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.
Ace of Swords wrote: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.
Toilailee wrote: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).
. 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?
