The more I play the more disappointing this game becomes.

[Snowblind]

I have tried to be more than generous with this game, but it gets harder and harder with each match I play and each campaign mission I go into.

- Units feel positively sluggish in the campaign. Most of my time in missions is watching my units plod back and forth around the map. Multiplayer is a little better, but I am absolutely baffled why we need two 'mouse modes'. It screams concessions for console controls. My troops more often than blunder past the unit I ordered them to attack, only to arrive and stand dumbly where the foe was when I gave the order (this has happened with both 'mouse modes').

- Units don't react to anything other than bumping hit boxes with another unit. I can't count how many units I've lost because my attention was elsewhere and the game has no notifications for when your units are under attack. My peerless warriors of Sigmar bravely allowed themselves to be melted by ranged attacks. Is this a design choice (if so, why? Really, why?), or just because the developer is inexperienced with the RTS genre?

I understand that locked combat reflects the tabletop...but that works precisely because it's a tabletop wargame. In an rts I just find myself bored. Or more often frustrated because my braindead troops stumbled through their intended foe and bump into their hard counter. Units lock, and there's little else I can do. Maybe pop an ability if it's on cooldown. Repositioning is a thing, except not in the glorious Age of Sigmar it seems.

- The Menus, In-game UI, and controls are a nightmare to manage. I've never had a game so thoroughly fight against me, even in the menus. It really feels like the entire game was developed for consoles first and PC was an afterthought. It's not awful, but every menu and every UI button is clunky and unintuitive on a mouse and keyboard.

- Is there really not an option to face a random computer, or am I just not looking hard enough?

- We have any army painter, which is great and I adore the depth they let you get into, but why are we restricted to certain colors for certain factions? Additionally, if I play as Stormcast why are my starting units and Muster Point always in the default color scheme? I'm assuming it's a bug, but surely someone must've caught that in testing?

Speaking of the Muster Point...If I am upgrading it why does it no longer heal the units I've retreated? Is this intentional? What is the point of the Realmgate and Muster Point being separate? It is an extra level of annoyance to not be able to set a rally point from the actual building the units are built and spawn from. Instead, I have to click queue my troops, and then click on the Muster point to rally. It's an extra needless step.

I want to like this game. The atmosphere, the music, the voice acting and graphics are all excellent. The army painter and robust map-making tools are an amazing inclusion. The core idea of essentially Fantasy Dawn of War is a solid one. There's a fun game in here...but it feels like this deserved way more time in development.

[Many-Named]

the color schemes are the official Citadel colors, so it may be why you can't just choose any color, they don't exist.

[Zsup]

Originally posted by Snowblind:

Units don't react to anything other than bumping hit boxes with another unit. I can't count how many units I've lost because my attention was elsewhere and the game has no notifications for when your units are under attack. My peerless warriors of Sigmar bravely allowed themselves to be melted by ranged attacks. Is this a design choice (if so, why? Really, why?), or just because the developer is inexperienced with the RTS genre?

I assume it's intentionally designed this way so squads wouldn't accidentally get forced into combat lock.

[Ernasty]

agreed with OP - you summed it up really well

i'm close to uninstalling and never touching this again

[NOBLE SIX]

Same. I'm just chipping away at the campaign for seeing where the story goes.

I don't know why RTS players accept units in games that don't retaliate. If it was any other genre players would be rightly complaining but in RTS players who are so genre starved will just accept mediocrity and sub-standard ideas.

[retrobarbaari]

Originally posted by Snowblind:

My troops more often than blunder past the unit I ordered them to attack, only to arrive and stand dumbly where the foe was when I gave the order (this has happened with both 'mouse modes'). ... the game has no notifications for when your units are under attack. My peerless warriors of Sigmar bravely allowed themselves to be melted by ranged attacks.

Ooo. This sounds bad!

They have no game testing or ignore game testers? Surely someone would said this stinks.

Amazing. Sounds like game is still in beta-level, combat development not done.

Surely will not waste my time in this, until this basic level behavior is fixed.

[Jámez Bondo]

How is it that this game is on very positive and yet we have these threads? Are people just hyping this because of the IP or something? What OP writes sounds awful, but maybe it changes down the line? How is the reception this divided?

[Ernasty]

it'll be mixed by this time next week as more people play the game - it's just not very good

[retrobarbaari]

Yeah, easy to be charmed by wonderful graphics and audio quick. Gameplay takes hours. I recently reviewed Blackthorn Arena. Instant love, but about 30 hours and 3 games later lots of irritations, And disappointment, as I wanted to love that game.

Gotta hope then developers keep working on this. I feel pity developers often need to publish their games in so raw state they are like alpha versions. It is hard to recover from bad reputation, but it is possible.

[Hedonist]

The first time I saw the trailer was great until I saw the gameplay. NOPE.

[Donmaxo]

I also agreed with OP - I am very disapointed.

stupid units just standing there and don`t fight back. Worst unit reaction of any RTS I have
Big Click fest, bad UI and no strategy.

i'm close to uninstalling and never touching this again

burned money :(

[ShouteN]

I agree with OP too. But the thing is they could fix this game and improve it a lot. It has solid foundation. I was jumping back and forth and couldnt decide if i want to trust them or not. Well if they abandon this game, i am simply add them to my black list and never purchase any game from this dev. In opposite i will buy all dlcs to support them. We will see how it goes.

[retrobarbaari]

Originally posted by tukkek:

Sorry bro but fixing a game takes cash, fixing a particularly bad game takes even more effort. The studio is infinitely more likely to count the money they made with the sales and move on to the next project than to put it back into the game for the sake of the two people playing.

A new project though takes much more development (and thus money).

Some developers have spent more than a decade developing one game ever better, they continue selling well and are highly popular. Reviews do matter a lot (some even read forums) when one is considering buying a game, and their new game sells from the beginning well because they are a trusted and loved developer and the previous good game gets praise in the reviews. Making one good game may bring you much more income than making faster several average games.

Sadly, every developer or publisher don't care about their reputation. I suppose it depends heavily what sort of a person one is, if one values good reputation and thinks it is also profitable.

And it is not all about the developer. Publisher may well be the one who is playing the tune. Taking a bad reputation publisher may get player base very wary to buy your game and it is reflected in reviews, and if you're a new developer, it may ruin your game, no matter what your intentions, because they will publish it ready or not, or demand money grab features.

[auDr3y]

Originally posted by tukkek:

Originally posted by retrobarbaari:

hope then developers keep working on this

Game went from 90 to 72% positive in a day and I can guarantee it's going to reach "mixed" (70%) very, very soon. At that point, the company is going to consider the game a complete failure and drop it like it's hot - just like Relic with Dawn of War 3.

Sorry bro but fixing a game takes cash, fixing a particularly bad game takes even more effort. The studio is infinitely more likely to count the money they made with the sales and move on to the next project than to put it back into the game for the sake of the two people playing.

Sad but true reality of commercial game development. Might as well give up hope right now.

This is pretty much on point; sadly. Imho, they waited to see peoples reactions to the beta, and instead of going down the road of "let's make the best game we can" they went with "let's charge 60£ and make as much as we can from the simps, since they are the only ones willing to buy it anyway", which is why we had no idea of the asking price until a week before launch (or whatever it was).

[Tree Killer 9000]

Originally posted by Hedonist:

The first time I saw the trailer was great until I saw the gameplay. NOPE.

Even in the gameplay trailers and reviews, the combat looked uninteractive, slow and sloggy, I think it has a slightly evangelical following which I get it's the first big AOS title and I love AOS play it weekly with a fully painted 2k S2D Cabalist list but... the game needs to be better.

[Ernasty]

Originally posted by Ernasty:

it'll be mixed by this time next week as more people play the game - it's just not very good

lol, it's now mixed..