It's going to either be a mobile game or releasing in 2023 or something. I'd love an rts that was released sometime in the last couple years though. Coh2 already has so many problems with crashes, and none of my friends want to touch StarCraft anymore. Wc3 also is ancient and I actually refunded it because it was broken on launch.
The potential for a competitive MP/e-sports focus is something that concerns me, but for a different reason. It often means removing randomised/RNG elements from the game entirely, and for my part I find that makes things very bland and by the numbers. It was one of the reasons DoW3 failed to grasp me at least.
I did think back on how CoH2 started though. Horribly balanced of course, but over the years they also threw out a lot of the atmosphere. Things like blizzards and winter conditions got culled pretty quickly (for better or worse) while the 2v2 map pool got focused more and more on small and lane based maps. A lot of the idle chatter also seemed to vanish along the way, but hard to remember accurately there.
Interesting to see that (at least in the single player) vet gives you options about what ability to unlock rather than an automatic upgrade like in the earlier games.
Hoping for it to run on my... let's call it "classical"... PC hardware may be a little on the optimistic side. But I'm still willing to give it a shot.
Hoping for it to run on my... let's call it "classical"... PC hardware may be a little on the optimistic side. But I'm still willing to give it a shot.
Mine warned me about "insufficient" memory.
I have 16GB of RAM.
Joking aside, it's rough around the edges and they mean it. You can't even set the resolution directly. I'm actually having issues because my screen is a 4K screen but my machine cannot handle gaming like that at all, so I'm looking at how to fix that in the LUA files.
Messed around in the skirmish mode, defaults to playing brits.
It certainly looks like a graphical upgrade over CoH2. Didn't run too badly on my machine (1070 ti, 4670k) but not something I'd be comfortable with in MP. I did notice the default opion had a 30 FPS cap as well, so probably worth poking around in settings.
Edit: On second look, FPS is worse than I thought.
Definitely a lot of placeholder stuff in use, particularly on icons. That said, most of the units seemed to be modelled and some were voiced. Other units (e.g. infantry sections, sappers) sounded very like their CoH2 counterparts so could just be recycled lines there but something about it sounds slightly different to me.
Looks good to me. I like the tactical over world layer. The graphics look on par with Iron Harvest, and this is still alpha, so they could get slightly better.
I also liked that they seemed to learn from their DoW3 mistakes and brought in 10 of the top players for CoH2 to help. Sounds like that group helped choose the theater and now they have 70 people on it working with the developers.
Relic also explained the great lengths it went to in order to get feedback from its community of fans. That began with a summit of 10 high-profile players
I think the single worst thing they could do is only balance around 1v1 for the eSports crap no one will pay attention to. When most people just want to do 2v2 or 4v4 and hurl tanks and artillery at each other.
I think the single worst thing they could do is only balance around 1v1 for the eSports crap no one will pay attention to. When most people just want to do 2v2 or 4v4 and hurl tanks and artillery at each other.
I agree.
In fact I'd go as far as saying that they should make team games the default.
DoW2 worked best in Team games on launch, and that's what it was built around in terms of scale. It was only later on when the hardcore community took over and wanted everything to be balanced around 1v1 that it messed up the scale of play and made things more dull to play / watch.
I think the single worst thing they could do is only balance around 1v1 for the eSports crap no one will pay attention to. When most people just want to do 2v2 or 4v4 and hurl tanks and artillery at each other.
I agree.
In fact I'd go as far as saying that they should make team games the default.
DoW2 worked best in Team games on launch, and that's what it was built around in terms of scale. It was only later on when the hardcore community took over and wanted everything to be balanced around 1v1 that it messed up the scale of play and made things more dull to play / watch.
I don’t know that it was just the hardcore that wanted 1v1 balanced.
It was the fastest mode for finding and finishing a match, so it’s where a lot of the casual also like to go like myself, where I also didn’t need to depend on a teammate or have a teammate depending on me playing my best APM hardcore when I might just want to grind out some games to unlock cosmetics.
Developers should never listen to hard-core fans. It never ends well. Never.
Hello, Darkest Dungeon!
I'd treat it on a case by case basis. They mentioned the high profile players helped pick the theater, they could also be responsible for suggesting the pause function. I'd have to imagine that player feedback in the alpha of Dawn of War 3 could only have improved the game given just how bad it was.
EDIT: I guess my point is, Relic knows they are not making a game for the top 1000 players. They have to appeal to a large audience. I think pulling in top player feedback early is the best way to do it, so you can incorporate that feedback naturally as part of development rather than stapling it on later as patches after launch.
Feedback is critical from all levels. It just needs to be handled in moderation.
Recent CoH2 updates have benefitted from community modders doing work and balance changes. I would imagine driven by some hardcore people.
I agree - balance and design around team games if you want a great game. Successful, too.
How many popular games right now are 1v1...? Ladder anxiety and multiplayer weaknesses can be mitigated with other people and friends.
The trend is heavily in team based games of different scales. Battle royales, mobas, etc. I think that's for a reason.
Goodness I am in the middle of an exhausting move right now but this sounds nice. I too, am sort of wary of Relic's track record even as a huge fan. It has been years though - the company has likely changed a lot.
I'd like if they took the vibe of the cinematic trailer and had resistance fighters as an actual faction element and not just a random commander's call in no one uses.
It's very total war like in that you have a lot of freedom on where to move on the map.
To use Total War terms (of recent iterations) you have Companies (Armies) and Detachments (heroes/agents). Only in CoH3, detachments are closer to mini companies. They can engage in auto-resolve only combat with other detachments and companies.
You only get to play RTS battles when attacking specific points or on company vs company battles. There are 'skirmish' fights too, which I'm not quite sure how they trigger. These don't allow for full on base building.
I was pretty unimpressed. Yes, I know its only an alpha, but the fundamentals of how armies engage each other and especially how detachments function doesn't feel good to me. I should be playing more battles, not watching health bars go down on the strategic map.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I'm tempted to get back into CoH based on this, especially because I recently started playing DoW 2 again and it was good fun and really enjoyable. I was very happy when I discovered they fixed the issue of units not shooting instead of fucking around trying to look for cover, so my faith in them has gone up a lot. I've never played CoH 2: Is it worth while? Would I be able to find people to play team games with to throw artillery at one another?
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited July 2021
I remembered that I never finished the first games campaign because my PC was terrible at the time and by the time I got a new one it fell by the wayside, so I'm playing through the first game.
Man this game still looks very pretty. Though it's funny that my PC can't play this 15 year old game on Ultra.
edit - ah, just don't run Shaders at Ultra. That seems to utterly destroy my FPS.
I think the single worst thing they could do is only balance around 1v1 for the eSports crap no one will pay attention to. When most people just want to do 2v2 or 4v4 and hurl tanks and artillery at each other.
I agree.
In fact I'd go as far as saying that they should make team games the default.
DoW2 worked best in Team games on launch, and that's what it was built around in terms of scale. It was only later on when the hardcore community took over and wanted everything to be balanced around 1v1 that it messed up the scale of play and made things more dull to play / watch.
I don’t know that it was just the hardcore that wanted 1v1 balanced.
It was the fastest mode for finding and finishing a match, so it’s where a lot of the casual also like to go like myself, where I also didn’t need to depend on a teammate or have a teammate depending on me playing my best APM hardcore when I might just want to grind out some games to unlock cosmetics.
I guess I approach this from the opposite side. I can understand what you mean by not wanting to let other people down.
1v1 is where the most tension is because it's all on you and no support / back up. And regardless of 1v1 or 3v3, there's always going to be that tension to play your best, only in 1v1 it can often suffocating because you've got no idea why you failed and nobody to really help, to spread the load or to back you up. And as much as it applies to your team, it also applies to the enemy team.
Like Corp.Shephard, most online / competitive games trend towards team based as opposed to 1v1. And I feel like psychologically that's because it's easier to take the blow of failure when you know it wasn't all your fault. Starcraft spent years trying to get new audiences specifically because 1v1 is so anxiety inducing (and DoW / CoH was never about APM, certainly not compared to other RTS's). As little fun as it is to let your team down, I feel like it's made easier when you're part of a group effort.
Then again, I never wanted to grind for cosmetics either, so YMMV.
Interesting psychology behind 2v2 and 1v1 games .. I really enjoyed climbing the competitive ranked ladder in RTS games; especially during the heydays of WarCraft 3 Battle. Net, I went from playing 2v2/3v3 to 1v1 because I find that teammates can be a mixed bag if you aren't playing with people you know. It was frustrating to see them AFK, ragequit, or grief during a match in progress; I eventually shifted to 1v1..
When Company of Heroes debuted, I played team games to get a grasp of the mechanics, but I eventually shifted towards 1v1 because of the aforementioned reasons. I just like to play it my way without being dependent on the whims of my team.
I'd probably say that it also directly depends on time invested per match.
If a regular match is close to 1 hour and my gaming time lets me play one, at best two matches? Every loss stings quite a bit more. If matches are like 20 minutes tops? It's not that bad if you lose here or there because you can try again for a win relatively easily.
I think the single worst thing they could do is only balance around 1v1 for the eSports crap no one will pay attention to. When most people just want to do 2v2 or 4v4 and hurl tanks and artillery at each other.
I agree.
In fact I'd go as far as saying that they should make team games the default.
DoW2 worked best in Team games on launch, and that's what it was built around in terms of scale. It was only later on when the hardcore community took over and wanted everything to be balanced around 1v1 that it messed up the scale of play and made things more dull to play / watch.
I don’t know that it was just the hardcore that wanted 1v1 balanced.
It was the fastest mode for finding and finishing a match, so it’s where a lot of the casual also like to go like myself, where I also didn’t need to depend on a teammate or have a teammate depending on me playing my best APM hardcore when I might just want to grind out some games to unlock cosmetics.
I guess I approach this from the opposite side. I can understand what you mean by not wanting to let other people down.
1v1 is where the most tension is because it's all on you and no support / back up. And regardless of 1v1 or 3v3, there's always going to be that tension to play your best, only in 1v1 it can often suffocating because you've got no idea why you failed and nobody to really help, to spread the load or to back you up. And as much as it applies to your team, it also applies to the enemy team.
Like Corp.Shephard, most online / competitive games trend towards team based as opposed to 1v1. And I feel like psychologically that's because it's easier to take the blow of failure when you know it wasn't all your fault. Starcraft spent years trying to get new audiences specifically because 1v1 is so anxiety inducing (and DoW / CoH was never about APM, certainly not compared to other RTS's). As little fun as it is to let your team down, I feel like it's made easier when you're part of a group effort.
Then again, I never wanted to grind for cosmetics either, so YMMV.
Not to beat this into the dirt but I do want to elaborate on this a bit further now that I am... somewhat more comfortable.
Let's look the most successful competitive 1v1 RTS games in the market: Starcraft / Starcraft 2. I would guarantee that the most played mode on Battle.net is not, and likely never has been, 1v1 automatch. It is not the driver that gets people into those games. What drove the player base to keep coming back to that game was custom games. "Use Map Settings" games if you wanna get old school. Uther Party, MOBAs before they were known as MOBAs, all of those weird games people cobbled together. I would even guess that Starcraft 2's co-op commanders mode and team game modes have been competitive (or superior) to its 1v1 population.
That giant player base of casual and consistent players created the interest and love that then sustained people diving into Starcraft's competitive 1v1 play and getting incredibly good at it: which became a powerhouse e-sport. The first "big e-sport" I'd argue. It likely only fixated on 1v1s as a competitive mode because... well, the internet was not as good back when Starcraft Brood War was a huge deal. 1v1 had the least lag and required the least amount of computer power.
Then of course there's the argument of "balance around what most people actually play". If we look at CoH2: 3 times more 4v4 games are played than 1v1- and each game has eight players rather than two. Why not aim to build and balance for those players?
Though, I don't want CoH3 to aim to be an e-sport or something like that. I think that sort of thing just comes organically from a popular and well built game with an active community. Which is why they should focus their efforts on building a game with a broad appeal.
One reason to balance around 1v1 rather than 4v4 even when more people play 4v4 is that most of the people who are playing 4v4 don't really care about the game being perfectly balanced, because they don't really care about competition and being really good, because if they did, they'd be playing 1v1. They just want to chill out and have fun driving tanks around blowing stuff up. If one tank is 5% worse than another tank even though the second tank costs 10 less fuel and builds 5 seconds faster, they don't give a shit. And anyways it all washes out in the madness of a 4v4. Whereas tiny differences like that make a huge difference to a 1v1, and the people playing 1v1s care about that stuff in the first place. So, that's one reason to balance around 1v1s.
The unit choice in the alpha is interesting, although I'm not really sure what era they're targetting?
For North Africa/Italy, it coud cover anywhere from 1942-mid 1944 (if they stop at Monte Cassino). It could make for a more interesting setup than the usual well-trodden 1945 state of affairs - less in the way of overrated german tanks and the likes and more of the early war stuff. Some of it suggests they were going that way particularly for the british faction (Mk3 Churchill, valentine, bishop), but other units and references suggest they're going much closer to the end of the war - e.g. M24 Chaffee and T40 Whizbang are in game, and the campaign references the Black Prince (which never even made it to the war).
I'm far from an expert on this stuff so maybe some of it is more viable/likely than I thought, but it does seem like they're aiming for "anything right up to the end of the war" which seems like a bit of a waste of the North African/Italian setup.
My longtime wishlist for any Relic RTS: give us the damn math!
The exact stats of each units and how that actually translates to the math of how they perform are always obfuscated in Relic games. At best you get the comparative stats of CoH. At worst you get the complete mess of meaningless (or outright wrong) numbers in DoW.
I'm reminded that about 5-7 months back, I tried playing a multiplayer Computer Stomp in DoW3
Another player actually joined me, but they just couldnt hold up their own weight, we kept getting beaten by the PC, and the end of match results would show the other player only doing 2/3 to 1/2 of my damage.
Finally finished an Ardennes Assault campaign. The Rangers are kind of a cheaty company since they start with the Thompson and can add anti tank through requisition but they are so much fun to use.
And pinpoint artillery with the explosive power upgrade is a monster against their biggest weakness, the HMG.
For pre-alpha, CoH3 is pretty impressive. Not sure I love the campaign style but I've been playing it the last two hours so it must have some kinda pull on me.
Shitty pic since my screencap didn't want to work. We won in the end by 8 points.
After 25 minutes the AI resource pool was maxed and never dropped. Assaulting the VP at the end the AI had, literally, more units on the screen than I had produced all game.
I'm not sure it's possible to make AI that can play CoH well enough to be much of a challenge. I'd rather the AI cheat than the game not really work in single player.
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I did think back on how CoH2 started though. Horribly balanced of course, but over the years they also threw out a lot of the atmosphere. Things like blizzards and winter conditions got culled pretty quickly (for better or worse) while the 2v2 map pool got focused more and more on small and lane based maps. A lot of the idle chatter also seemed to vanish along the way, but hard to remember accurately there.
https://www.companyofheroes.com/
https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise/company-of-heroes-legacy/blogs/2-company-of-heroes-3-game-overview
Also one unit threw a knife to kill an enemy. A very DoW2-esque thing to do.
Showed some GIs breaching and entering a building, and the destruction looks pretty good.
It zoomed out to reveal some almost Total War-esque campaign map.
I'm downloading as we speak type.
Edit: ok, I was able to request verification via the Dawn of War site. I haven't received it yet, but I was able to click a button, so that's a start.
Edit: LOL from stream chat "Relic_Andy: if you signed up but never verified your account years ago, we recommend making a new account"
You can't use the same effing email you clowns
Hoping for it to run on my... let's call it "classical"... PC hardware may be a little on the optimistic side. But I'm still willing to give it a shot.
Mine warned me about "insufficient" memory.
I have 16GB of RAM.
Joking aside, it's rough around the edges and they mean it. You can't even set the resolution directly. I'm actually having issues because my screen is a 4K screen but my machine cannot handle gaming like that at all, so I'm looking at how to fix that in the LUA files.
I haven't played an RTS in ages
It certainly looks like a graphical upgrade over CoH2. Didn't run too badly on my machine (1070 ti, 4670k) but not something I'd be comfortable with in MP. I did notice the default opion had a 30 FPS cap as well, so probably worth poking around in settings.
Edit: On second look, FPS is worse than I thought.
Definitely a lot of placeholder stuff in use, particularly on icons. That said, most of the units seemed to be modelled and some were voiced. Other units (e.g. infantry sections, sappers) sounded very like their CoH2 counterparts so could just be recycled lines there but something about it sounds slightly different to me.
I also liked that they seemed to learn from their DoW3 mistakes and brought in 10 of the top players for CoH2 to help. Sounds like that group helped choose the theater and now they have 70 people on it working with the developers.
Mediterranean? Yes!
Naval support? Yes!
Pause to issue orders? YESSS
Overworld map? Fuck yeah!
Oh nooooo
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I agree.
In fact I'd go as far as saying that they should make team games the default.
DoW2 worked best in Team games on launch, and that's what it was built around in terms of scale. It was only later on when the hardcore community took over and wanted everything to be balanced around 1v1 that it messed up the scale of play and made things more dull to play / watch.
Hello, Darkest Dungeon!
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
I don’t know that it was just the hardcore that wanted 1v1 balanced.
It was the fastest mode for finding and finishing a match, so it’s where a lot of the casual also like to go like myself, where I also didn’t need to depend on a teammate or have a teammate depending on me playing my best APM hardcore when I might just want to grind out some games to unlock cosmetics.
MWO: Adamski
I'd treat it on a case by case basis. They mentioned the high profile players helped pick the theater, they could also be responsible for suggesting the pause function. I'd have to imagine that player feedback in the alpha of Dawn of War 3 could only have improved the game given just how bad it was.
EDIT: I guess my point is, Relic knows they are not making a game for the top 1000 players. They have to appeal to a large audience. I think pulling in top player feedback early is the best way to do it, so you can incorporate that feedback naturally as part of development rather than stapling it on later as patches after launch.
Recent CoH2 updates have benefitted from community modders doing work and balance changes. I would imagine driven by some hardcore people.
I agree - balance and design around team games if you want a great game. Successful, too.
How many popular games right now are 1v1...? Ladder anxiety and multiplayer weaknesses can be mitigated with other people and friends.
The trend is heavily in team based games of different scales. Battle royales, mobas, etc. I think that's for a reason.
Goodness I am in the middle of an exhausting move right now but this sounds nice. I too, am sort of wary of Relic's track record even as a huge fan. It has been years though - the company has likely changed a lot.
Time will tell. Must move box
I'd like if they took the vibe of the cinematic trailer and had resistance fighters as an actual faction element and not just a random commander's call in no one uses.
It's very total war like in that you have a lot of freedom on where to move on the map.
To use Total War terms (of recent iterations) you have Companies (Armies) and Detachments (heroes/agents). Only in CoH3, detachments are closer to mini companies. They can engage in auto-resolve only combat with other detachments and companies.
You only get to play RTS battles when attacking specific points or on company vs company battles. There are 'skirmish' fights too, which I'm not quite sure how they trigger. These don't allow for full on base building.
I was pretty unimpressed. Yes, I know its only an alpha, but the fundamentals of how armies engage each other and especially how detachments function doesn't feel good to me. I should be playing more battles, not watching health bars go down on the strategic map.
Man this game still looks very pretty. Though it's funny that my PC can't play this 15 year old game on Ultra.
edit - ah, just don't run Shaders at Ultra. That seems to utterly destroy my FPS.
I guess I approach this from the opposite side. I can understand what you mean by not wanting to let other people down.
1v1 is where the most tension is because it's all on you and no support / back up. And regardless of 1v1 or 3v3, there's always going to be that tension to play your best, only in 1v1 it can often suffocating because you've got no idea why you failed and nobody to really help, to spread the load or to back you up. And as much as it applies to your team, it also applies to the enemy team.
Like Corp.Shephard, most online / competitive games trend towards team based as opposed to 1v1. And I feel like psychologically that's because it's easier to take the blow of failure when you know it wasn't all your fault. Starcraft spent years trying to get new audiences specifically because 1v1 is so anxiety inducing (and DoW / CoH was never about APM, certainly not compared to other RTS's). As little fun as it is to let your team down, I feel like it's made easier when you're part of a group effort.
Then again, I never wanted to grind for cosmetics either, so YMMV.
When Company of Heroes debuted, I played team games to get a grasp of the mechanics, but I eventually shifted towards 1v1 because of the aforementioned reasons. I just like to play it my way without being dependent on the whims of my team.
If a regular match is close to 1 hour and my gaming time lets me play one, at best two matches? Every loss stings quite a bit more. If matches are like 20 minutes tops? It's not that bad if you lose here or there because you can try again for a win relatively easily.
Not to beat this into the dirt but I do want to elaborate on this a bit further now that I am... somewhat more comfortable.
Let's look the most successful competitive 1v1 RTS games in the market: Starcraft / Starcraft 2. I would guarantee that the most played mode on Battle.net is not, and likely never has been, 1v1 automatch. It is not the driver that gets people into those games. What drove the player base to keep coming back to that game was custom games. "Use Map Settings" games if you wanna get old school. Uther Party, MOBAs before they were known as MOBAs, all of those weird games people cobbled together. I would even guess that Starcraft 2's co-op commanders mode and team game modes have been competitive (or superior) to its 1v1 population.
That giant player base of casual and consistent players created the interest and love that then sustained people diving into Starcraft's competitive 1v1 play and getting incredibly good at it: which became a powerhouse e-sport. The first "big e-sport" I'd argue. It likely only fixated on 1v1s as a competitive mode because... well, the internet was not as good back when Starcraft Brood War was a huge deal. 1v1 had the least lag and required the least amount of computer power.
Then of course there's the argument of "balance around what most people actually play". If we look at CoH2: 3 times more 4v4 games are played than 1v1- and each game has eight players rather than two. Why not aim to build and balance for those players?
Though, I don't want CoH3 to aim to be an e-sport or something like that. I think that sort of thing just comes organically from a popular and well built game with an active community. Which is why they should focus their efforts on building a game with a broad appeal.
For North Africa/Italy, it coud cover anywhere from 1942-mid 1944 (if they stop at Monte Cassino). It could make for a more interesting setup than the usual well-trodden 1945 state of affairs - less in the way of overrated german tanks and the likes and more of the early war stuff. Some of it suggests they were going that way particularly for the british faction (Mk3 Churchill, valentine, bishop), but other units and references suggest they're going much closer to the end of the war - e.g. M24 Chaffee and T40 Whizbang are in game, and the campaign references the Black Prince (which never even made it to the war).
I'm far from an expert on this stuff so maybe some of it is more viable/likely than I thought, but it does seem like they're aiming for "anything right up to the end of the war" which seems like a bit of a waste of the North African/Italian setup.
The exact stats of each units and how that actually translates to the math of how they perform are always obfuscated in Relic games. At best you get the comparative stats of CoH. At worst you get the complete mess of meaningless (or outright wrong) numbers in DoW.
Another player actually joined me, but they just couldnt hold up their own weight, we kept getting beaten by the PC, and the end of match results would show the other player only doing 2/3 to 1/2 of my damage.
MWO: Adamski
And pinpoint artillery with the explosive power upgrade is a monster against their biggest weakness, the HMG.
Well worth the $1.42 they cost me to unlock
Can't wait to see the polished up final release.
https://ibb.co/ys8dJ1w
Shitty pic since my screencap didn't want to work. We won in the end by 8 points.
After 25 minutes the AI resource pool was maxed and never dropped. Assaulting the VP at the end the AI had, literally, more units on the screen than I had produced all game.
Cool
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan