I didn't notice you saying he was wrong though
Some things go without saying.
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The more recent event seems to be another screenshot that was taken on a separate server, yet still a private one, and appears to be an edgy joke that I made that was taken, again, out of context and sent as a complaint.
It goes without saying that this whole thing stinks, I should be able to make jokes or say what I want in a private setting without the anxiety of knowing that anything I say can be used against me and hurt me. It's also quite concerning how Relic didn't even bother to verify the claims, if they did they would have known the screenshot in question was deliberately taken out of context. It's even more concerning to know that anybody that uses my profile picture and my name on Discord will automatically be considered me. Meaning that literally anyone can falsify screenshots and Relic will simply not verify.
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Depending on what you said/wrote, I think it is okay if Relic can decide to end your contract depending on the severity of the case and potential damage to them. I personally also would not automatically call any chat private because all the users were invited. If it was one of the 200+ users discord servers where you don't even know everyone, it is kind of public as well. If it was a private chat with 2-3 friends its a different case obviously, because the damage to Relic severely decreases the less people there are and also the "more private" the chat is.
I fully agree that Relic should have done more verification checks. It is a business agreement after all, also for Relic, and they should handle it seriously. Obviously they have the WAY larger leverage so they can act like this in the sense that they don't need to care neither from a reputation point nor sales, income, publicity or whatever. They're just the bigger shot. Nevertheless it shows shitty behaviour and code of conduct from their side. If they don't want to invest that work, they should not offer the contract to streamers that are "too small".
I can tell from my own experience here as a mod that it is sometimes very difficult to judge if something crosses a red line or not. Due to time, context etc constraints you just have to make your best guess based on what you can see. Sometimes you'll just get it wrong, no doubt about that. But this ties in to the point above: I am doing this for free in my spare time, and while I still try to make a fair decision, there's naturally restrictions to how much time I can invest. Relic did a business agreement, and they should take it way more seriously. It sounds pretty believable that they did not invest much time into verification of users and the overall claim. If I were you, I'd write John about it, but probably there's not a high chance of response and more in-depth review due to the release of CoH3 in a few days. |
On Reddit AceHiro wrote this:
I didn't sign an NDA and I did not talk about confidential content about coh3 simply because I didn't know anything lol. The discord servers that I'm part of are huge, more than 200 people, obviously not all of them are friends.
Calling a 200+ people discord server where you probably know the vast majority vaguely at best "private" is utter nonsense. Relic might have still made a mistake, but pretty sure AceHiro is leaving out crucial info. |
Typically Unions tend to kill the industry/job you are attempting to unionize so it shouldn't be taken lightly.
However, wouldn't this thread be better served in another, thread?
American spotted!
On topic though:
It is difficult to judge without knowing what the deal exactly included or what was policed exactly. It is a business deal and AceHiro should be aware of it. If he said something that hurts the trust between both parties or that AceHiro only adhered superficially to the deal but otherwise tries to circumvent it (e.g. breaking an NDA is also not okay in private chats), it is his fault. If Relic generally polices private chats and bad talking about CoH3 or any CoH game in general, they are overstretching their competence. I slightly doubt that this is the case though, due to AE regularly trash talking bugs in the game. On the other hand AE has also more influence than probably any other streamer, so maybe he can dare to say more because dropping him would actually anger the more active part of the community due to his tournaments and range.
I get the impression though that AceHiro is disappointed that the codevelopment is nothing more than a marketing stunt and free game testing for Relic. I find that quite naive. It can serve well for the community and the game, too, but primarily it is a marketing stunt. Obviously Relic will present it differently, and it is good that AceHiro calls them out on it. We've seen their shoddy community and ocmmunication handling multiple times in CoH3: First, promising weekly dev diaries that were good for the first few weeks, then became a meaningless wall of text and finally abandoned quickly, and then revived after months of nothing but only for very few entries. Relic and IGN starting their video campaign before initial launch, only to embarrassingly move the launch date 1 month before when all videos were published.
That's not to say that they completely ignored the feedback at all, they did address some problems that were pointed out during their tests. But as usual, if you promise full transparency and top notch communication with a large community, putting one single person on the job is not going to cut it.
Overall, this reads as AceHiro being too naive to really think that a big studio will not try to control the information flow of their main product. And Relic on the other hand being incompetent or at the very best overpromising due to marketing and then obviously underdelivering. |
The problem isn't to sell additional content but how it impacts the game. I play Stellaris and Paradox is well known for milking their player base with constant new add-ons but since those are correctly implemented and finally don't break the game they are well received.
Definitely this. I don't know how varied and interesting MP gameplay will be with only three battlegroups at launch. Yes, they offer more variety than CoH2 commanders, but having the choice of 5-6 commanders only gives you an okay at best variety for gameplay.
If the base game has enough content, then I am fully fine with releasing paid (but balanced) battlegroups down the line. However, if the current battlegroups are designed to become stale after a short while so you're incentivized to buy more, it is not. Then the game has basically a 70-80€ price tag.
Some of the DLCs that Paradox released did break the game though in the sense of putting someone not owning the DLC at a serious disadvantage, because the AI had access to it while the player did not. |
Hard to say really. There are signs of them, but they are very vague. We for sure know that there are at least 2 units missing from the game being Noshorn and Archer TDs.
We also know that having more then 3 battlegroups are also planned, since there were signs of battlegroup loadouts. On top of that, dispute a lot of concepts of battlegroups, have changed since previous tests. Most of the abilities were still in use in tech tests.
Meaning that we are still missing multiple units\weapons\abilities in battlegroups tech test had (and relic pretty much said that on release there will be only 3 battlegroups). Not to mention that WM and US had 4 commanders in the files.
So its safe to assume, that relic will release new battlegroups.
My personal opinion is that they are most likely then not, will be locked behind both in-game and real money, since Relic got a lot of hate before about commanders being unobtainable without real life money.
As for gameplay content. Pretty much mini-gamemodes similar to the ones in vCoH ToW, will be returning to some extend, there were a lot of signs of them.
So basically the same things as in CoH2: Mini-expansions/DLCs, commanders, skins.
I would speculate that they will release pure single player campaigns as well. This will be a big fraction of the player base, and once they have set up the basic systems for the release version, there is no reason why they should not create a campaign e.g. North Africa, France, Poland, Greece/Crete etc. especially a German POV Crete campaign would lend itself well. Or maybe the more obvious choice: US POV campaign in the Pacific. They would work well for their designed gameplay of integrating navy, air and land forces on the strategy map. Maybe they'll even bring back Soviets at some point.
They literally said they will be releasing new battlegroups during one of the deep dives and UI is dead giveaway for it. Doctrines were monetized and sold well, so no reason to believe they wouldn't do the same with battlegroups.
Not really sure what you're debating here.
The debate is not only about battlegroups. If you couldn't find hints for monetization of basically confirmed battlegroups in the game files, you won't find anything else as well. If you however find them, whatever else Gachi claims to have found in the game files has more credibility as well. |
I completely agree with your post but want to explain why I'm more optimistic regarding Relic's dlc politic:
I'm convinced that they know that a "fair" dlc policy is needed if they want to establish the game as service game: In other words: They will make more profit if they treat the players better (no op commanders, good quality dlcs instead of bad designed copy and paste doctrines).
Regarding cut out content:
I know that a lot of companies have done that in the past and that's shit. But some players don't want to understand how production in the gaming industry works. Take a battlegroup for example: Before Relic can sell a new doctrine, artists have to draw, units need to be modeled and testing have to be done.
The issue is that they don't necessarily maximize profits if they treat players "better". If we look at Sega and Creative Assembly and how they handled many of their Total War entries and DLCs over the last 10 years, the base core games really look stripped down to the minimum to sell the better content later.
I am not in the games industry, but from what I have heard, at least towards the last months where development focuses on optimization and bug fixing, artists are rather free and that's the time when they often create the first cosmetic DLCs. Also, creating skins for vehicles is not that complex. Creating a battlegroup with new units overall is obviously more work, but given Relic's record in CoH2, I don't know why I should trust them. Yes, they claim to have learned their lesson, but CoH2's commander monetization is quite atrocious. And if Gachi's claim of having two different in game currencies turns out to true, that's another sign that they have not learned at all. The only reason for currencies is to hide the real costs as well as overspending due to mismatches in how much currency you can buy and the costs of single items. It's an inherently dishonest system, and even with CoH2's almost non-existant unlocking system, at the very least they had real prices.
If Relic does want to support the game and keep it fresh than they alrdy have to work on mp and sp stuff or we will have to wait a long time. And then players would complain why the game doesnt get the much needed content.
That depends on your target audience. CoH so far was aimed towards a more mature audience, there are less issues regarding game content if the base game is decently made. But I confess that this is a highly subjective opinion, I'm definitely the kind of person that sinks hundreds of hours into very few games if the core gameplay loop suits me instead of playing many games for only a couple of hours each. |
2x speed bonus on reversing.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. But cool to see to also get different minor factions via battlegroups. |
What is wrong if Relic sells cosmetics? As long as I have the option to turn off unhistoric skins etc. I support it. People seem to forget that Relic is a company who needs to generate revenue after the launch. They can only support the game long term if they sell cosmetics, customization etc. I really don't understand why people care complaining about this, honestly. If I can customize my units then I happily throw my money on it. I also don't mind to pay for quality battle groups - as long as they are balanced.
Gameplay wise there is nothing wrong with it. There can be social/financial issues with microtransactions generally for people vulnerable to spending, but that's quite a whole different topic.
People mostly complain because nowadays you'll also not get a finished game anymore at launch. We're already only buying licenses without any reselling value, and many games are in a decent state months to years after launch, which should have been actual development time. The 'games as a service' model is often being abused to actually ship an alpha version of the game and excuse bugs.
Relic knows that it crossed a line in CoH2, they will not do the same mistake again. They also adressed that several times btw.
All in all I would recommend to have some patience and look back at his topic 3 months after launch. If we have balancing breaking battle groups I'm the first who will rage. But I'm optimistic that this will not be the case.
I wouldn't trust any game company on their promises, especially not if publishers are behind them that have proven to cut content and sell it later as DLC.
We'll see what Relic will do, but since these MTXs can heavily influence the game's design and balance, it's necessary to draw a red line before important design decision have been made |
I've made a post after digging tech test files, which had connections to montization.
Pretty much what will be monetisation
1) Separate\bundled skins for tanks\captured points\inf units. Pretty much every aspect of army will be customisation
2) Things like player avatars, titles, player cards
3) There will be 3 types of item rarity similar to common\rare\epic
4) And I believe game would have 2 types of currency one being free and the other one will be paid one.
Also again, for those who think "skins aren't sufficient enough", there are passive income, to generate more $ proper game-developers\publishers use expansions, the same way Total War did.
I mean sure, big companies always trying to milk you dry, but lets be honest "EA\Ubisoft style" is not the single one here on the market.
I remember your post, it was a pretty interesting read, but quite a while ago.
Did you find anything regarding battlegroups or other gameplay content? What you list up there seems to be cosmetics only. |
I don't see how CoH3 can monetize cosmetics successfully. Sure they had some throwaway camos and cross-over skins in CoH2, but even with 10k concurrent players on the regular basis, they stopped making simple textures (where other games have remodels, voice-overs, vfx for skins). It was unprofitable, and same will be for CoH3 - tank skins aren't sexy catgirls or black knights - they barely matter.
There's already a CoH3 cosmetic DLC out there. They'll clearly monetize it.
Creating a new skin is not that much work. If a somewhat decent artist spends half a day on it (and he'll probably need less), Relic spends a couple of hundred dollars. You'll break even if 200-300 player's buy it for 2 dollars. |