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I played around with the demo a bit and it just doesn't feel right. In particular, everything seems to just do basically the same amount of damage to everything else? So the primary determining factor is just whether you can get a shot off first and how fast you can shoot. So assault frigates seem quite effective but everything else is wildly unpredictable based on engagement angles, which when you're fighting groups moving targets in dense terrain is near impossible to control. I don't think that this mode is a good idea, because you're just randomly modifying the stats of all the units so there is no consistent feel to any of them and you're basically just spamming ships and ctrl clicking them on a dozen little blobs of enemies around the map to collect stuff to make your ship stats better, and I hope you didn't pick artifacts for a ship type that isn't very good. I dunno, coming from DoK I don't even understand it, it's like they've just not even made a game as much as just thrown a bunch of assets into a physics engine and typed in random values for the stats. I also don't think the 3d terrain is great either because the game does not do a good job of actually displaying it. You're fiddling with the camera trying to see if there is another layer of open space sandwiched between what looks like a solid element. They also seem to have taken a step back from DoK in terms of usability too, the repair frigates seem allergic to doing any repairs unless you micromanage them, far less convenient than positioning a formation in DoK and they just sort it out automatically. Again this might just be a failure of trying to do the 3d thing which I still don't think really adds much, not helped by them apparently choosing to just make the controls different for no clear reason and still failing to make them up to the task. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 17:54
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It's weird because DoK felt REALLY confidently designed. It reminded me of Brood War. This reminds me of ORB
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Feb 8, 2024 18:02
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Assessor of Maat posted:yeah I'm on the fence a bit with how fragile the units are; the corvettes and bombers are definitely popping so easily it feels unintentional, but I've had a few games where I was able to stack everything on the assault frigates and they can tank reasonably well. people keep commenting that they almost lost their carrier to small poo poo, and others (like myself for instance) use it as a line ship and come out fine. I think there might just be something fucky with some of the damage, which also might be why interceptors rip the face off of everyone
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Feb 8, 2024 20:06
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remember when they laid off the director and other leads i have a feeling we're seeing the impact of that
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Feb 9, 2024 00:03
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:remember when they laid off the director and other leads i have a feeling we're seeing the impact of that they did not lay off rob cunningham, and what we are seeing is almost certainly not the impact of that. bbi has 330 employees and multiple dev teams. these people worked on hardspace: shipbreakers, minecraft legends, crossfire legion or one of their other in development projects.
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Feb 9, 2024 01:03
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turn off the TV posted:they did not lay off rob cunningham, and what we are seeing is almost certainly not the impact of that. bbi has 330 employees and multiple dev teams. these people worked on hardspace: shipbreakers, minecraft legends, crossfire legion or one of their other in development projects. oh fair enough then then i have no clue why they've hosed up so hard on stuff they've already got right and fixed before
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Feb 9, 2024 01:30
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I feel like a crazy person or something because I'm having no problem with the controls (I think they're a big improvement, actually) and haven't noticed unresponsive units or anything like that. Fighters feel kinda crappy in general which needs fixing, and it doesn't help that the starting fleet only gives you one good frigate option (suppression). There's no point building more than a couple anti-frigate/capital units until the third mission. I like being able to reference surfaces for sending scouts to accompany resource collectors, and the turret deployment from the tutorial seems cool as hell. I think they just shouldn't have released this game mode as the demo, since it cuts off prematurely and doesn't feel all that satisfying as a result. Or at least I assume it cuts off prematurely: 3 missions go by very quickly and if you and your teammates know what you're doing it's trivially easy to win.
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Feb 9, 2024 04:15
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Cognac McCarthy posted:I feel like a crazy person or something because I'm having no problem with the controls (I think they're a big improvement, actually) and haven't noticed unresponsive units or anything like that. Fighters feel kinda crappy in general which needs fixing, and it doesn't help that the starting fleet only gives you one good frigate option (suppression). There's no point building more than a couple anti-frigate/capital units until the third mission. I like being able to reference surfaces for sending scouts to accompany resource collectors, and the turret deployment from the tutorial seems cool as hell. Yeah, I've got my head around the controls and, though I can see some problems with the game, have been having a good time with it, even if when the full thing launches I'm sure I'll mostly stick with the other modes.
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Feb 9, 2024 04:20
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I feel like despite putting on classic controls, every bit of muscle memory I have from the first three games is leaving my head spinning. I don't think I've had such the bad time as others have had (I turned NLIPS off immediately) but I feel like I can't make sense of the controls. It also feels like ships can die far too quickly, especially frigates. I think I mostly agree with turn off the TV's comments -- the controls just keep throwing me and things feel like they're happening without really informing me. It's pretty, though, and the voice work is great.
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Feb 9, 2024 |
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Feb 9, 2024 08:18
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i find the controls real bad, poo poo unresponsive or not following orders, cant tell whats happening half the time really glad its being delayed i definitely want to like it time to play the Hw series over again, HW remastered here i come
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Feb 9, 2024 16:45
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yeah my mouse cursor disappears a lot, the sensor screen refuses to come up, and my clicks get ignored on move orders. these are just the most basic issues im having at the moment, not including support frigate nonsense, broken formations, guard not making my ships follow eachother, move orders being cancelled at random, terrible bomber AI, my carrier sometimes melting, NLIPS weirdness it’s not “i don’t understand the controls”, it’s that they straight up aren’t functioning, new or classic, keybinds or clicking icons
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Feb 9, 2024 19:20
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Assessor of Maat posted:well, if you insist these forums never fail to disappoint me with every once in a while someone posting something  off the wall batshit crazy and not realizing why it's not just a normal thing to everyone else lol
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Feb 10, 2024 11:09
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yeah i just fired up homeworld one to see if maybe i was being too unkind to HW 3 but no, HW1 stil owns and controls so easy and yeah now im playing through this again lol
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Feb 10, 2024 16:11
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:yeah my mouse cursor disappears a lot, the sensor screen refuses to come up, and my clicks get ignored on move orders. these are just the most basic issues im having at the moment, not including support frigate nonsense, broken formations, guard not making my ships follow eachother, move orders being cancelled at random, terrible bomber AI, my carrier sometimes melting, NLIPS weirdness I remember Dungeon Siege II having a disappearing mouse cursor problem, that I later solved by forcing the game to start in windowed mode on my modern machine. Just in case it helps, have you tried starting the game in window mode? That could at least help with the disappearing mouse, if nothing else.
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Feb 10, 2024 16:46
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I am constantly getting the bug where the mouse pointer is permanently hidden and you can't turn the camera anymore. I've had several instances where the carrier starts ignoring commands and just slowly drifting straight down as well until it bumps into the bottom of the map. Needs more cooking.
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Feb 10, 2024 16:48
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Oh wow, I played the demo for 30 minutes and felt like I wasn't actually controlling anything and I was just old and bad at video games now, but, I'm glad that seems to be the consensus
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Feb 10, 2024 18:04
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I'm not a game dev (aside from some lovely CS projects back in uni), and I don't talk code with my friends who are, but... Isn't UI and controls and AI and pathing and stuff, the poo poo that's the most jank in this demo (it's plenty pretty) kind of something you have to design right at the beginning of building a game? Realistically, even with the announced delay, can they basically gut and rebuild HW3? I have a sinking suspicion some exec was really hung up on making BDO terrain the killer gimmick, and it's turned into a technical boondoggle.
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Feb 10, 2024 18:13
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Adding terrain and megaliths was the original idea for HW2, but the tech at the time couldn't handle it, plus they were on a compressed release schedule. It's safe to say it was BBI's idea to revisit it
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Feb 10, 2024 18:21
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I meant a BBI exec, not investor. Sometimes you have a really cool idea and it just. doesn't. work. Be it cost in design time or system resources, or gameplay constraints. You have to be willing to Kill Your Darling as it were, and man... I've met so few people capable of making that hard call, and basically none of them were exec class.
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Feb 10, 2024 18:25
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Played it a bit, went in very exited and am now....less so. I think it looks gorgeous and the terrain to hide and flank around is cool, but also what are these controls and unit limits? Like everyone else has been saying, the controls just leave me frustrated and annoyed, the changes add nothing to a system that was pretty much perfect. F to center on ship is way better than backspace or middle mouse button, why do I need to take my hand off the keyboard for that? Why is shift no longer the vertical axis movement trigger? Why does it feel like I'm always simultaneously too far away and too close to have an over view? Also good god the abilities, they really are just "press s to be better for 10 seconds", they should be, idk, alternative firing modes or like with the stealth fighters a brief modifier of unit behavior. Lastly I also don't really like this mode but tbh if the campaign and normal multi are good, I can just leave it. Hope they get it right in any case, after coh3 I'm not ready to have another beloved series of my youth be ruined.
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Feb 10, 2024 18:51
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Slyphic posted:I meant a BBI exec, not investor. Sometimes you have a really cool idea and it just. doesn't. work. Be it cost in design time or system resources, or gameplay constraints. You have to be willing to Kill Your Darling as it were, and man... I've met so few people capable of making that hard call, and basically none of them were exec class. Well, sure, but there's no real way of knowing if adding terrain has been a huge problem this time around. From a performance perspective it's working, and especially in the second mission I can see how it could create interesting gameplay. Presumably the best execution of terrain is in the campaign. I think they made a mistake by releasing the demo as a few missions from this game mode and not a campaign mission. Plus the bugs people are experiencing with units not responding to orders, though I haven't encountered those yet. Anyway Rob Cunningham is both the game director and the studio founder, so we were always going to get his vision, but hopefully the fact that he's actually plugged into the day to day development means that anything that needed to be cut was cut. If you consider game director a creative role, then there are thankfully no executives overruling the creatives.
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Feb 10, 2024 19:41
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its just sad that HW1 is RIGHT THERE, just copy that poo poo, it still holds up and is amazing as im playing right now, and im easily grouping up squads of fighters, not losing track of anything, UI is super simple but gets everything across. like dang
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Feb 10, 2024 20:51
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queeb posted:its just sad that HW1 is RIGHT THERE, just copy that poo poo, it still holds up and is amazing as im playing right now, and im easily grouping up squads of fighters, not losing track of anything, UI is super simple but gets everything across. Yeah…yeah. I have the feeling they’re trying to modernize the controls into a paradigm based on absolute camera motion (fly your camera around like a ship) instead of HW1/2’s motion relative to a focused object. The problem is the old control scheme worked well enough to make weirdos like us hyped for a sequel 20 years later (I am crumbling to dust) and ditching it now is loving up all our muscle memory - and arguably just not working as well. Camera relative to ships means your screen is always pointing at something interesting. The megaliths seem to work fine. I don’t really know if they’re adding much but they might turn out to be cool.
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Feb 10, 2024 21:13
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I'm deeply unimpressed by the monoliths from a gameplay perspective, but I'm also pretty sure the campaign will make far better use of them. I'm trying to not just angrily demand nothing ever changes, but I also just don't think I like space games with big objects like that. Empty space just feels better (I too fired up the 'ol HW1 to better judge if I'm misremembering).
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Feb 10, 2024 21:43
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Homeworld 3 feeling bad? drat. This was one of my most anticipated games of the year. As the user upthread pointed out, why the gently caress would you not just copy HW1, that was already rock solid.
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Feb 10, 2024 22:46
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Slyphic posted:I'm deeply unimpressed by the monoliths from a gameplay perspective, but I'm also pretty sure the campaign will make far better use of them. The second mission definitely makes the most use of them but it depends on what the objective is. For the "destroy the enemy convoy" objective, I think the target goes underneath the little tunnel thing so if you're trying to intercept them you've gotta plan accordingly. It's not much but I can see how some cool scripted events could take advantage of that kind of thing. None of the missions in the demo really require that you take cover or hide but I can imagine that will come up in a campaign mission or higher level skirmish. For now I mostly find the structures useful for quickly attaching scouts near resources, or quickly sending units in the right direction before fine-tuning their position later
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Feb 11, 2024 00:34
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Cognac McCarthy posted:The second mission definitely makes the most use of them but it depends on what the objective is. For the "destroy the enemy convoy" objective, I think the target goes underneath the little tunnel thing so if you're trying to intercept them you've gotta plan accordingly. It's not much but I can see how some cool scripted events could take advantage of that kind of thing. None of the missions in the demo really require that you take cover or hide but I can imagine that will come up in a campaign mission or higher level skirmish. For now I mostly find the structures useful for quickly attaching scouts near resources, or quickly sending units in the right direction before fine-tuning their position later on that note - there's a small hidden scripted thing on the ice shelf map with a friendly probe you can follow around for an artifact. it's nothing fancy, but I'd say it demonstrates the benefit of having terrain to position yourself against. that little bit of extra thought required of you does help keep things engaging tried to find anything similar on the other three maps but doesn't seem to be anything, there's some vaguely conspicuous enemy probes on the first map but either nothing happens when they die or I'm managing to miss one
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Feb 11, 2024 03:53
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I haven't played HW3, but in general I am always incredibly disappointed by space games that just happen in the literal void. The comparison I often use is Elite Dangerous (superior in almost every way) vs. Everspace (varied, engaging environments that present all kind of interesting challenges and opportunities. Like, if Starcraft were played on a featureless plain, it wouldn't be better. But doing 2D (or 2.5-D, gravity-having) level design is hard enough, I can only imagine how tough it is in full 3D. Glad they're trying it, hope they succeed!
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Feb 11, 2024 04:01
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Man, after my first time didn't feel so bad, trying to play again just now was extremely frustrating. Units not going where I tell them to, not shooting at what they're ordered to attack, abruptly breaking off and flying to the other end of the map, general keybinds and mouse clicks not working, being unable to adjust movement height...
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Feb 11, 2024 04:31
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Murs4NkwWgA i guess it turns out that homeworld 3 was designed around the alt control scheme that i didn't realize exists.
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Feb 11, 2024 05:22
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All right so after all the fussing upthread, including my own negative reaction...I think this game is gonna be pretty good. The recent patch turned up the default control sensitivity and it's night and day for me. There's a lot of stuff I'm still iffy on, I don't think ships are going to have nearly as much personality as in HW1 and the combat just isn't quite as cinematic as HW2's flickering pulsars and flights of fusion missiles, the controls need a pass (a plain 'just like HW1' mode would be nice) but the basics are there. And I had some actual emergent fun with the megaliths, trying to keep a big block of progenitor stuff between my carrier and the battlecruiser in mission 3. I think it's gonna be okay.
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Feb 11, 2024 05:43
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After playing around with it a bit the movement plane seems like an actually good upgrade over the old system that's inexplicably tied to horrible inputs. e: i can also confirm that assault frigates are very cool and the point defense in hw3 looks neat. turn off the TV fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Feb 11, 2024 |
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Feb 11, 2024 07:15
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I haven't beaten the last mission yet (I only just realized it gives you a destroyer for the final boss fight) but using the megalith to hide from the battlecruiser as it hunts you is pretty rad. Wrath of Khan vibes.
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Feb 11, 2024 16:51
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Assessor of Maat posted:on that note - there's a small hidden scripted thing on the ice shelf map with a friendly probe you can follow around for an artifact. it's nothing fancy, but I'd say it demonstrates the benefit of having terrain to position yourself against. that little bit of extra thought required of you does help keep things engaging I saw that probe but after capturing the area it didn't move on  e: I think the Incarnate fleet's bugged - keeps crashing around when the heavy corvettes come out. Cool though. Definitely enjoyed the demo, really hope there's a ton of fleet types and war games maps in the full version. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Feb 11, 2024 |
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Feb 11, 2024 17:00
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General Battuta posted:I haven't beaten the last mission yet (I only just realized it gives you a destroyer for the final boss fight) but using the megalith to hide from the battlecruiser as it hunts you is pretty rad. Wrath of Khan vibes. I've never had that experience because either my fleet was on top of the battlecruiser when it jumped in and my carrier gets annihilated, or my carrier was miles away at one of the objectives and doesnt need to hide. Either way the battlecruiser dies very quickly to a couple massed attacks.
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Feb 11, 2024 23:28
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RBA Starblade posted:I saw that probe but after capturing the area it didn't move on yeah, all but one of the crashes I've had were with the incarnate fleet too. did get games past that though and I like their gimmicky EMP corvette. oh, and turns out I was missing one; if you do kill all of those probes, a damaged raider carrier hyperspaces in and gives another artifact if you kill it
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Feb 12, 2024 01:33
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I'm bad at soloing this battlecruiser >:[
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Feb 12, 2024 02:15
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Does the game throw fewer enemies at you if you're playing alone or with just two players? My impression is that it doesn't
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Feb 12, 2024 03:54
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Cognac McCarthy posted:Does the game throw fewer enemies at you if you're playing alone or with just two players? My impression is that it doesn't I've only seen enemy destroyers in 3 player games so they may just upscale the ships
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Feb 12, 2024 04:08
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turn off the TV posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Murs4NkwWgA Thank you for sharing this, I revisited things after watching this and had a great time. Huge relief after rage-quitting the other night over camera control
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Feb 12, 2024 04:23
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