May 23rd - the day Steel Division: Normandy 44 was released. Released despite majority of players was waiting for Wargame legendary series continuation. In 2 months average daily players count dropped to level of 300 people, when WRD being 3 years from release had 2.5 times more. This concludes the fact Steel Division was an epic fail.
Was this before known failure? What exactly Eugen systems made wrong again? Could this be avoided?
Choosing WWII as leitmotif after succesful games covering much wider timeframe felt like a huge downgrade in a matter of gameplay because many game mechanics which made wargame series unique dropped of.
Choosing Normandy circa 44 as a theater made things even worse. Lack of USSR dissapointed not only russian auditory which contained at least every 10th customer of studios, but big chunk of international community in general. Situation was meant to be fixed later for additional price later with P2W DLC.
First wrong thing - decor. Cartoonish look intended to give us feel of diorama and tabletop wargames was precepted much worse than semi-realistic feel of predecessor. You don't see much difference from birds eye view you usually play game at. Up close it looks worse. Not only breaking immersion but also lags a lot.
Clumsy UI overloaded with needless candy-like elements that replaced minimalistic and utilitarian one looked like a disrespect to already formed Eugen's audience.
Second - Sound design in general being better thanks to good SFX, voice acting (except campaign briefings) and ambient sounds was killed by shitty OST. Royalty free wargame beat bought in past for economy was recognizable by any fan in any source, and it never distracted you from the game. SDN44 Superfluous monotone synthetic orchestra themes got old and bored us in half an hour.
Game design flaws - Third one - the key one. Lacking or spoiled game mechanics. For example selected time period excluded SEAD and radar AA antagonism, which was big mind games element of gameplay - should I try to hit pesky bomber that kills another disposable infantry unit or risk of losing couple heavy SAMs not worth it and I'd better to suffer a little bombing and save for a fighter jet.
Instead of it so called "Sword and shield" mechanics were slipped in. AA was not a countermeasure for aviation and was only able to lay down some suppression slightly reducing frequency of enemy airstrikes.
This created one big meta element where airborne divisions having elite planes in enourmous quantity just hunted down enemy fighters and overloaded crippled ground AA with continuous bombing runs. Even pricy AAA pieces weren't a medicine from that kind of cancer. Finally people have tired of suffering either joined metajerkers crowd for not to lose to stupid balance or just left the game not willing to stay vulnerable with that useless AA coverage.
Was that kind of behaviour realistic in comparison with old HP system? Maybe. Was that interesting to play - definitely not. Besides, bragging about realism devs were silent about the fact that in the game where tank lost it track will never move again and infantry squad reduced to one man will not magically replenish from supply truck, planes severely damaged return to battle in brand new condition for no charge except additional time for this miracle.
Note - devs finally understood the mistake and last patch contained this: anti aircraft weapons lethality globally increased. But will difference be noted by remaining 300 people - not so important when more than 4000 people left.
Tanks - key unit of any RTS where they are present suffered the most. For the means of reality maps filled with bocages were like labyrinths. And tanks were like slow agonized lab rats. No leg-ups, several times per maneuver you will show enemy your side or even back armor.
Tanks mortal enemies - planes and AT units had no penalty on this terrain. Planes could attack through heavy folliage and LAW equipped infantry and, what's even funnier, AT-cannon squads were not only gaining additional stealth but they could run through those bocages like things were anything else but several meters high ground walls with dence trees.
There are bulldozer blade equipped tanks in game which in reality served for destroying bocages but they don't have any role besides cheap starting armor.
Add absolutely insane price for top level armor. Most expensive tank required you to sit without reinforcement for 4 minutes when enemy could get up to 20 squads of infantry, several AT cannons for stealthy ambushes, several planes etc. And your tank will simply explode in the forest. Well. You have the unit that requires steel balls and nerves to play.
On the other hand if those axis tanks rolled out to open with little recon support, smoke screen and AA cover and little skill involved - the unit absolutely invulnerable to fair play appeared on the battlefield.
So all you can do is just sit and wait for a mistake of a player that is forced to play hasty by sitting 4-5 minutes in static defence with no reinforcements before. Or use your own uncounterable shit.
I will not be surprized if most of King tigers were just bombed to the stone age with planetrains or excessive and over effective in game artillery.
Other side of armored warfare - shooting at tanks. Instead of understandable still flawed HP system even unrealistic at all we received another RNG layer over one we had.
Now stars should form up not only for hitting but also for penetrating armor.
Of course when both chances are in range of 90% this is not a problem. But when they fall to 50% combined chance of destroying target is only 25%.
And you be sure that in the critical moment enemy capable of penetrating your armor at 5% chance will get that chance and you will catch infamous redundant BAILED OUT crit, when your tank will get BOUNCE ricochet 5 times in row with 80% of penetration chance. Cybersport...
Things get worse when tank goes ROUT rolling like an imbecile showing vulnerable sides to enemy. Yes this is old and familiar mechanic but this time you need only 75% of morale loss. Increased speed and lethality of WRD minimized affection of it and the game feeled much better. Ideally it should be scrapped or reworked but instead we have situation when good entrenched HMG made tank piss tank demoralized. To conclude - this was a huge stepback, lalka.
The list can be continued with: Overpowered flame troopers rolling in huge quantities on the field. HMG nests capable of holding down a company of troopers with light armored behicles. Sniper squads capable of taking down any ground target except heavy tanks. Despicable off-map invisible barrages. Mass autocannon rushes as only hope for axis armored not to be steamrolled in first 10 minutes.
Stupid balance decisions when battlegroups with cheaper and better assets had more income than armoured with expensive unvetted stuff. But I think you can see that game was completely unfinished in terms of game design.
Promised matchmaking system appeared to be utter bullshit. Instead of modern system where you can grab friends and jump into desired game mode would it be team fights or 10v10 circus devs conservativity gave us hybrid merged with classic lobby system. Moreover ranked and quick play pool were combined and some players used this to quickly progress to the top of the ladder.
In result: 10v10 is not gathered of more or less equal sets of players and still is one sided assrape. 3v3 and 4v4 are not presented in quick play mode at all and still sit in the lobby gathering people in long time. 2v2 is usually found in more than 25 minutes. And in ranked game you will often engage enemy from quick play pool that will not even try to put some effort into competition. Although you will get your ELO and he will save his. Maybe low online count to be blamed in such a shitty system. Though it is a situation when 95% players left, and even such a matchmaking is not a major problem but strong one.
Of course most of the mistakes and flaws could be fixed with patches. But that's a different joke.
Remember millionth mile and norse dragons? 170 new units, reworked balance and finally competitive gameplay. Forget it. Shit division is better than this. Every patch has a loud name. Duelists - cynical adding of custom 10v10 servers.
Huge Balance Patch of His Imperial Majesty MadMat Who Has To Eat - full patch content can be described as couple of +5/-5 and some armor tweaks. Or the last one - When the River Runs Too Deep which looks like a stone on the neck of a drowned game.
Most notable changes of those - rotated maps (realism lol) or another broken units added to the game. Well at least devs have sense of humour when it comes to naming those. But when game desperately needs E.R. and community manager tells us things are coming next patch yet next patch is even more ridiculous, situation looks really really sad.
Fun fact. Paradox interactive in 2011 forced Cerberos to lauch Sword of Stars 2 much earlier before it was finished. This of course had lead to failure after good first installment of the game. In the meantime inner Paradox studio started the work on Stellaris. So whole situation was looking like an attempt to murder a competitor series.
Maybe we'll see some more games related to WW2 in the arsenal of bloody publisher. Things are looking even more suspicious when we add poor advertising campaign, long NDA and constant omissions of the PR team.
Feel free to leave all the hate and love in the video comments. If you already bought the game don't worry too much. Maybe those money will help devs to make new good game in the future.
I hope that info was useful for you. See you later pricks.
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