What happened to Relic?

What game-breaking problems were there before they moved to steam? Please enlighten me? Comparing the relatively minor bugs in CoH1 to the massive calamity that is CoH2 is just nuts and anyone who knows anything about both games would agree.

Dat poor argument doe.....

There were SO many more bugs, and balance issues with CoH compared to CoH2. CoH2 is years ahead of CoH in every imaginable way.


Game breaking problems I can think of off of the top of my head for CoH:

Allied smoke bug - Make any unit inside smoke invulnerable
Panzershek clipping - You couldn't hit anything with them. This made German t2 useless for more than a year
Units getting stuck getting out of buildings
Stormtroopers camo'd on retreat
support vet not giving any bonuses
Connectivity to the Relic servers - for several weeks after launch connecting to the servers was so difficult
Drop hacking - on of the first #1 on the American ladder got there by drop hacking when ever he was lossing
Ladder rankings no working properly 1 rank 20 (General of the Army), no one in ranks 19-15
Being able to delete your HQ
Tank wrecks that were part of the maps were salvageable.
Calliope with a working gun - for the first 6 months to a year, all the Americans had to build was riflemen to calliope
Bars that could instantly suppress multiple units while on the move
Nuclear pineapples
Semois Pin
Napalm Nascar
Bar/ATgun/Quad cal unbeatable strategy
1 sec arty
glider crush
fallschirmjäger taking on and crushing 2 squads of riflemen
Kangaroos
Brit blobs
jeep/kett pushing
Zombie Grens
Staghounds
PE Panther spam
Pio Spam
Boring ass sniper duals - Every game.
Strafe being OP - Strafe being UP - Strafe being useless - Strafe WTF wiping out everything - and so on
Demo charge rush
Inspired assault full auto panzershreks
Indestructible, repairable, deletable trenches
Crippling brit trucks that just spawn by mining then tank trapping map entry points.
Allied war machine replacing as many tanks as you could get killed
Pak "first shot" camo bonus lasting for 3 or 4 shots
Pak infantry sniping
Cap walking
You could play online ranked games in Dev mode
Gliders being able to land in enemy bases


I didn't have to even think hard about the above list.

There were SO many more bugs, and balance issues with CoH compared to CoH2. CoH2 is years ahead of CoH in every imaginable way.


Game breaking problems I can think of off of the top of my head for CoH:

Allied smoke bug - Make any unit inside smoke invulnerable
Panzershek clipping - You couldn't hit anything with them. This made German t2 useless for more than a year
Units getting stuck getting out of buildings
Stormtroopers camo'd on retreat
support vet not giving any bonuses
Connectivity to the Relic servers - for several weeks after launch connecting to the servers was so difficult
Drop hacking - on of the first #1 on the American ladder got there by drop hacking when ever he was lossing
Ladder rankings no working properly 1 rank 20 (General of the Army), no one in ranks 19-15
Being able to delete your HQ
Tank wrecks that were part of the maps were salvageable.
Calliope with a working gun - for the first 6 months to a year, all the Americans had to build was riflemen to calliope
Bars that could instantly suppress multiple units while on the move
Nuclear pineapples
Semois Pin
Napalm Nascar
Bar/ATgun/Quad cal unbeatable strategy
1 sec arty
glider crush
fallschirmjäger taking on and crushing 2 squads of riflemen
Kangaroos
Brit blobs
jeep/kett pushing
Zombie Grens
Staghounds
PE Panther spam
Pio Spam
Boring ass sniper duals - Every game.
Strafe being OP - Strafe being UP - Strafe being useless - Strafe WTF wiping out everything - and so on
Demo charge rush
Inspired assault full auto panzershreks
Indestructible, repairable, deletable trenches
Crippling brit trucks that just spawn by mining then tank trapping map entry points.
Allied war machine replacing as many tanks as you could get killed
Pak "first shot" camo bonus lasting for 3 or 4 shots
Pak infantry sniping
Cap walking
You could play online ranked games in Dev mode
Gliders being able to land in enemy bases


I didn't have to even think hard about the above list.

stahp you're giving me flashbacks

It´s a matter of taste i guess.

At the beginning I really hated CoH2 because it wasn´t the game I wanted it to be. I don´t hate it anymore but I doubt I will ever like or even play it and I think this is because of three points.
- I don´t like the comic like art style at all and it’s really hard to play game which appearance you dislike.
- The hardware optimization is nonexistent. Playing a game without the necessary amount of FPS and micro lags is a pain. And I don´t even got a bad pc.
- But the most important thing is the engine. I dislike the fighting system, it feels unrealistic and unpredictable. CoH1 did this way better. Pop cap, upkepp / income system, Resource System, tech tree, doctrines, retreat mechanic, all this was way better in CoH1 then it is in CoH2. CoH2 unifies and simplifies way too much. Today the US vs WH balance is really good in CoH1 (yes I know, Relic needed years to get to this point) and there are plenty of viable strategy’s. PE and even more brits are still unbalanced. I doubt the will ever be. Especially the brits don´t work fine with CoH1´s engine. They are poorly designed and unfinished. CoH1 went for the worse with OF and ToV and sadly CoH2 continued this trend.

To sum it up, Relic toke away many good thinks (some of them represent CoH), unified some mechanics and introduced some good and some bad new stuff. If you like this stuff CoH2 is your game.

That’s what I think.

This might make some bring out the pitchforks, but one mechanic I actually think DoW2 got better than CoH2 was removing base building.

One of the reasons why i stopped playing DoW2 was the removing base building. It´s a bad idea to remove something which represents a franchise.

One of the reasons why i stopped playing DoW2 was the removing base building. It´s a bad idea to remove something which represents a franchise.

+1

One of the reasons why i stopped playing DoW2 was the removing base building. It´s a bad idea to remove something which represents a franchise.

Same reason I did.

Maybe basebuilding was important for DoW, but its not for CoH2. Basebuilding in CoH2 exists because people desperately wanted it to be in the game. Does it serve a purpose or is "fun" in any way? No. But that doesent matter as long as it is in, right? (excluding OKW "truck-building" thats actually an example of base-building as an interesting feature, because clever placement is the key here)

If basebuilding is an integral part of a game then I dont want it to be removed. For CoH3 however I hope Relic goes the last step and takes it out of the franchise.

Apart from that:

I really like CoH2 and actually prefer it over vCoH. There are quite a lot of small "stupid" annoying things (including some design-decisions, glitches and so on) but those dont make the game bad in my opinion.

I also seem to be part of the minority that thinks that most of Relics design-intent is great: The Brits, the Panzer Elite, ColdTech, the Soviet faction and a lot of things people claim to be "bad design" dont suffer from the design at all in my opinion.

All those things are great ideas that just need tweaking...changes that are sometimes never implemented which is why some of those things remain in a rather dislikeable state for a lot of people.

The "turtle-potential" of the brits was for example never a problem for me, i actually liked fighting with and against it. The blobbing was the factions huge problem which made it a pain in the a%% to fight against and boring to use. Certain key abilities like heroic charge were a problem.

Same goes for Coldtech: Im still convinced that coldtech could be a lot of fun in competitive multiplayer IF some changes were introduced that makes it feel like less of an annoyance.

A lot of what Relic did so far gave me the "Wow! That is truly amazing" impression at first sight and then a >slight< disappointment when playing it because i kept thinking "Why did they implement it this way?" or "Why does it have so little impact?" which then lead to an overall "good" instead of "amazing" impression.

Interestingly that is even the case with The Western Front Armies: "Those new factions are really amazing...BUT...blobs are back"

Overall I think Relic is doing a really great job with CoH2. I think my problem is just that im overly critical with the game because I like it so much. Its always this "The game is fun BUT if only that was better...then the game would be perfect" feeling I have.

One of the reasons why i stopped playing DoW2 was the removing base building. It´s a bad idea to remove something which represents a franchise.

Base building might have been central to DoW1, as it was a rather standard RTS / Starcraft clone.

DoW2 was more like a pseudo sequel to CoH1, or at least it built on the same kind of cover/commander/manpower economy mechanics. Base building was hardly relevant in CoH1, so it was a very wise decision to remove it from any future game that was built on the mechanics as CoH1. It might have disappointed some standard RTS fans of DoW1, but as mainly a CoH1 player I felt it was a good move to remove bases.

I'm appalled that the whining brought back buildings for CoH2, because as in CoH1, base building is completely irrelevant to the game:

- It doesn't fit the combat centric gameplay

- it doesn't fit the resource system (you don't need expansions, new bases etc.)

- Buildings are expensive and only work as tiers. You never get more than one of each

Basically, base building belongs in SC2. It makes no sense in CoH.

As far as base building is concerned it was far superior in COH1. Units actually came out from the buildings making it strategic in placement. In COH2 just plop it down anywhere and then wait for what seems like ages for your units to actually arrive on the field once they've completed. This and the zoom level are 2 main things that still really bother me.

The fact that the British Empire(The UK, Canada, Australia, India and etc) singlehandedly won WW2 but don't have an Army in CoH2 is almost a crime.

Not to derail this topic into a historical argument, but are you serious with this BS?


On Topic: I didn't get into CoH 1 until like 2011, and by then the game was fantastic. I didn't get into CoH 2 until Western Front Armies released (Summer Sale for the win!) and while CoH 1 in 2011 might have been a bit more polished than current CoH 2, I think current CoH 2 is more fun.

Basebuildings are awesome and a must have but only when they are done properly like coh1 where they actually look good and units came out of them. In coh2 they are just ugly holes in the ground... really bad work. Dow2 without basebuildings was just retarded, belive it or not but many people enjoy the feeling of building buildings in games. Dow1's basebuilding was muuuch more fun than dow2's UUUUGLY and boring base.


This i find is a huge issue with coh2. The first impression of coh2 to new players is the most ugly base and uninspiring base structors i have ever seen. Even Red Alert buildings had more thought put into them. Atleast i remember clearly the first time i tried coh2 and i immediately felt distaste for the shitty work on base buildings. If i was not a ww2 fan to begin with i would probably had not bothered with the game at all EPIC FIRST IMPRESSION.

My biggest issue with cob2 is the lack of ranking. In vcoh it was the reason why id brake my keyboard and mouse and the reason why id be pulling all nighters. (2.602 rank reset ) it kept me in the game for so long and why i still play it. I find this motivation absent in coh2 gone and replaced with a sorry ass call of duty modern retards pew pew casual prestige with unlockable skins when you reach this amount of XP. I want a 1-20 ranking system that shows skill and keeps me wanting to play the game. I want a reason to play the game. And conquering the leaderboards isnt fun when you have to go to a out of game site to look especially when you dont have a good computer

Have you guys actually looked at the games the old team works on for Smoking Gun Interactive?



I think I'll stick with COH2 even if it has its issues.

Yep, timeless masterpieces like Musical Feet, Doodle Jump and Freefall racers! Kinect and iOS games have never been so good!
http://www.smokingguninc.com/products/released/
(I shouldn't be cruel to Smoking Gun, it's just sad that the money is in mobile trash these days. Look at where Sega puts most of it's efforts in Japan for example)

lolllll

I think COH2 has improved a lot since release, and a lot of the changes in gameplay and approach are great. Still, the initial release made it seems like they had learned nothing at all from vCOH, and they ended up reinventing inferior gameplay solutions, in stead of reusing what worked great in vCOH.

I think many problems that the player base is referring to could be solved by fixing the "no one must know anything"-doctrines by Relic.
Why is this even a thing? Everything they do is top secret. And how should we "improve" their ideas if we are only able to face them after they already got patched into the game?


/Edit: Okay okay, but LOOOL to the free fall racers video. Unbelievable that this team has made vCoH. Wow.

/Edit: Okay okay, but LOOOL to the free fall racers video. Unbelievable that this team has made vCoH. Wow.

Even I was like:
Show Spoiler

But seriously I honestly think the reason why CoH2 is so different from CoH1 is because Relic hired a new team of "creators" to try and attempt something better, which thankfully didn't end in a total letdown but it's not in the best of shape as of at this very moment(mostly due to incompetence and slow acceptance of trying to connect with the community on improving the game[though they have dramatically improved from a few months ago]). It would be nice though to increase the hotfix rate on known bugs/lag freezing issues. Balance ofc is every month though it's gotten ridiculous with the overnerfs and overbuffs(slowly improving but not at a rate I would like).

Have you guys actually looked at the games the old team works on for Smoking Gun Interactive?



I think I'll stick with COH2 even if it has its issues.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

Main issues with CoH2 over CoH1:
- Increased lethality to a point where it simply makes no sense for a game like CoH
- Some units simply shouldn't be in the game.
- Predictable, repetitive and boring 'do X or lose' strategies, because of the two points above
- Pathing
- Still no ladders (StarCraft2 baseline)
- Ultimately the flow through the game isn't nice and smooth but more like repeatedly tripping over something.

What happened to Relic? Veteran developers moved out or leave and noobs got in.