haha I completely forgot about the blizzards! With the little fireplaces and the "freezing barometer"... God, the hate I felt back then
I think it was actually the blizzards which made me leave the game for some time and turn to DoWII again..
Plus the color of the snow was this horrid bright baby blue color that gave me so much eye strain, my eyes would be bloodshot and watering every time I finished a 25+ minute game on a winter map. If you pull up a recent youtube vid from COH2 and compare it to 2013 they changed the color of the snow at some point to something more neutral and reasonable looking, not sure exactly when.
so it is like 25% off?
that is tough, but not the end of the world........
I didn't realize Relic employed that many people, thought it was 200 tops. So this really isn't a catastrophic blow. Game studios put most of their team on the next game while a much smaller chunk does post launch support for the released titles, so what I'm guessing actually happened is this: Sega massively expanded Relic for the purposes of AoE4 and then kept them around to work on COH3. Then they remembered the last DoW game flopped extremely hard and realizing Relics only viable IP for the time being is CoH, they didn't need so many people around. Seems more like Relic ins't rushing towards developing a new IP rather than a doomsday scenario.
You don't feel it looks that good, because of leap CoH2 had over CoH1 being significant, when graphics improved a LOT generation to generation and it really is not possible to go that far for CoH3 without forcing everyone to get 30xx GPUs to run it, modern graphical improvements are really just higher resolutions and more FPS, textures itself are pretty much at peak.
I think you're right about talking about many other games, I highly doubt that's the case here. I remember when BF1 came out in 2016 being blown away by what were basically photorealistic graphics, which of all the games I've played that was a first. Now a ton of games have photorealistic visuals or pretty close to it, a lot of them aren't even made by gigantic AAA developers. Just look at Ready or Not for example, new small developer and the maps are insanely good looking, practically on par with the new COD (the character models aren't quite there but whatever). Another example look at the last 3 Eugen titles (SDN44, SD2, Warno). The units aren't as detailed as COH2+3, especially the infantry, but when you zoom in the maps look pretty damn close...and this is a game of much larger scale where you're intended to play from 30k feet up in the skybox. And shockingly it does all that while running well on a medium tier gaming rig.
COH3 has a pretty odd aesthetic to it. On one hand it doesn't blow you away with how true to life the visuals are, but the art style doesn't look particularly stylized either. It just kinda looks like what would've passed for great graphics back in 2014. That said it never really came across as bad, I'm not going to trash it for looking hideous because it looks reasonably ok for an RTS imo. But I don't buy the argument that this is peak graphics and couldn't have looked any better, or that if it did look any better nobody would be able to run it.
This is why I never play 1v1. You just want to have fun and pick a fun commander, but instead you get punked because you didn't try to guess what the enemy was going to pick and pick to counter it. So you get stuck playing some lame commander you don't want to play at all.
That is the opposite of fun to me personally. I can see the benefit of it in a 1v1 chess match though.
What I meant was spending too much fuel on the wrong things at the wrong times setting you up for a bad mid/late game as the tech progresses. So for example you spend a bunch of resources on infantry upgrades but never managed to make much of an impact with those, you're now behind on fuel and get punished by someone that rushes fast mid game vehicles. Or if someone is going very infantry heavy and is managing to do some damage, you need to slow down and spend that fuel on upgrades that will keep you in the game instead of holding on too long for late tech.
What you're saying about commanders I totally agree with. Interesting counter choices should revolve around decisions made during the game, not which commanders happened to be brought in.
Its a bit of joke that COH1 was lightyears ahead of its time with the graphics and COH3 doesn't look much better than COH2 10 years later.
Gameplay wise COH3 is looking really damn good. The way the factions (and doctrines) are designed is a massive step up from COH2. Gone are the days of having early game AT units that can carry you 30 minutes in to the game and deciding between buying vehicle A or vehicle B. Now you have all kinds of things to spend that fuel on, and if you make bad teching choices you're going to open yourself up to nasty counter play options that you can't really defend against. People that only played COH2 never knew what it was like to get stomped out by T3 rush because you fucked up and don't have enough fuel to field AT guns 8 minutes in to the game.
Really out of the loop on this stuff I haven't followed COH2 in a few years now and just stumbled across the AE video in a discord, but I want to add some historical context.
Most of the SUS clips can be explained by what I have been saying for years but no one wants to believe: What you see in game is not what the server is doing. You are the client and operating on the data you have available. There is other data coming to the server from other players etc.
So most of the clips are of things that have units on the edge of the FOW. I would not accept any of those as cheating.
Most (maybe all?) games I've played that have some sort of saved or instant replay system have issues where the data in the replay is not perfectly in sync with what actually happened in the game client, so I agree units reacting to what is just barely beyond the fog in the replay seems like weak evidence IMO.
In a COH1 fairplay maphack report the person reviewing had to show that there was a consistent pattern of sketchy unexplainable movements, and this usually took multiple replays, otherwise there wasn't enough confidence that the suspect behavior wasn't just a coincidence. One of the exceptions to this would be if someone called in a strafing run on hidden cloaked snipers or storm troopers, that was an instant banhammer case closed situation. What happened with the Brumbar looked like one of those types of offenses to me. I don't remember if you can find ATG's with the green cover on the cursor in COH2 like you could in COH1, but regardless that still looked very damning. Being able to multi task during a big engagement, and not only find the location of the AT gun but perfectly lead the shot where it is moving, and managing to do that not once but twice in a short time span looks like a hardcore red flag to me. Historically I think that's the sort of evidence that would've been considered sufficient for a ban all on its own.
Doctrines: Scrap doctrine ability overlap completely, no more duplicates. And preferably return closer to the COH1 system where you have fewer doctrines but 2 branching paths. Less is more, 3-5 doctrines per faction that are very distinct and well thought out is far superior. And IMO all doctrines should be available to pick in game, being in a situation where you could've been better equipped to counter the opponent if you had made a different selection prior to entering the match is frustrating.
Autonomous infantry animations: Haven't played COH2 much in the past couple of years so this may have been addressed, but a major gripe I had back when I played a lot were the overly dramatic infantry reactions to incoming fire. Nearby impact of anything other than small arms fire resulted in guys just diving all over the place. I vividly remember playing in a tournament game like 7 years ago and I micro'd away from an incoming molotov only for my guys to go "oh shit" and dive in to the fireball they just dodged...no bueno. The infantry panic reactions happened for all sorts of things including incoming AT rifle shots, AT gun fire, grenades, artillery misses, etc. This was a thing in COH1 but it was far more subdued, it generally required something like a direct hit from tank/artillery and it seemed like they recovered much faster.
Vaulting: I like the idea but not a huge fan of the universal implementation. In COH1 it was easier for the defensive oriented faction to go on the counter offensive in the early game after repelling a major push. You could use map objects like fences and short walls to limit the enemies avenues of attack and secure your flanks, it made aggressive defensive playstyles more rewarding and it was very satisfying when you pulled it off. Also at a high level players would do things like use attack ground with bazookas or flamers to burn down fences to open more flank routes or enter a base, and neat quirky things like that were good for the high skill ceiling. However the maps need to be made accordingly, there needs to be an appropriate amount of openings so that aggressive MG play is rewarded but not too overpowering. Ideally I think vaulting should be limited to special elite units and possibly as a veterancy perk for main line infantry units.
Optimization: I have a rig that should be very overkill for a 7 year old RTS yet it barely performs better than the system I was running when the game came out. The framterate still dips in to the 40s and 50s when there are lots of units on the field and this is on a PC that runs most new FPS on high/ultra at 100+ fps. In theory it shouldn't be a big issue because high framerate isn't super important for a RTS, the problem is in COH2 the camera panning really goes downhill as the performance dips, it gets extremely choppy and sluggish. A long time ago I used to play COH1 and other rts games on a laptop running at 25-30fps, and the camera movement still felt much more snappy and responsive than COH2. This is something that really needs to work well in a competitive rts game.
Did only once play BF1 but I do enjoy BFV as well, the shooting mechanics are on point imo.
Ya the gunplay was amazing in BF5, its a shame they fucked up just about everything else. BF1 was pretty much the opposite, mediocre gun play but despite that far better overall imo. Good maps and use of the time period, fun variety of vehicles, better game modes, superior visuals, great performance few bugs, consistent experience that didn't get screwed up with gamebreaking updates, not overtly woke.
United States
Insane Aimstrong
Relic Entertainment
