Ok, I'll admit its been quite a long time since COH 1 came out and I have some serious rose-tinted nostalgia goggles when it comes to that game, so feel free to correct me on this. But I'm pretty sure it beat the fuck out of Dawn of War 3 when it comes to a 'successful' launch.
While the various factions felt OK in terms of units and options, the input lag in DoW 3 was absolutely horrendous and the the hero units were very boring and uninspired. It's cool if you liked it of course, but to me it felt like it had very little in common with any of the previous entries at all. I might be misremembering but didn't they completely water down/remove the cover system? Not to mention all of the shallow MOBA nonsense they tried to add. I get that they really wanted to innovate but it just didn't know what it wanted to be.
That said though, you and other people have voiced a lot of completely valid criticisms of 3. That list from Dirty Finisher for example, it brought up so many obvious 'why is this STILL an issue' issues that should never have made it past the testing phase. It definitely smacks of very rushed and unfinished game that just isn't really acceptable, given all the love and hard work from the people who made the original and then (eventually) coh 2, into a really great multiplayer RTS.
I don't really consider Company of Heroes 1 to be the benchmark anymore because that game launched at a point in time where the industry standard was to rigorously QA-test a game before it came out in the absence of Steam and its patch infrastructure. That moment in history is long past us and so the more relevant launches are Company of Heroes 2 and Dawn of War 3, both of which launched in a more contemporaneous moment.
That being said, Company of Heroes 1 launched as an extremely functional game in terms of playability and smoothness, but it left much to be desired in the balance department. There are several systems that are included, even in the base factions, that time and experience would repudiate in Company of Heroes 2. Manpower discounts, purchased veterancy, unit replacement abilities, stealthed elite infantry, global upgrades... these were things that were included from the beginning, before Company of Heroes had defined itself as a subgenre within the greater scope of RTS games, and many of them were mistakenly drawn from other, completely mechanically-different strategy games. Many of them downplay or even outright negate the moment-to-moment tactical gameplay that makes Company of Heroes great - hence, they were largely excised save for a few abortive attempts in the second game. Not coincidentally, many of these things have been brought back in some form or another in Company of Heroes 3 which is one of the reasons why I expressed serious concern during the pre-alpha tests.
It's funny that you bring up the cover issue in Dawn of War 3 because this was something that was an issue in Dawn of War 2 - at that game's launch common wisdom said that the cover system was cloned from Company of Heroes (not entirely inaccurate) and that it had no place in Dawn of War. If anything, Dawn of War 3's cover system, such as it was, had a bit more in common with the first game than it did the second. Was this for better or worse? I can't say. The input lag was indeed an issue but one that was fixed quickly. I will also note that it had absolutely none of the ridiculous interface problems Company of Heroes 3 currently has - Dawn of War 3 looks professional and appealing in its menus and UI. Company of Heroes 3's current interface is barely at the level of the first game, and it's honestly shameful. It's also been that way for almost a month now. As for the elites being uninspired, sure, there were a few that were pretty basic. Most of them, though, had a unique mechanic or an interesting role or synergy with other elite units or with your base roster that made them worth using. I had a lot of fun very successfully using elites some considered to be very far from meta (Warp Spiders). That was one of the things I loved most about Dawn of War 3 - the tactical diversity. You could make just about any unit on the roster work for you if you used them right.
The point is, Relic has fallen far indeed. I wonder how much of Age of Empires 4 was actually Relic and not one of Microsoft's supervising studios, or how much Relic's internal decision-making process was involved in the game's design. The difference between even that and Company of Heroes 3 is vast, and it's depressing to see people debasing themselves to try and garner enthusiasm for a game which was clearly made with very little. I, personally, don't have time to waste on a game which doesn't have any respect for me as a consumer. Company of Heroes 2 is still out there if I ever want to play a Relic game again. |
There's definitely a lot that needs fixing and balancing, but this is a little bit hysterical. Dawn of War 3 was an absolute dumpster fire. Whatever you think of it's issues, the game at least got more than decent reviews and it isn't a watered down MOBA.
Dawn of War 3 was honestly Relic's best game at launch, other than the huge misfire that was the main multiplayer mode (for the record, I liked it, but I can see how people would have issues being forced into it). The art direction was generally terrible but the game ran great, there was next to no major bugs or technical issues, and the game launched with three of the most well-designed and distinct factions in Relic's development history. There were a few outstanding balance issues coming out of the beta test but for the most part, every unit in the game had a role and a job that it could perform, build diversity was even better than Company of Heroes 2 in its heyday and the game just felt great to play - every unit operated differently, the elites were extremely fun to use (albeit not fun to have used against you in some specific balance scenarios) and it had that ineffable quality that just made me want to keep playing.
Fast forward to Company of Heroes 3 and it's clear that the PR disaster that was Dawn of War 3 must have gutted the company of its former talent - playing the most recent multiplayer alpha (i.e., the launch build) was a thoroughly uninteresting and unentertaining experience. It feels like the Diet version of Company of Heroes - I understand why people say that it feels like a mobile game, because tons of tiny things about how the game operates, from the way tanks move to how infantry operate and react and just the blandness of it all add up to something that lacks that quality that makes me want to keep playing. I don't think I played more than three games of that test for no other reason than that desire wasn't there. It's like AI-generated text - you can train an AI to mimic a particular author or writing style and all the hallmarks of it will be there, but the thing itself, taken as a whole, will be flawed.
Hence I think the best possible outcome at this point is Relic collapses. The argument tends to be, without Relic there won't be Company of Heroes, but at this point what I'm seeing is that with Relic, there won't be another good Company of Heroes. And I'm not going to settle for a boring, broken, buggy mess and shell out $70 CAD on the promise that maybe, down the line, it might end up being a good game. I have standards. |
Honestly is Company of Heroes actually worth saving at this point? All it is right now is pretty much a hollow brand - Ancestors Legacy was mentioned earlier and, whatever you may think of the game, it proved that other, smaller studios can pretty successfully emulate or even innovate on the formula and produce a fun, functional game. Relic right now is in the end stage of a Ship of Theseus situation, clearly a vast majority of the people making actual decisions at the company have no idea what makes Company of Heroes good or fun, and I suspect a large portion of them don't even play it.
The silence from the company and the fact that they can't even do a proper hotfix when it's desperately needed points to a critical failure at some end of the decision-making process internally. Right now everything looks like it's adding up to a Dawn of War 3-level scenario, and I think people should brace for the possibility that the studio straight-up won't finish the game. Refund it while you still can, if you can. |
Right now giving this game a positive review is like giving a horse with a broken leg a pat on the back. You might make it feel better in some small way but it'll never be what it once was and someone, at some point, is probably going to put it down. |
I have a five-year-old PC and while the game is technically playable, it's not an ideal experience. My point is that I can run Company of Heroes 2 at max settings with no frame rate drops and yet this game runs like complete ass for no discernible reason, and this is supposed to be my fault. It's fine though, because I want to play Relic's game as much as they want me to play it. |
You really underestimate how many people play on 10+ year old PCs and blame everything except their hardware for low performance.
Just go to reviews of any game that does not have pixel art graphics and you'll notice the exact same comments on negative reviews, irrelevant hardware, windows 7 and rant how game is "badly optimized" or has "bad graphics".
I think one of the issues here is that for a game which is an absolute GPU hog, there isn't much on-screen impressive enough to justify the frankly-ridiculous performance demands. It comes off as either sloppy optimization or just another attempt to sell graphics cards.
Developers used to have to pull tricks like only texturing the visible sides of objects and environments, and now they feel they can just melt your PC for no good reason. I really don't care if the visual fidelity of some tiny environmental object has increased 400%, I'd rather the game actually runs well. |
I'm honestly surprised to see so many people here okay with what's been thrown out of the gate. Company of Heroes 3 is trash right now, the lustre of newness will fade quite quickly, although I do have to say I didn't expect them to be touching balance quite so soon so hats off to that.
Yes, Company of Heroes 2 was also bad at launch. That being said, we were also dealing with an entirely different situation where Relic was dealing with the fallout from a publisher changeup and was clearly given a lot of leeway. Dawn of War 3 proved that SEGA is more than willing to pull the plug if things get dicey.
Age of Empires IV is something of an outlier in that most of the post-launch support is on Microsoft's strategy divisions, and I get the impression that Relic is only tangentially involved there anymore.
We're dealing with a studio that has rapidly ballooned in size but is staffed by almost none of the people who made the games which made the studio what it is, and this launch has proved that the learning curve is apparently brutal. It's anyone's guess as to how it all turns out in the end, but the absolute fumble that is the singleplayer campaign's current state and the public beating the game is currently taking may cause irreparable harm that the studio may not get the resources to fix. In the end it looks like Relic might be going the way of BioWare - either way it's not the company that makes the games I like anymore, and if they end up burning for it I'm going to sit on the sidelines with my popcorn in hand.
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No it is simply not "heavily in favor of the nazis".
All sides made prototype units that saw no action and units that did see action (even if produced in limited numbers.)
There is no "favor" here.
The question here is weather such prototype units should be included in the game or not.
I am not sure which question is biased but I find the fact that you are talking about nazis and losing the war interesting.
COH franchise is basically a game ,now if you are suggesting that because it is based in WWII that the "evil nazis" should lose every game, I have to point out that people would simply not play such a game.
I don't think "evil Nazis" should lose every game, I do think that it's macabre in general to reduce this disgusting conflict to a game but that's a completely different issue altogether.
I know that all sides produced prototypes that never saw action - you're not saying anything new. You're not actually responding to my point, you're reiterating your argument and accusing me of bias, something you loathe other people doing.
The "question" I'm referring to is "is this unit 'authentic'?" when referring to things that should be included in the game, particularly when it comes to things which actually saw combat. The Sturmtiger is a great example of my point - it's a purpose-built machine for a very specific battlefield problem. The British made tons of those types of things, but the reason why the Sturmtiger was deployed on the battlefield, outside of its intended purpose, and why combat-ready units like the Meteor were deliberately kept out of combat, or why things like the Black Prince or Tortoise weren't produced and deployed was that the British weren't losing the war and didn't need them. The question of combat use is therefore biased in favour of German tech for the reasons I've stated. Hopefully that's clear enough for you.
Compounding it is the mystique surrounding the Wehrmacht and their supposed wunderwaffen, something that the Company of Heroes series has gladly fed for sales and what the historical community has long debunked. Again, though, that's a completely different issue, albeit one which has effects in this arena. |
Well it seem to me that what you are saying is you have no problem with the Black prince being added for the allies but you would have one if the Mouse tank was introduced for the axis.
Pls try to move beyond axis and allies since this not an issue of sides but an issue of introducing prototype units to the game.
Where did I say I would have a problem with the Maus? I wouldn't, really, if it were balanced and fun to use, the only criteria by which I would judge pretty much any unit's inclusion within reason.
The issue is Axis and Allies though, because the category of "authentic" units or units which only saw combat is heavily weighted in favour of the Nazis, purely because they lost the war and in their last desperate years they were more than willing to throw literally everything that could move at the frontlines. The question itself is biased. |
You say you have 9 years experience reading history and yet is FOR the BP addition and think it constitutes a WW2 tank?
Yeah right
I didn't say I thought the Black Prince was a WW2 tank, I said I couldn't care less about its inclusion in a game which already has a fantasy interpretation of the Nazi Wehrmacht. Get it right. |