Relic Blood Pack DLC

[Toilailee]

Aside from loyalty issues, balance opinions and opinions on what counts as a game breaking bug, what really pisses me off is Relic’s habit of breaking and bugging things and then basically saying “not our problem” by not giving a fuck about fixing them.

The last patch that came a loooong time after they’d dropped the support for dow2 naturally got some of us excited but it ended up doing nothing but breaking the lobby system. And afterwards Relic just disappeared again when it would’ve presumably been easy to hotfix since they only needed to revert the changes. It’s the same story with the IG HWT crew members having no guns bug that you mentioned.

I get that this community isn’t too easy to please or polite, particularly back at GR it was merciless, but still this kind of zero fucks given attitude toward newly introduced bugs is poor etiquette and only serves to antagonize the community. Even as kids we were taught (or at least I was) that if I make a mess I have to clean it up, and that should be even more important when dealing with customers. And I believe that is why some people are offended by DLC like this since it shows that Relic would rather create and sell garbage DLC like this than clean up their messes.

Now I’m not a tech guy and I could be wrong when I think it should be simple to fix newly introduced bugs by reverting the changes, but even if I am it doesn’t change the fact that many in the community are going to feel like I do and get angry at Relic for it. Also I remember Relic doing hotfixes after patches back in earlyish retri and many of the in game bugs, like the IG HWT, have been fixed in Elite which shows it’s at least fully possible with a little effort.

[Myrdal]

I highly doubt sega went to relic and said "hey make some pointless DLC on a game released 4 years ago

Why not? Seems like a reasonable assumption given Sega's financial situation and the fact that other sega titles got exact same dlc previously.

The real fuckup is the battle server migration which they just left in a complete mess. Invitation bug? That's just scrathing the surface. Also, even with perfect implementation this BS network model is flawed and sadly not an improvement over the old p2p system with a reasonable catch up/lag grace timer.

Needless to say, you can report these and Relic's Community Manager (or one of them) has been replying to bug threads on the official forums recently.

That is somewhat good news at least.

[Cheekie Monkie]

I lol'd...

But I do hope that ppl buy this, like way more than should. Who knows, reric might even become interested in dow franchise again.

I bought the Tau Commander DLC at full price, thinking that it might encourage the devs to develop a complete Tau race (especially considering how comprehensive the voices were for the DLC).

My prayers were unanswered.

Also

Relic loyalist dogs!

[Sturnn]

You (or the other guy) still haven't explained that despite your "loyalty" (we'll get onto that in a minute) why this is a "fuck you" to the "loyal" fans?

To make it more simple so also you can understand. It's like father who leaves his son for 10 years, doesnt pay alimony, doesn't care about child etc. And then comes back when kid is 25 years old and says: Hi Son! It's me, ur dad. Do u mind to give me some money?

I don't think you understand here. You're so quick to say this utterly trivial piece of DLC that costs as much as a damned cheeseburger that doesn't affect gameplay or even offer high-quality cosmetics (it's just for fun) is "short-term money making".

Actually it is you who missed whole point. It is not about money (looks like it is only thing you can understand). Its about damn fact that they this sth like this. It's like giving you 1% pay rise in job. They spit into fans faces with it. But ,,short-term money making" was about Relics approach to all games they have ever made.

What about the Battle Server migration? What about the removal of GameSpy from DoW 1 and the Steamworks migration? For vDoW II and CR as well, and the removal of GfWL? The crash bugs they fixed and various other things. All of that was for free. Then they release something on Halloween for $2 and you go mental. And you call SEGA blind

Well GameSpy migration and GfWL was simple move to make more money - those games are still on market and people are buying them. If they would not make this migration they would simply lose money. They didnt make it for us. They did it for themselfs. I guess we should all kiss their asses becasue they fixed buged game!

As a final note on "loyalty". Buying a game does not mean you're "loyal" to it (if you can even be loyal to a video game). Nor does it indicate any loyalty to the developers (or publisher) unless you explicitly buy that game because you're "loyal" and not for any other reason. Loyalty has no place in any consumer transaction - vote with your wallet. Always vote with your wallet. But don't turn around and cry that your purchase of a video game several years ago entitles you to act like a child now, because it doesn't, sorry.

Buying whole DoW 1 and 2 series even if u are aware of all bugs etc. cannot be called loyality? So what can be? Loyalty has no place in consumer transactions? What the hell? What about fucking Alfa Romeo fans? What other reason would tell them to buy those cars if not loyality/love to the company? I love WH40k and this is only game I can feel a bit.
And what exactly you call acting like a child? In my opinnion you are acting like a child with this whole superiority tone which is just leaking from your post. Someone has different opinnion then yours? Sure, call him child and make him an idiot. Mature as fuck.

And at the very least, you're allowed your free speech, sure (within the confines of the forum rules, etc). But so am I, to call you on that.

Obviously I am not. You've just showed it. Different opinnion - shut the fuck up kid, u dont know what u are talking about. I have right, u dont.

[Gorbles]

I'm amazed at your attitude, really? Do you take this air with anyone who disagrees with you?

I can guarantee that if I made comments in that kind of way there'd be consequences. Then again, I have an old reputation that some people remember that makes me an easier target.

I can't believe you compared optional cosmetic DLC to alimony cases. The fact that you even used this as a comparison just shows out completely ignorant you are of the entire situation. It's really insulting, to be honest. Not going to debate with someone who abuses real-world tragedies to attempt to win Internet points.

I can guarantee you the cost of doing the Battle Server migration across DoW 1 and DoW 2 is not because it gets paid back in sales made. Games released a decade ago don't sell much on Steam. In fact, most games make the majority of their sales in the first year of their release. Suck it up, those are market-backed statistics that you can source on developer blogs and articles where they (kindly) share their market data.

You have the right to your opinion. I have the right to disagree. Swearing at me just makes you look more like a child than anything else. Peace out.

EDIT:

Will respond to others shortly, didn't realise so many posts had been made.

Support was dropped and it was officially stated years ago, these kind of lies exactly what I was expecting from you, if the state of the game was left after the battleservers update wasn't enough to prove that.

Another lie, in retail HWT IS gamebreaking at high level and it blocks an entire race out of it's supression mechanic, fortunately for IG they have BS catachans and sents to carry them in T1 and then the lobby bugs which can't even be fixed with mods or unofficial tweaks is indeed an enormous flaw that cuts the continuity of the game, on top of being incredibly annoying and the fact that you can't make private lobbies, without even going into deeper issues like retail pathing or the soundbug which makes you crash and there's a lot more than those in game.

I highly doubt sega went to relic and said "hey make some pointless DLC on a game released 4 years ago"! It has to be a relic initiative, however I don't care about the DLC itself, it's the concept behind it, they obviously rather release paid content than fix even 1 of a myriad of bugs this game has and don't tell me it's different people working on it, they could very well spare someone to fix AT LEAST the most obvious of bugs like the HWT or the lobbies and whoever of the art/animation team must have basic knowledge of whatever programming language relic used for DoW2.
I don't pretend they come back working full time on the game but they HAVE TO at least have the decency to fix what they broken recently (1 year ago).

You know, I wouldn't even care if they released this or more paid DLC as long as they fixed some bugs with it, it would have been even fair and perhaps I would even have bought it.

Also beside the fact that I bought relic products since homeworld and I think I played everything except impossible creatures, you are correct on the fact that as a loyal player Im not entitled anything, however, as a paying CUSTOMER Im indeed entitled to a working game on all it's features which DoW2 isn't right now and hasn't been for many years but even more so during the last year.

1. "the kind of lies I was expecting from you"? Do I know you? Do you have a personal agenda against me? Because that would be bias, y'know.

2. Support as of Relic under THQ when a third of Relic was axed, most of them from the DoW II team, was indeed dropped. Support started again when Relic started working on the networking part of the DoW and DoW 2 series. Do try to keep up.

3. You and I have different meanings of the word "game-breaking". I understand where you're coming from, but as a software engineer "broken" has a very clear and definitive meaning that you don't get to change, sorry. The HWT bug does not break the game. You can play the IG race without losing due to that bug. I'm not lying, we just have different perspectives. I don't accuse you of lying, do I?

"high level play" in vanilla refers to the about 10 people left playing the game at that level. That is not a number of people in any cost-benefit scenario worth entertaining. Even if they'd fixed the bug two years ago you'd still find something to complain about. So would others. Some people might be mollified. But the argument of "it breaks the game at high level play" is stupid because nobody plays vanilla at high levels of skill anymore. Nobody has done for years. Work on ELITE started when official support was still ongoing due to player satisfaction with Relic a) timeliness and b) accuracy of balance changes. I'd know, ask Caeltos.

4. What is your experience with the games development scene that leads you to state with confidence that it was a Relic initiative? Bear in mind that neither of us have a factual answer here, I completely understand that.

For the record, I do amateur games development in my spare time and regularly talk to games people. I had direct contact with THQ back in their era and I'm very familiar with the breakdown of publisher and developer. Additionally, Blood & Gore is a DLC pack SEGA have been doing with all of their recent Total War releases so forgive me for thinking it might be more than a coincidence.

Give me your answers!

5. You're not even entitled to a working game. If you were you'd actually put your money where your mouth is an initiate a class-action lawsuit (wouldn't cost you that much) against Relic and / or SEGA for damages caused to said product. Class actions lawsuits work against companies because it normally costs more for them to respond to them than it does to settle for damages.

But no, you're not entitled to a working game for one reason and one reason only:

If Relic had never done the Battle Server migration, the only functional MP scene would be Retribution. Which I'm sure would suit some ELITE players perfectly, but I don't really care about them, especially given the wonderful people I've had to talk to on these forums. Such caring people

Heck, if Relic hadn't fixed Battle Servers and GfWL vDoW II and CR wouldn't have functioning campaigns.

Aside from loyalty issues, balance opinions and opinions on what counts as a game breaking bug, what really pisses me off is Relic’s habit of breaking and bugging things and then basically saying “not our problem” by not giving a fuck about fixing them.

The last patch that came a loooong time after they’d dropped the support for dow2 naturally got some of us excited but it ended up doing nothing but breaking the lobby system. And afterwards Relic just disappeared again when it would’ve presumably been easy to hotfix since they only needed to revert the changes. It’s the same story with the IG HWT crew members having no guns bug that you mentioned.

I get that this community isn’t too easy to please or polite, particularly back at GR it was merciless, but still this kind of zero fucks given attitude toward newly introduced bugs is poor etiquette and only serves to antagonize the community. Even as kids we were taught (or at least I was) that if I make a mess I have to clean it up, and that should be even more important when dealing with customers. And I believe that is why some people are offended by DLC like this since it shows that Relic would rather create and sell garbage DLC like this than clean up their messes.

Now I’m not a tech guy and I could be wrong when I think it should be simple to fix newly introduced bugs by reverting the changes, but even if I am it doesn’t change the fact that many in the community are going to feel like I do and get angry at Relic for it. Also I remember Relic doing hotfixes after patches back in earlyish retri and many of the in game bugs, like the IG HWT, have been fixed in Elite which shows it’s at least fully possible with a little effort.

Yeah, I do understand your frustration here. The problem is actually very simple:

Relic didn't have the resources to fix everything. I respect you (even if you don't know or care for me), and I respect the effort you put into your post (no insults, etc). So I'm going to put all my cards on the table and give you everything I know.

Most of Relic's patches on a technical level were pretty solid. Chaos Rising alone got, what, 19 patches or so? 19 patches excluding hotfixes (of which there were more than a few). The problems set in towards the end of THQ when resources were being hastily funneled into CoH 2 which hadn't been released at the time. Relic were being hit by waves of layoffs. The reason why stuff like the HWT couldn't be fixed (and honestly speaking, I don't know the specifics of the ELITE fix, but I don't think it actually fixed the core problem - it's a band-aid solution. Any news on that I would really love, honestly) was because there was no-one on their end with the technical competence to do so. From what I remember bC himself was making balance changes in the game data files, or he was getting someone similar to do them for him.

This DLC has absolutely nothing to do with the people who work on the fixes you want. It isn't their job, and they're not responsible. The people responsible for allocating developer budget and resources are, simply put, SEGA (there are more complicated dynamics than that but essentially SEGA hold the purse strings). If you want someone to actually blame for this, blame SEGA.

With regards to the Battle Server migration. I'm very, very qualified to talk about this for one main reason: I was the primary community contact by dint of being the only active community moderator left, as well as being a prominent RelicNews (Relic's original and first fansite) member. I worked with the senior engineer to coordinate community feedback during the Battle Server migration and the amount of bugs I reported and playtested myself was significant. Relic did a ton of work here. Relic were on a time schedule; looking back it's now evident that the people assigned to work on the migration were at least in part contracted; they had a limit on how long they were working with the games (source: the person I was talking to later had a new senior position elsewhere). They couldn't fix everything, and they fixed more than people think they did (trust me).

Stuff like the HWT would've been on an incredibly low priority. I'm pretty sure I was asked to ask them about it, and I did, but it wasn't on their list of priorities. Just like how they fixed Dark Crusade's widescreen rendering issue because the standalone codebase was very similar to Soulstorm, but they didn't backport those resolution changes to vDoW and WA; the codebase was too different. Too much work.

Relic actually fixed a ton of stuff as well as doing the network side of things (which aren't easy fixes. Removing GameSpy itself in DoW 1 was a massive change to half the game. GfWL affected more of vDoW 2 and CR, but being more modern technology it was possibly easier to decouple - though I'm speculating there). Numerous crash bugs in both DoW and DoW 2 were fixed. Core engine issues that most of the time people didn't even notice were fixed.

I'm well aware the network state isn't perfect. Or even ideal all of the time. But that's SEGA you need to blame for that. They're the ones with the resources - that's why publishers exist.

Like you said - people buying this DLC would show interest in the franchise. If you don't believe SEGA are worth the money? Absolutely fine, vote with your wallet. But the only chance anyone has of seeing any further fixes is to show their support.

Make your own choices, but don't insult those who choose differently (not aimed at you Toi).

[Ace of Swords]

I highly doubt sega went to relic and said "hey make some pointless DLC on a game released 4 years ago

Why not? Seems like a reasonable assumption given Sega's financial situation and the fact that other sega titles got exact same dlc previously.

The real fuckup is the battle server migration which they just left in a complete mess. Invitation bug? That's just scrathing the surface. Also, even with perfect implementation this BS network model is flawed and sadly not an improvement over the old p2p system with a reasonable catch up/lag grace timer.

Needless to say, you can report these and Relic's Community Manager (or one of them) has been replying to bug threads on the official forums recently.

That is somewhat good news at least.

Because of this

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/we-bet ... 0-6428680/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder ... naissance/

Take what they say how you want, but there's also been a backlash about TW: warhammer chaos pre order DLC, everyone is pissed as hell about that everywhere, on youtube as you see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC1Y2pFP2ls 35k dislike vs less than 3k likes and there isn't a single positive comment, I'd say that if they have been listening to people, those are really fed up with DLC bullshit and pushing yet another paid DLC on a game with no support and that has huge problems which could be fixed with some minor efforts as showed by the modders of Elite, it would be a decent indication that this initiative was purely from relic.

[Sturnn]

I'm amazed at your attitude, really? Do you take this air with anyone who disagrees with you?

Acutally the same question can be asked to you You whole first post was screaming ,,How dare you to have different opinnion?!" and now you ask such thing?

I can guarantee that if I made comments in that kind of way there'd be consequences. Then again, I have an old reputation that some people remember that makes me an easier target.

This made me laugh

I can't believe you compared optional cosmetic DLC to alimony cases. The fact that you even used this as a comparison just shows out completely ignorant you are of the entire situation. It's really insulting, to be honest. Not going to debate with someone who abuses real-world tragedies to attempt to win Internet points.

Even the most simplyfied examples still is not enough to make you understand. Is it really insulting? It both cases result is the same - someone doesnt care about you and then appears and ask you for money.

I can guarantee you the cost of doing the Battle Server migration across DoW 1 and DoW 2 is not because it gets paid back in sales made. Games released a decade ago don't sell much on Steam. In fact, most games make the majority of their sales in the first year of their release. Suck it up, those are market-backed statistics that you can source on developer blogs and articles where they (kindly) share their market data.

If it would not pay off they would not do it. Simple as that.

You have the right to your opinion. I have the right to disagree. Swearing at me just makes you look more like a child than anything else. Peace out.

And here we go again Child here, child there. Really dude? Can u make some mature comments on topic instead just trying to implicate that I am swaring at you? Really?

Will respond to others shortly, didn't realise so many posts had been made.

If u want to continue this coversation just PM me - now we are making hard off top

[Gorbles]

You directly swore at me, whether to mock me or make a joke, I don't know which. You also called the stuff I was saying stupid, and you're having a tantrum about $2 DLC.

Of course I'm going to say you're acting childish.

Because of this

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/we-bet ... 0-6428680/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder ... naissance/

Take what they say how you want, but there's also been a backlash about TW: warhammer chaos pre order DLC, everyone is pissed as hell about that everywhere, on youtube as you see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC1Y2pFP2ls 35k dislike vs less than 3k likes and there isn't a single positive comment, I'd say that if they have been listening to people, those are really fed up with DLC bullshit and pushing yet another paid DLC on a game with no support and that has huge problems which could be fixed with some minor efforts as showed by the modders of Elite, it would be a decent indication that this initiative was purely from relic.

If the DLC actually cost more than a hamburger, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

If SEGA / Relic hadn't done several months free work on fixing Multiplayer across two game series (totalling five unique games), I'd be inclined to agree with you.

Problem is you seem to think that a) a $2 DLC is going to cause them to roll in money and b) that the Battle Server migrations somehow didn't cost them three months of employee's wages (and server infrastructure costs).

Which is weird. I'm a software engineer, I work directly with web services, platform deployments, etc. C'mon, talk technical to me. Give me your experience with publishers and their relationship with developers. I always want to talk with people. Problem is people get too stuck up trying to defend their opinions instead of just admitting they could be wrong.

I hold a lot of actual, real information here. That's why I'm posting in the way that I am. I'm not exactly a regular here.

[Forestradio]

don't forget relic's recent dow2 stream where they ignored all questions about bug fixes/support and just showcased their "dlc" (quotations because it's something any modder could throw together in a day np) by playing last stand (rather badly i might add)

it ended with the vague promise of "getting in touch with the community"

it was just blatant trolling of the community tbh

also:

I get that this community isn’t too easy to please or polite, particularly back at GR it was merciless, but still this kind of zero fucks given attitude toward newly introduced bugs is poor etiquette and only serves to antagonize the community. Even as kids we were taught (or at least I was) that if I make a mess I have to clean it up, and that should be even more important when dealing with customers. And I believe that is why some people are offended by DLC like this since it shows that Relic would rather create and sell garbage DLC like this than clean up their messes.

qft
it's one thing to be served a shit sandwich, and another thing entirely to be served a shit sandwich and be told about how great it tastes and how grateful you should be for it

[Sturnn]

You directly swore at me, whether to mock me or make a joke, I don't know which. You also called the stuff I was saying stupid, and you're having a tantrum about $2 DLC.

Of course I'm going to say you're acting childish.

Whatever you say mate. Your world your rules

[Nurland]

Allrighty... Not sure if this conversation is going anywhere. Remain constructive or the topic will be locked/deleted

[KanKrusha]

Just to clarify, it actually does take 30 seconds to fix the IG HWT bug. It is what started me modding because i wanted to see how hard it was to do.

[Wise Windu]

Kind of hesitant to get involved here, but let's all at least try to not make arguments personal attacks

Also, question for Gorb: Do you happen to be in contact with anyone from Relic? I've been sending them some messages about the ability to easily pirate their paid DLC. Maybe they've seen it, but I haven't gotten any replies. If you do and could get them a message somehow, that would be really cool. It's something that could affect future CoH2 DLC as well.

[Flash]

@Gorb

The problem this community, and the steam forums it looks like, is a complex one. The DLC was pushed by SEGA, which is pretty easy to see considering the Total War games had the same thing at the same time. So blame for that falls on them.

The problem this community has is with Relic, who incidentally has a PR problem on their hand (more on that in a bit). The reason that support for retribution stopped is understandable albeit unfortunate and very frustrating. Relic went through massive changes when THQ dissolved, it's a matter of public record that they lost large amounts of employees. The work done to migrate the old games to the battle servers was a net positive for the DOW games except retribution. On Retribution the quality of the game was reduced (I personally like the lag fix, but the lobby, invite and chat functionality are massively degrading towards the experience).

Now on to Relic's PR problem. While the scenario of Relic's problems is well known, it does not matter to the user/consumer. To the user, the companies woes are unimportant. The user only cares that the product has been reduced in quality, and that support for the product has been cut. Relic basically has to demonstrate to a small segment of it's prospective market (let's call them "loyal fans" or w/e with all the irony involved. semantics. Others would call this their core fanbase) that their word is good and they are invested and care about their product. Because a lack of caring usually results in a poor quality product, poor sales, and a reputation hit. I'm not saying that Relic doesn't care, only that there is a perception that relic doesn't. This DLC offering furthers the viewpoint of apathy. (even if it was pushed by SEGA, relic is the front-man so to speak). It shows a disconnect between management (sega or Relic, the pleebs don't care) and community. The community sees it as a cash grab, which it essentially is, and the community is angered that any time was spent on developing this as opposed to fixing the many bugs that have resulted from Relic's hard choices. Relic has long had a reputation of buggy releases and buggy games which does not help. Relic's reputation further takes a hit when some of the bugs do not require lengthy fixes. The IG HWT, while perhaps not broken by your standards, is still a significant problem. It completely removes a strategy that the game is designed around from one of the races. The fix itself is not a complicated one, it can easily be fixed in Cope's toolbox, a homebrew mod tool. The HWT is simply lacking las guns on the non bolter crew members. Adding them is pretty simple. Relic also has reputation problems with it's balance, even at Retribution's peak there were many complaints about balance and the erratic nature of the balancing approach (over-correction). The most recent patch you mentioned a few months ago, restored some functionality to the chat system but did nothing for the rest of the serious bugs. It also implemented steam trading cards which basically no one asked for. The trading cards and blood pack dlc are mostly done by the art team and do not require that much coding time. The fixing of the netcode, chat, and lobby system would require significant overhaul of the game and require a lot coding support. Relic cannot afford that at this time and probably never well. Glossing over bug issues, while trying to maintain the public image of supporting the game (when resources aren't available to really do so) further's their perception problem. Straight up honest and forward talk would probably be better.

So to recap, Relic has a perception problem, that they are apathetic, greedy and exploitative of their fanbase. And those views have a grain of truth to them. But are not the whole picture. Relic hasn't done much to help the community in terms of modding either. The community could have taken over some of the burden of bug fixing in the place of Relic with indirect support (release of official mod tools, documentation, and/or source code). Other games have gone that route and down very well with it. Volition's Freespace 2, or the Black Mesa mod for half life are prime examples. That option was never explored at all and the lack of communication between relic and community (until January with the launch of the new website) didn't help their cause either. It some ways, in feels as if Relic has hindered the community helping itself intentionally or out of apathy.

I don't hate Relic for the choices they had to make, but the situation sucks and there isn't going to be any improvement for which a great deal of people have reasonable frustration over.

[Gorbles]

Simply put, Flash, they don't have the resources. The DoW 2 Community site went without an active Relic contact for some time and I'm not privy to why.

I understand a lot of your concerns, and you're right to pin it on perception. However, SEGA manage PR. SEGA are the ones that allocate budget to community teams and so forth (there may be some hierarchy within Relic, but I never saw Noun or Cynthia respond to anyone higher, directly).

As I said, I understand the frustration, so there's not much more to say there. But how hard was it for you to make your post, compared to the posts I've had to sit and read that got amazingly personal, amazingly quickly? We could benefit from more of your kind of posts, or Toi's, or Windu's. And open and honest dialogue with Relic wouldn't occur under any other circumstances, if it were even to occur at all.

Realistically, what do you think Relic can say? Employees are bound by NDA, and you can't badmouth the publisher. All they can say is what they have the resources for. You understand the art team was involved in recent cosmetic updates, and that they don't have the resources for further work right now. What reasonable statement could they make other than that? Would simply saying that help?

Going on replies to this thread, I don't think it matters what Relic say, to be honest. And given my repeated begging for someone to talk technical back to me, no-one has. So nobody's going to be particularly interested in any technical updates from Relic because no offense intended, people probably aren't going to understand the specifics. I see a lot of talk of modding here, and that's great, but modding is worlds apart from development. I was one of the first modders for DoW II myself, I figured out a lot of the campaign format. I'm honestly not putting down anyone who has the time and effort to mod any aspect of this game.

Which is why I asked what the fix applied to the HWT was, because I thought the issue was a lot more severe than crew-mates not having lasguns (that's the game-breaking balance issue?). I thought it was to do with weapon upgrades and transference, though I barely ever play IG so I don't know the specifics anymore (quite honestly I don't care, which is why I asked. Played IG the other night on Random, mind you). I get a "it's a 30 minute fix" followed by that wonderful and mature REKT meme

Kind of hesitant to get involved here, but let's all at least try to not make arguments personal attacks

Also, question for Gorb: Do you happen to be in contact with anyone from Relic? I've been sending them some messages about the ability to easily pirate their paid DLC. Maybe they've seen it, but I haven't gotten any replies. If you do and could get them a message somehow, that would be really cool. It's something that could affect future CoH2 DLC as well.

I have no direct contact with anyone but the current DoW Community Manager - KellieG. Cynthia left some time ago, and before her, Noun did, so my active list of contacts has dried up somewhat.

If you think it affects the CoH 2 scene, there's a lot more engagement there so I'd recommend you approach the CoH 2 Community Forums to see who the active staff are. It's also more likely to be prioritised to be fixed then, too.

[Flash]

Sadness regarding Sega managing PR. It didn't take much to make an even headed post, just 30 mins away from me studying for my exams . The personnel attacks that you have undergone here are a toxic culture issue that we as a community need to fix at some point. We sometimes have a mob mentality. The rekt meme was in poor taste and really servers no productive purpose (sorry Forest. You have skills, but being flippant isn't usually productive). I'm not an authority figure here, but you have my apologies regardless. If you're ever in Indianapolis I'll buy you a beer/ poison of choice. Are you no longer working as a community manager?

I appreciate candor in my personal life, and I find it goes a long way towards furthering understanding and and acceptance. I personally think that just saying they don't have the resources to ever completely fix the game would help. But PR is usually about trying to manage perception and paint the company in a positive life. Thus admissions of that nature run counter to that expressed goal. More sadness. Any help they could give the community to help (official tools, documentation, source code) fix what's left would be greatly greatly appreciated. I realize that's pretty unlikely though. I also know that modding is no substitute for proper development but the engineer in me refuses to accept that we can never improve things haha.

The people who have responded here are small and number and not entirely reflective of the entire community; many of us would be interested in hearing technical updates, or really anything. By your definition the IG HWT bug isn't game breaking. But this game is designed around the concepts of knock-back, suppression and stuns to control melee and blobs. The setup teams also serve as cheap tranisitional AV for most races. The bug removes one of those components almost entirely resulting in limited options and gives the appearance of shody game design. IG can manage without them in t1 thanks to the nature of catachans (also poor game design).

Anyway thanks for responding. Back to cramming.

[Ar-Aamon]

Blame Sega first that's for sure. See what they did with Creative Assembly and their TW Series. Chaos Faction as a DLC?! WTF.

[Flash]

That's my point. There should be. We all agree the situation sucks. So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to sit around and bitch about it and lash out at someone loosely connected to Relic who has a different opinion? How about we try channeling that righteous fury towards something that advances the mod. Aka help windu with the codex, help with the implementation of the next patch, pick up modeling and finish necrons/dark eldar/tau. Relic has made their choices and those aren't going to change. Make due.

[Forestradio]

The rekt meme was in poor taste and really servers no productive purpose (sorry Forest. You have skills, but being flippant isn't usually productive).

probably true, but i haven't seen any acknowledgement of the other stuff i did say that WAS productive so there's not really a lot else to do, is there?

care to comment on this particular bug gorb?

there's a bug atm that sometimes during a game or even right at the start disables all "right-click" commands aside from movement, which makes it impossible to click on enemy units to attack them and also makes it impossible to capture points

this is awfully similar to relic's stream, where people tried to be constructive at first, asking about a hotfix for battle server fuckups and whatnot, and then were just ignored and so resorted to trolling because a) it's funnier and b) if relic isn't going to bother then why should we?

[Gorbles]

care to comment on this particular bug gorb?

there's a bug atm that sometimes during a game or even right at the start disables all "right-click" commands aside from movement, which makes it impossible to click on enemy units to attack them and also makes it impossible to capture points

this is awfully similar to relic's stream, where people tried to be constructive at first, asking about a hotfix for battle server fuckups and whatnot, and then were just ignored and so resorted to trolling because a) it's funnier and b) if relic isn't going to bother then why should we?

What am I meant to do with bugs? All I can advise is that you report them on the official forums. I can't even guarantee they'll be fixed.

Also, being constructive means "don't resort to trolling when you don't get your own way". There a billion reasons why Relic might not address issues with the product on a stream about something else entirely. Not all of them are good reasons, sure, but there are no justifications for trolling. It's just poor form, in my opinion.

You can't take the moral high ground about taking Relic to task for failing to fix the product, when you admit to trolling because it's "funny". You have no moral high ground as a result of that, sorry.

[Forestradio]

so one might even say that the bug is
....GAMEBREAKING?
or maybe capping units are so op that relic just decided to remove them from the game

i've done a great deal of things in my time playing dow2, not all of which were appropriate, but claiming high grounds is not one of them

[Gorbles]

That bug when it occurs is, sure. But I never said otherwise so I'm not sure where we're going now.

On the subject of moral high ground, you were judging Relic for introducing bugs, etc. Other people, maybe not you, talked about what they paid for, being a loyal customer, etc. All of these claims only hold weight if you don't go off and troll Relic for not immediately giving you a response.

Sadly, you probably just put them off further :/ This is why I do the damage control that I do. I want Relic / SEGA to see the most constructive complaints they can, not mindless ranting. That's not how you convince a business to update a legacy product.

[Ace of Swords]

What constructive criticism do you want? Do we have to spoon feed them the fix to their bugs? Do they need the elite devs to PM the fixed files?

In that case then they should be paying us for playing their games.

Let's be fucking real now, the DoW and CoH communities are saints among video games communities and it's not an exaggeration, we've put up with some much bullshit with relic policies and incompetence for really long but we kept buying their shit, could you imagine just for a second what kind of shitstorm would the players and game journalists make if Blizzard or Riot left just ONE of these kind of bugs running on their games for a week?

Yeah we've been dealing with dozens of bugs for YEARS.

And to return on the incompetence point, Im an electronics technician and when people tell me the problems they have, I instantly have a general picture of the issue and it never takes me much to understand the core of the issue and fix it, I understand that coding might be more complicated as I do have a basic understanding of C++,CSS and HTLM5 but from devs with dozens of games on their backs, years of experience and most importantly they made the engine they are using and thus should have perfect understanding of it, I expect them to be able to fix this stuff within hours.

So again, what do they expect from us?
What should we be constructive about? I've reported every single bug made by the battleservers back when they have been introduced and the members of the community that count (top 10s) of both DoW2 and CoH2 constantly tried to tell relic what was wrong balance wise but were barely ever been listened to.

So one last time what do you want from us? To fix your game for you? Fine hand us the source code and the tools needed and I myself will pick it up and work on it for FUCKING FREE.

[Fr33man1800]

Well to be honest I do find this DLC insulting, many of us, myself included, where expecting something better given the price tag , not only doesn’t fix ANY issues the game has but also breaks the replays saved from previous versions, and I heard some ppl lost the army rank during the update.
So its normal to understand why ppl are mad cause they not only did this for a shameless cash grab, it also broke some things during the update which at this point is a standard for relic updates.



Cause if it was completly cosmetic cheap and well done i woudnt mind that much but given that they where going to do "something" for the game at least make shure it doesnt affect others with the update and make it worthwile.

I dont know if they just fail to see the state the game is in right now, in their eyes all must be perfectly 100% fine...

[Forestradio]

That bug when it occurs is, sure. But I never said otherwise so I'm not sure where we're going now.

there aren't any number of "game-breaking" bugs

...wat?

On the subject of moral high ground, you were judging Relic for introducing bugs, etc.

pointing out incompetence doesn't involve any sort of moral high ground, it's something that should be expected across all aspects of life

Other people, maybe not you, talked about what they paid for, being a loyal customer

...did u actually watch the stream? because it was filled with comments about overpriced dlc, and focus firing/capping, and a lot of other people directly ASKED of relic directly about the battle servers and all of it was ignored

All of these claims only hold weight if you don't go off and troll Relic for not immediately giving you a response.

...why is that? they gave away their dlc in a raffle to someone who was trolling quite a bit...

Sadly, you probably just put them off further :/ This is why I do the damage control that I do. I want Relic / SEGA to see the most constructive complaints they can, not mindless ranting. That's not how you convince a business to update a legacy product.

there have been plenty of constructive complaints, however nothing seems to have gone through at all

even just saying that there wouldn't be any more dow2 patches would be preferable, instead of pretending like nothing is wrong and ignoring everything

like i said before: it's one thing to be served a shit sandwich, and another thing entirely to be served a shit sandwich and be told about how great it tastes and how grateful you should be for it

[Gorbles]

You know, the selective quoting of five words from an entire post is getting irritating.

The context was you saying there were a million game-breaking bugs. I can't even remember my intent, either I meant to say "anywhere near" or I'm wrong and you . . . score an Internet point? I'm not sure. You were wrong because there aren't a million, "ha ha"? I dunno what we're even getting at at this point.

Pointing out incompetence is different from what you were doing, and the irony is you can't handle anyone pointing out yours (or a lack of knowledge, similar thing). You were basically flat-out insulting Relic (or me, this has gone on far too long now, I don't even know). You can criticise without razing something to the ground with a flamethrower. I didn't watch the stream, I don't care about the stream. Nothing wrong with asking any questions. There's something wrong with trolling. Simple as that.

Nobody said you had to be grateful for anything. Nobody said you had to buy this DLC. I've kept telling you to vote with your wallet. You're making things up that were never said by anyone.

You don't have to buy this DLC. This DLC has nothing to do with the people who have the skill fix bugs in the game. Relic are not SEGA, and shouldn't be blamed for SEGA's decisions. That's all there is to it. That's where my argument ends.

[Oddnerd]

Blame Sega first that's for sure. See what they did with Creative Assembly and their TW Series. Chaos Faction as a DLC?! WTF.

Sega's DLC practices have been nothing but disgraceful. Lots of uncritical fanboys defend that practice too - like livestock at the feeding troughs those people are. I am worried that in the event of DOW3 being released in the future, we will have something similar to the Greek States DLC for R2TW or the Chaos Warriors DLC for WHTW, where essential elements of the game are parceled up and sold separately.

[Forestradio]

The context was you saying there were a million game-breaking bugs. I can't even remember my intent, either I meant to say "anywhere near" or I'm wrong and you . . . score an Internet point? I'm not sure. You were wrong because there aren't a million, "ha ha"? I dunno what we're even getting at at this point.

i didn't say there are a million game-breaking bugs
the point being that there ARE some bugs that have an extremely huge impact on how a game can shape out, and one of them that prevents attack commands and capture commands is a pretty significant example, given that dow2 is based around capping and fighting...
i can list more than can easily shift a high level game in retail/elite one way or another

Pointing out incompetence is different from what you were doing, and the irony is you can't handle anyone pointing out yours (or a lack of knowledge, similar thing).

...what? in my work and studies i expect to have mistakes pointed out so that they don't happen again, especially in my studies. it's basic professionalism
how is it different from what i'm doing exactly?

You were basically flat-out insulting Relic (or me, this has gone on far too long now, I don't even know).

correct on all accounts! then again you did say that you didn't care about Elite players so you can hardly be offended when i respond in kind, now can you?

You can criticise without razing something to the ground with a flamethrower. I didn't watch the stream, I don't care about the stream.

idd, but previous criticisms have not worked or been acknowledged at all

Nobody said you had to be grateful for anything. Nobody said you had to buy this DLC. I've kept telling you to vote with your wallet. You're making things up that were never said by anyone.

what exactly have i made up? acting like this dlc was made as a show of appreciation or a sign of continued dow2 support is, in my opinion, totally unrealistic. if relic can't be bothered to answer a simple question about other patches (all it takes is "yes" or "no") then ofc there will be frustration over it

You don't have to buy this DLC. This DLC has nothing to do with the people who have the skill fix bugs in the game. Relic are not SEGA, and shouldn't be blamed for SEGA's decisions. That's all there is to it. That's where my argument ends.

oh im sure there's plenty of blame to go around, but this is relic's game, the updates were made by relic (even if they were told to do so by Sega) and that's who people blame

[Wise Windu]

You don't have to buy this DLC. This DLC has nothing to do with the people who have the skill fix bugs in the game. Relic are not SEGA, and shouldn't be blamed for SEGA's decisions. That's all there is to it. That's where my argument ends.

oh im sure there's plenty of blame to go around, but this is relic's game, the updates were made by relic (even if they were told to do so by Sega) and that's who people blame

Gorb is right though, in that the people who would have made this DLC, which was a visual DLC rather than a balance/bug fix patch, would probably not be qualified to fix any server issues or bugs in the game. I could pretty easily make the blood effects for the DLC, but I definitely could not fix the observer bugs or server issues. With limited resources, they likely had the people responsible for that kind of thing working on something that would make them more money.

Although I'm not sure that's what's being argued with this point. Despite Relic not being at fault in the end, it's pretty clear that people are blaming them for their parent company's decisions, correct or not. That isn't really something that can be changed, unfortunately.

[Atlas]

Alrighty folks, I think we've covered what needed to be covered on Reric.
Remember, the mods are watching.


As for the DLC itself lol. Even if I COULD pirate it, I don't want to. It's literally not worth the time to do it.