This is such a bad direction for discussion.
And how much of the blame is because the PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR of CoH3 is an executive whose past is mostly an executive from EA. The game was trusted to this dude, David Littman, and he fucked us all. His past includes being a hockey player, and then 10 years of hockey game production for EA. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN WHEN THE DIRECTOR IS SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER WORKED ON RTS BEFORE. No wonder they prioritized the fucking console port and mtx, because... that is where EA made most of the money on the hockey game.
Instead of blaming women/minorities/sjw/egs and all the other buzzwords, just blame this guy. Even if Relic had employees who weren't the best qualified in all roles (I doubt it, but I can give you 10% of blame to the mandated corporate hiring). I looked up some profiles on linkedin what I can find, they all have backgrounds in mobile games, smaller games, enterprise - none of them are unqualified, and most are the white dudes. Still, if the project isn't going smoothly along, it is always on the producer/director to set things right, not the low-level employees to somehow steer the ship.
We lost. We all lost with these layoffs because you cannot "continue" with your plan without the audio team, and probably the more than half of CoH3 team. If AOE4/Team2 is spared, then it COH3/Team1/(probably DOW3 too) is the one being culled.
In conclusion: captain hockey is the person responsible for COH3 fuckup. Even if he is replaced, COH3 team lost so much development power (they are not hiring replacements), it is physically impossible to steer it forward. If you thought COH3 development was slow with 100/100 popcap, now we have the 40/100 popcap trying to win the late game against Axis.
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Invasion of Czechoslovakia, the pact between Germany and Poland - "Bliezinki-Ribbentrop Pact", to divide and conquer Europe starts the WW2, in which USSR tries to form the alliance with UK and France, in the attempt to contain the aggressors and preserve the peace.
What is more realistic, Iron Harvest or alt-history lessons on this board.
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Alright, lets wait for the final announcement.
Wishlist:
• All store content frozen and delayed indefinitely until the playerbase rebounds to CoH2 levels
• 1 map per month starting from June
• Battlegroups every second month
• Working on the two faction Expansion for multiplayer, campaign not in-development
• Confirmed quality of life features such as leaver punishments, spectate, replays, real matchmaker incentives.
• Acknowledgement that the launch state and content of this game is poor, community concerns weren't taken into account.
Expectations:
• We hear ya, monitoring feedback, community is our priority
• We are not not not NOT DOW3'ing COH3, committed to CoH3 future
• The new bridge map is coming, at least two more maps in the future someday
• Some vague balance change directions
• Layoffs have no effect on CoH3, now half the CoH team members will do double the work, twice as fast, and even superior quality.
• Expansions in development but nothing concrete |
You can't take an RTS game and turn it into life service.
CoH2 and 3 have all the components of the live service game. It is just that you cannot run live service without content updates.
• First month you get the new map, event where you unlock some skins
• Second month you get 2 new battlegroups
• Third month you get a small map + one map rework, second event, go make some special queue with 2x resource mod or special tank modifiers.
• Fourth you get a new map
• Fifth you get 2 more battlegroups, maybe you unlock those instantly during the third event rather than saving up coins
And you just keep going at it. Stable content rollout that keeps the game fresh.
At every month, you also add some premium skins for sale. Nothing wrong with paid skins, but the skins themselves aren't live service. It is a tip jar for when you are doing a great job with the actual live service component.
We are 3 months in and there isn't a single piece of content in THE LIVE SERVICE GAME. (skins or balance/bug fixes aren't content). COH3 only has the live service monetization, nothing more. |

Nothing healthy about Relic's turnover. It is a downsizing, and the unplanned one with 30 min notices to the 30% of your total workforce.
Turnover is healthy when studios maintain the same workforce, and have open vacancies (hasn't been the case with Relic for months now, or just 1 specialized request). Some retire, some choose other employers, build their own companies, some get fired for poor performance. Ideally leaving employees stick around those extra 2-4 weeks to train their replacements, ensuring smooth transitions and it is all on friendly terms.
The puzzle is, what are there 4 community managers. Wouldn't surprised if John is the only one doing work, while 3 others are "monitoring feedback" aka slacking all day long.
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I can't help but wonder how much more polished the game could have been at launch if they would of just dropped the half-arsed, bad singleplayer campaigns and focused exclusively on multiplayer/skirmish content. I know campaigns are supposed to be a staple of RTS's in general but Relic haven't really produced anything good in that regard since the first game...
This doesn't sound great. For a completely new game, updates have been coming at a pretty glacial pace already. Guess we'll just have to wait to find out exactly what they'll be prioritising, moving forward.
There were multiple beta tests, feedback was there, problems were visible months ahead of launch.
You heard them, they thought they did a great job. And clearly it is the managers and upper-positions who patted themselves on the back for their decisions, unless everybody is delusional in there. No amount of time or polish would change their minds that the project wasn't going to the right direction, and their priorities are wrong, and the feedback from beta tests has to be taken onboard rather than fucking with some hue slider.
But even in those videos where 3 dudes are staring at the camera: there is no hype, no pride, uncomfortable. Last one was approaching the hostage video: words say one thing, body language says the opposite. Dodge all the relevant community questions, bombard them back with "we hear ya", "share your feedback". |
Expected. If your employees shit the bed, and label themselves as successful, you have to clean the house yourself. The only hope is that it is the unskilled fat and managers who are being trimmed, and not the actual developers.
It is going to get DOW3'ed. Keep in mind there weren't mass layoffs after DOW3, while we aren't even in the console launch of COH3 and the heads are already rolling.
Somehow I doubt that the layoffs will hit the people it should, which were the project managers and people above them. Several of my immediate family are programmers. I hear their side of stories like this when they happen, which usually happens when the project manager doesn't understand everything that needs to happen to deliver a successful product.
You are probably right on this one, simply because to restructure and layoff the low-productivity employees you need to send in some outside/independent HR agents: to inspect reports, interview employees, gather feedback, write their own reports on productivity/quality/risks of the studio.
It cannot be a snap decision, because if it is: then it is the Relic management who caused the problems in the first place: low-productivity + low-quality output.
Again the community can stand up to save the day. Just open up the mod. so we can mod merge the both game into one hell of war experience ! Coh2 was save, it can be done again !
People told you in your thread how idiotic the idea that you can just merge both games is, and instead of changing your point of view, you still suggesting it.
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So no-one gonna mention how new promised map is a bridge map for skirmish? I mean this fucking priorities are insane.
Bot stompers already play on x10000000 shitty bridge maps from workshop, but HEY this one is official. Its probably remake of this idiotic 2v2 map, with terrain lowered making middle bridge the only available path.
Sorry but I really want to smack someone who works for relic in the face.
Operation BRuh ASS.
It is the next stage of video game failure. Community is in the far better shape when people are being negative/raging on social media. Things go really wrong when nobody cares anymore, just some token activity of bot-level news/videos/discussions. Gamers, as the average player, are getting far better at abandoning trash and moving on, developers have to work harder to retain players/attention now.
Some people on this forum are still beliebing in CoH2 story, things will get better because it worked out once. Nope, we are 10 years later now, it will be DOW3'ed.
A game as complex as CoH2 with so many moving pieces needs active balancing to prevent fatigue. It gets stale, and this is none of the failure of Sturmpanther or whoever was making decisions for the community-driven patches. You just reach the point of diminishing returns without further updates: more repetitive, more people aim for the most efficient/OP playstyles, nothing new to discover. CoH2 got shelved (by devs) 4 years ago, only through the community effort it got extended as far as updates/patches go. I am thankful, but Relic fucked us all with abandoning CoH2 unofficially long before their 10 year plan, and then producing the stinker of CoH3 which needs one more year in development at the very least. |
You do realize that both games use completely different engines, right? There is no such possibility like "Copy content from CoH2 and paste it in CoH3". Everything needs to be re-built from scratch
Not the icons mate.
But yes, merging games is impossible. Perhaps you could get away with much faster production time editing and retexturing some tank models, at the same time re-mastering the old maps from existing CoH3 environmental assets rather than rebuilding precise building/terrain details as they were in CoH2 maps.
Right now, the content is a joke, and if there is a choice between two remastered CoH2 units/maps, versus one new CoH3 asset from scratch: I take the first option until CoH3 reaches half the content of CoH2.
Reuse audio, icons, base-models, gameplay role/design of the Sturmtiger. Bring it to the CoH3. It would have been fine if Relic weren't laggards with launch content, but we are at the position where the team is scounting for the 4vs4 map, maybe summer you will get some actual game DLC, yet the quality of it might be botched anyway.
We are almost three months in, there is 0 new content. Skins or some bug-fixes aren't content. |
I think you guys are close to the agreement, much more closer than the arguments you try to respond to. My assumption is that both are fine, most people playing the game will accept either: slightly more powerful retreat bonuses with less wipes, or less protection during retreat and more wipes. Even for the tournament, it is small potatoes, I don't have a strong preference to this.
And while you are arguing about balance changes are TTK design tweaks, the house is on fire. People leaving because the game sucks, audio-visual component unsatisfactory, no map variety, limited units/battlegroups, awkward tank ranges, no leaver/rager punishments, bad matchmaking, bugs on mines/support weapons/everything, missing features.
The discussion on the best iteration of DPS/TTK/Retreat is not productive at this stage of the game  |