I said they don't care about multiplayer? Interesting. When did I say that?
Duffy: Well, we’re not an esport. The demands on the game and the presentation are different if that’s what you’re aiming for. Our game is very presentation heavy. Everything that’s visual in the game is underpinned by gameplay and supports gameplay. We build the tech systems to support the experience. That has created something really unique.
Berger: It has its own pace. It speaks to an audience that likes the time to make decisions on the battlefield but it’s fast paced enough that you’re not staring at a turn-based game. It’s not as unforgiving as either a fast paced esport RTS or a turn-based strategy game. It has its own area where it’s very approachable with a lot of depth that lots of people can find their own level in. When we build a game we constantly keep in mind that it’s not going to be played, mostly, by extremely hardcore players. A lot of the things in the game aren’t going to be used by hardcore players. If you look at the pure numbers it doesn’t make sense. But other players will love to use it. It’s there for them. Those people are our core.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/05/cold-front-company-of-heroes-interview-pt-2/#more-110700
That's the CoH2 design philosophy in a nutshell. Observer mode is one of those features that appeals primarily to the hardcore player. The hardcore player is not where Relic's focus lies.
I personally think it's coming, and it'll be great when it does, but I wouldn't get too excited about anything happening in the near future. |
Not yet, but even if it was it would be biased, seeing as anybody visiting a site like this is very likely interested in multiplayer. |
There's a lot of people in between compstomp and uber competitive that you're leaving out here, probably the largest group of all.
The majority of people who played vCoH never played against other people. They either played compstomp or campaign. We don't have info for CoH2, but it's safe to assume that trend hasn't changed.
Everything Relic has done so far has been targeted at that group of players. Until we see otherwise, I think it's safe to assume that those players are their first priority. |
Sounds like the ability to queue for multiple modes at once (1v1 and 2v2 at the same time for example). |
Watch the video they released this AM m8.
Well, it's kinda silly to say "Hey, this is possible now!" when it was entirely possible before. And it isn't a feature that the compstomp crowd cares about, so I doubt it's a priority for the development team. |
Well, there was nothing technically stopping them from implementing it on the old servers, it just would've meant if the observer lagged everyone else in the game would lag too. But we were told it wouldn't get added until after the move to the new servers, so at least that is out of the way. Same with in-game leaderboards.
But without word from Relic, I wouldn't get your hopes up. |
My post was mainly directed at A_E. He's being championed for stating he hasn't read 90% of the criticism in this thread because he doesn't care; I think that's silly and a terrible outlook to have.
As for your point, outsmarted is a bad word for Basilone to use, because you can "outsmart" someone in a million different ways. Running at an infantry squad to fake throwing a grenade and getting him to run out of cover is outsmarting. So is delaying BARs so your opponent builds a Pak first out of T2 instead of a Gren. So is starting to throw and then cancelling a grenade around a Puma to make your opponent think you have sticky bombs. There are a million ways to outsmart your opponent in any game.
CoH2 has all that stuff, and that's great. What it doesn't have is diversity. |
Company of Heroes is indeed a simple game strategically, yet it's still more complex than CoH2. If you look at it from a pure numbers perspective, there are the same number of base units available in both games (4 per tier, there's actually one more in CoH2 I believe because of Conscripts in T0, but there's also one more tech building for Americans in vCoH, so it essentially evens out). Yet there are only 3 fuel-based upgrades in CoH2 (the 3 Conscript upgrades for Soviets, none for Ostheer aside from tier upgrades, which I'm not counting because Wehrmacht has them as well). There are only 3 in the entire base game! In comparison, there are 20 fuel-based upgrades in vCoH (8 for Americans, 12 for Wehrmacht). That's just objectively more options for a strategic player.
CoH2 narrows the gap when you include commanders, but you're still limited to three a game (just like in vCoH) and you still have the problem of players having to pay extra money just for access to all of the strategic options. Ultimately, vCoH just gives a player more options. In a strategy game, more options is rarely a bad thing.
The argument that CoH2 is new and immature and will grow is obviously valid. New strategies will emerge, the metagame will shift, everything that happens to all RTS games will happen to CoH2. But the shifts are going to be smaller, because there are simply less options. You're not going to see the huge shifts from tech rushes with no upgrades (vCoH 1.7) to low-tech high-upgrade gameplay (2.301 T2 Terror, Piospam, rifle upgrade spam) and everything in between (T1-T2-T3, fast vet 2 into T3, etc.). In order for that to happen, the base game needs to be able to facilitate it, and right now it does not. Instead, you're going to see shifts in unit compositions, and which units are built more than others. That provides variety, of course, but on a much smaller scale.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. I have an open mind, I want CoH2 to be great. That's why I post my opinions, and that's why I'm critical of the game. Because I think it has great potential, but it also has a lot of issues that are holding it back. I don't understand the hate against people who are simply pointing this out. The game needs improvements above and beyond balance; pretending it doesn't is counter-productive.
It's strange that the people defending the game are so much angrier than those stating their issues with it :/ |
So would you participate in a tournament where only the base commanders were used?
For SNF we locked the Commander options to those already released and then gave the Commanders free to everyone who won in the first round so that everyone had the same options without buying them. That didn't get you to play.
This is a good first step, but it raises problems for players who haven't built up a network of other players to practice against (new players, players playing behind a language barrier, etc.). For players like that, automatch is really the only way they can practice. But the fact that DLC commanders are allowed in automatch means automatch isn't really a viable place to practice for a DLC-free tournament, since every game where your opponent uses a DLC commander against you is largely wasted. If I'm practicing for a DLC-free tournament, I don't want to play 10 games in a row against the Tiger Ace, since it means I'm practicing a scenario that will never occur in the tournament I'm about to play.
I think if Relic is willing to recognize that DLC commanders have no place in competitive tournaments, they should be removed from automatch as well, since it is, for most people, the most competitive environment they're ever going to experience. |
Inverse just 3 things:
1- Isn't this kind of grudge between casters what Noun is trying to avoid?
2- What's wrong with casters arranging tourneys? isn't this what SNF, TFN, AE and others does/did?
3- Being butthurt with the man after so long is just lame bro
It's not a grudge, it's just a response to someone who doesn't understand why Harlequin isn't some sort of revered god in the CoH community, and why he shouldn't be given a tribute on the biggest CoH show out there. And I never said running tournaments is bad; in fact, I'm pretty sure I specifically said it was great he ran a tournament. But, like most people who do that sort of thing, he ran it to benefit himself, not to benefit the community. Again, nothing wrong with that, but the man shouldn't be put on a pedestal for it.
Ultimately, I think Harlequin was good for the community. He was at times disrespectful (though likely not intentionally), and his casting was awful for anyone with a lick of understanding about the game, but there's no doubt he attracted an audience that might not have been otherwise interested in CoH. I just think the majority of the audience that he did attract moved on with him to the next game, instead of staying with CoH despite his departure. When you watch a Harlquin cast, he's the star of the show; the game is just there to give him subject material. Harlequin made his audience Harlequin fans, not CoH fans, so when Harlequin left CoH, so did a majority of his audience. That's why I don't think he's the type of caster Relic should look to support. |