No one really knows if players quit because of the warspoils / DLC system.
Better late than never I say.
That's absolutely right, yes.
But I'm not talking about the war spoil thing alone. They were screwing up things since the Alpha and the paywall thing is something that scares players off. The RTS genre is already very small and the idea to make a full priced game with pay2win stuff is simply stupid as hell. Nobody with a clear mind would make something like that but THQ became bankrupt so everything they tried was to get money in.
It started with the skins which is okay in my opinion because it doesn't affect the game. Then first rumors became loud that there would be commanders that have to be unlocked with real money. This was a reason many players didn't even buy the game. Relic was like 'Yes, we know that you are afraid of this system, but we won't make it pay2win. It's just to let players try other strategies.'
Now every faction's meta revolves around a P2W commander.
Ostheer: Osttruppen,
Spearhead, Elite Troops (old),
Close Air Support (old)
Soviets: Partisans (old),
IS2 + KV8
OKW:
Defense Doctrine
USF: Calliope, Pershing, Elite Rifles (old)
UKF: Crocodile, Helms Deep
(sorry didn't know most of the names)
These are by far the most played commanders for each faction and each and every single on of them is not available if you begin playing the game on level 1.
You cannot unlock them (yet) without ridiculous luck or spending extra money.
People with these commanders CLEARLY have a advantage. There is no way anyone can deny that.
I did not spend a single Euro on anything besides the original game and Western Fronts. I marked the commanders I own after about 950 hours totally played in Orange ( I got some for preordering CoH2 aswell).
So as you can see, I played almost 1.000 hours (almost 41 days) and I don't own about half of the meta commanders.