Why would I organize a boycott over a possibly bad expansion? The pre-nerf Tiger Ace was a grievous mistake which Relic admitted and corrected, though it took far longer than it should have.
All I'm saying is that I suspect less work was put into this expansion than it needed, and hurried work, and it will show. And that's disappointing, not boycott worthy. Like many people, I'm waiting to see what things look like on release.
Balance-wise it will need a lot of work, because these things always do.
Game-mechanics wise and quality of animations/units/etc they've put a LOT of work in.
You should try being more positive. I don't think I've ever read a single positive post from you. =/
Tbh I only very rarely see any vCoH references here on these boards, much less complaints that "why isn't coh2 like vCoH"
Some people occasionally wax nostalgic or bring up a specific comparison between the two in a (misguided) attempt to illustrate a point they might be making. But its benign, and just an attempt to communicate in a context they are familiar with. Thats it really though.
Dunno what the fuss is about.
You should have been here a few months ago, well maybe more than a few months ago. But yeah there used to be quite a few people that hung around and posted in pretty much every single thread about how bad COH 2 is and about how vCoH was perfect and then crying to Relic because they changed so much in CoH 2.
Anyways, as I said before... I really wish Relic would lift the NDA. In my opinion they should have lifted it at least a week or two ago but, I don't think they will - sadly.
Except people don't "trash" CoH2 because they prefer vCoH; they criticize because the game has a lot of issues and took steps back in a lot of areas, and they care about the game and community and want to see it improved. I don't think you can really argue against the fact that objectively, as a game in 2014, CoH2 has a lot of issues. Even without taking vCoH into consideration, there are a lot of questionable design decisions in CoH2; people just use vCoH as a comparison because it's the most logical thing to compare it to. It's much healthier, in my opinion, to discuss those issues instead of pretending they don't exist.
Offhandedly dismissing criticism because it comes from a person who happens to prefer a different game doesn't make much sense to me.
If you knew anything about me you'd realize that I'm one of the most critical people about COH 2 and, at times, Relic. I've written numerous essays directly to the devs on shortcomings with CoH 2 and with WFA. I've spent hours talking one-on-one with them over VOIP etc etc etc. To say that I ignore or dismiss the faults/short comings of COH 2 - or people's constructive criticism is extraordinarily ignorant.
Most of your criticism of CoH 2, despite it being like 9+ months ago, was founded in some sort of logic - but I can't say the same for a lot of people. Anyways, we've really drug the thread off topic. You have me on Steam and can PM me if you want to continue with this discourse.
The irony is, you're screaming "fanboy" in the opposite direction - calling people who dislike CoH2 vCoH "fanboys" constantly and dismissing their arguments based on that fact alone. Your attitude is just as toxic, only in the opposite direction.
The irony here is that I don't care if people prefer vCoH to CoH 2. That's their opinion, they're entitled to it. Different games for different people, simple as that. Both games are good. Both games do things right and both games do things wrong - end of story.
I only have a problem when people (and there have only been a select few of them) incessantly trash CoH 2 simply because they prefer vCoH. If they prefer vCoH... why not go play it instead of spending hours every day mucking up forums with a bunch of useless shitposts?
I guess if you want to call that toxic, then sure. I'm toxic. Great post Inverse, stay classy bro.
On that note, I think the primary element of toxicity on Coh2.org, is from a degree of gangbanging by a small group of shitposters. Its not any one individual poster that is toxic, so much as it is a number of them together attacking another individual poster, and mitigating their personal responsibility of shitposting by doing it together, and creating the artificial illusion that "we are the community condemning you", when infact its just a small group of asshats who together spam up threads with a quadratic amount of crap compared to their small number and all targetted at one individual, and certainly not the topic actually at hand. Something to perhaps pay more attention to, and recognise for what it actually is.
Excellent post Cannonade. The part I quoted especially has made me re-think my stance on how toxic the community is - I think that you're right in saying that it is basically a hugely vocal minority that drown everyone else out with their aggressive spewing of bullshit.
Also @Ami and others - just to clarify a bit better what I was saying before - coh2.org is an amazing site and you guys have done a wonderful job running it. I just wish the people that hate on CoH 2 simply because they prefer vCoH - and the people that scream fanboy in every thread would stop bringing down the overall quality of the site with their shitposts.
Come on, this community is immensely positive and supportive. Our criticisms are generally constructive. Let's not paint some twisted bitter picture here cause that's not even close to the case. People are pissed about this NDA and the real lack of marketing, and rightly so. We can't be awesome together if we're not allowed to be, now can we?
A decent portion of the community (especially you guys that put on tourneys and create content) are positive and supportive, but you don't have to spend very much time on these forums - or the official forums to get sick of all the complete bullshit or the pervasive negativity and trollishness that a lot of people spew.
You know like the whole "LOL U THINK DAT BCZ UR A DUMB [insert faction] FANBOI FAGGOTZ"
Would be interested to see how many times "Soviet/German fanboy" has been used on these forums.
Anyways, I agree with you about the NDA needing to go - probably should have been removed at least a week ago - if not more. And yeah Relic's marketing sucks - hopefully that's something they can work on in the future. So yeah, while your statement of us not being able to be awesome together because of NDA and other nonsense is definitely true - the fact that this is the most negative/troll infested/un-constructive community (as a whole) that I've ever been a part of is also true. Maybe Darkfall had a worse community... maybe... but doubtful. Grated, it has slowly been getting better over time, there's still just so much toxicity left.
Ciez the TL;DR of what you wrote says to me that the balance team is still cleaning up messes made by the design team.
Somewhat, but that's basically the entire point of having a balance team - at least in my opinion. Design guys make stuff that's really cool/fun to play with - balance guys make it so that it is fair.
That's just my view of it anyways, makes sense to me - and that's how I'd handle it if CoH 2 were my game.
Another thing people forget is how much of a crunch and how much stress Relic was under with the whole THQ mess. I mean, I don't want to constantly blame that for any and every mishap that Relic makes but I think some one told me that they had like 1/4th of the budget for COH 2 as they had for CoH 1?
Pushing out a game that is, in many ways superior to CoH 1, while under such a time/budget crunch is impressive. (Do not want to derail this thread into coh2 vs vcoh, both games are good both games do things right and both games do things wrong).
I just wish this community was more positive and supportive. That's the only way we'll ever make it grow and reach the vast potential that CoH 2 has. All eSports and popular games have stemmed from highly dedicated communities, not from a developer throwing money at the problem.
That still leaves the question of how SI and ET in their first incarnation made it live(ET got pretty balanced, SI got butchered directly and indirectly by price changes).
I don't want to do any witch hunt here and there definitely are communication issues somewhere which lead to patches that are so obviously imbalanced that it makes one wonder WHO and how drunk he was when he accepted them.
It is good that you correct me(or anyone) if you know more on the issue.
I'm tired of NDA over NDA on NDA about NDA and all this secrecy on relics part.
I love their games, but I hate that there is absolutely no transparency on anything and whatever is delivered is delivered in form of bucket of ice cold water on the head.
I hope the new group see the imbalances and can beat relic into fixing them when they see it during closed tests, but seeing flowers like march deployment make me double question everything relic related and even my love for the game can not change it.
I could probably write an essay on why the mishap of ET/Industry happened (different testing environment, changing of personnel, patch being released in two+ parts instead of simultaneously) , but everyone would still be upset - and I'd probably get in trouble with Relic so let's just focus on the positives since then. First off, Relic has definitely listened to their community about paid DLC that directly impacts the game. I'm pretty sure I'm correct in saying that there have been no more paid commanders released since ET/Industry. I guess Advanced Warfare was kind of paid DLC, but most people got it for free - and while Advanced Warfare is extremely strong, it isn't anything like Industry/ET were on release.
Furthermore, balance is much more delicate and a lot more difficult to achieve than people think. Us testers play as much as we can (everything from 1v1 to 4v4) and Relic has frequent internal testing going on but the ability to account for every possible strat/build order on every possible map is nearly impossible. This is further compounded by the issue that the vast majority of top players do not want to spend time testing/helping Relic balance. I'm not going to mention names because I don't want to call anyone out but Relic has tried extremely hard to get the top guys working alongside them to help balance the game, but it simply hasn't panned out. I can understand not wanting to volunteer personal time in "doing Relic's job" (since after all, it is their game and they're the ones getting paid to balance it) but to be offered the chance to participate, then not take part and spend half your time bitching about the balance that you could have helped fix... honestly in my book it's just a bit insane.
I certainly can't promise anything (since obviously I don't work for Relic) but a few of us really impressed upon one of the higher-ups in the company today the need to remove the NDA from WFA and the need to advertise it more. As I've said on my stream and in other threads on coh2.org Relic has done a phenomenal job with this expansion. I doubt everyone will like it but I can say from first-hand experience that when we were handed WFA (back in like April) I legitimately hated it. It was downright terrible. To Relic's credit, they took all of our feedback into consideration and over the past few months have managed to transform WFA from an expansion that I was not going to play - into one that I'm extremely excited about. Maybe I'm just too excited, or maybe I'm too naive but in my opinion Relic has significantly changed the way they interact with us testers, and with their community as a whole - and in a very positive way. With the past two patches (infantry combat, vehicle combat) and with WFA they've listened very closely to our feedback and they've implemented a ton of really amazing changes. Sure the balance isn't perfect but I think that the mechanics of the game are better than ever - and 1v1 is arguably the most balanced it has ever been. Sure there are some cheesy strats (m3 spam, ISU spam) but overall if you look back over the past year - CoH 2 has become an amazing game.
Please, just give Relic some more time and understanding. All the recent patches have been a step in the right direction. Peter, Brad, Jason and the rest of the Balance/multiplayer guys are all really solid players and they know what they're doing. They're hugely invested in COH2 for the long-term - it's pretty obvious with how much the game has changed for the better this past year. Blaming people/starting witch hunts etc etc isn't going to do anything - that's not the sort of feedback that anyone wants or likes - and I really wish this community was more positive. I can promise you that Relic listens very closely to constructive criticism - imagine what we could accomplish if people would stop bashing anything/everything at every chance they got and actually made sensible posts.
Sadly, I doubt most people will read this post since it is so long. Oh well.
I'm definitely getting it. Throughout my time in the alpha I've seen it go from, frankly terrible, to pretty damn amazing. Relic has put a ton of hard work into it - and they've listened very closely to their fans.
I'm excited to see what happens with COH 2 after WFA hits. Should be a lot of fun.
While they spent a lot of time with websites and game journos discussing TWFA I believe that their dedicated fan base can do a better job of creating word of mouth about TWFA through video and forum posts if there was no NDA. Most of the articles I read were not that exciting more, most of them kept asking about the whole THQ / Sega thing or DoW3 (lolz) rather than your up coming release.
The unit reveals are a good idea but they could have done that when the expansion was announced and revealed one unit per week. Even if the unit design isn't finalised you can easily mention that development is still early and things are subject to change.
If there was no NDA on the alpha and people were allowed to stream fans not fortunate enough to get into to alpha could see the game and more importantly see the massive improvements being made with every iteration, which shows that you are listening to fan feedback and improving the game.
The audio recording blog post was a great insight into the development for the expansion but I feel their could have been more blog posts from other sections such as the artists creating the vehicles or the uniform designers or even videos of the voice recording sessions like in DoW2 etc.
Journalists reach an audience but I find that most of them do a mediocre job at showcasing many games in a good light. Not like the developers can who know their game better than anyone. One of the most amazing things I saw this E3 was the Nintendo treehouse where the localisation team cut out the media middle men and had a constant stream all week showcasing their games directly to their fans and because the localisation team was very well informed on the products they were showcasing they did an amazing job which resulted in them being mentioned in 47% of the tweets made during the event. http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a578234/e3-2014-nintendo-dominates-social-media-conversation-on-twitter.html
TL;DR your dedicated fan base and yourselves can do a much better job at advertising your products than the gaming press. Provided that you give your fan base the opportunity to create content.
+1 IpKai spittin' da troof.
On a serious note: Great post, totally agree, would love to stream WFA for people.
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