The community will never agree on whom would be ideal for a private alpha.
Somewhat true. But this issue is less important when there are more people involved.
This train came and left the station years ago. Relic has pissed off so many motivated outstanding community members over the years who spent hundreds of hours doing testing in private balance betas in private balance forums and all left frustrated and angry. Relic would then a year later gather up the next round of fanbois who didn't know any better and off they were to redo the cycle. Seeing as it looks that COH2 is coming to its EOL I imagine they want to put this game to bed like we did with 2.602 vCOH but they shoulda just helped ups make it amazing years ago instead.
This is quite depressing, and, unfortunately, true.
Edit: And actually: Get rid of the idea that being 'prominent' should be a factor at all. Just because youre relatively unknown among the community doesent mean that you havent done much for the game so far. And thats exactly why a popular vote like this one is quite useless IMO.
You are right, being a prominent old timer alone does not equal compotence and expertise in this field. This wasn't the only factor when making that list though. Don't forget that you guys were supposed to mention anyone you think is OK for the role too.
Dane is a caster, and this is what he is good at. If he wants to contribute, and I mean his decision, not people who watch him, he can always cast one of mods games. That would be the best place for his ballance insights and by putting this cast in one of feedback threads, he could suggest changes in a constructive, interesting and self-explanatory way. Even if he was on the team, there wouldn't be much more for him to do as the changes would still have to be implemented by the modders.
Your condensing, degradative tone is not necessary at all. Not that it would affect anyone or reduce his chance of joining the team, but people like you have made some members to flee the forums and stop posting.
Truth is, he probably doesn't want to work with this team, because there would be no opposition from relic if he wanted to.
Imperial Dane has regular "state of the balance" casts and usually he is spot on.
He´s one of the few active members who agrees that the Panther is lackluster. When I hear others here suggesting making the Panther a glass cannon (which makes as much sense as a flying IS-2) or not touching it at all, I have little hope for any patch.
Also with 1200+ games casted alone, he probably has more insight than most. So I would definitely consider him.
Dude, Machine is a caster in the first place too.
Keep that in mind when you are talking about Dane.
True.
Dane is another miragefla that will only buff Ost. end of discussion.
True, ostheer has been an OP faction since the last patch.
We don't need more people on the team, we just need more people actually playing, giving us rational and non biased feedback and posting replays to support their claims. To help out us here, there will be tournaments down the line.
Most of the feedback is just noise making it difficult to get sensible feedback, especially since there's only a handful of replays posted so far.
This is the point at which EVERYONE is part of the process. You want to have an influence on how the patch goes and what it does? okay this is what you do:
PLAY THE PATCH
upload the replays
Give logical feedback to issues you believe to be the results of the changes.
Also remember that we can only change things withing the 'scope' of the patch. These are things the whole community voted on. Remember all that hype about people voting on the shit they thought was most affecting the game? Well that defined the scope of the patch, there directly you and everyone else who voted decided on the changes.
And ladies an gentlemen, this is when dictatorial instincts and tendencies start to grow and delude the individual. "we don't want anyone else besides ourselves" etc.
@Machine, if that is how you really evaluate the feedback from average players or frustrated/shocked fans, then you are not gong to succeed in utilizing the overall feedback you receive. Respect isn't a bad thing either, generally speaking.