Relic and the Long Distance Relationship

Being a long time devout fan of COH2 is like being in a long distance relationship. You hear from the person you love every once in a while, and that is enough to keep the fire burning inside of you just bright enough to continue the relationship. In the mean time, between the long bouts of silence, your mind is left to wander, and your stomach left wrenching. Why isn’t she answering her phone? She is surely out doing massive amounts of ecstasy and getting gang banged in some wild orgy, that’s the only explanation! Maybe she found someone else and is never coming back. Chances are the significant other in this hypothetical long distance relationship has a perfectly rational reason for being unavailable. Everyone is busy and there isn’t always time to talk, but when left in the dark regarding someone they love, people tend to assume the worst. It’s human nature.

I can’t help but feel like I’m in a semi abusive long distance relationship, with Relic playing the part of the heart breaker that goes out on the weekend and forgets to call. Then when she (yes, Relic is a she in this metaphor) finally does get around to talking with you, she vaguely glazes over all of the awesome shit she’s been doing, talks about how EXCITED she is, and leaves me to fill in the blanks about everything else. It’s not very fun. In the mean time I’m left to stew about all of the unresolved problems that have sat around for ages, and without a consistent line of communication, am left growing increasingly frustrated by the circumstances.

So basically that was just a really dramatic metaphor to explain how Relics policy on communicating with the community makes me feel. Does it really have to be this way? Why leave us to our own assumptions (based mostly on past failures, might I add) if there are great things on the way? It’s only a matter of time before people get so burnt out on the hope of better things to come. Without having some sort of rationale as to why the game is consistently plagued by bugs (see what I did there?), a stale meta, and optimization/performance issues.

I think we can all appreciate that Relic is a small studio and that resources are limited, but why isn't our community manager given more freedom to let us know what in the hell is being worked on?

I just want to know what Relic's priorities are now that AA is complete. Are they are actually committed to making the game more suited for competitive play, or has the focus already shifted to the next round of single player content, or more MP factions?

Whatever happened to the whole ESL partnership? There have been zero updates since the announcement. What about the mechanics in the game that makes coh2 frustrating for competitive players? Or the boring, call-in dominated meta? We have a growing list of (often resurrected) bugs, an incomplete warspoils system, and a potentially awesome open beta platform that has yet to be fully utilized. I don't think anyone expects promises, it would just be nice to know what the priorities are.

I’ll conclude my long, cathartic rant with that. How does Relic make you feel, and what are your guesses as to what Relic has planned for the future? I expect nothing more than quippy, one sentence remarks, followed by excessive usage of MVGame and Kappa.

didn't read the whole thing but the first two paragraphs seem about right.

Where's the community manager on this one?

Zero comunication.

Zero comunication.

dude christmas holidays. There will be no communication/response until new year

she don't care.

I think this issue has more to do with Relics policy on what can be said than the community managers willingness/dedication to let us know whats going on, considering that not much has changed between how Relic communicates with the community since Nouns departure.

dude christmas holidays. There will be no communication/response until new year

they have poor communication regardless of the holidays.

I think this issue has more to do with Relics policy on what can be said than the community managers willingness/dedication to let us know whats going on, considering that not much has changed between how Relic communicates with the community since Nouns departure.

Yes, afaik, most of he info is locked behind some NDA, but this pisses a lot of people off, because there is no indication of what Relic's priorities are/what we can expect from them.

I am getting annoyed at the community manager. I don' get care about jazz hands or silly patch notes, i want information.

SEGA's people also seem to be dominated by the paranoid set, which doesn't help matters any. "AAGGHH! If we let Relic advertise a tournament from a third party in their game, then people will start stealing our genetic material and we'll all be replaced by clones!"

Information is the POWER

No One's gonna share the power

lol

1. We announce stuff when details are finalized, and things are locked down/fully known. I definitely know that you guys want more information in advance. In this case, the time slot was up in the air for quite a while so I was unable to pre-announce any further that we did.

In former times Relic CM´s promissed many things, the most wont become true so the chance their policy. Better say nothing then say something wrong. Maybe there is nothing they can tell us know, maybe the don´t work on a patch. Sometimes there is just nothing to say.

Plus Relic seems to focus on their forums now.

Sure, it would be interesting knowing about Relics Roadmap but i wouldn't share such informations either.

What if I told you that the communication is better than before?
I give you guys all the credits for your sceptisim but given where we come from a couple of months ago, I'd say things changed for the better. I'm absolutely no fan of Relic's way of communicating but we gotta roll with what we have...

I'm not too fussed. They want the game to keep doing well, so things will slowly continue improving. To be honest I'd rather know about cool stuff when it's almost ready to go, don't need pre-patch hype.

The only things that bug me are talking about how excited everyone is instead of just talking about the exciting thing, and affirming that the feedback is being listened to instead of just addressing feedback. Seems like some kind of stale middle management strategy.

I am working in a customer-oriented company and the way Relic handles its communication or just in general his relation with the customer is just inadequate.

Better than before, that might be but (I'm speaking for myself) that's just not enough. When you get a 2/10 on your school report and you had a 1/10 before, you can talk about progress, but still very very poor.

The amount of good people lost the previous year is just too much. Rogers and Ipkai are only 2 examples of it.

Not only that, but their priorities are very strange.
DLC content has not been brought out for a very long time. Easy money and pleasing customers with skins, stickers or commanders.

It's not going to take a long time untill I say goodbye to this game too.
I don't care anymore about 'oh but it's going to change' or 'it has been worse'. Communication, service 0.

These are my two cents.

What kreatiir said is correct.
You can have the best product but if you have such a poor marketing you won't sell anything.

They dug their on grave before CoH2 was even released.
NDA prevented any hype and the Pay2Win policy broke their neck.

Look at CoH2 Youtube videos. Mostly under 1.000 views which is absolutely NOTHING. I could film mysef sleeping and could get more views. Even the videos of Relic don't get more than 10k.

They have never realised that marketing is the key to be succesful.
See - Call of Duty releases bullcrap every year but they create such a hype that people tear the game out of their hands.

CoH2 only showed a little clip with few to no information at all and blocked everything else under the NDA. It's predecessor was the best-rated RTS of all times, there was so much potential. But no - NDA. We don't know nothing but get preorder bonusses, lol.

The saddest thing is that they did not learn anything because it was the same thing a year later with WFA. I was in the Beta and was really enthusiastic about all the new things but I was not allowed to talk about it.

I do not know if this is the fault of Relic or SEGA but I feel sorry for Cynthia.

It's just like dropping her and a shovel into a destroyed City with the task to rebuild it on her own. She surely is a very charismatic girl and I am sure she knows her job very well. But the City "Company of Heroes" got wrecked insanely bad.

And the most ironic thing is that there are thousands of willing helpers wanting to help her but the NDA and poor public relations have blocked all access to CoH-town.

I think this issue has more to do with Relics policy on what can be said than the community managers willingness/dedication to let us know whats going on, considering that not much has changed between how Relic communicates with the community since Nouns departure.

Pretty much. Upper management tells her what she can and can't say. Nice to see them re tweeting community events now though, before I used to have to sacrifice a goat to get one. It took so much effort that I eventually stopped going through the rig moral each time.

Relic communication policy can be described in one Cynthia_RE's quote:

Not something that can be discussed right now, but once we are ready to share more information we will...

The amount of good people lost the previous year is just too much. Rogers and Ipkai are only 2 examples of it.

It's not going to take a long time untill I say goodbye to this game too.
I don't care anymore about 'oh but it's going to change' or 'it has been worse'. Communication, service 0.

+1, especially the bold part.

You can have the best product but if you have such a poor marketing you won't sell anything.

there are products/goods that need no marketing whatsoever.
unfortunately coh2 isnt one of those, although whoever is in charge of marketing seems to think it is...

In my opinion,Relic is going to "dig their own grave" due to their incompetence to improve their own product although they have to because their marketing is bad and communication even worse.

People always say that their studio is small and they cant do this or that in a short time but they are obviously not doing anything positive.I havent heard of a bigger patch/improvement for 2 months now which is by the way really pathetic.

Last but not least,hundreds of supporter (me too) buy their DLCs but as a reward we get the knowledge that we are in a lost place and that is the issue which mainly leads to less players,less money,smaller studio and so on.