Profile of Noun

I just hope that Relic will be so serious when other players get abused, because I hate when somebody is calling me names while ingame.

Send a replay to info@relic.com and we'll review the case.

To be clear we have always suspended people for griefing. We've banned people for this. We did in the original game for years, and will continue to do so.

Further I just watched a cast where the player in question claimed to have hacked the game in order to control who he matches up against. Anyone hacking the game to affect multiplayer play is banned immediately. He initially only had a 2 week suspension, since I did not hear him claim this first hand, but I have heard him now so we're reviewing what to do with his account.

Likely he's just claiming that, and hasn't actually, but it's enough for us to take action at this point.

Ultimately if you're playing the game to make it so it's not enjoyable for other people to be playing the game then we'd rather you not play the game. Sure, be competitive and try to win but if your goal is to troll then go play Call of Duty.

Well, that is great, but I just responded to what is being said in this thread/on this forum. There is no way I can know or check what you lot are saying to Relic developers on Steam, Xfire, Teamspeak, Mumble, Ventrilo and personal messages anywhere else.

It's not so much that they do it in private, which is cool but we understand not everyone has a direct line to us that some of the longer serving members of the community do. The key is that they're able to do it in a constructive manner without resorting to hyperbole.

Constructive: "I paid for the game and I expect it to have Leaderboards like it says on the Steam product page."

Not Constructive: "This is another total fail on Relic. What are they hiring Boston Terriers to program things now? I'm never buying a Relic game again and I'm burning my copy of CoH 2."

Constructive: "I think that the T-70 should have a faster rate of fire."

Not Constructive: "Everyone knows that the T-70 is way UP. I can't believe Relic still hasn't fixed it! What, do they just sit at their desks and master..."

Constructive: "The Ostwind is too expensive."

Not Constructive: "LOL FU NOOBS OSTWINZ 2 XPENSY. FU. SHOOT URSELVES."

Nobody is saying that the game is perfect. We wouldn't be doing regular patches to add more content, fix bugs and adjust balance if it was. And truthfully apart from the original Elevator Action, no game has ever been perfect.

Ultimately it comes down to what sort of dialogue you as a consumer, and as a community want to have. In consumer focused industries feedback is important, and just as if we were working in a restaurant we want to make your experience as great as possible.

I have worked on games where the dev team got to the point where they just said that the forums were pointless because all they got was negative feedback no matter what. Relationships can get toxic, and when feedback stops being valuable because people are more interested in showing how angry they are, or how clever they are, then developers focus on other avenues.

I don't want that relationship to get toxic. I think it's in a really good place, but it takes work on both sides to keep it that way.

From our side we need to be engaged with our forums, and these ones. We need to listen to feedback and do our best to give you what you want in the scope of what we can do.

That doesn't mean that because you make a post saying you want a Zombie Mode we're going to run out and do that. Or that if you say X is OP we'll nerf it the next day. We can't do everything everyone says, nobody could. Especially since despite all the "everyone knows" type posts, there's never 100% agreement on anything.

If we nerf X then some people will say, "The developers never listen, they nerfed X!"

If we don't nerf X then some people will say, "The developers never listen, they didn't nerf X!"

From your end as a consumer, a fan and a member of the community how you behave is up to you. In my view you would get more out of being constructive.

Relic also had a plan to support Dawn of War II for a number of years. Then the entire team got laid off and who gives a shit about promises amirite?

A healthy skepticism of the developer team is always good. No disrespect intended Noun, but aren't the guy in charge and you can't guarantee me or anybody anything, so while your comments are appreciated on my part, I don't quite believe them. Not out of any possible malice intent you may or may not have, but simply due to the fact that you aren't in charge of where this game goes, and when it comes right down to it you're doing your job. But you've said as much yourself.

Fantastic point. We had more planned for DoW II. We wanted to keep up the DLC we were doing because it was both making money and making people happy. I know, DLC people like hard to believe.

I was so mad when I read that they had laid off the DoW team but pretended that DoW III was still right around the corner. I was at EA by then because I didn't want to move to California to work at THQ HQ, but I vented a lot to people like Marcus and Gorb.

So that's why I want us to only talk about stuff when we know it's happening. At times we have said "we intend to do that" or "hope to" when asked about things. But putting up a list even without dates is just asking for us to have to apologize for something later. Even if the list had 1,000 things and we did 999 of them that one thing would be something that someone had bought the game for and now felt lied to.

We want to expanded the community as much as or more than you do. That's why this post was created. Which is why it bewilders us when we ask for a simple Roadmap, when we ask for a simple discussion of where in heck this game is going and in return get a stone wall with a non-reply... we know why this game is in trouble.

Roadmaps are too easily misunderstood as promises, and are empty without timelines. Members of this forum have seen our internal roadmaps, but they're people we know have an understanding of development and we prefaced it by saying it's stuff that we'd like to do and are working towards without promising it.

Relic has in the past said that they were going to do stuff and then not done it, and it's something we'd like to stop doing. SEGA will help us with that, they're far more understanding of... well everything, than THQ was. THQ was big into promising things before anyone was ready. Space Marine 2. DoW 3. DoW 3 Free-to-Play. Homefront 2 & 3.

I'd much rather we do stuff first, then brag about it second. Maybe that's being overcautious, but we've in the past given easy answers that we thought the community wanted to hear. All with the best of intentions, but not always with the ability to carry those out.

So we're going to shut up and ship.

Take the Leaderboards for example. We wanted them in at launch. We were confident we could do that and now there are people who rather fairly feel upset because we said they'd be in at launch and they're not. It would have been better had we not promised them and then failed to deliver.

If we say we're doing X, I want to know that we're 100% doing it. Or at least as close to 100% as we can get.

Hopefully that's an explanation. I understand that you're frustrated, and hopefully our dedication to support the game long term will change your mind. If you want to take this as the game being in trouble that's all on you.

Personally I view it as us getting our shit together and not talking out of our hat as before.