DoW3 new footage

[Torpid]

You don't build a game around being a e-sports from day 0, you need a product that's fun first and foremost, the competetive aspect will come naturally if there's a demand for it, or if it's passable. Forced e-sport games rarely do well. Or even struggle to find their identity.

Starcraft wasn't an omg wtf esport game day 1
CS was not an omg wtf esport game day 1
DOTA was not omg wtf esport game day 1
LOL was not omg wtf esport game day 1
Street Fighter was not omg wtf esport game day 1
Smash was not omg wtf esport game day 1

Do I fucking need to go on?

Oh yeah, so let's just sick back and 'allow' a game to become competitive just incase the casuals who we are designing it to attract like the look of it. Those other games were fortunate to become as popular as they did as far as I'm aware. I really have no idea how LOL or CS become Esport territory but the other games are quite defining for their genres. We have retrospect on our side as game designers now. So you can very much design a game to facilitate it working competitively. Obviously you don't need to legit hope and put all eggs in one basket that it will get million dollar prize funds at some point as that's absurd. But actively recognising that balance and competitive play is important and chasing top-down balance rather than bottom-up balance is a good starting point to facilitate such. Any signs of Relic doing so? No.

We already know the balance will be terrible. Add in the fact now that they admit they are focusing more on campaign than multiplayer and don't really want to design it to be competitive. Sounds like it will be a great game.

In contrast Creative Assembly have placed a heavy emphasis on multiplayer - the beta for example was multiplayer after all. We know they have a far better history of balance - and their constant patching and free updates on warhammer total war are a proof of that (although it is hard to balance a game with so many races, fortunately halo wars 2 will only have... 2! albeit 6 heroes I imagine). They have multiple gamemodes for multiplayer announced, over 4 in fact already the purpose of which is to make the multiplayer appeal to a wide variety of players from casual to competitive.

[Ace of Swords]

You don't build a game around being a e-sports from day 0, you need a product that's fun first and foremost, the competetive aspect will come naturally if there's a demand for it, or if it's passable. Forced e-sport games rarely do well. Or even struggle to find their identity.

Starcraft wasn't an omg wtf esport game day 1
CS was not an omg wtf esport game day 1
DOTA was not omg wtf esport game day 1
LOL was not omg wtf esport game day 1
Street Fighter was not omg wtf esport game day 1
Smash was not omg wtf esport game day 1

Do I fucking need to go on?

Yes you need to go on.

DoW3, three, number 3, it's not the first installment of the series, this is not starcraft 1, this is not DOTA 1, starcraft 2 WAS built with esports in mind, DOTA 2 was built for esports in mind, I can't talk for LoL for I haven't followed the development but from what I know it was built to be a competitive game, about fighting games I don't know either for my expirience with them stops to tekken and the dbz games.

So, THIS IS THE THIRD GAME OF THE SERIES and they don't know what they want to do with it, I actually agree on the fact that having a solid and interesting campaign is a strong point that anchors people to your game, however dawn of war both 1 and 2 built quite a community over time and generally speaking the warhammer video players are the tabletop players which WANT and are already at home in a PvP and competitive territory.

[Tinibombini]

You don't build a game around being a e-sports from day 0, you need a product that's fun first and foremost, the competetive aspect will come naturally if there's a demand for it, or if it's passable. Forced e-sport games rarely do well. Or even struggle to find their identity.

Starcraft wasn't an omg wtf esport game day 1
CS was not an omg wtf esport game day 1
DOTA was not omg wtf esport game day 1
LOL was not omg wtf esport game day 1
Street Fighter was not omg wtf esport game day 1
Smash was not omg wtf esport game day 1

Do I fucking need to go on?

I think you are conflating two separate ideas here:

1. Games becoming WTF esports doesn't happen on game day 1;
2. Games weren't designed to be esports from day 1.

I believe that Starcraft 2, LOL, DOTA 2 (since DOTA was a mod) and CS were actually designed to be e-sports. The developers had it firmly in their minds that their game was going to be an esport.

Sure, a game will not be a big esport on day 1 but that doesn't mean it was not designed with being in esport in mind.

Those games were not designed with single player campaign in mind (LOL, SC2, Streetfigher, CS) to draw fans into a fun experience on the hope that somehow they would organically morph into an esport title. In fact, only one of them, SC2, has really any single player to speak of.

[Carnevour]

Dota was already an esport. It just had a company for example Valve to remake it and create a tool for Icefrog to continue working on it. DoW1 was an esport and was popular until relic fucked over balance to creating Dawn of Eldar. You dont go in and tell an esport community that we want this game to be esport, since they would just shrug and continue to watch actually interesting games in which the community built the foundation for growth of e-sport. Yeah the same DoW2 community that could never work with each other or attend tournaments, the same community that wanted everything to be handed to them rather create something, the same community that blames everyone and everything on relic anytime something goes to shit. You reap what you sow.
Oh look torpid calling people dirty casual unlike the godly 1337 players of DoW2, those stinky casuals who want to enjoy a proper made game and gasp make up the main audience for any esport and usually create a lot of content that promotes the said game. There is no such thing as perfect balance, and before you say Brood War, no it doesnt terran have a slight edge but unlike Western crybabies Koreans actually grinded and came up with new strategies instead of crying about something being OP or slightly OP. Whether a game becomes an esport is mainly on the community no one else.

[Carnevour]

It's interesting reading the comments here hyping massive on eSports and DoW II design contrasted to the official forums where it's more decidedly vDoW and no eSports.

I don't think there's ever been a more obvious example of DoW III being unable to please everyone. DoW II didn't suffer to this extent pre-release because people only had vDoW to compare it to. We now have two divergent products that Relic are attempting to bring back under one banner and fans of each are disgruntled over separate aspects of the game.

Just do what Valve did with CS:GO which was created to heal the schism caused by 1.6 and Source. Create a game that is different from both and add some hats while updating it with new stuff. And make clear to the fans that they either can accept this or fuck off.

[Forestradio]

Super smash 4 was definitely designed to be competitive.

[Ace of Swords]

Shush Caeltos people that havent even watched e-sports or know how it works know better.

Whether a game becomes an esport is mainly on the community no one else.

Interesting, because this is not true at all, you talk and talk a lot about muh esports but you don't seem to understand what they mean and what they actually are, valve, riot and blizzard invest money, millions of dollars in them to make them Esports and Esports are videogames that grant a living by just playing them for their best players, tournaments with money (paid by their developing houses) attract curious viewers which attract the sponsors (nvdia,intel,amd and so on so forth) who in turn fund the players who go PRO as in dedicate their life to the game on top of having the chance of winning a significant amount of money to be able to live their lives without having to work "normal" jobs.

I mean, DOTA 2 should be pretty famous for this as their opening tournament before the game release had a prize pool of a million IIRC sponsored by valve.

Relic had in mind a similar deal for CoH2, there was supposed to be a tournament both for EU and USA with an hefty prize pool in the thousand of dollars/euros sponsored by them, well turns out they lied about that and all that project went into nothing as CoH2 got the Electronic Sports League support but never had any tournament financed by relic.

To finish both DoW1 and DoW2 had hundreds of tournaments all paid by the pockets of the organizers or community members and never EVER relic did anything to support those, they couldn't even get a decent ladder going on or ban cheaters from it.

So please, stop trying to be pretentious when you have no clue of what you are talking about.

[Carnevour]

Shush Caeltos people that havent even watched e-sports or know how it works know better.

Whether a game becomes an esport is mainly on the community no one else.

Interesting, because this is not true at all, you talk and talk a lot about muh esports but you don't seem to understand what they mean and what they actually are, valve, riot and blizzard invest money, millions of dollars in them to make them Esports and Esports are videogames that grant a living by just playing them for their best players, tournaments with money (paid by their developing houses) attract curious viewers which attract the sponsors (nvdia,intel,amd and so on so forth) who in turn fund the players who go PRO as in dedicate their life to the game on top of having the chance of winning a significant amount of money to be able to live their lives without having to work "normal" jobs.

I mean, DOTA 2 should be pretty famous for this as their opening tournament before the game release had a prize pool of a million IIRC sponsored by valve.

Relic had in mind a similar deal for CoH2, there was supposed to be a tournament both for EU and USA with an hefty prize pool in the thousand of dollars/euros sponsored by them, well turns out they lied about that and all that project went into nothing as CoH2 got the Electronic Sports League support but never had any tournament financed by relic.

To finish both DoW1 and DoW2 had hundreds of tournaments all paid by the pockets of the organizers or community members and never EVER relic did anything to support those, they couldn't even get a decent ladder going on or ban cheaters from it.

So please, stop trying to be pretentious when you have no clue of what you are talking about.

Yeah blizzard invested a lot of money into SC2 yet its the weakest of the Esporst at the moment. Same with Hearthstone. Apparently your method of throwing money into the game doesnt work for Blizzard. There should be interest from people towards a game to warrant esport growth. You can throw as much money you want it wont get you a long time fanbase.
Yeah thats why i prefer Valve games like Dota 2 and CSGO, since the company does studies and are always coming up with new ways to evolve the industry.
I havent followed CoH1 or CoH2 since those games are a ResidentSleeper for me where they last for an hour and its set in WW2. But I can only guess why relic backed out is that they realised that its a void attempt for such a niche game.
You mean one of the biggest Esports in the past decades SC:BW that was built by its community through thin and thick which was later recognised and had investment poured into it. (Korean ofc)
So no im not talking out of my pretentious ass when it comes to e-sports since ive done a lot of research and defended my dissertation about it.
Also DOTA 2 isnt a famous example, its a normal example for a large community that already was established and had a lot of tournaments by organiser and players, the only thing Valve did was invest in it and helped it to grow, which Sega can do the same if they are interested and seeing that a lot of ''companies'' like EA or Activision are trying to get a slice of the cake that keeps growing.

[Swift]

It's interesting reading the comments here hyping massive on eSports and DoW II design contrasted to the official forums where it's more decidedly vDoW and no eSports.

I don't think there's ever been a more obvious example of DoW III being unable to please everyone. DoW II didn't suffer to this extent pre-release because people only had vDoW to compare it to. We now have two divergent products that Relic are attempting to bring back under one banner and fans of each are disgruntled over separate aspects of the game.

I don't think that's entirely true, the big DoW II haters I know are Bigamo and Gollo, but as for everyone else, some prefer DoW I, some prefer DoW II, and it may lean one way or another by a margin, but not enough of a margin that it's really noticable. None of the DoW II fans get shut out of conversations for being a minority for example.

I wasn't old enough to pay attention to the pre release DoW II press, but I can be pretty sure a lot of DoW I fans will have thrown a fit at seeing their game turned on it's head into "CoH in space". I remember playing DoW II with a friend from release for a while and although sort of captivated by it as a shiny new game, I was disgusted by the way they had taken my beloved DoW I and butchered it into a small unit, no basebuilding mockery.

[Gorbles]

Warnoise, My_Name, Frequency . . there are a number of vocal posters that definitely prefer vDoW. I mean that's entirely fair, it's just interesting to watch the split.

[Ace of Swords]

Yeah blizzard invested a lot of money into SC2 yet its the weakest of the Esporst at the moment.

That's because they failed to appeal to their already existing fanbase with SC2, many pros went back to broodwar and because mobas got in it's place, there's way more money to be made in mobas and it also much easier despite what people like to believe, a top sc/sc2 player has to put way more effort in becoming good and maintaining his skill at starcraft while mobas are a joke to learn and play compared to it.

Same with Hearthstone.

They don't care about the Esport scene of HS, it exists purely to milk casuals and most of their income has coming from this game, even if they sponsor a few tournaments (and that is a marketing method to keep streamers interested which in turn pretty much do free publicity by keeping the game on the top 10 of twitch) into getting more and more people and getting said people to spend real money into the card game.

Apparently your method of throwing money into the game doesnt work for Blizzard. There should be interest from people towards a game to warrant esport growth. You can throw as much money you want it wont get you a long time fanbase.

It's not my method it what has always been done, sponsor big tourney = create curiosity = get players, of course this has to be supported by having a fun game that is playable, I've mentioned this before and everyone can attest to it by their own experience, relic games are ALWAYS a frustrating mess in the first year of their existence when it comes to the competitive part of them worse case scenario this goes on for the first 2 years of their existence, for some like CoH2 it will never end and usually 6 months of this shit is enough to kill the game for good.

Yeah thats why i prefer Valve games like Dota 2 and CSGO, since the company does studies and are always coming up with new ways to evolve the industry.

Not sure nor care about this part but I don't recall any game released by valve in the last 5 years that was innovative, the best things to come out recently were steamOS (which was completely forgotten and not even got an announce for it's release) and the HTC ViVe.

I havent followed CoH1 or CoH2 since those games are a ResidentSleeper for me where they last for an hour and its set in WW2. But I can only guess why relic backed out is that they realised that its a void attempt for such a niche game.

It's not niche at all it's the second biggest RTS in the industry, same as CoH1 before CoH2 it was the only other RTS that had regular events and a somewhat stable playerbase with an income of fresh players that aimed to be competitive but relic failed to support it properly (can't give them all the blame though, yeah they failed in the balance/bug fixing department but THQ also had it's fair share and now SEGA as in this case it's the publisher who would need to sponsor and put money on the line).

You mean one of the biggest Esports in the past decades SC:BW that was built by its community through thin and thick which was later recognised and had investment poured into it. (Korean ofc)

brood war is an exceptional case, not only a whole nation supported it as a real sport (the same football would be for americans and soccer for italians) but it was also in a time where blizzard nailed the RTS mechanics perfectly, so much in fact that nowadays anything that isn't a facsimile of starcraft isn't even considered a RTS so we could say it was pretty much the only worthwhile game to play competitively online at the time but today there are dozens of RTSs/RTTs and everyone chooses what they prefer there won't be any huge community for a single game unless the dev/publisher pushes for it with loads of marketing like acti-blizz,bethesda, EA and many others do and well I guess I forgot to mention this part but usually the DoW games had 0 marketing back then I didn't even know DoW2 existed still I randomly saw it in a store and grabbed it.

And yet it managed to get a decent following one numbers in the thousand of players which is not small and had a good chance of growing but the lack of balance the repetitive gameplay of retail and 0 marketing or pushover for esports put off the beginners and stagnated the influx of new blood plus making a lot of people quit the game during early stages to avoid getting too involved into it.

So no im not talking out of my pretentious ass when it comes to e-sports since ive done a lot of research and defended my dissertation about it.
Also DOTA 2 isnt a famous example, its a normal example for a large community that already was established and had a lot of tournaments by organiser and players, the only thing Valve did was invest in it and helped it to grow, which Sega can do the same if they are interested and seeing that a lot of ''companies'' like EA or Activision are trying to get a slice of the cake that keeps growing.

DoW already has it's niche of players and it runs on a very old brand that's what, 30 years old now? (talking about 40k), it's an established universe with endless potential and already played by a lot of people, no I've got no idea of how many people actually play warhammer IRL or are involved in the RPGs and all sub-categories it has but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the millions, Dawn of War with some pushing has the potential of becoming an enormous piece in the gaming industry as it's already a big part of it, known by many, praised by the gaming press because it brought a breath of fresh air in the RTS industry after starcraft stagnated it, the problem is that it won't for the reasons I've already stated above, lack of marketing, lack of competent devs (I mean fucking coh2 doesn't even support crossfire/sli and lags on high end machines it's ridiculous without even starting to talk about the hundreds of bugs that plagued that game and still do with dozen of these being game breaking bugs and game changers in game).

So yes, I'm pretty fucking mad at all the wasted potential.

[Aguxyz]

^

[Oddnerd]

Every time I think about posting something in-depth I realize Ace has said it better.

Have all my ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[g0ll0]

It's interesting reading the comments here hyping massive on eSports and DoW II design contrasted to the official forums where it's more decidedly vDoW and no eSports.

I don't think there's ever been a more obvious example of DoW III being unable to please everyone. DoW II didn't suffer to this extent pre-release because people only had vDoW to compare it to. We now have two divergent products that Relic are attempting to bring back under one banner and fans of each are disgruntled over separate aspects of the game.

I don't think that's entirely true, the big DoW II haters I know are Bigamo and Gollo, but as for everyone else, some prefer DoW I, some prefer DoW II, and it may lean one way or another by a margin, but not enough of a margin that it's really noticable. None of the DoW II fans get shut out of conversations for being a minority for example.

I wasn't old enough to pay attention to the pre release DoW II press, but I can be pretty sure a lot of DoW I fans will have thrown a fit at seeing their game turned on it's head into "CoH in space". I remember playing DoW II with a friend from release for a while and although sort of captivated by it as a shiny new game, I was disgusted by the way they had taken my beloved DoW I and butchered it into a small unit, no basebuilding mockery.

WOW I never post here, but reading this.. I'm not a dow2 hater thats a good game with a nice community, I just find DOW1 far superior than dow2 every game has a beginning DOW2 was and entire and totally different game than dow1... I see relic is trying to return to its roots and thats a good thing IMO, if I remember well dow1 had a huge community in times where there was no twitch youtube etc, it was a very popular RTS even was toe toe vs sc1 in WCG ( when WCG WAS the mayor e-sports thing), DOW2 was a rushed game due to THQ Bankruptcy so they had to take COH and create DOW from essence engine so in the end we had coh in space with bugged mechanics, GFWL no obs at release etc.. Im looking forward to DOW3 it looks like a solid RTS and press are talking good about it, I can see 90% of dow3 hate comes from dow2 and 4OK lore community I think dow3 is a great opportunity to merge DOW1+DOW2 communities

[Gorbles]

@Ace:

Do you have, like, anything at all to back up any of your claims. Anything at all? Like your claims about Hearthstone's earnings, for example. All I'm seeing is two opposing people not really agreeing on much (which is fair) with the echo gallery lapping it up going OH NICE POST M8.

Bit pointless, because if all people are going to do is throw claims around all day, we'll be here all year.

And that's without touching the hairy issue of the "40k brand", which means completely different things for completely different groups of people. Let's not pretend your group is the only one that understands what "40k" means, I've played the game for close to 20 years now and it's beginning to bug me that people frame it like that. We're all passionate about it, but that doesn't mean there's a "right" interpretation of 40k.

(also don't blame Relic for Crossfire / SLI, they're incredibly complicated setups that a lot of games don't get right)

[Toilailee]

Every time I think about posting something in-depth I realize Ace has said it better.

Have all my ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Rename to Ace of Words.

(for the record I didn't read most of the thread so not endorsing anyone, carry on)

[Soberson]

It all comes to a personal preferences and tastes as this point. Dawn of War 3 is no doubt "a dawn of war game". Will it be "the Dawn of War game" for you? Some people can already tell, some are on the fence. Now those who have already decided trying to sway others to their side with debate based on personal taste. This makes no sense. I guess we are really bored

[Caeltos]

To finish both DoW1 and DoW2 had hundreds of tournaments all paid by the pockets of the organizers or community members and never EVER relic did anything to support those, they couldn't even get a decent ladder going on or ban cheaters from it.

That's funny, I participated in tournaments through-out most of the lifespan of the Dawn of War 2, that extends to community driven tourmaments as well as the EMS, which was hosted and driven by ESL. Relic supported the majority all of those tournaments and were observers back then, and did what they could. We have to REMEMBER that they were still under the leash of THQ (Which were bankrupt) so pouring money back then wasn't the most feasible and logical thing to do. But they DID advertise the tournaments and tried to get the word around.

Super smash 4 was definitely designed to be competitive.

I spoke with IpKaiFung (who has worked with ESL in the past, not sure if he still is) about the history and evolution of the fighting games, and we drew comparisons to Dawn of War. Super Smash was never a series of competetive fighting level, until people discovered all of depth in the games mechanics, and started ballistic about it. The game was for starters, an enjoyable game and the competetive just grew by itself naturally.

Not only that, but the developers behind the game didn't rally too much behind it either. It isn't until the last like what, 2 years now that Nintendo has rallied behind their own game and started to see the value of the e-sport scene and started their own thing with it. But the thing that drove the attention first and foremost was probably the community-driven effort and natural growth that made the game into what it is now. Same thing with how Street Fighter came to be a competetive fighting game. If you just look back at 10 years, and compare how it's setup now. You can even look back at how counterstrikes growth, and I played that game since it's release when I was a youngster dumpster.

One thing they all probably have in common is that they're able to rally behind their game, and support it and have fun with it. Despite its flaws and issues here and there. The problem in the Relic community I find, is that people are just so obnoxiously negative and loud about their opinion, and that doesn't help to generate a positive vibe around the competetive game. People will call out on the bullshit community and stop playing the game. Even if they're a part of the problem.

What I'm technically saying is that, you may not like the direction of the game. But at least give it the benefit of the doubt, and wish it well if you truely care for Dawn of War. Wait for the reviews, if that's your kind of thing, or until it gets updated and tailors more to your liking. But wishing the game to be dead on arrival won't do you the player any good, or the people at the company at it. Take pride in at least knowing they're tailoring the game to be fun gameplay wise, and treating the lore more as a second-hand type of thing. If the game was focused on accurate lore representation, then it may not be a fun gameplay experience. Etc etc.

[Ace of Swords]

@Ace:

Do you have, like, anything at all to back up any of your claims. Anything at all? Like your claims about Hearthstone's earnings, for example. All I'm seeing is two opposing people not really agreeing on much (which is fair) with the echo gallery lapping it up going OH NICE POST M8.

Bit pointless, because if all people are going to do is throw claims around all day, we'll be here all year.

And that's without touching the hairy issue of the "40k brand", which means completely different things for completely different groups of people. Let's not pretend your group is the only one that understands what "40k" means, I've played the game for close to 20 years now and it's beginning to bug me that people frame it like that. We're all passionate about it, but that doesn't mean there's a "right" interpretation of 40k.

(also don't blame Relic for Crossfire / SLI, they're incredibly complicated setups that a lot of games don't get right)

https://www.vg247.com/2015/08/04/destin ... 25-bilion/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/hea ... n-monthly/

You can just google, it's not a secret that HS makes the most money with very little effort from blizzard, it's also the most casual TCG there's on the market and RNG reigns king, it was obviously not made to be a competitive game.

And what I mean with the brand is that all 40k players, literally ALL played the dawn of war games, some casually some competitively some just for the campaign it doesn't matter what they did but I regularly go to a game store and I'm in contact with lots of people that sooner or later meddled in warhammer whenever it was fantasy,40k or the RPGs, all of them played dawn of war 1 and 2, so yes there is a strong fanbase that relic failed to maintain because of the reasons I've already stated; then dow1 was the first game to bring 40k into real time has a video game (all the previous strategy games were turn-based) so that was the first iteration and while it was great it had a lot of problems, then dow2 came and lowered the scale while making the game mechanically significant and more challenging to play but mainly compstompers complained that the game isn't "40k" enough (despite dow2 being much closer to TT than DoW1) but all in all I'd also like a larger scale dow3 is barely large and I'm sure it will disappoint both sides.

[Ace of Swords]

To finish both DoW1 and DoW2 had hundreds of tournaments all paid by the pockets of the organizers or community members and never EVER relic did anything to support those, they couldn't even get a decent ladder going on or ban cheaters from it.

That's funny, I participated in tournaments through-out most of the lifespan of the Dawn of War 2, that extends to community driven tourmaments as well as the EMS, which was hosted and driven by ESL. Relic supported the majority all of those tournaments and were observers back then, and did what they could. We have to REMEMBER that they were still under the leash of THQ (Which were bankrupt) so pouring money back then wasn't the most feasible and logical thing to do. But they DID advertise the tournaments and tried to get the word around.

So THQ was already bankrupt during the DoW1 times? Was it bankrupt during DoW2 vanilla? Also of course relic not being an indipented dev isn't responsabile for putting money on the line however they are responsabile for not polishing the game properly which ALWAYS leads to massive drops of the player base within 3-6 months of the launch of the game, latest example is yet again coh2.

http://steamcharts.com/app/231430

I spoke with IpKaiFung (who has worked with ESL in the past, not sure if he still is) about the history and evolution of the fighting games, and we drew comparisons to Dawn of War. Super Smash was never a series of competetive fighting level, until people discovered all of depth in the games mechanics, and started ballistic about it. The game was for starters, an enjoyable game and the competetive just grew by itself naturally.

Not only that, but the developers behind the game didn't rally too much behind it either. It isn't until the last like what, 2 years now that Nintendo has rallied behind their own game and started to see the value of the e-sport scene and started their own thing with it. But the thing that drove the attention first and foremost was probably the community-driven effort and natural growth that made the game into what it is now. Same thing with how Street Fighter came to be a competetive fighting game. If you just look back at 10 years, and compare how it's setup now. You can even look back at how counterstrikes growth, and I played that game since it's release when I was a youngster dumpster.

We went over this already, dawn of war is not at his first game and it's not at his first competitive community, dawn of war exists since 2004, it's been 12 years the growth was alted purely because relic was incapable of fixing the bugs and balance before the community shrinked too much.

One thing they all probably have in common is that they're able to rally behind their game, and support it and have fun with it. Despite its flaws and issues here and there. The problem in the Relic community I find, is that people are just so obnoxiously negative and loud about their opinion, and that doesn't help to generate a positive vibe around the competetive game. People will call out on the bullshit community and stop playing the game. Even if they're a part of the problem.

Oh yes, the dota and lol communities are extremely famous for their very supportive communities totally not blaming the devs every time an OP hero comes out right? Please be fucking kidding because the dawn of war and CoH communities are 2 of the most supportive I've ever seen and DID stick with relic despite all their bullshit PR managment and really REALLY put effort into trying to fix the games either by modding it themselves or suggest directly to relic how to fix bugs,maps and balance, you are flat out lying here saying such bullshit, if this was the starcraft community everyone would've quit when they saw the DoW2 ladder wasn't even working properly and was never fixed nor hackers dealt with it and yes I'm talking of the ladder pre-battleservers.

And please don't conveniently ignore the bs you said about dota and starcraft not being built for competitive play in mind.

What I'm technically saying is that, you may not like the direction of the game. But at least give it the benefit of the doubt, and wish it well if you truely care for Dawn of War. Wait for the reviews, if that's your kind of thing, or until it gets updated and tailors more to your liking. But wishing the game to be dead on arrival won't do you the player any good, or the people at the company at it. Take pride in at least knowing they're tailoring the game to be fun gameplay wise, and treating the lore more as a second-hand type of thing. If the game was focused on accurate lore representation, then it may not be a fun gameplay experience. Etc etc.

Again are you desperate or what? Nobody wants DoW3 to fail and nobody flat out said that, what not me, not 2 or 3 people here are saying but what thousand of fans of both DoW1 and DoW2 on youtube on IGN on twitch on the forums and on many other dozens of gaming communities are saying is that DoW3 isn't looking what they expected it to be and this doesn't refer exclusively to the graphics, we are giving it the benefit of doubt, WE FUCKING ARE, however everything seen now and that's what we are talking of, THE VIDEOS WE'VE SEEN SO FAR AND YOU APPARENTLY FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THIS, DO NOT AND I REPEAT DO NOT APPEAL TO THE MAJORITY OF THE 40K FANBASE.

[Gorbles]

@Ace (your first post, sorry):

There's no data that compares it to any of Blizzard's other products. The first link even groups HS with HotS, but can't offer a breakdown:

However, with Heroes of the Storm included in the figures, it’s unknown how much of a split can be allotted to each.

Microtransactions are definitely the future (if done well; value for money is something a lot of companies aren't getting right, and I think the next half a decade will start punishing the greedy ones and more and more games get into that space and undercut them), but more and more Blizzard games have them (Overwatch, as well as actually costing money. HotS and HS being F2P as a base). We can't make sweeping statements about how much money Heartstone alone is bringing in, I don't think.

Good to know it was doing better than DotA 2 at least for a while though, I want card games to be more popular again, haha. I think there's more complexity there than you give it credit for, but that's for a very different thread (I played the TCG for a time as well, y'see, barely touched HS thankfully - for my wallet).

Every game franchise leaves fans behind. It's inevitable. Even something like DotA 2 (or Hearthstone) that has amassed millions of players, leaves fans behind. It just manages to gain new ones at the same time. I can barely play vDoW anymore, and it was the game that got me into software development (not literally, but in terms of inspiration). DoW II is much more enjoyable but even that's getting to be a bit of a slog. People will always claim a game "isn't on-brand enough" (where brand is applicable of course). There are people that don't like DotA 2 making changes independently of DotA (the mapmod).

DoW III definitely has a larger scale than DoW II. I doubt many of us would disagree. The kicker is "does is satisfy the scale that vDoW players prefer". I think that's hard to answer because we've seen zero MP yet. I'm a Campaign man myself (TLS v2.0 please Relic), and I like what I've seen of that, so I'll argue based on the apparently scale of that. Based on the unit bar across the screen we have a large amount of active units at any one time, including multiple vehicles. This by itself is pretty similar to vDoW scale, where you had a maximum of 10 units (on average, let's not count a 20-strong Scout Squad strategy, eh ) and six vehicles (for an average Dreadnought of 3 pop). The bases might not be as large? I don't know. They're certainly taking up enough on-screen space (spanning a screen in some cases), so is that good enough? Or do you want something even larger?

I mean, a lot of people like the rather ambitious mods like Ultimate Apocalypse that vastly increase the scale of the game. I don't, but my dislike of UA is . . . old, at this point. Outdated, irrelevant

We have to go on the vanilla game (with or without expansions) because that's what Relic provided. That is what they have experience of. I don't feel it's fair holding them to something like UA in scale because they've never attempted something that huge.

EDIT

A quick point on CoH 2's numbers:

1. Game population for any paid-upfront game will always spike at release (or in the case of Steam Sales, around a sale or free weekend). The stable playerbase is normally a much smaller slice than on-launch numbers. F2P games subvert this a bit because there's no paid barrier to entry.

2. 5,000 concurrent players is still an awful lot, especially for a genre as fragmented and niche as RTS games (this is a fact: RTS games do not have the purchasing power of FPS or RPG genre games). I don't think people realise how good an average of 5,000 concurrent players is, three years after release.

[Ace of Swords]

^

I don't disagree with what you are saying however HOTS is a flop, it's barely played for being a blizzard game and lol & dota players shit on it constantly though I don't really play these games so I'll leave that to them, HS is also a mobile game in the sense that it can be played on the phone and we all know how much money these games make it's not hard to figure out that HS (and perhaps overwatch but there's no numbers for that yet) is the new driving horse of blizzard.

Also I'm a casual poker player and semi-competitive MTG player, I used to play yugi-oh a long time ago as well and I do understand how complex these games are, I've played a bit of HS and it's a joke compared to them, nothing wrong with it being a casual game but it's again obviously getting tourneys because it's popular and because blizz wants to keep milking people with it and it's system, but that's really a story for another time nor I really care to go in depth with it.

For CoH2 and basically every game that's not already a major staple in the gaming industry 5k is indeed a fair number I 100% agree with that however the drop in numbers is enourmous (the drop from the release to the first months is at the bottom of that link mind you) and that's 100% blame to put on relic for their incapability of fixing the game or hell even actually just releasing a polished game within the time constraints (although here we can give the benefit of doubt because coh2 was released between THQ failing and SEGA acquiring the game although remembering the dow2 release it wasn't much different.

[enasni127]

BTW does anybody know if DOW 3 will use a 64 Bit engine?

Whenever Phil Boulle says things like "we want it to be as responsive as possible" and "It should run on mid-range computers" and so on I just understand: "We will create a cheap and weak 32 Bit engine and will make DoW 3 run on it no matter what it takes"

[Gorbles]

32 vs 64-bit has very little to do with how responsive the engine is or what range of machines it runs on (given how popular 64-bit setups are these days).

[enasni127]

Nobody wants DoW3 to fail and nobody flat out said that, what not me, not 2 or 3 people here are saying but what thousand of fans of both DoW1 and DoW2 on youtube on IGN on twitch on the forums and on many other dozens of gaming communities are saying is that DoW3 isn't looking what they expected it to be and this doesn't refer exclusively to the graphics, we are giving it the benefit of doubt, WE FUCKING ARE, however everything seen now and that's what we are talking of, THE VIDEOS WE'VE SEEN SO FAR AND YOU APPARENTLY FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THIS, DO NOT AND I REPEAT DO NOT APPEAL TO THE MAJORITY OF THE 40K FANBASE.

I agree 100%

[enasni127]

32 vs 64-bit has very little to do with how responsive the engine is or what range of machines it runs on (given how popular 64-bit setups are these days).

You better don't say this on a total war forum.

It's very simple. if you have big battles with many well animated and detailed hi-res models (this excludes DOW 3 so far) you will need more and more of your RAM. If you reach 4096 MB of it your 32bit Engine is done for and the CPU will probably idle around at ~30% of its capacity cause it just doesn't get enough input cause the RAM bottleneck's your whole system.

There are many titles which suffer from this and the reason is (in many known cases) the 32bit engine which can't handle big battles on high detail and so starts lagging. This will absolutely affect the responsivness of the game even if the engine is written well.

You are right, it doesn't affect the "range of machines" but what I think is that Phil Boulle could say "older machines" and mean something like "It's a 32bit engine so and old system with little RAM capacities would be enough"

And just to say it again. the total war engine suffered from this in Rome 2 und Attila so that many effects (collapsing walls etc) where replaced by clouds of dust to save resources.

You know, so fard DOW 3 looks like complete garbage but real big battles in 3v3's or even 4v4's could be a reason for me to play it - as long as those battles run perfectly smooth.

[Gorbles]

You're, uh, telling me nothing I don't already know. That said you've provided exactly zero examples of modern games that release exclusively for 32-bit systems.

As an example, the minimum requirements (from Steam) for Warhammer: Total War is a 64-bit operating system (which necessitates a 64-bit CPU architecture to accommodate). There is no reason to assume that a title under the same publisher would intentionally choose a pure 32-bit solution. Rome 2 and Attila (based on the same engine) don't have this requirement.

[enasni127]

You're, uh, telling me nothing I don't already know. That said you've provided exactly zero examples of modern games that release exclusively for 32-bit systems.

As an example, the minimum requirements (from Steam) for Warhammer: Total War is a 64-bit operating system (which necessitates a 64-bit CPU architecture to accommodate). There is no reason to assume that a title under the same publisher would intentionally choose a pure 32-bit solution. Rome 2 and Attila (based on the same engine) don't have this requirement.

1. If you already know what I wrote then I don't see any reason why you wrote what you wrote before.

2. You didn't even answer my question if it was 32 or 64bit

3. Just take some hours in the total war forums or try to find their older rally point videos on youtube. In one of them the CA team said they know about that issue of their enigne and removed some effects and detail to save resources. I don't think they are telling lies about their own products.

4. Are you the same Gorb as the Gorb from the DoW 3 Forums who earns more respect and love there day by day?

[Gorbles]

I was telling you you were wrong about your assumptions about 32-bit applications and the likelihood that DoW III would be 32-bit. You then brought up a dated example of a series the newest version of which is 64-bit.

I don't know what DoW III is or will be. It's safe to assume it'll be 64-bit, of course, but you're trying to spin a story where it's 32-bit. I never said you were wrong about older Total War games, but the newest game is factually 64-bit.

I'm just a bit confused at what you're getting at.

And yes, I'm that guy. Sorry

[Paranoid Kamikaze]

I would be legitimately surprised if DoW 3 was 32 bit.