People thought relic was going to close down 2018

The main problem with Coh2's elevation is also that units won't take elevation into account. They try to fire regardless and will happily hit the ground if they don't roll an accuracy hit. So either it looks odd because the shot goes through the ground, or it looks odd because your unit shoots the ground. In any case, it looks odd because your unit might actually not see its target.

totally agree. In coh2 elevation is a nuisance, but in COH3 Relic actually made it work. Elevation is one of the reasons I hate Rails and Metal. Tank fights near top fuel always got me mad (until I banned the map, lol)

Well for starters we need to quit pretending its pre-alpha. The game is less than a year from launch. It should have already (or more likely already has) started beta.

What you see now is going to be very close to the final product. (especially since we have been getting updates for 6 months and nothing of note has changed in any of the reveals)

Agreed 100%

Too many people are like "Omg Guys don't be mean that COH 3 is complete trash because its in pre-alpha" sucking on Relic's "lolipop". These are the same mentally deficient people who hyped up Dawn of War 3 even though many valid concerns were brought up on early gameplay footage before launch.

My bet is COH 3 will actually have a good single player campaign (That COH2 Russian Campaign was hot garbage) but the multiplayer will be extremely subpar compared to COH 2 for a good 4-5 years.

My bet ... the multiplayer will be extremely subpar compared to COH 2 for a good 4-5 years.

You dont need to bet, if you find that CoH2 MP was better then vCoH one, or you never played vCoH, then CoH3 will be subpar for you.

CoH3 wont be like CoH2, it might share simularities, but it will be much closer to the vCoH. Not because they used the ideas of vCoH, but even because Relic acknowledged that vCoH was a better game and they should look at it for insparation.

You dont need to bet, if you find that CoH2 MP was better then vCoH one, or you never played vCoH, then CoH3 will be subpar for you.

CoH3 wont be like CoH2, it might share simularities, but it will be much closer to the vCoH. Not because they used the ideas of vCoH, but even because Relic acknowledged that vCoH was a better game and they should look at it for insparation.

Since this thread has gone off the rails...
What about Coh3 makes it feel like vCoh?

I thought top 1v1 players wanted a commander system closer to vCoh so it was not so predictable. They do not want players to be able to know that at minute 4, unit X will arrive. Having branches in the tech tree lets you have more options. This could be great for tournaments if the tech trees dont suck and therefore become predictable.

vCoh point system? WhiteFlash has been begging for this for years to help balance maps better. Make areas worth something if you go there. I never had issue with the Coh2 system since it made sense that every map will have the same exact number of points. Unless its a WF map of course But the vCoh system may have map timings all be different. Maybe that is good???

What am I missing?

I think some of you guys have no idea what Beta phase actually is. Generally beta is finished, but unpolished product. Stuff like placeholder props, missing or proof of concept features are all attributes of an Alfa stage.

...

Well without nitpicking, few core concepts are already coping/improving the ones from vCoH.

Point system alone is probably the biggest change so far, because CoH2 system pretty much affected littery the whole game. And every single point on the map is pretty much point of interest worth trying to capture. Problem with CoH2 system, is not even the amount of points, but rather the fact that usually in total (excluding the VP), there are only 4 points of interests and unless you just want to either delay or cut-off the enemy, there is no reason to go beyond this (unless its 1v1), since regular points are effectively pointless to the economy, making game more static and predictable.

Well and the fact that faction actually have choices now, which will affect the economy. Not the ones UKF had with "Duh, should I delay my AEC by 30 seconds by picking grade" or "Side grades are here to delay tanks".
Those are at least two core differences which arent subject to change.

And if we start speculating about what balance of the game will be, considering relic keeps vCoH in mind, we can expect much less survivable inf, powerfull yet vulnerable tanks, soft-counters actually working as support units (hello deflection damage), over-all slower teching\teching and maybe even the fact that rebuilding LVs\Vehicles or going multiple of them wont put you in instant disadvantage economy vise.

As for commanders, I honestly think, that its just an over-all improvement over CoH2 system, but I have no illusions about them. There still will be top picked commanders and there still will be meta with the most commonly picked abilities, simply because its hard to balance so many battlegroups (since we will be getting more then 3 per faction) and abilities to be equally worth picking. I see them as a massive QoL improvement and game improvement, but not something game changing or ground breaking.

vCoH nailed doctines because there was only 3 per faction with 6 abilities in each, it was much easier to make them distinct and usefull.

But to make it clear, I didnt play vCoH super competitively back in the day so I might not have super deep knowlage about it, but it was enouth to see the difference between it and CoH2 in how gameplay changed and especially after all CoH2 patches.

Point being, a I hear a lot that CoH2 is masterpiece RTS (at least gameplay wise), while imo a lot was really downgraded in CoH2. QoL and UI was improved in it, thats for sure, but not the gameplay. Thats why I doubt that they will like CoH3, if they didnt like vCoH gameplay in a first place, since its a reference for Relic now.

Point system alone is probably the biggest change so far, because CoH2 system pretty much affected littery the whole game. And every single point on the map is pretty much point of interest worth trying to capture. Problem with CoH2 system, is not even the amount of points, but rather the fact that usually in total (excluding the VP), there are only 4 points of interests and unless you just want to either delay or cut-off the enemy, there is no reason to go beyond this (unless its 1v1), since regular points are effectively pointless to the economy, making game more static and predictable.

I wouldn't say a standard point is THAT much weaker than a specialized one. It's just that the game forces you to prioritize fuel so much in the beginning that the munitions income is not that important. At the start everyone rushes fuel. Not having infantry upgrades is bad, but getting an early Luchs/AA HT/222 etc is more than compensating for that and will likely give you control over more points for mun.
Later the situation often reverses when fuel is not that important and you just want munitions to buy abilities.

I agree that the system is bad though since it makes it arbitrary which point you take. There are usually 12 standard points, of which a maximum of 4 designed as cut offs. This leaves at least 8 points with the only function of generating exactly the same amount of resources. They are for the most part interchangeable and basically all "the same".
In total, there are 3 important VPs, 4 special resource points, <4 cut offs and >8 "boring" standard points. Almost half of the points do not have decent purpose, and at least 2 are often secured next to the base anyway.

I hope CoH3's new, old system can improve that. It is more of a challenge for mappers though, since the points need to be placed in a way that you can't snowball and insta-win because you control the most important region for 5 minutes. Let's see what Relic does.

I wouldn't say a standard point is THAT much weaker than a specialized one. It's just that the game forces you to prioritize fuel so much in the beginning that the munitions income is not that important. At the start everyone rushes fuel. Not having infantry upgrades is bad, but getting an early Luchs/AA HT/222 etc is more than compensating for that and will likely give you control over more points for mun.
Later the situation often reverses when fuel is not that important and you just want munitions to buy abilities.

I agree that the system is bad though since it makes it arbitrary which point you take. There are usually 12 standard points, of which a maximum of 4 designed as cut offs. This leaves at least 8 points with the only function of generating exactly the same amount of resources. They are for the most part interchangeable and basically all "the same".
In total, there are 3 important VPs, 4 special resource points, <4 cut offs and >8 "boring" standard points. Almost half of the points do not have decent purpose, and at least 2 are often secured next to the base anyway.

I hope CoH3's new, old system can improve that. It is more of a challenge for mappers though, since the points need to be placed in a way that you can't snowball and insta-win because you control the most important region for 5 minutes. Let's see what Relic does.

A lot of good sense here, its hard to compare Coh1 and Coh2 on this matter since only the second has been extensively played on renewed patched and maps. vCoh teamgame was broken in favor of Axis since they could more capitalized on resources with the buyable vet.

During the pre-alpha solo player I saw a new mode that could be interesting to develop, I don't know what does plan Relic about it. There was no victory points, every point matters in the calculation of the countdown. It's more like Wargame's serie if I'm not mistaken and could be refreshing reducing the amount of shock points on maps and encouraging playing on all the map.

Well without nitpicking, few core concepts are already coping/improving the ones from vCoH.

Point system alone is probably the biggest change so far, because CoH2 system pretty much affected littery the whole game. And every single point on the map is pretty much point of interest worth trying to capture. Problem with CoH2 system, is not even the amount of points, but rather the fact that usually in total (excluding the VP), there are only 4 points of interests and unless you just want to either delay or cut-off the enemy, there is no reason to go beyond this (unless its 1v1), since regular points are effectively pointless to the economy, making game more static and predictable.

Well and the fact that faction actually have choices now, which will affect the economy. Not the ones UKF had with "Duh, should I delay my AEC by 30 seconds by picking grade" or "Side grades are here to delay tanks".
Those are at least two core differences which arent subject to change.

And if we start speculating about what balance of the game will be, considering relic keeps vCoH in mind, we can expect much less survivable inf, powerfull yet vulnerable tanks, soft-counters actually working as support units (hello deflection damage), over-all slower teching\teching and maybe even the fact that rebuilding LVs\Vehicles or going multiple of them wont put you in instant disadvantage economy vise.

As for commanders, I honestly think, that its just an over-all improvement over CoH2 system, but I have no illusions about them. There still will be top picked commanders and there still will be meta with the most commonly picked abilities, simply because its hard to balance so many battlegroups (since we will be getting more then 3 per faction) and abilities to be equally worth picking. I see them as a massive QoL improvement and game improvement, but not something game changing or ground breaking.

vCoH nailed doctines because there was only 3 per faction with 6 abilities in each, it was much easier to make them distinct and usefull.

But to make it clear, I didnt play vCoH super competitively back in the day so I might not have super deep knowlage about it, but it was enouth to see the difference between it and CoH2 in how gameplay changed and especially after all CoH2 patches.

Point being, a I hear a lot that CoH2 is masterpiece RTS (at least gameplay wise), while imo a lot was really downgraded in CoH2. QoL and UI was improved in it, thats for sure, but not the gameplay. Thats why I doubt that they will like CoH3, if they didnt like vCoH gameplay in a first place, since its a reference for Relic now.

WHAT... THE STRATEGIC POINTS IN COH2 ARE ALMOST AS GOOD AS FUEL POINTS. 2 OF THEM EQUAL TO FUEL POINT PLUS MUNITIONS.

No the criticism for coh2 is opposite what you said. Every point is too valuable.

In vCoH you had high and low level territories. You also had manpower territories. This meant that territories differed greatly in their value. There might only be 1 high fuel but 4 low fuel. There might also be 2 low fuel and 1 high fuel.

In coh2, even the standard territories grant you fuel and munitions and this means vCoH did a much better job with points of interest

WHAT... THE STRATEGIC POINTS IN COH2 ARE ALMOST AS GOOD AS FUEL POINTS. 2 OF THEM EQUAL TO FUEL POINT PLUS MUNITIONS.

No the criticism for coh2 is opposite what you said. Every point is too valuable.

In vCoH you had high and low level territories. You also had manpower territories. This meant that territories differed greatly in their value. There might only be 1 high fuel but 4 low fuel. There might also be 2 low fuel and 1 high fuel.

In coh2, even the standard territories grant you fuel and munitions and this means vCoH did a much better job with points of interest

I wasnt talking about the raw value of strategic points, what I was saying is that considering the usuall amoung of points on the maps you will have more problems actually getting those.

For instance, because the total amount of the fuel\muni on the maps are spread around all strategic points, the raw value of 1 strategic point is significanly lower then the value of 1 point in vCoH.

In other words, in vCoH capturing even 1 small fuel point from the enemy is worth +5 fuel, in CoH2 you effectively need to capture 2 strategic points to get +6 fuel income. Same with munitions but to a lesser extend.

Point being, that considering how evenly resources are spread in CoH2, how relatively save most strategic points are (outside 1v1) and how they bring almost nothing unless you can capture multiple of them, players just tend to focus more on the high income points because they already give you more then enouth income.

The main problem with Coh2's elevation is also that units won't take elevation into account. They try to fire regardless and will happily hit the ground if they don't roll an accuracy hit. So either it looks odd because the shot goes through the ground, or it looks odd because your unit shoots the ground. In any case, it looks odd because your unit might actually not see its target.

This and you can't attack ground on higher elevation which leads to some interesting scenarios when smoke is involved...

So we're looking at $60-120M revenue from the game, a good chunk of it goes to MS and Valve though.

I hope they made more... 60M$ would be bad

I've heard that salaries in the gaming houses are quite bad in compare to other positions in software engineering. But if we would take in an average we could find on glassdoors we could be looking at 80k$/year

Based on LinkedIn Relic has 290 employees, let's count with 250 - as LinkedIn isn't reliable source, not everyone is updating they profile when they leave the company / are just contractors etc etc ...

If we would take 80k as average (of course there will be lower paid people but also you have directors and such) we could be looking at 20M$ yearly costs just in salaries. You need to throw in additional expenses (offices, hardware, bonuses), I think it could be easily 25M$/year to run the studio. Maybe even more.

So that would be enough to cover the development of the old games / it needs to cover also new games.

But anyway I think AoE4 was a success and Relic is in good position.

1 game away from shutting down down. Also comments on the thread saying if AoE 4 fails then the studio fails..

I think this is not uncommon for a game studio. Making games is extremely expensive. You work on something for several years and have 0 profit. There could be also loans involved in making the games / investors and such...

My friend worked in local small (15ppl) games studio and they were always 1-2 releases from shutting down.
When they worked on a new game, they often needed to release shitty DLC for old games - because they knew that would make money and give them more time to work on a new stuff. Even though they didn't enjoy making the DLCs.


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Anyway making software is extremely expensive these days ...