Thing not to do when design (and advertise) a RTS game

LordHoki

After DOW3 failure. RTS fan take a big hit as another beloved franchise go down to the abyss. But I would argue that the game could have been saved, and I am not talking about big overhaul in game play mechanics. Bellow is a list of what to do (And not to do) when you design a RTS game. Remember, this is just my opinion, as a big RTS fan that have played them all.

1. People don't want sudden change with their franchise. They want improvement not a big shift that no one asked for. If you want to introduce new feature, do it as an options. What I mean is Relict should not force player to play power core only. This is a bad, bad move from them. They should have annihilation classic at the very beginning, and then say "Hey guy, we have a new idea. We call it power core mode, you can try them out if you like". I believe that people will be more open mind with the mode.
2. More options is always better. I believe that Relict should spend less time in design Elite and Doctrine and instead spend those time create new faction or more units. Elite is a good Idea but they take a lot of time to design, and compare to previous game where we have four factions instead of three, no wonder people feel like DOW3 is lacking in content. Elite can be added latter as a easy way to add content for the game.
3. Do not, ever create a campaign like DOW3. Which switch races every mission. This is such a bad idea that no one have done before. You are playing Space marine and getting use to them then Bammm, you play as Eldar now and Bamm again, you play as Ork now. There are no time to getting use to any one faction at all.
4. Active update and balance patch is a must for any game that is multiplayer focus. As we can see in the case of DOW3, people get frustrated with ranger spam and stop playing, waiting for the next balance patch. What can they do instead? Play a short and bad single player campaign?
5. More is always better, you need to have healthy amount of maps, game mode, units in each race to please a wide variety of people. DOW3 have too little map, and each race have too little options for player (Because they push these options into doctrine). This reduce the player options in game which in turn bore player very fast.
6. Respect the fan base and the franchise. You can experiment all you want with a new game, but a beloved franchise have many critical player that will not forgive easily. A sad reality is people don't want change, that is why there are so many 60$ remaster now a day. I do not agree with it but that how the world is. If you want to change, you have to do it smart. Do it slow and respect what already has. Do it carefully.

Above suggestion is important for any RTS game not just DOW. Hope that Relict will take time with their next game.

Gorb

People don't want sudden change with their franchise. They want improvement not a big shift that no one asked for.

Except that people are using DoW II's success in their arguments here. So evidently, there is an appetite for sudden change. Or at least, there was in 2009.

Do not, ever create a campaign like DOW3. Which switch races every mission. This is such a bad idea that no one have done before.

Except in Winter Assault, an expansion to Dawn of War made by Relic Entertainment.

There's far more I could say on this, but I really recommend making sure you at least have knowledge about each product in the franchise you're trying to criticise before going out and doing it. vDoW isn't just Dark Crusade or Soulstorm. DoW II isn't just Retribution. We need to stop forgetting the past, and instead try and recall all of the franchise's history. When you do that, you can very easily see why Relic did what they did with DoW III, even if you disagree with the end result.

Opinion post.

CANNED_F3TUS

Agree with some points. Forcing peoplw to play Power core was not a good move. I dont necessarily liked that about DoW 2. I was forced to play fuckin VP. One of the crappiest game modes someone can come up with worse then PC even.

LordHoki

@Gorb sorry but I have to disagree with you.

• First, winter assault do have you switch race from mission 1 as Imperial Guard to Chaos. But from mission 2 to 5 you played as chaos and ork and mission after that you played as Eldar and Imperial Guard. So no, Winter assault campaign is nothing like DOW3 campaign. Not only that but Winter assault come after the base game as a DLC, at which point players are expected to already know most races.
• Second, I don't think that DOW2 is as big of a success as Relict wanted. Many people who are fan of DOW1 do not like DOW2. DOW1 and 3 have more active player and what happen to DOW2 is why (In my opinion) Relict come back to base building and remove retreat mechanic.

Socite

@LordHoki said:
@Gorb sorry but I have to disagree with you.

• First, winter assault do have you switch race from mission 1 as Imperial Guard to Chaos. But from mission 2 to 5 you played as chaos and ork and mission after that you played as Eldar and Imperial Guard. So no, Winter assault campaign is nothing like DOW3 campaign. Not only that but Winter assault come after the base game as a DLC, at which point players are expected to already know most races.

>

In Winter Assault you do get to choose between Order and Disorder, but you are still made to switch between two factions for the first 3 before you get to focus on your preference. Also, the fact that people don't know the races as well in dow3 compared to WA backs up the campaign choice (to an extent) since it introduces you to all if them, showing you how they work.

That said, I don't personally agree with the way were forced to keep switching, I felt more detached from what was happening and was only really interested in the Eldar story progression. Hell, 3 seven-mission length campaigns, one for each race, would have felt better since it would let you focus on each faction's point of view and development one at a time, although it would be harder to tell the overall narative.

Note: I say 7 missions because in the campaign we got each faction has 5 separate missions then there's two combined.

Amoc

@Gorb said:
Except that people are using DoW II's success in their arguments here. So evidently, there is an appetite for sudden change. Or at least, there was in 2009.

There was no such "appetite" in 2009. You know as well as anyone that DoW II was met with a significant backlash from vDoW fans. Regardless, the game was solid in its own right and built on the already proven and successful CoH formula. It was, however, a brand management mess. It was deeply divisive and we can see how that spilled over to DoW III.

We've talked about this before, but after this game the DoW franchise doesn't mean much other than a vague/general "40k-IP RTS/RPG/MOBA/WHATEVER" game.

@Gorb said:
We need to stop forgetting the past, and instead try and recall all of the franchise's history. When you do that, you can very easily see why Relic did what they did with DoW III, even if you disagree with the end result.

You can disagree with both the result and Relic's reasoning in equal measure. One thing I'll say here is that you can't cherry-pick how you choose to remember the past. You've talked at length about how a simple reboot of vDoW's archaic design wouldn't have succeeded in 2017, and I think you're right. Why then would you argue that a 2005-era campaign was reasonable for DoW III?

Gorb

@LordHoki

1. My point was that the switching occurred. I'm not here to debate the subjective extent to which you find the switching personally acceptable, I'm simply saying it existed. It caused the same effect, and the same criticisms (not enough time with each race, forced to play factions you disliked, and so on).
2. I don't think anyone knows for sure, the extent to which DoW II was perceived as a success by Relic themselves. I don't think anyone here can speak for the developers on that.

Besides, my point wasn't to argue those specific points. It was to use those to highlight that you're making claims that perhaps aren't as helpful to Relic as you're making them out to be.

@Amoc

1. DoW II was successful, ergo, there was appetite. You can't argue the reverse now, considering every argument about each game's relative success boils down to their popular uptake. Of course DoW II suffered from backlash. I've been the one trying to point that out every time people use DoW II as the "success" story of innovation compared to DoW III's "failure". Your opinion is that this is because of the strengths it took from CoH. That's your argument, I'm not here to debate that.
2. I never said you couldn't disagree with their reasoning. I said you can see why they did it. If you can't, then simply say so. I don't want to guess.

I'm not here to be drawn into a debate on design choices - I've already said that I came here to point out things about the OP's post that they consider apparently-sound business advice. I'm not cherry-picking anything. The functional mechanics that underpin a game's core design, and how a campaign is structured, are two very different things. You can make a dedicated thread for it, or PM me about it. I'm happy to answer that kind of off-topic there.

Amoc

Well if your objective is for us to empathize with the designers' decision-making process, then I guess I understand where you're coming from. I don't really agree with everything the OP said, but the one thing I think he did get right is that a franchise comes with expectations and a developer ignores them at their own peril.

You use DoW II as a counter-example and you're right that it was successful, but it wasn't successful because vDoW fans were hungry for a completely different type of game, or because Relic gave them something new. It was successful because Relic nailed adapting the CoH formula to 40k. There was a ton of overlap in the fan base already and they were using proven design concepts. Even then, they still alienated a huge part of the player base. I posted this in another thread before but this quote's from the lead designer of XCOM 2:

When you make your first game, you feel like you have creative ownership over it. When you make games that have an audience already, then you shift the ownership over to your audience. And now you're in a position where you're sort of curating this game for your audience, and you can have this back and forth with them in terms of understanding what it is they want.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xcom-lead-explains-why-some-triple-a-games-fail/1100-6449248/

Dullahan

@Gorb said:

People don't want sudden change with their franchise. They want improvement not a big shift that no one asked for.

Except that people are using DoW II's success in their arguments here. So evidently, there is an appetite for sudden change. Or at least, there was in 2009.

Do not, ever create a campaign like DOW3. Which switch races every mission. This is such a bad idea that no one have done before.

Except in Winter Assault, an expansion to Dawn of War made by Relic Entertainment.

Moreover, I recall people asking many times for a campaign that featured all the races rather than the usual "Campaign is SPESS MARHEEENS ONLY" stuff we usually get. Retribution making every race playable was a direct response to people requesting that very thing too. (And that campaign absolutely suffered immensely from that design decision.)

DoW3's campaign switching between races was great for learning the mechanics of each race in preparation for multiplayer and it was more interesting from a narrative perspective. If the story didn't go full rehash in the back third then it could have been really great.

Ololo111

Really, there should be more reaction buttons - nooone of those right now can say how much I'm in love with OP's sister.

charlando

Ugh, so much monday morning quarterbacking

Cro2fear

But i still fail to see why poeple are clasifiying Dow 2 as an rts when it's not, it's a rtt.... This is the reason why relic failed with dow 3 they tryed fussing 3 differnt styles in a game and cause a cluster f

The_Great_ASD

@Gorb let's get it clear - DoW II would be truly succesful if it won't divide fanbase.

Okay, fans ate it - they accepted (at least, half of them) DoW II...
But you tried to trick your fans again. And, unfortunately for Relic, fanbase is not that stupid.
And here is morale - you can't fool someone over and over. Relic was out of luck and, while for the 1st time fanbase forgave you, at the 2nd time fans became furious, because Relic tried to make that trick again. Nobody want to tie up with inconstant and unreliable man.

DoW is not just "RTS based on WH40k" or how you said (I regret I forgot where you wrote this, I should screen it). "Terminator" is a film series about confrontation between human and AI, but I don't think you liked (will be impudent enough to state , that you, as most other people, think first two films are masterpieces, but further producers just felt smell of money) that most (even if every single film would be nice enough to be winner if Oscar), if the first film was about cyborg from future hunting lonely girl, who is defended by the guy from the future; 2nd was about boxing matches/MMA-like fights between human and cyborgs; 3rd was about chess match between computer and human...