Why listening to the community isn't always good.

I'm just going to put my thoughts here, because they're starting to get a little too long-winded for the shoutbox.

Regarding the title; I heard that the decision to release CoH 3 with 4 factions and 2 campaigns was a decision that was made at the behest of urging from the first wave of the community council members (thanks Smartie). Now I'm not here to throw anyone under the bus, because at the end of the day, Relic were the ones who ultimately decided to acquiesce to the suggestions, and any of the speculation I'm about to engage in falls squarely at their feet, not the community people. (After all, the only people who can gauge whether or not they're able to pull something off whould be the higher ups) HOWEVER, I think that what we are seeing may be a symptom of Relic mistakenly listening to the community when they should have stuck with their plans.

What do I mean? Well, let's just imagine an alternate universe where CoH 3 releases with 2 factions. Number one, balancing is relegated to one faction versus another. Simplicity. The difficulty of balancing a unit is not multiplied by a plurality of faction designs and units it has to contend with. Number two, a more positive initial reception. Maybe if the Brit and DAK matchup (NOTE: Apparently, Relic's genius idea was to rehash the US vs Wehr matchup for coh3's release, so keep that in mind) had some more love and attention, and bugfixing in general, the game wouldn't have gotten the bad reviews it recieved (and rightfully so, outside of our pleasant hypothetical realm. Sorry to burst your bubble 1v1 and 2v2 players) Number three, actual post-release hype. With only two factions on release, but with two factions coming in the very near future, players would have something to actually look forward to and give them an incentive to pay attention to the game. And that flows into number four, the big one imo, income for Relic. Yes, I think I would have bought DLC for CoH 3 if its release wasn't so shit poor. I may very well have bought a US and OST expansion. And I think that goes for a lot of people. Maybe that would have given Relic some much needed post-launch gas to keep going.

All in all, I personally wonder how much of the post release content drought would have been alleviated by the release of the US and OST factions post launch, and if fast tracking those factions are what caused the drought in the first place.

As always, thank you for reading my rant.

One X factor to think about in the 2 faction scenario is how many people have complained that there is no Italian faction. I can envision a boycott of a 2nd DLC that did not include Italians.

Or perhaps the game's budget (relatively speaking, as I know the costs of development are only getting more bloated and expensive as time passes) just wasn't large to fully deliver on what was promised?

One X factor to think about in the 2 faction scenario is how many people have complained that there is no Italian faction. I can envision a boycott of a 2nd DLC that did not include Italians.

Fully agree. I have no idea why some people were SO upset by this

That and certain people practically foaming at the mouth over the inclusion of the Black Prince.

One X factor to think about in the 2 faction scenario is how many people have complained that there is no Italian faction. I can envision a boycott of a 2nd DLC that did not include Italians.

Certainly something to consider.

Or perhaps the game's budget (relatively speaking, as I know the costs of development are only getting more bloated and expensive as time passes) just wasn't large to fully deliver on what was promised?

That's probably the case. The lackluster nature of the current "roadmaps" just made me wonder if it was originally where the release of OST and US was supposed to occur.

Kek new roadmap right as I make this post.



Hey, better late than never on the replay UI.

Community managers are Relic employees and they definitely didn't have the sway to dictate how many factions are picked. I just don't think that's their job.

I don't know who pushed for four factions but I'm guessing that Relic took the feedback in from the first two games and realized that a lot of people didn't like the length of time it took to balance the game post-launch.

I think four factions and campaign setting was a big issue. Splitting the art department between Italy and North Africa ate up a lot of resources. There are a bunch of entities (objects in old coh parlance) that we just don't have in coh3 that we did in coh1/2 and a bunch of unfinished ones.

If four factions has been DAK/ITA and US/UK and the game was mostly set in 1942 North Africa the game would probably be much better. I'm not sure how you'd get four factions in an Italian setting, but there could be two Italian factions with a similar core but with some vehicles and equipment from the their allied side. Sort of 3.5 factions if you will.

The importance of the campaign setting is something I don't think is brought up in these discussions. RTS games have about an 80/20 split singleplayer/multiplayer of units sold. I don't know why CoH would be an exception to that, so that's why a lot of time, money, and work hours go into the singleplayer portion of the game.
(this is also why there are so few 3v3/4v4 maps compared to 1v1/2v2 maps; you don't make a 4v4 map for a campaign because it's too big).

Can someone give me a fairly convincing answer about why they don't implement community maps (from Nigo pack for example)? Is there some kind of official statment about this matter?

I read a message from Rosbone saying that the map editor is very buggy a couple of weeks/months ago.

Isn't MonolithicBacon working there, a community map maker?

Can someone give me a fairly convincing answer about why they don't implement community maps (from Nigo pack for example)? Is there some kind of official statment about this matter?

I read a message from Rosbone saying that the map editor is very buggy a couple of weeks/months ago.

Isn't MonolithicBacon working there, a community map maker?

This was posted today on the CoH3 discord, the reason being legal stuff. No idea what makes it different from community content in CoH2.

"We're still working on other things behind the scenes that aren't on this roadmap. Community Maps are one of these. Because of all the legal work we have to do, we were not confident as to be able to make it happen before end of this year." - Gabby_RE

This was posted today on the CoH3 discord, the reason being legal stuff. No idea what makes it different from community content in CoH2.

"We're still working on other things behind the scenes that aren't on this roadmap. Community Maps are one of these. Because of all the legal work we have to do, we were not confident as to be able to make it happen before end of this year." - Gabby_RE

If that is the excuse, it is hokum.

There are only 3 issues that I stretch myself to imagine

1) Copyright in the map. If this were an issue, I would have thought it highly likely Relic have a template assigning copyright from COH2, which they can easily adapt and ask the mapmaker to sign. This may include being allowed to change the map. Since all mapmakers I came across wanted their maps published and preferably in automatch, this is unlikely to be an issue,

2) Capacity to contract. If Relic are worried the mapmaker may lack capacity bcs they are too young, all Relic have to request is sight of a birth certificate.

3) NDA. If for some bizarre reason Relic want the mapmaker to sign an NDA, this sadly should not be difficult, since community members seem to happily sign their lives away on these things.

More likely, it is that the Relic mapmaking side feels under pressure and does not want to spend hours on examining community maps if they have their own tasks to attend to.

All known former staff members who are part of Relic now, are shown on our staff tree under the Developers section

"We're still working on other things behind the scenes that aren't on this roadmap. Community Maps are one of these. Because of all the legal work we have to do, we were not confident as to be able to make it happen before end of this year." - Gabby_RE

I find it funny that I start asking for my maps to be removed and all of a sudden adding maps is a legal issue

The last Mono stream he made it sound like certain bad actors were a reason to not include maps. People that gave mappers problems/hard time were the bad actors mentioned. I know certain mappers have had death threats from drooling goons. But I do not see any legal issues with people trashing mappers in forums,twitch, etc.

POSSIBLE LEGAL STUFFS
I recall reading a review of a game where the community was mad because the game added a Mod Store so content providers could charge money. Perhaps Relic wants in on this cash stream. You want to play Crossroads in 1v1, you buy the map from WhiteFlash on the Relic store and Relic gets a cut (25%). They make money and dont have to do anything. Its free money. I know mappers have been clamoring to get paid since people like Skin makers have gotten paid.

MAP EDITOR - OFF TOPIC
I stated before the map editor is very bad, compared to Coh2. If you start a map from an existing map you will not be able to edit it efficiently. For no apparent reason Relic puts every piece of the map in a listbox. That listbox code is horrible. You can click an object in the map and then wait up to several minutes for the listbox to refresh.

In Coh2, no such listbox exists. You can edit huge maps instantly at all times. It never lags. It is one of the best Worldbuilders ever made.

Coh3 is not the worst, but the decisions made added steps, lag, complexity, etc that make it cumbersome to use at best. The tool layout in Coh3 is insanely dumb compared to Coh2. Just like the game, no attention to detail was given in the editor.

I have also worked on a map just for Coh3 to say "Uhhh this map does not load anymore. Bye." Not sure how long it takes Relic to resolve these issues when they happen in house.

For no good reason Coh3 maps are huge on your hard drive. There are gigantic files being manipulated. Not sure how much this makes the editor lag.

My guess is the difference in making a map in Coh2 vs Coh3 is like 10:1. You could make 10 maps in Coh2 to every 1 in Coh3. I do not see them fixing the editor anytime soon. So one map every 3 months sounds about right.

I'm just going to put my thoughts here, because they're starting to get a little too long-winded for the shoutbox.

Regarding the title; I heard that the decision to release CoH 3 with 4 factions and 2 campaigns was a decision that was made at the behest of urging from community managers.

You did not remember my post in the shoutbox correctly. I did not wrote that community managers pushed for 4 factions, it was the first wave of the COMMUNITY COUNCIL members (well known guys from the community).
And I still think it was a good decision!
Relic wanted to release with US / Wehr factions - do you think anybody would have been hyped for factions that was alrdy the CoH1 launch factions? I absolutely don't think so. And we should not forget that DAK / Brits as launch factions would never ever happened simply because the US market is so big. (Germany is a big CoH market as well).
And is balance really the reason the game has not met expectations? NO, balance is one of the strengths of the game. There are a lot of factors that hold CoH3 back but 4 factions and balancing are not the reasons.
Releasing the pc version 6 at least 6 months too early is the main reason. Let's say CoH3 would have been released in September then replay mode incl. caster hud would have been released 3 months after release - acceptable, right? We would have had 4 4vs4 maps after 3 months of release and so on....

It's just beyond me how management could put money on the console version but not solve the issue with the community maps. Honestly, if you have a chance to get free, high quality maps FOR FREE then you should prioritize this issue.

You did not remember my post in the shoutbox correctly.

Fixed, thanks!

Relic wanted to release with US / Wehr factions - do you think anybody would have been hyped for factions that was alrdy the CoH1 launch factions? I absolutely don't think so. And we should not forget that DAK / Brits as launch factions would never ever happened simply because the US market is so big. (Germany is a big CoH market as well).

Wow, that's puzzling. Coh 1 - US vs Wehr; Coh 2 - SOV vs Ost; Coh 3 - Brits vs Dak US vs Wehr (???)

In light of that, I'd say that it probably was a good decision to include the others at launch, considering that it would basically be received as a blatant ripoff of CoH 1 at that point.

And is balance really the reason the game has not met expectations? NO, balance is one of the strengths of the game.

In 1v1 and 2v2 yes I agree.

There are a lot of factors that hold CoH3 back...Releasing the pc version 6 at least 6 months too early is the main reason. Let's say CoH3 would have been released in September then replay mode incl. caster hud would have been released 3 months after release - acceptable, right? We would have had 4 4vs4 maps after 3 months of release and so on....

For sure

I don't agree it would be better off with 2 factions like previously.

We have 4 and we can start with balancing out from get go.
New factions always threw current balance completely out of the window in both previous games, having 4 at launch gives more variety to players and less long term problems for devs in my eyes.

There is enough to look forward to in form of battlegroups and maps, say what you will, but the 4 factions we have right now are much better balanced then 4-5 factions in both CoH1 and CoH2 after YEARS post release since you do not need to fit new shapes in pre-existing form, you work with them from get go and make them fit much better with each other.

Relic should listen to community it is something most companies do, but that does mean to listen to everything that the community says, there are good ideas and bad.

Having 4 faction on release means a lot more workload and does complicates things balance wise. The solution to that problem, is to always have a benchmark and balance according to that.

Having more 2 campaigns on release is less of an issue imo.

I like having 4 factions, because dak is cool

I like having 4 factions, because dak is cool

Yeah, here I was thinking that the plan was to release the game with the two new factions. Apparently it was US and Wehr, so maybe not as shrimple as I thought.

Yeah, here I was thinking that the plan was to release the game with the two new factions. Apparently it was US and Wehr, so maybe not as shrimple as I thought.

Tbh, USF really has unique, flexible design this time and has actual openings that do not involve rifle spam.

Do Relic have a problem of listening to only a few "top dogs" within the community? Most definitely, a few streamers do not at all reflect the majority of the game's community which if one takes a glance is mostly 3v3 and 4v4 team game casual players.

Was it a mistake to launch the game with so much content right at the get go? Not at all, it's what pushed it beyond what was done before and I don't think it's fair to say that it's balanced worse than how the original or CoH2 released.

In my opinion the problems here lay in rather absent transparency on what were and are the current goals and what's actually being worked on as well as actual post-launch support in terms of content because from what I remember CoH2 had new stuff released a month after it's release while this game has been in a perpetual state of damage control from the looks of things by comparison for a few good months now.

As a modder I will also mention and keep on hammering about the again rather lackluster modding support, big hype was generated before the game's release about the tools but a few of us knew that we shouldn't really give our hopes up and that's what really happened. Currently we're being fed table-spoon sized updates for modding when so much more could be done if we at least had the same capabilities as CoH2 if not the original game. Franchises such as Men of War were literally built on the backs of modders and their workshops are full of great mods, some of which even went on to become games on their own such as Gates of Hell and further attract people to the series. So I wholeheartedly believe that unlocking the game's modding potential will reduce the amount of negative reviews about the game and increase sales as well, if only Relic would actually listen and also be willing to implement ideas and fixes from the community.

Nah, don't twist this back on the community.

If you are worried about balance, which Relic wasn't because open beta was a joke, you could have more rounds of it, including the early-access launch. There are so many paths to launch a bigger/better/more complex sequel without resorting to the bare-minimum content delivery.

Instead, Relic made a lot of poor decisions, skipped most of testing, and you ended up being scammed of a worthwhile sequel. They laughed at your face saying the game is a success, and when Sega discovered the balance sheet, they fired most of them.

Don, my boy, you are over this. Even the holdouts, who believed that this 4vs4/3vs3 map patch in July will turn the tide, should accept the truth that it is finito.