mostly negative review

[LeviathansWrath]

as the title says homeworld 3 has now crossed into mostly negative status, now my negative review wasnt directed at bbi, was dirrected at the actions of GBX who interfered with the production of this game, may this be a lesson to them to leave the devs working on a product alone and stay out of it

[A Glowing Thing]

Originally posted by Flushing:

I don't think anyone is left their that matters. Its been a long time. Veterans tend to leave to start their own studios. Which is what happened with BBI. The thing is BBI is only 1 of 3 of the leads. Considering that the games visuals are extremely good. The missing piece of the puzzle would be on the programming side.

HW as a whole can't be reproduced anyway because it is very much a product of making decisions on the fly. The pieces ended up working extremely well together. It is very special in that way.

I think BBI is the best place for it. The gameplay was on the right track. More external testing throughout would have helped a lot imo. The sucky thing about this now is from this point on resources spent on HW3 will only go down.

[RoReaver]

Originally posted by A Glowing Thing:

I think BBI is the best place for it. The gameplay was on the right track. More external testing throughout would have helped a lot imo. The sucky thing about this now is from this point on resources spent on HW3 will only go down.

Well with a bit of sauce, even if it's just this year's worth of DLC, this might chug along for a long, long, long time on mods quite well. What it needs most is here already and even if we don't get year 2, and maybe some Story DLC that just goes "HW3 happened but we only care no more Karan, no more Trinity and Far Jumpers are now just standard cores thanks to the synthetic proliferating" then a lot of the bad blood can be washed away with good either mini-campaigns based on various factions or episodic ones. If they cap that off with a mission creation tool that allows persistence of fleets between missions then that would instantly make HW3 the best of the bunch in terms of mod support and would, everything else considered, probably see a HW4 pop up a decade or so down the line after 3 chugged along collecting bestially good mods (pun oh so intended) like Age of Empires 2 did (which basically reawakened to development life when Microsoft went "yo fam, can we make this mod an official expansion with your permission?" .

[Zakalwe]

Originally posted by Mors Invictus:

Originally posted by Zakalwe:

Has a AAA RTS ever been this badly received?

I guess Dawn of War III comes close.

DOW3 was an epic disaster, and yet way more successful than HW3 in terms of player numbers (you can compare the two on steamcharts.com etc). They even fixed the MOBA garbage by adding a spectacular annihilation skirmish mode. I've got hundreds of hours in that mode. Sue me .

What can BBI do with their failed Wargame mode? All their eggs are in that basket, and nobody's playing.

[RoReaver]

Originally posted by Zakalwe:

Originally posted by Mors Invictus:

I guess Dawn of War III comes close.

DOW3 was an epic disaster, and yet way more successful than HW3 in terms of player numbers (you can compare the two on steamcharts.com etc). They even fixed the MOBA garbage by adding a spectacular annihilation skirmish mode. I've got hundreds of hours in that mode. Sue me .

What can BBI do with their failed Wargame mode? All their eggs are in that basket, and nobody's playing.

Comparing the DoW community to the HW community is like comparing the Star Trek community to the Babylon 5 one. Sizes are completely different so the cross-section of people who would still like a game if it deviated enough from the recipe to have bitter vets cringe is much higher.

[Sentinel-Ghost]

Originally posted by RoReaver:

Originally posted by 『Insperatus』:

Just like how HW2 never happened and HW:C was the last HW game that is canon.

Fixed if you don't want gaping plotholes in the lore and being stuck with space Jesus still.

Nope. You can't erase the Dreadnought, not happening. Sure HW2 had its flaws and plot holes, "I've never quite understood how FTL can work in this Universe if "The THREE Hyperspace Cores" are something unique. - maybe a longer jump range? I dunno.

But generally HW2 isn't that bad. I found the ship designs waaaay better than anything HWC offers.

[Zakalwe]

Originally posted by RoReaver:

Originally posted by Zakalwe:

DOW3 was an epic disaster, and yet way more successful than HW3 in terms of player numbers (you can compare the two on steamcharts.com etc). They even fixed the MOBA garbage by adding a spectacular annihilation skirmish mode. I've got hundreds of hours in that mode. Sue me .

What can BBI do with their failed Wargame mode? All their eggs are in that basket, and nobody's playing.

Comparing the DoW community to the HW community is like comparing the Star Trek community to the Babylon 5 one. Sizes are completely different so the cross-section of people who would still like a game if it deviated enough from the recipe to have bitter vets cringe is much higher.

I'm sure you were banned yesterday!

[Богдан]

Originally posted by HeathenSW:

Well, we can hope for something very rare. I just remembered a game called Star Wolves - it had an abyssmall second installement, but the fans who did a mod for the first one convinced the publisher that they can be trusted. Thus we had Star Wolves 3 made by fans - storyline of it completely ignoring the second game and continuing the story from the mod for the first game. There's even one crazy (in a good way) person that works on mod for a long ass time that actually uses huge amounts of data from Star Wolves 2 in Star Wolves 3. For the fanbase there Star Wolves 2 never existed.

Maybe some mod will make things right in same-ish way here.

Yeah, great game.
There's a significant detail though. It was a mod for the original very good game. Basically the same game with different story.
So it can only be compared to HW2 mod released as a separate game.

For my entire life I never saw a situation when a good mod was made for a bad original game.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by Zakalwe:

Originally posted by RoReaver:

Comparing the DoW community to the HW community is like comparing the Star Trek community to the Babylon 5 one. Sizes are completely different so the cross-section of people who would still like a game if it deviated enough from the recipe to have bitter vets cringe is much higher.

I'm sure you were banned yesterday!

RoReaver is passionate but always posts in good faith. I think the moderators know that but if people spam report him and use the loosey goosey reason of "rude", it forces them to act.

[Scorch]

Originally posted by Sentinel-Ghost:

But generally HW2 isn't that bad. I found the ship designs waaaay better than anything HWC offers.

It's always surprising to read, how HW2 is considered by someone as "bad".
BTW, Somtaaw ships are the ugliest in the series, their fleet looks like a collection of home appliances. But maybe that was a point.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by Scorch:

Originally posted by Sentinel-Ghost:

But generally HW2 isn't that bad. I found the ship designs waaaay better than anything HWC offers.

It's always surprising to read, how HW2 is considered by someone as "bad".
BTW, Somtaaw ships are the ugliest in the series, their fleet looks like a collection of home appliances. But maybe that was a point.

The reason why I don't like Homeworld 2 is because it deified Karan S'Jet and spit-balled the Hyperspace Core/Progenitor narrative. That locked us into the S'Jet's being super important (taken up again in DoK as a prequel) and put us on this new narrative.

While not all paths lead to the Homeworld 3 narrative, Homeworld 2 certainly established one path in that direction.

Cataclysm was great because we didn't need Kith S'Jet or Mothership for that matter. It demonstrated that a Homeworld Game with an original story could be made without limping in with the now standard Homeworld tropes of a S'Jet plugged into a Banana shaped mothership is saving the universe from an antagonist who is merely the flip side of the coin, such as the Taidan Emperor, Makan, or Tiama, the Incarnate Queen.

If there is a future Homeworld game, which seems unlikely they should look to Cataclysm. Open the door to choosing different Hiigaran Kiths, who operate different looking mothership class ships but have the same core Hiigaran Navy.

[RoReaver]

Originally posted by Scorch:

It's always surprising to read, how HW2 is considered by someone as "bad".
BTW, Somtaaw ships are the ugliest in the series, their fleet looks like a collection of home appliances. But maybe that was a point.

Yes, their entire fleet's basically militarized industrial ships with the exception of a few hulls they outright bought from other species. The destroyer looking like it'd be more at home tugging other ships or hauling things around isn't by accident:
"The design of the Deacon was based on plans of the various heavy freighters developed during the Cataclysm Era. It was never meant to be used in battle, but with the advent of the Beast War, Somtaaw designers modified it into a fighting ship, replacing loading booms with Ion Cannons, point defense weapons with Mass Drivers turrets, and adding a large missile launcher turret on the top of the hull. After converting the ship's ore processors into a proper Destroyer Drive, the ship was finally ready for deployment, and the Deacon-class Destroyer was born." (from the homeworld wiki but I can digout the HW C manual and provide you a link and page number for it). The themes of the game are so strong they're bred into the designs used.

Originally posted by Flushing:

The reason why I don't like Homeworld 2 is because it deified Karan S'Jet and spit-balled the Hyperspace Core/Progenitor narrative. That locked us into the S'Jet's being super important (taken up again in DoK as a prequel) and put us on this new narrative.

While not all paths lead to the Homeworld 3 narrative, Homeworld 2 certainly established one path in that direction.

Cataclysm was great because we didn't need Kith S'Jet or Mothership for that matter. It demonstrated that a Homeworld Game with an original story could be made without limping in with the now standard Homeworld tropes of a S'Jet plugged into a Banana shaped mothership is saving the universe from an antagonist who is merely the flip side of the coin, such as the Taidan Emperor, Makan, or Tiama, the Incarnate Queen.

If there is a future Homeworld game, which seems unlikely they should look to Cataclysm. Open the door to choosing different Hiigaran Kiths, who operate different looking mothership class ships but have the same core Hiigaran Navy.

Two things I don't agree with:

1. Homeworld not having a future - it likely will, they might've even hedged their bets on this one being unpopular because resetting the narrative away from HW = Mommy ship + Karan/S'Jet (which was 3 games in already by that point) would've pissed anyone off who saw it as a core thematic (with a side dish of Far jumper = now no longer special).

2. Them needing to use Hiigarans as the main/player faction. Tbh I am likely gonna make a video on this whole thing but the more I've pondered on the whole story leading up to this point the more I am of the opinion that excluding maybe the Somtaaw the Hiigarans are just genocidal ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who never learned their lesson (Ancient Hiigaran war they destroyed the Taiidani homeworld through orbital bombardment, possible with a near total loss of all lives on the planet, tried to beat the Bentusi into submission when they went "bruh, that's not how you use a Far Jumper" and then violated the terms and conditions of their own exile from the outset by taking the Far Jumper with them in secret. If you were a half-senile 20-30th clone down the line of the bro who saw, quite possibly, his entire family burned to ash by the same people going "he he far jumper go BRRRRR" in their prison system, ya may just be like "♥♥♥♥ em, the Bentusi were wrong in saving this unrepentant race". The events of Cataclysm, where powerful kiths are basically like "do as we say or else you get to die alone in the void" to the lesser ones is a powerful sign of the Hiigarans not being good guys either).
My hope here is they continue on in year two with story DLC. Possibly mini-campaigns for each of the introduced races in the previous year's paid DLC, and if they're sly enough about it maybe have those campaigns last 5-6 missions each and the first 2 being free DLC to show the quality's there before investing anything into buying the DLC for it.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by RoReaver:

Originally posted by Scorch:

It's always surprising to read, how HW2 is considered by someone as "bad".
BTW, Somtaaw ships are the ugliest in the series, their fleet looks like a collection of home appliances. But maybe that was a point.

Yes, their entire fleet's basically militarized industrial ships with the exception of a few hulls they outright bought from other species. The destroyer looking like it'd be more at home tugging other ships or hauling things around isn't by accident:
"The design of the Deacon was based on plans of the various heavy freighters developed during the Cataclysm Era. It was never meant to be used in battle, but with the advent of the Beast War, Somtaaw designers modified it into a fighting ship, replacing loading booms with Ion Cannons, point defense weapons with Mass Drivers turrets, and adding a large missile launcher turret on the top of the hull. After converting the ship's ore processors into a proper Destroyer Drive, the ship was finally ready for deployment, and the Deacon-class Destroyer was born." (from the homeworld wiki but I can digout the HW C manual and provide you a link and page number for it). The themes of the game are so strong they're bred into the designs used.

Originally posted by Flushing:

The reason why I don't like Homeworld 2 is because it deified Karan S'Jet and spit-balled the Hyperspace Core/Progenitor narrative. That locked us into the S'Jet's being super important (taken up again in DoK as a prequel) and put us on this new narrative.

While not all paths lead to the Homeworld 3 narrative, Homeworld 2 certainly established one path in that direction.

Cataclysm was great because we didn't need Kith S'Jet or Mothership for that matter. It demonstrated that a Homeworld Game with an original story could be made without limping in with the now standard Homeworld tropes of a S'Jet plugged into a Banana shaped mothership is saving the universe from an antagonist who is merely the flip side of the coin, such as the Taidan Emperor, Makan, or Tiama, the Incarnate Queen.

If there is a future Homeworld game, which seems unlikely they should look to Cataclysm. Open the door to choosing different Hiigaran Kiths, who operate different looking mothership class ships but have the same core Hiigaran Navy.

Two things I don't agree with:

1. Homeworld not having a future - it likely will, they might've even hedged their bets on this one being unpopular because resetting the narrative away from HW = Mommy ship + Karan/S'Jet (which was 3 games in already by that point) would've pissed anyone off who saw it as a core thematic (with a side dish of Far jumper = now no longer special).

2. Them needing to use Hiigarans as the main/player faction. Tbh I am likely gonna make a video on this whole thing but the more I've pondered on the whole story leading up to this point the more I am of the opinion that excluding maybe the Somtaaw the Hiigarans are just genocidal ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who never learned their lesson (Ancient Hiigaran war they destroyed the Taiidani homeworld through orbital bombardment, possible with a near total loss of all lives on the planet, tried to beat the Bentusi into submission when they went "bruh, that's not how you use a Far Jumper" and then violated the terms and conditions of their own exile from the outset by taking the Far Jumper with them in secret. If you were a half-senile 20-30th clone down the line of the bro who saw, quite possibly, his entire family burned to ash by the same people going "he he far jumper go BRRRRR" in their prison system, ya may just be like "♥♥♥♥ em, the Bentusi were wrong in saving this unrepentant race". The events of Cataclysm, where powerful kiths are basically like "do as we say or else you get to die alone in the void" to the lesser ones is a powerful sign of the Hiigarans not being good guys either).
My hope here is they continue on in year two with story DLC. Possibly mini-campaigns for each of the introduced races in the previous year's paid DLC, and if they're sly enough about it maybe have those campaigns last 5-6 missions each and the first 2 being free DLC to show the quality's there before investing anything into buying the DLC for it.

They don't need to go with Hiigarans. They could revisit the reestablished Taidan Republic or perhaps a Pirate faction.

But if they do go with Hiigarans, it should come from a Cataclysm orientation. No S'Jets, and no Space Bannana mothership.

[RoReaver]

Originally posted by Flushing:

But if they do go with Hiigarans, it should come from a Cataclysm orientation. No S'Jets, and no Space Bannana mothership.

Imagine telling Rob Cunnigham "We want more BBSGs!" (Big Beautiful Siege Guns)

[Sugam]

woh that's a lot of back and forth. Its interesting to have some history on it even if its not all potential factual. But this is the norm guys, this IP (homeworld) dead as far as big releases goes. They had their chance and forgot (or perhaps never knew or cared) what made the game what it was. Its pretty common these days. A lot of big IP's, taken over and then trashed in all forms of entertainment. Home world won't like vanish or something, they will put out what they can with what very limited sources they have going forward. Its too bad, glad I held back from buying. But maybe you guys can mod these ships/factions and abilities into sins2. That be interesting, lol.

[RoReaver]

Originally posted by Sugam:

In simple terms: It's not a big series or a big release. It's a niche series with a catchy title of being the first one, and still arguably one of the few, to do 3D space combat in RTS games. It's got a table top RPG now, a table top strategy game (they both look gravy lore-wise if you got any interest in that sort of mediums), a comic I think and this game (Homeworld Mobile is closing down, they're apparently focusing on HW3 which could be a good sign could not be). Closest comparison to this I can think of is EVE-Online because that has really, really catchy titles in the news ("Gamers blow up 400k worth of ingame ♥♥♥♥ in USD pricing in 10k player battle spanning better part of a real world week" sounds all fun and good up until you take part in one of those fights and feel like slapping yourself with a brick 8 hours in might just be more fun... and I am a 19 year veteran of EVE-Online... it's better now than it was when I started cause holy hells was POS bashing at 3AM 3-4 days a week on the same bloody POS is about as fun as fanning yourself by jumping out of a 5th story window. repeatedly).