The conventional reply to your post would be "What are you on and can I have some of it". 
I doubt if Relic could afford either Inverse or Whiteflash who appear to be successful in their own commercial fields.
If Janne had wanted to work at Relic, he would have been there by now.
Following the live stream in 2014 with Yoink and remarks passed in a haze (to the enjoyment of all but Relic), I am afraid Ami became persona non grata for certain chaps at Relic, hence Operation Charlie Fox in 2015 (CF = crowd funding), which was the only way we could set up a big tournament without Relic support. Even with the success of OCF, Relic did not budge.
Apart from that, I agree with your post. 
My guess is that Janne is also well compensated. He certainly has skills. For reference, one of my relatives is a developer for a financial company and makes double the average game developer salary, another works for and IT consulting company and makes about 1.5x.
Relic mostly just needed a competent project manager for COH3. My view from afar is that they didn't. I've managed projects in a couple of industries for 30+ years and am sure that I would've been fired from any position I've ever had if I would've delivered something like COH3.
As far as the number being indicative of something else, my impression is that Relic has way too many employees for a studio that doesn't have a major release soon. Also, the org chart for COH3 looked way too fat. One trivial example is having an Art Director and a Technical Art Director. When you have multiple people doing similar jobs, the result is usually that it slows progress, and makes what should be simple decisions into nightmarish committee decisions.
If Sega was going to pull the plug, it seems like the cuts would've been much deeper. You don't need to keep a couple hundred employees to transfer the intellectual property to another development studio. |
So how do we do that? We merge them using hadron collider?
We are on a budget and just put it at the front of 2 trucks and crush them together?
We just melt them and mold them into one?
Or we just crack them both into a bowl, scramble them and heat them up until firm on a pan?
No, you're overthinking his suggestion. The answer is duct tape. It fixes everything.
Duct Tape
I'm sure that COH2/COH3 not making the list was a simple oversight.
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Meh. It's not really that deep of a split to warrant it. Around 2k players left coh2 and plus an extra 500 new players are all that CoH 3 is pulling in. CoH 2 is pretty much doing exactly the same as it was prior to CoH 3.
All relic has to do is stop wanking off and actually put some elbow grease and content into CoH 3 and the switch will either occur or not occur naturally.
Agreed - the total number of active COH players is about the same now as it was before the launch, maybe up a little.
I don't think there will be any large switch until the game goes on sale. I often see COH2 players from South America when I play. To them, $70 might be as much as 20% of their monthly income. If I had to pay that percentage, I'd still be playing COH2.
Also, COH2 is better balanced in everything except 4v4 and feels more fun to play still. In COH3, US seems too good in early infantry battles but terrible in late game, similar to COH2 on release. |
While these news are kinda sad and definitely point to CoH3 not performing as expected, let's not pretend like this means that CoH3 is doomed for sure... not even close if you ask me.
We have absolutely no clue who got fired here, they could be (and probably are) people who -as shitty as it sounds- are not deemed essential anymore for the future development of the game.. such as Campaign mission designers or certain artists.... or people who are not even in the CoH3 team to begin with.
Even when putting the performance of CoH3 and this rough economic situation aside, Relic is not working on any projects right now apart from CoH3, at least not that we know of. They had over 300 employees prior to this move.... and I really doubt you need that big of a staff to support a post-launch game. So it's absolutely no surprise that they laid off employees, the total number is just a bit surprisingly high now. It's not unusual at all that the employee number of game development companies goes significantly up and down as time passes and games getting launched. No matter if it's Relic or Rockstar Games or any other studio
People really need to stop jumping to worst-case scenario conclusions all the time... the future of CoH3 might as well be very positive despite this news for all we know. Relic still has around 200 employees left
Good points - If they're not working on any new projects, they certainly need a lot less employees. Also, the 17(?) year long history of the series tells Relic that most of us aren't going to another game any time soon. |
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Somehow I doubt that the layoffs will hit the people it should, which were the project managers and people above them. Several of my immediate family are programmers. I hear their side of stories like this when they happen, which usually happens when the project manager doesn't understand everything that needs to happen to deliver a successful product.
In this case, there is no way that they developed the scope or work breakdown structure correctly, as there is no indication that they realized what features should be in a competitive RTS.
They also skipped on the QA/QC and testing with too many examples to note.
Lastly, it doesn't seem like they had a solid project plan at any point, and should've just released two factions, Wehr or Dak and Brits, and one campaign. By spreading themselves too thin and deciding to release at a given date regardless of state, they made sure that the product was bad. |
Hey guys I guess I need help. 
At the moment my friends and I play a lot of allied 4v4 in CoH3. (Since this is the only way to find a game without waiting for 15 Minutes or so.) But although we have experience from CoH2 (1.400h on my side) and the advantage of an arranged team, we struggle hard even against lower ranked players.
Most of the time it goes like this: Two of us go mid, both sides get to play their 1v1. We win a lot of early engagements, prepare the frontline with MGs and stuff, only to get overwhelmed by massed infantry like Bersaglieri, close range PG or 250s with flamers. Somehow we hold on to the battle and can do a few good runs with light vehicles, but we are not able to secure the territories long time. Again, mostly because of massed infantry like Jäger Shreck blobs, Lufftwaffe pioneers with launchers or other stuff, only to face a medium tank pack. The end game then is so chaotic (I know 4v4...) that my PAKs get artied, or a loiter kicks in and so on. But in my opinion this would not be the problem if we would perform better in the early stages.
On a side note: I absolutely hate to mass infantry or blob. Normally I send my inf in groups of two, try to flank or fight from cover.
My build orders are normally:
UKF (Air and sea operation doctrine): HMG, T1, IS, IS, IS, T2, Humber or Stuart; medic tent, grenade upgrade if necessary
USF (Airborne doctrine): Scout, Scout, T2, HMG, mechanized upgrade, Quad; medic tent if necessrary
Is there some general advice you can give for 4v4, e.g. building a ress cache asap, or focussing on two victory points, or something? And how am I supposed to fight massed infantry, without massing myself?
Maybe I/we just have to ltp, have more map awareness and have to build more infantry to fight back, but perhaps you have some advice, so I can learn.
I hope I could make my points clear, thanks in advance for the responses.
Cheers!
TL/DR: I want to get better at allied 4v4 
I wouldn't skip the Dingo, as it can cause a lot of bleed. If you're getting overrun by blobs, consider a second Vickers and one less Section. A quick resource cache is always a bad idea unless your opponents are terrible. |
Hey Grumpy,
Nice suggestions here.
You can give them to SpecsRanger, the mod's author. He is very open to suggestions and help. Maybe you can help them with the mod.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/2958174636
Thanks! I'll ask him if he wants any help. I know how to do all of the basics in the Essence editor but don't know how to do everything that SpecsRanger did. |
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This looks really good! There is only a few things that I would do differently.
Increasing the cost of the Bazooka squads while giving a slight increase to the bazooka damage won't really help them. I think they need camo so that they have some chance of getting a satchel off. Also, 75 damage won't really help much. Bazooka's were buffed to 100 in COH2, and that was against tanks that had 640 health typically. The small increase likely won't decrease the number of shots to kill or TTK.
The Hellcat should have the same range as the Marder. They don't have any armor and not a lot of hit points. Currently with the range of the 88's, it's difficult for them to get more than one shot off before they have to retreat, which makes them nearly pointless on a map like Winter Line.
The reinforce cost for DAK's PGrens seems too high. I'd lower it to match Rifles since they don't seem to be any better than rifles. When I play DAK and use them, I always seem to be manpower starved.
US doesn't have any light or heavy arty. Would you consider giving the Scott the range it should have? The real-life Scott had a barrage range of around 8km. In comparison, mortars typically were 2-4km, the leIG was around 4km, and 105 howitzers were around 11km. In that background, it seems like the Scott barrage should be 120 to 160. In gaming terms, it seems like mobile light arty should have a shorter range than less mobile light arty so 120 seems better.
I made my own mod that is in the Workshop. It is much less ambitious than this one. Mine was done with the idea that Relic isn't likely to be ambitious either, so what would be the fewest changes we could make that would balance the game. I'm trying to balance it with only buffs so it's always going to have some problems like "Zeroing" arty guaranteeing wipes.
Do you mind if I copy your Grenadier changes into my mod? I wasn't sure what to do with them in my mod. |
You complained about Axis having an alleged 60 win rate, not about Soviets being bad in 4v4. I've shown that the statistics you provided are biased because you only look at a few selected months. Soviet's win rate this may doesn't matter, the whole point of the paragraph was that win rates in single months jump like crazy. ...
This is absolutely not true. You're making up things that you think I said, ignoring what I did say, throwing out all types of extraneous arguments, then calling the things that you think I said absurd.
The 60/40 number came from the early days of the patch. I specifically said "in the range of" which tells normal people that I didn't look up the exact numbers. It turns out that I was off by about 5-7%, depending on the faction. Had I taken the time to look it up for all 2757 top 200 game, I would've averaged it to 46/54, which still isn't balanced. If my being off by 5-7% is absurd, your 5-8% error in claiming it is balanced is even more absurd.
I made a very specific complaint about the Walking Stuka, and the fact that they ignored complaints about it. I know that several of us complained specifically about the Walking Stuka and it's effect on Soviets. I'd have to question if you've ever played all three Allied Factions if you really think that it doesn't hit Soviets harder. Specifically, it hits Soviets harder in 4v4's where units are a lot more clumped together and maps are more lane-like. They could have changed it to a larger AOE while capping the number of models killed to 5 which would've had a huge effect on Soviets.
You keep trying to dismiss the effect of Soviets being worse. If you had bothered to look at all of the data, that you accuse me of cherry-picking, you'd see that teams of 4 Soviets have a win rate of 28% in 4v4 over the entire range of this patch. In general, the win rates for Allies get better with fewer Soviets, with Brits being pretty good if they're not teamed with two or more Soviets.
I seemed to have touched a nerve here. My guess is that some of the people on the balance team are your friends. I don't know who they are, or if they're actually biased. To be fair to them, the did an excellent job in balancing 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3. Most of the win rates are 50+/-1 % (exception being Soviets in 3v3) which far better than Relic ever did. They listened to a lot of suggestions, and a couple of mine even made it into patches. However, I am more than a little salty about the Walking Stuka complaints being ignored.
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If you already accuse others of selective perception and biased opinions, at least fact check your own stuff. You base your pro Axis 60/40 split on coh2stats.com data for top200 games from January, March and April 2023 with a total of about 250 games. February (140 games) shows 55% winrate for Allies and May so far is balanced with 70 games.
What do we learn from that? This number of games is way too little. Most imbalances occur after coh3 release and if you look to either all data or the top200 data for all of 2022, you'll see a pretty even split. If Axis arty constantly wipes your 7 men Cons, you're just bad at dodging and counterwiping.
Wow - you're an alleged moderator and you respond to a post about statistics by attacking my personal skill level? That says a lot about you.
In long games, you'll always hit the point where you don't have a choice except to keep a squad on a VP, even when you hear the sound of the rockets. There isn't a lot of dodging within that circle.
Also, even if I go back all the way to the start of the last patch, the Soviet win rate is 45.5%. While that's looks a little better, it's still not even close to balanced. The number of games is 2757.
As for May being balanced, it shows a 42% win rate for Soviets. If that's your idea of balanced then ok. |
Relic Entertainment
