The Eldar are the only elves I like. I mean I really really fucking hate elves, but if you can create a dark god through debauchery then well, you're doing something right.
The Eldar are the only elves I like. I mean I really really fucking hate elves, but if you can create a dark god through debauchery then well, you're doing something right.
The Eldar gods are pretty good as well. Only 2 survived the fall*, Khaine, who was defeated by Slaanesh and splintered into pieces, which are where Avatar's come from more or less, and the laughing God.
Solitaires (a type of Harlequin) don't wear soulstones, so in order to have their souls saved, the Laughing God needs to trick Slaanesh to save them.
Eldar are awesome compared to normal Elves, because they're completely out for themselves, and wouldn't think twice about manipulating events to save a few of their own, at the cost of millions of another race.
The amount of background for Eldar is pretty impressive, truth be told.
Edit.
Oh and you've also got Ynnead, the god of the dead, who seems to be forming from all the spirits the Eldar have collected and placed in the Infinity circuits. The hope being that one day he will be strong enough to defeat Slaanesh.
*there are stories that say Lileath was saved by Nurgle.
tbh I'd say orks are the least violent species in the galaxy.
Not in action, of course, but on principle.
Orks don't kill because they "want" to, it's simply who they are. Much as you breathe, an ork will smack another ork for having shiny teeth.
Which brings us to another reason why the orks rock. they're honest. they don't hide behind a false god (marines), pseudo morality (tau), poor self-esteem (chaos), etc. You see an ork, he's says he's going to slap you and that's *exactly* what he does.
evilthecat on
tip.. tip.. TALLY.. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
The other thing is that orks are sort of... innocents. Violent innocents, but in some sense unspoiled.
tbh I'd say orks are the least violent species in the galaxy.
Not in action, of course, but on principle.
Orks don't kill because they "want" to, it's simply who they are. Much as you breathe, an ork will smack another ork for having shiny teeth.
Which brings us to another reason why the orks rock. they're honest. they don't hide behind a false god (marines), pseudo morality (tau), poor self-esteem (chaos), etc. You see an ork, he's says he's going to slap you and that's *exactly* what he does.
I'm pretty sure they want to fight. In a Galaxy like this, who doesn't?
Who the fuck decided how much HP the last boss was going to have. This person needs to get kicked in the dick. It took me 111 minutes to beat that fucking mission and then the game crashed on the after-action screen.
Honestly, why did we go for the melee ground assault on the last boss. Nuke it from orbit, people!
*sigh* such an obnoxious end to a great campaign.
kildy on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
Is it worse than The Wailing Doom in the first campaign? Because killing that Avatar sucked...really bad.
e: Also, the first campaign becomes somewhat of a joke once you get Terminator armor and everyone is rollin' around with storm bolters, assault cannons and thunder hammers. I just beat it for the first time this weekend, despite owning DoW2 since it came out. So I wasn't aware how trivial Terminator armor made the game. I stopped microing for the most part, I would just charge this big chunk of terminators with a dreadnought in to just about anything and watch it die.
I didn't think the end was bad. Took me about 10-15 minutes to beat him. My group was Commander in regular armor with a hammer (he was pure, so warshout stunned the boss). Assault Terminators with their assault jump exploding which did pretty decent damage. The Librarian, and his wrath spell stunned, and his fireball spell does decent damage as well. And then Thule, the Dread. He had a Melta and his Melta sweep at close range did great damage.
It took a lot of running in and out to beat him though.
I'd assault jump in with the commander, timed so that the assault squad would get in around the same time. Then I'd warcry, which stunned him for a few seconds. Then I'd do a melta sweep with Thule. Then wrath with the Librarian, which stunned him. Then I'd teleport out with my assault marines, then explode-jump back in. Then I'd pretty much just hit 'x' with the whole squad, heal up and go back in and do it again. Took a while, and things almost fell apart when he summoned new guys to help, but I thought it was pretty fun.
e. I should mention, I played on normal difficulty.
I didn't think the end was bad. Took me about 10-15 minutes to beat him. My group was Commander in regular armor with a hammer (he was pure, so warshout stunned the boss). Assault Terminators with their assault jump exploding which did pretty decent damage. The Librarian, and his wrath spell stunned, and his fireball spell does decent damage as well. And then Thule, the Dread. He had a Melta and his Melta sweep at close range did great damage.
It took a lot of running in and out to beat him though.
I'd assault jump in with the commander, timed so that the assault squad would get in around the same time. Then I'd warcry, which stunned him for a few seconds. Then I'd do a melta sweep with Thule. Then wrath with the Librarian, which stunned him. Then I'd teleport out with my assault marines, then explode-jump back in. Then I'd pretty much just hit 'x' with the whole squad, heal up and go back in and do it again. Took a while, and things almost fell apart when he summoned new guys to help, but I thought it was pretty fun.
Yeah I'd love to have done that too except that
Thaddeus was the traitor in my game, and I'm on Primarch.
Oh and my favorite part was when he would randomly and inexplicably regain tens of thousands of hit points over the course of a few seconds.
The Chaos Rising campaign is awesome, although I do have a few wishes for the next inevitable expansion.
While this may be a case of being cursed with greatness, it didn't seem very long. I think it probably took me about 10 hours the first time through. This feels short for an RTS. If it can keep up the same level of quality but go on for longer that would be awesome.
The final boss wasn't that much fun, and it seems like that's a relatively common complaint. Maybe I was just doing it wrong or something, but it took me over half an hour to beat, mostly due to the run to and from the respawn beacon after he ate half my marines.
The thing is, I was never in any real danger of losing. I can't even think of a mission I actually failed. I may have had all my squads killed several times, but I never actually lost the level.
I think one way of tying these two things together would be to have the odd level that is just a straight up boss fight, but with no respawn beacons. You'd obviously have to tweak the current format a little bit; make most of the bosses damage come from special attacks and remove their one-hit-kill melee attacks. Perhaps also play with their aggro mechanics, so they don't ping-pong between squads so much like they seem to now.
I think something like this would allow genuinely taxing bosses, with much more developed abilities, without the risk of "do an hour long level, get to boss, get raped and die, ragequit game."
My other real complaint about the campaign is that, they added in loads of new awesome item types... which you never really get. I never found any lascannons, lightning claws, commander helmets or Librarian weapons aside from the default ones you get as mission rewards. I never found any autocannons at all, so have no idea if they're an item your devastators can get. I presumed they were since the enemy uses all the ones you can use, and gets them as well.
I found a couple of green meltas and multi-meltas, but other than that never anything particularly exciting apart from the scripted purple drops. Maybe that was just me being unlucky, but in 2 playthroughs I've mostly ended up with gear that isn't particularly better than what I had at the end of the last game. More varied corrupt items would be awesome as well; I never found anything corrupt that Cyrus could use. This made me sad, since it meant I had one slightly-nice guy left at the end of the campaign. :P
EDIT: Relating to SJs spoiler...
Is the traitor random? Or is it related to corruption levels/items used or something? In my pure playthrough the traitor was Martellus, but in my corrupt one it was Tarkus.
I didn't think the end was bad. Took me about 10-15 minutes to beat him. My group was Commander in regular armor with a hammer (he was pure, so warshout stunned the boss). Assault Terminators with their assault jump exploding which did pretty decent damage. The Librarian, and his wrath spell stunned, and his fireball spell does decent damage as well. And then Thule, the Dread. He had a Melta and his Melta sweep at close range did great damage.
It took a lot of running in and out to beat him though.
I'd assault jump in with the commander, timed so that the assault squad would get in around the same time. Then I'd warcry, which stunned him for a few seconds. Then I'd do a melta sweep with Thule. Then wrath with the Librarian, which stunned him. Then I'd teleport out with my assault marines, then explode-jump back in. Then I'd pretty much just hit 'x' with the whole squad, heal up and go back in and do it again. Took a while, and things almost fell apart when he summoned new guys to help, but I thought it was pretty fun.
Yeah I'd love to have done that too except that
Thaddeus was the traitor in my game, and I'm on Primarch.
I didn't even know that:
Your own group members could betray you. Mine was the stupid dude I saved on the planet, forget his name.
Anyways, I want to play it again, maybe corrupt this time in Co-op, but I can never find anyone who wants to play, haha.
The only Commander Helmet I got was the one from the Librarian wargear package or whatever. There's not very many sources of loot in this game, it seems. Or maybe I just think that because every piece of loot I did get was almost exactly the same as something I already had/didn't want.
e: @ Diss:
Thule left my party a few missions prior to the last one because I was too corrupt, so he wasn't even an option.
The Chaos Rising campaign is awesome, although I do have a few wishes for the next inevitable expansion.
While this may be a case of being cursed with greatness, it didn't seem very long. I think it probably took me about 10 hours the first time through. This feels short for an RTS. If it can keep up the same level of quality but go on for longer that would be awesome.
The final boss wasn't that much fun, and it seems like that's a relatively common complaint. Maybe I was just doing it wrong or something, but it took me over half an hour to beat, mostly due to the run to and from the respawn beacon after he ate half my marines.
The thing is, I was never in any real danger of losing. I can't even think of a mission I actually failed. I may have had all my squads killed several times, but I never actually lost the level.
I think one way of tying these two things together would be to have the odd level that is just a straight up boss fight, but with no respawn beacons. You'd obviously have to tweak the current format a little bit; make most of the bosses damage come from special attacks and remove their one-hit-kill melee attacks. Perhaps also play with their aggro mechanics, so they don't ping-pong between squads so much like they seem to now.
I think something like this would allow genuinely taxing bosses, with much more developed abilities, without the risk of "do an hour long level, get to boss, get raped and die, ragequit game."
My other real complaint about the campaign is that, they added in loads of new awesome item types... which you never really get. I never found any lascannons, lightning claws, commander helmets or Librarian weapons aside from the default ones you get as mission rewards. I never found any autocannons at all, so have no idea if they're an item your devastators can get. I presumed they were since the enemy uses all the ones you can use, and gets them as well.
I found a couple of green meltas and multi-meltas, but other than that never anything particularly exciting apart from the scripted purple drops. Maybe that was just me being unlucky, but in 2 playthroughs I've mostly ended up with gear that isn't particularly better than what I had at the end of the last game. More varied corrupt items would be awesome as well; I never found anything corrupt that Cyrus could use. This made me sad, since it meant I had one slightly-nice guy left at the end of the campaign. :P
I really want them to do a Dark Crusade type game with the DoW2 engine. Let me play as all the races with a risk-style world map.
It would take a lot, with different squads for each race, and different wargear equips, but I can safely say that Dark Crusade is easily the longest I've ever played an RTS in single player.
I beat it with every race, and at that point there were like 8 or something.
Yeah but the plot was almost non existant. There were scary undead guys and scary chaos guys and watch out! It's the Orks again. And I guess we have to have a reason for the Space Communist Hippies to show up so let's just have the planet belong to them.
The only Commander Helmet I got was the one from the Librarian wargear package or whatever. There's not very many sources of loot in this game, it seems. Or maybe I just think that because every piece of loot I did get was almost exactly the same as something I already had/didn't want.
e: @ Diss:
Thule left my part a few missions prior to the last one because I was too corrupt, so he wasn't even an option.
So you lost two of your squad mates? That's rough. I went pure the whole way through, I didn't know people would leave you if you were corrupt.
What would have been cool in this game would be if you actually ended up changing sides part way through, and played different missions based on your corruption. Like if you actually fell to chaos, and got like 5 chaos missions fighting against the blood ravens. I guess it would have taken too much time though.
I didn't get any helmets either, I only got I think one staff weapon for the librarian. I got probably dozens of mastercrafted bolt pistols though.
Yeah but the plot was almost non existant. There were scary undead guys and scary chaos guys and watch out! It's the Orks again. And I guess we have to have a reason for the Space Communist Hippies to show up so let's just have the planet belong to them.
I agree, but I still loved it because each individual campaign was kind of short-ish, and I got to play as each race and find different units I liked to use, and different strategies for each. Plus, the banter between your commander and the enemy commander in the stronghold missions were pretty great. Unfortunately it was something they didn't carry on as much with in the following expansion, whatever it was called.
The only bolt pistol I had during the entire campaign was the Pistol of Terra that I had gotten from the original campaign. I only ever found two regular lightning claws, both of which were useless by the end of the game. I found one storm bolter, which by the time I found it, it was like 6 levels too low for me. I found like 20 relic and master crafted plasma pistols that I had no use for. The old Terminator armor was practically useless by the time you're able to use it. Ugh. Maybe when I play through on Captain the game won't hate me so much.
Do cultists with grenade launchers need the Aspiring Champion in order to properly grenade suppression teams / platforms? I know the grenade barrage will knock them out of place, but it generally doesnt do enough damage to cause a retreat, and keeping LoS on the team brings the heretics within range of the weapon.
Gnome-Interruptus on
MWO: Adamski
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Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
Yeah but the plot was almost non existant. There were scary undead guys and scary chaos guys and watch out! It's the Orks again. And I guess we have to have a reason for the Space Communist Hippies to show up so let's just have the planet belong to them.
I agree, but I still loved it because each individual campaign was kind of short-ish, and I got to play as each race and find different units I liked to use, and different strategies for each. Plus, the banter between your commander and the enemy commander in the stronghold missions were pretty great. Unfortunately it was something they didn't carry on as much with in the following expansion, whatever it was called.
Random skirmishes were horrible though (both in DC and Soulstorm), which is why I only ever played singleplayer once or twice. Of DoW1 and addons, I'd say Winter Assault had the most fun campaign.
I was pretty much the same. My main squad all hit level 30 around half way through the campaign purely from the amount of white items I ended up burning.
It's a little depressing when you get to the end of a mission and see you have a good 10-12 items collected, 8 of which are white bolt/plasma pistols or armour.
The drop rate is good enough, what's actually dropping isn't.
Ans yes, I didn't get the point of the old terminator armour either. If it was upgraded when you could use it, great. As is it's completely outdated, especially the level 12 set you get from Angel Forge in the original campaign.
And every set of Terminator armor I found was specifically for melee characters. None of them helped at all if you wanted to put Avitus or Tarkus in it. Not that I could have anyway, because of the aforementioned storm bolter problem, and the only Terminator assault cannon I found was like, a level 24 white with no special properties.
The rest of the game was a lot of fun though; I like the campaign better than the first one. I loved the space hulk art too, whoever did the background image when you are in orbit gets a gold star from me!
The whole thing felt more 'warhammer' than the first one. And the modeling and texture work on the new chaos units was really great.
Voice acting was decent too, but honestly I don't think I've ever heard Space Marine voice acting that I like, it is always so cheesy. But then, space marines are cheesy no matter what. I can't stand any of their fiction
I think what's holding you back from enjoying it is one simple misunderstanding:
Warhammer 40k is cheesy and ridiculous as hell in its entirety. That's the point.
From a literary perspective, I just can't empathize with the space marines. They just shout a lot. That is mostly what I meant by 'cheesy'.
I mean, I used to think it's good. But I'm tired of it now. If they go for DoW3 before Homeworld 3 then I'ma gonna be pissed.
Hoz on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
So, single player impressions and general rambling design stuff. I've completed it twice, once co-op with surrealitycheck on Primarch, once myself on Captain, and am trying a third gear-oriented run on Primarch again.
The mission structure in general feels much better. I like the Corruption/Redemption choices. The method for gaining and losing Corruption was nicely implemented.
Map design is still slightly questionable, but mostly good.
Take the return to Angel Forge, for example. There is a large portion of the map that is simply empty of troops. If you're doing Power/Resilience (which I think is what most do), then you will explore that to try and find units and instead just lose Speed score for nothing. Then look at, say, the new Avatar mission; lots of alternative routes that reward you with speed. It seems that sometimes you're rewarded for exploration, but other times you aren't. However, there are thankfully fewer super-large maps like Capital Spire that take an age to clear everything out of.
Now, onto some debate on the scoring system.
I suspected it wouldn't have been changed since vanilla, but since it hasn't, and given the way it meshes with map design, I'm going to bring up a few issues I have with it. Resilience is fine (there are problems with enemy damage sometimes but that's not resilience's fault). Power and Speed, I feel however, could do with some review. They're more or less mutually exclusive, which means you have to choose between the two. This leads on to the fact that Power is almost always better; more killing means more XP and more loot; the only reasons you would rush a mission is if you were only playing for the story, if you like having less loot and XP, or if there was some in-game constraint.
What I would like to see instead is to merge both into a kill rate stat. So, for example, let's consider multiple routes, like in the
new Avatar
mission. You can choose to outflank people and avoid combat, but your score suffers as a result because there are fewer enemies. Exploration, rather than penalising the player with a bad Speed score, is now as good as simply rushing a mission, provided that you keep your killing rate up whilst doing so (and enemies are roughly equally dispersed).
Similarly, if you successfully force your way through a heavy enemy entrenched position, you are rewarded for it with a higher kill rate score. It can also affect choices about additional mission objectives; whereas before you might penalise a player for going out of their way to
destroy a Warp Gate
by having them lose some Speed score, you get a choice. You can, as the map designer, choose your unit density to either reward, ignore or penalise the player's choice to undertake an optional extra. The final benefit is that it removes those annoying missions where your Power score suffers because there are infinitely spawning units, or there are unreachable units.
I don't have any massive problem with scoring as it stands, but it does occasionally feel cumbersome.
Loot design is better in some ways, worse in others. In vanilla, you had a concrete but grindy way to ensure you got loot you could use. In CR, what loot you get is mostly random, and with only
14
mission rewards, you cannot hope to cover all bases. Loot tokens are always good, but I feel should have been much more ubiquitous. There are three things I would say about them; firstly, that they should indicate the quality of loot given using the normal colour scheme.
Secondly, they should probably display what units it will be limited to when you're about to donate them. For example, I saw that one such token would, if my FC was wearing Terminator Armour, give Lightning Claws. I wanted those for Thaddeus, and my previously donated token had been useable by multiple squads, so I donated it only to receive a pair of claws only useable by my FC, who was a Heavy Bolter fashioniste. Sad me.
Thirdly, I think that given the ability to give multiple rewards for missions, most of your missions should've had a token. Now, given each token represents 11 items, that might seem like work, so you could repeat tokens (since there are often two options or more I want from any token). This would've helped loot disparity a fair deal; even by the time I faced the final boss, Avitus was still using the co-op reward Lascannon, Thaddeus was using the single green TH+S that I'd gotten from a Token, and my FC hadn't found a better Heavy Bolter than the one I'd imported from my old save; in my own Primarch run, my terminator FC doesn't have a Commander Item for Terminator Armour at all. 8(
I said earlier that you could get all the gear (and thus gear appropriately to your spec) in vanilla but not in this. This isn't entirely true; there is a way; die on every mission.
Co-op rewards are awesome. Whoever thought that up deserves a pat on the back and a nod of approval. I have to wonder if you get more for over 15 missions done as a guest (it also seemed like the reward I received from completing the final mission was the same as the one I received from the penultimate mission).
Primarch damage changes are better. A few enemies still stood out as having ridiculous one-shotting capabilities (I see Seer Council are still laser-killing Bear Jews), and it still feels like that needs to be looked at on a unit basis. I can understand Jonah getting one-shotted if you've gone deep Corruption with him, but when he's got maxed Stamina tree and still cannot get into combat range without playing russan roulette with a Sorceror's lightning, it's a bit unpleasant. The same can be said of Thule. Overall, though, a vast improvement.
Individual map stuff.
I see the Avatar guy still needs a hard kick in the danglies (applicable even if they were responsible for co-op rewards). Phase 1 is still the worst part because of that instant kill shot and the positioning of the fall-back point. It's just not cool to retreat your guys only to find that red circle waiting for you and lose the mission instantly.
The optional missions are a bit weird. You don't lose days for failing them, so why give them day limits at all, excluding the one where there's a penalty for letting it expire?
I thought it was odd how performing Redemption options often rewarded you with Corrupting items, and vice versa. I suppose I can see why.
Strategic Assets after the first three seemed pointless. I often captured them with a Corrupt squad but got no indication of Redemption even for the Shrine, and no tangible reward.
Space Hulk was great. Good environment, loved the Corruption timer limit in that situation.
The mission against Diomedes was awesome. The ability to choose whether to destroy power generators or fight you way through was sweet. It probably should've recommended Cyrus in the briefing but that's a tiny thing.
I've fought Cyrus and Martellus on the return to Argent Shelf (I already mentioned that Array didn't I? Seriously, teleport access area only, but then you spawn two Dreadnoughts from thin air? Dick move, map designer. If I hadn't capped the Array quickly for reinforcements, Thaddeus would've been stuck there until the cinematic). Martellus was significantly more difficult. I guess I'll find out soon whether there are other bosses to fight dependent on your squad's Corruption (hi Tarkus).
The final mission I'll echo surrealitycheck's sentiments. The anti-infantry tank was useless at killing infantry; its knockback often just meant you had to push further into enemy territory to finish them off, triggering more enemies to attack you. Something akin to the FC's insta-kill chance on the Sponson Heavy Bolters would've been nicer. Also, I echo Shepard's (?) point about the left way being significantly more difficult. Eliphas' Tzeentch towers' knockback was unpleasant.
I felt that the Chaos waves should've stopped respawning once you beat Eliphas, allowing your Blood Ravens respite. I fought Ulkair quickly my second time through, when he started at a little over half health, but my allies continual dying meant the fight took near thirty minutes until the Blood Ravens had run out and he stopped regenerating from that. And we are talking Avitus, FC and Thule all with the highest ranged output I could muster, and Thaddeus using his ridiculous Terminator Merciless Strike thing at all opportunities. Admittedly on Captain, not Sergeant of course. The mission felt great in theme, but the execution obviously suffered a bit as difficulties changed.
All in all, though, very good fun, enough that I'm trying another run and have one more possibly planned after that (and I think surrealitycheck is trying a Bolter only run which could be funny).
I never played DoW2, I just picked up the combo pack. For the original campaign is the strategy to get extra deployments just max resilience + fury and forget about speed? Also, do I want to do all the optional missions or is it pointless?
I never played DoW2, I just picked up the combo pack. For the original campaign is the strategy to get extra deployments just max resilience + fury and forget about speed? Also, do I want to do all the optional missions or is it pointless?
Thanks.
Yeah, do missions by killing everything and don't let units die. Optional missions give good loot, late-game optional missions give the best loot. Foundries > Shrines > Arrays. And defend your strategic assets.
Bethryn on
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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CorporateLogoThe toilet knowshow I feelRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
There is a point in the endgame where you will simply not be able to complete the sidequests because more keep popping up than you can actually finish in time, though
There is a point in the endgame where you will simply not be able to complete the sidequests because more keep popping up than you can actually finish in time, though
Even if you get high scores to re-deploy?
mellestad on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
No, it's formulated so that as long as you do at least 5 every two days, you never miss one. In my Angel of Death run I got all the gear by doing exactly that and didn't skip any.
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Probably, but the ones not killing everything else don't have codices with backstory, or books written about their conquests. For obvious reasons.
The Eldar gods are pretty good as well. Only 2 survived the fall*, Khaine, who was defeated by Slaanesh and splintered into pieces, which are where Avatar's come from more or less, and the laughing God.
Solitaires (a type of Harlequin) don't wear soulstones, so in order to have their souls saved, the Laughing God needs to trick Slaanesh to save them.
Eldar are awesome compared to normal Elves, because they're completely out for themselves, and wouldn't think twice about manipulating events to save a few of their own, at the cost of millions of another race.
The amount of background for Eldar is pretty impressive, truth be told.
Edit.
Oh and you've also got Ynnead, the god of the dead, who seems to be forming from all the spirits the Eldar have collected and placed in the Infinity circuits. The hope being that one day he will be strong enough to defeat Slaanesh.
*there are stories that say Lileath was saved by Nurgle.
Not in action, of course, but on principle.
Orks don't kill because they "want" to, it's simply who they are. Much as you breathe, an ork will smack another ork for having shiny teeth.
Which brings us to another reason why the orks rock. they're honest. they don't hide behind a false god (marines), pseudo morality (tau), poor self-esteem (chaos), etc. You see an ork, he's says he's going to slap you and that's *exactly* what he does.
That's until GW starts dicking around with retcons about the Old Ones and stuff. :P
You're an Old One retcon
I'll be 30 on Sunday. :?
I'm pretty sure they want to fight. In a Galaxy like this, who doesn't?
http://beta.humugus.com/index.php/auth/register/inv/1966
The data files do. You need to own the original to play the original campaign. Possibly also the original races. That's how DoW1 worked.
*sigh* such an obnoxious end to a great campaign.
e: Also, the first campaign becomes somewhat of a joke once you get Terminator armor and everyone is rollin' around with storm bolters, assault cannons and thunder hammers. I just beat it for the first time this weekend, despite owning DoW2 since it came out. So I wasn't aware how trivial Terminator armor made the game. I stopped microing for the most part, I would just charge this big chunk of terminators with a dreadnought in to just about anything and watch it die.
The End Boss has, if I remember correctly, ~ 1.6 million HP.
The Avatar in the first game didn't take me much time at all, ~20-30 minutes max, but this... this is just stupid.
It took a lot of running in and out to beat him though.
I'd assault jump in with the commander, timed so that the assault squad would get in around the same time. Then I'd warcry, which stunned him for a few seconds. Then I'd do a melta sweep with Thule. Then wrath with the Librarian, which stunned him. Then I'd teleport out with my assault marines, then explode-jump back in. Then I'd pretty much just hit 'x' with the whole squad, heal up and go back in and do it again. Took a while, and things almost fell apart when he summoned new guys to help, but I thought it was pretty fun.
e. I should mention, I played on normal difficulty.
Yeah I'd love to have done that too except that
Oh and my favorite part was when he would randomly and inexplicably regain tens of thousands of hit points over the course of a few seconds.
While this may be a case of being cursed with greatness, it didn't seem very long. I think it probably took me about 10 hours the first time through. This feels short for an RTS. If it can keep up the same level of quality but go on for longer that would be awesome.
The final boss wasn't that much fun, and it seems like that's a relatively common complaint. Maybe I was just doing it wrong or something, but it took me over half an hour to beat, mostly due to the run to and from the respawn beacon after he ate half my marines.
The thing is, I was never in any real danger of losing. I can't even think of a mission I actually failed. I may have had all my squads killed several times, but I never actually lost the level.
I think one way of tying these two things together would be to have the odd level that is just a straight up boss fight, but with no respawn beacons. You'd obviously have to tweak the current format a little bit; make most of the bosses damage come from special attacks and remove their one-hit-kill melee attacks. Perhaps also play with their aggro mechanics, so they don't ping-pong between squads so much like they seem to now.
I think something like this would allow genuinely taxing bosses, with much more developed abilities, without the risk of "do an hour long level, get to boss, get raped and die, ragequit game."
My other real complaint about the campaign is that, they added in loads of new awesome item types... which you never really get. I never found any lascannons, lightning claws, commander helmets or Librarian weapons aside from the default ones you get as mission rewards. I never found any autocannons at all, so have no idea if they're an item your devastators can get. I presumed they were since the enemy uses all the ones you can use, and gets them as well.
I found a couple of green meltas and multi-meltas, but other than that never anything particularly exciting apart from the scripted purple drops. Maybe that was just me being unlucky, but in 2 playthroughs I've mostly ended up with gear that isn't particularly better than what I had at the end of the last game. More varied corrupt items would be awesome as well; I never found anything corrupt that Cyrus could use. This made me sad, since it meant I had one slightly-nice guy left at the end of the campaign. :P
EDIT: Relating to SJs spoiler...
I didn't even know that:
Anyways, I want to play it again, maybe corrupt this time in Co-op, but I can never find anyone who wants to play, haha.
e: @ Diss:
I really want them to do a Dark Crusade type game with the DoW2 engine. Let me play as all the races with a risk-style world map.
It would take a lot, with different squads for each race, and different wargear equips, but I can safely say that Dark Crusade is easily the longest I've ever played an RTS in single player.
I beat it with every race, and at that point there were like 8 or something.
What would have been cool in this game would be if you actually ended up changing sides part way through, and played different missions based on your corruption. Like if you actually fell to chaos, and got like 5 chaos missions fighting against the blood ravens. I guess it would have taken too much time though.
I didn't get any helmets either, I only got I think one staff weapon for the librarian. I got probably dozens of mastercrafted bolt pistols though.
I agree, but I still loved it because each individual campaign was kind of short-ish, and I got to play as each race and find different units I liked to use, and different strategies for each. Plus, the banter between your commander and the enemy commander in the stronghold missions were pretty great. Unfortunately it was something they didn't carry on as much with in the following expansion, whatever it was called.
MWO: Adamski
Random skirmishes were horrible though (both in DC and Soulstorm), which is why I only ever played singleplayer once or twice. Of DoW1 and addons, I'd say Winter Assault had the most fun campaign.
It's a little depressing when you get to the end of a mission and see you have a good 10-12 items collected, 8 of which are white bolt/plasma pistols or armour.
The drop rate is good enough, what's actually dropping isn't.
Ans yes, I didn't get the point of the old terminator armour either. If it was upgraded when you could use it, great. As is it's completely outdated, especially the level 12 set you get from Angel Forge in the original campaign.
From a literary perspective, I just can't empathize with the space marines. They just shout a lot. That is mostly what I meant by 'cheesy'.
Give me an inquisition story any day!
I mean, I used to think it's good. But I'm tired of it now. If they go for DoW3 before Homeworld 3 then I'ma gonna be pissed.
The mission structure in general feels much better. I like the Corruption/Redemption choices. The method for gaining and losing Corruption was nicely implemented.
Map design is still slightly questionable, but mostly good.
Now, onto some debate on the scoring system.
What I would like to see instead is to merge both into a kill rate stat. So, for example, let's consider multiple routes, like in the
Similarly, if you successfully force your way through a heavy enemy entrenched position, you are rewarded for it with a higher kill rate score. It can also affect choices about additional mission objectives; whereas before you might penalise a player for going out of their way to
I don't have any massive problem with scoring as it stands, but it does occasionally feel cumbersome.
Loot design is better in some ways, worse in others. In vanilla, you had a concrete but grindy way to ensure you got loot you could use. In CR, what loot you get is mostly random, and with only
Secondly, they should probably display what units it will be limited to when you're about to donate them. For example, I saw that one such token would, if my FC was wearing Terminator Armour, give Lightning Claws. I wanted those for Thaddeus, and my previously donated token had been useable by multiple squads, so I donated it only to receive a pair of claws only useable by my FC, who was a Heavy Bolter fashioniste. Sad me.
Thirdly, I think that given the ability to give multiple rewards for missions, most of your missions should've had a token. Now, given each token represents 11 items, that might seem like work, so you could repeat tokens (since there are often two options or more I want from any token). This would've helped loot disparity a fair deal; even by the time I faced the final boss, Avitus was still using the co-op reward Lascannon, Thaddeus was using the single green TH+S that I'd gotten from a Token, and my FC hadn't found a better Heavy Bolter than the one I'd imported from my old save; in my own Primarch run, my terminator FC doesn't have a Commander Item for Terminator Armour at all. 8(
I said earlier that you could get all the gear (and thus gear appropriately to your spec) in vanilla but not in this. This isn't entirely true; there is a way; die on every mission.
Co-op rewards are awesome. Whoever thought that up deserves a pat on the back and a nod of approval. I have to wonder if you get more for over 15 missions done as a guest (it also seemed like the reward I received from completing the final mission was the same as the one I received from the penultimate mission).
Primarch damage changes are better. A few enemies still stood out as having ridiculous one-shotting capabilities (I see Seer Council are still laser-killing Bear Jews), and it still feels like that needs to be looked at on a unit basis. I can understand Jonah getting one-shotted if you've gone deep Corruption with him, but when he's got maxed Stamina tree and still cannot get into combat range without playing russan roulette with a Sorceror's lightning, it's a bit unpleasant. The same can be said of Thule. Overall, though, a vast improvement.
Individual map stuff.
The optional missions are a bit weird. You don't lose days for failing them, so why give them day limits at all, excluding the one where there's a penalty for letting it expire?
I thought it was odd how performing Redemption options often rewarded you with Corrupting items, and vice versa. I suppose I can see why.
Strategic Assets after the first three seemed pointless. I often captured them with a Corrupt squad but got no indication of Redemption even for the Shrine, and no tangible reward.
Space Hulk was great. Good environment, loved the Corruption timer limit in that situation.
The mission against Diomedes was awesome. The ability to choose whether to destroy power generators or fight you way through was sweet. It probably should've recommended Cyrus in the briefing but that's a tiny thing.
I've fought Cyrus and Martellus on the return to Argent Shelf (I already mentioned that Array didn't I? Seriously, teleport access area only, but then you spawn two Dreadnoughts from thin air? Dick move, map designer. If I hadn't capped the Array quickly for reinforcements, Thaddeus would've been stuck there until the cinematic). Martellus was significantly more difficult. I guess I'll find out soon whether there are other bosses to fight dependent on your squad's Corruption (hi Tarkus).
The final mission I'll echo surrealitycheck's sentiments. The anti-infantry tank was useless at killing infantry; its knockback often just meant you had to push further into enemy territory to finish them off, triggering more enemies to attack you. Something akin to the FC's insta-kill chance on the Sponson Heavy Bolters would've been nicer. Also, I echo Shepard's (?) point about the left way being significantly more difficult. Eliphas' Tzeentch towers' knockback was unpleasant.
I felt that the Chaos waves should've stopped respawning once you beat Eliphas, allowing your Blood Ravens respite. I fought Ulkair quickly my second time through, when he started at a little over half health, but my allies continual dying meant the fight took near thirty minutes until the Blood Ravens had run out and he stopped regenerating from that. And we are talking Avitus, FC and Thule all with the highest ranged output I could muster, and Thaddeus using his ridiculous Terminator Merciless Strike thing at all opportunities. Admittedly on Captain, not Sergeant of course. The mission felt great in theme, but the execution obviously suffered a bit as difficulties changed.
All in all, though, very good fun, enough that I'm trying another run and have one more possibly planned after that (and I think surrealitycheck is trying a Bolter only run which could be funny).
Thanks.
Even if you get high scores to re-deploy?