BATTLEFIELD BRIEFING: THE WEEK AHEAD…
Next week, Dawn of War II is finally going to go live and ship to stores. We are really excited to ship the game and see what you all think of the final product.
We would like to take this opportunity to talk a bit about the Beta and what’s in store next for DOW II. First off, the Beta has been really successful from our perspective. We have had over
250,000 unique players participate and have gathered an incredible amount of qualitative and quantitative data. Your bug reports, balance feedback and technical support assistance is going to go a long way to helping us support the DOW II community over the next few months. This support starts with our first major patch for the retail game which is currently in certification testing at Microsoft. If everything goes to plan, the patch should be available at launch or within a few days of the game shipping to stores.
Note: Leaderboards and Player Stats will be reset when the patch goes live due to formatting changes. We appreciate your understanding.
Some of the changes in the retail patch relate specifically to Multiplayer.
Here are the highlights:
New Content
* • Two new Multiplayer maps are being added - one 1v1 and one 3v3
Multiplayer Gameplay
* • Fixed a bug where ability effects were permanent on burrowed units.
* • Fixed several population capacity bugs.
* • Fixed problem with retreating to allied HQ when player’s HQ is destroyed.
* • Fixed attack ground to allow firing into the Fog of War.
* • Prevented Waaagh/Zeal/Biomass/Psychic might “double dipping” when own units are killed by friendly fire, and remove reward for allied friendly fire.
* • Prevented non-attacking commanders from getting a share of XP for incomplete construction.
* • Added cool down timers to construction abilities.
* • Prevented anti-suppression from being modified into the positive.
* • Prevented area of effect suppression originating from target entities inside of buildings from spreading to units outside a building.
* • Increased the suppression and damage on suppression weapons at distant range.
* • Fixed a bug where units that had been completely replaced via reinforcement would lose their control groups.
* • Removed Ravener tunnel impass to prevent several blocking exploits.
* • Requisition resource rates are now reduced depending on game size.
* • Requisition points now increase by +5 requisition every 20 seconds (up from 15), up to a maximum of +30 (down from 35).
* • Fixed an issue with grenades not harming the squad that throws them.
* • Fixed an issue with the Apothecary’s Heal ability that prevented it from properly healing infantry.
* • Reduced damage of Kommando hero’s Remote Bomb against HQ’s.
* • Kommando hero’s Kaboom! now properly deals 500 damage to the Kommando, but does not kill him.
* • Tyranid Warrior Adrenal Gland melee damage reduced to 52, from 60.
* • Reduced firing rate of Hive Tyrant Venom Cannon to match the other versions. Damage reduced to 60, from 85. Area of effect damage modifier reduced at outermost radius to 0.3, from 0.4.
* • Spore Mine blast radius increased to 10, from 8.
* • Increased accuracy of small arms against Ripper Swarm to 0.3, from 0.2.
* • Ripper Swarm cost increased to 240, from 200.
Go
here to see a comprehensive list of all bug fixes and changes.
There are a couple changes that warrant additional explanation.
The original Beta resource rates were purposely reduced in team games (based on the number of players) to control the rate at which teams teched up and to keep the pacing consistent with 1v1 games. However, player feedback from team games and our own analysis showed that Requisition was earning too slowly, resulting in fewer units on the field compared to a 1v1 (on a per player basis). With the Beta balance patch, we tried to address this problem in two ways – by removing the Requisition resource modifier completely in team games and introducing a new Requisition mechanic whereby the rate increases the longer a point is held. These changes had the combined and unintended side effect of grossly increasing the Requisition rate in team games. In our first patch, we are reinstating the Requisition modifier in team games for pacing purposes but retaining a gradual rate increase mechanic to ensure Requisition eventually escalates to appropriate levels. Our internal tests have validated this change and we expect Requisition rates in team games to be much better paced.
The second element we would like to talk about is suppression. Generally speaking, the suppression mechanic should work very similar to how it did in Company of Heroes - to inexpensively neutralize infantry forces – however, directly porting over this system has proven insufficient. Here are some problems that have appeared in the Beta and the solutions we are implementing in the patch.
* • Suppression is too easily neutralized by melee based opponents because once a suppression unit is attacked in melee, that unit is rendered completely ineffective. To play an effective role on the DOWII battlefield, suppression is now more effective against melee units at short ranges.
* • Suppression units are quickly overwhelmed by groups of standard ranged units. To prevent this, suppression has been made more effective against ranged units who choose to enter their firing range.
* • Units in cover are too vulnerable to suppression. As a result, cover has been made more effective at dissipating suppression.
Together, these changes should dramatically increase player’s tactical options for using and countering suppression. Moving forward, we will continue to explain some of the changes we’re making to the game to a greater extent because we know many of you are very interested in how we arrived at the decisions we’ve made. Sometimes we just make mistakes, we’re only human after all, but other times there are very good and well thought out reasons behind the changes.
Our work to make DOW II’s multiplayer experience as fair, fun and exciting as possible has just started. We sincerely hope you enjoy the game and continue to support us through your community participation.
The Dawn of War II Team
(3. Betapatch)
