One week from release and still no official okw gameplay

On that note, I think the primary element of toxicity on Coh2.org, is from a degree of gangbanging by a small group of shitposters. Its not any one individual poster that is toxic, so much as it is a number of them together attacking another individual poster, and mitigating their personal responsibility of shitposting by doing it together, and creating the artificial illusion that "we are the community condemning you", when infact its just a small group of asshats who together spam up threads with a quadratic amount of crap compared to their small number and all targetted at one individual, and certainly not the topic actually at hand. Something to perhaps pay more attention to, and recognise for what it actually is.

Excellent post Cannonade. The part I quoted especially has made me re-think my stance on how toxic the community is - I think that you're right in saying that it is basically a hugely vocal minority that drown everyone else out with their aggressive spewing of bullshit.

Also @Ami and others - just to clarify a bit better what I was saying before - coh2.org is an amazing site and you guys have done a wonderful job running it. I just wish the people that hate on CoH 2 simply because they prefer vCoH - and the people that scream fanboy in every thread would stop bringing down the overall quality of the site with their shitposts.

Come on, this community is immensely positive and supportive. Our criticisms are generally constructive. Let's not paint some twisted bitter picture here cause that's not even close to the case. People are pissed about this NDA and the real lack of marketing, and rightly so. We can't be awesome together if we're not allowed to be, now can we?

I massively disagree with this Ami. I've been playing Multiplayer games for ~15 years and this community is one of the worst ever. Before people now hate on me, please let me elaborate.

There are roughly four kinds of people in the community in my opinion:
- People who are active, like the community and try to transition the game into something better. Amongst those I count a lot of the staff on CoH2.org, balance testers, the guys providing replays with balance problems to solve problems, the ones who host tournaments, be it ESL or whatever. They are the ones who really try to improve the community.
- The ones who once were in the first group, but have grown bitter due to the lack of interaction with Relic and other issues.
- The forum warriors who care more about discussing about the game than actually playing. Their opinions are often quite biased, they call the ones arguing against them fanboys and usually base their opinions less on facts than subjective impressions. Often after a lost game they go to the forums and spam them for a long time.
- The silent majority who plays on a more or less casual level or compstomps and barely provides feedback.

While in general I can fully understand the second group, I think they are doing a massive harm to the community and it's future development. Their bad experiences are constantly re-iterated and they see everything Relic does in a negative way. On the one hand you are thankful for their earlier contributions and how they helped improve the community, but on the other hand right now they are busy destroying all their good efforts prior and guilty for that are they solely. Relic may have faulted them in the past, but they continue to keep it affecting the now. That's one of my major problems with the community. The other are the people on the forums. They tend to be only a small part of the community, but due to their extremely high activity in the forums compared to them ingame their opinion is often rather vocal. The sheer amount of such posts drowns out most useful discussions and even in the old closed balance beta that was running till january or such (where also some lateron released commanders got tested!) the amount of spam, off topic and biased posts based on nothing was immense. I assume that was also one of the reasons Relic decided not to go for such a balance beta anymore, as like in the forums the ratio of useful to useless posts is too high.
Those are pretty much my problems with the community. I've rarely ever seen a community that has so much negativity and whose general attitude towards changes is usually negative. Couple that with an ignorance to learn what values in a changelog mean, but a vocal spam about what one thinks they mean and I am very annoyed. That might be especially with me, as I put a lot of time and effort to learn the stats, mechanics and workings of CoH2.
My problems with Relic are in the recent time small. In the beginning of the launch they were massive. There was almost no communication, close the gameplay did barely improve in the patches and was rather bland. So many things there were bad and those caused a lot of people who invested a lot of effort into CoH2 from the start to become annoyed with them. A major part of why the community is this way is Relics dealing. It would have never gotten so bad had they not failed so much in the beginning. Of late I feel the patches are far better, the gameplay improved and while there definitely are still quite some issues, those are often more attributed to scaling (1v1 => 4v4) and in general rare compared to prior. The gameplay got a lot more depth with different ranges mattering more and in general I for one am incredibly happy about those changes. So balancing-wise it improved a lot. The other issues like communication have barely improved. While there are now casts/videos that showcase new patches and offer a big improvement over just changelogs forum posts from Relic are still rare. I've been incredibly happy with the German Community Coordinator Hardy who often posted on the German forums and also quite often in the international ones, but he had to retire since his working permit expired. Besides him I sometimes see the Balancers posting, but I feel especially a lack of interaction from Noun or whoever is responsible for direct interaction with the community. This feeling of not being heard / listened to is a major factor why this community is so bad. People feel ignored which annoys them and they vent their anger. Instead of directly trying to solve this problem at the root and communicating more they blame the community for being toxic. Definitely helping. If you take a look at the Q&As or Ask Me Anything on Reddit most issues are actually not answered, but 'passed on'. I honestly wonder why you do this if you can't answer the questions :\

TL;DR:
I don't like a lot of people in the forum-community, but there are also some really nice and active people. The biggest cause of the problem was the time Relic took to improve CoH2 and the lack of communication which - till this day - exists in one or another form. Fix please for a better future.

Ciez: Indeed.

Even now as I look at the site stats, I see 32 registered members to 90 guests.
A full two thirds are therefore lurking, and not posting.

This is a frequent thing on many discussion boards. Some people get so caught up in their own dramas (often self-created) that they lose sight of the fact that almost always the majority remains silent. Just because a few asshats jump on the bandwagon and start attacking an individual poster, rather than the topic, does not mean the majority agrees with their shit. Infact, they are more likely completely tired of exactly that kind of shit and having to wade through it to get to the nuggets of actual content they are here for in the first place.

Especially now, so close to the launch of WF, there are no doubt many potential new members for the site and the game perusing here hoping to get some insight on the launch. Its tragic a small group of gangbangers make it so difficult for them to have that.

Generally speaking we all, as the community, can do one very constructive thing.
That is to simply not respond to personal insults and any posts that are not actually related or relevant to the actual topic. Responding creates a train, and the gangbangers love that. They will keep returning to the thread in hopes their barbed bait snags some otherwise reasonable poster, and they can drag them down to their level.

-If a post is not on topic or insulting, do not respond to it-

Its hard, but always try to remember that you are infact doing the community atlarge, especially the lurkers, a huge service and justice, and they are silently thanking you for it and will surely think of you as a dignified and valued poster whom they will give all the more respect an attention to in future.

MilkaCow: With all due respect, your post reads to me rather much as you also being representative of the second group younlisted. I mean no offence with that, but its something you might want to reflect upon if you wonder why it might seem that way to a reader.

God damn this got derailed fast there goes all hope of beaching NDA for WF secrets and bashing relics marketing into NDA lifting

Also @Ami and others - just to clarify a bit better what I was saying before - coh2.org is an amazing site and you guys have done a wonderful job running it. I just wish the people that hate on CoH 2 simply because they prefer vCoH - and the people that scream fanboy in every thread would stop bringing down the overall quality of the site with their shitposts.

The irony is, you're screaming "fanboy" in the opposite direction - calling people who dislike CoH2 vCoH "fanboys" constantly and dismissing their arguments based on that fact alone. Your attitude is just as toxic, only in the opposite direction.

Back on topic, I don't really get the obsession Relic has with NDAs in this day and age. I mean, if you're proud of your product, shouldn't you want people to be talking about it prior to release? Isn't that essentially free marketing? Like, you can call it an alpha all you want, but software like this is not changing one month prior to release. You don't look too confident in your product as a developer if you're trying so hard to stifle discussion and downplay software issues (through the NDA and alpha naming respectively) so close to your launch date.

actually the okw faction units got pretty shuffled around in the latest alpha patch

The irony is, you're screaming "fanboy" in the opposite direction - calling people who dislike CoH2 vCoH "fanboys" constantly and dismissing their arguments based on that fact alone. Your attitude is just as toxic, only in the opposite direction.

The irony here is that I don't care if people prefer vCoH to CoH 2. That's their opinion, they're entitled to it. Different games for different people, simple as that. Both games are good. Both games do things right and both games do things wrong - end of story.

I only have a problem when people (and there have only been a select few of them) incessantly trash CoH 2 simply because they prefer vCoH. If they prefer vCoH... why not go play it instead of spending hours every day mucking up forums with a bunch of useless shitposts?

I guess if you want to call that toxic, then sure. I'm toxic. Great post Inverse, stay classy bro.

Apparently I've been Inverse'd *rolls eyes*

Except people don't "trash" CoH2 because they prefer vCoH; they criticize because the game has a lot of issues and took steps back in a lot of areas, and they care about the game and community and want to see it improved. I don't think you can really argue against the fact that objectively, as a game in 2014, CoH2 has a lot of issues. Even without taking vCoH into consideration, there are a lot of questionable design decisions in CoH2; people just use vCoH as a comparison because it's the most logical thing to compare it to. It's much healthier, in my opinion, to discuss those issues instead of pretending they don't exist.

Offhandedly dismissing criticism because it comes from a person who happens to prefer a different game doesn't make much sense to me.

Except people don't "trash" CoH2 because they prefer vCoH; they criticize because the game has a lot of issues and took steps back in a lot of areas, and they care about the game and community and want to see it improved. I don't think you can really argue against the fact that objectively, as a game in 2014, CoH2 has a lot of issues. Even without taking vCoH into consideration, there are a lot of questionable design decisions in CoH2; people just use vCoH as a comparison because it's the most logical thing to compare it to. It's much healthier, in my opinion, to discuss those issues instead of pretending they don't exist.

Offhandedly dismissing criticism because it comes from a person who happens to prefer a different game doesn't make much sense to me.

If you knew anything about me you'd realize that I'm one of the most critical people about COH 2 and, at times, Relic. I've written numerous essays directly to the devs on shortcomings with CoH 2 and with WFA. I've spent hours talking one-on-one with them over VOIP etc etc etc. To say that I ignore or dismiss the faults/short comings of COH 2 - or people's constructive criticism is extraordinarily ignorant.

Most of your criticism of CoH 2, despite it being like 9+ months ago, was founded in some sort of logic - but I can't say the same for a lot of people. Anyways, we've really drug the thread off topic. You have me on Steam and can PM me if you want to continue with this discourse.

Jesus Inverse, get over yourself.

I've read all 6 pages of this topic and, although I find the discussion about marketing and NDA utterly interesting, there's a question that I would like to be answered by those who have been playing the alpha.

Do you honestly recommend to preorder it? Or it would be better to wait a couple of months to buy it at 75% sale?
I hope the NDA doesn't forbide you to answer that.

I love the CoH series and I'd like to preorder it, but all this secrecy makes me to avoid wasting my money in a game on which I don't know anything besides a single gameplay video that probably has been outdated already.

I hope that NDA doesn't forbide you to answer that.

It does,

It does,

In that case, I'll wait.

I don't understad how 4 days before the release date we still don't know anything about the expansion. Relic is trying to sell us a closed box without telling us what is inside.

Just wait - unless you MUST have the skins etc.

Why rush?

Wait a few days - see what is actually on offer and then make the decision for yourself.

Given COH2's history - my money is staying in my pocket.

my money is staying in my pocket.

How you choose to spend your money is under NDA, so please, stop telling people.

Snip

Great post, very well said. I really hope someone from relic reads this.

How you choose to spend your money is under NDA, so please, stop telling people.

Well - that's if I was part of the Beta - which I wasn't....so no NDA for me.

Inverse & CieZ, you're both doing nothing but good for the community, please.
I understand both opinions, and I know CieZ isn't bitching on 'just the vCoh' players. There are indeed players who are not just - pointing out errors of coh2 -. There are some guys here just saying 'VCOH IS BETTER OMG COH2 FEGS STFU'. And I completely understand CieZ having a problem with these guys.

Anyway, this topic is getting out of hand.

Because Kreatiir, quite obviously, time invested in making a strong site like COH2.org brings in more players. More players are more sales - more sales are more money and more potential DLC targets.

However, by not investing time or money into COH2.org (and we're talking like £500 prize money or some goodies) you alienate the community. The community has to find its own way and resents you. It's a classic PR/image problem. If you abandon a game, leave it to rot, whats to say you won't do it again? I will however point out that Relic have never done this, and are in fact still supporting Dawn of War - which makes them look fantastic vs. other devs.

Whatever, just read a book on why PR is so important and tell me Relic aren't falling short in some of those catagories. Of course that book is getting rewritten all the time...

I know that, like I stated; You don't have to tell ME why. Tell relik.

Well, yeah, that's why I posted Sorry, the tone I used in my post wasn't great. It was a slow morning for me.

@Greeb: There is a whole other thread discussing if you should preorder or not. I'd say, if you have any interest now is the time to buy.