Demo Impressions (First post ever about a game)

[crazylegsmurphy]

Hey All,

 

I must admit this is officially the first post of this nature I have ever written in my life. I am what you might call the “casual gamer” in the sense that I only have limited experience with these types of games, and so please forgive me if I don’t know all the abbreviations or terms.

 

I wanted to take the time and write this review of the demo as I am very impressed with the support Delphi-PG has given, and it seems like the company genuinely cares about the gaming experience that their customers have. So with that, I suppose I should get started.

 

I’ll try and break these down into categories to make it a little easier to follow as this will undoubtedly get pretty lengthy. I’ll address the following issues and thoughts in the following categories:

 

1.First Impressions

           a.Graphics

           b.Gameplay

 

2.Space/Ground Combat

           a.Space Combat

           b.Ground Combat

 

3.Final Thoughts

 

 

1. First Impressions

 

In the past my experience has been limited to games like SWGB, AOE, and Civilization. Because of that, my view of how things should, or could be may be a little narrow compared to what the rest of you know, but this might be the opportunity to get a point of view of someone with “Fresh Eyes.”

 

When I first loaded up the demo version of EAW I was fairly impressed. I had been looking forward to the release of this game since it was first announced, and so my expectations were naturally high.

 

I found that everything seemed to be pretty intuitive and I had very little trouble navigating around. There isn’t much I am going to say about menu locations and such due to the fact that this is the demo version and much of it could be changed for the final release.

 

1.a. Graphics

 

At first it seemed like the graphics were a little on the “unpolished” side. The main (in game) interface, while looks good seems to be a little big for my taste. What I mean is, when I put the resolution up to 1280 X 1024 the icons and such still seem much bigger than necessary. Of course this is a minor nit pick and doesn’t affect the game in the least, but it does give me a claustrophobic feeling.

 

My suggestion would be to slightly scale down the tabs dedicated to space and ground building, and sneak that little R2 unit’s details in there somewhere. This would just open up the main play area a tad.

 

With that said it seems for the most part that the graphics are pretty well done. There are minor things such as ships flying through ships, and the camera rotate/zoom can become a little awkward (especially in space), but all n’ all pretty fair.

 

1.b Gameplay

 

The gameplay seems to be pretty solid actually. Once I got over my initial learning curve and threw out my expectations I started to have a pretty fun time. Space battles were a nice change and the idea of taking over planets seems to be quite enjoyable.

 

There were however, a few things that I found a little odd about the gameplay. As all of you know, the speed of the demo has been drastically increased, but as many of you have stated, some of the bigger vehicles seem to be moving slightly quicker than expected.

 

Now, I am aware that you can actually set the speed of combat in the options menu, but the problem is that you can get the smaller ships/troops to move at a decent speed, but the but vehicles (Especially the AT-AT) seem to be moving at too quick a pace. As many have said, it’s hard to say if this is a result of the demo or not, but my suggestion would be to slow the larger vehicles down a tad to give them a better sense of “bulk.”

 

I will touch on more specific issues in later sections, but overall the game seems to be pretty enjoyable.

 

2. Space/Ground Combat

 

2.a. Space Combat

 

I actually quite enjoy the space combat aspect of EAW! From the demo it seems that it could result in some quite enjoyable online battles once all the units have been properly balanced. There was however a few things that I did find a bit odd.

 

(Clickable Area)

 

Firstly, when you are in a space battle, for the most part the icons will try to line themselves up side by side to make it easier to isolate a specific group of units. This actually works quite well except for when you are trying to target something specific in that area. There were a few times when I found myself trying to fight through a cluster of X-wings and TIE’s in order to hit the shields on a Star Destroyer. It became quite annoying to have to try and pan the camera to the right angle so I could actually click on the ship I wanted. Of course this is probably a limitation of being able to pan the camera in the first place, but it would probably only bug me a fair deal if I lost a battle because I couldn’t weed through things quick enough.

 

(Population Cap – Space)

 

The other thing I have noticed is the population cap. Now I understand that you can call reinforcements at any time and it is designed to give you the impression that you have unlimited forces, but what I don’t like is that you seem to have no control over what forces show up at the start of a battle.

 

For example, let’s say I have a pretty wide range of ships and I am going to attack a space station. I know, (From the mouse over effect in Galactic Mode) that this station is only guarded by one ISD and a few fighters. At this point when I fly a fleet of ships to the planet it automatically starts a battle and picks the (Population Cap) amount of ships that it thinks I might want.

 

This could be a little frustrating if I simply wanted small fighters, or large ships to enter the battle. My point is that unless the game allows me to choose what ships I want to bring into battle, it’s slightly frustrating when I don’t have access to the ships I brought until something dies.

 

This could be solved if the game would allow the player to fill the unit spaces above the planet before starting the battle, or allow the player to have reserves show up later (delayed in Hyperspace). This would allow the player to use three fleets of ships in the order they wanted.

 

I’m sure many of you would argue this by saying, “If you only want a certain ship to attack the planet, than only make a fleet with that type of ship.” In a way you are right, the problem is, there is no way to adjust to the battle conditions that are happening. In other games of this nature, when you have a large population cap (200 – 300) you can choose to bring in certain types of units and keep the rest in reserve. That way if the battle changed, you could react and bring in something to defend.

 

The way that it is set up now, it seems that the game maxes out your already low population cap right off the start, and all the ships you need are “locked” in Hyperspace. This means, the only way to get them is to sacrifice something.

 

I would like to see the population cap stay, but have it so you can either control the ships that enter the battle, or have the population cap so you can cycle out ships as necessary.

 

(Instant Repair)

 

And finally, as many of you have debated about, the instant repair of ships. I am on the fence with this aspect of the game as I can understand how the focus groups could see this as a tad tedious waiting for ships to be repaired. On the other hand, I can see it from the perspective of the player who feels that this “no consequence” style of gameplay could result in a player being forced into battle after battle of “fresh” ships.

 

I know in my experience with the game there has been times when I have been able to just barely sneak by a battle as my ships were creeping along in flames, only to have them ship shape and ready to go 5 seconds later. Some people were concerned this would lead to people building up population cap forces and just jumping from planet to planet.

 

While I agree with that concern, I also feel that there is a much more underhanded way of abusing this system. Imagine that I take 5 ISD’s into a battle. I show up, and destroy a bunch of the enemy forces, but in doing so I take a lot of damage. Now, all I really need to do is retreat and then come back “five seconds” later and attack again, only this time I still have 5 ISD at full health, and they are struggling to beat me with the limited forces they have left.

 

I’m sure there are many other ways that one could abuse this concept to their advantage, but it does seem to me that having some sort of time delay for battles would help to solve this problem. I don’t agree that ships should have to go back to “dry dock” but there has to be some sort of check in place to stop people from just bombarding people with battles.

 

I think this could be easily solved by having a short time delay where ships are unavailable for battle. Sure, they can defend the planet they just captured, but there should be a limit on how fast you can recover from battle. As for the concerns of the focus group (the one who said that waiting around for ships to repair) I can’t see how in a game with 40 some planets, how there isn’t something else that could be done while the ships are being repaired.

 

2.b. Ground Combat

 

This unfortunately is where I think this game suffers greatly. I find that every time I was “forced” into a space battle, I was pretty happy about it, but when a ground battle started, I found myself groaning as I knew what was in store.

 

(Population Cap – Ground)

 

The biggest concern I have is the population cap. I know that people hate this argument, but in the ground battles it is really very noticeable. When you are on the offence, you are really at an advantage in so many ways.

 

Firstly, when you are on offence, you can pretty much bring down wave after wave of units in any order you please, and the more “reinforcement pads” you have them more places you can drop them. This works well, except of course if you are on the defense.

 

On defense you are so limited in so many ways. The population cap of the planet means a few major problems for a player trying to not let their planet fall into enemy hands.

 

(Population Cap – Ground – Unit space)

 

It has to be the most frustrating part of the game, when you are trying to build up your ground defenses and then suddenly they are all orbiting in space. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to watch my huge fleet of transport ships fall prey to an Imperial attack simply because there was no room on the planet.

 

I understand that this aspect is designed to stop players from stacking all the units on a key planet and having a long drawn out battle, but to store the extra units in space is absurd, especially since the offender can bring in a huge fleet.

 

I personally think this really needs to be addressed. I agree that people shouldn’t be able to stack the planet full off AT-AT’s, making it impossible to beat, but there needs to be a safe way to store reserves of troops so they aren’t fodder for incoming ships. This brings me to my second issue with ground battles (and in some ways space as well.)

 

(Limited foresight)

 

Think back to the battle of Hoth, remember how the Rebels were crouched in the trenches waiting for the inevitable attack of the Imperials? What was the one thing that gave the rebels the advantage in that situation? The answer is defensive planning!

 

In EAW you build your buildings on the Galactic level. You also build your units on the Galactic level. This means that at no point during the game are you able to see what is happening on the planet until you are attacked. Once the Invasion Force lands you are suddenly getting your first look at the base laid out for you and then scrambling to figure out how to defend it.

 

All the attacker has to do at this point is land as many units as possible, and head for the base. Obviously Tatooine was a demo map, and it was pretty obvious where the enemy was, but the point is that when you are on defense you have no control at all where your units are, or buildings are.

 

It has been said that building bases is, “So 90’s” and that this new form of ready made base is the new way of strategy games. To me however, it’s like asking a blind man to organize your kitchen and then being forced to make a meal for your family in 20 minutes. Obviously when you don’t have control over where things are placed, you are automatically at a disadvantage from a defensive standpoint.

 

I think there needs to be a way where the player can have some control over where things are placed and the order in which units form up prior to battle. If your main concern is defending a cantina, (for some reason) then the player should have some form of control to say, “I want my tanks here, my troops here, and a few turrets here!” not, “Ahh, where are my troops, where is my cantina, where are the build pads, where are my tanks, where am I, what planet is this, why don’t I have a clue what this planet looks like even though I control it!?”

 

All jokes aside, I think the defender should always have home base advantage of knowing where things are, where they are put, and prior knowledge of the land before getting attacked. If the game is only going to limit the player to 10 population cap units, then there has to be some sort of advantage.

 

On a side note, I am aware of the shields and other defensive structures put into the game. I also am aware that the attacker has the “fog of war” to deal with as well, but this, in my opinion doesn’t make up for the fact that I should know where all my units are going to be before I get attacked.

 

(Squads, Life, and Emotion)

 

The only other slight issue I had with the game is the lack of formation. This also applies to space combat, but not as much for a few reasons. On the ground, we are seeing units revert back to the days of SWGB where they would line up and exchange fire like they were throwing cupcakes at each other. In the space combat the units actually weave and dodge bullets, but on the ground my troops would just stand there with a dumbfounded look on their faces at an AT-AT blasted them to shreds.

 

Now, while I thought LOTR:BFME had it’s fair share of issues (Build pads) the one nice thing about that game is that the units seemed to be “alive” It was nice to see some reaction of the units to the things that were happening on the screen. I personally would rather see my troops run from an AT-AT if there is no support, than sit there and get slaughtered. When population caps are so tight, the unit AI needs to be able to know when it’s a good time to move.

 

*NOTE:  I was just playing EAW and when I took down an AT-AT my Rebel Troops put one hand in the air and cheered. So apparently there is some emotion in this game. I also realized that an AT-ST stepped on a few of my troops, but the rest didn't care as they were moving somewhere.

 

This also applies to troop to troop battles. I don’t understand the point of all this amazing 3D terrain if the units are just going to stand beside it and fire from a group. I would like to see some AI written that would allow the units to have a bit more self preservation.

 

As well, and I am sure many of you have wondered why this isn’t the case, but there needs to be some sort of formation buttons. Even SWGB had some form of formation button (while pretty useless), which allowed you to at least protect your tanks a bit. LOTR:BFME II seems to have figured out that it’s much too time consuming to try and baby-sit units that have a tendency to run off after a speeder bike leaving tanks exposed.

 

(Bombing Runs)

 

This is a double edged sword for me. I absolutely hated how in SWGB the fighters would just hover above the battle and get picked off by anti-aircraft units. I always wanted to see strafing runs and now we finally have it…unfortunately now defending against it is almost impossible! Sure, we can take our already occupied troops, and walk them over to a build pad, stand there long enough to “re-capture” it, and then build an anti-aircraft turret. Then, we can pull the troops off the turret and leave it completely undefended as they have to get back to the battle, because of course the population cap is looming.

 

As your troops rejoin the battle you realize that because your build pad happened to be the only build pad out of range of the fighters, your troop center falls prey to the bombs and your anti-aircraft turret saves it’s ammo for another day.

 

So, I suppose that I really enjoy the aspect of the bombing run, but once again the limitation of the build pads causes too much time and energy to be spent on trying to locate the right place to build, acquiring it, and then defending it.

 

This whole issue could be solved with one simple step. Make the build pads a structure that can be built anywhere the defender wants. Even if the main buildings were pre-made (But we still knew where as defenders) we could figure out where to best fortify our bases.

 

3. Final Thoughts

 

I suppose that is my major issues that I have seen based on the demo available. It’s hard to say what works and what doesn’t until one has had the opportunity to play the full game, but I think everyone has valid points.

 

For me, I am simply looking for a game that I can play with my friends online, that will have the staying power of SWGB (Still on all our computers) and won’t become frustrating like, well, SWGB (drives us insane at the same time). Like most games that are released there are always things that come up that even the designers didn’t see, and that is fair enough.

 

I applaud these two companies for supporting the game as they have, and I am very impressed by the ability to mod the game (Even though in many ways it drives me nuts). I think that if these issues were addressed this game could easily become one that it replayed many, many times.

 

With that said, I look forward to playing the full version of the game, and I thank you for taking the time to read this.

 

Jeff

 

•In case you are wondering, my PC runs this game pretty well for the most part, but I can notice lag on full detail when things become crazy on the screen.

 

Pentium 4 D – 3.00 GHz

2 Gigs Ram

Nvidia GForce 256

1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz

Edited January 30, 2006 by crazylegsmurphy

[Teradyn_pff]

Many of the issues you have listed here are ones that most of us agree with, but since the game is almost out, it becomes a moot point.

 

The most dissapointing thing about some of this is things that are not (or will be very difficult) moddable. 

[Cain]

Many of the issues you have listed here are ones that most of us agree with, but since the game is almost out, it becomes a moot point.

 

The most dissapointing thing about some of this is things that are not (or will be very difficult) moddable. 

 

All the issues popsted in the feedback forum will influence the design of the first patch for eaw. (*this I know for sure)

 

Crazylegsmurphy thank you for your effort and imput. It is appreciated.

Edited February 1, 2006 by Cain

[Holly-Gan]

Yeah cheers man. Thats one great first post if ye ask me. Welcome and thanks.

[noian]

Some of the same thoughts I had. I mean, the troops should at least scramble to get outof the way of a tie mauler! They just stand there, shooting at it, waiting to be run over. If I was a rebel trooper, I would be running around dodging fire and hrowing gernades.

 

Also, I would like to see it(like in AoE3) that when troopers are firing at viecles, they throw gernades instead of shooting lasers(on tantooine, 4 native units would destroy a at-st with its laser blaster?). Lasers destroying viecles just doesn't make sense.