Dawn of War Codex

Actually, I've been enjoying the 2v2-tournament(s) a hell of a lot. Also, bigger prices are divided here and it allows more people to join, while not going endlessly.
I see an solution in this case, and I want to emphasize, that there is a lot more tension in teamgames where people are supporting each other, while also two well-trained higher-level players can surely make our top-level- candidates sweat.
Add some exciting rules or so, and we are in business.

I agree with Crazyman disagree completely with Raffa's pessimism. The modern DOW player is absolutely garbage. Toil, Riku and Pega's micro is not that impressive when you look at the game from the wider RTS perspective. They're only the best atm because the playerbase sucks. Suffice to say, Toil is no Mvp.

With more money involved there's a greater incentive to be better. People would try harder, take 1v1 seriously and do different builds. Man, I just don't have the people to play with in 1v1. There's like 10 people maximum who have a serious chance of winning against me in the entire world. THAT IS ABSURD given that my micro is pretty downright poor. Money makes the world go round and it would certainly spruce up the DOW meta I assure you.

Team games are horrible in this game because they require even less micro in a game that's already very non-micro-intensive AND with more players randomness only increases in it's possibility, not to mention team games exacerbate bad MUs due to the linear nature of the maps and the way the maps/eco restrict the viability of non-conventional builds.

I agree with Torpid.

Tbh the only game that requires a good amount of micro is SC2, but that's because it's built to be an APM simulator, with little no none strategy involved aside from learning the standard builds.

If you want a game that instead largely focuses on Macro, strategy and to a lesser but still important extent micro play Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.

DoW2 is more about having a good general strategy, the ability to deal with improvised situations (in other words specials, lack of them, general Bugs,pathing) and then the micro required is tied to the build you are doing and the hero you choose, which is a pretty good considering everything, you can decide to play a small but elite army (and no im not referring to SM vs IG, but to choosing between heavily upgrading or spam units), it's all up to you and how you want to play, both works but ofc you need to keep up and be able to micro what you do and time yourself well, also in this game, more so than the 2 I nominated positioning is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, and it's not just about cover, like I was explaining to chaos libby how to beat an immortal wb with storms which requires a triangle formation between CSMs and the havok(s).

That Torpid Gamer wrote:The modern DOW player is absolutely garbage. Toil, Riku and Pega's micro is not that impressive when you look at the game from the wider RTS perspective. They're only the best atm because the playerbase sucks.

This.

I've been saying it since since over 2 years ago.

Eh, I disagree. Dawn of War is a thing of it's own kind of RTS. Can't exactly shift from SC to DoW2 and be pro at it, or the other way around. I'm not one to let my own nostalgia cloud my judgements on the progress on how people have adapted to the game as well.

Seriously, looking back at older games, there's a severe improvement from alot of people, and mindboggling decision making that aren't as common as they are now. There's way more flexibility, and overall smarter decision making. And in-part of that is due to general cunning people are more open-minded with strategies and explain things to the common playerbase, and that passes on like the flu.

yea i'm kinda with caeltos / ace (at least it seems they're taking this view) in that the players aren't garbage, it's just not as micro intensive of a game as a whole compared to a Starcraft or a Supreme Commander when individual units are concerned compared to dawn of war 2's squad based system. Only so much micro that can be worked with in a game where 5 units work as 1 in most cases. Anyway that's fairly off topic but feel it was something to be said, excited for these tournaments regardless.

I said it before that the vets back in the day were bad. In hindsight I agree and disagree with that statement. It only makes sense when we look at their gameplay outside of the meta. I feel that many players in the past had better micro than those of today, however, I also feel (and this was the inspiration for my comment about vets being bad at DOW) that their macro, i.e. their decisions and map prioritisation and control of bleed etc, was just terrible compared to the better players of today.

Honestly I think old DOW players were really bad. I think modern DOW players are bad. I think this comes from the simple fact that DOW isn't a popular game so when we look at "skill" from an outer perspective our DOW players seem rubbish, but that's only because there's no pro-DOWers and in general our population size is far lower than that of starcraft.

The imbalance of DOW is also quite tremendous and I don't think that helps player skill much either. I often play on retail these days as I enjoy the challenge of playing on arbitrary maps against arbitrary players who I don't know. Many times I have been defeated by orks or chaos players who have 400-800hours played, compared to my own 3200hours and they had terrible micro. Put frankly it's very easy to play orks or chaos in retail and although the overall skill cap may not be as high as what can be done with say the farseer or the techmarine, if I make one small mistake I end up losing whereas they are allowed to make multiple without losing. Ultimately however if we both make no mistakes I win as the TM or the FS because those heroes are just superior in versatility and so if I have an already well established micro level, I win because certain heroes are macro-favoured whereas as others are micro-favoured. That's the difference between a CL and a CS. The CL is by far the worse hero against an opponent with perfect micro. He's predictable and compositionally not too versatile. He will be punished for that, much more so than the CS. However the CS, to be used optimally requires far more micro on your behalf and pressures the opponent's micro much less and so is not as useful against an opponent with poor micro. I think having these micro-pressuring and micro-intensive heroes has negatively affected the micro ability of DOW players in general in the long run. CL IZ 2 EZ.

I think the popularity of offensive tanky melee heroes and the apparent consensus that they are the best 1v1 heroes is a testament to the lack of micro-ability in the current playerbase, although I think the macro understanding of the current playerbase is rather good, at least retrospectively it seems to be, although I still see much room for improvement - melee based builds are underused, the librarian is underused, fighting T3s with T2s is feared too much and snipers/turrets are underused in 1v1.

Raffa wrote:I've pretty much accepted my 1v1 is never gonna be as good as Toil's, Noisy's or whoever's because they have that many thousands more hours a d are better players.

You idiot.

When you first started playing 1s with me you were quite bad but you were improving reeaally fast, then you got all arrogant constantly calling yourself one of the top players and insulting other players on regular basis. That's where your growth stopped dead in it's tracks, such a waste.

I don't think it's very fair to simply compare Dawn of War to X RTS game. They're all different in their own regard. Different game mechanics, characteristics, control options, etc. They, for the most part, stand out against one another. Sure there can be rip offs and carbon copies, but with the two games in question as well as the third one that Crazyman pointed out being supreme commander there are DRASTIC differences between all of them.

I will agree however that the player base has very little incentive to get better. This doesn't mean that they aren't getting better it simply means they rate of improvement is quite slow. Unless you're a real die hard fan of this game I would be very surprised to see someone grinding out 8 hours a day (in either game mode Retail/Elite). The Koreans in StarCraft aren't just naturally talented by any means they simply go by the rule practise practise practise. But don't take that as I don't believe in natural talent, I do, it's just I don't think 100,000+ Koreans (or whatever the amount of players are) are all naturally talented.

With some decent cash going into it I feel that more people (including myself) won't just play 1-2 hours a day if I'm lucky. They'll actually want to practise, find practise partners, take on challenges like playing players they never thought they could beat.

I have actually be watching some 1v1 plays and its all starting to seem extremely straight forward. And seeing the same build over and over I am starting to realize, which has already been mentioned, you dont need to have excellent micro to be a very good player imo. You just need to know whats good vs what and then include everything Ace said. Watching replays helps alot with this. And it can also help figure out way out of a situation if you got this build and your opponent goes this type of build to counter it.

For example. I was watching a game with RIku. He went, Apotho,2 tacs (one with flamer) into some devs (scouts obviously too). The IG player was going to go Heavy weapons team as his 1.5 purchase. And then he changed it to catachans. Then I proceded to yell at my laptop. I think getting catachans was a mistake vs what Riku had.

So I am a noob at 1v1 in my own respect but watching this replays are really making me give alot of confidance. So I might start soon. But any way, any one reading this, I encourage you to go to the Replays topic. And download so replays. They will help in one way or 10 others .

Black Relic wrote:I have actually be watching some 1v1 plays and its all starting to seem extremely straight forward. And seeing the same build over and over I am starting to realize, which has already been mentioned, you dont need to have excellent micro to be a very good player imo. You just need to know whats good vs what and then include everything Ace said. Watching replays helps alot with this. And it can also help figure out way out of a situation if you got this build and your opponent goes this type of build to counter it.

For example. I was watching a game with RIku. He went, Apotho,2 tacs (one with flamer) into some devs (scouts obviously too). The IG player was going to go Heavy weapons team as his 1.5 purchase. And then he changed it to catachans. Then I proceded to yell at my laptop. I think getting catachans was a mistake vs what Riku had.

So I am a noob at 1v1 in my own respect but watching this replays are really making me give alot of confidance. So I might start soon. But any way, any one reading this, I encourage you to go to the Replays topic. And download so replays. They will help in one way or 10 others .

lol sure you are

PS . A mówiłeś Erie że chętnych nie będzie ...

EDIT: ah and yeah i support ( my idea ) with one big tourney which also i can donate with 30-50 euro only if Riku not gonna win

Rataxas wrote:

Black Relic wrote:I have actually be watching some 1v1 plays and its all starting to seem extremely straight forward. And seeing the same build over and over I am starting to realize, which has already been mentioned, you dont need to have excellent micro to be a very good player imo. You just need to know whats good vs what and then include everything Ace said. Watching replays helps alot with this. And it can also help figure out way out of a situation if you got this build and your opponent goes this type of build to counter it.

For example. I was watching a game with RIku. He went, Apotho,2 tacs (one with flamer) into some devs (scouts obviously too). The IG player was going to go Heavy weapons team as his 1.5 purchase. And then he changed it to catachans. Then I proceded to yell at my laptop. I think getting catachans was a mistake vs what Riku had.

So I am a noob at 1v1 in my own respect but watching this replays are really making me give alot of confidance. So I might start soon. But any way, any one reading this, I encourage you to go to the Replays topic. And download so replays. They will help in one way or 10 others .

lol sure you are

PS . A mówiłeś Erie że chętnych nie będzie ...

EDIT: ah and yeah i support ( my idea ) with one big tourney which also i can donate with 30-50 euro only if Riku not gonna win

Mówiłem, że może być ich mało, a nie, że w ogóle nie będzie ...

In any case, seems that enough people like the idea, so it's settled - the tournament will be organized, rules and more info will be announced soon-ish. But please continue the discussion here. Most of all, it would be really helpful to know if there's a certain way You'd like the MRT's or qualifying tournaments to work.

I am working with Eerie on the subject and i'll throw some ideas here to be discussed:

Since the Grand tournament (GT) (name subject to change) gathers his participants mainly from the preceding MRTs there is a need of some rules on how to qualify.

Monthly Rumble Tournaments as Qualifiers
There are points (QP) to be gathered in each MRT (probably fixed amount for the round you get into + something ingame related) and a QP-table will be openly accessable for anyone at anytime to see how well you are positioned there. Getting high on that list will ensure you a spot in the GT.
Naturally you can gain more points by participating in more MRTs. Expect a strong rivalry regarding those (?) 16 spots per MRT as well, once it is established a lil better.
The ideas are: The winner of any MRT will directly qualify to the knockout phase of the GT and does not need to take part in any other MRT if he so wishes. If the same guy wins a MRT more than one time he will not block others from taking these reserved spots. The QP-table leaders (8 total including winners) will also directly qualify to the knockout phase of the GT. Additionally the next 8 players on that QP-table will directly qualify to the group phase of the GT.
So landing inside the top 16 of that table should be a goal for everyone.

other Qualifications
There is an additional way as the last chance to qualify for the GT for those who had bad luck at the MRTs or didn't have the time to participate (more than once): Qualifications (QG).
There will be a seperate registration for this event coming up after the 3rd MRT in a cycle to decide who will take the last 8 spots of the GT. These QGs can be played over the course of 1-2 weeks and the playing times are up to the respective players. There must be a referee there however.
Depending on demand and time these matches can be Bo3 or Bo1.
The format of these QGs is not decided yet and open for suggestions.

Grand Tournament - general information
The GT of each cycle (4 months) will have 24 spots to be taken and will have 2 phases - one for each day: A group phase and a knockout phase. Once it is all set into stone, we can announce a date to be saved (since it's over 2 days).

Grand Tournament - group phase
The group phase will have 4 groups with 4 players each and the two best players will advance to the knockout phase.
It is possible to play different groups at different times in the day (making it for different timezones easier to play, WIP on that matter, open to suggestions). One group however must be played at the same time, two games parallelly, three matches for each player.
The groups consist of each two players from the MRTs (place 9-16 on the QP-table) and two players from the QGs as seen HERE.
These will be (most likely) Bo3 matches, winning a game (max 2 games in a match obv) will reward 1 point, losing or conceding will give 0 points. If there is a tie between two players pointwise, left VPs in their wins will be added and compared.
The two best players within a group will proceed to the knockout phase that is played on the next day.

Grand Tournament - knockout phase
The knockout phase will start with a Round of 16 where 8 players come directly from the group phase and 8 players qualified from the MRTs as seen HERE. Reaching the knockout phase will reward the player with a prize already, advancing will improve its quality.
All matches are Bo3 besides the finale, which is Bo5. Map and hero-pick-rules to be announced.

Some observations
- reaching the top 8 in the QP-table will directly win you a prize, since the knockout phase has been reached
- since there is a lot of qualifying and groups, players who advance to the knockout phase should not be taken lightly. they are well practised
- If there are people who qualify and don't have the time to participate or don't want to, we might allow some playoffs to determine substitutes (or simply take those, who are available at the time)


Conclusion
This is very much WIP, any suggestions, feedback, calculations, QQs are welcome. Since this is a completely new format we might overdo it at some points and need community feedback now and after the tournaments.
Main things to discuss:
- general format
- QP-table (how to determine these points in a balanced way)
- prize distribution
- map- and hero-rule preferences (it is not decided to use MRT rules in the GT)
- tournament name

Uncle Milty wrote:I am working with Eerie on the subject and i'll throw some ideas here to be discussed:

A little comment on that:
In the sketches I've made there are numbers for the people who progress through a qualifier into a group stage
http://dawnofwar.info/index.php?page=to ... TEST_GROUP

I believe the tournament qualifier will end with 8 people who won't fight each-other, so their numbers will be distributed randomly.

Seems like a very complex and long-term plan with a lot more work for those organising things. People not turning up etc will really balls it up.

Ambition is good, just try and think through all the permutations first. I think it's gonna be even more important to get good, reliable livestream coverage if people are donating money etc. In which case I think it's fair that the streamer(s) get something for their time, especially if you raise a lot.

I like the ideas so far but I had an idea for a simpler system. Have a set of qualifying tourneys (3 or so) with full admission (up to 32 players each). The top 8 players (quarterfinalists) from each tourney are immediately granted a spot in the Grand Tournament and not allowed to play in the remaining qualifying tourneys.

Advantages of this format:

(1) It's simple and easy to understand, all you have to do to qualify is show up at one of the qualifiers and place in the top 8.
(2) High-level players don't have to spend more time qualifying after placing well in a single qualifying tourney, and they're not punished if they can't make it to one of the tourneys for some reason or another.
(3) Average skill level will drop with each qualifying tourney (since the previous top 8 won't be participating). This gives "intermediate"-level players a chance to face similar skill levels in a competitive setting and get their games streamed. Compare this to the past where lower level players might get matched vs Toil/Riku etc. in round 1 and get about 10 minutes of playtime. If nothing else, this change might get some newer players participating.

Again, I like the format already presented in this thread, just throwing ideas out there

I like the idea a lot but i also agree with the guy above (not god the one who replied before me lol) however im brand new (less than 30hrs) and i would be willing to play in either but i live in texas and im also in the army so my time to play is limited and not flexible really. But id be glad to play in either but weekends are when im completely unoccupied so please take that into consideration when planning the mrts from now on. Poitsense

Alright ladies and gentlemen, the qualification points (QP) system is ready (including scores from MRT#10):

http://www.dawnofwar.info/index.php?pag ... /MRTladder

An explanation on how the ladder works, how points are distributed as well as who will benefit from it can be found on this site http://www.dawnofwar.info/index.php?pag ... adderrules

Cheers

We don't use euros here in murica lmao but i will if it can be converted somehow.

poitsensie wrote:We don't use euros here in murica lmao but i will if it can be converted somehow.

Paypal or any other thingie will do it for u, no worries

Hooah thanks eerie