Dawn of War 2

Before you assume this is a rant thread it's not, I like this game but really think relic should look into fixing the interface lag issues before balance since this is more game breaking.

Countless times I have gave out orders to find out they have not been carried out. Other times i'll hit a hotkey for a control group and think I have them selected when I don't only to watch a squad die when it shouldn't have. Then to add salt in that wound, the hard counter i'll have coming retreats. So not only does the one squad die, the thing I have to force a retreat on his army retreats and is useless...there goes my whole power farm. Early on this can be game breaking. Don't even get me started about units sent to cap and them just standing there b/c an enemy capped it first.

Honestly I think the game is good, good balance for a game with 4 armies I mean EA for example has worse balance and their games only have 3 factions/armies. The problem is the interface lag seems to be very high.

I would really like it if these issues were addressed before everything else, but one can only dream right?

OMG! This just happened to me today and it PISSED me off. I lost a tac and scout squad in t1 because of that lag crap which cost me the game due to me pressing retreat like 100 times and them just sitting there doing nothing. This type of BS happens a lot and its been doing it for awhile now. I don't understand why relic has never fixed things like this and the bugs that are still here from 1.3 like the screen randomly locking up when your switching through your units on hotkeys. Also I the stupid bug or w/e with tacs when you put them on auto attack(a+click) and they go into melee or they run right past a enemy unit without attacking which I'm not sure if this is due to lag or not. But yeah I agree on what your saying.

This post has been edited by Zato: Nov 19 2009, 05:26 AM

I'll help you hope.

The retreat lag really needs to be addressed for sure... you should only have to hit retreat ONCE no matter how laggy the game is or whether or not your unit is on its feet or on its ass. It's annoying to have to spend sometimes 4-5seconds hammering the retreat button while the rest of your army gets fucked up because you werent able to micro it properly.

I have found a reason why sometimes squads dont do what I tell them - if you are using shift + # to give the same command to multiple units, what happens is if you already had a unit selected when you started shift-selecting, it will UNselect that unit from the group if it was already selected.. Ive found this to be the #1 cause of squads not doing what I thought I told them to.

But seriously the retreat thing needs some work.

Tbh, I have pretty much quit the game since I took a couple of weeks off and I can't get back into it after playing other games that have almost non-existent command lag. Everything in this game feels clumsy now, Also when you go up against someone with a crappy internet connection the game is almost unplayable for me now.

So now I'm waiting for Chaos rising.... go go chaos... I guess. Relic really does make amazing games, its just they have crappy coding and patch it so much it is nothing like the game I liked when I bought it

Command lag can and does kill the hell out of the game- It is not fun when you are fighting multiple fronts and need to address one spot for a few seconds, only to return to the other spot to see your units not doing what you commanded and either sitting with their guns up their asses, or dying a horrible, 2 second squad killing death.

I've found out myself that when squads are being buggy, just issue them to move back and then retreat rather than just pressing X. Might be the same but who knows, it generally works for me.

And yeah the command lag is really a pain in the arse, i can't say i stopped playing because of that, i have to blame Modern Warfare 2 and Dragon Age for it.

Oh and RL too, who would've known, it takes time

What's more supprising for me, orders issued with mouse are sometimes also lagged, but are not disobeyed. I mean, if I press 3 to get my control-gropup3 it can (due to interface lag) do not select unis. When I click them - it will select. When I press X to retreat - it can be not done. If i _clik_ retreat icon - it is obeyed. Just like they had some screwed-up logic going in keyboard parser

Won't even try to count games/battles lost to retreating wrong group of units, not attacking in melee when issued to, not keeping range when ordered to etc.. Still, it is not enough (yet) to scare me away from DoW2..

Oh geez yes, please fix the command lag. It's messed with my micro so many countless times its frustrating. Being an old C&C player where responsive units was often everything, this is doubly annoying sometimes.

Age old problem, can't see it being fixed any time soon.

I'm hoping Chaos Rising fixes most of these issues. Relic can't exactly do major code work with these patches we've been receiving (1.4, 1.5, etc), they're essentially limited to tweaking numbers behind the scenes and that's about it.

With Chaos Rising, however, we might see a lot of these annoying problems fixed since they actually have a budget & sizable team to work with (I'm sure the majority of Relic is working on future projects rather than polishing the current version of DoW2). Fingers crossed. If it's not (along with things like buggy buildings, sticky targeting screwing retreats, abilities that appear to have their cooldown lapsed but turn the cursor into a red X rendering them unusable, and other such annoyances) then I'm going to be really disappointed...

This post has been edited by fischbs: Nov 19 2009, 11:41 AM

I totally agree, this game feels like you are ALWAYS playing with a high ping and while running a half dozen other programs. It's just a shame to stop playing a game because of something like that, but hey, it matters, more than most things really. I don't know how many years of my life I've lost to stress from bad interface stuff.

Also, why the hell is the retreat button so damn tiny? The HUD buttons could all have been significantly bigger.

And the selecting a squad member with a single click in a group still issues command to the whole group. This wouldn't be that big an issue if it was like this in CoH, but in CoH when you select one guy out of a group only he gets the commands (ie retreat). So now people that have played both games get all screwed up when going between them. It's sad they didnt get together between CoH and DoW teams and decide on a few seemingly insignificant mechanics to make them the same in both games.

I've lost so many guardains + shootas this way, or they run out into the open when there's green cover all around.

Then the next loading screen will say "using cover, your units will intelligently move to cover when near it." I laugh everytime that comes up

According to a friend of mine, some command lag is actually intentional. There's a built in "reaction time," where each unit has a set delay on it. Presumably it is to reduce the usefulness of insane micro because troops reacting like that is unrealistic or some crap. Really, it's just a pain and an artificial skill cap as well. I haven't checked if that's true, so don't quote me on that, but it sure feels like it. Regardless of the cause, it needs to be a high-priority item on Relic's fixing list.

Lol, that, is totally bogus.

IDK about that ^^

Having your units to sit and die for a few seconds is probably not intended. What is being bemoaned over is the fact that you can sometimes hammer the x button and your units will not respond.

This has ruined so many games for me, and countless others'. I think it's the #1 reason why people leave DOW2, often never to return. It's so frustrating.

It's so maddening when you're playing a practically perfect game and then it refuses to acknowledge a retreat / move / attack order and then it's effectively game over Even when it doesn't do something like that, it's still cumbersome and means that you have to babysit everything and double-check to see if it has actually done what you asked of it.

This post has been edited by bluefootedboobies: Nov 19 2009, 22:06 PM

Yeah, if I felt a need to babysit, I'd play sims or something.

It's not intentional!

It all comes down to shitty Games For Windows Live and the fact that multiplayer lacks servers and is instead peer to peer. The worst thing is that I don't think a fix is possible.

If everyone had T1 connections and monster spec computers which were perfectly set up, it might be OK ... but in the real world it's an absolute farce.

essence engine is a pain in the ass, it was in coh and it is in dow2 but at least it looks pretty and allows interesting techniques.

UI is a major part of online play, thats something that blizzard have worked on very well. Not every company has a team dedicated to UI polish and refinement though, usually it's just tacked on at the last minute.

Jeez guys, it's not that bad, there are just some annoying bugs that crop up from time to time due to lag. I have no problems whatsoever playing in games with up to 350 - 400 ping, and I've had no problem finding countless ranked games with pings of 100 - 175. Let's not make a mountain out of a mole hill.

This post has been edited by fischbs: Nov 20 2009, 06:58 AM