Discussion - Current state of Tournaments

There is a reason COH3 has a smaller playerbase then COH2.

This is actually very-very debatable. Steam says, at the moment of writing, 4600 people in the game, while stats show that there are only 1500 people playing, including games vs AI and customs. So pretty much slightly less then half.

CoH3 has 2800 players, if we imagine that the same amount of ingame players are playing, its around 950. I mean yeah, its smaller, but this isn't serious major difference.

Its speculation of course, but the point being, that both games aren't doing great. Basically, a lot of people doesn't want to return to CoH2 after CoH3. Even considering that probably everyone who was interested in CoH have a copy of CoH2 at this point.

Point here, if CoH2 really had 100% objectively superior gameplay and was so much better, people most likely would've return to it. Or maybe just because its not the latest game in the series people dropped it, but I doubt. But instead it seems like they just dropped game entirely, which is unusual.

Its speculation of course.

Agreed. Respect the passion for COH 2 and its general 'feel', but it would be very simplistic to suggest that this is the main reason. Its not even a fair comparison right now, and it wont be for a while.

The game needs way more maps, commanders and quality of life improvements before we can even start with that comparison. The question is, does the playerbase have the willpower to wait that long, or to maybe come back later? I wouldn't blame anybody if they said no.

This is actually very-very debatable. Steam says, at the moment of writing, 4600 people in the game, while stats show that there are only 1500 people playing, including games vs AI and customs. So pretty much slightly less then half.

CoH3 has 2800 players, if we imagine that the same amount of ingame players are playing, its around 950. I mean yeah, its smaller, but this isn't serious major difference.

Its speculation of course, but the point being, that both games aren't doing great. Basically, a lot of people doesn't want to return to CoH2 after CoH3. Even considering that probably everyone who was interested in CoH have a copy of CoH2 at this point.

Point here, if CoH2 really had 100% objectively superior gameplay and was so much better, people most likely would've return to it. Or maybe just because its not the latest game in the series people dropped it, but I doubt. But instead it seems like they just dropped game entirely, which is unusual.

People not returning to a game off the principle of an old game. Yet the old game still retains a larger portion of the playerbase. I’ll leave you with this. How long are you going to COPE?? The BIG “balance patch” came. Matchmaking times still blow unless you search Allies ( weird ) which Relic swears is a weird phenomenon and not lack of players/ people wanting to play Allies lmao. They made a post in their office discord asking for help on uncovering the “issue”.

You are missing the point. Since release. COH3 player numbers have been DECLINING. We have not plateaued yet…… it doesn’t matter how “close” the numbers are. COH2 retains the larger playerbase. The 10+ year old game is beating the BRAND NEW GAME????

People not returning to a game off the principle of an old game. Yet the old game still retains a larger portion of the playerbase. I’ll leave you with this. How long are you going to COPE?? The BIG “balance patch” came. Matchmaking times still blow unless you search Allies ( weird ) which Relic swears is a weird phenomenon and not lack of players/ people wanting to play Allies lmao. They made a post in their office discord asking for help on uncovering the “issue”.

You are missing the point. Since release. COH3 player numbers have been DECLINING. We have not plateaued yet…… it doesn’t matter how “close” the numbers are. COH2 retains the larger playerbase. The 10+ year old game is beating the BRAND NEW GAME????

I am not defending CoH3 by any means, just trying to say that player being smaller for CoH3 isnt solely connected to its gameplay\vision of how game should work.

We can start from the fact that CoH3 almost no content for teamgames, gamemodes which majority of players pick, ending up with the fact that CoH3 is banned in russia (and russians are in the second place via players amount in CoH2).

Game is doing poorly not solely because some old farts, decided to make it similar to vCoH.

You are missing the point. Since release. COH3 player numbers have been DECLINING. We have not plateaued yet…… it doesn’t matter how “close” the numbers are. COH2 retains the larger playerbase. The 10+ year old game is beating the BRAND NEW GAME????

Im gonna make a really "bold claim" now and say it's because the MP content & experience is in a very dry state with lack of maps and features on top of all the annoying bugs. But definitely not because of stuff like TTK or "game's too similar to CoH1"

This on top of the SP players leaving the game after finishing the campaign and you get such numbers. Of course I would have loved if CoH3 launched in a way better MP state so we could have kickstarted with much more player retention, but now it's CoH2 launch all over again basically.

CoH2 MP blew horseshit for the first ~6 months and it took almost a year to recover

Im gonna make a really "bold claim" now and say it's because the MP content & experience is in a very dry state with lack of maps and features on top of all the annoying bugs. But definitely not because of stuff like TTK or "game's too similar to CoH1"

At this point in my forum life, I think I can pretty safely say that I fit into the "lowest common denominator" group of CoH players. In my experience, my friends and I would probably come back if the MP experience wasn't so dry by thia point.

For fucks sake, I can't say it enough; there are only TWO 4v4 maps... and they're only adding ONE map in the near future.

Im gonna make a really "bold claim" now and say it's because the MP content & experience is in a very dry state with lack of maps and features on top of all the annoying bugs. But definitely not because of stuff like TTK or "game's too similar to CoH1"

This on top of the SP players leaving the game after finishing the campaign and you get such numbers. Of course I would have loved if CoH3 launched in a way better MP state so we could have kickstarted with much more player retention, but now it's CoH2 launch all over again basically.

CoH2 MP blew horseshit for the first ~6 months and it took almost a year to recover

Yea you are probably right. About the whole dryness. Good thing no big titles come out later this year.. Maybe relic can do the impossible again.

Im gonna make a really "bold claim" now and say it's because the MP content & experience is in a very dry state with lack of maps and features on top of all the annoying bugs. But definitely not because of stuff like TTK or "game's too similar to CoH1"

+1

At this point in my forum life, I think I can pretty safely say that I fit into the "lowest common denominator" group of CoH players. In my experience, my friends and I would probably come back if the MP experience wasn't so dry by thia point.

For fucks sake, I can't say it enough; there are only TWO 4v4 maps... and they're only adding ONE map in the near future.

Yeah imagine you play CoH2 4v4 but you only get Lorch Assault and Port of Hamburg all day Even the biggest CoH fanboy can endure this for so long only

Im gonna make a really "bold claim" now and say it's because the MP content & experience is in a very dry state with lack of maps and features on top of all the annoying bugs. But definitely not because of stuff like TTK or "game's too similar to CoH1"

Just to clarify: My post was about how boring I find CoH3 to look at. The TTK might be fine when playing yourself, but as a viewer this can be different. CoH has the chance to draw many players in by great visuals and intuitive gameplay. But, despite me playing CoH2 for hundreds of hours and understanding the mechanics of CoH well, I found it odd how many "good plays" top level players didn't take, because they know that they won't be able to kill a low health infantry squad. This is probably worse if you're new to the franchise.

This on top of the SP players leaving the game after finishing the campaign and you get such numbers. Of course I would have loved if CoH3 launched in a way better MP state so we could have kickstarted with much more player retention, but now it's CoH2 launch all over again basically.

CoH2 MP blew horseshit for the first ~6 months and it took almost a year to recover

Let's not kid ourselves, CoH3's launch is worse than CoH2, by far.
On a technical level, both games are/were pretty bad. Which one is better or worse is probably up to personal taste and another debate that has been fought multiple times by now, so I'm not going to re-re-reheat it.
Communication by Relic is really bad and I doubt they realized the extend of it.
Review wise, CoH3 is doing horribly. Overall user reviews at Steam are below 60% and the recent ones are ~36%, showing a mostly negative, which is quite a big deal for everyone that got interested by a trailer or stream and then sees that the game is not just divisive, but definitely bad. No one is going to buy it that way. Even if Relic turns manages to turn everything around in the next couple of patches, the mostly negative label is going to cling on for weeks. It will be hard for Relic to every breach the 70% positive reviews again. I don't know how well Steam reviews worked back when CoH2 launched and I know that the game has been review bombed by Russians due to CoH2's campaign, but filtering for the earliest reviews gives +85% positives? Anyway, I doubt CoH2 every reached the level of CoH3's negative reviews. CoH2 had the chance of surviving by new player influx. CoH3 probably not so much.
CoH3 also lost more players post-launch than CoH2 back then. Peak players dropped way harder for CoH3 two months after release.
There's also more indicators. CoH2 never dropped below the player count of its predecessor, even most positive reviews on Steam are pretty critical, players seem to be concerned about the roadmap and Relic's prioritization.

It's not all bad, but the biggest issue is that players are still leaving from CoH3, and the negative reviews will surely hamper CoH3 bouncing back quickly for months to come. CoH3 is in a worse position than CoH2 back then. Tournaments and streaming could help out Relic a lot (and even for free), but they don't seem to be willing to get replays and observer mode going.

Relic has 280 employees...



I'm sure they've been working very hard over the last year(s).

meanwhile at Relic....

Relic is busy releasing Coh3 on Console probably because SEGA told them to do so. And you're here bitching and trying to figure out why MP isn't taken seriously by Relic and doing dumb comparison with Coh2.

I would never hire anyone of you for your sense of awareness.

I'm sure they've been working very hard over the last year(s).

meanwhile at Relic....

Yes Gdot we got it, CoH3 is in a rough state because Relic is a bunch of woke socialist far-left liberal radicals Because they made one post about the U.S. abortion law 11 months ago

Yes Gdot we got it, CoH3 is in a rough state because Relic is a bunch of woke socialist far-left liberal radicals Because they made one post about the U.S. abortion law 11 months ago

the only way coh3 would have not been in a rough state is if Relic could grab us by the pussies with no objection

Let's not kid ourselves, CoH3's launch is worse than CoH2, by far.
On a technical level, both games are/were pretty bad. Which one is better or worse is probably up to personal taste and another debate that has been fought multiple times by now, so I'm not going to re-re-reheat it.

Objectively, CoH3 is in a better technical state than CoH2 at launch. CoH didn't launch with the "battle servers" or whatever that made connections more stable and the quantity of crashes per time played was so incredibly higher in coh2 than in coh3. Also, CoH3 has great optimization going for it, unlike COH2, which still struggles to this day. I only heard of a few people with AMD GPUs having significant issues around launch, and that was fixed with an update post-coh3 launch or by remembering to update the driver.


Overall, CoH3 is struggling because of a lack of maps and slow pace of balance changes, among various other issues (clunky friend/invite system; should've just stuck with Steam's features exclusively). Community communication has been quite normal for Relic which can be described as too slow and with too little information which makes players even more frustrated. The glue holding the game together has been the four factions and optimization/stability. But this glue won't hold forever.

When I loaded up COH3 for the first time I immediately noticed a lot of things that reminded me of vCOH. That`s not a coincidence. WhiteFlashReborn wrote a lengthy post about how coh3 should be more like vcoh and not coh2 and that`s what we got.

Also the focus on 1v1 is apparent. Relic and Sega must have missed the fact that 3v3 and 4v4 are by far the most popular game modes. It`s sad how 80 % of the playerbase wants to play big team games yet they only get 2 maps. Then people are surprised why the player numbers are absolutely awful and the reviews negative.

The "ivory tower" narrative is not complete BS when the self-proclaimed "elite" (basically a handful of 1v1 players and casters) was allowed influenced Relic on the development of the game even though this elite has absolutely nothing in common with the average COH2 player. Might as well asked players of another game on how to develop coh3.

You did it again. WhiteFlashReborn is literally direct counterevidence to your point. Relic ignores him even though he undeniably has excellent credentials. I'm guessing it's due to his very opinionated and undiplomatic persona.

Your point about CoH3 being too much like CoH1 is another prime example of "sounds plausible to someone who is clueless but has 0 correspondance to reality". Funnily enough most of the people who make this point discovered the franchise in the hayday of CoH2 which is not a coincidence. CoH3 isn't failing due to its core design, it's failing because of lacking features and poorly tuned balance.

If you think Relic focuses too much on 1v1 that is fine. I don't really see much evidence for it but it's a reasonable position. However, the 1v1 elite ivory tower bullshit needs to go. Who is this supposed 1v1 "elite"? CoH2 pros hate CoH3 for the most part. Besides, they don't have anything to do with relic. There isn't some secret 1v1 player group that advises Relic. Maybe you are talking about the handful of people who advised relic during the development process (AE and Luvnest)? If so please state how exactly you think they ruined CoH3... It's an absurd claim.

Didn’t in the past you preach riflemen are viable in team games in COH2? Then you double back? Then COH3 releases and you preach it’s amazing I love it. It’s so good. Then you play team games and say omg this is terrible? Your judgement is disconnected from reality. Anyone who follows the community. Knows the stigma for anyone that’s not a 1v1 player. Wasn’t there a 4v4 tournament team comprised of 1’s players verbatim say “it’ll be easy they’re team game players”? Then get absolutely hulk smashed? Only to proceed to blame pathfinders Scott’s? No mention of misplay on their part lol? COH3 is dramatically different from COH2. The TTK is what’s going to turn a lot of players away. Including myself. There’s no noticeable difference in weapon profiles. There is no unit in this game that does omega damage close range besides royal engineers. I LOVE watching a squad on top of another squad take over 8 seconds to resolve an engagement. It’s so thrilling. To the point where I can’t even tell if COVER is even important. Everything that was “tactical” and semi believable about COH2 was left behind with making COH3. Maybe I would enjoy the game if they painted all the models green or tan. So we can pretend they are plastic army men. Im ranting at this point. But I’ll say it again. If you influenced COH3 to be more like COH1. You killed the franchise. Congrats 🎈🍾🎉. There is a reason that COH1 retains the lowest playerbase. There is a reason COH3 has a smaller playerbase then COH2. There is a reason that no one is coming back after the “balance patch”. The gameplay fucking blows 🤯. It’s no longer epic WW2 battles with epic sound and visuals. It’s now watching squads miss point blank for 10 seconds.

Ok let's suspend hostilities. I feel like you misinterpreted something I've said somewhere and ever since you think I have something against you. This is not the case. I like your stream and humour a lot. You're literally one of the funniest people in the CoH2 community because you have actual wit rather than spamming emojies at every opportunity. You're also an excellent player. So a few things I wanna make clear:

1. I don't have a uniform opinion on CoH3. I don't get why you always act like all my opinions need to be either anti CoH3 or pro CoH3. I'm also not part of the "1v1 elite" as you like to call it. First of all I suck at the game relative to top 1v1 players. I tried playing a 1v1 tourney recently and it was way too stressful of an experience and I'll never do it again so there is that. Secondly, I'm not even a 1v1 player in terms of the games I play. I mostly play 2v2 and 4v4 with my CoH buddies mostly for the social aspect. I used to play loads of automatch 1v1 around 7-8 years ago but I don't see how that makes me part of the 1v1 elite. There's probably a few weirdos among the tournament players but I don't get why you let them bother you. It makes zero sense to lump me in with them cuz they would never consider me part of their club and I don't know any of the actual elite players.

2. I actually think your twitch banter is really funny and entertaining, but you should be able to be on the receiving side as well. Like you can't seriously set up (admittedly very funny) roasts on twitch and then lose your mind when AE does the same to you in an obviously tongue in cheek way. I think part of it is crosscultural confusion because the meaning of "c*nt" is very different depending on which side of the atlantic ocean you're on but still you guys should stop creating unnecessary drama.

3. I don't know what you're talking about with the 4v4 tourney. It seems to me like you have this idea of 1v1 players looking down on you and you apply it to everyone who you think is a "1v1 main". If you're referencing the 4v4 tournament I played in with Elpern, Orange and Jibber none of what you said applies at all. We were scared shitless of 4v4 main teams and basically knew that they would trash us. Jibber and I constantly asked Aerafield for advice in advance of the tourney. We mostly did it for the fun of discovering the competitive side of 4v4.

4. I think the 1v1 core design is exceptionally good. It's obvious that the factions are well thought out and the "high level" design ideas make sense. The game was designed by people who actually understand CoH and I think this is a first for the CoH franchise.

5. However, on a balancing level things are messy in a way they really shouldn't be. I completely agree on TTK. All the faction design is for nothing if TTK isn't tuned properly.

6. TTK and all the other tuning issues have nothing to do with CoH1. The problems CoH3 has are early CoH2 problems rather than CoH1 problems. CoH1 players HATED early CoH2 in part because of these exact issues. Guess which game initially had insanely slow TTK compared to its predecessor and was super boring because of it? CoH2. It took one megapatch a year after release to fix this problem. Guess which game suffered from forward reinforcement dominance? Guess which game was accused of looking cartoony compared to its predecessor? Guess which game was accused of having unclear visuals? Guess which game was accused of having bad UI? Guess which game was accused of having a bad tac map? Guess which game was almost universally hated by the fans of its predecessor? I hope you get my point.

7. TTK is a serious problem because many people seem to like it for some mysterious reason. I think they don't realize that part of the reason CoH3 feels so bad is high small arms TTK. So there is a real chance that it won't be fixed which is why people who have identified the problem should be vocal about it in a constructive way. Shitting on relic is pointless. This is not how you make people listen.

Just to clarify: My post was about how boring I find CoH3 to look at. The TTK might be fine when playing yourself, but as a viewer this can be different. CoH has the chance to draw many players in by great visuals and intuitive gameplay. But, despite me playing CoH2 for hundreds of hours and understanding the mechanics of CoH well, I found it odd how many "good plays" top level players didn't take, because they know that they won't be able to kill a low health infantry squad. This is probably worse if you're new to the franchise.


Let's not kid ourselves, CoH3's launch is worse than CoH2, by far.
On a technical level, both games are/were pretty bad. Which one is better or worse is probably up to personal taste and another debate that has been fought multiple times by now, so I'm not going to re-re-reheat it.
Communication by Relic is really bad and I doubt they realized the extend of it.
Review wise, CoH3 is doing horribly. Overall user reviews at Steam are below 60% and the recent ones are ~36%, showing a mostly negative, which is quite a big deal for everyone that got interested by a trailer or stream and then sees that the game is not just divisive, but definitely bad. No one is going to buy it that way. Even if Relic turns manages to turn everything around in the next couple of patches, the mostly negative label is going to cling on for weeks. It will be hard for Relic to every breach the 70% positive reviews again. I don't know how well Steam reviews worked back when CoH2 launched and I know that the game has been review bombed by Russians due to CoH2's campaign, but filtering for the earliest reviews gives +85% positives? Anyway, I doubt CoH2 every reached the level of CoH3's negative reviews. CoH2 had the chance of surviving by new player influx. CoH3 probably not so much.
CoH3 also lost more players post-launch than CoH2 back then. Peak players dropped way harder for CoH3 two months after release.
There's also more indicators. CoH2 never dropped below the player count of its predecessor, even most positive reviews on Steam are pretty critical, players seem to be concerned about the roadmap and Relic's prioritization.

It's not all bad, but the biggest issue is that players are still leaving from CoH3, and the negative reviews will surely hamper CoH3 bouncing back quickly for months to come. CoH3 is in a worse position than CoH2 back then. Tournaments and streaming could help out Relic a lot (and even for free), but they don't seem to be willing to get replays and observer mode going.

What on earth are you talking about. It actually boggles my mine that someone who was around for CoH2's launch would make such a claim. CoH2 was barely playable. It had ABYSMAL performance both in terms of input lag and FPS. It had HORRENDOUS core design. The whole game revolved around ridiculous AoE damage, absurdly high ranged super units and other super gimmicky shit. It had the worst feature of CoH history in the form of Col tech. It got reviewbombed to pieces. It certainly didn't have 85% positive. I don't remember the exact score but I'm not confident that it wasn't lower than CoH3. Everybody who had been hyped for the game was completely disillusioned. People who had had big plans for COH2 quit the game for good after a few months to a year (Tommy, Fatal, Ami etc.). It had paid commanders from the start. It had no ladder at all for months.

Then march deployment happened and the core gameplay improved massively. But roughly at the same time relic released the most bonkers P2W commanders in CoH history. All the stuff people call OP these days is a joke in comparison. These commanders would almost literally autowin the game for you. Saying CoH2 never dropped below the player count of its predecessor also makes zero sense because CoH1 had not been a steam game until then and transitioned to steam servers at that time which basically killed the game.

What on earth are you talking about. It actually boggles my mine that someone who was around for CoH2's launch would make such a claim.

I agree that on a technical level its not even close, COH 3 is in a far better state. But I think Hannibal is referring to the game as a whole, the slow updates, poor communication and the lack of features etc. All of that stuff is pretty much standard behaviour from Relic at this point.

Your point about CoH3 being too much like CoH1

It reminded me of COH1 when I first downloaded the MP test and played it for a few hours. A lot of people also felt like that. Stop pretending like its not a reasonable point considering the doctrine system, overall aesthetics, ultra light vehicles in T0, global upgrades, tier structures etc etc etc

Your point about CoH3 being too much like CoH1 is another prime example of "sounds plausible to someone who is clueless but has 0 correspondance to reality". Funnily enough most of the people who make this point discovered the franchise in the hayday of CoH2 which is not a coincidence.

I didn`t play COH1 but I bought COH2 on release and immediately liked it even though it was obviously very bugged. The potential was obvious from the first minutes of playing the game. COH3 on the other hand felt totally meh to me. I can`t remember a single match that made me feel emotionally invested.

CoH3 isn't failing due to its core design, it's failing because of lacking features and poorly tuned balance.

It`s not just balance. The game is just not as appealing to casual players. Sound and graphics are terrible for 2023 standards considering what Relic managed to achieve with COH2 in 2013. Also a lot of elements of COH2 that most people didn`t like, somehow found their way into COH3 like AA loiters, sim cities etc. Someone made a list on this in another post. This just shows how lazy Relic was when developing COH3.

However, the 1v1 elite ivory tower bullshit needs to go.

Look at who was part of the community team allowed to have an input in COH3. DevM, Luvnest, AE and other 1v1 players. So how is it bullshit? 80% of MP coh3 players play 2v2,3v3 and 4v4 yet 80% of the community team working with Relic is 1v1 players. Do I have to elaborate why this is a bad idea?

It reminded me of COH1 when I first downloaded the MP test and played it for a few hours. A lot of people also felt like that. Stop pretending like its not a reasonable point considering the doctrine system, overall aesthetics, ultra light vehicles in T0, global upgrades, tier structures etc etc etc



I didn`t play COH1 but I bought COH2 on release and immediately liked it even though it was obviously very bugged. The potential was obvious from the first minutes of playing the game. COH3 on the other hand felt totally meh to me. I can`t remember a single match that made me feel emotionally invested.



It`s not just balance. The game is just not as appealing to casual players. Sound and graphics are terrible for 2023 standards considering what Relic managed to achieve with COH2 in 2013. Also a lot of elements of COH2 that most people didn`t like, somehow found their way into COH3 like AA loiters, sim cities etc. Someone made a list on this in another post. This just shows how lazy Relic was when developing COH3.



Look at who was part of the community team allowed to have an input in COH3. DevM, Luvnest, AE and other 1v1 players. So how is it bullshit? 80% of MP coh3 players play 2v2,3v3 and 4v4 yet 80% of the community team working with Relic is 1v1 players. Do I have to elaborate why this is a bad idea?

You didn't play CoH1 and you're claiming that CoH3 is too much like CoH1... Idk what to say. I can't even debate this with you because you wouldn't know what I'm talking about. The people who feel the same way are equally clueless. It's CoH2 fans who think they have figured out CoH even though they've only seen a tiny part of its history. Had the same thing with a guy on reddit claiming that DAK is a PE clone without ever having played CoH1. I actually made the effort explaining in depth why PE has nothing to do with DAK and he just ignored it and insisted on his point without a single argument.

You think Global Upgrades are the reason CoH3 is bad? The fact that doctrines are now trees with choices rather than linear? All of these things were uncontroversially superior in CoH1 for anyone who has actually played the game. There's zero reason to think they make CoH3 worse. Just like there are plenty of things that were superior in CoH2 and are thus present in CoH3. Design wise it is a very good amalgamation of CoH2 and CoH1.

80% of the community team is 1v1 players? What? Are you in the community team? Where the hell did you get that from? It's once again completely incorrect.