|
British and Afrika Corps can join the game under one or many commanders with their dedicated units. There is no need to add 2 new specific faction in game.
And for Japan, that's sound too alien to me. Pacific theater is more adequate for a naval strategic game than field one.
|
It can work, you just need to be creative, think different HUD styles for USF or soviets, new voicelines for all your infantry, skinpacks for infantry etc etc..
Even taking into account the genre's inherent weakness in this area, there are still a ton of avenues Relic could go down with regards to cosmetic DLC that could be profitable. Custom HUDs, super-detailed custom skins for single units, more victory strikes, custom base building skins/models, custom tactical maps, custom icon styles, custom voice packs, hell even alternative building skins/models for buildings on maps. Why do all heavies share a single skin? I bet you if they made some really kick-ass skins for the more powerful lategame units they would make a killing. Look at how popular custom skins were for CoH1, especially near the end of the game's life. If you make cool shit, people will buy it.
This durability/supply system is the easy way out in terms of time investment, just like monetizing commanders was, but it's ultimately going to hurt the game because it doesn't improve the player experience at all. It's a system that only makes sense if it's tuned to turn a profit for Relic, yet it doesn't actually add anything of value to the game.
I would like to believe you but, in my opinion, this is not enough to secure enough money. The game impose a realistic concept of character design. What is the matter to have 3 different skins based on the same real one? What the idea of having different HUD skin or victory strikes or faceplate? Today that's free so people are happy with that but people isn't going to spend a lot of money into something he saw 1 minute in the game.
Faceplate and victory strike are invisible during the game
HUD are good but that not what people really want to buy, or you have to create the Hype around by linking them to special events.
Voices, you can expect 2 or 3 different voices for a faction, but a german accent is a german accent.
Skin for Super Heavy and Heavy, yes that's going to be the motor of your business
Skin for medium and light will sustain it
Skin for soldier models, they are just too small to be interesting
Now I'm not saying they are making the right decision with supply but IMO they are making the right decision to not focus on customization to make it viable. |
That's the problem though, the supply/durability system described here is nothing like the system used in Dota 2 and CSGO. If they straight-up copied Valve's model that would be amazing. Paying for cosmetic items is totally legit, because it doesn't give you additional gameplay options and it's totally not necessary to do if you just want to play the game competitively. What isn't legit is paying for more gameplay options (different topic though) or paying to continue using your items over time.
If it's limited to only dropped items, it turns off the large number of people who play for that carrot-and-stick incentive of getting a drop after the game. Just look at the anger over the War Spoils system, and the backlash against Valve recently for their changes to the Dota 2 drop system. That's the best-case scenario, and it's still a major negative for a large portion of the community.
You cannot implement Dota2 or CS:GO model into Coh2.
Dota2 is a game aiming for fun in its level of execution, calls, dialogues, heroes are mostly fun. And from that fun, you can take a lot of freedom to design cosmetics, dialogues, calls etc... and sell it, you are just limited by 2 facts: your imagination and the frame decided by Valve.
CS:GO is also aiming for fun and personalization, you can also play with audio, weapon skin and model skins, those are really visible and gives a personification of your pixel character.
Coh2. Coh2 is fun as well, for sure that is part of his objective but in a clear different manner and for sure not in a visual or auditive one. You cannot change you Panther skin to pink with blue bubble because it is fun, you cannot change voices by stupid one because its fun. The frame is clearly limited to a "realistic" visualization and immersion. People find their fun in that realism and its execution with the game engine. You cannot decided to design flying wingmen grenadiers squad in all statistics equal to normal one's but visually funnier.
So basing your economic model on skin and decay... that's going to last a couple of months before all realistic skins and possible voicing are available onshop, and next what?
Coh2 doesn't make you control a single character you can personify but an army, a commander and here is the personification. And it goes in that direction, the one COHO was taking in his time. You select your preferred army, and you design your commander in a dedicated frame. And because your commander cannot be personified you need to found another way to do it. And it goes to abilities and monetize it with economic transactions. |
And that will work do you think? in fact this may cause the okw to be even more powerful. or do you think obers and fsj will remain 50 mp a piece?
Yes, why not? that would be the correct price, the one made when OKW was really struggling in munition and fuel.
The real fact there is we hadn't this issue of volks spam when OKW was really struggling in munition, not like now. And so any other units around had a good price because it was hard to play the faction.
Now I understand perfectly that OKW meta wasn't good at that time, probably not funny to play because it was constraining too much players into a unique playstyle.
Now we are in the exact opposite with OKW floating in munition, so we need a middle, what we call a balance you know. Today OKW players don't make more decision, that simply 100% ammo invest on shreck until you have 3-4 squads and next you can switch full fuel since you don't need munition anymore.
The balance between that is clearly to let players make the decision where they want to invest their munition but make sure all their decision will have a downside. More shreck AT, less AI, more AI, less AT. That simple. |
|
The powerfulness of Shreck isn't the shreck itself or volks, just that OKW can spend all its ammo in it.
What make 1919 good but not that overpowered, the fact USF need ammo for many others abilities. Of course you can decide to invest all your ammo in it, but at the end, that's a strategic decision and it weaken you somewhere else.
Make volks shreck blob costing the same, but add or increase all other ammo prices of OKW abilites, add an ammo price to obers LMG, to falls, to jaigen to panzerfusiliers etc... and you' ll see a decrease of shreck spam. People will have to make strategic decisions again and decide how best invest ammo and fuel to have enough AI and AT on the field.
Today it is just easy to spend any single munitions point on shreck since you know you'll have ammo free AI stuff. |
OKW is the faction with the "Wonder" stuff, they got 2 available, KT and JT 
Your Sherman is usually there to scare the Luch, problem is it doesn't do enough damage to it to be really reliable. And it does worst vs a panther.
|
It's a bad thing when that content actually affects gameplay in a multiplayer game. If they keep durability away from commanders then it'll be a lot better, unless you happen to be a person who really likes skins. But when you release paid DLC that affects gameplay without giving players a way to reliably obtain that content over time without paying, then you're forcing players into a situation where they need to pay extra money in order to have access to the same gameplay options available to other players. It should be obvious why that is a terrible situation for a multiplayer game based around competition.
We don't really know what the supply system will be for and how the commander system will work in the future. I wouldn't be that much surprised if Relic fuck it up in the way you describe it, but sincerely let's wait & see, there is no need to play Cassandra in that topic with so few hints. |
Do we know if the decal will be more like a skin or a simple tag?
Honestly, if it is fun to customize a bit his army once (like in DOW), I don't see a real market/viable market on a RTS game like that.
Models are too small, that would only be visible without zooming on super Heavies...
But I might be wrong  |
|
Supply in COHO was only used to resupply "Elite units" each of them limited at 1 or 2 per building.
And it was absolutly possible to play without them and so not using supplies.
Commander draft ability was also part of COHO, and drafts were limited in the Commander dedicated doctrine.
It brought a lot of fun, but also some unbalance since some abilities were to much powerful in combo with some stock units. (heyho flare + triple snipers)
As far as I remember COHO was shut down before a complet test of its monetization aspect so I'm not really sure about repeting the same errors, we don't know if it would have work or not. |
|
I sincerely consider F2P as the last hope for this game. The problem is it hasn't been designed for that at the beginning and requires a lot of change in the meta to make it viable.
Viable means economically viable.
Like any other Free to play, gamer designers have two options, or making it more or less Pay to Win or Pay for cosmetics.
Valve, with its large player base and graphics available in game has done a great job with TF2 and Dota2 but I'm not sure Relic can do the same. Because in those games it is far easier to implement cosmetics, those games doesn't need to be realistic, they can pain their characters in the pink if they want and I'm not really sure it is possible for Coh2. they can do event for christmas, halloween or whatelse if they want, that's just going the make the game funniest or with some minor change in rules etc...
In Coh2 you can probably design 2 or 3 type of armor skins but not more and it would become really redundant. Assimetrical balance make any change in rules completely impossible.
So they probably need to design a kind of P2W version of Coh2 to make it viable. A good way to do that is probably to design a dedicated money to use specific abilities or call-in.
two options (can be mixed)
1- A money to replace munitions, so any time you want to use a special ability, you use that money and when you run out of money, you pay. You can also play without using any abilities but it clearly more difficult. of course you still need to cap territories to make the money available during the match, but when you run out of money in your account, you don't have it anymore in match.
2- A money to pay for any commander's ability. So you want a reco, you pay, you want a call-in tank, you pay etc... (same idea as 1-)
The problem with the actual design that not all factions are equal facing abilities or commanders abilities consumption. |
0
![[DGM]Estal'xile flag](/images/replay/ostheer_flag.jpg)
[DGM]Estal'xile
Tuty
![[DGM]Estal'xile flag](/images/replay/usf_flag.jpg)
[DGM]Estal'xile
Regis
Relic Entertainment
