Homeworld 1 and 2, Company of Heroes and the first Dawn of War were great. It all went downhill with COH addons and DOW2 when they got hung up on MOBA trash ideas. DOW2 games sold really well because of moronic reviewers and even more moronic 40K fanbase, which probably gave them the confidence that this is the way. The problem is, your average consumer doesn't want to think tactically or utilize strategies, what grabs their attention is the leveling up and using magic skills to steamroll through every situation.
The same thing that happens to all videogame developers. Change in ownership/publisher, everyone capable leaves to form their own new studio, brand coasts by on reputation until they frickup one too many times.
They keep trying to re-invent the wheel instead of build up ontop of the wheel that worked (dawn of war 1), until they got so carried away their latest wheels aren't even wheels, and you have to buy 60% of the square wheel as DLC.
Continual heavy staff turnover because THQ floundered and sank. They were an incredibly tight-fisted and micromanaging publisher starting around '05, and the sudden financial clusterfrick of '08 made them double down on an increasingly bad series of decisions.
A great example of it is looking at the credits on Company of Heroes and comparing them to the credits on the expansion, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and then finally checking out Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor.
Quality Control testers and map artists got over-promoted to content designers, while fewer and fewer names returned at all. Finally, while COH2 was in development, the lead developer was killed in a car crash like a month before the game released. I remember because I talked to him on their forums like a day or so before and it was incredibly shocking to me when I saw the news.
Pictured is what THQ bet the farm on in 2011.
The uDraw "game tablet." They put everything on ice to push this out and make it their flagship item.
Guess how it went.
When their supposed community manager tried to release mod tools for the original Company of Heroes following Tales of Valor's release and well prior to the existence of any COH2, she was fired out of a cannon and in to the sun. THQ was taking the "mods are bad for sales" philosophy, and it's reflected in how awful 2's modding scene turned out.
>lead developer
This guy was for CoH:Online and died 3 months before release.
Sega continued the "mods ar bad by putting out limited dev tools and never updating them once they were out for coh2, they dont allow for model imports. Sega clearly is also tight fisted given how LITTLE money they've given for coh3 and the short ass dev time, they are building the tracks as the train is coming with relic trying to hit a 2022 release for coh3, a game that just a few months ago was in white box pretty much with hardly ANY new features other than "le room clearing" and "3d buildings" for destruction.
The other real big red flag is Quinn Duffy's leave shortly after AOE4 launch has me thinking the management for relic is fricked to the core, most of the former Relic staff now sit at Blackbird entertainment now who is I believe working on Homworld 3. In my humble opinion I think Coh3 will be DOA without someone like Quinn to craft the game design, honestly at this point its literally a copy past of coh1 with a fresh coat of paint and no soul and forced diversity.
Company of Heroes 2 was last great relic game outside the online requirement and DLC shilling shit, it started to go wrong sometime after that though. DoW 3 was like a bad dream that needs to be forgotten but I don't think this company can make anything like Homeworld, Company of Heroes, or Dawn of War 1 + expansions again.
They clearly always hated base building and were trying to minimize it's presence in every game they made, but never made a full jump to complete remove it. DoW 2 is their best game, but they still included main base building for some inane reason. And then went back and brought back base building again in DoW3, even though it doesn't fit the setting or their gameplay design lmao.
Why do people love DoW2 so much? I don't get it.
Like ok, campaign was lit, but it's a one and done deal with basically 0 replay value.
I played DoW2 skirms for maybe 2ish hours total and precisely 0 of it was enjoyable, I miss the sense of scale of DoW1 and despite there actually being branching 'gameplay' paths via leader choice every skirmish felt bland and samey.
Every map was small, inability to completely wipe enemy out sucked, no chaos on release???
can someone who actually likes dow2 explain to me what the appeal is, or is it the usual contrarian homosexuals who's personality is that they like what's unpopular?
Agreed. In single-player, it's pretty fun. But I don't play DoW-games for the SP, I play them for multiplayer lan-matches with tonnes of action. DoW2 was beyond anemic in MP.
They like it because it's simplified. DOW2 follows the same progression of thought Company of Heroes does from 1 to 2. Summarized in three points,
Take out the macro management
Reward wombo combo cheese
Gut the strategic layer
You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts, you can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack, you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit
Relic was desperately trying to capture the magic of MOBAs like League, Heroes of New Earth or DOTA. I don't think this was a stupid decision on their part. Those games were printing money hand-over fist for seemingly no effort at all. A lot of people seemed to think that MOBAs were the logical evolution of strategy games from a business perspective. "Why control an army when you can control a hero?"
You can see it in the three half-ass minigames that got shoved out with Tales of Valor, Company of Heroes 1's final expansion. They released a moba with infantry, a moba with tanks, and a tower defense co-op mission. Later they circled back with Company of Heroes: Online to see if they could gin-up a microtransaction powered RTS with purchasable hero units and character profiles for the player, but shuttered that because THQ was going through too much financial rough water to commit to the idea. (Todd Howard had not yet show us that you can sell the same beloved game once a year if it's not FIFA or Madden.)
>Relic was desperately trying to capture the magic of MOBAs like League >Reward wombo combo cheese
Makes sense, yeah. So the game tickles the same parts of the brain that keep people playing league of legends despite enjoying precisely none of it.
>A lot of people seemed to think that MOBAs were the logical evolution of strategy games from a business perspective. "Why control an army when you can control a hero?"
The funny thing is that this could've worked if they completely ditched trying to be an RTS, or did an asymmetrical rts where one player controls a small squad of hero space marines, and the other player(s) control a more rts style swarm of orcs / tyranids, instead they picked worst of both worlds that just about worked for maybe a couple hours of fun, but had 0 staying power
...and instead of learning from it they made DoW3 that doubled down on that design choice
Absolutely
Its main campaigns are goddamn great.
The MP is is fine but you quickly wish for ease of use features of 2, even if it has better aesthetics
>Spectacle is better due to weight of units and actions are visually impactful. Assault Squad actually knocking down everyone around them alone makes SM better than in DoW1 >Better unit pathing >Actually diverse looking environments with proper Hive city, deserts or thick jungles >Amazing looking effects >Cover system, destructible environment and ability to garrison units in buildings means maps are more interactive and battlefield feels alive >Factions play far more differently. Chaos in particular is better than in DoW1 since in DoW2 you have focus on cultists performing rituals instead of just being unit to send to blob with and forget about like with everything in DoW1 >HQ units being highly customizable but not straight OP and better than other units further diversifies armies >No unimmersive basebuilding and instead full focus on microing units and tactics >Better, more sensible army rosters >Far superior music >Far superior Voice Acting >Campaign with tons of effort put into it to the point it's basically different game altogether instead of a string of skirmish missions like in DoW1 >Additional coop mode in The Last Stand
Game is straight, objectively superior to DoW1 in every way
Agreed. In single-player, it's pretty fun. But I don't play DoW-games for the SP, I play them for multiplayer lan-matches with tonnes of action. DoW2 was beyond anemic in MP.
Except DoW1 is only worth it for fricking around in skirmih. DoW2 is actually properly competitive game. Which is why it actually has tournaments still
They like it because it's simplified. DOW2 follows the same progression of thought Company of Heroes does from 1 to 2. Summarized in three points,
Take out the macro management
Reward wombo combo cheese
Gut the strategic layer
You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts, you can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack, you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit
Relic was desperately trying to capture the magic of MOBAs like League, Heroes of New Earth or DOTA. I don't think this was a stupid decision on their part. Those games were printing money hand-over fist for seemingly no effort at all. A lot of people seemed to think that MOBAs were the logical evolution of strategy games from a business perspective. "Why control an army when you can control a hero?"
You can see it in the three half-ass minigames that got shoved out with Tales of Valor, Company of Heroes 1's final expansion. They released a moba with infantry, a moba with tanks, and a tower defense co-op mission. Later they circled back with Company of Heroes: Online to see if they could gin-up a microtransaction powered RTS with purchasable hero units and character profiles for the player, but shuttered that because THQ was going through too much financial rough water to commit to the idea. (Todd Howard had not yet show us that you can sell the same beloved game once a year if it's not FIFA or Madden.)
Factually incorrect since Moba wasn't big back then yet. Relic always, since day one, sought to get rid off basebuilding which is why base building is so pathetic and limited in DoW1.
>Relic was desperately trying to capture the magic of MOBAs like League >Reward wombo combo cheese
Makes sense, yeah. So the game tickles the same parts of the brain that keep people playing league of legends despite enjoying precisely none of it.
>A lot of people seemed to think that MOBAs were the logical evolution of strategy games from a business perspective. "Why control an army when you can control a hero?"
The funny thing is that this could've worked if they completely ditched trying to be an RTS, or did an asymmetrical rts where one player controls a small squad of hero space marines, and the other player(s) control a more rts style swarm of orcs / tyranids, instead they picked worst of both worlds that just about worked for maybe a couple hours of fun, but had 0 staying power
...and instead of learning from it they made DoW3 that doubled down on that design choice
Dow3 was explicitly designed to cater to casual Dow1 crowd and in particular for those who enjoyed bloat mods like UA or Unification. Which is why it has cancer like named characters in multiplayer, big units that don't belong in game like kBlack person or wraith knights, base building, simplified cover system, simplified micro and focus on blobbing and le big battles and other casual and noncompetitive elements.
>Spectacle is better due to weight of units and actions are visually impactful. Assault Squad actually knocking down everyone around them alone makes SM better than in DoW1
What I experienced was two small squads of space marines having a pub-brawl against two small squads of tyranids with one bigger tyranid.
1vs1 MP is actually pretty great, I'm not an skirmish masturbator
They like it because it's simplified. DOW2 follows the same progression of thought Company of Heroes does from 1 to 2. Summarized in three points,
Take out the macro management
Reward wombo combo cheese
Gut the strategic layer
You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts, you can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack, you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit
Relic was desperately trying to capture the magic of MOBAs like League, Heroes of New Earth or DOTA. I don't think this was a stupid decision on their part. Those games were printing money hand-over fist for seemingly no effort at all. A lot of people seemed to think that MOBAs were the logical evolution of strategy games from a business perspective. "Why control an army when you can control a hero?"
You can see it in the three half-ass minigames that got shoved out with Tales of Valor, Company of Heroes 1's final expansion. They released a moba with infantry, a moba with tanks, and a tower defense co-op mission. Later they circled back with Company of Heroes: Online to see if they could gin-up a microtransaction powered RTS with purchasable hero units and character profiles for the player, but shuttered that because THQ was going through too much financial rough water to commit to the idea. (Todd Howard had not yet show us that you can sell the same beloved game once a year if it's not FIFA or Madden.)
>You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts, you can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack, you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit
Factually wrong on many levels. Just admit you played 3vs3 beta at best.
Also base building is embarrassingly simple in DoW1 anyway and anti-lore for Eldar and Space Marines.
>Like ok, campaign was lit, but it's a one and done deal with basically 0 replay value.
What RTS actually has "replay value" in its campaign? >every skirmish felt bland and samey.
Because one of the major weakness of DoW2 is the dogshit skirmish AI that doesn't even understand how to play the game. If you don't like (or don't want to replay) the campaign and don't want to play against people, the game has nothing for you after playing through the campaign, except last stand, which is a fun little thing.
>They like it because it's simplified. DOW2 follows the same progression of thought Company of Heroes does from 1 to 2.
You're a moron. DoW2 is doubling down/adjusting a lot of the concepts introduced in CoH1. Vehicle facing, weapon teams, cover (both the utilization and destruction of), and a greater emphasis on unit positioning/abilities. It just doesn't have much concern for shit like "When/where do I build an armory." DoW 1's "macro" and "strategic layer" was already anemic compared to almost everything else in the genre
>You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts,
You definitely can, and you can make this same argument against DoW1 if all you want to consider are maps like Quatro or Into the Breach. >You can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack,
Every army has some sort of AoE anti-blobbing measures Also, if they're sticking everything to together, it means they're not covering other areas leaving you free to, at least, decap all their shit. >you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit.
See above, if they're focusing on their hero (who cannot solo armies), then you can bushwhack lone units that they left to recap what you decapped or resume nicking their shit.
This shit is basic knowledge/tactics in the game, suggesting you didn't actually play the damn thing.
>Spectacle is better due to weight of units and actions are visually impactful. Assault Squad actually knocking down everyone around them alone makes SM better than in DoW1
What I experienced was two small squads of space marines having a pub-brawl against two small squads of tyranids with one bigger tyranid.
The scale is smaller, that just is what it is. If you think anything with the license should be "BIGGEST" then yes, you will be disappointed.
>Retribution has all the mainline 40K factions >last stand minigame >voice acting's great, even with all the cut lines >not micromanaging 20 units at once >generally fun to control and play even if it's not balanced >everything looks great
No-one plays DoW II or Chaos Rising.
Also this guy covered almost everything
>Spectacle is better due to weight of units and actions are visually impactful. Assault Squad actually knocking down everyone around them alone makes SM better than in DoW1 >Better unit pathing >Actually diverse looking environments with proper Hive city, deserts or thick jungles >Amazing looking effects >Cover system, destructible environment and ability to garrison units in buildings means maps are more interactive and battlefield feels alive >Factions play far more differently. Chaos in particular is better than in DoW1 since in DoW2 you have focus on cultists performing rituals instead of just being unit to send to blob with and forget about like with everything in DoW1 >HQ units being highly customizable but not straight OP and better than other units further diversifies armies >No unimmersive basebuilding and instead full focus on microing units and tactics >Better, more sensible army rosters >Far superior music >Far superior Voice Acting >Campaign with tons of effort put into it to the point it's basically different game altogether instead of a string of skirmish missions like in DoW1 >Additional coop mode in The Last Stand
Game is straight, objectively superior to DoW1 in every way
[...]
Except DoW1 is only worth it for fricking around in skirmih. DoW2 is actually properly competitive game. Which is why it actually has tournaments still
[...]
Factually incorrect since Moba wasn't big back then yet. Relic always, since day one, sought to get rid off basebuilding which is why base building is so pathetic and limited in DoW1.
[...]
Dow3 was explicitly designed to cater to casual Dow1 crowd and in particular for those who enjoyed bloat mods like UA or Unification. Which is why it has cancer like named characters in multiplayer, big units that don't belong in game like kBlack person or wraith knights, base building, simplified cover system, simplified micro and focus on blobbing and le big battles and other casual and noncompetitive elements.
they got lucky with two games, the latest fifteen years ago. everything else they've ever made is dreck.
Homeworld 1 and 2, Company of Heroes and the first Dawn of War were great. It all went downhill with COH addons and DOW2 when they got hung up on MOBA trash ideas. DOW2 games sold really well because of moronic reviewers and even more moronic 40K fanbase, which probably gave them the confidence that this is the way. The problem is, your average consumer doesn't want to think tactically or utilize strategies, what grabs their attention is the leveling up and using magic skills to steamroll through every situation.
i don't have a problem with that, but relic are delivering neither deep strategy nor a (shallow) aesthetic sensation
The same thing that happens to all videogame developers. Change in ownership/publisher, everyone capable leaves to form their own new studio, brand coasts by on reputation until they frickup one too many times.
They keep trying to re-invent the wheel instead of build up ontop of the wheel that worked (dawn of war 1), until they got so carried away their latest wheels aren't even wheels, and you have to buy 60% of the square wheel as DLC.
CoH1 and DoW2 were great too
Nope. Run-around-capping-map-areas is a shitty and unfun gameplay paradigm.
lol it's far more engaging than the standard "oh look all the resources I need are in this neat little pile"
Building economy for 20 minutes instead of fighting is shitty and unfun gameplay paradigm
CoH3 beta was rather nice
I wonder if DoW3 and (slightly less disastrous) AoEIV make a positive growing trend
Alex Garden decided he would rather make pizzas than video games
Probably a smart decision.
good: everything before DoW 2
bad: everything after DoW 2 (including DoW 2)
DoW2 was great
Cope + seethe
No taste, as expected of basebuilder cuck. You could as well push piles of coloured pebbles around a flat table.
>You could as well push piles of coloured pebbles around a flat table.
That would be more fun than playing DoW2 or CoH2
That sums up the limited mindset of citysim/blobfest morons.
Base building is fun, eat shit
Go play simcity woman
Whats wrong, is basebuilding too much for your smooth brain?
other than THQ going under? nothing much, DoW3 was a mistake and coh2 suffered a lot from rushed develpment.
being canadians also don't help, they just can't stop making moronic decisions.
Nothing besides dow3
I like COH2 and I hope they will refine the formula with COH3
Continual heavy staff turnover because THQ floundered and sank. They were an incredibly tight-fisted and micromanaging publisher starting around '05, and the sudden financial clusterfrick of '08 made them double down on an increasingly bad series of decisions.
A great example of it is looking at the credits on Company of Heroes and comparing them to the credits on the expansion, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and then finally checking out Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor.
Quality Control testers and map artists got over-promoted to content designers, while fewer and fewer names returned at all. Finally, while COH2 was in development, the lead developer was killed in a car crash like a month before the game released. I remember because I talked to him on their forums like a day or so before and it was incredibly shocking to me when I saw the news.
Pictured is what THQ bet the farm on in 2011.
The uDraw "game tablet." They put everything on ice to push this out and make it their flagship item.
Guess how it went.
When their supposed community manager tried to release mod tools for the original Company of Heroes following Tales of Valor's release and well prior to the existence of any COH2, she was fired out of a cannon and in to the sun. THQ was taking the "mods are bad for sales" philosophy, and it's reflected in how awful 2's modding scene turned out.
Unbelievably depressing if true
>lead developer
This guy was for CoH:Online and died 3 months before release.
Sega continued the "mods ar bad by putting out limited dev tools and never updating them once they were out for coh2, they dont allow for model imports. Sega clearly is also tight fisted given how LITTLE money they've given for coh3 and the short ass dev time, they are building the tracks as the train is coming with relic trying to hit a 2022 release for coh3, a game that just a few months ago was in white box pretty much with hardly ANY new features other than "le room clearing" and "3d buildings" for destruction.
The other real big red flag is Quinn Duffy's leave shortly after AOE4 launch has me thinking the management for relic is fricked to the core, most of the former Relic staff now sit at Blackbird entertainment now who is I believe working on Homworld 3. In my humble opinion I think Coh3 will be DOA without someone like Quinn to craft the game design, honestly at this point its literally a copy past of coh1 with a fresh coat of paint and no soul and forced diversity.
when someones gf was hired to write HW2
Did the most stupid thing a dev can do - listen to gamers and tried something new.
I just wish they finally made DoW3.
Company of Heroes 2 was last great relic game outside the online requirement and DLC shilling shit, it started to go wrong sometime after that though. DoW 3 was like a bad dream that needs to be forgotten but I don't think this company can make anything like Homeworld, Company of Heroes, or Dawn of War 1 + expansions again.
Nah, it sucked.
>wow, it's so fun to play this epic match with... 2 squads of marines and one tank
They clearly always hated base building and were trying to minimize it's presence in every game they made, but never made a full jump to complete remove it. DoW 2 is their best game, but they still included main base building for some inane reason. And then went back and brought back base building again in DoW3, even though it doesn't fit the setting or their gameplay design lmao.
Why do people love DoW2 so much? I don't get it.
Like ok, campaign was lit, but it's a one and done deal with basically 0 replay value.
I played DoW2 skirms for maybe 2ish hours total and precisely 0 of it was enjoyable, I miss the sense of scale of DoW1 and despite there actually being branching 'gameplay' paths via leader choice every skirmish felt bland and samey.
Every map was small, inability to completely wipe enemy out sucked, no chaos on release???
can someone who actually likes dow2 explain to me what the appeal is, or is it the usual contrarian homosexuals who's personality is that they like what's unpopular?
Agreed. In single-player, it's pretty fun. But I don't play DoW-games for the SP, I play them for multiplayer lan-matches with tonnes of action. DoW2 was beyond anemic in MP.
They like it because it's simplified. DOW2 follows the same progression of thought Company of Heroes does from 1 to 2. Summarized in three points,
Take out the macro management
Reward wombo combo cheese
Gut the strategic layer
You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts, you can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack, you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit
Relic was desperately trying to capture the magic of MOBAs like League, Heroes of New Earth or DOTA. I don't think this was a stupid decision on their part. Those games were printing money hand-over fist for seemingly no effort at all. A lot of people seemed to think that MOBAs were the logical evolution of strategy games from a business perspective. "Why control an army when you can control a hero?"
You can see it in the three half-ass minigames that got shoved out with Tales of Valor, Company of Heroes 1's final expansion. They released a moba with infantry, a moba with tanks, and a tower defense co-op mission. Later they circled back with Company of Heroes: Online to see if they could gin-up a microtransaction powered RTS with purchasable hero units and character profiles for the player, but shuttered that because THQ was going through too much financial rough water to commit to the idea. (Todd Howard had not yet show us that you can sell the same beloved game once a year if it's not FIFA or Madden.)
>Relic was desperately trying to capture the magic of MOBAs like League
>Reward wombo combo cheese
Makes sense, yeah. So the game tickles the same parts of the brain that keep people playing league of legends despite enjoying precisely none of it.
>A lot of people seemed to think that MOBAs were the logical evolution of strategy games from a business perspective. "Why control an army when you can control a hero?"
The funny thing is that this could've worked if they completely ditched trying to be an RTS, or did an asymmetrical rts where one player controls a small squad of hero space marines, and the other player(s) control a more rts style swarm of orcs / tyranids, instead they picked worst of both worlds that just about worked for maybe a couple hours of fun, but had 0 staying power
...and instead of learning from it they made DoW3 that doubled down on that design choice
if i like coh2, should i get coh1?
Absolutely
Its main campaigns are goddamn great.
The MP is is fine but you quickly wish for ease of use features of 2, even if it has better aesthetics
>Spectacle is better due to weight of units and actions are visually impactful. Assault Squad actually knocking down everyone around them alone makes SM better than in DoW1
>Better unit pathing
>Actually diverse looking environments with proper Hive city, deserts or thick jungles
>Amazing looking effects
>Cover system, destructible environment and ability to garrison units in buildings means maps are more interactive and battlefield feels alive
>Factions play far more differently. Chaos in particular is better than in DoW1 since in DoW2 you have focus on cultists performing rituals instead of just being unit to send to blob with and forget about like with everything in DoW1
>HQ units being highly customizable but not straight OP and better than other units further diversifies armies
>No unimmersive basebuilding and instead full focus on microing units and tactics
>Better, more sensible army rosters
>Far superior music
>Far superior Voice Acting
>Campaign with tons of effort put into it to the point it's basically different game altogether instead of a string of skirmish missions like in DoW1
>Additional coop mode in The Last Stand
Game is straight, objectively superior to DoW1 in every way
Except DoW1 is only worth it for fricking around in skirmih. DoW2 is actually properly competitive game. Which is why it actually has tournaments still
Factually incorrect since Moba wasn't big back then yet. Relic always, since day one, sought to get rid off basebuilding which is why base building is so pathetic and limited in DoW1.
Dow3 was explicitly designed to cater to casual Dow1 crowd and in particular for those who enjoyed bloat mods like UA or Unification. Which is why it has cancer like named characters in multiplayer, big units that don't belong in game like kBlack person or wraith knights, base building, simplified cover system, simplified micro and focus on blobbing and le big battles and other casual and noncompetitive elements.
>Spectacle is better due to weight of units and actions are visually impactful. Assault Squad actually knocking down everyone around them alone makes SM better than in DoW1
What I experienced was two small squads of space marines having a pub-brawl against two small squads of tyranids with one bigger tyranid.
>I quit 2 minutes into the match
>I'm very serious and not biased against DoW2
1vs1 MP is actually pretty great, I'm not an skirmish masturbator
>You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts, you can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack, you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit
Factually wrong on many levels. Just admit you played 3vs3 beta at best.
Also base building is embarrassingly simple in DoW1 anyway and anti-lore for Eldar and Space Marines.
>Like ok, campaign was lit, but it's a one and done deal with basically 0 replay value.
What RTS actually has "replay value" in its campaign?
>every skirmish felt bland and samey.
Because one of the major weakness of DoW2 is the dogshit skirmish AI that doesn't even understand how to play the game. If you don't like (or don't want to replay) the campaign and don't want to play against people, the game has nothing for you after playing through the campaign, except last stand, which is a fun little thing.
>They like it because it's simplified. DOW2 follows the same progression of thought Company of Heroes does from 1 to 2.
You're a moron. DoW2 is doubling down/adjusting a lot of the concepts introduced in CoH1. Vehicle facing, weapon teams, cover (both the utilization and destruction of), and a greater emphasis on unit positioning/abilities. It just doesn't have much concern for shit like "When/where do I build an armory." DoW 1's "macro" and "strategic layer" was already anemic compared to almost everything else in the genre
>You can't pressure a player on multiple fronts,
You definitely can, and you can make this same argument against DoW1 if all you want to consider are maps like Quatro or Into the Breach.
>You can't deal with a player's deathball doomstack,
Every army has some sort of AoE anti-blobbing measures Also, if they're sticking everything to together, it means they're not covering other areas leaving you free to, at least, decap all their shit.
>you can't exploit an ADHD addled loser's hyperfocus on his hero unit.
See above, if they're focusing on their hero (who cannot solo armies), then you can bushwhack lone units that they left to recap what you decapped or resume nicking their shit.
This shit is basic knowledge/tactics in the game, suggesting you didn't actually play the damn thing.
The scale is smaller, that just is what it is. If you think anything with the license should be "BIGGEST" then yes, you will be disappointed.
>Retribution has all the mainline 40K factions
>last stand minigame
>voice acting's great, even with all the cut lines
>not micromanaging 20 units at once
>generally fun to control and play even if it's not balanced
>everything looks great
No-one plays DoW II or Chaos Rising.
Also this guy covered almost everything