The negative user reviews are infuriating

I have to rant about a few things that annoy the shit out of me with regards to negative user reviews on steam and reddit. Wonder what your thoughts are, don't take this too seriously.

1. Why on earth do people constantly harp on about minor unfinished/sloppy elements of the game like icons, weapon symbols and faction flags. I saw someone on reddit declare that usage of old icons to be "UNACCEPTABLE" and the primary reason he gave a negative review. In one of the youtube reviews the guy demonstrates how he can recreate the faction symbols in 5 minutes in photoshop. He literally spends more time on this tangent than he does talking about gameplay. How dense do you have to be to completely ignore the actual GAME. You know ... the part that matters. If you dislike the gameplay we can agree to disagree. But to just brush over it and complain about the menu art instead is just infuriating.

2. Why do people who are guaranteed to play the game for thousands of hours and basically have CoH as a mainstay hobby give negative reviews? Steam reviews primarily communicate to the general public. If someone unfamiliar with CoH comes across the newest iteration and sees shit reviews they will likely never get into the series. I have a hardcore CoH2 1v1 player in my friendlist that has like 4000 hours in the game and still has a negative review complaining about balance issues. Why? How does that make sense? So many people don't even know CoH or are only vaguely familiar with it. And in my experience almost everybody you show and explain the game to ends up liking it. So why scare off that crowd just because of your own agenda?

3. Why do people completely neglect the strong aspects of CoH3? Doesn't the fact that we have 4 factions and amazing performance make up for some of the shortcomings? Isn't having 4 factions upon release preferable over having a super polished game in terms of interface and multiplayer functionality? Maybe not, but then it would be more of a case of relic being overly ambitious in their desire to provide a lot of bang for your buck. No one would have complained if it was just two factions at release, but they went the extra mile and maybe that cost us polish.

4. A bigger playerbase would be so cool, but people actively prevent this from happening by shitting on the game. And I absolutely loathe the high and mighty do-gooder argument that this needs to be done because the gaming industry deserves a lesson about early releases. This is after relic already delayed the game and it is obvious that they ran out of options. Of course the same people would also agree that working conditions in the gaming industry are horrible and that pre release crunch should be avoided.

5. Anyone german who gave a negative review because there is no german voice acting needs to seriously ask themselves if they would actually NOT RECOMMEND CoH to someone new for that reason. Is that really sufficient to make CoH3 a bad game? REALLY? The average German's english is light years behind the Dutch or Scandinavians so maybe it's time that we stop putting our own voice acting over everything?

I think you take it too literally.

The people rating it negatively just don't think too much. They load the game, with high expectations - something ain't right, and instead of breaking it down with the essay they just lob a sentence or two.

Relic needs to learn communication managing expectations, responding to feedback/rants, and setting roadmaps. Come Relic, explain the content release plans for the next year, the monetization, and what is the path to updating the icons.

You have a much cooler head and lower expectations. The game would have its anus opened wide if it launched with just two factions. It is already barebones with two 4vs4 maps and poor balance/variety.

I have to rant about a few things that annoy the shit out of me with regards to negative user reviews on steam and reddit. Wonder what your thoughts are, don't take this too seriously.

1. In one of the youtube reviews the guy demonstrates how he can recreate the faction symbols in 5 minutes in photoshop.

You answered your own question here. There are a bunch of things you could fix in minutes but are broken since over a year ago???????

2. If someone unfamiliar with CoH comes across the newest iteration and sees shit reviews they will likely never get into the series.

They should avoid the game. It is trash and unfinished. See #1 above.

I agree with your concept of playing for 100' or 1000's of hours. I personally will not even look at this game until they fix team colors and rendering quality. This is day 1 shit, not 5 years later and fully released shit. Every time I look at the horrible color choices they used on points, I want to literally puke. It looks like some 7 year old made the game. I want to drive to Relic and take a dump in their lobby and then explain how thats what they have done to their own game.

3. Why do people completely neglect the strong aspects of CoH3? Doesn't the fact that we have 4 factions and amazing performance make up for some of the shortcomings?

4 factions is only good for the top tier of players and people who play 1v1. The rest of us would like a better experience and more maps. 4v4 only has 2 maps??? In Coh2 I could make a map in a day. Have it cleaned up by day 3 max. So why is there only 2 maps?

4. A bigger playerbase would be so cool, but people actively prevent this from happening by shitting on the game.

Again you have it backwards, Relic shit on us by putting out this trash. SteamCharts shows this games playerbase eroding like my desire to play Coh3 when I saw the first beta test. So the people buying the game think it sucks and are not playing it.

5. Anyone german who gave a negative review because there is no german voice acting needs to seriously ask themselves

I could care lass about voice acting. If anything I am annoyed by how loud the voices are compared to the guns etc. It destroys the immersion.

In essence I agree with your whole post. Everything you said has validity. Coh3 will eventually be the best game in the series. It has great bones.

I too went back and forth on how to review the game. Do I say it is great to get more players to come over? Or do I let Relic know they are sentient dildos from space sent here to ruin our lives? I chose the latter.

Putting out poorly made unfinished trash is so on par with everything they ever do. Every decision they have ever made is the wrong one. Every time they say they will do something they dont.

Having people from the community there gave me hope. But read every post I have made about Relic since 2017 and there is a common denominator. I consistently say "Some one high up at Relic is a moron. And they continue to hold this game back. And people either fear or really like this person because no one has had the balls to say what they are doing is wrong." I hoped it was Duffy, and had hope when he left. But it was not him. The cancer is still there.

Every game they have ever made has broken things that only a moron would ship the game with. And in every game those things have NEVER been fixed. So what hope is there they will fix the 100's of things broken in this game? None.

I'll break it down point by point. Bear in mind, if I'll mention steam reviews I don't mean the ones that just consist of "it's good/bad lol", but at least mention a couple of points why they gave a thumps up or down.

1. Why on earth do people constantly harp on about minor unfinished/sloppy elements of the game like icons, weapon symbols and faction flags. I saw someone on reddit declare that usage of old icons to be "UNACCEPTABLE" and the primary reason he gave a negative review. In one of the youtube reviews the guy demonstrates how he can recreate the faction symbols in 5 minutes in photoshop. He literally spends more time on this tangent than he does talking about gameplay. How dense do you have to be to completely ignore the actual GAME. You know ... the part that matters. If you dislike the gameplay we can agree to disagree. But to just brush over it and complain about the menu art instead is just infuriating.

They do, because the game is not finished to a an extend that you should expect from a release. Since it overall works as a game, but has just so many smaller rough edges, you'll have to list those rough edges. I it is not only the icons, but the sum of all the issues. And the icons are one where it is just strikingly obvious that Relic cheaped out or misplanned or whatever, especially because they are rather quick and easy to do. Yet, Relic did not fix them.

2. Why do people who are guaranteed to play the game for thousands of hours and basically have CoH as a mainstay hobby give negative reviews? Steam reviews primarily communicate to the general public. If someone unfamiliar with CoH comes across the newest iteration and sees shit reviews they will likely never get into the series. I have a hardcore CoH2 1v1 player in my friendlist that has like 4000 hours in the game and still has a negative review complaining about balance issues. Why? How does that make sense? So many people don't even know CoH or are only vaguely familiar with it. And in my experience almost everybody you show and explain the game to ends up liking it. So why scare off that crowd just because of your own agenda?

For your example regarding your friend, I fully agree with you. For CoH3, no one is guaranteed to play thousands of hours. They played maybe 10, 20, 30 hours, they're free to give a negative review.

3. Why do people completely neglect the strong aspects of CoH3? Doesn't the fact that we have 4 factions and amazing performance make up for some of the shortcomings? Isn't having 4 factions upon release preferable over having a super polished game in terms of interface and multiplayer functionality? Maybe not, but then it would be more of a case of relic being overly ambitious in their desire to provide a lot of bang for your buck. No one would have complained if it was just two factions at release, but they went the extra mile and maybe that cost us polish.

A steam review is not a journalistic piece, but from your points I get the feeling that you kind of expect everyone to list pros and cons. That would obviously be desirable, but the casual nature of steam reviews lends itself to players either giving a positive or negative review and then just writing why they chose what they chose. This goes both ways, you'll also find many positive reviews just writing positive things. Overall, I don't see your point here. It's ordinary steam reviews, nothing special.

4. A bigger playerbase would be so cool, but people actively prevent this from happening by shitting on the game. And I absolutely loathe the high and mighty do-gooder argument that this needs to be done because the gaming industry deserves a lesson about early releases. This is after relic already delayed the game and it is obvious that they ran out of options. Of course the same people would also agree that working conditions in the gaming industry are horrible and that pre release crunch should be avoided.

With the amount of stuff missing and place holders in the game, Relic heavily misplanned. That's an error of the management, nothing else. The original release date of November is a testimony to this. They should have either opted for a smaller game or delayed for longer. They might have been under financial pressure. But then again, their business decisions are none of my business, and I can't know either. I can only judge their product, which they put out to the public and labelled as "finished" for their release.
Seeing CoH3 as an unfinished product that should have gotten more polishing before release is fair critique. Blaming the critics for the small player base is unfairly shifting the blame. It's Relic's responsibility to fix their own product and ensure longevity, not the customer's responsibility to neglect problems so that more people buy the product.

5. Anyone german who gave a negative review because there is no german voice acting needs to seriously ask themselves if they would actually NOT RECOMMEND CoH to someone new for that reason. Is that really sufficient to make CoH3 a bad game? REALLY? The average German's english is light years behind the Dutch or Scandinavians so maybe it's time that we stop putting our own voice acting over everything?

I personally find these types of critique petty as well. German however has quite a large base of native speakers that are also used to audio synchronization. Many other games provide that service, CoH3 doesn't. It might tie in to all the other aspects showing that CoH3 has been rushed. It's stupid to base your whole review on it. But then again, there's also a lot of positive reviews with no substance, and I don't see you complaining about those.

Overall, your thread mostly reads like your new favourite game is being criticized partially unfairly and you want to rant about it. You can do this for sure, but if you want higher quality reviews, then maybe don't read the ones on steam. In steam's system, you're expected to read multiple reviews and distill out the essence yourself, otherwise it does not work at all. You're trying to shoot the messenger, not the one responsible for the message.

I agree on your point but tbh the biggest hanger for me is the "bad" graphic's as these have always to suffer for console releases.
When i remember coh 1&2 had at their time the best u can get basically, but therefore it runs at least real good.

I agree with OP's post.

Also CoH players are older now and bitter / hard to please. Critics were a lot more lenient during coh 1 days, less competition too.

I agree with OP's post.

Also CoH players are older now and bitter / hard to please. Critics were a lot more lenient during coh 1 days, less competition too.

It can basically be summed up as 'This new thing is not exactly like the old thing that i loved!'

Despite the old thing recieving about 10 years of polish and lots of balance and refinement. People have short memories.

Being outraged is fashionable.

It is extremely rare for new game, regardless how good it is to not be review bombed at the very least on day 1 by people with petty issues.

snip

You've done far more for the game than me, so you've earned the right to complain. But I kinda feel like you fall into the category of people I was adressing. I just think you're waaaaay too negative. Constantly trashing Relic at every opportunity, instead of having a more pragmatic view. Cuz let's be honest, there is no alternative to CoH. Just look at the pile of shit that is Iron Harvest. So we should try to make the best of it rather than having a strong negative bias. That doesn't mean blindly throwing money at relic, no one is obliged to buy the game obviously, but I'd say take a MEASURED approach to criticizing and try not to carry the negativity outside the CoH sphere as to not harm the growth of the game. Ranting on CoH2.org = okay (commendable even, look at what I'm doing); ranting on steam = well within your rights but I'd argue not in your interest as a CoH fan. You could even rant on steam but then qualify the complaints with a remark about how great CoH is at its core.

They do, because the game is not finished to a an extend that you should expect from a release. Since it overall works as a game, but has just so many smaller rough edges, you'll have to list those rough edges. I it is not only the icons, but the sum of all the issues. And the icons are one where it is just strikingly obvious that Relic cheaped out or misplanned or whatever, especially because they are rather quick and easy to do. Yet, Relic did not fix them.

Listing small rough edges is sensible. Basing the main part of your critique on them, when the core gameplay is good is lazy and misleading. It's funny because the usage of old icons would normally indicate a much worse state than the game is actually in because it is something you would usually see in an alpha version. So yea relic relly shot themselves in the foot with the minor but really glaring faults.

For your example regarding your friend, I fully agree with you. For CoH3, no one is guaranteed to play thousands of hours. They played maybe 10, 20, 30 hours, they're free to give a negative review.

Not literally guaranteed, but there are a lot of hardcore fans who will very likely end up playing the game a lot. And frankly, if you've played 30 hours in two weeks the game can't be that bad.

A steam review is not a journalistic piece, but from your points I get the feeling that you kind of expect everyone to list pros and cons. That would obviously be desirable, but the casual nature of steam reviews lends itself to players either giving a positive or negative review and then just writing why they chose what they chose. This goes both ways, you'll also find many positive reviews just writing positive things. Overall, I don't see your point here. It's ordinary steam reviews, nothing special.

I'm more bothered by people's decision to publish a negative review, even though they are long time fans of the franchise. You don't have to write an essay to come to a more reasonable conclusion than "the game feels off/icons are missing etc.

With the amount of stuff missing and place holders in the game, Relic heavily misplanned. That's an error of the management, nothing else. The original release date of November is a testimony to this. They should have either opted for a smaller game or delayed for longer. They might have been under financial pressure. But then again, their business decisions are none of my business, and I can't know either. I can only judge their product, which they put out to the public and labelled as "finished" for their release.
Seeing CoH3 as an unfinished product that should have gotten more polishing before release is fair critique. Blaming the critics for the small player base is unfairly shifting the blame. It's Relic's responsibility to fix their own product and ensure longevity, not the customer's responsibility to neglect problems so that more people buy the product.

Yea, but why is it useful for us as fans to make the situation worse? This is not about assigning blame. It's about the stupidity of some hardcore fans from a purely pargmatic point of view.

Overall, your thread mostly reads like your new favourite game is being criticized partially unfairly and you want to rant about it. You can do this for sure, but if you want higher quality reviews, then maybe don't read the ones on steam. In steam's system, you're expected to read multiple reviews and distill out the essence yourself, otherwise it does not work at all. You're trying to shoot the messenger, not the one responsible for the message.

If you read this as pure fanboyism I think you've missed the point. I'm mostly saying that even if I grant that the game is in a poor release state, it just doesn't make sense to shit on it in public if CoH is one of your favorite franchises. At best it contributes negligibly to forcing change in the gaming industry and at worst it leads to the decline of CoH as a franchise. And I've seen plenty of people on steam do exactly that, and I've seen very few reviews trying to counteract it. Like I wonder how many of the 1000 or so super hardcore fans have given a positive review? I might be wrong but I think it's a pretty small portion. Frankly, if anything the community should organize positive review bombing.

BECAUSE PAYING 60 DOLLAR FOR UNFINISH GAME IS FRAUD

I gave CoH 3 a "Do Not Recommend" review on steam. Here it is:

I want to like company of heroes 3, but they released it in a terrible state. There's a good game beneath the surface, but it's going to take a lot of updates to un♥♥♥♥ this game.

But if you like the CoH series, and you're bored of playing CoH 2, I'd get CoH 3. It's worth playing, at least. As much as I'm disappointed at the state they released it in.

I think that's a very fair review of the game. Compare CoH 3's release to other AAA titles like Red Dead 2 and realize that there is a bit of a spark missing here. The game was buggy and unpolished, and I think it's fair for my review to state that.

I will, of course, update the review as time continues on and the game is patched and improved.

However, I will NOT review a game that does not exist yet. CoH 3 in a polished state is exactly that, a game that does not exist yet, and I'm not going to pretend to be a time traveler and review it like it does exist.

As of right now, I would easily recommend CoH 2 over CoH 3 to someone new to the genre. I'm sorry but it's the truth, as much as I like CoH 3 and as much as it pains me to say.

I just think you're waaaaay too negative. Constantly trashing Relic at every opportunity, instead of having a more pragmatic view.

I trash Relic for the completely unavoidably obvious errors they make. I cant wrap my head around how they are this dumb.

Right now there are a bunch of issues/bugs with game play like no blob control mechanic, units not doing the right thing, tell a vehicle to do anything besides focusing will cause it to retarget some random unit even after you told it to target a specific unit.

These are all bugs in code that are very complicated to find/test. I will never complain about these types of issues.

But the ridiculous stuff like team colors? How does anyone screw that up? It is literally one variable.

A more recent example, I noticed the minimap was missing the manpower point icon a couple days back. The new patch fixed it. But the icon looks nothing like the one in the normal view minimap. How do you screw this up??? How.... I beg someone to explain to me how this is possible. I could go grab a 7 year old out of any classroom and have them fix this in 5 minutes. But Relic cant do it???

WTF ARE THEY DOING THERE??? WHAT??? I am all ears.

You could even rant on steam but then qualify the complaints with a remark about how great CoH is at its core.

I agree. In my review I said it is unfinished but will be a great game in about a year.

I pray for you guys its better in a couple of days so the player base does not erode any further.

MORE TRASHING AS AN EXAMPLE
Watching streamers is a big part of my Coh3 life. Relic assured us they will make Coh3 great for streamers, they are adding stuff.

- Instead they hide the kill counts for units.
- Screw up the final stats screen.
- Screw up the colors.
- Dont show the names of the players when their units are selected.
- Point colors look like shit and they disappear in 720 and lower streams.
- Screw up the specular lighting so everything is oatmeal mush especially on low bandwidth streams.
- No CELO style overlay.

No to mention the obvious stuff like replays/spectate/etc. But I can forgive those, they are very complicated and should be left off to polish game play more like they did. Why waste a bunch of time when the game is probably gonna DOW3 a month after release.

So what exactly did they do for stream viewers? Oh that's right, nothing as usual.

Have they never watched a single stream? Do they not see every Coh2 streamer using some form of CELO?

"The Lord helps those who help themselves."
Read and live this Relic.

Just look at the pile of shit that is Iron Harvest.

I felt this in my soul.

If I would give a review right now, it would be a negative one for sure. While the core is fun, there are just so many blunders which should not be there for a relasing product of a company published by SEGA.

I fully agree with rosbones points, and while most steam reviewers are writing like mouthbreathing apes they have at the end of the day a very valid point.

Especially for hecking 60 euro. I played through both campaigns on hard and oh boy they are just bland. MP is fun for now, but it will take months atleast to fully judge it, because the actual ranked MM is not a thing as of now. But we will run soon into a problem regarding map variety. Relic needs to get its shit together rather sooner than later.

Compare CoH 3's release to other AAA titles like Red Dead 2

One studio had a 9 digit amount of US-Dollars available for developing their game, the other one didn't. Like what on earth is this comparison


Anyway I'd say I agree with both sides here. Trashing on the game for the most petty stuff is absolute bullshit, but saying that the game feels unfinished or rushed or whatever is 100% understandable.

Short and simple as reverb put it, games garbage for $60 pricetag 1.0 release. There's too many critical issues Rosbone pointed out that are very simple issues or should've been nonissues.

- Instead they hide the kill counts for units.
- Screw up the final stats screen.
- Screw up the colors.
- Dont show the names of the players when their units are selected.
- Point colors look like shit and they disappear in 720 and lower streams.
- Screw up the specular lighting so everything is oatmeal mush especially on low bandwidth streams.
- No CELO style overlay.

That's all simple issues and nothing on the absolutely insane balance that was the first week. Balance is expected to be rough for awhile on a new games release, but decisions like emplacements shouldn't be countered by indirect fire and basically only AT weaponry? I find it hard to believe that any semi-competent player would say that was a good change.

Remember back before steam took over PC gaming and 99% of players wouldn't patch their game ever? Devs had to actually release finished products at release or players would try the game for 4-5 hours at most and then drop it or return it. The online patching trend has in part ruined far too many AAA titles for the last 6-7 years at least. That's what the bar should be, not this cyberpunk, bf2042, diablo immortal, EFT crap they get away with BECAUSE of the average player throwing $60 at it for prerelease and accepting half-baked games. It doesn't matter if I want the game to be successful because CoH is a great franchise, because if I accept crap now for coh3, their bar for "accepted" and getting away with $60 becomes that, crap.

Just look at Metroid Prime: Remastered that released physically the day before. It sold out in minutes from Nintendo's website and the actual game code is from 2001-2002, just with new visuals. All the old speedrun exploits are still in the game. The core gameplay in fantastic and with the added effect of being on their most recent system with great graphics they made phenominal sales and hopefully some new fans and hype for prime 4. If CoH3 received that level of polish alongside the core gameplay which is already solid, it could've carried the community much farther than it currently is projecting.

One studio had a 9 digit amount of US-Dollars available for developing their game, the other one didn't. Like what on earth is this comparison

The comparison is that one game was feature complete and had plenty of attention to detail, so much so that even today, people are finding more and more to appreciate about the game, and the other wasn't.

Budget is one part of the equation. How much do you think went into the development of Cyberpunk 2077? $200 million less, but still nine digits.

There are many indie games which release in a more polished state than AAA games do, with a miniscule fraction of the budget.

At the end of the day, the consumer chooses where they draw the line at spending money on games that need to be patched up to be a pleasant experience, and at the present time, consumers are giving a lot of wiggle room to publishers in this regard. Therefore, publishers see that it's much more efficient and savvy to release the games half-baked and fix them later for a faster return on investment.

If Relic really wanted to, they could have held onto the game for longer and released the game in a much better state. They didn't, because they were betting on consumers stomaching the poor release and buying it anyways.

Whatever, if it works for them, that's fine, but I'm not going to commend them for it. Not until the game is at a state where I personally would recommend it to someone. And that's all there is to it.

If Relic really wanted to, they could have held onto the game for longer and released the game in a much better state. They didn't, because they were betting on consumers stomaching the poor release and buying it anyways.

I didn't know you had secret insider information about CoH3's development and what SEGA was or wasn't ordering them to do, thanks for sharing with us I guess

I didn't know you had secret insider information about CoH3's development and what SEGA was or wasn't ordering them to do, thanks for sharing with us I guess

I don't need secret insider information, look at the state of the game ffs. I get trying to be positive about the game, so was I, I tried my hardest to look on the bright side. But CoH 3 was released in an atrocious state, and I dare even say that it feels soulless at many points. Especially with the clashing 2d and 3d artwork that just doesn't. look. good. period.

You have to wake up and smell the roses, man. This is not an acceptable state for a game to release in. It just isn't. Only by modern standards is this palatable.

Now I am terrified. I am quoting Reverb and people are agreeing with me.