Relic On Removing Base Building And Homeworld 3

Shacknews featured a massive interview with lead designer of Dawn Of War 2, Jonny Ebbert. He explains Relic motivations at simplifying certain mechanics in RTS while still having depth in gameplay. He explained that:

So people thought that base-building played a huge role in the original DoW. It didn't. You built your barracks once, and you never built another. There was never that decision like you have in other RTS games where it's like, "Do I need to build a second barracks, or an armory?" You can only build one. You build your first three squads, maybe another one in tier 2, and then it goes unused the rest of the game. And if the enemy comes in and blows it up somehow, it's like, "Eh."

And the only thing--the base always felt out of place to me in CoH and DoW in that they were only there to keep you from getting stuff out too soon. It was purely a pacing mechanic. So I said, why don't we just remove that, and see if we miss it. And we didn't.

I remember at one point, we had a bunch of global upgrades next to your thing that you had to use to start unlocking units within a tier. And it was really hard to work out the UI for, and it was getting really irritating. Finally, one day I said, "You know what, let's pull it out, just for a day. Let's see if we miss it. And the minute someone says, 'I miss it,' we're gonna put it back in." And everyone was like, "Well you know it's gonna be back in tomorrow." And I was like, "Let's just see how it goes." [laughs]

And so we pulled it out, and nobody missed it. No one ever said, "What's wrong with this game?! We don't have these global upgrades." They didn't matter. And what I found was that, there's so much that you can be doing with your units, and managing them, we just kind of wanted to remove all the things that pull you away from that. Because nothing sucks more than going back to your base, and having your army die because you weren't watching it.

So we try to do all these things that allow you to stay focused on your units, control them very carefully. And I'm hoping it's more approachable. I'm thinking it might be a little less intimidating. But I'm not sure. We'll see.

On questions about possible directions of how they would like to see Homeworld 3 take(specifically in regards to the controls of the game):

I think that might be too complex for most people. I mean, maybe not. Maybe we could have a breakthrough in the control scheme where it's easier to play and more accessible. But at the same time, it might be like the equivalent of Fallout 3, where it feels like Homeworld, but it's kind of a different style of game. Where it's way more accessible to people, a little more exciting. We would probably want to take it in that direction. If we were working on something. [laughs]

Homeworld 3 is not announced but is speculated to exist somewhere deep inside the Relic Studios, off the eyes of the press and public.

Read the entire interview here

Read my impressions of the Dawn of War 2 beta here