31 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

figured I should ask those that have been paying attention.

Is this the best RTS since Company of Heroes, or does it at least follow in the footsteps of ra2 in hilarious multiplayer-fun?

I like what I've seen as of yet, with all of these special abilities and hard counters. But I am a bit sceptical to the quality of the different factions. Soviet seems to be the only one with a proper design as of yet, the Empire seems very somewhat meh and tacked-on, and the allies looks very generic. But I guess it might not be as bad when you play it.

so for those who tried the beta, is this a worthy successor of ra2, or worth any rts-player his time?

[Mastermind]

If you like Red Alert 2, I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy Red Alert 3 as well. I know I certainly have.

[duke_Qa]

yeah, i don't play online alot, so I think I'll avoid the worst DRM shit that way. unless they've added serial checks to LAN as well, which would suck immensely.

But if you say it resembles ra2 in some fashion, then I guess it will be worth checking out. it seems that there might be a well-balanced game in there aswell so that is a plus.

[Apollo]

figured I should ask those that have been paying attention.

Is this the best RTS since Company of Heroes, or does it at least follow in the footsteps of ra2 in hilarious multiplayer-fun?

I like what I've seen as of yet, with all of these special abilities and hard counters. But I am a bit sceptical to the quality of the different factions. Soviet seems to be the only one with a proper design as of yet, the Empire seems very somewhat meh and tacked-on, and the allies looks very generic. But I guess it might not be as bad when you play it.

so for those who tried the beta, is this a worthy successor of ra2, or worth any rts-player his time?

COH is whole different league than RA3 and as you mentioned allies looks very generic...they indeed are and they depend more on their special powers/abilities to make difference as allies don't have a power horse unit like Soviets (Apoc) or Empire (King Oni) does so must mix all their units and support by the powers.

Soviets are the most straight forward of the sides favoring usual brutal assault in tactics and according to beta, soviets can get base & production going faster than other sides. Yet like allies, must have good mix all times while more tolerant on mistakes since got armor to back it up.

Empire is tricky, they benefit from no build radius limitations due to their construction method which however makes empire most vulnerable in early game harassment.
While empire lacks an dedicated airfield, they hardly need one as whole transforming bit allows empire to almost instantly adapt to every situation be it air or land/naval raid while allies and soviets must mix their units to try deal with every battle scenario but often empire players make good use of transforming to effectively snipe off any loose units and should say AA support be lost from enemy army..empire can just take to air and dispose of remains or vice versa.

Personally i would have liked upgrading options in the field for allies possibly while soviets be more salvage type, as it is now they just have to try keep best mix force together and utilise powers well if face empire assuming empire player plays cards right, he can win with lesser units given the flexibility.

As for economy, it is extremely simplified as you make refinery, it releases 1 miner as usual but then there is no point making additional harvesters except replace that 1 lost and given how it works, you can just wall in the harvester along refinery and ore depot

then just repeat that for other map ore depots as holding one ore depot is certain doom.

When harvester numbers can't be so high, income isn't very fast flowing either.

As for unit designs as usual, they are EAish so very generic and things of interest is usually their special abilities mainly.

Best bit is probably the AI Commanders/Generals to help you in single player but then I heard that AI is very unit spammy to keep the heat on thus the need for "partner"

depends really what you prefer..single player or more online action as online is gonna be very competitive type with quick moves

Edited by Apollo, 20 October 2008 - 06:11 PM.

[ambershee]

depends really what you prefer..single player or more online action as online is gonna be very competitive type with quick moves

You mean spamfests and cramp-infusing click-wars versus a painful and poorly implemented UI?

[duke_Qa]

same system as in tiberium wars on the UI? If it was somewhat connected to your num-keys it might have been fast and easy to quickly build something.
Of course you probably would want to keep your left hand over by the other buttons, and I think I recall that in TW there were shortcuts for the different build menus around the QWERTY... meh, nothing is perfect I guess.

madHQ: nurfed the economy? i dunno how you can nerf the economy? does it just mean that you get so little cash that you can't get enough units quick to own a guy?

[Blodo]

They already did that in a sense... when I played the beta, the cash came in really really slowly at the start, forcing you to grab at least three ore fields as soon as possible (and base expansion vehicles help with that). Then your income starts rising and ultimately the game turns into a spamfest either way. When we reach the spamming phase, Empire suddenly starts winning even more due to their mass transformers. Dunno quite how it works, but they just kill whatever comes into their sights and nobody seems to have a hard counter against it that wouldn't involve spam as well, which I regard as fail when it comes to tactics, since due to this the game forces you to place all your effort into your macro and land grabbing, and push your unit tactics into second place. The problem with this approach is that no matter how much you nerf the economy, you won't change the spammy approach to the gameplay without a massive re-evaluation of the game balance and introducing hard counters into the game.

In short: as long as you can outproduce the other guy, you win, unless he is allowed to mass empire transforming units. A very well done return to the roots this is...

[Mastermind]

Actually, most of the counters in the game are pretty hard counters, and the game doesn't really ever reach a spammy phase in high level play. I'd recommend checking out the gameplay video on the website that was released showing Gavin Simon vs Jeremy Feasel, it's a pretty impressive match, and should show you what the game looks like when a couple of very good players are playing.

[Elerium]

Actually, most of the counters in the game are pretty hard counters, and the game doesn't really ever reach a spammy phase in high level play. I'd recommend checking out the gameplay video on the website that was released showing Gavin Simon vs Jeremy Feasel, it's a pretty impressive match, and should show you what the game looks like when a couple of very good players are playing.

Yes when you use your MCV as a frontline unit and pile up all your units next to his about to go critical super reactor?

I more or less agree with Blodo and Apollo.. to me the game feels poorly balanced. In the beta most of the issues I had was Japan being too overpowered unless you do zomg rush as I kept doing as they can switch from air to sea to something else too easily and the other factions having to make solid units to counter their flexible ones, wearing the enemy down. The harvesters are too fragile as well, meaning that getting an economy up is just painful.. plus in the beta Japan had huge advantage with them spamming refineries via cubes giving them a lot of freedom to expand unlike the other sides. All the factions seem generic too, Japan seems the most thought about but suffers from no actual WW2/1950's units instead focusing on current pop trends to make a side that's basically just taken out from an anime lacking any seriousness and flavour. In RA2 all of the factions' units looked like they could be taken for granted, but in this it's just you can't. Allies are boring and generic having lost any good interesting looks, and the Soviets are too cartoony and rounded, unlike the gritty hard lined side they were in RA2. Basically to me, Allies= the combo underdog side, Soviets= the frontline spammy flexible side, Japan= the weak yet once they get over that hurdle they become the best side.

Edited by Elerium, 21 October 2008 - 10:51 AM.

[duke_Qa]

Seems to be a split in opinion here, thats usually a positive sign. if you play it on a high level i guess you can avoid the worst spam-fest. Although when i played ra2 on lan games, spamming screenfulls of tanks was alot of fun.

[OmegaBolt]

Meh, I loved the beta. Simple as, IMO.

Perfect pace.
No real spam I came across, at least no individual units only matches. It's also hard to have loads of land units when there isnt 100% land on the maps.
The secondary moves are really cool and add a lot to the game.
The powers are also nicely done, though I kinda didnt like it when they changed the Magnetic Satellite.
Co-op should be really fun.
The UI is fine... I like the smaller cameos.

Go buy it on release.

[duke_Qa]

nice nice. so what is the most likely thing to get patched up right after release when the game comes out? some of the empire's robot-morphers?

[Spectre]

It coming from EA, probably not, but they seem to be redeeming themselves in this and Dead Space.

[duke_Qa]

Well with that amount of cash and talented people under them there has to be a hit now and then.


also, veterancy in ra3, are there crazy upgrades there as there was in ra2?

[Mastermind]

Actually, most of the counters in the game are pretty hard counters, and the game doesn't really ever reach a spammy phase in high level play. I'd recommend checking out the gameplay video on the website that was released showing Gavin Simon vs Jeremy Feasel, it's a pretty impressive match, and should show you what the game looks like when a couple of very good players are playing.

Yes when you use your MCV as a frontline unit and pile up all your units next to his about to go critical super reactor?

There's nothing wrong with crushing stuff with your MCV, it's a valid tactic. It's got a mountain of hit points, and can crush tanks. Why not have a bit of a monster truck rally? As for the super reactor, yeah, he made a mistake there. Gavin is still a great player, he's just not perfect.

[Blodo]

You can't base a sense of balance out of a single replay... the point is I played 22 games online while the beta lasted and all 22 lasted well into late game (my team won 19) and even before late game what happened was that we spammed units at each other, since there really is no hard counter and base defenses seem to be sort of useless.. It's not that different from CnC3 actually where you win either by a ridiculous rush or a ridiculous mass. EA style tactics are really weird, compared to CoH style tactics, which might very well be due to the way they coded the damage values. In Company of Heroes actually had each unit have a different damage value assigned to every other unit. In the end, CoH had real hard counters.

I doubt they will ever come out of this spammy streak, but we will see how the final game looks.

[Ash]

All these primary and secondary functions I'm seeing, although occasionally somewhat interesting or quirky, smack to me of overmuch micromanagement. I prefer the 'does what it says on the tin' approach rather than having to click a button to make the unit change its behaviour completely or use a special ability. Half of them will probably never get used anyway.

The only game that can really get away with it is Total War, because there are like fifty+ men in a unit and they aren't about to die in the couple of seconds itll take me to press the button. As in, I have the time to come look and see what's happening. If I'm not fast enough in RA3, the units would be destroyed.

So it's bland vs spammy vs ubermicro. Yayness.

[duke_Qa]

yeah, C&C games haven't been the sort that puts limits on how many units you have, and tanks have always been somewhat mediocre compared to what you get in dow/COH, so you have to have a ton of them to balance things out. but if you play the game hardcore I bet you will have a hard time spamming.

[ambershee]

From what I gather, the DRM in RA3 is going to be insane - including limited activations and a requirement for permanent internet connection. Not connected? Can't play, lose an activation.

[Blodo]

You are correct. That is also the reason why I will not be buying the game until a patch comes out that deactivates the DRM..