Is Coh2 ready for E-Sports?Post-oktober Betapatch discussion

Relic announced in august that they are "planning to do an E-sports-program later this year" -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVuY0sNcbHs
If the patchnotes lives up to what it promises is the game ready for E-sports? Or does it still lack in code, gameplay or something else?

I have no idea myself what E-sports demands or is, but as I play and visit streams sometimes I would love the game to grow and watch the topplayers in topgames.
Whats your opinion?

As much as I would love to see a major e-Sports event that involved CoH 2 I think it needs a little more time. This patch is looking quite solid but in order for it to be truly competitive it needs at least some of the following:

1 - Less RNG (no more vehicle death crits/abandons - losing a game on a 5% chance is stupid. Or in a more recent tourney game my opponents got THREE vehicle death crits on important vehicles, without that they would have lost 100%)

2 - Less 1 shotting of squads. The main offenders are ISU, KT, Tiger, Stuka, B4, demo charges. Demo charges should be a way to deny buildings, kill bunkers, or punish aggressive garrisoning, not things you just randomly throw down b/c they 1 shot squads. Plus sweepers don't deactivate them... likewat???

But overall having squads 1 shot seriously limits the skill cap of the game, let's poor players crutch on bad game design and is frustrating. Squad preservation should be rewarded and should be one of the most integral parts of the game. When your vet 3 full hp squads get instantly killed by something completely out of control it's dumb. Simple as that.

3 - Redesign call-in system. It is broken right now. Super heavies are so much stronger than anything you can build it is insane. Call-ins are much more efficient/less risky. We've had enough of Tigers, T34/85s, ISUs, JTs, and Elefants. The T3 vs T3 is actually really exciting and balanced. Plus it'd be nice to have an actual flow of the game like early, mid, late, superlate. Not what we have now which is: early, kind of mid but not really because only light vehicles show up..................... superlate.

4 - Better maps - the current map pool is laughable for competitive play. I'd say 75% of the map pool isn't truly playable competitively, and most of the maps that are competitive are hardly balanced. Thankfully with some relatively minor changes this could increase by a lot. A lot of the maps are actually beautiful looking and have a pretty decent flow, just need some better balance and a few awkward things ironed out.

Either way, if Relic can keep up patches like this one I think things should start taking an upward turn again.

Wow the patch isn't even live yet.. give it some time.

not constantly pissing off tournament organisers, commentators, modders and other content makers would be a massive step forward on Relic's part.

the amount of community contributors they have burnt out over the years is staggering.

^^

It's a long road back from frown town but at least my units no longer take a break to masturbate before deciding to run away from a grenade

not constantly pissing off tournament organisers, commentators, modders and other content makers would be a massive step forward on Relic's part.

the amount of community contributors they have burnt out over the years is staggering.

Yeah they did that.

But the love of the game does seem to keep you guys hanging around on the periphery. And if you could see past your (justifiable) anger at past transgressions and remember why you loved the game in the first place maybe you'll find your way back again. Despite anything Relic did there is a community who has supported those contributors and miss them. And based on recent communication it appears maybe...just maybe...Relic is changing their ways. I hope we have reached a tipping point.

In short, I hope all those folks reconsider and return if they love the game and see its potential. We need you back!

COH Central is not CoH2 Central.

COH Central is not CoH2 Central.

This keeps happening, I think Coh 2 has been mean to them so they try and run away from time to time.

*topic moved, carry on. Nice post by Ciez.

As much as I would love to see a major e-Sports event that involved CoH 2 I think it needs a little more time. This patch is looking quite solid but in order for it to be truly competitive it needs at least some of the following:

1 - Less RNG (no more vehicle death crits/abandons - losing a game on a 5% chance is stupid. Or in a more recent tourney game my opponents got THREE vehicle death crits on important vehicles, without that they would have lost 100%)

I don't know I quite like abandoned vehicles, heavy engine damage from infantry snares is stupid but abandons are quite exciting and create a new fight about a vehicle. If you support your vehicle and it get's abandoned you should have no problem destroying it.
That being said I wouldnt be opposed to give abandoned vehicles the immobilized status

+1 for ciez's post.
I vote no. Too much RNG. It's so frustated when your loosing, half of your troops/tanks because of crashed planes for example.

Do most people enjoy a little RNG? Without RNG the best play wins every engagement in a predictable way, whereas an unexpected turn of events can be the catalyst for some really exciting moments (for viewers). I guess the hope is that over a few games the best play will ultimately come out ahead since the RNG is frequent enough and goes both ways.

+1 for ciez's post.
I vote no. Too much RNG. It's so frustated when your loosing, half of your troops/tanks because of crashed planes for example.

Hm maybe it is harder to play, but i think watching is a more fun if there is RNG. Obviously 1 shotting a vet 3 Squad with full health should not happen. But as a fan i do not only want to watch a pure chess game. I want to watch the horror of one player getting 3 times bad luck - but still keeps fighting and (hopefully) wins by strong mind and even more skillfull strat.

In other words as a fan, i kind of like the tragedy. So RNG needs to get toned just a bit. But should not be negated. Do not forget, this is what Coh2 makes sepecial anyways.

Hm maybe it is harder to play, but i think watching is a more fun if there is RNG. Obviously 1 shotting a vet 3 Squad with full health should not happen. But as a fan i do not only want to watch a pure chess game. I want to watch the horror of one player getting 3 times bad luck - but still keeps fighting and (hopefully) wins by strong mind and even more skillfull strat.

In other words as a fan, i kind of like the tragedy. So RNG needs to get toned just a bit. But should not be negated. Do not forget, this is what Coh2 makes sepecial anyways.

Fully agreed. We are not playing SC2 here.

sorry, but the "we'd like coh2 to be esports" efforts come 2+ years too late.
the game at its very core has multiple things (and i'm specifically NOT talking about "chance") that were decided on somewhen pre-release that pretty much rule out esports. the commander system and how it works is one of those. dividing the player base with addons is certainly not helping either. and don't get me started on spoils of war.

if you go back to the very first interviews quinn duffy and his team gave after coh2 was announced, it became very apparent that even the multiplayer part of the game was an afterthought. everyone who was there at release knows what state the game was in (and i'm not talking about balance) when it was in beta and later on at release.

ofc one could argue that the game has changed... but in most areas it hasn't. and were it has changed, it was often for the worse (from a competetive standpoint).

relic never wanted coh2 to be esports. they did nothing pre-release, and now, like almost 1.5 years after release all they added was observer mode.
the replay system for example hasn't changed since coh1 (which was released over 8 years ago), and in fact (and i don't know how that's possible) was WORSE than the coh1 replay system when coh2 was still in beta (as in, it had less options and some of those were even non-functional).

sorry, but no chance. try to make (competitive) multiplayer the core focus of the game when developing coh3. you can still release 20 singleplayer campaign moneygrabbing dlcs later on (or even on release).

trying to make coh2 esports is the equivalent of trying to turn your lawnmower into a F1 racecar.

Rng and competition dont go hand in hand. Losing your first tank for which you saved all your fuel to a random critical is bad, that is something that does not belong in competitive events.

Every aspect that takes away a certain amount of control away from the player, is bad for esports.
When you do x to get result y, but it gives you the opposite, thus negative for you ( lets say a tank critical or abandon) only frustrates the player.

I brought it up countless times, here and on the official forums..

e: RNG is fine for some things, it makes a fight between cons & grens exciting.
But what I obviously meant, is that some RNG is gamebreaking and is only frustrating and doesn't fit in competition.

Also Crawler, this makes no sense at all.

trying to make coh2 esports is the equivalent of trying to turn your lawnmower into a F1 racecar.

COH2 needs tweaking, but that just doesnt make any sense.

RNG is fine, but stupid unfair pointless RNG like heavy engine damage Crits, Abandoned vehicles or planes crash landing is stupid and has no part in the game whatsoever.

The other big problem leaving Coh2 back is the lack of skill differentiators, currently there isn't enough skill ceiling for the top players to be rewarded over moderate players, both in terms of a micro level and on a tactical/strategic level. There's various reasons why:

• Really poor intentional design decisions that need to change such as Blitzkrieg, Panzer Tactician and Sniper Sprint that serve to be a get out of jail free card that prevents bad players from getting punished when misplayed, or forcing off MG's by throwing a grenade/Molotov despite crawling up to an MG from the front whilst taking damage. Or MG teams randomly reloading at the very start of a combat. When you outplay your opponent, you should be rewarded by it. A really good flank shouldn't be negated by just pressing the Smoke and Blitzkrieg button and then driving away completely unharmed. Likewise nice pre-emptive MG placement shouldn't be negated by a Rifle nade from the front wiping 5/6 Maxim members, or a Molotov forcing a retreat. Vet 5 gives OKW far too much late game strength, despite having the best heavy tanks and forward bases, they then have infantry that scales 2.5x better than Allied infantry having 5 Vet bonuses instead of 2.
  
  
• The lack of meaningful strategic choices due to units overperforming and underperforming, you don't have to think about what and when to build, because you build the same thing every single game. Gren into P4 into Tiger. Conscripts into Maxim into T-34 into IS-2/T-34'85. The factions need to have non standard build paths, things need to have opportunity cost to reward players for making the correct decision, and punishing players for building the wrong units. For example SU-85's and Jacksons should actually be good Tank Destroyers than can punish heavy Tanks. Ostwinds should be really good anti infantry that aren't just completely outshadowed by Panzer 4's and Tigers also being really good anti infantry. Tech swapping as Soviets should be viable, going from Tier 3 to Tier 4 for an SU-85 should be an option if hard AT is needed. They need to look at what is causing problems and how to fix it in an interesting way. For example, is the Ostwind is neverused. Why? Because it's overshadowed by the hard AI of the P4, Tiger and even of the Panther. Why? Because of Pintle Mounted Machine guns granting those tank destroyers really good anti infantry. By removing the Pintle Mounted Machine guns, the tank destroyers now no longer are super strong against infantry and AT guns, and now the Ostwind has a purpose in and a role in the counter system/dynamic.
  
  
• The lack of meaningful micro techniques. Tank micro has a lot more potential than what we currently get, and not in terms of depth, in terms of not limiting the players input and rewarding good micro. Every tank in the game should have ignore infantry, as well as target infantry. (Sometimes I want to get that last shot to wipe a squad) but also the ability to control the facing of a turret, you should be able to preemptively adjust the turret for instant fire around a corner, or should be able to keep it in a certain direction instead of auto acquiring. You can spam attack ground but it's clumsy and stupid. These are small skill differentiators that most players will ignore and not use, but are the things that are so important for eSport depth and professional matches/tournaments.
  
  The maps are also awful and need to be way more balanced, most of them aren't. Not only in terms of a spawning location such as North Langres being weaker than South Langres, but also in terms of factions. Langres South is incredibly overpowered for OKW because of the ability to camp until late game, and with the Battlegroup headquarters behind the hedge for safety and with the Panzer headquarters locking down any ability to decapture territory. Certain units are just completely not viable on certain maps. For example SU-85's and Jacksons are fantastic on langres because of how open it is, but on a cluttered urban map full of chokepoints and shock blockers, SU-85's and Jacksons are completely ineffective due to never being able to make use of their full range.
  

Coh2 has a very long way to go in terms of making it viable as an eSport. It's going the right direction, but Relic need to make some very fundamental changes in terms of fixing their own mistakes. Soviets inability to tech swap is intentional, but having that is just a terrible idea that hurts the game so badly. Blitzkrieg, Panzer tactician and Sniper Sprint are just cheap lame abilities that add nothing into the game other than rewarding Bad play. They have to be critical and make decisions instead of "We can't remove Blitzkrieg because it's too late and people will get mad."

RNG itself isn't bad, it's just the implementation of it that matters. I haven't played CoH2 enough to speak to that, but the people who blindly slag on RNG as being generally bad are misguided. I can't comment on how LoL handles things because I don't play it, but Dota 2 and CSGO are two of the most popular competitive titles right now and they both have a ton of RNG. Hell, there are entire heroes in Dota designed around RNG, every autoattack you do deals random damage, and every creep kill you get gives you random gold. RNG isn't inherently bad.

PwnageMachine above me made a lot of really good points. Personally I don't enjoy CoH2 as a competitive game because I don't like how the core factions have so little in the way of strategic options. Because of this, the variety comes entirely from commanders, and since you're limited to three of those per game, your options are limited as well. Something like having to choose between building more units or improving the units you currently have may seem so simple, but it adds incredible depth to strategy games. The fact that CoH2 entirely lacks that decision-making element is the main reason it doesn't interest me.

That said, at the end of the day all that matters is whether or not people enjoy watching it. I know I don't, but that's fine, because there are plenty of other competitive games out there that I do enjoy watching and playing. If CoH2 can find a large enough audience, it can be successful. It's usually easier if you can attract that audience at launch when your game is in front of the most eyes (see SC2), but games like Dota 2 and CSGO have shown how you can grow a competitive community over years with smart management. The main problem with that approach is that Relic has never prioritized the competitive communities in any of their games, and you really need a developer actively working to grow the competitive scene these days if you really want it to flourish. Only time will tell.

Nice post Pwnage, and others.

To clarify a little bit on the section of my post about RNG - RNG is a good thing in games, even competitive ones. It makes the game harder, or impossible to "solve" and increases replay-ability. Plus it forces the players to constantly make on-the-spot decisions more frequently and rewards good game instincts and gut reactions. This is one of the things I love about CoH 2 compared to SC 2 (which is an amazing RTS in it's own right) - but SC 2 meta tends to revolve around really specific "solved" timings and build orders on the maps. You have to memorize like 25 different opening timings (down to the second) for each match up and other stuff like that. For people that like chess style RTS, SC 2 is great. For those of us that don't - it gets tedious.

Anyways, infantry RNG with accuracy, cover etc is a good thing. It keeps you on your toes early game but experienced players will be able to determine which unit will win any given infantry fight at least 90% of the time. Sure sometimes the Cons are just going to kill two models while running through the red cover road even though your Volks are in green cover. It happens. But you can still react and retreat your Volks and if this engagement, or a similar one (where you opponent makes a bad move) happened another 10 times in the game, you'd come out ahead. You can recover from something like that. Even AT gun and tank RNG is fine with penetration and front/rear armor - because, again, the player has a lot of influence over the range at which they're engaging and whether or not they're pushing for the rear armor, etc etc.

I think you guys get the point.

Now, my gripe with some of the current RNG revolves mostly around squads getting randomly 1 shot. As I said before, there's no counter play to this. Oh look the ISU just killed ANOTHER vet 5 Volk squad with schrecks. First of all, it took no skill whatsoever of my opponent to do that - the tank saw the Volks and boom they're gone. Sick. Second of all, outside of trying to spam move orders to force to squad to not clump up or being paranoid and retreating constantly every time I think the ISU is going to shoot, there's no counter play. (Neither of these things really work anyways). No amount of skill on my part will overcome that ISU 1 shotting my squads. My cat could be "microing" the ISU, and it'd still 1 shot things. Bad design, bad for competitive play.

Then onto truly game breaking (as if losing vet 5 squads in the blink of an eye wasn't bad enough) RNG like abandons and death crits. I'll cite mine and Sib's recent game 1 vs allstars in Romeo's tournament. I don't want this to come off as QQ I lost b/c of RNG - that's not what I'm getting at. I played the early game *VERY* poorly (losing my sturms and kubel in like 6 mins) and could have played the end better (allstars played well, not taking anything away from them either) but there was some really frustrating RNG. In this one game alone their M3, Katyusha, and ISU 152 all got death crits, preventing them from being destroyed. All of these units have a big impact on any game that they're in. So let's break it down, for those that are still reading this long post.

M3 - M3 is really hard for OKW to deal with early, it helps having Ost in the game for fausts but the M3s ability to harass and chase goes unopposed for a while. Getting a death crit on the M3 from my first schreck shots is disappointing because I made that investment (instead of mines or nades or G43s) in order to counter the M3. I should have gotten the kill, I didn't - my investment was in a way punished and my opponent got to continue being annoying with the M3 in a situation where it should have been dead. Poor design, especially on a little scout car. Like is it really going to still be driving after getting hit in the face with a schreck? Cmon now...

2 - The Katyusha. Sib actually recon'd and stuka bombed the Katyusha because it was vetting up fast and causing us a big headache. Allstars were pre-occupied with micro elsewhere and didn't notice the Katy being Stuka'd. Killing this would have had a HUGE impact (I'm pretty sure it was already vet 2 at the time). Instead - it gets a death crit, gets a ton of vet, Sib threw away a ton of munitions for nothing (there's no way he could predict a death crit). Obviously this is a huge swing in momentum AND additional levels of vet for the katy. So really, because of this death crit we helped our enemies. And plus, how is a Katy going to live from a giant bomb being dropped on it?

3 - This was the biggest of them all, the ISU 152. So it was super late in the game, both teams were low on VPs and I had a ton of resources banked - enough for another JT actually. I had been playing the keep-away game with the ISUs for a while, since the JT can never really kill ISUs against decent opponents - but at least I can control the VPs and bleed and just hope that my squads don't die faster than the enemy bleeds VPs. So anyways allstars makes a solid flank with some T34/85s and calls in a bombing run on my JT. Good move by them - puts me in a rough spot. Luckily their ISU is 1 hit from dead, and I have a second JT coming. Instead of trying to save my JT - which probably wouldn't have worked anyways, I go for the trade. I wanted to trade my JT for their vet 2 ISU - since I have another JT coming and they have like 30 VPs or whatever left. All I'd have to do is keep their second ISU away long enough for them to bleed. My JT gets the kill shot on the ISU, it connects anddddddddddd main gun crit. My JT dies (as I knew it would) and now instead of my one new JT vs their one new ISU it's my fresh JT against a vet 2 ISU AND a fresh ISU. No way to win that. Had their vet 2 ISU died, as it should have, they couldn't have pushed us out of mid and would have bled the final VPs.

Anyways, I'll say it again - my explanation was NOT meant to be QQ or take anything away from RunToTheSun and Symbi, they played pretty well. I definitely played poorly for most of game 1. I just wanted to use a recently example to highlight the ways in which even tiny amounts of RNG (5% chances) can end up swinging a game drastically. It's frustrating as a player to lose a game off of a 5% chance, especially when you make the right call and in 95 games out of 100, you would win because of the call you made.

TLR - Some RNG is good, and should stay. Infantry combat, indirect fire and tank combat are all examples of this. Death crits, abandons, 1 shot'd squads, immobilize/engine destroy etc are bad RNG and are extremely detrimental to legitimate competitive play.