Profile of voltardark

Jump back to quoted post25 Feb 2015, 22:10 PMInverse

It has nothing to do with them trying to make money and everything to do with how they're trying to make money. There are a lot of proven ways to monetize your game that have zero impact on the actual gameplay.

By monetizing commanders with unique units and abilities, Relic is letting players pay for more options. If you're trying to compete in a strategy game, having more options is an advantage, so by letting players pay for more options, they're indirectly letting players pay for a strategic advantage in their games.

Now let's pretend Relic implements the CoHO shop system. We have no idea if they will or not, but let's just pretend they do. Suddenly your commanders and bulletins only last a few games before you have to repair them with supply. That's fine and dandy until you realize that your super fancy King Tiger costs more supply to repair than you receive for free after each game. Suddenly you're faced with a decision: do I remove my King Tiger every few games and accept playing with inferior units, or do I pay Relic a few bucks for the privilege of continuing to be able to use this unit in every single game?

Now if you're a casual player who picks up the game every once in a while, that system is fine. But if you're even remotely inclined to play your strategy games competitively, or if you're playing in a tournament or other competition, you want access to the best units possible so that you can have the best chance to win. That means you either have to pay up or accept that you'll be at an inherent disadvantage before the game even starts if you happen to play against someone who's willing to spend money when you aren't.

Don't you see how that's a problem? Now you're directly paying for an in-game advantage over someone who isn't willing to spend extra money for the game. It's not about people feeling entitled or being cheap or any of that bullshit, it's about the developers putting their business model before gameplay integrity. That's a middle finger to the subset of the community which actually takes the game seriously, which is much of the game's most dedicated fans and the target audience of this forum, hence the resistance to these sorts of endeavours.

When Relic charged people for the WFA factions, nobody bitched. When Relic charged for a new single-player campaign in AA, nobody bitched. When Relic charged for new ToW missions, nobody bitched. When Relic added new skins and faceplates and victory strikes and decals, nobody bitched. Why? Because these all make perfect sense to charge for, and they don't affect the integrity of the gameplay. But when you charge for things like commanders that give players unique gameplay options, or when you (potentially) implement a system that forces players to pay in order to consistently use their best units and abilities, you fuck over those people who want to compete without getting nickle-and-dimed to death. In other words, you fuck over a lot of the people who frequent these boards.

Change is great; I don't think you'll find many people who don't think CoH2 needs to change if it's going to improve. But adding the CoHO shop system to CoH2 isn't a good change; it's a disaster to anyone who cares about playing this game even remotely seriously. And it's a whole lot easier to spot something like this while it's in the development phase than when it's already been coded and released. Why would you just blindly assume something is going to be great, especially when it comes from a company with a track record like Relic's? There's nothing wrong with being skeptical and taking issue with the direction Relic appears to be taking the game based on the information we have.

Jump back to quoted post25 Feb 2015, 20:12 PMdasheepeh

I already did that. Still would do a 2 with a friend anytime over that.