Dawn of War II - An Exercise if Frustration

I love Steam. Have bought quite a few games off it over the years. Will inevitably end up buying more. It's a wonderful platform.

But, I wholeheartedly agree that this was a terrible move by THQ. Some people bought it and couldn't even get as far as patching because it simply wouldn't unlock due to Steam not letting them unlock it yet. So essentially they bought an empty box, because that's all it was good for until Steam started verifying people's installs.

I don't think this is really something you can blame Steam for, since they obviously want as many games using their service as possible. But publishers obviously have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to making things available via Steam.

Hopefully a few of them are presently looking into Stardock's Impulse Reactor stuff, too.

If it's anymore disappointing i found  the game to be pretty damn mediocre

I have never had major problems with any of Valve's games. But they do have a history of problems with thier third party titles. To give you a recent example the demo of Grand Ages: Rome which I was looking forward to does not download properly. Even if you manage to get it onto your PC the demo won't run anway.

The use of Steam by itself isn't bad. To force us to use Steam even to be able to install the game is bad bad bad bad...

The game looks pretty, but I didn't like it when I was playing it on my friend's PC.  What's the point of hiding behind of a wall when it's going to be blown apart in couple seconds anyway?  The hero units are going to ruin some parts of the game just like WC3 did, you just wait.  I am waiting for a DWII Dota, that's for sure. 

The game itself (at least the SP campaign) is awesome.

You put your ranged units behind cover to protect them somewhat and to prevent suppression. You have a melee unit/units out front getting the face of things to prevent them steamrolling the units behind cover.

You can't just go running headlong at the enemy or you will get stomped.

What?!?!?! So you buy the box and if you have dial up or even *GASP* no internet your stuffed? What is the purpose of this?

And how big is this game? How much of my bandwidth do I lose to download it, plus future patches. Then if I want to uninstall it to make room for something, then I guess I have to re-download it. What a pain.

I'm interested in finding out how well sales go, its a pity we don't have an alternate reality world to compare sales with and without this method of distribution.

I've no idea what the TC's talking about.  The game requires you to install Steam if you don't have it, but the game then installs from the disc.  It'd have to, or I'd have spent hours downloading instead of hopping on after a few minutes and playing.

SP Campaign from the little I've seen so far requires no tactics, or really I should say very little.  Stand all men behind cover.  Point guns toward enemy.  Repeat.  On Primarch, the highest difficulty, the AI isn't the least bit smarter but just has extremely high unit stats.  It feels ridiculous because I can have heavy bolter teams in heavy cover with their special ability activated to initiate HUGE damage and one or two orks will drop before my team itself has taken enough ranged damage to have to retreat.  You can't face buildings at all it seems without using the stealth unit and his mega-uber demo charges that destroy any of them in one shot.  The one saving grace of the campaign is the collection and distribution of wargear which is somewhat fulfilling in a Diablo sort of way.  Leveling up your troops and giving them better and/or shinier equipment is pretty fun.

Fortunately, I bought it for MP mainly.  Unfortunately, just like in the beta races are generally well-balanced with some extreme exceptions.  One being the Tyranids again like during the beta when Venom Cannons ruled all.  Note that VCs still are pretty overpowered as they shred both infantry and vehicles pretty damn easily.  So what's the new ridiculous 'Nid feature?  Ravener Alphas, one of the commanders, can build as many tunnel structures as he feels like.  They turn invisible and there are very few detector units.  After which, he and even his non-Tyranid allies can enter any of them instantly and pop out of any other one with no travel time.  They can just teleport across the entire map without you and your team dedicating your lives to finding and destroying tunnels.  Usually you'll be too busy getting your ass handed to you by enemies appearing behind you and retreating to another hidey-hole if they take significant damage.

Stuff like this makes the game feel rushed, especially after the embarrassing debacle of waiting three weeks now to fix an issue that by their own admission took about 15 minutes to code.  Population caps break when you reinforce troops.  So we keep waiting and Relic says they'll get a patch out soon once it clears QA.  Three weeks later. 

I'm regretting my money spent even though I got it 30% off.  Oh well, here's hoping it's just from its new arrival and not going to be a sign of things to come.  Mainly just replied here to dispel the wrong information about the install process, but I think my rambling may be of use to other folks interested in DoW2.

Wait a sec, are you saying the game was not installed from the disk, but downloaded by the Steam client?  If so, that's bat guano stupid! 

Dont bring the bats into this. Bat need friends, too.

The game installs from disk but first it must check that you have the latest Steam version installed... which means that you need an already up to date Steam version installed or you need an internet connection(as the box already advertises anyways) to update the ones that comes with the game.

I can't play it simply because it looks so mega-crappy.  No antialiasing, no nothing.  My card can do all of these things, but the game doesn't allow my card to do them for some reason.  And I can't play a game that looks 10 years old graphics-wise, so the game just sits there.

Just to throw some oil on the fire here, DoW2 requires not one but two third party programmes:

1. Steam for DRM and patching.

2. Games for Windows Live for multiplayer (disfunctional skill level matching included), DLC down the line (gogo microtransactions!) and slowing down the patching process. (hello, 1-2 week certification process!)

Reading on other forums other issues have come to light. For example people that have internet access, but from behind a restrictive firewall (eg university students living on campus) can't get the game to work because the firewall blocks Steam. People have pre-ordered the game and not realised the internet condition, then they can't play, a couple of GI's have said this. Steam apparently requires a credit card number to have an account, so you paid for the game and then are asked for a credit card number, even though you may have no intention of buying anything. Too bad I guess if you have no credit card, or just don't like the idea of comprimising your own security. Lastly people have got everything needed but Steam doesn't allow them to authenticate.

I don't actually know whats going on, these are the complaints I've been reading.

As far as the "authentication" goes, I've been reading of download times of 1 hour up to 14 hours. No matter what your connection a simple authentication should not take 1 hour.

Probably only the people with issues post stuff, but there seems to be a few posting these sad tales.

Steam does NOT require a credit card. I played the DoW2 beta and had steam installed for it. At no point did steam ask for a creditcard.

(quite a useful beta for me, I found out that I did not like A. DoW2 B. Steam C. GfWL)

People not noticing the internet requirement are people who can only blame themselves. The game box states it quite clearly. Online shops can be tricky with their advertisement tough.

Steam may be the devil of DoW2 but it doesn't requiere any credit card (fortunately) (yet?).

My internet connection isn't the best one but I have quite good download times. Downloaded the beta in just 45 minutes and that's the longest download time for me (included patches, switching languages,...). Lucky me, I guess.

GFWL is quite silly, because if I want to go live, I need to disable my firewall first (I can enable it as soon as I'm live and it works fine). It also forces me to log every time, even if I just want to check the army painter. And as my computer is shared, I cannot let it remember my login.

i had to go through the Steam BS thing just to get a demo Empire: TW and you know what...the $&#@ing demo won't work. personally i don't know if it's cause the game isn't compatible with my computer or if it's Steam...

http://www.beefjack.com/blog/news/pc-news-blog/dawn-of-war-ii-requires-steam-for-activation/  read post #14 by ottatouch.

"to continue. my son purchased Dawn of War II. We noted the on-line activation required - fair enough. But on activating and creating the Steam account required he required credit card details. As he doesn’t have one, he would have to use mine."

I have no idea, but it must be confusing enough that this person thinks he needs his credit card to create a Steam account. Nobody told him on that page he didn't need a credit card so I assumed you do.

All this reminds me of online music stores releasing mp3's that only play on specific mp3 players. Companies are very caught up in "rights" and protection of said rights, which is fair enough, but doing so often causes customers pain. If enough people don't buy the game things will change, if people buy the game it will not change.

Unfortunately alot of modern businesses run an equation where share price or profit is the outcome and customer satisfaction is a variable that can be lower as long as the sales keep happening. Petrol prices are a prime example of this, and I say its fine as long as you remember your satisfaction is only a variable and not the result, so if you don't like it don't support it.

Okay, is there any confirmation on whether you have to download a bunch of stuff if you buy the retail version?

You do not.  You have to have the latest Steam and GFWL updates.  These come on the disc, but may need small patches.  You have to have a Steam and GFWL account.  You have to download the latest updates for DoW2 before playing.  You do not have to download the entire game off the net.

I'm no fan of DRM and Relic's approach clearly hasn't been the easiest.  That being said, I'm finding far more people with problems with the game itself regarding bugs or design than those who just can't play because Steam or GFWL are preventing them.

All you have to do if you buy the retail version is put the disc in the drive, let it install the game, and enter its cd key as far as I know...only downloading involved is for the patches.

Dawn of War II; its appearent that I stay clear of this one.

Happy gaming to all, and enjoy being an American consumer.

I Personly enjoy DOW II a great deal and while it was somewhat annoying to need 2 other progarms to play it.  I was dissapoint with neither the graphics which are of a fairly high level or SP campagin because tacits are neither simple or as easy they frist appear to be in any enviroment.

Those patches aren't a choice though - it won't let you run the game until you've downloaded the latest patches. Which for the small minority who still have dialup is probably a big problem.

I just wish it was a better game - the campaign is good, sure, but the multiplayer is pants. So, thanks to Steam, once you've finished the 10 hour or so campaign, you're left with a game you can't even sell because it's steam-locked to your name.

I wish I'd held off a year or two and bought it from the bargain table rather than wasting $100 on the bloody thing.

i always thought if you get a game that can run on steam, it doesn't matter whether be it a retail or a download copy, but it requires steam to run; it will run after you install it.  That is, as long as you have steam installed.

Besides if you bought the game, and you hate steam, then get a crack for it.  Wait a bit, and some unknown genius whom have too much time on his hand will crack the game and upload the crack, wola, you can play your legit version without having to be at the mercy of Valve's pestky software.

i just want to add that i am not by any means advocating piracy of any sort, but rather a way to resolve of getting rid of the problem of being tied to a particular digital distribution platform, or rather being forced to.  

One game on steam is enough for me