DoW2 Beta

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Downloading it now. After I do a few skirmishes to familiarize myself with everything I'm up for some matches if anyone wants to do one.

Gonna be up allll night for this sucker.

And speaking of suckers, I couldn't resist the mere $7.50 for Soulstorm for the beta access...

[Vendetta]

Had a couple of skirmishes last night. Not really much more than to get used to the new economy model, which is kinda "Company of Heroes Lite".

Not sure how much squad reinforcement will play in at this stage, because even Marines died in no time once the shooting started (though that could just have been the way the AI swarmed Razorbacks around it's stronghold and since it was on Easy pretty much stayed there the whole time).

Will investigate some more when I get the chance.

I definitely like the fact that there are no distractions from actually doing stuff though.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well, here are my thoughts so far. Not going to touch on a lot of things, what with it being beta and all, and try to just focus on the fundamental gameplay.

It's become very obvious through playing it thus far that they tried sooOOoooOooOOooo hard to not be CoH In Space that the game has suffered for it. For the sake of argument, I'm ignoring the fact that I would have paid for a CoH In Space - the downsides of such hellbent, bent-over-backward effort to differentiate itself from CoH are the crux of the issue. Squads tend to be slightly smaller than CoH's on average, which can be a problem when you consider that some of CoH's squads were already too small in many situations (PE squads just getting blown away before you can do anything about it, for instance) and the same problems quickly become evident in DoW2. Space Marines in particular suffer, since one Super Duper Shot just tends to obliterate the unit and make it useless - and at 500 req a pop, tactical squads are also one of the most expensive units in the game for a mere 3-man squad.

There is much less cover and fewer buildings than in CoH, which isn't necessarily a bad thing given the setting and their selection of races, but both are also much less effective. Cover is wiped out completely much more easily than in CoH, and at least in CoH firepower capable of destroying cover also tends to leave usable craters in its wake, which is much less the case in DoW2. The game has also sacrificed much of CoH's feel, atmosphere, environment, soul, whatever you want to call it. While watching your captain chainsword a swarm of hormagaunts while he only has a sliver of life left is admittedly pretty damn cool, on the whole it tends to be a bunch of flashy lights, arbitrary (as opposed to logical) rock/paper/scissors unit balancing, and random crap happening on screen. It's not horrible by any means, but it lacks much of the oomph of CoH, not to mention the latter's superior balance methodology (e.g., MG eats infantry alive, AT guns kill tanks, etc) - once again, they seem to have only given a cursory, layman's glance at the tabletop game and just stuck their fingers in their ears screaming "LA LA LA LA TABLETOP ISN'T A VIDYA GAME WE'RE GONNA BALANCE IT OURSELVES USING OUR OWN ARBITRARY BULLSHIT WE PULL OUT OF OUR ASS". Say what you will about 40k TT balance, but at least it has over 20 years of thought and effort put into it already. Jonny Ebert or whatever the lead designer's name is who took over around the time of Dark Crusade is a massive douchebag.

So, that segues nicely into the fluff. To be fair, they have made some improvements: Bolters sound and feel a little meatier (they still don't say ".75 caliber automatic rocket launcher", but oh well), Space Marines feel a bit more like Space Marines, power fists actually rape vehicles now, as they should, units are deployed a little more realistically (instead of magically produced in a base structure) a la Ground Control or World in Conflict, and other little things like that seem to be a bit more in line with the 40k canon. Unfortunately... much of the rest of the game took a step backward. A lot of the unit selection is downright bizarre, unit composition is even worse - I can totally understand 3-4 man Marine squads, it's for game balance etc etc, I get it - but a "Devastator" squad which is just... a CoH MG team except with power armor and a heavy bolter. Uh... no. They don't even have weapon upgrades - to get a "better" (read: arbitrarily balanced) "Devestator" team, you have to build a different kind of "Devastator" - the mortar team, er, plasma cannon team. Of course, said plasma cannon has absolutely no bearing or resemblance whatsoever to its 40k TT/fluff counterpart - it literally is just a CoH mortar which also requires LoS. The irony of this pains me, because I wanted CoH-like mechanics such as weapon teams, but they implemented it so goddamned incompetently that it makes me want to hurt the designers responsible.

The unit selection, what little of it makes any canonical, TT, or fluffy sense, is pretty damn limited. I can't blame them too much for this, what with doing 4 races instead of CoH's original 2, but they don't seem to have thought them out very well. Heroes are kind of cool, at least in concept... but like everything else, the execution seems to be pretty flawed. Wargear customization = superawesomeomg... except that it's also way too damn limited. In fact, that's the only customization you have over your hero, really - what arbitrary, nonsensical wargear combination you're currently using. You don't level up your ability trees strategically like in CoH, it just kind of gives them to you. To their credit, they've avoided the retarded Warcraft 3 hero bullshit and managed to have pretty decent gameplay surrounding the heroes, but there's so much lost potential and really only feels half-realized. Fluff, again, is murdered with not even lip service given to verisimilitude - once again, despite having logical options THRUST INTO THEIR FACES, Relic chooses to invent some cock-ass horseshit to stroke their flaccid penises with. Instead of, oh, I dunno, USING THE THREE GOD DAMNED HQ OPTIONS IN THE SPACE MARINE CODEX FOR EACH HERO TYPE - HEY, WORK ALREADY DONE FOR YOU, they just implemented retarded shit. The Techmarine is understandable, what with the Master of the Forge and all (why they didn't actually use said Master of the Forge, I have no fucking idea), but fucking Apothecary? What? They could have used a Chaplain, which actually makes sense, and gave him damn near identical wargear and abilities with just slightly different names and it would have worked perfectly.

And it isn't just Space Marines - I'm just using them as an example. 'Nids I can't complain too much about, but the other two races are equally shit on with regard to their hero selection. Farseer and Warlock make sense for Eldar... but Warp Spider Exarch? Wtf? WHY NOT THE NEW FUCKING ASPECT WARRIOR COMMANDER ACTUALLY IN THE GODDAMN CODEX WHOSE NAME ESCAPES ME AT THE MOMENT? If you wanted a non-psychic, warrior type special hero... uh, hello? Look, GW already made that, back when the new Eldar codex came out! Christ. Ditto for Orks - why a Mekboy when, uh, hello - Big Mek? You know, the actual army leader who is basically the same thing except actually a hero? I can sorta-kinda understand the Kommando Nob, even if I think a Warp'ead would have been a cooler choice. Also, no Mega Armor for the Warboss? Lame. Seriously stupid wargear options, but that goes for most of the heroes.

But to be fair, it isn't all bad. The game's entertaining enough, and it isn't terrible by any means. There's just so much lost potential. It could have been goddamned fantastic the way CoH is, but they squandered it on absurd bullshit. Sort of like a Traviss of 40k - so fucking obsessed with inserting their own bullshit into the canon that they forget what canon it is that they're working with.

Yeah, you know, I'm gonna run with that. Relic = Traviss of WH40K.

[Feil]

Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Does the beta cover the campaign mode and the other races as well, or is it really just a demo?

[General Zod]

Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Does the beta cover the campaign mode and the other races as well, or is it really just a demo?

Uh, if it covered the campaign mode it would be a demo. This is just a multiplayer beta, so no campaign.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Does the beta cover the campaign mode and the other races as well, or is it really just a demo?

All 4 races are present and fully playable.

[Stark]

BCG, that's a pretty nice rundown. How much of it do you think is just beta teething? 40k might be dumb but, as you say, 'CoH in Space' is a good game. The cover thing is a bit wierd, given the 40k setting - do you think it's an attempt to keep the fast moving playstyle from DoW instead of the sometimes slower pace of CoH since you can't actually rely on it? Is it less effective in that the bonus it gives is also smaller?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

There a lot of issues purely due to beta-ness: Exact unit and army balance, unit and upgrade costs, etc. It is also possible that the limited selection of maps just have less emphasis on cover and buildings than the full retail array of maps might. But a lot of these fundamental problems are pretty clearly early design designs and are not really fixable at this stage. One thing I have noticed recently, though, is the use of a system identical or very similar to Opposing Fronts' infantry health. In OF's case it was patched out at the end of beta because EVERY BETA TESTER EVERYWHERE EVER screamed at Relic about how goddamned stupid it was, so perhaps there is some hope yet for DoW2.

Cover, again, is so dumbed-down because of their hard-on for not making CoH In Space. It is without a doubt also just plain pandering to the hardcore, competitive RTS players (who they're just going to lose to Starcraft 2 anyway) for whom things like "tactics" actually mean "clicking faster" and "abusing the game mechanics more than the opponent" (you know, the sort of player who hates WiC because it requires more thought than micro). Hence, throwing the more intricate pacing of CoH out the window in favor of click click click ubermicro lolololol.

This is pretty damn unfortunate, because the Imperial Guard would have meshed so well with everything they were trying to do. Playing Guard ideally would have indeed been very similar to CoH in many respects, and they could have built the other races and core mechanics around that. But of course they chose the road more retardedly traveled.

Functionally, cover is less effective not only because it offers less protection, but also because it's easily destroyed. The physics are more over-the-top in DoW2, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the already limited amount of green cover around the map is usually quickly annihilated. It feels sort of like navigating units around some primitive 8-bit game's maze with the occasional powerup or goodie lying around for you to use, rather than CoH's fully immersive and interactive environment. "Static" isn't quite the right word for DoW2's environments... perhaps "barren", "lifeless", or "devoid of any depth".

In CoH, cover is in-your-face: Your dudes get pinned down and slaughtered if they're out in the open, and that makes sense. If you're in green cover, your units can't be pinned and are very difficult to kill with small arms. Again, all good stuff.

In DoW2, they implement everything bass-ackward: Your dudes get "pinned" (they move much slower) and slaughtered if they're out in the open. The problem with this is that the balance is extremely reliant upon your melee units, and since CoH MG teams Devastators, Shuriken platforms, Warrior broods, and Shoota Boyz are available right off the bat your options are really limited. Sitting in cover doesn't do much for you, either - you still get pinned, it just takes a little longer, and you take a bit less damage.

This starts to spiral off further and further down the rabbit hole into their idiotic rock/paper/scissors balance and "counter" system - jump troops to kill the MG teams heavy weapons, melees to kill the jump troops, etc etc etc, and I could rant for hours about their implementation of it, but I digress and much of it is dependant upon the current beta balance anyway.

[Uraniun235]

once again, they seem to have only given a cursory, layman's glance at the tabletop game and just stuck their fingers in their ears screaming "LA LA LA LA TABLETOP ISN'T A VIDYA GAME WE'RE GONNA BALANCE IT OURSELVES USING OUR OWN ARBITRARY BULLSHIT WE PULL OUT OF OUR ASS". Say what you will about 40k TT balance, but at least it has over 20 years of thought and effort put into it already.

Could that be GW's doing? I seem to remember hearing that when DoW1 was in development, GW very explicitly said DOW had to be very much a basic RTS - base buildings and all - because they were afraid of DoW competing with their precious tabletop franchise.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

As far as I know that's rumor and hearsay. While it wouldn't exactly be out of place with GW's typical business practices, I've never seen anything substantive to support that.

If anything, I would think the opposite to be the case - GW is very protective of their canon, to the point of stamping out incomplete mods of existing games which do not accurately portray the universe (e.g., making a Supreme Commander mod wherein one side is changed to Space Marines, but the other two are left unchanged from the vanilla game).

[Vendetta]

If anything, I would think the opposite to be the case - GW is very protective of their canon, to the point of stamping out incomplete mods of existing games which do not accurately portray the universe (e.g., making a Supreme Commander mod wherein one side is changed to Space Marines, but the other two are left unchanged from the vanilla game).

They're very protective of their copyright. You could be as canon faithful as you liked with a mod for another game, if you used their copyright they would stomp you.

[Rogue 9]

Well, this beta is just an endless exercise in frustration. It refuses to accept my Windows Live ID, even though I know it's good.

[Uraniun235]

If anything, I would think the opposite to be the case - GW is very protective of their canon, to the point of stamping out incomplete mods of existing games which do not accurately portray the universe (e.g., making a Supreme Commander mod wherein one side is changed to Space Marines, but the other two are left unchanged from the vanilla game).

Hmm. Maybe a few complaints to GW along the lines of "THEY'RE RAPING MY BELOVED GAME" would prompt them to slap Relic on the wrist...?

[Rogue 9]

Okay, I got it to let me log in, finally.

The UI is trash. I want my control buttons where I can see them, not all tiny and stuffed in the bottom of the screen underneath the unit stats. I'll play more later when I have time and see what else I can figure out; the two guys on my team in the game I was in lagged out, so I didn't get very far with it.

[Teleros]

Functionally, cover is less effective not only because it offers less protection, but also because it's easily destroyed. The physics are more over-the-top in DoW2, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the already limited amount of green cover around the map is usually quickly annihilated. It feels sort of like navigating units around some primitive 8-bit game's maze with the occasional powerup or goodie lying around for you to use, rather than CoH's fully immersive and interactive environment. "Static" isn't quite the right word for DoW2's environments... perhaps "barren", "lifeless", or "devoid of any depth".

I wonder if someone at Relic's been reading the 40k analysis threads here . Cover (at least, the kind not made of unobtainium) will be annihilated quite quickly if your basic Guardsman has a multi-MJ lasgun as a basic weapon instead of a Lee-Enfield rifle . Similarly, WW2 infantry didn't wear powered armour capable of surviving such weapons (except that it seems they get slaughtered if in the open as well from what you've been saying ). Oh well, at least if this system makes it into the final release I'll know to not worry about building assault squads much .

[Samuel]

Functionally, cover is less effective not only because it offers less protection, but also because it's easily destroyed. The physics are more over-the-top in DoW2, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the already limited amount of green cover around the map is usually quickly annihilated. It feels sort of like navigating units around some primitive 8-bit game's maze with the occasional powerup or goodie lying around for you to use, rather than CoH's fully immersive and interactive environment. "Static" isn't quite the right word for DoW2's environments... perhaps "barren", "lifeless", or "devoid of any depth".

I wonder if someone at Relic's been reading the 40k analysis threads here . Cover (at least, the kind not made of unobtainium) will be annihilated quite quickly if your basic Guardsman has a multi-MJ lasgun as a basic weapon instead of a Lee-Enfield rifle . Similarly, WW2 infantry didn't wear powered armour capable of surviving such weapons (except that it seems they get slaughtered if in the open as well from what you've been saying ). Oh well, at least if this system makes it into the final release I'll know to not worry about building assault squads much .

Except they make their buildings out of unobtanium as well. Not to mention that even if you melt concrete, it doesn't destroy the cover. And they still lack craters, which would be very common.

Do they have melta weapons? Because the analysis thread mentioned they were comparable to nuke blasts and they would be fun to turn on defenders.

[Feil]

If anything, I would think the opposite to be the case - GW is very protective of their canon, to the point of stamping out incomplete mods of existing games which do not accurately portray the universe (e.g., making a Supreme Commander mod wherein one side is changed to Space Marines, but the other two are left unchanged from the vanilla game).

They're very protective of their copyright. You could be as canon faithful as you liked with a mod for another game, if you used their copyright they would stomp you.

GW permits total conversion mods provided you stick a disclaimer in. From their page of Legally Dubious IP Policy:

Any game or mod must be a "total conversion." In other words, you must not use our intellectual property (logos, images, names etc.) in relation to the worlds, names, logos, or images of any other company. For example, you cannot place our Space Marines in a Disney total conversion using the Unreal engine, but you could make a TC solely using Space Marines with the Unreal engine. This is, of course, assuming that you have permission to use the Unreal engine.

[Uraniun235]

Interesting... wonder if someone there has a burning hatred of crossovers.

[Stark]

Okay, I got it to let me log in, finally.

The UI is trash. I want my control buttons where I can see them, not all tiny and stuffed in the bottom of the screen underneath the unit stats. I'll play more later when I have time and see what else I can figure out; the two guys on my team in the game I was in lagged out, so I didn't get very far with it.

Did you play Red Alert 3? I noticed this issue in that game; several of the buttons (that you're clearly supposed to use elite shortcut keys for) were small, hidden in foldout UI elements or otherwise obscured or unclear.

[Rogue 9]

Okay, I got it to let me log in, finally.

The UI is trash. I want my control buttons where I can see them, not all tiny and stuffed in the bottom of the screen underneath the unit stats. I'll play more later when I have time and see what else I can figure out; the two guys on my team in the game I was in lagged out, so I didn't get very far with it.

Did you play Red Alert 3? I noticed this issue in that game; several of the buttons (that you're clearly supposed to use elite shortcut keys for) were small, hidden in foldout UI elements or otherwise obscured or unclear.

No, I haven't. And I'd use the hotkeys if I knew what they were, but I didn't that first time. That's still no excuse for having a shitty control interface, though.

[Stark]

Yeah I'm not saying you should know; I thought the RA3 UI was awful because it was basically reliant on using the hotkeys BUT was built on silly gimmicks like 'fold-out' UI sections that nobody would EVER use in multiplayer. There seems to be a trend towards minimising the area given to 'hot-keyable' options in games and I was curious if that's what the DoW2 UI was like; the game should clearly be playable both ways. RA3 was even worse because the default hotkey setup was totally retarded (ie, arrows move camera + wasd area for order = lol I have three arms).

[Samuel]

Interesting... wonder if someone there has a burning hatred of crossovers.

Kingdom Hearts vs 40K?

[Shinova]

I have Steam open and it says the beta will be available in 1 hour.

Clearly once everyone's gotten a few comp stomps down to get familiar with the thing, we need an SDN match of some kind.

[Rogue 9]

I have Steam open and it says the beta will be available in 1 hour.

Clearly once everyone's gotten a few comp stomps down to get familiar with the thing, we need an SDN match of some kind.

Better than this bullshit with random dudes that it's been so far. I actually can't figure out how to get it to do a comp stomp, since it only allows you into the multiplayer.

[Shinova]

I think there's a way, cause I see comp stomp vids on youtube. I'm sure you can insert an AI into any of the team slots.