How I feel about paid commanders.

No sorry, haven't watch it, if I understand you correctly one of them used Osttruppen Commander and the other Mechanized assault? Well okay a combination of both might be problematic, although what I've read people have found ways to counter them and no longer think they're OP.

I haven't included every aspect of the game in the analogy (which we can drop now, even I think it went a bit too far ), only the system of free and paid DLCs. Nevertheless I disagree with your statement, I don't think we're this far.

Yes I've acknowledged they're possibly unbalanced when released, but things always get fixed, as you've noticed with this patch like flame halftrack's gotten nerfed, Blitz is now disabled with a damaged engine, 120mm was nerfed a bit, which I all think are nice. And YES some of the changes could have come earlier... As I see things now, Devs are trying to fix stuff as soon as possible and the new commanders were tested in the beta, perhaps they should be tested for a bit longer next time, so we can avoid situations such as these.. All in all I think things are going in the right direction, just a bit more testing before the new releasing. I don't think that situation is so bad that we need tens of topics of pure rant, thank you

Basically, VonIvan went with Ostruppen spam, Sib with Assault Grens and sometimes just Grens. They absolutely kerbstomped AndyIsRipping and IronRoman three times in a row with it - not even a competition. Think they did the same to Hans and Luckystrike. I think we'll see with Ostruppen - personally I don't see how a lot of the strats that were ridiculous with them after the damage hotfix are more balanced now, whether that's the Ginnungagap/Hans spam, FHT and trenchspam, the Semois/Kharkov building rush. At high level play I think there are still a lot of reservations about how balanced Assault Grens are, though I think they just need a bigger call-in cooldown and they'll be fine. The balance considerations for those are only half the story - they also kind of mess up a lot of the core principles of the (early) game in a manner which is basically un-fixable and which affects every player who has to play against them.

I think the issue is the speed/timing of release for all these new commanders and the state in which most of the paid commanders so far have been released. If the same release schedule and standards are kept up, the game is just going to drift from one imbalanced new commander to the next.

Even if they were released in a basically sane and tested state (as Soviet Industry, the FHQ doctrine, Ostruppen and Assault Grens all weren't), they would probably require a month or two in the game before they could be effectively balanced. The poor state of release has further problems in that, when people are paying for them, you can't later remove an ability from a commander to balance it, and a lot of the new commanders seem to have a combination of several useful new abilities plus two of the best of the old ones, whereas the earlier commanders had more of a mixed bag.

The fact that Relic are sugarcoating them by releasing Tales of War commanders for free at the same time only exacerbates the problem of not having any time to balance new commanders properly against the existing game.

All of the balance adjustments you mention I wholeheartedly support (though I think the 120mm didn't need to be pricier - and did they actually remove the blitz with a damaged engine yet?) but none of those were imbalances that made me not want to play. The presence of Soviet Industry, or the Dushka + Mine doctrine or the cheapish insta-vet 3 grens have more or less put me off trying the new patch until I see a fix for them. The topics of pure rant are pretty understandable. I don't think the game is doomed but I do think Relic need to seriously reassess their release schedule and balancing process for new multiplayer content so they can actually reap the benefits of the other balancing work and game improvements they do.

Balancing commanders is made even tricker by the fact that many abilities are shared between several commanders.

Basically, VonIvan went with Ostruppen spam, Sib with Assault Grens and sometimes just Grens. They absolutely kerbstomped AndyIsRipping and IronRoman three times in a row with it - not even a competition. Think they did the same to Hans and Luckystrike. I think we'll see with Ostruppen - personally I don't see how a lot of the strats that were ridiculous with them after the damage hotfix are more balanced now, whether that's the Ginnungagap/Hans spam, FHT and trenchspam, the Semois/Kharkov building rush. At high level play I think there are still a lot of reservations about how balanced Assault Grens are, though I think they just need a bigger call-in cooldown and they'll be fine. The balance considerations for those are only half the story - they also kind of mess up a lot of the core principles of the (early) game in a manner which is basically un-fixable and which affects every player who has to play against them.

I think the issue is the speed/timing of release for all these new commanders and the state in which most of the paid commanders so far have been released. If the same release schedule and standards are kept up, the game is just going to drift from one imbalanced new commander to the next.

Even if they were released in a basically sane and tested state (as Soviet Industry, the FHQ doctrine, Ostruppen and Assault Grens all weren't), they would probably require a month or two in the game before they could be effectively balanced. The poor state of release has further problems in that, when people are paying for them, you can't later remove an ability from a commander to balance it, and a lot of the new commanders seem to have a combination of several useful new abilities plus two of the best of the old ones, whereas the earlier commanders had more of a mixed bag.

The fact that Relic are sugarcoating them by releasing Tales of War commanders for free at the same time only exacerbates the problem of not having any time to balance new commanders properly against the existing game.

All of the balance adjustments you mention I wholeheartedly support (though I think the 120mm didn't need to be pricier - and did they actually remove the blitz with a damaged engine yet?) but none of those were imbalances that made me not want to play. The presence of Soviet Industry, or the Dushka + Mine doctrine or the cheapish insta-vet 3 grens have more or less put me off trying the new patch until I see a fix for them. The topics of pure rant are pretty understandable. I don't think the game is doomed but I do think Relic need to seriously reassess their release schedule and balancing process for new multiplayer content so they can actually reap the benefits of the other balancing work and game improvements they do.

Yeah, I see.

As I've written before, I agree that we can come to a conclusion that the new comms were rushed a bit and next time should be properly tested prior release. I don't mind if they're released in a period of the next month, just that they're thoroughly evened.

Yesterday when I finally manage to play a couple of matches since a week I noticed a couple of things:
the game was smoother, about the 120mm mortars it was actually their range that was bothering me, not the spam, PaK received camouflage as standard (same principle as in vCoH)-when was that added?, no more Blitz for the damaged engines, flame halftrack armor considerably nerfed, AI got buffed acting better (no spam of certain units...)...

The one game I played with Elite troops I haven't got the feeling of major OPness, I managed to vet a Gren squad and a Pz IV (to 1 star only) nothing more, because the fuel costs. And spending 40fuel on 2 vets also caused my armor to come out later which posed a problem, since Soviets were fielding quite a lot of it.

*I correct myself about the camo of the PaK, when I played with Luftwaffe support it had camo option, when I played today with Mechanized doctrine it didn't - can anyone explain it?

You held back on mod support. That feature definitely made coh1 awesome to play when you get tired of the normal game play.

If you think modding ruins games ((I don't know if you do or not)) look at arma 2 with it's Day-Z mod, which increased arma 2 sales.

or maybe look at rome 1 and medieval 2

*I correct myself about the camo of the PaK, when I played with Luftwaffe support it had camo option, when I played today with Mechanized doctrine it didn't - can anyone explain it?

vet gives the camo

LOL love that video it was used for rome 2 launch too... well i just trolling in the community right now. i was a med skill player since COH1 and still is. since my last 2 games with my friends few days ago, where we got no cd AT nades in 1 game and 7 min T70 base rush another. i decide to take a break from this game and move on to BF4 and Xcom enemy within until some day it is not so buggy and less crap to deal with.

I think the idea of comparing this with Call of Duty or Battlefield is a bit off the mark. We're really looking at games as a service more than a title that gets a new full priced game every year or two. We're not going to drop a $70 CoH 3 next year. We intend to support CoH 2 for the long term, even more effectively than we did with the original.

We know that some people don't like DLC, and sometimes that's a fair opinion to have. But what items like the Commanders allow us to do is offer a greater level of support to the base game than we'd have been able to in the past. Free content like new maps, the World Builder and features like Steam Chat lobbies are all built off of support from the DLC. The Turning Point Update is a huge free update to the game, and there's content in there that would not exist if it weren't for paid DLC.

CoH2 was a full game on release, nothing was held back from it. It had as robust a single player campaign as the first, a multiplayer mode like the first and an entire new play experience with Theater of War which lets players play pre-set AI battles and co-op.

We have a long roadmap for the game, and we hope you guys will stick around. There's no need to buy all of the DLC, we don't expect everyone to. Just like we designed the original expansion packs for CoH to be useable if you didn't have the base game and for players who didn't buy the expansion packs to be able to play against those that did, we're dedicated to making sure everyone has a great experience no matter what version of the game or what additional content they may have.

We hope you like the game, we've got really great plans for it.

This really great and really reassuring for me. This is exactly the kind of business model I have been waiting for in an RTS and is exactly the reason why I will continue to support this game and buy the great commanders you are realeasing. It's not 'pay to win' its 'pay to increase strategic possibilities and enjoyment of the game'.

If you make a great game, don't ruin it by changing it completely and releasing an expansion. Work to improve upon it and provide small DLC updates where players can decided exactly what they value and exactly what they are willing to pay for. Which will help you guys understand what the player values and continue to work towards releasing the stuff we want and enjoy.

You will get resistance. New and innovative ideas often do. But once people get used to it, and those shills who will hate it no matter what leave, what we will have is a strong community of players and developers working together to continually make a great game better. It is good to hear this way of game development is here to stay

This really great and really reassuring for me. This is exactly the kind of business model I have been waiting for in an RTS and is exactly the reason why I will continue to support this game and buy the great commanders you are realeasing. It's not 'pay to win' its 'pay to increase strategic possibilities and enjoyment of the game'.

If you make a great game, don't ruin it by changing it completely and releasing an expansion. Work to improve upon it and provide small DLC updates where players can decided exactly what they value and exactly what they are willing to pay for. Which will help you guys understand what the player values and continue to work towards releasing the stuff we want and enjoy.

You will get resistance. New and innovative ideas often do. But once people get used to it, and those shills who will hate it no matter what leave, what we will have is a strong community of players and developers working together to continually make a great game better. It is good to hear this way of game development is here to stay

I read this over and over again until I realized you are just trolling.

I read this over and over again until I realized you are just trolling.

Not even trolling.

Not even trolling.

ಠ_ಠ

If you are not trolling, then my next question is how you can survive in a modern society without any sense of logic or critical thinking.

This really great and really reassuring for me. This is exactly the kind of business model I have been waiting for in an RTS and is exactly the reason why I will continue to support this game and buy the great commanders you are realeasing. It's not 'pay to win' its 'pay to increase strategic possibilities and enjoyment of the game'.

If you make a great game, don't ruin it by changing it completely and releasing an expansion. Work to improve upon it and provide small DLC updates where players can decided exactly what they value and exactly what they are willing to pay for. Which will help you guys understand what the player values and continue to work towards releasing the stuff we want and enjoy.

You will get resistance. New and innovative ideas often do. But once people get used to it, and those shills who will hate it no matter what leave, what we will have is a strong community of players and developers working together to continually make a great game better. It is good to hear this way of game development is here to stay

As far as the model works for the consumer: it's a good business model for single-player content, and for cosmetic multiplayer content. It is an appalling business for a multiplayer RTS because what anyone I face in Automatch has in this game dictates my experience of the multiplayer.

The expansion model allows people to play the base game against other people with the same in a balanced state in terms of options available if they prefer to, while this one does not. Also, compare the value for money you get with The Conquerors or The Titans to what you get for these commanders... it's not even close.

The part of your post I have bolded (Relic's official line) is currently not true of the paid commanders in the state they've been released in. The bugged FHQ bug, Assault grens, Ostruppen and Soviet industry were all so radically overpowered at release that it's basically professionally embarrassing.

Assault Grens and Ostruppen are still not uncontroversial in the community in terms of balance. If Relic want to work with this controversial business model, they have to do a much much better job of playtesting and balancing their content, as well as employing a responsible release and patching schedule driven by integrating it into the rest of the game. I have yet to see them do this.

If some people value commanders that are blatantly above the power curve, should Relic make more overpowered commanders because they probably sell better? I suppose you might also add that what a player values may actually not be what a player wants to be in the game, if you consider people buying one commander to counter another.

Tl/dr: I have already paid for a game. Allowing other people to pay to make my game less fun makes me unable to recommend it to friends, uninterested in playing the game I've paid for and unwilling to purchase any future offerings from Relic. The business model is bad. I would be willing to tolerate it if the developers were implementing it competently. I am waiting to see if something changes in this regard.

If Relic sees the game as a 'service', why didn't they advertise it as a service, or implement the payment model of a service rather than a conventional upfront £30 purchase which is completely inappropriate for this DLC model and borderline misleading for people who pre-ordered it?

As a little aside, whilst I understand and in some parts agree with people who are angry at Relic/Sega, imo the DLC strategy currently employed is a cluster F' and not sustainable long term (hopefully).., insulting individual members of the Relic/Sega team who aren't responsible for it, such as Noun, who is called out in the Youtube video above, is not productive, it is his job frankly and you can hardly expect him to crap on his own doorstep. Whether he truly believes in some of the stuff he says, who knows, but if he posted that the current strategy of his employers is BS and poor for the customer publicly, he'd end up unemployed quick-time and would find it very hard to get a similar job in the games industry ever again.

Same for the balance team, I don't agree with everything they do (such as the balancing of the Dlc commanders), but we don't fully know what the story is in there and ultimately, Relic as a company is responsible. Sometimes you see people calling for them to be fired, which is nuts and a knee jerk response.

As a little aside, whilst I understand and in some parts agree with people who are angry at Relic/Sega, imo the DLC strategy currently employed is a cluster F' and not sustainable long term (hopefully).., insulting individual members of the Relic/Sega team who aren't responsible for it, such as Noun, who is called out in the Youtube video above, is not productive, it is his job frankly and you can hardly expect him to crap on his own doorstep. Whether he truly believes in some of the stuff he says, who knows, but if he posted that the current strategy of his employers is BS and poor for the customer publicly, he'd end up unemployed quick-time and would find it very hard to get a similar job in the games industry ever again.

Same for the balance team, I don't agree with everything they do (such as the balancing of the Dlc commanders), but we don't fully know what the story is in there and ultimately, Relic as a company is responsible. Sometimes you see people calling for them to be fired, which is nuts and a knee jerk response.

Completely agree, I mean initially, considering their earlier work in COH2, I found the release of clearly untested and unbalanced commanders out of character of relic, who seemed to actually care about this game.

It's good that, at least, someone put the right focus at the right place.

Id love to see the beta feedback threads on these.