Does anyone have a guess if new doctrines or new factions will ever be added to the game?
Thanks
This is actual a more complicated question to ask than you realize.
New core content and balance is not the same thing. But most importantly, it was pretty obvious that the "5 years plan" for COH was going to fail financially with new content. Some former popular streamers like Romeo were trying to warn the community/Relic about this many months ago.
Did anyone listen? I sure did. To help understand why the 5 years plan failed financially I highly recommend reading this article below by Sergey Galyonkin. This is the owner of steamspy.com which is one of the best steam "marketing tools" available free for gaming fans and indie devs.
Selling the base game to new users to continue support for existing users isn’t a viable business. It’s a Ponzi scheme. It’s unsustainable.
So we’re left with two options: selling content or going full free-to-play with hats, boxes, locks, energy and gacha.
So recently for COH, Relic/SEGA Europe have shifted gear and are investing more time into user acquisition/commercial publishing (lead by John Clark, SEGA Europe and Alex Price, Director Relic Brands) and testing community content with War Paint. Alexandre Delamaire is the new COH brand manager which seems interested in the CS GO business model. https://twitter.com/alexdlmr/status/724443047421845507
The less visible - but very profitable - part of Valve's revenue: betting & gambling through virtual items in CS:GO - Alexandre Delamaire
They want the franchise to grow as a "global brand" with more community content (this logical include new mod tools and eventual steam trading) NOT new factions every year and 10+ new commanders.
This is coming from the top of SEGA Europe (John Clark, Senior Vice President) which report directly to the other top SEGA executives. So you can expect more "War Paint" and user customization coming with future COH games (not just PC gaming) and COH2 updates. Laying the foundation for more community content and user customization is not necessary a bad thing but I guess haters gonna hate as usual.
In collaboration with Sega, Wargaming announced a new Valkyria Chronicles themed tank for World of Tanks Blitz. This announcement teases an increased involvement between the Sega developed series and mobile MMO.
Screenshot_20160906-172901 This collaboration marks the first time Wargaming has worked with another gaming company, and the company has released a video covering the announcement and collaboration.
New SEGA COH "Streaming Bunker"
SEGA Europe has been streaming several times now from a new "COH bunker". Did any COH naysayers pay attention to that? I guess not. Dead game? Yeah right. New COH content are coming; the only question will it be for COH2 or a new game.
I have given several good hints at COH2.org that Relic/SEGA Europe want to expand their core franchises (COH, DoW, Total War, Football Manager) to Asia and/or other platforms. Look at what they are doing with Total War (Kingdoms and Arena freemium games), Halo Wars 2 (huge cross-platform team) and Football Manager freemium games + cross platform teams to get a clue what is coming for COH. Could be a mobile card game like Hearthstone/WoT:Generals or something else like a top down shooter like Wargaming is working on.
If I´m right about this; then expect future Wargaming/Microsoft + Relic collaboration in mobile/PC freemium games. On Xbox we have Creative Assembly+Microsoft collaboration and I expect something similar will happen with future Sega expansions into mobile gaming.
Also look at the new blitz mode in Halo Wars 2 which also include "gaming cards" that could potential be laying the foundation for a new card game on mobile made by Relic or CA. Microsoft is very interested in Halo card games and wants to expand Halo to mobile and they have no current studio for that. Microsoft did some experimentation with Halo Spartan Strike as a mobile/PC game. Microsoft is definitely interested in COH because of AoE/Halo Wars. When Company of Heroes vets build the next Age of Empires http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224356/When_Company_of_Heroes_vets_build_the_next_Age_of_Empires.php
Former top Xbox executives, Ed Fries is helping this Vancouver studio as Advisor (7 years now).
Vision for Age of Empires:
So we have two SEGA partners, Microsoft + Wargaming interested in card games so that is a good clue for what is coming.
World of Tanks Generals (WW2 card game - cancelled)
I played this game for over 100 hours and I could easily see a WW2/Halo card game doing well on mobile/pc.
i am sure Kyle did not pay attention to every word he was using like he is writing an English thesis.
Or better, do like http://www.teamliquid.net/ forum moderators and ban the whole bunch of balance whiners. At very least rename balance forums to; COH balance whiners. Make a monthly "MegaWhine Thread" and delete the rest.
COH2.org Balance:
138334 posts/3276 topics
The entire strategy forums, co-ops, Replay Reviews and campaign - total posts (State Office forums):
21614
138334 posts and 3276 topics about balance, seriously?
Is there really a need to have so many posts/topics about it?
For comparison go check out the Teamliquid community forum for Starcraft 2, CS GO, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch etc. I know, there are current and former Relic devs that have used these forums a lot. TL has a rule on their forums about balance whine posts. Why don't we have one here to foster some fruitful debate?.
http://www.teamliquid.net/about/ Community
You may have heard that our moderation is strict. Compared to many other places, that's probably true, as it is our goal to provide a place where intelligent discussion and a respectful community can prosper. We give our moderators discretion to use common sense and inject personality into their interaction with forum users.
Regular COH balance poster:
The balance forums are infested by trolls, scrub rhetoric and biased feedback that are lacking humility.
Balance should be based on testing/data analysis, not a "personal feeling" which don't weigh the importance of multiple factors involved. Ofc everyone should be entitled to an opinion, but that belong to the official balance forums. Fruitful balance debate should be in the hands of the less vocal community members that actual know what they talking about. There is no need to make another clone of the official balance whine forum. Also, money talks louder than words. Care about balance? Well, walk the talk and financial support valuable community members/balance tester like GG.
On the balance forums, whiny scrubs will complain to all who will listen. Become a drama queen for a day with thousands of views. Meanwhile, REAL balance tester usually gets ignored/overshadowed by the endless stream of whine posts.
Personal, I have more than 5000 hours into COH2 and I don't consider myself a balance tester. At this point, the balance forums are totally irrelevant.
Also, attitude reflects leadership. Ask yourself what kind of players do we want to attract?. Do we really want the whole community to look like a bunch of whiny scrubs?;
tl dr version; COH balance forums are pretty much irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Where is the delete button plz?
Cobra, are you possibly some kind of researcher or journalist by day? Because I can't see many other sorts of people devoting such rigor to sourcing their forum replies and it's fairly impressive.
As a former top MMO trader/gambler and alliance director from EvE Online (now retired), most of my playtime would go into background research and to predict gaming trends/post-patch influence on the virtual economy. That's one reason why I like to source everything. You should see my bookmark list
Relic is pure crap compared to other dev's. They live in the dark ages when it comes to transparency and communication.
Compared to which RTS developers? It´s not fair comparing them to Blizzard since RTS is no longer their primary business. The Blizzard developers had far more publisher support to make Starcraft a global brand that could connect with millions of fans. In comparison, Relic created the Homeworld franchise (HW1) with less than 30 devs IIRC and didn't cost Sierra much to make.
But, I can agree with transparency and communication which usually leads to mediocre patches that are neither good nor bad.
If both DoW3 and Halo Wars 2 fail financially that's pretty much the end of big budget RTS (triple A games). DoW3 also help justify further development cost on the Essence Engine used for COH2 and potentially COH3.
And of course now we’re using the next-generation Essence Engine, which has allowed us all sorts of freedom. Relic, Matt Kernachan
As an old school HW fan from 1999-2004, I know Relic´s old history better than most COH2 players. In other games, I continued playing with many HW vets/former Relicnews staff (most noticeable Evolution corp) which pretty much ruled EvE Online competitive play for years original as a nomadic group of PvPer.
Now, If you don't know Relics history with Relicnews and founding principles how can you "predict" where they are going?.
I try to be fair and see both sides as I believe "Truth" is in the eye of the beholder. What Relic believe in today need not be your "truth", nor need it be where Relic was 3 or 10 years ago.
"Truth" comes from a place of experience and is not always black and white.
THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only new opportunities to grow from your mistakes, this include both fans and Relic.
So let us grow together.
During the Homeworld era, I remember there were some decent Relic interactions with fans, such as the Relicnews community. This ofc require mutual trust and respect. Spreading slander and Relic hate will destroy that trust.
With the COH2 community, I have never seen so much hate towards Relic. Yes, unfortunately Relic had some bad luck with unstable publishers. But with the new SEGA CEO there might be some light at the end of tunnel.
I covered this in detail with reliable sources here; SEGA restructuring?
De Waubert: Mathieu and I, the cofounders of Amplitude, have always been huge fans of their Creative Assembly and Relic games. So already we were extremely flattered that they would even consider us.
“This is a unique opportunity to test a self-sustaining model where players can access top quality content, reward the content creators, and fund community-led events,” said Alex Price, brand director at Relic. “We’re excited to see how this might pave the way for more collaboration with players and designers across our portfolio of games.”
As one of the oldest studios in Vancouver, Relic has a rich history with many talented devs that today have created their own independent studios. Most noticeable (Vancouver), Blackbird Interactive (former HW devs), Klei Entertainment (former DoW devs), Smoking Gun Interactive (former COH devs) and Hinterland (former Spacemarine/console devs).
I'm a guy that happened to live in Vancouver and liked video games. I saw the Homeworld trailer on the HL disk IIRC... thinking "That's dumb, who'd want to play Starcraft in 3d..."
Penny-arcade was raving about it, so when I saw news the demo was out in August of 1999 I downloaded it on a whim (a whole 65 MB or so).
I fell in love almost immediately. It felt like Battlestar Galactica, Starwars, Starblazers... all rolled into one. I was hooked.
I had trouble alt-tabbing out of the game... so I was trying to troubleshoot it. Went looking for forums... found Relic's website... they were in Vancouver! Hey I know that guy!
Couldn't find a post about my problem, so figured out the issue and posted it. Then stuck around to help other Homeworlders, then Impossible creature players, then HW2, dawn of war, company of heroes... 50 or 60 thousand posts later I was one of the most well known members of the "Relic Community". I also helped run relicnews.com, which for a few years was the unofficial official forums (Bart Mazus, another local guy owned Relicnews.com and was doing website work for Relic). Went to a couple of E3's, wrote a few articles and a few hundred news posts, etc etc.
So yeah, they had me as their number one fan for a while, I worked on HW2 as a contractor (I tell that story in another post), and in 2010, Rob Cunningham invited me over to show me the pitch video for what was Hardware (now Homeworldhipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
So yeah, some lucky guy that got to watch and help an awesome game community grow and made some awesome friends along the way.
Obtuse: I noticed the note in your yearbook entry, "Contract @ Relic Summer ‘03", how did that come about and what did you do there?
ÜberJumper: Well... I don't know how much you know about the History of Relic and Sierra, so I'll go back a bit. Homeworld was a successful product, didn't cost Sierra much to make, but Relic had to offer up their next 3 titles to Sierra before anyone else could bid on them. Relic started work on Impossible Creatures (which Sierra passed on, and Microsoft published), and there was another title that Sierra passed on as well (I think) then finally Homeworld 2. Relic had been working on Homeworld 2 since almost the end of Homeworld. I was there for a visit in July of 2000 IIRC with a couple of community folks (RipperT and Carradine). We sat in on a dev meeting, saw the game in action, played with it a bit, had lunch with them, it was all good. The Next E3 rolls around, and before that started, Sierra launched the now infamous Homeworld2.com site which had a timer on it counting down to the game's launch, so, I book a flight to LA for E3.
Meanwhile, Relic and Sierra are having some issues over money (which is what a lot of developers go through I hear), and the E3 display of Homeworld 2, and the launch of the website are cancelled. Anyway, while I was there, I got a chance to see Homeworld 2 (in it's then current form) and I was gob-smacked. Flash forward a couple of months to August and news breaks that Sierra had cancelled Homeworld 2. So the game, at that point, is Dead. I hang out for a while longer in the community, and when I think it's clear that Homeworld's not going anywhere, I "left" the community. Alex Garden heard that, and called me up and offered to take me to lunch. He convinced me to stay with the community, that it wasn't dead yet, so I hung out for a while longer. May of 2002 rolls around, and Relic's started work up again on Homeworld 2. They're hiring folks to fill positions that they'd had to let go as HW2 had been stopped (this is when Mecha, long time community member, moved over from England to work on HW2) so anyway, they're working away and basically starting from scratch, but Sierra's not the same Sierra that helped Relic birth Homeworld. They didn't put as much effort into it as they could have. Turn-around time on bug tracking and what not was essentially not happening, so they needed to bring people in to test.
Pike and I were both contracted to do "first pass QA" (credited as additional design support in the credits) on the game. I was working a full time job, getting to Relic at 4pm, working till 10-11pm, then heading home. That was for all of July. The game went gold first week of August and it still needed way more QA on it but it ended Relic's contractual obligations to Sierra and let THQ buy them up. I actually had a chance to see some of the DoW stuff while I was working there, was pretty cool, the early DoW stuff that is.
We've been patient for years and nothing has changed instead of for the worse.
They're not communicating, no hints, nothing new in the files, nothing. The community managers keep telling us that they're excited and can't tell us nothing and after that it turns out that it's a flop or they just want us to get hyped for something small. No thanks, this community has went to hell anyway.
I understand your frustrations, but to many "rage posts" makes the community looks bad. Both in the eyes of new players and developers.
Bullshit, bullshit and... More bullshit, feel free to feel betrayed by Relic.
betrayed? Patience is a virtue
“We’re immensely proud to be celebrating 10 years of Company of Heroes,“ said Justin Dowdeswell, General Manager of Relic Entertainment. "and we hope that our community, and perhaps even some new players, will be able to enjoy and benefit from the activities we have planned around this huge milestone. Company of Heroes left a legacy of quality and innovation and we’re looking forward to the next ten years!”
“Another area we are focusing on is China. We have launched Football Manager Online in China, and we believe there is a big opportunity for strategy games in the territory, so we’re looking into that.”
He concludes: “It is an exciting times with lots of opportunities.”
I study law to become a lawyer and i can tell you that isn't how it works. To get things done you will have to negotiate and communicate. The community has managed quite a few times by now let relic listen to what we want, last patch is made for a big part by the community. How did we do it? By making proposals, talk to them on twitchstreams. Not by threatening them with not buying their products or with a boycott or things like that. We gave them inspiration by supporting people who have balancemods and ideas that big parts of the community appreciates. And when they notice such things they add them in patches. Communicating and negotiations.
If we do what you suggest, boycott them and don't give them money, you think you will get what you want? So from where does relic then get his money to pay developers, software, hardware, offices and the list goes on and on. This will ultimately result in a bankrupt relic, consequences are that you will have a dead game in this case a dead coh and probably a dead dow3.
So i don't know where you learned economics, but i suggest you go back to building. Go tear down some walls or build them but not here. Don't build walls between the community and relic we need to build bridges! calling out to people to bash on relic wont help it only makes things worse.
+1
"Truth" is in the eye of the beholder. That's why it's important to communicate and keep an open mind. Try to see things from different perspectives not just your own. If both fans and Relic are self-righteous and narrow-minded then our relationship will become a divorced couple that can't agree on anything.
Denmark
hipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
Cobra
Ozena
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
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VonManteuffel 
