Why listening to the community isn't always good.

The community will never truly find out what the “community council” had input on. But I would love to know. 1. The list of people that were on it. 2. The amount of influence and their suggestions. Especially since people that have no idea about gameplay or unit match ups were on it - AE was on it.

Will never understand the need to “get back to COH1”

Lower TTK
Removing TD roles essentially
Huge variations in model health
Cover rework against grenades
MG suppression mechanic completely changed
Snares completely changed
Crush being removed
Factions missing essential elements again
USF with no non doc indirect besides a mortar
Brits without a TD
The buff to retreating

All of these things just make gameplay not fun. They aren’t even balance concerns. Just the gameplay itself is boring, anticlimactic. Most of my complaints probably dont matter to new people or people who barely played COH2 or COH1.

But I do not understand people who actively played COH1,COH2 and think COH3 is anything close to its predecessors.

Look at the “community” its gone lol. The known streamers are gone. The playerbase is still declining.

I can not express to anyone in words. How sad this is. That this franchise is where it is now. I gave COH3 a chance. I played a decent amount of games for all factions. None of those games came close to some of the average, not even good games of COH2 I have had.

Being realistic. COH3 will probably not recover. There are way too many good games releasing this winter. For a massive influx of people to comeback. On top of the update cadence that has been shown by Relic. Like people said. After 10 months. There will only be 2 new 4v4 maps. Not even talking about missing elements just maps.

I think its okay to say. I wish COH3 never released. At least then the franchise would be remembered for being good while it lasted. Not an utter clusterfuck. That it is now.

I never really liked community decision decisions. The community are absolutely terrible game designers that only know how to tweak things based on their experienced losing to overpowered strategies. That's all, and that's where it ends.

They have no ability to figure out what makes a game fun, how to create a vision for the game, and organize everything around that vision. They can make little quality of life adjustments and stuff like that, but never a fun game.

I hope Relic did not take the community opinions to seriously. The "community" did not make CoH 1, it was Relic that did. Neither CoH 2.

Was removing crush intentional? Who made that decision!? That's a classic mechanic. What??? I thought crush was removed due to some technical limitations that affect pathing or something.

On top of people like AE being involved who is a glorified anchorman that couldnt win a game against someone who RE spams him in COH2 ( he lacks understanding of gameplay).

ARe you not a fan of AE? Never would of guessed, this news is postively stunning...

Give it a rest man, we get it

Ultimately relics fault yes. Does that make the people on the council blame free? No.

Yes they are blame free. These people give up their time without any compensation in order to improve the game as they though best.

Relic (and Sega) make decision for their product and they are the only ones responsible and the ones to blame.

As they for the idea that Top players are the only ones that someone should ask about the game it is a flawed idea for a number of reason.

...Especially since people that have no idea about gameplay or unit match ups were on it - AE was on it.

Trying to create a relation of AE and the state of COH3 make little to no sense at all.

The community will never truly find out what the “community council” had input on. But I would love to know. 1. The list of people that were on it. 2. The amount of influence and their suggestions. Especially since people that have no idea about gameplay or unit match ups were on it - AE was on it.

Will never understand the need to “get back to COH1”

Lower TTK
Removing TD roles essentially
Huge variations in model health
Cover rework against grenades
MG suppression mechanic completely changed
Snares completely changed
Crush being removed
Factions missing essential elements again
USF with no non doc indirect besides a mortar
Brits without a TD
The buff to retreating

All of these things just make gameplay not fun. They aren’t even balance concerns. Just the gameplay itself is boring, anticlimactic. Most of my complaints probably dont matter to new people or people who barely played COH2 or COH1.

But I do not understand people who actively played COH1,COH2 and think COH3 is anything close to its predecessors.

Look at the “community” its gone lol. The known streamers are gone. The playerbase is still declining.

I can not express to anyone in words. How sad this is. That this franchise is where it is now. I gave COH3 a chance. I played a decent amount of games for all factions. None of those games came close to some of the average, not even good games of COH2 I have had.

Being realistic. COH3 will probably not recover. There are way too many good games releasing this winter. For a massive influx of people to comeback. On top of the update cadence that has been shown by Relic. Like people said. After 10 months. There will only be 2 new 4v4 maps. Not even talking about missing elements just maps.

I think its okay to say. I wish COH3 never released. At least then the franchise would be remembered for being good while it lasted. Not an utter clusterfuck. That it is now.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying.

However, I have 4K hours in CoH 2, and you probably have double that. The experience has been had/enjoyed. Why stay in CoH 2, CoH 3 has good things about it.

While pointless to deny that COH3 has its fair amount of problems, its hilarious to me how coh2 "e-sport ready APM masturbation" gameplay is even remotely considered to be supperior.

CoH2 became poor mans starcraft, like R6S is a poor mans Counter-strike.

Is CoH2 good game? Yes. Is it objectively superior to vCoH\CoH3 in gameplay? Completely subjective, all of them have major pros and cons.

And honestly people who thinks that CoH3 shortcomings are solely (or even mostly) came because of the gameplay, are completely delusional or have a lack of super basic understanding what keeps majority of the player base in pretty much any game.

IF (and its a BIG IF) CoH3 recovers from original fuck up, all arguments will be down to "Well majority of people like to eat shit", same argument which was used by die hard vCoH fans when CoH2 finally was some what fixed.

ARe you not a fan of AE? Never would of guessed, this news is postively stunning...

Give it a rest man, we get it

Hows no? If it upsets you, I recommend you continue to ask me to stop. Which I will point you to my previous statement of me saying no.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying.

However, I have 4K hours in CoH 2, and you probably have double that. The experience has been had/enjoyed. Why stay in CoH 2, CoH 3 has good things about it.

Im just going to stop playing the game in general lol. COH3 1v1 is not as fun as COH2 team games. COH3 team games are worse than COH3 1v1s. Ill pass on the game.

While pointless to deny that COH3 has its fair amount of problems, its hilarious to me how coh2 "e-sport ready APM masturbation" gameplay is even remotely considered to be supperior.

CoH2 became poor mans starcraft, like R6S is a poor mans Counter-strike.

What are you on dude? Kimbo - low apm Duffman - low apm plenty of top players have LOW APM. The gameplay for COH3 is trash. The average COH enjoyer wants big battles, with cinematic visuals and audio. COH2 retains the higher playerbase 10 months after release of COH3. Whatever COH2 did is objectively better than what COH3 is doing lol. COH3 is the worst game of the 3 and will be for the foreseeable future. With a possibility of never getting better. Less than 2k concurrent players. With single player DLC confirmed for this year and no more major additions to maps. People arent going to come back. COH3 will fade away. Like all the streamers for COH3 did.

Im just going to stop playing the game in general lol. COH3 1v1 is not as fun as COH2 team games. COH3 team games are worse than COH3 1v1s. Ill pass on the game.

You mean you're going to stop playing CoH 2 as well?

COH3 is missing QoL features you expecting
COH3 is not using new powerful processors to implement new mechanics.

It just feels dated and it is all Relic fault

ARe you not a fan of AE? Never would of guessed, this news is postively stunning...

Give it a rest man, we get it

I think the thing people are not taking into account for "epic" scale games (because in terms army size coh3 is far far more massive), it's the *VP* system that makes it so you don't get into those battles that often, i think i can count on one hand the amount of super late games I've had because of it, however vs caosak when we played on 600 vps, the 3rd game ended up being a one hour slug match, which was also the first true epic scale match I've had.

Just some food for thought.

What are you on dude? Kimbo - low apm Duffman - low apm plenty of top players have LOW APM.

Its not only about raw APM, its about the way you are forced to play. CoH2 gameplay is super stale, where its basically 4 mainlines + few support weapons + double AT gun, after that its all about who can micro better, who can control units better and who knows the encounters better. And you are super punished by doing something even sub-optimal.

I dont think you will deny that, even you always play exactly same builds, against exactly same opponent builds (if the opponent is somewhat competent), picking exactly same commanders. Not because you like it or because its "meta", but because if you dont, you will be shooting yourself in a knee. At least thats how I see it.

It also happened in vCoH and happening in CoH3, but difference is, in both its happening because of the OP units\abilities, in CoH2 its intentional result of how factions\abilities are made\balanced.

Again not a bad thing, some like this gameplay, but honestly there are far better RTS out-there where skilled players can flex with their skill. You can always go and play WC3 or AoE, because it least with all the above, they have variety in the approach I can take.

The gameplay for COH3 is trash. The average COH enjoyer wants big battles, with cinematic visuals and audio.

Its hard to say. In CoH2 only 2v2\4v4 were really bread and butter for the community, with a pro-scene being relatively small. For an average player who dont give a fuck, sure, CoH2 is more fun, because it has more maps, more commanders, more mods, more custom content to mess with.

Same for content makers, they have more diverse content to produce and unless they are just passionate about CoH in general, there is no reason for them sticking with CoH3, playing on the same maps, with same 3 commanders.

Not to mention that if you compare vCoH to CoH2 transition, a lot of people known people abandoned both. Its just CoH3 failed to keep new blood in the game, because they got bored. Especially since, most of the players pretty much played full release version of CoH3 for multiple weeks, during so called "small slice beta tests".

Balance was screwed because Relic did a basic mistake. Instead of tuning the new faction to the old one they started tuning the old faction to new and that creates issues for a number of reasons.

Firstly neither USF nor OKW where balanced when released and that trying to fix thing by making changes to Ostheer/Soviet was a fools errand.

In addition "fixing" Soviet to fight okw and OStheer to fight USF meant destroying the balance between the two which Relic had spend so much to achieve.

The end result was to completely redesign 3 factions and waster more time in trying balance things while not fixing simple things.

Trying to release 4 faction at launch does take a lot of resources and might be a contributing reason why other things that should be easy fixes where not done upon release.

I agree, the issue is: If it really would have taken that many resources, they should have realized at some point and cut down on that part. There were also a lot of things wrong at release and still are, there surely are deeper issues.
Another problem for CoH2 was also that the newer factions were released OP. Probably by design to make people buy them. Obviously people don't like their new DLC that they paid for overly nerfed afterwards, so as you said the old factions had to change, throwing both the hypothesized overfitting off as well as the some of the factors that the game has been designed around. This will take more time overall than designing four factions from the get go. Especially since CoH2 did a repetition once UKF was released, resetting parts of the process.

COH3 is missing QoL features you expecting
COH3 is not using new powerful processors to implement new mechanics.

It just feels dated and it is all Relic fault

The COH franchise is a niche game. TBH, there is a finite amount of tanks, trucks, and arty you can simulate. It is the disadvantage to playing an historical game which tries to encourage a degree of immersion, when that franchise extends over 3 iterations in a 17-year period. I am not one of those who believes in change for change's sake. To that extent, the franchise will always feel dated, since there are certain aspects best preserved rather than changed.

As to mechanics, I fear you may be howling to the moon. If anything, mechanics have gone backwards in this iteration and so Crush has gone; arty is mostly unimpressive; DevM has done heroic things to reign in the skillz planes; replays may emerge; spectator mode is silent, Surrender button seems lost in space and the UI is all over the shop.


Audio is now in recovery after being on life-support. Who in the name of Hades thought it sensible to have Machine Guns sound tinny?

I could see the reason for limiting modding if the Shop was selling good, saleable skins and other paraphernalia, but the Shop is off and the modders cannot understand why they are blocked. After all, if a Modder produces a really interesting set of skins, they still could not be used in automatch unless Relic became attracted and wanted to snap up the idea.

Similarly with maps, there is a complete dearth of good maps. Relic should be encouraging the community to make maps, since the evidence over the first two iterations of the franchise is that dedicated mappers and modders can produce results as good as the official Relic devs. And this is where the problem lies, I suspect.


In a nutshell, the current Relic devs must accept that they have their equals in the community: Relic Devs should be supervisors now as much as they should be creators. 4 current Relic Devs come from the community and at least one in the past. That is not an accident: the community is the seedcorn for this game.

Relic subcontractors from the community who never joined their staff included the artist, Rita (B)rush, while some non-Dev mappers had their creations formally acknowledged including WhiteFlash and Onkel Sam, and many other mappers had their creations enter automatch, at least for a while. Then there were the various unofficial balancers including Sturmpanther, who at least understood that in 3s and 4s, asymmetric balancing was antipathetic to those modes, whereas balancing in 1v1 and probably 2v2 is a different matter. But still Relic persists in one size fits all, whereas it is patently obvious that revving up in a 4s, for example, you can't wait for fuel to flood through and build the heavies that 1v1 deprives you mostly. Using the Tiger in 4s is a different concept from using the rare Tiger in 1v1. 4s forces the use of ATGs and arty. 1v1 can't do it all.

Why can't 3s and 4s be balanced separately with some similar units but different values? Cut down on light vehicle play for those modes. That was the big miss for COH3.


And last, as Steel Pact showed, there is a lot more that Relic could have done with inclusion of minor armies including Poles, Free French, Canadians, and sub-units of the German army including the Scandinavians and Dutch - Wiking from memory, although Imperial Dane will no doubt correct me if I am wrong. Partisans could have easily been adopted.

I agree, the issue is: If it really would have taken that many resources, they should have realized at some point and cut down on that part. There were also a lot of things wrong at release and still are, there surely are deeper issues.
Another problem for CoH2 was also that the newer factions were released OP. Probably by design to make people buy them. Obviously people don't like their new DLC that they paid for overly nerfed afterwards, so as you said the old factions had to change, throwing both the hypothesized overfitting off as well as the some of the factors that the game has been designed around. This will take more time overall than designing four factions from the get go. Especially since CoH2 did a repetition once UKF was released, resetting parts of the process.

Yes you we agree.

Only thing I want to point out is "the op on release/buy to win theory". In my opinion it is can be a an oversimplification in some cases.

When a new item is released people need to play with it so that enough data is created to deiced what changes are need. Now lets say the miraculously on release is item is slightly up or op. After the initial hype where people will check out the new content people will realize that using the new item will cause them to lose games since they are not familiar with its full potential. Soon they will stop using preferring to go back to what they know. And that would mean that not enough data is created to help fix to problem. Having things being op at launch actually speed up the balancing processes so it makes sense.

The Coh3 world as I see it:

• Pushed out a game that was not ready for release. Even pushed out release date and it still was not ready.
  
  
• Saw dropping sales and pushed out skin store to cash in before the party was over.
  
  
• Sega lays off 100+ employees. Nothing changes. Still super slow response from Relic and community managers.
  
  
• Promised DLC announced.
  

This says to me "Relic is trying to get out from under this game". There have not been nor will ever be any major QoL changes until well after the DLC is released. That assumes Relic does not drop Coh3 after the DLC.

They are not taking the horrible state Coh3 is in with any seriousness. They do not care at all. They are shoving the poor community members out there like schills trying to keep us interested without devoting any serious manpower to the problems. I can guarantee they have only one part time programmer working on Coh3 updates.

In all of my dealings with Relic, they were always the person lagging behind not doing what they said they would. Community people doing work for free were expediant and professional. Meeting deadlines and doing work above and beyond to get the best result. Relic could care less. It was just a chore for them to do.

January/February will be an exciting time with either a real push to fix the game or its burial.

Relic could care less.

That's true. I suppose that if they couldn't care less about deadlines, they wouldn't be updating the game at all now would they?

Yes you we agree.

Only thing I want to point out is "the op on release/buy to win theory". In my opinion it is can be a an oversimplification in some cases.

When a new item is released people need to play with it so that enough data is created to deiced what changes are need. Now lets say the miraculously on release is item is slightly up or op. After the initial hype where people will check out the new content people will realize that using the new item will cause them to lose games since they are not familiar with its full potential. Soon they will stop using preferring to go back to what they know. And that would mean that not enough data is created to help fix to problem. Having things being op at launch actually speed up the balancing processes so it makes sense.

I know this is an argument regularly made. It seems reasonable, although the amount of 'sufficient data' is hard to quantify. I could also argue that people will always play new stuff, so they have a decent set in the beginning to work with. I'm always careful when the reasoning is just so convenient for the company and 'accidentally' increases sales. In any way, it diminishes my fun with the game. I am not any company's QA tester. They are responsible for getting their stuff right.

Hows no? If it upsets you, I recommend you continue to ask me to stop. Which I will point you to my previous statement of me saying no.

LOL yes i am clearly the one whos upset here

I was mocking you, not taking personal offense. You should try the second part sometime