Profile of Inverse

Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But if you're practicing for a tournament, you're going to want to have access to everything you'll have access to in the tournament game. That means you're using your best items in practice, and you're losing more supply than you're gaining in practice. Furthermore, in CoHO you received less supply when you played custom games than when you automatched, which means a tournament player is actively punished for playing proper practice matches.

No matter how you slice it, it's a terrible situation for anybody who wants to play the game competitively, and this isn't even accounting for the fact that ladder players who pay money would have more consistent access to the best items than ladder players who don't pay. The ladder is the competitive environment that the largest number of players have access to, and it's arguably the one most affected by this system.

Not even close. It had far less that CoH1, and CoH1 was peaking at around 10k players per day at that time.

i dont follow. has it not always been like this? you had to pay to stay competetive in coh. in coh1, you had to pay for opposing front to use new armys. later you had to pay if you wanted to use new TOV units like the schwimmwagen or kangeroo. in coh2 you had to pay for new commanders and you had to pay to get the new armys.

if a new system get implemented the basict fact that from time to time you can spend some money to widen your options in the game and to enhance your chances of winning stays basicly the same.
of course there are changes in detail and we still have to see if and how it plays out. maybe it will get more expansive to stay competetive. maybe top players never have to pay a dime because they win a lot in automatch and so get rewarded a big amount of free supply. i dont see any reason to object a "play for free but pay for extra content approach" in general.

in one way or another - someone has to pay for a game that gets support. thats just the way it is and you have to pay for balance relevant core gameplay options because faceplates and skins just wont make real money.

one aspect of warspoils /cohonline that has not been discussed widely holds a much bigger threat to competitive gameplay in my opinion. in the current warspoil system as back in the days in cohonline there are items that will help your gameplay but that are not for sale. now that is just stupid in my opinion and i dont want to see it further implemented in coh2.

some commanders in coh2 can not be purchased in a shop but drop randomly after playing a game. same in cohonline: you simply could not buy the sprinting mg with the rocketlauncher (or any other hero unit if i remember it right) - you had to wait for it to come to you. after you had it, you could spend cash on keeping it active.

what i dont want to see are items in a game that you can only get by chance and that are not for sale.

this is how it should be in my opinion:
- the better players should be rewarded for their skill and effort by so much free supply that they should not have to pay real money (maybe as a reward for certain a ladder position).
- the casual player should not be forced to buy anything if he does not mind playing with fewer options.
- the eager but lazy player should be able to purchase anything there is in the game with cash.
- the eager but cheap player should be able to get anything there is by grinding.

You're right, buying new factions can be seen as buying options, but it's not really in the same ballpark as something like commanders or ToV units. Having an extra faction doesn't help you in a single automatch game, for instance, while having purchased commanders definitely can. The two are on completely different levels in my opinion, though I see how they relate and I understand it does weaken my argument.

As for the ToV units, there was heavy resistance to the concept in the CoH1 community when that expansion was announced and released. We got really lucky that the new units were not, for the most part, drastically superior to their original counterparts, but still, if you're a Brit player who doesn't own ToV you're at a major disadvantage in the current metagame because Brits really need Stags in order to be competitive. I think that's a bullshit situation and it should be avoided at all costs.

I see commanders as dozens of mini ToV expansions, which is why I think it's a concept that's so detrimental to gameplay. The only proper competitive game I can think of that has a similar system is League of Legends, and even then tournament players are given access to all game content so it's less of a problem.

Which is a strategic level decision forcing you to decide if you want to use the same commander and the same units every game or "I can beat this guy without using X"

Sorry, that sounds awesome - more or less exactly how AA works because it is not setup to use the same Company all the way through.

You might not necessarily be able to employ the same methods in every game so it would force people to explore and use a variety of tactics.

No more "Wah, stale call-in meta" and the advantage in the game shifts from people who find the optimum strats for each patch and execute it effectively (which you have been complaining about), to those able to effectively play and use with all the tools at their disposal.


So there's some reservations about that, but almost everyone here is crying about how awful this could be on the basis of no evidence whatsoever about how it will be implemented, I can equally sit here and point out the upsides if it's done well.


See above for my thoughts on this

Also:

Good

Despite lots of evidence to the contrary the 1v1 Taliban persist in deluding themselves that are in anyway relevant, let alone important

So you think it's awesome that someone playing in a tournament is going to have to decide between paying money to repair their items or playing with less potent ones? That literally directly gives an advantage to the player who is willing to pay.

I've said in every post I've made on this subject, if you don't care about competition then the CoHO system was alright. My posts have directly targeted how fucking awful it is for the competitive scene.

Yes they did

They complained that they were too expensive

They complained that they weren't interested in buying them

They complained that Relic were working on that rather than doing what they wanted Relic to do

There's a big difference between complaining that a company is charging for something and complaining that the content they're charging for is irrelevant, uninteresting, or too expensive. Nobody with any sense expected the WFA factions, ToW missions, or AA campaign be released for free, which was the point of my statement.

Even with it's pay to win coho online was regarded as a great game(in the top 20 greatest of all times even). There was never any shortage of people online. It had so much variety that any shortcomings could be esily overlooked. Fun trumps fair when you are talking about any game in my opinion. Coh2 lacked variety from the get go and then came the nerfing sprees and the unique but gimmicky wf factions. People aren't talking about how fun the game is but whats wrong with it.

I'm ok with Relic charging for some things as it a business with bills to pay and mouths to feed. I would much rather them work on fun things that affect actual gameplay rather than useless placeholder items that people won't buy anyway.

It was a great game but it only lasted 7 months? How does that make sense? I never saw it above 2000 concurrents any time I played before they removed the player count from the interface. You can't be wrong about what you like, but it's hard to see how a game that shut down after a 7-month beta can be considered a success.

It was a success in that it got people interested in CoH that might not have been otherwise, but that's about it.

It has nothing to do with them trying to make money and everything to do with how they're trying to make money. There are a lot of proven ways to monetize your game that have zero impact on the actual gameplay.

By monetizing commanders with unique units and abilities, Relic is letting players pay for more options. If you're trying to compete in a strategy game, having more options is an advantage, so by letting players pay for more options, they're indirectly letting players pay for a strategic advantage in their games.

Now let's pretend Relic implements the CoHO shop system. We have no idea if they will or not, but let's just pretend they do. Suddenly your commanders and bulletins only last a few games before you have to repair them with supply. That's fine and dandy until you realize that your super fancy King Tiger costs more supply to repair than you receive for free after each game. Suddenly you're faced with a decision: do I remove my King Tiger every few games and accept playing with inferior units, or do I pay Relic a few bucks for the privilege of continuing to be able to use this unit in every single game?

Now if you're a casual player who picks up the game every once in a while, that system is fine. But if you're even remotely inclined to play your strategy games competitively, or if you're playing in a tournament or other competition, you want access to the best units possible so that you can have the best chance to win. That means you either have to pay up or accept that you'll be at an inherent disadvantage before the game even starts if you happen to play against someone who's willing to spend money when you aren't.

Don't you see how that's a problem? Now you're directly paying for an in-game advantage over someone who isn't willing to spend extra money for the game. It's not about people feeling entitled or being cheap or any of that bullshit, it's about the developers putting their business model before gameplay integrity. That's a middle finger to the subset of the community which actually takes the game seriously, which is much of the game's most dedicated fans and the target audience of this forum, hence the resistance to these sorts of endeavours.

When Relic charged people for the WFA factions, nobody bitched. When Relic charged for a new single-player campaign in AA, nobody bitched. When Relic charged for new ToW missions, nobody bitched. When Relic added new skins and faceplates and victory strikes and decals, nobody bitched. Why? Because these all make perfect sense to charge for, and they don't affect the integrity of the gameplay. But when you charge for things like commanders that give players unique gameplay options, or when you (potentially) implement a system that forces players to pay in order to consistently use their best units and abilities, you fuck over those people who want to compete without getting nickle-and-dimed to death. In other words, you fuck over a lot of the people who frequent these boards.

Change is great; I don't think you'll find many people who don't think CoH2 needs to change if it's going to improve. But adding the CoHO shop system to CoH2 isn't a good change; it's a disaster to anyone who cares about playing this game even remotely seriously. And it's a whole lot easier to spot something like this while it's in the development phase than when it's already been coded and released. Why would you just blindly assume something is going to be great, especially when it comes from a company with a track record like Relic's? There's nothing wrong with being skeptical and taking issue with the direction Relic appears to be taking the game based on the information we have.

You could buy everything from the store actually, except for a few specifically drop-only items if I recall correctly.



You also couldn't consistently use rare bulletins/units unless you paid for supply because you couldn't afford to repair them all with the supply you got after games. If you saved up a decent supply bank you could go for a while, but you would be spending more than you were receiving and eventually you would run out.