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Here is how you Bring Back DAWN OF WAR III
2 years ago
LordOrk97
- Firstly because the game was rushed through development there isn't much that can be dont regarding the stand alone game. The only option is to provide DLC content with 3 new factions... perhaps Last Stand mode etc to the game to make it better but the graphics are less then the DAWN OF WAR 2 FRANCHISE so perhaps we must focus on moving forward. TBH I think they should just leave the DAWN OF WAR 3 for now and focus on DAWN OF WAR 3 expansion similar to the Dawn of War 2 franchises.
- That way it is a new game, new factions, new graphics and this will bring back the DAWN OF WAR franchise.
- Relic may need to reduce the price or offer a free expansion for the make up of the DAWN OF WAR 3 game.
- DAWN OF WAR 3 was rated 6/10 through IGN so its not a bad result it just needs a few changes that's all and can be done easily. Lets bring the expansion as a new game just like DAWN OF WAR 2 Retribution which I am still playing right now and its 2018... But its an awesome games so why would you leave the game.
- People will forget DAWN OF WAR 3 and be like omg how good was that expansion for DAWN OF WAR 3... just add in a few things from Retribution maybe just units etc or another faction or more maps for LAST STAND etc. This is my opinion. Either go out as a failed game or go out with a surprise with success in the DAWN OF WAR 3 EXPANSION.
- FOCUS ON THE EXPANSION just remember DAWN OF WAR 2 got better and better with the expansions... so can DAWN OF WAR 3.
5
Comments
GenDrameron
3 months ago I did not smell a Staff tag either in the forum, unfortunately I think it is unnecessary to wait
satan6666666
first above all is fuckin balance. eldar ranger and fireprism, big mek scrap turret ++heresy redacted++!
Decepticats
@satan6666666 but balance can be resolved in an expansion. So PLEASE RELIC MAKE DoW3 expansion!!! xD (spoiler: they won't.)
GenDrameron
expansion yes...
charlando
so pull some magic money out of a hat do develop a free expansion?
FabricatorGeneral
I disagree with your post. I like the graphics of Dawn of War 3 and view them as a clear upgrade over the previous 2 games. And no Relic should not rush out an expansion just to please a tiny fan base. The only thing Relic should do is take their time, get their ++heresy redacted++ together, and make a complete product. When they are ready. Dawn of War 3, is not to go anywhere. Not right now, less they do not learn from their mistakes.
FrankR
I like the graphics, the game runs good on my 2015 IMAC. I have not tried multiplayer yet, so I do not even know if the servers are even running. I plan on finishing the campaign before playing online, I have made the mistake of going right into multiplayer mode on other games and feel because of that I didn't give single player modes a chance, I will try my best to not do that with this game so far enjoying my time in DOW3.
Socite
The campaign should do a good job of introducing you to each faction and its mechanics, how to play etc.
As for the game's servers, Relic have stated that the servers will be staying up, although we're not getting more updates
If you want to find people to play with, there's a DoW3 discord where we host gamenights every weekend, so feel free to join us! There's a thread here on the forums where I post the day/time for the gamenight, though it's often a bit short notice. - https://discord.gg/QcQNzhZ
Ololo111
I wonder, why would you think so? I could clearly see how CoH2's update was halted by DoW3's release and how DoW3 was supported by a team of 2-4 men, even that very last patch of 1,4 gb, some days away before the abyss hit the game was made by some "very devoted person", according to Re_BenB
I don't know what've happened durring development, but there was a lot of movement behind the scene. Halting CoH2 update, then AoE4 anounced, then mr.Boulle left, then, again, CoH2's surveys spamming and holding a very liable one for DoW3...
That's the problem with DoW3 - you can only guess what have actually happened and don't even allowed to do it here. Communication was the worst thing Relic ever provided (even worse than DoW2 or CoH2 on release).
My very fiest post on this forum was in regard of Open Beta code which never hit me on my mail. Guess what - that post was incorporated into the "critisim thread" and never properly answered. I had to contact Sega support to be affirmed that open beta would work without one. Literally, there wasn't been a single notion or an answer from CM on angry pre-purchasers pleas.
I could have speculate or suggested whether expansion is still possible, but this would be on the same level as the pinpointed quote.
PS: A lot of 3A games not designed in favour of casual playerbase have "Mixed" reception: Civ6, For Honour, ..
Even now DoW3 retains larger playerbase (acounted for August, prior Steam's September sale) than Ancestor, which was supposed to do what DoW3 didn't.
I can see external possibilty for DoW3's expansion to come, but can't say if there is an internal one (like the very one Re_Benb's post stating that their license on WH40K was grandfathered, which may practically mean that GW is against any further development, and nothing can be done with it).
Ololo111
PSS
Sorry for trying to be smarter than Relic's managers, but they could have at least enlisted those very devoted few to make a unit pack (1 unit for each faction) to finance balance-fixing. This moderate step might've been seen as the good intention, much better than releasing new skins to the no longer supported game.
Chronoslayer
I wonder how much balance fixing would really even cost if Relic really wanted to do it? A modder can use the mod tools to whip up some mitigations to sniper spam and/or Wazmakka for free in their spare time.
Ololo111
I've been wondering about that for the long time myself.
Yesterday, I finally logged into CoH2 after I left it with DoW3's release: the very first game and my ATG got bugged. That very bug derrived from a certain timing on barrage's ability and, though rare, it has been here since CoH2 migrated on new servers.
They are adding new units with an upcomming patch - even though they promised not to add any ("the game went into finalization phase" or something like that stated on the last BF's commanders release) - but that particullar thing got overlooked.
It was modders who fixed terrible clamping on certain formation years after release for CoH2, after a lot of commanders was been and were releasing. Add here the very popular bug still persistent in DoW2 with IG team-weapon rushing in melee range while on attack-move compared with Necron Lord release, and I can only assume that something terrible is happening on a planning phase inside Relic.
I guess, one particullar modder already balanced Rangers' spam, but those changes need to be implemented game-wide, like they did with formations in CoH2, and like they didn't with IG's unit in DoW2.
Relic needs to become more flexiable, and not on a special ocassion only. If they do, DoW3 might be brought back.
PS
Somehow, I had a feeling that selling DoW3 content may yield way more goodwill for the company from their overall playerbase than giving new CoH2 stuff for free. It's way better for some of us to have DoW3 on CPB rather than curse it while it's trying to die.
And @Chronoslayer is absolutely right: I doubt it's too hard to deal with some spams, doctirnes and an ability misuse, since they are more than just obvious now.
Of course, I expect nothing, but have a hope, still.
Draconix
Well, the examples which @Ololo111 gave, clearly shows to me that Relic is not a expert on balancing games, sadly.
But I can probably said same about Blizzard as well. 
Overall, balance is IMO a very difficult task to achieve in games, at least for devs.
Gorb
Nobody is an "expert" on balancing games, for the simple fact that so much discussion around it is irrevocably biased by player input. The amount people like where CoH 2 is at now, for example, varies dramatically based on how much they approve of the community-driven balancing the game is now supported with.
Much like bugs, as it's very easy to have an outside opinion on them. But bugs are harder to work out, because as a player it's natural to get a feel for game balance and flow. It's not a natural skill to be able to work out where a bug comes from and how easy it is to reproduce, nevermind fix. @Ololo111, bugs don't tend to happen because of some kind of failure in planning. Bugs happen. Per n source lines of code, they happen, inevitably. Video games can have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of SLOC. You can make more bugs happen with bad management, but given your examples across two games can be counted on a single hand (and sure, I'm aware there are more), that's quite the correlation to try and draw if that's the case.
The IG HWT issue was a specific issue introduced with Retribution (naturally, as the IG debuted in DoW II with that expansion). It could not be fixed by modders. Modders have worked around the issue, but they have not fixed it as far as I'm aware (I've asked ELITE modders a couple of times on this, maybe they've figured it out. Last I checked, it was nothing the data / attrib layer could fix). It was raised to Relic around the time the games were migrated to Battle Servers, along with a number of other bugs. Some were fixed. Some weren't.
So when you talk about something "terrible", you don't even know the effort Relic went to to improve their products, for free, outside of any regular support cycle. Which just feeds into the general consumer approaching to "here is how you bring X back" (to bring this back to the thread at large). Relic have no plans for support for this title. They said they'd let us know if that ever changed. It's not that they don't want to, it's because that was the decision made, that was decided to be the best choice at the time. If that best choice changes, then we will know.
Slamming Relic to satisfy your own interests, or to even just attempt to make sense of something that might be happening with a different game? I really don't get the point.
The whole thing about "well if modders can fix it" is kinda exactly the point. Modders can fix it. We have the Workshop, fully-integrated. There is nothing stopping anybody getting a good community mod together, like ELITE did for Dawn of War II. If people aren't going to be motivated to do these (apparently) simple fixes, I don't understand how anyone can think getting people on paid time to divert their attentions to it, when whatever they're working on is far more important relatively than some changes that modders can do for a game without a major active following. I just don't get it. The way DoW III has gone, for better or worse, means their next game (be it the AoE title or whatever they have in the works) has eyes on it. It's a very hard justification to tell them to give that new product less focus - even a day's less focus (given how tight deadlines always are in games development) - just to make a few people happy on here. And that's even assuming people can agree with the proposed changes (confirmation bias, survivorship bias in terms of people who are still around here, and so on).
It's very easy to think you hold the answers (generic "you", to anybody reading this). But that's a mistake, because it's made from the outside, looking in. And if you don't want to listen to me, that's fine (understandable, even).
This is long enough without me getting into the communication post, and all of that, so I'll wrap this up here. Ololo111, you have a very weird memory of engagement in the times of their earlier games
Opinion post.
DawnOfWarRealm
Hello everybody, now that I've went through all comments, first I would like to thank Gorb for giving his opinion, he reminded me of something logic, for me its pretty simple.
In my opinion Devs don't decide if the game live lads, the community decides, why exactly though ? Well if all the money spent in the making of the game was a waste why continue developing it ? If people don't buy the game anymore or don't advertise it, tell me how do you want to save it ?
The thing is the media and a big part of the community as well as those who claim to be the ancient players of all Dow games have been constantly spitting on Dawn Of War III because their poor child heart was ruined by a mistake, on behalf of helping fixing it and prove their "loyalty" (if they were real fans, no offense), they kept vomitting on it, which was even worse ! I worked my ++heresy redacted++ off aswell as other people who tried to save the game, the only way we can fix this, is to give a good reason to SEGA to poursue the developement. People say :" its impossible we won't even get an expansion, its relic's fault, we don't have the money e.g"
Maybe you're right, but like I tell myself everytime "I need to question before blaming someone else" for instence what did I do wrong ?
If the community is so determined to save Dawn Of War III, what are you waiting for ? Money don't fall from the sky.
Thank you for you attention, regards,
Ololo111
@Gorb, your post is too general, and, surely, can be addressed to anyone.
But if you try to look at that case-based:
1) We have a fully integrated workshop support, but some mods (like that WH30K one) removed from it. Also, we don't have proper mod tools, capable of, at least, changing victory conditions without crashing a game. You might want to say that DoW1 and DoW2 never had a proper tools provided to begin with, but those never had Denuvo chewing game data and additional level of encryption on packed assets.
DoW3 is modder's hell. That's why you don't have too much people trying their own balance's layouts, not because nobody needs it - I see this being a reason.
2) I didn't question the fact that bugs do appear on development. I just mentioned the fact that Relic preffers to roll up new content over the fixing of old bugs (like that Soviet's ATG one being known for oh so long as of now). Add here "community driven CoH2" updates which is too general as well, because those don't include Steam or Reddit communities, but CoH2.org community only. They include some bits of input which were easily overriden by Relic's own decisions (how they did with AEC to my personal delight), so those a "community-based" only in name. There is no activity comming from Relic on Steam, and there is 2 month old thread on the null-page of companyofhereoes.com\general-discussion.
That's another example of cool-marketing that Relic deploys - on the same line as high Metacritic score for DoW3 or sudden turn-over in CoH2 Steam reviews.
With all that in mind
3) I didn't "smash" Relic as whole. Their developers did great, whoever was asigned to DoW3 support - in their scarsest numbers, obviously - did great, no matter the outcome. I will say that with multiple "maybes", but I hope it would reach you straight - maybe, it shouldn't have been mr. Boulle who left the studio, but, just maybe, some other person, who choose to engage community through paid reviews and promotion of streamers instead of, maybe, facing them directly? How much of skin some person, maybe, saved when DoW3 was fold up while CoH2 was given away for free in hope of selling more premium content? And how much money, maybe, publisher was convinced to gave them for a new project instead of working on their current one?
Of course, I can only speculate, that's what you normally would say, Gorb. But, as a fellow sane being, please, answer me: isn't it better to actually try to form your own opinion, rather than bashfully hide it because you can be wrong?
I can't say for sure what have had happened to DoW3, but I'm assured that leaving your released game in care of 2-4 people (who masterfully pulled 3 more Elites and new maps from pre-producted assets) is terrible, not somehow "terrible"; producting new free content for CoH2 when the attempt on selling more premium items failed is terrible, not "terrible".
Anyway, I don't need his head. I just went here to say that since they are adding new units to CoH2 (anyone want to bet that they would have VO on them?), they may as well try it on DoW3, if that super-wise attempt in giving CoH2 away for free failed. I have the feeling that the part of people cursing DoW3 when it's dead sentence was read may return on the slightest fluctation toward any change in it.
And stop scoffing your own developers. It's simply offending to let someone to push up 1,4 gb update and then anounce by the next day that there will be no major content anymore.
Relic already anounced that CoH2 is in "finalization" stage after last BF commanders was released. Now they reworks copypasted Sov and Wehr's commanders with completely new upgrades, abilities and units.
Nobody is expecting anything to be for sure after communication was halted and lootboxes issued instead of some "fair" premium content evolution for CoH2 (do I need to speculate over that, too?). Just let the developers body do what they can, and don't make fools of them.
I am fully aware that DoW3 may as well be dead on AoA's way, with, for example, GW being agianst it. That is lethal, no mistake. And that's why I do have a hope, but don't expect anything.
.. but, maybe, just maybe, it's worthy to look into how many people like me there are? Since CoH2 didn't get anywhere better, "maybe"?
Gorb
@Ololo111
Most of my posts can be addressed to people in general
Mods being removed from the Workshop have nothing to do with the tools provided. They have little, if anything, to do with Relic. Mods removed for IP infringements is something that Games Workshop have decided on. You're blaming the wrong people, there.
I'm not touching the Denuvo angle, because it inevitably trends to the realm of conspiracy and has literally no impact on modding (fun fact, Steam itself historically prevented DLL tweaks to the Steam version of vDoW with file integrity checks. Nothing involving DRM or even Relic / SEGA at all. There were ways around it of course, but the point remains).
DoW III is not a modder's "hell". I mean, you should probably listen to a modder on that, right? It might not give everyone exactly what everyone wants, but that's never been done in the history of the franchise. Even vDoW had more than a few shortcomings that lead to community tools being (mostly) the preferred option for creation. Besides, there is literally nothing stopping balance tweaks of any kind. Victory conditions are another thing entirely, but if you want a discussion on modding we really need to clarify the scope of what we're talking about, instead of going from gameplay modes to changing balance in a paragraph and a half.
Assuming that just because the content that was released wasn't in your estimation worth the time, or that because you believe you know exactly how long it takes to make certain pieces of content, you can therefore work out the size of the team supporting DoW III . . . is a poor assumption to make. And you keep making them. Digs about being smarter than Relic's "managers" (whichever part of the hierarchy they are - you didn't clarify business management, or development management. Big differences, hard to argue the point if you're not going to be upfront about the criticism).
You say you can't say "for sure" what happened to the game, but that isn't stopping you from rolling out these theories left, right and centre. For what gain? To convince whom? Me? With a signed NDA? Unlikely. Even if I did know something, I wouldn't even be able to mention it. I treat NDAs seriously, always have, always will. It's why this kind of attempt at drumming up a negative interpretation of what goes on inside a company we don't have visibility on never works on me.
And yes, these are all opinions of mine. I'm not exactly hiding anything, it's a bit weird for you to phrase it like that. I'm probably misreading it. Refreshing that someone considers me sane, at least
So to go back to the content angle, because this seems to underpin your thoughts here. People responsible for figuring out bugs aren't the same people responsible for figuring out content. I mean, a common outside perspective is just "hire more people", and while in an ideal world where talented QA and programmers simply float around waiting for a job, that would be an okay suggestion . . . real world software development doesn't work like that. I mean, I'm not trying to be condescending here, but every time someone goes "well why do they work on content and not bugs" I just kinda drop my head to the desk a bit. It's not a simple matter of firing a few artists and hiring a few programmers. It doesn't work anything like that (also, good luck convincing the art director that he needs less resource on the assumption that a) you can find the QA and programmer talent in time and b) those new hires can immediately get to work troubleshooting potentially-complicated problems in a game they have zero professional experience with).
Secondly, what you deem as "pre-produced assets" based on some static screengrabs from content pulled through Worldbuilder (that weren't complete, lacked a lot of animations and SFX, had no other UI assets alongside them . . . and generally required time and work to deliver) is, well, still something that requires time and work to deliver. I looked into those files every patch, hah. I'm not assuming you didn't, but they were not in a release-ready state. You're still slamming Relic, here. You're dismissing their work (though as intent is difficult online, having trouble working out if "masterful" is sarcastic or not) by labelling it as something that was effectively already done. You're dismissing management, as you have already. That's the whole thing. Top to bottom, there.
Thirdly, and finally, development always gets moved around by management. You can consider this offensive if you want, but that's just a reality of project management. It hurts, I'm not going to lie. But I'd rather get the chance to make something work than never get that chance at all - even if it gets canned. I've been in that position before myself. It wasn't great at the time, but I'm still happy for what got made, even if it never saw the light of day. Software though, to emphasise. Not video games, hah.
You don't have to sell me on wanting more content for DoW III. But this ain't the angle to take on it, I don't think.
Dandalus
Also make LoW3 multiplayer feature free to play as Blizzard did with starcraft2, dlc are to be factions and elite units as well as skins. Moba are f2p so since RELIC was aiming at moba players making LoW3 f2p might restore DoW3 player base.
Temennigru
It’s pretty simple, really.
DoW3 failed because they focused on the wrong audience.
Warhammer players in general don’t bother with highly competitive multiplayer games (the kind that people complain about how snipers are dealing 1 damage too much), and competitive multiplayer gamers don’t bother with warhammer.
If they made a decent campaign with plenty of hours of gameplay and non-linear progression, and a fun-based multiplayer (like in the old games, and possibly a PVE co-op multiplayer) instead of a straight-forward ultra-competitive actions-per-second based multiplayer, the game would’ve seen more success.
Tl:Dr, warhammer players don’t want to worry about damage per second and actions per second. They want big guns, something to shoot at and a good story.
Gorb
Both vDoW and DoW II had an engaged competitive scene. And tons of people interested in game balance. One of the major complaints about DoW II was that the developers said they were focusing on 3v3 for balance, which was criticised all the way up until Retribution where they changed that balancing philosophy (and focused on 1v1 more).
I don't doubt there are players that don't care about balance and just want to have a good time. But there are also players that do, and the franchise has a history of appealing to both.
Opinion (not moderator) post.
Dandalus
100% correct. Worrying about having 1000 apm is objectively stupid. DoW1 was brilliant cause you didn't have to do 1000 apm, this is how a game should be actually. A game that needs 1000 apm to be good is a bad game.
Obviously a good game will obtain a competitive scene. But making a game competitive is paranoid.
Gorb
Then why bother patching balance? Why did Dark Crusade and Soulstorm get a lot of backlash for not having the balance support people wanted it to have? There's definitely an appetite for it, and to deny that is as foolish as ignoring the players that just want a fun time.
Decepticats
Saying vDow didn't require lots of APM is silly. Unless an RTS game is so un-engaging as to have absolutely nothing for a player to do for most of it, having a higher APM will be beneficial. This was true in DoW1, it was true in DoW2, and it was true in DoW3. You can quibble about what the minimum APM should be to be able to beat the AI. But if you're playing against other humans, you're either going to have to be smarter or faster than them to win (or both).
And speed in an RTS game is determined by APM. To pretend otherwise is to completely misunderstand the genre as a whole.
Maybe YOU didn't have to focus on APM in DoW1 because YOU didn't get matched against very good players (or just did comp stomps). But that is just what your experience was with it when it came out back in the day before most gamers understood HOW to be competitive at videogames. Ultimately, that experience is irrelevant to what it means a game "requires" to excel at it. In DoW1 there were tons of units on screen, tons of abilities, and positioning them to mitigate enemy damage while maximizing your own is essential to performing at high levels. That will require high APM.
Edit: if you are so concerned with APM, maybe you should look for games that have the S but without the RT. Because as long as there's an RT in your S, you're going to have to operate in Real-time which means APM. If you want to just take your time and have fun, play against the AI or play a turn-based strategy game instead. It's that simple.
Ololo111
vDoW was almost as bad as CoH2, Gorb.
To the very least, vehicles costed like 2x, 3x times they were in DC intially, got ridicluosly short cap and ridiculously high HP pool. I never played WA, but that very feel that hit me when I tried DC for the first time can't be forgotten - it was like 2 different games. And it were weeks or month before first updates, not months.
vDoW weren't been competitive. It was a cinematic experience with nice BGM's and refined animation on sync-kills + army painter. MP weren't been somehow populated to begin with and community.. was pretty much childish comparring with Generals or AoM ones. Temennigru is absolutely right - it was for doll-lovers and casuals, pretty much like WH:Mark of Chaos lately, which is much worse than WH: Blood Omen in terms of mechnics, despite being released close to 10 years later.
Considering vDoW2, I still remember Relic's stature - Live is to blame, not them. Personally, I had one stable disconnect per 3 games played. I couldn't even bother with balance at that time.
Lol, but the thing is - vDoW has underdeveloped macro. There wasn't been limits on T3 units initially, and there were no sense in building T1-2 ones when you got access to them.
It's just the matter of the fact - you were playing with 3-5 unit types incorporated into 10-12 controllable squads (because some workers used inf cap). The best thing you could do was to focus your squad on the enemy's single unit, because all formations are rombic.
It's not just vDoW - CoH2 and DoW2 suffers from this as well. There was and there is that ""terrible casuality counter" in CoH1, but things like Captian sniped by ATG on spawn never obligated losing streak durring for the rest of the match, because you can shift the pressure from MP to Fuel, you can invest into economy units\upgrades.
Even early wipe doesn't mean you've lost. Unlike DoW2. Because all you are doing here is "throwing templates" with abilities, because ..mm there is nothing else to do. Complicated input, normally, results in advanced régimes being formed, but, sadly, not in DoW2, so RNG and mouse-hunting decide everything. So there is only plain, degenerative even in terms of MOBA's micro. RTS'es are comparrable and Retribution's micro is surely better than vDoW's one, but the whole gameplay is still worse in a scale of hundreds when comparring it with DoW:DC.
I would agree that DoW3 is bad in it's name. They should have used something else. Mostly because it's prequel was forced up to 2 expansions, despite DC playerbase aspirations. It's all-new playerbase, and, yes, they are mostly casuals.
Relic did it themselves, so they should at least consider their previous steps.
Gorb
I didn't say it was designed to be competitive necessarily. I simply said that it was. Regardless, I disagree with anyone that attempts to categorise things as "casual" or not, because it often comes from a misplaced sense of superiority. When you start ranking the individual competitive scenes of different games on some kind of "casual" or "not casual" rating, you lose any nuance between those games at any level of play.
Ololo111
That's some terrible generalization, Gorb.
So if you happened to call one thing better than another and had the perseverance in trying to prove it, you are, most likely, an elitist?
"Casual" doesn't automatically means "worse". Video games are entertainment, too, so if you manage to pull a higher entertaining value from simplifying gameplay's basis - that an achivement on it's own.
The question here is what intially attracted people to DoW1, and I highly doubt that was competitive gameplay. It was promising in the future term, though.
Gorb
"casual" often means "worse", and is used as a cudgel online in particularly for that very reason. It not always meaning worse is either you being unaware of the context, or you not caring, or worse.
You can call whatever you want, whatever you want. But when you generalise to such an extent (and then, uh, call me out for generalising?) you're going to be open to criticism in return, yeah. I mean, exactly how "competitive" was vDoW? How are you qualifying "competitive"? Is there a metric you ascribe to? I'm not being sarcastic, you're rating these things somehow, and obviously I don't know how. But again, you used the word "childish". That's worlds apart from better or worse, and informs the tone of your post. Even if it was accidental, at least own that usage, c'mon.
The question you're posing at the end here can't be answered. It has no answer. Nobody could possibly have an answer to that. Only our biases, and how we direct them at a time fourteen years (and counting) in the past.
Besides, that was never the question. Somebody replied to me saying Relic focused on the wrong, i.e. competitive audience. With DoW III. The question was never specifically about the original reasons people were interested in v1.0 of the original Dawn of War.
Ololo111
I see a lot of games in Steam tagged as "casual", and I actually requsted help with picking a casual title myself just days ago on Reddit. I can provide you a link when this bad self of mine is falling to such tragic extents
What you are reffering to, Gorb, is only survived within a part of "4chan's" ""alt-right"" audience. It's not 2009-2013 and the battle is already lost
[1] That's why you are generalizing, Gorb. You saw me as being "one of them", while by "casual" I meant the direct opposite to "competitive", and by "doll-lovers" I meant people obsessed with painting their own armies over responding to "1v1 pro go", because it's your "casual" attitude, when you are trying to play Barbie's House in competitve mode when there is a casual one present.
The more competitive RTS is, the lesser it's tolerance to casual palyerbase (DoW3, AoA and Etherium showed that in the most descriptive way). And if you consider DoW:DC to be competitve title, then vanilla was "pre-competitve" by the reasons I already listed; if you consider vDoW "competitve", then DC is "over-competitve", though there are other titles of the time that proves that the first is the right one.
To the very least there is MMR that helps you messure competitvness, and when some SC2 gold turning into CoH2 Top-20, that's the whole story in a nutshell.
So, I thought Teminnigru's post was about how you can't kite to both casual and competitve audience, because one tends to terminate another and both need different aproaches, but Relic is somehow benting from one to another - a solid method to lose every expectation of your whole playerbase.
And, indeed, I generilised within [1] just like you did before, Gorb, but let's call this our own "biass", or rather "a positive, likely to come assumption", becasue that's what all humans normally do
Decepticats
@Ololo111 RTS games were only ever casual because games used to be played casually in general. Very few people took them seriously and played "to win." That's not the case anymore. What you're asking for is a cultural and mentality shift amongst a populace. Essentially you want time travel. It doesn't matter how casually an RTS is designed, players now will play it competitively and MAKE it competitive. Look at Grey Goo. The developers deliberately tried to make it a "Beer and pretzels" RTS, a game you could play with a beer in one hand. It didn't matter. People still played it with a competitive eye and if you weren't doing the same thing, if your APM was lower than your opponents or you weren't min-maxing your builds and upgrades, you would lose horribly.
You cannot make a competitive game casual anymore. It's not down to the game's design. It is down to the players' mentalities. Players will make any game competitive. So the best thing you can do is what Relic tried to do with DoW3, which is make the game more responsive, balanced, and exciting while adding mechanics (such as the hated Power Core mode) that help "casual" players survive long enough to actually get to do something.
Gorb
@Ololo111
There's a huge tangent about what "competitive" means, and how you're mistaking it for "skill" (in that someone competitive can be matched against non-competitive players simply by dint of not being good enough for higher-tier play). There's more in Steam's user-driven tagging system (which means the meaning of words is ascribed to the ever-shifting notion of culture, especially online). And there's a whole bunch of irony in you using "Barbie House" for someone's attempts at (a lack of) competitive play (whether or not you chose it for effect, because the whole point of these references is it often doesn't matter - only the end result). But these are all tangents.
Me generalising has nothing to do with you generalising. It's not some tit-for-tat game of point-scoring absolution, here.
The post that was made was saying that a) Relic focused on the "wrong" playerbase, and that b) DoW players aren't primarily competitive. One of these is arguable (by merits of the game's lack of success, it doesn't matter if you think Relic focused on the right or the wrong, because the results are now past us), and the other is simply, laughably not. There are plenty of competitive DoW players. Plenty of them have played the game competitively. In sponsored tournaments, some on sites that have been managed for that specific aim for years (like the ESL).
Would the game have done better if Relic had kept sync kills (despite removing through more and more across DoW II's supported lifespan)? Who knows.
Would the game have done better if Relic had included Chaos instead of . . . Orks? Eldar? I don't know. The factions were designed and implemented to the extent they were at launch for various evident reasons, sadly, often all people see are the raw numbers. Much like the endless quibbling over the specific number of squads per faction in DoW II compared to vDoW. There wasn't much nuance in the depth of mechanical play, it was "this number is less than this number, and that is therefore bad". It wasn't a healthy discussion overall, though of course there were positive discussions within that whole time and place.
It's the same attitude here, and for all my disagreement it's an important attitude to recognise. Some people are going to be unhappy with less choices, regardless of how good those choices could be argued to be. So, who knows.
Would the game have done better if everything had a minimum of half a second of delay, unit abilities were differentiated solely by one of five or more vaguely-different floating circles around the base of unit models, and you sometimes couldn't tell the difference between (importantly) different ammunition-based abilities? This one's less arguable I feel, and I'm stacking the examples there in my favour, hah
The end result was the message; that Relic were "simplifying" DoW III. I'd say making it cleaner, but again, optics.
Relic never shifted its focus, you see. Relic has always considered the competitive, or the driven. There were some exceptionally-skilled players and modders back in the early days, that went on to have successful careers at Relic. Directly from that skillset. stefanhaines was a high-level vDoW player. An unnamed modder (that I personally can't remember) who worked on a Necron mod for Winter Assault. Hired going into Dark Crusade. The studio has often gone about it in different ways, for better and for worse (in terms of reception, and public favour). But they've always tried to give the players the best of both worlds. Sometimes one side has received more focus than the other (Single Player in vDoW II, for example). But these kinds of far-fetched assumptions about Relic focusing on the competitive at the expense of those more interested in different kinds of gameplay? These assumptions aren't supported by the evident reality of history. Not the here, not the now, not the arguable. Things that have categorically happened.