Call to action - Let's Be Awesome Together

This community consistently compares itself to bigger communities/games such as SC2 and Dota 2, for reasons of growth. Succesful casters and streamers in those scenes show themselves and are almost exclusively native speakers. The implicit conclusion drawn from this leads to my previous statement. In addition, the idea is to attract people that are currently not consistently watching CoH content, which is more likely with webcams and native casters, as the implicit preferences point out.

Furthermore, I do not blame you or anyone else for speaking with any kind of accent. I merely pointed out what the majority of viewers implicitely prefers. As for the growth of TFN, it has been diminishing since the release of CoH2, which cannot be good in the light of a sequel which sold quite well.

P.S. Touché on that spelling mistake. However, I specifically mentioned vocabulary, which is, as you clearly did not know, unrelated to the concept of spelling.

The main reasons the growth for games like SC2/Dota/LoL is bigger for the casters has literally nothing to do with anything apart from the fact that those games are just much much bigger, their numbers are massive and there are plenty of foreign casters who are huge.
TFN reached plenty of people outside of the community, as I've had tons of people approach me/TFN in various ways saying they had no previous knowledge about CoH even existing.

Fact of the matter is you are binding success of a shoutcaster to be tied to webcams and peoples nationalities, when you are clearly overlooking the fact that the game isn't doing so good in the competetive community, something TFN was aimed at.

If the growth of TFN halted in the last few months it basically had nothing to do with my accent or webcams, it had everything to do with the game.

What really equals success is timing, a well received game and promotion of your material, not webcams which doesn't set you apart from anyone else.

P.S. It clearly went right over your head that if you can subtly insult TFN by claiming our (non-existant) failure was because of me not being a native english speaker or using webcams I can subtly insult you by pointing out that you not being able to spell properly makes your posts useless, can you see the comparison now?
It's an equally ridiculous claim as your statement.

On the contrary, the majority of top streamers and casters of CoH are native English speakers (HelpingHans, Stephenn, Siberian, Inverse, Xcom, AmiPolizeiFunk, Tommy, RnP, A_E, VonIvan etc.). Clearly, every rule has exceptions, but you will find a similar pattern within succesful competitive games.

The top streamers have always been (with a few exceptions) the best players, and the most consistent at streaming, Aimstrong, DevM, Aljaz, Symbiosis, Sandland, Pepsi (the list goes on) and some people from your list, at best it's a split, but it's not the rule as you claim it to be.
A pattern is also seen quite obviously here, none of the former popular players/streamers play CoH2 anymore, it's merely a coincidence your list of people are still playing CoH.

Naming a few non-native speakers out of a majority of native commentators over the last decade is not changing the core of my point, at all. Exceptions only enhance it.

Next to that, nowhere have I stated that casters should be visible during the games themselves. Between games, a webcam is preferable to anything else, as implicitely preferred.

Webcams for streamers is straightforward. For example, nearly all top streams on Twitch.tv right now feature the player on a webcam.

SNF5 used this exact setup with webcams between games, still it had worse numbers then SNF4, majority of the broadcasts were lower then the TFN WC which used none of that aswell.
You don't want webcams during games but if you look at the TFN channel on Youtube there is no "between" games, it's all replays, one by one.
So I'm not sure what you want actually, you don't want it during games, but you blame TFNs failure on it, but then you don't take into consideration that the ones doing it is not doing any better at all, so you're really just spinning around in a circle of incorrect "facts".

TL;DR Success for content creators rely 90% on the game itself, the other 10% is some of the things listed above, not your ludicrous statement about webcams and nationalities.

I'm done feeding the trolls, my game finally finished patching and this gave me 15 mins of something to do, I will simply no longer respond, as you are already stuck in a web of made up "facts" you are unable of letting go.

I feel compelled to speak for what I imagine is a larger portion of the community than lonely ol' me and say that despite supporting a lot of the critical posts in this thread I also still have optimism for this game and that Relic (via Noun) is sincere.

Maybe it'll end up a bust, but I think we have all known that since before release due to many circumstances. I have invested X amount of my time and effort into this game and I'm willing for it to not pay-off. I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.

hahahaha

why do people think they are in control of relic just because they paid $60 for the game? its fine to voice your opinion and disagree with how they do things, but you should realize its their game. they can do whatever they want with it. that doesnt make them a "communist era dictatorship".

Seriously? Paradox or what lol

FYI thats what 'communist era dictatorship' was like. They do what they want
And they also didn't like toxicity of internet and peoples opinions that don't favor them.

But enough about you being a 'smart' ass, stick on topic. If you don't understand it don't comment on it

My opinion on TFN: Some of it has to do with the game yes.. coh2 is simply not as good as vcoh, thats just a fact, less readability, worse effects, worse sounds and shallow gameplay. But otherwise when i watched TFN for coh2 you could feel you guys werent intrested in the game and that came through and made it boring to watch. Faking excitement is very hard and noone can blame you for not liking the game. But to me that was made your casts not fun to watch. It felt like i watched some guys doing a show because they "should" not that they actually wanted or enjoyed it.

Compared to Tales of Heroes where you could hear the joy in the voice when things heated up in the game.. made you want to play the game while still wanting to keep watching the show. You knew the evening was gonna be a good one when a new episode got released.

So no suprise the viewer numbers werent there, maybe there are other reasons but this is how I see it.

Seriously? Paradox or what lol

FYI thats what 'communist era dictatorship' was like. They do what they want
And they also didn't like toxicity of internet and peoples opinions that don't favor them.

But enough about you being a 'smart' ass, stick on topic. If you don't understand it don't comment on it

are we having a language barrier issue or something? relic is not forcing you to do anything. if you dont agree with what theyre doing, you are welcome to not play their game and spend your time in other ways. communist dictatorships are not like that.

youll also notice this thread is full of "toxicity" and negative opinions. none of which have been censored in any way. noun has been nice and very willing to discuss and answer many questions despite peoples negative tone. again, nothing like a communist dictatorship.

so stop trying to use sensational terms. youre as bad as the people calling relic a bunch of nazis.

tl;dr version:

Relic is upset with Ami's frustration with Relic breaking promises (ie pay to win dlc) and not fixing gameplay/balance isues spilling over in a twitch stream with a streamer he was on vent with so they're no longer going to support COH2.org/SNF as much as before. Also, it's the casters fault that people aren't getting into the game (lol) and not the state of the game, so let's all just get along.

RAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Ok Noun, let me make a "quick clip" of content. It'll be no more than 2-3 minutes. That's good for streaming from your phone right, which will attract more viewers? I can really see the enthusiasm building when someone watches my 2-3 quick youtube clip consisting of me calling in a DLC Tiger Ace and destroying my opponents base who had been winning the entire match. I'm sure that will get people moist. Maybe I'll put it in a Vine or a .Gif with fucking Grumpy Cat looking over my opponents base like Lucifer himself.

A lot of complaints/bad reviews on metacritic are about the game being pro-nazi - I guess we all know who writes those reviews.

Oh, true that. There was a ruckus about the game showing the Soviet Union in a bad light (how else should you portray the Soviet Union?).

Still, DLCs being mentioned isn't exactly infrequent.

I would love to hear relic just for ONCE say where they stand with coh2. Is it still just a "casual" game mostly intended for comp-stomps and derp around in teammgames, mass arty, mass tank style? Or are they finally going to start supporting AND developing more into the competative side of things?

I've been saying this for months... You can't simply make a casual game an e-sports title. The game was designed for guys who mostly would play Hochwaldt and Scheldt games on vCoH. They've looked at Blitzkrieg mod (which is pretty much the biggest casual/fanboy mod for CoH overall) and took Eastern front 1.00 as reference, which pretty much also was casual as hell because modding knowledge was so shallow at their release back in 2010.

There can't be esports if the game has no decent skillcap. Even when playing C&C Kanes Wrath aka SC II lite I'm getting more APM after the 2nd minute than I have in CoH2 the whole game.

Let me be more precise:

You CAN play an esports title casually.
But you CANNOT play a casual game as an esports title.

It's that easy. It simply does NOT work to try to appeal to both esports and casuals at the same time. The only thing you CAN do is to make the game for esports and then guide casuals into the esports side from the game.

Would be nice to hear so I know if im just wasting my time or not. Sometimes it feels like they refuse to answer so they can keep fooling the competative scene into keep playing the game.

NEWS RELIC!!! A strong and healthy COMPETATIVE scene is free and powerful advertisement to a game. Counter-strike, dota, LoL, warcraft 3 where all games like coh2 as in easy to play but unlike coh2 they still had a hard to master gameplay, years of developing new strategies, new tricks to do that CASUALS enjoy to see and follow and dream that they too can one day do the stuff the best of the best can.

Thats the difference between a well executed casual game to yours relic.. a casual game doesnt have to be shallow to draw in casual players.

WORD!

"Easy to learn, hard to master."
for CoH 2 it's like:
"easy to learn, easy to master"
for CoH 1 it was:
"hard to learn and hard to master"

Even though I dislike Blizzard a lot for several reasons. one thing they do extremely well is making people interested in playing more and more. CoH 2 also does this to an extent, but there's no match with the addiction machinery from Blizzard. On top of that their games offer ridiculous amounts of strategical depth.

I mean c'mon - they made a Starter edition for SC 2 which allows you to play skirmish, custom lobby games multiplayer, tutorial and a few campaign missions as a "replacement for a demo".

I would've never even considered buying SC 2 or downloading it or whatever, because I don't like SciFi apart from warcraft 3 and C&C. But since it was free I played some games, and it's already addicting. It's like Blizzard knows the game is that good and I'm going to unlock the starter edition for 50$ anyways...

Edit: About p2win:

And then I get the full deal, 100% of the game. No need to get DLC commanders... Just imagine someone would try to sell you SC 2 units for money.. Like "drones and zealots are for free. But if you want templars, go upgrade for 1.99$" - Nobody would play SC 2, everone would stick with WC3 or SC 1.
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are we having a language barrier issue or something? relic is not forcing you to do anything. if you dont agree with what theyre doing, you are welcome to not play their game and spend your time in other ways. communist dictatorships are not like that.

youll also notice this thread is full of "toxicity" and negative opinions. none of which have been censored in any way. noun has been nice and very willing to discuss and answer many questions despite peoples negative tone. again, nothing like a communist dictatorship.

so stop trying to use sensational terms. youre as bad as the people calling relic a bunch of nazis.

Did you read my post?

Entire post was about Relic doing what they want and not giving their customers what they want.

You ask me do I realize that its Relics game and they can do what they want with it, despite me paying $60 for it.

Of course I realize it, since I wrote entire post about it.

You argue my comparison of Relic's insistance on doing things their way as with communist regime where they also did what they want, despite different wishes of their disgruntled customers/population.
You laughable dismiss this comparison with examples of things they do not do as they did in communist regime.

So yes, I think we do have language barrier. (or I hope we do, anyway)

For first part read my post again and second Metaphor is important part of most languages on Earth, as far as I am aware.
Not being able to understand one will get person in situation where they are stating the obvious and arguing about unrelated points.

A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object

The point of metaphor is not the difference or similarity of Relic and communist regime on all aspects, but what is the end result:
Toxicity, revolt and mistrust of community. The exact thing that Relic/Noun is complaining about.

Anyway I don't want to give English lessons or argue about things that went of topic any further.

Just read about 8 pages, heres my two cents.

Toxicity in the streaming community? I don't see it. By no means am I a big caster, but I've had positive interactions with a lot of other streamers like JaminRock, Siberian, HelpingHans, and NorthWestFresh. Apart from the incidents back at launch that we all know of, I haven't seen any animosity, and especially no shit talking between any of the mentioned streamers, ever.

I can appreciate the tips on short content. It's a nice tip for fledgling streamers to get some exposure (see: Sib's highlights on coh2.org like the "Mancum" stuff).

I just want to add my thoughts on the whole DLC business. I really appreciate Noun for finally addressing it on some level. Nothing irritates me more than having seen absolutely zero comments from developers on our gripes with DLC. I understand the SEGA influence, I understand the NEED for P2W commanders. The only recommendation I'd like to make on future premium commanders is to keep them more like the Partisan commander. That is, not inherently broken, but super fun to play. Having my friend purchase that commander for me has led to me streaming almost daily about how much fun I am having with Partisans. Commanders like Soviet Industry and Elite Troops, which destabilize the game immensely, should be refrained from in the future. Though, I know SEGA has the ultimate say, so I can't really blame Relic too much.

Overall, CoH 2 is in a dangerous state. Player counts are low, twitch viewers are paltry, and more people are leaving due to DLC. Like others have said, ask me 5 years ago what I thought about CoH, and I would argue to the death about how it is the best game of all time. Ask me today, and I'll be hesitant to speak positively of it.

Regardless, thanks Noun for addressing our complaints. In the past I've really directed my anger toward you for walking around what I perceived to be big problems, but your honesty in this thread is commendable. I hope the team at Relic keeps up this higher level of community interaction, rather than letting our anger fester among ourselves in the community.

I've read through this again and invisi'd a few of the more spam/meme type posts, but in general I think it's interesting and constructive discourse and the vast majority of people have been perfectly civil.

I think many people here - including Noun - would agree that Relic have lessons to learn, but so do we as a community.

The quote by TribalBob from GR is particularly irksome, though, and you can't get around that. I'm not sure how things changed between now and then internally at Relic, but if that's the sort of post that was doing the rounds back during the alpha (or even before) and we've ended up with successive DLC commanders since, then I have a renewed sense of sympathy for the people who feel hurt.

I do get the sense that Relic are trying to turn a corner here, though, and so I wouldn't be surprised if we see some major changes.

I think many people here - including Noun - would agree that Relic have lessons to learn, but so do we as a community.

I do get the sense that Relic are trying to turn a corner here, though, and so I wouldn't be surprised if we see some major changes.

Very nicely put, agree.

I might add that I share your optimism. I also feel the change in attitude and believe Relic is trying to turn the corner.

Let me be more precise:

You CAN play an esports title casually.
But you CANNOT play a casual game as an esports title.

It's that easy. It simply does NOT work to try to appeal to both esports and casuals at the same time. The only thing you CAN do is to make the game for esports and then guide casuals into the esports side from the game.

What about SSBM ? If there isn´t anything more casual as Nintendo, you tell me.
Anything can be played "competitively" (take for example speedruns), if you want something to turn into an Esport you basically need popularity, numbers, that´s it.

ugh i hate the esports talk for 1 reason. esports are all about 1 thing and that is money .

Lol @ thread. imagine noobs reading this...

First of all, I appreciate what Noun is trying do here
Second, i really like the game and since i dont find nothing better that catters me i will keep playing.
Thirdly, i will briefly talk about the first message written by Noun n then go on with the flow of the thread.
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I dont know how many or who wants to catter to a broad audience. But i dont think thats what some of the oldies have in mind. I dont see the basic mechanic of the game cattering to the big audience. This game n genre is in a niche and should have catter to it. Quality n complexity over casualization.
I didnt get into CoH cause i saw a fancy image or catchy video. After seeing SC2 matches (IPL, Day9, Husky, etc and i have to say i didnt bored with 10mins game unless something super "special" happened) n playing the game (in that order) i looked after other strategy games. Thx to TFN n Inuki (the ones who i catch up first with) i´m here today.
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Regarding how the thread derailed: Isnt it a bit too late to be "awesome"? The game is fine, but it doesnt keep up with the expectatives and fails greatly on other aspects. I mean, when the core issues, options, game mechanics, direction on which the game was designed (or is following) are what people are discomform with...how do you expect people to still like the product, praise it n spread the word of how great it is.

I think all this have already been said but will say it anyway.
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Short own issues version: DLC n Vanilla commanders (Price, design, usage of things already ingame, overlapping) + Strategy depth n possibilities + Bulletins.

Since the ones who remains here:

A rather a large chunk of the community (possibly even the majority) is dissatisfied with the current state of CoH2. Some issues are controversial some issues are universally accepted - which is astounding given the very nature of RTS gaming.

What can YOU, we or others do to improve the game?

1- Vets n oldies have already told you what needs to change in order to appeal to that sector.
2- We can agree this is a niche game/genre. Trying to make it more casual in order to be more popular wont work in a long term of time.
Maybe it would but i think it would derail from the roots of what the game started of.

If that it´s the case all what have been said on the first post is gonna work. This somehow reminds me of how Battlefield started and on what is has been converted nowadays.
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Please give us some indication of the plans relic and/or sega have for the future of CoH2 aside from balance patches.
A rough roadmap, even if there is no timeline whatsoever, would do nicely.
I know how unlikely a real roadmap is but please give us something, anything to look forward to.
Please give us hope for the future!

Should we expect a huge change that will shake the core of COH2 or shall we just expect little mid changes which will improve the game but leave it as it is now (Optimization, Better replay system or rewind funtion, more DLCs, more maps, somehow somewhen mods, etc).

why do people think they are in control of relic just because they paid $60 for the game? its fine to voice your opinion and disagree with how they do things, but you should realize its their game. they can do whatever they want with it. that doesnt make them a "communist era dictatorship".

wooof, you'are right there. CoH2 it's their game and they can do with it whatever they want.
The only issue here is that they resorted to lies when took our 60$ for the game. That's not ethical. (I don't believe that they didn't know by then that their DLC commanders were P2W)

Even more, their DLC policy is based in making worse the multiplayer experience to those who doesn't buy DLCs because they won't have as many strategies to use than the ones who buy them.

I'm not against DLC at all. I myself have a couple of ToW DLCs, and I agree that Relic should try to make all the money they can with the game, but just respecting two simple rules:

- Don't lie to your customers.
- Don't make the game worse for those who doesn't want to pay more.

I not buying the DLC can have a negative impact in a player, then you're doing it wrong.

Now look, I'm not a caster or a streamer, but I've been in this community since 2010. First off, as for the toxicity, it rarely exists between streamers, but it definitely does exist throughout commenters or people talking in the background. Can streamers control it obviously, but they can't completely prevent it from happening.

Plus, streamers stream to be entertaining or to hang out with the community rather then simply promoting the game. Again, I'm not a streamer, but you don't have to be a genius to figure this out.

Recently, you've been tweeting when players are streaming, keep that up. Even though I don't enjoy the game, however, I still watch streams just to chat with other people. I would've never find about Sib, Von, Rogers and etc without the COH2.org stream list at its front page. To be honest, if it wasn't for VonIvan's streams with master chef and some good COH2 gamplay, I wouldn't think I would still have Coh2 installed or be typing this right now. I watch these twitch streams for the streamers, not the game, but the fact that they are playing the game just gets me re-interested into the game and see if it has improved.


If you want Company of Heroes 2 Community Entertainment Base to grow, then you need to grow a larger amount of players. Now look, I don't want to completely copy Ivan's post, but the optimization completely daunted players especially the free weekend players. Many of my friends didn't play the game because their frames per second were too low. 30 frames per second is basically unplayable for a RTS. Is this because the engine is poorly optimized, mainly, but your developers who created the video options did a poor job, a really bad job. Where is AO, shadows, and post processing? They are in the configuration files, but they aren't in the actual game options. And the sad thing is that when many of people disabled some of these options in the config files; they gained around 20-25 fps allowing them to play at a stable frame-rate. Imagine the amount of people who wouldn't have been kicked out of multiplayer games and quit the game if these 3 options were in your options.

Also this game is very CPU demanding, do you guys know why? It's because there is a encoder running in the background recording replays. You can disable it, if you tweak some of the game settings in your company of heroes 2 folder and many people reported that they gained 27-33 frames per second after the tweak. Yes, they do lose replays, but in exchange they can properly play the game without it being a slide show and won't get kicked from games.

Where are our beloved mod tools? I'm not talking about map tools. I'm talking about the ability to allow users to create high resolution texture packs, custom soldier skins, (which wouldn't affect skin sales since only the player can see it) and the ability to create massive popular mods such as modern combat or the eastern front mod. Yes, we can make them but we can't actually use them in game for some reason. Mods extend the life of games: skyrim, fallout, Battlefield 2, Arma 2, basically every Valve game, even Halo 1 Combat evolved, which are old games yet they are still commonly played because of mods.


Yes, casters grow the game, but they aren't best the way to grow the game. First, the game itself needs to be good. If your commander balance director decides to keep on poorly testing these commanders, and yes, I'm pointing fingers not on Brad or Pq but that guy. The guy will be the catalyst of killing off the series. His first strike was the A-Grens, which luckily were nerfed right away. His second strike was windustry and elite troops, which took way to long to nerf, we both know the reasons why for that. If there is a 3rd strike, well we both don't want to see that happen.

Keep tweeting out casters and streamers, do more sales and free weekends, and please listen to the top members of the community, they basically represent the COH2 community. I'm just a random person who is typing this late at night. They know more; they built this site because they love the franchise and I'm pretty sure for that reason, they are dedicated to improve it. But they can't help, if you guys are always quiet to them. If you read this far then I'm impressed, anyways thanks for reading.

Yes there was a German fan/content creator by the name of General Mistake a very nice guy who we had the pleasure of hanging out with and hearing his feedback on the game as well. So yes there was a German Content creator invited to Vancouver.

I got absolutly no idea who General Mistake is. Someone who is active @GR? He isn´t a popular / known german player, he isn´t a popular german streamer, he isn´t an active member at the biggest german fan side hq-coh.com or at YouTuber. Otherwise i would know him. Means i wouldn´t consider him being part of the german community and thats my point: The german community wasn´t represented in Vancover at all.