Profile of Retro

It's not the add-ons that bother me but the buyable commanders that have a tendency to be released overpowered.

It reminds me quite to War Thunder where expensive premium tanks get released entirely overpowered and over time are nerfed until they match into the game when you actually could release them either well balanced or rather underpowered in the first place and then balance them to not unnecessarily fuel those P2W accusations all the time.

But I fear that's the principle behind it. To fuel sales. Just like Warhammer releases new rules every few years where you have to buy the (overpriced) rulebooks and armybooks over and over again to be able to play with others in stores with the actual rules. I must say I was surprised that it actually took 5 years in average between those editions (except 6th to 7th was only 2 years) because back then it felt to me like a new edition would be released almost every year

EU4 regularly sells expansion packs, all of which change the gameplay in significant ways, and which would more or less be necessary for engaging with multiplayer

I see your point but EU4 packs currently cost between 15€ (e.g. Mare Nostrum pack) and 2€ (e.g. Native Americans Unit Pack) which either add a lot of new units or actual game features to the game.

Relic on the other hand surely ain't the devil of this industry but 4€ per commander appears quite a bit too much to me, considering that they don't really add new features or many new units. Often a bunch of new commanders are released where many share traits, thus personally I find 4€ per commander overpriced and which made me hesitate till now to buy them. I don't know how many time EU devs spend into balancing their units but new CoH2 commanders have also been repeatetly accused of being overpowered - either for selling reasons or due to a lack of required balancing work and testing. None of it makes Relics policy here really much more likeable.

The main thing I suspect responsible for people farming is apparently the drop system. Relic currently sells COH2 for 30€ (add ons not included) with a drop system, that has been for 3 years, up until we (hopefully) get a better one soon, a farce. I've played this game for years on a casual basis and can count the amount of useful drops I received on 1 hand. Naturally people will feel taken for a ride that way. Which might not be the case if Relic never created this drop system and just focused much more on NOT introducing overpowered commanders. But it's also system intended to reward people for playing and thus keep the customers interested to further invest their time into the game - thus it's not 100% altruistic of Relic to give away things for free.


But in the end it's likely up to your personal affection. I play War Thunder, a MMO in which I invested possibly 150€ by now (and plan to invest more) and where single tanks sell for a price as expensive as 40€, nearly the price of an anticipated AAA title and the grind is still obnoxious with them. Is such a vehicle thus worth 40€ not to say a system likeable that requires you to buy multiple of them? Certainly not. But I still do it (well at sales at least) and I don't feel any bad for it despite knowing that I pay for a totally overpriced good. Thus I can absolutely empathize with everyone who criticizes such a system in our forums for being overpriced to the max.

If you want to find a reason to justify your spendings you'll find one. I noticed this in a Warhammer 40k tabletop forum where plastic sells for the price of gold in weight, people have invested thousands of € into their hobby and react very aggressive when you adress the topic if Games Workshop might actually be milking them - a company infamous for this as much as EA is in the electronic gaming industry.

Would I thus agree with a method of bypassing those payments? With W40k people have started to melt their own miniatures. This is definitely hurting business (and if everyone would do it the development of new models would certainly come to a halt) but on the other hand I think it's the overpriced business model of GW that drove those people to look for alternatives in the first place. Satisfied customers (like me in War Thunder) don't do that. And on the other hand I doubt that such people would have had the money to invest it into those miniatures in the first place so it's theoretically no loss for the company - but that's a discussion that's getting somewhat close to the question if piracy is really hurting business as much as e.g. the music industry claims.

What i infer from all your posts combined (Retro and scratched): you farmed the hell out of this game. Now bid daddy steps in and says it is not allowed anymore.

You assume way too much. I recently just started with farming despite owning Coh2 for years now and as someone who payed huge amounts of money for games I really want to support (Star Citizen cough cough) am not anyone who "wants everything for free". But I admit I would have started farming way earlier if I had known about this because this sad excuse of a drop reward model always frustrated me and already once indirectly drove me away from the game for quite a long time.

Actually this is a discussion happening in a lot of F2P games where many developers are complaining that people "want everything for free" while a lot of paying customers are complaining that developers only see them as cash cows to be milked the last cent out of them for a service that is not worth the price. There are always at least two point of views involved and a good game to me is one, where those two extremes meet in the middle - a fair game. Fair to the customers and developers alike. With Coh2 my estimation so far would be that the tendency goes somewhat into the "developers milking the game" direction which in return reduces the willingness of customers to spend money for additional content and look for other ways to bypass a system they regard as unjust.

When you break it down it is really about PR. Good games which are reasonably priced, with fair systems, as few P2W as possible and where the community feels like the devs deserve their money because they treat the community right and give them what they ask for will get their money. Of course the more hyped such games are the more they can demand. With games where the developers greed shines through by making clear that milking the cash cow comes first and then comes customer satisfaction or where monetarization decisions are even hurting the quality of a product (most striking example: EA) the relations from the customerbase to the developers will deteriorate and peoples regard it as a justification to get greedy themselves and bypass their business models with methods like farming etc.

So this is not a clear case of greedy customers here. The problem lies in customer dissatisfaction.

You are unhappy, for X reasons (and most of them are ridiculous, having paid 100€ for this game doesn't entitle you to exploit the shit out of it).

Judging by your immature attitude we're likely way older than you and thus have experienced a gaming standard where paying 50 euros has established itself as the norm. A price you had to pay ONCE to get a triple A title game with it's full functions and where major content updates where for free. Everything else was regarded as pure greed - by the developer. Now the world has changed and capitalism rules more than ever before but don't blame us for still judging a games worth by this rule of thumb. I think we can all agree that wanting to experience all additional commanders isn't worth the price they ask for it. If the drop system wouldn't be such a farce and the prices more reasonable on a level where you'd say "yes, that's fair compared by the amount of work they had to invest in it" I would already own every commander in the game - by payment, not by farming.

New system is coming, and should fix most issues (oh and SURPRISE, that's the exact moment the devs decide to restrict farming in their game, does it mean that farming is useless from now on ? go figure out).

You're wrong. They decided to restrict farming way ahead the new system. I will continue to farm until the new system is out. If it can convince me of it's qualities I'll stop immediately. Yet since this is still a matter of the future and Relic likes to take their time for the time we still have to endure the old unjust system I will continue to farm. Manually if it has to be to not break any "rules".

It's hard to imagine for me that anyone - or even a "large part of the community" - would primarily want to play against the AI considering how boring that is but if that's the case so be it.

Then let's see if the new war spoil system is that fair that players will stop farming on their own. I'm pretty sure that some threats in rather hidden forum posts will only have a very limited impact on the current farming situation.

they wont dare to do that. i mean its no proof at all ^^

Also as long as they don't get the email account that is linked on this page I doubt that they would be able to take measures.

not now, but farming without mods and scripts is still possbile, i might go back to that

How do those options look like?