People thought relic was going to close down 2018

Well as it is, CoH3 has a solid foundation at least.

Also unlike CoH2, CoH3 doesnt really try to bring anything particularly new aside from elevation and destruction systems. All it brings is pretty much an improvenets, which is good.

People shouldn't forget that CoH2 tried to change a lot of things. Be it resource points, commander system, territory capture, whole phylosophy behind factions and their economy.

CoH3 on the other hand is trying to take only working concepts and improve them if nessesery.

The only thing I'm really afaid of right now is the artstyle and UI. While even if we look at CoH2 alpha UI, core idea of UI was already in place. Same with art style.

While relic still saying that not everything is set in stone, there are few big questions about artstyle. And I am not even bitching about game beeing way too colorfull, but the fact that it has poor visability and readability. And some massive changes are requared in texture and shared department.

Imo so far it feels like CoH3 has all the chances to improve upon everything and be the best CoH mechanically, but also from the artstyle and visual perspective it might also end up the worst.

I mean, even main CoH3 image looks kinda ugly to be honest. I'm cringing from the US soldier face all the time I see it.

Maybe its the problem of the updated engine. Even DoW3 if you look at it closer, has the same problem (if you take individual static images, everything kinda blends together), but it was some what compinsated by contrast colors on the unit models and very shard and distinct animations, which wont work for realistic setting.

Word. We all love COH2 but it's not a terribly high bar for COH3 to improve upon. Heck, better designed factions with full unit rosters and a better non-doctrinal unit system alone is probably enough to put COH3 > COH2

It's completely subjective. I love the Imperial Guard at Warhammer 40,000 and I might even have bought the horrible DoW3 if IG was in it. I like the USSR more, so I don't really want to play the same factions for the third time. I just got bored after playing a little alpha multiplayer. The only reason I will buy is if the Italian faction is and will be as an independent faction and not a battlegroup for Germany. And my friends with whom I play in СoH were not thrilled with playing the same factions for the third time.

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.

This looks like you have some misconceptions about software dev.

The build designation of alpha has no bearing on how far away the game is from full release, first of all.

Secondly, it'll only be beta when there's a build called beta and it's in player's hands for beta testing.

Your assumptions say that you think they don't have enough time to go beta(!) In truth, it's up to them how long they take and when they start labelling their builds differently.

After watching the Alpha / Beta test video, what a nostalgia. Especially the Soviet barbed wire, why can't we bring it back? This is a really interesting and unique mechanic.
https://youtu.be/iGayHh6yQu8?t=227

I mean, even main CoH3 image looks kinda ugly to be honest. I'm cringing from the US soldier face all the time I see it.

Almost every game for the last 15 years has animated models in the UI. Is there a chance maybe Relic plan to do this with Coh3 as well? That would explain plasticy 3D rendered looking images instead of hand painted art style pics. I dont recall seeing animated models in AOE4 though... Hmmm

I personally like the portraits in early video with the uniform and not just head more than the current ones or the animated ones in coh3

I also like the "weathered photo" effect on portraits.

Maybe I just have connected UI with "people" that tank to you with futuristic RTS like starcraft and make less sense to me in WWII settings.

...

Big plus to this.
Overall, Coh3 doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. Coh2 has a very satisfying, even addictive core loop.
The game shows scars mostly of Relic trying to create completely different factions with the DLC that they didn't know fully what to do with when they found out that their design doesn't work as intended. Plus some additional issues like outdated texts, XP system, some ability mechanics and so on. Issues that accumulated if there is no dedicated developer tasked with cleaning those up regularly.
On top of that, there are some engine limitations like missing side armor etc, but overall they are not game breaking.

I am also concerned about the asthetics and UI. So many things look like plastic, cheap figurines sold to tourists at trash shops. It starts with the people on the main cover, the soldiers on the loading screen, the soldier's heads in game when selecting a squad, many of the vehicles, sometimes also infantry models.
Literally all clickable buttons and abilities. Everything is rectangular or square with 90° angles, mostly white background and visually fully floating above the actual rest of the game.

They really need to fix this. In the end it would not be an absolute deal breaker if the rest is fine, but it just lessens the experience. If I start CoH2, I know it is a gruesome war with tragic heroism right from the main menu, simply by using a dark design with metal plates and some type of melancholic music in the background, completed by the flag of one of the nations. CoH3's main menu reminded me of the plastic toy soldiers I played with when I was little.

The only thing CoH3 is bringing to the table right now is QoL improvements. In every other aspect CoH2 is superior.

Best case scenario right now is it takes the CoH2 path and slowly turns itself into something decent in 5 years.

Based post, but i hope not.

What I really did not like in COH3 so far is ambient building destruction.

They way that brick building get damage seem unrealistic to me and looks more like concrete building than brick buildings.

Basically:

(1) COH3 is going good as long as it does not try to do something radical. The units, factions etc are all well and good.
(2) UI tries to match mobile gaming standards, which I presume it is to appease normies. Just look at the UI of AOE4, it's like kindergarten.
(3) Just make 4 different factions, give them slightly different teching upgrades but make the basic tools universal (at, mg, snares). The game will be insta classic. Try and save 5 years of balancework. Then I guarantee people will flock to buy whatever pos dlc comes next.

Big plus to this.
Overall, Coh3 doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. Coh2 has a very satisfying, even addictive core loop.
The game shows scars mostly of Relic trying to create completely different factions with the DLC that they didn't know fully what to do with when they found out that their design doesn't work as intended. Plus some additional issues like outdated texts, XP system, some ability mechanics and so on. Issues that accumulated if there is no dedicated developer tasked with cleaning those up regularly.
On top of that, there are some engine limitations like missing side armor etc, but overall they are not game breaking.

I am also concerned about the asthetics and UI. So many things look like plastic, cheap figurines sold to tourists at trash shops. It starts with the people on the main cover, the soldiers on the loading screen, the soldier's heads in game when selecting a squad, many of the vehicles, sometimes also infantry models.
Literally all clickable buttons and abilities. Everything is rectangular or square with 90° angles, mostly white background and visually fully floating above the actual rest of the game.

They really need to fix this. In the end it would not be an absolute deal breaker if the rest is fine, but it just lessens the experience. If I start CoH2, I know it is a gruesome war with tragic heroism right from the main menu, simply by using a dark design with metal plates and some type of melancholic music in the background, completed by the flag of one of the nations. CoH3's main menu reminded me of the plastic toy soldiers I played with when I was little.

Hard agree. The cover art for me is one of the cringiest I have seen all my life. I hope they change it.

Just look at COH2's which I believe has the best artistic design out of all three. The cover shows a commisar with a coat hard at work at defending his motherland. COH3's cover shows a weird us soldier looking at you while a hard hatted german and a faggotcuck spectacle man lay in the rainbow painted background. I get that Mediterranean theater is supposed to look more "bright" in contrast with Eastern Theater's grim aesthetic but cmon.

Hard agree. The cover art for me is one of the cringiest I have seen all my life. I hope they change it.

Just look at COH2's which I believe has the best artistic design out of all three. The cover shows a commisar with a coat hard at work at defending his motherland. COH3's cover shows a weird us soldier looking at you while a hard hatted german and a faggotcuck spectacle man lay in the rainbow painted background. I get that Mediterranean theater is supposed to look more "bright" in contrast with Eastern Theater's grim aesthetic but cmon.

Although the design of the CoH2 is good, the commissioner's Show Spoilerdesign is very horrible and ridiculous. He is stereotypically awful and his uniform is something from the Red Alert and not from the Second World War. It's a mixture of post-war designations with terrible medals, just like the Red Alert.

I don’t understand what prevented from taking a real photograph and interpreting it for game design, for example, the famous photograph "Kombat" Show Spoiler which is one of the symbols of war. But apparently what is the plot of the game and his personification - the Red Alert.

Although the design of the CoH2 is good, the commissioner's Show Spoiler

design is very horrible and ridiculous. He is stereotypically awful and his uniform is something from the Red Alert and not from the Second World War. It's a mixture of post-war designations with terrible medals, just like the Red Alert.

I don’t understand what prevented from taking a real photograph and interpreting it for game design, for example, the famous photograph "Kombat" Show Spoiler

which is one of the symbols of war. But apparently what is the plot of the game and his personification - the Red Alert.

I have to disagree with you in some aspects.

I like COH2's cover art a lot. Sure, I get that in many respects is not exactly historically accurate but I believe it portrays the struggle of the Soviet people [and the Soviet state, NKVD and all] to repel an invasion that for a while seemed certain to win. In that commisar's face I see determination, hard realism and above all resolution to win no matter the losses. Also, the background showing soldiers running disorderly with T34s by their side shows the "all or nothing" psyche that has characterised the Soviet people in most of the normie literature we have today.

And for that I like it. Sure the coat's style might be inaccurate (never bothered to research this) but I feel that the struggle is well presented in this way. Red Alert or not, the cover art is badass.

But don't take this the wrong way. I can see where your point is.

I have to disagree with you in some aspects.

I like COH2's cover art a lot. Sure, I get that in many respects is not exactly historically accurate but I believe it portrays the struggle of the Soviet people [and the Soviet state, NKVD and all] to repel an invasion that for a while seemed certain to win. In that commisar's face I see determination, hard realism and above all resolution to win no matter the losses. Also, the background showing soldiers running disorderly with T34s by their side shows the "all or nothing" psyche that has characterised the Soviet people in most of the normie literature we have today.

And for that I like it. Sure the coat's style might be inaccurate (never bothered to research this) but I feel that the struggle is well presented in this way. Red Alert or not, the cover art is badass.

But don't take this the wrong way. I can see where your point is.

Just read the real story of photography "Kombat" is a junior political commissar who raised the pinned soldiers to attack and died immediately. This is a photograph taken just moments before his death.

Or take this photo for example, it perfectly shows the mood of the game, and there are many such photos.Show Spoiler

Wow, I am so glad they didn't stick to the commander options on the right side. Can you imagine how many misclicks you could get by having that there?

Actually I don't remember a single triple A company game where the public has been able to play-test over a year before launch. Do you know one? Because I'm genuinely curious. The CoH2 Alpha launched in early 2013, a couple of months before release if I'm not mistaken. And looked totally different (and worse) than the release version of June 2013.

To me, thats actually not that far off from what we got in the release build though. Which is why what we have now is concerning rather than comforting. Tons of modern releases are hide behind the 'its just beta' line (Cyberpunk, Battlefield 2042, Anthem, Watch Dogs) only to retain all those bugs or poor design choices at launch.

Even CoH2 had a rocky start and it took years to get CoH2 to where it is today. Even more than that, the developers never really left the game in a great place. They offloaded balance to the community team, which let them turn the multiplayer into a solid game, but single player and co-op are still buggy, broken messes. Tons of UI, QoL, and Netcode updates should have been implemented as well and never were. The decision not to allow for roster overhauls was completely ridiculous. I really enjoy playing CoH2, but it has some huge issues that were more or less abandoned, and I see no reason to see why CoH3 will be any different.

I get what you mean but we will see. I think the CoH1 US vs Wehrmacht matchup was always extremely popular in the CoH fanbase and personally I think this even improved in CoH3. Not to mention that I am pretty sure that more factions will come as well

I'm not a fan. CoH2 pacing and matches felt way more entertaining to me than CoH1s ever did. People love it in CoH1 because its the only matchup without a gimmicky army that ruins any semblance of balance, not for its innate strength.

I think IntoTheRains basing his statements on the public Relic we see where it takes 6 months to put together a map patch. Something any one of us could do in 2-3 days tops. Lets hope that is because a patch is low priority and the guys/gals have their heads down and getting to it now.

I almost made a working 1v1 Coh style game in a month by myself in my spare time. So we should see some massive changes pretty quick.

Most of my complaints are actually toward the general direction of the gameplay and roster design right now, but yes, Relic doesn't make quick progress on anything and the dwindling time we have remaining has to include 2 more faction designs as well as a ton of UI work and bug fixes. This suggests (along with a quick talk with Miragefla) that the factions we have now are pretty much what the final rosters are going to look like.

This looks like you have some misconceptions about software dev.

The build designation of alpha has no bearing on how far away the game is from full release, first of all.

Secondly, it'll only be beta when there's a build called beta and it's in player's hands for beta testing.

Your assumptions say that you think they don't have enough time to go beta(!) In truth, it's up to them how long they take and when they start labelling their builds differently.

If the labels are arbitrary then the 'pre-alpha' defense doesn't make any sense as a shield then. However they want to define it, the game is less than a year from its intended launch and a LONG ways from finished.

I am also concerned about the asthetics and UI. So many things look like plastic, cheap figurines sold to tourists at trash shops. It starts with the people on the main cover, the soldiers on the loading screen, the soldier's heads in game when selecting a squad, many of the vehicles, sometimes also infantry models.
Literally all clickable buttons and abilities. Everything is rectangular or square with 90° angles, mostly white background and visually fully floating above the actual rest of the game.

Art style aside, I somewhat can see where this UI came from.

There are pottentually multiple reasons:
1) The fact that its DoW3 making CoH3. If you compare DoW3 UI to the skeleton we have in CoH3, its pretty simple to see a lot of similarities. The same way core idea behind vCoH was taken fron DoW1, it also shares a lot of similarities.
2) Considering who was invited to be in "closed testers" group it also makes a lot of sense why it has such state. AE himself was very vocal, in one of the first videos regarding CoH3, that he as a caster likes this new UI idea, that it gives more visability so to speak. Top players most likely said something the same along those lines, since they dont really care about UI, because they do everything via hotkeys anyway and pottentually said that vCoH\CoH2 UI unnessesry massive.
3) No-one was kinda vocal about the whole UI thing. CoH\CoH2 still has one of the best UI in RTS games if you ask me and most of the people take this for granted never actually telling that UI was almost perfect, if slightly too big. And since no-one actually praised old UI, but at the same time few complained that it is too big/old looking, relic decided that changing the whole philosophy behind it is worth doing.

What I dont understand, is why they just take CoH2 replay UI as a basis for CoH3 UI, because it contains all nessesery space and possitions for the ideas of CoH3 and it can fits perfectly this minimalistic yet stylish UI.

At least this is what I am thinking, because its still kinda strange how Relic keep telling us that they care about "old players" and we can see it in mechanics and gameplay choses, yet they slapped complete UI overhaul, noone ever asked for.

If the labels are arbitrary then the 'pre-alpha' defense doesn't make any sense as a shield then. However they want to define it, the game is less than a year from its intended launch and a LONG ways from finished.

I didn't say the labels are arbitrary; they're not...

You also seemed to miss the inference that it'll be done when they say it is.

Well as it is, CoH3 has a solid foundation at least.

Also unlike CoH2, CoH3 doesnt really try to bring anything particularly new aside from elevation and destruction systems. All it brings is pretty much an improvenets, which is good.

Elevation is actually an interesting mechanic, since it is a natural shot blocker. A map could be very open, but at the same time not. This also brings more emphasis to knowledge of the map and ability to use it as an advantage. Coh2 also has elevation, but (AFAIK) it can be ignored, if the firing unit rolls an accuracy hit.

Elevation is actually an interesting mechanic, since it is a natural shot blocker. A map could be very open, but at the same time not. This also brings more emphasis to knowledge of the map and ability to use it as an advantage. Coh2 also has elevation, but (AFAIK) it can be ignored, if the firing unit rolls an accuracy hit.

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.