Theatre of War

[HansAdler]

Yup, crazy t-34 counter attacks and supertanks make it incredibly hard. At least for once there's a challenging game in which the singleplayer may actually prepare you for multiplayer .

Those of us who have the game should try to get some multiplayer going sometime.

 

[Heinz]

yeah, exactly. it's challenging for sure. after the patch, let's MP!

 

[HansAdler]

Agreed, for those who are disappointed, hold on and wait. These guys have a reputation as being a supportive dev house, and from what i've seen on their forums they are committed to their products and already have a patch in the works to deal with many issues people are reporting.

After that, it is time to get some MP in for sure, Heinz .

 

[Funker42]

Oh yeah... I was about to post if anyone had seen this game. I just saw the review on wargamer. I'm going to download the Demo see if it is worth anything. I've been looking for a good Close Combat 3/5 game in 3d, but sadly no one has made one that even comes close these days.

Matrix games did just re-release close combat 3.

 

[Heinz]

Funker, just take my advice and make sure you spend time configuring the camera to your liking first. it's a b*tch to play if the camera is not set up right.

 

[Rak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwa0sbOBI7A

Guys watch the video, it's very well made. Especially the last part is awesome.

 

[ash2life]

beautifull - need to get that game now

 

[Deathsai]

So, have there been any patches that would make this game worth purchasing?

 

[Rak]

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=63;t=001154

 

[BlitzForce]

I like the look of this addon, and once they get a proper squad cohesion setup for infantry then it will be much better

Also in addon will be another most demanded feature

 

[bloodypotato]

Am I the only one that has odd camera problems in the demo? It seems to swing around randomly and changing the camera settings around hasn't fixed anything.

 

[EvilHobo]

Ah, I've been waiting for building / urban fights for the longest of times now. Sounds pretty good to me.

 

[BlitzForce]

press middle mouse button to mouse look

 

[Reddog]

Have they fixed the crippling problem where your troops refused to hold formation or stay put?

That is the reason I dropped the game pretty much straight away. The ****ing annoying fact that you could not move your troops in formation much less at all easily. Because unless you hit 'hold ground' at the end of every single little manover you make the moment you were looking away they would break back into the default scattered formation and do whatever they felt. Like say running out of cover and into dead ground and machinegun fire piece meal. It made coordination just a bloody chore and a half, because when you had multiple things going on unless you were there exactly at the end of every units move or action your battle would quickly degenerate into ****.

The other reason was that the idea of a great SP mission in this game was to have you always outnumbered heavily with the computer having stupid amounts of reinforcements. Yet if you play the same mission on the other side the balance of reinforcements is reversed so you have **** all again.

Absolute garbage and insulting when the developers call it a 'spiritual successor to CM', fact is CM ****s all over it.

 

[bloodypotato]

press middle mouse button to mouse look

No, it's not that I can't change the camera, it's that the camera just tends to jerk all around the screen for no apparent reason, even when I'm not holding middle mouse button down. The only way that I can really play is if I have the camera pointing straight downwards.

 

[BlitzForce]

I don't know, I don't own the game yet, but here are what somethings I picked up from the devs
So I will most probably get the new stand alone add on

First of all, friends, don't worry about developers suspending support for TOW or being indifferent to your questions and suggestions. All your complaints, wishes and suggestions are noted, in fact all topics of this forum which were active in last two months were examined thoroughly page by page to make sure no good thought will go unnoticed. Some of your suggestions were already planned, but some were not, and it is very important for us to know what community needs most.

The most popular demand was about quick mission generator. There is a number of technical difficulties concerning that and because of current game structure it is hard to implement. In short, every mission in TOW has complex structure and mission generator capable of tasks normally done by designer must be even more complex. Maps are made by hand in 3D editor so generating map from tiles on the fly like in CM is not possible, AI must have general direction of attack set if it is offensive, etc. Thus, mission generator most likely would be some form of wizard in current editor which will automatize most necessary actions, making creation of a simple engagement possible quickly, but probably will still require some hand work like adjusting unit

 

[BlitzForce]

Have they fixed the crippling problem where your troops refused to hold formation or stay put?

That is the reason I dropped the game pretty much straight away. The ****ing annoying fact that you could not move your troops in formation much less at all easily. Because unless you hit 'hold ground' at the end of every single little manover you make the moment you were looking away they would break back into the default scattered formation and do whatever they felt. Like say running out of cover and into dead ground and machinegun fire piece meal. It made coordination just a bloody chore and a half, because when you had multiple things going on unless you were there exactly at the end of every units move or action your battle would quickly degenerate into ****.

The other reason was that the idea of a great SP mission in this game was to have you always outnumbered heavily with the computer having stupid amounts of reinforcements. Yet if you play the same mission on the other side the balance of reinforcements is reversed so you have **** all again.

Absolute garbage and insulting when the developers call it a 'spiritual successor to CM', fact is CM ****s all over it.

You can tell them to hold position.

totally different game to CM. CM is more like a Chess game

 

[Tomcat_ha]

looks like excellent support. Maybe then i should get it.

 

[Rak]

I was really looking forward to this game from the very start. From Wartime Command to WW2 RTS, and Theatre Of War. I think it's a good game, but it didn't worth the wait in my opinion.

I have to two reasons, first is unit management(for infantry) is clunky. They're too slow to follow your orders, infantry animations drive me crazy, and they do stupid things that you never expect. IMO this game needs something like COH squad management, infantry taking cover behind obstacles automatically, firing properly and having fast and smooth animations for that.

Second is, the game is pointless. The range where fighting starts is vast, and having only a few units at your hand it quickly becomes your Panther driver vs 4 T-34 and lots of infantry after 10 mins of fighting. There is not any mission diversity, all the maps are same, no excitement at all. There is no connection between missions, and you have to be an excellent "coder" to make proper missions for your taste. I wouldn't want to spend 2 weeks to just to get a well scripted mission done to be honest. Then comes the multiplayer, it's horrible. No point in playing at all. It's mostly 4-5 vehicles and a few infantry per player, and no objectives other than playing a team deathmatch.

What I expected was, that us being a Division commander, we would advance through town after town in a big map; defend, attack, circle, try to break out and fight in intense city fights. More like a "Dynamic Campaign" but according to history. For now, I think the only strong side of TOW is excellent vehicle combat modelling.

For the add-on, I don't think it will make a huge difference. Sure it sounds interesting with some fixes and lot of things promised, but they are limited by themselves. They made a wrong approach with a very complex structure for the game, and now they struggle to add even basic things because it conflicts with the other things and make the process unbearable. Take mortars and movable HMG for example, IMO it's not a big thing for a developer but they can't add these even for the add-on.

I may sound pessimistic, but TOW is a very ambitious game in some areas and just because of that it's a half-finished game in my opinion. Add-On probably will make it better, but if they want to be successfull with the series they need to make a total overhaul and refinement of the game.

 

[BlitzForce]

it's mainly the animations that makes it hard to add, more work to do etc
ie animations for setting up the weapon, firing, reloading, and unpacking, then moving for each person on the weapon team.
Anything can be done, you just need enough resources and time.So lack of time is the culprit

that's the problem when you go full 3D and more realistic. More abstracted games won't have this problem


if i could code I could do a good game. I can do artwork, 3d stuff and sound already