Feb 2, 2023

Company of Heroes - John_RE

February 2023

There’s been so much Company of Heroes news in the last couple months, we knew we had to recap it all and showcase some of the amazing content our players have been creating! With CoH3’s launch approaching fast this month on February 23rd and the Multiplayer Tech Test behind us, we’re not going to waste anymore time. Let’s get into it!

NEWS

Multiplayer Tech Test

Our final public test of Company of Heroes 3 concluded in January, and we want to thank all 154,000 players who took part! This last push allowed us to iron out any remaining technical issues before launch and it was a great opportunity for our team to get a head start on your feedback. You can find all the details here, along with the results of our testing and an outline of how we plan to tackle your top points of feedback. You can also check out our video recap!

CoH3 is Coming to Console

We’re incredibly excited to be bringing Company of Heroes 3 to our fans on Xbox Series S and X and PlayStation 5 later this year with the support of our SEGA partner studios. You can find all the details and our FAQ here, along with our reveal trailer and console gameplay reveal here.

DEVELOPER SITREP

British Forces Deep Dive

We just completed the third installment of our Deep Dive series looking at CoH3’s launch factions. This time we “risked it for a biscuit” as we hit the field with the British Forces. Check out the behind-the-scenes insights from our developers Matt Philip and Will “MonolithicBacon” Ward.

Stay tuned for our Deutsches Afrikakorps Deep Dive coming in the next couple weeks!

Faction Tech Trees

Want to start theory crafting and learning the ins-and=outs of all four factions before launch? Check out our detailed Tech Trees, now available in the https://www.companyofheroes.com/en/media.

Launch Content & Beyond

Company of Heroes 3 is going to be the biggest game at launch in the franchise’s history. If you still have questions about what you’re getting in the game at launch, you can find all the answers here, along with details about our post-launch content plans. Don’t forget to check out our Community Schedule for the remainder of February and March!

PARTNER CONTENT

We were thrilled to be joined in London by two of our partners, A_E and VulcanHDGaming, for an exclusive preview of CoH3 at the end of November. Be sure to check out their channels for the matches from the preview and their coverage of last month’s Tech Test!

Coming out of last month’s Tech Test, Greyshot117 seems to think the Italian L6/40 is overpowered! What do you think? Can it dominate the meta at launch?

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

During the Multiplayer Tech Test, we hosted a screenshot contest for players to show off their coolest moments from CoH3. This entry from Vetkin showing off the Italian Guastatori was one of our favorites!

Our community moderator, DemonicSpoon, wrote up a terrific new player guide for PvP in CoH3. If you’re hesitant about jumping into competitive play, this is a good place to start! Find the link to it here.

Inuki over at The Iron Cast has put together 12 awesome tips for beginner players. Check it out so you’re ready for launch!

Sarge is an old hand at RTS games and has been creating some great new tutorials and videos for both CoH2 and CoH3. In this video he shows off how to turn a tactical retreat into an advantage.

We also love seeing the projects, screenshots, art and more that you are creating and working on! Be sure to tag us @companyofheroes and use the hashtag #CoHCommunity so we can check out and share your amazing creations.

KingDarBoja on Discord has been working on some amazing models of WW2 Italian tanks, and we can’t wait to see them when they’re finished!

That’s a wrap for our second Wire Report! With CoH3’s launch in just a few weeks, we’ll have another recap of all the news and updates soon. Submit your content for consideration by using the hashtag #CoHCommunity or by sharing screenshots, links and videos on our Discord or Forums.

LINKS

Pre-Order CoH3
Official Forums
Steam
Technical Support
YouTube
Twitch
Discord
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Feb 2, 2023

Wire Report - February 2023

Company of Heroes 2 - John_RE

February 2023

NEWS

Multiplayer Tech Test

CoH3 is Coming to Console

DEVELOPER SITREP

British Forces Deep Dive

Stay tuned for our Deutsches Afrikakorps Deep Dive coming in the next couple weeks!

Faction Tech Trees

Want to start theory crafting and learning the ins-and=outs of all four factions before launch? Check out our detailed Tech Trees, now available in the https://www.companyofheroes.com/en/media.

Launch Content & Beyond

PARTNER CONTENT

Coming out of last month’s Tech Test, Greyshot117 seems to think the Italian L6/40 is overpowered! What do you think? Can it dominate the meta at launch?

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Sarge is an old hand at RTS games and has been creating some great new tutorials and videos for both CoH2 and CoH3. In this video he shows off how to turn a tactical retreat into an advantage.

LINKS

Pre-Order CoH3
Official Forums
Steam
Technical Support
YouTube
Twitch
Discord
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Jan 19, 2023

Tech Test CoH-Development Update

Company of Heroes - John_RE

We wanted to thank everyone who took part in our most recent Company of Heroes 3 Multiplayer Tech Test! This was our last push to test our online infrastructure and to nail down any pesky bugs and crashes before we launch on February 23rd. Over 154,000 players took part in the Tech Test, which was four times more than what we had for the Mission Alpha in July! We can’t thank you enough for helping us with this crucial step.

Over the course of the test, we received over 650 bug reports from the community through our new online form. Your testing also helped us identify crashes well before launch so that we can already investigate fixes. All these reports along with your feedback is going to help us deliver a great Company of Heroes experience when we launch just over a month from now!

Objectives & Results

So, what did we want to accomplish with this test? And did we achieve those objectives?

Test server load and overall stability. This includes things like match performance, player logins and overall matchmaking.
Test matchmaking queues and how they worked individually.
Test wider array of different PC setups, hardware and software compatibility, and game client stability.
Optimize the game by discovering and reducing crashes and bugs.
Test client and server-side maintenance and patching.

On all counts, this test was extremely successful for our team. We had 4x our estimated players and we had no server issues. Our average gameplay latency or matchmaking times were both lower than our targets, and we continue to look at ways to improve both. We were able to test over 1,400 different processors and video cards across different hardware setups, and we found and fixed several crashes related to configurations, rendering and game mechanics. Additionally, we found some fun bugs related to AI and economy exploits.

Our data also showed that certain GPU models that are slightly older were experiencing worse performance than they should have been getting. The Tech Test allowed us to identify this issue early, and we’ll continue to make improvements based on that player data and feedback. Our goal is to make the game playable on as many configurations as possible at launch.

After our first hotfix, we were also able to cut our crash rate almost by a third. We’re going to continue this work over the next month to reduce our crash rate even further. No game can ever have a 0% crash rate, but we can try to get close!

The team at Relic accomplished our goals with this test, but we also want to let you know how we plan to tackle your feedback.

Visuals

One of biggest topics of discussion during this Tech Test focused on the look, feel and readability of the game right now. First, the version of the game we used for the Tech Test was about a month old, and a major lighting pass wasn’t quite ready for this build of the game, but you’ll see updated versions in our upcoming Deep Dives. We’ve also identified a couple of key issues that were contributing to degraded visuals. For some users, game scaling was defaulting to a Low setting, meaning they were seeing subpar resolutions and blurriness. Additionally, we found two rendering and map bugs that were causing lighting shadow artifacts and missing terrain details, so we really appreciate everyone calling these out! We have most of these fixes internally already and look forward to showing the game again closer to launch.

Before: Tech Test with bugs

After: Latest version with bugs now fixed

Before: Tech Test with bugs

After: Latest version with bugs now fixed

Additionally, we plan to start vehicles in a state that is slightly more weathered, so they don't feel as 'clean' when they are first produced.

Before: Original vehicle starting state

After: New vehicle starting state - slight weathering

Reference: Full weathering state

Audio

There was a lot of discussion about CoH3’s sound design and some concerns that it didn’t quite meet expectations. We found an issue where Sound Output Quality was defaulting to Low or Medium for some players instead of High, which would significantly degrade the audio experience. We approached CoH3’s sound design with an emphasis on realism with gunshots and explosions having more of a “crack,” whereas past CoH titles had more of an old-school Hollywood “kapow!” Therefore, the team is re-working and optimizing several audio FX including cannons, machineguns, explosions, off-map artillery and more to give them that heavy impact. Not only that, but the team is working on the final audio mix and will be completely re-mixing the audio for all our tanks for launch.

Settings & Controls

We’re happy to be providing more quality-of-life options for players including things like WASD camera controls, customizable keybinds, and more camera settings. We did see that some players had frustrations when navigating those settings menus or when things weren’t controlling in-game as they were used to in CoH1 or CoH2. Your feedback has been critical in identifying those pain points, and we hope to improve on those systems post-launch.

Post-Launch

Finally, we know there’s been a ton of discussion about balance, systems, unit abilities and more. Though this recent test was more focused on testing our online infrastructure, all these discussions are giving us a head start on fixes, balance patches and quality-of-life changes that we want to address in the first few weeks and months after launch. We’re continuing to work on features and systems we know players want, and your feedback is helping to shape and inform what those systems look like, and we want to deliver them in the best state possible without compromising the core game at launch. We’ll have more news on some of those big post-launch updates as soon as we have all the details.

Be sure to keep your feedback coming in the weeks and months ahead, as that’s going to help us prioritize it and continue improving this game and franchise that we all love so much. From everyone at Relic, thank you for taking part in the Multiplayer Tech Test and we can’t wait for you to play the full game at launch.

Jan 19, 2023

Tech Test CoH-Development Update

Company of Heroes 2 - John_RE

Objectives & Results

So, what did we want to accomplish with this test? And did we achieve those objectives?

Test server load and overall stability. This includes things like match performance, player logins and overall matchmaking.
Test matchmaking queues and how they worked individually.
Test wider array of different PC setups, hardware and software compatibility, and game client stability.
Optimize the game by discovering and reducing crashes and bugs.
Test client and server-side maintenance and patching.

Visuals

Before: Tech Test with bugs

After: Latest version with bugs now fixed

Before: Tech Test with bugs

After: Latest version with bugs now fixed

Additionally, we plan to start vehicles in a state that is slightly more weathered, so they don't feel as 'clean' when they are first produced.

Before: Original vehicle starting state

After: New vehicle starting state - slight weathering

Reference: Full weathering state

Audio

Settings & Controls

Post-Launch

Jan 11, 2023

Multiplayer Tech Test

Company of Heroes 2 - John_RE

Objectives & Intent

Welcome to the Company of Heroes 3 Multiplayer Tech Test! This is our last big development push before launch and we’re extremely excited to finally get it into your hands.

Your participation will allow us to prepare for launch by testing our infrastructure on a larger scale. The test also helps us identify new bugs and issues that cannot be caught without having thousands of people playing the game at the same time.

Your feedback during this test is critical. Though the game is essentially ready for launch, your feedback on your experience - everything from faction balance to units to systems and more - will help inform fixes and patches in the first few weeks and months of the game’s life. This will also help us iterate on quality-of-life improvements, feature priorities, future iterations of gameplay elements and content.

Test Objectives

Server load and stability

Match performance - server calls during matches
Logins - server is capable of handling large numbers of player logins
Matchmaking - server can match players quickly and efficiently based on our parameters

Queue testing

We will be changing access to certain game modes during the Multiplayer Tech Test to monitor how the queues work individually. This will vary with the number of players testing at any given point in time and will be communicated in Community Spaces (forums, Discord) and social media.

Client stability & compatibility testing

A large group of players testing the game with different PC set-ups will give us the chance to test a lot more hardware and software configurations than we would ever be able to do with our team. We will be focusing on learning about:

Hardware issues

Software configuration issues
Crashes - We will be monitoring crash reports to ensure CoH3 is optimized for as many configurations as possible. Help us by filling in the Bugsplat report should you get one! Our team reads every single one of these and the more information we get, the better we can understand the issue.

Bug Reporting

With a large group of players, we are going to be able to discover new bugs and issues that we never had the chance to encounter during internal testing. This will help us squash as many critical issues in the launch window as possible. {LINK REMOVED} Be sure to select “Report Feedback or Bug” under “Nature of Enquiry.”

Client and server maintenance & patching

As we plan to support CoH3 for a long time, we are using this test to make sure we are ready to deliver updates and perform maintenance without a hitch. We will be testing this both on the client side (when you need to download a patch through Steam) and on the server side (when the update is deployed via our servers and downloaded in-game).

Available Features

Mission Zero – First time launch tutorial (skippable). Note that there are many tutorials and first-time-user tooltips that will not be present in this test, but you will be able to experience them at launch.
As this test is Multiplayer focused, Tactical Pause will not be available. However, at launch, Tactical Pause will be available in the singleplayer Dynamic Campaign Map in Italy, in the North African Operation, and in singleplayer Skirmish.
Multiplayer Modes & Skirmish vs AI:
1v1
2v2
3v3
4v4
All 4 Launch Factions
US Forces
Wehrmacht
British Forces
Deutsches Afrikakorps
All 12 Launch Battlegroups
US Forces: Airborne, Armored and Special Operations Battlegroups
Wehrmacht: Luftwaffe, Mechanized and Breakthrough Battlegroups
British Forces: Indian Artillery, Armored Support and Air & Sea Battlegroups
Deutsches Afrikakorps: Armored Support, Italian Combined Arms and Italian Infantry Battlegroups
Maps (Note: We will have more multiplayer maps included for launch!)
1v1
Road to Tunis
Twin Beaches
2v2
Pachino Farmlands
Torrente
3v3
Gazala Landing Ground
L'Aquila
4v4
Mignano Gap
Winter Line
Automatch & Custom Games
Victory Point Mode
Annihilation (see note below)

Schedule

Registration
January 4th – January 13th
Playtest registration can be found on the CoH3 Steam store page here.

Multiplayer Tech Test
Wednesday, Jan 11th @ 10am PT to Monday, Jan 16th @ 10am PT

Planned Downtime
January 12th from 1pm PT to 3pm PT
Dependent on player numbers

Backup Downtime
January 13th – 10am PT to 12pm PT
We will only use this downtime if we did not conduct maintenance on January 12th
Dependent on player numbers

Once the planned downtime is complete, we will be providing access to the Annihilation victory condition.

Player Feedback

For those that have been with us since we first revealed Company of Heroes 3, you know we want to hear your feedback and you know we take it seriously. Please share your thoughts and concerns, as that’s how we continue to improve CoH3 in the days ahead.

As a reminder, we won’t be able to make any major design, feature, or gameplay changes before our official launch on February 23rd. However, your feedback will inform future iterations, balance changes and patches in the weeks and months ahead. Our team’s focus for launch will be to squash any newly discovered critical bugs and crashes – anything that’s a showstopper. For example, if your game consistently fails to launch, that is something we need to know about so we can fix it before launch.

You can fill out this survey after you have played the Multiplayer Tech Test to help us continue our work on CoH3! {LINK REMOVED}

You can leave your feedback on the community forums here.
Or on our official Discord: https://discord.gg/companyofheroes

Where to Report Bugs

{LINK REMOVED} Be sure to select “Report Feedback or Bug” under “Nature of Enquiry.”

Should your game crash and you receive a Bugsplat screen, please add as many details as possible in the comment box and click “Send Error Report.” Like we said, our team reads every single Bugsplat report we receive, so please submit them as they help us track and resolve issues!

Known Issues & Bugs

To replay the tutorial mission, you will need to delete your save file under Documents > My Games > Company of Heroes 3 - Playtest
If a user begins a game in a Custom lobby and a player tries to join after that lobby is no longer available, they may encounter a crash.
Twin Beaches has the incorrect territory point income and Victory point count.
Battlegroups may show as pink placeholder boxes after finishing an automatch game.
If a player leaves while a match is loading, there may be an error loading match stats afterwards.
There is a slight chance that if the host of a lobby searches for an automatch game, then fails the search and leaves the party, once they try to rejoin they will not see themselves in the lobby.
If a lobby host selects “Start Match” as a player is changing their Faction selection, they may load into the game with Battlegroups that do not function.
The Smoke Launcher ability on the Panzer III cannot be used more than once.
When certain units pick up a team weapon from a different faction, they may use that unit’s voice lines.
White Phosphorus tracer rounds have the wrong color.
The 251 Medium Carrier is missing a voiceline to indicate when Auto-Reinforce is enabled or disabled.
Stuka Anti-Tank Loiter ability is not functioning as intended.
All Loiter abilities are targeting units in a larger area of effect than intended.
Constructing and repairing may cause certain units to t-pose.
Text chat box may get wider than intended when typing long messages.
Wehrmacht Sniper is missing Veterancy descriptions.

FAQ

How do I sign up for the Multiplayer Tech Test?
Visit the official Company of Heroes 3 Steam store page here and scroll down to this prompt.

Click “Request Access” - if it is before the test has begun on January 11th, you will be notified that you have been registered. Once the test begins, we will be providing access to all players. The test will not be restricted or limited in any way to anyone that has registered. After the test is live on January 11th, if you have clicked “Request Access,” you should now have a prompt to download the test.

I've requested access but I can't seem to play or can't find the game?
If you've followed the steps above, the game should be in your Steam library. Open your library and search for Company of Heroes 3 - Multiplayer Tech Test.

Do I need to pre-order Company of Heroes 3 to access the Multiplayer Tech Test?
No. The Multiplayer Tech Test will be available for free to any Steam user that wishes to have access. Request access and download the test using the steps above.

Are you limiting access to the Multiplayer Tech Test?
No. You don’t need to “stand in line” or wait your turn to get access. All players who have requested access will be granted it once the test begins on January 11th. We may be limiting modes as we test our servers (outlined above under Queue Testing), but we will not limit player access.

How long is the Multiplayer Tech Test running for?
The Multiplayer Tech Test will begin on Wednesday, January 11th at 10am PT and will close on Monday, January 16th at 10am PT.

How do I report a bug?
{LINK REMOVED} Be sure to select “Report Feedback or Bug” under “Nature of Enquiry.”

Where can I leave feedback?
You can leave us feedback on our official forums here.
You can also join the discussion or look for teammates on our official Discord server here: https://discord.gg/companyofheroes

How can I get help with a technical issue?
You can view our knowledge portal here.
You can also submit a ticket to {LINK REMOVED}

Will the Multiplayer Tech Test support WASD camera control or customizable keys?
Yes, full WASD camera controls will be available, along with the ability to customize keys.

Will the Multiplayer Tech Test support localization in other languages?
No, but all localization will be available for launch on February 23rd. You can find the list of all supported languages on our Steam page.

What are the minimum and recommended hardware specifications for CoH3?

Minimum:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: Intel i5 6th-gen or AMD Ryzen desktop processor with 4 cores @3GHz, or equivalent performance
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950, AMD Radeon R9 370, or equivalent performance
Storage: 40 GB available space

Recommended:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel i7 8th-gen or AMD Ryzen desktop processor with 8 cores @ 3GHz or equivalent performance
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, AMD Radeon RX 5600, or equivalent performance
Storage: 40 GB available space

If you're still reading this, we thank you for being a dedicated Company of Heroes player and helping us to make the best game possible! See you on January 11th!

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