A sort of rescue plan

luxex · September 2017

yes, this is one of those "my great idea to save the game" posts.

I really like DOW3. It is a good game, with some area for improvment, but my feelings do not really count here.

Community wants more races, but this ain't gonna happen without bigger potential DLC-buyer-base.

How do we get bigger playerbase, when 50% discount didn't work?

We put it in humble monthly.

Many people have those subscribed and many will give any "premium" sounding game a chance.
And it isn't unusual for good games not that long after premiere to go on humble monthly. (TWWH for example)

what do you guys think about this solution proposal?

Jazz_Sandwich · September 2017

I think that will help but I feel that the biggest issue is more fundamental to the game itself. Thousands bought the game but a small minority are actually still playing it. Player retention simply isn't there - even if even a thousand more people buy the game, how many of those can we expect to stay playing?

Ololo111 · September 2017

You might as well put it on -75% on Steam, if you're concerned about playerbase, because it supports local pricing. Personally, I know one chinese guy from CoH2 that wishlisted it since Aprill, but hadn't bought when it was at -50%.

But, actually, yes, HB would be better. Base CoH2 is 4,99 USD right now anyway and I would bet there is an avalanche of CoH1's on keystores. So, they can go for 20$ = - 67% somewhere close to November (they clearly need to wait at least 6 months).

That's my thouhghts.

Again, nothing had been done about Skulls. It would be good to stop their emission, so the first buyers would have got at least some sort of "honorary trophey", the thing that proves their dedication to the game early.

Ace40k · September 2017

in an emergency case, Relic should think about releasing a free2play version of DoWIII. without campaign, without army painter, without replay viewer. only multiplayer and only one race to play (chosen by the game for you). this way, it will increase the online population significantly and people who enjoy the game have an easier time to spend money on it. this could be the second revival of the game we've been hoping for since release

Fww · September 2017

Sure they can sell more copies with sales but thing is that no one want to play multiplayer and this mean that people will drop the game after playing for 10-15 hours.

jambai · September 2017

So your rescue plan is to make the game cheaper? You aren't aware that the game has lost 90% of it's player base already - in other words people don't like the game at all?

Draconix · September 2017

@jambai said:
So your rescue plan is to make the game cheaper? You aren't aware that the game has lost 90% of it's player base already - in other words people don't like the game at all?

I like the game just like other RTS. But its sad to me that the game seems to be abandoned. As for playerbase, I wouldn't call this game dead, but rather unpopular.

jambai · September 2017

@Draconix said:

@jambai said:
So your rescue plan is to make the game cheaper? You aren't aware that the game has lost 90% of it's player base already - in other words people don't like the game at all?

I like the game just like other RTS. But its sad to me that the game seems to be abandoned. As for playerbase, I wouldn't call this game dead, but rather unpopular.

I've never said/perceived the game as dead, even DoW 1 and 2 aren't dead technically (and have similar player base).
Not sure if I'm sad though. I still cannot make up my mind of what were they thinking in designing this game.
Ride along the MOBA wave and pissing on the face of the fan base or just another very different take on WH40K RTS.

deadman · September 2017

Some games die for a reason.

RaidenX · September 2017

@Jazz_Sandwich said:
I think that will help but I feel that the biggest issue is more fundamental to the game itself. Thousands bought the game but a small minority are actually still playing it. Player retention simply isn't there - even if even a thousand more people buy the game, how many of those can we expect to stay playing?

Player retention isn't there because of mind boggling decisions made by the developers. The game is on its face interesting but its riddled with anti fun properties. Units die too quickly, there are too many of them to micro properly, orbital abilities that delete whole armies for no reason, and unbalanced races and months that pass by with nothing changing. What is there to fight for at this point besides for the most hardcore DOW fans? There's just nothing here of value.

Draconix · September 2017

@RaidenX said:

@Jazz_Sandwich said:
I think that will help but I feel that the biggest issue is more fundamental to the game itself. Thousands bought the game but a small minority are actually still playing it. Player retention simply isn't there - even if even a thousand more people buy the game, how many of those can we expect to stay playing?

Player retention isn't there because of mind boggling decisions made by the developers. The game is on its face interesting but its riddled with anti fun properties. Units die too quickly, there are too many of them to micro properly, orbital abilities that delete whole armies for no reason, and unbalanced races and months that pass by with nothing changing. What is there to fight for at this point besides for the most hardcore DOW fans? There's just nothing here of value.

Don't care what dissapointed fans say about Dow3, I'm enjoying. Of course that game didn't lived for everyone expectations, but hey, if there are rises for franchises, then should be also falls.

Yes its sad that the game seems abandoned, but who knows? Relic is still active despite others doomsaying about its closure with Dow3.

Overall, for what is Dow3 for someoneactually lies in his tastes. I understand that you didn't like this game, but there are still people who are enjoying this game, even if it is a handfull, like me for example. If I want, I will gladly play this game for hundreds of hours.

RaidenX · September 2017

@Draconix said:

@RaidenX said:

@Jazz_Sandwich said:
I think that will help but I feel that the biggest issue is more fundamental to the game itself. Thousands bought the game but a small minority are actually still playing it. Player retention simply isn't there - even if even a thousand more people buy the game, how many of those can we expect to stay playing?

Player retention isn't there because of mind boggling decisions made by the developers. The game is on its face interesting but its riddled with anti fun properties. Units die too quickly, there are too many of them to micro properly, orbital abilities that delete whole armies for no reason, and unbalanced races and months that pass by with nothing changing. What is there to fight for at this point besides for the most hardcore DOW fans? There's just nothing here of value.

Don't care what dissapointed fans say about Dow3, I'm enjoying. Of course that game didn't lived for everyone expectations, but hey, if there are rises for franchises, then should be also falls.

Yes its sad that the game seems abandoned, but who knows? Relic is still active despite others doomsaying about its closure with Dow3.

Overall, for what is Dow3 for someoneactually lies in his tastes. I understand that you didn't like this game, but there are still people who are enjoying this game, even if it is a handfull, like me for example. If I want, I will gladly play this game for hundreds of hours.

Hey man I'm genuinely happy that you and other individuals are enjoying the game but a long and healthy lifecycle requires more than just onsies and twosies for enjoying the product. I've been dying for a good RTS but DOW 3 just doesn't satisfy it. The game has no mass appeal because it is far too complex, micro-intensive, and new players absolutely get ++heresy redacted++-blasted until they learn you have to pick and play the flavor of the month to do anything here. DOW 3's schtick was bigger battles. Why? So people could have even less time to enjoy the graphics of the game and the models? And then it also brought base building back which is good but does not mesh with the bigger battles theme.

It's not just that I didn't like this game, it's that it isn't a fun game at all or Relic would have an actual player base. It's not even really that I don't -like- this game, because as a sum of its parts -I should-. Its got DOW universe, RTS, hero-units, everything I want in a game but it's so horribly executed.

Better luck next time, Relic. That's all I can say.

Guziol · September 2017

Add 2 new factions and make it so you can play the game for free but only multiplayer and only space marines. Pay up and you get everything else. Maybe try out a faction for a day if you pay a crazy amount of skulls for it.

Codex_Astartes · September 2017

I was going to create a topic but here's my 2 cents; like it or not this game abandoned relic style dows (squads, more customizations, armor and dmg types to finely tune the balance instead of raw hp-dmg buff and nerfs, cover, lack of unit upgrades and lack of unit weapon additions that came with an upgrade)

Might be sad for most people might be a blessing for people who were kinda bored with sc2 but imo the game's MAIN problem is the lack of advertisement and the lack of ads from playerbase AKA word of mouth.

My point is; this game has thousands of potential players but it cannot reach them. Why? Well, first of all the change of the game style and art was the catalyst. This created a warphole as you'd imagine, most fans hated it, felt betrayed BUT this was NOT the downfall of the game.

1) RTSers are gamers that like to gather,produce,position,execute so playing a game involves many thought processes.

-Chat. ALL KINDS O' CHAT lobbies are MANDATORY, people should be able to communicate, small talk, get to know each other, boast, whatever.
-Observer mode for ranked-public (coh2). LEARNING. especially for people with ladder anxiety

2) The incentive. When playing a game the aim is usually having fun, getting excited. If the game does not provide this (due to the abandonement from dow2 mechanics i presume) then owners of the game tend to find a "placeholder" incentive to get full utility from their purchase: AKA the reason for grinds, money sink etc.

-The grind is a wise decision for skins. But the problem is that it ENDS. This game needs a marketplace that costs -No microtransactions -No balance affecting changes and with such a content flow that only a diligent player would be able to buy all of them.

-The FREE SKINS was a mistake. The real gift would have been, giving people their placeholder incentives providing an aim for your customers and making the game more like a "dow" game

-The marketplace should also have rewards for multiple types of players eg: compstompers,ladder lovers, annihilation lovers

-Skins for skulls sure good but what else? The variety or even the illusion of it attracts players. There are many achievement whores like me. Think about extending reward pool (faceplates maybe) (no pets oh the emperor no!) more portraits, player badges ALL FOR SKULLS. Hmm skull throne portrait/faceplate for 1k skulls? Not a bad idea.

In the mean time bring back the dow mechanics even fragments of it with the community so that people can see that you care and the game is not abandoned for AoE4

Stoner · September 2017

Have to agree with some posters above, making this game to sell more won't help one bit. It sold approximately 250k copies (maybe more at this point) and we have only ~800 online pop, that's crazy. Big discounts, going F2P or anything like this won't save this game and won't increase playerbase one bit. Sure there's lack of content, QoL and and still some bugs, but that's least problematic, the main issue is gameplay itself. As has been stated billion times already - simply not fun, something is very wrong with it, although core system is there and it's solid.

Recently Torn Banner studios gave away their latest game called Mirage: Arcane Warfare for free for one day because it literally didn't have playerbase, and after giveaway they dropped price almost to the floor to form some community around it. I have spent quite a lot of time with their Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. It has very broken gameplay system, there are LOTS of exploits, some annoying bugs, several years after release it still wasn't polished well enough, but rarely I keep coming back to it and it always had and still has enough players to find match quickly despite all the shortcomings. I grabbed Mirage for free just to check out what it is. Visuals are pretty good but style is too cartoonish, it's pretty much the same how DOW III feels. Gameplay surprisingly is way more polished than Chivalry, most exploits are gone, but it's just too chaotic and messy, though I had no problem keeping in top 5 in most matches, it gets boring real quick. After 2-3 days of play I have literally 0 desire to come back and play more. In first day of giveaway, playerbase raised by some ~20k players, on day 2 it dropped to ~3000 while, again - game was FREE. Although gameplay is pretty much fine, nothing is really broken, it just simply isn't fun enough, not engaging enough and game itself has no spirit of its own, no agenda, while Chivalry has all that with way more broken gameplay.

I think it could be somewhat demonstrative example in relation to DOW III and how different distribution models may affect (or rather not) this game and it's community. I still believe gameplay itself needs radical changes to be fun, this may bring back players who already bought it and most importantly keep them around.

Ololo111 · September 2017

@Stoner said:
Have to agree with some posters above, making this game to sell more won't help one bit. It sold approximately 250k copies (maybe more at this point) and we have only ~800 online pop, that's crazy. Big discounts, going F2P or anything like this won't save this game and won't increase playerbase one bit. Sure there's lack of content, QoL and and still some bugs, but that's least problematic, the main issue is gameplay itself. As has been stated billion times already - simply not fun, something is very wrong with it, although core system is there and it's solid.

Recently Torn Banner studios gave away their latest game called Mirage: Arcane Warfare for free for one day because it literally didn't have playerbase, and after giveaway they dropped price almost to the floor to form some community around it. I have spent quite a lot of time with their Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. It has very broken gameplay system, there are LOTS of exploits, some annoying bugs, several years after release it still wasn't polished well enough, but rarely I keep coming back to it and it always had and still has enough players to find match quickly despite all the shortcomings. I grabbed Mirage for free just to check out what it is. Visuals are pretty good but style is too cartoonish, it's pretty much the same how DOW III feels. Gameplay surprisingly is way more polished than Chivalry, most exploits are gone, but it's just too chaotic and messy, though I had no problem keeping in top 5 in most matches, it gets boring real quick. After 2-3 days of play I have literally 0 desire to come back and play more. In first day of giveaway, playerbase raised by some ~20k players, on day 2 it dropped to ~3000 while, again - game was FREE. Although gameplay is pretty much fine, nothing is really broken, it just simply isn't fun enough, not engaging enough and game itself has no spirit of its own, no agenda, while Chivalry has all that with way more broken gameplay.

I think it could be somewhat demonstrative example in relation to DOW III and how different distribution models may affect (or rather not) this game and it's community. I still believe gameplay itself needs radical changes to be fun, this may bring back players who already bought it and most importantly keep them around.

I guess, you're missing how younger people precieve this world. It's not a set of properties for them, what make things worthy, but the single monolith "cool". What I play (CoH2) is cool. What I own (DoW3) might be just as cool for this very reason. This game needs some tardy fans to counter tardiest detractors.

Mirage is 3D-action and you got Lots of them these days sound and living. Any RTS'es with >800 players\day? CoH2 and SC2 only.

Ololo111 · September 2017

By the way, Petroglyph, 8 bit developers, made every thing possible for their product, like releasing it in parts and calling them "independent games", making "arena" version with MP-only then F2P one with weekly race rotation... and it's just as popular as it was.

So, it's not just DoW3. It's RTS as whole. Devs\publishers need to come up with some really crazy ideas to sell their games in this age, like bundling some Macha's dakimakuras to the deal (Ecchi style, 'f course).

On a serious note, I can't name you exact numbers, but many people remembered CoH2's launch and might've got deterred with initial reception of DoW3. So, they might want to play it in a prolonged period, but it's only natural to wait for a sale right now (pretty much, before getting in open beta, I have in plans to remind Relic things like broken HW\MG42 teams on attack-move, clamping, de-syncs and many others, so basically I've pre-ordered DoW3 to leave a negative review initially). Noone wants to be an alpha-tester for a full-price when you can get the game better and cheaper with just a bit of waiting (Relic\Sega brought it themselves - that what extensive sales do with your future projects). So, the sale might actually have a target audience, just like demo prior release might had.

CANNED_F3TUS · September 2017

@WorlockOrk said:
Lets talk about DoW 4 !!!!

Talking about a game that may or may not come and if anything in 5 years is not interesting. We got DoW 3 to focus on.

Stoner · September 2017

@Ololo111
I think DOW III has enough tardy fans already, why would it need more? We need players, not tardy fans btw. And selling Macha's dakimakuras definitely isn't crazy enough, but Gorgutz one might just work.

On 3D action argument, I don't think it's really that relevant here. I was mainly highlighting parallels between newer game an the old one showing why new is less successful than the old in the same genre borders, with small references to DOW III. I think it's at least distantly similar situation. And seriously, painting majority of playerbase of that game as potential turds isn't going to get us anywhere. That's one of the main mistakes of DOW III design path IMO, because I believe chunk of players who are interested in Dawn of War were looking for something completely different from modern oh so trendy titles.

Martin · September 2017

^^ insightful for gorgutz dakimakura, relic needs to know about this.

jonoliveira12 · September 2017

Why would anyone want Macha dakimakuras, when you have Taldeer?

Maybe a Isha dakimakura.

jonoliveira12 · September 2017

@WorlockOrk said:

@CANNED_F3TUS said:

@WorlockOrk said:
Lets talk about DoW 4 !!!!

Talking about a game that may or may not come and if anything in 5 years is not interesting. We got DoW 3 to focus on.

Didin't we said everything since 3 last months ? Sometimes there is no point in poking rotten corpse anymore ; )

Only rotten corpse here, is this post.

frumpylumps · September 2017

Maps are complete ++heresy redacted++ up and it really is astonishing they haven't attempted to balance or change them. More evidence that this balance team is garbage and overly reliant on our biased forums and popular casters for feedback.

Ololo111 · September 2017

@jonoliveira12 said:
Why would anyone want Macha dakimakuras, when you have Taldeer?

Maybe a Isha dakimakura.

I guess, it's well known that in non-harem settings protagonist should have a heroine and a manoeuvre girl related to him. When Taldeer got to her unremovable battle suit, she distanced herself away from the main pairing - what a good sortie should have done and did.

Considering Macha: she's making for a perfect yandere girl chasing protagonist for years since they've met - just enough of the plot for 1-cour series, at least. Incidentaly, Relic might design Angelos hammer stunt having this in mind. Just imagine: yandere heroine and her Mecha-wielding acquitance are chasing protagonist with the finishing move finishing all WH40K fans around before he even starts it. Yeah, by the way he's a Chapter Commander riding a BIG ship and destroying ancient relics.

The only missing feature is highschool right now. Oh, oh, but I've already got a side story for Gorgutz ready up: he was a scrawny little ork in Choppa's High and bigger boyz always bullied him, untill..

Well, ok, ok, I need to stop.

By the way, by the way, Nurgle could have been a fat yaoi girl spreading her BL contagion to the real world and Slaanesh just as well may be a cute trap testing protagonist heterosexuality each and every time they've met (too cute to be a real world trap, which would make for another twist in the plot).

jonoliveira12 · September 2017

@Ololo111 said:

@jonoliveira12 said:
Why would anyone want Macha dakimakuras, when you have Taldeer?

Maybe a Isha dakimakura.

I guess, it's well known that in non-harem settings protagonist should have a heroine and a manoeuvre girl related to him. When Taldeer got to her unremovable battle suit, she distanced herself away from the main pairing - what a good sortie should have done and did.

Considering Macha: she's making for a perfect yandere girl chasing protagonist for years since they've met - just enough of the plot for 1-cour series, at least. Incidentaly, Relic might design Angelos hammer stunt having this in mind. Just imagine: yandere heroine and her Mecha-wielding acquitance are chasing protagonist with the finishing move finishing all WH40K fans around before he even starts it. Yeah, by the way he's a Chapter Commander riding a BIG ship and destroying ancient relics.

The only missing feature is highschool right now. Oh, oh, but I've already got a side story for Gorgutz ready up: he was a scrawny little ork in Choppa's High and bigger boyz always bullied him, untill..

Well, ok, ok, I need to stop.

By the way, by the way, Nurgle could have been a fat yaoi girl spreading her BL contagion to the real world and Slaanesh just as well may be a cute trap testing protagonist heterosexuality each and every time they've met (too cute to be a real world trap, which would make for another twist in the plot).

Nonsense!
Taldeer best girl!

A sort of rescue plan

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