Dawn of war 2: Why I hate windows live

[bukky]

so it only effex u online

 

[captainfuzzy]

Ok, I see some people throwing around wierd rumors they heard about the game. I'll attempt to clarify, since I've actually played it.

1. No, there's no base building worth mentioning. But no, you won't miss it much. You main base is essentially all the stuff you built in DoW1 rolled into one single structure. In all fairness, base building was just something to occupy you while you wait for stuff to happen, a filler mechanic. Build orders are still important, only it's unit build orders you're concerned with now, not urban planning. Also, this means that all your units come from the same building and you don't need to poke around your base to get all your production queued...

2. Unit upgrades aren't global, you buy them for every unit individually. Again, this works great. The only problem is learning all your commander upgrades, since each gets about 10 of them, can have 3 of them active and can switch them around. Kinda like the Necron Lord from DoW1.

3. There is no lack of stuff to do in the game. At best, you can buy yourself a few seconds of peace every now and then, but every time the shooting stops, there is likely something else you should be doing, like queuing more units, repositioning your forces, upgrading your power generators, decapping and capping points, harrassing or just going to find more stuff to kill.

4. Unit placement and micro wins the battle. Attack + move loses battles. DoW1 was a macro oriented game. DoW2 is the opposite. If you can outmaneuver your opponent, you can take out a force several times your size. I managed to turn a nearly complete defeats into victories by careful unit placement and proper use of special abilities.

DoW2 is an RTS game. It's not the first game to take the focus off base building, and if you define an RTS by base building, I am forced to disagree with your definition of the genre. Especially since such a definition means that Homeworld series, World in Conflict, Myth series, Kohan series and Ground Control series are not RTS games. Are you saying that those games are not RTS games?

Geez, some people and their security blankets...

P.S. When I say "take the focus off base building" I mean exactly that. Some of the games I mentioned do away with bases altogether, others just streamline the entire thing (DoW2 is in this category).

This game essentially eliminated all the things that made base building and economy management worthwhile (i.e. the ability to build simultaneous units from different buildings, the power to change your rate of resource gathering according to your continuous direct input, be it upgrades or an increase in worker units, etc.) and kept intact all the tedious stuff. You're left with a single building that is only capable of doing one thing at a time, extremely slowly. This isn't a war strategy game, this is a game where you spend half an hour trying to get to the point where you can field four units at the same time.

The individual unit upgrades are a wonderful thing...in tabletop 40k, where you choose a full army list before the battle begins and there isn't any base-building at all. Having to upgrade each individual unit in the middle of battle is an extreme amount of micro for an RTS and an incredible waste of time, considering how often I have to go hunting for my errant, ADD-afflicted troops before I can even select them.

You're right in saying this is a micro-oriented game. It won't even let you overwatch things anymore, you have to do every little damn thing yourself. Heck, the mini-map doesn't even bother to tell you where your units are being attacked, and considering how often the icons sit on top of each other and how often your troops will just run off chasing anything that moves, you have to visually scan the arena yourself.

So here's the problem. This isn't a war game, this is a skirmish game, where each side fields about four units at a time, restricted to that because of the game's idiotically slow resource gathering mechanic and its even more idiotically slow unit building rate. Not only does this have nothing to do with what the Warhammer 40,000 universe is like (and frankly, neither did the first game; 40k is a universe where immense armies are shipped across space to battle for entire systems, not a world where armies send engineers to planets to build bases and then conjure troops out of the ether before getting around to killing each other), but DoW2 also has nothing to do with what an RTS is supposed to involve--like the ability to command armies, not platoons.

 

[Cowabungaa]

so it only effex u online

Not sure, since this is just a beta, but Fallout 3 uses Windows Live as well and I could play that without (heck I found out it hád Windows Live after I was already level 14 or something) logging into Windows Live. But for online play, yes you need Windows Live for that, not seeing what's só bad about it though but I never had any problems with it.

This game essentially eliminated all the things that made base building and economy management worthwhile (i.e. the ability to build simultaneous units from different buildings, the power to change your rate of resource gathering according to your continuous direct input, be it upgrades or an increase in worker units, etc.) and kept intact all the tedious stuff. You're left with a single building that is only capable of doing one thing at a time, extremely slowly.

So here's the problem. This isn't a war game, this is a skirmish game, where each side fields about four units at a time, restricted to that because of the game's idiotically slow resource gathering mechanic and its even more idiotically slow unit building rate.

These are indeed very important parts, and I fully agree on them. It's exactly what annoyed me about the game, just one building to pump units from, unit building is usually pretty slow (seen that you have just 1 building) and resource gathering is indeed hórribly slow. The latter can be fixxed in the full version, not so much for the first, but please still remember that this is a beta.

 

[bukky]

dawn of war 1 obviously the original and in my opinion the best it has 3 sequels
now dawn of war 2 anyone else think it may also hav a load of sequels

 

[bukky]

also eldar webway gates were essential for them bcause every building in the area could infiltrate and you could teleport your army from 1 place to another now what with no base building will the eldar still be able to infiltrate their base

 

[bukky]

will you start with power points next to ur base or not???

 

[Jandau]

This game essentially eliminated all the things that made base building and economy management worthwhile (i.e. the ability to build simultaneous units from different buildings, the power to change your rate of resource gathering according to your continuous direct input, be it upgrades or an increase in worker units, etc.) and kept intact all the tedious stuff. You're left with a single building that is only capable of doing one thing at a time, extremely slowly. This isn't a war strategy game, this is a game where you spend half an hour trying to get to the point where you can field four units at the same time.

I personally never much liked the entire Simcity aspect of RTS games. It wasn't why I play them. You seem to like it, good for you. As for having one building doing one thing very slowly, I'd have to disagree on the "slowly" part. And I'd have to disagree on the "half an hour to get four units". Maybe you just insisted on playing Space Marines too much. As an Ork I tend to have four units on the ground before I even see the enemy for the first time. Even as Space Marines I have four units out before moving to Tier 2. But you're right about one thing, this isn't a war strategy game. It's a war tactics game.

The individual unit upgrades are a wonderful thing...in tabletop 40k, where you choose a full army list before the battle begins and there isn't any base-building at all. Having to upgrade each individual unit in the middle of battle is an extreme amount of micro for an RTS and an incredible waste of time, considering how often I have to go hunting for my errant, ADD-afflicted troops before I can even select them.

You can select all your units on the sidebar. Also, all units are auto-selectable with number keys. Upgrading each individual unit isn't hard and I generally do it on the fly while moving the unit in question. Furthermore, individual unit upgrades were featured in DoW1 and CoH, so they're hardly a new thing. In fact, they were a lot more complicated in DoW1 where you could mix and match various upgrades for certain squads (four heavy weapons for a Tac squad, for instance). Heck, it shouldn't be hard even according to you since apparently you get a total of four units after 30 minutes of gameplay... As for troops being "errant" and "ADD-afflicted", can't say I've noticed. They are always where I left them and don't run around too much.

You're right in saying this is a micro-oriented game. It won't even let you overwatch things anymore, you have to do every little damn thing yourself. Heck, the mini-map doesn't even bother to tell you where your units are being attacked, and considering how often the icons sit on top of each other and how often your troops will just run off chasing anything that moves, you have to visually scan the arena yourself.

Overwatch what? Units take cover and return fire on their own. I will give you that the lack of feedback about what's going on is quite annoying. A "Unit under attack" would be very welcome. Currently you only get a notification when a unit loses a member. Your troops will hardly ever run off by themselves unless you told them to do so. However, a general consensus is that Stances should be reintroduced to allow players to customize the unit AI a bit.

So here's the problem. This isn't a war game, this is a skirmish game, where each side fields about four units at a time, restricted to that because of the game's idiotically slow resource gathering mechanic and its even more idiotically slow unit building rate. Not only does this have nothing to do with what the Warhammer 40,000 universe is like (and frankly, neither did the first game; 40k is a universe where immense armies are shipped across space to battle for entire systems, not a world where armies send engineers to planets to build bases and then conjure troops out of the ether before getting around to killing each other), but DoW2 also has nothing to do with what an RTS is supposed to involve--like the ability to command armies, not platoons.

Oh boy, this paragraph is... "special"... This is a war game. It deals with a smaller scale of conflict than, say, Supreme Commander and focuses more on unit tactics than an overall strategic picture. If that's not to your liking, fine, play something else. The resource mechanic is basically the same as in DoW1 and CoH and as for it being slow, a common complaint in the Beta was that resources come too fast, especially in 3v3 games, so many people tend to disagree with you here.

As for the scope and scale of WH40k, I'm not quite sure what your point here is. Tabletop WH40k doesn't deal with huge armies. It deals with squads and the occasional Tank. A fully fielded army in DoW is equivalent to roughly 1000 points in Tabletop. The only attempt to represent the "scale" of WH40k fluff is Epic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_(game) ), but that's not the franchise DoW is based off. It's based off the "regular" WH40K. Essentially, you're complaining a Spiderman movie doesn't have enough Green Lantern in it...

And finally, many very popular RTS games didn't exactly let you command "armies". A full pop cap Ork army fields more individual soldiers than, say, a Night Elf army in Warcraft 3, only the soldiers in DoW2 are organized in squads.

Overall, I'm not quite sure what your vision of an RTS is, but it seems to exclude most of the genre...

 

[bukky]

my army was 4 times as big with eldar but its a shame you cant use the pheonix lords in any of the games on dow

 

[Dys]

if your computers have an issue with Live, fine, but where do you think these issues lie? I will tell you more often than not it is your systems or Microsoft's issues with certain countries.

Issues with my computer? I think not. Given that the xbox live matchmaking system is barely better I am guessing it is a problem with microsoft (I don't even look like lagging on dedicated hosts or battle.net regardless of what I'm downloading in the background, it isn't my internet).

Why is it that every publisher wants to force broken matchmaking services on me without giving proper support to my country. It's not like Australia isn't big enough, really if you can't be fucked making it work at a reasonable standard, don't include it in our market. Waiting 15 minutes to auto matchmake (while at the same time telling me there are a minimum of 20 potential players) is horeshit.
What was wrong with the direct IP connect system? I don't want to wait 15 minutes to be auto-matchmade with players in WA (I'm in Victoria) only to have them drop out 5 minutes into the game. /rage. Even relic-online (which I also hated) in CoH was better than this.

 

[Pezzer]

I'm fifteen, but: I created my account on Windows Live, this all went smoothly. I then tried to play a match on DoW2, I was asked for my parents to log into their account (which does not exist) and give me permission to use this game online.

Does anyone else have a problem with that? I mean I can see the reasoning, but why is DoW2 restricted in this way when no otherRTs I have ever played has been?

 

[bukky]

somebody plz explain wots wrong with windows live

 

[Bobzer77]

I'm fifteen, but: I created my account on Windows Live, this all went smoothly. I then tried to play a match on DoW2, I was asked for my parents to log into their account (which does not exist) and give me permission to use this game online.

Does anyone else have a problem with that? I mean I can see the reasoning, but why is DoW2 restricted in this way when no otherRTs I have ever played has been?

Well maybe because its rated mature and no other RTS has windows live on it, I hate windows live myself but I can never give myself any reason other than its Microsoft (who gave us xbox 360's and vista)

 

[bukky]

but whys it bad u dont have to pay or anything

 

[bukky]

and you can use xfire

 

[Sir Ollie]

Just waiting for my copy to arrive, anyone who wants a game give me a shout.

Also the first time i've used the pc version of live i don't see a difference between the two

 

[Cornuto]

I don't even see why we should tolerate this kind of behavior. Being able to play and save your game has been a standard of PCs since the beginning. What right does Microsoft have to remove this basic functionality?

This calls for a petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/StopGFWL/

 

[bukky]

thank you
but i cant play because the graphics needed are now so much higher then the other 4 games so its on ebay