Second, observer mode has been one of the most requested features for CoH2 for a very long time. It's something that's been sorely lacking for a RTS that "aspires" to be eSports. There is no denying that Relic received a lot of flak for shipping CoH2 for what amounts to be the same, feature-wise, as CoH1, but dressed up pretty. The current replay and cast system is so laughably archaic and cumbersome. Live spectatorship is critical in generating hype and excitement, and in this day and age of Dota2, SC2, and LoL, pretty much required for sponsors to chip in. Live obs mode has been requested time and time again, and this time Relic delivered on it. The fact that Relic has released this for the general public means they are in the very last stages of the build and is almost ready for release, with some bugsquashing and polishing left to go. This is very good news, and one of the best streams Relic has done - for its subject matter, at least. We should be cautiously optimistic heading forward, and it presents opportunities for future tournaments and the ESL for more viewership.
Agreed. The CoH1 replay system was really cool but today it´s antiquated. An up-to-date and improved replay system was one of the things promised but never implemented. Sure they changed some things and more informations are available now but as a caster i really don´t care about things like the total damage done by a player because it says nothing about the game. I´d like to see a replay system like the up coming observer mode. Also such stuff would be nice to see in CoH1 but i doubt this will ever happen (and there are more important things to do). Still, it would be very cool.
Third, although the interface is quite clunky and functionality does not seem to be very elegant, it is at least basically functional. I will disagree with the design decisions (as with lots of GUI issues within CoH2), but at least all the important bits are there. Hopefully, sometime in the future within their 5-year plan they will optimize and streamline the interface so that it will look as pretty as SC2. Relic employees, take note:
Currently it is way too cluttered, too busy. It's also lacking shared FoW, multiple players' units. Maybe other goody stats with a push of a button - APM, sector counts, and so on. For the overlays, god forbid that it'll be used for 4v4s! There's still too much blank space, or just unnecessary detail which aren't really needed.
Again, agreed. To be honest the presentation was a surprise. I was expecting much less. I matters of functional it´s really good but i miss about the same stuff you do (multiple players' units in the first place). And i also think the interface is not looking that well designed. Well they called it an alpha so maybe there will be some improvement until release.