Balance forum with rank prequisite

These forums are getting to be as unreadable as the official forums.

I apologize for the inherent snob factor, but I wonder if you might consider creating a balance section that requires a 1v1 or 2v2 rank of 200 or above to post.

I know, rank does not always equate to skill, but it's all we have to work with. You could create a tourney quarter-finalists section for all I care, just some place where there's less gibberish being posted which would be read-only for everyone else and I know the opinions expressed will be backed up by skill+experience. This might also get other skilled players posting, there seem to be quite a few who just don't want to waste their time on the forums arguing with idiots.

It would also help Relic by filtering the feedback. There's clearly too much for them to pay attention to at this point.

I understand there is some hidden forum here that's invite only, but I think it would be more helpful for such a forum to be read-only by the masses.

Dont worry, its less than 200 players who plays the game. Oh, no I was wrong its 205. Maybe there could be a tournament to determine the (five) people that are not permitted to speak?

O sorry I only paid for the game... uups... shame on me... I am just a casual gamer trying also to relax playing COH2... and enjoy the game coming back from a days work. Poor little me not being a member of the exquisite distinguished merry few...burn the witch .

You could have just posted a screenshot showing that you're ranked among the top 200. MVGame

Make it for the top 20 only you filthy animal.

Noise, I think you are forgetting the number of trolls that are in the top 200

Top 20 dont mean they're good players or any better candidate for balance discussion either tbh.

Also, Relic doesnt really have an interest in high level players feedback over casuals.

I frequently disagreed with the opinion of some of the best vCoH guys re: balance. Maybe that's just because I'm an idiot though.

I'm not convinced our discussions on balance do much to influence the process.

As Groucho Marx said, I would not join any club that would have me as a member. In any case, I'm not a top tier player and would not expect an invite.

Just irritated and fed up with the crapola. I'd rather just read good posts from smart players and sifting through the posts from all the IIBovineSSDivision types is getting thoroughly tiresome. I do read the community forums on occasion and a lot of the same garbage posters are now here as well, that's all.

Here's how I deal with fanbois:

You smack them in the face with the truth, and move along.

Best thing to do is ignore them afterwards.......sooner or later they either A. Give Up. Or B. Lose Credibility from the majority of people reading.(Which in turn causes them to go into fit mode and eventually get invisi'd by the admins)

I don't think there's a clear-cut solution but there's definitely an issue to consider. And this is not related to COH2, every game where balance is involved has it.

That said, from experience, some people of lower level does have good ideas regarding balance too, and some other of higher level might be extremely bad at it.

This issue is more about being able to filter smart people from idiots. One of the solutions we considered before is the usual system of upvote/downvote, but this does turn out into agree/disagree battle as well as popular/no popular battle instead of filtering smart from stupid.

I don't think there's a clear-cut solution but there's definitely an issue to consider. And this is not related to COH2, every game where balance is involved has it.

That said, from experience, some people of lower level does have good ideas regarding balance too, and some other of higher level might be extremely bad at it.

This issue is more about being able to filter smart people from idiots. One of the solutions we considered before is the usual system of upvote/downvote, but this does turn out into agree/disagree battle as well as popular/no popular battle instead of filtering smart from stupid.

+1

A select group of top players and mapmakers worked closely together with Relic to bring 2.602 to COH1, which we have been playing on for the last 4 years. Other than some dumb bugs that weren't supposed to happen (Stag reload, for example), the patch was balanced enough (particularly for the vanilla factions) to provide us with two great Seasons of SNF gameplay and years of fun after that.

Balancing from the top down is definitely the right way to go, but posting about it here won't be very useful. Relic has to agree with you first. We tried it here at COH2.ORG, and actually put a helluva lot of effort into getting the best possible feedback, but Relic eventually pulled out. They didn't like or couldn't respond to the fact that many of the arguments came down to the business model, involving premium DLC having the primary influence on mutiplayer gameplay. Most top players unanimously agreed that this business model was bad for competitive COH. It really came to a head when the Tiger Ace was released. We raised objections when we heard it was coming down the pipe, but it got released anyway, and pretty much fucked up multiplayer entirely ever since (Cata's 70+ wins with Elite Troops and buying PIV vet is still making top-level multiplayer unfun even today). After that everybody just threw their hands up in the air and gave up.

At the same time, Relic moved their balance beta to a private beta with a strictly enforced NDA and private SEGA forums. The current balance participants are an eclectic bunch, with only a small handful of top players (that I know of) or even players that care about COH2 as an Esport.

I see the point of a top-tier balance forum, but how many of the top 200 players are just biased, flavour-of-the-month abusers that don't want their strat nerfed? It's not an easy thing to fix by any means.

At the same time, Relic moved their balance beta to a private beta with a strictly enforced NDA and private SEGA forums. The current balance participants are an eclectic bunch, with only a small handful of top players (that I know of) or even players that care about COH2 as an Esport.

^^

Steam group for closed beta participants has like 7 or so well known players, some huge Relic suck ups, and a lot of people that as far as I can tell were included because they have friends in beta. For example RtN has a few pretty good players in it, though it looks like almost everyone in the clan is in closed beta. At least that was the case back when there was like 30 beta members.

I see the point of a top-tier balance forum, but how many of the top 200 players are just biased, flavour-of-the-month abusers that don't want their strat nerfed? It's not an easy thing to fix by any means.

+1 The best players to find are those good at the game(not awesome), aren't afraid of trying new strategies that seem useless to the masses, and aren't biased with either faction(meaning they play both at around the same amount of games/rankings).

Thanks to fan feedback we're looking at moving to a more open forum of testing. We have a great group of people in the balance beta now, and we'll continue to work with those people in some capacity and anyone else interested.

A mix of both is great, but we're also relying a lot more heavily on data. It's great hearing a top level player talk about how long it takes to tech up for tanks, but it's much more useful seeing how long it actually takes in millions of games. We can release an update and then watch live how that changes the game as thousands of games are played and we can watch that data.

Also skill isn't a perquisite to having good ideas. As Seb said it's much better to simply learn who has good ideas and can express themselves well and who can't. We're always looking to work with people who fall into that first category.

I'm not sure what exactly it is that's the difference, but I've played games that were balanced seemingly exclusively on data interpretation which did not turn out very well. Just as a suggestion, do not underestimate the importance of watching actual players in games and getting an understanding that graphs can't illustrate as well. Sorry for being vague.

Edit: Maybe it's to do with an average not being indicative of an individual match, which can easily play out very differently from what appears to be working fine 'on average'.

I originally came here to mock this dumb idea of a thread but I've changed my mind.

Thanks to fan feedback we're looking at moving to a more open forum of testing.

I was hard in my thread that you closed below but I'm glad to see some of it was taken to heart and it may be sparking change. If Relic indeed goes more open with it`s testing I will personally deliver you and Peter a cake*. This cake is not a lie.

(Assuming Relic HQ is still downtown)