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Real talk about doctrines and elites @relic
Strangequark
I just want to share this because its something I've been working on in my free time, and as long as you understand it comes from a place of opinion, but also from a vast wealth of RTS experience from the player side. IE dev's have more data than I can get my grubby little mitts on so take it with a grain of salt.
Lets see if we can't add a bit of complexity to gameplay, while at the same time streamlining overly complex existing pieces as far as the doctrines and elites are concerned. Some of this is going to be brutally honest, but it will be professional and always be with the best interest for the game, and community at heart.
Current elite doctrine set up seems like its been a bit of a pain to balance, essentially players having to pick the better performing ones in MP to make sure they stay as competitive as possible. Having elites and doctrines behind a grind wall can have a tendency to alienate new players, as they won't have the same punch in MP as someone who's been playing and grinding and has access to all of those goodies. I'm guessing the idea for this was to have a reward system that makes the player feel accomplished for their unlocks, but in practice it definitely feels more like a forced chore to stay competitive with everyone else. Video game busy work essentially.
The base building from my own experience feels pretty shallow, with the only real tech options being to push yourself through the tiers, a handful of unit upgrades, and then the force wide upgrades that deal with infantry/vehicle respectively. Forward base positioning is still a tactical choice, and I think its a good mechanic, but the overall system feels really bare bones.
So lets see if I can't at least give you some ideas at killing those 2 birds with 1 stone.
First, lets unlock all the doctrines. It would be one thing if they had parallel buffs, changes to units that had a small buff, but a drawback elsewhere. A good example of this is Solaria's doctrine where you are trading mobility for damage. They aren't all like that though, quite a few are just straight up buffs that make you take them because of how they perform, others don't perform at all. Were going to stick all those doctrines somewhere now that they are all unlocked don't worry.
Where to put those doctrines, well they can shore up how weak the base building feels right now. This fixes a few things in my opinion. Removing doctrines as a choice at the start of the game, all of them. It feels like a game of rock paper scissors at the start, though with the current state of doctrines, its more like rock paper shotgun. I also feel that it telegraphs way to much information to the opponent you are playing, as well as giving you too much info on them. You can see exactly what they are going to try to accomplish in the game unit wise before the match even starts. It's anticlimactic, and makes the matches feel boring to me. Surprises are rare in this game, at least on the ladder. Because of how doctrines currently perform as well, it makes adapting during the match feel clunky. You can't change your doctrine mid match, you picked it before you saw who you were playing, and now you are stuck, and using units without any doctrines makes them feel weak in comparison to those that do have doctrines.
So lets add 3 more buildings for each race, 1 for each tier. They don't need to be super expensive, were only sticking the doctrines into them, and the doctrines are going to have their own requisition prices. Buildings shouldn't be super tanky either considering how I envision counter play. Now this does a few things, cause I see a lot of complaints about early game. In numerous forms actually. Super heavy spam with regular units being an issue with the resource rate bump, doctrines making units in the early game a pain to deal with (Improved WWG in Tier 1, or tireless tacticals and slow death on marines) So with an extra resource sink especially early game you can help balance that heavy unit spam against tech. You don't take the spam play away, you've just now made it punishable by a player choosing to go defensive and tech up. Since now at the start of the game, all units are bare bones, no doctrines, no buffs, and those are now choices you make in game with requisition.
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Strangequark
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4. Each tier building should be required to move up to the next tier, and each one should be price adjusted to fit into the portion of the game, just basically a steadily rising price the higher tier you go. All of the doctrines should be split up into the different phases of the game, so you could give Eldar back their Tier 1 WWG teleport, by putting it into their tier 1 doctrine building, and balancing the map presence it gives with mobility, with cost for the doctrine itself. Now the eldar player doesn't just get early game presence for free right from the get go, but has to make the choice to balance that against how many units he wants to put on the map. In this system it's basically removing doctrines from the early portion of the game where they feel like balance is hardest, and gives you the developers different options to balance each doctrine. Either by moving the tier building they appear in, requisition cost to purchase, and of course with the actual changes in the doctrine itself. It lets the player choose how he wants to play his army right there, shaping it as the match evolves and allows for a much smoother feel for adapting to your opponents style of play.
On to the Elites. I said earlier I'm not a huge fan on how you pick your stuff at the start, so lets move them into those same buildings with the doctrines. This one is easy as their point system basically separates the different units into their own tiers, tier 1 giving you 2-4 point elites, tier 2 giving 5-7, and tier 3 hitting the 8-10. They would still cost elite points, we're just moving where you get them from, and giving you the choice in game to pick which ones you want, with a cap of 3, and they no longer carry doctrines with them. The doctrines themselves, you get 2 per building, giving you the total of 6 like you had before with the 3 army doctrines and the 3 elite doctrines that your elite choice came with. Each tech building would have all the doctrines for that tier available, you'd just be limited to picking up 2 that lock in for the rest of the match.
Counter play is a bit trickier, as this system elevates information as a resource and the current power core mode is a bit stingy when it comes to how close you can get to someones HQ to peek at their doctrine buildings. The buildings themselves when an elite or doctrine is being built or purchased, should have an icon above that building showing whats being researched, or if the player is in sight of it, a quick mouse click would reveal what they were choosing and building. With the turrets, and the doctrines being in buildings it would be hard to really sneak a unit in there to do enough damage to blow the building up before the doctrine was finished, but more and more possible the longer the match goes on and units get stronger and stronger. However getting a peek at the path of tech they are taking, or even how much tech they are taking can give a good player an advantage with that info, but not a huge one since DoW 3 has way more soft counters, than outright direct hard counters.
Strangequark
That's pretty much it so far, I haven't really toyed around with req costs or timing, or dividing the doctrines up into tiers yet because honestly I need a bit more data I think to reliably put them into places where they feel solid but not cheap or gimmicky in their timing. It brings 3 more buildings per each race, adds tech choices in all stages of the game without actually messing too much with how the doctrines and elites work, just how they get implemented. While at the same time making the building system feel much more robust, but not confusing and giving the player the freedom to adjust how he plays during the match, instead of rolling the dice at the start.
Larkis
Maybe you should make a summarize at the end where you put the important changes in easy readable form. When i first read it i really missed the part about the cap. For my taste there is alittle bit to much explanation and justifying so somebode could easily miss important informations.
Just an idea.
I think this would be a good idea.
Alchemist13
This is what I think relic should do with Dow 3
Relic pick one of there games the can either go the doW2 route or DoW1 route, instead of trying to please both player bases and in results displeasing everyone. So they definitely need to pick which game they want to follow and just abandon this idea of dow3.
It can be fixed tho, they just have to decide what they want to with this game either make it more like doW2 or Dow 1( my vote is for 2). just add to the doW2 formula for example, add wargear, add leveling system for elites and units, add skill trees for elites, tone down the elites and super abilities so they are not so overpowered, made base building better, a, fix cover system, bring back sync kills, and get rid of doctrine system, more game modes, and maps. They could also Add a Conquest and last stand mode to the game to help bring people back, then throw In 2 races into a expansion pack with a fleshed out dow 2 style campaign where you play as one of the new races (my vote would be get to play as the necrons or chaos and go on quests, and eventually gather a army to kill Gabriel angelos). That would fix the game and bring people back, I garutee it, I just doubt Sega will keep funding the game for relic to be able to do all that tho.
Strangequark
I get that Larkis, but this is for the devs which is why there is so much info as to why I'd swap the doctrine elite system into this. They have to see the why and the how and the reasons behind the decisions outside of "I'm not a fan of the current system" They have to see it comes from decades of experience playing RTS games from numerous studios and publishers at high levels of competitive play, but still understanding that too much complexity takes away more than it adds. It's not meant for the players, that's why I put it in the suggestion feedback section, and not general discussion.
Larkis
i dont say that you should skip the explanations. I just said it is easier to read to have a small abstract at the start so everybody has the idea what you wantet and after that you cozld bring your explanation textwall.
Strangequark
I did, its just at the very end in a separate post. I mean, that's where they go right?
noun, plural summaries.
1.a comprehensive and usually brief abstract, recapitulation, or compendium of previously stated facts or statements.
ShakerGER
First of all nobody needs those useless sync kill. Then go play DoW 2. Why copy a game that already exist and nobody plays? If I would be a developer I would always doubt ALL of my communites suggestions if it fells like 80% is proposing completely inebt ideas like this... It's fine that you think about improving DoW III but please stop thinking about reviving DoW 2. (Which is not worth it in my opinion)
Alchemist13
@ShakerGER
because that is what you when you make a sequel to a game, you try to build upon your previous games and look at what does work and what doesn't, a lot of people did play the first two dow games, hell more people still play those 10+ years old games then Dow 3 today. Dow 2 was decently popular back the day so why wouldn't they go back to a formula that worked before?
How are my ideas inebt? there not even that difficult to add the things I mentioned or change, and my ideas are just a valid as yours, if you even had any ideas, but I see you are to busy being a relic fanboy, you clearly have no clue what your even talking about do you?
I am sure that is what Sega will make relic do with this game or there next game after seeing this failure of game.
Strangequark
Hey, take your argument out of this thread, I don't want it cluttered with a bunch of nonsense or ego's.
@Alchemist13
@ShakerGER
CourtJester
You happen to see my posts about my suggestions for doctrines and elites? You might find something in that that you agree with. If not, Ill see if I can find it and i'll C/P it here.
CANNED_F3TUS
Really like what i was reading. But how would this work for orks the waaagh banner is their tier building
Strangequark
Well that's the thing, they all have tier buildings now they just get 1 extra per tier to build. The buildings themselves should be cheap since the doctrines will have a cost. I don't play orks that often so actually naming the buildings I'm kinda stumped on, but say like "Orkimedese build-a-plan" It's not removing the existing tier buildings, just adding 3 more one per tier.
CANNED_F3TUS
Aaag. Ok makes sense. If relic did this they would definantly add an extra layer to base building.
DaDokisinX
So I read this, (unfortunately I this means I gotta Revive this post..) and basically you just assume that certain new elements in this game, like lack of base building and elite system, is inherently bad. Again I'm pretty sure this is jsut your subjective opinion of what YOU find fun about an RTS. I personally do not enjoy base building that much.
You criticize the skull system.. this may make sense if it was set up like LoL but its not. Not only does Relic give you enough to play with when you log on, but getting new skulls is VERY easy. I have more than I'll ever need, and I got to this point after like 40 hours of playing. Finishing the campaign will also give you basically all the skulls you need to play the game.
Asking Relic to redesign their entire game to fit what YOU would personally find fun is a fantastic waste of resources as well. I don't really see an argument as to why the game is objectively not fun, not complicated, and inherently imbalanced.
Strangequark
You are still assuming an awful lot, and I'll just leave it at that.
Robomate
Man this is a huge chunk of text to go through might come at this in parts or edit later
First part i agree some are just straight up buffs with no drawbacks , disagree on unlocking everything though because if you're implying that some are useless then why would you need everything unlocked if half of the selection aren't usable
I thought the whole idea behind this to make mirror matches different to help create different tactics, obviously didn't work as well as intended due to balancing issues perhaps relic might be better off going back to preset abilities
Also it punishes you for investing so much into one unit eg all banshee doctrines can be countered with a flamer
Most team games are usually people rushing to tier 3 to spam vehicles so more researching then again you'd run into people only using certain tech/research because of how strong they'd be
I already struggle in games when the enemy just keeps producing more units which seem to be just as effective or even better as me having smaller squad but with health&damage tech researched
HOWEVER i would like STEALTH doctrines to be removed and introduced as buffs and stuff for research as i think they'd be too hard to balance and simply can be countered by an 50 req unit or objectives with their stealth detection