Profile of Inverse

War Thunder has DLC content packs on Steam, Dota 2 doesn't. All of Dota's DLC is cosmetic and has to be purchased in-game, not through Steam, with the exception of a single item pack related to a documentary they released about it.

As for those updates, they completely reset the counts, not add to them. So if they did an update during a free weekend they would likely see a large increase in numbers, but since free weekend games are removed from your library after the free weekend is complete any subsequent updates would override those numbers. The only way that would be a factor is if the update they used for their report happened to fall directly after a free weekend, which is incredibly unlikely.

EDIT: Dota 2 isn't on there because of bugs in Steam's API, and it does look like they're counting ownership as a "purchase" regardless of whether the game is free-to-play or not. Still, my point about free weekends stands, they won't be counted on there because when the free weekend is over the games are removed from your library.

Reading through their methodology a bit closer, I'm fairly confident their sales graph refers to the delta of ownership numbers between April 2014 and March 2015. You can't see WFA/AA purchases in your public library since those are considered CoH2 DLC items, but purchasing only WFA is considered a full purchase because it adds the entire CoH2 game to your library.

For example, if I own CoH2 and purchase WFA, that WFA purchase won't show up on this graph because it doesn't add anything to my library; it just adds some DLC to my account. However, if I don't own CoH2 and purchase WFA, that WFA purchase will show up on this graph because it would add CoH2 to my library, which would allow it to be picked up by their profile scraping code.

It's extremely silly having multi-mode maps; it was purely a cost-cutting measure on Relic's end, and it dramatically degrades gameplay quality.

a member of the CoH Experts clan and as such I have a reputation to live up to

lol

It would take too long to refute every silly argument in this thread from people who never played or analyzed CoH1 at anything approaching a high level, so I'm not going to bother. Instead, I'll give you some examples of the diversity that CoH1's unit upgrades allowed, and you can draw your own conclusions.

Wehrmacht, thanks to its wide array of veterancy upgrades and diverse T1 unit selection, always had the most potential for strategic variety. What always impressed me the most about high-level Wehrmacht play was the fact that every single top player had a unique and viable style of play. Sepha pioneered VVSMG and usually played a single-tier-heavy style with veterancy relevant to that tier; Aimstrong perfected VVSMG and played to get crazy-fast vet 2 on infantry before transitioning to vehicle play, and even used vet 1 infantry as a fake to get players to invest in snipers while he fast-teched to T3; aljaz played a stupid-long T1 style and poured the fuel he saved into T3 vet upgrades; Tommy loved support vet and was one of the few players to keep using Piospam after its nerf, and devised some other interested support vet strategies like his MG-Sniper Blitz opening; DevM used a little bit of everything and adapted his teching decisions very well to his opponent's play; Mags played an incredibly powerful defensive style with support, infantry, and tank veterancy.

In every single one of these instances, vet timing and progression played an integral role in the effectiveness of the strategy, and it was those little nuances of varied timings and the dozens of little variables that went into making a teching decision that made high-level CoH1 games so interesting to watch and analyze. Players constantly had these little decisions to make, and their choices had broad-reaching impacts on how the game would proceed going forward. From a macro perspective it just looked like players arbitrarily building units and upgrades, but if you took the time to look closer you could deduce the reasoning behind every little action, and it added an element of mind games and strategic back-and-forth that just isn't present in CoH2.

Even Americans, which were far simpler than Wehrmacht from a strategic perspective, had a variety of options late-game and strict reliance on tight timings in the early-game. Things like delaying BARs to induce your opponent into investing in AT and then flanking with stronger infantry or investing in supply yard upgrades when your opponent thinks you're going for tanks were incredible to watch and analyze, and the viability of every single unit and upgrade in the late-game gave players meaningful choices throughout the game.

CoH1 had a lot of problems. The OF factions were design disasters (and share a lot of traits with the CoH2 factions, which tells you a lot), and the strength of grouped MGs, snipers, and infantry made lower-level play frustrating at times. But the vanilla matchup was very good at encouraging better play and giving players a wide variety of ways to differentiate themselves from others thanks to its upgrade dynamic and strong, diverse core factions. It's that dynamic and diversity that CoH2 is sorely lacking.

Yes but you can take what you learned and actually apply it, and you can also use said knowledge of your mistakes to recognize other peoples mistakes.

And this game really isn't deep enough mechanics wise to make the claim that there is some great massive gap between players skill levels. This game requires very good micro at higher levels across every single faction. But the unit list is far to small and the amount of strategies far to small to consider planning a real difference maker.

I do understand the feeling you are talking about, when I first got into visiting and speaking with streamers and whatnot I learned so much so fast (Thanks Sibchat!), but eventually I just discovered the only real difference between players at high ranks was the ability to micro units effectively.

True, all good points.