Profile of Inverse

Relic has talked the talk when it comes to the competitive scene, but they haven't walked the walk yet. CoH2 as a competitive game has regressed since launch largely thanks to the DLC commanders and the lack of substantial changes to the base game outside of balance fixes. The game has potential from a competitive perspective, but I really don't see it happening unless the first true expansion radically changes things up. The game in its current state just isn't a good competitive game.

If you want your game to have a successful competitive scene and you're competing with games like Dota 2 and SC2 for viewers and players, you don't do what Relic has done with CoH2. You don't drastically simplify an already relatively simple game, give it a replay system from 2008, leave out any sort of spectating/live observing, release pay-to-play commanders that introduce new units and strategies, and emphasize pretty visuals over optimization and performance. And you can't come out and say you want the competitive scene to grow when you've done everything I've listed above, and when each of those things directly undermines the competitive scene. Nobody is going to believe you.

I want CoH2 to be a competitive game. I want to come back after an expansion and find a game that I really want to get into, with features and a business model that support competitive play. However, not a single CoH2 design decision was made with competitive play explicitly in mind. That ultimately tells me all I need to know about Relic's priorities with regards to CoH2.

Actions speak louder that words. Until Relic actively prioritizes the competitive community, I don't see it growing. If you want to play a game competitively, what incentive do you have to play CoH2?

Budwise you should take part in the balance beta where Peter and Braden are working directly with the players who volunteered.

Balance isn't the problem unfortunately.

The overwhelming negativity of the highest level players in this game is very disheartening to me. I didn't get in on the ground floor of dow2, and so was trapped behind the learning curve of that game... by the time I got interested in playing multiplayer, there were barely any active players any more. I totally bypassed coh1 thanks to my bias against WW2 games (learned that lesson the hard way!) and now most people seem to think coh2 is somewhere between awful but fixable and irredeemable.

This is not my perspective on the game, but what is 1 or 2 positive voices against a tidal wave of negativity?

I enjoy tactical games far more than traditional RTSes. I enjoy fighting over objectives like victory points more than "build an army and destroy the enemy base" and where else am I to find that? End of Nations imploded on itself, C&C4 remains the laughingstock of the industry, Men OF War 2 seems doomed to relative obscurity as well as potentially being the victim of its own complexity. The Wargame titles, likewise, have a learning curve like a cliff and fewer players than CoH1...

Are RTS or tactics players doomed to StarCraft 2's high apm spamfest, or Planetary Annihilation's macro-centric tidal waves of units, or to migrate to 1 man squad control of MOBAs like Dota 2 or LOL?

This game is the closest thing to the type of game I'm looking for that still has an active community, but the community itself seems to resent it.

The reason vCoH was so beloved was because it managed to hit the perfect balance between macro- and mechanics-focused RTS games like Starcraft and entirely tactical games like Men of War. There was something for both types of players in vCoH, but the best players had to be proficient in both areas or overwhelmingly superior in one or the other.

In vCoH, you could have a lot of success as a pure micro player with poor strategic decision making, or you could have a lot of success as a smart strategic player with poor micro. Both were equally viable, even though if you really wanted to be a tournament contender you usually had to excel at both. It just had this amazing mix of the two, and it attracted such a wide variety of players. It also made the competitive scene so interesting, because you had different players with different combinations of these two primary skills. You had players with insane strategic decision making but relatively weaker micro (see Sepha a few years ago), and you had players with ridiculous micro but poor decision making as the game went on (Lollypop is a great example of this type of player). And of course, you had all sorts of players in between. And the game facilitated this variety because it was designed with an equal emphasis on strategy and tactics.

CoH2, on the other hand, has shifted so far from that balance that made vCoH so rewarding to watch and play. You still have back-and-forth between strategy and tactics, of course, but it doesn't feel like the game gives both equal weight. It's a lot easier in CoH2 to play a generally safe strategy every single game and rely on your micro and tactical decision-making without ever having to deviate from your original plan. The game doesn't seem to reward strategic players as much as vCoH did, so you're stuck with this one-dimensional competitive scene that doesn't have to excitement and variety that vCoH's did. CoH2 is Warcraft 3 to vCoH's Starcraft Brood War. They're both decent games in their own rights, but vCoH/BW just gives players so many more options than CoH2/WC3. And giving players options and chances to express their unique playstyles is integral to a thriving competitive scene.

vCoH just made this awesome compromise between the tactical game and the strategy game, and it drew in people who loved both. A number of vCoH players went on to have a lot of success in SC2 (iaguz, link0, HuK), and yet the game still had room for players like Lollypop who didn't have a knack for strategy but could micro like hell. I just think Relic should have tried to recreate this balance, instead of deliberately shifting it so far to the tactical side.

CoH2 isn't a very compelling competitive game, and the trend with competitive games like RTS games recently is the games that are good competitively are the games with lots of players. Look at LoL, Dota 2, SC2. LoL actually pays something like 8 or 16 professional teams, and they see it as a marketing expense because they realize how valuable a competitive scene is for exposure and publicity. Funny how it's also one of the most popular games ever.

A successful multiplayer games these days tends to have a strong competitive scene and elements that appeal to casual players. I can't speak to the casual scene, of course, but I know personally the competitive scene is very dull currently. If that changes, you'll see CoH2 grow.

It's honestly probably the biggest reason I haven't played CoH2 in months. I want to stream, but the performance is terrible, and there's nothing more frustrating than playing an RTS at 30-40FPS and missing actions because the game is stuttering. CoH2 is the only game I can't stream, even at bare minimum settings. I can stream Dota 2 on mostly high settings and get excellent performance, same with vCoH and SC2. Hell, even without streaming, I can play BF3 nearly maxed at 40-50FPS and can barely get CoH2 to run 30-40FPS on high.

This is all on an i5 2500K at 4.4GHz with an HD6870. All in all a very decent rig.