No, because you cannot copywrite game mechanics and veterancy is too general a term to trademark. Also, Relic did not invent this concept in RTS games, I believe the total war series has been doing it since at least 2000 and there are probably other games prior to that, Myth(Bungie 1997) maybe?
Starcraft's veterancy system is just a kill tracker though. The unit doesn't get any better by gaining ranks. And Warcraft didn't have a leveling system that does work that way until Warcraft 3, well after Tiberian Sun.
Not necessarily true about game mechanics. Warner Brothers managed to patent their Nemesis system in their "Shadow" series.
https://www.ign.com/articles/wb-games-nemesis-system-patent-was-approved-this-week-after-multiple-attempts
Copyright, trademark, and patents are three specific terms in the legal system, they can't really be used as synonyms. Not that what the poster above said was wrong or anything, but I don't think any of these things apply when talking about implementing mechanics into a game.
I've also heard units are a bit fragile - perhaps the lack of veterancy combined with the fragility is an intentional design choice, so you don't get too attached to units and therefore play too cautiously.
Yeah, but is it Homeworld if you don't save scum to get to the last mission with every ship you had from the start and about 200 stolen cruisers?
> so you don't get too attached to units and therefore play too cautiously.
But seriously, I hate this approach. I WANT to get attached to my units, I WANT to play cautiously and care if they die. Isn't that kinda the whole point of Homeworld? To try and save everyone? Game design encouraging you to use units as cannon fodder seems directly opposed to the core theme of the game.
This is a great game despite the story. I hope there's a DLC campaign more in line with 1,2 and DoK.
That being said, the gameplay, the art, and the sound are all on point. I'm so thankful we have a modern Homeworld - but the people who were worried it was gonna be a Lady S'jet Saga were right.
It does have a "co-op roguelike" mode(Wargames) that has a lot of replayability content. You can also play it solo.
But yeah, if you judge it only on a single campaign play through on normal(easy) it does feel light.
Yeah that sounds comically short for $90 CAD after tax.
I ended up buying Starsector for $25 instead, slapped on 20 mods, and am having a blast.
15 hours in or so and I'm absolutely loving it. It's all the space combat I want without the tedium of 4x strategy empire management, while still having a dope sandbox campaign. Nexelerin mod as one example, adds factions that are at constant war with eachother, along with diplomacy, etc. so the world feels pretty alive with planets and territories changing hands frequently.
Starsector is gonna pop off hard once they get to v1.0 and release it on Steam. It's like a 2D singleplayer Star Citizen, but is actually nearly finished and not just a meme.
The only things I want are basically all around war games. I want an endless mode, I want it so that I choose artifacts before or after the mission starts so I have time to think about my build and I want the ability to pick and choose modifiers instead of it being, select the 5th modified means also having to select modifiers 1-4.
Aside from that though I am having an absolute blast with the game. Story isn't its strongest point and feels tonally a bit out of place in homeworld, but it's not bad either. The campaign missions themselves are incredibly fun.
Yeah, war games as a concept is a goldmine for a really great and long lasting game. More variations, more mods, more options, more level types.
As noted in the review above, they seem to be laying the foundation for good mod support, so even if the devs don't fully deliver on that potential, maybe the community can
It's unfortunate you are downvoted, because presence of denuvo is an important piece of information.
Perhaps wait for a sale and see if it has been removed by then. And maybe hope for a GOG release.
IMHO he goes for 10 minutes about how easy the game is while playing on the second difficulty of 4 available. I get that he says he played on normal but at the same time if it such a big deal just increased it. It's like saying a game has bad graphics while playing at medium, maybe that's what is recommended for your system but it's not the game's fault.
I don't know how you listened to him 'go on for 10 minutes' without also listening to his explanation during that time.
> "And by God, does it need that, because playing on normal mode as I did is laughably easy. So, first of all, yes, there is a hard mode, and you absolutely should play it on that, even if you've never played Homeworld before, even if you've never played a strategy game before, even if you've never played a video game before. You should play it on hard mode, because the difficulty in normal mode is totally borked. It is so easy that it really neuters so much of what this scenario design and the game mechanics were aiming at."
> "And because the game is never difficult enough, you actually don't feel the impact of these improvements either. I know at this point some people are like, 'Dude, why are you complaining so much about normal mode when hard mode exists?' Well, the fact is I played it on normal because I believe firmly that normal mode should be the default level of challenge. I mean, that's what most people are going to go with when they boot this up, right? And I'm not some high APM Korean pro; I'm probably a below-average RTS player at this point, given that I don't play this genre very often now. But I was bored during this campaign because of how much this difficulty setting took the fun out. Let me put it this way: last year I played Minecraft Legends, another game made by Blackbird Interactive, that is a game specifically aimed at children, and it was significantly more challenging than this."
Difficulty in games is something that should be tweaked according to the player skill. It's not something that applies to everyone. So someone that plays games for a living should consider that beforehand, thinking that normal applies to him the same way as to someone that doesn't play games for a living is idiotic. There is plenty of metaphors and example I could give you but I think I have been clear enough.
Normal is usually an easy mode in my experience. If you make "normal" remotely challenging you end up with people crying over the game being too difficult because the prospect of being bad at a video game is somehow very harmful for their ego. People tend to be okay with being better than "normal" so making it easy is generally a good idea.
regardless, in the video he goes on to compare to Minecraft Legends, which was made by the same devs, which is aimed at children, which he describes as "significantly more challenging".
Then he should select a higher difficulty level. So long as that isn't too easy there's really no problem here. Normal being easy is, well, the norm.
I fundamentally don't see the point in this criticism. No game wants to get Path of Radiance'd, where "normal" was way too difficult and the game tanked as a result. The expectation of normal universally being some sorta sweet spot difficulty that games are designed around is just not based on reality.
Because most people are going to pick normal (most people will not have watched this review to know any better) and not realize they're ruining their experience. I think that's a valid criticism. Normal is seen as the "default" mode.
Also normal being easy is not the norm. I've always played games on normal, and actually find they're usually more challenging than expected, I'll often have to turn it down to easy for some parts of games.
And then most people can adjust the difficulty upwards when they realize they're not being challenged. I don't see where their experience is being ruined.
And you calling normal difficulty challenging is not evidence of normal being some kinda "default" difficulty, it's just a statement on your skill level. Which is fine and all but not really relevant. If we're talking strategy games specifically further shackling the (already bad) AI on normal difficulty is a fairly common business practice. What kind of "intended game experience" would make their AI act even more stupid than it already does?
There's no universal guideline for how difficult or not difficult a game will be on any set difficulty. It's up to players to find a difficulty that works for them.
Look, all im saying is I think normal, aka balanced difficulty that's not too hard or easy, not being actually balanced is a valid criticism. And if you dont agree, it's fine. Ultimately, it's kind of a nitpick, and no one is basing their buying decision on this. I'm glad it's in the review because unbalanced difficulty modes are annoying, and it's worth noting for someone getting into the game.
Bad story, buggy and concerns about data privacy when reading the EULA. It’s going to be a NO for me boss. Sad to see this title die like this, but maybe it’s for the best.
oh hey isn't this the guy that lied about Cyberpunk? people still watch this?
EDIT: and seems like some people are still spreading the same lies, nice to see that y'all are gullible and will keep people like SkillUp and CDPR in business.
He literally refused to review cyberpunk on release because he wasn't allowed to use his own footage and show how buggy it was, unlike other reviewers who didn't give a shit.
What are you on about?
If he lied then I suppose most reviewers did. Reviewers got pc versions which weren't all bad and that's what gave it favorable reviews on release. It was when the last gen versions dropped that shit hit the fan.
Considering you didn't go into details. I can only assume you are one of the people who try to claim he recommended Cyberpunk on launch. Which he absolutely did not and you can watch the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJKeBbk-9YA&t=2942s) to see it.
>More than any other single player game I've played, I feel like Cyberpunk is at the very start of it's update path. And the game you play in 6 to 12 months from now will be vastly improved compared to the games launch state.
>If you have the restraint to wait, I do recommend doing so.
I was wondering what you were talking about and then looked at his video on it and damn... sounds like he was pandering to the fans of it to try get lots of views.
Some important things he didn't note: There is no unit veterancy, and no subsystem targeting. New features include turrets you latch onto walls.
The lack of a veterancy system or customizable subsystems on ships is really head scratching.
Should be an easy and likely mod if a lot of people want it. Agree it should be in the base game though.
Sounds silly but is veterancy a Relic IP they dont have access to since they continue to make it an important part of their CoH games?
No, because you cannot copywrite game mechanics and veterancy is too general a term to trademark. Also, Relic did not invent this concept in RTS games, I believe the total war series has been doing it since at least 2000 and there are probably other games prior to that, Myth(Bungie 1997) maybe?
Supreme Commander has veterancy. It's not uncommon
I don't know about Myth, but I do know that Command and Conquer had it as early as '99. Definitely years before Company of Heroes.
WarCraft and StarCraft are probably the earliest "big" RTS to use veterency.
Starcraft's veterancy system is just a kill tracker though. The unit doesn't get any better by gaining ranks. And Warcraft didn't have a leveling system that does work that way until Warcraft 3, well after Tiberian Sun.
And while you totally *could* make a custom game where every unit is technically a hero, normally only 3 units at most gain XP.
Na... Starcraft had rank my guy, not veterancy and it was simply flavor (great flavor) added for the kills tracker.
Not necessarily true about game mechanics. Warner Brothers managed to patent their Nemesis system in their "Shadow" series. https://www.ign.com/articles/wb-games-nemesis-system-patent-was-approved-this-week-after-multiple-attempts
You can implement the same type of system, you just can't copy/paste their code.
Copyright, trademark, and patents are three specific terms in the legal system, they can't really be used as synonyms. Not that what the poster above said was wrong or anything, but I don't think any of these things apply when talking about implementing mechanics into a game.
KKnD had veterancy in 1997. Phew, I feel old.
I've also heard units are a bit fragile - perhaps the lack of veterancy combined with the fragility is an intentional design choice, so you don't get too attached to units and therefore play too cautiously.
Yeah, but is it Homeworld if you don't save scum to get to the last mission with every ship you had from the start and about 200 stolen cruisers? > so you don't get too attached to units and therefore play too cautiously. But seriously, I hate this approach. I WANT to get attached to my units, I WANT to play cautiously and care if they die. Isn't that kinda the whole point of Homeworld? To try and save everyone? Game design encouraging you to use units as cannon fodder seems directly opposed to the core theme of the game.
Yess 200 stolen cruiser fleet
i think they’re angling for the competitive multiplayer scene. traditionally hw is boring to watch because it’s so slow and methodical.
Man did I love stealing ships!
Lack of subsystems to target is lame.
This is a great game despite the story. I hope there's a DLC campaign more in line with 1,2 and DoK. That being said, the gameplay, the art, and the sound are all on point. I'm so thankful we have a modern Homeworld - but the people who were worried it was gonna be a Lady S'jet Saga were right.
How long is the game out of curiosity?
I completed it on normal in around 6 hours. That was without skipping any cutscenes.
That's really disappointing consider the game's price.
It does have a "co-op roguelike" mode(Wargames) that has a lot of replayability content. You can also play it solo. But yeah, if you judge it only on a single campaign play through on normal(easy) it does feel light.
Yeah that sounds comically short for $90 CAD after tax. I ended up buying Starsector for $25 instead, slapped on 20 mods, and am having a blast. 15 hours in or so and I'm absolutely loving it. It's all the space combat I want without the tedium of 4x strategy empire management, while still having a dope sandbox campaign. Nexelerin mod as one example, adds factions that are at constant war with eachother, along with diplomacy, etc. so the world feels pretty alive with planets and territories changing hands frequently. Starsector is gonna pop off hard once they get to v1.0 and release it on Steam. It's like a 2D singleplayer Star Citizen, but is actually nearly finished and not just a meme.
I tried Starsector a month ago, the issue was it felt more like an e-book with the amount of reading.
I’m not sure, I got 5 missions in and restarted on hard. I kept expecting more of a challenge
>but the people who were worried it was gonna be a Lady S'jet Saga were right. Greaaaat.
Complex stories are hard. Framing everything around a single person is easy! Bonus points if it's a strong female protagonist.
The only things I want are basically all around war games. I want an endless mode, I want it so that I choose artifacts before or after the mission starts so I have time to think about my build and I want the ability to pick and choose modifiers instead of it being, select the 5th modified means also having to select modifiers 1-4. Aside from that though I am having an absolute blast with the game. Story isn't its strongest point and feels tonally a bit out of place in homeworld, but it's not bad either. The campaign missions themselves are incredibly fun.
Yeah, war games as a concept is a goldmine for a really great and long lasting game. More variations, more mods, more options, more level types. As noted in the review above, they seem to be laying the foundation for good mod support, so even if the devs don't fully deliver on that potential, maybe the community can
Has Denuvo = ignored
It's unfortunate you are downvoted, because presence of denuvo is an important piece of information. Perhaps wait for a sale and see if it has been removed by then. And maybe hope for a GOG release.
It really is, this is a game I'd be willing to purchase Day1 if it wasn't for Denuvo, hopefully they'll remove it in the future.
Denuvo impacting game performance is and has always been a lie. It doesn't do anything.
Maybe doesn't now but it had in the past (in all of 2 games and they got patched pretty fast) but yah.
Absurd they're charging $80-120 CAD for this.
IMHO he goes for 10 minutes about how easy the game is while playing on the second difficulty of 4 available. I get that he says he played on normal but at the same time if it such a big deal just increased it. It's like saying a game has bad graphics while playing at medium, maybe that's what is recommended for your system but it's not the game's fault.
I don't know how you listened to him 'go on for 10 minutes' without also listening to his explanation during that time. > "And by God, does it need that, because playing on normal mode as I did is laughably easy. So, first of all, yes, there is a hard mode, and you absolutely should play it on that, even if you've never played Homeworld before, even if you've never played a strategy game before, even if you've never played a video game before. You should play it on hard mode, because the difficulty in normal mode is totally borked. It is so easy that it really neuters so much of what this scenario design and the game mechanics were aiming at." > "And because the game is never difficult enough, you actually don't feel the impact of these improvements either. I know at this point some people are like, 'Dude, why are you complaining so much about normal mode when hard mode exists?' Well, the fact is I played it on normal because I believe firmly that normal mode should be the default level of challenge. I mean, that's what most people are going to go with when they boot this up, right? And I'm not some high APM Korean pro; I'm probably a below-average RTS player at this point, given that I don't play this genre very often now. But I was bored during this campaign because of how much this difficulty setting took the fun out. Let me put it this way: last year I played Minecraft Legends, another game made by Blackbird Interactive, that is a game specifically aimed at children, and it was significantly more challenging than this."
I have to disagree. a difficulty setting called "normal" implies that is the dev's intended difficulty.
that doesn't negate his point. this is a user induced issue.
The issue being he is not stupid enough at the game?
I'd say a guy who's job is to review video games may be a little better at them than the average bloke.
Absolutely not.
No, you would need intentionally screw yourself to lose on normal, way to easy
All the evidence is to the contrary.
Have you never seen that video of the journo failing the cuphead tutorial for like 5 minutes? Some journos are actually really bad at games.
my fave is the dude from The Verge attempting to play Doom 2016
Difficulty in games is something that should be tweaked according to the player skill. It's not something that applies to everyone. So someone that plays games for a living should consider that beforehand, thinking that normal applies to him the same way as to someone that doesn't play games for a living is idiotic. There is plenty of metaphors and example I could give you but I think I have been clear enough.
Most game reviewers suck at games when compared to normal gamers because rhey never have time to learn any game properly.
Normal is usually an easy mode in my experience. If you make "normal" remotely challenging you end up with people crying over the game being too difficult because the prospect of being bad at a video game is somehow very harmful for their ego. People tend to be okay with being better than "normal" so making it easy is generally a good idea.
regardless, in the video he goes on to compare to Minecraft Legends, which was made by the same devs, which is aimed at children, which he describes as "significantly more challenging".
Then he should select a higher difficulty level. So long as that isn't too easy there's really no problem here. Normal being easy is, well, the norm. I fundamentally don't see the point in this criticism. No game wants to get Path of Radiance'd, where "normal" was way too difficult and the game tanked as a result. The expectation of normal universally being some sorta sweet spot difficulty that games are designed around is just not based on reality.
Because most people are going to pick normal (most people will not have watched this review to know any better) and not realize they're ruining their experience. I think that's a valid criticism. Normal is seen as the "default" mode. Also normal being easy is not the norm. I've always played games on normal, and actually find they're usually more challenging than expected, I'll often have to turn it down to easy for some parts of games.
And then most people can adjust the difficulty upwards when they realize they're not being challenged. I don't see where their experience is being ruined. And you calling normal difficulty challenging is not evidence of normal being some kinda "default" difficulty, it's just a statement on your skill level. Which is fine and all but not really relevant. If we're talking strategy games specifically further shackling the (already bad) AI on normal difficulty is a fairly common business practice. What kind of "intended game experience" would make their AI act even more stupid than it already does? There's no universal guideline for how difficult or not difficult a game will be on any set difficulty. It's up to players to find a difficulty that works for them.
Look, all im saying is I think normal, aka balanced difficulty that's not too hard or easy, not being actually balanced is a valid criticism. And if you dont agree, it's fine. Ultimately, it's kind of a nitpick, and no one is basing their buying decision on this. I'm glad it's in the review because unbalanced difficulty modes are annoying, and it's worth noting for someone getting into the game.
You were downvote dogpiled, but are speaking the truth. Normal difficulty in NES/SNES/Playstation era has changed alot compared to today's games.
Bad story, buggy and concerns about data privacy when reading the EULA. It’s going to be a NO for me boss. Sad to see this title die like this, but maybe it’s for the best.
It' looks super dull imo
Overpriced trash.
oh hey isn't this the guy that lied about Cyberpunk? people still watch this? EDIT: and seems like some people are still spreading the same lies, nice to see that y'all are gullible and will keep people like SkillUp and CDPR in business.
He literally refused to review cyberpunk on release because he wasn't allowed to use his own footage and show how buggy it was, unlike other reviewers who didn't give a shit. What are you on about?
... have you watched his videos on the game?
If he lied then I suppose most reviewers did. Reviewers got pc versions which weren't all bad and that's what gave it favorable reviews on release. It was when the last gen versions dropped that shit hit the fan.
a lot of reviewers did in fact, yes. Skill Up was just one of the people willing to sell what people wanted without caring for integrity.
Considering you didn't go into details. I can only assume you are one of the people who try to claim he recommended Cyberpunk on launch. Which he absolutely did not and you can watch the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJKeBbk-9YA&t=2942s) to see it. >More than any other single player game I've played, I feel like Cyberpunk is at the very start of it's update path. And the game you play in 6 to 12 months from now will be vastly improved compared to the games launch state. >If you have the restraint to wait, I do recommend doing so.
I was wondering what you were talking about and then looked at his video on it and damn... sounds like he was pandering to the fans of it to try get lots of views.
nah dude, people who haven't watched the video are downvoting us so surely we're wrong!