A Quick Note For The COH2.org Community

People found their scapegoat / whipping boy for their balance concerns, and heres the dramatic resulttttt

This has nothing to do with finding a scapegoat and everything to do with a Relic employee using automatch to both test abusive strats and then rub salt in the wound by baiting his opponent (aerohank). The in game troll is one thing (do you still feel that kubels are over performing?), but to visit the replay thread and continue to fuel the flame is (while admittedly hilarious) really, really bad PR.

I totally understand that it's a balance devs job to min max units and push the most abusive strategies to their limits in order to identify how a unit is performing, but is live automatch really the place for that? When people have ranks at stake, getting trolled with an abusive strat by a Relic employee and then subsequently trolled in the replay thread in which his opponent was obviously very frustrated makes it seem like Relic is both aware and complacent with the current balance issues.

This has actually happened once before already. Take the truck pushing crushing issue for example. This was something that was brought up from the beginning of the WFA alpha, there were numerous threads about it. Nothing got done. WFA goes live, people are up in arms about it, it's a super hot topic, people are mad. What happens next? A Relic balance dev and their (from the casual players point of view) "elitist pr0 balance testers" *cough* Ciez *cough* are streaming games in which they abuse the shit out of truck pushing crushing just for some cheap laughs. Just ask sepharim if he remembers. Well played Relic, take the most abusive and frustrating gimmicks and advertise that not only are you aware of them, but you're willing to further infuriate an already frustrated fan base for your own amusement. So...fucking...sad.


The reaction to taxman was warranted, but highly unprofessional. You can't stroll around with "RELIC" attached to your name and call your customers assholes, that's just asking for trouble.

Dusty you backing him up in this casual manner only makes the situation murkier, considering that you have some sort of relationship with Brad, and your attitude toward the whole thing kind of mirrors his own, you should probably distance yourself from all this, for Relics sake.

Thanks Cynthia for creating this thread, hopefully some good comes from it.

EDIT:

After making this point I feel that I should clarify that I don't think that Relic collaborating with the experienced members of the community for balance feedback is a bad thing. I don't want this situation to cause Relic to recoil from interacting with the community, I just feel that they should be a little more sensitive and realize that your place in the community is as a Relic employee and not just a member of the #rekt train The fact that this is being addressed by the community rather than Relic is just embarrassing.

Well said FestiveLongJohn's. My understanding is that these were not isolated incidents either. Numerous other community members got in touch with me after Aerohank posted that replay expressing similar concerns. This was just the tipping point of frustration.

I also agree that live auto-match should not be used as a testing environment for max/min/potential abuse tactics. An open balancing server with scheduled events would be a much better approach.

*Edit: I should mention that there is little point in dwelling on the past now. Relic is taking this seriously or they wouldn't be posting. We should do the same.

FestiveLongJohns summed up exactly why I was upset by this whole situation. He's my spirit sister.

The fact this this is being addressed by the community rather than Relic is just embarrassing.

Not quite sure what you mean by this.

I'm part of the Relic Community Team, officially employed here at the studio. The communication in this thread comes directly from us as a studio and is representative of our official views on this subject.

Yeah, I don't think that's really fair. Relic seems to be all over this.
On a side note, an in game mute chat option could go a long way to making auto matching more enjoyable for some.

I'm fairly certain they are referring to the fact that an apology was issued on a fan website before significant internal disciplinary action was taken against the employee that was caught flaming/abusing customers.

That's not even true.

I'm fairly certain they are referring to the fact that an apology was issued on a fan website before significant internal disciplinary action was taken against the employee that was caught flaming/abusing customers.

This is incorrect. Not really sure how this information would be something he's referring to, or even something a member of our community would have knowledge of. It's very important to us that this apology message was broadcast in this community, where things transpired.

I personally have no idea why this thread isn't locked already. No fruitful remarks here. Just a company statement followed by gossip.

Good to see Relic are addressing this. What was said was definitely unprofessional, but I can't criticize the response since it was actually warranted if it had been anyone but a Relic employee. I still respect all parties.

Honestly though, I am just hoping this speeds up that process that this balance issue is addressed now. Even I am engaging the rage switch now which just feels not right. I hate being mad at a game, feels so stupid

While we are at it, can we have a mute chat option in game?

Not quite sure what you mean by this.

I'm part of the Relic Community Team, officially employed here at the studio. The communication in this thread comes directly from us as a studio and is representative of our official views on this subject.

My point is that this isn't the first time this has been an issue, as many others have had similar negative experiences with Relic balance developers prior to the one being addressed here in this thread. The fact is, it took some really obvious misconduct from a Relic employee to evoke a response, which makes me question the manner in which you brief your employees on how they are expected to act when interacting with the community. It's embarrassing because this has been par for the course (see truck pushingcrushing) until enough of a stink was made of it by the community to attract your attention.

I appreciate the direct response, and the opportunity to voice our concern in this thread, Cynthia. I'm sure you guys will deal with the situation accordingly. I'm not trying to make mountains out of molehills here, if Brad were not a Relic employee this wouldn't even be a blip on the radar compared to some of the replay chats out there. Unfortunately for Brad, he does work for Relic, sorry you have to clean up the mess.

Honestly though, I am just hoping this speeds up that process that this balance issue is addressed now. Even I am engaging the rage switch now which just feels not right. I hate being mad at a game, feels so stupid

I think the majority of us are feeling some sort of frustration as well about the balancing. While it appears that Relic may listen to our input there is relatively little action on it. We can't completely fault them with this either. Relic has a vision for the game. They share that vision in little tid-bits spread out among all the different communities. We are left trying to piece it together. So, yea, don't feel silly.

My point is that this isn't the first time this has been an issue, as many others have had similar negative experiences with Relic balance developers prior to the one being addressed here in this thread. The fact is, it took some really obvious misconduct from a relic employee to evoke a response, which makes me question the manner in which you brief your employees on how they are expected to act when interacting with the community. It's embarrassing because this has been par for the course (see truck pushing) until enough of a stink was made of it by the community to attract your attention.

I appreciate the direct response, and the opportunity to voice our concern in this thread, Cynthia. I'm sure you guys will deal with the situation accordingly. I'm not trying to make mountains out of molehills here, if Brad were not a Relic employee this wouldn't even be a blip on the radar compared to some of the replay chats out there. Unfortunately for Brad, he does work for Relic, sorry you have to clean up the mess.

This is fair feedback, and very much why we are conducting a review of our communications. I do want to state that like any company, we have policies which employees are required to adhere to.

I can't comment on other scenarios that may have occurred without my knowledge, but I will say that if anyone within our community has concerns on this subject I strongly encourage you to reach out to me via private message.

Nice to see your interest, Relic
I think Relic needs to make more "hotfix" patches for some points of imbalance instead of Big patches.
Hope new patch will be released soon.

Relic has a vision for the game. They share that vision in little tid-bits spread out among all the different communities. We are left trying to piece it together. So, yea, don't feel silly.

We are aware that this is an area we need to improve upon, and are currently working to set up a better framework with which to do so. It will not be an overnight change as much as I would love to see that, it's going to take a significant amount of work. We are very committed to that work, and I certainly feel that it is exceptionally key to our success. Our community will certainly start to see things evolve over the coming months.

We are very committed to that work

It's 11:42 PM in Vancouver and you are posting on a forum of internet nerds. I see some of that commitment coming out now.

Am I the only one who thinks that what Breaking Brad did wasn't all that bad?

I mean, watch some high level games on Propagandacast - full of truck pushing. It's just what people do at higher levels.

In the first few games in question he got a bunch of profanity and the worst he said was "so you think the Kubels are underperforming?" Again, I don't see much of an issue with this.

I agree that saying "GG asshole" at the end of the game with taxman was bad. That definitely was not okay. Otherwise it's mostly a case of him getting harassed by community members, IMHO.

edit:

Just wanted to elaborate a little on why this doesn't sit well with me.

Whenever I play games like this, there's always a torrent of verbal abuse/hate speech and whenever that happens the response is always "get over it noob!" and from how Relic handles enforcement it doesn't seem they care much either. If you're going to take the line that "it's just how things, we won't do anything," that's fine, I guess.

But when you start intervening for any other conduct issue, even if it's a special case like an employee ... eh. So suddenly Relic needs to step in when a balance team member steps on someone's toes with an annoying strategy and a trollish but mostly harmless comment? Bleh. Meanwhile anyone who wants to can pretty much go Full Hitler and say whatever the shit they want. Bleh.

Am I the only one who thinks that what Breaking Brad did wasn't all that bad?

I mean, watch some high level games on Propagandacast - full of truck pushing. It's just what people do at higher levels.

In the first few games in question he got a bunch of profanity and the worst he said was "so you think the Kubels are underperforming?" Again, I don't see much of an issue with this.

I agree that saying "GG asshole" at the end of the game with taxman was bad. That definitely was not okay. Otherwise it's mostly a case of him getting harassed by community members, IMHO.

Read the whole topic and you will see that people are more angry about him coming to the replay thread and posting the question again to mock his opponent.

Read the whole topic and you will see that people are more angry about him coming to the replay thread and posting the question again to mock his opponent.

I read the whole topic, thank you very much.

Yes, that innocent replay thread, with the replay title that I won't repeat here but I don't use gendered slurs.

I still think it was pretty harmless in that context.

- edit -

To clarify a little bit, I do think that some of the things bC did were bad, and I think it's a good thing that Relic sent this note out.

On the other hand, it also feels like this is largely a case of butthurt rather than actual harm.

Relic being the employees and us being the customers, I agree that it's more important for them to behave reasonably ... it's their job and we're just playing a game, after all. On the other hand, I don't like how Relic employees misbehaving is being represented as the ONLY problem here, when it is very clear to me, at least, that harassment in general is also an issue.