Considering pre purchase, need to know some things first

Hi all,

New to these forums, and pretty new to forums, but am learning its a great way to learn alot about a game from it's community. I mean, who knows the game better than you, the community. So I am considering prepurchasing. I loved CoH in alot of ways, it had some great content, but also had it's fair share of headaches. So can you help me learn some things before I make my decision, Ill just go one question at a time, so as to keep it concise. So heres the first question.

Is this game made by the same people who made the previous coh game? Save devs, same programmers?

Hi all,

New to these forums, and pretty new to forums, but am learning its a great way to learn alot about a game from it's community. I mean, who knows the game better than you, the community. So I am considering prepurchasing. I loved CoH in alot of ways, it had some great content, but also had it's fair share of headaches. So can you help me learn some things before I make my decision, Ill just go one question at a time, so as to keep it concise. So heres the first question.

Is this game made by the same people who made the previous coh game? Save devs, same programmers?

Different ppl this time around.

Thank goodness.

Next question, and thanks for that quick reply, whats the status of the dreaded "drop hack". Is it still prevelant. It was a headache in coh, and more so coho when you lost items you had paid for. Is that going to be an issue in coh 2?

Don't think drophack will be an issue in coh2.

Any1 can still 'pull the plug' ofcourse. Don't think you can do much about it.

watch tutorial MVGame

Any1 can still 'pull the plug' ofcourse. Don't think you can do much about it.

That was the drop hack. Starcraft 2 addressed it. Some kind of drop hack detector that kicks the player trying to exploit it.

Different ppl this time around.

Huh? It's the same people right?

I hope not. Those are the guys that left glaring imbalance issues, exploits, and had poor customer service from as recent as 2012, all the way back to.. gosh when did CoH come out, 2005 ish?

I hope not. Those are the guys that left glaring imbalance issues, exploits, and had poor customer service from as recent as 2012, all the way back to.. gosh when did CoH come out, 2005 ish?

They also made one of the best RTS games ever. They kept supporting the game for 7 years, sure it wasn't perfectly balanced but no game ever is. I don't see your problem?

It's some of the same people and some different people. Quinn Duffy, for instance, was a designer on CoH and now I think he's the lead designer on CoH 2. A lot of the key people from the CoH team are gone, though - they left Relic a few years ago (they're the ones Relic hired to port CoH to Steam recently, in fact).

A lot of people from CoH1 are working on CoH2 and a few people from CoH1 are else where.

Actually, if you want to find out:

For the CoH credits, go to this website.

For the CoH 2 credits, go to Steam\steamapps\common\Company of Heroes 2 - Test Build\CoH2\Movies and play "credits.webm."

Big changes:

Lead Producer of CoH: John Johnson (gone to Smoking Gun Interactive) replaced by Jonathan Dowdeswell (producer of Relic Online team from CoH)

Art Director of CoH: Angie Radwan-Pytlewski (gone to Smoking Gun Interactive) replaced by Ian Guise (artist from CoH)

Lead Designer of CoH: Joshua Mosqueira (gone to Blizzard) replaced by Quinn Duffy (senior designer from CoH)

Lead Audio Designer of CoH: Crispin Hands (I think he works at some specialized audio company now?) replaced by David Renn (audio assistant from CoH)

Lead Animators of CoH: David MacLeod and Erin Olorenshaw (dunno what they are up to now) replaced by Brett Pascal (new to CoH but animated stuff for Sleeping Dogs and TRON: Evolution among other games)

Lead Development Testers (whatever that means) of CoH: Ryan McGechaen (recognize that name?) and Lino Conti (I think these two were tied to THQ?) replaced by Matt Philip (he worked on Space Marine)

UI Art Supervisor: Not specified in CoH credits, but in CoH 2 it's Robert Westwood, who did not work on CoH (which shows...) but who was an artist on Space Marine.

Gameplay Engineering Supervisor: Not specified in CoH credits (maybe didn't exist? I dunno what this position means) and in CoH 2 it's Alex Lam, who worked on Space Marine but not CoH.

Senior Artists from CoH: they are all gone or promoted - Alun Bjorksten moved up to Principle Artist, and is joined by Ian Cumming who worked on most of the WH40k games but not CoH. 4 of the senior artists are from CoH - two were artists and 2 were animators. The other 14 aren't from CoH but I didn't bother looking up where they worked.

Artists from CoH: basically all gone, I think. Of the 19 CoH 2 artists, 2 were CoH artists, 1 was a CoH animator, and 1 was a senior artist supervisor on CoH. The rest are new to CoH although probably a lot of them worked on other Relic stuff like a WH40k game or 4.

It also appears the 1) the credits are unfinished so some people might be left out, presumably the SEGA people, because 2) Sonic is in the credits!

Lead Audio Designer of CoH: Crispin Hands (I think he works at some specialized audio company now?) replaced by David Renn (audio assistant from CoH)

Lead Development Testers (whatever that means) of CoH: Ryan McGechaen (recognize that name?) and Lino Conti (I think these two were tied to THQ?) replaced by Matt Philip (he worked on Space Marine)

Crispin Hands is a contractor. Ryan McGechaen = Tribalbob aka dude who made semois

Anyone who doesn't recognize Tribalbob has no business worrying about the credits for the two games in the first place

I hope not. Those are the guys that left glaring imbalance issues, exploits, and had poor customer service from as recent as 2012, all the way back to.. gosh when did CoH come out, 2005 ish?

patching is not dependent on relic , it wqas dependent on THQ now they did not wound up bankrupt due to sound and solid decesioning , anyway , many members of the old guard are gone and the people who are at relic now are responsible for DOW2 and OF i think , the former is great if you like the sort of MOBARTS the latter however is ... oh well lets just say that it introduced us to brits ( nough said MVGame ) .

I guess that leads to the question of:

What is theyre position on patching and support for this product. I dont want a repeat of CoH in terms of support. For example, haiving a 82 win streak broken by someone suing a trainer. Sent the replay in with teh ticket, and they verified that was teh case, but never fixed the account stats.

The other is, whether they will be including some mechanism for addressing drop hackers, whether that be banning their IP's like the starcraft 2 support staff after repeated violations, or some third party software which detects attempts to drop hack and kicks the offender before the match instance is ruined.

Thoughts?

And the balance? After ToV, I am not sure they ever implemented a single balance patch. Will this product be similiarly situated? Years of an imbalanced product? Why? Keeoing the server up and running is one thing, but a lack of balance, in a pvp rts, just wont cut it.

There's no way for us to know how much Relic is going to keep supporting the game after it comes out. Some/much of that might even depend on sales. As for hackers and stuff, I don't know if we've heard anything about anti-hacking but we'll probably have to wait and see whether hackers can get around it or not.

Should we measure their support/addressment of hackers/exploiters in the last coh, and how they dealt with it, as how it will go down here?

Because that would mean it will be riddled with them, from the day it is released, until the day the CoH 3 beta starts.

They let known and reported glitches go unaddressed not just for a month, or years, but they still exist today. They were never fixed. Money was put into Coho, a game also filled with the same problems, but they never cared to fix the product we had all already paid for. What does that say to you?

Your telling me, its the same developers, or isnt it? That is important to know. The ones who handled it last time, basically took the position that you get the game, glitches and all, and now that we have your money, we dont care to patch/fix/ devote any resources to fixing these errors.

Becuase that would mean it will be riddled with them, from the day it is released, until the day the CoH 3 beta starts.

There are a lot of different developers as I pointed out above but I think the people who make these kinds of calls are the publishers, because they pay the bills. THQ published CoH and SEGA is publishing CoH 2, so they are entirely different companies. I would look to how well SEGA has supported their multiplayer RTS games like the Total War series or Universe at War.