Active spectator mode coh2?

This is just awful. Literally the most important thing for a competitive online community and it won't be there on launch? That's really shooting yourself in the foot.

Not at launch, I'm afraid. However, I know Quinn really wants to implement some post-launch features that will help with replays/casting at some point; and I do too after hearing about what you guys have to do for stuff like SNF. Running three replays and syncing them all sounds like a pain the butt.

Someone over at the hon community worked on a mod that would auto synch replays. Maybe such thing could be made?

2013, an RTS without obs, unacceptable.

Sums it up perfectly.

I've not been on any negative side about Relic news before, but this is just goddamn ridiculous. No observer when you had a game 3-4 years ago that had a observer mode? It's neccessary for e-sports and even training. Usually in Dawn of War 2 we got together 6-8 guys and got into a 1v1 king of the hill. 2 plays the other six gets to spectate and chat about the game and bullshit amongst each other. Every now and then there was one or two new players and they got some good instructions while hanging out watching the game. It is very community building and helpful in creating a strong community feeling.

Totally called it. Not happy but not surprised. At least replays are still in.

im not to worried as long as the replay system is the same or better hopefully better i think we will be okay. (snf, and all the other casters.) however it won't grow nearly as much as it could with live casting. nor attract as many casters. or really any esport attention without.

At least replays are still in.

I wonder if we this time can rewind or put the "pointer" in the random location of the replay duration bar?

Well now I feel bad...

Sums it up perfectly.

I've not been on any negative side about Relic news before, but this is just goddamn ridiculous. No observer when you had a game 3-4 years ago that had a observer mode? It's neccessary for e-sports and even training. Usually in Dawn of War 2 we got together 6-8 guys and got into a 1v1 king of the hill. 2 plays the other six gets to spectate and chat about the game and bullshit amongst each other. Every now and then there was one or two new players and they got some good instructions while hanging out watching the game. It is very community building and helpful in creating a strong community feeling.

^this

Seems like the developers copy pasted CoH1 and added just graphical features and new models. To be honest I feel like CoH2 is a mod of CoH1 like EF.

I guess no money was spent on improving the network code or adding simple features like game pausing in multiplayer, observer mode for tournaments or a simple reconnect option in case you crash. What will happen if in a big tournament your internet dies or your OS freezes and you need to restart.

This is indeed unacceptable.

please Relic forget about mirror matches and give us spectator mode. The commmunity is split on mirror matches but speaks with one voice on observer mode.

Please, this is so vital for Company of Heroes 2. Spectator mode will help the game so much more then something like 'cold tech' or 'true-sight'. Include it upon release Relic, cmon

From the moment I saw that xp elements were implemented in the multiplayer, I knew they would go completely the wrong way with it.

Instead of focusing on true competitive players (better connections, not p2p, spectating), Relic has decided to focus on exclusive skins, gathering xp, and cater to the casuals that want to compstomp and play on chokepoint maps.
I fear this game is dead on arrival, and that this community will let the game fall after only a few weeks. Exactly this same thing has happened to SupCom2.

From the moment I saw that xp elements were implemented in the multiplayer, I knew they would go completely the wrong way with it.

Instead of focusing on true competitive players (better connections, not p2p, spectating), Relic has decided to focus on exclusive skins, gathering xp, and cater to the casuals that want to compstomp and play on chokepoint maps.
I fear this game is dead on arrival, and that this community will let the game fall after only a few weeks. Exactly this same thing has happened to SupCom2.

I agree.

well, if you think the game will fail, then don't bother writing about it, don't buy it, and don't come back :-P

whilst i am pretty sure that spectator mode won't be in until long after release, and i'm 99% sure that the replay system will be almost untouched from CoH1, i still have faith mainly in the community and that we will make the best of it until relic releases something that makes us happy (or content, at least).

also: reconnect? you kidding? so if i play a 1v1 and the other guy drops... i have to play against AI in case he comes back? Haha :-D and everything but 1v1: nobody cares whether you dropped.
P2P is not as important an issue, at least when the net code is well written. pausing in multiplayer is cool, but can also be abused (to a certain extent). it is not a priority though.

cr4wler we are talking about reconnect for custom games, not reconnect in automatch. If you can pause a game when a player drops and let them reconnect, it lets us run tournaments that don't break down whenever one player's computer crashes.

Everyone talking about Relic catering to casual gamers who love compstomps and 4 hour long artillery slugfests on The Scheldt are 100% right. It makes the game much worse but Relic thinks it needs to make the game more fun for the majority of people rather than us, the minority, who care about things like spectator, 1v1, balance, pausing, etc. Personally, although I understand the business sense in focusing on the masses, I feel like anyone who played that way in CoH doesn't really care about the quality of the game they're playing, and more effort spent making the game better for them is basically wasted because they just want to chill out and watch the pretty explosions, but I can definitely understand the other viewpoint, which is that Relic should spend its time and money on the larger group of people rather than the smaller group of people.

I just wish they would look at things like Tales of Heroes or Rogers and Pounders' videos and realize that if you make it fun to watch competitive CoH, you'll draw in all those casual players who just want to chill out on the Scheldt, whereas if you focus on all those casual players you just wreck the game for the people who really care about the fine details and make it harder for us to run tournaments, play a balanced game, attract the finest players, make the best videos, and so on.

If you look at a game like Starcraft II for instane, they know that most players aren't crazy Korean micro masters, but they put all their effort into balancing the game for pro players because they know that casual players are never going to be good enough to know whether the game is balanced or not and it's so exciting to watch a good SC2 match that it brings in casual players to have that sort of top level competition. Sure, most players in SC2 can be creamed by a 6 pool or basically any kind of cheese, but Blizzard just doesn't care. If you're worried about that stuff you can just play team matches or custom games with funky settings.

So, again, not surprised, and I can see why Relic does what it does, but still, it sucks for us and I think overall it just sucks for CoH 2. The worst part is that even if I'm wrong, and it's better for the game, then it's better for the people playing compstomps or on The Scheldt, and not for us. We still have to put up with pay to win, no improvements on spectating/replay watching/game pausing from CoH 1, and so on.

At least there are pretty charts at the end of each match. Relic put a lot of effort into those for some reason.

Damn.

Great post, Tycho. I agree with you 100%.

well, if you think the game will fail, then don't bother writing about it, don't buy it, and don't come back :-P

whilst i am pretty sure that spectator mode won't be in until long after release, and i'm 99% sure that the replay system will be almost untouched from CoH1, i still have faith mainly in the community and that we will make the best of it until relic releases something that makes us happy (or content, at least).

also: reconnect? you kidding? so if i play a 1v1 and the other guy drops... i have to play against AI in case he comes back? Haha :-D and everything but 1v1: nobody cares whether you dropped.
P2P is not as important an issue, at least when the net code is well written. pausing in multiplayer is cool, but can also be abused (to a certain extent). it is not a priority though.

Okay but what if that player is you and you don't want to lose the match ? Wouldn't you like to reconnect back into the fight ? And I was referring to competitive play specifically because you will lose money and the tournament because of a power shortage or packet loss.

Also, pause system can be simple; 3 pauses of 1 minute for each player. Your enemy can unpause after 1 minute. I see no abuse here.

Pause works great and is vital in SC2.

Pause works great and is vital in LoL. It's not working on rank or custom because it doesn't matter and would be very anoying. But it's very important and used often for issues during tourney games.