I don't think 3 minutes in COH2 would be enough. (but I could be wrong) We did some tests and asked for quite some feedback from casters and players and the general consensus was that mines/demo charges, as a core aspect of the COH2 gameplay, deserve a lot of respect, and 3 minutes are not enough to be sure they would be blown up already. It is hard to pull out a right number because on one side you want to offer a "as close to live" experience to viewers, but on the other side you have to make sure players can't be exploited.
I spectate pretty much every day matches of League of Legends using their built-in obs mode (with 3 minutes delay) and I really believe 3 minutes is the perfect delay there. I also know from playing with friends that often some information that are apparently irrelevant become immensely important. Let me give an example: right now in COH2 the meta is dominated by call-ins based strategies. By having a 3 minute delay in the automatch the information you could give to another player are immense: doctrine picked (which is probably one of those things with the highest impact), tech choice, mines placement.
I believe that Relic wants to go super-safe right now and go with 8 minutes to make sure it's impossible to have players communicate with observers in the automatch. After a first period of tests I would be totally up to propose Relic to lower the delay to about 5-6 minutes (if it's possible) and see how it turns out.
Overall tho it's irrelevant: since you are not supposed to interact with players in the automatch but just spectate games with specific tools the delay could even be 1 hour.
What instead I think should be in the game is a way to let observers feel more involved when spectating, like being able to see mouse clicks and even players camera movement (like SC2) but I have no idea if it's possible.
To answer your question, "Observing as a Party" feature should allow you to chat with the friends in your group while spectating the game while also being in sync with each other.
Since spectators in the automatch won't be in sync this means that there would be no point to allow them to chat because they could be watching totally different moments of a game.
That said, on tournaments (that are based on custom games) it will definitely be possible for you and your friends to spectate games (if allowed by the game host) and chat together.
You have some very good points and I wouldn't suggest anything else, as long as the delay can be toned down in the future if it's possible without opening up for abuse. I guess we all want the observer mode to be as "live" as possible.
And about the chat, why would it be bad to chat with other players you are not in sync with? Why not just enable an option to toggle on and off the chat? Just some thoughts... I would hate to miss any advice just because I can't watch the chat since I was not in their observer party. |
It's 3 minutes in MOBAs because that's how long wards last. Mines for example can persist for the whole game.
Fine enough but where did you get the number 8 from? Is it the average time from when a mine is deployed until it detonates? As you said, mines can persist for the whole game, why not just auto upload replays so we can be 100% sure that no one can help the players? 8 minutes is excessive, I would personally like 3 minutes but would probably be satisfied with 5. |
The host can also turn off obs completely or set a password for their game. Automatch obs can't be switched off however and will have a constant 8 min delay. The game will always be 8 mins behind actual live even if you try to fast forward to live.
Indeed but isn't this a subject to change? I understand that Relic wants to be safe regarding the delay but we're not talking about 8 minutes compared to no delay but rather a decent 3 minute delay like in other comparable observer modes.
I don't know if there are any plans to implement this but it would be really cool with an "observer chat" so you can discuss a current game with other viewers. |
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So, anyone else but me that thinks 8 minute delay is excessive? It should be not more than 3 minutes. I have a hard time to see how it would help anyone 180 seconds later when you try to get his attention and try to explain where he could have planted a mine somewhere on the map.
I just want it to feel as "live" as possible. 8 minutes could as well be 15 minutes or even an hour or to the point where you can watch a replay instead. 8 minutes is a very long time in CoH2. Just compare it to watching someone streaming on Hitbox with just a few seconds delay where you actually can help a player by telling him what you see on the minimap that he might be missing. It wouldn't be any different compared to having a person sitting next to you when you play and helping you.
Other than the extreme delay in automatch games this observer mode have exceeded all my expectations. You can even minimize the hud size so you can watch larger team games. Well done Relic! |
I don't think real time is fair. First, there is bound to be a delay because of lag. Secondly, even though you are only spectating one side, you can have people "spot" for you which is still cheating.
You will need the delay to prevent cheating.
Well, how about a 30 second delay if you are watching one side? Then no one can help you detect flanks, idle units etc. It's not much different watching a stream on Hitbox with just a few tiny seconds delay where you already see everything he is seeing. People seem to be excessively afraid of it being abused.
Anyway, there's just a few minutes until we'll probably find out about the custom game observer mode... |
I believe League and DOTA2 have something like a 2 minute delay so it is okay
Then you are watching the whole game. I'm talking about just spectating one side of the game in real time. |
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Always medics no matter what, either yourself or your team mate. Just think about it, having fully healed squads compared to having a bunch of squads averaging on 75% health when fully reinforced really makes a difference. You can stay in the fight much longer and when you have a fully healed squad you don't lose fire power as fast when it takes longer for the opponent to pick off models from it.
If I build more than one Conscript I am always very tempted to get AT nades. I usually skip molotovs unless we're only up against Ostheer. |
custom matches are the only ones that make sense. Unless automatch games are to be broadcast with some huge delay. Didn't command and conquer start doing that?
Why would that be? What if you could spectate your friend and only see what he is seeing? They should have done this for automatch as well. It would be the same thing as watching someone streaming on Hitbox with just a few seconds delay, except that you can look around the map yourself and experience the fight in highest quality possible.
But I guess we'll have to be excited about some streamer doing some livecast sometime... |
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To be fair you should take the amount of games played into account. Top 10 Axis in 4v4 random have much more games played compared to the Allies. A more accurate comparison would be within the arranged teams.
Hon3ynuts had some very good points. |
Perhaps we should wait and see what is announced tomorrow then instead of speculating.
So if we close our eyes and hold our ears everything is going to be ok? |
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