Is the pace of innovation slowing?

I've been playing Relic games for a while, since Homeworld and Dawn of War 1, and I do think that each new game they release is better than the ones before it. But with CoH2 especially I feel that the formula is not really evolving anymore and is just being tweaked. Dawn of War was pretty innovative for it's time,and CoH1 was a huge departure from Dawn of War. If you look at CoH2, well, it's pretty great, honestly, I love it, but Relic isn't innovating with game mechanics the way they innovated with cover, retreating, suppression, and the economy in previous games. Some major innovations were even deliberately sliced out of the game post-release, like Cold Tech and blizzards.

I think that's fine for a sequel, but it's making me think that it's time for Relic to create something memorable and new. I think having to REMOVE cold tech from the CoH2 post release demonstrates that Relic is reaching the end of what they can do with the current formula.

What are your thoughts?

Because there's only so much you can do that innovates that also works. Relic could implement all sorts but eventually you run out of ideas as well as things you can realisticly do.

To be honest I agree in that I think CoH 2 hasn't done all of it entirely right, and I'd argue that a game like DoW II with the presence of more innovation over a wider perspective makes use of important innovation better.

Innovations for the sake of innovations are never the way.

If formula proves to be good, you should perfect it, not try to push more shit on it.

There can be innovations, but they need to be spot on and if the setting of the game doesn't require more innovations, why do it?

Prove?

Every single MOBA that failed.

Plus, anyone even remembers cold tech?

Relic did a lot of really cool stuff in CoH2. Truesight, abandoned vehicles and Cold Tech being the stand outs.

They haven't been as innovative, but they've really improved their design. They did a pretty solid job designing units + factions for CoH2, although they've since fucked with Soviets and OKW through patches. (But that's some scrub balance designer + community bitching ruining the original game designers good ideas.)


I think they should have stuck to their guns on cold tech, but once the game came out and they saw all the vCoH whiners complaining they've done their darndest to make the game more like CoH1.

Innovations for the sake of innovations are never the way.

If formula proves to be good, you should perfect it, not try to push more shit on it.

There can be innovations, but they need to be spot on and if the setting of the game doesn't require more innovations, why do it?

Prove?

Every single MOBA that failed.

Plus, anyone even remembers cold tech?

I remember cold tech and miss it, lame ass whiners wanting everything easier.

Innovations for the sake of innovations are never the way.

If formula proves to be good, you should perfect it, not try to push more shit on it.

There can be innovations, but they need to be spot on and if the setting of the game doesn't require more innovations, why do it?

Prove?

Every single MOBA that failed.

Plus, anyone even remembers cold tech?

I agree to an extent, but if we get too conservative, we'll end up playing AoE2 forever but with different balance and graphics. Once upon a time retreating squads and a focus on squad preservation in an RTS was a big innovation. What if there's something else just as cool,but we're too afraid to try it?

I agree with you on Cold Tech but I'd argue that the problem is not innovation itself but rather trying to add minor new things to a game design that needs to stay mostly the same - I mean CoH2 had to be designed so that blizzards weren't even there half the time. If blizzards were a core part of the game maybe they could have been incorporated in a way that made them fun.

Also I thought the game was better with cold tech, for whatever it's worth

I remember cold tech and miss it, lame ass whiners wanting everything easier.

It is still playable in custom games.

Idea was fine, implementation was bad.

Coldtech is an example of innovation that was poorly done. That they left it in as a checkbox option shows they want to save face about it while being able to commit zero effort in making it better.

Anyways Relic will innovate only as far as it is profitable. Patches, new DLC and even selling other modders' material (and making the in-game store in general) are examples of Relic's level of effort and spirit of innovation- the kind that affects their bottom line. And you will see more in the upcoming patches.

One more thing: if Relic innovates too many things in CoH2 then CoH3 won't be sell-able. That's why innovation is slow: they don't want to fix too many things now. Why cure cancer when you can just sell temporary treatments forever?

the scale, pace,degree of detail, sound and optics are perfect. not much to do here. true sight must ve been ultra hard to implement and is an insane cool feature.

the only thing i wish for the future is being able to control units and fight inside houses

The next step/innovation will come when vr is used by the large majority of gamers. If that ever happens, because wearing one of those vr-headsets is not realy comfortable.

Yeah , i know some people will tell me vr is sooooo awesome , but imho there are just techdemos atm and thats it. The price of those things is quite high, too.

Otherwise with the current generartion of gamedevs I can´t see any real "innovations" on the horizon.
It´s mostly 8bitretroshitgames, zombiesurvivalpostapoclypticcraftinggame number87398457, a moba, another moba , a cod-clone, a halo-clone or a bf-clone...

... or for thew rts-genre "oldschool" ,"largescaleblabla" or the occasional gamesworkshop cheap produced moneygrab.

For the next years I see the dark age of pc-games, because the big money is earned either on consoles or (excuse me - got to vomit) mobilegames.

CoH1 could be highly innovative because there were no expectations on it, it was a brand new series. When you make CoH2 you have to have a lot in common with the first game, otherwise you're not making CoH2, you're just making some other RTS with the same name.

Once you've established that your series has a core DNA, you start variations on a theme. The core of the game is the leitmotif showing up in every entry and then you try to do something interesting with it each time. Too little and its repetitive, too much and its inconsistent.

CoH2 featured a lot of ideas that sounded cool, but were ultimately not fun or hampered the experience. Cold tech was good and bad in equal measure, the blizzard blocking line of sight was tactically interesting, while having to make sure all your units were huddled around fires was NOT, it was just boring and slowed everything down. The death blow was that it tanked performance on some computers too, all these computer cycles dedicated to a mediocre gameplay variation overall.

CoH2 does have unambiguously positive changes, reverse hotkey is great, grid hotkeys are good (but no rebinds WHY), vaulting over obstacles is good, lack of zombie bunkers and purchased global vet were good changes. There were also bad changes, like making alerts and UI messages harder to see, cancerous levels of DLC that actually impact game balance (Commanders should NEVER have been unavailble to anyone), redundant commanders / commander "hand" system being inferior to the old 3 trees system and so on.

2 steps forward one step back.

the scale, pace,degree of detail, sound and optics are perfect. not much to do here. true sight must ve been ultra hard to implement and is an insane cool feature.

the only thing i wish for the future is being able to control units and fight inside houses

I'm also happy with CoH2 but given that it seems Relic is running out of things to improve it with, I'd like to see a new series. I dunno, just really feels like it's time for that.

A lot of people think that CoH2 may not be truly innovative, and that it has been more refinement. Developing an RTS with asymmetric factions is not easy and takes a lot of iteration, and they seem to have gone with tried and tested base formula from vCoH, and added stuff like vaulting, truesight, and blizzards.

Relic admitted blizzards, while a cool concept ;-), was detrimental to gameplay and removed it from automatch. Perhaps other things related to RNG such as vehicle abandon as well, but the point is they aren't perfect though we still invest time into their games since we love them to some extent. It's like a retarded child; retarded, but you still love him.

If you compare the changes in the genre (or gaming in general) between 2006-2016 as opposed to 1996-2006 then it's clear the pace of innovation has slowed. I can see a few reasons for this:

1: RTS is a mature genre so many of the obvious or easy innovations have already occurred. Likewise players have more of a firm expectation of what and RTS should be.

2: Technology isn't changing as quickly as before - or more accurately, consumers and devs aren't pushing for change. Thus opportunities to use new tech in innovative ways are slower to come. Developing or experimenting with new tech is more expensive and makes it harder to get sales because the number of people who can run your game is reduced.

3: Consumers expect higher production values which means games are more expensive to produce. Gaming has become more dominated by big publishers, who like most big businesses prefer safer, lower-risk investments. Why would a publisher take a risk establishing a new IP or developing a new engine when they can just release another installment of an established franchise which is guaranteed to make money?

4: Gaming is much more universal and casual players represent the bulk of the customer base. As in any medium casual consumers have less discerning taste, are drawn in more by flashy features and marketing rather than deep gameplay, and quickly move on to the latest new thing after the hype surrounding a game has died down.

One thing is sure optimization for COH2 sucks ball compared to other Relic games, heck even 4v4 DoW2 does not tax my computer as much as 1v1 COH2.