That I have never bought a DoW title, and I'd like to explain why in case any relic employees see this which I doubt they will but here it goes anyway. Also had a very well typed out post that covered all of the big issues but it was immediately removed. So lets try this one last time. I'm also a old vet of classic RTS's and newer Moba's as well.
Timing and balance are broken. Every race has so many units that are worthless to the current state of the game, whether being beatin by other units that do the job better, or are more cost effective. Lets just take a peek at the land speeder for example. You have to be tier 2 to get it, which means you need an arsenal (this is important, because the arsenal is where you get squad upgrades from.) Now teching to tier 2 takes time, as does building the arsenal, as well as resources, resources you could be using to make troops. Once you finally make it to tier 2, you then have to build a machine cult to finally get access to all the heavy power units it has. Now do that math at how much you spent in resources to get that 1 unit, and how well it does, with 0 upgrades against any standard infantry unit at +1 +1. It loses, to all races, which makes even rushing that unit totally pointless. Timing kills it. Each race has numerous units like this, making it feel like you have many more numerous tactical choices than you actually do. Think of it like many different branching paths, except only 1 of those has any real late game potential, and the rest lead to dead ends.
Comments
Strangequark
Part 2
Now the above can be remedied with patches and hot fixes down the road, but at 60 dollars I expect a much more finished product, I could excuse the above if the game price point was more around the 40 dollar mark, anyway moving on.
Animations are a huge issue, and I don't mean the Angelos flip thing, that's just a look design choice but it doesn't effect gameplay. I'm talking about units fighting their own animation to move around, derp dancing in place cause they can't get out of their own way. Holy crap does it get worse as you scale up the model too. How many times have you players been looking at your screen nearly screaming for Solaria, or the Gargant to stop fidgeting around and fire at targets that are clearly in its range. That essentially kills any real micro you might want to do, cause you can't trust the units to move in the way you want them to. Without micro for fights, that's a huge portion of strategy in a RTS that you take away, positioning becomes the key to everything, and pours even more focus onto the hero units. You can't take on a superior force with better unit control because of this, so it then becomes a game of "who has more". That also leads to the issue of giant armies getting lumped together for a fight, but because of the narrow nature of the corridors on the maps opens you up to the ONLY counterplay the game has, bombardments. It's so easy to catch an entire army and sometimes wipe it completely off the map. It would be different if the different army set ups had counter play from each race. "Oh you are going that, well I can counter that with this" doesn't exist in this game, not late game anyway. Heavy bolters and flamers still deal with early ork and eldar easily enough, but mid to late game those units become worthless as upgrades come into play, and space marines still have no counter for massed wraithguard ranged units. It's so completely frustrating (and sometimes funny) watching your units dance around as you try to micro, as they get shot and die without returning fire. (Relic could take some huge lessons from SC2 and how sharp their command response is to unit orders.)
Strangequark
Part 3 last part
Powercore. Lets start with easy questions to this. Why do the Orks care about a power core? Why do the space marines? Why does each race turrets look identical? This design choice does a couple of extremely bad things in my opinion. First it divides the map, maybe not directly into lanes, but for sure down 2 distinct paths with the shield gens and turrets. The turrets do stupid damage, so there is no base pressure at all early, makes it feel like there is a safe zone around your base for at least the first 10 minutes of any match. I've never played an RTS where early base pressure wasn't a viable option with counters of its own. That doesn't exist in this game at all, and completely makes taking out workers not a choice either. Workers are cheap, built from a place protected by 2 big turrets. It's actually a very resource sound option to mass 2 to 3 mid game and lead them in front of your army to buy your actual damage a bit of time to dps a few more seconds than your enemy. Worker deaths should mean something, they shouldn't just be throw away crap you don't care about after mid game, but until you make the home base where they are manufactured unsafe that particular design choice isn't going to be remedied anytime soon. I mean, each race has a base, it has health, why was it so hard to make those the win condition instead of this "powercore" thing everyone shares. It doesn't add to the gameplay, it instead takes away the strategic options an attacker might have otherwise had, and leads to gameplay like massing workers in front of an advancing force, it isn't just unfun, its silly.
g0ll0
the entire balance arround this core thing and elites is killing this game... "lane squads" are uselss late game some elites can handle even 3 or 4 squads for almost 1 minute.. I really think elites should be nerfed and lane squads should be buffed also add squad leaders at tier 2 and make vehicles stronger.. they die pretty fast
but the most important thing remove the core/turret
KanKrusha
Because in DOW2 power/heavy armour takes increased damage from Plasma and power melee which means that if your opponent buys lots of plasma (cheap) then power armour becomes a liability instead of a benefit.
It was too complicated, mostly because they didn't have a different size gradation for space marines and other infantry so couldn't use accuracy to balance heavy armour.