Profile of Inverse

I disagree, highly skilled players at poker mitigate luck. But even at the highest level luck can still cause the more skilled player to lose - whereas in a game like SCII there is no luck at the highest level.

I understand that you were not saying CoH2 is like poker. That was the point that I was making, as they both involve significantly more luck than any of the strategy games you listed.

That's not entirely true. There's luck in SC2; if you get lucky and scout your opponent first on a four-player map, you can defend some all-ins easier. If you get lucky and scout some obscure building rush, you can defend against it a lot easier. There might not be luck in the game mechanics in the form of RNG, but there's still luck. The point remains that good players know how to minimize luck-based situations and use them to their advantage, but the luck is still there in one form or another.

I think people get it wrong when they paint luck or randomness as this absolute evil, because it isn't. Poker has luck, but it's so pervasive that it ultimately has little bearing on the final outcome of the match. Anyone who plays or watches Dota 2 knows how much RNG is in that game; literally every autoattack every unit does is randomized within a range, and there are dozens of heroes and items with percent-based chances. But because the randomness is present in almost every interaction, and because Valve's pseudo-RNG approach limits extremes, it's hardly noticeable.

The RNG in CoH2 is a problem because its emphasis is so incredibly skewed. The difference between getting the killing blow on an expensive tank and missing it is so incredibly huge that it all of a sudden makes RNG look like this terrible, terrible mechanic when in reality, the only thing terrible about it is the implementation.

In poker, if you get a bad hand, you fold and play another. Minimal loss. In most cases in Dota 2, if you get unfavourable damage rolls, you miss a last hit, or maybe in some rare situations miss a kill. Again, minimal loss. In CoH2, you miss the last hit on a Tiger Ace, well, game is hard. It's a problem of scale, not a problem of RNG = bad.

On the contrary, the majority of top streamers and casters of CoH are native English speakers (HelpingHans, Stephenn, Siberian, Inverse, Xcom, AmiPolizeiFunk, Tommy, RnP, A_E, VonIvan etc.). Clearly, every rule has exceptions, but you will find a similar pattern within succesful competitive games.

That couldn't be further from the truth really. Maybe in CoH the majority is English, but competitive gaming is far more popular in Europe and Asia than it is in America. Most of the popular SC2 and Dota 2 streamers are not native English speakers.

What we need is for Relic to just come out and state what's now obvious:

1) COH2 is a casual RTS, not a competitive one.
2) The design focus is on "fun" units like the Tiger Ace or IS-2 that any noob can use successfully.
3) New commanders are to keep people interested in the game, not to provide strategic depth.

I know this is still hard to accept for diehards, but if you expect this game, given the faction design and teching system, the insane amounts of RNG, the resource system, the popcap and upkeep systems, to ever have a chance of being better or at least equal to vCOH, you are wrong.

It's a for-fun RTS where you dick around for a bit with infantry but eventually whoever has the best tank micro or lucky arty hits wins. The most strategic element is unit preservation (ie., faster CPM wins).

I was among the diehards. I don't care anymore. It's fun, it's casual, it never stresses me out like vCOH used to, and there's certainly no pressure. If I lose, there was doubtless some element of RNG I can blame it on, and if I win, that's cool, and I'll only be unhappy if I didn't get to play with my Tiger Ace/IS-2/KV-8 because they quit early. It's like that. And it's still a lot of fun. But it's not competitive or serious and you have to stop expecting it to be.

This has already happened really. All the competitive casters are gone, the only person with tournament success in vCoH that still actively plays CoH2 is Symbiosis, and there really aren't many people filling the gaps. There isn't a single good analytical caster for CoH2 now that Tommy's gone, because there isn't much to analyze. But there was a very strong community built around vCoH, and you'll be hard-pressed to get people to stop trying to make the game better, because so much of what made vCoH successful is being squandered in CoH2.

It's too bad, but at this point the community has done all it can do.

What I don't get, however, is that Relic explored this exact model with Company of Heroes Online. And Company of Heroes Online was a complete and utter failure. So why the hell would you take that experience and try to turn it into your sequel when you knew it hadn't worked before?

Just wanted to throw it out there: Didn't Relic specifically state that they were not going for an "esports" approach before release even happened?

I remember being bummed when I heard this knowing that comp stomping and single player would be focused on more but I accepted it.

The lack of transparency and frequency of updates and fixes for problems in this game is startling but the "esports" thing was never going to happen.

Nothing was explicitly stated either way, but there were a lot of behind-the-scenes implications that gave people the impression that Relic and company was going to support competitive play more than they had in the past. Things like sponsoring the last vCoH season of SNF, their early commitment to the first CoH2 season of SNF, the community event in Vancouver with a number of top players, the repeated assurances that DLC would in no way affect gameplay (this is probably the most infuriating, since it was an outright lie, but it's hard to blame community managers for that when they likely had no idea it was a lie themselves), Taylor Fales' in-depth involvement in the last vCoH balance patch, and Peter's dedicated involvement in the private forums here in COH2.ORG during the initial alpha and beta tests.

There were a lot of indications that Relic was interested in at least supporting the competitive scene even if they didn't make it a priority. However, community members were told certain features were being prioritized and then we wouldn't hear anything about them for months; we were told DLC would not have an impact on gameplay and it became clear very quickly that that was entirely false.

I refuse to believe there was any malicious intent on the part of Relic; somewhere along the line, priorities shifted, that's all. But for the people who were in it from the start, I can sympathize with the frustration.

You're right, that's smart. But Noun's post largely dismisses in-depth content as being viewed by only "the small audience of hard core players", and that "60 minute content doesn't get shared well, because the only people who will invest that amount of time in watching something are fans already or the elderly while they wait for Jeopardy to come on."

That is a) insulting to the people who invest their time in that type of content, and b) extremely misguided when you look at competitive gaming trends in other games.

Take League of Legends as an example. I'm sure they use quick clips and highlight reels to attract new players, but they equally promote their substantial content, and it's the substantial content that gets them the majority of their exposure. Hundreds of thousands of people watch LoL tournament streams. That's not something you can just look at for 60 seconds and get a good feel for what's going on. You need to invest 30-60 minutes into a game. And yet hundreds of thousands of people do that, and many thousands more watch after the fact. They sold out the fucking Staples Centre for their world championships.

Short content is great for attracting new players, you're absolutely right. But it's god-awful for retaining a player base, and when your game relies on microtransactions retaining your player base should be the most important thing in the world for you. Neglecting the substantial content your community produces and calling it boring just seems so silly to me. If you think the substantial content is boring, perhaps you need to look at the subject matter and figure out why your game isn't enjoyable to watch.