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The open beta for WiC has started. Is anyone else playing it? I've had a few games (luckily against noobs, top three player since game #2 lol) and so far I'm pretty impressed. Not least at it's scalability: it runs on my 6600GT just fine, even with half the post effects and the awesome explosions all over the place.

The only UI quibble is that how hard would it be to show more than one unit's specials in a mixed group? We're all in 1280 land now, so it's not real-estate.

EDIT - I guess I should add more impressions. The division between 'general types' is workable - ie, you can still buy the other units, but at higher cost. Infantry seems to be undervalued, since I've seen well-used infantry rape heavy tanks. It's RTS 'life bar' stuff, but the balance is pretty good: a heavy tank will rape it's way through light tanks as fast as it can fire it's gun, dropping hellfires on tanks kills them good, airstrikes and arty quickly level towns, etc.

I think the greatest sign of the divided-command idea is that they play differently. I was a mediocre air commander - it requires a lot of SA and you basically form a mobile troubleshooting squad. I was (when I noticed) able to see off similar numbers of choppers for no loss, and deal with sizable armour groups. I only saw one AA vehicle, and it killed choppers good.

On the other hand, the ground-pounders are much more local and 'traditional'. The command-points spawning bunkers over time didn't bother me as much as I thought it might (it's quite slow, so you have to hold the area for some time) and they are stationary, so utterly fucked by off-map arty anyway. Hiding infantry is a very effective tactic: I snuck a unit of rangers into a town behind enemy lines and was able to call in accurate arty on passing units - they couldn't spot them without checking the buildings.

I thought about it, but didn't really want to download something just for multiplayer, which is something I hardly ever do. It comes out 1 September anyway.

You play RTSs... but not multi? It boggles the mind.

I grabbed a key, will probably download it tonight and try it out tomorrow.

GuppyShark wrote:I grabbed a key, will probably download it tonight and try it out tomorrow.

Same. I must note that obtaining a Beta key was delightfully easy. Not an utter pain in the ass like any Fileplanet open beta.

EDIT: Grah. The e-mail link to the Beta client is broken.

I was in the closed beta. It's not a bad game, but I do think it lacks a bit of depth in terms of gameplay. It's also incredibly dependent on how good the rest of your team is; I had a bunch of games where all our armor did was die because nobody wanted to go anti-air. Other times I had scorewhores who kept begging for TA so they could launch nukes ("OMG GIVE ME TA OR WE LOSE") Pretty graphics though - I had a screenshot of a triple nuke, but forgot to paste it into photoshop

Infantry was really hard to kill when hidden in trees without tactical aid. I was best at air and support - Soviet artillery is like the angry fist of god. Set up camp on high ground and 80% of the map can literally be hit within seconds. Amphibious transports seemed rather useless and tanks didn't do enough damage against infantry.

Yeah, tanks don't seem to have coax, a common RTS piece of lameness.

I've noticed the pub-standard 'zero communication' issue: the only time I know anyone is even listening to my advances, or moving to support, is when they appear overhead. This also means about three times the TA required gets dropped on any enemy formation.

Exonerate wrote:I was in the closed beta.

Me too.

It's also incredibly dependent on how good the rest of your team is; I had a bunch of games where all our armor did was die because nobody wanted to go anti-air.

My problem was Arty Noobs.

Infantry was really hard to kill when hidden in trees without tactical aid. I was best at air and support - Soviet artillery is like the angry fist of god. Set up camp on high ground and 80% of the map can literally be hit within seconds. Amphibious transports seemed rather useless and tanks didn't do enough damage against infantry.

I had Support and Armour, and I agree about Soviet Arty, the NATO Arty was slightly stronger but less accurate and the US MRLS was ungodly powerful but so pathetically inaccurate it was nearly useless except for bringing down buildings on garrisoned infantry. Then there's the Heavy Tank, or as I called them, High Speed Arty.

Quick question, does the crater effect still look like clay?

Another closed beta player here. I might see what they've done since then. I was a little disappointed when they nerfed infantry, especially vs. air, seeing as how almost no one played infantry anyway ('cept me, infantry all the way, baby. I'm fuckin' unstoppable on the assault maps with just two squads of infantry and two choppers to transport them).

And for the record Stark, tanks do have co-ax, they just suck. A fact which irritates me. In the open, though, most tanks do pretty well against infantry. It's only when they're in trees or buildings that armor is really fucked (but that's pretty easily dealt with with napalm and laser-guided strikes respectively, or even chemical strikes).

Since I got sick of the constant 75% helicopter spam, I have started playing support and going 100% aa. I'm not always in the right place, but enemy air players apparently aren't smart enough to wait for a huge mass of choppers and a few heavy aa can kill 6 choppers without damage. Sadly, it's a low-scoring way to play it seems, so I'm not getting MVP anymore.

Also, so many air whores don't even circle targets. I mean, honestly, it's pretty easy to render a2a useless just by doing a complete wide circle in 12s...

So Stark, was I right?

Your stories of lame players dissapoints me, the entire interface is just so conductive to team work with the fast communication menu...

Most people don't even know the q-menu exists.

The players are bad enough that I, Mr Not Very Good At RTS Really, is regularly top-3, almost always win my branch, and usually gets best tactical too. Everyone else is doing FPS-style 'ignore everyone else on your team' stuff, which is a real shame.

I mean, I had 4 AT squads in a forest killing vehicles as they drove along a road, and nobody noticed. Nobody gassed me. I even had an air guy actually paying attention and letting me ice the AA so he could blow everything else up.

Stark wrote:Most people don't even know the q-menu exists.

The players are bad enough that I, Mr Not Very Good At RTS Really, is regularly top-3, almost always win my branch, and usually gets best tactical too. Everyone else is doing FPS-style 'ignore everyone else on your team' stuff, which is a real shame.

I mean, I had 4 AT squads in a forest killing vehicles as they drove along a road, and nobody noticed. Nobody gassed me. I even had an air guy actually paying attention and letting me ice the AA so he could blow everything else up.

*head desk*

I hate,hate,hate, stupid player populations. Of course, since we're on differant sides of the world, we can't team play.

Ugh, the unwashed masses descending like rabid dogs on Soviet weaponry and ruining the nomenclature.

and I agree about Soviet Arty, the NATO Arty was slightly stronger but less accurate and the US MRLS was ungodly powerful but so pathetically inaccurate it was nearly useless except for bringing down buildings on garrisoned infantry.

Wow. So they got it totally backwards

Then there's the Heavy Tank, or as I called them, High Speed Arty.

WTF? There's no such thing as a heavy tank in either arsenal in the relevant period. What tank?

They use Abrams - heavy, Patton - medium in the game.

Stark wrote:They use Abrams - heavy, Patton - medium in the game.

That's bloody dumb. What, gamers wouldn't understand that the Abrams > Patton, is that it?

Vympel wrote:

Stark wrote:They use Abrams - heavy, Patton - medium in the game.

That's bloody dumb. What, gamers wouldn't understand that the Abrams > Patton, is that it?

Possibly.

Only heard about WiC recently, looks like something I'd go for as long as the requirements aren't Supreme Commander-level.

I'm guessing the lack of communication issue will be dealt with when the game comes out, on account of those who don't communicate will lose, and those who do will win, leading to a general realisation that talking = better.

You play RTSs... but not multi? It boggles the mind.

I've never understood the need to play online against random opponents. If I don't know them, what's the difference to playing an AI?

The AI for any RTS ends up being retarded and easily beatable unless it cheats out the ass. Human players, meanwhile, provide a legitimate challenge and let you improve your game immensely. Not to mention good teamplay can be really, really rewarding.

Lazarus wrote:Only heard about WiC recently, looks like something I'd go for as long as the requirements aren't Supreme Commander-level.

A 6800GT plays it with most things maxed out in 1280x1024. It's scaleable.

And I'm running it on a 6600GT in 12x10 with everything on except shadows and reflections. It runs fine for everything except 'nuke dropped right on the camera'.

SupCom is a great example of a worthless game to play single: even I can beat their 'hard' AI, it's that bad. I'd rather play humans (who at least are entertaining), and WiC is very, very team-based so AI would probably never work.

AI worked okay in Ground Control 2, which this game takes heavily from.

Shame Ground Control 2 sucked. And believe me, if the shipped game has AI that can work in the very, very close teamwork required (far more than RTS 'teambased' I'll Kill Over Here) I'll be impressed.

I like the false dichotomy between 'play only SP' and 'play MP with strangers'. I'm not a big fan of playing random Brazilian kids either, but that's why there are matching services, friends lists, private servers, clans, etc. Most of the RTS multi I play is over VPN with my friends... and it's far more fun than 'bleed you units lol', 'haha spawn units here now', mission scripted, protect Raynor bullshit.

It also doesn't help that RTS storylines are puerile nonsense.

Stark wrote:It also doesn't help that RTS storylines are puerile nonsense.

C&C and RA would like to kindly tell you to go fuck yourself.

Poor offended fanboy...

I have discovered there are AU servers now... sadly, AU players are even stupider than US/EU players. Who knew?