did the ESL get cancelled ? (officially)

Hm my bad in that case. I stopped following the CoH2 s scene shortly before the 1000 dollar tourney so I have no idea how it went. However I was talking about my own experience that I gained from release til Nov 2014. Every tourney that I entered during that time was lacking players.

Fair enough

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In my opinion many players dont show up because they have either no time or think they arent skilled enough yet for a tournament.
Furthermore if we could get more streamers/viewers there would also be more 1vs1 players due to their awaked interest for competitive gameplay.(Btw thats why i started playing 1vs1)

Yet there is not enough interest in 2vs2/1vs1 because the game is lacking ESL or regular events.
No incentive except for a more balanced match.

I don't participate not because I'm an average player, but because of:

1. Time zone
2. No reconnect function

This notion that you aren't "competitive" if you aren't playing in tournaments is bullshit. You are competitive if play to win and make efforts to improve. It doesn't matter if you are playing a hosted game vs a friend or someone in automatch of similar level, both are competitive, not just the <1% of total games you played that were in a tournament. If you are good enough to beat someone, it doesn't matter if its in a event or not.

CoH has the base for a competitive game but is lacking in the balance and dev response. It just takes time to build up a community that cares for the game

Underrated post. All true.

However, insofar as it comes ro community building up that cares for the game, well, its almos all here on coh2.org (official forum as the significant other, well, simply because official, if you know what i mean. Frankly the forum/site design/structure is something out of the mid 90s if you ask me).

ESL does not, and never has, given a shit, despite Ipkaifungs no doubt significsnt efforts, which I by no means intend to second guess. I never meant to come across as saying anything different, or detract from him in my retaliation ro calling me "twisted".. He tried his best over there, for years, and i dont mean to belittle his work. He did that work, nobody else, and he deserves his due.

Nonetheless though, conclusion is, sadly, that ESL doesnt give a shit about CoH2. And its no wonder ipkai burned out in his efforts, i would have too.

But, coh2.org is here. The community is here. The streamers are here. Experience is here. Staff list is here.
Many if not most game producers would kill for a supporting site with the capacity this one has.

This is where the promotional/prize money is best served, both for Relic and the community.

ESL turnout was next to nothing. CoH2 community participation almost none existant. Game relegated to "old" status.
Why the hell give them the money? I cant even imagine an ESL hosted tourney for this kind of prize. Who would even organize it? Ipkai, as our old rep, did his damndest to no reward and is no longer available. Whonwould stream the games? All the streamers are from here. Who would watch it? I think even the community, housed here, would frankly boycott an ESL tourney after how they have treated the game and Ipkai.

Relic, make it happen, here.
Coh2.org staff. Need help? PM me and Ill do what I can. Im sure there are many others who feel the same.

my two cents is coh2 tourneys arent popular because the game has a low online player base period. I play coh2 even though I find it quite boring. I only play because its the closest thing to what I would like to play. So many people who bought the game just stopped playing, even I do off and on. Make coh2 a more interesting expansive game and things change. But until then not many will care enough to play in tournaments. I can't shake the feeling of coh2 being a watered down version of the previous versions and not an improvement.

Even the people who sign up for tourneys are then like meh, i don't really wanna play coh2. I wish relic would stop trying to make the game safe and make it fun and exciting again.

You got it wrong Nullist. ESL have been really good to me, I'm working on new projects with them and so far it's been amazing. ESL had high hopes for the game, they thought it looked good and had the potential to have a thriving competitive scene. Alas the CoH 2 community didn't bother to show up so the section isn't there any more. If you're upset about it not being there any more then you only have yourselves to blame.

I quit CoH2 for two reasons; the first reason is that the community in my opinion don't want much more than a nice auto matcher and an in-game ladder. That's perfectly fine but I want to do more than that so I'm going to put my efforts to use in a scene that has more ambition.

The second reason is because of Relic and the way they go about things. I really do not understand the level of bureaucracy they employ for such a tiny studio. To even get a re-tweet approved for a community event you have to go through several layers of management, most of the time you wont get that promotion.

I asked in August about an interview about the ESL partnership. Just to outline what their hopes are, why they are doing it etc. to get an extra layer of promotion for the announcement instead of people having to trawl through twitch archives. I didn't get a response till late September with simply "Don't want to talk about it."

Well we have two major questions IMO:
1. Is CoH2 a competitive game?
2. Is ESL partnership good for the game and the community?

The answer for the first question is very well discussed here. As Inverse said, CoH2 is not designed for Professional Competitive gaming like SC2 (RTS) or other non-RTS title. I don't say that it's mechanics (RNG, asymmetrical balance and balance issues etc.) are bad for competitions, it's mostly because of the thought process of the game's design. As Inverse said, the real question here is "Can Relic handle this kind of responsibility and workload?". The game is not balanced, is not optimized and has some technical issues.

But competitive events good for CoH2? That's hard to answer.
It's a great way to advertise the game we all know that, and relic know that. They have a certain amount of budget to advertise their products, and it's up to them to decide how to spend it and they have people to discuss this major decision.

In my opinion, if done right, it could help the game, community and their sales. but "doing it right" is hard. They need to fix the technical issues, balance the game etc. But, we see that the whole game industry is changing. Even the biggest publishers and developers prefer to work on their current products rather than developing another title. Even games like CoD and BF series, they release a lot more DLCs. Look at the success of remastered battlefield 2 maps for battlefield 3 (Back to karkand). Low development cost, huge success.

It's up to them. Can they make a huge profit with ESL partnership? We don't know, but IMO if they do this right (which is costly and unlikely) it would help the game grow even more.

This notion that you aren't "competitive" if you aren't playing in tournaments is bullshit. You are competitive if play to win and make efforts to improve. It doesn't matter if you are playing a hosted game vs a friend or someone in automatch of similar level, both are competitive, not just the <1% of total games you played that were in a tournament. If you are good enough to beat someone, it doesn't matter if its in a event or not.

Agree entirely.

The concept of "competitive player" to mean someone who makes a living off it, is a recent development and exclusive to such rare games as which can offer enough money to support them (most of whom go home empty handed).

This is exactly the kind of attitude we need in tournaments to attract more players. And, to their credit, most promoters and staff have said the same. Perhaps we hqve become too hard on the loser (and there always is one) rather than thanking them and appreciating them for the courage to show up and do their damndest for our enjoyment.

Im gonna quote this in sig cos Basilone hit it right on the head:
"You are competitive if play to win and make efforts to improve."

Nobody can ask or demand more of you than that.

Do what Basilone said, and you deserve, by all means, the right to the title and privilege of "Competitor".

:competitive player" doesn't have anything to do with being payed money. the word your looking for is professional or pro.

my two cents is coh2 tourneys arent popular because the game has a low online player base period. I play coh2 even though I find it quite boring. I only play because its the closest thing to what I would like to play. So many people who bought the game just stopped playing, even I do off and on. Make coh2 a more interesting expansive game and things change. But until then not many will care enough to play in tournaments. I can't shake the feeling of coh2 being a watered down version of the previous versions and not an improvement.

Even the people who sign up for tourneys are then like meh, i don't really wanna play coh2. I wish relic would stop trying to make the game safe and make it fun and exciting again.

I like your MG42 aggression - I watched it recently in obs mode

However, and with some considerable reluctance, I must take issue with you ( to a a very polite degree ).

Recent CoH2 tourneys were, in fact, popular - the last SNF tourney attracted consirably more support. The 2v2 Nations Cup also attracted a notable interest - but sadly, Kreatiir left the staff, before it was completed - and he cancelled the end games of the tourney, seemingly through lack of support from the Dev base.

I like your MG42 aggression - I watched it recently in obs mode

However, and with some considerable reluctance, I must take issue with you ( to a a very polite degree ).

Recent CoH2 tourneys were, in fact, popular - the last SNF tourney attracted consirably more support. The 2v2 Nations Cup also attracted a notable interest - but sadly, Kreatiir left the staff, before it was completed - and he cancelled the end games of the tourney, seemingly through lack of support from the Dev base.

I also though the last few tourneys were pretty good and were starting to gain some traction. Its hard to create a viable comp scene when you have a small player base and a majority of that base is playing single player.

a competitive player is someone who plays for competitive doesn't have anything to do with being payed money. the word your looking for is professional or pro.

I agree entirely, and that is a very good point to distinguish on.

And yet we hwve posters here with the sentiment that "competitive players" wont bother with this game, because there is less potential to be a "pro player", who earns his livelihood with it. Its an antiquated and misguided notion. Earning money bynplaying a game, and competetiviness in playing a game, are two completely different and unrelated factors in this era.

This game, in and of itself, is plenty competetive.
Earning money on it, however fails compared to streaming big "assets" and playing Minecraft.

They are confusing the competetiveness of the game, with the lucrativeness of playing it, (or more importantly, of streaming it) which is a matter of its marketing and promotion (and company funds to allocate in support), as well as personal charisma instream like big "assets"/Pewdiepie, inorder to graduate from competetive to "pro".

Its an easy confusion to make, but false, nonetheless.

Hate on CoH2/Relic for not being more popular, so as to earn viewer revenue, so as to be "pro", by all means. Fair enough.
But hating on it for the misconception that somehow each snd every single CoH2 match ever played is not competetive, nor the game itself in multiplayer vs, is categorically false.

CoH2, in multiplayer vs, is categorically a competetive game.
Is it competetive in the games market? Somewhat. Relic could certainly do more, and this enormous prize pot promised to ESL (hopefully soon to coh2.org) is a step in that direction.
Is it competetive in the "pro" market? Not unless you have enormous "assets" or are Pewdiepie.

Glad you brought this up, for purposes of dinstinguishing the many tenses and misused applicarions of this term.

@Ipkai: Ok, man. ESL project though, is demonstrably and provenly a complete disaster. That much is clear. Good luck to whatever you do next. See you in another lifetime.

Not one person here said CoH2 games aren't competitive. There's just no real reason for your average competitive-minded RTS player to choose CoH2 over a game like SC2.

Not one person here said CoH2 games aren't competitive. There's just no real reason for your average competitive-minded RTS player to choose CoH2 over a game like SC2.

Sadly Inverse is correct. CoH2 at its present state offers no incentive for any RTS fans other than "free play". Alot of people that I know play RTS games for the competition against other players. They want a sense of accomplishment over other people. Its human nature tbh. SC2 Rewards this with their in game ladders and dev sponsored tournys. What does Relic offer?.............

Also, coming from a player that has spend a few years on the CSGO Competitive/Tourny scene this game has alot of work ahead of it. Just my 2 cents.

Nullist read to far in to my post, I wasn't even talking about CoH2 games in particular (which are less competitive than coh1 games imo but I digress). I was addressing the attitude that competition doesn't exist outside of some tournament event, this goes for any game. These are the posts I was replying to:

Yeah, people are constantly talking about a competitive scene blablahblah but when it comes to participating in a tourney they either don't sign up at all or refuse to show up.

What I get annoyed at is the people talking about how they want competition when in actuality they want a nice in game ladder and what they consider a fair game online once a day or once a week even.

Competitive play is not exclusive to tournament events.

Ive been watching CoH2 for years, and seen plenty of extremely competetive, exciting and engaging play, including in SNF.

SC2 bores the hell out of me. To me its rote repetition, APM masturbation and completely uncharactarable players who may or may ot suffer feom some degree of autism.

You are confusing competitiveness, with "i can earn money from this".
Id rather watch a big tit Minecraft player, than an SC2 match.

Fortunately, instead, we hwve homegrown coh2 casters with charisma, community interaction and good matches that the above mentioned can only dream of.

Ive been watching CoH2 for years, and seen plenty of extremely competetive, exciting and engaging play, including in SNF.

SC2 bores the hell out of me.

You are confusing competitiveness, with "i can earn money from this".

Nope.

Jump back to quoted post3 Feb 2015, 17:38 PMInverse

The game doesn't offer much to competitive players, especially not competitive RTS players. Little developer support, paid DLC that affects gameplay, poor performance on many machines, tiny playerbase, limited ways to stand out as a player, etc.

It wasn't designed to be a competitive game.

In comparison, SC2 has good developer support with major tournament series sponsored by them and patches aimed at actively improving the quality of competitive play, no paid DLC that affects multiplayer, great performance on nearly any machine, a large playerbase, and a vast range of ways to differentiate yourself as a player thanks to the game's combination of deep macro and deep micro gameplay, cheese strategies, and the viability of a vast range of playstyles.

By a wide variety of criteria, SC2 is in fact a superior competitive game, and it's no doubt more attractive to players interested in competitive RTS play.

I haven't once referenced professional play, just competitive play.

I like CoH1 more than SC2, but that doesn't mean I think it's a better competitive game, because objectively it isn't.

RNG is competetive.

It cuts both ways.

Makes for far more interesting viewing and playing, than automatic SC2.

As an example, in Super Bowl 49, did you expect that fnal throw rather than muscling the last yard? Hell no. Did you expect the interception? Fuck no. Did anyone see the probability of that impssible fumble that took Seahawks to the line? Absolutely not.

That was RNG in action, at its best.
Nobody saw it coming. Completely unpredictable. But it made for a fantastic game.

COH2 is not perfectly balanced.
But that is ok. I totally think a „pretty good“ balance is enough. (sure, some people will rage against hat, but that is fine).
To attract a crowd, a major part is, if watching the game is fun. And I see big potential from that in COH2. It is far easier to understand as an outsider than League of Legends or Starcraft.

If you watch one of those games without playing them you understand nothing. COH2 is far easier in that respect. And it is big fun. Ami Polizeifunk totally demonstrated that potential.

And if you find more people who watch, players will come. Even if the game has some balance issues. Simply, because then you can get famous as a player.

Do it like DOTA. Set a ridiculously high price tag for a tournament and then get things rolling.

Competitive play is not exclusive to tournament events.

Yep I didn't word my statement properly. What I meant is that the player base on the whole doesn't have much interest in taking part in competitive events. Despite talking about them all the time.