Relic; It's Time We Had That Talk

No game in the history of video games has shipped without bugs, and no QA team in the world can find them all.

We should be thankful that Relic don't have to pay to submit a patch to steam or we would never get any fixes.

Yep - I'm sure those that shelled out $100 for the special edition or whatever are really "grateful".

You gotta give props to relic. They have been doing a great job communicating with the community on the forums and is on par with blizzard. Not many developers really do as actively or openly.

Sorry to hear you're worried about the game.

We're exceptionally happy with it's performance so far, and with how it's been received. Some things aren't perfect, sure, but then they never are on launch. For example the leaderboard situation is not something we're happy about, and we share the community's frustration with that. We hope to have it resolved as soon as possible.

As OnkelSam pointed out we're actively working with the community both here and on the official forums to take in feedback, and share what we can of what we're hoping to do in the future.

As you say it's 2013, and not 2008. As such it's even more important to have a rational and thoughtful process of deploying game updates. Rushing fixes out just so it looks like we're doing something might be good for some kind of "community management" or "PR" but it would be a disaster for the game. We'd much rather take our time and deploy something we have faith in than rush.

Which isn't to say we may never make mistakes, but by being methodical we hope to limit them.

Further I do disagree that we've been slow in updating the game. It's been out for 3 weeks and we've 3 updates (not including Day 0) and have another one in the works.

Again as OnkleSam points out a lot of people's frustration is coming with a lack of historical context. It's easy to look at CoH and say that it has more than CoH 2, when it's not taken into account that CoH is over seven years old and has two expansion packs released for it.

If we did a bad job of setting the expectations that CoH 2 at launch would be more like CoH at launch than CoH now, that's on us.

We've very happy with how the game launched. In a day when the largest publishers are fumbling launches like Diablo III and Sim City, we had remarkably few issues. No launch is perfect, but the game is incredibly stable for a PC title and we're not having to spend most of our time fixing issues impacting the majority of the player base.

I'll also address UGBEAR's complaint about "soon" or "we're working on it". We believe in open communication with the community. However that's never going to mean you guys get to know everything that's happening at all times. We can either be honest with you and say that we're working on something, or we can just not say anything.

I realize that what you'd rather is to have us say, "Well that will be out on August 32nd at 11:45 am PDT". But that's not realistic, and will never happen. As we see with the Leaderboards things fall behind, for reasons that are often out of our control. We'd like to let you know what's on our radar, or being worked on, but we can't commit to things where we might not make it.

A lot of companies just don't say anything about what they're working on until they're ready to ship it. We're trying another way, if it's not working we can change.

The bottom line though is we are listening to feedback. We're also watching the in-game stats and metrics, and those often tell us more than forum posts can. For all the people who dramatically are declaring that they're never playing again (all games have that and it's funny to see how many of them then post the next day as if they've never said it) our retention rate (the number of players who play and then play later) is incredibly high.

We committed to continually improving the game, just as we did with Company of Heroes. We hope that's with your help.

I agree, announcing something you cannot commit too is a big mistake.

I have no problems with balance as I know a game which has so many variables can never be perfectly balanced on launch or possibly ever. Developers can never predict how every aspect of the games mechanics will be used / abused.

My main disappointment is that the overall design of the MP systems, They don't feel as if they have had as much development time as the rest of the game. I know working in a PEX team can be hard especially in an environment they're not used to but I think it is vital to have an experienced MP member develop the PEX for MP.

I like the twitch TV add-in but I wonder if it was worth the development time when 3rd party software can preform the same task.

Yep - I'm sure those that shelled out $100 for the special edition or whatever are really "grateful".

If this were an XB or PS3 game they wouldn't get no where near the amount of fixes PC players do, since every time a developer submits a patch they have to pay Sony or MS.

If you believe games should ship without bugs then you're going to be very disappointed because it will never happen.

It's almost as if you don't play your own game. In fact, a Dev commented on twitch they didn't play much after launch. And from other dev statements there seems to be an over reliance on internal metrics & statistical data that in no way gives an accurate picture of real play. So it appears there's a disconnect between what the Dev team sees as 'the current state of play' and what the actual 'current game play' is that the community experiences.

So one unnamed dev says that they haven't played much in the three weeks since launch and that means we don't play? If all we did was play the game then updates would take longer, we have to actually work on it.

We employ some top level players. Is everyone who works at Relic a top level player? Nope. I'm not, for example. But the people who've played our balance testers tend to find them pretty good players.

If you consider those to be unreasonable questions that can't be answered then we have to assume there is no answer... and that this game is basically set aside in terms of development or worse, DOA.

If you want to put some arbitrary metrics on what you consider the game as being DOA, that's up to you. We'll continue to support the game regardless, and work to make it even better for all the fans. We'd love for you to be one of those, and to have a dialogue about it, but there's not point if at all points we keep getting, "Either do this or the game is DOA."

It's also important to remember that we have an entire community to service and support. The competitive community is a small part of that. An important part and a part that we want to grow and nurture, but it's only a part. CoH2.org has what, 2,760 members? That's a sliver of the community. Even if you throw the official forums in there we're talking about a small fraction.

You guys are absolutely important, and to be honest you have far more of a voice in how the game is developed than most fans, but we have to work for everyone. Just because there's a thread that says, "This is the most important thing and if Relic doesn't do it now the game is DOA", doesn't mean it's important to anyone other than the people in that thread. If everyone in that thread agrees with them.

It's good to see that some people in the thread here see that we're working hard, and with the community. We really think that's important and how to improve the game. We love your passion for it, and we realize that if you didn't love the game you wouldn't be on a message forum posting about it.

It's clear that you're not living up to your expectations. However we're living up to ours currently, apart from leaderboards. We're going to continue to work to provide what we feel is a fantastic experience playing the game and continue to improve it. This process will take years, as it did with the original. It's a journey as much as a destination.

We look forward to taking that journey with the fans.

If this were an XB or PS3 game they wouldn't get no where near the amount of fixes PC players do, since every time a developer submits a patch they have to pay Sony or MS.

If you believe games should ship without bugs then you're going to be very disappointed because it will never happen.

No - I don't agree with your point - I expect a game to be supported even if it cost $20.

That's the problem here - the price of admission was set VERY high - and once admitted people realized "hang on a second - this isn't worth what I paid for".

It's like buying a Porsche (for the relative $ we're talking here) and finding the most basic of items not working to a standard that equated to the price.

The REAL problem here is that well polished games such as Borderlands 2, BioShock Infinite, Far Cry 3 etc were all polished out of the box ready to go - and I believe they were cheaper too.

So if you think its fine and dandy - then thats great - but I believe you're in a significant minority there.

I like the twitch TV add-in but I wonder if it was worth the development time when 3rd party software can preform the same task.

Most of that was provided by Twitch. I believe it's an API call mostly, with some backend stuff and then our UI on top of it.

See how I make it seem like I know what I'm talking about.

The moral of the story is that it didn't take much time, and we didn't put anything aside to do it. So it's not the reason that thing X isn't in the game.

So one unnamed dev says that they haven't played much in the three weeks since launch and that means we don't play? If all we did was play the game then updates would take longer, we have to actually work on it.

We employ some top level players. Is everyone who works at Relic a top level player? Nope. I'm not, for example. But the people who've played our balance testers tend to find them pretty good players.



If you want to put some arbitrary metrics on what you consider the game as being DOA, that's up to you. We'll continue to support the game regardless, and work to make it even better for all the fans. We'd love for you to be one of those, and to have a dialogue about it, but there's not point if at all points we keep getting, "Either do this or the game is DOA."

It's also important to remember that we have an entire community to service and support. The competitive community is a small part of that. An important part and a part that we want to grow and nurture, but it's only a part. CoH2.org has what, 2,760 members? That's a sliver of the community. Even if you throw the official forums in there we're talking about a small fraction.

You guys are absolutely important, and to be honest you have far more of a voice in how the game is developed than most fans, but we have to work for everyone. Just because there's a thread that says, "This is the most important thing and if Relic doesn't do it now the game is DOA", doesn't mean it's important to anyone other than the people in that thread. If everyone in that thread agrees with them.

It's good to see that some people in the thread here see that we're working hard, and with the community. We really think that's important and how to improve the game. We love your passion for it, and we realize that if you didn't love the game you wouldn't be on a message forum posting about it.

It's clear that you're not living up to your expectations. However we're living up to ours currently, apart from leaderboards. We're going to continue to work to provide what we feel is a fantastic experience playing the game and continue to improve it. This process will take years, as it did with the original. It's a journey as much as a destination.

We look forward to taking that journey with the fans.

So still nothing in regards to what we want - i.e. COH1 custom game ability etc.

Yep - they're "working on it".....

The REAL problem here is that well polished games such as Borderlands 2, BioShock Infinite, Far Cry 3 etc were all polished out of the box ready to go - and I believe they were cheaper too.

All excellent games. However I think that it's a case of the community here being closer to the flaws in CoH 2, than they are in other games. The grass is always greener, sort of thing.

We work to make sure things are as smooth as possible. We don't always get there, the more complex games get the more complicated it is to make them and the more likely that something goes wrong.

I've worked for three publishers and have seen dozens of launches and never seen one go 100% smoothly. CoH 2 is probably the smoothest, in terms of bugs, crashes and errors.


Far Cry 3: http://www.gamefront.com/far-cry-3s-eu-pc-launch-woes/
BioShock Infinite: http://www.incgamers.com/2013/05/bioshock-infinite-pc-stuttering-bug-still-not-fixed-six-weeks-after-release
Boarderlands 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-13-borderlands-2-patch-aims-to-finally-fix-badass-rank-bug
http://www.examiner.com/article/borderlands-2-hit-by-crippling-game-freeze

love the topic then i look to find a relic dev (okay CM) has posted in it.

on a broad note noun well said.

All excellent games. However I think that it's a case of the community here being closer to the flaws in CoH 2, than they are in other games. The grass is always greener, sort of thing.


Far Cry 3: http://www.gamefront.com/far-cry-3s-eu-pc-launch-woes/
BioShock Infinite: http://www.incgamers.com/2013/05/bioshock-infinite-pc-stuttering-bug-still-not-fixed-six-weeks-after-release
Boarderlands 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-13-borderlands-2-patch-aims-to-finally-fix-badass-rank-bug
http://www.examiner.com/article/borderlands-2-hit-by-crippling-game-freeze

Noun - can we have a yes no at least for that multiplayer question?

Will we have COH1 game creation ability?

Most of that was provided by Twitch. I believe it's an API call mostly, with some backend stuff and then our UI on top of it.

See how I make it seem like I know what I'm talking about.

The moral of the story is that it didn't take much time, and we didn't put anything aside to do it. So it's not the reason that thing X isn't in the game.

That is good to know.

No - I don't agree with your point - I expect a game to be supported even if it cost $20.

That's the problem here - the price of admission was set VERY high - and once admitted people realized "hang on a second - this isn't worth what I paid for".

It's like buying a Porsche (for the relative $ we're talking here) and finding the most basic of items not working to a standard that equated to the price.

The REAL problem here is that well polished games such as Borderlands 2, BioShock Infinite, Far Cry 3 etc were all polished out of the box ready to go - and I believe they were cheaper too.

So if you think its fine and dandy - then thats great - but I believe you're in a significant minority there.

You don't have to agree, it is a fact. No game will ever be released bug free, of course some games with infinite publisher budgets and a small army of QA or much simpler systems game may have less bugs but COH2 is far from being anywhere near a disaster.

A bug free game would require an infinite development time and publishers don't allow that.

I don't think the general public understand what a complicated and gigantic task game development is, especially triple A. There are so many systems at work, so many layers, just look at the credits, all those developers working on one game, so many fields and then acquiring all that talent is another massive task and even harder is getting them to all work together (poor producers) I don't envy you.

Comparing video games to cars just doesn't work, it is like comparing a nuclear reactor to a push pump. I understand customers expect and deserve a certain level quality that is without question and that is why MS and Sony charge for patches and it is easier as the hardware / software is static for consoles (mostly) PC's come in so many shapes and sizes that unexpected things pop up all the time.

I have almost always had to gets fixes for triple A games for my PC, Farcry 3, terrible performance, had to edit text files, dark souls required community mods to runs in 1920 X 1080, Aliens colonial marines...Syndicate, BF3, Crysis 2, I can't think of one game which I haven't found a bug, that may however be my developer eye.

In a perfect world I would love to see bug free games, but it won't happen.

Relic have deployed 3 patches already, I believe they're committed to making the game the best it can within their limits.

No self respecting developer in the world wants to release a buggy / bad game, but sometimes they have no choice, which sucks.

The current most pressing issue is team games and the poor balance due to the Opel truck and the strafe.

You need to fix this ASAP to maintain the casual player base. Anyone can see most players do 3v3 and 4v4, you only need to look at the ingame stats to see this (though I realize some might also have 1v1 checked!)

I suspect the nub base is getting frustrated and bored. I won't even touch 3v3 or 4v4 anymore.

i didnt experience any major or even minor balance issues in the last days, beacuse the games was unplayable for me. every time i wanted to start a 3v3 with my friends, they suddenly dropped out of the lobby

FYI you should know that currently only 5,7% of the players who have played 10 or more automatches, and 2,9% that have played 25 or more. Now I do think that its not because they didnt like balance. I think many players are contemt playing campaign ToW or the occational AI skrimish (not that there are alot of the latter either). I really think the community is smaller than it thinks it is. This also might explain the lack of dev interest to hurry pvp gaming.

With that said, I really hope it swings and more ppl get more into pvp gaming. Also I do hope that relic soon gets the features asked by the community into the game.

Interesting, where did you get these stats?

Interesting, where did you get these stats?

You can see them on the Steam achievements page.

Further I do disagree that we've been slow in updating the game. It's been out for 3 weeks and we've 3 updates (not including Day 0) and have another one in the works.

Slow in the meaning of there was an alpha six months ago and the whole community clearly stated what needs to be fixed and really a lot of stuff didn't happen, but instead changes in the wrong direction.

Sorry to hear you're worried about the game.

We're exceptionally happy with it's performance so far, and with how it's been received.

Talking about performance, like the performance on nvidia cards, game doesn't run properly for about 50% of buyers, or even more?
People can play Crysis 3 on ultra but have low frames on medium coh2?


Overall some good things happened to a good game, till release. I won't deny that, but having a brilliant predecessor and doing the big talk like you would easily surpass it with greatness, without achieving it at all, doesn't help your credibility.


-wire - worse
-sandbags - worse
-mines - worse
-weapon crews - worse
-commanders/doctrins - worse
coh1:6 abilities too chose with counters coh2:no choice/counter
-balance - worse
-performance - worse

-Oh now soldiers can jump over a 1,20 fence. But a 1,50 fence is too much, WHAT?
-Why should I lay 15 seconds of wire, while jumping over the next fence takes 1 second?
-P4 wrecks flying all over the battlefield
-bulletins? Ah always wanted my opponent having 10% stronger soldiers. That way he finally doesn't need percentage hack anymore.
-Lobby? aahahhaha
-Opponent selection system? good joke
-mod support? nowhere, even disabled it on purpose after realizing people could play the campaign without those PINK teamcolours and skins on a 14year old standard,
to sell more bad skins.
-worldbuilder? maybe 2018
-Ground textures? Oh we could do 512x512 ones again, like we did in 2006, never change a running system eh ;-)
-Lightning/Shaders on maps? Buggy at best
-blizzard is cool, ruins frames, reduces sight. How about an addon with emp weapons disabling our monitors. Having good graphics(good joke) is cool without seeing anything from it.
-True Sight system? Awesome, 6 Mann standing in a 20meter line can't see behind a 50cm thick tree in 40°
-Cold system: 4 guys with a flamethrower in yellow cover die by frost standing 5 meters between a fireplace a burning wreck and a burning tree.
If i place my 6 men squad about 17 times around green cover only 2 men will die by frost.
- connection issues: uuuh don't even get me started.

I haven't even started about balance yet, but there are already like 20 threads about it.

Aren't able to produce a lot of good maps? Let the community do the thing. How many good community maps are in the coh1 mappool? Yeah, ah lot.
Aren't able to get proper balance? Well gr community did a fine job on the latest coh1 balance patch. After like 3 good versions and about 10 bad ones from relic running for years.
Aren't able to produce good skins? yeah community. I know you love your skins, but please be objective.

There are also a lot of people moaning about Mg42s in 1941 and Stg44 in 1942 and so on.
I personally couldn't give less of a fuck, but most people are great doing math from numbers 1 to 4.

Longevity and somebody left to buy an addon > crap dlcs

I'd also like to know why my game randomly crashes to desktop and I get a COH2 Update from Steam...

This has started happening more frequently since the patch from July 10th. I have sent in your awesome bug splat report.

The game hasn't even been out a month. Game came out on June 25th. In the time since it came out we have had 2 tourneys, a balance patch and dlc. Balance is mostly there, with most imbalances coming from bad play more then anything having to do with units and what does need fixing will probably be dealt with in a patch or two.

As for su-85's panzer grens with skrecks do pretty well vs. them.

By dlc do you mean the commanders?
You do realise that they required almost no work to create, as they are just reworked/coded commanders that the game all ready has. Sold at launch.. Essentially paying for something you all ready have.