Intelligence Bulletins

Just feels like OF TOV and COHO all over again. (THQ needing ze moneys)

Looking back at COHO; it actually wasn't that bad considering we'll get all that 'stuff' in COH2 aswell.

Very disappointing

Let's wait to see them ingame and then we can judge them

No need to wait in order to judge the concept. It would be pretty lame to enter a game disadvantaged because my opponent's pre-chosen upgrades counter mine. Or because they managed to farm, WoW-style, the best bulletins that are going to take me additional weeks of playing to attain. Hopefully we're able to toggle this option for automatch.

We've been promised no "pay-to-win". If you can pay for an XP-boost, and more XP unlocks advantages, no matter how small they may be, that's still "pay-to-win". Don't like it.

Actually that's not pay-to-win. Pay-to-win is when content impacting the game is unlockable only by paying and in no free way. xp example you just need to play more, that is free and you eventually get it.

Doesn't LoL have a system in which only players with an equal amount of unlocks are able to play vs eachother? I'm critical of pay to win, and some of the things that might be introduced into CoH, but i'm holding judgement and i'm a bit on the sideline at the moment until I see exactly what they have to offer.

Bulletins open balance issues, but there may be only a select few bulletins to get within each slot and they might not differ drastically.

One side of me says says a play to win system is terrible and relic should have gone down the skins/items (and only for coh, maps) design similar to dota, the other says well this system has proven to work for LoL and they have a competitive game simply because so many people play it, will a lot of this new stuff relic is putting in for casuals make the game more enjoyable and bring in more competition?

Actually that's not pay-to-win. Pay-to-win is when content impacting the game is unlockable only by paying and in no free way. xp example you just need to play more, that is free and you eventually get it.

true.. while playing COHO, i got all the hero units, upgrades and bonuses without paying anything for them. In fact, you could obtain most of them by playing skirmishes only, iirc.

Good thing was they provided for diversity and customization, enabling different BOs and strategies. Bad thing was that some of them were clearly OP (mg dmg bonus III, pio fausts, if anyone remembers.. not to mention some of the hero units) but i think the game was pretty balanced for a beta (relatively speaking, considering amount of stuff that was in game).

LoL is free to play, you just pay to get stuff faster, or skins, or name change and misc like that. Every game changing element can eventually be unlocked for free. (realistically you can't get them all in a decent amount of time for free, but most of them being useless it's not a big deal you just ignore them).

And when you start to play and haven't unlocked everything yet, you can get matched up with and against people who have them and get an advantage over you when the matchmaking is unfavorable. It's not really an issue though, it just pushes people to play more to unlock them and/or pay, which are both good for the dev/game.

Also you can have on your team/play against champions you don't own, similar to how ToV or OF would mix with vcoh. Actually the COH example is worse and really pay to win, if T17 was OP, we could condiser ToV being an example of pay to win. In LoL you can eventually unlock that OP champ for free.

Tbh if it gives money to THQ to advertise and support the game as we would expect it to be, I don't really care what they choose to do. Actually not doing a system like LoL would almost be bumd considering how well it works.

lol, Seb cares more about THQ than about us, players.

Seb, when your point is that "ToV was worse" that's not really great support. ToV was awful. I didn't buy it and because of that I didn't get OP Kangaroo Carriers to pwn the enemy whenever I randomed Brits. If I had $$$ I would have won more games. Just because I can eventually unlock something for free doesn't mean that it's OK, because if I have to play 100 hours just to be evenly matched with someone else, I don't want to play any hours. I want to just go play an RTS like Men of War or Starcraft or literally any other RTS that is made by people who understand why it's important for competitive advantages to turn on skill rather than time played or money invested. This is one reason why I never got into LoL and play DotA instead - my cash or my hours played don't put me at a disadvantage in DotA.

I think its good, I dont mind it. It is very similar to lol, which i played (as well as DotA2) but I like the concept. You guys need to understand THQ's financial situation and that the concept of games costing 50-60$ and nothing else is gone. Even blizzard is considering changing their system. Face it, the old model of selling games is gone because it doesn't net out as much cash as the new models, and with games getting more expensive every year, companies need to adopt those new models to survive. Which isn't a bad thing, it just needs a bit of adapting from our side as well. LoL isn't pay to win, if you don't want to pay for stuff you will just have to play a bit more, which means u can unlock everything with playing. Which isnt bad, think about it, there will be no disadvantage, and there will be levels so you won't be matched up with someone who has 100 intel buletins while u have only 5 unlocked.
I belive it will be a good system because lynx and duffy hears us hating pay to win enough times that they wont make it pay to win.

I'm fine with intelligence bulletins but the bonuses have to be very small. I think somewhere on the order of 5% is about right. Maybe allow them to stack so one can go heavily down one side but since there are only 3 slots it leaves them open to other things. A disadvantaged player with the wrong bulletins should still be able to beat the opponent by playing reasonably better.

Seb, when your point is that "ToV was worse" that's not really great support. ToV was awful. I didn't buy it and because of that I didn't get OP Kangaroo Carriers to pwn the enemy whenever I randomed Brits. If I had $$$ I would have won more games. Just because I can eventually unlock something for free doesn't mean that it's OK, because if I have to play 100 hours just to be evenly matched with someone else, I don't want to play any hours. I want to just go play an RTS like Men of War or Starcraft or literally any other RTS that is made by people who understand why it's important for competitive advantages to turn on skill rather than time played or money invested. This is one reason why I never got into LoL and play DotA instead - my cash or my hours played don't put me at a disadvantage in DotA.

I don't think they would care about losing you if the impact on the majority is different. LoL has that and it's the most played and most viewed game, the dev is making tons of money so they can keep supporting the game forever, introducing new content, constantly patching following community feedback, and put up millions of $$$ for tournaments and pro players salary. Who would not want that for COH2? If you like the game you're going to play the 100 hours either way, and unlock everything either way, and most of the time it will be against players on the same case as you if the system is done correctly, so no real disavantage. Plus it won't be that big of an advantage. We're talking about 10% pen on some tanks, it's not having to fight an impossible battle with for example only half the possible units.

Really the time needed to unlock is basically considered as a progressive introduction/tutorial to the concepts of the game. If you got everything on your first game, you wouldn't realize the impact of it either way, considering how big mistakes you'd make impacting the game much more than a couple of misc stuff.

I think the bulletins are fine given certain conditions:

1: There are no "tiers." There is no bulletin that is inherently better than another one (say infantry have an extra 10% health as opposed to 5% health)

2: If they are included in automatch games, no player should be matched against a player with more bulletins than themselves. This could obviously be fixed by giving the player a number of bulletins to start with on a new account

3. There is an option to allow players to select any existing bulletin in custom games so that tournament players have access to everything.

I don't think they would care about losing you if the impact on the majority is different. LoL has that and it's the most played and most viewed game, the dev is making tons of money so they can keep supporting the game forever, introducing new content, constantly patching following community feedback, and put up millions of $$$ for tournaments and pro players salary. Who would not want that for COH2?

Me. If CoH2 has pay to win (and that's what you're describing, and what LoL has) then I honestly don't care how successful Relic gets, because for me that money is wasted on a game that cannot have a competitive environment.

I don't know how you can possibly put LoL and "cannot have a competitive environment" in the same phrase, it just doesn't make any sense.

The only thing making competition is money. Football games aren't fair. Some teams invest much more money to get better. They pay to win. The only required thing to have competition is people willing to compete, and others who enjoy watching, attracking sponsors, and making money. And lastly people to organize said competitions.

I think the bulletins are fine given certain conditions:

1: There are no "tiers." There is no bulletin that is inherently better than another one (say infantry have an extra 10% health as opposed to 5% health)

2: If they are included in automatch games, no player should be matched against a player with more bulletins than themselves. This could obviously be fixed by giving the player a number of bulletins to start with on a new account

3. There is an option to allow players to select any existing bulletin in custom games so that tournament players have access to everything.

this

I don't know how you can possibly put LoL and "cannot have a competitive environment" in the same phrase, it just doesn't make any sense.

The only thing making competition is money. Football games aren't fair. Some teams invest much more money to get better. They pay to win. The only required thing to have competition is people willing to compete, and others who enjoy watching, attracking sponsors, and making money. And lastly people to organize said competitions.

also, this.

I don't know how you can possibly put LoL and "cannot have a competitive environment" in the same phrase, it just doesn't make any sense.

The only thing making competition is money. Football games aren't fair. Some teams invest much more money to get better. They pay to win. The only required thing to have competition is people willing to compete, and others who enjoy watching, attracking sponsors, and making money. And lastly people to organize said competitions.

There are two ideas of "competitive" at work here. One is the same as "professional." In that sense you're right. LoL can have a pro gaming scene and so can football. So CoH 2 could definitely have a pro gaming scene even with pay to win intelligence bulletins because pros would either just buy them or play a lot.

Another meaning of "competitive" is "playing to win." When I play an RTS online, for instance, I play to win. I don't play compstomps and I don't play 2 hour long "throw artillery at each other to watch the pretty explosions" matches on The Scheldt. I play to beat the opponent with skill (and NOT with money or with hours played). So if I lose a game because the other player is using some 10% damage bonus that they have not because they're better but because they're richer or they're a high school kid with more free time than me, this isn't what I want out of my competitive game. It's not competition: it's their wallet/free time vs. mine.

It would be cool if CoH 2 were competitive in the first sense, but I don't think any of us believe that Relic would ever make an RTS good enough to actually support a pro gaming scene in any sense other than a few people winning a few hundred dollars at some tournaments every once in a while.

Relic COULD make a game that's competitive in the second sense, though. At least until ToV, CoH was competitive like this. No money or grinding to unlock any bonuses. Basically every good RTS is competitive in this second sense. And I want CoH 2 to be competitive in this second sense.

I don't remember chess having a pre-game powerup system and it's still a solid game 500 years layer (and more if you count its ancestry). It seems to me that the game is being over-complicated for the sake of making more money.

Pay-to-win? i'm not sure
Implement unnecessary features-to-get paid? seems that way.

troubling.