Profile of Hannibal

they become valid the moment you notice that the 3d models of the tanks are reused from coh2, a game from 10 years ago. there is no possible excuse for that and it shows incredible carelessness

The question is not if the models have been reused, but if the reused models are outdated. Could they have higher polygon counts and neater corners/edges with 10 more years of graphics development? Sure. But it does not always make sense to improve the complexity of your models, especially if you're not going to see it once you're zoomed out. At this point you'll just increase power consumption on the hardware for no benefit. On zoom-in, you'll probably see some of the rougher edges, but there is good reason for the developer to prioritize performance over that last 10% visual fidelity. You personally might weight that differently and not recommend the game with good reason as well, but that's not the only way.

I would have also expected an overall larger graphics leap, but I don't find the graphics particularly bad. For me it was more the overall art design that was slightly off and did not yield this great immersion that CoH2 had, but this has to do with more than just graphics. I have to say that I did not play the release version and that the data that Relic has put out since then looked promising on the graphics side at least.

I find it quite annoying though that many just jump on one single issue and downvote the game because of that. I don't believe that the e.g. graphic issues are so large that THAT many people find it game breaking. The game is more than just graphics or a couple of models ported from CoH2. They just expected better or something different and downvote in pure defiance.

I seen way to many these "gamer" journalists, not even understand the game, much less in Multi-player and even less to gaming community and culture.

Quite a broad topic, but I agree. I did not say that there is no bad gaming outlet, but given the circumstances (needing to review multiple games a week, follow on current games news etc) and cases of actual misconduct aside, many reviews are okay. Obviously, no gaming journalist will beat a really dedicated hardcore fan that spend the last 10 years playing CoH2. Some people just assume that every journalist should be able to sink 200+ hours into the same game while having played the predecessors for even longer, but that's straight up impossible.
My point is that the final score is very weird. You need to know that this journalist cares about similar things as you do. Reading the text gives you insight if that is actually the case or if he is complaining about things that you don't care about or praising things that will annoy you personally.

I thought most people here care about multiplayer? That part cannot be reviewed yet.
Many 'professional' games media are okay, but people care too much about scores and too little about the text and then are wondering why the games are not as expected...

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.

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.