Amazing job guys, a number of us at the studio were watching the action. Quite a bit of excitement on our end to say the least. Great event!
(I can't believe I didn't mention this on the stream yesterday)
I watched the final games aswell and for the first time in my (short) COH2 history I actually enjoyed watching the game and I really had the 'I want more feeling'. The addiction feeling, the feeling that gets people hyped.
Observer mode is the main culprit. It adds another dimension to the game. I'm not only referring to the 'live' part. But mainly to the user interface. It's smaller, simpler AND gives you all the information required. It shows you so much more of the game and makes the viewer able to focus of what actually is going on.
That's an issue with the ingame UI, it's dominant, distracting, has a lot of attention drawing notifications of low priority events. In Vcoh you had all your 'macro intel' on the left. (Resources/minimap/doctrine progress) and your action buttons on the right. This was a simple and straightforward UI. In COH2 it's scattered a bit everywhere around your screen.
It just makes the player struggle with himself and the game, instead of his opponent. Which is the factor he should be struggling with. I don't want to fight this struggle, that's what made me turn off everytime I tried to pick up the game and learn it.
PS: Thx APF for the bigger xp kickers, although a really small feat, it actually adds CLARITY to the game. Yeah clarity, that's the word. It's what the game could use more of.
In the end I guess i'm just trying to describe the same thing as Inverse in his post: #MakeMeWantToPlayCOH2