The Gaming Den

Whipstitch wrote:From what I've heard from backer beta participants Pillars of Eternity 2 sounds like a real turd. They apparently doubled down on 4e style per encounter bullshit and nerfed the ever living shit out of casters. In a further bid to making characters staid and boring as possible the "Devoted" subclass is apparently the strongest thing going and that's just literally a Fighter who gives up all but one proficiency in exchange for a fat bonus.

I've seen a fair bit of it. It isn't that different from the first one. Given that everyone has to deal with proficiencies now (for some reason), the devoted thing isn't actually that bad. There are some absurdly good multi class combinations that can be done with that... But it's just a bonus to penetration and +25% critical hit damage. Given there are enemies that are just flat immune to damage types, this is an option that can really fuck you. And the combat path still looks fucked so can easily screw melee only characters.

As for the vancian Spellcasters- I never thought they really fit in the first place. No one else was on that kind of power scheme, and they could utterly trivialize encounters in PoE1. At least for the low level spells, most of the exact same spells are there. Priests still knock people down, Wizards molest people with tentacles (though I think that's a new spell), and Druids still do everything.

The really bad elements for 2 become apparent with a deeper dive, the speciality class options for each class really suck with terrible drawbacks and mediocre benefits. Except... Some few don't, are just combo exploits for system mastery.

The cipher got hit with huge cast times- seriously five or six seconds. Which makes the class useless, except for one of the the aforementioned combo exploits which involves not using spells and just unloading all focus into a melee strike for hundreds of damage.

Conjured weapons also got hit with large cast times, but overall combat time is faster, so there isn't much point.

The biggest loss is the generic feats are gone- either folded into specific classes or removed, so customization is way down. And spells are abilities you select at every level, so character creation is basically min/max clone brigade where you should only ever take the best stuff. And a lot of classes still lack a large selection of info to choose from.

The consequences of the multiclassing system aren't entirely known (because the higher level abilities werent in the backer beta), but it looks like multiclassing is absolutely superior at low to mid level, but may end up fucking you completely at the end game. Sole class characters get a new tier of abilities every 2 levels, multiclassing every 3, but multi gets more points to spend, so have a much larger array of abilities and two resource pools to draw from.

On the other hand, it might well mean that single class is entirely pointless, since the best abilities in PoE1 weren't necessarily the highest level ones. If you can still pile long lasting paralyze effects, and now also take a huge amount of passive damage stacking, fuck high level spells.

The major take away is high system mastery is going to trivialize is game, because the designers are idiots, while people who just take what sounds cool are going to get punched in the dick. Which means more endless tinkering with the game to find a balance point unsatisfactory to everyone.

I'll eat my crow on that one. It's been a long damn time since CoH1 and DoW1 came out. That said...Company of Heroes is a direct reskin of Dawn of War 1. DoW2 is not that similar. Dead serious. Still don't understand what you're going on about.
CoH and DoW were about building your base, to build and upgrade multiple squads of dudes (+tanks) and then sending your army around the map for control points to acquire more resources to build a bigger army, so you can eventually send a full company of Spess Meringues to burn the enemy base to the ground. Or a full company of the US Army, or whatever.
Dawn of War 2 has no base building. No unit construction. Persistent characters, acquiring random loot, RPG skill trees, tiny little fireteams, not whole SM companies. I love Dawn of War 2, don't get me wrong, but it shares *very little* with Company of Heroes. Or Dawn of War 1, for that matter.

Yeah, i liked the corruption mechanic in DoW2 as well.
I wish they had done more for that game instead of making DoW3 <.<

I really felt that the corruption mechanic was mostly pointless. It's pretty trivial to keep your squad at full purity, and the benefits of getting corrupted never seemed that good. The buffs were meh, the gear was meh (and randomly acquired meh, at that). Why even bother?

Hadanelith wrote:I'll eat my crow on that one. It's been a long damn time since CoH1 and DoW1 came out. That said...Company of Heroes is a direct reskin of Dawn of War 1. DoW2 is not that similar. Dead serious. Still don't understand what you're going on about.
CoH and DoW were about building your base, to build and upgrade multiple squads of dudes (+tanks) and then sending your army around the map for control points to acquire more resources to build a bigger army, so you can eventually send a full company of Spess Meringues to burn the enemy base to the ground. Or a full company of the US Army, or whatever.
Dawn of War 2 has no base building. No unit construction. Persistent characters, acquiring random loot, RPG skill trees, tiny little fireteams, not whole SM companies. I love Dawn of War 2, don't get me wrong, but it shares *very little* with Company of Heroes. Or Dawn of War 1, for that matter.

That's pretty much the only thing (base building), but pretty much every RTS has base building. And Dawn of War 2 had more than its fair share of in-battle unit building/upgrading too in multiplayer, plus Retribution campaign, whereas CoH expansion campaigns had persistent characters with leveling up too.

However things that both CoH and DoW 2 did carbon copy like and you simply don't see in other RTS before:
-Weapons with limited firing arcs that need setting up (in DoW 1 set-up weapons can still fire in any direction).
-Each match each faction can pick one from 3 "doctrines" that unlock different abilities and special units (no equivalent at all in DoW 1)
-Said doctrine abilities require a special resource that is only gained by your units kiling and dying.
-Some weapons cause supression damage, others don't, as opposed to DoW 1 where every weapon can potentially break down morale.
-Being supressed seriously slows you down, while in DoW 1 the closest thing is morale breaking that actually makes you go fastah even if you fight worst.
-Ninja retreat button where you click one button and your units run back to base while gaining huge defense bonus against shooting (you need to manually guide units back to base in DoW 1)
-Squads already start at max numbers for basic dudes in contrast with DoW 1 where your basic 4 dude sphech merine squad can buy 5 extra basic dudes.
-Small scale where even a single tank is supposed to be something huge in contrast to DoW 1 where you can spam half a dozen tanks no problem if you so choose.
-Tanks take different amounts of damage depending on the front/rear/sides, also most anti-tank weapons slow them down because reasons.
-Units able to go inside random buildings.
-Grenades with timers that fuck up people inside buildings.
-Direction-based cover mechanics combined with retarded AI that makes it easy for units to end up in the wrong side despite your best efforts, in contrast to DoW 1's "if you're standing here you take less damage regardless of what direction you're being attacked from".

Hadanelith wrote:I really felt that the corruption mechanic was mostly pointless. It's pretty trivial to keep your squad at full purity, and the benefits of getting corrupted never seemed that good. The buffs were meh, the gear was meh (and randomly acquired meh, at that). Why even bother?

See, that both purity and corruption paths were more or less equally viable while not being too hard to go either path was a good thing. You could descend into chaos for all the spiky bitz and warpflame or remain pure for the golden stuff whitout much trouble. And then there were all the extra fluffy bits like your un-corruptable dreadnought starting to threaten you as you turn closer to kayos, and the bit where one of your party members eventually breaks down and turns on you depending on your campaign actions is pretty nice story-wise. In particular when they bothered making different reasonings and dialogues for each traitor scenario, from "I was possessed all along" to "I've realized the Imperium sucks and all my service for the corpse god was useless, now I'm doing what I want".

*le sigh*
And it goes on . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbt3kxWDe4Y
I had kind of highish hopes for that one . .

Now to wait and see how bad the WH40K Civ Game will be . .

I'm still hoping for Total Warhammer: 40K since they actually did a pretty good job with Fantasy Warhammer.

In particular because it would finally allow to have proper sized armies instead of glorified skirmishes.

Oh yes, a 40K Total Warhammer would be sweet . .
Sadly, Gothic Armada did not tickle my fancy either.

Seriously, the best WH40K game i found as of late was a pretty buggy mod for Stellaris . .

And the best Star Wars Game was also a Mod for Stellaris.
And the best Star Trek Game was also a Mod for Stellaris.
And the best Star Gate game was also a Mod for Stellaris.
And a Mod for Stellaris could also be the best ever Galactica Game.
And a Mod for Stellaris could also be the best ever Babylon 5 Game.

See, you're talking about multiplayer, which...fair enough, I guess. But multiplayer RTS and I don't get along. At all. Singleplayer story campaigns are where it's at. And for DoW 2, at least, that was what they were pushing, too, which made me quite happy. If the multiplayer of DoW 2 and CoH were basically the same...news to me. But I can't really care much.

Stahlseele: At this point, any GW video game should be assumed crap until *proven* otherwise. A Diablo-like 40K game? I can kinda see the possibility, but I can also see a billion pitfalls. Looks like they've fallen in several (dozen) of them.

I just got Total Warhammer 1 for Christmas, and yeah, it's actually pretty good. Definitely want the expansions and the sequel. That said...I don't know how well the formula would work for 40K. There's a reason that the Total War games have stuck to historical games up to this point - the far future changes things so much that they would be completely at sea. Besides, They just released TW2 and they're working on expanding that, followed by a third game (we already know it's coming, that's not news). Total 40K is a long way off, if ever.

Ok DoW 2 campaign had quite different mechanics from the rest of the game and I cannot blame you for staying away from the skirmish and mp modes.

Anyway TW 40k could work since t is more of fantasy than future sci fi. Half the factions consider charging hordes of infantry with pointy sticks a viable tactic (and actually works often enough) and most commanders want you to drive them closer so you can hit the enemy with their sword. Just do a world map like Dark Crusade or Soulstorm for provinces.


And yes right now they are busy making WH fantasy but eventually they will have converted all factions and then I bet they will turn their eyes to 40k.

By this point, i am prepared to be completely disappointed by the WH40K Civ Game as well ._.

DoW2 mechanics are all I want out of a 40k war game. If larger scale then make the models tinier and more numerous per unit

Yeah, a new DoW2 Addon with Necron and Tau again or with Sororitas and Dark Eldar and their weird mechanics would have been nice to have as well.

Stahlseele wrote:*le sigh*
And it goes on . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbt3kxWDe4Y
I had kind of highish hopes for that one . .

Now to wait and see how bad the WH40K Civ Game will be . .

Considering how much of a mismatch it is, it can't be anything but terrible.

Research isn't a thing. Human tech is stagnant, alien techs are perfected and stagnant.

Exploration makes no sense- they either came at the planet from orbit (thus can survey the entire planet), or have been living there for thousands of years.

Diplomacy isn't a thing, because 40k. No one shares worlds, and having half-a-dozen different factions on the same planet beggars belief.

So, a shitty war game with a bizarre map and a outright gamist take on unit production that has fuck all to do with the background. People arrive with armies, they don't settle in and make units one at a time.


A civ knockoff that's going to be worse at things civ already struggles with looks hellish terrible on first principles.

I happen to like Civ . . Well, Civ5 with it being completely done . .
And i will wait for Civ6 to be somewhere around the same level of done ish ness before passing final judgement, even if i do not like the new graphics style of it.
And i happen to like WH40K so to me, at first, it just sounds like a game i could like . .

Good for you. You liking both doesn't mean that a game that tries to combine the two can in any way overcome the inherent contradiction. Civ is about progress, 40k is anti-progress. The only 40k solution is guns and swords, which makes Civ's (laughable) attempts at diplomacy and trade even more worthless.

There are a lot of viable game styles that fit 40k, especially in in the realm of computer turn based strategy. This isn't one of them. The 40k answer to the 4x genre is reducing it to the Dalek answer.

Stahlseele wrote:Yeah, a new DoW2 Addon with Necron and Tau again or with Sororitas and Dark Eldar and their weird mechanics would have been nice to have as well.

I didn't play basic DoW2 because Space Marines are the Roman Reigns of 40k. But Retribution, honestly I don't know why they didn't just release a bunch of extra campaigns - they could even keep the same basic plot and battles for all of them as the 10,000% laziness approach and just change the units, wargear and (small amounts of) inter-party dialogue that you get - as cheap DLC. And then for bigger, more varied campaigns that aren't "The Retribution one literally everyone has" they could charge a bit more.

I enjoyed the basic experience of that short campaign with the character-levelling options sufficiently that I'd be happy to pay a few dollars for a Necron campaign, and then for Tau, Dark Eldar, Sororitas, Daemons, Gene Cult, Mechanicus, and so on. If they made enough that buying them all is about the same as buying a full expansion for a game then they'd probably wind up ahead on the effort:money ratio.

They did do a Tau and necron commander 10 bucks DLCs (yeah, 10 bucks each) for Last Stand, which was actually the most popular segment of DoW 2, to the point it started being sold as its own game, and there were people complaining when DoW 3 didn't have any equivalent.

Why bother developing a whole new faction when people will throw money at a single new unit?

FUCK
Harmony Gold!
In the eye!
With a rusty spoon!

You are talking about the lawsuit against HBS, right?
Is there something new? Only found things from November...

Yeah, that.
They are, again, making a mess of things so the Marauder and Warhammer can not be in the new Battletech Game . .
For some fucked up reason.
Because the MWO Models were fine up until now where they suddenly are not.

I wonder, the reason this is Happening are the american Copyright laws, right?
If your Company is not in the US, how concerned are you about those laws?

Would this be an reason for an development Studio, to be not in the US?

DISCLAIMER: Not an single idea, about Copyright laws...

Yes, pretty much american copyright law.
Even if, technically, they do not own the copyright anymore.
They are, basically, one of the first and oldest copyright Trolls.

Korwin wrote:You are talking about the lawsuit against HBS, right?
Is there something new? Only found things from November...

The upshot is the judge refused to dismiss the case HG brought out of hand (PGI filed a motion to do that) so out of caution harebrained isn't including the Robotech specific stuff at launch. Which is sensible. PGI has sold a lot of these mechs as individual packs in MWO for lots of money, whereas HBS is a much smaller operation with a lot less money, with a game at isn't even out yet. HG doesn't have to win to break them with a lawsuit.

As far as I can tell it only affects the Robotech stuff, not the other anime mechs like the shadowhawk, locust, wolverine and thunderbolt.

Iirc, however, dealing with this dismissal apparently exhausted the judge so badly that the actual case won't be reviewed til next year. Yeah the first part is sarcasm, but according to what's on the HBS forums, they're talking about a 2019 resolution.

On the upside the marauder and warhammer are fairly shit designs with terrible weapon/armor/heat configs, so whatever. Plus the marauder aesthetic doesn't fit at all- the original never even pretended to rescale the cockpit from Zentradi size, and even the redesign still looks terribly vulnerable and absurd.


@Korwin - because you want to sell shit to the American market. If you want to make easy money off the hordes of teeming fanboys for <whatever>, you've got to deal with a bizarre and blatantly unreasonable legal system.

Locust is Robotech though, if i remember correctly.

But i thought the MWO Models used and made by old pal Alex were different enough to be safe, after all, MWO has been using and selling, them for years by now . .