COH3 is going to be a massive flop

You can't really do groundbreaking invention with every iteration of the game. New sub genre can appear only once, unless you want to drop all the players enjoying it, you pretty have to have to make it again on follow up titles with improvements.

Unless you want to innovate forcefully and end up with DoW3 again.

And if graphics are problem and don't look great for you, well, upgrade.
Its rather obvious that graphics in modern times will not have as leaping jumps as it had 10-15 years ago as we're reaching rapidly cap of what current technology can produce.

Its astonishing seeing amount of people not understanding that.

LoL if you se other games like F1 from 2011 to 2022 there is a big difference.... But the game wants u to pay 60 Euros for it, and its not 60 Euros worth it... If it was free to play it will be okay but not for that amount of money!

LoL if you se other games like F1 from 2011 to 2022 there is a big difference.... But the game wants u to pay 60 Euros for it, and its not 60 Euros worth it... If it was free to play it will be okay but not for that amount of money!

I will, and I will have hundreds of hours of fun, thanks.

You also didn't "debunked" anything I've said, you just threw random statement without bringing up mechanics so I'll just tell you that in both your F1 games you run in circles with a fast care, nothing changed there except graphics and how many things happen at pit stop, hardly genre-defining changes.

And contrary to both previous games, this one gives us 4 factions as opposed to 2 and DLC year later adding up to OVER 60 Euro, not to mention we have more stock units and options then we had stock+doctrine in both previous games.

You see what you want to see, I see what actually is there.

Personally, I can't enjoy a game that has significant issues with graphics, such as lighting, shadows, and textures.
Additionally, imbalanced gameplay can also ruin the experience, for example, the Afrika Korps in this game are overpowered but still fun to play.

Have fun but no complain

For fuck's sake, a game isn't gonna flop because graphics or audio is not fully nailed down. It's the GAMEPLAY that really matters in the end.

CoH2 multiplayer at launch was:

- trash meta
- boring units without weapon profiles and dull veterancy
- laggy af games because no battle servers
- terrible performance esp. snow maps and blizzards
- no ladders

--> 75% of the launch-day playerbase gone in just 3 months


Seriously all the people here who praise and worship CoH2 so much, I just cannot imagine you were here from the beginning since June 2013

Apart from the last point, CoH3 has NONE of these issues, and with all the complaining (me included) we do about coh3, we have to really acknowledge the coh2 launch disasters that are now being avoided and commend Relic for that.
Strategy diversity so far feels AMAZING in CoH3, literally every single person seems to play a different build and strategy in coh3 and says it's the best one. I cannot remember this ever being the case in CoH2 at all.

In nearly 10 hours I didn't have a single crash or FPS problem despite never restarting, and my PC is over 6 years old.


The first couple of months are probably gonna be rough for hardcore multiplayer people like me but I am optimistic the game will be amazing by the end of this year.

If you've played CoH2 for 10 years you're obviously going to prefer its sound, graphics and UI, but I don't see any criticism of the gameplay here. In terms of gameplay and army choice, CoH3 for me appears to be miles ahead of CoH2 at release in terms of gameplay and strategic options, it looks very promising and entertaining as long as exclusive DLC isn't introduced.

The graphics in many instance just look bad. The desert maps are just empty looking and devoid of character. The units on desert maps are extremely bad at standing out from the background. Tanks covered in dirt are just bland. The whole desert enviroment just makes for very drab and boring battles. It just looks horrendous.

I want to elaborate on "New Relic's" never-ending mediocrity and why is this happening.

First, the question is this;
Will AoE + CoH mediocrity be enough to save "New Relic"?


Many studios, died making fewer mistakes than Relic/Sega.
By spreading focus + talent between AoE4, DoW3, and CoH IP, Relic excels at nothing.
Sega is partly responsible for this as they were not ready to invest in CoH3 developments after the CoH2 life cycle.

This can be confirmed using LinkedIn sources; so many CoH2 talent/leads either left or joined the AoE4 team.
Along with this fact;

According to LinkedIn, the turnover rate in the games is around 15.5 percent, higher than any other tech sector

For comparison (former Relic IP) to help demonstrate "New Relic" ongoing talent bleed;
Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak (low budget RTS from BBI)


These desert maps from BBI studio look aesthetically better than CoH3. Since a large portion of CoH3 marketing is focused on desert maps, mediocrity is not good enough.

Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak is made by Blackbird Interactive and run by Relic vets such as the CEO.
At release, BBI was only 50 devs and on a small RTS budget. Most of their budget went into single-player content. But for a Relic indie RTS its quality was good compared to the money invested.

"New Relic" studio leadership also took a big gamble by growing the studio too quickly.
By attracting new investments, it's easy to spend more money and hire more devs.
But it's not easy to do layoffs because Sega/Relic leaders made catastrophic mistakes.

With the CoH2 release, Relic was only 110 devs and growing a brand new team for DoW3.
Now with CoH3, the studio has over 300 devs and too many mouths to feed.
In its current state, this studio is financially doomed to fail.

Old Relic and old Blizzard mindset were focused on excellence. Relic had this mindset up to CoH1 at least. In comparison to Blizzard Starcraft IP, old Relic was on a tight RTS budget with games such as Homeworld 1 and Homeworld 2.
With THQ/Relic, they took a big budget gamble with CoH1 and won.

My advice from a fan perspective?
At the very least make Relic work to get your money. Don't blindly buy CoH3 at full price and expect that money will go into making great games. That's not how consumers get better value for their money.
As a consumer, our wallet is our only real voting power within these big corporations.
Keep bailing out the losers that make bad investments/decisions and this cycle will continue.

Many corporations have died because they grew too quickly.
These are economic realities Relic can’t escape from.

For recent proof of this, former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey who openly admits to this financial suicide;

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey apologises to employees amidst layoffs;
https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/twitter-founder-jack-dorsey-apologises-to-employees-amidst-layoffs-122110501395_1.html

I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation:
I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that," he tweeted.

-Quote Jack Dorsey

yes the disappointment with coh3 is seeing not much improvement in the underlying engine and feeling our alpha feedback ignored and feeling hurt about console ports taking up devtime

yes coh3 meta and performance is much better than coh2 at same stage. but its not enough since coh1+2 already provides alot of base materials.

it the upset that coh3 doesn't seem to break new grounds after 10 years.

the fear of flopping is also more like dow3 when relic ignored feedback and press on with the game design

For fuck's sake, a game isn't gonna flop because graphics or audio is not fully nailed down. It's the GAMEPLAY that really matters in the end.

COH 1/2 impressed casual players with amazing immersion and that`s 100% a big part of the success of the franchise. No way would COH2 be able to attract so many players 10 years after launch without amazing grahpics and sound.

COH2 even had amazing graphics at launch that were poorly optimized but hat a wow factor. The game had problems and the launch was bad but the potential was obviously there. Start COH2, load up one of the initial winter maps like Pripyat Winter and look how soldiers and tanks leave marks in the snow and look at the visuals in general. It looks amazing even by 2023 standards.

COH2 is often hated on but its success is pretty amazing. Over 5000 concurrent players almost 10 years after launch.

With COH3 everything just feels mediocre and in many ways a downgrade. I don`t think they can fix the sound for example. The Tiger sounds like a vacuum cleaner and is barely audible even when looking directly at it. This is such a huge disappointment compared to COH2. I have no idea how they could manage to get it so wrong.

The graphics have potential but they desperately need to fix lighting which is just horrific at the moment and insanely off-putting for a very large percentage of casual players.

COH3 will have dominant metas very soon as well. Every RTS has. Considering the amount of units and battle groups this will be even harder to balance than COH2. People just haven`t figured out what OP meta they can abuse yet. This is an advantage for now but will change over time. The amount of units and diversity is good and Relic should be applauded for it but that doesn`t help when the basics are just not there.

I am just disappointed by the lack of love and effort that were put into this game. This is especially obvious when looking at the UI in game and in the main menu. Both suck and just look so low-budget. It just makes the game feel soulless. I can`t believe this game has been developed since 2017. Either Relic developers are simply not as talented today as they were 15 years ago or they cut corners to save cost.

COH 1/2 impressed casual players with amazing immersion and that`s 100% a big part of the success of the franchise. No way would COH2 be able to attract so many players 10 years after launch without amazing grahpics and sound.

COH2 even had amazing graphics at launch that were poorly optimized but hat a wow factor. The game had problems and the launch was bad but the potential was obviously there. Start COH2, load up one of the initial winter maps like Pripyat Winter and look how soldiers and tanks leave marks in the snow and look at the visuals in general. It looks amazing even by 2023 standards.

Its cool and all, but even if consider, that CoH3 for some reason don't have this "magical immersion", its actually the first game in the series which is aimed at "impressing casual players" by allowing them to actually play the game, instead of looking at the picture.

Not only they are receiving plenty of SP content, they are getting separate casual MM, they are getting tactical pause if the game is way too fast for them.

On top of that, game finally have functional bots. When I was messing around testing units, I was playing like if standart AI was from coh2 and bots beat the shit out of me, by actually retreating, dodging nades, using abilities and so on.

MP learned from both CoH1\2 providing diversity of builds and map design and QoL from CoH2.

For the amount of content on launch, game easily costs its money, considering other CoHs with all the DLCs would have been costing more then CoH3 right now.

Optimisation wise, its almost perfect, not only in comparison but objectively, allowing people even with old rigs to run it, unlike CoH1\2.

And the only criticism is the "Wow its soulless, wow I dont like colour pattern". All modern GPUs software comes with game-profile, which allows you to adjust post-processing, if you don't like how the game looks, just adjust colour pattern for it.

I don't think the sounds are bad at all, it's just the mixing that is a bit off. The directional audio is very confusing as well. You will get a punchier sound if you change the dynamic range to "compressed" in the sound options. That should be the default mode imo.

I don't think it will flop. I played about 10 hours of it this weekend without a single bugsplat. I'll take that over better sounds. Considering that most people play single-player, all the customization options in unit composition will probably keep them playing longer than players did with COH2.

The UI could be better arranged, but after playing it long enough I got used to it. COH1's and COH2's were better but it isn't so bad that the game is unplayable.

The tactical map needs to go back to the old size. They shrunk it to where it isn't very helpful. Also, in COH2, rotating the tac map would rotate the normal view without changing the elevation. They changed that for COH3 and I'm not a fan.

The instant, launching s-mines from the Tiger are going to generate a lot of complaints. So far my record is 2 full squads wiped. Call-ins of all types seem strong, but especially the American air call-ins.

I liked the change to the Walking Stuka. It looks better and is more accurate to what it would've been.

I'm not sure I'm a fan of all the ways to get free veterancy.

I have to say, all the issues so far which i am having with the game are fixable at the latest post-launch.

After 20 hours the gameplay is top notch if you ignore balance issues and some bugs.

Like others have said before me, the variety of viable units is really good. But one has to consider that nobody has fully figured out the game yet, thus no meta is established.

I am really critical of relic, but the game is fun and refreshing to play, I am curious how the game will look at launch.

yes i enjoy the tech test but in different manner. yes it is a refreshing look.

but at same time, im not sure of the everything on the table design.

coupled with what AE said of poor gunplay.

coh3 now may divide coh2 players. there's is less focus on marked progression and unit preservation.

i don't feel a difference when i rebuild a gren squad late game while my vet squad got wiped.

i seems able to get all tech structures up, and i can field what ever units from it. a bit more generous with resources and units. i can field 3 p4 even when i don't dominate resources points

coh3 seems to much reduce the penny pinching of coh2. if im cynical,its another automation, of resources management and cutoffs..

If you've played CoH2 for 10 years you're obviously going to prefer its sound, graphics and UI, but I don't see any criticism of the gameplay here. In terms of gameplay and army choice, CoH3 for me appears to be miles ahead of CoH2 at release in terms of gameplay and strategic options, it looks very promising and entertaining as long as exclusive DLC isn't introduced.

Agreed, COH3 looking fundamentally solid

I don't think the sounds are bad at all, it's just the mixing that is a bit off. The directional audio is very confusing as well. You will get a punchier sound if you change the dynamic range to "compressed" in the sound options. That should be the default mode imo.

i dont know man, the other day i paid attention to how the wehr mg42 sounds in coh3 and it's nothing short of a joke

i wonder if we played the same game

i dont know man, the other day i paid attention to how the wehr mg42 sounds in coh3 and it's nothing short of a joke

i wonder if we played the same game

Looks like the meme sound of the MG42 didn't make people stop playing CoH1

CoH2 didn't have the wow factor when it launched. It was a mess, the gameplay was a downgrade from CoH. But it had some new mechanics which kept the game a float. 10 years later you have a great game that has been fixed and updated to as good as it can get. But one thing they never fixed was the gameplay feel which was hard coded from the start.

CoH3 Tech test actually blew me away after 10hours as I could really see how fluid the gameplay was. I do care about graphics and sound, but if the foundation is this good, then we just need to give it time.

CoH2 didn't have the wow factor when it launched.

In terms of graphics, sound etc. it definitely had a "wow factor". Only the most rabid vCoh fanboys high on nostalgia would deny that. It still looks way better than any modern RTS I have seen including AoE4 and CoH3 so how is that not a wow factor for 2013? Yes, I know optimization was bad. No need to mention this again.

In terms of graphics, sound etc. it definitely had a "wow factor". Only the most rabid vCoh fanboys high on nostalgia would deny that. It still looks way better than any modern RTS I have seen including AoE4 and CoH3 so how is that not a wow factor for 2013? Yes, I know optimization was bad. No need to mention this again.

Have you changed settings to full screen, maxed everything high resolution?
Some shaders and shadows in general can be tweaked, but the game looks great.

You don't feel it looks that good, because of leap CoH2 had over CoH1 being significant, when graphics improved a LOT generation to generation and it really is not possible to go that far for CoH3 without forcing everyone to get 30xx GPUs to run it, modern graphical improvements are really just higher resolutions and more FPS, textures itself are pretty much at peak.

For fuck's sake, a game isn't gonna flop because graphics or audio is not fully nailed down. It's the GAMEPLAY that really matters in the end.

CoH2 multiplayer at launch was:

- trash meta
- boring units without weapon profiles and dull veterancy
- laggy af games because no battle servers
- terrible performance esp. snow maps and blizzards
- no ladders

--> 75% of the launch-day playerbase gone in just 3 months


Seriously all the people here who praise and worship CoH2 so much, I just cannot imagine you were here from the beginning since June 2013

COH2 was trash at launch. It froze often on my computer and I'd lose units in multiplayer before getting control back. It was so un-fun that I stopped playing after a month or two and played other things until WFA came out. COH3 feels a lot better.

I looked on Steam and saw that I actually played more like 20 hours of the beta. I'm sure it's going to be addictive to a lot of people.