Who has played this game? Do you think it was deserving of RTS game of 2004? With the new expansion pack, the Dark Crusade, being released recently, the game is still going strong. What is it about this game you feel made it good? Why do you play it? What do you find fun about it? From a designer standpoint, do you think the game design was good? It was very successful, but is the game really that good or is it just popular with the masses?

I own the Gold edition of this game and IMO it is very deserving of the RTS Game of 2004. The game is similar to Starcraft in tactics and the use of squads but with 3D characters instead of 2d sprites. I do not yet own the expansion Dark Crusade so I cannot comment on it.

Dark Crusade adds necrons and the Tao, but nothing new to the game. I would like to see the game with obstacles, and to hide in buildings, which would provide more tactical options than it has. Company of Heroes, which is based on the same engine, allows you to take cover and hide in buildings. This offers a lot more tactics and makes the game more enjoyable.

I thought Dawn of War was only an average RTS game.

The game does have some limited cover options (such as craters(heavy) and rubble(light)). Overall I felt the game was better than the traditional RTS's like AoE and RoN. Those games tend to be geared toward how fast you can advance thru the ages to get better weapons(all you have to do is monitor your resources and upgrade when you have enough). Ends up being a race. Also their SPC's were badly done. AoM was the only one I thought that had a decent single player campaign(besides DoW).

If you guys liked Dawn of War, I recommend Company of Heroes, also from Relic.

Personally I think both games contributed in making the RTS genre more focused on strategic combat and managing limited troops than building. Company of Heroes takes the strategic combat even further with several special skills/abilities for units and over all more cover in the maps.

Company of Heroes is the best RTS title since Total Annihilation.

Company of Heroes is a really great game, very immersive. It uses the same engine as Dawn of War.

The problem I had with DoW is that online, it just comes down to whoever is fastest to build armies and capture the points. So the only tactic is to spam out your base and grab the points, and than rush the other players base. So it's all ur base belongs to us sort of deal. Which I found annoying, because all the n00bs will do this.

Every game of CoH I had online has been remarkably enjoyable because you can't just do this. You can't simply rush, because bases have machine gun nests. It becomes a much more tactical game than DoW. But CoH suffers from network sync problems, everytime I play online someone gets disconnected.

DoW was ok but I didn't feel it was better than AoM or WC3. Even though there are killer rushes in those games too, it took longer to build up a rush than in DoW.

Also I can't stand the spammers in DoW chat. Somebody should kill these people.

"spam and rush the points" sounds like every other RTS known to man...

I liked DoW, though I only played single player. Good pacing, decent balance, enough new things to keep it fresh, decent enough story for single player, good and functional artwork....

I don't play it anymore, but it was worth getting discount. Entertaining.

yeah, that might be true, all RTS have spam and rush, but in DoW it's much faster than other games. So it's really hard to play online. Every game I ever played winds up being whoever can get into the other base first with a bigger army. There is no turtling option in the game, it doesn't exist at all. At least in other RTS, you can fend off the rush and turtle. So I felt the online play just kind of fails, and can't see why this game design was best RTS of 2004. I never played the single player campaign, as I am an online player. I still play it, I bought the gold and the Dark crusade update, but I find the online play is only so-so compared to other games. I haven't played alot lately because of all the spammers online recently.

I am designing an RTS and analyzing what people enjoyed from most RTS games. DoW was best RTS of 2004, and I want to know what people felt made it best RTS of 2004. It doesn't seem like anyone played it online, which is what I mostly play, so maybe the single player campaign is really good, so I will have to load it up and try it and see. DoW had the advantage of being based on Warhammer 40K rules, and alot of the game design was given to them in a license deal.

The art was ok, the maps kinda sucked imho, the map editor is terrible and hard to work with.

Quote:

Original post by GrumpyAndTired Dark Crusade adds necrons and the Tao, but nothing new to the game.

Um... Apart from a completely new (and imo pretty crappy, but still new) type of singleplayer campaign? (We're talking a Total War-style open-ended campaign)
Apart from a completely revamped stealth system?
Apart from a new unit for each race, and two new races with radically different playstyles? (Necron has an entirely different economy than the existing races and, uh, the fact that their units are immortal lends a certain new twist to the game as well. Tau have their quirks too, with a branching tech tree forcing the player to choose which way to specialize... Or with the lack of base turrets)

I'd say that's a lot of new, for an expansion.

Quote:

I would like to see the game with obstacles, and to hide in buildings, which would provide more tactical options than it has. Company of Heroes, which is based on the same engine, allows you to take cover and hide in buildings. This offers a lot more tactics and makes the game more enjoyable.

It also changes the game to something very different. I like Company of Heroes, but it's not "better" than Dawn of War in my opinion. Just different. Some things are great (more advanced cover system, vehicle damage system and so on.
But the game doesn't have DoW's pace, or DoW's focus on aggressive gameplay, and it's a lot more predictable (A DoW multiplayer game can turn around completely in a minute or two. If you get ahead in CoH, you're much more sure of winning)

I'd very much like to see DoW incorporate features from CoH, but not having them definitely doesn't make it an "average RTS".

Quote:

yeah, that might be true, all RTS have spam and rush, but in DoW it's much faster than other games. So it's really hard to play online. Every game I ever played winds up being whoever can get into the other base first with a bigger army. There is no turtling option in the game, it doesn't exist at all. At least in other RTS, you can fend off the rush and turtle. So I felt the online play just kind of fails

I'd say the opposite. There's not much turtling no, and that's what evens the playing field. You're forced to move around the map, you're forced to be aggressive, and you're forced to fight for control of the map, rather than just hiding, building up a big army, sending it to your opponent's base. And because you're forced to play like that, you also stand a much better chance of surviving enemy rushes.

I think online play is where the game shines. I've had some incredibly tense matches because it's so easy to tip the balance. It's not just "once you get into the enemy base with a bigger army, you've won". I've won matches where the enemy had taken out half my base at one point. Just like I've played ones where I had a huge force vastly outnumbering my enemy, only to see it torn apart because I'd been stupid enough to rely on a single unit type, allowing my opponent to specialize a bit.

It's usually relatively easy to get around on the map, allowing you to cause trouble when the enemy is trying to concentrate on your base. Get behind his units. Jump into his base and take out his power generators. Or just try to hold the critical points for those 10 seconds longer.

If your base is attacked, you don't turtle, you try to fend him off, while doing damage elsewhere. Turtling just means you let him come back later to finish the job.

The nice thing is that it's *not* just spam and rush. It's also about (almost uniquely for a RTS) reacting to your opponent's strategies, and fighting multiple battles at the same time. And obviously, building the right units for the task. I've found that it's a game that rewards tactics much more than usual for the genre.

To be honest, it sounds like you're just not very good at it. If you try to play it like Warcraft or C&C, then yes, you will get slaughtered, and you'll probably find it a pretty average RTS.

If you try to take advantage of everything it offers (use melee units to tie up ranged ones, use the right weapon types depending on enemy unit types, keep moving, keep expanding, take advantage of cover when possible), I think you'll find plenty of depth in the game.

(And no, it's not because of the singleplayer campaign that it's a popular/good game. Singleplayer is mediocre at best.)

Well that's a good answer. I do play it coming from WC3 and other RTS games, and I am not very good at it as I haven't played it a lot. It seemed the only purpose was to get a few units and run into the enemy base and sit there and blow it up. I got bored as all my games turned out this way.

Whereas in WC3, AoM, CoH, and AOE3 I have games that last upto an hour or more, even though I am an aggressive rusher and play against aggressive rushers. I rarely turtle, although sometimes I will turtle if I feel like slowly mangling my opponent. So what I am doing wrong in DoW I don't know, but my games only last at most 10 minutes. I am also high on the ladders on those games, so I'm not a noob at RTS games.

DoW has a rich set of units to pick from, and a rich set of upgrades, but I rarely got to use any of them online. Single player against the CPU I have gone on to get the more exciting units the game has to offer. Online the game is over to fast. It's not because I lose a lot at DoW, on average I win. But it's a simple pattern to get 2 to 3 combat units, and rush the base, and the game is over.