COH2 into the E-sport - Casting mode -

Hey,

Every huge that is in the esports have one thing in common, recordings of gameplay of some kind. CoH, Age of Empires and MANY other games all have this function. But one thing seperates starcraft, LoL, Dota and CoD is spectator mode. Live spectator mode. This is the one single biggest difference between ALL esport games. WoW would be HUGE in esports if it had spectator mode of some kind, so would CoH, and also the upcoming CoH2.

How would this change things u might ask.

Simple. I have a couple of bucks extra, and id like to start a tournament. 1v1, knockout tourny. Total pool of prize 7k USD. Tho arranging a tournament requires sponsors, players and so on. With todays function with COH2, we are forced to watch replays, and stream them, after the fact that the game has been played. There is a huge difference between LIVE and after gameplay, and LIVE will attract way more people, and most importantly it will attract sponsors.

This in it self will circle around, more players, more sponsors, more attraction, more twitch streamers, more commentators, more attraction and so on.

I dont understand why blizzard gets it, while noone else does. LoL would not be nearly as huge as it is now if it wasnt for the spectator mode. The attraction that its getting is mainly due to the tournaments going on and the streams on twitch and own3d. All these made the game attractive and got it huge, attracting sponsors and so on.

I wish this was implemented, but i am pretty sure it wont. Not long till release, i doubt something like this will appear all of the sudden. Tho i cant stop asking me why they dont make it spectator/commentator/casting friendly.

Blizzard doesn't "get it" - Blizzard has a ton of money. Spectator mode is costly because you need dedicated servers and you need to allow people to connect to them on the fly and so on. Dota 2 can also do this. Why? Valve has a ton of money. Relic is poor.

Why is there a need for dedicated servers? Starcraft Broodwar had spectator maps with peer to peer and that was over 10 years ago.

You don't need dedicated servers, you just need programmer time to code it, artist time to make it look good, and QA time to make sure it works. All of those are very expensive.

There isn't a spectator mode right now because the replay system is low on Relic's list of priorities. It's obvious just by looking at the replay file; it's 95% identical to the vCoH replay file. They want something that works with minimal effort on their part, at least at first. So they transplanted the vCoH replay system into CoH2.

You also have to think about technical issues. CoH2 is pure P2P, which means you could potentially find some way to spoof a spectator request and all of a sudden you have information you aren't supposed to have. SC2 is less strictly P2P, since it has a server which essentially acts as a relay between clients. I don't know the specifics, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if they performed some very basic server-side verification to make spectating run smoothly.

Why is there a need for dedicated servers? Starcraft Broodwar had spectator maps with peer to peer and that was over 10 years ago.

If you want to set up custom spectator matches where the spectators are there when the game starts, then yes, you don't need dedicated servers (and in fact people made maps like this for CoH 1) but it's a janky solution and it's nowhere near as awesome a something like Dota 2. But as Inverse points out, servers aren't the only things that cost money. Spectating would cost Relic time and money to add. Would it be better if they added it? Yes. I think it's stupid that this game lacks even basic updates to the replay features even though we're many years past CoH. But I also realize that Relic is going to cut any corners it can, and the only people who care about this stuff are people like us. Your average Scheldt High Resources Annihilation Compstomp player doesn't care if spectating is in, and that makes it hard for Relic to justify spending money on it.

Your average Scheldt High Resources Annihilation Compstomp player doesn't care if spectating is in, and that makes it hard for Relic to justify spending money on it.

^^This.
Listen to the latest interview the guys did with Lynx. He clearly mentions that the majority of COH players only play the campaign and skirmishes, the game will never be able to generate enough attention now to get into the competitive scene.
The core gameplay of COH may very well favor highly tactical competitive "ladder" play and esports, but most people seem to prefer more casual, stress-free gamemodes.
It's not a matter of the budget Relic had when they first started developing COH, they clearly chose NOT to put too much focus on the competitive scene. There are indie games, mods, as well as games more than a decade old with very strong competitive presence and that's because it's how they were marketed to begin with.
Don't forget that supporting competitive play would require CONSTANT balance and other adjustments, a lot of MOBAs are being updated weekly or even more often.
I guess I was cool with how things were with vCOH before they announced they'd move over to the steamworks, minus of course the crazy smurfing and hacking. I still think people should be allowed access to an extra profile for practice-related purposes, but with profiles in both games now tied to steamworks, that isn't gonna happen.
In addition, they seem to have dumbed down the stat system in COH2 to an incredible extent. The bulletins and unlockable commanders are also extremely stupid and require grinding, which has no place in a competitive RTS.
Last most important point, if they choose to go the "pay to unlock new units / guns / commanders / bonuses" route, rather than maybe develop full-fledged expansions introducing new stuff like in vCOH, that'd put off A LOT of competitive players. And it would obviously show that they don't care about the competitive scene and game balance.

First off, u don't need dedicated servers. I see how you thought it would be required, but i am talking about spectator mode like SC2 has, not matches that you can join while they are playing just so that you can spectate. That is not required for CoH2 to go big in e-sports. It only requires casting features. The battles look amazing, the animation are beautiful, the graphics are to die for, in all it makes for a beautiful game to look at, even when you don't know the tactics, you'd still want to watch tanks go at each other and infantry being blown to peaces by artillery that turns the ground black. Going into e-sports will ensure a bigger player base next time they release an expansion or CoH3.

Bobby Miller also made a huge point saying most players only buy and play CoH for single player and/or skirmishes. Tho his point was not that its like this due to peoples desire, its like that due to features for tournaments lack, specifically casting. Commentating over a replay witch the scores are already known lowers the excitement by a million. This game has the full potential to go e-sports, tho as you guys say, its expensive. Tho its worth the effort, and i think its even worth a delay on release. The awesome commentators in this game will lift this game higher than the developers ever can with advertising. When it first goes on Twitch, the player base will increase. Tanks sing, blow up, crash, ram, they can even be stolen. Infantry burn alive, they freeze to death, they will desert you, they can take down tanks, burn down houses. Houses, trees, bridges explode, burn and disappear from the map, turn into ashes, rendered useless, the ground gets blacked out by the action, the road becomes hard for vehicles to drive in. And most importantly, its possible to do a comeback even if its 500 v 20 in score, and those battles that are score "turners" are always EPIC. Sh1t ton of kills, and its so unforgiving. One mistake, and you will lose your map control.

This game is insanely entertaining, even for a noob such my as my self. Let me show an explain as to how this is interesting. Just look for your self -

http://www.twitch.tv/sundaynightfights/c/2218098 - Watch from - 30:30. I did not play CoH, and i play CoH2 just a little bit, but even I, a newbie look at that and my mind goes "holy sh1t".

Conclusion is that it wont be happening, but id love for it to happen.

When we met the Relic team (Oct and Dec/Jan), they told us they want to make coh2 an esport. So far, everybody knows that esport = perfect spectating mod. Q. Duffy told us once that the spectator features won't be part of the game at the release date but they will work on it post-release.
So let's juste wait and see..

When we met the Relic team (Oct and Dec/Jan), they told us they want to make coh2 an esport. So far, everybody knows that esport = perfect spectating mod. Q. Duffy told us once that the spectator features won't be part of the game at the release date but they will work on it post-release.
So let's juste wait and see..

Keep in mind that Relic was still with THQ back then and chances are that their vision has probably changed considerably since. THQ may have had less funds to provide, but they were far more PC-centric than SEGA. And COH was a MAJOR franchise and source of income for them and, if needed, could have pushed for it to get into the E-sport scene. For Sega, it will be just a sequel to a franchise they picked up from someone else at an auction that hasn't proven itself yet and probably will never net them the sales they'd like due to it being PC-only. Just a miniscule drop in the ocean of titles they own. Something tells me they wouldn't find it a good idea to invest in something they've never done before just for the sake of COH2 (E-sports).
And releasing the game in its current state in 2 months and THEN at some point trying to make it more competitive doesn't sound like something that could work to me.
It's a shame that we can't be more optimistic about the situation, but the whole thing seems more like a rush job by the day.

Keep in mind that Relic was still with THQ back then and chances are that their vision has probably changed considerably since. THQ may have had less funds to provide, but they were far more PC-centric than SEGA. And COH was a MAJOR franchise and source of income for them and, if needed, could have pushed for it to get into the E-sport scene. For Sega, it will be just a sequel to a franchise they picked up from someone else at an auction that hasn't proven itself yet and probably will never net them the sales they'd like due to it being PC-only. Just a miniscule drop in the ocean of titles they own. Something tells me they wouldn't find it a good idea to invest in something they've never done before just for the sake of COH2 (E-sports).
And releasing the game in its current state in 2 months and THEN at some point trying to make it more competitive doesn't sound like something that could work to me.
It's a shame that we can't be more optimistic about the situation, but the whole thing seems more like a rush job by the day.

I am more optimistic. They paid more than $20M to get the franchise and then they paid more for 3 more months of development. The Total War series are PC only and yet these games get tons of support.
Relic and COH2 are not just a minuscule drop in the ocean of stuff they own, but rather another excellent RTS-maker with its excellent RTS. With Relic and CA, they own a big part of the RTS market.

http://www.coh2.org/news/1281/building-the-foundations-making-coh-huge

SEGA will support the competitive community if there is demand. However community has to step up it's community building game and stop practising it's forum warrior game.

I am more optimistic. They paid more than $20M to get the franchise and then they paid more for 3 more months of development. The Total War series are PC only and yet these games get tons of support.
Relic and COH2 are not just a minuscule drop in the ocean of stuff they own, but rather another excellent RTS-maker with its excellent RTS. With Relic and CA, they own a big part of the RTS market.

No, they paid that for Relic the company, not just the COH franchise.
Also, you can't compare such a well-established series as Total War which consists of 8 games to COH, let's be realistic. And still, Total War doesn't amount to much in comparison to other Sega franchises.
Hopefully this will put things into perspective for you.
Shogun 2: Total War (PC) - units sold: 500,000
Football Manager 2012 (PC + PSP) - units sold: 1.52 million
Sonic Generations (multiplatform) - units sold: 2.69 million
All these games were released in 2011. Sega knows where to sink their money into.

http://www.coh2.org/news/1281/building-the-foundations-making-coh-huge

SEGA will support the competitive community if there is demand. However community has to step up it's community building game and stop practising it's forum warrior game.

There we go again with the blatant fanboyism... This is wishful thinking at its finest and has to stop. First off, the article was written before Sega purchased Relic, so it's completely invalid. You're being blinded by, what I hope is, love for the game and therefore have extremely high expectations as well as lack of objectivity.
No, chances are that Sega will not support the COH competitive community, cause they don't give a fuck about us, to put it bluntly. Sega's a multinational corporation with a long history and is not gonna test the waters like this just cause we WANT THEM TO. Are you THAT naive to think Sega will decide to all of a sudden jump into e-sports with COH when it's had something like Total War for years?
As for the "forum warriors" comment... Pretty funny coming from someone on this forum with 350 posts... I could reply pretty harshly to that, but I reserve trolling for twitch.tv and ingame. I suggest you do that too, so we can all have a nice intelligent discussion here.
Being unrealistic with our expectations of the game doesn't help it in any way, shape or form. It just makes the developers think they're doing everything right, which they clearly are not.

No, they paid that for Relic the company, not just the COH franchise.
Also, you can't compare such a well-established series such as Total War which consists of 8 games to COH, let's be realistic. And still, Total War doesn't amount to much in comparison to other Sega franchises.
Hopefully this will put things into perspective for you.
Shogun 2: Total War (PC) - units sold: 500,000
Football Manager 2012 (PC + PSP) - units sold: 1.52 million
Sonic Generations (multiplatform) - units sold: 2.69 million
All these games were released in 2011. Sega knows where to sink their money into.

They wouldn't have paid that much if COH2 wasn't included in the deal. And your argument about Total War doesn't invalidate anything of what I said, since it still gets amazing support.

Btw you should watch the interview at the beginning of the last SNF. It should give you an idea of where they put their money.

There we go again with the blatant fanboyism... This is wishful thinking at its finest and has to stop. First off, the article was written before Sega purchased Relic, so it's completely invalid. You're being blinded by, what I hope is, love for the game and therefore have extremely high expectations as well as lack of objectivity.
No, chances are that Sega will not support the COH competitive community, cause they don't give a fuck about us, to put it bluntly. Sega's a multinational corporation with a long history and is not gonna test the waters like this just cause we WANT THEM TO. Are you THAT naive to think Sega will decide to all of a sudden jump into e-sports with COH when it's had something like Total War for years?
As for the "forum warriors" comment... Pretty funny coming from someone on this forum with 350 posts... I could reply pretty harshly to that, but I reserve trolling for twitch.tv and ingame. I suggest you do that too, so we can all have a nice intelligent discussion here.
Being unrealistic with our expectations of the game doesn't help it in any way, shape or form. It just makes the developers think they're doing everything right, which they clearly are not.

If you actually read the article I don't actually have high expectations of CoH2 getting into the mainstream esports scene. It's actually more of a call to arms to the community and to emulate another successful competitive community that hasn't had any developer support in the past but perhaps I need to re-write it since if you did read it that point obviously didn't come across.

Like I've said many times, if we get developer and publisher support that's awesome. If not then it's not game over.

http://www.coh2.org/news/1281/building-the-foundations-making-coh-huge

SEGA will support the competitive community if there is demand. However community has to step up it's community building game and stop practising it's forum warrior game.

Maybe we would step up if we were allowed to shoutcast at all, but right now only a few people are even allowed to step up. So I think it's kind of unfair to put all the burden on us when clearly SEGA is making it much harder for us to do anything unless we want to break the NDA like all the other people on YouTube who SEGA hasn't done anything about.

I really like your DIY attitude but I think even you have to admit that when it comes to promoting the game, SEGA is really making it tough for us. I mean, sure, we don't get spectator mode, we don't get updated replay features, we don't even get a game that's visually clear (holy shit do blizzards at 720p + twitch.tv compression look like crap), but we can deal with that. What we can't deal with is not being allowed to make any videos in the first place. What the heck am I supposed to do to support the game if the game won't let me support it?

The game isn't out yet and I'd be concerned if the situation was the same after June 25th but how about supporting the coh scene and doing a shout cast for the original game or maybe host an event?

Get more people playing, then get more people watching, which gets more people playing, which gets more people watching and so on and so forth.

There we go again with the blatant fanboyism... This is wishful thinking at its finest and has to stop. First off, the article was written before Sega purchased Relic, so it's completely invalid. You're being blinded by, what I hope is, love for the game and therefore have extremely high expectations as well as lack of objectivity.
No, chances are that Sega will not support the COH competitive community, cause they don't give a fuck about us, to put it bluntly. Sega's a multinational corporation with a long history and is not gonna test the waters like this just cause we WANT THEM TO. Are you THAT naive to think Sega will decide to all of a sudden jump into e-sports with COH when it's had something like Total War for years?
As for the "forum warriors" comment... Pretty funny coming from someone on this forum with 350 posts... I could reply pretty harshly to that, but I reserve trolling for twitch.tv and ingame. I suggest you do that too, so we can all have a nice intelligent discussion here.
Being unrealistic with our expectations of the game doesn't help it in any way, shape or form. It just makes the developers think they're doing everything right, which they clearly are not.

total war games are a sinlge player game a lot more than coh , coh2 are , just look at how many shoutcasts there are for tw games and how many for coh + dow2 . tbh starcraft 2 will start declining soon and all those rts fans will look for sth new , hence the reason sega elected to buy relic and ea elected to build generals 2 specifically at that time

the question is why are you guys waiting on relic to do somthing when relic has said it isn't happening might ahppen after release. instead of planning on doing somthing about it yourself. the game will have mod tools so whats stopping you from making a new hud or perhaps a adding in stuff that would make it easier to cast.

7 years of experience, unbelievable community support, zillions of feedback since alpha plus beta and yet- we are talking about modding? lol. That's a desperation. After all the hype created by this site I'll pay 65$ and wait for a mod to fix the UI, balance, maps etc. Hmm, sounds genius.

There's a mod atm called Eastern Front btw. Have you ever tried it while recommending a COH2 fix mod?