The Hard Talk: Community Contributors

The excitement for ESL has been low because they are catering to the same small group of players each week. Increased prizes will do very little to help.

Poor seeding and the same EU players in the NA brackets all lead to a stacked system.

Relic/ESL needs to restrict players to either the NA or EU tournament.

They should have done an upper and lower league to encourage new players to get involved and gain experience in competitive play. At minimum make it double elimination with a loser's bracket so players have a chance to play a couple competitive games.

Blocking out an afternoon to end up playing a level 500+ player in round 1 then playing a top 10 player in round 2 isn't fun for anyone. I get more competitive games just playing automatch.

Fuck oath! Excuse my Australianism; thats our way of saying +1

Edit:
Also, guys, word to the wise, if you want to bicker and fight eachother, I recommend a private forum, away from new visitors.

No one wants to see this shite on the front page

I do, forum fights by people who dont play the game and think they're important are extremely entertaining.

Can you point me out where I said that?

[...]

I don't give a rats ass about money, I play the game because I like it, I contributed to this site because I thought it had potential and I'm working on V3E where NO ONE gets money because I like doing what I do. Fuck me even if he did decide to pay us out, do you think I'd have the balls to claim a dime? Artists, referees, these are the guys with the hard jobs. Think before you try to turn this on me mate.

Oh what a pitiful response. No, my battle-station is unable to take screenshots as fast and continuously as you and Rogers1337 can spam the chats, but being a former semi-fan of Rogers, I've tried to strike up conversations with you two in chat. I do have a memory though.

And don't hide behind the "but I'm doing this for all the people who are *actually* awesome, not me I suck lol" bastardisation of the humblebrag method.

If you think a viable economical ecosystem is that one guy who occasionally rolls in to do monetised events gets to keep half of what the revenue is, without even considering the people working on his site 24/7 because they love the game, then recheck your values.

A financial ecosystem is one thing and one thing only; the economically motivated repetition of action.

You don't get that by spreading 5 Euros here or there, or by Ami sending signed thank you cards of himself in dirty underwear to the contributors. You get it by making it worth the while for event locomotives.

When you reach a certain age or get children and family, you need money to justify doing even what you love for a considerable amount of time. Just about anyone can see that, but some people's emotions seems to keep them from including that in their reasoning.

Heyo,

it is like christmas eve in here, when everybody is a bit drunk and tells his family members what he really thinks of them. Well here is my two cent:

Of course did ami screw up with relic in the yoink stream (why on hell yoink had to put it online anyway, i will never understand). Of course Ami can be annoying - probably more than other people - but that is mostly because he cares and he wants to create. You can´t have one without the other. He is an perfectionist and he tries to up the production value. I truely understand, that if relics offers him a WFA key for a big tournament like OCF, it is like treating him like a child. Maybe it was from relics side still deserved after the yoink incident, but now it should stop.

What i am trying to say is: I dont care if ami is "two-faced", he is such a prominent figure in the community because "he gets shit done" and without him there wouldn´t be ESL or any competitive scene of coh2.

Best Regards

awa59b

PS: I think ami hates puppies, even the fluffy ones...

This was the most honest and best answer in this thread thank you!

Heyo,

it is like christmas eve in here, when everybody is a bit drunk and tells his family members what he really thinks of them. Well here is my two cent:

Of course did ami screw up with relic in the yoink stream (why on hell yoink had to put it online anyway, i will never understand). Of course Ami can be annoying - probably more than other people - but that is mostly because he cares and he wants to create. You can´t have one without the other. He is an perfectionist and he tries to up the production value. I truely understand, that if relics offers him a WFA key for a big tournament like OCF, it is like treating him like a child. Maybe it was from relics side still deserved after the yoink incident, but now it should stop.

What i am trying to say is: I dont care if ami is "two-faced", he is such a prominent figure in the community because "he gets shit done" and without him there wouldn´t be ESL or any competitive scene of coh2.

Best Regards

awa59b

PS: I think ami hates puppies, even the fluffy ones...

+1/2

It's like having your in-laws over for Christmas.
But I agree with most of what you said. Lets agree to disagree to agree for a better future honestly. We all want CoH2 to do better in one way or another, best to work for progress through action, though it's good to lay down some facts, whether it be Relic or the Community.

The excitement for ESL has been low because they are catering to the same small group of players each week. Increased prizes will do very little to help.

Poor seeding and the same EU players in the NA brackets all lead to a stacked system.

Relic/ESL needs to restrict players to either the NA or EU tournament.

They should have done an upper and lower league to encourage new players to get involved and gain experience in competitive play. At minimum make it double elimination with a loser's bracket so players have a chance to play a couple competitive games.

Blocking out an afternoon to end up playing a level 500+ player in round 1 then playing a top 10 player in round 2 isn't fun for anyone. I get more competitive games just playing automatch.

I strongly agree with this as well, the majority of people that try multiplayer aren't enticed to try ESL considering the amount of pr0s vying for the tournament prizes provided, including myself. NA/EU need to be separate, unless there's a joint tourney for it, and there should be a beginners, intermediate, and pr0 tournament revolving around ESL, hopefully this can be done in the future, for now I like how we've been able to startup ESL again successfully.

Yikes, jealously and envy run rampant in this thread. Very sad to see.

I strongly agree with this as well, the majority of people that try multiplayer aren't enticed to try ESL considering the amount of pr0s vying for the tournament prizes provided, including myself. NA/EU need to be separate, unless there's a joint tourney for it, and there should be a beginners, intermediate, and pr0 tournament revolving around ESL, hopefully this can be done in the future, for now I like how we've been able to startup ESL again successfully.

Best post on here.

If we REALLY want ESL to affect the growth of the game, we've got to get more than just the top 50 players to participate somehow (other than watching). I love watching these guys play...don't get me wrong...but man I would be so pumped to play in a tourney I could actually compete in.

i initially applied as coder. was put on staff as referee. did my job as referee. admittedly not a lot of work, but never got thanked either.

Seb is the guy to contact for that. No idea who you talked with before, but I know we are looking for coders. The problem is that we are very careful about it. Trust is an issue, I am afraid. Seb prefers people whom he, or the other coders, already know or people already on staff.

as for coding, i had several ideas and had at least half implemented quite a fee of them. for example in aplha/beta i wrote a program to automatically extract unit stats and put them in a sql db. it wasnt finished, but it could have automated thr process of extracting unit stats. you could have had a patch comparison. your stats would always be up to date. and we could have had it on coh2.org pretty much on release (or at least not long after). i also had an idea for an android app. or if you go back and look at the website feedback threads, i posted a few bugs and/or bugfixes. but i never got to be a coder. never got access to the coder tools.

I am very sorry to hear that, cr4wler.

Should you still wish to be a coder, you may PM Seb about it. If nothing else, you should get to know why you weren't selected the first time around.

Best post on here.

If we REALLY want ESL to affect the growth of the game, we've got to get more than just the top 50 players to participate somehow (other than watching). I love watching these guys play...don't get me wrong...but man I would be so pumped to play in a tourney I could actually compete in.

Same here I would like to play with people around my skill level. Where both players have roughly the same chance to win.

They could add all your five factions ELO or how many you have rank with average that and get "tourney" rank. From there we can have three different groups where players would face similar players of skill.

Just a quick idea...

Holy cow.
In the beginning I was a bit worried about this topic from ipkay as a headline article.
Now, looking at this discussion, this has become a complete mess. Sth not really healthy.

Would you not be able to talk about this to each other or together much simpler, rather than publicly fighting?

To me as an outsider this is irritating and painful to watch.
I guess talking would help. my 5cent.

[...] there should be a beginners, intermediate, and pr0 tournament revolving around ESL, hopefully this can be done in the future [...]

Maybe I have got it completely wrong, but isn't this what Relic/Kyle implicitly said they'd do in the stream? A monthly tourney with big prizes and weekly with low prizes, right? Can't compete in both. This would effectively split the pool of competitors, based on their own estimations. Seems really smart to me.

So I've probably got it wrong MVGame Kappa PogChamp KodachromeForExpert

[...] Would you not be able to talk about this to each other or together much simpler, rather than publicly fighting?

To me as an outsider this is irritating and painful to watch.
I guess talking would help. my 5cent.

I don't think Ami could privately give Von Kluge an answer that would satisfy him or those who agree with him, so all they can do is be publicly vocal about it. And oh boy are they that. But yes, it is indeed painful.

Seb is the guy to contact for that. No idea who you talked with before, but I know we are looking for coders. The problem is that we are very careful about it. Trust is an issue, I am afraid. Seb prefers people whom he, or the other coders, already know or people already on staff.



I am very sorry to hear that, cr4wler.

Should you still wish to be a coder, you may PM Seb about it. If nothing else, you should get to know why you weren't selected the first time around.

We have been in contact before (it was more than 3 years ago if my memory serves me right, at the very launch of the site), and it was my fault for failing to find a timely solution to the issues we faced regarding the introduction of new coders.

cr4wler was not selected because we didn't know him well enough to give him the kind of access we would have had to.

I wouldn't say the situation now is where I would dream it to be, but definitely improved over time, and will keep improving.

We are indeed (passively) looking for coders and will consider any application (which can also be just a discussion), but I would understand if he did not have any interest in joining us anymore.

That said, I don't think COH2.ORG can be blamed for preventing him (or anyone else) from contributing to the community. A "unit stats" webpage as he described could have been entirely coded without access to our own code, and there are also plenty of ways it could have been hosted on the net (including here, if the final product was ever presented to us).

this thread seems to have... taken a turn for the worse!

YeeEAAAHHH!!!

i was going to lock it but i can't so...

Okay.

Let the dinosaur of the community speak. I feel I am in a unique place and have perspective few others actually do to comment here. As I have been a troll and salt monster as of late. Let me me try to structure my problems with Ami and what not. I am not sure why I am typing but I guess I am bored enough and still give a slight shit enough to explain myself.

I had been an active member of this Company of Heroes community since 2006. I believe the alpha was in late 2005, or Summer of 06 I can't remember. I started casting in 2007, after listening to some great casters of the alpha. I loved the game dearly. It was the best RTS experience I had ever had. GameReplays.Org was the shizznit back in the day. After a time, I found Tales of Heroes. Bridger and Vitensby. The Knowledge Guru, met the sports/radio caster. Gods of casting. They did more for Company of Heroes as a franchise than I believe to this day anyone has ever done. They pioneered, I can't imagine if twitch, or even you tube would have been as prominent as it is now when they started. Sad thing is most of you have no idea who they were or what they did. That's okay. They did it because the loved it. Bridger spent hours, days, weeks months editing trying to start a network for a small but successful game that didn't end up panning out. They PLAYED the game, they LOVED the game. They never asked for anything.

My own story coincides with theirs. I casted for a long while when Dinosaurs roamed the earth and you had to make mp3 files, and MANUALLY sync them with the replays (Yeah, annoying). I eventually headed up a very active shout casting section of GR.org with my friend Somebloke and we ran the section well for I believe a year or longer. As time went on, months and almost a year before a patch or any word from
Relic the game started to die a bit and interest died. Opposing Fronts came out and broke the game but
it created excitement and brought people back. Time went on and I kept casting here and there eventually when Tales of Valor released and further broke the game the game basically started dying further. Many people left, GR.org started to gutter out. Years went by COH2 was announced and I got in on the ground level of what we now know as coh2.org. We were all excited. Pounder and I were in our 3rd season of RnP (maybe second I can't remember) and we were looking forward to a site run by fans for fans. No bullshit.

The rest writes itself because that is when many more people came into the community with the second game. Most Vcoh people were not happy with the new game, and I totally understand and respect that. What I don't respect is people who stayed around only to shit talk the game, and the people who enjoyed it. That did enough to hurt the community on early off. But back on topic, passion. We saw it in Tales of Heroes. We saw it in TFN, we saw it in all the greats of shoutcasting past for this small little game that we all banded together so hard to try and make successful. We did it because we loved it. Not to make money. When I was releasing casts on my old rig, it would take 24-48 hours to compile, edit, encode and upload one shoutcast. Whoopadiedo right? Well its tough to manage when you work 48-56 hours and up a week. As I did at the time. Didn't care, loved doing it. I loved doing it for the fans, and I loved doing it for the game which I still cared for.

This is why I have a problem with Ami. I didn't stay in the community (I guess the point is moot now because I am inactive, but whatever my time was spent) for money. I did it because I loved it. Plain and fucking simple. I never asked for anything from Relic, nor anyone. I did it because I wanted to do it. Because I LOVED THE GAME. I played the game, a lot. So fine, you want to turn the website into a success. May the force be with you. OCF was 85-90 percent contributors who saw nothing who made it what it was. Who did it BECAUSE they love the game. They did not expect anything. That is the ONLY reason you were able to host OCF and take home the chunk of change you were able to.

Now here is where people lambaste me and say "You are not relevant anymore" You are just butthurt" " You host your own tourney" to those people I say, sure. Try running a tourney with no contributors. People have tried and failed. If you don't have people who love what they do, in a small gaming community who are generally ONLY going to operate on the love of the game, not money you ain't got shit. OCF happened 100 percent because the community was not only generous enough but ENOUGH PEOPLE WERE WILLING TO COMMIT THEIR TIME TO THE EVENT TO MAKE IT A SUCCESS. It's not about money. Ami you are not going to get anywhere in the gaming world if you walk around with dollar signs on your glasses looking for the next cash grab. People can smell that your heart isn't in it.

I spent 9 years in the Company of Heroes community. I have seen the greats come and go. The greats never asked for a dime. They operated on their passion for the game, and for the community which they also loved dearly. They wanted the game to become a success, so others could enjoy what they enjoyed and slaved hours and hours of their lives away playing and casting,organizing,selling cats etc.

So thanks for organizing OCF I suppose. Don't toot your own horn too hard. I assure you overall everyone else who contributed to make it a success worked harder then you did, and didn't see a penny for it. Not that they cared, because that is what game casting, and a gaming community should be built on. Passion and love for the game. Not dollar signs.

I see the comet coming children. The meteor is almost here, its time for me to shrink back into irrelevance although I will enjoy all the hate I get for this. So with that, I will leave you be. I wish you all the best.
-Rogers
Just another shitty little caster like all the rest.

+1 to what Rogers said.

My main gripe with Ami and $ is that he treats it like a business. That might work for a huge game like LoL or Dota2, but won't work for a niche game like CoH2.

If you truly do it for the love of the game and the community you wouldn't feel the need to be compensated.

You don't see professional salesman trying to sell people plain old atmospheric air and then complaining when no one buys it.

We have been in contact before (it was more than 3 years ago if my memory serves me right, at the very launch of the site), and it was my fault for failing to find a timely solution to the issues we faced regarding the introduction of new coders.

cr4wler was not selected because we didn't know him well enough to give him the kind of access we would have had to.

I wouldn't say the situation now is where I would dream it to be, but definitely improved over time, and will keep improving.

We are indeed (passively) looking for coders and will consider any application (which can also be just a discussion), but I would understand if he did not have any interest in joining us anymore.

That said, I don't think COH2.ORG can be blamed for preventing him (or anyone else) from contributing to the community. A "unit stats" webpage as he described could have been entirely coded without access to our own code, and there are also plenty of ways it could have been hosted on the net (including here, if the final product was ever presented to us).

Why you no just slap da codebase on GitHub, mock up some data, and let da fanbois go wild without any prod/dev middleware/server/db access? Why you no just sit back, eat Belgian cheese, drink wine and review dem quality pull requests? #MVGame