Wargame: Red Dragon Review

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Wargame was a title which had brought Wargamming to the masses. However with Red Dragon, countless issues with the franchise started to accumulate. Game has a lot of variety and factions, but sadly a lot of it is poorly balanced. Wide scope fail to simulate combat. Flawed and superficial in-game mechanics fail to properly represent real world. Game was great at its time, but it was simply abandoned despite franchise’s popularity.

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This game suffers from poor balancing and developer bias. Throughout lifespan of this franchise, game had suffered wide disparities between factions.

Historical Balancing
• This games lacks any sort of historical balancing. Historically speaking, Warsaw Pact armor was a lot better than Nato alternatives. It is not until 80s when Nato had deployed their Abrams and Leopards 2 which had a significant quality advantage over most Soviet armor. However, this is in no way represented in this game. Developers disregard historical balance sometimes seemingly even with disdain. USSR had the best anti-air equipment during cold war as it invested heavily to counter Nato air superiority. Despite this fact, it is USA who receives the best AA unit in the game. To put salt to injury, this unit is a Patriot system. An unit which literally could not function in a game! It would never be commanded in a brigade level structure nor it could physically fire without myriad of supporting system. Even more, even if it would fire, its minimum range is pretty much the whole of Wargame map which would make this unit completely useless in this game. Eugen would constantly put units like this which simply does not work from any point, even from gameplay one as it introduces difficult to balance units which then receive countless nerfs as was with Buratino.
  
  Bias Balancing
  
• Game has a bias balancing towards Nato factions. In this game, Nato factions are simply better. This is due to developers having no clue about balancing a game. They balance simply around win rates without any understanding that more experienced players will actively choose to play with Warsaw Pact and thus would win over less experienced players. As it is, Warsaw Pact was an unplayable faction for most of its time unless you were a hardcore enthusiast which could stomach playing an underdog in multiplayer matches and still emerge victorious.

Eugen had fired its best developers for them standing up for themselves, their pay and their rights. As a result, only mediocre and incompetent developers had remained in the company. New talent which they had brought up is not up to par. Quality of their titles had seen a sharp decline and they had never managed to create anything remotely as good since Airland Battles.

Pay to Win DLC
• As developers continued developing games which nobody want to play, they started to run out of money. At that point they started to introduce paid DLC. In order to get people excited and enthusiastic, they made all of the factions in those DLC really powerful. If anyone wishes to know which factions are the best in this game, just take a look at paid content. Chances are that you will be playing A tier faction if not an overpowered one.
  
  Bias Developer
  
• Developer in this game is bias towards Nato. I had compiled factual evidence to that fact. During transition from Airland Battles to Red Dragon, each faction integer based accuracy system were converted to percentage based with 1 point equalling 5%. This transition went correctly for Nato units. However, Warsaw Pact units had seen a very significant deviation in this regard. They were all nerfed in Red Dragon for no apparent reason. When confronted with this fact, developers responded with an outrage and silence.
  
  Same bias continues with other historical units. Abram tanks for example receives massive gains in statistics without any historical reason for such an upgrade. Some units like T-62 significantly under-perform for no reason, its stats seemingly attached to long debunked myths about its rate of fire and accuracy. Similar thing had happened with BMPs and their GROM smooth-bore cannon and Malyutka missiles which were dead-accurate and very advanced weapons for their time. Similar thing is seen with bore-launched missiles with its statistics and missiles being full of historical inaccuracies.
  
  Delusional Developers
  
• All of those issues were raised in their forums. They seemingly have no understanding that better win rate is a result of better players playing weaker faction than it being otherwise:
  
  Eugen response to balance disappointment 

  Community Created Artwork for Steam Artwork

  By: Nightbringer
  
  
  Trying to point out inconsistencies in their balance and inconsistencies in their reasoning:
  
  In regards to Wargame 

  Community Created Artwork for Steam Artwork

  By: Nightbringer
  
  
  I was only met with arrogance and dismissal. If you ever saw someone talking how Eugen hates their community, point out to this post. It is a perfect example of what happens when you bother talking with a developer about their game:
  
  Eugen response to balance disappointment #2 

  Community Created Artwork for Steam Artwork

  By: Nightbringer

Eugen was a great developer once, but they had threw everything away. They had fired their top talent. Incompetent leadership had undertook projects which are of little interests to the community. Incompetent developers are making atrocious decisions (just look at GUI in Warno). They try new ideas and then quickly abandon them like with the whole naval aspect in this game. Developer has no clue of what its target audience is. Do they want to create Wargamming title or an RTS one?

Eugen was once a good company which turned bad over time. I simply adored their Ruse series. Act of War was great too. I loved previous two Wargame titles. However, look at their developmental history post Red Dragon. It is nothing, but failures and disappointments.

Calicifer’s Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

[h1]Great game plagued by countless issues[/h1] [hr][/hr][i]Wargame was a title which had brought Wargamming to the masses. However with Red Dragon, countless issues with the franchise started to accumulate. Game has a lot of variety and factions, but sadly a lot of it is poorly balanced. Wide scope fail to simulate combat. Flawed and superficial in-game mechanics fail to properly represent real world. Game was great at its time, but it was simply abandoned despite franchise’s popularity.[/i][hr][/hr] [h1]Countless issues with Balance[/h1] This game suffers from poor balancing and developer bias. Throughout lifespan of this franchise, game had suffered wide disparities between factions. [list] [b][i]Historical Balancing[/i][/b] [*]This games lacks any sort of historical balancing. Historically speaking, Warsaw Pact armor was a lot better than Nato alternatives. It is not until 80s when Nato had deployed their Abrams and Leopards 2 which had a significant quality advantage over most Soviet armor. However, this is in no way represented in this game. Developers disregard historical balance sometimes seemingly even with disdain. USSR had the best anti-air equipment during cold war as it invested heavily to counter Nato air superiority. Despite this fact, it is USA who receives the best AA unit in the game. To put salt to injury, this unit is a Patriot system. An unit which literally could not function in a game! It would never be commanded in a brigade level structure nor it could physically fire without myriad of supporting system. Even more, even if it would fire, its minimum range is pretty much the whole of Wargame map which would make this unit completely useless in this game. Eugen would constantly put units like this which simply does not work from any point, even from gameplay one as it introduces difficult to balance units which then receive countless nerfs as was with Buratino. [b][i]Bias Balancing[/i][/b] [*]Game has a bias balancing towards Nato factions. In this game, Nato factions are simply better. This is due to developers having no clue about balancing a game. They balance simply around win rates without any understanding that more experienced players will actively choose to play with Warsaw Pact and thus would win over less experienced players. As it is, Warsaw Pact was an unplayable faction for most of its time unless you were a hardcore enthusiast which could stomach playing an underdog in multiplayer matches and still emerge victorious. [/list] [h1]The best were fired[/h1] Eugen had fired its best developers for them standing up for themselves, their pay and their rights. As a result, only mediocre and incompetent developers had remained in the company. New talent which they had brought up is not up to par. Quality of their titles had seen a sharp decline and they had never managed to create anything remotely as good since Airland Battles. [list] [b][i]Pay to Win DLC[/i][/b] [*]As developers continued developing games which nobody want to play, they started to run out of money. At that point they started to introduce paid DLC. In order to get people excited and enthusiastic, they made all of the factions in those DLC really powerful. If anyone wishes to know which factions are the best in this game, just take a look at paid content. Chances are that you will be playing A tier faction if not an overpowered one. [b][i]Bias Developer[/i][/b] [*]Developer in this game is bias towards Nato. I had compiled factual evidence to that fact. During transition from Airland Battles to Red Dragon, each faction integer based accuracy system were converted to percentage based with 1 point equalling 5%. This transition went correctly for Nato units. However, Warsaw Pact units had seen a very significant deviation in this regard. They were all nerfed in Red Dragon for no apparent reason. When confronted with this fact, developers responded with an outrage and silence. Same bias continues with other historical units. Abram tanks for example receives massive gains in statistics without any historical reason for such an upgrade. Some units like T-62 significantly under-perform for no reason, its stats seemingly attached to long debunked myths about its rate of fire and accuracy. Similar thing had happened with BMPs and their GROM smooth-bore cannon and Malyutka missiles which were dead-accurate and very advanced weapons for their time. Similar thing is seen with bore-launched missiles with its statistics and missiles being full of historical inaccuracies. [b][i]Delusional Developers[/i][/b] [*]All of those issues were raised in their forums. They seemingly have no understanding that better win rate is a result of better players playing weaker faction than it being otherwise: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927379321 Trying to point out inconsistencies in their balance and inconsistencies in their reasoning: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927380071 I was only met with arrogance and dismissal. If you ever saw someone talking how Eugen hates their community, point out to this post. It is a perfect example of what happens when you bother talking with a developer about their game: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927379571 [/list] [h1]How far they had fallen from grace[/h1] Eugen was a great developer once, but they had threw everything away. They had fired their top talent. Incompetent leadership had undertook projects which are of little interests to the community. Incompetent developers are making atrocious decisions (just look at GUI in Warno). They try new ideas and then quickly abandon them like with the whole naval aspect in this game. Developer has no clue of what its target audience is. Do they want to create Wargamming title or an RTS one? Eugen was once a good company which turned bad over time. I simply adored their Ruse series. Act of War was great too. I loved previous two Wargame titles. However, look at their developmental history post Red Dragon. It is nothing, but failures and disappointments. [i][url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Calicifer/discussions/0/3759978149434395016/]Calicifer’s Reviews[/url][/i] [quote]If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.[/quote]