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RTS and fighting games are extremely different. Grouping them together doesn't really make sense. |
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Agreed, it definitely could succeed. CoH1 was released near the height of the WWII gaming obsession and it grew, albeit slowly and over a long period of time. Like a lot of people here have said, it's just a whole lot of little things that detract from CoH2 as a competitive title. |
Why will it automatically have a smaller audience because it is a WW II game?
Because it's a setting that's been beaten to death by games companies. Remember 4 or 5 years ago when 95% of shooters released were set in WWII? It was a running joke in the games industry. There are just less WWII gaming nerds than sci-fi or fantasy gaming nerds. |
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The truth is, if CoH1 was released right now, it probably wouldn't be a very successful competitive game either. I think it would be more successful than CoH2, mainly because I think it's just a better game for that style of play, but it's still a WWII RTS by a developer with a terrible track record of encouraging competitive play in their games. And it would still be thrown into a market of already-successful competitive games that offer a whole lot more to players interested in that kind of thing.
CoH1 had the benefit of developing a competitive scene before competitive gaming really took off in the mainstream, and as a result was able to attract a lot more competitive players than it ever would have been able to if it had be released today. Just something to keep in mind when comparing the two. |
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CoH2 just doesn't give anything to the average competitive player who doesn't have a history with the Company of Heroes franchise. I personally think the design of the game has a lot to do with that, but that's a subject that's been talked to death here, so I won't harp on it anymore.
It's just a whole bunch of small things really. It's a WWII game, so right off the bat it's going to have a smaller audience. Because of that small audience, matchmaking struggles to create even games with acceptable latency. On top of that, the game suffers from major performance issues. A lot of competitive players play their games on bare minimum settings even if their rigs can handle higher, simply to guarantee that FPS drops don't occur during important moments. The fact that a lot of really good rigs can't guarantee acceptable framerates on minimum settings in CoH2 is hugely frustrating to competitive players.
Add on top of that the DLC commanders system, which has improved but is still problematic from a competitive perspective, not to mention the fact that when the game first was released and had the most attention on it, it was in such a horrendous state that anyone who would have been potentially interested in it was instantly turned off, and you end up with an environment that really isn't encouraging to competitive players who don't already love CoH. Toss in Relic's obvious apathy toward the competitive scene and the fact that 99% of their previous game's top players have no desire to play the sequel and you've got a game that doesn't really encourage competition and is starting from scratch in a market oversaturated with better competitive games.
It's going to be really tough for them to overcome at this point in the game's life. CoH2 will always have a competitive scene, of course, but growing it even to the size of CoH1's is going to be a challenge. |
There is a thread about this over on our own forums - http://community.companyofheroes.com/forum/company-of-heroes-2/company-of-heroes-2-general-discussion/company-of-heroes-2-bug-reporting/86369-game-is-getting-outright-unplayable-again-due-to-lag
The devs told me that what you're seeing is due to the fact that they added reconnects to the battle server. So if for some reason you got disconnected, you are no longer kicked from the game, but get re-connected automatically. That’s why your game will freeze and speed up to catch-up with everyone else. Previously in these cases, you would have simply been disconnected from the game but now can continue playing.
We're looking into adding messaging to communicate this. But also want to investigate this further. Anyone that can provide dxdiags, replays and warnings logs - please let me know. It goes a long way in helping them diagnose things.
Thanks!
It's a good change, of course, but there's no reason for the freeze to also freeze your camera movement and client-side functionality. In that sense it is, unfortunately, poorly implemented. The actual gameplay should be the only thing that freezes; you should still be able to pan around the map and click, even if those clicks don't actually do anything. Forcing the entire client to freeze up makes the game feel extremely unresponsive.
Read the thread guys: From page 2.
So think of it this way, any time this freeze happens, it's when a sync error would've occurred.
Which, imo, is still an incredible issue. But I honestly believe it has to do with matchmaking. People are being matched up from across the globe in a very suboptimal manner right now for a variety of reasons. For instance, having two to six players spread across the continental United States along with a player from Germany and a player from Korea is bound to cause extensive connection issues.
This has absolutely nothing to do with sync errors. It just means that instead of every player having to wait for a single player who is lagging (which was the case in vCoH and other pure P2P games), only the lagging player is affected, while the other players continue playing without issue. This is because everyone connects to and gets their game commands from a server now instead of directly from other clients. When the lagging player re-establishes his connection, he receives all of the information he missed during the disconnected period, which causes the fast-forwarding. The problem is, it's poorly implemented, and it causes your entire client to freeze when the connection issue happens instead of just stopping the gameplay mid-simulation but letting the player maintain control of the screen. |
Funny you mention that because I think they removed that moving while throwing a grenade a couple patches ago
Nah, you can still do that in vCoH. It's because the units are heading for cover, so they start moving automatically behind the piece of cover, and only the one unit throwing the grenade stops. |
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Well, this mechanic will never, ever, ever lose you a game, especially at your level of play. At the extreme, highest level of play it might give a player a tiny advantage, but that's it.
Your argument is still "it's not intended, therefore it is wrong". I've done my best to explain why that is a terrible opinion to hold. You are not convinced, that is fine, but hopefully others who hold your views can read my arguments and consider them fairly. |
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It's fine to not like it, I have no problems with that, even though I think, personally, that it's a really interesting mechanic that gives players one more tool to use in games. I just take issue with the whole culture in the CoH community that anything they don't like or that's not explicitly intended is instantly "abuse" and frowned upon. It puts such a chokehold on innovation, and it seems so strange to me.
I don't really think the comparison to speedrunning is entirely valid since in those instances players are exploiting very obvious bugs in the game's code to skip large sections of the game. In the case of this particular mechanic, it isn't a bug at all. There's nothing inherently wrong with this mechanic, nor with the way infantry units move in general. It's just an aspect of the engine that behaves in an interesting way under very specific circumstances. Removing this on Relic's end wouldn't be about fixing a bug but about reworking the fundamentals of their movement system.
Again, I get not liking it, and I get wanting it removed. If they got rid of it, I would be a little bit sad, but I would totally understand. But the simple fact that a mechanic is unintended does not automatically make it "abuse". That's the main point I want to get across, but I appreciate that your opinion may differ, and I'm glad that you can articulate it well enough to have an actual conversation about it. Hopefully people can look at both sides of this and make their own decisions. |
Inverse, you can say what you want. This is not right. Units are not meant to get stretched out like that. If it was then it would be in the description of the gameplay infos ingame. It is a result of bad or not complete programing of the engine. I don't think that Relic knew that and still left it in the game. Some hyper active player discovered it, that does not mean that it is ok to use it tho. Because you are hangup on the word Abuse i will say that it is an exploit!
P.S. I think you are defending it because you see it only from the competitive side and if something gives you an advantage then you like it. So i don't share your side even if you would describe it as a Super hot naked Blond on my bed 
P.S. II. I give a sh.. if this happened in over (competitive) games, that doesn't effect me so i cant take it as an argument.
Like I said above, vehicle reversing was never in any official Relic material for vCoH. Does that make it abuse or an exploit? Your logic is extremely flawed. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's a problem that needs to be fixed.
If you don't care about playing this game competitively then this mechanic will never, ever, ever affect you.
Regardless, your view is extremely close-minded. Where would gaming be today if everything that wasn't in a manual was barred from ever being used? You realize how terrible that would be, right? Capwalking isn't exploiting a bug, just like vehicle reversing in vCoH wasn't exploiting a bug. It turns out that if you give the game engine input in a certain way, it will act in a way that people weren't previously aware that it would act. That's not abuse, not exploitation, not anything. It's a cool little interaction that can help players be more efficient with their infantry. If Relic doesn't like it, they can comment on it or remove it, but until then, it's a part of the game engine, intended or not. It's little things like this that make games interesting for years after release.
Sandreas, your argument boils down to "it's not intended, therefore it is wrong", which, as my post and examples attempt to show (if you had taken the time to read and consider them of course), is a terrible way to think about game mechanics. You can dislike this mechanic if you want, and you can ask it to be removed if you want, but don't call it abuse or exploitation, because it's neither. |
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