Opinion on the campaign.

Olteonz

The story was cool, the execution was terrible.

First off, i dont get to learn any of the factions to a comfortable level. Im constantly thrown from race to race and only have 5 missions for each. This created a miserable experience for me.

Secondly, there never was any challange. I am not restricted in how many elite points you can spend and are not pressured in any meaningful way. Completing a mission didnt feel rewarding, it felt exactly the same as the previous missions.

And thridly, you dont get to experience the full story of either faction fully. This was the dealbreaker. I complete a mission, another faction progresses the story without my involvment. I felt disconnected from all the factions and felt like i was watching a movie not playing a game, and just watching the story unfold rather than experiencing it myself.

I pray to the god-emperor of mankind that with the necrons comes a dark crusade/retribution style campaign where i choose a faction, and take in its story to the fullest. I dont want to feel like im forced to play eldar if i find SM story arc more intresting.

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Lelic pls.

Old_Raven

@1: wasn't a big problem for me, probably because I watched and played some MP before I jumped into the campaign.

@2: Half agree. The missions where you can't build units were fairly hard for me. The AI is way too passive on hard and medium though, which makes the ones where you can build (except the second to last) really easy.

@3: I disagree, I always had a good overview and connection to factions comes by connecting to the three MCs. That the factions had internal struggles and that you switch between the factions was something I liked for the storytelling.
I
n many RTS campaigns you beat some guy, then beat him some more, then beat him some more, while the difficulty increases to keep the maps challenging. But when a faction receives a crushing defeat, they don't come back stronger, they grow weaker. After I've crushed the antagonist's armies ten times, how the heck is he still sending stronger armies?
In the DoW3 campaign on the other hand the factions are fairly balanced and the three man FFA keeps the balance of the factions. I also get to play each big story-element that keeps each faction in the race. That we have the greedy/dumb guys rushing to the spear also added some variety.

I really disliked retribution because the faction's story were very superficial and unbelievable. That's just what happens when you have to write different factions into the same missions.

My 2 cents to the campaign:
The good:
+I really liked the storytelling, a 3man FFA is really easy to ++heresy redacted++ up but it was well executed imo.
+The plot was predictable, but entertaining.
+Cutscenes aren't on blizzard level (/budget), but they get the job done and the dialogues and voice acting was good.
+Good mission design, the maps were diverse and there was often an element that made each special.
+the factions were well portrayed, the Eldar were sneaky and arrogant, the Orks bloodthirsty and hilarious and the SMs honorable. The Orc missions had me multiple times laughing. Considering how bad recent RTS have done at story- and dialoge-writing, this is pretty marvelous.

the bad:
-The AI needs a rework in base building missions, it is effectively braindead. Often the units don't even react when they get shot by snipers and the AI doesn't mimic resource gathering in any way. It should send waves every 1-2 minutes on hard with increasing difficulty and react to attacks in any way, it's way too easy to reach the breakpoints where the waves deal no damage and they almost never contest your resource generators. It doesn't feel like playing against a sentient being.
-Energy vs supply is pretty annoying. Since you often only have 1-2 generators and start with >4 stacks, energy income on average is non-existent. This is especially noticeable in missions that are designed to make the player play certain units, like when vipers get introduced and get with all gens it's barely enough to build 2-3 additional vipers within 20 minutes. The
-difficulty curve is fairly bad on hard. Partly due to the AI but also in general.

Leeroy1986

I personally would have liked a separate campaign for each, less integration. Although, I do appreciate from a development PoV resources can become stretched.

Kneecap

Oh man. A Dark Crusade style campaign map would be straight up awesome. And great for people looking to level up elites without having to resort to grind maps.

tritol

I was looking forward to seeing old campaign mechanics. Ok everyone is mentioning DC/SS that map was awesome, I hope they add some skirmish mode similar to this once they add more factions. But even copying WA last mission would be cool, switching between all 3 races and racing for the pointy stikk, as was promised.

I didnt like DoW2 but same here, it was just one chain of missions same like any other campaign, but you had to illusion of choice if you go for side missions too, what equipment you choose as a reward or if you complete it in chaos/order way.

All these things would make the whole campaign and game much cooler. You dont need to make them balanced, hell make those crit passives work on 3 stacks and give every elite 5 abilities, just for the campaign to make it more fun, in multiplayer you can use normal elites but in singleplayer it would boost the enjoyment tenfold.

Dean478

Absolutely hating it myself. Currently trying to get through on casual and having one of the worst experiences in an RTS ever...

-Resource generation: how does it even work?! Strategic points seem to offer random levels of requisition or power, with no apparent indication of what until you capture it. Playing elder games takes me up to an hour per map while I sit around waiting for power to generate just so I can build 1 or 2 vehicles... I've got a power issue obviously, but unlike previous games, I can't even build a power generator! 1 per point! And in this mission points are destroyed when you are forced to relocate your base...

-Arcade Spawn points: I have no idea what I'm supposed to be building or using. Half the mid-game maps allow the AI to simply spawn unlimited enemies from inconspicuous spawn locations. They don't even use their base! They literally just come out of the walls and demolish your army... It reminds me of every terrible first person shooter where AI enemies just endlessly spawn out of the air until you capture some arbitrary point

-No tactics: there seems to be no tactics at all... everything comes down to a blob of units. No (real) cover, elites vs standard units just sees entire armies wiped out in seconds while I infuriatingly try to micromanage my elites like crazy... it is just WAY too fast and not fun at all. It's the same reason I lost interest in the traditional RTS model from Dune 2 through to Starcraft 2. I got sick of the action lasting seconds. It's not engrossing! It doesn't help when the interface is far too busy that I'm losing units and can't even see it with all the text and popup menus and icons and noise!

I was up to mission 9 I think it was? Finally getting a grasp of space marines before I'm once again forced to swing across to another faction before I can even learn the first.

I try to watch videos of the same mission online and it makes no sense to me. I literally just watch the player throwing away units at the enemy until they manage to take a location.. it seems the game is based upon how quickly you can relocate units while simultaneously managing your production chain.... no tactics at all.

I want to like it. I really do. But I'm struggling right now.