Profile of Inverse

Pretty overpriced for what you get.

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere here, so I wanted to point out something I noticed the other day in case it gives Relic another clue in their quest to improve performance. For some reason, actions that cause changes in the data being displayed on the UI in-game also cause major drops in framerate.

When I was streaming the other day, I was getting a solid 80 or so FPS at the start of matches. However, if I forced multiple interface display changes in a short period of time by rapidly tapping, for instance, F1 and F2 to cycle between the USF T1 and T2 buildings, I would experience obvious stuttering and framerates that dipped to 30-40FPS. The moment I stopped forcing the interface updates the performance would recover to its previous level.

I also experienced microstuttering whenever I selected a tier building. Even if I didn't cycle between multiple buildings, just selecting one caused a noticeable stutter and large dip in the FPS graph for a fraction of a second. Furthermore, opening the tactical map for the first time or after not having opened it for a while is far from responsive.

I was only able to reproduce these performance issues when selecting tier buildings, not when selecting units, but I did not test unit selection thoroughly. I also think it's weird that the CoH2 menu interface is locked at 20FPS, since it makes the menus feel sluggish and extremely unresponsive, but that's a different, though potentially related, issue. There seems to be some major optimization issues with the user interface that should really be addressed if the issue of overall performance is ever going to be improved.

I was told by Relic staff member (don't want to name) that single player skirmishers trump everyone else combined, by more then 5:1, after I wrote letter complaining about some similar issues as Napalm intends to. (thats 1v1-4v4, campaign, and multiplayer skirmishers.
Cannot remember correctly, but only 11 or 13% of people who bought the game played even single online game (this was approx. 6-8 months ago)

Its worth a try Napalm

It's definitely true, and it's true of 99% of games honestly. The vast majority of CSGO, SC2, Dota 2, etc. players who play those games don't play them competitively or with any competitive ambitions. The problem with Relic's approach is that they see those numbers and think immediately that they need to focus their attention on the "casual" aspect of the game, at the expense of the competitive scene.

It's a weird way to think about the game, and Relic is one of the only developers who seems to feel that way. Other developers like Valve and Blizzard and Riot realize that while the vast majority of their players will never play their games competitively, the competitive scene is vital to success because it provides free marketing, attracts new players, and keeps existing players interested in their games and the communities surrounding them. The fact of the matter is, skirmish players are going to keep playing skirmish regardless of the changes to the game. Competitive play, on the other hand, is never going to succeed today unless it is given serious, targeted attention from developers. Most of the biggest non-MMO multiplayer games today are games with hugely successful competitive scenes supported by developers who run their own flagship tournaments and focus a large amount of energy on improving competitive play. These games also happen to have enormous numbers of casual players, even though so much developer energy is focused away from that aspect of these games. The fact that Relic doesn't realize that, and didn't from day one prioritize the competitive scene as a result, is their #1 strategic failing as a company in my opinion.

Just let people decide if they want to enable it or not. Problem solved.

I'm curious actually Napalm, did you meet Stefan Haines?