i fear Relic/Sega is wanting too much

I think Relic is overdoing themselves, or Sega is overdoing them.

So you have:
Dynamic campaign
linear campaign with story sequences
4 factions
MP for 1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4
Map refining, balance refining
a new Engine
Bugs, glitches, visual errors etc.

and that all in 4 months

Why isn't SEGA giving them more time?


I'm afraid!

You now have all right to tbh. Lets even put campaign and maps aside.

Last MP beta was 6 months ago, with USF and Wehrmacht factions being more or less flashed out before it, we had few balance problems here and there during testing.

Right now as it stands, game still runs like shit (no meaningful improvements since last alpha) and we dont have even have MP versions of DAK\UKF, not even their concepts to discuss.


At very least, relic MUST do another beta test for multiple weeks right until the launch for MP with all 4 factions or at least new two, otherwise it balance will be messed up similar to release state of COH2.

But my main concern if the performance, because for real, so much time passed and nothing was improved.

I do wish they'd push the release date to next year. It'll no doubt go down badly with corporate, but a bad launch stays with the product for a long time. I'm not saying this because I made a prediction (way back) of a next-year launch, but because the timescale doesn't matchup. The game industry has enough burnt out devs from crunch as is.

>bad launch stays with the product for a long time
So true. I hope they will push it to Christmas at least.

Definitely agree with the concerns. CoH2 took years to recover from its horrible launch

Definitely agree with the concerns. CoH2 took years to recover from its horrible launch

Well and the horrible WFA balance? ^^

Depends how long ago development started, think of it like LEGO, building the pieces of LEGO and designing them to fit together takes time but once that aspect is done, you just slot them all together and (hopefully) they fit.

Oversimplified but adding a dynamic campaign AND a linear one isn't as resource intensive as it sounds.

Problem is, relic don't have the Lego pieces made yet if the latest "demo" was their current state of development, but id gather its a few months out of date at the point of release at the least.

I am looking forward to it and would like to have my hands on it sooner than later.
Reporting bugs and helping to improve the gameplay is okay for me.
And for me personally the performance was okay and I do not have such an high end gaming machine.
And at least the new USF looks well rounded as well as Wehrmacht. DAK and Brits look at least kinda interesting.

I do not mind that much the dynamic campaign.

I am looking forward to it and would like to have my hands on it sooner than later.
Reporting bugs and helping to improve the gameplay is okay for me.
And for me personally the performance was okay and I do not have such an high end gaming machine.
And at least the new USF looks well rounded as well as Wehrmacht. DAK and Brits look at least kinda interesting.

I do not mind that much the dynamic campaign.

Reddit-tier opinion.

We are consumers and by no means are entitled to, or have the knowledge for, bug reporting on a commercially released game. There are people getting paid for that.

A game, like a book, or a movie (and that may surprise you) is a product, not a service. Back in 2018, for 60euros you could but RDR2 (day one perfect).

Opinions like these are what make the modern videogame scene a complete cancer, since idiotic companies expect consoomers to be testers, bug reporters, creators etc... whilst in reality a player is just a player.

COH3 will most likely suck on release and need 12month patching to even be playable. Exactly what happened with AOE4.

You now have all right to tbh. Lets even put campaign and maps aside.

Last MP beta was 6 months ago, with USF and Wehrmacht factions being more or less flashed out before it, we had few balance problems here and there during testing.

Right now as it stands, game still runs like shit (no meaningful improvements since last alpha) and we dont have even have MP versions of DAK\UKF, not even their concepts to discuss.


At very least, relic MUST do another beta test for multiple weeks right until the launch for MP with all 4 factions or at least new two, otherwise it balance will be messed up similar to release state of COH2.

But my main concern if the performance, because for real, so much time passed and nothing was improved.

I do wish they'd push the release date to next year. It'll no doubt go down badly with corporate, but a bad launch stays with the product for a long time. I'm not saying this because I made a prediction (way back) of a next-year launch, but because the timescale doesn't matchup. The game industry has enough burnt out devs from crunch as is.

>bad launch stays with the product for a long time
So true. I hope they will push it to Christmas at least.

Definitely agree with the concerns. CoH2 took years to recover from its horrible launch

Based. You are going to make it.

I think Relic is overdoing themselves, or Sega is overdoing them.

So you have:
Dynamic campaign
linear campaign with story sequences
4 factions
MP for 1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4
Map refining, balance refining
a new Engine
Bugs, glitches, visual errors etc.

and that all in 4 months

Why isn't SEGA giving them more time?


I'm afraid!

they can 'do' all these is probably because the 'new' engine is old/tweaked essence.

nothing of the engine felt clearly upgraded.

units abilities seems recycled and mixed around once again.

so they just needed to focus on content and level designs....but yet it seems they hired a bunch of noobass mobile developers. in 4 months time, i expected a much more polished mission alpha than what was shown.

they can 'do' all these is probably because the 'new' engine is old/tweaked essence.

nothing of the engine felt clearly upgraded.

units abilities seems recycled and mixed around once again.

so they just needed to focus on content and level designs....but yet it seems they hired a bunch of noobass mobile developers. in 4 months time, i expected a much more polished mission alpha than what was shown.

+++++++++

Feels like more and more of the budget is being put in marketing instead of the dev budget. 7.7% inflation in Canada this year isn't helping either. I can't imagine any of the good developers staying if they aren't getting a good cola raise

2022 is just a terrible year all around to release a game

Feels like more and more of the budget is being put in marketing instead of the dev budget. 7.7% inflation in Canada this year isn't helping either. I can't imagine any of the good developers staying if they aren't getting a good cola raise

2022 is just a terrible year all around to release a game

That's why it would be absolutely welcome by everyone for them to delay it, even for a year.

A bad launch stays forever, a delay is just a bummer.

While a delay would surely be beneficial, CoH3 will be way better in the long run.

That judgement is obviously pure gut feeling, but from what Relic showed so far, they at least seem to know and work on 90% of CoH2's shortcomings. I assume CoH3 comes out fairly buggy, with acceptable optimization and probably overall bad balance. The first >half year will probably be fixing glaring issues and balance, as well as implementing some more "basic" and QoL features.

But there's a lot of promising signs that Relic/CoH3 will fare better. As mentioned above, Relic at least acknowledges a lot of issues and declares they were working on them. If that's really true will be seen, but it's not that they'd completely neglect where designs in CoH2 failed and kept pushing for it. Engagement of the community is higher as well as their hiring of community members into staff might potentially give them a bit better look/understanding how the game looks outside of their testing, at least as long as they actually have to say something.
The current visual fixes regarding contrast and visual hierarchy gave me confidence, that at least that part of the company knows how they can fix stuff quickly if the community calls for it. It's probably blindness to your own work that makes it often hard to detect room for improvement. It could be a hint that Relic does not have sufficient reviewing procedures. It is overall shitty to outsource that part to the community, but overall it can still yield a good game.

Other smaller factors will likely also contribute in the long run to a better game. Just to mention one: While it initially doesn't sound special that there will be four instead of the usual two factions at launch besides having twice the amount of equipment to play with, it will surely make the introduction of new factions via DLC smoother. CoH2 suffered a lot downstream from the DLCs, because Wehrmacht and Soviets have been balanced so intricately to one another, that - in combination with Relic's shoddy design for the new factions - the introduction of the new factions not only lead to problems for the new ones, but heavy changes on the old ones as well. Having four factions at launch will at the very least mitigate that.
I haven't followed AoE4 an awful lot, but from what I get the factions there are also more asymmetric than in AoE2, and the faction balance has become alright. The game also seems to regain players at the moment, so Relic seems to be able now to weather some storm and improve the game they have.
And last but not least: CoH is Relic's core franchise. They have more interest in keeping CoH alive than AoE, so in the end they'll also invest more resources into CoH if need to be.


My best guess is that buying CoH3 6-12 months post launch is probably the best strategy if you like the franchise. At this point, the game should be decently fixed with the initial weaknesses being addressed to not distract from the actual improvements.



(edited typos)

While a delay would surely be beneficial, CoH3 will be way better in the long run.

That judgement is obviously pure gut feeling, but from what Relic showed so far, they at least seem to know and work on 90% of CoH2's shortcomings. I assume CoH3 comes out fairly buggy, with acceptable optimization and probably overall bad balance. The first >half year will probably be fixing glaring issues and balance, as well as implementing some more "basic" and QoL features.

But there's a lot of promising signs that Relic/CoH3 will fare better. As mentioned above, Relic at least acknowledges a lot of issues and declares they were working on them. If that's really true will be seen, but it's not that they'd completely neglect where designs in CoH2 failed and kept pushing for it. Engagement of the community is higher as well as their hiring of community members into staff might potentially give them a bit better look/understanding how the game looks outside of their testing, at least as long as they actually have to say something.
The current visual fixes regarding contrast and visual hierarchy gave me confidence, that at least that part of the company knows how they can fix stuff quickly if the community calls for it. It's probably a lack of blindness to your own work that makes it often hard to detect room for improvement. It could be a hint that Relic does not have sufficient reviewing procedures. It is overall shitty to outsource that part to the community, but overall it can still yield a good game.

Other smaller factors will likely also contribute in the long run to a better game. Just to mention one: While it initially doesn't sound special that there will be four instead of the usual two factions at launch besides having twice the amount of equipment to play with, it will surely make the introduction of new factions via DLC smoother. CoH2 suffered a lot downstream from the DLCs, because Wehrmacht and Soviets have been balanced so intricately to one another, that - in combination with Relic's shoddy design for the new factions - the introduction of the new factions not only lead to problems for the new ones, but heavy changes on the old ones as well. Having four factions at launch will at the very least mitigate that.
I haven't followed AoE4 an awful lot, but from what I get the factions there are also more asymmetric than in AoE2, and the faction balance has become alright. The game also seems to regain players at the moment, so Relic seems to be able now to weather some storm and improve the game they have.
And last but not least: CoH is Relic's core franchise. They have more interest in keeping CoH alive than AoE, so in the end they'll also invest more resources into CoH if need to be.


My best guess is that buying CoH3 6-12 months post launch is probably the best strategy if you like the franchise. At this point, the game should be decently fixed with the initial weaknesses being addressed to not distract from the actual improvements.

Very good takes, some of which I did not think of before.

All I care about is COH3 being a decent game that will give me a couple of hundred hours' fun.

I played the alpha for 5 hours and messed around a lot with the game in order to make sure to see everything. There are many problems, not only from easily fixed statistical-imbalance that only require a different value in a .txt somewhere, but glaring graphical, ui, qol problems.

Now of course it's a given that it was an "Alpha" but I cannot help but wonder how much of "Alpha" into "Beta" into "Gamma" etc. will take place before the final launch. Now I am not a game developer by any means, but I cast doubts over whether such an undertaking would be feasible especially with the much advertised "anti crunch" tactics.

And for one, I think it's very very very bad to see us, the consumering public as any sort of "gamedev testers" in order to account for a very very very awful launch that we spent 60$ on. Stuff like "let the game come out and we will give feedback etc" is not only grossly unprofessional, but grossly irresponsible to fellow consumers.

I do not pay 60$ to be a game tester. If I wanted to become one, I would make a career out of it and get paid for it. You buy a game for 60$ only to play it "as is", since that's what also the Terms of Service give you as a consumer. There's no legal obligation for the consumer to take part in development, that's why many corporations take advantage of this little loophole to make whole willing gaming communities unpaid testing labor. That's bad, and I think lawyers agree with me.

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Please, you don't know how the game developing system works, you just assume things or what you've heard and that doesn't make you right. also you keep saying you are paying 60$ to test the game for Relic, but you have already tested the game for free, many alphas probably. I think you fail to see, how important it is for us to test the game at any stage and how lucky we are to improve the game in its pre-launch state.

Wanting the game to be perfect on launch is just asking to be disappointed, nothing is perfect. Ever.

I do apologize for going at you like this, but dude, you are just assuming and wanting too much while being cheap. (I don't wanna pay for other peoples hard work) If this mentality keeps spreading,:" Don't buy the game on launch, but 6-12 months after launch because we know best", then Relic's expected sales will suffer. Cancel culture at it's best.

From my perspective, CoH3 is coming along nicely and will have a much better launch than CoH2 did. Be it delayed or not.

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Fair points and interesting perspectives. I too dont have a single clue about what actual game development looks like. But I feel like you somewhat protect the anti-consumer and shitty business practices of the modern games industry.
I am baffled by the 60 Euro price tag for coh 3, especially with Relics trackrecord and with the "alpha" we had. It screams to the average joe like me "just another half-backed game that was forced to launch".
Calling it 'cheap' for not wanting to buy shitty products is a copout answer with all due respect. In the end its Relics responsibility to release products that are bought which in turn will keep them in business, if they fail to achieve that at full price, its their own fault. Its not our obligation to "save" relic from going belly up.

I dearly hope I will be proven wrong with my cynicism.

I am baffled by the 60 Euro price tag for coh 3

Assuming Relic keeps their word, it would be 60€ for four factions and two campaigns, thats way more content on launch than ever before. If you think 60 bucks is too much for that then I really don't know what to tell you.

It gives me the impression of you being this type of player that never wants to spend more than 20€ on any game on this planet ever, even if it's Rockstar Games levels of quality and even if you get thousands of hours of content from it