have with a more flexible unit that can refit AND have veterancy. Unit levelling will be a more important and interesting mechanic once hero wargear is applied to all units.
However, Relic’s implementation is woefully simple. From what I can tell levelling is a simple multiplier effect. Essentially units with high HP get MUCH more benefit from levelling than low HP units. Eg. Compare a 420HP SM scout to a 4500hp terminator squad. Fully levelled the scout is ~630HP vs ~7K HP for terminators. Clearly there’s a MUCH better bonus for the terminator despite having the same % bonus. This means that late game there’s no reason to keep low tier units and you should aim to get high tier units and get them levelled.
A more complex system is needed. Its not necessarily appropriate that scouts become HP monsters once they’re levelled. However, their utility could be improved via other means such as: faster capping, faster re-equips (assuming my re-equip suggestion is implemented), lower upkeep costs. The point is that the current system lacks depth and can cause problems. A more detailed and interesting system is needed to smooth out issues and to actually promote the use of elite level t1 squads in later game rather than recycling to free cap.
11. Tiering/Teching
Currently tiering is FAST and CHEAP. The only one I really have issue with is its cheapness and its value. T3 is currently fairly useless for most races. Most of the great abilities come at t2. Most of the great units come at t2. T2 is the best upgrade you can buy in DoW2. With some pieces of wargear costing similar to a tier....but clearly not possessing as much value – you have to question why are the costs so skewed.
The following rule served me very well in DoWpro:
“Everything should be costed according to its worth/You get what you pay for...and you should get it fast when you’re paying cash”
I’ve no problem with fast tiering. I think it works well. Cheap tiering is a different issue especially compared to the more useless HW/Wargear items that cost comparable amounts.
The aforementioned rule should be applied to EVERY FACET of dow2. It does work and it works well.
13. Unit AI
Auto-AI cover is frequently frustrating. Often it overrides player commands. Ideally a stance should be added to allow units to cease auto-cover seeking and let players seek cover manually. This would mean casual players can still enjoy the auto-cover whilst more advanced players can micro more and have greater unit control.
Irrespective of what worked in Company of Heroes, units moving by themselves to take cover rather than shooting a retreating enemy or utilising a powerful ability/weapon whilst they can is NOT REALISM! Let players micro to cover directly themselves OR add stances that permit the auto-ai to be disabled. The system for moving behind cover and using direction is rather good and intelligent - no need for AI to intervene.
Additionally, you can’t cancel orders by moving a unit, this should be changed (e.g. if a squad is about to throw a grenade but are given the order to move, the action interrupts and they move)
*BUG* Commanders in particular occasionally freeze and ignore all commands including retreat.....potentially game-losing bug
14. Stances
The lack of stances in general is something of an issue. Units will often chase into the enemy’s base and die to turrets. A hold position stance would also be beneficial and stop your units from auto-seeking cover.
DoW2 has removed the Stand Ground, Hold Ground etc stances from the original game. In Company of Heroes there were also no stances, but units would simply hold their designated position, save for moving to better cover during the course of a firefight. In DoW2, ranged units act similarly to CoH, essentially defaulting to DoW1's "Hold Ground" stance. Melee units, however, (which CoH never had to deal with) seem permanently set to DoW1's "Attack" stance, and will willingly follow a retreating enemy the entire length of the map, dealing little to no damage on the way until at last they come face to face with the enemy's HQ turrets and are turned into a fine red paste.
However, while these units blindly follow enemies the entire width of the map, their melee-activation radius (how close they have to be to the enemy to charge in) is tiny: unless the enemy comes within around 4-5 units' width of them, my sluggas are content to stand where they are and occasionally take pot-shots with their pistols at the scouts standing 1 second worth of movement away.
Also, the removal of the Ranged/Assault stance leads to unncessary awkwardness. For example, sluggas upgraded with burnas default to the "Ranged" stance, requiring a specific "Melee Attack" command to be issued to make them engage in close combat -- where, it must be noted, they do far superior damage than they ever would at range, burnas or no. Which means the stance is simply changed upon upgrading, and not dictated by choosing the stance which deals the greatest damage.
Perhaps a related note, sending a unit after a specific unit only works until they disappear into the fog of war. This is most noticable and frustrating when sending a unit to attack an enemy that's in the process of decapping a point: the second the point is decapped, and the visibility around the point disappears, the unit you sent can no longer "see" the enemy and so stops dead in its tracks, instead of carrying on to defend the point. Which results in both losing map control and having units standing around in the open scratching themselves. Annoying.
*Credit to Bandolaf for his views on stances*
15. Transports
Destruction of transports causing insta-death to all inside is a bit of a concern given the cost of certain units and the inherent weakness of transports. This is a particularly harsh mechanic and given the woes in pathing with vehicles at time.....this can be very frustrating for a player struck with pathing glitches.
I’d advocate a HP hit to transported units rather than instadeath.
Transports are currently far more useful for their HW’s than anything else. They’re too risky to transport troops in due to low hp + pathing issues + instadeath for transported squads. They’re not actually THAT much faster than the infantry on the small dow2 maps – given the risks its better to just footslog.
16. Knockdown
One of the most effective unit abilities at present, ranking right up there with suppression. The difference is that knockdown will even affect retreating units and let you trap and kill with enough mass of knockdown units. A concern since no other mechanic beyond overwhelming superiority of numbers will let u wipe out retreating squads.
Concusion
I’ve been pretty frank in my assessment of DoW2. I make no apology for this – as I said DoW2 has potential but needs work to reach it.
I hope that in providing a single coherent article to outline the numerous concerns I have with the game to help illustrate the areas that need work and development to increase the depth and fun for all players of DoW2.
I look forward to receiving your thoughts and feedback and will continue to update and amend this article with the intention of providing a single, definitive resource which outlines the key areas in which DoW2 could be improved upon.
- Korbah
Contacting me:
I'm readily reached via irc @ #dowpro on irc.quakenet.org
Increased the chances for melee sync-kills to occur. All infantry weapon damage reduced by 15% with the exception of anti-vehicle, sniper and artillery weapons. Suppression units' damage at long range reduced, suppression against cover reduced a little. Some melee units reduced in health by 10% to avoid them getting out of control against the reduced ranged weapons. melee_heavy damage to vehicle reduced to 0.5, from 1. power_weapons_pvp damage to vehicle reduced to 1.15, from 1.25. Plasma damage vs vehicles increased to .25 from .15 fixed a damage bug with frag grenades and stikkbombz increased grenade damage modifier to garrison cover to 1.25 from 1 Reduced grenade pvp damage modifier against generators to 1 from 1.5
Space Marines
Tactical Squad
Missile Launcher reload time reduced to 6 seconds, from 8. Leader cost increased to 75/25 from 50/25. Fixed an issue the with tactical marine sergeant having a shorter range than the rest of the squad which would cause him to run up to the enemy.
Terminators
Terminator zeal cost reduced to 700 Assault terminator zeal cost reduced to 700 Scouts Sniper rifle cost changed to 180/40 Shotgun knockdown chance reduced to 15%, from 25%. Infiltrate energy drain increased to 1.5/sec from 1. Scout Sergeant detection radius set to 35. Fixed a bug that was causing Frag Grenades to do far less damage than intended Leader cost increased to 60/25 from 50/25
Techmarine
Techmarine Heavy Bolter turret damage reduced to match the other turrets.
Assault Marines
Melta bomb fixed to affect Carnifex mobility Leader cost increased to 100/25 from 50/25 Leader health increased from 320 for 440 Assault Marine Jump energy cost increased to 70, from 55.
Force Commander
Force commander teleporter pack armor req cost increased to 100. Force commander 2 handed hammer special attack damage reduced to 30 from 50. Force commander flesh over steel stun duration reduced to 8 seconds from 10.
Apothecary
Apothecary armor of purity health increase reduced to 100. Apothecary armor of purity heal cooldown reduction bonus reduced to 0.65 from 0.5. Apothecary heal tuned to heal heroes more, heal over time effect reduced Apothecary chainsword damage reduced to 33 from 38 Apothecary sanguine chainsword damage reduced to 50 from 65 Apothecary power axe damage reduced to 85 from 100 Angels of death cost increased to 500 from 400, cooldown increased to 3 minutes from 1 minute
Techmarine
Techmarine mine cost increased to 65 energy from 50. Blessing of omnissiah recharge time increased from 50 to 150.
Eldar
Falcon and Fire Prism can now reverse. Webway gate psychic might cost increased to 125 from 90. Fixed an issue with the FLeet of Foot tool tip not saying that it causes a damage reduction.
Guardians
Warlock Leader cost increased from 50/15 to 65/15
Shuriken Catapult
Shuriken Catapult damage decreased from 14 to 12.
Banshees
Banshee War Shout radius reduced to 8, from 15. Banshee charge speed bonus reduced to 2 meters/s from 3 meters/s Banshee Exarch leap damage reduced to 20 from 40 Knockdown from Banshee leap removed Banshee Exarch gains knockdown on leap with Executioner upgrade Executioner special attack no longer affects allies Aspect of Banshee changed to provide Warshout and Exarch Executioner Exarch upgrade changed to provide squad speed increase Exarch upgrade cost increased to 85/15 from 50/15
Rangers
Detection radius set to 35.
Farseer
Farseer armor of asuryan req cost increased to 200 from 150.
Seer Council
Seer council zeal cost reduced to 600 Seer council req cost reduced to 700 Seer Council Singing spear damage reduced to 80 from 100
Warlock
Warlock providence now affects ethereal slash cooldown. Warlock energy drain on merciless witchblade reduced to 30 per hit from 60. Warlock witchblade of kurnous cost increased to 125/30. Warlock warp throw power cost increased to 45. Warlock warp throw recharge time increased to 45 seconds.
Warp Spiders
Warp spider deathspinner damage reduced from 25 to 21 Warp spider exarch damage reduced from 37 to 34 Warp spider exarch damage modifier removed Exarch upgrade cost increased to 85/15* Aspect of Warp Spider cost increased to 50/20
Warp Spider Hero
Warpspider exarch phase shift duration reduced to 10 seconds. Warpspider exarch entangle duration reduced to 5 seconds. Warpspider heavy guage filament energy drain increased to 4.5 per second from 3.5.
D-Cannon
Black hole ability on D-cannon tuned to do damage at correct time. D-cannon damage increased to 220 from 120, damage table changed
Wraithlord
Wraithlord Shuriken Cannon damage reduced from 300 to 200. Wraithlord Brightlance damage reduced to 100, from 170.
Fire Prism
Dispersed beam area reduced to 10 meters, Focused beam damage increased to 200, reload decreased to 7 seconds from 8
Avatar
Avatar cost increased to 1000/250, hp increased to 7000 from 6000, leveling curve on hp decreased to 10% per level from 15%, build time increased to 90 seconds
Orks
Kommando, Slugga, Stormboy, Kommando Nob leader cost increased to 75/25 from 50/25
Mekboy
Mekboy dakka deffgun power cost inscreased to 30 from 20. Mekboy dakka deffgun damage reduced to 350, from 450. Damage tuned such that the Mekboy's deffgun does not ramp up as highly in damage at close range. Banner aura speed bonus reduced to .25 from .45 Banner Aura received damage modifier reduced to .94 from .91 Banner Aura received courage damage modifier reduced to .94 from .91 Banner Aura damage modifier reduced to 1.06 from 1.09
Warboss
Warboss Kustom Shoota changed to light weapon knockback. Warboss Kustom Shoota knockback chance reduced to 10%. Warboss Huge Choppa special attack changed to affect only enemy troops Warboss Boss Pole suppression resistance reduced from .25 to .5 Stikkbommas Stikkbomb damage reduced to 175 from 260 Fixed a bug that was causing Stikkbombs to do far less damage than intended
Kommando Nob
Kommando camo armor req cost increased to 100. Kommando kaboom recharge time 20 seconds from 10. Kommando extra equipment energy bonus reduced to 75 from 235
Kommandos
Kommando ambush ability range reduced to 35 meters from 50 Kommando shoota range reduced from 29 to 25, damage increased from 25 to 30 Burna Bomb damage increased from 10 to 20, damage over time increased to 20 from 15 Kommando Nob Leader detection radius set to 35.
Ork Waaagh shout ability
Waaagh shout speed bonus reduced to .07 from .1 Waaagh shout damage bonus reduced to 1.015 from 1.02 Waaagh shout received damage reduction decreased to .98 to .985 Waaagh shout received courage damage decreased to .996 to .985 Waaagh shout cooldown increased to 90 seconds from 60.
Wartrukk
Detection radius set to 30.
Tyranids
Hive Tyrant
Brood Nest biomass cost increased to 225 from 175. Hive Tyrant charge range increased from 15 to 18 meters, cooldown of charge decreased to 4 seconds from 6, speed increased to 4.5 from 4. Health increased to 1200 from 1000.
Spore Mines
Spore mine explosion radius reduced to 10, from 15.
Lictor
Detection radius set to 35.
Ravener
Ravener Devourer damage increased to 85 from 68, cooldown reduced to 1.4 from 1.8 Fixed an issue with the Fleet of Claw ability costing energy and thus preventing the unit from using the ability.
Ravener Alpha
Ravener toxic miasma damage reduced to 15 per tick from 20.
Warriors
Increased damage of warrior melee with adrenal glands to 60, from 42. Increased cost of warrior adrenal glands to 100/30, from 50/15.
Zoanthrope
Zoanthrope reload reduced to 8 seconds from 10.3
Please not that this is in addition to the 1-2 STEAM auto-update patches Relic does a day. I don't know what those have been except for one that improved unit targeting against spore mines.
Regarding Korbah's point about DoW2 competing against SC2, why do you think it's the case that a game announced AFTER SC2 is pushed into beta and release months before SC2?
There's no way in hell it would sell coming out at the same time as, or after SC2. Right now, it's pretty much the only RTS game out in a long time, and it will fill the void and sell because of that. From a business perspective, that's probably the smart move, but it says oodles about Relic's intent - it's just obviously not meant to be a competitive game.
On January 29 2009 20:46 Manit0u wrote: I've been experimenting with nids lately. Here's some stuff that might help you about the heroes:
Hive tyrant: Starts to shine around T2, before that try to avoid combat with him. Later on get him the venom cannon upgrade and watch him wreck havoc.
Ravener: I guess this will be the most 'pro' hero in the retail as he gives you the most possibilities. Tunnels are awesome they're like webway gate for free, mine drops are teh shiznit, burrowtraps are very nice too.
Lictor: Flesh hook + leap are his best skills. Best used for pulling out stuff and solo hunting for capping/decapping/protecting points. (my choice of wargear for him: - dunno the names so I'll just post effects - kill -> hp, leap, loner)
The "Toxic Cloud" (I think that's actually the name.. hrm possibly not tho) ability for the Lictor is siiiiiick! Huge AoE, makes all enemies weaker AND allows you to reinforce all your squads inside it!!
And all it costs is mana! You can basically just go reinforce, tab, reinforce, tab, reinforce, tab, reinforce, tab.. Your squads will stay full forever during a battle unless they get 1 hit KO:ed.
On January 29 2009 15:18 0xDEADBEEF wrote: I'm really looking forward to this. The only thing they have to get right is balance. If they manage to do that, I won't play SC2 but DOW2 instead. The game is generally more appealing to me - cooler universe, great soundtrack , focus on micro, tactical battles, lots of terrain modifiers, and of course the WH40k races are cooler than the Starcraft copies. Plus, I'm not too happy with some of the new units in SC2, and I still don't like all graphics (although they have improved, some things still look like toys), while DOW2 looks absolutely amazing. If there is a competitor for "better RTS than SC1" apart from SC2, it's this game. And we really need a new "best RTS". Because unless you love every aspect about SC1 to death, chances are high that you're (by now, after all these years...) sick and tired of some of the more annoying aspects of SC1 (like me), and you really want a better game without such flaws, but unfortunately there is still none.
To be honest, the only thing about SC that I mind is that there's not much left to discover. Other than that I like pretty much everything..
DoW2 is so different that there's plenty of room for both games, for me anyway.
It is a bit amusing to see so many people whining about SC 2 "dumbing down" the game while at the same time cherish DoW 2 that might possible be the most "dumbed down" RTS game ever created. It is probably largely due to people being emotional attached to Starcraft and can't view its sequel objective while they can do that with DoW 2 due to not having the same attachment to the first DoW game.
DoW 2 is pretty fun in 3vs3 but it is a very shallow game that got very little depth in term of tactics and strategies. It is catering to the casuals however it require way too much micromanagement for it becoming as streamlined as they are gunning for. If you are interesting in Relic games I would suggest playing Company of Heroes instead; a game that is better than DoW 2 in most ways.
But hey, at least DoW 2 don't have MBS, seeing as you only have one building.
But that's the entire point Eury, DoW2 is barely an RTS anymore, it's more like RTT or something.. Of course, if I was a DoW fan and felt the game was now worse I might be pissed off (as many of them are), but I have no attachment to DoW1, so I just enjoy it for what it is - a really good skirmish game.
On January 30 2009 01:43 FrozenArbiter wrote: But that's the entire point Eury, DoW2 is barely an RTS anymore, it's more like RTT or something.. Of course, if I was a DoW fan and felt the game was now worse I might be pissed off (as many of them are), but I have no attachment to DoW1, so I just enjoy it for what it is - a really good skirmish game.
That is a fair point I guess. Reason why I dislike the game is, while I didn't like DoW 1 so much, that I thought CoH was the best RTS game in the last 5 years and for me DoW 2 is a step down from that. Gone is the tactical map, the great resource system, commander abilities and more. I expected a game that would be pretty much be DoW built upon CoH taken to another level. Instead we got something completely different, that is as you said, not a RTS but a RTT.
I do have a bit of fun in 3vs3 but with no real buildings and very few units the game feels shallow and the winning strategy is pretty much cap the few VPs and control them. Your HQ provides enough resources that capping REQ points is less important and it is hard to defend them with no listening posts in the game anyway.
Who ever first said "catering for casuals" or "catering to the hardcore" should have their neck wrung.
When Starcraft was made it wasn't made to cater for anyone other than people who play computer games.
Weigh a game on its own merits. Not who you think will be playing it.
That is a fair point I guess. Reason why I dislike the game is, while I didn't like DoW 1 so much, that I thought CoH was the best RTS game in the last 5 years and for me DoW 2 is a step down from that. Gone is the tactical map, the great resource system, commander abilities and more. I expected a game that would be pretty much be DoW built upon CoH taken to another level. Instead we got something completely different, that is as you said, not a RTS but a RTT.
Having extensively played both DoW1 and CoH. DoW2 is like neither which is a good thing. The slow strategical pace of CoH suited the WII setting down to a T which is why it was great.
When making this game I am sure relic tried out different unit lethalities, sectors and command trees and in the end it just didn't work in the 41st Millennium.
This game is fast brutal and accessible whilst still having a core which is strategic and deep.
The more you play it the more tactical potential opens open up to you.
On January 30 2009 01:57 Eury wrote:Your HQ provides enough resources that capping REQ points is less important and it is hard to defend them with no listening posts in the game anyway.
Almost everyone agrees that the resource balance needs to be changed so that holding external requisition points means more. There is some debate about the listening posts though. Some feel it might make the game too defensive - I sort of agree. I personally feel a longer decap time for them would be best (hence allowing one more time to react to stop it).
I think I have read somewhere that Relic does plan to fix the resource system in some manner via an early patch. So hopefully this issue will be fixed upon the games final release.
I have played plenty of 1vs1 and that mode is pretty much broken and won't be popular in DoW 2. Relic have pretty much said as much considering they are balancing the game for 3vs3. Now, 3vs3 is more fun, however it still lacks in amount of units and unit diversity. There is pretty much no macro in the game so all focus is on micro and the game boils down to pretty much each team member try to take control of one VP each and hold on to it.
The game reminds me, and dare I say it, to DOTA the most. Considering the heroes, the very few units and you where you fight your battles. I don't dislike DOTA but if you are looking for a RTS you won't find it here.
On January 30 2009 01:57 Eury wrote:Your HQ provides enough resources that capping REQ points is less important and it is hard to defend them with no listening posts in the game anyway.
Almost everyone agrees that the resource balance needs to be changed so that holding external requisition points means more. There is some debate about the listening posts though. Some feel it might make the game too defensive - I sort of agree. I personally feel a longer decap time for them would be best (hence allowing one more time to react to stop it).
I think I have read somewhere that Relic does plan to fix the resource system in some manner via an early patch. So hopefully this issue will be fixed upon the games final release.
I don't think they can do that though. If they change the amount of resources the HQ provides you will fall even further behind if you lose a battle and it will be pretty much impossible to come back in the game then.
Warcraft 3 solved that by a) having creeps and b) units didn't get experience, and many Starcraft players still think it is too hard to make a come back in that game. DoW 2 is even worse, and nerfing the HQ will just make it borderline impossible to make a come back. Every game will be pretty much decided in the first few minutes then.
On January 30 2009 00:58 naventus wrote: Regarding Korbah's point about DoW2 competing against SC2, why do you think it's the case that a game announced AFTER SC2 is pushed into beta and release months before SC2?
There's no way in hell it would sell coming out at the same time as, or after SC2. Right now, it's pretty much the only RTS game out in a long time, and it will fill the void and sell because of that. From a business perspective, that's probably the smart move, but it says oodles about Relic's intent - it's just obviously not meant to be a competitive game.
Yeah I agree the timing is obvious. They'll get lots of sales because it does look great and the 3v3 play is very nice. It's a great casual game and there's not anything wrong with that. But with SC2 so near.. having played the beta so much I'm not sure it's really worth the money. It has the same lasting appeal as DotA really. Which to me is not very much.
What I don't understand is why with so few units... do you still have to control them in squads? It doesn't make any sense that you can't spread out a 3 man tactical squad in the places you want. This also makes scouting annoying, although as Korbah said it's redundant anyway.
And the fallback command.. why do the units have to run all the way back to base? It's just silly and annoying. Couldn't they fall back to the nearest cover? Oh there's a suppression gun there... back to base I go?!
As one of the guys above said it's the most dumb-downed RTS ever. It feels almost like a UMS map, instead of a real game. I have to say I'm mega hyped for SC2 now.
Yeah, the lack of requisition you get from controlled points versus ones out in the field is annoying. I get run over by a guy who more or less straight teched to a vehicle before my economy kicks in way too often.
No delete function!!! Nor is there an ability to retire your units ie. return them to the HQ for a % cost back. At the moment the only way to get rid of units to free pop cap is to sacrifice them and give the enemy XP. This needs rectifying.
There doesn't seem to be an overwatch function with regards to reinforcing units - I miss it already tongue.gif
From the post Bluewolf quoted.
Can someone tell me why these features are desireable ? Can't you just target your own unit and kill it if you so desperately want it gone?
And overwatch is basically a "reinforce squad at all times" button right? Why should that be in a game
On January 30 2009 02:29 Eury wrote: I have played plenty of 1vs1 and that mode is pretty much broken and won't be popular in DoW 2. Relic have pretty much said as much considering they are balancing the game for 3vs3. Now, 3vs3 is more fun, however it still lacks in amount of units and unit diversity. There is pretty much no macro in the game so all focus is on micro and the game boils down to pretty much each team member try to take control of one VP each and hold on to it.
The game reminds me, and dare I say it, to DOTA the most. Considering the heroes, the very few units and you where you fight your battles. I don't dislike DOTA but if you are looking for a RTS you won't find it here.
In my experience, 3v3 maps - especially the city map (god I cannot remember any of the map names, even after probably like 50 games :D) generally seem to have one half of the map that far outweighs the others in importance.
IE holding the south (with an emphasis on the center portion) of the city map with only token efforts towards the north seems far superior than trying to contest all the VPs evenly.
No delete function!!! Nor is there an ability to retire your units ie. return them to the HQ for a % cost back. At the moment the only way to get rid of units to free pop cap is to sacrifice them and give the enemy XP. This needs rectifying.
Can someone tell me why these features are desireable ? Can't you just target your own unit and kill it if you so desperately want it gone?
No you can't target your own units that's his point really, you have to sacrifice them. Units have an upkeep cost (I know you know that, just for others), I guess with the way experience works it would be best to get rid of your weaker units as they are simply a liability that's costing you money to have on the battle.
Im not sure how this game qualifies as an RTS, the first game I played I wondered if this was just one of the modes, surely I wasnt playing the real game? One building??? All of your units level up??? Controlling points for resources....
On January 30 2009 01:57 Eury wrote:Your HQ provides enough resources that capping REQ points is less important and it is hard to defend them with no listening posts in the game anyway.
Almost everyone agrees that the resource balance needs to be changed so that holding external requisition points means more. There is some debate about the listening posts though. Some feel it might make the game too defensive - I sort of agree. I personally feel a longer decap time for them would be best (hence allowing one more time to react to stop it).
I think I have read somewhere that Relic does plan to fix the resource system in some manner via an early patch. So hopefully this issue will be fixed upon the games final release.
I don't think they can do that though. If they change the amount of resources the HQ provides you will fall even further behind if you lose a battle and it will be pretty much impossible to come back in the game then.
Warcraft 3 solved that by a) having creeps and b) units didn't get experience, and many Starcraft players still think it is too hard to make a come back in that game. DoW 2 is even worse, and nerfing the HQ will just make it borderline impossible to make a come back. Every game will be pretty much decided in the first few minutes then.
I don't really think that must be true at all. As it is, the hq gives like 200 requisition... and all the remaining points on the 2 player maps give like 80. That's paltry. All they have to do is cut the hq requisition down to like 100, 125, and up all the points to like 40 or 50. Points tend to get exchanged fairly quickly, and if you're behind by a point it won't make a huge difference unless it stands that way for a long while. As it is now, you capture the entire map and get like a 300 requisition advantage over your opponent over the course of the game. That's like one squad.
On January 30 2009 01:57 Eury wrote:Your HQ provides enough resources that capping REQ points is less important and it is hard to defend them with no listening posts in the game anyway.
Almost everyone agrees that the resource balance needs to be changed so that holding external requisition points means more. There is some debate about the listening posts though. Some feel it might make the game too defensive - I sort of agree. I personally feel a longer decap time for them would be best (hence allowing one more time to react to stop it).
I think I have read somewhere that Relic does plan to fix the resource system in some manner via an early patch. So hopefully this issue will be fixed upon the games final release.
I don't think they can do that though. If they change the amount of resources the HQ provides you will fall even further behind if you lose a battle and it will be pretty much impossible to come back in the game then.
Warcraft 3 solved that by a) having creeps and b) units didn't get experience, and many Starcraft players still think it is too hard to make a come back in that game. DoW 2 is even worse, and nerfing the HQ will just make it borderline impossible to make a come back. Every game will be pretty much decided in the first few minutes then.
I don't really think that must be true at all. As it is, the hq gives like 200 requisition... and all the remaining points on the 2 player maps give like 80. That's paltry. All they have to do is cut the hq requisition down to like 100, 125, and up all the points to like 40 or 50. Points tend to get exchanged fairly quickly, and if you're behind by a point it won't make a huge difference unless it stands that way for a long while. As it is now, you capture the entire map and get like a 300 requisition advantage over your opponent over the course of the game. That's like one squad.
Think about it. With your scenario if you lose a battle. not only will your opponent's hero and units be a higher level than you, he will also have map control thus having a huge resource advantage, at the same time you have only a HQ that provides very little income. There is a reason why Relic choose to have your HQ giving a majority of your income. The reason is to make it possible to make a come back in the game. To turn around the tide and win.
It is a poor fix to, in my view, broken meta game where whoever gains an advantage will be favored heavily and the gap between the players widen exponential when someone gains the upperhand.
On January 30 2009 01:57 Eury wrote:Your HQ provides enough resources that capping REQ points is less important and it is hard to defend them with no listening posts in the game anyway.
Almost everyone agrees that the resource balance needs to be changed so that holding external requisition points means more. There is some debate about the listening posts though. Some feel it might make the game too defensive - I sort of agree. I personally feel a longer decap time for them would be best (hence allowing one more time to react to stop it).
I think I have read somewhere that Relic does plan to fix the resource system in some manner via an early patch. So hopefully this issue will be fixed upon the games final release.
I don't think they can do that though. If they change the amount of resources the HQ provides you will fall even further behind if you lose a battle and it will be pretty much impossible to come back in the game then.
Warcraft 3 solved that by a) having creeps and b) units didn't get experience, and many Starcraft players still think it is too hard to make a come back in that game. DoW 2 is even worse, and nerfing the HQ will just make it borderline impossible to make a come back. Every game will be pretty much decided in the first few minutes then.
I don't really think that must be true at all. As it is, the hq gives like 200 requisition... and all the remaining points on the 2 player maps give like 80. That's paltry. All they have to do is cut the hq requisition down to like 100, 125, and up all the points to like 40 or 50. Points tend to get exchanged fairly quickly, and if you're behind by a point it won't make a huge difference unless it stands that way for a long while. As it is now, you capture the entire map and get like a 300 requisition advantage over your opponent over the course of the game. That's like one squad.
Think about it. With your scenario if you lose a battle. not only will your opponent's hero and units be a higher level than you, he will also have map control thus having a huge resource advantage, at the same time you have only a HQ that provides very little income. There is a reason why Relic choose to have your HQ giving a majority of your income. The reason is to make it possible to make a come back in the game. To turn around the tide and win.
It is a poor fix to, in my view, broken meta game where whoever gains an advantage will be favored heavily and the gap between the players widen exponential when someone gains the upperhand.
yea and that should be the point do you like the model of starcraft? it's the same, you gain an advantage, and it gets bigger and bigger
On January 30 2009 01:57 Eury wrote:Your HQ provides enough resources that capping REQ points is less important and it is hard to defend them with no listening posts in the game anyway.
Almost everyone agrees that the resource balance needs to be changed so that holding external requisition points means more. There is some debate about the listening posts though. Some feel it might make the game too defensive - I sort of agree. I personally feel a longer decap time for them would be best (hence allowing one more time to react to stop it).
I think I have read somewhere that Relic does plan to fix the resource system in some manner via an early patch. So hopefully this issue will be fixed upon the games final release.
I don't think they can do that though. If they change the amount of resources the HQ provides you will fall even further behind if you lose a battle and it will be pretty much impossible to come back in the game then.
Warcraft 3 solved that by a) having creeps and b) units didn't get experience, and many Starcraft players still think it is too hard to make a come back in that game. DoW 2 is even worse, and nerfing the HQ will just make it borderline impossible to make a come back. Every game will be pretty much decided in the first few minutes then.
I don't really think that must be true at all. As it is, the hq gives like 200 requisition... and all the remaining points on the 2 player maps give like 80. That's paltry. All they have to do is cut the hq requisition down to like 100, 125, and up all the points to like 40 or 50. Points tend to get exchanged fairly quickly, and if you're behind by a point it won't make a huge difference unless it stands that way for a long while. As it is now, you capture the entire map and get like a 300 requisition advantage over your opponent over the course of the game. That's like one squad.
Think about it. With your scenario if you lose a battle. not only will your opponent's hero and units be a higher level than you, he will also have map control thus having a huge resource advantage, at the same time you have only a HQ that provides very little income. There is a reason why Relic choose to have your HQ giving a majority of your income. The reason is to make it possible to make a come back in the game. To turn around the tide and win.
It is a poor fix to, in my view, broken meta game where whoever gains an advantage will be favored heavily and the gap between the players widen exponential when someone gains the upperhand.
yea and that should be the point do you like the model of starcraft? it's the same, you gain an advantage, and it gets bigger and bigger
Not even close to that degree. You gain the same advantages as in SC, but add to that better heroes and better units.
On January 30 2009 02:58 Klive5ive wrote: What I don't understand is why with so few units... do you still have to control them in squads? It doesn't make any sense that you can't spread out a 3 man tactical squad in the places you want. This also makes scouting annoying, although as Korbah said it's redundant anyway.
And the fallback command.. why do the units have to run all the way back to base? It's just silly and annoying. Couldn't they fall back to the nearest cover? Oh there's a suppression gun there... back to base I go?!
As for the squad thingie:
- that's how WH40K works, tabletop and first DoW, you don't buy single units there (unless it's some elite/heavy support/vehicle stuff) - you get them in squads - in real army single person is nothing, you operate in squads/units - makes more sense - thanks they didn't expand original DoW in the way tabletop got the Apocalypse expansion, there even vehicles come in squads
As for the fallback command:
- it is a tradeoff - you lose units presence in a battle for extended time mostly but in return you get a) free of suppression and bonus movement speed so the unit has greater chance of survival b) your unit gets right to the point where it can heal and reinforce
You basically have to ask yourself a question when using it (I assume that you're using it when your unit stands in the face of complete wipeout and you having no way of saving it): Will I need this unit in the future? If yes then go ahead and retreat, if you find the unit expendable then just leave it to soak the damage for a couple seconds longer.
For me the biggest problems with DoW II right now are (apart from terrible matchmaking):
- suppression units should be moved to T2 or their costs increased significantly, early game suppresion spam is so annoying - why the hell when your ally drops from the game but you still win it 2v3 you don't get victory? I'm like 6-15 right now, of those 15 losses there's 10 bugs/hangups/discs and I did win a lot more games but someone dropped in them... WTF?! Is it so hard to give leaver/discer a loss, his teammates 0 points in case of a loss and victory if they manage to win? Of course it should be balanced so if there's one player discing from each team then they get a loss and the remaining players have to fight it out in normal win/loss conditions.
On January 30 2009 08:21 Frits wrote: they should remove that gay fallback shit and lessen the cost of units / up the cap of units
Apart from that Im really loving this game, so many fun stuff to do, favorite race so far is SM.
Then you should definitely watch this crappy replay of mine to see how to one-shot carnifexes with drop pods T_T (it's 1v1 so no one should have problems following what's going on).
And fallback is awesome, if you wouldn't have it then suppression would be even more OP. It worked for CoH and I don't see why it wouldn't work for DoW2 too.
On January 30 2009 02:58 Klive5ive wrote: What I don't understand is why with so few units... do you still have to control them in squads? It doesn't make any sense that you can't spread out a 3 man tactical squad in the places you want. This also makes scouting annoying, although as Korbah said it's redundant anyway.
And the fallback command.. why do the units have to run all the way back to base? It's just silly and annoying. Couldn't they fall back to the nearest cover? Oh there's a suppression gun there... back to base I go?!
As for the squad thingie:
- that's how WH40K works, tabletop and first DoW, you don't buy single units there (unless it's some elite/heavy support/vehicle stuff) - you get them in squads - in real army single person is nothing, you operate in squads/units - makes more sense - thanks they didn't expand original DoW in the way tabletop got the Apocalypse expansion, there even vehicles come in squads
As for the fallback command:
- it is a tradeoff - you lose units presence in a battle for extended time mostly but in return you get a) free of suppression and bonus movement speed so the unit has greater chance of survival b) your unit gets right to the point where it can heal and reinforce
You basically have to ask yourself a question when using it (I assume that you're using it when your unit stands in the face of complete wipeout and you having no way of saving it): Will I need this unit in the future? If yes then go ahead and retreat, if you find the unit expendable then just leave it to soak the damage for a couple seconds longer.
For me the biggest problems with DoW II right now are (apart from terrible matchmaking):
- suppression units should be moved to T2 or their costs increased significantly, early game suppresion spam is so annoying - why the hell when your ally drops from the game but you still win it 2v3 you don't get victory? I'm like 6-15 right now, of those 15 losses there's 10 bugs/hangups/discs and I did win a lot more games but someone dropped in them... WTF?! Is it so hard to give leaver/discer a loss, his teammates 0 points in case of a loss and victory if they manage to win? Of course it should be balanced so if there's one player discing from each team then they get a loss and the remaining players have to fight it out in normal win/loss conditions.
That is easily the most useless reply I have ever received.
Ofc I know how to use fallback, that's WHY I don't like it. Saying "WH40k and real life has squads" is the dumbest reason ever to put it in your game. They obviously did it because they just updated their old engine, but it's annoying and makes the micro appear unresponsive.
I think that in the beta micro appears inresponsive because of huge pings/lags (especially if one person has set his settings too high it's gonna lag for everyone instead of slideshowing only this one person). When playing DoW or CoH I didn't feel like it was very inresponsive, maybe a bit slower than in BW but they're not 10 years old and it wasn't a nuisance really.
And personally, I prefer squads instead of single units for basic infantry, for me it just looks and feels better.
Am I doing something wrong or does it seem like they're really weak.
The problem I have is that in order to keep them effective in a fight you gotta stack them close to your synapse creatures but that gives map control to your oponent...
I always end up winning fight over fight in the first tier of the game but I get decapped from all over and the game eventually ends up in T3 where tanks and shit completely destroy my T1/T2 army.
It just feels like, cost to cost, "nids" are highly on the losing side. Wich makes you group up more units to win fights, wich in return leaves less units to cap/decap, its really a vicious circle.
Yeah... I think Tyranids are quite weak overall. I've gotten run over by Tyranids... when I'm Tyranid. And I think I lost one game as Space Marines (but they feel weak too). I think one guy might have beaten me when I was Eldar, when I was trying out a new strategy.
They seem to go defensive and then go for one big all in attack if they go Hive Tyrant (that seems to fail miserably). The way synapse works, that's probably the only viable way to do it since there's like 5 or 6 different synapse types (which is crazy, I thought it was like one universal aura). The Ravener can build burrows, and supposedly one viable strat is to build those everywhere and use the mines to blow up anything that comes your way.
But I've only won one game as Tyranid... and that guy was pretty newb, and he still almost beat me. ~_~
On January 30 2009 09:31 Famehunter wrote: Anyone played the "nids" extensively ?
Am I doing something wrong or does it seem like they're really weak.
The problem I have is that in order to keep them effective in a fight you gotta stack them close to your synapse creatures but that gives map control to your oponent...
I always end up winning fight over fight in the first tier of the game but I get decapped from all over and the game eventually ends up in T3 where tanks and shit completely destroy my T1/T2 army.
It just feels like, cost to cost, "nids" are highly on the losing side. Wich makes you group up more units to win fights, wich in return leaves less units to cap/decap, its really a vicious circle.
I am just doing so. I also thought at start that they're seriously underpowered but with a bit of effort they can be pretty rewarding.
Early game: - just mass (I usually start off by building second hormagaunt brood and ripper swarm, then depending on the situation I add hormagaunts, termagaunts or warrior brood) - screw synapse, spread your hormies all over the map (rippers can cap/decap too!) and use their superior speed to grab what you can (especially VP's but anything will be useful, your best stuff isn't cheap) - if you're using ht - get bio-plasma for him, will help with all this pesky suppresion and infantry blobs - do NOT get barbed stranglers, they're way too slow and ineffective in the long run (can basically only suppress stationary targets or if you take them by surprise and if you manage that then you'll manage to get into melee where your superior numbers should shine)
T2: - get 1-2 zoanthropes and venom cannons on everything you can (warriors and ht if you're using him), you will need some AV and anti heavy infantry right now, stall for t3 - you won't be using anything from T1 apart from warriors and mines now, maybe one gaunt squad or ripper swarm to run around the map and cap/decap something
T3: - simple, spend all you can on carnifexes, spam tyrranoformation all over the place (if you're ravener then minedrops are better I think) and run enemy over (watch out for those damned drop pods landing on your carnifexes)
Basically you should have initiative early on with superior numbers and speed, then you'll have to give it away a bit (unless your enemy is noob), power up and annoy him with stray gaunt squads running all over the map. When you have some counters to walkers/vehicles (venom cannons and zoanthrope or two) you should start putting some pressure on your enemy. What happens next is up to you. Either pump out more warriors or wait for your first carnifex to try and win this. If you get more than 1 carnifex then get venom cannon (priority) and hornback on them. Third one (if you'll get this far) should also get venom.
Okay the best strategy that won me ALL games: First 3 minutes: Split 3 squads, 2 squads to capture victory points, 1 money points and use your hero to support any of the squads that may need help, maps are pretty small, so its easy to get from point to point. 4-7 minute: mass early tier army and always have 1 squad capturing enemys victory points, while your other squads battle out with your opponent. 8-12 minute: Use your by now gained advantage, defend your points with 1 squad each and use the hero and 1 higher tier unit to support of of your squads that defend the points whereever needed. 13+ minute: you've probablt won by this time, if not, it means you haven't been agressive enough in taking points on the map. Still though, if that is the case then with your whole army lineary progress to regain victory points from the closest ones to the farthest.
Nids seem ok, didn't know what the hell i was doing with them at the start, but usually i whip out another Homo squad then the shooty ones and that's all good. From there ii can either go mines or tech for some Lictor
Man, I played one Tyranid who kept bombarding me with crap that nearly made my Orks melt all at once (venom cannons?). I had to WAAAAGH up constantly (this ability reminds me a lot of bloodlust, only the more squads you have the more obnoxiously strong it becomes) and then fortunately my tank busters came along so I could bombard the wankers to death (coincidentally, I love rocket barrage...) and all his units were nice and clustered up, so that messed them up pretty badly. I guess my Warboss was really out of position and couldn't call all da boys in time. But he still lost really badly.
I kind of felt like he was a better player than me based on how much trouble he caused me in early game though. Ork is strong. :>
Coincidentally, this notched me up to #1337 in wins hahahaha.
Edit: On the other hand, mines are freaking over powered against Ork. Eldar rip that crap apart. -.-
On January 30 2009 02:58 Klive5ive wrote: What I don't understand is why with so few units... do you still have to control them in squads? It doesn't make any sense that you can't spread out a 3 man tactical squad in the places you want. This also makes scouting annoying, although as Korbah said it's redundant anyway.
And the fallback command.. why do the units have to run all the way back to base? It's just silly and annoying. Couldn't they fall back to the nearest cover? Oh there's a suppression gun there... back to base I go?!
As for the squad thingie:
- that's how WH40K works, tabletop and first DoW, you don't buy single units there (unless it's some elite/heavy support/vehicle stuff) - you get them in squads - in real army single person is nothing, you operate in squads/units - makes more sense - thanks they didn't expand original DoW in the way tabletop got the Apocalypse expansion, there even vehicles come in squads
As for the fallback command:
- it is a tradeoff - you lose units presence in a battle for extended time mostly but in return you get a) free of suppression and bonus movement speed so the unit has greater chance of survival b) your unit gets right to the point where it can heal and reinforce
You basically have to ask yourself a question when using it (I assume that you're using it when your unit stands in the face of complete wipeout and you having no way of saving it): Will I need this unit in the future? If yes then go ahead and retreat, if you find the unit expendable then just leave it to soak the damage for a couple seconds longer.
For me the biggest problems with DoW II right now are (apart from terrible matchmaking):
- suppression units should be moved to T2 or their costs increased significantly, early game suppresion spam is so annoying - why the hell when your ally drops from the game but you still win it 2v3 you don't get victory? I'm like 6-15 right now, of those 15 losses there's 10 bugs/hangups/discs and I did win a lot more games but someone dropped in them... WTF?! Is it so hard to give leaver/discer a loss, his teammates 0 points in case of a loss and victory if they manage to win? Of course it should be balanced so if there's one player discing from each team then they get a loss and the remaining players have to fight it out in normal win/loss conditions.
That is easily the most useless reply I have ever received.
Ofc I know how to use fallback, that's WHY I don't like it. Saying "WH40k and real life has squads" is the dumbest reason ever to put it in your game. They obviously did it because they just updated their old engine, but it's annoying and makes the micro appear unresponsive.
no. squads are not a legacy, they're intentional. They force players to use more 'tactical' micro and less 'click-fest' micro. To alot of Starcraft players this may seem like a bad decision, but many many players like it.
I am very experienced in both starcraft and company of heroes (squad based), and i must say that the control in each game is completely different but both are alot of fun and satisfying.
Honestly, Company of Heroes would be so shitty if it wasn't squad based.
I don't mind squads so much anymore, it's still just a unit, it's just visually represented differently.. I mean, if you use Eldar you still have a ton of BW style micro (since fleet of foot makes them able to outrun melee so easily).
On January 31 2009 07:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: I don't mind squads so much anymore, it's still just a unit, it's just visually represented differently.. I mean, if you use Eldar you still have a ton of BW style micro (since fleet of foot makes them able to outrun melee so easily).
Eldar used to be micro race in DoW1 too. Unfortunately catapult squad costs the same as guardian squad so most people on the beta are just using eldar to play capture+camp instead of hit&run
On January 31 2009 07:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: I don't mind squads so much anymore, it's still just a unit, it's just visually represented differently.. I mean, if you use Eldar you still have a ton of BW style micro (since fleet of foot makes them able to outrun melee so easily).
Eldar used to be micro race in DoW1 too. Unfortunately catapult squad costs the same as guardian squad so most people on the beta are just using eldar to play capture+camp instead of hit&run
Capture and camp players are the easiest to beat :D. Flanking and Grenades aswel as jumpers punish campers hard.
The mobility that going for Cannons takes away is actually a huge disadvantage vs a quick player. Guardians + Plasma grenades ftw.
Been playing a good bit of this the past few days. It's a fresh change of pace, though I don't think I will buy it when it comes out. If the slow ass matchmaking sped up a shitload, I prolly would though...
Anyone want to play some 3v3s or 1v1s? I'm "Motiva" on Live
On January 31 2009 11:50 zizou21 wrote:theres too many skills to take the time learning everything T_T game doesnt really look worth it -_-
Yeah, I know what you mean. I went looking for a guide that listed what everything did, and I couldn't find one. Seems like every match against a good player, they're abusing something that I wasn't even aware existed. And sitting back in their base until they get it. I can't believe they thought that having 80% of the requisition being given by the HQs could possibly be a good idea.
On January 31 2009 07:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: I don't mind squads so much anymore, it's still just a unit, it's just visually represented differently.
No, not really. Squads are very blatantly made up of more than one distinct unit, you're just forced to give the same commands to all of them. Saying that they're effectively the same as single units in other games is ridiculous, you have a much greater degree of control when you can give commands to every unit individually. It's far more than just a visual change.
This game has such horrible pathfinding... I even once had the Tyranid artillery unit just move a bit to the side and then to the opposite one and not attack at all for more than 30 seconds against a stationary target. Also, live randomly disconnects me in the middle of the game, when there is no lag or anything.
ok .... i played this game for about 20 mins ... and i think it sucks ;/ really , i have no idea what im doing , and its even hard to find games ;/ you have to wait like 10 minutes ... i had big hope in this game , and it failed to entertain me ... ;/
I played it for several hours. It's fun, because it's another game, not the same like BW. You'll fail if you try to play it like star, need to invade map positions (you can conquer houses or smth). and push slowly forwards. But it's kinda noobgame...
On January 31 2009 07:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: I don't mind squads so much anymore, it's still just a unit, it's just visually represented differently.. I mean, if you use Eldar you still have a ton of BW style micro (since fleet of foot makes them able to outrun melee so easily).
Well I do use Eldar and it's nothing like that. I wish it was though.
If you run away then press halt, they don't fire instantly. They move to the nearest cover first.
And of course if one man is stuck behind an obstacle when you run the WHOLE squad gets put into melee. So then the other 4 men move BACK towards the enemy they have just run away from!
The squad system doesn't let you sacrifice individual units for the sake of the squad. 1 in melee = all in melee and it's not exactly uncommon for units to become trapped behind stuff or squads to randomly split up.
Don't know how some of you guys are having trouble getting a game, takes me 30 secs max.
I'm playing random at the moment which is probably not the best idea as i didn't know what the fuck i was doing as well as reading all the different unit abilities, but i'm doing pretty well. If someone is camping in their base, you should know about it and tech accordingly.
If you guys need any kind of help or what shit to get, then i might be able to help you
On January 31 2009 18:20 Sinedd wrote: ok .... i played this game for about 20 mins ... and i think it sucks ;/ really , i have no idea what im doing , and its even hard to find games ;/ you have to wait like 10 minutes ... i had big hope in this game , and it failed to entertain me ... ;/
So you played for 20 minutes, thats 1-2 games? How can you make a decision on a game you cannot possibly have grasped even the basic mechanics of yet?
On February 01 2009 00:29 Velr wrote: the more i play, the less i like this game.
It might just be a temporary crisis. I loved the game when I first played it, then after some games I started hating it and now after playing even more I start to think it just gets better and better. There's still so much to discover, and we can't forget it's just a buggy beta, not the final product (and I guess not super close to it either).
After playing with my friends tonight in 3vs3 I must say it is a funny game. But that's also how far it will ever go, it will be something to spend your time on until Starcraft 2(if it comes out soon).
so after playing about twenty games online or so, ive decided that i suck at this game, if anyone wants to help a noobie out or learn the game together add me up.
WHIZZPIG on games for windows live danzepol on steam
On January 31 2009 07:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: I don't mind squads so much anymore, it's still just a unit, it's just visually represented differently.. I mean, if you use Eldar you still have a ton of BW style micro (since fleet of foot makes them able to outrun melee so easily).
Well I do use Eldar and it's nothing like that. I wish it was though.
If you run away then press halt, they don't fire instantly. They move to the nearest cover first.
And of course if one man is stuck behind an obstacle when you run the WHOLE squad gets put into melee. So then the other 4 men move BACK towards the enemy they have just run away from!
The squad system doesn't let you sacrifice individual units for the sake of the squad. 1 in melee = all in melee and it's not exactly uncommon for units to become trapped behind stuff or squads to randomly split up.
Wraithlords(and probably the other walkers, too) frustatingly often refuse to melee units, two times against banshees a walker just moved around refusing to attack them no matter if I gave an attack ground command or clicked on a banshee and one time against another wraithlord, who barely had any hp T_T
On January 31 2009 07:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: I don't mind squads so much anymore, it's still just a unit, it's just visually represented differently.. I mean, if you use Eldar you still have a ton of BW style micro (since fleet of foot makes them able to outrun melee so easily).
Well I do use Eldar and it's nothing like that. I wish it was though.
If you run away then press halt, they don't fire instantly. They move to the nearest cover first.
And of course if one man is stuck behind an obstacle when you run the WHOLE squad gets put into melee. So then the other 4 men move BACK towards the enemy they have just run away from!
The squad system doesn't let you sacrifice individual units for the sake of the squad. 1 in melee = all in melee and it's not exactly uncommon for units to become trapped behind stuff or squads to randomly split up.
Wraithlords(and probably the other walkers, too) frustatingly often refuse to melee units, two times against banshees a walker just moved around refusing to attack them no matter if I gave an attack ground command or clicked on a banshee and one time against another wraithlord, who barely had any hp T_T
Do you mean that they refuse to melee the units even if you click Z+select target squad?
Since Z = force melee key. I haven't had that problem but I haven't played eldar much either
I've tried stop, force melee, right click and attack move(but instead wrote attack ground by mistake). It happened 3 times in the 30+ games I played, against the bashees it was moving like it was trying to make way for them to move or something?! Against the other wraithlord, mine just stood there taking the beating, he was firing his arm mounted weapon before entering melee, then he just stopped doing anything.
On February 02 2009 06:37 lololol wrote: I've tried stop, force melee, right click and attack move(but instead wrote attack ground by mistake). It happened 3 times in the 30+ games I played, against the bashees it was moving like it was trying to make way for them to move or something?! Against the other wraithlord, mine just stood there taking the beating, he was firing his arm mounted weapon before entering melee, then he just stopped doing anything.
Yeah, the AI for all the large walker units is painful. They just kind of stumble around, going in circles before maybe deciding to start attacking.
On February 02 2009 06:37 lololol wrote: I've tried stop, force melee, right click and attack move(but instead wrote attack ground by mistake). It happened 3 times in the 30+ games I played, against the bashees it was moving like it was trying to make way for them to move or something?! Against the other wraithlord, mine just stood there taking the beating, he was firing his arm mounted weapon before entering melee, then he just stopped doing anything.
Yeah, the AI for all the large walker units is painful. They just kind of stumble around, going in circles before maybe deciding to start attacking.
Try moving a bunch of lictors around.... oh dear it's painful
Yeah, I've had similar problems when I had my Force Commander trying to punch a walker with his Power Fist. He'd just stand around, not even shooting or anything, whilst the walker slowly turned around and walked away. :/
On February 02 2009 11:23 Phyre wrote: Yeah, I've had similar problems when I had my Force Commander trying to punch a walker with his Power Fist. He'd just stand around, not even shooting or anything, whilst the walker slowly turned around and walked away. :/
Power fist has very slow attack. This could be that. If you issue too many orders in a short amount of time (like spamming attack) you can disrupt slower attacks. On a side note, the best eq for FC is: hammer, sprint armour, teleporter. It turns him into such a beast ^_^ You have tactical marines and predators to deal with vehicles.
From the vids, it looks exactly like DoW ... with updated graphics. Is this the case? Are there new units or significantly different gameplay features?
On February 02 2009 20:45 eat wrote: From the vids, it looks exactly like DoW ... with updated graphics. Is this the case? Are there new units or significantly different gameplay features?
Gameplay mechanics are more like those in CoH than DoW. Units aren't very new (apart from Tyranids being added) but they're different.
Downloaded when open beta came out. Having tonnes of fun. Ownaging face as Space Marines
My only worry with this game is that Relic is trying to make a casual RTS, it has the potential to be great but imo Relic won't get it done especially given their track record.
On February 02 2009 21:33 ssystem wrote: Downloaded when open beta came out. Having tonnes of fun. Ownaging face as Space Marines
My only worry with this game is that Relic is trying to make a casual RTS, it has the potential to be great but imo Relic won't get it done especially given their track record.
Sometimes casual stuff turns into competetive one (vide DotA).
It keeps returning some completely idiotic error about not supporting my locale and (bang!) fails to see my IP. Does Microsoft even know about routing?
On February 02 2009 11:23 Phyre wrote: Yeah, I've had similar problems when I had my Force Commander trying to punch a walker with his Power Fist. He'd just stand around, not even shooting or anything, whilst the walker slowly turned around and walked away. :/
Power fist has very slow attack. This could be that. If you issue too many orders in a short amount of time (like spamming attack) you can disrupt slower attacks. On a side note, the best eq for FC is: hammer, sprint armour, teleporter. It turns him into such a beast ^_^ You have tactical marines and predators to deal with vehicles.
I know it has a very slow attack, but I issued the Flesh Over Steel command once and the FC just stood there doing his idle animation. Then I tried to tell him to simply melee the walker and he still idled. The entire time the walker was staying still since it was engaged in melee and then when it was done with the enemy squad it did a 180 turn in place then walked off. I've noticed this a few times where I tell the FC to go kill a walker and then check back on it a little later to see him idling in front of a walker punching his face in.
Also, playing 3v3s is frustrating to me. I can always seem to hold 1 VP and a power in my "lane" but then my allies seem to fail to hold theirs and I lose. Then I go help them but end up stretching myself too thin and lose again. Reminds me why I stick to 1v1 games.
Holding 1 VP and counting on your allies is a bad thing. It's best to capture one VP then go to help an ally, then move to the third one with another ally or go back to the one you captured to recapture it from the enemy. This game is all about non-stop movement and capturing/recapturing. I'm playing like that, am currently on a 5 win streak in 3v3's, always end up champion with ~700 score (as compared to playing capture+hold in the beginning when I was getting like ~400 score).
On February 03 2009 04:15 Manit0u wrote: Holding 1 VP and counting on your allies is a bad thing. It's best to capture one VP then go to help an ally, then move to the third one with another ally or go back to the one you captured to recapture it from the enemy. This game is all about non-stop movement and capturing/recapturing. I'm playing like that, am currently on a 5 win streak in 3v3's, always end up champion with ~700 score (as compared to playing capture+hold in the beginning when I was getting like ~400 score).
I'll give it a shot. I play SM and I initially went FC+Scout, Scout, ASM, Shotties, ASM, T2. I won practically all of my early skirmishes and had no difficulty holding my area until walkers showed up. Meltas were unreliable so the FC was mainly for Powerfist AV. I wasn't winning the matches though for the aforementioned reasons, the rest of the map would get taken. I was recommended to switch to a more entrenching style with HB Dev squads to lock down an area and tech faster since no power is needed, hopefully getting a dread out earlier with a Powerfist FC for AV. That doesn't seem to work either.
I've been hearing good things about Apoth+ASM though, maybe I should try that? Scout+Apoth, ASM, shotties, ASM, T2. Seems like it would leave me really vulnerable to walkers and vehicles in general though.
On February 03 2009 05:38 Phyre wrote: I'll give it a shot. I play SM and I initially went FC+Scout, Scout, ASM, Shotties, ASM, T2. I won practically all of my early skirmishes and had no difficulty holding my area until walkers showed up. Meltas were unreliable so the FC was mainly for Powerfist AV. I wasn't winning the matches though for the aforementioned reasons, the rest of the map would get taken. I was recommended to switch to a more entrenching style with HB Dev squads to lock down an area and tech faster since no power is needed, hopefully getting a dread out earlier with a Powerfist FC for AV. That doesn't seem to work either.
I've been hearing good things about Apoth+ASM though, maybe I should try that? Scout+Apoth, ASM, shotties, ASM, T2. Seems like it would leave me really vulnerable to walkers and vehicles in general though.
I play SM too. What I usually get nowadays is FC + scout, scout, tsm, asm (or second tsm squad, depends on what my enemy gets), t2, dread sometimes, t3, predator.
I tend to get tsm before asm (and delay them even further) since I really need this first 20 energy for shotguns on at least 1 scout squad, besides tsm are great all-around unit, later on you can upgrade them with rocket launcher to kill walkers/tanks (especially with techmarine, I managed to kill 2 dreadnaughts at close range with tech + rocket tsm and blessings of omnissiah) or with plasma vs nids.
Gear for FC: thunder hammer - knokbacks are king (and kill animations with this weapon make me hard) sprint armour - getting into the fray faster, chasing retreating heroes (don't forget about knockback) or manouvering out of danger teleporter pack - as above but even better
Apoth + ASM is awesome because of Angels of Death, if your guys can be invulnerable for some time it can really piss enemies off, also free revival and quite strong shooting/combat depending on the weapon you take for him (I managed to solo Carnifex with apoth alone). On a side note: to take out walkers with asm you MUST have a sargeant there.
1 (no more) HB squad can be used early on to hold onto some area but I ceased to make HBs at all since any semi-decent player can take them out easily and if not then you have a pretty useless unit when first walkers arrive on the field. When I see enemy suppression squad setting up I just stop what I'm doing and run behind them with 1 scout squad before they can finish placing, this completely owns them and most beginner players can get really confused and surprised by such a move (they usually expect you to run or die if they bring suppression to the field).
For you people having problems with walkers, try plasma squads if you're SM or brightlance team if you're eldar and if you play nids its either warriors with talons or venom cannons, they all work really well if you place them correctly.
1 particularly efficient combo I use vs walkers is warp spiders with stun grenades next to my brightlance team. just teleport forward, stun the walker and run away while brightlance tears it apart.
And I personally dont recommend using power fist vs walkers, unless its mauling at another walker...
ASM/banshees can deal with fast walkers, plasma devs and brightlance plats can be easily tied in melee and/or destroyed in seconds, and with eldar you're better off building a walker of your own and buying his brightlance, so you'll have it mobile, much more durable and good at melee as well.
So they increased the req income from the nodes in the latest patch, and just as I said it would, it lead to games are now very onesided. The games are won by the first battle now as you can chug out units as soon as you get map control while your opponent can barely afford any units.
On February 06 2009 17:42 Eury wrote: So they increased the req income from the nodes in the latest patch, and just as I said it would, it lead to games are now very onesided. The games are won by the first battle now as you can chug out units as soon as you get map control while your opponent can barely afford any units.
This is rather disturbing, I liked the fact that you could sometimes win even if you were totally outcapped as long as you got good unit composition and good positional advantages.
On February 06 2009 17:42 Eury wrote: So they increased the req income from the nodes in the latest patch, and just as I said it would, it lead to games are now very onesided. The games are won by the first battle now as you can chug out units as soon as you get map control while your opponent can barely afford any units.
This is rather disturbing, I liked the fact that you could sometimes win even if you were totally outcapped as long as you got good unit composition and good positional advantages.
So let me get this straight, you won the first battle, took map control and deny him resources. Tell me any rts where anyone in this situation has a good chance of a comeback....
And anyways any good player will not just move his army around in one single blob to forfeit map control anyway, winning the first battle does not mean you have won. The focus of this game is unit management, always doing something with each squad/unit, so especially at the start you should be at multiple locations having small skirmishes with the enemy. And anyway why should the game compensate so that the guy that came out on top not get anything out of doing so. Before this patch you didnt get the bonus requisition and when you have more squads you get less req per minute, which was dumb, why should I get less income just because I have more squads and won a fight.
There are a few things lacking from this game, but its generally fun overall.
And lol apoc is bugged in new patch, hes heal doesnt heal his squads (lol) but it does heal heroes a lot more.
On February 06 2009 17:42 Eury wrote: So they increased the req income from the nodes in the latest patch, and just as I said it would, it lead to games are now very onesided. The games are won by the first battle now as you can chug out units as soon as you get map control while your opponent can barely afford any units.
This is rather disturbing, I liked the fact that you could sometimes win even if you were totally outcapped as long as you got good unit composition and good positional advantages.
So let me get this straight, you won the first battle, took map control and deny him resources. Tell me any rts where anyone in this situation has a good chance of a comeback....
And anyways any good player will not just move his army around in one single blob to forfeit map control anyway, winning the first battle does not mean you have won. The focus of this game is unit management, always doing something with each squad/unit, so especially at the start you should be at multiple locations having small skirmishes with the enemy. And anyway why should the game compensate so that the guy that came out on top not get anything out of doing so. Before this patch you didnt get the bonus requisition and when you have more squads you get less req per minute, which was dumb, why should I get less income just because I have more squads and won a fight.
There are a few things lacking from this game, but its generally fun overall.
And lol apoc is bugged in new patch, hes heal doesnt heal his squads (lol) but it does heal heroes a lot more.
I said SOMETIMES. And with that I meant that you could make a comeback if you for instance got a vehicle out when he has no AV or when you can flank a massive army with a few shuriken platforms and mow them down while taking minimal losses. Though these scenarios require your opponent to do some pretty bad mistakes.
And the game is very fun, although shallow. After a 100 matches or so it'll get highly repetitive since every game is the same.
On February 06 2009 17:42 Eury wrote: So they increased the req income from the nodes in the latest patch, and just as I said it would, it lead to games are now very onesided. The games are won by the first battle now as you can chug out units as soon as you get map control while your opponent can barely afford any units.
This is rather disturbing, I liked the fact that you could sometimes win even if you were totally outcapped as long as you got good unit composition and good positional advantages.
So let me get this straight, you won the first battle, took map control and deny him resources. Tell me any rts where anyone in this situation has a good chance of a comeback....
But the thing is that you can take map control so extremely fast in DoW 2. It doesn't work the same way in Starcraft there if you win a battle doesn't mean that you gain expansions all over the map in almost an instant. You need to build expansions and workers which a) takes time b) cost resources.
So, now in DoW 2 when you win you get better units, better heroes and a multiple better economy as soon as you win a battle. The opponent will have a very hard time to get back from that when the odds are stacked so heavily against him.
On February 06 2009 17:42 Eury wrote: So they increased the req income from the nodes in the latest patch, and just as I said it would, it lead to games are now very onesided. The games are won by the first battle now as you can chug out units as soon as you get map control while your opponent can barely afford any units.
This is rather disturbing, I liked the fact that you could sometimes win even if you were totally outcapped as long as you got good unit composition and good positional advantages.
So let me get this straight, you won the first battle, took map control and deny him resources. Tell me any rts where anyone in this situation has a good chance of a comeback....
But the thing is that you can take map control so extremely fast in DoW 2. It doesn't work the same way in Starcraft there if you win a battle doesn't mean that you gain expansions all over the map in almost an instant. You need to build expansions and workers which a) takes time b) cost resources.
So, now in DoW 2 when you win you get better units, better heroes and a multiple better economy as soon as you win a battle. The opponent will have a very hard time to get back from that when the odds are stacked so heavily against him.
THis is quite right. What I meant that you shouldnt be punished so immensely by losing a small battle ( unless you're suiciding your whole army into enemy fire, then you deserve to lose).
A major update to the Dawn of War 2 multiplayer beta has just hit Steam within the last few minutes, a good sign that the developers are keeping a close eye on progress and lending an ear to player feedback. The patch notes are extensive, consisting of a huge number of balance tweaks and new features. I’ve taken the liberty of bolding some of the more important changes.
For the TLDR crowd:
(1) Ranged weapons nerfed to make getting into melee a bit easier. (2) Explosions now dynamically alter the battlefield by creating craters and debris which can be used by infantry as cover. (3) Grenades and flamers are now more effective against enemies in cover (which is what they’re designed for). (4) And woe are the Eldar–it is not a good day to be a space elf.
Patch notes - 2/5/09
Increased the chances for melee sync-kills to occur. Fixed an issue with all units gaining experience from kills. Only units that fight will gain experience. Heroes will still gain experience just by being near the fighting. All infantry weapon damage reduced by 15% with the exception of anti-vehicle, sniper and artillery weapons. All heroes health reduced by 10% to reflect global damage change. Some melee units reduced in health by 10%. Suppression units’ damage at long range reduced, suppression against cover reduced a little. melee_heavy damage to vehicle reduced to 0.5, from 1. Damage against building reduced to 0.5, from 1. power_weapons_pvp damage to vehicle reduced to 0.15, from 0.25. Plasma damage vs vehicles increased to .2 from .15 Flamer damage vs garrison increased to 3.5 from 2.5, vs heavy cover to 2.5 from 2. Increased grenade damage modifier to garrison cover to 1.25 from 1. Reduced grenade pvp damage modifier against generators to 1 from 1.5. All vehicle deaths now generate heavy cover. Melee special attacks no longer knockdown retreating units. Increased uncapture time for requisition and power points to 15 seconds, from 10. HQ health decreased to 10,000, from 15,000. Requisition points are now updated to use a new system. Points are worth +10 upon capture, but this value now increases by +5 every 15 seconds up to a maximum of +35. When uncaptured, this value resets to +10. Requisition points will no longer be reduced in resource rate in larger games.
Space Marines
Avatar and Carnifex are no longer instantly killed by drop pods. Fixed an issue with space marine base turrets being able to rotate 360 degrees.
Tactical Squad
Missile Launcher reload time reduced to 6 seconds, from 8. Accuracy against large targets increased to 1, from 0.75. Damage reduced to 160, from 175. Sergeant cost increased to 75/25 from 50/25. Fixed an issue the with tactical marine sergeant having a shorter range than the rest of the squad which would cause him to run up to the enemy. Plasma gun damage increased from 65 to 90. Flamer damage increased from 12 to 14. Tactical Marine HP increased from 300 to 350. And They Shall Know No Fear damage reduction modifier reduced to 0.6, from 0.5. Knockback chance decreased to 50%, from 100%. Damage price increased to 1800, from 1200.
Dreadnought
Dreadnought assault cannon upgrade requisition cost increased to 100, from 45
Terminators
Terminator zeal cost reduced to 700, from 900. Assault terminator zeal cost reduced to 700, from 900.
Scout Squad
Sniper rifle cost changed to 150/35 from 100/60, damage increased to 170 from 150. Shotgun knockdown chance reduced to 15%, from 25%. Infiltrate energy drain increased to 1.5/sec, from 1/sec. Scout Sergeant detection radius set to 30. Fixed a bug that was causing Frag Grenades to deal far less damage than intended. Leader cost increased to 60/25 from 50/25 Fixed an issue with Scouts dealing more melee damage than they should have been.
Techmarine
Techmarine Heavy Bolter turret damage reduced to match the other turrets.
Assault Marines
Melta bomb fixed to affect Carnifex mobility. Fixed an issue that caused Meltabombs to have a chance to miss their target. Assault Marine Sergeant cost increased to 100/25 from 50/25 Assault Marine Sergeant health increased to 440, from 320. Jump energy cost increased to 70, from 55.
Force Commander
Force commander teleporter pack armor req cost increased to 100. Force commander 2 handed hammer special attack damage reduced to 30, from 50. Force commander Flesh Over Steel stun duration reduced to 8 seconds, from 10.
Apothecary
Fixed an issue with the Heal ability not being able to target Terminators. Apothecary Armor of Purity health increase reduced to 100. Apothecary Armor of Purity heal cooldown reduction bonus reduced to 0.65, from 0.5. Apothecary heal tuned to heal heroes more, heal over time effect reduced Apothecary chainsword damage reduced to 33 from 38. Apothecary Sanguine Chainsword damage reduced to 50, from 65. Apothecary power axe damage reduced to 85, from 100. Angels of death cost increased to 500 from 400, cooldown increased to 3 minutes from 1 minute.
Techmarine
Techmarine mine cost increased to 65 energy from 50. Blessing of the Omnissiah recharge time increased to 150, from 50.
Predator
Predator Autocannon now has a 100% chance to generate cover when it hits the ground, up from 50%.
Eldar
Falcon and Fire Prism can now reverse. Webway gate psychic might cost increased to 125 from 90. Fixed an issue with the Fleet of Foot tool tip not saying that it causes a damage reduction. Eldritch storm crater now generates light cover.
Guardians
Shuriken Catapult damage decreased to 12, from 14. Warlock Leader cost increased to 65/15, from 50/15.
Howling Banshees
Banshee War Shout radius reduced to 8, from 15 and will no longer affect retreating units. Banshee charge speed bonus reduced to 2 meters/s from 3 meters/s Banshee Exarch leap damage reduced to 20 from 40. Knockdown from Banshee leap removed. Banshee Exarch gains knockdown on leap with Executioner upgrade. Executioner special attack no longer affects allies. Aspect of Banshee changed to provide Warshout and Exarch Executioner. Exarch upgrade changed to provide squad speed increase. Exarch upgrade cost increased to 85/15 from 50/15.
Rangers
Detection radius set to 30. Long Rifle damage increased to 180, from 160. Ranger cost decreased to 360/25.
Farseer
Farseer Armor of Asuryan requsition cost increased to 200 from 150. Farseer Rune Armor health regeneration reduced.
Seer Council
Seer council zeal cost reduced to 600. Seer council req cost reduced to 700. Seer Council Singing spear damage reduced to 80 from 100.
Warlock
Warlock providence now affects Ethereal Slash cooldown. Warlock energy drain on Merciless Witchblade reduced to 30 per hit, from 60. Warlock Witchblade of Kurnous cost increased to 125/30. Warlock Warp Throw power cost increased to 45. Warlock Warp Throw recharge time increased to 45 seconds.
Warp Spiders
Fixed an issue that caused Haywire Grenades to have a chance to miss their target. Warp Spider Deathspinner damage reduced to 21, from 25. Warp Spider Exarch damage reduced to 34, from 37. Warp spider Exarch damage modifier removed. Exarch upgrade cost increased to 85/15. Aspect of Warp Spider cost increased to 50/20. Jump cost increased to 30 energy.
Warp Spider Exarch
Warpspider Exarch Phase Shift duration reduced to 10 seconds. Warpspider Exarch Entangle duration reduced to 5 seconds. Warpspider Heavy Gauge Filament energy drain increased to 4.5 per second from 3.5. Spider’s Brood cost increased to 350 requisition, from 125. Jump cost increased to 30 energy. Group Teleport cooldown increased to 90 seconds.
D-Cannon
Singularity ability on D-cannon fixed to deal damage at correct time. D-cannon damage increased to 220 from 120, damage table changed.
Wraithlord
Wraithlord Shuriken Cannon damage reduced from 300 to 200. Wraithlord Brightlance damage reduced to 100, from 170. Wraithlord Brightlance upgrade requisition cost increased to 100, from 60. Power cost reduced to 40, from 60. Wraithlord Shuriken Cannon upgrade requisition cost increased to 100, from 40.
Fire Prism
Dispersed beam area reduced to 10 meters, Focused beam damage increased to 200, reload decreased to 7 seconds from 8 Fire Prism shot now generates light cover instead of heavy cover.
Avatar
Avatar cost increased to 1000/250, hp increased to 7000 from 6000, leveling curve on hp decreased to 10% per level from 15%, build time increased to 90 seconds.
Orks
Slugga Boyz
Slugga Nob cost increased to 75/25, from 50/25.
Mekboy
Mekboy Dakka Deffgun power cost increased to 30, from 20. Mekboy Dakka Deffgun damage reduced to 350, from 450. Damage tuned such that the Mekboy’s Deffgun does not ramp up as highly in damage at close range.
Banner Aura speed bonus reduced to .25, from .45 Banner Aura received damage modifier reduced to .94 from .91 Banner Aura received courage damage modifier reduced to .94 from .91 Banner Aura damage modifier reduced to 1.06 from 1.09 Supa Tuff Beam energy drain reduced to 3.5/sec from 7/sec. Electric Shock energy drain reduced to 4/sec from 5/sec.
Warboss
Warboss Kustom Shoota changed to light weapon knockback. Warboss Kustom Shoota knockback chance reduced to 10%. Warboss Huge Choppa special attack changed to affect only enemy troops. Warboss Boss Pole received courage damage modifier reduced to 0.5, from 0.25.
Stikkbommas
Stikkbomb damage reduced to 175, from 260. Fixed a bug that was causing Stikkbombs to do far less damage than intended. Stikkbomb explosions now generate light cover.
Stormboys
Stormboy Suicide attack now generates light cover. Stormboy Nob cost increased to 75/25, from 50/25.
Kommando Nob
Kommando Camo Armor requisition cost increased to 100. Kommando Kaboom recharge time increased to 20 seconds from 10. Kommando Extra Equipment energy bonus reduced to 75, from 235. Kommando Remote Detonation now generates light cover. Boomtime explosion now generates light cover.
Kommandos
Kommando ambush ability range reduced to 35 meters from 50 Kommando shoota range reduced to 25, from 29, damage increased to 30, from 25. Burna Bomb damage increased from 10 to 20, damage over time increased to 20 from 15. Kommando Nob Leader detection radius set to 30. Kommando Nob cost increased to 75/25, from 50/25.
Ork Waaagh shout ability
Waaagh shout speed bonus reduced to .07 from .1 Waaagh shout damage bonus reduced to 1.015 from 1.02. Waaagh shout received damage reduction decreased to 0.985, from 0.98. Waaagh shout received courage damage decreased to 0.996 from 0.985 Waaagh shout cooldown increased to 90 seconds from 60.
Wartrukk
Detection radius set to 30.
Looted Tank
Ork tank shot now has a 100% chance to generate cover, up from 50%. Ork tank Boomgun now always generates cover.
Tyranids
Fixed a bug where the death of synapse creatures hurt the Tyranids around them twice instead of once. Tyrannoformation tendrils now all generate light cover. Fixed an issue with all Warrior and Zoanthrope synapse auras not increasing in effect with level. Additionally, the bonuses gained from leveling will stack with other synapse creatures.
Hive Tyrant
Brood Nest biomass cost increased to 225 from 175. Hive Tyrant charge range increased from 10 to 15 meters, cooldown of charge decreased to 4 seconds from 6, speed increased to 4.5 from 4. Health increased by 200.
Spore Mines
Spore mine explosion radius reduced to 8, from 15.
Lictor
Detection radius set to 30. Flesh hook damage reduced to 180 from 230, can no longer target platforms. HP increased to 600 from 500. Damage decreased to 34, from 51.
Ravener
Ravener Devourer damage increased to 85 from 68, cooldown reduced to 1.4 from 1.8. Fleet of Claw removed from Ravener squad. Ravener Burrow now generates light cover.
Ravener Alpha
Ravener Toxic Miasma damage reduced to 15 per tick, from 20. Catalyst damage taken reduced to 50% over 10 seconds, damage multiplier increased to 2.25, from 2.
Warriors
Increased damage of warrior melee with adrenal glands to 60, from 42. Increased cost of warrior adrenal glands to 100/30, from 50/15.
Termagant
Termagant knockdown chance while under ranged synapse reduced to 25%, from 35%.
Zoanthrope
Zoanthrope reload reduced to 8 seconds, from 10.3 Fixed an issue with the Zoanthrope losing energy when leveling.
Carnifex
Increased cost of Venom Cannon to 100/30, from 30/10. Increased cost of Barbed Strangler to 100/30, from 30/10.
It's like they nerfed pretty much everything and by a huge margin. Prior to the patch I used to rape everyone with Eldar, now I'm getting my ass handed to me everywhere I go. GIVE ME MY BANSHEES BACK MOFOS!
On February 06 2009 21:39 rkarhu wrote: It's like they nerfed pretty much everything and by a huge margin. Prior to the patch I used to rape everyone with Eldar, now I'm getting my ass handed to me everywhere I go. GIVE ME MY BANSHEES BACK MOFOS!
Yeah I play Eldar too and I this change just forces a slightly different play style.
Rangers are MUCH cheaper and definitely viable. I can now move round the map with instant suppression. Also Falcon tanks are awesome; in the patch notes they didn't mention their cost has been reduced to 375/95. AND they can move backwards with micro. With all the heavy weapons going up in cost (remember Falcons come with a free Brightlance and Shuriken cannon) and reduced melee vs Vehicles; I'm going to be getting these beauties every game.
On February 06 2009 21:39 rkarhu wrote: It's like they nerfed pretty much everything and by a huge margin. Prior to the patch I used to rape everyone with Eldar, now I'm getting my ass handed to me everywhere I go. GIVE ME MY BANSHEES BACK MOFOS!
Hahahahahaha, this reminds me of "World of Roguecraft 1".
"omg before the patch I killed everyone with my NINJASKILLS but now I'm nerfed so I can't kill anyone."
Righ now I've lost a lot of interest in DoW2 They've made some awesome changes to the units (rewarding better players mostly) but what they did with resources is absolute horror. It doesn't affect 1v1 much but 3v3 has turned into vehicle spamfest. Today I've experienced 8 vehicles pounding on my main when I had: Farseer, Guardian Squad, Ranger Squad. Sux a lot.
I liked it when you went all happy when you could field 1 vehicle as it gave you nice advantage, right now with AV being nerfed and requisition overflow you're facing 3 new dreadnoughts before you're able to finish off the first one that showed up.
Edit: And in case of Apoth not healing his squads Relic said it's a bug they didn't notice while patching and it's gonna get fixed for 0-day.
Yeah I agree Manit0u this patch is almost a step backwards. Falcon grav tanks are now massively overpowered. I just played a game against a rank28 where I just rushed to grav tanks, using rangers to annoy him till I could get them out. Once I had 2 out it was game over... so stupid.
The new requsion points need over a minute to even give the same amount as the old ones, and after that they provide +13 bonus req rate, when your base provides 20 times as much, hardly something that would suddely make games one-sided. The big change regarding req is in 3v3 where they provide double the resources compared to before on top of the other change. 1v1 games aren't much different, you just get a bit more req to increase the game pace.
On February 06 2009 23:42 lololol wrote: The new requsion points need over a minute to even give the same amount as the old ones, and after that they provide +13 bonus req rate, when your base provides 20 times as much, hardly something that would suddely make games one-sided. The big change regarding req is in 3v3 where they provide double the resources compared to before on top of the other change. 1v1 games aren't much different, you just get a bit more req to increase the game pace.
It's 1min 27 seconds to reach +35 req gain. It's not really visible in 1v1 but it has HUGE impact on 3v3. Not just because of requisition overflow, I can live with that, the problem is that requisition affects EVERYTHING.
Some examples: a) with a shitton of req you can now spam generators all over the map = you get a lot of the most valuable resource that has the biggest impact on the game b) you don't have to trade wargear/tech for units c) ultimate units that usually cost a lot of req (and often zeal) are not expensive any more
You're missing that they doubled the income in 3v3 on top of that, the other change has a small effect both in 1v1 or 3v3. The huge change is that before they gave 50% to each player(+11 from +22), now it's 100% of +10 -> +35 for every player, which is more than the old amount after 19 seconds and goes to more than triple the old ratio after 75 seconds. Practically the team gets 3 times as much as a player in 1v1 would, compared to 50% more pre-patch.
Yea, it feels like the changes they made were too extreme. I mean I'm not sure how overpowered Wraithlords for example were prior to the patch, but look at what they did to them! Shuriken cannon damage was cut from 300 to 200 and the cost went up from 40 to 100. And it's the same with brightlance, almost worse (tho they lowered the power cost). Makes me wonder how much REAL testing they did or did they just think that "Look, these guys are too powerful at the moment so we'll need to nerf them. How does a 90 % reduction in damage and 70 % increase in cost sound? At least they wont be overpowered anymore."
Wraithlords were very OP. There was almost never any reason to make anything else. While the eldar t3 god of war is very strong, there was no reason to risk losing points by spending money on tech that could have been spent on a few wraithlords. Banshees were complete bullshit as well.
That being said I have not played the new patch enough to tell if they overnurfed them. They probably did.
On February 07 2009 18:13 rkarhu wrote: Yea, it feels like the changes they made were too extreme. I mean I'm not sure how overpowered Wraithlords for example were prior to the patch, but look at what they did to them! Shuriken cannon damage was cut from 300 to 200 and the cost went up from 40 to 100. And it's the same with brightlance, almost worse (tho they lowered the power cost). Makes me wonder how much REAL testing they did or did they just think that "Look, these guys are too powerful at the moment so we'll need to nerf them. How does a 90 % reduction in damage and 70 % increase in cost sound? At least they wont be overpowered anymore."
That's what they seemed to be doing in every DoW1 patch - constantly shift imbalance from one race to another, over nerfing and overbuffing stuff. O_o
They've done this in CoH, as well. They basically do not test the game for bugs or obvious imbalances at all or they hired a bunch of monkies to do it for them. Huge balance changes, random new bugs introduced(it looks like someone changes/deletes a few random things in the game files for fun every single patch) and lots of things left unfixed and imbalanced. Seriously, how could they not notice that grenades and stikk bombs weren't dealing the intended damage, all it takes is to throw a grenade once and it's damn obvious plasma nades deal a ton more(while they should be similar), now with the new patch the apothecary doesn't heal infantry(again you just need to use it once to see that and they were doing internal testing for at least a week on that patch). What kind of retarded internal testing misses such things is beyond me. In soulstorm(the third expansion to DoW) there are still bugs that were introduced in the first expansion and even after the year late "hotfix" and patches, there are still hundreds of bugs left, so how can't the developers fix them, even considering the community supplies them with the full buglist and it takes a day(without any internal tools from the devs) to make a full bugfix mod. Not to mention that SoB and Necrons are still clearly the worst races, but imbalances aren't unexpected, when you see how pathetic their design is... DoW has 15 armor types, and every weapon has a unique percent damage value for every single armor type and the damage values are 54.6865% damage to one type, 53.9434% to another, i.e. random numbers and similar to about half the armor types. It's pretty obvious to anyone with at least a bit of knowledge about game design that such clusterfuck is completely unnecessary and undesirable. The game actually needs no more than 6 armor types and damage numbers that make sense, instead of what a random number generator generated for them. Also, I don't know how, but they managed to make the pathing in DoW2 even worse than in DoW, it's pathetic especially for walkers and on top of that sometimes they do not attack at all and in my last game a killacan of mine was pounding on a platform doing no damage at all, after 4-5 "hits" I tried moving it and ordering it to attack again, but it still did absolutely no damage and I had to retreat it. I'm currently securely deleting the beta files.
On February 07 2009 20:00 lololol wrote: They've done this in CoH, as well. They basically do not test the game for bugs or obvious imbalances at all or they hired a bunch of monkies to do it for them. Huge balance changes, random new bugs introduced(it looks like someone changes/deletes a few random things in the game files for fun every single patch) and lots of things left unfixed and imbalanced. Seriously, how could they not notice that grenades and stikk bombs weren't dealing the intended damage, all it takes is to throw a grenade once and it's damn obvious plasma nades deal a ton more(while they should be similar), now with the new patch the apothecary doesn't heal infantry(again you just need to use it once to see that and they were doing internal testing for at least a week on that patch). What kind of retarded internal testing misses such things is beyond me. In soulstorm(the third expansion to DoW) there are still bugs that were introduced in the first expansion and even after the year late "hotfix" and patches, there are still hundreds of bugs left, so how can't the developers fix them, even considering the community supplies them with the full buglist and it takes a day(without any internal tools from the devs) to make a full bugfix mod. Not to mention that SoB and Necrons are still clearly the worst races, but imbalances aren't unexpected, when you see how pathetic their design is... DoW has 15 armor types, and every weapon has a unique percent damage value for every single armor type and the damage values are 54.6865% damage to one type, 53.9434% to another, i.e. random numbers and similar to about half the armor types. It's pretty obvious to anyone with at least a bit of knowledge about game design that such clusterfuck is completely unnecessary and undesirable. The game actually needs no more than 6 armor types and damage numbers that make sense, instead of what a random number generator generated for them. Also, I don't know how, but they managed to make the pathing in DoW2 even worse than in DoW, it's pathetic especially for walkers and on top of that sometimes they do not attack at all and in my last game a killacan of mine was pounding on a platform doing no damage at all, after 4-5 "hits" I tried moving it and ordering it to attack again, but it still did absolutely no damage and I had to retreat it. I'm currently securely deleting the beta files.
I agree with you all the way. I'm sad to see that Relic hasn't learned much from their mistakes, because the game has immense potential. Maybe not in competitive scene, but in the casual sense the game has already been so much fun.
I haven't played the game since my pc would barely run it, but as an RTS fan, I've been checking out some VODs and commentaries on youtube. Check out youtube channel VaulSC if you're interested. Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it because from watching his videos, he seems to think the patch is a good thing because requisition is more important and tier 3 is relevant. Again, I haven't played the game, but I thought I'd throw this out there since several here seem to think the patch was an overall step backwards. VaulSC's two most recent videos are post-patch, and he gets some tier 3 out and caps some requisition. He comments that pre-patch, he wouldn't even need to cap any req to win, and games would never get to tier 3.
I have heard him say in previous videos though that overall this game may become repetitive over time and is not as deep as SC. Hopefully it's at least fun enough to be worth buying and playing for a while though.
On February 09 2009 02:29 numberThirtyOne wrote: I haven't played the game since my pc would barely run it, but as an RTS fan, I've been checking out some VODs and commentaries on youtube. Check out youtube channel VaulSC if you're interested. Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it because from watching his videos, he seems to think the patch is a good thing because requisition is more important and tier 3 is relevant. Again, I haven't played the game, but I thought I'd throw this out there since several here seem to think the patch was an overall step backwards. VaulSC's two most recent videos are post-patch, and he gets some tier 3 out and caps some requisition. He comments that pre-patch, he wouldn't even need to cap any req to win, and games would never get to tier 3.
I have heard him say in previous videos though that overall this game may become repetitive over time and is not as deep as SC. Hopefully it's at least fun enough to be worth buying and playing for a while though.
If you read the latest post by Vaul in his thread over at Relicnews he stated he won't be playing the game anymore until they patch the ridiculous bugs that cropped up with the latest patch.
VaulSC wrote: Quick update:
This game is currently un-playable due to bugs and balance issues. With so little time left in the beta this is very dissapointing. With less people wanting to play it competitively there is not going to be a lot of quality testing done! Obviously Relic will be fixing the main things in time for release, but what else will be wrong when it does come out?
1. The Apothecary cannot heal units other than himself his troops; he can only heal himself and other commanders. Rationale for game-breaking status: A healing hero that's unable to heal is simply a useless hero, so picking the Apothecary now automatically puts a player at a massive disadvantage.
2. The Hive Tyrant and Carnifex (and perhaps Warrior, haven't tested) Venom Cannons are hideously overpowering. This is possibly resultant of the fact that they are apparently classified as plasma weapons in the code, meaning they would have inadvertently received the massive buff that real plasma weapons received. Whatever is causing it, it's definitely not intentional. Rationale for game-breaking status: Honestly, just try the thing. It used to be really good, but now it annihilates entire squads of infantry in seconds and melts any vehicle attempting to oppose its God-like powers in a similar time frame. Nothing can even come close; it's all obliterated in mere moments. This utterly ruins all Tyranid match-ups, even mirrors.
3. The Kommando Booby Trap does 5500 damage to buildings. This has to be a bug, because it's totally inconsistent with the damage values associated with other target types. Rationale for game-breaking status: An HQ has 10,000 HP now. All it takes is two of these to end a game instantly.
Relic has stated that Apothecary bug was unintended upon patching and they've fixed it for the retail. I do believe that they're gonna fix HT/Fex VC and Kommando too.
The biggest issues for me right now are:
(3v3 is greatly affected by that, 1v1 to a much lesser extent)
Match-making is still worthless (especially not counting some games, it's rather disappointing if you play 4 games, 2 wins as champion, 2 loses and when you check the rankings it shows up as 0 wins and 3 loses)
Requisition no longer being shared in 3v3 has completely ruined it.
1. I have very long search times (5 min?) 2. Game has crashed every ingame at some point (though works fine in replays)
Despite not being that into DoW, I was excited to have something new to play (DoW2). But you really get a feel for the lack of "polish" that the game has, and it's damn annoying.
You can hop on SC or WC right now and have a game faster and of probably equal fun quality. It's almost like Relic intentionally leaves all these glaring flaws in the game (multiplayer engine sucks) that just makes you not want to buy it.
On February 09 2009 02:29 numberThirtyOne wrote: I haven't played the game since my pc would barely run it, but as an RTS fan, I've been checking out some VODs and commentaries on youtube. Check out youtube channel VaulSC if you're interested. Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it because from watching his videos, he seems to think the patch is a good thing because requisition is more important and tier 3 is relevant. Again, I haven't played the game, but I thought I'd throw this out there since several here seem to think the patch was an overall step backwards. VaulSC's two most recent videos are post-patch, and he gets some tier 3 out and caps some requisition. He comments that pre-patch, he wouldn't even need to cap any req to win, and games would never get to tier 3.
I have heard him say in previous videos though that overall this game may become repetitive over time and is not as deep as SC. Hopefully it's at least fun enough to be worth buying and playing for a while though.
If you read the latest post by Vaul in his thread over at Relicnews he stated he won't be playing the game anymore until they patch the ridiculous bugs that cropped up with the latest patch.
This game is currently un-playable due to bugs and balance issues. With so little time left in the beta this is very dissapointing. With less people wanting to play it competitively there is not going to be a lot of quality testing done! Obviously Relic will be fixing the main things in time for release, but what else will be wrong when it does come out?
1. The Apothecary cannot heal units other than himself his troops; he can only heal himself and other commanders. Rationale for game-breaking status: A healing hero that's unable to heal is simply a useless hero, so picking the Apothecary now automatically puts a player at a massive disadvantage.
2. The Hive Tyrant and Carnifex (and perhaps Warrior, haven't tested) Venom Cannons are hideously overpowering. This is possibly resultant of the fact that they are apparently classified as plasma weapons in the code, meaning they would have inadvertently received the massive buff that real plasma weapons received. Whatever is causing it, it's definitely not intentional. Rationale for game-breaking status: Honestly, just try the thing. It used to be really good, but now it annihilates entire squads of infantry in seconds and melts any vehicle attempting to oppose its God-like powers in a similar time frame. Nothing can even come close; it's all obliterated in mere moments. This utterly ruins all Tyranid match-ups, even mirrors.
3. The Kommando Booby Trap does 5500 damage to buildings. This has to be a bug, because it's totally inconsistent with the damage values associated with other target types. Rationale for game-breaking status: An HQ has 10,000 HP now. All it takes is two of these to end a game instantly.
Interesting. None of the videos I've watched from him or anyone else have mentioned problems with the patch, but of course I'd believe anything given Relic's track record.
To be fair, this is a beta, so I am guessing they rushed the patch out the door. Hard to hold the balance bug side effects against them for something no one has paid for yet? At least, it seems like something they will easily have fixed with a day 0 retail patch.
On my end though, unless the game has LAN tournament support, I won't be buying it. I volunteered to forfeit an online tournament game when my opponent / myself were unable to connect to each other due to NAT issues this weekend. We were both able to connect to previous games and to other competitors - just not to each other. This happened for others in that tournament as well.....
The inability for certain people to connect might not hinder automatch that much. But it makes the game unplayable in fun online tournaments (yes, even those without prizes) - one of the things I tend to buy a game for. Despite the limited depth of gameplay, I still like to have some challenge in my games, and automatch alone just doesn't provide that.
I understand it's a beta but I think it's going to leave a poor image of Relic's patch/balancing quality in people's minds. Relic isn't really known for great patch support, they tend to take a very long time and break as much as they fix. I was hoping that this would change with DoW2 and it may very well still happen come retail. However, this beta patch doesn't do much to make me believe DoW2 will be any different from previous Relic games.
I'll still probably buy it at some point because it's a beautiful game and I'm a sucker for the W40k universe, but when I buy it (if ever) will largely be determined by what I see in terms of patch support in the first few months of release.
Big kudos to Relic's art/sound guys though, it really does look and sound awesome and visceral.
We are certainly aware of your feedback and aren't ignoring it. You need to understand that releasing statements about every temporary in-balance or bug is not a sustainable practice for us.
We've worked really hard to do a balance update while the Beta was ongoing, and yes, we made a few mistakes that we will rectify in our first patch as quickly as we can. This code & data patch will fix a lot of known code bugs, exploits and fix some of the balance issues introduced during the last update (Apoth, Kommando, 3v3 req, etc.).
MP balance is always a work in progress, especially at this stage. We are always actively working to make it better. Consistent, intelligent and informed feedback is always appreciated!
Thanks for participating here on this forum; we know you wouldn't comment and share your thoughts if you didn't care!
Cheers, Noseworm
Thought I'll post it here if some people still follow the news.
The official statement from Relic as to the changes in retail:
New Content
* • Two new Multiplayer maps are being added - one 1v1 and one 3v3
Multiplayer Gameplay
* • Fixed a bug where ability effects were permanent on burrowed units. * • Fixed several population capacity bugs. * • Fixed problem with retreating to allied HQ when player’s HQ is destroyed. * • Fixed attack ground to allow firing into the Fog of War. * • Prevented Waaagh/Zeal/Biomass/Psychic might “double dipping” when own units are killed by friendly fire, and remove reward for allied friendly fire. * • Prevented non-attacking commanders from getting a share of XP for incomplete construction. * • Added cool down timers to construction abilities. * • Prevented anti-suppression from being modified into the positive. * • Prevented area of effect suppression originating from target entities inside of buildings from spreading to units outside a building. * • Increased the suppression and damage on suppression weapons at distant range. * • Fixed a bug where units that had been completely replaced via reinforcement would lose their control groups. * • Removed Ravener tunnel impass to prevent several blocking exploits. * • Requisition resource rates are now reduced depending on game size. * • Requisition points now increase by +5 requisition every 20 seconds (up from 15), up to a maximum of +30 (down from 35). * • Fixed an issue with grenades not harming the squad that throws them. * • Fixed an issue with the Apothecary’s Heal ability that prevented it from properly healing infantry. * • Reduced damage of Kommando hero’s Remote Bomb against HQ’s. * • Kommando hero’s Kaboom! now properly deals 500 damage to the Kommando, but does not kill him. * • Tyranid Warrior Adrenal Gland melee damage reduced to 52, from 60. * • Reduced firing rate of Hive Tyrant Venom Cannon to match the other versions. Damage reduced to 60, from 85. Area of effect damage modifier reduced at outermost radius to 0.3, from 0.4. * • Spore Mine blast radius increased to 10, from 8. * • Increased accuracy of small arms against Ripper Swarm to 0.3, from 0.2. * • Ripper Swarm cost increased to 240, from 200.
On February 16 2009 05:50 Mora wrote: how many of you are still playing the beta?
thoughts/comments after spending some more time on it?
I am still playing it (although had a break due to exam session at univ). It keeps getting better and better although it's hard to play at times (bug abusers in beta, many of them), by checking the latest patchnotes etc. I'm full of hope for this game, it's really simple to get a grasp on but playing with decent oponnent can be really demanding, especialy in tactics/multitasking parts. Pre-ordered.
Also pre-ordered it, with my left over chinese new year monies ;D
Really liked it before the patch, but its like kinda broken atm >_> still playable if you dont get abusers. Anyways hopefully relic gets it together for the release, however theres like 7 maps with the release which is like wtffff......more maps come out every year for starcraft in the proleague, how they only made 7 maps for the release of their game is beyond me, unless they plan to charge for DLC/include more maps in future DLC or something really retarded like that.
So in the beta thus far we have 5 playable maps, so unless its 7 maps not including the ones alrdy playable, thats not a lot of variety atm lol. Hopefully this changes in the future, because the previous games had a lot more than 7 maps.
On February 16 2009 14:18 ToyotaDemon wrote: Also pre-ordered it, with my left over chinese new year monies ;D
Really liked it before the patch, but its like kinda broken atm >_> still playable if you dont get abusers. Anyways hopefully relic gets it together for the release, however theres like 7 maps with the release which is like wtffff......more maps come out every year for starcraft in the proleague, how they only made 7 maps for the release of their game is beyond me, unless they plan to charge for DLC/include more maps in future DLC or something really retarded like that.
So in the beta thus far we have 5 playable maps, so unless its 7 maps not including the ones alrdy playable, thats not a lot of variety atm lol. Hopefully this changes in the future, because the previous games had a lot more than 7 maps.
I guess there's only 7 maps for ranked games and some more if you want to play custom games. Will have to wait and see (3 days left).
Mora - can you comment on if they plan to fix the NAT negotiation code? Or is that something Windows LIVE controls? I have seen zero information about it in any patch list?
Also - bump. Game is worth a purchase if one wants a casual RTS - and it will likely be the only thing offered before SC2 - so keeping the hype up.
On February 17 2009 09:55 [-Bluewolf-] wrote: Mora - can you comment on if they plan to fix the NAT negotiation code? Or is that something Windows LIVE controls? I have seen zero information about it in any patch list?
Also - bump. Game is worth a purchase if one wants a casual RTS - and it will likely be the only thing offered before SC2 - so keeping the hype up.
I disagree; it's a very one-dimensional and boring game. With such a low number of maps and little scope for skillful play it get's boring VERY fast.
It's a lot of fun for the first couple of weeks, but pretty soon you'll realise you just wasted your money.
On February 17 2009 09:55 [-Bluewolf-] wrote: Mora - can you comment on if they plan to fix the NAT negotiation code? Or is that something Windows LIVE controls? I have seen zero information about it in any patch list?
Also - bump. Game is worth a purchase if one wants a casual RTS - and it will likely be the only thing offered before SC2 - so keeping the hype up.
I disagree; it's a very one-dimensional and boring game. With such a low number of maps and little scope for skillful play it get's boring VERY fast.
It's a lot of fun for the first couple of weeks, but pretty soon you'll realise you just wasted your money.
Flamebait
Nobody cares what you think. If you did not like the beta, why would you bother come in this thread and pull out of your ass a post like this.
Maybe you're jealous because you cant afford to pay for the game.
For everyone else, I look forward to play some great games with you all on the new maps this week end. omg, just cant wait !
On February 17 2009 09:55 [-Bluewolf-] wrote: Mora - can you comment on if they plan to fix the NAT negotiation code? Or is that something Windows LIVE controls? I have seen zero information about it in any patch list?
Also - bump. Game is worth a purchase if one wants a casual RTS - and it will likely be the only thing offered before SC2 - so keeping the hype up.
I disagree; it's a very one-dimensional and boring game. With such a low number of maps and little scope for skillful play it get's boring VERY fast.
It's a lot of fun for the first couple of weeks, but pretty soon you'll realise you just wasted your money.
Flamebait
Nobody cares what you think. If you did not like the beta, why would you bother come in this thread and pull out of your ass a post like this.
Maybe you're jealous because you cant afford to pay for the game.
For everyone else, I look forward to play some great games with you all on the new maps this week end. omg, just cant wait !
Or maybe he played the game, realized it was one dimensional, and wants to dissuade people from buying a horrible half RTS game with shitty mechanics and possibly less skill ceiling than the original DoW.
Actually theres 3 1v1 maps but yeah still pretty shitty lol. Anyways about the game itself the mechanics needed are not that demanding, the game isnt totally one dimensional. It does focus ENTIRELY on battles, thats its main selling point and at the same time the turn off for some players. In the end its friggin W40K, need I say more?
I'll say this though, theres not too much room for creativity and generally it doesnt reward those trying what we would call "being cute". I know this is a starcraft site and I still regard sc as being the #1 rts ever atm, but if game developers did not try new things like relic did with DoW2 we would just be getting games which are like carbon copies of starcraft except just with different models and units. I think DoW2 is a strong product but DEFINATELY needs some more content in it asap or players will absolutely get bored to death with the 7 available maps atm.
Single player atm is decent, though ive only played it for 2 hours (yes im playing single player because I wanted to play with what relic supposedly spent most of their development time on). Single player is very different to multiplayer, you completely customize your squads, its pretty much like "TimeShift" but a whole lot more better and not completely stupidly difficult. Imagine Diablo 2 in space and as an rts sort of thing.
DoW2 is a strong product that will keep people amused until starcraft 2 comes out, even the people over at the official DoW2 forums acknowledge that starcraft 2 > DoW2 even before its been released. But hey having something to play around with until sc2 isnt that bad ;D better than nothing. Strong product that NEEDS DLC and maybe some different approaches to its development might of made it a much stronger contender to sc2, mainly suffers from lack of depth and variety, i mean i CANT scout, i CANT really rush, but having said that it is still worth a play if you havnt played it yet though that would be hard now since the beta is closed.
I just don't get what their thinking behind this kind of release is other than we could really use the money let's release this half-finished game and then as a selling point say they will add free down loadable content as the game progresses, when really it's things that should have been there at release. No 2v2, 7 total maps (3 1v1, 4 3v3), and their attempt at patching during the beta just made things worse.
On February 19 2009 10:51 mrgerry wrote: I just don't get what their thinking behind this kind of release is other than we could really use the money let's release this half-finished game and then as a selling point say they will add free down loadable content as the game progresses, when really it's things that should have been there at release. No 2v2, 7 total maps (3 1v1, 4 3v3), and their attempt at patching during the beta just made things worse.
I liked 99% of the changes done in the patches during beta. And I like this game a lot and can't wait to see how the retail looks/works (just waiting for the post to deliver my copy). Really small amount of maps can be a problem, although I'm used to WC3 where you have 13 maps for 1v1, 6 of them are horrible and you can only de-select 5, the horrible maps make you want to cut your wrists if you play on them. This leaves you with 8 maps and being paired only with people who haven't got them de-selected gets you playing only 2-3 maps all around most of the time.
The biggest issue for me is lack of 2v2, although I think Relic stated that they're working on it.
I disagree with people saying this game is crap and not worth the money. It's definitely worth giving it a shot and checking out later how it's gonna develop.
Wow, I'm just experiencing the worst possible game distribution in the history. I have a nice shiny metal case for my DVD, a campaign walkthrough with pictures and shit and everything I need to get me started. The problem is that I can't even install the game... Seriously, I have absolutely no idea why Relic decided to go with Steam and GFWL but it's causing some major pain. Just browsing through DoW2 tech support forums reveals this:
- can't install the game in Europe for at least 2 more hours (and people outside Europe are happily playing the game right now) - although I have the DVD I'll most likely have to download it from Steam - redeem keys for bonus pre-order content aren't working - I won't be able to even play SP campaign without logging on into Steam and GFWL
Oh man I can't wait to start playing the campaign IM SUCH A WH40K DORK, the multiplayer was really boring to me but the single player is enough for me to buy it.
I wonder why they chose to have such a small amount of different units by the way while having no base building capacities, now everyone is gonna get bored with the game in a matter of months. I really liked the first game soooooo much better than this one online.
EPT![[image loading]](http://ve3dmedia.ign.com/images/03/22/32213_DawnofWar2-08_normal.jpg)
):
, focus on micro, tactical battles, lots of terrain modifiers, and of course the WH40k races are cooler than the Starcraft copies. Plus, I'm not too happy with some of the new units in SC2, and I still don't like all graphics (although they have improved, some things still look like toys), while DOW2 looks absolutely amazing.
![[image loading]](http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/3701/marinesih2.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://dowcodex.com/stuff/public/sturm/GTFO.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://dowcodex.com/stuff/public/sturm/notyourfault.jpg)
