Dawn of War Codex

nope...
like DOW2 and COH2 at launch though
I don't remember for DOW1 and COH1.

But it's not an excuse, it should have been there from the beginning.
But as always, they probably had other priorities in order to launch the game at the end of April.

Lost Son of Nikhel wrote:

Tinibombini wrote:Maybe have an observer mode so that it is actually possible to cast these tournaments for the new epsorts sensation that is DoW 3?

What????? DoW 3 don't have an Observer mode???

It didn't even have a ladder unit recently and the ladder they got is a joke that makes no sense for a game with mirror matches.

GuruSkippy wrote:nope...
like DOW2 and COH2 at launch though
I don't remember for DOW1 and COH1.

But it's not an excuse, it should have been there from the beginning.
But as always, they probably had other priorities in order to launch the game at the end of April.

TBH, I started playing multiplayer in DOW 2 in Retribution and rarely I entered in match as an observer. I don't remember if in the beginning of Chaos Rising or Retribution had the observer mode.

But that was a huge mistake if they really really wanted to turn DOW 3 as an E-Sport not include the Observer mode and the ladder. This make the game look really unfinished. They should had released the game a few months later with these things included, IMHO

Well, about esport, they never stated that they really wanted to turn DOW3 as esport.
They said, if it becomes eSport, fine, we'll support it, but that's not our goal.

Then, I understand even less the changes they made in DOW 3.

There will be a community update later today. Let's wait and see what they have in store for us.

A quick browse through the cancer that is DOW3 forums show endless arguments from dinosaurs for keeping it like DOW1/2 vs ppl who defend Relics "innovations".

However, looking at RTS in 2017, many titles have come and gone in the past few years, most of them being disappointments or having niche appeal and the only ones with noteworthy persistence in multiplayer popularity are games like Starcraft 2 or Age of Empires HD which is a remastered 17 year old game. Even Starcraft 2 supported by the giant that is Activision Blizzard is considered to be losing its edge which is why they too are remastering Starcraft Broodwar in the hopes of creating the ultimate RTS esport.

In this context, maybe being a dinosaur is not a bad thing.

We live in the end times of RTS, only holy relics from the Dark Age of RTS work and nobody can understand why.

(edit)
p.s it appears Age of Empires Remastered has just been announced by Microsoft and it seems to be the only RTS of note at E3 so far. Abandon all foolish pretensions of innovation Relic, the Golden Age of Remasters is upon us.

I got a question for you guys what would the game's numbers look like potentially if they took an approach to dow 3 like this:

dow 2 engine version/gfx/mechanics but ramped up, higher zoom on maps, way bigger population cap, way bigger maps, and a whole new base building system. No elites at all, still t1 to t3, but just way more new units and new wargear, increasing customization potential by a lot. Kept the same unit survivability as in dow 2.

The sp campaign would not really be a story like in dow 2 or 3, but instead a full planet like dark crusade/soul storm, with base building and, pre action narration and cutscenes, after action reports, stronghold cinematics, basically a dark crusade but with dow 2 mechanics, more zoom, cover, supression, more population, basebuilding, more unit types and war gear. They could of also included a modding toolkit with the game, I wonder what the success of that game would look like now.

I'd try it, but honestly my expectations have been lowered so much that a remaster of DOW1 with pathing and collision that wasn't coded by interns would be awesome to me.

kataklysmkx wrote:I got a question for you guys what would the game's numbers look like potentially if they took an approach to dow 3 like this:

dow 2 engine version/gfx/mechanics but ramped up, higher zoom on maps, way bigger population cap, way bigger maps, and a whole new base building system. No elites at all, still t1 to t3, but just way more new units and new wargear, increasing customization potential by a lot. Kept the same unit survivability as in dow 2.

0 because you'd basically have a good lookin game that runs at roughly 10 fps max.

Here's my wall of text on the subject. I love the game.

When Dawn of War 2 came out, people said "Give us Dawn of War 1 with bigger army sizes (250 popcap!), more heroes and big crazy battles!"

So, they did. The scale of the battles is way larger than anything ever before and the elite system plays into the exact playstyle that people wanted. There is some pretty vocal whining, most of the complaining seems to revolve around three things: Power Core, No Sync Kills and Quality of Life features. : they wanted to watch cool super units engage in massive battles with hundreds of space marines and eldar and orks with tons of explosions and things dying.

I will address what the game is and my opinion of it, and then talk about these complaints.


The return to Dawn of War 1 mechanics: no retreat, no suppression, listening posts are back, upgrading resource nodes is back. However, many of the tactical elements that defined Dawn of War 2 are still around (i.e heavy weapons teams do AoE damage, rather than suppression, knockdown is still very important, Stun, blind, reflect and silence.) What has been pared back is the emphasis on persistence. Units are more disposable, with the only unit in the game that actually gets its own investment being Tactical marines. (Where you upgrade to either flamers or plasma on individual squads, and yes they are absolutely balanced around this.) Everything else is global upgrades or doctrines.

There's no leveling on either Elites or units. What this does is bring back a more traditional RTS gameplay approach where you can sacrifice units for damage, and in the late game being able to build units fast enough at home is almost a more essential skill than micro. We still have yet to see players truly use a proper macro playstyle, even in high level competitive play people tend to stop building additional units once they reach their "comfort zone" of micro, leaving half the popcap on the table. I think myself, Choko Bambus, VindicareX and Guruskippy are the only people that regularly prioritize them. They're either completely forgotten or a mid to late game afterthought to many other players.

The elite system is where all that intense DoW2 micro pays off. These guys are a bit more limited in what they can do than DoW2 heroes could be, but because of that specialization they also have some intensely powerful abilities. And the elite point system itself works as a timing push mechanic. I think most of the complaints of Elites being too powerful have fallen off as people have improved, and the more I play myself the more I don't consider them vastly superior to line units. Elites that are a little too strong have been nerfed appropriately relatively quickly. In the late game you mainly just want to focus on macro, splitting your army across the map and controlling your elites. Ultimately, I think DoW3's mechanics transition into a far more engaging late game state than DoW2's did, even though DoW2 has a stellar early and mid game. DoW2 lategame sufferred greatly from the victory point system. The old joke "Baneblade can't cap" applies here. Many late game units simply couldn't contribute to the win condition of the game in DoW2. I enjoyed victory points as a system that rewarded map control, but I think it was a very unsatisfying game mode for most casual players who had Autarch Kayle running lightspeed around the map constantly harassing their VP's while their Baneblade slowly crawled across the fucking HUGE 3v3 map to go fight... something. Power Core is ultimately more intune with this player mindset: Bigger units lets you fight your enemy behind their defenses and win. (And killing objectives rewards you with plenty of money to further bolster your army. I'll talk more about power core later though.

I think the elite system blends extremely well with the more casual take on regular unit control. There's still a ton of depth and nuance to line units, but at the same time it's a big step down from Coh2 or DoW2 levels. Which quite frankly is necessary when you're going to give players 3 heroes to micro and an army 3-4x the size of DoW2's.

Can I just take a moment and talk about what a great fucking job Relic has done with the actual DESIGN of the Elites and Factions in this game? Holy shit, it is such a massive improvement over everything they've done. (And I adored CoH2's new factions designs with Western Fronts and British Forces) Every race has unique mechanics that make it feel really different, and similarly all the units feel both useful and slot nicely into the factions arsenal. Does no one else remember what a shitshow DoW1 and DoW2 could be in compeptitive play, especially before Retribution came out and largely balanced DoW2? DoW1 drastically favoured ranged units and kiting and my limited experience with the game around 2007-2008 was Necrons being insanely broken. DoW2 at launch had all sorts of problems, like Tyranids being massssssively overpowered. The factions in DoW3 don't have this problem. DoW3's factions are the best designed content they've ever produced. Space marines are slow and can't really relocate around the map very quickly, but can call down drop pods to bring units into the fight right away to bolster their forces, and they have their Chapter Standard ability to either commit more fully to an engagement or to run away. The deathstorm drop pod also helps them in this regard, inflicting insane DPS and being able to turn the tide of many engagements when used at the right time. This contrasts heavily with the Eldar playstyle that is all about taking full advantage of your shields and fleet of foot to disengage after doing some damage to go teleport to the other side of the map and attack there. And then Orks. THE FUCKING ORKS. Holy shit I love their design. The Waaagh towers signal an attack as an entire Ork army runs across the map to fight with bonus speed and damage temporarily, the scrap system means that Orks can unlock abilities for their infantry or even build vehicle units from the wrecks of enemy vehicles right on the spot. Instead of the rooted concentration of forces of space marines or the extremely mobile Eldar, instead Orks are all about dictating the ebb and flow of combat.

And the elite units are similarly incredibly well designed.
Each faction has 9 elites, every single elite ability has 2-3 functions. The easiest example to give is Farseer Macha. She has three abilities: Singing Spear, Psyker Blast and Temporal Weave. Initially these abilities have their obvious purpose. Throwing the spear damages and knocks down enemies in a line, Psyker blast causes a defensive explosion around Macha to damage and knockdown units around her and Temporal Weave works similarly to Phase Shift in DoW2 and removes units from the fight along with the Farseer herself.

But then there's the secondary effects. The spear thrown into the ground debuffs nearby enemy units, causing them to take more damage. Psyker blast also applies Fortune to Macha, giving her bonus damage and damage resistance. And lastly, the singing spear can be recalled to again damage and knockdown enemies it passes through. When Macha has cast the spear, her melee damage is also massively reduced.

But wait, there's more. Throwing the spear into the ground causes both Psyker Blast and Temporal Weave to behave differently. Instead of psyker blast being a defensive ability centered around Macha, when you throw the spear it becomes centered around the spear. This can be used to either damage enemy units or to give allied units the Fortune buff. (Or buff, if they're all standing in the same spot.) Temporal Weave will be projected along a line between Macha and the Spear, rather than in a circular AoE around Macha.

But wait, there's even more. All the Elites can come into battle with an Elite Doctrine, which is either a "Command" ability (in effect for the entire game) or a "Presence" ability (only active while the elite is alive). The commands are usually some sort of unique buff. In the case of Macha, it allows Wraithguard to increase their attackspeed while draining their shields. Macha's Presence ability lets any of of your elites have a second chance at life when they die, restoring roughly 33% of their health and putting them in stasis for a few seconds.

Every single elite has this kind of depth, and they all work within the existing faction mechanics. Eldar elites have shields which can regenerate in webway auras while Ork or Space marine elites have to retreat to a production structure to heal, Ork Elites can utilize scrap taken from the fight. Space marine elites tend to have abilities focused around staying in combat for a prolonged period of time, such as Diomedes Zeal and Fury or Jonah's attack speed buff as he casts spells.

P.S They've also fixed special attacks. Instead of the archaic melee skill system, now heroes use special attacks or critical strikes every X amount of regular attacks, indicated on the HUD. This allows you to know EXACTLY when a special is going to trigger and you can take advantgae of that tactically.

Army Doctrines work like a suped up version of CoH2's bulletin system. You have 3 slots to pick various abilities that benefit different units in your army. Some simply give units more shields, or additioal effects for existing abilities. Some give them entirely new abilities. Some are passive, some are active. Ultimately, I think doctrines are a huge improvement to the 3% more weapon accuracy bullshit that was in CoH2 and it allows you to experiment a lot with your own playstyle and how you incorporate units into your army. For example, Banshees have a doctrine that lets them reflect attacks when using their unlockable charge ability. I've been using this to reflect grenades and powerful ranged attacks back at the enemy, which is hilariously powerful and very reminiscent of the cool micro tricks in DoW2.


The base building in DoW3 is straight forward but I'm hesitant to call it simplistic because placement of buildings is really important. It reminds me of C&C or BFME2 in that regard, it may disappoint Starcraft players but everyone else shouldn't be complaining. In the late game, building multiple production structures is actually worth doing to keep pumping out units fast enough which is a first for a Relic RTS. There are minor differences in the factions here as well, for example the upgrade structure has a different price for each faction and the Ork tech tree is very different from Eldar or SM. The economy model is also pretty nuanced, because generators take such a long time to build and you can only build 1 per node at a time you have to be very particular about which one you want and when. I think there's a ton of unexplored depth when it comes to this area of the game in competitive play. The elite point generator is also a fascinating thing because its resource cost changes based on the amount of generators you have. In some respects, the elite point generator and the lethality of elite units is a comeback mechanic. If you're losing some line units early on, if you can get an elite out and use it well enough you can get back onto even footing.

So, lets talk about the elephant in the room. Power Core. The community HATES this game mode. I imagine a lot of this has to do with the fact that most players play team games, where the game naturally starts to form more "lanes". There's also the matter of people overestimating the kind of army they need to kill a turret, and so I think a lot of 3v3 games mostly devolve into "fight until late game, one team gets resource advantage and builds more late game units, attack move at each other until one side wins the tug of war". Essentially, I think that the community is literally too dumb for this game mode, atleast for now. They don't realize how early they can actually attack the enemy objectives and you can hop into most random 3v3 games and carry your team to victory by bashing these things with a smart army composition. In 1v1 people have really started to figure it out and I think most people enioy it, but for team games annihilate is much more the pace of what the community wants.

Sync kills are gone. It's an odd time to do it, since line units are more expendable than ever, but it has been an absolutely constant criticism of their previous games that things like sync kills, cover and squad formations were huge headaches for people. I think the game still has some really awesome looking stuff to replace them with the elite units, like Wraithknight Taldeer's Jump ability, so I find this to be one of those grass is always greener complaints. The game still looks very awesome in action when big armies fight it out.

The other complaints are mostly quality of life features. Observer mode, customizable hotkeys, some UI stuff. This game launched with the usual Relic fare: no hotkeys and mediocre replay features. Nothing new. The UI is the best they've done though, in my opinion.

I think what makes people dislike the game is that the way they want to play it (sit back and build up a big army) is not really how it is meant to be played. You're literally meant to be throwing your units at the enemy and fighting them for the first 20 minutes while you're getting a huge refund for any losses. Building generators early in DoW2 was pretty common, but in DoW3 overinvesting in generators out of the gate is what causes people to have small armies and lose fights. The economy is simply way more complicated early on, and people are a little too timid in the early game. (especially in team games) Like how Para said he thinks the game is punctuated by lulls in the fighting and is a slower game than DoW2. I don't think it's slower, the lulls in combat aren't any longer than DoW2's retreat lulls. The difference is that people are playing passively because victory points used to work as an incentive to go into the field, whereas power core encourages defensive play until you are ready to take on your opponent. However, when people 'feel" ready and when they "are" ready are two different things, causing players to spend minutes sitting around doing nothing in 3v3. I think this, more than anything, is what causes people to get bored of the game and feel like every game plays out the same way.

tl,dr

DoW3 is an incredibly well designed game. It is very different from DoW1 and especially DoW2, but that doesn't mean it is bad. All of the same criticism that can be leveled at DoW3 was leveled at DoW2 when it came out.

The playerbase being what it is has almost nothing to do with the game itself. Modern PC gamers either play singleplayer titles, or they play a select few ultra-popular multiplayer titles. If your title fails to achieve ultra-popularity, it's going to have dismal player numbers until it goes through several waves of steam sales and builds up a dedicated playerbase. This is especially true of a niche genre like multiplayer oriented RTS games. Nostalgia goes a long way, as can be seen with Age of Empires 2 HD.

Here's DoW3's playerbase up against some recent multiplayer focused titles (jun23 and prior is pre-steam sale discount)
http://imgur.com/a/hzzVG

and Here's DoW3 up against the biggest RTS releases of the last year or so that aren't remasters.
http://imgur.com/a/bUcg2
http://imgur.com/a/sKabA

That damage control. Seriously, the way you write your opinion it looks like was written by a CM.

TLDR: Game was well designed, people are simply whiners who don't know how to play this game or expected play again DOW 1 or DOW 2 with better graphics. The features that lack in the release? Meh, that isn't THAT important. The implemented it later patchs, so why are you crying? Lack of content and gamemodes? Meh, that isn't that important. They will implement it in later patchs. Unbalanced races? Well, its Relic, what do you expected?

And to be honest, the comparations you are making aren't going to make DOW 3 better. For Honor, for example, had a lot of problem with servers and connections, which ruined the MP mode. And even with that amount of serious problems, it have a bit more playerbase than DOW 3.

And of course, the comparations you are making are a bit.... biased. It seems you choose titles which aren't very popular/known or even niche titles in the already niche genere of RTS, to make DOW 3 looks better.

And you fail.

Lets compared with ANOTHER biggests releases of the last year.
Hearts of Iron IV
http://steamcharts.com/app/394360#1y

Total War Warhammer
http://steamcharts.com/app/364360#All

Xcom 2
http://steamcharts.com/app/268500

Sid Meiers Civilization VI
http://steamcharts.com/app/289070

Divinity: Origins Enhanced Edition (well, this is a bit oldier to be fair)
http://steamcharts.com/app/373420

Age of Empires III (even older than DIvinity, but with more playerbase besides the bad reception which have in the beginning when it was released)
http://steamcharts.com/app/105450

Shall I continue? Some of these games are older, and still have more playerbase or averaged players than DOW 3. Some of them aren't very known (Divinity saga, for example), some of them are as niche as DOW 3 (XCom) or have a big fanbase. Others are more focused in singleplayer and others in multiplayer. And still have more playerbase or average players than a 3 months released game.

Reviews are mixed in Steam, like ALL the RTS titles. But in the other titles the global ones are mostly possitives, in DOW 3 are mixed.

Numbers don't lie. At the moment, DOW 3 was a fucking fail. It would rise in the next months, with successives patchs, with content and shit? I don't know. I hope yes, because I'm not going to gain anything if this game goes to hell and it would be a bit sad if this franchise would die in this way.

In the moment, the trailer video "wow fuckton of bodies falling from the sky its raining men allellullah!" caused me 0 hype. I didn't aply for the closed beta and I couldn't play the open beta. I'll tried (sometimes forced myself) to watch some Indrid multiplayer casts and some spanish campaign casts. I quit the video 10 minutes after. The gameplay bored me. The flashy flashy effects are obnoxious to me. The animations kill me. Seriously, everytime i see moving the units this song comes to my head.



I'll wait. Six months, one year. And then I'll see. We will see the numbers. If the bad sales were because the lack of content of the release and because the people aren't used to the new Elite system. Maybe in next sales when it costs less than 10 € i will give it a try.

But, at the moment, I'm not going to buy it.

When your initial reaction is to claim a positive post by a longtime DoW II player was written by a community manager, it's kinda obvious how far down the well of your own bias you are.

Props to Dullahan for the effort, it was a nice surprise to read something like this, early this morning.

Gorbles wrote:When your initial reaction is to claim a positive post by a longtime DoW II player was written by a community manager, it's kinda obvious how far down the well of your own bias you are.

Props to Dullahan for the effort, it was a nice surprise to read something like this, early this morning.

That's why I say "it looks like" and not "you are a CM"

While my post certainly wasn't as extended and elaborated than Dullaham's one, at least I take some time to refute some of his arguments

Your post was nothng but a poor attempt of Ad-Hominem.

Saying that you're biased is not an ad hominem, in any shape, way or form. We all have bias - the trick is admitting it.

You weren't ever going to give Dullahan's post a fair read because you were already going to post something against DoW III in response to whatever he wrote. My bias is that I agree with his evaluation of the design and I really think it touched on some interesting points that I've made myself before (player perception of Power Core Turret strength, for example).

Crying that I attacked you personally because I pointed out you're irrevocably biased against the game is a poor attempt at diversion. Respect peoples' arguments and their opinions. Saying "it looks like it was written by a CM" is doing neither.

Dullahan wrote:I think myself, Choko Bambus, VindicareX and Guruskippy are the only people that regularly prioritize them.

Not sure how you can say that about me !
I have posted only one replay on GR for debug purpose a long time ago, and when we met, I wasn't good enough yet (and I still think I'm not good tbh, so much rooms to improve in this game).

Good post otherwise, I do agree with a lot.
I think DOW3 will slowly rise again, after more content added and some steam sales.

Lost Son of Nikhel wrote:In the moment, the trailer video "wow fuckton of bodies falling from the sky its raining men allellullah!" caused me 0 hype.

I alredy imagined the game being shit as early as when the trailer popped up. Going for an abstract angle is a red flag of something's quality more often than not. It's even more glaring when you compare it to the trailers of the first and second games, not even taking into account the numerous expansions.

Lost Son of Nikhel wrote:And of course, the comparations you are making are a bit.... biased. It seems you choose titles which aren't very popular/known or even niche titles in the already niche genere of RTS, to make DOW 3 looks better.

And you fail.

Lets compared with ANOTHER biggests releases of the last year.
Hearts of Iron IV
http://steamcharts.com/app/394360#1y

Total War Warhammer
http://steamcharts.com/app/364360#All

Xcom 2
http://steamcharts.com/app/268500

Sid Meiers Civilization VI
http://steamcharts.com/app/289070

Divinity: Origins Enhanced Edition (well, this is a bit oldier to be fair)
http://steamcharts.com/app/373420

Age of Empires III (even older than DIvinity, but with more playerbase besides the bad reception which have in the beginning when it was released)
http://steamcharts.com/app/105450

Save for AoE 3, which is actually surprising to me how active it is, those are all singleplayer dominant games that aren't even fucking RTS games. AoE3's popularity is interesting, if you look at its lifetime stats it was certainly hovering around the 800-1200 range that DoW3 is and simply grew a little over the years. (The same will happen with DoW3) You can see obvious spikes in the playerbase with steam sales as well, so as I said once a game is out long enough and enough people buy it for bargain bin prices, the community grows a little bit. Same thing happened with CoH2 and Men of War 2.

I chose multiplayer dominant titles to show how even well designed, hyped games will have a massive drop off in playerbase. The PC market is filled of people who mostly play singleplayer, or 1-2 ultra-popular multiplayer games they've invested thousands of hours into. (i.e Overwatch, Counterstrike GO etc) Some of the titles you listed have multiplayer components, but the vast majority of people are playing singleplayer. Fucking Call of Duty has consistently died within weeks on PC for years, despite being very healthy on consoles. The best selling video games of all time can't hold a playerbase on PC.

The current market is oversaturated with ultra-popular titles, which draw players away from newer titles. The release market for DoW2 was very different from DoW3. League of Legends, Dota 2, CSGO, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch etc didn't exist back then. I know many, many players who played a ton of DoW2 who now spend most of their time in one of those games. I know even more who didn't grow up with RTS games and thus have little interest in the genre. Every single new game is criticized for a lack of content on release, because people only seem to play games for the XP bars and the unlocks rather than actually enjoying the game play.


I chose the biggest RTS new releases I could think of in the last couple of years. Is there anything else in the genre that has come out recently doing better? I can't think of anything. Unless we want to count Legacy of the Void, but Starcraft has always been in its own bubble. Compared to any other recent title in the genre, DoW3 is doing quite well. Comparing DoW3 to non-RTS games isn't a valid comparison. The reality is that the genre is dead, save for a few thousand fans. People who enjoy the strategic component of RTS are playing turn based strategy games and people who enjoy the action element of RTS are playing MOBA's.

Here's some more games too!
http://imgur.com/a/t02gz

Why do people complain about game modes all of the sudden? Since CoH relic has only ever had two: Victory point and Annihilate (which was really just a tacked on mode, as none of the game mechanics were designed for this with base structures often being extremely resistant to regular units.) Power Core is throwing the casual playerbase for a loop because they don't understand the mechanics. (Turrets grow stronger over time, a small early game army can totally kill turrets and shield generators can be defended.) The new annihilate update has been very popular with that crowd. Go play a 3v3 and watch people idle their units for 10 minutes while they tech up and try and tell me that the casual playerbase has any clue on how to play the game. The one big fault of power core is that it is intimidating to attack your opponent when they have defensive advantages, whereas VP's people would try and capture them and idle their units around the vp's atleast.


People revolted just as much against DoW2 when it came out. People claim DoW3 is literally ignoring the fanbase, when they deliberately gave them exactly what they asked for when DoW2 came out. (This is also true of the campaign, actually. People wanted a linear story driven campaign where you could play as all races, rather than the repetitive campaigns of Dark Crusade and DoW2.) In Retribution they went way out of their way to make all the races playable for people, and here they went even further with missions designed around specific faction abilities.

Numbers don't lie.. already 25% off on steam!

Gorbles wrote:...

When your initial reaction is a lie, it's kinda obvious how far down the well of your own ass you are.
Props to Lost Son of Nikhel for the effort, it was a nice surprise to read something like this, late this evening.

Seriously Gorb. Stop being so obnoxiously condescending. When you don't have anything to contribute to the discussion, just let the other people discuss and express their views and opinions.


+1 Broodwich. It's sad to see. I really hoped this game would take off

Yes, quiet down Gorb, we need to have this same fucking tired discussion about Steam numbers for the ten thousandth time. Personally, I believe that the game needs more MOBA features and a My Little Pony themed faction, and I think the game's poor sales and low peak user count backs me up on that.

@Dullahan
Great post. My thoughts pretty much mirror you own.

My thinking on why the game didn't get such a good reception has been changing recently. I think Relic made some pretty tone-deaf decisions as far as what to streamline - stuff like squad leaders, weapons upgrades, various fluff compromises, etc. The generic damage/HP buffs the armory grants functionally serve the same purpose, but by not including all the little fiddly bits like nob leaders and plasma pistol upgrades, you have to question whether they are using the license to its fullest. The overall design is great though, and I think if this wasn't a WH40k game it would probably received a much more positive reaction.

Also the sound effects are generally anemic (Solaria's chainguns), even downright terrible in some cases (the hell is that melta gun noise?). KNob's shotgun is one of the few sound effects that I can say with certainty is an upgrade from DoW2.

lol @ anyone who falls for 1 of these expertly cooked laid on very thick posts.

Arbit wrote: stuff like squad leaders, weapons upgrades, various fluff compromises, etc. The generic damage/HP buffs the armory grants functionally serve the same purpose, but by not including all the little fiddly bits like nob leaders and plasma pistol upgrades, you have to question whether they are using the license to its fullest.

I do agree partially with this.
Indeed, leaders and weapon upgrade per squad were something in DOW1 and 2, and they basically served the same role than basic general HP/damage upgrade (as long as it doesn't change the squad role or add a new ability). But it was really something WH40K.
Problem is, DOW3 squads are waaaaay too much affordable and disposable to have this. It's already annoying enough when playing ork late game to continue scraping every one of your squads who will die next engagement.
So imagine, if you add leaders and weapon upgrades...

Scrap is a good compromise for that, I feel. Uniquely suits the Orks. This does mean by design other races lose out, but at the same time we never saw anything like Battle Focus (or even global-scoped Drop Pods on the UI, plus Banner) before.

The closest we got was Tyranid Synapse, and that was several years of balancing fun

I'm hoping we can expect this level of racial design to continue, and indeed, to improve. You lose some of the finer detail, but that detail comes at a (sometimes unnecessary) cost to micro (advantage of Aspiring Champions for Chaos, for example, was Kill The Weak, and not necessarily their individual Plasma Pistols on a squad that primarily dealt Bolter damage). Not a tenable design for something of DoW III's scale (and shows the lessons learned in large-scale RTS design in those 10 to 13 years).

Would I like to see more research content? Yes, I think so. But I'd also like to see more units, more Doctrines, more races, all the things everyone else wants. Some of these will take more time than others (the Turret Doctrines were a relatively fast turnaround, for example). But I definitely think we'll see them added, too.

Dark Riku wrote:

Gorbles wrote:...

When your initial reaction is a lie, it's kinda obvious how far down the well of your own ass you are.
Props to Lost Son of Nikhel for the effort, it was a nice surprise to read something like this, late this evening.

Seriously Gorb. Stop being so obnoxiously condescending. When you don't have anything to contribute to the discussion, just let the other people discuss and express their views and opinions.


+1 Broodwich. It's sad to see. I really hoped this game would take off

He says, being obnoxiously condescending.

I have plenty to contribute, but Dullahan said a lot of it. Arbit said some more. The usual responses from the usual posters in here apart from that, really.

Broodwich wrote:Numbers don't lie.. already 25% off on steam!

Steam Summer Sale?

Like, my god people, it's one thing to hate a game. It's another to just be silly.

Lol, what else do you think would bring the price down so rapidly?

I'm not talking about the base price, just in general. If the game were doing well, I'd expect it to either not be on sale or more like 10% off

Broodwich wrote:Lol, what else do you think would bring the price down so rapidly?

I'm not talking about the base price, just in general. If the game were doing well, I'd expect it to either not be on sale or more like 10% off

Long gone are the days where developers can be so stingy with sales, even if their game is doing well.


Even Activision does a 50% off sale for COD, back in the day those games NEVER went on sale.

lol
i'm not going to get into a debate about game sales, simply because i don't care enough

Broodwich wrote:lol
i'm not going to get into a debate about game sales, simply because i don't care enough

You're the one who brought it up.

To be entirely honest, the main reason for me not having any interest in DOW3; ignoring problems like graphics, gameplay, animations, voice acting, etc. Is the massive arse price tag. Just no... Im not paying 100 dollars for it. Also, the community is one of the worst ive ever seen. One dissenting opinion and you get wrecked by the fans jumping on you. If i wanted to get gangbanged by fans who can't tolerate dissent ill rather play no man sky, or mass effect 3, or xcom 2 or stellaris. Heck, there is a rumour going around that Dawn of War 3 had its very own "White Knight" group that was created by fans solely to attack those who didn't like the game! what is this, 1937?