Unbalanced pay commanders

FYI;
Sega Spending More Time on "Higher-Quality" Content Prompts 90% Profit Forecast Cut (December 2015)
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sega-spending-more-time-on-higher-quality-content-/1100-6432822/

"Higher-quality content is expected, thus resulting in a trend of longer development lead times," the company explained. "Sega also has titles whose launches were postponed from the initial schedule and titles that did not fulfill our expectations in terms of market reception."

*SNIP*
In July, Sega Games CEO Haruki Satomi admitted the company betrayed the trust fans put in the company over the last few years. At the time, he stressed that Sega's goal was to improve the quality of its games in hopes of re-establishing itself as a valuable brand.

We Betrayed Fans And Want to Be a Brand Again, Says Sega CEO (July 2015)
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/we-betrayed-fans-and-want-to-be-a-brand-again-says/1100-6428680/

President of Sega Games Finally Realizes That Gaming Quality Is Important (July 2015)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/07/08/president-of-sega-japan-finally-realizes-that-gaming-quality-is-important/

First a bit of context, the company is actually part of Sammy Corporation who bought out Sega a fair few years ago. Sammy has a history of mostly doing pachinko in Japan and while they did a few games over the years, it was never their main line of business.

So the direction of Sega since Sammy took over is not an entirely surprising one, as they’ve almost ignored what made games work and went after what they thought would make money based on their pachinko expertise.

Sega May Be On The Verge Of A Renaissance
http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/07/24/sega-may-be-on-the-verge-of-a-renaissance/

In short, Sega is currently at the bottom of a very deep hole when it comes to consumer trust and that is something that won’t be resolved overnight.

Let's hope Relic get more development times to give DoW3 a good launch.
Whatever you believe the new SEGA CEO or not, there is no doubt that SEGA/SAMMY Holdings marketing strategy hasn't done much in the past to earn consumer trust.

It's unlikely SEGA/Relic have a big marketing budget left for COH2 so if they are not able and willing to use "word-of-mouth" marketing then COH2 eSport are RIP.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: CONSUMER TRUST IN ADVERTISING
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2013/under-the-influence-consumer-trust-in-advertising.html

Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, often referred to as earned advertising, are still the most influential, as 84 percent of global respondents across 58 countries

Consumer trust and positive brand advocates are everything in "word-of-mouth" marketing. Games such as League of legends encourages you to play with your friends and this results in many players joining through word-of-mouth marketing.
A good marketing strategy, turn the consumer into the "salesman". League of Legends was one of the first FTP games to show that word-of-mouth marketing along with micro transactions can be the primary source of income for a game without sacrificing game quality.

5 Marketing Tricks That League Of Legends Used To Build a Billion Dollar Business
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-marketing-tricks-league-legends-used-build-billion-dollar-butkus

The current COH marketing strategy for multiplayer doesn't really excel at anything and the marketing team has to make up their minds how they gonna market this multiplayer franchise/game sequels for years to come;
1) Subscription based multiplayer
2) Full priced games with higher DLC quality such as Starcraft 2 expansions
3) FTP eSport models such as LoL, Dota2, WoT, Total War: Arena.

For Relic's sister RTS studio, creative-assembly they decided to do a split between "single player content" that focus on DLC/full priced game and "multiplayer content" that use the WoT FTP model such as Total War: Arena and FTP Total war: Kingdoms (for mobile games, compete against "Game of War").
Rest assure CA are already planning for a Warhammer MMO game (which cut single player content) that use the same model from TW: Arena.

Personal, I don't really care much what MP model they use as long they change the current strategy towards higher quality core gameplay and increase multiplayer accessibility for new players.
If the core gameplay is good (including large team games which currently sucks, should be MMO oriented instead) then players should not be asking for new content all the time for new gratification. MMO oriented team play could easily become a new stand-alone game by itself similar to TW: Arena or something else.

Also as pointed out by top players such as Luvnest in games such as CS: GO you don't see players asking for new content on a regular basis, why? Because the core gameplay has higher quality than COH2.
Now for the love of COH2, if Relic wanted to fix this. Plz, go talk with some of the popular twitch streamers such as Luvnest or HelpingHans that actual understand how the gaming industry works far better than what you usual see from these forum warriors/pseudo-intellectuals around here and official forum. Or at very least invite those type of players to a closed beta/alpha forum before Relic/SEGA release more new content that has questionable quality.

Also, go watch popular variety steamers such as:
http://www.twitch.tv/excessiveprofanity/v/28223476
ExcessiveProfanity who played with COH lead balance designer Brad (and Kyle in chat). In the above stream go 3:38:50 to 3:49 where ExcessiveProfanity accuses SEGA marketing team of being cancer in the gaming industry. Neither Kyle nor Brad tried anything to defend SEGA after ExcessiveProfanity criticized the SEGA/Warhammer marketing strategy. There are plenty of devs both in CA and Relic that know SEGA marketing for games such as Rome 2/COH2 (which both was released prematurely) has been rubbish.

The Top 10 Gaming Trends:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2014-global-gaming-stats-whos-playing-what-and-why/

Revenue from games and game content is up and on par with the movie industry

The gaming industry and top eSport games will just keep on growing, but the RTS genre is lacking behind because it's "too complex" and lacking the MMO experience for the mainstream gamer. For the same reason, LoL is more mainstream than more complex MOBA game such as DOTA2. Hardcore and casual gamers are hard to define as pointed out by this vid;

Confessions of a Filthy Casual;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v4CIhGcxiY