P1na: I liked the RPG elements of the second, with its skills, equipment and few-against-many missions. They won't be able to make us all happy, so I can only hope I'm one of the happy ones. I do like that they appear to be planning campaigns for different races, here's hoping that doesn't mean they're repeating the retribution approach. Lot's of hope on this game.
It would be great to have 2s squad management and 1s scale, but I feel they are very different games that don't mix that well. I'll be really happy to be proved wrong of course, I just don't think it will happen.
RPG elements can be included in the gameplay along with base building I think. Similar to what Warcraft 3 did. I think the whole thing simply rests on how to balance the power of the hero units against the 'normal' units in the game. Then you can have several smaller-scale single player missions similar to DoW2 where you only fight with your hero squads, and you can have larger-scale missions like in DoW1 where you fight with a big army. That's really difficult to pull off though, and I think DoW2 singleplayer VS multiplayer came the closest to managing it. Other RTS games try and usually fail to completely pull it of, i.e. the few-unit missions from just about any other RTS game.
Come to think of it, it might have been almost perfect had DoW2's multiplayer bases simply worked as they did in DoW1. Fighting mechanics from DoW2, and base building + research mechanics from DoW1. And skill points for your commander(s) from combat experience gained. Then you'd simply disperse larger scale missions in the campaign. That could work?
