I'm more concerned about the Relic's efficiency

because they're lazy/incompetent/don't care

the example i made is a sign of something very serious going wrong at relic

But no Community Manager wants to "lie" to their fans

as i said: he does not need to lie, but at least say something. the mortar fix for example: he stated the fix would come early last week. it didnt. it takes !7 DAYS! for him to say its gonna be delayed. that is unacceptable. there is NO reason why he shouldnt find 1 freaking minute to go to the forums early last weak and say its gonna be delayed. NO REASON.

just to be clear: i dont beat him up for a delayed patch, hes probably not responsible for that, and i like him taking the risk and giving an ETA, although it was completely wrong this time, a thing i dont judge him for aswell

the example i made is a sign of something very serious going wrong at relic

as i said: he does not need to lie, but at least say something. the mortar fix for example: he stated the fix would come early last week. it didnt. it takes !7 DAYS! for him to say its gonna be delayed. that is unacceptable. there is NO reason why he shouldnt find 1 freaking minute to go to the forums early last weak and say its gonna be delayed. NO REASON.

just to be clear: i dont beat him up for a delayed patch, hes probably not responsible for that, and i like him taking the risk and giving an ETA, although it was completely wrong this time, a thing i dont judge him for aswell

I don't know enough about what's up there now to argue on their behalf, and they're not paying me to!

I just bristle at the fact that things in game development get played off as being much easier than they are, and that developers are just lazy or they'd do more or that they don't care. I guarantee that the patch isn't delayed because nobody cares and everyone is taking 3 hours lunches and playing PokemonGo.

I just bristle at the fact that things in game development get played off as being much easier than they are

i only have some experience with coding and no experience with game development, therefore i cannot claim something to be easy or hard from that point.
but what i can see is members of the community making their own mods (kappatch and mirageflas mod come to my mind regarding balance, or jannes general mods) in their free time without getting paid and fixing several bugs aswell as improving the balance by quite a bit.
if you compare that to relics progress you can see that one single community member is working much faster and more efficient than the whole relic team. im not saying they are lazy, but they are either a) lazy, b) incompetent or c) not working on the game. are there other options?

are there other options?

That's not for me to say, but there's more to it than it seems from the outside. And the weight of consequences and dependencies between what a community Modder / balancer has to work with versus what the development team has to is much different.

im not saying they are lazy, but they are either a) lazy, b) incompetent or c) not working on the game. are there other options?

I also have no experience/knowledge of this industry but what about d) a bottlekneck between the programming and then uploading it to steam. This is seriously giving relic the benefit of the doubt and theyll never speak up on their tardyness but is there a mamdatory 3-4 days wait peruod on the steam end? Steams rolling out a trillion updates a day, coh2s not gonna get any priority on their to do list

Everyone that I know at Relic is passionate about the projects they work on. They love the games and are so proud of them. Most of them could make more in another field, game development generally doesn't pay as much as similar positions in say medical software or banking development. People are there because they love games, and they want to make games that make people happy.

They also love CoH and are proud to work on it.

I think there's lots of fair and valid reasons to be critical of Relic, or any game maker. I think where the criticism is unwarranted is when it goes from "Relic should do X instead of Y" and goes into "Relic does X because they're lazy/incompetent/don't care".

If they're passionate, they'd put their heart into fixing the game. Three years is pushing it.
If they're good at what they do, the game wouldn't be piggypacking on revamped war spoils and skeleton crew.
So it just means one thing: they're dedicated and good people, but nevertheless suck as developers.

Or like Gusty says, they're just handed too many things at a time, so they're doing multiple things and doing bad at them and people blame them for it. That's fine too...except it's still shitty game.

You can't wriggle out of this one. It doesn't matter what kind of people the developers are. What matters is whatever the kind of people the developers are, the result is a game that's either stayed buggy, or keeps getting new bugs.

I might be known for as the nicest kindest most generous guy around town, but odds are if I do a very shitty job cleaning your house or repairing your car, you're going to prefer finding someone else to do it.

i only have some experience with coding and no experience with game development, therefore i cannot claim something to be easy or hard from that point.
but what i can see is members of the community making their own mods (kappatch and mirageflas mod come to my mind regarding balance, or jannes general mods) in their free time without getting paid and fixing several bugs aswell as improving the balance by quite a bit.
if you compare that to relics progress you can see that one single community member is working much faster and more efficient than the whole relic team. im not saying they are lazy, but they are either a) lazy, b) incompetent or c) not working on the game. are there other options?

TO be fair, there's a log of bureaucracy behind fixing a game. To state it very simply: when you fix a game, you don't just fix a game.

It's like how you wash your own car: you don't just "wash your car", you arrange a suitable time, find and take it to a suitable place, procure the buckets, hose, detergent and sponges, then you actually start doing the washing. Normally that means an initial spray of water, then followed with scrubbing (preferably everywhere you can get your hands on), and then washing the lather off. And that's just washing: if you wanted to get rid of stubborn spots, you might need to scrub harder and focus on that spot for a while. And if you're not doing it very well, you have to redo a section. Too short to wash the roof or centre of the windshield? You need to have brought a squeegee mounted on a stick. And unless you got some neighbour on hand, all of the stuff I must be bought and kept.
These aren't additional options either, if you want a properly washed car, you can't just skip over detergent or water or sponge. You NEED to have done all of the above to actually have washed a car. Anything less and the average person thinks you didn't really wash a car at all.
Oh yeah, and that's just washing once. Imagine washing about once per month or even a week. With many things to do, it's not easy to fit time to wash your car.

It's a rather lengthy procedure to produce a "wash a car". Now imagine a team of people trying to develop a piece of software that manages to work, work well, can have additional content without breaking it, and on top of all that, manages to be fun for as many people as possible.

Suffice to say, the modders have the benefit of not having to answer to head developers, who themselves have to answer to SEGA, to get what they want. Modders just make the mods. In a car wash analogy, they don't need to get supplies, location, and do most of the work themselves. They just look at a washed car and see if there's anything they don't like about it and finish the job. What's not okay is to do that and consider yourself as having done more work than the guy before you.

i have felt a lack of efficiency for a little while now. Just how long they take to respond to game breaking bugs. And how they take longer and longer to fix something. The combined arms was a good example, of how much we had to push for the fix. And still it took them days to do anything. They could have just made the breaking commander unavailable until they fixed it. And now they wont do anything with the usf morter before next week, after the back lash it got from the community, and from what i heard on helpinghans stream, that tightrope got message from relic, saying that there wasn't a problem with the morter, i got really pissed. Since we have clear video proof of it.

i have felt a lack of efficiency for a little while now. Just how long they take to respond to game breaking bugs. And how they take longer and longer to fix something. The combined arms was a good example, of how much we had to push for the fix. And still it took them days to do anything. They could have just made the breaking commander unavailable until they fixed it. And now they wont do anything with the usf morter before next week, after the back lash it got from the community, and from what i heard on helpinghans stream, that tightrope got message from relic, saying that there wasn't a problem with the morter, i got really pissed. Since we have clear video proof of it.

Jesus, such is the arrogance of Relic.
One day they will will answer for such deeds

That's not for me to say, but there's more to it than it seems from the outside. And the weight of consequences and dependencies between what a community Modder / balancer has to work with versus what the development team has to is much different.

of course, the modder does not need to answer to anyone, there is less need for documentation, etc
but this can only explain differences in speed and that only to some degree and not the worlds that lie between community mebers and relic

but is there a mamdatory 3-4 days wait peruod on the steam end?

seeing the pushed a hotfix out on successive days in feburary aswell as in march, i highly doubt that. but if that is really the reason, you know, communication

Now imagine a team of people trying to develop a piece of software that manages to work, work well, can have additional content without breaking it, and on top of all that, manages to be fun for as many people as possible.

we are talking about a bugfix here or blatant imbalances. they dont need to develop anything, just change some values. and what i wrote top

we are talking about a bugfix here or blatant imbalances. they dont need to develop anything, just change some values. and what i wrote top

Hardly a difference, they still need to deal with the bureaucracy behind making and organizing fixes for a game. It's arguably even more work because you're not making something from scratch, you gotta go back into a built game, redo some work, then make sure the changes actually do what they're supposed to do, and also make sure they don't cause further fuckups. Perfect analogy is renovating a poorly made house: way easier to just tear the whole rotten thing down and start over. Sure it costs more and takes longer, but it solves everything provided you actually do the job right the second time around. And really, it's Relic's own fault it wasn't done right the first time.
Not saying Relic ppl should go to hell for dead gaem, but still.

It's arguably even more work because you're not making something from scratch, you gotta go back into a built game, redo some work,

most changes are FAR less work than "redoing some work"

then make sure the changes actually do what they're supposed to do, and also make sure they don't cause further fuckups.

well, if they are doing that at all, they dont invest that much time

seriously, people like cruzz would need 1 hour to fix the shit, 1 hour to document it, then they could go wanking in the basement for the next 72 hours and they would still be faster than relic.

or to quote cruzz on the cavalry commander

Fixing the issue requires 4 lines of script.

cruzz is also able to find all mistakes and ninjachanges within very short time. why is that impossible for relic? probably because they dont know what they are doing and document changes properly.

hell, he could probably do the job of all guys at relic working on coh2 WHILE fapping in the basement

It's simple. We lowered our standards for relic so much to the point where we expect something wrong every time they do anything.

And when they do something right aka their job. We praise them.

Coh2 is only the way it is because the lack of other RtS games alike.. nothing more nothing less..

Coh2 is only the way it is because the lack of other RtS games alike.. nothing more nothing less..

Basically this, RTS games are a risky proposition these days so releases that combine innovative and polished gameplay with the production values of a AAA title are few and far between. If you get sick of CoH2 you don't really have anywhere else to go. You have Pseudo-realistic B-grade series like Men of War and Wargame, old-school RTS like SC2, DoW2, or various indie games. Not saying those games are better or worse, but they don't offer what CoH does.

Not trying to be overly cynical here but really, there's not much business incentive for Relic to put more resources into this game. Casual players (i.e. the majority of day 1 sales) don't notice or care about minor balance issues, while us die-hards will buy Coh3 regardless.

most changes are FAR less work than "redoing some work"

well, if they are doing that at all, they dont invest that much time

seriously, people like cruzz would need 1 hour to fix the shit, 1 hour to document it, then they could go wanking in the basement for the next 72 hours and they would still be faster than relic.

I didn't say all, and I think ones like USF mortar can't get any simpler. But you still can't just change some code. It's dumb, but it's often necessary, though I do not think in this case it was. They're likely doing it so they don't need to make a hotfix for a hotfix (which I believe they once did).
IF it really is a simple change and IF they really did just slack off on it, then that's inexcusable, yet not surprising.

only person on the coh2 account at the moment is kyle thats why its non existent.

only person on the coh2 account at the moment is kyle thats why its non existent.

are you sure? while kyle may be a nice guy, he doesnt have a clue regarding balance. and coding too probably.

I didn't say all, and I think ones like USF mortar can't get any simpler. But you still can't just change some code. It's dumb, but it's often necessary, though I do not think in this case it was.

yes, some may be a little more complicated, but even then, most chnages are pretty easy compared to making the game

They're likely doing it so they don't need to make a hotfix for a hotfix (which I believe they once did).

reread the patchnotes! they did a hotfix 13 times in the last 3 months

cruzz is also able to find all mistakes and ninjachanges within very short time. why is that impossible for relic? probably because they dont know what they are doing and document changes properly.

Cruzz checks the actual code.

Phantom QA which relic supposedly have don't do that.
In fact, no QA checks the actual code, just the in-game stuff.

And relics QA is of low quality itself, if it even exists.