Maybe this is flame bait. Oh well, a lot of this seems to be an implicit reference to TFN so I feel I ought to say my piece if nothing else.
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. 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.
I'm not trying to take the moral high ground here- I was on that Vancouver trip and I will forever be grateful to Lynx and everyone involved in spearheading it for providing what was an awesome, if surreal experience; but it was definitely the harbinger of some bad blood. I would never turn down such an insane opportunity or expect anyone else to in the name of the Greater Good, but in retrospect such selectivity is precisely what causes the toxicity you speak of.
Secondly, although I would agree there has been some 'toxic' stuff in the past, there is almost no trace of it now (mainly because there aren't enough casters/streamers left for there to be anyone to be toxic to/or with, but I'll get to that in a minute). So why bring it up now? I can think back to certain slanderous events that took place years ago to zero CM reaction, so why now stir the pot? I see only one reason- try and bait community members into restarting some kind of old flame war so you can look at TFN and SNF as we head out the door (I can't speak for Ami but I would guess he's looking that way) and say, "Hah, look. They were assholes, good riddance."
Then you state that anyone looking to make a career out of casting COH should look elsewhere. Well, duh. TFN was never in this for the money. If we wanted money, we'd be in Dota or LoL or SC2 or any one of a number of other, bigger games that have an actual esports scene. However, you kind of shoot yourself in the foot if you make statements like this, then quickly slip a brown envelope across the table. The moment you start paying people to cast the game, you're turning it into a job. You are literally paying people to PR your game. Wanna talk about toxicity now?
But come on, let's give it a shot.
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.
Furthermore, if Relic has such an antipathy to esports, or the competitive community in general, why wasn't this made clear sooner? Why is it only now we find out that the reason we had to beg for any exposure on the official FB/Twitter was because we were making hour-long casts, and what you really wanted were 30 seconds snippets of big explosions to appeal to the masses? Why were we strung along with such promises as 'there won't be pay to win' only to be totally shat on? None of these things are necessarily wrong, that's how you want to do business, that's fine by me- but we have wasted our time to date thinking that Relic gave a shit about our attempts, as a whole community- not just TFN- to craft a scene that might one day be regarded as esports within CoH/2.
TFN has left this scene for two reasons- one is a lack of support for the competitive community, but the other is quite simply the game itself. Tycho touched on this; the replay system is actually worse than in CoH1, the game itself is, even speaking objectively, ugly and cluttered to look at and basic functionality is still middling at best. You want us to make cool little montages- we can't do that without at the very least a rewind system. Or, well, we can (and have done so), but several hours work for 30 seconds of footage isn't a very good effort
utcome ratio.
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)
There's plenty of other things that could've been changed, but they would require more time and money (like making commanders have a bit of personality instead of all being roughly carbon copies, like having some logical progression to the tier system instead of a scattergun assortment of units, like having global upgrades to add some depth to the otherwise standard infantry-infantry-infantry tanks-tanks-tanks game progression, like having a functioning replay system, like optimizing the game so we can record in high quality instead of chugging along, like learning from all the design mistakes that were made in CoH1 and subsequently rectified [human crush on light vehicles, wire cutters as a purchasable upgrade etc]).
Of course, none of this happened, so the game is failing from the perspective of everyone here. You can keep saying that it's surpassed where CoH1 was at the same point in its life cycle, but that's a bit like saying that I'm better at maths now than I was when I was 13. Yeah, that's wonderful and everything, but it's also meaningless.
It might be easy to look at something like this and just go 'lol videogames srs business' but I feel we're justified in being ticked off. We invested our time and energy into this franchise in the very reasonable expectation that CoH2 would be at least worthy as a predecessor. The fact that it has failed these expectations on so many accounts feels almost like a betrayal for those who put the hours in to make content, to host tournaments, to do and make cool things. CoH2 succeeded in not only being a disappointment (not to everyone, I know, but to a large section of the content creating community) but also in killing CoH1.
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.
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Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
