Online service

[General Blaze]

Is Company of Heroes going to use Gamespy as an Online service? Would be nice for a change that it doesn't, due to it's reputation and all.

Personally, I don't think it's THAT horrible, but a different online service would be a better change of pace and would benefit the company greatly.

[Sabin]

Come to think of it. I don’t know of any real alternatives left to THQ/Relic for an externally developed online service, though unlikely, they could develop their own online service.

Ultimately, they will likely use GameSpy’s services to power in-game multiplayer functionality once more. Otherwise, you could inform me of real choices left for THQ and-or Relic in this area, mind you, that they cannot be owned by competition.

[Ammon Ra]

TA has 5 "gamespy" services available. :p

Had to say that. limiting it exclusivly to one service is imo not a good idea. But it probably will. Although sometihng ala steam would be intereting...

[Valdarez]

My only experience with GameSpy is with Axis & Allies RTS and it's horrible. The absolutely worst online gaming experience from a server perspective that I have ever dealt with. From stats disappearing, accounts being corrupted, disconnects being assigned for no reason, to servers being unavailable, buddies list being lost or simply not working, not being able to join games when full green bars (NAT negotiation errors). You name it, GameSpy is the worst online servers out there.

My other experience is with Diablo and Diablo II from Blizzard, who provided the best online gaming experience/support to date.

[Sabin]

I can recall a number of games with superb implementation of the GameSpy Powered multiplayer functionally. We got to remember that GameSpy isn’t the sole handler of the entire multiplayer environment, and also falls under the responsibility of the developers/publishers to make sure it's well tested and polished. Otherwise, you’re going to get a bad service that wasn’t properly tested for release and will be problematic (all kinds of problems).

We can stop with the wishful thinking that Company of Heroes is going to be supported at Battle.net, Steam, Microsoft Zone, and other competing services. It’s not going to happen; those companies have spent and continue to spend great deals of money and manpower to establish those services for their use, not others.

In the end, it’s an expensive and time consuming ordeal to support multiplayer functionality when that feature is generally overlooked by the majority of gamers. In addition, it’s highly unlikely they would develop their own when the game in question isn’t expected to have a MASSIVE and strong multiplayer following to warrant the expense.

Edit: I have yet to hear of a reasonable alternative to GameSpy.

[Valdarez]

As long as there is a ladder system, and it's not buggy as all get out, then I will be thrilled. A&A suffers from lack of a ladder system, so everyone goes by their win percentage, which obviously doesn't tell the story regarding players abilities. There was one guy that did nothing but play newbs and has a 98% win rate after 1k+, but couldn't hold his own against any reasonable level player. People ooh and ahh at his rating, but anyone that knows him, understands how it was achieved and has very little respect for him. A ladder system would help negate the whole win% problem because you can't climb a ladder by only playing new players.

If this game delivers on the fully destructible environment along with the touted physics capabilities and the gameplay is solid, then I can't see why CoH wouldn't derive a massive following. From what I have seen thus far Relic has a good name with the community and several good games under their belt. Our clan, consisting of roughly 30 players, is anxously awaiting the release of this game, and I guarantee that there are several other clans in the A&A RTS realm that look forward to it as well. We get about 2k hits a day on our website, and once it's released will be promoting it day in and day out. Granted that might not be a lot of traffic, and we have a small following there, but if the game is put forward in other like places such as the DoW sites and other like minded forums, then it has the chance to be a huge hit.

There's a lot to be said for how a company promotes a game and how they service the community post sale. Having a company representative that does nothing but goes out and participates in forum discussions, provides interviews or indepth knowledge, and continually wets the appetite of the public is a must in order to develop an early following. It's been two months since I noticed this game at E3, and I haven't been able to find any new shred of information on it since, and I have been scouring the web for it. No new screenshots, nothing. Even the website isn't operational yet. Hopefully Relic gets on the ball and provides us more information on this game, otherwise players sights my tend to wander... say towards another RTS coming out at about the same time such as Star Wars: Empire at War.

Post sale, providing patches, expansion maps, and other like material for the community is a must. This keeps players happy by having a bug free game, promotes goodwill with the free content, and keeps guys talking about the game with their coworkers allowing the game to stay in the limelight a bit longer via word of mouth which when positive always has a net affect on sales.

[Sabin]

A massive following is the likes of Blizzard games and other titles, which tend to easily pass the mark for a million units sold. They usually warrant the extensive multiplayer support at and beyond retail release, regular tournaments, custom tailored multiplayer functionality, and so forth. It would be huge accomplish for Relic and THQ if COH does sell over a million.

For instance, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War to even my knowledge hasn’t reached the million units sold mark. They however obviously sold well enough to warrant the still ongoing support and quick expansion announcement. By far, I don’t remember any huge glaring problems with their GS supported features, except a few firewall/router combinations at login.

I didn’t get a chance to play Axis & Allies, and that leaves me with little information on the particular problems with its online functionality (except your experiences). I do however remember some pretty negative reviews of that game, and maybe they didn’t have the resources left to pull off a good multiplayer as well.

In the end, we can only hope that the given budget and manpower will be enough to bring about a great multiplayer experience for the players of Company of Heroes.

[Druidika]

Ground Control 2 featured an excellent implementation of the Gamespy toolkit in my opinion. Everything was working, router issues were nearly non-existant, stats were updated immediately etc.

[General Blaze]

Then in this case, Relic did a fairly okay job with the Gamespy toolkit from what I expereinced in DOW, but there are still a few issues that loads of people are teed off of.

Hopefully Relic learns from their mistake and make much better use of the Gamespy toolkit for their future products. Especially CoH.

I've seen developers who made a stable online service powered by Gamespy but hardly make full use of it (Team 17 with Worms 4 Mayhem. Online lobby has less features than BF2's lobby but is much more stable.) while others did a VERY AWFUL job with it (DICE's BF2.) And then there's Massgate, which Druidika pointed out.

[Valdarez]

Then in this case, Relic did a fairly okay job with the Gamespy toolkit from what I expereinced in DOW, but there are still a few issues that loads of people are teed off of.What were the issues with the online gaming of DoW that teed off the players?

[ionfish]

It wasn't Bnet.

[Valdarez]

It wasn't Bnet.Well, that doesn't help. :rolleyes: