Developer Q&A
Thank you to everyone who sent in a question for the Dawn of War II: Retribution development team, and we’ll even extend the thank you to those of you that sent in many questions. We received hundreds of them, so please forgive us if we did not have time to answer your specific question.
The responses below are from Balance Designer Clint Tasker and Producers Jeff Lydell and Sean Meek, who wrote these answers in between bug fixing and shipping beta patches.
Dawn of War II: Retribution Development Team Q&A
What's Clint Tasker's opinion on current balance? Please name the important issues.
I am really happy with the balance of Retribution. Before the beta was released I told the community this, and I am pretty sure I heard a collective eye roll. But I’ve been reading the boards every day and the squabbles on balance have been highly contested and are surrounding very specific issues. This to me is a success. Almost no where have I seen comments like, “the IG are broken WTF reric?”
Relic has had a history of producing expansion races that are a bit over powered and I am glad that we can maybe put that reputation to bed with this expansion. To be honest our department doesn’t get any bigger but the game is getting exceedingly complex. Maintaining balance is a triumph, but refining that balance with six races and twenty one racial matchups is something balance and multiplayer design at Relic should be proud of.
Are there any plans to improve the Seer Council? I've hardly ever seen one in the wild.
There are still units that have some niche roles we would like to expand. I’ve already unofficially said that I would like to give Khorne Havocs a more defined role as well. I wouldn’t say Seer Council improvements are out of the question.
Are you planning in changing the way Phase Shift works for the Warp Spider Exarch? As of now, the fact that the enemy can't retreat out of it makes very hard to stop.
Right now there are no serious plans for changing Phase Shift. While it immobilizes your enemy’s troops it also can immobilize your own troops. I understand the concern that this can be timed with abilities such as Singularity and the Autarch call in; the former combo existing for all of DOW2’s existence. We’ll continue to keep it in mind but there won’t be any changes right now.
The Extra armour mechanic for the Imperial Guard was a pretty neat way to differentiate IG vehicles from other faction's vehicle (who usually have a static armour upgrade). However, in many cases extra armour isn’t extremely cost effective and therefore it isn't really used. Do you guys have any plans to try and make this mechanic more appealing to players?
Yes, for sure. I was worried about this mechanic before release because we had different things in mind for it. It went through a lot of iteration and its final form didn’t get finalized until very late. So, I was worried it could be far too good if too cheap and we ended up making it cost probably more than it should. With feedback from the community we can refine this feature and try to hit the right balance.
Are the heavy turrets supposed to have vehicle class armor as opposed to building armor? I had just noticed that they die quickly to a Manticore barrage and this was a concern of mine.
They were given vehicle armour so that their counters would seem more intuitive. If the Manticore is that devastating to it then yes, that is something we will surely look at.
What is an effective way to stop Catchacan spamming? With two upgrades they are effective ranged and melee, anti infantry and AV and have a plethora of special abilities.
Catachans are designed to be a hard melee counter for Imperial Guard. Guardsmen are extremely susceptible to melee, especially in matchups such as Ork vs IG. Sentinels can be effective counters but if the stomp is juked then they immediately lose the advantage. Catachans were also given power melee almost specifically for the Space Marine matchup. Without this we found that ASMs would just dominate the other IG units in tier 1.
That being said, the counter for the Devils is simply ranged units. The short range of the Catachan shotgun means they need to approach ranged units in cover and in most cases they will take too many casualties to stay in combat. We reduced the damage of the grenade barrage because we found this could cause the Devils to win some ranged encounters, especially with Termagants. This ability is for units in buildings and disrupting setup weapons so it didn’t need a high damage value.
Are you planning on nerfing the manticore?
Right now we have no intention of nerfing the Manticore. If you remember the release of Chaos Rising there was a lot of discussion on the Wraith Guard. As players got more used to playing against them the Wraith Guard became easier to deal with and we feel this situation is similar. To be honest, up until the release of the beta we felt internally that the Manticore may not be good enough.
If I can give one piece of advice for players struggling against this unit is that the IG player is putting a lot of resources into a tank that can nearly be two-shot by most types of AV. If you make it a priority to hunt it down and destroy it you can very well win the game in just that action. If you can’t do this, or your opponent prevents you from doing so stay on your toes. If you continue to dodge the barrages then that 300/100 investment becomes useless.
Do you plan to do anything about the Chaos Space Marine's highly underpowered Tier 3? Or are we all using them wrong?
I think that the Chaos Predator is in a good place, and I personally think that a lot of players underestimate this tank. There is a tendency for players to overestimate the power of a T3 unit and to send it in unsupported. For example: a lot of players considered the nerfs to the Land Raider to be too much. The reality was an unsupported LR was pretty good, but a supported Land Raider was almost impossible to counter.
We have heard feedback that the Great Unclean One is too expensive and its abilities require too much energy. We agree, so in 3.9 we are lowering the cost and raising the maximum energy of the GUO.
Do you feel that the Ork Battlewagon needs some tuning to make it worth the cost? It seems underpowered, especially when compared to the Land Raider Redeemer and Baneblade.
Not all super units are comparable. The Baneblade for example is significantly more expensive than the Battlewagon and has most of its potential tied to abilities with cooldowns. The Land Raider is meant to be a support vehicle, and with the recent nerfs, acts more like one.
Right now the Battlewagon is working particularly well as far as we are concerned. It works excellent as an anti-infantry weapon with some decent AV thrown in. It also has its speed going for it. The Battlewagon can escape from far more situations than either the Land Raider or Baneblade.
Has the skirmish Ai been improved at all?
There have been minor bug fixes and improvements to the AI but we haven’t significantly overhauled it any particular way. The AI is always an area we would like to, and strive to improve.
I want to ask why you switched from the true skill system to the current rating system?
The quick answer is that TrueSkill is Microsoft’s system used for Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live. Because we decided to use Steamworks rather than GFWL we had to change.
The long answer is that while TrueSkill is a very good skill system, especially for shooters, it doesn’t lend itself well to RTS and it does not work well as a ladder ranking tool.
The first problem is that TrueSkill only has 50 degrees of separation. This isn’t nearly enough to distinguish thousands upon thousands of players. We needed a system that broke up player skill more and gave small goals of increasing your rank. Now with Elo you say to yourself, “I’m 234th and if I gain just 50 more points I can go up to 199th.” This keeps players more interested in the ladder and encourages them to play more.
This granularity helps us solve the other problem of matchmaking. With TrueSkill the system would see a 35 and a 29 and say “these guys are close enough.” But, we all know that the difference in skill between a 29 and 35 could be pretty great. Now we can make tighter matches, especially in team games. I think players are already seeing the difference in Retribution.
I could go on about what makes this Elo system great but I think just jumping online and seeing for yourself is proof enough. Everyone at Relic is really excited about these features we have put into Retribution and we’re really happy that the community seems to agree.
Paid DLC - are you going to be using it in the future if so can you give us a clue on what things you might possibly have lined up?
We’re going to be releasing the exclusive wargear that player received by buying the Retribution race packs as paid DLC. If that proves popular we will investigate more DLC.
I was wondering if, there be new maps,races,heroes added to the Last Stand for a price with Retribution.
We’ll be adding some free DLC for The Last Stand sometime in April and possibly more in the future.
Is it likely that individual team rankings will be implemented for team games ala sc2 or not? If not why? (What are the technical restraints, or whatever reason)
Unfortunately storing data for all such possible teams is something that Steam doesn’t support. It is something that we would like to investigate for the future.
Are any plans forthcoming to increase the transparency of unit roles and levels of effectiveness through more detailed tool tips in game, such as in Kolaris's Advanced Tool Tip Mod?
Dawn of War II is an incredibly complex game and although Kolaris’s mod does a great job, presenting all this information in an easy to understand way and accurate is a significant task that adds a lot less value than new units. Clarifying how the game works is a process we’ve begun by introducing some multiplayer elements to the single player campaign and it is something that we’re always aware of.
Can you reveal any statistics on most successful commanders and race win/loss ratio? (even for CR would be fine)
Great idea! Expect something soon.
