Relic Blood Pack DLC

[Oddnerd]

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.

It's probably corny and over the top in terms of the effects. I think Attila TW had something similar released just recently. It was apparently cartoonishly stupid and excessive to the point that it made the game sillier rather than darker.

[Forestradio]

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.

so is it impossible for relic to say whether or not they're actually going to do something else with dow2? are they ignorant of the issues? do they know about the issues but don't know how to fix them? or do they just not care? oh the sarcasm

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.

this is the whole point, the dlc is literally something a modder could make with some spare time
but ye relic has other important things to do like making more p2win commanders for coh2

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.

as others have said, it's not the dlc itself, it's a total lack of communication with the community about things way more important than the bloody blood pack of blood-soaked bloodiness
the dlc is just a confirmation of other problems entirely

[Wise Windu]

so is it impossible for relic to say whether or not they're actually going to do something else with dow2? are they ignorant of the issues? do they know about the issues but don't know how to fix them? or do they just not care? oh the sarcasm

Maybe they're just hesitant to tell the people who play the game something they don't want to hear. That some of the bugs will probably never be fixed, and continued non-minor (as in non-visual patches) development isn't likely to happen, and that they likely will not have the resources even in the future to do so. They don't want to say anything bad about the future of the game or SEGA's funding, but don't want to make impossible promises. Might be better to be open about it, but they'd probably get some blame either way, and maybe a scolding from SEGA.

as others have said, it's not the dlc itself, it's a total lack of communication with the community about things way more important than the bloody blood pack of blood-soaked bloodiness
the dlc is just a confirmation of other problems entirely

Covered some of it in the first part, but yeah. It would be awesome if they were more open about stuff, and I definitely think they could at least acknowledge all of the current issues in the game, the issues they caused with patches, and maybe even whether or not they actually plan on doing something about it in the future. All they really mentioned during the stream was plans for some future content, maybe.

[bjack]

[The extension jpg has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

From last week, Relic joined a twitch channel and was surprised to learn that false starts are an issue when the streamer was unable to start Last Stand.

Surely they will respond?

[SirRinge]

Hell, I really hope they do. It's good to see Relic still looking out for their game though

[ytimk]

I must read too much fucking 8chan. And I only do so for silly memes.
Reading this thread and some of the white-knighting going on had the word 'shill' going off in my brain repeatedly, and that should be a concern due to utter batshit tinfoil, buttttttt games companies are companies, or some people just want to be seen to 'bat for the team'
Shameless cash grabs are shameless cash grabs, nothing exists in a vacuum.

[Batpimp]

what in the fuck are you posting bro. ^^^

[Flash]

what. on earth. is that. I'm probably the one most "standing up for relic" if you can even call it that apart from Gorb, and that's his job. so ...i'm a shill? Except I didn't just pop outa nowhere, I've been here and playing this game for years now. And I've critiziced relic plenty before. Kinda annoyed now actually. Try and stand up for some rational thought and tone down the mob mentality and I feel like I'm being accused of being a shill? What?

[ytimk]

As I said, its just some crazy, tinfoil shit, that popped into my mind while reading this thread.

I mean no personal offense to most of you here, and I'm actually sorry if it has.

It's just, from my personal perspective as a consumer, crusading attempts to deny/deflect/diminish responsibility/bad press/negative feelings about any corporate entity and/or their practices is just shallow shilling. A corporate entity: whose sole reason for existence is profit at all costs, where the ends justify the means. I'm not a communist raging against business, but that is what business do to survive, consumer be damned if it can be 'gotten away with'. And in this industry there are unfortunately a lot of precedents for this type of behaviour/practices that honest customers have a legitimate right to be angered/disappointed with.

I am also concerned about the words used to portray those who air criticisms in the first place: sweeping judgments and stereotypes are not helpful (on all aspects that may be taken of course). Yes, some people are loud mouths frothing with rage, venting on the net, but then extrapolating that into accusations of 'mobbing'/'irrational discourse' by a larger portion of people who honestly only have reasonable consumer complaints strike me as a bit counter productive.

Again, this was not meant to cause personal offense and/or demonise the vast majority of the decent people in the thread, it was just a crazy thought that popped into my head while reading.

[Flash]

I'm not offened. I don't know you, I have no investment in you. Just annoyed.

I used "mob mentality" to describe the situation because that's what happened. Poor gorb kept getting attacked personaly and professionally with the attacks escalating and those after one upping those before. That is textbook mob mentality. There's just no physical torches and pitchforks because this is the internet. There's a lot of pent up frustration here towards relic (warranted I would argue), and gorb was the closest embodiment of relic that we could smack.

Man and I thought I'd never see the day, but I'm about to defend business. Your argument only takes into account one viewpoint. A business is also a collection of people with their own wants and desires. Nobody really wants to make a shitty game. It's not in their self interest and people generally have pride in their work. They want to do a good job. So why do we have shitty games? That's complicated and has to due with hundreds if not thousands of factors. Are there companies that are inherently exploitative? Yes. Comcast comes to mind. Standard oil is the historical example from the US. Are all business like that? No. Do companies have an incentive to make money? Yes, that's capitalism and how the "west" and arguably most of the world works. Do companies try and spin things to paint themselves in a positive light? Yeah sometimes. The point is this: not all businesses are evil and this situation in particular is a lot more complicated than your previous two posts allow for. For example you haven't made the distinction between relic or sega as the evil business here. Sega is the one pushing for and mandating this dlc.

Over simplification and dichotomous thought are bad.

[Dark Riku]

"Poor Gorb" does not embody Relic at all. He didn't get attacked because of mob mentality either.
Saying stuff like "DoW2 has no gamebreaking bugs" etc, got him "attacked".

[Ace of Swords]

It's not in their self interest and people generally have pride in their work.

The thousands of shitty kick starter and early access games which get dropped by the devs as soon as they made enough money out of them, scream about how wrong you are.

Yes business are here to make money, thanks for the deduction, that doesn't mean they have the right to fuck you over, do you think it's fine for a plumber to install a faulty tube in your sink so that in a week you have to call him again and pay him again for full price?

After all, that makes money doesn't it? It's fair because it's capitalism right?

No, because in the real world where customers and the public are protected these are scams which potentially make basis for lawsuits and for sure will get the people who do such fired and potentially black listed from their professional register.

Now, this isn't what happened to dow2(and I've already expressed what is wrong with what relic/sega did) , but it happened with hundreds of other games AAA or Indie, one that pissed me off a lot was dark souls 2, where they basically sell you a graphic patch for 14€ or so despite the fact that the game was greatly downgraded at release from the beta/alpha videos they showed.

Now this happens with video games because software is still a huge grey area for laws, especially in europe and even more so in my country and at least here you're not going to find any lawyer willingly to go against a multinational or even bothering to to sync up with other countries laws to follow smaller devs, they just wouldn't give a fuck if such thing was even possible to begin with.

It would take a huge movement of people to recognize our rights as consumers of software, however I have my doubts that even in such case we would find a professional figure willingly to fight for it.

[Forestradio]

Yes business are here to make money, thanks for the deduction, that doesn't mean they have the right to fuck you over, do you think it's fine for a plumber to install a faulty tube in your sink so that in a week you have to call him again and pay him again for full price?

laws against this go back to ancient Babylon but i don't think anyone cares about that at this point

besides, this thread has run its course, no one is going to change anyone's opinion (or so it seems perhaps im just cynical) and furthermore the blood dlc has literally 0 bearing to elite mod, it doesn't work with the mod and did nothing except force people to run old replays through a hex editor if they want to watch them

so i propose that this thread just be locked or deleted, and may the emperor have mercy on its soul

[Dullahan]

1. The last patch the DoW 2 series received was in the past few months. Support hasn't been dropped by any means. That said, not every game gets supported forever. You don't pay for eternal technical support. Get over it.

2. Considering I can play the game without fault, there aren't any number of "game-breaking" bugs by definition of the term "game-breaking". There are some severe issues that hamper specific races (IG's HWT suffers here as an example) that people have wanted Relic to fix in the past. That's a bit different from "game-breaking".

There are also new bugs from the migration to Steamworks / Battle Servers, but the only one I've found there is that the Steam Friend Invite seems to be broken. 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.

The last patch of relevance was over three years ago, and left the retail game with a few significant hotfix worthy bugs. (IG weapons team trying to melee everyone for example) The more recent patches have been backend bullshit that actually broke a few things themselves like custom games returning to the lobby after the game that are really annoying and likely a 2 minute fix on Relic's end.

All in all, I don't really expect them to keep balancing the game or doing major updates, but simple fixes to minor bugs like these are all I want. It's such a pain in the ass to remake a lobby after every game.

[Skyward Sorceror]

KEEP IN MIND THE FOLLOWING:
1. I am making this post without knowledge of what was previously posted (Though from an understandable summary that was incomplete, it seems like dislike over DLC for a dead game that relic abandoned).
2. That's pretty much it, also this will involve some fluff plus the main fact our favorite game universe is among the goriest ever. Aside maybe from Starship Troopers and Aliens.

Khorne revels in this DLC, but he is still pissed because Relic is CHARGING us for his beloved gore, which should be free with every vicious slaughterfest. Also keep in mind the fact Relic is making DLC COULD be the symbol of the deadness ending, or it could just be more milking. Either is possible people. I say keep an eye out, because this is prolly a lictor in hiding....

[Lulgrim]

Well, there are two viewpoints into this that seem to be overlooked by some participants

1. The reason some people are pissed off with Relic is they seem to have this habit of graciously pushing a patch to fix something, then actually breaking it worse, and then going "well you can't expect support forever" <radio silence>. Instead of, like, hotfixing it since they already put their hands in, or just leaving it the fuck alone in the first place. Examples would be the aforementioned Heavy Weapon Squad and breaking the multiplayer custom lobbies as well as automatch stats and ranking.

2. The DLC is called the "Ridiculously Bloody Blood Pack" and it was released on goddamned Halloween, how can it escape you that it's just stupid Halloween luls or possibly Sega telling all devs to get something "appropriate" out for their games, i.e. not actual even slightly planned content.

[saltychipmunk]

I think everyone is aware that it was a shallow marketing ploy.

Rather i think that is part of the problem. things like this always ,without fail, provide extremely dry kindling for a witch hunt. It is stupid lulz, a troll maybe? a joke? a silly little bit of jolly fun? probably true.. but I can think of many pranks that dont end well despite the best of intentions......

In the end Sega/Relic need to buy (because they cant seem to find) some freaking self-awareness or go the way of EA/ Konami and just go right off the deep-end in terms of pr fail.

[Lulgrim]

Well by "luls" I don't mean it's actually funny, I mean more like stupid shit people and/or businesses do because it's Halloween.

[Gorbles]

The last patch of relevance was over three years ago, and left the retail game with a few significant hotfix worthy bugs. (IG weapons team trying to melee everyone for example) The more recent patches have been backend bullshit that actually broke a few things themselves like custom games returning to the lobby after the game that are really annoying and likely a 2 minute fix on Relic's end.

All in all, I don't really expect them to keep balancing the game or doing major updates, but simple fixes to minor bugs like these are all I want. It's such a pain in the ass to remake a lobby after every game.

Hey, this thread is still going.

Some last bits from me, then.

1. "of relevance" is a personal qualifier that in no way alters the fact of the recent support. Yes, Retribution was the worst-affected (ironically) out of the whole line-up but it was a necessary consolidation of the DoW II platform and codebase that - if it had not been attempted - would've gotten Relic far more ire than the few hundred people still actively playing MP Retribution (as in, it would've affected everyone who ever wanted to touch vDoW II and / or CR again as they would be dead products).

(@Fulgrim: here in particular, you'd have a working Retribution, but you wouldn't have a working anything else. Good for you guys personally, sure, but I hope you can see the larger picture here)

2. Pretty sure I acknowledged all those other bugs, and if I didn't in this thread due to, um, posts made against me causing me to back off, I think I managed to in the bug hunt thread I posted not long after.

3. Please don't cite things as being two minute fixes

Most of the team working on the network layer for DoW II this year were contract staff (at the very least, the senior engineer I was in contact with was a contracted employee) and weren't tasked on any gameplay-related stuff. Expectation vs. reality, etc.

I can say for definite that Relic are aware of the community's concerns and have even lurked places like this to get feedback. That doesn't translate into any action, of course, but it's something I can say at the very least.