Company of Heroes 3 News

On June 6th, our team is releasing the next update for Company of Heroes 3, Brass Leopard (1.1.5), which focuses on quality-of-life improvements, gameplay changes, bug fixes and more. We showed a sneak preview of this mid-sized update in one of our last developer livestreams. You can check it out here. This will be a high-level overview of everything coming in Brass Leopard, with more detailed patch notes releasing tomorrow.

Find all the details below, or you can watch this quick summary:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]OVERVIEW [/h2]
Brass Leopard will include:

• A new 3vs3 map in Co-op Automatch, Skirmish and Custom Games
  
• Changes to Gameplay
  
• Quality of Life improvements
  
• Audio improvements
  
• Mod Tool improvements
  
• Bug Fixes
  

[h2]NEW CONTENT [/h2]
Brass Leopard will include the new 3vs3 map Catania Crossing, which is very reminiscent of The Scheldt from the original Company of Heroes.

• This map will be available in Co-Op Automatch, singleplayer Skirmish, or via Custom Games.
  
• This map will not be coming to Player vs Player Automatch.
  

Catania Crossing, though more Co-Op focused, was a map we worked on earlier in development and was already near completion. Since it was now ready, we decided to make it available to players to offer more variety as soon as possible. It was designed as a cooperative map for more social experiences, and not necessarily for the highest levels of competitive play. As such, we felt it best to leave it out of PvP automatch.

We know our PvP fans are eager to see more maps in the automatch pool, and we’re happy to say that the next update will bring two new maps to all modes. One is a 3vs3 and the other is a 4vs4. We hope to have more news on those soon.

[h2]GAMEPLAY CHANGES [/h2]
All plane and loiter abilities have been overhauled, thanks in no small part to DevM (Miguel M). There are too many changes to cover here, but in summary, planes should look, feel and respond better, while maintaining the immersion we want players to experience in-game. Be sure to review the upcoming Brass Leopard patch notes for all the granular details.

Here’s a preview:

• Plane timings have been standardized
  
• Animations are more realistic
  
• Crashes and debris have more impact
  
• Terrain deformation from bombs & bombing runs is better
  
• Projectiles are faster and more accurate
  
• Paradrops are now invincible
  
• Units acquired with a Mark Target ability now have an indicator
  
• Loiters now display a ground indicator for their area-of-effect
  

[h2]QUALITY-OF-LIFE IMPROVEMENTS [/h2]
We’ve introduced several quality-of-life improvements based on our Development Priorities map and the feedback we’ve been seeing from players.

[h3]Event Cues[/h3]
Event cues have been updated to be more player-friendly and less intrusive with their on-screen real estate. They have also had their priority adjusted so that less important cues won’t override more critical ones. Additionally, event cue boxes will now allow players to click and select units behind them.

[h3]Player Names, UI & Team Colors [/h3]
Units will now display the player name of their owner in the unit card. As in past CoH games, you can now bind a hotkey to toggle player names displayed under unit decorators. Player names under unit decorators can now be toggled on or off for the first time in the series – you can find this in the Settings menu.

We’ve also done a lot of work to unify how team colors and unique player colors work throughout the game. These will now apply to player names and unit health bars on the unit card. Territory flag and capture UI will now use team colors over unique colors to reduce confusion.

Players will no longer be able to instantly tell which Battlegroup other players have selected by checking the Player List. This will now display all the Battlegroups in each player’s loadout.

[h3]Camera Zoom[/h3]
Based on player feedback, we’ve made some adjustments to the camera height while in a match. When you begin, the camera height will still default to its current position, however using the mouse scroll wheel, you can now zoom out an additional 5 meters. We feel this is a happy medium to give players some added flexibility while still ensuring the game feels like Company of Heroes.

[h3]Stability[/h3]
Our team has done some work to help remove frustration that arises when a player desyncs from a match. Desyncs will now only disconnect the player that caused it, instead of ending the game for everyone in the same match. This should help with match and game stability across the board and alleviate griefing from players that purposefully force desyncs.

[h2]AUDIO[/h2]
Several audio fixes and changes have gone into Brass Leopard. Many weapon and vehicle effects have been corrected or improved, such as the US Forces M1919 Browning, Sherman tank, and the Axis Flak36. The team continues to work to improve on the audio mix overall. We’ve also updated several intel announcements to ensure players are receiving the information they need during the most critical parts of a game.

[h2]MODDING TOOLS[/h2]
This update will also include a small number of fixes to the modding tools to help reduce some pain points for our modders. Most notably, we are also introducing “ability achetypes” which are templates that can be cloned to easily create variations using custom properties. In plain English, this is a state tree workaround. We will include more details in the patch notes, but we hope these changes will empower our modders to create more complex and fun mods for players to check out in the near future.

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]
One of our primary goals right now is to improve the overall quality of the CoH3 experience for all our players. That means we aim to bring as many bug fixes as possible in each update, and Brass Leopard is no exception. We have several fixes coming for maps, gameplay, art, audio and more to help bolster the game. Additionally, both the Dynamic Italian Campaign and the North African Operation will be getting several bug fixes for our singleplayer fans. You can find the line-by-line details and all the other bug fixes in our patch notes tomorrow.


[h2]CONCLUSION [/h2]
We can’t wait to see and hear your feedback once you go hands-on with Brass Leopard! Be sure to jump into our official forums or Discord to discuss the update with other players and to leave us your thoughts. As always, your feedback helps inform our focus and helps guide the future of Company of Heroes 3. Don't forget that we've outlined our road ahead here. Our Community team will be hosting a live Q&A session on Brass Leopard on June 15th on Twitch, so be sure to tune in!

As you can imagine, last week has been a difficult week for our team, and we want to thank players for their support and positive messages as we took a few days to regroup. Today we want to address a highly discussed topic in our community — what’s next for Company of Heroes 3? As mentioned in the message posted to Relic’s Twitter, Relic and SEGA are fully committed to supporting Company of Heroes 3 on PC and console. We know there are areas of the game not meeting your, or our, expectations, and we will continue to iterate, improve, and communicate with you as we take on your feedback and plan future updates. Please understand that following this week’s studio events we are still adapting and organizing, and our goal is to answer some of your questions on our upcoming priorities and game updates as best we can.



[h2]Company of Heroes 3 Console Edition release[/h2]
Console Edition is releasing tomorrow, and we’re excited to welcome new players to our community. A welcoming, supportive, and growing community will allow us to continue supporting our game for years to come.

[h2]Brass Leopard PC Update (1.1.5)[/h2]
This update is on target to release on June 6th and will include a new 3vs3 co-op map, changes to gameplay (including Planes and Loiters), quality-of-life improvements, audio improvements, mod tool improvements and several bug fixes. You can check out our preview livestream here. We will be posting patch notes and a more robust overview closer to the release.

[h2]Emerald Bear PC Update (1.2.0)[/h2]
The Emerald Bear PC update following Brass Leopard is in its alpha stage and is planned for release in July. We will share more details about its contents once we complete our final testing. This patch is too far along in development to change any of its priorities; however, we are already reassessing priorities for subsequent updates. Once everything is locked in, we’ll share its release date and give you a sneak peek at what’s coming. Based on community feedback, we've dropped "Operation" from our update names to reduce any confusion about their size or scope

[h2]Communications Cadence[/h2]
We intend to adhere to a more regular schedule of communications to ensure our players are kept up to date on all the latest news and updates.

• Bi-weekly Wire Reports (starting June 9th) – these blog posts will aggregate news about the game along with the best player content we’re seeing. It will include answers to frequently asked questions, and occasional insights from our developers.
  
• Bi-weekly livestreams (starting June 15th) – showcases, play sessions, Q&As with the Dev team, and more.
  

Be sure to let our team know what you think of our future updates, the sneak peeks, the before/afters we’ve showcased, and our livestream previews from Brass Leopard. If you liked these types of previews, we’ll aim to have more in the future!


Our team is committed to supporting Company of Heroes 3, and part of that support is building trust with our players and community. As mentioned above, we are reviewing and reassessing all our priorities for the game that are not already locked in for the June and July updates. You can see below that our Development Priorities roadmap has been adapted to reflect what content is coming, what is back on the table, and what has needed to shift.



There are a lot of topics on the table right now and plenty of conversations for our team to have. Those include (in no order of priority): additional multiplayer maps, a replay feature, vote to surrender, additional balance updates, planning for additional content, and how/when we could integrate community-made maps to the game.

We are also working on a longer-term roadmap to share with all of you, which will include descriptions of planned content and target dates. We are aiming to release this roadmap shortly after the July 1.2.0 PC update.

This overview is just the beginning, and we understand it does not cover every concern that the community has raised. What hasn’t changed is our team’s commitment to supporting Company of Heroes 3 and continuing to improve the experience for all our players. Thank you again for your kind messages and continued support as we focus on the road ahead. Join us tomorrow to welcome our new console fans to the community and get ready for next week’s Brass Leopard PC Update!

As a member of our CoH3 player community we would be very grateful if you could take 5 minutes of your time to complete this survey.

Your insights will guide our decision making process as we continue to support and enhance CoH3 alongside our players.


Follow this link to begin your survey.

CoH3 Player Survey


Thank you for being a part of this journey with us!

Since the launch of Company of Heroes 3 in February, our team has received considerable player feedback, data, and information. Our principal focus has been on fixing urgent issues through hotfixes and supporting and improving your gameplay experience with larger updates.

With Operation Sapphire Jackal, we fixed over a thousand issues & bugs. In the same update, we also brought Challenges, Merit, and cosmetics to the game. These were not received as well as we hoped, notably due to a lack of transparent communication based on the feedback that you were giving us and our own team’s priorities.

So, we’ve reorganized, and we hope you will see improvements in our communication in the coming weeks as we are planning to give more insight into what happens behind the scenes during the live development of CoH3.

We’ve already begun this process with last week’s livestream where we offered insight into how our Design team approached the latest Balance Update. Additionally, we want to show you more of what is in the works at Relic for our next update. We saw quite a bit of feedback on our Development Priorities list, so we hope that this post today also provides insight into how we make decisions.

We are dedicated to supporting this game for years to come and our aim is to strengthen player trust with effective communication and action to back it up, as we continue to make CoH3 the best experience for all our players.




Our April Development Priorities

We wanted to provide more clarity on what “Development Priorities” means to our team, and what players can expect. What do the different columns mean? How are these items and features prioritized? Why are some items not listed here? Hopefully, we can answer some of those questions.

[h2]On Target [/h2]

Last-minute technical problems notwithstanding, you should expect these items to be in the next one or two updates. That is the Soon™ list!

[h2]In Development [/h2]

In the In Development phase, we are actively working on these items. However, they may not be slated for an upcoming release/update, or the timing of their delivery is still being nailed down. These items will be scheduled for a release as soon as they’re completed, or moved to On Target once we have a better idea of when we can deliver them.

[h2]Scouting [/h2]

Items in the Scouting phase are in development but will need more time before you see them in game. We may be at the design phase, are still scoping it, or working on prototypes. Sometimes items in Scouting will be a larger undertaking for the team. For example, a new Expansion!

[h2]Subject to change [/h2]

During development, unforeseen technical issues or new unplanned priorities might come up. This can impact any item on our Development Priorities list. These items might then be moved off of the list until they are closer to release.

[h2]What if the item I care about is not on the Development Priorities list? [/h2]

This is meant to be a high-level list and is not representative of everything we are working on. With this list, we want to share the items that we know our team can deliver in a reasonable time and that players are interested in. Some larger features might take a while longer to show up on our Development Priorities, especially if they’re in very early stages, but they are likely still on our radar!



Progress since the March Development Priorities list

[h2]Released in Operation Sapphire Jackal [/h2]

• Hundreds of bugfixes and improvements
  
• Challenges, Merit and Cosmetics
  
• The gameplay changes originally planned for that update were released earlier with the 1.0.5 balance hotfix, but our communications didn’t reflect it properly.
  

[h2]Released after Operation Sapphire Jackal [/h2]

• Hotfixes and stability patches
  
• Balance update
  

[h2]Moved Items[/h2]

• Several items were moved up to On Target and In Development

[h2]On hold [/h2]

Because we want to work on critical improvements to the game, we had to shift focus from some of the additional accessibility features we were working on. The work is just on hold for now until we are ready to get back to it and was removed from the list.

The most recent Development Priorities list, as shown on last week's livestream

[h2]Balance Update[/h2]

• We released a Balance Update last week on April 20th
  

[h2]Next update[/h2]

• Remaining On Target items will be included in the next PC update.
  

As outlined in the above list, our focus right now is on improving the overall gameplay experience, rolling out fixes, adding additional quality-of-life features, and bringing new content to Company of Heroes 3. This means some requested items like Replays, Observer Mode or Ranked seasons aren’t on our short-term list for now. Those features are still important to us, but we feel that focusing first on improving the overall quality of the game will have a much larger impact on all our players' experience in CoH3.

Hopefully, this rundown of the Development Priorities list sheds some light on how our team prioritizes features, defines what those mean, explains how items make the list, and outlines when you can expect them to be delivered. Our team hopes to continue sharing more insights like this in the weeks and months ahead via blogs, developer livestreams, and more. Our next update to the Development Priorities list will come shortly after our next major update, Operation: CLASSIFIED, which is in the works. Stay tuned and we will have more information for you soon!