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Do you think Relic ought to have titled DoW 3 as an offshoot?
2 years ago
hastings
Maybe something like "Dawn of War: Warriors", or even "Dawn of Warriors". Indicating upfront that it's an offshoot, not a successor to the main line.
Do you think it would have been better received that way?
Longtime fans might still grumble about the direction the company is taking, but they wouldn't criticize the game itself.
And Relic could still promise a main line successor in the future.
What do you guys think?
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Dullahan
There are several core gameplay mechanics that exist in Dawn of War that simply do not in other RTS games. Some other games have similar mechanics or some of them but the unique combination is what I consider to be the defining characteristic gameplay of the series.
First and foremost is the squad based combat with an active reinforcement mechanic and abilities. Squads are comprised of individual entities that have some degree of autonomous movement and yet are controlled as a singular unit. Additionally the active reinforcement mechanic is quite different from say the passive healing mechanic of other RTS games with squad based combat such as Battle for Middle Earth 2. It encourages squad preservation because it is always cheaper to reinforce a squad rather than replace it with a new one outright, although one of the big departures in DoW3 is that reinforcement has the smallest discount compared to prior entries. (On the flip side, healing squads now reinforces models which wasn't the case with other games)
The second is of course the melee combat. Not only are there dedicated melee units but every single unit is capable of actively choosing to engage in melee combat. Units engaged in melee often can't use their ranged weapon, which allows you to "tie up" units. This is a very important tactical element for Dawn of War and strongly encourages kiting. Once again we can compare this to Battle for Middle Earth 2 wherein ranged units can still actively fire when attacked in melee. While Company of Heroes shares the squad combat and reinforcement mechanics, it doesn't have a melee system. This was one of the largest gameplay differences between Dawn of War 2 (often derided as CoH in space) and Company of Heroes 1 & 2.
Another core mechanic is the presence of knockdown either through melee combat or abilities. Units can be thrown into the air and left to ragdoll on the ground momentarily while they recover which stops the so affected entities from inflicting damage temporarily. This can even be used for "chain" knockdowns wherein a single unit is kept repeatedly disabled. (Hero units are especially vulnerable to this.) In Dawn of War only entities within the knockdown area are affected which often means that much of the micro in the franchise revolves around maneuvering your squad outside of the area of effect. The less entities in your squad hit with a knockdown ability, the higher your damage output remains. A common example from Dawn of War 2 was dodging the Force Commander's Battlecry special attacks by running behind him during the animation. Most abilities that do this are grenades, "Special attacks" from hero or melee units and large explosive abilities. Most RTS games do no feature this mechanic outside of the Dawn of War franchise. A few like Battle for Middle Earth 2 feature a trampling mechanic wherein cavalry can trample units which will throw them around and inflict significant damage. I keep mentioning BFME2 because it was quite clearly heavily inspired by Dawn of War and Wacraft 3 but even still it is far from a copy. In every Dawn of War game there is a whole lot of micro revolving around this mechanic either by targeting abilities to maximize knockdown or to avoid knockdown and inflict more damage. In DoW2 this mechanic was heavily flawed thanks to the retreat mechanic providing immunity to many such abilities. If you knew a unit was going to be hit with a knockdown ability, often you could simply tap the retreat button to prevent it. DoW2 in many ways was just a game about forcing your opponent to retreat while you held map control and often ability combos were a way to do that at a high level of play.
Heroes and other powerful units are another staple of the series. They lead your troops into battle with a variety of combat and support abilities. An important defining feature of heroes in Dawn of War is their ability to trigger "special" attacks in melee combat. This is something of an equalizer between them and the much more numerous squads, this allows them to periodically trigger an AoE attack that often features knockdown as well.
Vehicles in Dawn of War often feature special armour that is very resistant to basic weapons fire. Unlike say Stacraft II where a Siege Tank is just as weak to rifle bullets as anything else, vehicles in Dawn of War require special antivehicle weaponry to do any meaningful damage to. Additionally in some cases there are specific infantry units who have similar resistance to ranged fire such as Terminators.
Fire on the move is another important element in Dawn of War. Most units in all three games can shoot while moving, giving them the ability to chase units while still engaging. In something like Starcraft II, Age of Empires or Warcraft 3 units with ranged attacks can only fire when standing still. It's common to see units with melee weapons also carrying a ranged weapon of some sort and more importantly is that vehicles can also fire on the move. For example Chaplain Diomedes has a pretty beefy pistol that deals significant damage to units that are kiting him. You see this stop and shoot mechanic from Warcraft III in almost every MOBA game today where ranged heroes and melee units all have to stop moving momentarily to attack. Traditional RTS games like Age of Empires or Starcraft II also require units to stop moving to shoot. For infantry this effect is primarily cosmetic due to the often low damage output of firing on the move but for vehicles it is absolutely essential for how they operate. Other RTS games are reliant on "stutter stepping" type mechanics for vehicles/infantry but such a mechanic simply doesn't exist in Dawn of War because units have to physically rotate/aim before shooting. (especially in DoW2, DoW3 and DoW2 with patches have all focused on increasing unit response time in this regard but it is still nowhere near MOBA/SC2 stutter stepping)
Movement abilities are also essential to the Dawn of War experience. I'll label these as "Jump troops" for the purposes of discussion but it also includes teleporting units. Specifically, the idea of some units being able to quickly traverse distance and terrain either as an escape tool or as a way to engage the enemy. The classic example of this is Assault Space Marines that jump onto the enemy and engage them in melee. The reason I consider this to be such an important gameplay element is because it integrates with several other mechanics in the game. Often these abilities will knockdown units that are jumped on and usually this is done in order to tie up ranged units very quickly in preparation for other units to approach. This also gives some units in Dawn of War a high degree of mobility compared to many RTS games. The ability to instantly or near instantly traverse terrain creates many opportunities for flanking or engaging that is truly unique to the franchise. MOBA games often feature this element such as the "Flash" ability in League of Legends but RTS games often do not. Other games often have "flying" units that can pass over any terrain, but I honestly can't think of any others that have these sorts of movement abilities for infantry. (Boba Fett in Empire at War I guess?) Many RTS games instead opt for units that can simply move over terrain like the Goo in Grey Goo or in Red Alert 3 where many units can traverse between land and naval movement but they still have to move at their normal speed, whereas jumping troops travel especially quickly and can traverse impassable terrain. (unlike say charge abilities that let units close into melee faster like zealot charge in SC2)
The final crucial mechanic is the way the player gathers resources. Unlike many other RTS games where resources are collected actively by the player, resources are passively accrued by holding territory out on the map. There's also significant upkeep mechanics that prevent one players early lead from snowballing into an insurmountable victory. The larger your army, the less money you get.
So that's a whole lot of words to describe what I would consider the core mechanics of Dawn of War as an RTS franchise and that are present in all the games. Each game has its own distinct mechanics on top of these core mechanics but these are the ones that define the gameplay as an RTS. Unless someone would like to argue against my definition I'm going to go ahead and say that based on this criteria Dawn of War 3 is just as much a Dawn of War game as the other two.
As such, I think the communities lack of respect for DoW3 as a sequel and instead interpreting it as a spinoff is ridiculous. DoW3 exchanges some mechanics for new ones, such as replacing cover damage modifiers with shotblockers that prevent damage in a binary fashion, but by and large it still plays extremely similar in the moment to moment combat. It's a mechanical successor to DoW2 with some of the overall mechanics taken from DoW1 (global unit upgrades, listening posts/node upgrades, production structure and basic tech trees)
Decepticats
@Dullahan is right. DoW3 is a main Dawn of War game through and through.
hastings
In that case, where did it go wrong? Who is at fault?
Don't you think it would have been better received as an offshoot anyway? That was my original question.
Decepticats
There's no question that Relic/SEGA (they are a team so I'm not placing blame on anybody individually) didn't handle this new age of marketing properly. The Youtubers and Redditors ran rampant with little counter narrative pushed by the team in those locations. As such anyone who was still optimistic (like myself) got shouted down immediately before the game was even released. To the point that someone felt the need to create a SEPARATE subreddit from /r/dawnofwar called /r/dawnofwariii just for people who were still looking forward to the game (and to where the negative voices followed and continued their endless shoutdowns because hating stuff is fun).
Hindsight is 20:20 and with the benefit of it we can see that highlighting a late game campaign mission to show off Gabe's leap and Solaria turned out to not be so great. Maybe if they'd shown off actual multiplayer gameplay (which is where the game shines) it would have given the haters less to rant about. Who knows?
I don't think the game would have been received better as an offshoot because then the entire narrative would be "WHY ISN'T THIS JUST DAWN OF WAR 3?" or "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST MAKE DAWN OF WAR 3?" or "THIS ISN'T A REAL DAWN OF WAR GAME ANYWAY!" so it would have changed nothing if Relic/SEGA's strategy remained the same.
Another option was to just have confidence and plow ahead with the planned content releases after the balance fixes and map releases early on rather than trying to do the adapting of the game to be like Dawn of War 1 and I suspect, just like with Dawn Of War 2, if Relic had done that eventually people would have come around on the game.
Decepticats
Basically I think Relic/SEGA is ultimately at fault (they are a team so no point singling out either one). Unfortunately, they marketed the game via old methods (gaming news sites and major outlets) while the game was trashed before it was even released by angry influencers in the new media (Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, Twitch). They needed to engage on Reddit and Twitter to combat this narrative and unfortunately they did not. The hate on these platforms was so strong that someone actually created another subreddit ahead of release (/r/dawnofwariii) so people who were still looking forward to the game had somewhere to post without being shouted down and insulted. Of course, that only took a few days for the haters to catch onto and chase us all over to there too. It was to the point where I stopped posting my positive opinion because I knew it would just get downvoted and I'd get yelled at. I imagine many others felt the same way. A few communication posts from Relic could have gone a long way to turn this back. The same thing happened with Total War: Warhammer but CA's community support gave us optimists links to refer to on specific issues (like the Chaos DLC and other issues that game was feared to have at pre and immediately post launch).
Hindsight being 20:20 we can also now see that making the first gameplay reveal be a small excerpt from a late campaign mission just to show off Gabe's flip and Solaria was a big mistake. It was too choreographed and the scenery too high in contrast and the gave the "influencers" more to latch onto to hate. Maybe if they'd showed multiplayer (which is where this game shines) first instead of trickling out videos of it later, people would have gotten the concept of the game more and seen how exciting it could be. Also games journalists and influencers could have written about that aspect for their first pieces instead of saying "It was a 15 minute mission excerpt and it was fun, but easy."
If this game had been titled as an offshoot, Warhammer 40K: Dawn Of War: HEROES or something it would have gotten the exact same treatment and been doomed just as easily. Perhaps even more harshly because it would have had the added complaint of "WHY DID YOU WASTE TIME MAKING THIS WHEN YOU COULD'VE MADE DOW3?" What needed to change was not Relic's design or naming strategy. What needed to change was their communication strategy.
Or perhaps their support strategy too. After launch, they pivoted to fix some needed community issues and this was good (such as adding annihilation mode, turrets, and shoring up the small map pool). But after that they should have gone back to working on Necrons or Chaos and pushed forward with that instead of trying to turn the game into DoW1 (which I contend would not have saved it). When DoW2 came out people hated it for the same reasons they hated DoW3 and with all the same complaints + Windows Live. What solved it was Relic pushing forward with content and support until people saw the love they had for the product and came back to it. But hindsight is 20:20 and it's sadly moot now.
GhostC4ke
So where are sync kill RPG element Warhammer 40k immersion ?
hastings
perhaps the design of the game had something to do with that
I already mentioned that. And I also already said that at least they couldn't criticize the game.
Good thing Relic didn't name it as an offshoot though. Cos if they did they might have succeeded. And success on that front would be a loss on another.
Rather another long wait but a chance at redemption than a permanent change in direction.
Decepticats
@Ghostc4ke the sync kills aren't what make Dawn of War. And for me the game is immersive in the 40K universe.
@hastings You underestimate what people can criticize. And they would not have succeeded if they named the game after an offshoot and i explained why. And no change in Dawn Of War is permanent. Have you been following this series? All 3 of the games are different enough that in most other series they would indeed have been offshoots instead of sequels. Dawn Of War 1 is so different from DoW2 when it came out people CALLED it an offshoot and a betrayal and all the stupid ++heresy redacted++ haters are saying about DoW3 now. It's just that it's older now and it got support and expansions so people remember it fondly.
Dullahan
The DoW fanbase didn't want a competitiv multiplayer game. They want a much slower paced game that they can stop and look at the fights.
Relic made a good game but the audience for it doesn't really exist outside of SC2 these days.
jackattack
Sync kills are awesome! One of the selling points of the game back then.
But at least they can't criticize the parts the devs are upfront about. And the devs can always promise a main line successor in the works.
They could've succeeded. But for my own selfish desires, good thing they didn't. Sorry.
GhostC4ke
So tell me is there any RTS with Sync kills ? There are a lot of cringe immersive you say
That is what you call immersive 40k ?
Darkstirling
I would say that wargear, and upgrading squads / heroes was a core part of the series. It wasn't in DoW3, but I think a lot of people didn't like that.
Dullahan
Doctrines were essentially the same system just moved out of game. Some units did feature upgrades as well too such as Tactical marines with squad based upgrades and other units having global upgrades available at the Arsenal/Soul Shrine/Pile of Gunz
There are downsides to picking that stuff out of game but some advantages too. In particular the synergy between Elites and their presence abilities (Such as terminators and Devastators, or Ven dread and plasma tacs) allowed you to tailor your Elite loadout and Doctrines to your specific playstyle. This was pretty prominent in the metagame with Ronahn/Ranger doctrines or Striking Scorpions/Banshees. (And the aforementioned Terminators/Devastators)
The biggest problem with the doctrine system is that they were varying levels of usefulness but all equal weight. Some are global abilities and then some only affect very specific niche units. I think they would have been better off with some sort of points system and weighing doctrine cost by usefulness.
GhostC4ke
At least I can change my wargear midgame to suit the game
Seriously , SM needs doctrine to use grenade ?
Why don't they make doctrine like COH 1 ?
Give me a full army and options
Dullahan
Considering that Tactical marines have never had grenades before, I dunno why people are so obsessed with their grenade ability in DoW3.