RELIC: how about an update_news_something

What happened to the original team? Surely it's not a completely different team than that that made vCoH......riighttt?

What happened to the original team? Surely it's not a completely different team than that that made vCoH......riighttt?

yes it is, the original team left, the lead design to ... you guessed it blizrd. there was a recent topic discussing all of this.

Does anyone have any theories on what the hell Relic is thinking? I'm working on a few but lack insider info

Seems like a middle management screw up to me. Or there's a yesman making crucial decisions somewhere

Pretty sure they just released a hotfix after the communal outcry over the kubel, and gave an explanation to why. Balance takes time, rather than make blanket complaints try coming up with some concrete solutions. Taking cheap shots at the devs of the game is not going to get you far.

and they are always excited about the future!

BUT
if we the community aren't excited...then who cares if the developers are....there will be no one around to buy the product they are so excited about....lol

Lack of leadership and vision. Basically they inherited a sophisticated product from the team that made the original game and they are not up to the level required to grow it let alone maintain it.

Have to disagree there, if there's one thing that Relic has been consistent at over the years it's being consistent at being inept at supporting their game via communicating with their audience or general quality of patches. Even the last hot fix had attributes that were intended to be changed but didn't make it in the end.

CoH1 wasn't exactly support nirvana either, taking almost a year to fix the sherman invulnerability smoke and the magical phasing panzer shrecks.

yes it is, the original team left, the lead design to ... you guessed it blizrd. there was a recent topic discussing all of this.

that's also incorrect, about 40% of the CoH1 team are still at Relic, two designers are at blizzard most notably working on Diablo3, some are at smoking gun interactive doing fuck knows, some are at blackbird interactive making the new homeworld and the rest are at all different studios in Canada and the US.

Pretty sure they just released a hotfix after the communal outcry over the kubel, and gave an explanation to why. Balance takes time, rather than make blanket complaints try coming up with some concrete solutions. Taking cheap shots at the devs of the game is not going to get you far.

the fix isn't enough, but did u notice how they butched the patch notes, not once but twice! For God sake they can't even get their patch notes sorted out.

Have to disagree there, if there's one thing that Relic has been consistent at over the years it's being consistent at being inept at supporting their game via communicating with their audience or general quality of patches. Even the last hot fix had attributes that were intended to be changed but didn't make it in the end.

CoH1 wasn't exactly support nirvana either, taking almost a year to fix the sherman invulnerability smoke and the magical phasing panzer shrecks.

the original team left right when the game was released so we never experienced their support only their creation

the fix isn't enough, but did u notice how they butched the patch notes, not once but twice! For God sake they can't even get their patch notes sorted out.

I'm not saying its enough or that they have been perfect; clearly thats not the case. But big bulky patches tend to cause more harm than good. Let them keep taking small steps to achieve balance. It took coh so long before a solid balance was reached. Acting erratically will only set them back more.

the original team left right when the game was released so we never experienced their support only their creation

dont know why you think that, most of them worked on OF as well. Just check the credits for both games.

I'm not saying its enough or that they have been perfect; clearly thats not the case. But big bulky patches tend to cause more harm than good. Let them keep taking small steps to achieve balance. It took coh so long before a solid balance was reached. Acting erratically will only set them back more.

What I was trying to say is that with Relic's track record it's very hard to take cheap shots at them. Very hard.

dont know where you think that, most of them worked on OF as well. Just check the credits for both games.

Here is where I learned this: http://www.coh2.org/topic/23223/what-happened-to-relic/post/207977

sorry to say this but Rogers is incorrect. Since the team that worked on CoH1 is near enough the same team that worked on OF.

I don't know why people are always spreading this rumor that coh1 devs were some kind of brilliant geniuses and now relic is a bunch of bumbling idiots.

Relic behaves the same way today as it always has.

It's already begun

Some sort of communication would be lovely.

I don't know why people are always spreading this rumor that coh1 devs were some kind of brilliant geniuses and now relic is a bunch of bumbling idiots.

Relic behaves the same way today as it always has.

Indeed, while they patch more often they still fuck up a lot too.

The core of the original design team is at Smoking Gun, and a few other major players have left (Josh Mosqueira and Taylor Fales come to mind), but most of the team is likely the same.

The original game had a brilliant design at its core, but the support it got post-release was absolutely terrible. A few examples for those of you who don't believe me...

They actually forked the game into two branches before they released Tales of Valor, using one branch to develop a balance patch and the other to develop the new expansion. They released the balance patch (2.400) a week before the expansion, but nobody at Relic thought to merge the balance and expansion branches together. So when the expansion came out, it had none of the balance changes that had been released a week before. They added some later, but most were never recovered, and a lot of people believed that 2.400 felt like the most-balanced patch in history.

They broke how MGs functioned in buildings inadvertently, but nobody there knew how to fix it, so they played it off as a feature and had their community manager at the time (Thunder) come out and say they were working on new UI elements to supplement this "feature". Though they polished it some in later versions, the promised UI improvements still haven't ever been released.

The only example of quality support from Relic in CoH1 was the 2.602 balance patch, which was really the work of one designer (Taylor Fales/Mora) working largely in his own time with a dozen or so top players on ironing out the game's core balance concerns. Taylor isn't at Relic anymore, and that level of community interaction hasn't been seen since Peter's involvement with top CoH1 players during the CoH2 alpha and beta. Even then, it felt like Peter never had the executive power to make balance decisions that Taylor had.

CoH1 prospered in spite of Relic's negligence, because it was a novel concept with an amazing design. CoH2 doesn't have the luxury of novelty or amazing design unfortunately.

The core of the original design team is at Smoking Gun

Nope, John Johnson (Producer), Drew Dunlop (Programmer) and Angie Pytlewski ( Artist) are the three people who left for smoking gun. http://www.smokingguninc.com/about/

Thanks

As inverse pointed out vcoh was an amazing game, even with the poor support that came after release, so its hard to believe that the same people who made it are the same ones that made OF and COH2.

that's also incorrect, about 40% of the CoH1 team are still at Relic, two designers are at blizzard most notably working on Diablo3, some are at smoking gun interactive doing fuck knows, some are at blackbird interactive making the new homeworld and the rest are at all different studios in Canada and the US.

I noticed that you added this later to your post. So only 40% of the original team remained? That is not much. Of the 60% that left, how many were key individuals?