Worrying trend
I’m concerned not about state of EA game, but that through two years of development, game progressed relatively slowly. It feels like a longer demo all those years before. Some things are better, others seem to be worse. Basic gameplay loop, content or just simple balancing seem to not had been worked on throughout those years.
🕹️The Main Attraction🕹️
What people would like to see ideally is their own build-your-own-tank tycoon where they can play through historical events with their own unique tanks or twists on historical tanks and see how they perform in the market and war. It should allow player to compete both on price and quality of a tank, to either produce best possible tank or fill orders as quickly as possible.This design freedom is what attracts people. They want to build their tank and then own it. To try and market it, to sell it in a market. They want to build on a good reputation which their firm builds on. To deliver on time, more and to produce superior quality tanks which receives plenty of praises. Or likewise, they want to turn them up by the hundreds. They want to make the minimal viable product and see their mass production helping tide of war to turn to their favour.
At the end, you want to see how your tank performed in combat. What weaknesses it had. What design flaws it has. What could had been better. What was superior. You want to address shortcomings and to build better tank next time. This interaction between what you built and how it performed is critical in establishing meaningful gameplay.
☠️Three Missing Steps☠️
By mentioning what are expectations of this game, I can dive deeper of what is wrong within each category. Where players have higher expectations than game currently deliver. Creation of the Killing Machine
I will check this game again when game is released. However, I’m not too optimistic if development will take a right turn. I had waited for years only to receive a slightly longer version of a demo. All of the development effort went not into core gameplay, but in features which I barely appreciate. Hopefully, upcoming updates will make core gameplay actually work and hopefully – more meaningful.
Calicifer’s Reviews
- At the moment, options to create tank which you want are non existent. You get historical hulls and typical upgrades for them. Those upgrades generally range from Tier I to Tier X upgrades and I mean it in direct sense of that word. There is usually no benefit of going with anything else than the absolute best. Only in rare situations when you are trying to do something which you weren’t not meant to, it becomes a slight issue and you might not be able to pick the best upgrades for each slot. This is really disappointing. People want to create tank or at least tank variation of their dreams. Instead we got a mobile game where you press on a hero to upgrade it.
Game could become better by adjusting specific requirements of what countries want. At the moment it doesn’t seem that having custom-tailored tank for requirements is possible. What about making requirements such that it would incentivise sacrificing better performance for increased reliability and off-road performance? What about making each part more of a side-grade with different focuses rather than as an upgrade?
The most important thing which I’m missing is lack of ability to up-armor your designs or likewise, reduce armor protection of a tank. You should be able to designate area, whatever it would be front, side, top or rear. Then you should be able to increase protection of that area while drastically increasing weight of a tank. Likewise, tanks should be protected against existing threats. Each gun should have its penetration value and you could design a tank to be resistant to a specific threat. This is actually simple, but brilliant system first introduced in Hearts of Iron III expansion. If you had armor superiority, that was expressed with a combat buff to your formation which has those tanks. This buff represented a reality on the field that enemy doesn’t have effective anti-tank weapons against your vehicles. As nations already naturally gain specific weapons, we should have an estimated protection values needed against those weapons.
Monetization of the Killing Machine - Selling of your tank is deeply flawed at the moment. You either win every contract of you are hopelessly outmatched. Furthermore, nations are very slow to offer any other contracts and they never replenish their stock. You cannot enter international market until mid 1917 for some reason. Those contracts for thousands of tanks never materializes. Nations do not ask for specific tanks to fill individual niches. Britain for example formed like 8 regiments of landships until they even considered a light/medium tank. Then they filled their maximum limit and never asked a tank from me again.
I offered a tank which completely doesn’t meet requirements. However, it passes like some super-tank way above its competition. My competition scores 450 points top. I can easily score double by providing a wrong tank to what a country wants. System of selling tanks and core gameplay foundation is completely broken at the moment.
Usage of the Killing Machine - What this game needs is statistical representation of a battle like most of grand strategy simulators have. Those abstract battles would test random values of a tank. If a battle tanks in an environment where there isn’t a lot of roads, tank’s off-road ability is being tested and praise/complaints are then given based on what is expected average for such tank is. If battle tanks a long time to conclude, operational range becomes important. As for combat, if enemy only has infantry, its armor would never get tested. As enemy armaments increase, such as its need for armor. A heavy tank which cannot resist anti-tank fire should get a massive reputation penalty. Likewise, a light tank should get primary stat penalty regarding mobility.
I played more than dozen of hours. I saw my tanks in combat once by accident. Nations do not report battles of your tanks. I repeat – the most bloody important feature of this game is still missing. Even when you see battle reports, they are confusing on what you can actually do to improve designs. This is mostly due to designs being very limited. You put the best parts available by default and you win every contract regardless how well your tank fits the bill.
📋Hollow Gameplay📋
At the moment, gameplay foundation is not here. It is just a bunch of attempted systems which do not quite work together yet. We have tank design where you can only min/max statistics. We have contracts which just spam one type of tank. We have global map and battles which doesn’t appear to the player when your tanks are fighting or give enough overall information of where your tank can improve. We have a tank building system which doesnt allow you to build heavier tanks at the expense of reliability. We have a system which doesn’t understand that machine gun up front is a lot more valuable than at the back. We have a tank building sim where you cannot up-armor, change weapons or suspension of a tank.I will check this game again when game is released. However, I’m not too optimistic if development will take a right turn. I had waited for years only to receive a slightly longer version of a demo. All of the development effort went not into core gameplay, but in features which I barely appreciate. Hopefully, upcoming updates will make core gameplay actually work and hopefully – more meaningful.
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.