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Q&A with CoH3's Executive Producer
Following Company of Heroes 3’s launch in February, the entire team has been busy rolling out hot fixes, addressing bugs, and releasing our first major update with Operation: Sapphire Jackal. Throughout all of this we’ve been seeing lots of valuable feedback from our amazing community, and as we’ve been doing throughout development, we want to keep you in the loop.
John from the Community team sat down with Company of Heroes 3 Executive Producer Steve Mele for a conversation about what we’ve been up to, some of the key areas we’re looking to address based on your feedback, and what’s next for Company of Heroes 3.
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John: Thanks Steve for taking the time to chat with me and answer some of our community’s questions. First, I wanted to quickly go over the launch of Company of Heroes 3. From your perspective, what are the big takeaways from the last few weeks?
Steve: It’s been incredible, and busy! Interacting with the community has really highlighted the player outreach and interest in Company of Heroes 3. It’s just such a big game, it’s easily the biggest Company of Heroes game we’ve delivered at launch. We’re really excited about the breadth of experiences we were able to provide with four factions, the Italian Dynamic Campaign, North African Operation, and new features like Full Tactical Pause. This is a beloved franchise with dedicated fans, and it’s always exciting to finally get the game in players’ hands to enjoy.
We’ve also been listening to feedback around issues that are preventing players from enjoying CoH3 as much as we want them to be. Some of that feedback we’ve already been able to address in the hot fixes since launch, and in our first major update we just released, Operation: Sapphire Jackal. We still have lots of work to do to make CoH3 the best it can be, and we’re committed to giving it the same level of support we did for past CoH titles with updates and new content for years to come.
John: One of the new programs we championed throughout production was our player-focused approach, CoH-Development. Can you talk about how we incorporated early feedback while working on Company of Heroes 3?
Steve: We knew right from the jump that we wanted to get players involved as early as possible. That feedback really helped us validate the directions we wanted to take, like moving to a Mediterranean theatre, which isn’t very common in World War II games, as well as the Dynamic Campaign being a feature that sounded exciting and made sense for a CoH game. CoH-Development was also vital in making sure that we introduced new features like Full Tactical Pause in a smart way, helping us with our goal to provide options for players, especially those who are new to the franchise or to strategy games, without sacrificing the core CoH experience that veterans expect. As those features came to life, being able to let people play early versions of the game allowed us to see how things were working, and even get a head start on balance, map designs, and more.
It’s always a balance, because there were areas where we were confident we knew where we wanted to take the experience. CoH-Development was always intended as a way to validate, correct where it made sense, and bring our community along for the ride. I really can’t express how valuable it was to have that level of communication with our dedicated players so early.
John: Speaking to that feedback and communication loop with our players, what does that look like now that we’ve launched?
Steve: It’s important to say that the work doesn’t stop when the game launches. It’s actually the opposite - we believe that this is where the real work begins, because we’re committed to Company of Heroes 3. Any of our players who experienced CoH2 on launch day compared to what it is now knows how much it continued to evolve with added content, maps, bug fixes, and balance patches. We plan on evolving Company of Heroes 3 for years to come as well.
More specifically to your question, our players are critical to that evolution. Relic has been around for over 25 years. In those early days we weren’t able to continue to evolve our games the way we are now, and we sure weren’t able to speak to our players so quickly and so directly. Our Community team is incredible. They’re constantly bringing feedback from players straight to the team about what people are loving, and what we still need to work on. The Community and Production teams then work together to look at our data and our roadmap, since often what people are asking for is actually something we’re already working on. Then, when we know we can commit to delivering something great, we’ll share that back with the players so they know they’re being heard.
John: What about bigger features? How does the team decide what we include for launch, and what comes further down the road?
Steve: That’s a great question. The short answer is lots and lots of very difficult decisions throughout the entire development process, because we want to do it all. I won’t get too into the details of how games are developed, but it’s worth mentioning that CoH3 is developed on Essense Engine 5, the newest version of Relic’s proprietary engine technology. When players tell us CoH3 plays and feels just like a Company of Heroes game should, that’s a huge win because moving to a new engine always brings some challenges along with it. We knew that in order to evolve our gameplay in exciting ways and bring in new features like the Dynamic Campaign and Full Tactical Pause, we couldn’t just bring over what we had built before. We had to do a lot of work to make it happen.
Deciding where to spend our time and resources is always difficult, because we’re huge CoH fans too. Every map, mode, faction, and feature of past CoH titles has its fans at Relic. However, one thing we all knew was that to justify releasing a proper numbered sequel that we can call Company of Heroes 3, it had to be more than just new maps and missions. Our team is so talented, and they had a lot of ideas as to what a Company of Heroes game, and what a strategy experience, means in 2023. Our primary goal was to provide players with something new and exciting, both for the franchise and for Relic. That lead us to Company of Heroes 3, which is by far the most content we’ve ever included in a game at launch. As developers we will always want extra time to add this or that. But there's a point where you have to release the game, get it in players’ hands, and start getting that feedback to help crystalize where we can go from here.
We know there are features players still want to see, and we knew that was going to be the case when we launched. What I can say is we’ll be supporting this game for a long time, and some of those features are already being mapped out.
John: Let’s talk about our first major update, Operation: Sapphire Jackal. I think the big question from players with this update was why we focused on rolling out Challenges and cosmetics before some of those additional features we know players are requesting. Can you elaborate on that?
Steve: As I touched on, we had a couple of main goals with Company of Heroes 3. The first was to deliver the biggest Company of Heroes experience to date. I’m proud of where we landed on that - CoH3 has a huge breadth of content and features, a brand-new theatre, and some of the most ambitious missions and set pieces ever seen in the franchise. Second, we knew we wanted to support CoH3 for a long time. That support will come from a number of areas including updates and balance patches, new maps and modes, and substantial DLC expansions. We know from past CoH titles that player customization is a big deal for our fans, especially in multiplayer battles, and we wanted to ensure there was a way for players to express themselves in-game as soon as we could. Cosmetics in Company of Heroes 3 are just that, purely cosmetic, and can be obtained via premium currency as well as a selection obtained with Merit, an in-game currency earned by playing the game.
Challenges and cosmetics are features that were in development before the game was released. We were aiming to provide those for launch, but we decided to wait a bit while we focused on the core gameplay experience. Now that they’re out, we’re able to continue to iterate and improve them based on player feedback, as well as continue work on other features and updates we have planned.
John: Can you speak to any of our upcoming plans for Company of Heroes 3?
Steve: We’ve been listening to the feedback from our players, and right now our goal is to improve the gameplay experience for them. The team has been working hard, and in the weeks following launch we’ve been able to deliver multiple hot fixes and updates that have helped address many of the most common issues players have experienced. As developers, we never want there to be friction in a player’s ability to enjoy our game, and while we’ve made a lot of progress, we still have work to do there.
We’ve also just released Operation: Sapphire Jackal, our first major update that introduced a number of fixes and weekly Challenges. We’re currently working on introducing a major balance update, which players have been requesting, as well as a new multiplayer map and improvements to the user interface. The team here is so passionate, and working hard to make this a great experience for our players. While we can’t do everything at once, going forward you’ll continue to see a regular cadence of updates, balance patches, and content drops. Also, while I can’t say too much right now, we’re working hard on our first DLC expansion that I think players will love.
John: That’s all great news. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer some of these community questions, Steve. We’ll have to do this again!
Steve: Thanks John, and thanks again to all our players!
