Vincent Alexander
Member
After some more games tonight, I think my biggest negative are the "superpowers". Not much strategy to "throw a lase down" or "lightning cloud" in the middle of an army.
Some interface elements just make no sense. What the fuck is it with these un-intuitive icons, not to mention gradient backgrounds. Repair and detect icons for servitors should be simple symbols, not bloody artwork.
Plus, rally points and arrow directions no longer stick to the game world to confirm the selection you've made. Why? Even Relic's pursuit of the e-sport angle can't explain this.
Fair points, but Relic is indeed not Blizzard. Their resources are very limited.
So, the Open Beta has launched, so I think it's safe to finally post my closed beta impressions. The CB was only 6 weeks ago, so I doubt much has changed since then, especially when it comes to fundamental gameplay mechanics. This should be interesting especially for those people that loved DoW1 and are thinking that this game is like that, especially when it comes to base building (to tackle that right away: it's not). Note that's also only for the Multiplayer, but considering the reviews mentioning that the SP is weaker than in DoW1 and 2 makes it all the more relevant:
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It's basically Dawn of War going almost all out on copying Starcraft with MOBA style towers and camera controls (in closed beta the maximum you could zoom out was wierdly to close to the ground to get a good overview over a large battle like you could in the first game, while the units look super small, Starcraft style even if you zoom in really close (the non-hero unit models also have very little details compared to DoW2 or even DoW1, they look like almost exact clones and e.g. squad leaders no longer exist as far as I could see, nor the option to add a hero/support unit to a squad); and generally super simplified base building compared to the first game.
Buildings basically only serve as roadblocks to recruiting more units, there are no towers, no mine fields, no defense structures whatsoever, ork buildings with built-in rather weak guns aside. The building roster from DoW1 is massively slashed. For example the Space Marines have a HQ you start with (no option to and no point in constructing more anyway, you can't relocate your base or build a new base/outpost anyway with how limited the maps are in size and approaches and if your base defense is breached the enemy player will just focus fire your core and win while mostly ignoring your base), 3 buildings for units (infantry A, infantry B, vehicles) and a listening post for flags, that's it. There is one research building that only has 2 DoW1-esque unit specific equipment upgrades (power swords for assault marines, rather pointless mines for the quite pointless not-stealthed, non-sniper scouts), the rest is Starcraft-esque +10% HP for all infantry, +10% attack for all infantry etc. global upgrades. Together with the two HQ research tiers you need for better units and the vehicle building... that's it. Very far cry from the complexity of base building in Dawn of War 1. Placement of the buildings doesn't really matter either, as the base towers keep you save from any attack until their generators near the middle of the map are destroyed and if they do get breached the game is done for anyway, almost no chance for a comeback when your core gets attacked (heck, many players even just ignore your base and focus your core which dies in about 40 seconds under heavy fire). They might have just have used unchangable building slots without an option to manually place your buildings at all, it would have made rather little difference.
Meanwhile the units (at least in CB) do rather pitiful damage, it takes almost forever for standard infantry units to do considerable damage to each other, only heavy weapon teams like Devastator Marines buck the trend. It also makes hero units very powerful and quite able to slaughter the "creep infantry".
Meanwhile the units are still about as expensive as in the first Dawn of War, so conserving units is important, yet for whatever reason Relic removed the Retreat command from Dawn of War 1/2 and Company of Heroes , which makes retreating units out of a fight difficult and often pointless. Relic didn't really know how to mainstreamify the system either, they removed retreat and left the high per unit costs, with units often having a lot less individual soldiers than DoW1 too, yet they still have the "re-spawn dead troopers at listening posts/in the base for depleted squads" thing in there, but considering how hard retreating is and how the name of the game is mostly just spamming and throwing more units at the enemy.... why bother.
They also completely removed the morale system by the way which was great and one of the absolute highlights of both DoW1 and 2, now every unit fights to the death Starcraft style.
Most what's left from the old Dawn of Wars is the capture points, which are far more spread out than many feared and make the map not that linear even with the towers. The towers are quite nice if anything, they prevent early game overs from all-in base rushes and are basically little threat to a mid/end game push, if the defending army is dead they barely have an impact. Cover is in in the form of a few captureable spots on the map, yet they are too few and too static to be of much use unless the enemy absolutely has to walk past them. It is absolutely critical to defend those capture points with troops, even moreso that energy production is now rolled into them as well instead of having to construct generators (another reason why there is little point to destroy bases instead of focusing on the core) you need to upgrade them with resources to not end up getting left behind by the opponents in income, yet the armed listening posts are basically incapable of stopping anything more threatening than one or two units of the most basic of infantry and turrets and mine fields no longer exist either.
Kill-synch animations were a large part of what made Dawn of War so visceral, the fighting personal and differentiated the game positively from most other RTS and was a joy to watch especially with the big/giant units, now all gone. Troops simply hack at each other/shoot each other and fall over dead.
Flanking troops, especially heavy weapons, like you could in Dawn of War 2 is now pointless too, everything, even set up heavy weapons (a wierd design decision to keep set-up times considering how the game plays and the emphasis on spamming high numbers of troops), can instantly turn around and face any threat, while flanking from a different side of the map into an engagement offers little benefit and the limited routes often mean you end up walking past a base turret which can seriously hurt your army for little gain, so the game usually results in two army blobs meeting each other head on.
I was a massive fan of Dawn of War 1 and really liked DoW2 too (heck, the first game made me buy into the 40k tabletop and splurge about $700 on it over time as well as read dozens of black library novels), but I'll pick up this game in a few months and on sale, hoping that the single player campaign is at least somewhat good. The last thing I wanted was Dawn of War to massively emulate Starcraft and have an awful MOBA camera (which works when you control one hero... but not an entire, giant army, especially when units like Whirlwinds and Devastators have so much range that you usually have to move the camera quite a bit from the center of the battle to even see them). After 4 multiplayer matches with the Space Marines I had the feeling that I had seen everything the entire faction had to offer (which isn't much) and didn't have any motivation to pick them up again (unlike Dawn of War 1, played hundreds of MP matches), from my 1-2 matches with the Orks and Eldar it looked the same for them, particularly the implementation of the scrap mechanic was pretty bad (run units over random re-spawning drops in your base to upgrade them, then throw them at enemy). And the xp requirements to level up even one hero unit were hilariously high and the xp payouts for a match (especially considering matches take much longer now with base rushes being out of the question) being comically low, if they didn't change them we are talking World of Tank levels here, which has rather bad grinding for a free to play game, mind. Yet one out of two "grand strategy" (either a big buff for the hero unit or the entire army) is locked at the far end of the grind tree of every hero unit. It played like a rather mediocre, run of the mill RTS with capture points and still more linear gameplay (even if not as linear as MOBAs, it does get rather close, especially with approaches to bases), something I'd rate 7.0/10 for the multiplayer, using the full rating scale, with DoW1 being a 9/10.
It is by far Relic's weakest strategy game without doubt.
As said, this was my impression from the Closed Beta a month ago, things might have been changed but I doubt it so shortly before release, with the game having gone gold and all.
I think the MP is a lot of fun, it's like an updated DoW 1 pretty much.
The Emperor provides.
Even Relic's pursuit of the e-sport angle can't explain this.
So anyone else who still hasnt gotten the key yet?
I registered arround the time they announced it, yet no key.
Sigh....was kinda looking forward to playing it.
Yeah, this is my guess as well at this point.I'm going to give the beta a try later on but from what i've seen and read of it so far, i really don't think this was how DoW3 should have been. Reading what you said it's odd to me seeing all these reviews that say it's good...i'm not sure if they just aren't taking into account the previous games in the series or if they just don't care about all these sort of things that you mentioned.
. Like you and several other have saids, the way the units behave reminds me more of creeps in MoBAs or the units in Starcraft 2 with no weight to them.
So, I'm not exactly sure what the hook here is. Very big units, I guess?
Gave this a shot and I know it's a bit unfair, but it really didn't grab me at all after the first match.
Don't know how it compares to DoW 1 at this point, it has been a while, but it seems they just removed a lot of stuff that defined Relic's RTS games. There is no retreat button, no real moral system, no proper cover system, very few squad upgrades I could spot etc.
So, I'm not exactly sure what the hook here is. Very big units, I guess?
So, I'm not exactly sure what the hook here is. Very big units, I guess?
That's disappointing to hear. I enjoyed all of the DoW1 and DoW2 SP campaigns. I wasn't interested in the MP.They suck in multiplayer and the game has a multiplayer focus, not really too surprising IMO.
I am enjoying Dawn of War 3, yet I completely agree that it feels like any old RTS with a 40K skin on it. I kind of like this game in spite of what it is...I really do wish it was more than what it is.I love the WH40K setting, I played the table top for several years, I love DoW2 and like DoW 1 but this one? No, thank you. Played 2 MP matches and don't feel motivated to keep on playing. The base RTS mechanics are fine, more or less. The Problem is: This doesn't feel like a WH40K game. This is a RTS with a 40k skin on top of it. So far I'm not interested... which is a shame I was looking forward to this.
I am enjoying Dawn of War 3, yet I completely agree that it feels like any old RTS with a 40K skin on it.
I'm glad a DoW 3 even exists, but I sure as hell don't enjoy it.
Instead of improving on the systems in DoW 1/2, they just threw everything out in favor of Starcraft like gameplay. If I wanted that, I'd be playing Starcraft. All of the regular units feel extremely weak now, and the elite units are just ridiculous. Why scrap the morale system? Why is cover basically gone? Why is the overall detail/animations worse than DoW1? I just don't get it. This game definitely wasn't made for DoW 1/2 fans.
So, the Open Beta has launched, so I think it's safe to finally post my closed beta impressions. The CB was only 6 weeks ago, so I doubt much has changed since then, especially when it comes to fundamental gameplay mechanics. This should be interesting especially for those people that loved DoW1 and are thinking that this game is like that, especially when it comes to base building (to tackle that right away: it's not). Note that's also only for the Multiplayer, but considering the reviews mentioning that the SP is weaker than in DoW1 and 2 makes it all the more relevant:
----
It's basically Dawn of War going almost all out on copying Starcraft with MOBA style towers and camera controls (in closed beta the maximum you could zoom out was wierdly to close to the ground to get a good overview over a large battle like you could in the first game, while the units look super small, Starcraft style even if you zoom in really close (the non-hero unit models also have very little details compared to DoW2 or even DoW1, they look like almost exact clones and e.g. squad leaders no longer exist as far as I could see, nor the option to add a hero/support unit to a squad); and generally super simplified base building compared to the first game.
Buildings basically only serve as roadblocks to recruiting more units, there are no towers, no mine fields, no defense structures whatsoever, ork buildings with built-in rather weak guns aside. The building roster from DoW1 is massively slashed. For example the Space Marines have a HQ you start with (no option to and no point in constructing more anyway, you can't relocate your base or build a new base/outpost anyway with how limited the maps are in size and approaches and if your base defense is breached the enemy player will just focus fire your core and win while mostly ignoring your base), 3 buildings for units (infantry A, infantry B, vehicles) and a listening post for flags, that's it. There is one research building that only has 2 DoW1-esque unit specific equipment upgrades (power swords for assault marines, rather pointless mines for the quite pointless not-stealthed, non-sniper scouts), the rest is Starcraft-esque +10% HP for all infantry, +10% attack for all infantry etc. global upgrades. Together with the two HQ research tiers you need for better units and the vehicle building... that's it. Very far cry from the complexity of base building in Dawn of War 1. Placement of the buildings doesn't really matter either, as the base towers keep you save from any attack until their generators near the middle of the map are destroyed and if they do get breached the game is done for anyway, almost no chance for a comeback when your core gets attacked (heck, many players even just ignore your base and focus your core which dies in about 40 seconds under heavy fire). They might have just have used unchangable building slots without an option to manually place your buildings at all, it would have made rather little difference.
Meanwhile the units (at least in CB) do rather pitiful damage, it takes almost forever for standard infantry units to do considerable damage to each other, only heavy weapon teams like Devastator Marines buck the trend. It also makes hero units very powerful and quite able to slaughter the "creep infantry".
Meanwhile the units are still about as expensive as in the first Dawn of War, so conserving units is important, yet for whatever reason Relic removed the Retreat command from Dawn of War 1/2 and Company of Heroes , which makes retreating units out of a fight difficult and often pointless. Relic didn't really know how to mainstreamify the system either, they removed retreat and left the high per unit costs, with units often having a lot less individual soldiers than DoW1 too, yet they still have the "re-spawn dead troopers at listening posts/in the base for depleted squads" thing in there, but considering how hard retreating is and how the name of the game is mostly just spamming and throwing more units at the enemy.... why bother.
They also completely removed the morale system by the way which was great and one of the absolute highlights of both DoW1 and 2, now every unit fights to the death Starcraft style.
Most what's left from the old Dawn of Wars is the capture points, which are far more spread out than many feared and make the map not that linear even with the towers. The towers are quite nice if anything, they prevent early game overs from all-in base rushes and are basically little threat to a mid/end game push, if the defending army is dead they barely have an impact. Cover is in in the form of a few captureable spots on the map, yet they are too few and too static to be of much use unless the enemy absolutely has to walk past them. It is absolutely critical to defend those capture points with troops, even moreso that energy production is now rolled into them as well instead of having to construct generators (another reason why there is little point to destroy bases instead of focusing on the core) you need to upgrade them with resources to not end up getting left behind by the opponents in income, yet the armed listening posts are basically incapable of stopping anything more threatening than one or two units of the most basic of infantry and turrets and mine fields no longer exist either.
Kill-synch animations were a large part of what made Dawn of War so visceral, the fighting personal and differentiated the game positively from most other RTS and was a joy to watch especially with the big/giant units, now all gone. Troops simply hack at each other/shoot each other and fall over dead.
Flanking troops, especially heavy weapons, like you could in Dawn of War 2 is now pointless too, everything, even set up heavy weapons (a wierd design decision to keep set-up times considering how the game plays and the emphasis on spamming high numbers of troops), can instantly turn around and face any threat, while flanking from a different side of the map into an engagement offers little benefit and the limited routes often mean you end up walking past a base turret which can seriously hurt your army for little gain, so the game usually results in two army blobs meeting each other head on.
I was a massive fan of Dawn of War 1 and really liked DoW2 too (heck, the first game made me buy into the 40k tabletop and splurge about $700 on it over time as well as read dozens of black library novels), but I'll pick up this game in a few months and on sale, hoping that the single player campaign is at least somewhat good. The last thing I wanted was Dawn of War to massively emulate Starcraft and have an awful MOBA camera (which works when you control one hero... but not an entire, giant army, especially when units like Whirlwinds and Devastators have so much range that you usually have to move the camera quite a bit from the center of the battle to even see them). After 4 multiplayer matches with the Space Marines I had the feeling that I had seen everything the entire faction had to offer (which isn't much) and didn't have any motivation to pick them up again (unlike Dawn of War 1, played hundreds of MP matches), from my 1-2 matches with the Orks and Eldar it looked the same for them, particularly the implementation of the scrap mechanic was pretty bad (run units over random re-spawning drops in your base to upgrade them, then throw them at enemy). And the xp requirements to level up even one hero unit were hilariously high and the xp payouts for a match (especially considering matches take much longer now with base rushes being out of the question) being comically low, if they didn't change them we are talking World of Tank levels here, which has rather bad grinding for a free to play game, mind. Yet one out of two "grand strategy" (either a big buff for the hero unit or the entire army) is locked at the far end of the grind tree of every hero unit. It played like a rather mediocre, run of the mill RTS with capture points and still more linear gameplay (even if not as linear as MOBAs, it does get rather close, especially with approaches to bases), something I'd rate 7.0/10 for the multiplayer, using the full rating scale, with DoW1 being a 9/10.
It is by far Relic's weakest strategy game without doubt.
As said, this was my impression from the Closed Beta a month ago, things might have been changed but I doubt it so shortly before release, with the game having gone gold and all.
Get out... Very limited? One of the most significant RTS studio which basically specializes in their own RTS-subgenre of combined-arms tactics, reinventing the same game using WW2 and 40k skins. The entire studio does not have other projects than perfecting and tweaking CoH1 foundations.
There is someone who is dreadful at their job, because even RTS games from 15 years ago have better menus and UI before there was even a dedicated UI/UX position in the industry.
Actually I play a whole bunch of League/LoL and I enjoy MOBAs in general quite a lot.(Also I remain unconvinced that anybody complaining about these supposed MOBA aspects has ever played a MOBA. Dawn of War 2 was more of a MOBA and that's just because it had some Warcraft 3 DNA [for the record: also not a MOBA]. Blowing up enemy bases is not a MOBA thing, that's an RTS thing from way way back.)
The ironic thing is that Company of Heroes 2 is alot closer to Dawn of War 1's gameplay and DNA than Dawn of War 3 is. They could have carbon copied it with a 40k skin (Dawn of War 2 also largely emulated CoH, which definitely wasn't a bad thing) and me and likely most old fans of the series would be happier with it.Any game design talent Relic had left eons ago.
I put most of last night into this beta and I'm definitely warming up to it after coming away with a mildly negative impression from the alpha. I definitely need another night to chew on it, though.Anyone else actually having fun?
Anyone else actually having fun?
Yeah DoW2 feels much more refined, but I'll wait and see how they will further balance this game. DoW2 was just perfect for me so I realize nothing will probably top it not counting a direct sequel with identical mechanics.
How do i use space marines drop pods ?
There is much Relic will hopefully learn and adapt with the MP going forward. Maybe they can make changes for other MP modes that have larger, unobstructed maps where you can build more buildings and field more units and take away heroes. Maybe. Who knows.