Like I understand that you probably can't reveal much about game development due to NDAs etc.
However, the "only if you knew attitude" is infuriating and doesn't add anything to the conversation.
People will jump to conclusions based on the information publicly at hand.
You're correct; NDAs restrict conversations, but it is frustrating to read the same incorrect assumptions and complete oversimplification of the development process.
I don't think there will ever be a way to solve this with larger-scale productions. |
And this is deserved at least in a bigger context. CoH3 is failing only because of the people involved in its development, every technical aspect would have been overlooked even by haters if the game got proper maintaining.
Think about that.
Console ports are outsourced in most of the cases. Even huge companies like sony and so on, usually are outsourcing their porting. + Relic is known to use outsourcing, CoH port as an example.
Developer (tech developers to be precise) usually consist of a smart ass guys, who are more often then not will make your game work, have your engine working and move to another project with-in company\studio.
So what we are left with is basically - art team (models\textures\assets), coding team (which do simple stuff usually), game\gameplay team (who are related to the game itself) and different sorts of management.
CoH3 is a success on a technical level. It runs good, system requirements are low and the game is over-all very stable. So tech guys did their job really good.
What about everyone else tho? Ok art team did a good job, animations, 3D models and textures were good. 2D art team is a shit.
Coding team, core is good. Everything past that is garbage, requiring huge amouts of tunning. Things like units responsiveness, features like player names and so on.
Gameplay team ... again 50\50 job.
What I am trying to say, CoH3 feels like this game was made by freelancers, who actually did their job really good, then gave the product to Relic to fine-tune and finish and Relic failed miserably to do so.
There are no justification, nor logical explanation why game-studio with 300 employees (even lets imagine CoH3 had like 100-150 employees fully dedicated to CoH3 from start till now), doing so bad.
Even having 10 people in each gameplay, design, balance, coding, art categories of dev team, can solve almost all problem with-in a couple of weeks.
But its not happening. It would have made sense if Relic was an indie dev studio, with like 20 guys, where single guy is a mapper, moddeler and coder. He just cant do everything at the same time. Yet even indie devs usually show better results.
So yeah, I really hope, someone who will be fired tell the world about whats happening in the kitchen.
Because right now its just doesnt make any logical sense, like at all, zero, why company with such amount of employees, doing everything so poorly and slow on their MAIN title, which CAN be a monopolist without any competitors in a WW2 RTS setting.
This gave me a little chuckle, this is not how game development teams are structured.
Anyway, it is unfortunate to see people lose their jobs. And like I said in my other post, making video games is very difficult (despite what people believe), many games have rough launches, and plenty that never make it to the public and this can be for many reasons, sadly a minority of the public tends to lean into bassless/uneducated assumptions and stupid conspiracy theory. |
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Darn it, and all this time, I thought troubled launches were because making video games is a difficult and complicated task that often goes wrong, but it turns out it was all caused by a massive conspiracy.
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I have to rant about a few things that annoy the shit out of me with regards to negative user reviews on steam and reddit. Wonder what your thoughts are, don't take this too seriously.
1. Why on earth do people constantly harp on about minor unfinished/sloppy elements of the game like icons, weapon symbols and faction flags. I saw someone on reddit declare that usage of old icons to be "UNACCEPTABLE" and the primary reason he gave a negative review. In one of the youtube reviews the guy demonstrates how he can recreate the faction symbols in 5 minutes in photoshop. He literally spends more time on this tangent than he does talking about gameplay. How dense do you have to be to completely ignore the actual GAME. You know ... the part that matters. If you dislike the gameplay we can agree to disagree. But to just brush over it and complain about the menu art instead is just infuriating.
2. Why do people who are guaranteed to play the game for thousands of hours and basically have CoH as a mainstay hobby give negative reviews? Steam reviews primarily communicate to the general public. If someone unfamiliar with CoH comes across the newest iteration and sees shit reviews they will likely never get into the series. I have a hardcore CoH2 1v1 player in my friendlist that has like 4000 hours in the game and still has a negative review complaining about balance issues. Why? How does that make sense? So many people don't even know CoH or are only vaguely familiar with it. And in my experience almost everybody you show and explain the game to ends up liking it. So why scare off that crowd just because of your own agenda?
3. Why do people completely neglect the strong aspects of CoH3? Doesn't the fact that we have 4 factions and amazing performance make up for some of the shortcomings? Isn't having 4 factions upon release preferable over having a super polished game in terms of interface and multiplayer functionality? Maybe not, but then it would be more of a case of relic being overly ambitious in their desire to provide a lot of bang for your buck. No one would have complained if it was just two factions at release, but they went the extra mile and maybe that cost us polish.
4. A bigger playerbase would be so cool, but people actively prevent this from happening by shitting on the game. And I absolutely loathe the high and mighty do-gooder argument that this needs to be done because the gaming industry deserves a lesson about early releases. This is after relic already delayed the game and it is obvious that they ran out of options. Of course the same people would also agree that working conditions in the gaming industry are horrible and that pre release crunch should be avoided.
5. Anyone german who gave a negative review because there is no german voice acting needs to seriously ask themselves if they would actually NOT RECOMMEND CoH to someone new for that reason. Is that really sufficient to make CoH3 a bad game? REALLY? The average German's english is light years behind the Dutch or Scandinavians so maybe it's time that we stop putting our own voice acting over everything?
I'm not saying COH3 doesn't deserve criticism, I've not played it yet, but most hardcore gamers cannot be objective, they're too invested in the product and react with their feelings, and they, at no fault of their own, do not understand the realities of game development and make a lot of assumptions which just fuels the fires.
Here is an old but interesting article about the most common misconceptions,
https://kotaku.com/10-big-myths-about-games-debunked-by-the-people-who-ma-1737839268 |
I seen way to many these "gamer" journalists, not even understand the game, much less in Multi-player and even less to gaming community and culture.
Most gamers are casual, they aren't interested in the nitty gritty of a game, all they want to know is if an overall experience in a product is fun/good, We are the minority.
Overall mainstream gaming journalists are fine, and independent reviewers tend to follow the same sentiment as the mainstream apart from being a little more critical.
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All round positive reviews, well done Relic!
Hope steam reviews have the same sentiment. |
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Nice! |
Smashing every idea into a game is the best way.
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The ST has always been an obnoxious unit, it is just worse now than it has ever been. |
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