Ami's Blog from Vancouver: Day 3

Let's see, where did we leave off? Ah yes, Joel 'Sepha' Taylor had just gotten his ass handed to him by Peter "pqumsieh" Qumsich in a 1v1 on a very special map. That fact alone was quite comforting. You may ask, "What the hell Ami, how can you be comforted by watching your hero, Sepha, get rolled by a guy you've never heard of before?" Well I'll tell you. It means that the Relic devs, and in particular the Relic balance leads, know how to play this game. They're highly skilled. Peter Qumsieh and Braden Chan, just to name two, are damn good at Company of Heroes 2. It means they have a passion for competitive gaming and they've put the hours in to become masters of their own work of art.

Critics may point to Staghounds in COH1, or perhaps the M3 in COH2, and cry, "This game is balanced by a bunch of blind monkeys! This and that are OP!" Peter would respond immediately with a hungry gleam in his eye, "Play me, show me what you think is OP and I'll teach you some techniques to deal with it." Wow, that's a bold statement. But I saw him do just that in front of my very own eyes, and I was impressed. Ask Sepha and he'll tell you that Peter's vehicle micro was top notch, that his use of the various hotkeys for "Reverse" and "Hold Position" made his units almost impossible to kill, that both his strategies and tactics were refined and in some cases, as advertised by that bold statement, eye-opening.

Peter and his team have a passion for Company of Heroes 2. He knows the game inside and out. Hell, he knows all of the code and the numbers in a way that we won't for quite some time. He's been playing the game for almost a year, wrestling with strats, build orders, and enemy tactics. He made us look like noobs, and I loved it. It showed me that we have a lot to learn, and the development of the COH2 metagame will be a thrill to watch.

After the games, Peter asked us some questions: "What do you think about the M3? Is it overpowered? Why? Which is worse, an M3 filled with Snipers or an M3 filled with flamer engineers? What do you think of the 251 flammenwerfer? What do you think of the XP kickers? Were they better over the units that were killed or better over the attacking units?" These kind of super-specific questions showed me that Peter has his finger on the pulse of the competitive community. He listened to all of us and took notes.

Peter and his team are voracious readers. They pour over forum posts both on the official forums and on fansites like COH2.ORG. They've developed speed-reading techniques and software to help them glean opinions and identify balance problem hotspots. If you ever thought your efforts to provide thoughtful feedback were just falling on deaf ears, you were dead wrong. I applaud their commitment. Just look at the changes from Alpha, to Closed Beta, to Open Beta, to the Day 0 patch. Company of Heroes 2 is almost always moving in the right direction, and it's moving fast.

We broke for lunch in Relic's kitchen where somebody had drawn a huge Sonic the Hedgehog on the floor-to-ceiling chalkboard wall. After sandwiches, fresh veggies, chips, drinks, and a giant chocolate chip cookie, all of the invitees took turns signing the board. "We is in your HQ, eating your cookies." Forever the promoter, I tagged a COH2.ORG "lightning-bolt in square" logo.

Quinn Duffy then led us on a tour of Relic Entertainment. The studios occupy the 3rd and 4th floors of a building that is located right in the middle of downtown Vancouver. There are passcoded doorways around every corner, each protecting the secrets of this highly active game studio. We saw server rooms, presentation rooms, playtesting rooms, audio recording rooms, rooms full of coders, rooms full of designers, and a room full of balance guys in the middle of a 2v2 match, smashing their hotkeys furiously and bashing the hell out of each other. We even saw a room full of 40k miniatures for painting and playing. I'm under NDA, so I can't go into any detail, but I think I won't lose my credibility with Relic if I tell you that every one of those rooms, barring the miniatures one of course, was full of Company of Heroes.

There will be new content for this franchise, both free and DLC, for a long time to come. We saw some stuff that made our eyeballs pop. We saw things, that forums warriors have been calling for, in actual development. Remember Quinn's funny Twitter post with the pic of all the post-it notes? We saw it, uncensored. The "road map" will have lots of stops, lots of detours into interesting new areas, lots of hills to climb, lots of panoramic vistas, and lots of treasures to discover along the way.

Producer Greg Wilson was kind enough to give each one of us a copy of Company of Heroes 2: The Collector's Edition in its compact steel box. Bobby Miller passed out some cards that unlock future Theater of War downloadable content. He gave us plenty of extra cards, so expect some give-aways by the streamers that were in attendance. One of the community members asked for a signature, and the idea spread like wildfire. Within a few minutes, dozens of devs were crowded into a small hallway, shaking hands with the fans and signing our games. What did Ryan McGechaen say? Something along the lines of, "this resembles the Relic design process... not necessarily the most efficient or most perfectly planned, but with something really great at the end." The studio visit concluded with a photo-op of the gang holding up a fifteen foot wide sign that read "COMPANY OF HEROES 2" in white letters on a red background.

This unforgettable Friday was topped off by a fantastic meal at The Italian Kitchen on Alberni Street. Unbeknownst to Bobby, we had all chipped in to get him a present. Yoink's wife, Amee, selected an incredibly fine bottle of Captain Burn's 13-yr old imported Scotch Whisky. After dinner, Yoink stood up like the best man at a wedding, lightly ringed his wine glass to get everyone's attention, and delivered a speech that left lumps in all of our throats. He honored not only Bobby's birthday and the work he had done, but also Relic's successful completion of this game that has been years in the making. We all lifted our glasses in celebration.