Revitalizing the COH2 community?

Just show this to someone interested in the game and see his face turn pale.

Also, a RTS is a type of game that requires a lot of time investment to be enjoyable, unlike shooters or another type of games.
I doubt anyone wants to waste his time learning to play a P2W game where all his ability and training means nothing against the units purchased for another player.

The overwhelming negativity of the highest level players in this game is very disheartening to me. I didn't get in on the ground floor of dow2, and so was trapped behind the learning curve of that game... by the time I got interested in playing multiplayer, there were barely any active players any more. I totally bypassed coh1 thanks to my bias against WW2 games (learned that lesson the hard way!) and now most people seem to think coh2 is somewhere between awful but fixable and irredeemable.

This is not my perspective on the game, but what is 1 or 2 positive voices against a tidal wave of negativity?

I enjoy tactical games far more than traditional RTSes. I enjoy fighting over objectives like victory points more than "build an army and destroy the enemy base" and where else am I to find that? End of Nations imploded on itself, C&C4 remains the laughingstock of the industry, Men OF War 2 seems doomed to relative obscurity as well as potentially being the victim of its own complexity. The Wargame titles, likewise, have a learning curve like a cliff and fewer players than CoH1...

Are RTS or tactics players doomed to StarCraft 2's high apm spamfest, or Planetary Annihilation's macro-centric tidal waves of units, or to migrate to 1 man squad control of MOBAs like Dota 2 or LOL?

This game is the closest thing to the type of game I'm looking for that still has an active community, but the community itself seems to resent it.

The reason vCoH was so beloved was because it managed to hit the perfect balance between macro- and mechanics-focused RTS games like Starcraft and entirely tactical games like Men of War. There was something for both types of players in vCoH, but the best players had to be proficient in both areas or overwhelmingly superior in one or the other.

In vCoH, you could have a lot of success as a pure micro player with poor strategic decision making, or you could have a lot of success as a smart strategic player with poor micro. Both were equally viable, even though if you really wanted to be a tournament contender you usually had to excel at both. It just had this amazing mix of the two, and it attracted such a wide variety of players. It also made the competitive scene so interesting, because you had different players with different combinations of these two primary skills. You had players with insane strategic decision making but relatively weaker micro (see Sepha a few years ago), and you had players with ridiculous micro but poor decision making as the game went on (Lollypop is a great example of this type of player). And of course, you had all sorts of players in between. And the game facilitated this variety because it was designed with an equal emphasis on strategy and tactics.

CoH2, on the other hand, has shifted so far from that balance that made vCoH so rewarding to watch and play. You still have back-and-forth between strategy and tactics, of course, but it doesn't feel like the game gives both equal weight. It's a lot easier in CoH2 to play a generally safe strategy every single game and rely on your micro and tactical decision-making without ever having to deviate from your original plan. The game doesn't seem to reward strategic players as much as vCoH did, so you're stuck with this one-dimensional competitive scene that doesn't have to excitement and variety that vCoH's did. CoH2 is Warcraft 3 to vCoH's Starcraft Brood War. They're both decent games in their own rights, but vCoH/BW just gives players so many more options than CoH2/WC3. And giving players options and chances to express their unique playstyles is integral to a thriving competitive scene.

vCoH just made this awesome compromise between the tactical game and the strategy game, and it drew in people who loved both. A number of vCoH players went on to have a lot of success in SC2 (iaguz, link0, HuK), and yet the game still had room for players like Lollypop who didn't have a knack for strategy but could micro like hell. I just think Relic should have tried to recreate this balance, instead of deliberately shifting it so far to the tactical side.

This game has so many issues that I'd be embarrassed to recommend a friend pay good money for it. It's not even that fun for me anymore, the game play just isn't rewarding. Rarely are games competitive, with victories that are hard fought and well earned through good strategy and micro.

You spend as much time sitting around waiting as you do playing in this game.
wait for a match? 1-5 min
wait for loading? 1-2 min
does game load? if no, wait ~5-10 min for match to end, or leave and get a loss.
So you've wasted a good chunk of time just getting a game, and maybe 1/5 games will be satisfying to play.

I started playing war thunder to kill the time between coh2 matches, then I realized, why am I even bothering with coh2 at all? Its a joy kill, other games are fun without all the bullshit. I don't have any compunction suggesting a game like war thunder to friends, because if they like the genre they'll like it and have nothing to lose. This is quite unlike coh2, where even if you like RTS theres a good chance you'll hate coh2 for all its flaws and you're out $60.

My 2 cents.

First, I'll start by saying that I love this game and consider it fun to play or else I wouldn't be here.

That being said, I am kind of biased, I love WW2 and I love RTS games. I hate MOBAs(LoL, DOTA etc...) which I find is a devolution of RTS. So this makes COH2 one of the only real RTS out there but I still believe it's a really fun game.

I think COH2 is a great game when you look at the engine (maybe not performance wise) but I love the capping system, True-Sight, the ice, the destruction, the cover system, how you have to manage your units, combined arms all stuff that also made vCOH great.

The real problems is what a lot of you already said and unfortunately unless Relic decides to do a complete 180, which is really hard for me to imagine happening (logistic wise), nothing will help this fundamental problem:

1. The game needs to be fair.

Not only for the competitive scene but also just to attract new players. Imagine a new player that knows nothing about the series ? not only does he have to go through the learning curve but he must also deal with a bunch of commanders that he doesn't have and can't even practice against. Not only that but the average player now hates micro transactions. The game is not only at full price but also includes micro transactions, like Ami said perfectly, it's stuck between 2 models. So this scares away not only new players that have interest for the game but even players who doesn't know a thing about it and might end up reading an article about the game somewhere online or in a magazine.

2. The lack of competitive/community features.

As much as I said that the game's engine/gameplay is awesome, I can't believe how much work needs to be made for features to support this game not only in the competitive scene but also just to promote the game.

-A REAL in-game leaderboard, like in vCOH but something even better, I'm no game designer so I'll let the pros think of something but we are 7 years AFTER the original game and the leaderboards are honestly awful. How can I not be able to view the results of my last 10 games for example in 2014 is, I'm sorry but ridiculous.

-A new replay system, again, we are 7 years after the launch of the original game and it's the exact same replay system, not able to rewind and casters needs to do a tone of video editing (ATR) for valuable information. Also, a system that you can watch older replays, how can you promote the game when you can't watch awesome or legendary games because it's an older version, again, I can't believe this is still the case in 2014.

-Observe mode, we all know why.

-In-game lobby, to bring some life to the game.

well said z3r07.

Cant understand why relic refuse to wake up and see the opportunity with coh.

coh2 is basicly a good game it needs some patching and maybe an expansion and it could be a really great game. But why does Relic always half ass work on features around their games?? Thats a death sentence to the lifespan of a game. If this was a blizzard game they would realize how good the basegame is and even take people of other projects to give it proper support.

I mean compare bnet 2.0 to this shit. And dont say "blizzard is a multimillion company bla bla" their warcraft 3 UI was lightyears ahead of coh2 game lobby... even broodwar bnet UI is better.

Its like relic loves being this half unknown developer thats afraid to succeed.

In Relic's defense, Battle.net 2.0 was literally horseshit for a long, long time. It took over a year for them to add chat lobbies. It's better to compare CoH2 to vCoH and ask why we don't have the same chat, lobby, and leaderboard features that vCoH launched with 7 years ago.

Yeah it was shit at launch (still better than coh2) but they improved it a lot. I dont think its needed to compare to vcoh since its obviously inferior in every way i just wanted to make a point that other game developers atleast always try to push on features around the game (sc2 was the first to have rewind replay and load replays from older versions to my knowledge) and we are supposed to be happy if relic gets some features at all over from their older games, forget about actually improving and adding features.

Bad advertising methods are the main culprit here imo. Balancing is a whole other story, which is an easier problem to solve. I feel the only way to "revitalize" the community would be to have a system of advertising targeting larger audiences, not just audiences in the limited sphere. Whenever I'm on other sites I always see a WoT or SC2 ad being shown, before CoH2 was launched not once did I hear about it either on T.V. or online(Specifically here in Merika').

how to make coh2 good:
lower infantry HP, make cover give more modifiers
lower RNG across the board
cp2 russian elite troops
fix input delay for international players IE: euro vs australian
pay some youtube celebrity to play it, and put it on sale
gg

This is a very good start at courting the "pro" community. Aggressive balance patching is also required to keep the community feeling like the game is being supported and will get better. It's shameful that games like Insurgency get multiple patches a week from an indie dev while CoH2 hasn't had an update in ages.

Additionally, for the more general population, I would probably suggest a price reduction across the board with a less Commander centric DLC plan. Cut $10 off the game price, and cut all DLC commanders to $2, and match every future DLC commander with a free commander (whether it is true or not, the DLC commander cause a lot of Pay2Win complaints, and it keeps some potential buyers from purchasing the game; a friend on mine refuses to buy it over the Commander DLC). A shift in focus to DLC skins (camo, vehicles skins like alternate turrets and swaps (puma skin for scout car with no stat changes), and coop mission DLC.

At this point CoH2 seems to have a steady population, it's not bleeding players yet and while it can be hard to bring back tho missing players, the right changes can convince players to return. The general complaints are not changing either: balance, pay2win commanders, and too much RNG. Address these and you'll see a lot of player return, then keep them here with tournament support (hell, talk to Valve about the tournament ticket thing they do with DOTA2 and add in-game viewing support of Relic sponsored tournaments).

I don't know how pivotal Josh Mosqeuira was in design decisions in CoH, but I am going to assume his abscence as lead designer is why CoH2 took one step foward but two steps back.

Shame he won't ever be back, he now holds a very very nice position at blizzard.

edit: Agreed about paying a youtube celebrity to give it some publicity. First you are going to have to adddress the disgusting issue of the commander DLC page. Literally a full page of $4 commanders is physically sickening. Stop. Please. Convert all of that to aesthetic DLC, skins and faceplates etc..

Once that has been addressed, like said before pay an influential youtuber, follow up with sale.

Bad advertising methods are the main culprit here imo. Balancing is a whole other story, which is an easier problem to solve. I feel the only way to "revitalize" the community would be to have a system of advertising targeting larger audiences, not just audiences in the limited sphere. Whenever I'm on other sites I always see a WoT or SC2 ad being shown, before CoH2 was launched not once did I hear about it either on T.V. or online(Specifically here in Merika').

Unfortunately I completely disagree.

Whats the point marketing a bad product?

I've bought 3 licenses of COH2 as for Xmas I bought 2 friends a copy who hadn't wanted to pay the $60-$100 entry required when they saw how it played as essentially a F2P title - so right here we have a problem in that people are aware of the "cake and eat it too" mentality that was taken. So at $10 I figured I'd be a nice guy and give them a copy for Xmas.

They STILL haven't even installed it.

Point 2 - you have a problem when you CAN'T EVEN GIVE IT AWAY. How many people played the free weekend? How many hung around? The players chart tells that story.

My friends don't have as much free time as I do given personal commitments - so what little gaming time they have they want it to be good. With COH2 they see games being ultimately decided later in the game by P2W elements of DLC commander and exploits of a broken balance which now I find turning me off the game.

i.e.

- Sniper/Guards
- Shock Spam
- Tiger Ace
- Ostrupen Spam
- Forward HQ spam
- Insta-kill air cover spam
- RNG
- Terrible Pathing
- Poor performance on high end PCs
- Poor match making

This doesn't even touch the question of "If it was good enough for vCOH - why isn't it in COH2 as a basic feature?".

My friends were - and I say that past tense - WERE casual vCOH players - Vire Valley etc - that was their fun. They ask "Where are the bunkers?", "Where are the tank traps?", "Why do they get 2 snipers and I get 1?" etc, and then they ask me as they know I still play it "Has it got any better yet?".

The casual players like that are simply avoiding it because ultimately their time is important now.

RTS's aren't popular with the Xbox 15 year old crowd - most players are 25+ in age and they have responsibilities etc. So they're not going to waste 2 hrs if those 2 hrs aren't fun.

So basically marketing a poor product wont do you much good.

I don't know how pivotal Josh Mosqeuira was in design decisions in CoH, but I am going to assume his abscence as lead designer is why CoH2 took one step foward but two steps back.

Shame he won't ever be back, he now holds a very very nice position at blizzard.

edit: Agreed about paying a youtube celebrity to give it some publicity. First you are going to have to adddress the disgusting issue of the commander DLC page. Literally a full page of $4 commanders is physically sickening. Stop. Please. Convert all of that to aesthetic DLC, skins and faceplates etc..

Once that has been addressed, like said before pay an influential youtuber, follow up with sale.

From what I understand the COH2 team is basically the Opposing Force/Tales of Valor team.

The guys that brought us Kangaroo Spam and Staghound Spam and MG Halftrack Spam and....

I don't think we'll get a product like vCOH as you put it correctly - that team is no longer there.

IMHO, i think its too late for revitalizing coh2.

I love the game, but GG relic.

The thing that utterly destroys the enjoyment of this game for me is the auto-match in COH2...after playing COH1 for 4 to 5 yrs.

Can't select annihilation game format or map. Sorry Relic -I do no have any freaking friends on steam to do a custom game, nor am I interested in having to make new friends to do it. During the day I just want to sit down, crack a drink open, fire the comp up, fire the game up, select annihilation...perhaps map preference, hit auto-match and play for hours. For months now I have had to play VP and or play golf...golf is getting much better from a 22 handicap to a 15. COH2 play...mehh who cares. THB, as it is ...hardly playing it.

Thinking back over the last 20 yrs...some of the RTS games and playing them online. Sorry if I get something wrong in the list. I could just go and find a game in a chat lobby/game list, join and play (usually annihilation). Never did play the SP in any of them.

Warcraft 2
Starcraft 1 & 2
C&C 1,2
Red Alert, Zero Hour
Supreme Commander
Age of Empire 1 & 2
COH1

I can say COH2 is truly the only RTS game I have ever read the forums waiting for something to happen. All the others were just fun to play hour after hour for years. COH2 as it is is ----facepalm =(

COH2 can't even pull me away from the room I have to go paint. But the forums did till now lol

The thing that utterly destroys the enjoyment of this game for me is the auto-match in COH2...after playing COH1 for 4 to 5 yrs.

Can't select annihilation game format or map. Sorry Relic -I do no have any freaking friends on steam to do a custom game, nor am I interested in having to make new friends to do it. During the day I just want to sit down, crack a drink open, fire the comp up, fire the game up, select annihilation...perhaps map preference, hit auto-match and play for hours. For months now I have had to play VP and or play golf...golf is getting much better from a 22 handicap to a 15. COH2 play...mehh who cares. THB, as it is ...hardly playing it.

QFT. I think I love you, man.

Its just so much meh.

Theres the competitive aspect that ppl talked about so much. I cant really contribute anything that hasnt already been said to this anymore. For further reference see inverse etc.

Theres the business model that has been mentioned here, in other threads, in other forums, on steam, that is being talked about and bashed on pretty much anywhere ppl discuss about coh2. Id like to say something good about it. Frankly, I cant. Its shit. Those skins are really nice. I even bought some. To be fair, I bought the DCE to support relic cause I felt that after vCoh they had earned my trust and they had earned the additional few bucks to keep up the great work. Boooooy was I wrong. Please relic, before you do anything else. Just get rid of the rediculous "pay for your strategical depth" system. Cause thats what it is. Most of the games depth boils down to commanders(again, see inverses thread about why coh2 doesnt cut it strategy wise). Making them a thing you sell, especially if they contain new units and not just reshuffled abilities is a big nono. Remember those little dev diaries you had shortly before thq suffocated in its debt? Your devs were mentioning that there were absolutely no in-game transactions. And while this is still true to a certain degree, it isnt. The game boils down to commanders. You get commanders by buying them. And while you dont buy them ingame, you still need to buy them, after purchasing the base game. Again, thats a nono. Tales of valor etc was fine. This, is not. It will not only keep ppl from buying the game, it will also cause players to leave because of stupid ideas like the tiger ace and soviet industry. Sure, you will fix them eventually but until then, 3 months of gameplay are basically ruined. And I cant blame anyone for just quitting because they cant take this shit anymore.

Then there are basic features. Sure, you had a hard time after thq went down the drain. I understand this. But basic features like lobbies are yet to be seen, half a year and 500 000 sales after the release. Why? Again, this is a nono. Why did you remove that in the first place? vCoh started off with most of those basic features like leaderboards, public lobbies, a decent chat, hell even an annihilation game mode. Where are they now? Down the drain? Why?

The current chat is worse than "unappealing" to alot of ppl I know, including myself. Nobody is using it, it is unpractical for the most of it and it is getting really fucking annoying to have to close that thing all the fucking time when starting a game. Jeez, was it so hard to just remake the old one that was running decently in the background? I get that often new things are great but if you have something that is running smooth and ppl who support it, why change it?

Annihilation had a huge fanbase and while those ppl were less into the whole competitive tourney thing and/or esports kind of play, they made up a huge chunk of the community. These ppl got practically no way of playing coh2 right now unless they switch over to VP or unless they got tons of steam friends who didnt abandon the game yet. Why did you remove it in the first place, yet again? The argument "It would split up the community" doesnt matter when in the first place youll just get all the annihilation players to quit the game without annihilation being in the game. Sure, some will stick with VP instead but I can imagine most of them being rather unhappy with it. I could much rather see alot of annihilation players getting their friends into the game and those guys could discover VP for themselves, adding up to the already existing VP community and making it larger. Instead you took away annihilation to temporarily boost VP and then have them leave the game when they get bored of it. Bod choice imo.

Public lobbies. Yes, they were problematic. Yes, smurfing etc was a thing. But you had 7 years to think of a goddamn solution. Instead you went easy mode and took them out completely. Jeez.

And when being asked about those very basic things now with alot of players who have abandoned the game but not just yet their hopes for the game listening to you, you keep giving us cryptic answers of how maybe in the distant future there might be a slight change, but maybe not and it all depending on certain star constellations and my milk being rotten...wtf?

Now what I see is that relic is listening. This is good. They are actually reading here and (surprisingly enough) on the official forums. This is a good thing, I cant stress this often enough. Game developers listening to their communities have become rare these days so its worth mentioning it I guess. And I see that you are actually making very very slight attempts at trying to satisfy the community. This is good too but its not enough.

Why does it need anarchy on the official forums and tons of casters screaming in their streams for you to realize that things like the tiger ace dont work? Have you been sleeping for the last 6 months when players all over the place told you they dont want pay to win?

Why do you need one of the most well-known faces of the community to have a public crackdown on this game and all its problems for you to actually realize that engaging in tournaments a bit more might be a good thing? Was there no other indicator?

Imo relic is too passive about most of this. You still think you can settle this somehow, you are on the right way and when theres very very VERY big resistance you slightly adjust the course of your progression but you keep the goal. In all of that you seem to forget one thing. While you are the devs, you made this game and its your work, creation and dream its us, the community, who are the life source of it.

This does NOT mean you need to listen to every clown who throws an idea at you. This also doesnt mean you need to listen to every guy who just screams loud enough that he wants something changed. But jesus, if your core game players of the first game abandon the second game and keep shitting advise, good critizism and other stuff your way, go grab it and read it, realize what it means and FUCKING DO SOMETHING WITH IT instead of just staring at it. Get out of your delirious state and start doing something productive, preferably in interaction with the community. Maybe then you dont need free weekends and discounts on the game to boost the number of players back to 5k.

Roadmaps on what to do and other basic communications(what are you currently working on etc) are just one thing. The dev streams were a good thing. Do more of that. If youd just divert half the manpower and money you use to advertise the fucking dlcs towards keeping the community well informed about everything you do then this would already go alot more into the right direction. If youd then actively engage in discussions instead of just going in there, ripping a quote out of context and answering it in a delirious way youre getting even closer. And if youd then even take the communities advise(preferably from players who know what they are talking about cause theyve been streaming tons of games, theyve had thousands of gameplay hours etc) we are on the final route to success. You dont do that, I dont see any change happening no matter how hard you try to convince us after amis public outburst. That thread on competitive events is nice and all, but its in wrong order. Fix the game first, THEN set up tourneys and THEN go and advertise the game again.

Being a lifelong WW2 enthusiast, I still like this game but I am bored of the same strats over and over again and the small maps with little space to maneuver. (vcoh aspect ratios were different)

My chief complaint of the game is the lack of tactical depth. I would prefer more tiers (like Age of Empires) and a lot more units types and structures. I would like a game like this to go up to T6 or T7. I'd liked more complexity.

The commander DLC system is, of course, horizontal- very wide but rather shallow.

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+1 to the first half of your post. Mind boggling that basic features like lobbies, functioning chat rooms and leaderboards/ranks were removed. Remove all commander DLC.

Then you kind of went off a tangent with an emotional lecture without any real solid points, but I understand since you are passionate about the game lol.

People are bringing up big ideas about new Expansion Packs, revamping the multiplayer to make it competitive, or whatever, but Relic only see this.

Risk = -$

change = -$

The damage is already done on Company of Heroes 2 reputation. Relic is not going to change their p2w commanders, and the people who dislike them are not coming back. The factions themselves are also too simplistic, there aren't many different kind of strategies, it's all about how you can abuse a certain unit right, and too much RNG. This game doesn't look like it's going to be competitive anytime soon.

Single player even pissed off a lot of players, and it wasn't such a great experience for people who didn't feel insulted. Potential customers look to see the reviews on Company of Heroes 2, but all they see on metacritic is a big red 1.8 rating and the word NAZI NAZI NAZI written all over by angry Slavs. All ToW missions don't seem worth the money, are people actually going to pay for the next one?

Relic should do something really big and epic for Kursk, which I think, is their last chance to make ToW look worthwhile since it's Kursk which is the most famous 20th century battle, so it will get more attention than any other future operations.


Relic is probably just going to drop the game, which is a shame because it could have been so much better. The Eastern Front was THE most epic campaigns in human history after all, and there is so much more things they could do to the factions, and so many better stories to tell instead of that weird fictional one.

But! at least this game is not dead......








...like Red Orchestra 2.

Red Orchestra 2 is hardly dead...