That's kind of been the wtf moments for me here as I read this thread. Not only are some of these elements from RTS first but I'm sitting her asking myself why that's a bad thing. RTS as a genre has been on the decline for a long time. Adopting more of it's elements since the moba genre has overtaken it or really grew out of it isn't that surprising.
I honestly don't know maybe it's me but didn't expect a game released in 2017 to be exactly like a game that was released in 2009 which also wasn't exactly like the first game that released in 2004. Also I could have just kept my expectations low. AllI wanted was a strategy game in the Warhammer 40K universe where I commanded units and had an interesting story. The details of how I expected it to play didn't even come to mind since there were so many ways of doing RTS. The only expectation and demand I had was that it ran well and had polish. It seems it does so I'm happy from a technical standpoint. I'll just learn the game and see how I liked on it's own merits tomorrow I guess.
I think there's a difference between what happened between DoW1 and Dow2 and this. Yes, DoW2 was different than the first game, but that was mostly because it tried to improve on certain aspects of the game - cover, positioning, increasing the tactical gameplay etc. Here though, it seems more like it plays different just because features from those two games are no longer there and it's shifted some of the focus to MOBAs, not because it's trying to do actually build upon the previous games to do something better. It throws pretty much everything except the very core ideas from the rest of the series out in favour of going for a completely different audience and style of gameplay, but compared to either of the previous two games it doesn't seem to do
anything as well as they did. It's like it's different for the sake of being different but in doing so it doesn't reach the same level of DoW1 with its scale, base building and map control, or DoW2 with it's weight, tactical/more 'realistic' gameplay and gritty feel.
I think there are more problems with it than just the gameplay itself, though:
- The units feel like they have no weight to their movement or attacks. They can just stand there and get attacked by an Imperial Knight like nothing is happening, no impact to the attacks.
- Sync kills are gone
- No morale or suppression
- The bright colourful art style doesn't fit in with W40K. Everything has less detail than even DoW1 did.
- A single gamemode and only 3 races.
- An EXTREMELY limited amount of units, buildings and upgrades, with the list artifically padded out by making some things that should be upgrades (e.g. Predator Annihilator/Destructor or Heavy Bolter/Lascannon devastators) completely separate units.
- Gabriel spinning his hammer in the air.
- Gabriel being part of your army even if you aren't blood ravens, rather than how in previous games it was a commander only based off the singleplayer version, not lifted directly from it.
- The entire Army Doctrine system - things that should be standard features are locked behind it, like Space Marines being able to fire while moving or use frag grenades. It's like they took upgrades from previous games and decided now you can only have 3.
- The Elite system, while an idea i like for Special units like the Knight, should not be for things like Assault Terminators. They should be a part of your army regardless.
- No point building bases past the large turret because you can't really defend them.
- Units feel like they're worthless. You're supposed to keep them alive, but you can't retreat them and can't really just walk away from a battle. Reinforcing them also takes power so defeats the point of having the cost reduction.
- The bright, thick outlines on everything
- The map design overall, with it being MOBA-like lanes, turrets and cores. No specific points worth defending or attacking more than any others.
- The voice lines seem so bland an uninspired. DoW1 and 2 had great voicework that conveyed lots of emotion and feeling. Here, even the Servitor doesn't sound right - the DoW1 version clearly came across as someone who had been turned into a machine and no longer had any independent thought, but there it's like it's just someone bored reading their lines without any real effort.
- Every model in a unit is completely identical to all the others in the unit. Lack of things like Sergeants/squad leaders.
- You can't zoom in very far, or change the angle of the camera
- Base building is ultimately pointless without any sort of proper tech tree. You're just arbitrarily getting units in pretty much whatever order until you can get heroes or vehicles out and then they're mostly irrelevant.
As for saying RTS games had some of these things first, what exactly are you referring to?
They are not making these games just for tabletop fans. And they already changed proportions and lore for DoW 1 and 2. I don't see any problems with the visuals in DoW3, it's one of the areas they did really well.
This is what i was referring to with the Space Marines:
Changing the proportions of Space Marines to the same degree as the concept art and reveal trailer is something that should
never be done if you properly understand what they're meant to be and the W40K universe as a whole. The look of them is iconic, as is what they represent and how they're meant to be portrayed. There are variations with their proportions in art and games, but they always stick to their core theme of being huge, heavy-looking, bulky supersoldiers. Having a Space Marine like that makes as much sense as depicting the Eldar as small and fat would, it just completely against their whole theme.
They didn't keep that look for the game other than they're sort of like that in the trailer, but thinking it might be a good idea in the first place suggests either a lack of care or understanding.
