CoH2/Relic and E-Sports - My thoughts.

What it comes down to is whether people who watch the game feel like the better player won and that the people who are champions of COH2 tournaments are truly better players and worthy of praise.

Do I think most people who watch this game feel this way? I think the answer is assuredly no.

When I watch someone like Maru or Parting or Innovation play SC2, I can TELL they are the better player. They have better macro, they have better micro, they have better multitasking. Their micro is breathtaking.

When I watch COH2 games, all I do is feel like the luckier player wins. Sometimes I feel like the player who meta'd better wins. I am not a super pro but I follow the scene enough. The games are exciting at first, but they is so much RNG involved as to completely devalue player skill. This is not an esport. The champions are not on the level of other esports.

Relic put RNG above mechanics for the most part. The first guy to get a crit usually wins. Games are not determined by slow incremental advantage turned into a win but rather constant huge dice rolls.

Moneymaker was cute when he wont the WPT going all-in everytime but nobody respected him and he disappeared from the game. That's what competitive COH2 feels like.

SC2 is a carbon copy of a an at the time 12 year old game

While I may agree with what else you've said, this is utterly beyond comprehension. It is entirely, irrevocably false in every way, shape, and form. Brood War and its progeny are, mechanics wise, miles, leagues, and millenniums apart.
One cannot compare gurgling refuse shaped into a human posing and a classical statue made out of marble other than they are comprised of molecules and vaguely resemble each other in shape.
I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which one I think is the refuse and which one is the marble

SC2 is still a blatant attempt to copy and paste the same game, while SC2 gets derided heavily in some quarters it's still a successful game in it's own right and it was in some regards a catalyst for the boom in live streaming of video games. That's something you can't take away from it.

There's no way CoH2 will ever be achieve mainstream success as an eSport. Over two years past release the game is imo the best it's ever been but the buzz surrounding it is gone.

There is perhaps some scope for it to achieve niche success, although there are many factors counting against that as the OP mentioned.

RNG is a big subject of debate. I think such a feature can enhance the esports potential by creating variety and uncertainty. However when entire games are frequently decided by one or two moments of RNG it's too much. Often when two players of similar skill play each other, the game comes down to who had better luck rather than who played that little bit better.

All right this is a can of worms saying this here but I'm going to go ahead and say it. Changing a games core mechanics to make it E-Sports friendly is not going to make a game and E-Sports success. In fact it hurts the player base and drives people away. The amount of threads I've seen demanding that core mechanics like infantry crushing, rng chances of missing and fun things like demo traps be removed is insane.

Those people who have the belief that E-Sports has to all operate the same. That players don't want to watch those moments are totally deluded. As a content creator I can tell you the things I get the most views for a those moments. People don't care in any way about the boring and dull play and counter play system they want awesome game changing moments. They attract views. They attract people who don't fully understand all the game mechanics but when they see that they clearly know who's winning. RNG missing critical shots makes viewers emotionally attacked cheering for the player who they go for or cursing the heavens if their player gets screwed over.

If you don't like that as a player understand that that's one of the most interesting moments in the game. That's what gets eyeballs. That's what gets viewers attention on you so that they either get involved or donate to tourneys directly or to casters who contribute to tournaments anyway.

In the end changing the game to fit some arbitrary opinion of what an E-Sports game looks like will only harm CoH 2 and ruin what is unique about it. Remember that making Battlefield play more like CoD didn't make it more popular. MAKING CoH 2 resemble Starcraft won't improve it's chances of becoming an E-Sports game.

Well said. Completely agree.

+1.

All right this is a can of worms saying this here but I'm going to go ahead and say it. Changing a games core mechanics to make it E-Sports friendly is not going to make a game and E-Sports success. In fact it hurts the player base and drives people away. The amount of threads I've seen demanding that core mechanics like infantry crushing, rng chances of missing and fun things like demo traps be removed is insane.

Those people who have the belief that E-Sports has to all operate the same. That players don't want to watch those moments are totally deluded. As a content creator I can tell you the things I get the most views for a those moments. People don't care in any way about the boring and dull play and counter play system they want awesome game changing moments. They attract views. They attract people who don't fully understand all the game mechanics but when they see that they clearly know who's winning. RNG missing critical shots makes viewers emotionally attacked cheering for the player who they go for or cursing the heavens if their player gets screwed over.

If you don't like that as a player understand that that's one of the most interesting moments in the game. That's what gets eyeballs. That's what gets viewers attention on you so that they either get involved or donate to tourneys directly or to casters who contribute to tournaments anyway.

In the end changing the game to fit some arbitrary opinion of what an E-Sports game looks like will only harm CoH 2 and ruin what is unique about it. Remember that making Battlefield play more like CoD didn't make it more popular. MAKING CoH 2 resemble Starcraft won't improve it's chances of becoming an E-Sports game.

This is absolutely a false dichotomy. Many esports games have RNG built into them. Hearthstone for example has a huge amount of RNG built into it. The balancing act of a developer is to have enough RNG so that lesser skilled/experienced players feel like they have a chance and not too much RNG that winners aren't just lucksacking their way to victory.

vCOH struck a better balance than COH2 did in my opinion (except for Strafe which waffled between too good and god-awful). Because the tech trees were predictable, it was easier to balance, and for the most part abilities that could wipe weren't available until later in the game. Mines suppressed and rarely caused squad wipes. Units that could wipe had RNG built in but rarely did and had more purpose as area denial. There were no f*cking abandoned vehicles in the game.

And for some reason, COH2 has RNG in THE WAY UNITS RESPOND. Pathing is nonsensical. Units take don't take well to micro management, "stickying themselves" to positions preprogrammed into the game no matter where you click.

vCOH was a better game in almost every way. It had a better UI. Units responded quickly and predictably. Their pathing made sense. And Americans vs Wehrmacht was one of the most beauitfully balanced matchups in all games around 2.311.

I just don't understand how relic regressed in so many ways. THey should just start over at this point and focus on basics.

cs 1.6 was the first esport game that got serious in the west and it was not desigend for esports. It was just a simple mod to Half-Life and an new iteration on what action quake 2 started. To have a succesful esport your game needs to have a high skill ceiling and easy to play and be fun at all skill levels.

SC2 for example will eventually fail because its just not fun for the majority of players because its too fast paced. LoL is a huge success because the game is simply just fun to play even if you can barely play it yet the skill ceiling is quite high.

Coh2's problem might be the skill ceiling is just too low. Its hard to see anything amazing done simply By a players skill.