ricolikesrice
15th Apr 09, 2:55 AM
Here s what i d love to see in future DLC / expansions:
1. Loot System:
For each successfully completed Mission you gain “prestige-points”, which can be used in the armory of your spaceship between missions to “buy” your troops new wargear. Of course fluffwise space marines (or eldar/orks whatever) don’t normally have to buy their gear, the whole prestige-mechanic is more representative of how the more successful your troops are in combat – the more they will get rewarded by their superiors with access to better gear.
How much prestige you get is defined by a) the missions “fixed value” and b) your fury, resilience and speed ratings.
Purchasable Wargear can also be further modified via prestige points to get certain bonuses associated to it. What kind of bonuses depends on the kind of gear you want to modify. The better – the more expensive as a general rule. So for instance fine-tuning that bolter to deal 10% more damage to orkz would cost less than improving it to fire 20% faster.
What kind of wargear is available also depends on the level of your squads and what missions they have already completed. For example you would not be able to purchase terminator armor from the start but only at a point in a SM campaign where your troops get access to an old chapter armory with a bunch of terminator suits in it.
The obvious advantage over vanilla SP campaign would be
a ) this system while not perfectly fluffproof either at least makes a lot more sense than nids/orks/eldar randomly dropping blood raven artefacts left and right and more importantly
b) YOU get to decide how to customize your squads, not a random “dice” that may decide your troops really need 50 suits of power armour and not a single missile launcher (slightly exaggerated example of how it works right now)
And if well-balanced it still offers plenty of (if not even a lot more) replayability because you ll never (should) have enough prestige to buy anything.
2. Main- and optional Missions:
Optional Missions should imho only show up after a main mission where you “earned” (i.e. had high enough fury,resilience and speed ratings) an extra deployment. Not all the time ( especially at the start of a campaign one doesn’t need optional missions yet, just as how its done in DoW2 right now ) but later on in the campaign more frequently. Without extra deployment = no optional missions for you.
Now if you were good enough to get that extra deployment the game would present you a defense mission, where you have to defend a generator/shrine/com relay that you secured in a previous mission. If you lose it, you obviously also lose that strategic asset and have to do the next main mission.
If you win, you obviously keep the asset and can do the next main mission.
If you win exceptionally well (high fury, resilience, speed rating) and gain another extra deployment …… you ll be presented another optional mission.
This time not a defense one, but one where you go out and hunt for an enemy “boss”. (fluffwise maybe the one responsible for the attack on your asset earlier)
The obvious advantage of getting good scores and thus as many optional missions as possible would be extra xp for your squads and most importantly extra prestige to buy gear from.
And those bosses could also drop (in difference to the otherwise changed lootsystem above) special RARE wargear or (imho better) “trophies” for beating them, that you can equip as accessory for your troops gaining different benefits depending on what boss you killed.
One thing before anyone screams that this system is punishing not-so-good players:
you could always lower the difficulty if you want to experience all the optional content but are not "good" enough to unlock extra deployments on captain/primarch.
I personally would like such a system a lot more than the current one, especially with my above mentioned changes to the loot system.
3. “Boss” Battles:
In future campaigns I d really prefer it relic stops with the ridicoulus “more hitpoints = harder fights” balancing. all “more hitpoints” amounts to is “more repetition”.
No boss fight, not even an avatar, not even future greater daemons of chaos in a possible expansion … should involve 10 space marines shooting / hacking at it for over a minute ( or 10…. ) -> that kind of stuff is
a ) absolutely raping fluff because nothing short of a titan could take so much punishment
b) pretty boring to play as.
a boss battle should not involve “shooting/hacking” at a boss for 3 minutes but instead of “epic carnage” fighting the bosses troops for 2-3 minutes and then at the end him showing up personally as the final highlight of said fight.
example:
lets say your boss is an eldar ranger. instead of you going to some arena and running around shooting and slashing away at a single eldar only made challenging by a few special abilities …. how about this:
you discover the bosses hiding place but instead of confronting him directly from the start it ll trigger a script where his troops attack you in different waves, from different directions, using different “specials” and you will (in the higher difficulties) have a really hard time keeping your guys alive, especially as these troops will “hunt you down”, not just remain in the area where the sequences was triggered so you have an easy time recovering.
in above mentioned example at first some previously cloaked rangers might start shooting your troops from different directions and while you run to cover to keep your guys alive while at the same time trying to kill them, even more eldar forces “spawn” at another side of the map and start moving in your direction trying to flank you from behind – i.e. those spawned troops aren’t passive , waiting for you to discover and kill them but actively seek out to join the rangers in combat – so you better finish those fast else you re getting killed from 2 sides.
The idea is that a “boss fight” is simply an encounter where the player is put under extreme pressure as all kind of new treats emerge (from flanking new troops to artillery barrages to warpstorms etc. etc. ) and he constantly has to adapt to these, surviving and eliminating the foes until they run out of troops and the enemy boss makes his last stand (and while such a boss should of course not drop over dead with one shot fired, it shouldn’t be as retarded as him being able to easily survive focused fire of 10 marines for over a minute ).
4. Heroes / Squads
Overall I think 4 is quite a magic number afterall while initially being disappointed that you can “just” field 4 different units per battle. 4 is good enough, anything higher and unless you re a robot (korean) half your troops might be standing around doing nothing half the time.
What I would like changed however would be the following:
Commander:
I d absolutely love it if you would have all 3 commanders for your race available to “lead” a mission, i.e. being able to chose between force commander, apothecary and techmarine (as a space marine example). Obviously at the start of the campaign you d only have your FC but during the campaign you d get the other 2 available and may chose them instead of your FC. Mind you only 1 commander per mission, i.e. no “squad” loadout of FC, apothecary, techmarine and Mr. Thule.
Vehicles:
Similary I d prefer more choice regarding vehicles/walkers. Especially as some people found out by digging in the files that concerning ork/eldar campaigns we d again get a walker only , no other vehicles. As with commander there should be only 1 vehicle per mission allowed, but you could chose between Walker (cybot), APC (razorback) and battletank (predator). especially customizing tanks with wargear would be awesome.
As for infantry I don’t need many changes except maybe more “fluffyness”, i.e. having 5 man squads (for SM). This aint MP so its no balance issue with that.
Would be the ideal strike force: 1 commander, 10 infantry, 1 walker or tank. ( or 1 commander, 15 infantry )
Same for Eldar, with orks maybe slightly adjusted numbers ( 1 commander, 16 infantry + vehicle or 1 commander + 24 infantry )
Another idea that crossed my mind:
How about reserves ? Would be awesome if instead of simply reviving a fallen squad-leader he d remain dead (at least for this mission) but you would be able to call in one of your reserve squads as replacements.
Example (working with the SM campaign):
Force Commander dies – you call in the Apothecary or Techmarine
Avitus dies – you call in cyrus / Thaddeus / tarkus from the barge
Thule dies – you call in the razorback / predator from the barge
if you don’t have any replacements you d of course lose the mission.
And now depending on difficulty levels those deads could have further penalties:
Sergeant : no penalties
Captain : killed squadleaders/commanders & destroyed vehicles cannot be used for the next 1-2 missions till they re fully healed/repaired
Primarch: same as captain but in addition they also lose 1-2 levels of experience.
Okay the post is already long enough so I ll stop for now - especially with the probably tons of grammar/spelling errors my non-native english produces.... one thing however, notice while I often used the space marine campaign we have as an example of “how it should be”, I don’t actually advocate changing it retroactively. While I would love that , I can definitely see relic not going back to change the already shipped campaign.
But for future campaigns those changes would be great, don’t you think ? (constructive) Criticism and more ideas welcome.
1. Loot System:
For each successfully completed Mission you gain “prestige-points”, which can be used in the armory of your spaceship between missions to “buy” your troops new wargear. Of course fluffwise space marines (or eldar/orks whatever) don’t normally have to buy their gear, the whole prestige-mechanic is more representative of how the more successful your troops are in combat – the more they will get rewarded by their superiors with access to better gear.
How much prestige you get is defined by a) the missions “fixed value” and b) your fury, resilience and speed ratings.
Purchasable Wargear can also be further modified via prestige points to get certain bonuses associated to it. What kind of bonuses depends on the kind of gear you want to modify. The better – the more expensive as a general rule. So for instance fine-tuning that bolter to deal 10% more damage to orkz would cost less than improving it to fire 20% faster.
What kind of wargear is available also depends on the level of your squads and what missions they have already completed. For example you would not be able to purchase terminator armor from the start but only at a point in a SM campaign where your troops get access to an old chapter armory with a bunch of terminator suits in it.
The obvious advantage over vanilla SP campaign would be
a ) this system while not perfectly fluffproof either at least makes a lot more sense than nids/orks/eldar randomly dropping blood raven artefacts left and right and more importantly
b) YOU get to decide how to customize your squads, not a random “dice” that may decide your troops really need 50 suits of power armour and not a single missile launcher (slightly exaggerated example of how it works right now)
And if well-balanced it still offers plenty of (if not even a lot more) replayability because you ll never (should) have enough prestige to buy anything.
2. Main- and optional Missions:
Optional Missions should imho only show up after a main mission where you “earned” (i.e. had high enough fury,resilience and speed ratings) an extra deployment. Not all the time ( especially at the start of a campaign one doesn’t need optional missions yet, just as how its done in DoW2 right now ) but later on in the campaign more frequently. Without extra deployment = no optional missions for you.
Now if you were good enough to get that extra deployment the game would present you a defense mission, where you have to defend a generator/shrine/com relay that you secured in a previous mission. If you lose it, you obviously also lose that strategic asset and have to do the next main mission.
If you win, you obviously keep the asset and can do the next main mission.
If you win exceptionally well (high fury, resilience, speed rating) and gain another extra deployment …… you ll be presented another optional mission.
This time not a defense one, but one where you go out and hunt for an enemy “boss”. (fluffwise maybe the one responsible for the attack on your asset earlier)
The obvious advantage of getting good scores and thus as many optional missions as possible would be extra xp for your squads and most importantly extra prestige to buy gear from.
And those bosses could also drop (in difference to the otherwise changed lootsystem above) special RARE wargear or (imho better) “trophies” for beating them, that you can equip as accessory for your troops gaining different benefits depending on what boss you killed.
One thing before anyone screams that this system is punishing not-so-good players:
you could always lower the difficulty if you want to experience all the optional content but are not "good" enough to unlock extra deployments on captain/primarch.
I personally would like such a system a lot more than the current one, especially with my above mentioned changes to the loot system.
3. “Boss” Battles:
In future campaigns I d really prefer it relic stops with the ridicoulus “more hitpoints = harder fights” balancing. all “more hitpoints” amounts to is “more repetition”.
No boss fight, not even an avatar, not even future greater daemons of chaos in a possible expansion … should involve 10 space marines shooting / hacking at it for over a minute ( or 10…. ) -> that kind of stuff is
a ) absolutely raping fluff because nothing short of a titan could take so much punishment
b) pretty boring to play as.
a boss battle should not involve “shooting/hacking” at a boss for 3 minutes but instead of “epic carnage” fighting the bosses troops for 2-3 minutes and then at the end him showing up personally as the final highlight of said fight.
example:
lets say your boss is an eldar ranger. instead of you going to some arena and running around shooting and slashing away at a single eldar only made challenging by a few special abilities …. how about this:
you discover the bosses hiding place but instead of confronting him directly from the start it ll trigger a script where his troops attack you in different waves, from different directions, using different “specials” and you will (in the higher difficulties) have a really hard time keeping your guys alive, especially as these troops will “hunt you down”, not just remain in the area where the sequences was triggered so you have an easy time recovering.
in above mentioned example at first some previously cloaked rangers might start shooting your troops from different directions and while you run to cover to keep your guys alive while at the same time trying to kill them, even more eldar forces “spawn” at another side of the map and start moving in your direction trying to flank you from behind – i.e. those spawned troops aren’t passive , waiting for you to discover and kill them but actively seek out to join the rangers in combat – so you better finish those fast else you re getting killed from 2 sides.
The idea is that a “boss fight” is simply an encounter where the player is put under extreme pressure as all kind of new treats emerge (from flanking new troops to artillery barrages to warpstorms etc. etc. ) and he constantly has to adapt to these, surviving and eliminating the foes until they run out of troops and the enemy boss makes his last stand (and while such a boss should of course not drop over dead with one shot fired, it shouldn’t be as retarded as him being able to easily survive focused fire of 10 marines for over a minute ).
4. Heroes / Squads
Overall I think 4 is quite a magic number afterall while initially being disappointed that you can “just” field 4 different units per battle. 4 is good enough, anything higher and unless you re a robot (korean) half your troops might be standing around doing nothing half the time.
What I would like changed however would be the following:
Commander:
I d absolutely love it if you would have all 3 commanders for your race available to “lead” a mission, i.e. being able to chose between force commander, apothecary and techmarine (as a space marine example). Obviously at the start of the campaign you d only have your FC but during the campaign you d get the other 2 available and may chose them instead of your FC. Mind you only 1 commander per mission, i.e. no “squad” loadout of FC, apothecary, techmarine and Mr. Thule.
Vehicles:
Similary I d prefer more choice regarding vehicles/walkers. Especially as some people found out by digging in the files that concerning ork/eldar campaigns we d again get a walker only , no other vehicles. As with commander there should be only 1 vehicle per mission allowed, but you could chose between Walker (cybot), APC (razorback) and battletank (predator). especially customizing tanks with wargear would be awesome.
As for infantry I don’t need many changes except maybe more “fluffyness”, i.e. having 5 man squads (for SM). This aint MP so its no balance issue with that.
Would be the ideal strike force: 1 commander, 10 infantry, 1 walker or tank. ( or 1 commander, 15 infantry )
Same for Eldar, with orks maybe slightly adjusted numbers ( 1 commander, 16 infantry + vehicle or 1 commander + 24 infantry )
Another idea that crossed my mind:
How about reserves ? Would be awesome if instead of simply reviving a fallen squad-leader he d remain dead (at least for this mission) but you would be able to call in one of your reserve squads as replacements.
Example (working with the SM campaign):
Force Commander dies – you call in the Apothecary or Techmarine
Avitus dies – you call in cyrus / Thaddeus / tarkus from the barge
Thule dies – you call in the razorback / predator from the barge
if you don’t have any replacements you d of course lose the mission.
And now depending on difficulty levels those deads could have further penalties:
Sergeant : no penalties
Captain : killed squadleaders/commanders & destroyed vehicles cannot be used for the next 1-2 missions till they re fully healed/repaired
Primarch: same as captain but in addition they also lose 1-2 levels of experience.
Okay the post is already long enough so I ll stop for now - especially with the probably tons of grammar/spelling errors my non-native english produces.... one thing however, notice while I often used the space marine campaign we have as an example of “how it should be”, I don’t actually advocate changing it retroactively. While I would love that , I can definitely see relic not going back to change the already shipped campaign.
But for future campaigns those changes would be great, don’t you think ? (constructive) Criticism and more ideas welcome.