Community Patch to Relic

Great idea but this won't happen. The QA process that community maps go through is strenuous and I can't see how Relic would be able to get enough resources to go through an entire community made patch. The best approach would be getting them to take a community patch and maybe...just maybe...get it onto their Closed Alpha or Open Beta servers to test out. It is such a long shot.

Relic doesn't need to implement a community made patch, they just need to test it and see what they like in it and implement those things. Many developers make this official practice and it always leads to the base game getting better for everyone.

And Relic has zero excuse for not doing more testing when they have a massive community willing to do it for them, open play testing is the back bone of any games long term success.

their QA is pretty shocking, I don't know how many times a bug got fixed for the next build of the game to have that same bug come back again.

They don't even seem to check the patch notes against what's actually in the attribute files that get shipped in a live build.

Involving the entire community is a terrible idea because most of the community has no idea what they're talking about. You need to define a target gameplay level and seek out individuals within that gameplay level for feedback, and you need a strong voice guiding the discussion and defining boundaries. The best-case scenario, then, is a Relic-selected pool of top players that are able to provide focused feedback on changes.

Ultimately, this won't happen unless Relic initiates it, and given Relic's current priorities I doubt it's something they're willing to do.

Is coh2 a dead end? I mean the poor faction design. Is not it easier to coh3?

As Inverse said, most people in this community have no idea about balance. If they involved the whole community there would never be an agreement on anything because of cluelessness, fanboyism, trolling etc

Well, Luvnest and my thought was that the community could give ideas for solutions to the programmers in our community and a programmer could try the solution, upload the solution, and then we could all test it and give feed back. After the solution has been finalized it could be added to a main patch.

Is coh2 a dead end? I mean the poor faction design. Is not it easier to coh3?

Well considering that a lot of people play CoH2 because DoW2 is dead (outside the elite mod) when DoW 3 comes out coh2 will probably die very fast and the cycle will repeat forever.

Well, Luvnest and my thought was that the community could give ideas for solutions to the programmers in our community and a programmer could try the solution, upload the solution, and then we could all test it and give feed back. After the solution has been finalized it could be added to a main patch.

Imagine the whole CoH2 community trying to provide good ideas for a balance patch. There would be a massive flood of good and bad ideas impossible for relic to keep track of.

Imagine the whole CoH2 community trying to provide good ideas for a balance patch. There would be a massive flood of good and bad ideas impossible for relic to keep track of.

Relic isn't making the patch. The community would be handing over a finalized patch over to Relic in the end.

Relic isn't making the patch. The community would be handing over a finalized patch over to Relic in the end.

Someone will have to decide what is included and what isn't. Be it relic or community members.

Speaking of DoW 2 and CoH2 I still don't understand why they didn't use DoW 2's counter system.

Someone will have to decide what is included and what isn't. Be it relic or community members.

We would have a main patch that fixes would be added to after they have been approved by the community. When a solution is being tested people could test it with the main patch and see if it works well with everything else.

Involving the entire community is a terrible idea because most of the community has no idea what they're talking about. You need to define a target gameplay level and seek out individuals within that gameplay level for feedback, and you need a strong voice guiding the discussion and defining boundaries. The best-case scenario, then, is a Relic-selected pool of top players that are able to provide focused feedback on changes.

Ultimately, this won't happen unless Relic initiates it, and given Relic's current priorities I doubt it's something they're willing to do.

That's why I hate democracy .
As you said, the best thing that could happen is if the release a patch based in top player's suggestions, but their policies are so uptight.

Great idea but this won't happen. The QA process that community maps go through is strenuous and I can't see how Relic would be able to get enough resources to go through an entire community made patch. The best approach would be getting them to take a community patch and maybe...just maybe...get it onto their Closed Alpha or Open Beta servers to test out. It is such a long shot.

Seriously, Cynthia gets paid to say this kind of stuff. You need not feel obliged, and particularly when it is demonstrably untrue. The only strenuous element of Relic's QA is the fact that it repeatedly defies all logic by possibly getting worse with every update.

You say you're optimistic, I say you're a shill -- as your recent news post aptly demonstrates. (To clarify this point before I am accused of acting inappropriately, I am talking about the concept of being shown NDA-covered content in an effort to convince the community the future is bright, despite being able to say nothing about it, whilst still claiming a degree of independence. Thus, the cap fits).

Regarding a community patch; whilst I think it's a good idea, it almost certainly won't happen.

Also, does Cruzz have some sort of online Ponzi scheme set up to advertise his mod? Otherwise I'm obviously missing something here. No offence to him (he seems a very talented guy) but I assume even he now feels uncomfortable at the slightly creepy levels of 24/7 spam-advertising and hero worship he seems to be getting from the same small but overly vocal group of people. I'm not sure that it's healthy to have a very small group of people wax lyrical about how Relic should just rename a small, largely untested mod 'Balance Patch - Final' and implement it officially.

In general, I agree with Inverse's posts (#3 and #12) on the previous page.

We would have a main patch that fixes would be added to after they have been approved by the community. When a solution is being tested people could test it with the main patch and see if it works well with everything else.

Sorry, I don't quite get what you're saying. Maybe it's because I'm tired What I'm talking about is the process of finding good and valid balance fixes.

Edit: Come to think of it, I don't need to write another response since the content of this thread clearly demonsrates why there will never be an effort that the community can stand behind.

Seriously, Cynthia gets paid to say this kind of stuff. You need not feel obliged, and particularly when it is demonstrably untrue. The only strenuous element of Relic's QA is the fact that it repeatedly defies all logic by possibly getting worse with every update.

You say you're optimistic, I say you're a shill -- as your recent news post aptly demonstrates. (To clarify this point before I am accused of acting inappropriately, I am talking about the concept of being shown NDA-covered content in an effort to convince the community the future is bright, despite being able to say nothing about it, whilst still claiming a degree of independence. Thus, the cap fits).

Regarding a community patch; whilst I think it's a good idea, it almost certainly won't happen.

Also, does Cruzz have some sort of online Ponzi scheme set up to advertise his mod? Otherwise I'm obviously missing something here. No offence to him (he seems a very talented guy) but I assume even he now feels uncomfortable at the slightly creepy levels of 24/7 spam-advertising and hero worship he seems to be getting from the same small but overly vocal group of people. I'm not sure that it's healthy to have a very small group of people wax lyrical about how Relic should just rename a small, largely untested mod 'Balance Patch - Final' and implement it officially.

In general, I agree with Inverse's posts (#3 and #12) on the previous page.

Going to have to agree with this, how could you ever call the QA relic does strenuous when official maps in rotation are horribly, horribly balanced along with stretching the already shaky pathing AI to breaking point.

Have people already forgotten that update last year that literally disabled all forms of artillery? How the fuck do you let something like that get out of testing?

A very long text

I envy the clarity and quality of your post. *bows*

Just had a thought. Something that MIGHT stop the fanboys from getting a say if this thing was ever going to go ahead.

We on coh2.org could elect an "advisory panel" of sorts that have input into balance changes in the community patch. We could have a poll on .org with a number of well-known, respected players in the community - Cruzz, Luvnest etc etc.

That could be a way to bridge the gap between the outright chaos of pure democracy without making it so much a one-man-decides-everything venture.

What do you guys think?

The ultimate problem is, not many people are going to bother unless Relic officially sanctions it and says they're going to seriously consider implementing the changes that are suggested.

There were a ton of these "Let's put together a patch log and pitch it to Relic" type discussions back in the CoH1 days, but the only time it actually gained traction was when Taylor came out and said he was putting together one last balance patch and wanted the game's best players to decide what went in it. Without that assurance, you're going to struggle to keep people interested.

Just had a thought. Something that MIGHT stop the fanboys from getting a say if this thing was ever going to go ahead.

We on coh2.org could elect an "advisory panel" of sorts that have input into balance changes in the community patch. We could have a poll on .org with a number of well-known, respected players in the community - Cruzz, Luvnest etc etc.

That could be a way to bridge the gap between the outright chaos of pure democracy without making it so much a one-man-decides-everything venture.

What do you guys think?

Yeah but those guys will have to read tons of crap in order to find something usefull in it. And I don't really believe that top players and respected members of community have time for this.

Just had a thought. Something that MIGHT stop the fanboys from getting a say if this thing was ever going to go ahead.

We on coh2.org could elect an "advisory panel" of sorts that have input into balance changes in the community patch. We could have a poll on .org with a number of well-known, respected players in the community - Cruzz, Luvnest etc etc.

That could be a way to bridge the gap between the outright chaos of pure democracy without making it so much a one-man-decides-everything venture.

What do you guys think?

Relic aren't interested in the solicitation of ideas from outside of the studio. To use their exact wording, should just close the thread as that's basically the TL;DR on the matter.