Dogs of War Online

Personally I like the direction the Devs are taking with the game but there is one factor that has really been highlighted to me. Randomness. I don't know what but it seems they are trying to introduce it at every level.

As a strategy table top gamer I can't put into words how much I hate that. What is the point of having a strategy when a single ability or dice roll can render it pointless. I'm happy with some randomness but not when it becomes game defining.

Leaving out the randomly spawning "elixirs" lets take the latest example, 15% chance to kill outright on every attack.

This ability can effectively render any melee option moot and on a good roll lay waste to as many melee units that it can reach or be attacked by. Further more it punishes low model count armies even further since every single model lost to such randomness hurts strategy far more. These armies are already punished by the mechanics; encirclement, hp, tactical options, scoring; that they are being pushed out the game.

So to sum up, some randomness is fine but when you stack it to game altering levels you destroy the game and any reason for strategy,

I do not like it aswell but i am in no-comment mode until I can test what they are doing myself, and I think no1 should give free judgements on their work based on the very few information we have; but you know, everyone is free to speak about theory based on posts instead than first person experience or what there is inside a black hole or what lady gaga has between her legs or any other pure theoretical supposition.

Actually I haven't given any comment on recent changes or the units the devs posted for this very reason.

I am starting to feel like stuck in the limbo, I mean we are betatesters not theorycrafters, thats what they should do, and if I cant put my hands on the game I cant give judgments or advices on how to improve it, on the other hand playing a game that is about to change utterly is something I do not want to do.

Thing is I'm not commenting with 0 experience. Many of us have played different miniature games through the ages and can take those experience and give a fair interpretation of how certain combinations of things play out. All that really changes is the numbers themselves in many cases.

Case and point. During the beta test for another game one of their hero's ironically had pretty much the same skill set as the new one does. You know what was the biggest complaint and problem a 1 in 6 chance (16%) insta kill. It ruined many many games and in the next iteration it was removed outright from all models that had it.

This repeated itself in two other game systems. One of which never beta tested the unit. They fixed their mistake by just banning that unit from any official events. Most of the groups I played with also refused to play against anyone who used it.

I agree we can't comment specifically on the units stat and game wise but we can comment on mechanical interactions which as beta testers many of us have experience with.

Well I am not 0 experience aswell since I had about 400 matches in this game and for curiosity many times I readed the original confrontation game rules and units.
Now, what I am trying to say is that I consider the devs to be better than me at theory crafting a game (its their job after all), so my advices right now could be bad ones as they could be good ones.
When they give us the game we can do our part seriously.

I can immagine many scenarios where a skill like that one not only wouldn't be that game changing but wouldn't even matter at all. By instance, what if the new DoW' meta after the patch will be heavily ranged units focussed? Elite units like that guy with a meele 15% oneshot wouldn't matter at all, no1 would simply play it from the beginning like any other meele elite unit.
Who knows maybe this unit meaning is just to counter those meele smurfs parties but got fucked by ranged units hard... who knows, it all depends on what kind of game the devs want to make.

But it is true that if the comunity does not want oneshots they would be wise to remove oneshots and just put a +100% damage bonus or something.

They shouldn't have such a powerful effect on a low % chance period, thats my opinion. Instant death wouldn't even be that bad if it were balanced around having a much higher chance of occuring, then it's a part of tactics and playing your units properly. Like using your death inflicting assassin to take down a high toughness enemy. If say the effect was % chance to cause bleeding (opposite of regeneration) that atleast allows the opponent to do something about it and it is possible that it won't actually change the situation of the game.

Where as when your unit dies there are no tactics you can deploy to recover that unit. Unless elixir can resurrect troops/heroes that is, and even then i would imagine that would be very costly to the player on the recieving end of the opponent's luck.

My morbid puppet just oneshotted a full Hp Golem.
Cmon this luck system sucks.
Remove any randomness(including critical hits) asap, this is a strategy game ffs.

I like crit hit, not istant kill. (was a bad thing also on miniature game imo)
Some luck is intresting in a tactics game otherwise it's chess like, but not "roll of doom" party.

i think they also changed the amount of crits you can get (maybe it now increases over 100% hit?). Other than... in the (only) game I played there were 3 killed outright and both impacted the game:

- I managed to kill a full HP skeleton archer and pursuit (and as a wolven this is quite some extra damage output)

- I used offensive stance to finish off a black paladin....riposte of the paladin --> insta killed my nearly full HP unit (so i lost 1 unit, the enemy unit was still alive and i wasted 1 offensive stance...which is a BIG deal)

- I managed to kill another unit that i wasn't supposed to --> pursuit for extra damage.

the game lasted 5 turns btw...i dont know if i was lucky or not but also crits were flying left and right.

Right now the bigger problem for me are unit imbalance - that is even bigger win/loss factor than randomness right now.
Currently there is short list of companies that can't be defeated without tons of luck - so th luck matters only in fair and quite balanced games when both players have similar composition (in term of weak, normal or OP). In other cases even one insta kill is not so important.


But still Insta Kill crits will be most visible and annoying to all newbies - because its much more frustrating

I just had one, with wolfen:

Rune guard(full hp) attack a lion solider(18hp) : got instant death by it riposte.
and then the solider with "critical injured"(2 hp left) went to attack my full hp assassin, and then it got instant death again..

ok.. then his archer killed my full hp warrior at 2nd turn.
straggled a bit, i still managed to the end : enemy : 1 archers(2hp) , the defender(36hp) (hero) me: PoB(40)

Wow.. turn roll lost, and guess what, the defender went to one shot my PoB and it ended.

Nice game of such luck design, and even worse for me who has bad luck, tragically .