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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)

I thought we heard it from dev team leaders, either Quinn Duffy or Stefan Haines. Maybe I was wrong.

But either way I understand what happened. Relic had an understanding with THQ, a plan for their business model, and THQ had said "we won't make you do this". And then they move over to Sega who says "we just paid $25 Million so you could move in with us or you'd be on the street. Of course you'll do P2W DLC"

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.

I dont think its a matter of the message not getting through, but of Noun not being able to tell any good news. Look at his answers in this thread, he avoids the issue of commanders, probably because he knows that they will continue to produce DLCs that mess up gameplay, so in stead of admitting that, he just pretends like nothing. Its the exact same thing he did with lobbies. He knew they werent coming, so in stead of admitting it, he pretended like nothing and hoped people wouldnt notice before buying the game.

Between all these interesting replies;
In what way does Relic follow these forums?
In what way does it communicate with the community?

I thought we heard it from dev team leaders, either Quinn Duffy or Stefan Haines. Maybe I was wrong.

But either way I understand what happened. Relic had an understanding with THQ, a plan for their business model, and THQ had said "we won't make you do this". And then they move over to Sega who says "we just paid $25 Million so you could move in with us or you'd be on the street. Of course you'll do P2W DLC"

I personally remember posts from Lynx and Tribalbob specifically. Regardless, you're most likely correct about how things went how. Hard to place blame, but frustrating nonetheless, and definitely a big contributing factor in the animosity on display around here these days.

I've got an idea - DLC Explosions! People like explosions, right? So you could have customisable explosions with like different colours and stuff. A bit like Decals in SC2 but with more BOOM! Explosions are cool.

so are lobbies coming NOUN?

I thought we heard it from dev team leaders, either Quinn Duffy or Stefan Haines. Maybe I was wrong.

But either way I understand what happened. Relic had an understanding with THQ, a plan for their business model, and THQ had said "we won't make you do this". And then they move over to Sega who says "we just paid $25 Million so you could move in with us or you'd be on the street. Of course you'll do P2W DLC"

It's unfortunate that anyone ever said that DLC wouldn't affect multiplayer and then DLC did.

This is one of the reasons I don't always share things with you guys, because plans change. I wasn't at Relic when this was said, but I'm sure that at the time it was true.

Things change, though from my understanding this change was already in place before SEGA bought Relic.

Makes sense at least. Look at DoW2 and THE financial situation. The engine is built to support DLCs as best as possible. And this work was done before THQ went down.

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.

The issue here is that all the strategic depht the game has is "fragmented" between those P2W commanders.

Whitout bunkers, tank traps, FHQ's, repair stations, etc, the game is shallow and it lacks of variety for the players who doesn't buy DLC.
And even if you bought them, you're compelled to choose just ONE of these abilities or units to play with.
That is terrible for people who played vCoH and knows the fun in having all these things as default, with global upgrades and doctrines much more versatile.

Having to choose a commander as soon as at 0CP or 1CP locks you in one path at the first minutes of the game, when in the previous game you could delay your doctrine choosing until the lategame because all the necessary units to win where non-doctrinal.
In CoH2 instead, as russian, you must take your commander as soon as you can, because your non-doctrinal units can't do shit.

What I'm saying is that DLC abilities and units really destroy the fun in the game. And if the game is not funny, nobody will want to see streams or try to improve his gameplay watching the pro players playing.

I remember that I joined several CoH communities because I wanted to find answers to my enemies strategies, because they used plenty of strange starting building orders, aggressive cut-offs, suicidal maneuvers and units that I believed useless in order to beat me. There was a lot of variety and game styles in every game and after every patch things reset and everybody was busy experimenting new strategies.

CoH2 instead has the same openings build orders since alpha. Strategies are always the same except when balance patchs overnerf something. The game is not organic anymore.
Strategies are dictated by balance patches and nerfs and not by creative players.
For example, T70 spam was stopped just when Relic nerfed them, and not because some player found the proper counter. The same with every single strategy that proves itself too effective.

I understand that pro players doesn't want to waste time learning a game whose balance depends on DLC sales. New commanders will always have attractive, and possibly OP abilities, to be more appealing for the buyers.

Tournaments, streamings, merchadising, Steam sales, Free weekends, etc... will be all useless if Relic doesn't understand that his game IS NOT FUN.
It has a terribly good potential to be a great game, but it is wasted in terrible bad decisions and greedy microtransactions policies.

And as several people said. We like to play in community, and talking with our teammates and our rivals while we play.
Currently playing CoH2 is a lonely activity, because chat ingame is terribly poor and useless, and the only teammates you can pick are the ones in your Steam friendlist.
Nobody talks before of after games. The only communication you receive (if lucky) is a "gl & hf" when the game starts and a "gg" when it ends.

Sorry, but that's depressing. I prefer to play DayZ where I can talk to my heart's content with each drunken russian that I find in the game.

To finish this wall of text. I'm sure that Relic knows all of this. They can't be so blind, or deaf, to ignore these blatant mistakes in their game. So the only explanation that it comes to me is that they don't really care.
They know their game is bad, and they don't care as long as they can make money of it, and that's why we only see patches with grandiose names like "Turning Point", and lots of events, free weekends, and now they encourage tournaments and casts...

But talking about improving the game the way the community wants? No words about that.
I won't give credit to anything a Relic's CM says until they gave us a few words about what are their intentions about the P2W DLCs.
Battle servers, Mud, Soviet bear cavalry, etc... all of them will always be rubbish if the fun things are behind a P2W wall.


Sorry if some sentences doesn't make sense. English is not my native language

Few wee thoughts.

1st, nice to see Noun openly talking about a few different issues, I don't imagine the job is easy in the current climate and communication with the community is something Relic have struggled with in the past. Minor nitpick, but as a professional i'd like to see clean language when posting as a Relic representative, not a major point and i'm not offended or anything at all.

2nd, I think the platform used is perhaps questionable, posting on COH2.org and refering to the recent events involving Ami could be construed as Relic having a pop back, may not have been the intention at all, but to an extent that is how I intially read it as. If this was not the intention, then I think the words used in places could have been picked a tad bit more carefully. Understandable that some at Relic would be offended by what came to air publicly from a sponsored individual/group, but imo as the corporate company, Relic, it should be dealt with privately if there is an issue here. Of course COH2.org I believe is the largest coh2 independent community, and so posting here is probably fairly important for both parties (Relic and COH2.org). Hopefully that relationship improves going forward, if not, Relic would want to substantially invest in their own COH2 site as it does not currently matchup to COH2.org.

Lastly, I think Noun not answering questions directly about DLC for the most part may be your answer, he may simply not be in a position to answer those questions. He may not even necessarily agree with the companies position on it, or he may do, either way he is an employee of Relic and has to toe the company line. I'm sure allot of us have been in similar positions in our work lives, sometimes things are out of our hands. I've been in a similar position, acting as a community representative for a company on a large online forum, answering customer queries and problems etc, sometimes my company had crap policies that were bad for customers and that sucked, but as a paid employee I did my job and avoided getting drawn into discussions on them.

It's unfortunate that anyone ever said that DLC wouldn't affect multiplayer and then DLC did.

This is one of the reasons I don't always share things with you guys, because plans change. I wasn't at Relic when this was said, but I'm sure that at the time it was true.

Things change, though from my understanding this change was already in place before SEGA bought Relic.

The thread goes sidway anyways

Well but why don´t you offer multiplayer passes for a pricing you could live with like 8 EUR a month. And get dedicated Programmers to work of the list of the community. I would have paid this at the beginning without hasitation. Maybe now it is too l8te, but when Coh3 is in prearation or DOW3 allow people "oldschool" RTS Fun.
A monthly fee is still the fairest business model imo

This is nice. It's sweet, cozy; we've got some drama, some making up and hopefully people will end up being reasonable and patient. A cup of hot chocolate please!

But the fact remains that Relic has broken trust with its lead users. All the incredible work put into creating this site from scratch and running SNF, the casts with TFN and others trying to be serious, has been spat on by giving the casual audience gimmicks that ruin the experience of lead users.

Relic has a gimmick running falling between two stools continuously so hard, it's not even funny watching the clownshow. They have alienated the potential enormous Russian community. They've repeated the failure of implementing mechanics alienating the core gameplay; back in the day, I stopped playing Wehrmacht for fear of falling asleep against the Brits - now in CoH2 you've got to fight all kinds of game-warping gimmicks.

Noun, I'm sure you're a great guy, I love your reindeer-sweater, but you're working for a company with a very bad track-record. I don't trust a word you say, a post you make, because "Relic". Words are just making me mad.
- I will trust one thing and one thing only; actions.

The thread goes sidway anyways

Well but why don´t you offer multiplayer passes for a pricing you could live with like 8 EUR a month. And get dedicated Programmers to work of the list of the community. I would have paid this at the beginning without hasitation. Maybe now it is too l8te, but when Coh3 is in prearation or DOW3 allow people "oldschool" RTS Fun.
A monthly fee is still the fairest business model imo

I think a premium pass which included all future multiplayer DLC would have been the right thing.

And besides that, they could release aesthetical or singleplayer DLCs.
Monthly fees cause a lot of incovenience for players, who feel preassured to play the game in order of make profitable his money.

The thread goes sidway anyways

Well but why don´t you offer multiplayer passes for a pricing you could live with like 8 EUR a month. And get dedicated Programmers to work of the list of the community. I would have paid this at the beginning without hasitation. Maybe now it is too l8te, but when Coh3 is in prearation or DOW3 allow people "oldschool" RTS Fun.
A monthly fee is still the fairest business model imo

I didn't pay 60$ for a game that isn't finished (apparently I did), AND have to pay 8/month.
Soz mate, the game isn't that good.

Currently, this community barely has streaming and casting "personalities" that a great number of people would be willing to watch and/or listen to. Relic should not invest time and funds into streamers and casters that will never attract a large crowd.

With all due respect for TFN, but it is hardly fair to blame Relic for poor success when you do not even cast with a webcam and/or lack English vocabulary.

It's unfortunate that anyone ever said that DLC wouldn't affect multiplayer and then DLC did.

This is one of the reasons I don't always share things with you guys, because plans change. I wasn't at Relic when this was said, but I'm sure that at the time it was true.

Things change, though from my understanding this change was already in place before SEGA bought Relic.

I am not sure I understand. Are you saying that the fact that DLC commanders are P2W is intentional? It's a genuine question that I think we'd all like to know the answer to.

With all due respect for TFN, but it is hardly fair to blame Relic for poor success when you do not even cast with a webcam and/or lack English vocabulary.

Tommy is british and Fatal speaks perfect english. I dont like the cameras. Always imagined krebs differently before he started his videos . Only person i nj seeing with camera was inukii and his panda hat in his old days.

Frankly the community is pretty toxic. I've been guilty of having a toxic attitude myself as the tension and bitterness of this community has rubbed off on to me in the 3 short weeks I've been playing the game. Don't get me started on bm'ing in automatches, when you compare it to the SC2 community every player there is a saint when it comes down to actual match playing. Here, almost eveyone (not all, some of you are good people) has to to throw in a cheap shot or some snide comment as they lose or win the match, without a gg or wp. Pretty minor point you might think but it goes a long way in making a community a fun place to be.

Ehh, I don't see this at all to be honest. Most of my games have very little chatting aside from the "glhf" and "gg wp" comments at the beginning and end of the game. These forums on the other hand have a way to go. I think the game is trending in the right direction, and I think if the community were to really get organized and start putting out new content on a consistent basis we could really see some growth.

As a previous poster pointed out, when I was playing vcoh and following the community on GR.org there was a TON of new content. All of which helped me learn tips and strategies I would have otherwise had to figure out on my own. I think this site needs more short, simple guides like the recent tip of the week guide. Perhaps some 2v2 strategies, or some commander synergies that play well in 2v2. I think the people that run this site are really focused on 1v1, but I see more potential in 2v2. I just recently upgraded my gpu and would love to start creating some coh content, so if anyone is interested in working with me and bouncing some ideas off one another shoot me a pm!

I am not sure I understand. Are you saying that the fact that DLC commanders are P2W is intentional? It's a genuine question that I think we'd all like to know the answer to.

Sorry, it really wasn't meant to be a loaded question. Perhaps I should rephrase it to use only the information that he gave in his original post:

"Are you saying that the fact that DLC commanders affect the multiplayer is intentional? It's a genuine question that I think we'd all like to know the answer to."

Better?