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Dawn of War 2 Q&A with Relic, July 2009

By DanaEileithyia - 15th July 2009 - 22:21 PM

Once again Thunder - the community manager for Relic Entertainment - has agreed to answer some of the questions that have been put forward by the GameReplays.org community. A lot of questions were selected and sent on to Relic but with the release of the beta nullifying a lot of them before the answers were released, not all have been included here. The first few questions in this months Q&A have been answered by Josh Long, one of the Multiplayer Designers at Relic, to explain a little more about his role and to follow-up on his excellent answer in the May Q&A for GameReplays.org. Thanks a lot to Josh for taking the time out to give us these answers!

GameReplays.org: In the Relic - May Q&A we asked you why the bonus damage to melee is so high versus retreating units? The Dawn of War 2 community and GameReplays.org are thankful for this answer however a few comments expressed in that answer sound like they are written from beta perspective, when combat was a lot faster and the ranged units dealt more damage. So the first question the GameReplays.org's community would like to ask you is how involved have you been with Dawn of War 2 since the beta? Is this answer really written from beta perspective or is it the result of being more familiar with patch 1.4? What does a Multiplayer Designer do and particularly what did you do for Dawn of War 2?

Josh Long: I personally have played equal parts of development, beta, current retail and 1.4. The design perspective I shared stems from the development phase. I understand that from an in-game perspective, the tenets of the system were more evident during the more lethal phases of beta. However, as many will note, general lethality was reduced before retail launch and certainly I am willing to entertain arguments that the system may now work less well than before. A flat, global damage decrease of x percent however doesn't suddenly change the paradigm around which the system was created. To boil it down, the answer I provided described the grounds for building the game, not a post-analysis deconstruction of the retreat modifiers. High level foundation for a game is laid prior to actually making it. That is where I would submit the misunderstanding is being made. Also, only a portion of the system, mostly melee, was discussed in my previous answer. Regardless, with refinements being made to mechanics such a retreat pathing and squad AI, and of course the general balance changes, we are awaiting more pertinent data to evaluate the consistently hot topic of melee and ranged damage vs retreating units. The game has changed a lot and we'll be taking a look at reactions from there once you get your hands on it.

What a designer, or multiplayer designer does varies depending on the developer, the skillset of the designer and the needs of the project. On Dawn of War 2 I personally worked on multiplayer systems in general, from top to bottom. Race, balance, economic and tactical design are examples of areas in which I was involved.

GameReplays.org: Another aspect which wasn't included in your detailed answer was the reduction of ranged damage against retreating units. What's Relic's opinion on this matter? Is the ranged damage debuff really necessary? Often ranged units are barely able to out-damage a unit's passive regeneration rate when that unit is retreating, and a single ranged squad is unable to cause casualties on any melee squad before it closes into range. In the Battle Report it was already mentioned that ranged units will have to plan their retreats better against melee units and it was also mentioned that Guardians were receiving a damage buff. Will ranged units from other factions experience similar damage buffs with the higher lethality of melee units?

Josh Long: The ranged reduction modifier was determined early on in development relative to Company of Heroes. It had a working model, and although ours is of course different, the mechanics of the game share enough similarities that we felt 20% damage was approximately and subjectively the comparable value. There are many advantages to dealing damage at range, some of which are less obvious than others. Of course people will look at hard damage values in isolated situations, but ranged units have a much greater capability to pick out specific targets on pursuit and intercepting units that are at full retreat speed. Ranged units on the whole are also consistently dominant in most any RTS. Adding a melee mechanic was challenging, as mentioned before and we had to superimpose it on the existing CoH retreat mechanics.

Evidently the intricacies of each damage type is always under the microscope but in considering DoW2 is fairly unique in its inclusion of melee, the balance of the two is often equally as important. While we can evaluate the means of damage and the manner in which the mechanics are functioning, in the end we have to look at the fact that ranged units are still being built often, while keeping a keen eye on the fact that it's all too easy for the pendulum to swing too hard towards ranged, eclipsing melee whether it be always or only during the late game phases.

The first Battle Report specifically featured Banshees, whose pursuit has been made much more consistent. The values are meant to be in a manageable state, but in some cases of course such as power weapons vs heavy armor, players would be well-advised to keep at a distance. Damage buffs probably outnumber nerfs on the whole but were selective. No particular effort was made to increase lethality on an overall basis. The feel of lethality has changed however with the increased number of units in tier 1 and we're looking forward to what we expect to be positive reactions.

GameReplays.org: Why are all vehicles glass cannons (high firepower, low durability) ? They take insane damage from artillery and anti-vehicle weapons, making infantry dominate the game.

Josh Long: We feel vehicle responsiveness was obstructing our efforts to balance their relationships with anti-vehicle units. We'll be re-evaluating this from beta on as we have increased the responsiveness of all tanks.

GameReplays.org: With the focus on Tier 1, it is expected that suppression teams will have a much larger battlefield presence, as players will be perfectly capable of affording multiple teams. Have there been any tweaks to the function of suppression teams at all to reflect this?

Josh Long: To counter balance their reduced requisition cost and the increased number of targets on the field for them to suppress, we have introduced a fairly significant power cost. Suppression weapons are meant to be used as army support, as their damage at closer ranges has been reduced, although their damage at longer ranges has been increased. Their suppression effect is now the focus of their role as opposed to their damage so we don't anticipate suppression team spam to be an effective strategy.

GameReplays.org: Based on the feedback in the community forums, what is Relic Entertainment's understanding of the current effectiveness of the super powers (Orbital, Roks, Eldritch Storm and Tyrannoform), both against each other and versus other global power abilities? Is Relic likely to make changes based on this feedback and if so, when?

Relic: We ran a poll on our community site to see how the overall effectiveness of these powers was viewed by the community. The design team asked me to put it up as they were wondering if they should be making any balance tweaks to these powers, and there was some difference of opinion in the team as to whether or not changes needed to be made. The result is no changes to these powers right now, the design team went on to concentrate on balancing the rest of the game for There is Only War.

This isn't to say there won't be changes to these powers in the future.

GameReplays.org: What are Relic's priorities after Patch 1.4?

Relic: Priority #1, make more cool shhtuff. This includes more updates for Dawn of War II with new content.

Discuss it in the Relic Q&A - July '09 discussion topic.