Follow-up to my previous post about Men of War II. Steam positive review ratings have jumped to around 60%, but it's still in the "mixed" category.
Here's my issues with Men of War II from playing the betas that are confirmed to be still in the game, which can't be (completely) modded away:
There's a small roadmap, but it says nothing about new factions, such as adding the British and Japanese factions that were present in the previous main games. It's mainly about fixing issues with the game that existed all the way back in the betas and sometimes even in Arena. Also, there's this line in particular:
Your mod has to be deemed to be popular so it will be allowed to be used in the dedicated server mode in the lobby mode. Otherwise, you will have no choice but to play modded games through the local server mode, which is apparently as dysfunctional as the multiplayer system in the older games.
Two weeks in after launch, and MoWII player numbers are already down to around the level of MoWAS2, which is really only played for the massive backlog of mods everytime I peeked at the multiplayer lobby list (if there is one available at all). I've seen complaints that matchmaking outside of the PVP battalions mode and (maybe) combined arms mode takes a very long time. They definitely appealed to a wider audience.
We'll have to see what happens when the game goes on sale. By then, they surely should've patched singleplayer mode to be offline, right?
In conclusion, Men of War II is what happens when you stubbornly hang onto the effort sunk into a free-to-play live service game that flopped. It's not worth 45 bucks for players like me that don't touch multiplayer often.
Here's my issues with Men of War II from playing the betas that are confirmed to be still in the game, which can't be (completely) modded away:
- In an effort to simplify infantry squads by ditching squad leaders, they've ironically made them worse to play.
- You can't group squads together other than what the game configures them as, requiring you to use control groups.
- You can't direct control squads, only a individual soldier.
- Resources no longer gets automatically distributed across a squad, making inventory management more clunky and time consuming.
- This is compounded by small arms ammo stacks being much bigger, which makes distributing them across soldiers even harder. The inventory management system might as well not exist as units gets auto-resupplied from thin air when they run out of ammo.
- Ordering infantry to storm a building causes them to run into the building to... melee the enemies. The enemies can still use their weapons just fine so you will pretty much always lose units.
- If you use the traditional lobby, you will be sent back to the main menu after playing a game. Which means you have to re-configure the settings and re-invite people, unlike past games.
- This issue was among the most upvoted in the Discord server during the open beta, yet nothing came out of it.
- If your unit is on hold fire mode, the ammo type still automatically switches when engaging an enemy. It's really annoying as ammo switching happens instantly unless you use the inventory interface.
- When you get auto-kicked out of the game for being AFK, you can't reconnect.
- Another player testified that this issue existed since Men of War II: Arena.
- The unit icons over them aren't selectable unlike in Assault Squad 2 and Gates of Hell.
- In addition to that, the infantry unit icons disappear when zooming out too much.
- The irony is that one of the complaints for Gates of Hell is that the dark and gritty artstyle makes the infantry blend into the environment. Yet, this game is worse as you can't just look for a icon to look where the infantry are.
- In addition to that, the infantry unit icons disappear when zooming out too much.
- The always-online requirement.
- You can get auto-kicked out of singleplayer for being AFK.
- A recent patch is supposed to fix this, but that patch also had bugs that caused crashes, so it was rolled back.
- Patches require the game server to be shut down to get them deployed. If you're mid-game, sucks to be you.
- Sometimes, you just don't get mission rewards for multiplayer at all.
- It turns out that the singleplayer component is already technically offline. It just needs a constant internet connection to give you the mission rewards for multiplayer.
- The devs and publishers recognized that many players don't want always online for singleplayer, yet they still decided to launch the game as is.
- You can get auto-kicked out of singleplayer for being AFK.
- Bonus issue that has been revealed post-launch: the standard multiplayer spawn system applies to singleplayer.
- None of the missions during the open beta used that system, so no feedback about that could be given.
- The system is something like this:
- There are two logistic slots for spawning in units. They will be on a cooldown when used.
- Aside from the starting echelon, there are two more that will unlock over time.
- There's a unit limit that will increase over time.
- This unit limit will stop you from manning your own and allied vehicles if having them goes over the limit. Enemy and neutral vehicles are exempt from this limit, but it's not like that will happen often as vehicles usually get irrecoverably destroyed.
There's a small roadmap, but it says nothing about new factions, such as adding the British and Japanese factions that were present in the previous main games. It's mainly about fixing issues with the game that existed all the way back in the betas and sometimes even in Arena. Also, there's this line in particular:
Your mod has to be deemed to be popular so it will be allowed to be used in the dedicated server mode in the lobby mode. Otherwise, you will have no choice but to play modded games through the local server mode, which is apparently as dysfunctional as the multiplayer system in the older games.
Two weeks in after launch, and MoWII player numbers are already down to around the level of MoWAS2, which is really only played for the massive backlog of mods everytime I peeked at the multiplayer lobby list (if there is one available at all). I've seen complaints that matchmaking outside of the PVP battalions mode and (maybe) combined arms mode takes a very long time. They definitely appealed to a wider audience.
We'll have to see what happens when the game goes on sale. By then, they surely should've patched singleplayer mode to be offline, right?
In conclusion, Men of War II is what happens when you stubbornly hang onto the effort sunk into a free-to-play live service game that flopped. It's not worth 45 bucks for players like me that don't touch multiplayer often.
