I love the Wargame series. Seriously! I have 206 hours racked up in European Escalation, 189 hours in Airland battle and so far 43 hours in Red Dragon. Now, understand that as a gamer I get bored really easily. 200 hours for me is phenomenal. My next favorite game in my steam list is Civilization 5 and I’ve played that for 130 hours. I rarely replay games. If you look at the rest of my games list I rarely play over 60 hours.
What does that mean? Well it means that this game rates as one of my all-time favorite games of all times, that’s what! Does anyone else remember the original Dawn of War? When that game came out I played it over and over and over again. Multiplayer was awesome and to this day I compare all games to it. I will still happily play Dawn of War again today, despite the dated graphics because the gameplay just doesn’t get old. Wargame is on par with Dawn of War as far as online multiplayer goes.
So where do you think this franchise is going to go?
Well I’ve heard that Eugen have no plans to release another sequel. Pah!! I’d totally buy another Wargame in one or two years’ time (you’ve got to be patient with these things). I bet there are others out there that feel the same.
Could we see “Wargame 4” in the future? If so, what would it be like?
Well we are out of military arms to add and honestly the naval side of RD is not why I play this game. But here are some things you could add that would make for a worthwhile sequel. Yes I would pay full price if you did these things (and did a decent job of it)
1. “Wargame – HD” - yep – the graphics in Red dragon are pretty great but there are a few things I’d improve. Imagine Iris zoom in a really built up urban environment! Maybe where nearly the whole map is suburbs. The thing that Wargame is lacking right now visually is a decent variety of building and structures. The ones we have are very samey and they all appear roughly the same size. Sky scraper in the middle of the map anyone? Perhaps we’d get to see a tank battle around the base of the Pyramids? Let’s just go crazy and add lots of new elements to the maps. (The maps in RD are great by the way and I just know you could make some really awesome and varied maps.) Right now I play mostly zoomed out. Don’t change that about the game. Just make it super pretty when I zoom in
2. More units! Why the f*** not? XD
3. More factions, more nations, more coalitions (holy crap everyone just totally hasn’t given you enough credit for the coalition idea – I love the balance that you have created with that system and in some ways it makes all the countries competitive.)
4. Don’t change the core gameplay at all, (like they did in Dawn of War 2. It just aint the same ) I like it the way it is.
5. Grow the player base / improve the friggin’ chat system. Seriously – although very welcome, the mute function just isn’t enough. See my post on this topic here for more details. http://www.wargame-ee.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=155&t=44306&p=551689#p551689 The bottom line on this is if you can improve the “tone” or “impression” of this game to newcomers you will have more of a chance of growing the player base. Let’s see “Wargame 4” be the go to game for competitive multiplayer. (see my post on the degradation of ranked here: http://www.wargame-ee.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=155&t=44187&p=551690#p551690
6. Are you following Roberts Industries and Star Citizen? If you folks can get that excited about your game and want to post lots of videos of development prerelease, and Livestream tournaments post release… That could be way awesome. Alexis Le Dressay, guest speaker?! Sweet!
7. “Wargame – Apocalypse Now” - Scenario based multiplayer – What if I could play a multiplayer mode where I chose my war, scenario and battle in a historical context? For example, Vietnam. Then the game delivers a premade deck for each side to the players with the units already in there and the map historically tailored to the battle. Don’t care for the US, or no interest in Eastern Asia, no problem! How about play as Argentina or Britain in a Falkland’s scenario? Desert Storm? It doesn’t have to be realistic, just balanced (You guys are the masters at balance; I’m going to talk more about that in a bit!)
8. Improve the lobby system. Similar to the chat system in RD, this area is quite lacking. I’ve read several posts with people calling for an auto matching system ever since ALB was first released. (here is a good one: http://www.wargame-ee.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=155&t=44143 ) Even if the system is unable to perfectly matchup players by skill, at least the teams will be randomized so we can minimize pub-stomping. Hell, why not build in a VoIP system to satisfy those who want to team up with their friends easier. The first weekend I started playing this game after go-live the number of players was ~3000. Now we are regularly under 1000 (it’s been a little over a week!) There are a lot of things scaring people away, which is sad because I know people really want to love this game.
Roadblocks to success (or why I think this won’t happen).
Yup, make that game above and I’ll happily open my wallet up – here’s $30 - $40 (I get a discount for having all three right?
) but I suspect that it just isn’t going to happen. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Eugene can be pretty slow in responding to the player-base for requests on many of the critical things. I don’t want to go so far as to say that they are completely unresponsive because that would not be true. In fact, in terms of balance I think you guys have been pretty much spot on. (Destruction mode, limited transport cards, mixed nationality coalitions with access to prototypes just to name a few really smart decisions)
So what am I trying to get at here? Well, honestly, I think Eugen is burnt out on Wargame and I think the developers are tired of listening to the players constant requests to buff this and nerf that. There are so many posts in the forum for things that just aren’t that important it drowns out the really high level stuff.
In my honest opinion I believe that the balance of unit strengths and weaknesses in this game is not nearly as important as many players think. Every unit in this game has a counter, and almost all units in the game can be defeated by their natural enemy if the conditions are right. (A tank kills infantry in the open but infantry kill tanks close up – is just one easy example) people are far too quick to saying hey, if I play the game the way I want to play it, I keep losing, therefore the unit balance must be wrong. And although there may be some occasions where a unit’s ability to counter another’s is lacking, the actual impact on your game was probably vastly insignificant compared to the many other factors that resulted in your loss of the game (e.g. deck composition, availability, positioning, skill level, overall strategy, luck).
Think about it; are you really qualified to make any decisions on this unit or that stat? Or are you just coming from the perspective of your favorite national deck?
So should we ease up on Eugen and give them a little benefit of the doubt? Ya!! Give them some credit. They have actually gotten pretty damn good at balancing this game. Wargame RD (and its awesomeness) speaks for itself!
That being said, Eugen, you’re not completely off the hook. There are still some things that need to be improved and I fear that those good suggestions are being poo poo’d before any time is taken in their consideration.
Okay, well I’m done with my rant here I think. Thank you to everyone who read the whole article! I hope that it has been interesting for you.
If you want to see another Wargame in the franchise please +1 this post! Let’s show Eugen just how much we love ‘em!
