Dogs of War Online

Hey, I've just joined the beta and first of all I want to say thanks for responding to my key request so hastily

Now, down to the feedback...

I've only been playing for a day and although I loved the game at first I quickly began to notice a great many faults and limitations in what I could do to play competitively. I've only really played undead but this is from observing how other factions performed as well.

Faction Imbalances;

Undead The play style of undead is extremely time and position dependant. This is because their elite units are too weak defensively and get focused down easily, their debuffs are extremely situational and aren't immediately effective and their only effective composition that requires lots of minion spam with archers takes two turns to effectively position and even then, minions can be bypassed as if they weren't even there.

Light They seem the most balanced of all the factions, I don't have much to say about them individually other than the fact they possess the best archers (which are a separate issue entirely).

Wolves By far the most ridiculous of all the factions. When played aggressively they can decimate any team composition, especially undead because of how time dependant they are. Their melee units destroy most units outright in one attack and then go on to do other things like hide or heavily damage another unit depending on their situation. They might be easy to kill but by the time you get the chance they'll have already done enough damage.

Movement From Threatened Spaces

Threatening a unit from moving away from one of your cheap units seems pointless as they'll only do a negligible amount of damage or simply be parried. This makes the strategic use of cheap units worthless in any regard other than doing damage or blocking narrow passages.

Archery & Line Of Sight

Archery is by far the most powerful thing on the table due to the lack of defense vs range and because they deal a large amount of damage at long ranges. Line Of Sight doesn't trouble them that much either as regardless of the amount of creatures trying to block line of sight to an important target the chances to hit it remain high.
Denying the ability to shoot whilst engaged is a nice touch but as mentioned above, if performed by a cheap unit the risk is pretty negligible. If an assault unit engages them they'll more than likely be focused down in no time and unless the player was completely wreckless with his archers any other elite unit would have difficulty reaching them without taking damage along the way and eventually being focused down themselves.

End Of Turn & On Turn Effects

The end of turn ends all effects from the previous one regardless of whether the unit has acted, this needs to be changed as it limits the use of certain things too much and removes the drawbacks of others before they've been taken advantage of.

Suggestions

I'm rather surprised that as a french developer you haven't taken any ideas from the highly successful dofus/wakfu franchise. Things such as the initiative and dodge/block mechanics could have prevented a lot of the issues in your game. At the very least you could have made a units turn end if it received damage from moving out of a threatened area.

I like denying ranged in melee with archers but when something stands in front of their target, regardless of side, there ought to be a larger accuracy penalty and increased chance to hit the unit in front (at least 50/50 of hitting either). This counts for any occupied hex that the shot crosses through, its simply too easy to ignore LoS blockers.

Give undead more useful and immediate defensive debuffs (not just making a single attack on a single creature miss, that's near enough useless). Lower the damage/accuracy of wolves that make multiple attacks as default.

Conclusion

I like the game, it was a fun distraction for a couple of hours but then that was pretty much it, I certainly wouldn't spend any money on this game. I began to notice a pattern amongst the high tier competition and it involved playing the same limited unit compositions over and over which simply seemed boring to me. I like to be able to vary my units at the same time as being competitive. I personally don't think the game will get too far, there seems to be too many flaws and balance issues to address.

P.S. It's never a good idea to build a competitive multiplayer game with factions, something you ought to have considered by looking at the evolution of mmorpgs and pvp. Balance is a bitch otherwise.

Oh, and another thing I think needs to be mentioned;

The indicator that displays certain skills as pre-requisites to others needs to be more emphasized and you need a more precise description for faith and mana increases rather than a default 'you might get this or that at either level which displays this icon'.

It would also be a good idea to give increased stats (especially in regards to survivability) as a unit is leveled up to justify their increased cost.

i agree on some points: my biggest fear about this game is that some team builds will always be always strictly better that everybody (or so) will use them. I also agree that sometimes archers have a relatively easy life to hit people point blank. About factions : it seems that new players will often think that wolven are the most OP race while in reality Lions are (at least i think so!). Wolven perform very good when your opponent doesn't know the game too well OR you are playing in the most horrible map ever created in any online game: ancient battlefield (the super little one). Once you fight people with more experience you will realize that they aren't that brutal. The "trick" is always check their movements and try to stick your units so that the first one who charges in gets focused. Usually lion will brutalize any wolven if they are using the mage and undeads can tear them apart with ferocious units/ exhausting touch from paladin / skeletons blocking key passages. All in all i think wolven are far from being imbalanced.

I did wonder about lions high parry rates and heals against wolven, they probably stand a better chance against them. I stick by undead being far too situational though.

Also, why on earth does ancient battleground exist? It's such a ridiculous map, nothing good can come from it

Thanks for the feedback !

It is supposed to be a noob map, and as said before, will be limited to very early players in the near feature.

As for factions, it would have been too much of a betrayal to the original material (Confrontation minature) not to go with the existing Factions. We have an increasing number of players that use to play the table top game, and it's a big plus for them. We did it with Aarklash: Legacy, because the developers had a certain vision for characters and variety was needed. Factions do work for RTS, and DOWO does share some elements with thoose too.

In my opinion, you shouldn't be too definitive with balance and competitiveness. I've played enough mmos to know that what is perceived as powerful at a T moment can and will change, especially when adjustments are made with almost every patch.
In wow for exemple, some playstyle/specs weren't considered as viable until some players showed how it should be done.

Then, I think the devs are willing the make the game as balanced as possible and to listen to the feedback, but they aren't aiming at becoming an e-sport reference.

As Deep blue pointed recently, we currently see very few Wolfens playing a composition with a large number of Crossbowman, while many elements shows it is a really solid option.

Izno wrote:Thanks for the feedback !

It is supposed to be a noob map, and as said before, will be limited to very early players in the near feature.

As for factions, it would have been too much of a betrayal to the original material (Confrontation minature) not to go with the existing Factions. We have an increasing number of players that use to play the table top game, and it's a big plus for them. We did it with Aarklash: Legacy, because the developers had a certain vision for characters and variety was needed. Factions do work for RTS, and DOWO does share some elements with thoose too.

In my opinion, you shouldn't be too definitive with balance and competitiveness. I've played enough mmos to know that what is perceived as powerful at a T moment can and will change, especially when adjustments are made with almost every patch.
In wow for exemple, some playstyle/specs weren't considered as viable until some players showed how it should be done.

Then, I think the devs are willing the make the game as balanced as possible and to listen to the feedback, but they aren't aiming at becoming an e-sport reference.

As Deep blue pointed recently, we currently see very few Wolfens playing a composition with a large number of Crossbowman, while many elements shows it is a really solid option.

just curious, do you actually collect statistics about units? ie: how many skeleton warriors are played? If that is the case it would be interesting to see them

Well there's a lion list that never lose exept on ancient battlefield.

its simply too easy to ignore LoS blockers.

I agree to this one especialy - Currently shielding with cheaper units isn't efective.

I've always been the kind of guy who explores the builds other people don't even think about, like dofus for example where I built the very first wisdom xelor and then went on to build the only pure vitality eca build focused on using resistance gear and combining ecaflips luck with roulette. Undead factions tend to have very unique playstyles which is why I went with it straight away.

I'm not kidding when I say there's very little strategic value to cheap units and that undeads elite units are too weak defensively to make it a viable faction to play competitively.

HellsingDS wrote:I've always been the kind of guy who explores the builds other people don't even think about, like dofus for example where I built the very first wisdom xelor and then went on to build the only pure vitality eca build focused on using resistance gear and combining ecaflips luck with roulette. Undead factions tend to have very unique playstyles which is why I went with it straight away.

I'm not kidding when I say there's very little strategic value to cheap units and that undeads elite units are too weak defensively to make it a viable faction to play competitively.

i am sure skydancer will think it otherwise with his 27 victories and 0 losses and his undead army. I also play a very similar build as him and i've a similar record (30 vicotires 6 losses, 3 done by skydancer :'( ) . Right now im experimenting some new builds that might have potential but they require at least 400-450 ap and right now seems like impossible to play something that "big". Not considering you get screwed by low ap armies because you have to adjust yours.