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The Design Analysis of DoW3.
AmalurLegend
The Design Analysis of DoW3.
Part I - Core rules：
I. The Comprehensive Balance Structure - including 1 vs 1 ~ 3 vs 3, all factions and all elite units combinations.
II. Active Driven gameplay style.
III. More Back and Forth situations.
IV. High Accessibility to players.
V. The Clear Progress of gameplay.
VI. For the E-Sport Climax.
Part II - Analysis
I. Why does Relic add the "Power Core" mode in DoW3?
[I] Reasons：
A. Because the VP mode will cause a "Defensive" gameplay style and they don't want the meta get fixed on the style.
B. The W40k universe does give people more Aggressive Feeling, so they want to make it in DoW3.
C. The Annihilation mode will cause the game become "Too Long", because at High Level, players are good at hiding buildings.
D. The Destroy HQ mode will cause some issue in 3 vs 3 mode. There are 3 HQ and it's hard to destroy 3 HQ at once and players can repair their HQ, so it will make the game become "Too Long".
[II] Status for now.
A. Power Core can become "Invincible" for a short time and costs some Req and Pow and has 300 seconds cool down time.
B. Power Core can restore HP very very very slowly when it's not under attack.
II. Why does Relic add the "Shield Generator" and "Turret"?
[I] Because if there is just a "Power Core" need to destroy and then it will have a problem in 3 vs 3 mode. The problem is that is very easy to let players get killed by All In strategy. So, they have to add the "Turret" to deal with this problem.
[II] Why does Relic add "Shield Generator", too?
Because they still want to keep the possibility of All In strategy to make different game pace.
And then there is a problem：if they make the "Turret" too strong and then it will reduce the possibility of All In strategy and the other side, if they make "Turret" too weak and then it will increase the possibility of All In strategy.
So, they decide to add another "Turret" on the map and there comes the similar problem.
And then, they decide to change the "Turret" into "Shield Generator" to keep strategy balance. With the "Shield Generator", the Defender has some buffer to delay the "Attack", but not for a long time and if the Attacker does success to destroy the "Shield Generator" and then he can get Bonus to increase his advantage.
[III] The Status for now.
I think both of "Shield Generator" and "Turret" are Double-edged sword, because those do help players at some aspect, but if players can not protect them well and then they will reward the rival some advantage to against you.
III. About the "Rush" strategy.
[I] There are several conditions for the "Rush" strategy in 1 vs 1 map.
A. The whole map is small and it's about 5 screen width.
B. The HP of Target Buildings are Low within 10 minutes.
C. The "Turret" are not quite powerful. Its damage is medium, but it's attack speed is slow and damage area is narrow.
D. The Damage of unit is high in DoW3. It's kind of like those in SC2.
E. Players can build their buildings at front line.
F. There is a return resource system of Escalation Phase.
G. If players destroy the "Shield Generator" and "Turret" and then they can get reward.
H. The "Turret" can not cover the "Shield Generator" much and can not cover the "Power Core".
I. The map design makes the "Lane Support" a little bit hard. I mean my soldiers went from Mid-Lane to Top Lane/Button Lane to support.
J. The Early "Rush" Build of Elite Unit combination.
IV. The Clear Progress of gameplay.
[I] It's not only the "Power Core", "Shield Generator" and "Turret" help the Clear Progress of gameplay but also the "Escalation Phase" does help it, too.
[II] The "Escalation Phase" does remind players, if you want to rush and then you had better to do it before 10 min and if players want a late game and then they have to hand on til 20 min.
V. High Accessibility to players.
[I] With the help of The Clear Progress of gameplay, players can more easily to know what they should do now and to plan his Strategies of every Escalation Phase.
VI. For the E-Sport Climax.
[I] To the TV show Broadcasters, there are more concrete objectives to report to audience. For example, player A's "Power Core" is going down and could player A hold on this wave?
Part III - My thought.
Clearly, Relic does do a lot of work about how to create their next RTS game and they really do it.
Thanks for reading.
Comments
MrBenis
But is the game any good?
AmalurLegend
From Game design aspect, there are a lot of good design those I mentioned above.
Dawn of War 3 has a Fantasy Art style, an Acceptable System requirement, and Solid Gameplay Structure and they have done well on it.
Further more Relic does want to take care every type of player.
First, Relic does seriously care about the balance about 3 vs 3 and 2 vs 2 and not just 1 vs 1. They know that a player play a game with other players will have "More" fun and less stress and it can keep players playing RTS games longer, so this time they are really serious on it.
Secondly, If players just want to fight with AI and then they prepare the Daily Missions for them to encourage them for play different factions and styles.
Thirdly, Relic designs a Reward Progression System to keep players have the motivation to play the game by giving "Skulls" after every match and players can use those "Skulls" to unlock "New Elite Unit", "New Skin" and "New Decoration". Besides, Relic does design a Character Progression System to encourage players to use different Elite Units and then they can level up and then players can unlock "Skulls", "Avatar" and "Skin". And Relic does design the Customize-able Doctrine System, to let players have more style to play.
Finally, I do admire Relic does have the courage the make the change with the fashion in their game.
Incitatus
Very good post!
How do you feel about the map size? I really wish the maps had more/less restrictive movement between lanes or at the very least another corridor around the map for moving to allow for more flanking of them main objective at the cost of time. A map could have either and that would make the games a bit more dynamic.
Hopefully we get a map edditor sooner rather than later that way we can really explore the potential of maps for this game.
Toddster
Great post! I've never been right into MOBAs but I'm confident DoW3 will mix RTS/MOBA genres quite well. Already pre-ordered!
AmalurLegend
I give some pictures for you to let you compare the size between different maps.
1 vs 1 map
2 vs 2 map
3 vs 3 map
And I give you some pictures to see how small the 1 vs 1 map is.
So, the design does make players to support those 3 Middle Resource Points more quickly, but make players to support the "Shield Generator" take more time when their army are outside.
For now, this 2 vs 2 map has more room for more Flanking Enemy and Flanking Objective.
Thanks for reading.
AmalurLegend
The Change of Resource System.
[I] For now, players have to Destroy the Listening Post and All add on and then they can capture the Resource Point.
It means, in DoW 2, players can just destroy the "Listening Post" and then Grasp rival's add on, but in DoW 3, players can not do it.
[II] Every point generate Req and Pow.
[III] Those add on take a long cool down time and build time - 60 seconds.
Thanks for reading.
Creature
Thanks for this. I was thinking about creating a similar post, but don't have the patience to organize it and include pictures and such.
Ventulus
As long as the maps are varied and its not essentially the same map again and again I think its fine. Bigger maps and smaller maps all have their place. I'm hoping that they cycle maps in and out of the ladder pool similar to how starcraft does.