+1, you got it.
i said the exact same thing in another thread, DoW3 failure is really not a good thing for CoH fans.
I disagree with this part but understand why you believe that. Sometimes bad things have to happen before good things can (for fans).
This was Relic's "Wake Up" call similar to the TW: Rome 2 fan disaster for Creative Assembly.
Go watch this video below (by Arch Warhammer) which are pretty much spot on how SEGA Europe will react to this DoW3 failure.
CoH3 predictions after 20m.
The new Relic team openly confirmed in interviews DoW3 was a game THEY wanted to make (SEGA Europe not so much). SEGA would have preferred a free-to-play MOBA game which was part of the THQ bankruptcy (codename Project Atlas). Relic openly talked about Project Atlas in their recent documentary (DoW2 last stand on steroids). Much of the microtransactions in CoH2 was inspired by FTP Company of Heroes Online and Project Atlas.
Relic also helped supervise the graphic engine for a big Warhammer MMO project created by Vigil. Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium which got canceled due to THQ bankruptcy. This graphic engine was also used in Spacemarine. This engine (not Essence) is now owned by Nordic Games (renamed THQ Nordic).
I suspected Relic wanted to delay the 2017 release date and SEGA said no. Total Warhammer 2 have 3½ months preorder (TW Warhammer 1 had 6 months), DoW3 had less than 2 months.
Moving a scheduled release date is very expensive and Relic underestimated how much time/money needed to complete the game. With all the money SEGA is making from Total Warhammer I doubt they wanted DoW3 to be terrible for fans.
With low player activity and 53% user reviews on Steam (only 42% positive the recent month), this game is dead to SEGA compared to CoH3 and Total Warhammer. Sure steam reviews are biased but they do represent the Warhammer community which SEGA takes very serious because of the big Total Warhammer IP.
DoW3 failed because it was not a game made for DoW fans but Relic trying to compete directly with Blizzards wider audience which was pretty narrow-minded and foolish. Hiring pro Blizzard fan @iNcontroLTV to stream DoW3, my god what was Relic thinking?
I can almost guarantee CoH3 will be a game made for LOYAL CoH2/CoH1 fans, not Blizzard fans.
With CoH3 we can also expect more Relic support to loyal modders/community content creators.
This SEGA Europe video below confirms what I have previously said about new CoH modding tools/new SEGA business plan for CoH and Total War/Endless Space etc.. There is no way SEGA would buy Amplitude if they were not interested in more community interactions (look up Amplitude business plan, games2gether). This is what SEGA want for future CoH games. Well before CoH3, we can expect a CoH2 modding update to help preserve its longevity. Notice how John Clark mention RTS games (community maps). Over the past few years, Creative Assembly also has hired Total Wars modders and community content creators. As an example you had CA hiring TW community member Darren. Darren has previous also made youtube content for CoH2. John Clark - (SVP Commercial Publishing) SEGA
I think you're right tbh, I share the same view pretty much. When faced with a problem, people don't say "how can I fix this", but instead "how could this happen to me".
Good vs Bad Tournament Players:
To further elaborate the point here;
Many potential good tournament players are wasting their talent because they don't have and/or listen to good "mentorship" (or honest friends). I don't doubt Paul is a much more talented player than me but obvious lack good mentorship.
Many good COH players like him (victim mentality) had the potential to become so much more.
Look back at what Romeo (former top caster - King of the hill) said about Paul as they were actual internet friends at one point.
It was like watching Lilo & Stitch. Good mentorship + talent = courage to break bad habits and become a better player.
As an "eSport" viewer/fan, don't you want to see more high-level COH competition along with good sportsmanship? I sure do.
It's sad to watch that some top COH players still behaves like spoiled children that did not get what they wanted for Christmas.
If Paul is reading this; you really need to stop hanging out with bad people and become more honest with yourself. Flattering egos are usual a red flag that you are dealing with some dishonest people. Honest mentors are a gift that should not be taken for granted. Knowledge is power (no pain, no gain), ignorance is not.
You won with 418 VPs remaining. In fact, Paula was doing much better UNTIL he built the two mortar pits, wasting 800mp and ensuring his defeat.
Sorry if I sound cynical/judgemental;
Both Paula and Donnie share the same line of thought; "logic" based on emotions (professional victims), not correctness (becoming the observer with personal introspection).
"Professional Victims":
Nowadays with millennials growing up, it's much easier (trendy) to deflect blame than looking into your own mirror. Honestly is courage.
Clint Eastwood got it right; We are "The pussy generation" that has not been taught to live courageously.
Fear today defeats more people than standing WW2 armies.
Have you seen the moving BIG with Tom Hanks, when a boy turn into an adult by magic. He is recruted on a big toy store in NY and start looking into toys in dev and start playing with the toys instead of looking at the market share graphics. He asks himself the true question a lead designer should ask himself at every stage of the game conception, is it funny to play with? Are the customers going to enjoy playing with it? Does this dev make sense in that way?.
I always have this scene in mind when seeing this kind of failure
+1
Good analogy. I remember that movie. Here is one clip that backs up what your saying;
Even EA started to figure this out a few years ago.
*SNIP*Five months after taking over, on February 12, 2014, Wilson gathered 146 of the company's top leaders at EA's headquarters. Together with Gabrielle Toledano, EA's chief talent officer, Wilson hatched a plan to help them understand why so many customers were unhappy.
The group was led to the basketball court, which had been temporarily remade into a conference space with stations of computers and telephone lines. For hours, executives went through the steps of installing, troubleshooting and playing the company's games. They also listened in on customer service calls so they could hear firsthand players' frustrations.
"Back at EA, I used to get lectured by business development people about how we have to have a portfolio strategy of games, because we have no idea what's going to do well. I said, 'You have no idea what's going to do well because you're not a gamer and you don't care about games. You have no confidence in your ability to make good games.' How did we let our industry get taken over by the BD people? I was a BD person at the time, but at least I played games," he remarked.
Mahoney believes the problem escalated back in 2007, when you "had a false dichotomy in the business" between the big AAA publishers (who doubled down on graphics fidelity) and the emergence of Facebook and mobile gaming on the other side. While the AAA publishers had a hard time learning how to adjust for an increasingly online world, the other side "were on record as not giving a damn about gameplay and game quality," Mahoney said. "The founders of these companies were not game players themselves. We all know who those were."
"They thought that they could reskin the same gameplay into five different games. They thought they could copy someone else's game and bring a large audience to it. They found that their revenues skyrocketed, but they were hitting the afterburner the whole time. They fell to earth when people got sick of dumbed-down games," he continued.
While Mahoney sees the "light at the end of the tunnel" and the industry finally emerging from this mess, the unfortunate effect is that many consumers were caught in the middle between the two camps, and creativity in the industry suffered.
"The core of our business is a creative business. We make our money by making art. You have to ask yourself, in this industry, are you making good art? When I say five bad years, I think there was precious little good art coming out of the industry. Not across the board. There was some awesome stuff. But that's not where the majority of the people you would see in these halls were focusing their time and attention," Mahoney said, referencing E3.
I do believe we'll see a CoH 3 but this "news" is about dormant IPs, CoH isn't one of them.
Well, guess what I actual read the whole 2020 plan not just what some journalists decided to focus on as "click bait"/PR nostalgia.
Read between the lines and its obvious SEGA Europe studios (which include Relic) will continue to be the primary AAA investment expanding their core IPs. SEGA only has a few studios capable of doing triple-A games.
Look at how SEGA Europe studios have been growing both internal and buying new studios such as Amplitude last year and a new studio for Creative Assembly. CA alone now has 4 studios.
Two new partnerships between SEGA Europe and Microsoft Xbox (Halo Wars) and Wargaming Alliance for PC/console.
Within the gaming industry such as https://www.linkedin.com profiles, usual "unannounced project" refer to a sequel or expansion and "unannounced title" is a new IP. Knowing this, you can look on Relic jobs how they are building a new COH team. As example; one Art Director Relic recently recruited for COH "unannounced project"; https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachschlappi/ http://www.zachschlappi.com/portfolio-1/
Worked on previous AAA titles such as; Just Cause, Far Cry, Medal of Honor. There is very little chance Relic would recruit a new art director this late for a DoW3 expansion.
I have given several good hints/info on this forum that SEGA Europe would expand their core IPs (Total War, external Warhammer IPs, COH, Football Manager, Endless Space 2). Relic GM has also briefly talked about this last year. The new Wargaming Alliance (free to play titles) is definitely part of that "Road to 2020" plan for global IPs.
The big push is all driven by intellectual property (IP) and company brands in the document, with Sega shifting from device-centric development to IP-centric development. This means the company is bringing its games to more platforms: PC, mobile, and game consoles.
If Relic expands to mobile their focus will probably be a strategy card game.
"The one thing we would love is to get the Relic experience on a console," Duffy enthused. "They can do great graphics and great sound. The things I love about Company of Heroes on the presentation side would translate, no problem. But the tactical squad control and cover, those would be harder to mechanically translate to a control pad.