Ok
what was wrong with COH2 besides balance at launch
Balance and general broken mechanics were of course a huge part of it, just like they are now, but on top of that coh 2 had substantial performance issues that meant it ran like shit on systems that supposidly met its requrements, made even worse on maps that featured that snow storm gimmick. There was no tooltips or detailed information about units or anything and it had a new command point system that was shit and broken. Did you play 2 at launch?
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Problem so much worse in coh3.
Nah Reverb. It's difficult to put into words just how fucking awful coh 2 was at launch. If you were there you'd remember. |
I think the T4 tech uprade is OK costwise. The P3 is relatively cheap and they get really good once they get all the relevant upgrades.
The cost of enabling the armoured call ins though, i think that's a little bit too expensive, given the cost of the call-ins themselves. |
And since a lot of people are fans of "DoW3 incident". DoW3 had 25k on release, lowered to 4k in 1 month, next month lowered to 1.5k players. So yeah, CoH3 is no where near.
Yeah Rosbone seems to be fixated on this just a tad much, at the moment. |
Yeah, this seems pretty minor, I think they're fine. |
Yeah, completely fair point about the standards on patching/fixes now vs back then. It's a totally different era now isn't it. It's pretty depressing that apart from a few notable exceptions, broken and buggy games on release are basically considered the norm now. I also can't really argue with you about the interface issues. Balance is one thing, but the interface stuff is pretty damn inexcusable.
The state of the game is unnacceptable as it stands. We definitely agree on that. Reading your earlier post, its very similar to how i felt about the state of Coh 2 when it first came out. I thought the series would just die and that would be that. I was pretty shocked at how much better it had become when i gave it another try, though this was a couple of years later at the very earliest.
That's probably why i'm an optimist about this one really. It improved so much, but we shouldn't need to lower out standards to this degree, not for a game this expensive and that has already been delayed and subjected to so much player feedback. I completely get it if you've had enough of Relic and believe you shouldn't have to wait for so long after its release for it to become decent.
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As an aside, I thought Dawn of War 2 really nailed it in terms of the feel, cover system and the little squads you had. Though i know it wasn't universally popular, many people really hated it. Honestly, you are kind of making me curious to dive back into DoW 3 to see just how much it improved over time, that is, if it's even still listed on Steam anymore?! Haha.
Appreciate the very detailed and thoughtful reply.
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Dawn of War 3 was honestly Relic's best game at launch
Ok, I'll admit its been quite a long time since COH 1 came out and I have some serious rose-tinted nostalgia goggles when it comes to that game, so feel free to correct me on this. But I'm pretty sure it beat the fuck out of Dawn of War 3 when it comes to a 'successful' launch.
While the various factions felt OK in terms of units and options, the input lag in DoW 3 was absolutely horrendous and the the hero units were very boring and uninspired. It's cool if you liked it of course, but to me it felt like it had very little in common with any of the previous entries at all. I might be misremembering but didn't they completely water down/remove the cover system? Not to mention all of the shallow MOBA nonsense they tried to add. I get that they really wanted to innovate but it just didn't know what it wanted to be.
That said though, you and other people have voiced a lot of completely valid criticisms of 3. That list from Dirty Finisher for example, it brought up so many obvious 'why is this STILL an issue' issues that should never have made it past the testing phase. It definitely smacks of very rushed and unfinished game that just isn't really acceptable, given all the love and hard work from the people who made the original and then (eventually) coh 2, into a really great multiplayer RTS. |
Honestly is Company of Heroes actually worth saving at this point? All it is right now is pretty much a hollow brand - Ancestors Legacy was mentioned earlier and, whatever you may think of the game, it proved that other, smaller studios can pretty successfully emulate or even innovate on the formula and produce a fun, functional game. Relic right now is in the end stage of a Ship of Theseus situation, clearly a vast majority of the people making actual decisions at the company have no idea what makes Company of Heroes good or fun, and I suspect a large portion of them don't even play it.
The silence from the company and the fact that they can't even do a proper hotfix when it's desperately needed points to a critical failure at some end of the decision-making process internally. Right now everything looks like it's adding up to a Dawn of War 3-level scenario, and I think people should brace for the possibility that the studio straight-up won't finish the game. Refund it while you still can, if you can.
There's definitely a lot that needs fixing and balancing, but this is a little bit hysterical. Dawn of War 3 was an absolute dumpster fire. Whatever you think of it's issues, the game at least got more than decent reviews and it isn't a watered down MOBA. |
I honestly don’t know how long it’s going to take for the gravity of the situation to set in for people that played COH2 and then played COH3. COH3 is SO FAR behind in BALANCE/MECHANICS its insane.
Wow, when you lay it all out like that it's hard to argue. Devils advocate... perhaps it's because it was made in a different engine, by i'm assuming, a totally different team?
Ur completely right though, it is very strange that so many of these little details, lessons and fixes were ignored and not simply carried over. I still expect many of them to be fixed in time, but why the hell were so many allowed to exist when you only have to play the 2 previous iterations of the game to know why they needed to be changed/corrected. The medic thing in particular irritates me as well.
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Guasto's are fun but arrive late and are susecptible to the above, perhaps even to a worse degree.
They definitely deserved the nerf. A lot more difficult to fit in now, but god are they fun to use against the right sort of short-range opponent. Just walking around eating about two enemy squads alive before they have to retreat. |