Call to action - Let's Be Awesome Together

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/

So no answer to number 2? Not even acknowledged that you have a MASSIVE problem that is solely driven by the DLC? Nothing at all??? You realize that the games word of mouth being "Pay 2 Win" and riddled with DLC....not even discussing this, wow.

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.

Again - you HAD a very functional system in COH1 - and the only thing you had previously to state why it wasn't part of COH2 going forward was SMURFING. As that's no longer possible - you really can't continue to stick your head in the sand here.

No comment regarding 4 - a DLC that actually the community would LIKE and SUPPORT as it provides MORE CONTENT to the game without making it P2W....This is probably one of the best DLC inputs I've seen from a community member.

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.

While we appreciate you taking the time Noun - your approach of band-aiding issues that are minor while not acknowledging the serious issues is the REAL problem here. The continued head in the sand approach of "everything's fine with the game - it MUST be we don't have the right Twitch interface or we're not advertising correctly etc...".

The problem is right there - it's in the multitudes of posts on the multitudes of forums and it's continuously ignored.

+1 there very good point

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.

I'm just taking issue with the very strong implication you make that you as a community manager feel it is more valuable to promote quick-and-dirty content over substantial content that actually has some value to players of the game.

I don't think it's a problem with the content, I think it's a problem with the game. If you think people don't enjoy watching a 30-minute CoH2 video, I think that should raise a lot of red flags within the development team. Instead of falling back on "Well, people have short attention spans, they like short content, so that's what I'm going to promote", you should be asking yourselves why it is that people don't enjoy the longform content that the community is creating, and figure out how to fix that.

I was not a hardcore SC2 or Heroes of Newerth player, but I watched countless hours of those games because they were interesting, exciting, and challenging from minute 1 to minute 60. I watched them because I wanted to be amazed by plays and awed by strategies. CoH2 doesn't have that appeal. It doesn't have depth of strategies or a high skill ceiling that you can be in awe at. All it has are pretty explosions and footsteps in snow.

People will watch longform content of your game if your game is interesting and has enough depth to keep them engaged. CoH2 doesn't have that interest and depth right now. So it makes sense to me that you'd want to promote short content at this stage, because longform CoH2 material just isn't very interesting regardless of how exciting and entertaining the casters are. But I think giving the community a game that people want to watch for more than 60 seconds before they get bored and move on to the next thing should be the ultimate goal.

I think people should make the content they want.

If they want to attract viewers one thing to consider is short form content to help attract them.

That's all.

Do what makes you excited and happy.

Am an active broadcaster since 2010 and during all those years there was exactly no support from Relic. Of course there was no german content creator invited to vancouver, of course none of us was allowed to stream CoH2 while it was still in beta state. I cant even say how many Emails and pm´s i wrote asking for support and I dont even get a single respond. Its the same for all other german CoH YouTuber. If you don´t want to work with us just say it. But ignoring us is rude, disrespectful and unprofessional as we talk about being professional. We advertise for CoH years and i cant even say how many people bought CoH because of our videos. I spend hundred of hours with post editing, organizing events and stuff. And now want to tell us how we have to do our job and blame us for our toxic behavoiur which is the reason why CoH2 and the CoH franchise is in such a bad shape. Thats just ridiculous and it makes no sense and makes me angry like hell.

Just wanted to throw it out there: Didn't Relic specifically state that they were not going for an "esports" approach before release even happened?

I remember being bummed when I heard this knowing that comp stomping and single player would be focused on more but I accepted it.

The lack of transparency and frequency of updates and fixes for problems in this game is startling but the "esports" thing was never going to happen.

The silence about the P2W commanders is deafening.

There also needs to be more community engagement when it comes to the balancing process. As you can see in the various forums its a very passionate topic. There are many other games to learn from. One of the best, EVE Online. Whenever new content/balancing patch is going live CCP publishes it first on the OPEN test servers. The community gets time to give feedback. They also act as bug hunters, etc. After that period the patch is adjusted and goes live.

The silence about the P2W commanders is deafening.

Yep - its more of the same really with the same response.

Am an active broadcaster since 2010 and during all those years there was exactly no support from Relic. Of course there was no german content creator invited to vancouver, of course none of us was allowed to stream CoH2 while it was still in beta state. I cant even say how many Emails and pm´s i wrote asking for support and I dont even get a single respond. Its the same for all other german CoH YouTuber. If you don´t want to work with us just say it. But ignoring us is rude, disrespectful and unprofessional as we talk about being professional. We advertise for CoH years and i cant even say how many people bought CoH because of our videos. I spend hundred of hours with post editing, organizing events and stuff. And now want to tell us how we have to do our job and blame us for our toxic behavoiur which is the reason why CoH2 and the CoH franchise is in such a bad shape. Thats just ridiculous and it makes no sense and makes me angry like hell.

Agreed. We're addressing this.

I think you'll see we posted some content on our FB page from the German community. We're also active on Company of Heroes Headquarter now.

not going to quote, because the quotes are way too long anyway ;-)

but yeah, i agree wholeheartedly with tommy and inverse on this one. especially about the part tommy raised with being disappointed about the feeling that we've been misled about what coh2 was going to be.

also, regarding LoL and "short content"... have you ever watched LCS coverage? those streams are 7-8 hours long more often than not (admittedly, at least 1.5 hours of that are probably breaks, but still). and you STILL have at least 20-30k concurrent viewers for that. sure, short 2-3 minute content about LoL exists, but introducing players into the game usually happens through friends that are playing the game (refer-a-friend system).

another thing i don't quite understand is: Noun, you've been vocal about how Relic is happy with the amount of players in CoH2. Now you're talking about content to draw new players in. The CoH franchise in itself is not exactly noob-friendly, the lack of information inside the game or on official sites exacerbates that problem even further. Patch notes would be completely useless without community efforts like statgrabbing tools etc. so, on one hand, you're content with the amount of players, you don't make the game user friendly, you have a DLC model going that is even more of a turn-off for new players, BUT you want short content so that new players do not get scared off? all that seems so counter-intuitive.

still, i'm interested in this "new approach". is it just a different approach at how to interact with the community, or maybe even on your take of what the game is supposed to be?

Just wanted to throw it out there: Didn't Relic specifically state that they were not going for an "esports" approach before release even happened?

I remember being bummed when I heard this knowing that comp stomping and single player would be focused on more but I accepted it.

The lack of transparency and frequency of updates and fixes for problems in this game is startling but the "esports" thing was never going to happen.

iirc, they didn't specifically say that they were NOT going for esports, just that the "focus" was elsewhere... also i can recall one quinn interview in which he stated that the single player experience was what they focused on first.

Just wanted to throw it out there: Didn't Relic specifically state that they were not going for an "esports" approach before release even happened?

I remember being bummed when I heard this knowing that comp stomping and single player would be focused on more but I accepted it.

The lack of transparency and frequency of updates and fixes for problems in this game is startling but the "esports" thing was never going to happen.

Nothing was explicitly stated either way, but there were a lot of behind-the-scenes implications that gave people the impression that Relic and company was going to support competitive play more than they had in the past. Things like sponsoring the last vCoH season of SNF, their early commitment to the first CoH2 season of SNF, the community event in Vancouver with a number of top players, the repeated assurances that DLC would in no way affect gameplay (this is probably the most infuriating, since it was an outright lie, but it's hard to blame community managers for that when they likely had no idea it was a lie themselves), Taylor Fales' in-depth involvement in the last vCoH balance patch, and Peter's dedicated involvement in the private forums here in COH2.ORG during the initial alpha and beta tests.

There were a lot of indications that Relic was interested in at least supporting the competitive scene even if they didn't make it a priority. However, community members were told certain features were being prioritized and then we wouldn't hear anything about them for months; we were told DLC would not have an impact on gameplay and it became clear very quickly that that was entirely false.

I refuse to believe there was any malicious intent on the part of Relic; somewhere along the line, priorities shifted, that's all. But for the people who were in it from the start, I can sympathize with the frustration.

I really dont mean to copy what the two people below me just said but realistically the longer you put off addressing the DLC issue, the worse things will get as people begin to think that you care more about making micro-transaction cash than supporting the competitive community.

Edit: ninja'd by like 4 posts, I was refering to Napalm and PingPing.

Just to be clear, it was Tommy who brought it up. I'm just pointing out the obvious silence in Nouns response. I do not believe this issue is up to Noun, I suspect it is a Relic/Sega business decision that is made in a meeting and passed down to the development staff via a memo.

The silence about the P2W commanders is deafening.

Sure the P2W commanders are frustrating, but let's not forget that Noun isn't a developer. He is the community manager, his job is to interact with the community and not to come up with business strategies or balance.

I agree Kurt. Being a community manager he should be able to contact those responsible for such a decision and provide clarity to the community. Open and honest feedback, ya know? Something on the lines of a "Lessons learned from Soviet Industry and Elite Troops DLC" blog post that captures Relic's original intent of those commanders, what when wrong, and what they are doing the in future to prevent such issues would go a long way in distilling confidence into the community. Confidence would go a long way in our community recommending this game to others.

I agree Kurt. Being a community manager he should be able to contact those responsible for such a decision and provide clarity to the community. Open and honest feedback, ya know? Something on the lines of a "Lessons learned from Soviet Industry and Elite Troops DLC" blog post that captures Relic's original intent of those commanders, what when wrong, and what they are doing the in future to prevent such issues would go a long way in distilling confidence into the community. Confidence would go a long way in our community recommending this game to others.

We haven't released new paid DLC Commanders recently. I'm not in a position to promise that we won't ever again, but we're aware of the feedback from players who didn't like them and we're continuing to balance those that are released.

Sure the P2W commanders are frustrating, but let's not forget that Noun isn't a developer. He is the community manager, his job is to interact with the community and not to come up with business strategies or balance.

Absolutely right - he's the bridge between the community and the dev team.

So if we get continued silence from Noun then we can only assume that this message ISN'T being delivered to those that CAN change it.

Hence the frustration when its never even mentioned by Noun in responding to posts that directly raise it.

Hey Noun,

I should note that the other DLC commanders have been over all, pretty good! Sure they
don't have all the sparkles and lights of a King Tiger or group of T34's but they brought much needed flavor to the game. I feel banning all DLC commanders from competitions would be going to far. There are some creative juices at Relic still and I think their work needs to be recognized and distanced from the P2W commanders. I personally don't mind paying for these different flavors.

Also, while I'm in the upbeat mood. The map modding community has contributed a significant amount of effort in creating dynamic content. I hope that in the future Relic will continue to support them by selecting the best of their maps and publishing them officially during patch cycles. In the leaked notes, it appears they are doing just that. This is a great example of good community engagement. People want to make maps for the chance to get published, Relic publishes map with recognition to the creator, more folks what to make maps, people come back into the game to play that new map and recommend it to friends. Its a cycle. How can this model be adopted else where? More community commanders?