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[KingofstarrySkies]

It sure smells like you're reading into a trailer and very little information on day-one of an announcement and already being a negative nancy. 

[ragnar119]

"This is the Dawn of War that fans have been waiting for," said executive producer Stephen MacDonald in a statement. "Our biggest units ever? Check. Giant orbital lasers? Check. Base-building, epic heroes, huge battles, it's all in there. Get ready for the biggest Dawn of War yet. For the Emperor!"

"Imperial Knight. This huge walker is the biggest unit Relic has ever made"....? I am sure there where a lot of big units like that in DoW 1.

It sure smells like you're reading into a trailer and very little information on day-one of an announcement and already being a negative nancy. 

Just reading what developers are saying. If they say we are streamlining it to make it more accessible, it rings a lot of warning bells

[Teneb]

"Imperial Knight. This huge walker is the biggest unit Relic has ever made"....? I am sure there where a lot of big units like that in DoW 1.

Ulkair (in Chaos Rising) was probably the biggest one, and they do look bigger.

It sure smells like you're reading into a trailer and very little information on day-one of an announcement and already being a negative nancy. 

Just reading what developers are saying. If they say we are streamlining it to make it more accessible, it rings a lot of warning bells

Ok, look: by accessible it usually means they don't want it to be intimidating to newcomers. Not "dumbed-down" as people love to parrot whenever the word "streamline" is said. Streamlining is GOOD. It removes redundant features. Let's take DoW2 Skirmish (multiplayer, not vs AI), for instance: it was actually not very intuitive or clear at all what you needed to do to win. If you didn't know that bascially you had to ball up and try to be the first to kill a unit or force a retreat, you would lose. Because the path to victory in DoW2 MP was to make the opponent waste resources reinforcing or retraining a unit as early as you could.

I hope there is Last Stand.

[Persus13]

I hope there is Last Stand.

Same, that and the coop campaign was the best thing about DoW2

[nenjin]

I hope there is Last Stand.

Same, that and the coop campaign was the best thing about DoW2

I'll second that. The campaign had its short comings but being able to play it with friends and level up and gear out was great.

[ragnar119]

Ok, look: by accessible it usually means they don't want it to be intimidating to newcomers. Not "dumbed-down" as people love to parrot whenever the word "streamline" is said. Streamlining is GOOD. It removes redundant features. Let's take DoW2 Skirmish (multiplayer, not vs AI), for instance: it was actually not very intuitive or clear at all what you needed to do to win. If you didn't know that bascially you had to ball up and try to be the first to kill a unit or force a retreat, you would lose. Because the path to victory in DoW2 MP was to make the opponent waste resources reinforcing or retraining a unit as early as you could.

Yea, but its not the case here from the little info we have. They already said the cover will be made a lot simpler and dumb down compared to DoW 2 with you have a zone barricade that your troops capture for cover (you can see it in screenshot on the third page in down right corner where eldars are). Same as  visual art direction and  close detail  that has been sacrificed to make the game be their most accessible RTS yet. So what streamlining and accessible means in most AAA games with this big publishers  most of time is  dumbing down the gameplay and mechanics to cater to masses as much as possible. A game thats not that complex in the first place. I mean, the first little information we have, we hear them talking about making it more streamlining and accessible, more simple. Not more complex and in depth. Really doesnt sound great. Hope I am wrong.

[nenjin]

We can't really comment on the LoD yet because we haven't seen gameplay footage.

That said, if i had to guess, sacrificing LoD is probably an admission either to the desire for a console port, or the eventual spin off to mobile.

It could also be the abandoning the focus on executions. That was really why you had the LoD you did in the previous games.

[Teneb]

Yea, but its not the case here from the little info we have. They already said the cover will be made a lot simpler and dumb down compared to DoW 2 with you have a zone barricade that your troops capture for cover (you can see it in screenshot on the third page in down right corner where eldars are).

You mean dumbed down as opposed by cover which was hard to tell your units to get to in a firefight (and where they'd sometimes leave on their own to get shot at in the open) in 2, and the poor pathfinding of 1 where it was a pain to get them where you wanted them? This new cover system is actually quite clever. It makes cover something to be fought over, something to position yourself in order to exploit it as much as you can.

Same as  visual art direction and  close detail  that has been sacrificed to make the game be their most accessible RTS yet.

Less detail means you can have more stuff on the screen and it means it's also far less confusing to tell what is going on. Let me take an example from another genre (first-person shooter): Battleborn. I played the beta, and while the graphics were great, the sheer number of particle effects and stuff going on meant that at time you couldn't tell what was happening. I lament the lack of grimdark (though I do like the smaller SM pauldrons), but I am perfectly OK with it if it means I can see what is happening.

That said, if i had to guess, sacrificing LoD is probably an admission either to the desire for a console port, or the eventual spin off to mobile.

RTSes are really not the kind of game you can play without mouse and keyboard. People have tried console ports of older ones, and it wasn't good.

[Dorsidwarf]

I never once paid attention to the thousands of on-screen conscript units in UA. Thats what IG are about.

[ragnar119]

Yea, but its not the case here from the little info we have. They already said the cover will be made a lot simpler and dumb down compared to DoW 2 with you have a zone barricade that your troops capture for cover (you can see it in screenshot on the third page in down right corner where eldars are).

You mean dumbed down as opposed by cover which was hard to tell your units to get to in a firefight (and where they'd sometimes leave on their own to get shot at in the open) in 2, and the poor pathfinding of 1 where it was a pain to get them where you wanted them? This new cover system is actually quite clever. It makes cover something to be fought over, something to position yourself in order to exploit it as much as you can.

I dont see how its clever to removing the cover system of older games that was actually not a problem. But the AI was more of a problem. You needed to position your troops importantly, now just capture another predefined spot. It looks a lot worse, with a lot less choice and positioning.

Same as  visual art direction and  close detail  that has been sacrificed to make the game be their most accessible RTS yet.

Less detail means you can have more stuff on the screen and it means it's also far less confusing to tell what is going on. Let me take an example from another genre (first-person shooter): Battleborn. I played the beta, and while the graphics were great, the sheer number of particle effects and stuff going on meant that at time you couldn't tell what was happening. I lament the lack of grimdark (though I do like the smaller SM pauldrons), but I am perfectly OK with it if it means I can see what is happening.

Yes and no. If you need  more things on screen it should not mean to make mincraft graphics (not saying the game looks bad, just making a point), or worse graphic compared to dow 2 that has release few years ago. At minimum you should keep your graphic of same quality like your older title, and not change your art style . Its not like the game looks like it will have more units than DoW 1. And not gonna talk that computers are a lot more powerful now than when dow 2 was out, so it would not be a problem to keep same qulaty with higher numbers.

Also bad example, as Battleborn doesnt have great graphic, its models and textures are not of highest quality and are not the ones making the problem. The problem with that game is to much use of particle effects, that makes it confusing.

[Frumple]

All I can say is that if the aesthetics and voice acting are up to par, I'm going to be forgiving a lot if there's stuff to forgive. Give me another one of these and you can do just about whatever the hell you please

Didn't even particularly like DoW2's gameplay (and I could barely play it besides), but shit like that made me not give a damn.

Definitely echoing the preference for something between the DoWs, though. I'm down with less basebuilding/micromanagement (auto-ability use for DoW1 was quite possibly the best goddamn mod it had :V) so long as there's still hundreds to thousands of things dying in a single match. Or minute, I'm not picky. Do realize that's probably not going to happen, since it seems some days like Heroes of Annihilated Empires or something from the Total Annihilation line were the last RTSes to realize there's a place (and a marvelous one) for thousands and thousands of corpses hitting the floor during the course of a map, but one can hope. One can hope.

[nenjin]

I legitimately disliked almost everything about Sup Commander but I still think it's the only format that can truly do justice to the other side of 40k we haven't ever seen in a computer game. We've now been inundated by stories of singular, heroic space marines doing stuff, ~company level deployments in games like Dawn of War. "Novel-sized" deployments in Dawn of War 2. 4v4, 8v8, and maybe more in Eternal Crusade. We've even got fucking space ships now and I didn't think I'd live to see that happen.

So seriously. Where are my 2.4 million guardsmen, Titan Legions, heavy air support, tank companies and true orbital bombardments? The scale of Sup Com (less focused on faceless machines and vehicles and more focused on infantry) is really the only format I've seen that could fit the whole damn game into frame.

I mean....you read about the amount of blood that many combatants fighting each other generates. But could you imagine seeing it?

[Parsely]

I'm dying to see a game on the scale of SupCom with living creatures killing each other. Like a more acradey version of Total War that cuts out all the grand strategy.

[KingofstarrySkies]

From a purely technical standpoint, it'd be damn near impossible.

[Parsely]

From a purely technical standpoint, it'd be damn near impossible.

Give me a break. If AI War with the ship caps turned way up and Total War don't nuke my CPU, I don't see why something like that should. If anything, making things more arcadey and therefore more responsive would lead to not needing as many animations, like Total War does (it having sometimes thousands of fairly detailed humans running around stabbing each other).