Why listening to the community isn't always good.

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?

Relic is doing what Relic always does, fail at the simplest of tasks. They are trying to put just enough effort in to make people think the game is not abandoned yet.

Just like they did with Coh2 for years and years. They had big talk of patches and maps and it was never a priority for them. "We cant wait to do this... uhhh we have to put it on hold". They tried to run their own mapping contest and they screwed it up massively. Even though they were given successful instructions on how to run it. Because they do not care. Their management is insanely inept. I dont know how the doors are still open there.

I dont know who is left there for management. But Relic needs further management cuts. All successful franchises/businesses have a person in charge who understands the business. Relic does not have this person. They either left or the people that fought them left. They are operating like some bean counter is making the decisions. "If we shit out a half finished game, we can sell 500k licenses and show a positive in our quarterly". And you will kill your franchise completely. Lose an additional 500k+ licenses because of review bombs and backlash. Good job, have a bonus.

I have seen this stuff first hand in the real world. Pissing off customers to make the books look good then laying off people after you get your bonus. Because they all stopped buying from you.

Hopefully, I am wrong. Lets say they have whole teams working overtime to finish the DLC and these people will transition to finishing the game. And the reason they havent done dick for a whole year was they needed to finish the DLC. I will be very happy for people to call me out and laugh at me.

Hopefully, I am wrong. Lets say they have whole teams working overtime to finish the DLC and these people will transition to finishing the game. And the reason they havent done dick for a whole year was they needed to finish the DLC. I will be very happy for people to call me out and laugh at me.

"Please just continue taking your blue pill and move along, Sir."

"Please just continue taking your blue pill and move along, Sir."

I take no pleasure in saying these things. They are just the truth as I see it. If I were doing prep work to invest in a company, this is what my report would look like. This company is a headless chicken. It appears to have no direction.

As I have said since 2017, Relic cant get out of their own way. There is someone/something there in power holding that company back tremendously.

FURTHER COH3 OBSERVATIONS:
With COH3, Relic took steps to increase the player base. Which we can all applaud. Adding the Total Warhammer thing, increasing TTK, changing cover, retreat paths, tactical pause, etc all helps newer players. This shows that a team somewhere knew what they were trying to accomplish and set goals. How much came from community members is uncertain.

The issue came when someone decided to launch the game over a year before it was ready.

This destroys the community. Most older players, streamers, etc are looking for something new and more challenging than Coh2. Instead they get an unfinished watered down version of Coh1. 1v1 is in pretty decent shape so many 1v1 players stay. The majority of everyone else leaves.

This mass exodus combines with review bombs to paint Coh3 as an unfinished failure.

WHAT TO DO NEXT
As a manager what do you do now. Do you pivot or double down and try to finish your goal game?

WHAT I WOULD DO
I would have put every resource on finishing QoL. Within the first month I would have had a roadmap with release dates for Spectate, Replay, etc. I would have focused on more maps in any form. This would at least slow/stop the review bomb bleeding since the game would appear finished.

Discuss with top players that are leaving, "What is not fun about playing Coh3. Are you just bored of Coh in general? Are there mechanics we can fix/change to increase excitement." Since Relic has community members talking to them, maybe they have had these talks. I do not see evidence that they have changed anything at all. So either the community members dont have the answers or Relic is not listening to the answers. Members could say but they wont (NDA?).

WHAT RELIC DID
Dicked around for over a year pretending to care. Pushing out false hope with tiny patches and almost zero QoL updates. Steam reviews are still trash. Community members are still leaving.

In Relics defense we have the arguments of:
- 1/3 workforce laid off.
- Fixing bugs in game.
- Owed a DLC before the end of the year.

All of these are valid to some extent. But these could have been relayed to the community a year ago. These lies of omission further reduce faith in Relic. They knew a year ago they were not going to fix this game but sit in streams every other months saying how excited they are to get it fixed.

So now all of a sudden we are to believe they are going to fix the game after the DLC?

Just to add, there really is no incentive for the upper echelons of management in smaller businesses and firms to actually do a good job. Once you get into the C-suite you're basically playing a game of musical chairs in the industry and the focus is on short-term goals and profits to pad your own resume or line your pockets - if the company fails this is taken as a matter of course and you can move on to the next one without too much ado. Like a parasite.

...

This guy gets it.

...

The Matrix reference was more about the last part, where you hypothetically stated that CoH3 development is slow because Relic is directing everything at the expansion and everything is fine as is.
We both don't believe it.

After initial critique and failure, CoH2 became a decent success and successor to CoH1. UKF for CoH2 got released a good 2 years after the main game's launch. I don't remember exactly when the community took over balancing and most of the patch work, but I think it was soon-ish after.
Good devs often support their game for 2-3 more years. But afterwards, they really need to move on to another product and focus on that instead, that's just the way it is. Given the current pace of development and seeing how CoH3 developed after more than half a year by now and what their plans until December are, I don't have big hopes of CoH3 becoming the go-to company of heroes game like CoH2 finally became with >80% of the player base.

Unless the expansion is a huge success (which it won't be, it will be single player only) that draws back an unexpected amount of players, leading to SEGA and Relic rethinking the strategy and diverting more resources to CoH3 again, nothing much will change.
Relic doesn't even need to drop the game. Extend the current pace of development for 2 more years: Where do we end up? CoH3 will be a decent game, some strengths, some weaknesses. But I doubt it will be the game that sucks me in for another 1000+ hours as CoH2 did. CoH2 was my main game for more than 5 years, every time friends and I met up online we'd ALWAYS play CoH2.

CoH3 will never be. At least I don't have any faith in it. The failed planning during development and subsequently financially disappointing release for SEGA did too much damage.

I take no pleasure in saying these things. They are just the truth as I see it. If I were doing prep work to invest in a company, this is what my report would look like. This company is a headless chicken. It appears to have no direction.

As I have said since 2017, Relic cant get out of their own way. There is someone/something there in power holding that company back tremendously.

FURTHER COH3 OBSERVATIONS:
With COH3, Relic took steps to increase the player base. Which we can all applaud. Adding the Total Warhammer thing, increasing TTK, changing cover, retreat paths, tactical pause, etc all helps newer players. This shows that a team somewhere knew what they were trying to accomplish and set goals. How much came from community members is uncertain.

The issue came when someone decided to launch the game over a year before it was ready.

This destroys the community. Most older players, streamers, etc are looking for something new and more challenging than Coh2. Instead they get an unfinished watered down version of Coh1. 1v1 is in pretty decent shape so many 1v1 players stay. The majority of everyone else leaves.

This mass exodus combines with review bombs to paint Coh3 as an unfinished failure.

WHAT TO DO NEXT
As a manager what do you do now. Do you pivot or double down and try to finish your goal game?

WHAT I WOULD DO
I would have put every resource on finishing QoL. Within the first month I would have had a roadmap with release dates for Spectate, Replay, etc. I would have focused on more maps in any form. This would at least slow/stop the review bomb bleeding since the game would appear finished.

Discuss with top players that are leaving, "What is not fun about playing Coh3. Are you just bored of Coh in general? Are there mechanics we can fix/change to increase excitement." Since Relic has community members talking to them, maybe they have had these talks. I do not see evidence that they have changed anything at all. So either the community members dont have the answers or Relic is not listening to the answers. Members could say but they wont (NDA?).

WHAT RELIC DID
Dicked around for over a year pretending to care. Pushing out false hope with tiny patches and almost zero QoL updates. Steam reviews are still trash. Community members are still leaving.

In Relics defense we have the arguments of:
- 1/3 workforce laid off.
- Fixing bugs in game.
- Owed a DLC before the end of the year.

All of these are valid to some extent. But these could have been relayed to the community a year ago. These lies of omission further reduce faith in Relic. They knew a year ago they were not going to fix this game but sit in streams every other months saying how excited they are to get it fixed.

So now all of a sudden we are to believe they are going to fix the game after the DLC?

Sorry I don't think you'd do anything you said because I don't think you can work well with people. In fact, I think you would destroy the game because most of the company would either quit or try to get you fired..

I think know your place as a gamer not a game developer. Competence is making a good team. And that is precisely what I do not see from your posts

What a stupid fucking thing to say to someone who has created more for this franchise than most people here.

What a stupid fucking thing to say to someone who has created more for this franchise than most people here.

He has been saying he can do a better job. I mentioned working well in a team. Hero developers do not make good games.

Many people have contributed way more, but they do not emit this level of self-entitlement and toxicity, many of them have joined Relic and are contributing massively (DevM, Tarnation, Miragefla, Marcus, MonolithicBacon).

Nor do they emit an arrogant "I will come in and do everything in 30 mins." This is the type of developer you want to avoid in your team even if he is a hero whiz. And from the players' perspective, this is the type of developer that is going to introduce scope creep, expansion is going to have too many unfinished things with too many bugs, and sunset your CoH franchise. Maybe as a solo indie developer.

Many continue to contribute (coh3stats, whiteflashreborn, inverse, AE, tightrope, and many more).

Complaining with valid complaints as a gamer is one thing. But claiming you can do a better job as a developer is something totally different. Can you lead a team? Can you manage production and demands from customers and business? Can you get people like miragefla, devm, and the other people to stay in the company? Can you deal with a terrible launch with 50% reviews to try and revive the game? Can you work with artists, designers, and sound to work together on one cohesive vision?

Saying you can do a better job for years now, sounds very ridiculous.

He has been saying he can do a better job.

Your hatred blinds you. The whole point of my posts is for us all to look at what has transpired and decide "Has Relic done the right thing and will Coh3 get better".

I listed the events and then stated (with 20/20 hindsight) what I feel could have been done. Then compared what was done. Was Relics response logical?

I opened the door for an intelligent conversation. But you guys just want unicorns and rainbows pushed up your ass by big daddy Relic. Your comments should have been more pointed to saying what you think should have been done, etc. Or just agree with Relics decisions.

I stated before the road map came out that nothing will be done until after the DLC. That is what the events showed us. That is why I stated, "Januaury/February will be interesting times". We players will not find out until then if Coh3 has a future. For now it is on life support. I am not being a jerk or trashing Relic. I am saying this is what the data shows.

HEROES
If I thought I was the super smart hero, why would I interview players leaving the game? Because I have played the game on many levels and modes with varying skill level players. And every person wants something different from the game. There is no one fix.

The question here was: Relic made the game better for new players but old players are leaving in droves. Should Relic stick with the EZ mode version or start switching game play back towards something more challenging like Coh2? What would you do?

Unless the expansion is a huge success (which it won't be, it will be single player only) that draws back an unexpected amount of players, leading to SEGA and Relic rethinking the strategy and diverting more resources to CoH3 again, nothing much will change.

You are probably correct. I dont see many players coming to MP from the DLC either. I too feel MP is dead until a few months after the DLC drops. But the thought of Relic putting resources in to get 1k or 2k new players in MP sounds like a very bad idea for them. They probably wont do it.

Best case scenario is Relic letting a small crew loose on fixing the game while the rest of the company focuses on the next big project.

You are probably correct. I dont see many players coming to MP from the DLC either. I too feel MP is dead until a few months after the DLC drops. But the thought of Relic putting resources in to get 1k or 2k new players in MP sounds like a very bad idea for them. They probably wont do it.

Best case scenario is Relic letting a small crew loose on fixing the game while the rest of the company focuses on the next big project.

Is it time to take the patient off life support?

Is it time to take the patient off life support?

For a strategy game with MP focus, these numbers don't look that bad. CoH3 has stabilized after the release and backlash, there's no real outflow anymore. Many other studios would love to have 2000+ players in peak times. But these are studios with 50 devs or less, not a company of Relic's size.
I guess even if Relic dropped the game right now and half the players leave the game out of frustration, the game might not be dead right away. Maybe the numbers then stabilize around CoH1 levels, maybe they slowly dwindle over time.

My assumption is that SEGA/Relic have decided that this game will not financially support more than a small group of developers in the long term. That's why we see mostly smaller updates, because the majority of Relic has been moved to another project. I guess the expansion is another decision point where they will adjust how many people for how long etc will work on CoH3.

What a stupid fucking thing to say to someone who has created more for this franchise than most people here.

This is a bit rich, coming from you.

For a strategy game with MP focus, these numbers don't look that bad. CoH3 has stabilized after the release and backlash, there's no real outflow anymore. Many other studios would love to have 2000+ players in peak times. But these are studios with 50 devs or less, not a company of Relic's size.
I guess even if Relic dropped the game right now and half the players leave the game out of frustration, the game might not be dead right away. Maybe the numbers then stabilize around CoH1 levels, maybe they slowly dwindle over time.

My assumption is that SEGA/Relic have decided that this game will not financially support more than a small group of developers in the long term. That's why we see mostly smaller updates, because the majority of Relic has been moved to another project. I guess the expansion is another decision point where they will adjust how many people for how long etc will work on CoH3.

I think it looks bad. Even if compared to CoH2, the release of which was worse due to the fact that their main publisher went bankrupt and the scandal surrounding the single-player campaign. Even there the numbers were better. And if you compare it with some Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront, the developers of which are even smaller than Relic, and their game is even more niche and hardcore compared to the casual Company of Heroes which has a certain recognition and name. There are almost similar online numbers, but Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront did not lose its audience dramatically like CoH3 did from 30,000 players to 2,600. Only from 3,800 maximum to 3,000 peak over the last 30 days.

Show Spoiler

In my opinion, this is a catastrophic failure of Relic. And the dismissal of 120 employees only proves to me that SEGA does not see the point in fixing games.

I think it looks bad. Even if compared to CoH2, the release of which was worse due to the fact that their main publisher went bankrupt and the scandal surrounding the single-player campaign. Even there the numbers were better. And if you compare it with some Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront, the developers of which are even smaller than Relic, and their game is even more niche and hardcore compared to the casual Company of Heroes which has a certain recognition and name. There are almost similar online numbers, but Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront did not lose its audience dramatically like CoH3 did from 30,000 players to 2,600. Only from 3,800 maximum to 3,000 peak over the last 30 days.

Show Spoiler

In my opinion, this is a catastrophic failure of Relic. And the dismissal of 120 employees only proves to me that SEGA does not see the point in fixing games.

What I meant is: A small studio would be fine with these numbers. A game like this can support 30-50 devs. At least I know other games with studios of this size that keep releasing - so at least it seems to pay their salaries. It's definitely bad for a company like Relic and the CoH franchise. They completely failed to meet their expectations, both regarding game quality as well as financial.

So the best thing we can realistically hope for is that Relic keeps a smaller force working on the game and improving it for the next 2 years when support usually ends. CoH3 is a pretty mediocre game at the moment. The last half year had some improvements albeit not a lot. Another two years at this pace and CoH3 will be okay to decent. Not the go-to game in the franchise, but something with its own player base in its own right.

Worst case scenario is obviously DoW3: The expansion doesn't do much, player numbers at some point start dwindling and Relic will end support completely. Ironically, this might not be the worst for the whole franchise, since some people might be back to CoH2 again, which also suffers from a split player base.


And just some context for your screenshot: The data you show is misleading. This game was released in June 2021. Player numbers from release shrunk by 65%. Still better than CoH3, but it wasn't really stable. This is pretty good retention for any game though, which might be due to the more hardcore player base: The player base is limited, but also way more sticky than casual gamers.