Call to action - Let's Be Awesome Together

Let's be creative!!!

We need 175x100cm COH2 pictures, with a lot of young, beautiful and multiethnical people behind, smiling to the viewer, to promote the game. Nude women or sport cars are advised too. The picture should give the feeling that playing the game makes you really really cool, successful and handsome.

The community needs you, anonymous player!!!
As a reward, if you do so, we will give you a 5% discount coupon for your next DLC commander purchase.

Let's be creative!!!

We need 175x100cm COH2 pictures, with a lot of young, beautiful and multiethnical people behind, smiling to the viewer, to promote the game. Nude women or sport cars are advised too. The picture should give the feeling that playing the game makes you really really cool, successful and handsome.

The community needs you, anonymous player!!!
As a reward, if you do so, we will give you a 5% discount coupon for your next DLC commander purchase.

Multicultural group of cool looking ppl : check , Superman/Captain marvel ripoff : check, hottest milf ever depicted in non porn related western comics : check . Alright ppl lets promote dis

“Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn”
However I don't think the CoH2 community is very toxic compared to alot of other communities (Im looking at u CoD) and I do believe it have gotten a better atmosphere lately. We are alot of ppl out there who enjoy the game alot and we know there are issues with the game but the game keeps getting better and better with each patch. And I do believe Noun made a great post here on how we can IMPROVE THE COMMUNITY.

Multicultural group of cool looking ppl : check , Superman/Captain marvel ripoff : check, hottest milf ever depicted in non porn related western comics : check . Alright ppl lets promote dis

It just needs a T34 in the background and some russian characters written to be perfect.

It just needs a T34 in the background and some russian characters written to be perfect.

Ginungagap could paint a schocktrooper over captain plannet , besides they are equal in terms of superpowers

My 2 cents:

There are three things that could've drastically made this game better:

1. Better Optimization
-I think one of the main reasons CoH2 has such a small community is because this game requires top notch computer builds to run it even at medium settings. CoH1 was great because even a dual core laptop with a crappy graphics card could run it on medium np. This is just sad honestly. I would rather the game have less detail and eye candy and be better optimized any day, and I think the majority of people I know stand by this as well. If the game was better optimized more people would likely try it, as most average gamers/comp stompers/people in general have semi-good to below average builds meant to run things like L4D2 or Total War. If the money used to create DLC was instead aimed at making the game a much easier thing to run, Relic would be tripling it's profits as this game was $60 dollars at launch, with collector editions stacked at $120, rather than have half the community buy $2-5 dlcs, or get them for free from giveaways galore.

2. Better automatch/Gaming Lobbies
-Another huge reason CoH2 is making it much more difficult for people to enjoy it is because it's setup as a join game only by friends list type of thing. In VCoH it was so much easier to get things going with a simple in-game friends list that would automatically invite people in-game, they could also be added easily by chat lobbies/startup games in the main lobby. In CoH2 you have to invite by clicking a giant invite button in the middle of your screen, wait for the steam system to show up, scroll through a ton of friends that have the game but aren't on it, send an invite, find out that it didn't work properly, then invite a second time because the first time usually never works.(This is a real bug a lot of people are experiencing). If CoH2 had lobbies/automatch/chat-rooms setup similar to that of VCoH, boy would this game be much more enjoyable and simpler to use!

3. Faster Balance Response/Better attention to Feedback
-The last, and I would say the most fragile thing that needs at least 90% of the attention of the company that is Relic, would be Balance/Feedback from the community. I think it's nice that Noun has finally somewhat opened up to the community after such a long time hiding behind a wall(Which I think it took the head of SNF and Coh2.org revealing his unhappiness to take such actions as these, whereas had this happened before the game started a lot of problems might've been solved)(No offense intended towards you Noun, just speaking the truth), had Lynx still been community manager I think things would've been received and re-routed asap by him, as they were in VCoH and changes would've gone on immediately, and not in a 2 month process(Again this is just from looking at the records comparing two community managers), this is not to say Noun has done nothing, he has done quite a lot of work to try and help out, but I think the ways in which he attempted to where inefficient and ineffective at best(I still respect Noun 100%). Now switching over to balance, I feel the way this game was setup for balance changes via a company schedule was both a bad idea and a horrible process. In Total War:Rome II whenever a bug occurred or a unit was going on overkill in the game the devs responded immediately with constant update patches to try and solve problems, whereas in CoH2 if there's a problem it takes relatively 2 weeks to 2 months to get it adequately solved. The only time there was a fast response was with Assgrens, why was this not continued? There should be no reason for it not to. I feel feedback given by the community is either ignored or considered after things the devs think will solve problems don't work in the beta/at their office. This should never be the case, the community should always be the #1 person to listen to whenever it comes to balance, in a thoughtful, organized manner. I can understand when certain people try to nudge for a faction they like the best to be the best, and that can happen sometimes, or if someone feels that their OP ways are the best ways and say incredibly unsupported arguments on why their way is the best way. If we had a forum here on coh2.org that was given to people who have thoughtful processes and good intentions I feel this game would improve rapidly, we could also have a voting poll to support these causes as well(not that hard to get one off a site) and if people were afraid they would get spammed by a certain group they could simply set the votes to 1 per IP address, that would solve the problem there and also help show consistency on issues that need to be resolved asap. Overall I feel the way things are done here show the community/guest onlookers just how bad management is by both the company and by moderators. My only wish is that in the future if things could change where the community was supported 100% by Relic this game might actually have a chance at surviving.

Thank you for your time.

Nothing inspires confidence in the competitive scene like asking for 60-second video clips instead of legitimate, substantial content. I just don't understand how a developer of strategy games in this day and age can't seem to wrap its head around the appeal of competitive play to a casual audience. Hundreds of thousands of people watch League of Legends streams and tournaments every single day. There are SC2 and Dota 2 tournament VODs with hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. The people responsible for this content are doing free advertising, and more importantly, they're showing your casual audience what can be done. They're giving players more reasons to continue playing the game. That should be the most valuable thing in the world to a company that is relying on microtransactions for post-launch revenue. It baffles me that nobody at Relic seems to understand this.

Tommy hit the nail on the head. Relic doesn't care about competitive play; that's totally fine. Just don't be surprised when people tell it like it is.

Best moment in competitive gaming ever and less than 60 seconds. It's what got me into fighters competitively and for many other people too.

If you want to get people interested in what you do you need something snappy to supplement your meaty content.

Ah yes, the token IpKai spite post. I admire your consistency.

Never said short content was bad. But emphasizing it over substantial work that gives a full experience and takes a lot of time to create is a slap in the face to anybody who seriously tries to develop content for a strategy game.

God damn you guys are brutal.

I'm pretty sure noun is just saying if you want us share your stuff you need to keep it short and it needs to appeal to a wide base not just a small group of people.

Just by looking at this website of theirs (http://www.relic.com/games/), says enough about a state of a company.
CoH2 - Coming soon (2013).
An not-updated site says much about the state.

It's not about emphasizing short content over longer content. It's about using short and catchy content to introduce new people or people who are generally uninterested in your long content to consider taking the time to watch it.

The issue with a lot of guys who are pushing for a bigger competitive scene myself included don't have a lot of experience in getting a scene up to the level of say Smash Bros: Melee let alone dota2 or LoL.

I used smash as an example because the lead developer has stated that he does not care for competitive play and Nintendo have issued many law suits against people who streamed tournaments for melee. Yet their scene struggles on, if you have the time take a look at this documentary. It's very informative http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoUHkRwnRH-KTCH3tJ9WvsWWPEgUu-y6d

I think the best thing a lot of us could do is to do some research on the growing pains other gaming scenes went through and apply the lessons they learned to our scene.

Excellent post Tommy I pretty much agree with everything you said there. Eagerly awaiting Noun's response. Ignoring such a post would be suicidal.

You're right, that's smart. But Noun's post largely dismisses in-depth content as being viewed by only "the small audience of hard core players", and that "60 minute content doesn't get shared well, because the only people who will invest that amount of time in watching something are fans already or the elderly while they wait for Jeopardy to come on."

That is a) insulting to the people who invest their time in that type of content, and b) extremely misguided when you look at competitive gaming trends in other games.

Take League of Legends as an example. I'm sure they use quick clips and highlight reels to attract new players, but they equally promote their substantial content, and it's the substantial content that gets them the majority of their exposure. Hundreds of thousands of people watch LoL tournament streams. That's not something you can just look at for 60 seconds and get a good feel for what's going on. You need to invest 30-60 minutes into a game. And yet hundreds of thousands of people do that, and many thousands more watch after the fact. They sold out the fucking Staples Centre for their world championships.

Short content is great for attracting new players, you're absolutely right. But it's god-awful for retaining a player base, and when your game relies on microtransactions retaining your player base should be the most important thing in the world for you. Neglecting the substantial content your community produces and calling it boring just seems so silly to me. If you think the substantial content is boring, perhaps you need to look at the subject matter and figure out why your game isn't enjoyable to watch.

I don't really think there's any toxicity WITHIN the community - from the continued theme of input FROM the community there's almost a solidarity. The toxicity I feel is now between the community and the Development Team.

This stems simply from the fact that the game is in the state that it is - and no matter how many times - in unity now - the Dev's are told what's wrong - they continue to turn a deaf ear and not acknowledge the problem, that problem being THE GAME.

Initially the community was 80/20 behind COH2 - with the 20 in the minority of criticism - however I dare say we're looking at 10/90 now with the 10 being relatively few in number and the majority of the community holding the same opinion.

FIX the game.

I have several issues with what's said here. Firstly, blaming the community for 'toxicity'. Perhaps if Relic's approach to community management had been more of this new 'spread the love' message and less of the 'divide and conquer' which has been prevalent to date, it would have bred lest animosity.

I'm sorry you feel that way. That wasn't our intention, but you feel that way so there's probably been misteps on our part. I'm sorry for that.

It's important that we at Relic iterate. We look at what we did, and decide what worked and what didn't. You feel like something isn't working and we're trying something new now.

If you don't feel like being a part of this iteration then that's totally fair.

Sorry if you felt we don't care, we do. Hopefully we show it better with this new approach.

The Vancouver trip which was only open to a select few (myself included), the payment Ami received for SNF (which doesn't bother me personally, I knew he was going for it since months ago, I say more power to him for managing to secure it, something I thought impossible in the context of things), the increased level of exposure for certain streamers/casters over others; favoritism has been shown time and again.

Again with the Vancouver trip, we'll do it differently next time. That specifically was designed as a trip where we were going to bring in top level LoL and SC2 casters. Both Lynx and I pushed back on that and said that trying to convince people who don't love CoH to play the game wasn't the way to go about it, and so at the last minute we reformatted it as a community trip.

I wasn't involved in drawing up the list of names of who got to go, but it was always going to be a select list. It's expensive to fly people to Vancouver. Feed them. Put them up in a decent hotel in downtown Vancouver. We don't have the money to bring in 100 people, so there were people that 100% deserved to be there that didn't get to go.

There's always going to be.

That sucks.

I'm not going to talk about who should or shouldn't have gone, but Rogers has told me privately about an issue you in particular had and if you want to discuss that in private I'm up for it.

All I can say is that the process was a bad one. We were trying to build ourselves back up from losing our publisher and we're still doing that now a year later. Moving marketing and community back into the studio will help that.

As for favoritism for casters, again I'm sorry about that if that's how you feel. I don't regret promoting anyone or anything we've promoted.

If someone got promoted more then it's usually because they were good about asking to be promoted. I'm way too busy, and that sucks on all levels. I don't get a chance to watch all the great shows, and so sometimes it takes someone constantly pointing them out to me to do it.

Take yesterday's tutorial stream. 3 people told me about it on the day, and two different people were telling me about last week. So I knew it was going on, and I knew to promote it.

And again, it's something we're hoping to improve as we hire more in studio community staff, so that we have time to refocus on things like that.

This irks me. I know that game development is not your remit Noun, but please don't tell me to 'give it a shot' when Fatal and I have spent thousands of hours creating content for this game, breaking new ground, literally adding features to the game which by all accounts should have been there in the first place- observer mode, picture-in-picture, dual resources, dual unit counters, tac map overviews, custom intros, custom outros, hosting tournaments, livecasting events, and more. To have it implied that we somehow haven't tried hard enough....well, it's pretty difficult not to interpret this as a massive slap in the face. Should mention too, that it's not just us. I'm sure I speak for anyone who has put hours into promoting this game that to be told now, 8 months after release that we should just 'give it a shot' (because clearly, we haven't been working hard enough), sends the message that everything we've done as a community up until now has been irrelevant.

Absolutely understandable.

I'm done with CoH as a franchise, but here's the 6 step program that might have made CoH2 more successful from the start instead of the bombing mess that it is today;
1. Make the FB/Twitter feeds an outlet for community exposure, not questions asking what people's favourite tank is.
2. Remove pay2win DLC from automatch.
3. Make basic match a thing so you have a place for people to go for those that prefer it so automatch actually contains competitive players, and isn't just everyone lumped in together.
4. Sell DLC maps, single player missions, comp stomp co-op missions instead of units. Repackage every 3v3 and 4v4 map from vCoH into a single 'regression session' package and sell it for 10 bucks. Minimal effort for maximum profit.
5. Use your power as a developer/SEGA as a publisher to promote CoH2 streams via Twitch, Youtube, MLG, whatever.
6. Give us the tools to make content. Remove the prevention on modding, put in basic features like observer mode (at its most basic you could literally just make 1v1 maps with 2 extra 'hidden' slots, thats how modders did it for CoH1)

All good points worth considering. And we have and will. A few I'll address.

1. Facebook Edgerank is a factor in why we do posts like "What's your favourite tank?" Those posts help ensure that posts promoting the game and casts get seen. An explanation on EdgeRank: http://www.whatisedgerank.com/

3. I agree we need to look for a way for players who want to play other game modes. It's something we're looking at but haven't found a solution to yet.

5. Absolutely agree. We're working on getting a contract with Twitch that will allow us to better promote our own stream. When we do we'll look at how we can promote other streams. However Twitch is always going to promote bigger content first. So they will prioritize a large SC2 tournament before any CoH2 content because SC2 has a bigger audience. But we can work on this.

6. 100% agree. I'd agree more but it's mathematically impossible. Modding is a goal, and it sucks so much that it's been negatively affected. We didn't mean to, but it's a trade off between security for the gaming experience and allowing mods. It's a long term thing, so it's not going to happen this week or next month or the month after that, but returning the power to mod the game is a goal.

If you look at Rome 2 we want that. We want a vibrant modding community who are able to quickly and easily distribute their mods via something like Steam Workshop. It's a long way off. But it's a destination.

There have been several points in the past where this initiative might have been gratefully received. But now? It's too little, too late, and the kind of community you want to engineer is clearly far removed from what we want to create. That's fine, it's your choice. I just wish you would've been clearer, earlier, and saved us all a lot of time.

Sorry to hear it's too late for you guys. I understand.

Take League of Legends as an example. I'm sure they use quick clips and highlight reels to attract new players, but they equally promote their substantial content, and it's the substantial content that gets them the majority of their exposure.

Yup, that's all I'm saying. You seem to be arguing with a point I didn't make.

I'm not saying stop making long content. In fact I say specifically make what content you want.

But if getting new people to watch your content is a goal, then consider short content at least part of the time. I'm not saying all short content, just like you're not saying all long content.

We're saying the same thing, I just feel like you're arguing because it's me who said it.

Honestly, after seeing how Relic played theire fans by refusing to clarify about lobbies, im having a hard time trusting anything Noun and Relic says. Back then Noun refused to respond those asking about lobbies, still they allowed theire moderators and other users to announce that lobbies would be implemented soon.

Seeing more empty talk, yet little actual progress, why should I trust them now?