i am sure Kyle did not pay attention to every word he was using like he is writing an English thesis.
Or better, do like http://www.teamliquid.net/ forum moderators and ban the whole bunch of balance whiners. At very least rename balance forums to; COH balance whiners. Make a monthly "MegaWhine Thread" and delete the rest.
COH2.org Balance:
138334 posts/3276 topics
The entire strategy forums, co-ops, Replay Reviews and campaign - total posts (State Office forums):
21614
138334 posts and 3276 topics about balance, seriously?
Is there really a need to have so many posts/topics about it?
For comparison go check out the Teamliquid community forum for Starcraft 2, CS GO, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch etc. I know, there are current and former Relic devs that have used these forums a lot. TL has a rule on their forums about balance whine posts. Why don't we have one here to foster some fruitful debate?.
http://www.teamliquid.net/about/ Community
You may have heard that our moderation is strict. Compared to many other places, that's probably true, as it is our goal to provide a place where intelligent discussion and a respectful community can prosper. We give our moderators discretion to use common sense and inject personality into their interaction with forum users.
Regular COH balance poster:
The balance forums are infested by trolls, scrub rhetoric and biased feedback that are lacking humility.
Balance should be based on testing/data analysis, not a "personal feeling" which don't weigh the importance of multiple factors involved. Ofc everyone should be entitled to an opinion, but that belong to the official balance forums. Fruitful balance debate should be in the hands of the less vocal community members that actual know what they talking about. There is no need to make another clone of the official balance whine forum. Also, money talks louder than words. Care about balance? Well, walk the talk and financial support valuable community members/balance tester like GG.
On the balance forums, whiny scrubs will complain to all who will listen. Become a drama queen for a day with thousands of views. Meanwhile, REAL balance tester usually gets ignored/overshadowed by the endless stream of whine posts.
Personal, I have more than 5000 hours into COH2 and I don't consider myself a balance tester. At this point, the balance forums are totally irrelevant.
Also, attitude reflects leadership. Ask yourself what kind of players do we want to attract?. Do we really want the whole community to look like a bunch of whiny scrubs?;
tl dr version; COH balance forums are pretty much irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Where is the delete button plz?
Cobra, are you possibly some kind of researcher or journalist by day? Because I can't see many other sorts of people devoting such rigor to sourcing their forum replies and it's fairly impressive.
As a former top MMO trader/gambler and alliance director from EvE Online (now retired), most of my playtime would go into background research and to predict gaming trends/post-patch influence on the virtual economy. That's one reason why I like to source everything. You should see my bookmark list
Relic is pure crap compared to other dev's. They live in the dark ages when it comes to transparency and communication.
Compared to which RTS developers? It´s not fair comparing them to Blizzard since RTS is no longer their primary business. The Blizzard developers had far more publisher support to make Starcraft a global brand that could connect with millions of fans. In comparison, Relic created the Homeworld franchise (HW1) with less than 30 devs IIRC and didn't cost Sierra much to make.
But, I can agree with transparency and communication which usually leads to mediocre patches that are neither good nor bad.
If both DoW3 and Halo Wars 2 fail financially that's pretty much the end of big budget RTS (triple A games). DoW3 also help justify further development cost on the Essence Engine used for COH2 and potentially COH3.
And of course now we’re using the next-generation Essence Engine, which has allowed us all sorts of freedom. Relic, Matt Kernachan
As an old school HW fan from 1999-2004, I know Relic´s old history better than most COH2 players. In other games, I continued playing with many HW vets/former Relicnews staff (most noticeable Evolution corp) which pretty much ruled EvE Online competitive play for years original as a nomadic group of PvPer.
Now, If you don't know Relics history with Relicnews and founding principles how can you "predict" where they are going?.
I try to be fair and see both sides as I believe "Truth" is in the eye of the beholder. What Relic believe in today need not be your "truth", nor need it be where Relic was 3 or 10 years ago.
"Truth" comes from a place of experience and is not always black and white.
THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only new opportunities to grow from your mistakes, this include both fans and Relic.
So let us grow together.
During the Homeworld era, I remember there were some decent Relic interactions with fans, such as the Relicnews community. This ofc require mutual trust and respect. Spreading slander and Relic hate will destroy that trust.
With the COH2 community, I have never seen so much hate towards Relic. Yes, unfortunately Relic had some bad luck with unstable publishers. But with the new SEGA CEO there might be some light at the end of tunnel.
I covered this in detail with reliable sources here; SEGA restructuring?
De Waubert: Mathieu and I, the cofounders of Amplitude, have always been huge fans of their Creative Assembly and Relic games. So already we were extremely flattered that they would even consider us.
“This is a unique opportunity to test a self-sustaining model where players can access top quality content, reward the content creators, and fund community-led events,” said Alex Price, brand director at Relic. “We’re excited to see how this might pave the way for more collaboration with players and designers across our portfolio of games.”
As one of the oldest studios in Vancouver, Relic has a rich history with many talented devs that today have created their own independent studios. Most noticeable (Vancouver), Blackbird Interactive (former HW devs), Klei Entertainment (former DoW devs), Smoking Gun Interactive (former COH devs) and Hinterland (former Spacemarine/console devs).
I'm a guy that happened to live in Vancouver and liked video games. I saw the Homeworld trailer on the HL disk IIRC... thinking "That's dumb, who'd want to play Starcraft in 3d..."
Penny-arcade was raving about it, so when I saw news the demo was out in August of 1999 I downloaded it on a whim (a whole 65 MB or so).
I fell in love almost immediately. It felt like Battlestar Galactica, Starwars, Starblazers... all rolled into one. I was hooked.
I had trouble alt-tabbing out of the game... so I was trying to troubleshoot it. Went looking for forums... found Relic's website... they were in Vancouver! Hey I know that guy!
Couldn't find a post about my problem, so figured out the issue and posted it. Then stuck around to help other Homeworlders, then Impossible creature players, then HW2, dawn of war, company of heroes... 50 or 60 thousand posts later I was one of the most well known members of the "Relic Community". I also helped run relicnews.com, which for a few years was the unofficial official forums (Bart Mazus, another local guy owned Relicnews.com and was doing website work for Relic). Went to a couple of E3's, wrote a few articles and a few hundred news posts, etc etc.
So yeah, they had me as their number one fan for a while, I worked on HW2 as a contractor (I tell that story in another post), and in 2010, Rob Cunningham invited me over to show me the pitch video for what was Hardware (now Homeworldhipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
So yeah, some lucky guy that got to watch and help an awesome game community grow and made some awesome friends along the way.
Obtuse: I noticed the note in your yearbook entry, "Contract @ Relic Summer ‘03", how did that come about and what did you do there?
ÜberJumper: Well... I don't know how much you know about the History of Relic and Sierra, so I'll go back a bit. Homeworld was a successful product, didn't cost Sierra much to make, but Relic had to offer up their next 3 titles to Sierra before anyone else could bid on them. Relic started work on Impossible Creatures (which Sierra passed on, and Microsoft published), and there was another title that Sierra passed on as well (I think) then finally Homeworld 2. Relic had been working on Homeworld 2 since almost the end of Homeworld. I was there for a visit in July of 2000 IIRC with a couple of community folks (RipperT and Carradine). We sat in on a dev meeting, saw the game in action, played with it a bit, had lunch with them, it was all good. The Next E3 rolls around, and before that started, Sierra launched the now infamous Homeworld2.com site which had a timer on it counting down to the game's launch, so, I book a flight to LA for E3.
Meanwhile, Relic and Sierra are having some issues over money (which is what a lot of developers go through I hear), and the E3 display of Homeworld 2, and the launch of the website are cancelled. Anyway, while I was there, I got a chance to see Homeworld 2 (in it's then current form) and I was gob-smacked. Flash forward a couple of months to August and news breaks that Sierra had cancelled Homeworld 2. So the game, at that point, is Dead. I hang out for a while longer in the community, and when I think it's clear that Homeworld's not going anywhere, I "left" the community. Alex Garden heard that, and called me up and offered to take me to lunch. He convinced me to stay with the community, that it wasn't dead yet, so I hung out for a while longer. May of 2002 rolls around, and Relic's started work up again on Homeworld 2. They're hiring folks to fill positions that they'd had to let go as HW2 had been stopped (this is when Mecha, long time community member, moved over from England to work on HW2) so anyway, they're working away and basically starting from scratch, but Sierra's not the same Sierra that helped Relic birth Homeworld. They didn't put as much effort into it as they could have. Turn-around time on bug tracking and what not was essentially not happening, so they needed to bring people in to test.
Pike and I were both contracted to do "first pass QA" (credited as additional design support in the credits) on the game. I was working a full time job, getting to Relic at 4pm, working till 10-11pm, then heading home. That was for all of July. The game went gold first week of August and it still needed way more QA on it but it ended Relic's contractual obligations to Sierra and let THQ buy them up. I actually had a chance to see some of the DoW stuff while I was working there, was pretty cool, the early DoW stuff that is.
We've been patient for years and nothing has changed instead of for the worse.
They're not communicating, no hints, nothing new in the files, nothing. The community managers keep telling us that they're excited and can't tell us nothing and after that it turns out that it's a flop or they just want us to get hyped for something small. No thanks, this community has went to hell anyway.
I understand your frustrations, but to many "rage posts" makes the community looks bad. Both in the eyes of new players and developers.
Bullshit, bullshit and... More bullshit, feel free to feel betrayed by Relic.
betrayed? Patience is a virtue
“We’re immensely proud to be celebrating 10 years of Company of Heroes,“ said Justin Dowdeswell, General Manager of Relic Entertainment. "and we hope that our community, and perhaps even some new players, will be able to enjoy and benefit from the activities we have planned around this huge milestone. Company of Heroes left a legacy of quality and innovation and we’re looking forward to the next ten years!”
“Another area we are focusing on is China. We have launched Football Manager Online in China, and we believe there is a big opportunity for strategy games in the territory, so we’re looking into that.”
He concludes: “It is an exciting times with lots of opportunities.”
I study law to become a lawyer and i can tell you that isn't how it works. To get things done you will have to negotiate and communicate. The community has managed quite a few times by now let relic listen to what we want, last patch is made for a big part by the community. How did we do it? By making proposals, talk to them on twitchstreams. Not by threatening them with not buying their products or with a boycott or things like that. We gave them inspiration by supporting people who have balancemods and ideas that big parts of the community appreciates. And when they notice such things they add them in patches. Communicating and negotiations.
If we do what you suggest, boycott them and don't give them money, you think you will get what you want? So from where does relic then get his money to pay developers, software, hardware, offices and the list goes on and on. This will ultimately result in a bankrupt relic, consequences are that you will have a dead game in this case a dead coh and probably a dead dow3.
So i don't know where you learned economics, but i suggest you go back to building. Go tear down some walls or build them but not here. Don't build walls between the community and relic we need to build bridges! calling out to people to bash on relic wont help it only makes things worse.
+1
"Truth" is in the eye of the beholder. That's why it's important to communicate and keep an open mind. Try to see things from different perspectives not just your own. If both fans and Relic are self-righteous and narrow-minded then our relationship will become a divorced couple that can't agree on anything.
Kyle_RE:
Yup, there will be more to come after the War Paint Championships. Our focus for COH2 for the coming months will be integrating additional UGC such as maps and skins as well as keeping the competitive scene going. We also plan to look into a number of known bugs and hopefully address some balance concerns the community have raised in future updates.
Nope a skin update. And not a full skin update where modders can take control and make coh3 modern warfare or anything, just these fucking reskins with flamboyant camo.
Can you news guys fix your titles from now on..."October 4th skin store update" is more appropriate. Title as it is comes off as click bait.
Sorry in advance for salt
So let's talk about "hope". Without any Relic announced goals for COH that seems one of the best things we (as fans) can do now. Spreading slander is counter productive and will only hurt future collaboration with fans. There is no clear proof yet that Relic has abandoned the COH franchise.
Right now we have the COH Brand Manager excited about the future of Relic, so what does that tell you?
Interested in making kick-ass strategy games (DOW3 & COH were just the beginning)? Relic will be ramping up soon:https://boards.greenhouse.io/relic
Patience is a virtue and I'm sure Kyle understand the importance of a roadmap/balance updates to preserve COHs longevity. But for whatever reasons, Kyle is not allowed yet to talk about anything. After the public humiliation of Braden Chan (former Relic "balance meatshield" that now work for Blackbird Interactive Game Studio with the Homeworld IP). Kyle is not that stupid to run into a burning building without an exit strategy.
"There have been some rumors of late that the CoH2 team would like to address. Although there has indeed been some recent changes to the team, rest assured these changes have had no impact on the current plans for CoH2."
1) Currently, Relic has 2 Executive Producers (Stephen MacDonald that was leading a team of 60 devs recently left but they are hiring a new one), 3 Game Directors (Adam Bullied, Quinn Duffy, Philippe Boulle), 4-5 Art Directors and a growing brand/marketing team. They don't need all these leadership positions for just DoW3.
Quinn Duffy: I do really like the way Sega approaches their development. They want Relic to be a craft-led studio, managing our own creative process and having more ownership of the game from beginning to end, including areas typically outside traditional development, like PR or marketing.
This means that Relic has to grow – we don’t have these positions internally. We’ve been building up the studio slowly hiring metrics analysts and our new GM who will lead a lot of the future efforts. But the independence is very interesting and challenging – Relic needs to make money, and we need to find the ways to do that while building our games, building relationships with the community, and making our games better all the time.
2) Since 2014 Relic has been growing from 120 to now 160 and they are not slowing down with the recruitment at all (now confirmed by COH brand manager). From my POV they are building 2-3 AAA teams, a) DoW3, b) DoW/COH (Relic call this cross-functional teams which can make content for both core franchises) and c) a team experimenting with freemium MMOs which is their backup plan similar to Creative Assembly with TW:Arena+Kingdom. https://boards.greenhouse.io/relic/jobs/455345
As our Designer, here’s what you’ll be doing:
Serving the emperor by contributing to Dawn Of War III or battling in the forces [COH] with our cross-functional teams supporting these & other exciting unannounced titles
Linkin Profile
Involved in every stage of the product life cycle for the Company of Heroes franchise, from marketing campaigns and age rating to live operations, updates and in-game store management. Supervised Relic’s first foray into eSports and monetized UGC through partnerships with ESL and Polycount. Co-directed in-house trailers and key art photoshoot for the latest expansion (COH2: The British Forces), also sourcing props, actors, venue and negotiating contracts and image rights. Revamped brand identity. Secured exclusive visibility for Relic artists and assets with Sketchfab around the launch of their new animation feature, generating +120K views through their site. Work on a daily basis with in-house video artist and graphic designer to design all assets for all owned channels.
*SNIP*If so, having the responsibility to drive the vision for an exciting unannounced title by being our Art Director, might be the perfect fit for you!
*SNIP
It’s a bonus if you have…
Experience with RTS games either as a developer or as a player
4) There is a good chance they are going to expand War Paint as a "self-sustaining model". So that mean new modding tools for community created content.
“This is a unique opportunity to test a self-sustaining model where players can access top quality content, reward the content creators, and fund community-led events,” said Alex Price, brand director at Relic. “We’re excited to see how this might pave the way for more collaboration with players and designers across our portfolio of games.”
My title is “Narrative Designer.” It’s a position I worked with Relic and THQ to create on the initiative of Tarrnie Williams, General Manager, and Owen Hurley, Cinematics Director. The core of my job is to champion the story and narrative production pipeline for an entire product.
There is plenty of more info out there that suggest Relic are planning to work on more than just DoW3. Just because Relic is not transparent dont mean they have abandoned the COH franchise.
Denmark
hipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
SturmTigerCobra
DonnieChan
Inane EliteVideoGameMasturbater
SturmTigerCobra
Relic Entertainment
