DOW II beta - your impressions?

I'm surprised nobody opened a thread for this yet.

- It clearly shows its Company of Heroes influence (considering that COH came from DOW, it's a nice loop), specially the way the units progress in the terrain looking for cover, and the harvest of requisition points and energy.

- the terrain is completely destructible, with armored units not wasting time circumventing obstacles, just going straight through it and blowing them up. Very nice.

- The scale is toned down from DOW, but there are plenty of customization options. The kind of commander you choose lead to very different styles of playing.

- for the Warhammer 40K players, the computergame now looks much more like the tabletop game, in medium battles. Even the terrain looks very much like game tables, at least to me.

- performance wise, in my ASUS g1S, with 1360X768 (my 32" LCD TV res) with a mix of medium and high options, it's running flawlessly. With everything on High (some options have an Ultra setting, but I can't activate it) it is still very playable.

- No bugs that I've seen yet. Only thing I noticed is that Dark Angels terminators doesn't come in Deathwing colors as they should, but I'm a WH40K geek.

 

Can't try it out I don't have Soulstorm

Neither can I wait for its official relsease

 

I might try it tonight.

 

I wanted to wait till next week but I caved in a bought soulstorn just to try it out. Played once and I was totally clueless, played again and game crashed
Otherwise it looks kickass, I hope games will b much longer when full version comes out.

 

downloading as we speak, soulstorm is only $7.50 on steam, thats a pretty good price, plus you get the beta.

im pumped

 

I wish Steam allowed debit cards. Actually, its probably a good thing that they dont because my account would've taken a beating during the sale

Performance wise, it sounds like it'll just about run on my laptop, I really hope it does

 

I'm pretty sure you can use most debit cards as a credit card. I use my debit card on Steam.

And not to hijack the thread, but do you need the original DoW to play Soulstorm? I would imagine so...

 

My debit card works.

 

nope you dont. you just cant get the other races online. you can only play dark eldar and sisters of battle online if you buy it by itself, in single player you can play as everyone though

Im also mixed about DOWII, I like it, but it seems theres a very limited choice of units, and its not as quick as the original, just seems like company of heroes to me.

 

For some reason, the in game videos that I have seen, seem to remind of Warcraft 3. With leveling Heroes, and items, and fewer units to be had than the original RTS. Anyone else see that connection as well?

 

I'm playing the beta and at first I find it kinda "meh", mostly because I played CoH and was expecting a bit more units and upgrades... But after playing a few 1v1s and 3v3s online I found myself addicted to this game. It just gets really fun watching my ork boyz tearing them apart...

For those of you who hasn't got the beta yet, you could check out this gameplay video here.
http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?showtopic=444811

 

As a veteran Dow player, I love this game. I suck right now, but I love it.

Add me if you want some 1v1s:

steam: K.Jack2.0
Live: kevinj444

 

I'm not that great at it right now but I love playing as the Orks.

The game is fun. I wish I could play some computers to get used to it though.

 

you can play computers commodore

you just need to host your own game and change the open slots to computers.

 

I have only played against the computer (easy ) up till now and I must say I like DOW much more than DOW II. I have never played CoH so I wouldn't know how it compares to that, but I have played all DoW games and this limited variety of units, no buildings (except if you play with the Defense commander, you can build turrets and healing/reinforcing stations - WOW ) and in my opinion the unit cap is the worst. You can have like 5-6 squads and you maxed out the population limit which in my opinion is nowhere near enough to defend and attack at the same time. I guess I am used to making T2 or T3 bases fortify them well and then attack while i still have some units defending in case of a counter attack.

What I find good about this game is the cover part, which although there was something similar in DoW it wasn’t as extensive as in this game. Also a really nice touch is that your vehicles no longer go around the cover but they just go over it which kinda makes more sense. I will comment more when I play again another human, but atm I want to improve my skills. I just hope the campaign in the final release will be nice.

 

I felt the same way you did, until i became un-deniably obsessed with it, you just need to find a race and its groove

space marines are the easiest for me so far, termi armor on the assault commander is insane.

 

Oh and the worst part is, where is the SM Railgun? That was my favorite weapon for the SM squad in DoW. Now they only have plasma rifles, missile launchers and flamethrower and the equivalent would be the suppression squad (I guess). I used to put 2 of these and 2 missile launchers in the squad plus the grenades, and they were able to take pretty much everything at a distance

I used to like the SM in DoW the best (cliche I know) but for me it had the perfect squad size/performance ratio. The Imperial guard have too large but weak squad, the Eldar and Thau are kinda too stealthy for my taste but the Thau invisible squad could be devastating if you don’t have a unit capable of see them, and for some reason I have never paid too much attention to the Orks, Chaos and Necrons (don't want to play with the "bad" guys ). Maybe I should try the Orks or the Tyranaids (not sure if I wrote them correct) in DoW II

 

So its just DoW in much more smaller size and more strategies? Is it fair to call it like that? I'm much more leaning towards F.E.A.R 2 at the moment as I could only afford one but I like the previous DoW very much and hope to dig more information before deciding.

Also, is the unit very flashy? I watch some earlier YouTube video and found out that the units its like, covered with LEDs. I'm curious how they look in this more recent one.

 

The game has top notch textures and lighting effects, looks super realistic from a distance.

 

Ahhhh, i missed this happening (stupid surgery)

where is the beta download?

 

It's Company of Heroes on steroids on Mars.

 

add me up, my username here is my live name, im starting to get tired of computers

 

You need to have soulstorm to get into the beta now. It costs like €4 on steam atm. Otherwise you wait till 29th

 

I already have soul storm. I've gotten all of the DoW games (comes with being a 40K nerd) Is there something in soulstorm that unlocks the beta?

 

go to steam and there should be a big advertisement for the dowII beta, you just need to enter your CD KEY and the beta will be available.

 

Oh.....it

I looked like an idiot last night in my first few games.

This game reminds me a little of WiC, except infantry does not die so quickly like they do in WiC. Basically everything is pretty strong in DOW II.

I like it...but I also like base building.

 

DLing now, 30%. Should be good, ive been looking forward to this game for ages; love DoW so this should be great!
The cinematics on youtube alone were enough to drag me into beta testing...

 

If you want to play some 1v1, add kevinj444 on live.

 

Really? Sweet, I'll just check and post back with my results

EDIT: Well it didn't work However PayPal is a payment method which allows debit cards so its all gravy

BTW, are you in US or UK? I'm UK.

 

I'm in the United States, so maybe that's it. All it asks me for is the card number, expiration date, and the three digit security code on the back, and it's worked several times.

 

lol thats a credit card man, debit cards do not have three digit security codes or expiration dates.

unless you can link your account to paypal and go from there its not working.

 

It's technically considered a 'check card', with the Visa logo. Debit card with credit card privileges.

 

hmmm, could be, dont think we go those up here? we probably do, im not sure.

 

No, it's definitely a debit card. Trust me. Maybe it's a weird hybrid...

 

I am waiting............I wanna play the demo now! I wiill probably end up buying the game at some point.

 

Are there any air units?

 

hi kevin, what settings are you running dow2 at? and what is the framerate like? cause i'm contemplating purchasing a computer with a 9800m GTX, as my current laptop does not run the game near as well as i would like. Thanks for any advice

 

Ok having been in the beta since the night it was unlocked, i can say a few things. First of all, SM never had rail guns (tau did). I assume you mean heavy bolters, which are still present in the form of devastator squads. There are no air units aside from jump jet infantry (which really aren't the same). The number of squads is also highly race dependent. SM have a small army (one termie squad is a quarter of the cap) but Tyranids can have quite a few squads. Though overall its much less than Dow which is also reflected in the maps which are quite small. The entire game is basically focused on the fighting so yes base building and teching are either eliminated or simplified to the extreme. But overall, just give it a chance. I didn't like it at first either, but it quickly grew on me. No its not Dow with better graphics but its still great nonetheless.

 

Yeah I meant the heavy bolters and the suppression squad=devastator squad. Not really good at remembering names In the mean time I played with the Ork as well and noticed that their units are a lot cheaper and you can build them more. I haven't played with the Tyranids and the Eldar yet (exam period). Commenting on your last sentence, I actually like that that’s the case, since it means they are trying to bring something new into the game and while it may appeal to some old fans and a lot of new fans (CoH players especially) I always thought Warhammer is about epic battles with a lot of units on the battlefield. I hope there will be a demo because I would like the see the single player campaign.

 

well I like the game but the performance is horrible. I am trying to run it on my q210 which has a nvidia 9200. I get about 10-14fps with lowest settings.

What is strange is I can run COH at same settings with 70-100fps which is using the same game engine. I am praying it is a bug or I will never be able to play this on my laptop and will have to stick with COH.

 

As I play wh40k from Combat Patrol (one squad only) to Apocalypse (hundreds of miniatures, big tanks, Titans) size, I can tell you that the best games are medium-size, usually between 1500-2000 points. I think that's what they're trying to reproduce here. That's a clear move to try to make the player more attached to his units than just considering them cannon fodder and the computer game more akin to the tabletop game.

 

anyone running this on a 8400gs? I'd like to know how it performs

 

They use the same 'family' of engines but dow2 has an updated version essence engine 2, where coh used ee1. Have you tried lowering resolution?

I'll be running a 8400gs, but I haven't tried the beta yet, wondering how it will run

 

I love the game but I have to say that the 100 population cap is retarded. You can't effectively defend your points with only a hand full of units. Units do last long for the most part though.

 

it should be about 120 or 140

 

Isn't that the point? They want you to move around, either attacking, flanking, or reacting to attack?

 

What resolution and settings allow a 9200M 70-100 in COH?

 

The performance of the beta is pretty poor compared to COH. On a 8600m GT GDDR2, the game runs at about 30-35 fps at 1280x800 with textures on medium and everything else on low/off. Keep in mind though that this is the beta and that the only way to play right now is multiplayer over the internet (which is usually quite a performance hit when compared to just single player).

 

WIP - I am using lowest res (1024x768) on DOW2 and still awful fps.

Kevin - COH 1280x800 all low. I normally play 1280x800 with a mix of med-high and get approx 25-30fps

My 9200gs is overclocked to 700/850 and score a 3dmark06 of 2700 at 1280x800 res

 

I can run it at 1680x1050, High settings, and the framerate won't drop below 30.