Profile of Inverse

It's pretty tacky to start an argument with an insult, but whatever. I don't think anybody can really argue that DLC is a problem in and of itself. The real problem lies in execution.

Dota 2 and LoL are two games that rely entirely on DLC and microtransactions for their revenue streams. However, everything purchasable in Dota 2 is cosmetic, and my understanding with LoL is that everything you can buy that affects gameplay can also be earned through normal play (haven't played, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong).

You make a lot of comparisons to MMOs and games in other genres, but you don't talk at all about other RTS games, which strikes me as a little odd. Even if we ignore the fact that Relic tried a similar business model with CoHO and it tanked, we just have to look at sales figures (Source) to see that three of the four best-selling RTS games ever (Starcraft, SC2, and WC3) also had thriving competitive multiplayer communities. They had/have entire industries built around them. Of course, correlation does not imply causality, but it's still an interesting thing to consider. There seems to be a pattern here.

Furthermore, your claim that a competitive scene gives nothing to a developer is patently false. How often do you see Valve and Riot advertise Dota 2 and LoL? They don't have to, because they know they can get people to watch their games and generate exponentially more interest that way than they could traditionally. Riot believes so strongly in this that they fund 16 professional teams, pay all salaries, and hold extremely lucrative tournaments. They don't do this to be nice to the scene; they do this because they believe it will make them money. And LoL has probably been the most popular game outside WoW for the last few years.

Nobody is going to argue that making a competitive game in any genre equates to success. It's equally stupid, however, to claim that a thriving competitive scene gives nothing back to a developer. When you rely on post-launch microtransactions to make money, you want to attract a large and dedicated fanbase. Historically, the best way to attract such a fanbase in an RTS is by making a game that is well-received by competitive players and giving those competitive players the tools and means to promote your game as best as they can.

Lag is always going to be a problem for CoH2 because it's a game with a small but global playerbase. You can't region-limit players because it would take ages to find games, so you end up matching players in different countries or even different continents. People like to bitch about P2P, but that's not the problem at all. It's simple network logistics.

It was infuriating in CoH2 to issue a move order and see it clearly being followed (one or two men in the squad responding to the command), yet have half your squad continue on its previous path for the sake of completing an animation. That is the change referenced in the patch notes.

I personally don't see how the previous scene was "thrown under a bus" as you put it.

I am not privy to the conversations that go on in the basement but if they weren't interested in you guys they wouldn't have invested all that money in SNF5 nor would they spend all that money on international flights to get some of the more influential community members to their HQ.

You're right, though you could be cynical about it and see those two events as marketing investments. Not saying that's the case, but you could see them that way if you wanted to.

I'm more talking about the changes that have been made and the comments that have been made since the DLC commanders started coming out; that speaks louder to me than just throwing money at the problem does. Before then, I think everybody was still optimistic and excited about CoH2's future. Sure, it wasn't a great game, and it probably would never be vCoH in terms of how every aspect of the game came together so amazingly, but with the right changes it definitely had potential, and people were still interested in it competitively. Peter was streaming and actively discussing balance with the community and it felt like things were actually getting done. The game at launch wasn't great, but at least it was getting better.

Then the DLC commanders happened, and the rest is pretty much history. Their release schedule makes balancing practically impossible, their designer could care less about how they impact competitive play, and they give tangible gameplay benefits to players who spend money above and beyond the $60 they have already invested. Not to mention these changes happened within 6 months of release, when the game was hardly in a state fit for competitive play in the first place.

I'll be honest. Even without the DLC commanders, CoH2 as a game doesn't particularly interest me. Using commanders to give players more options instead of building those options into the core game isn't very compelling to me, even if those commanders were free. But I love the franchise, and I would've stuck with it if I knew the developers were doing their best to make the game competitive. It's difficult to care when a lot of the evidence suggests they largely aren't.

That's what I mean when I say they threw us under the bus. CoH2 isn't a game made for us, the people who organized and ran and played and watched vCoH tournaments. That's not necessarily a bad thing. There's the very real chance that there's another group of people out there willing to devote as much to CoH2 as we did to vCoH. Maybe in a few years Relic can get in a groove and make CoH2 a great game, even if it doesn't appeal to those who played vCoH. Hell, maybe they can change my mind, and I will gladly eat my words if they do. If they can grow and succeed with this model, more power to them. But I don't think you can blame the vCoH community for not enjoying a game that is so incredibly distant from the game we enjoyed for the past 5 or 6 years.

http://www.coh2.org/news/1281/building-the-foundations-making-coh-huge

tl;dr a thriving competitive scene isn't the sole responsibility of the developer, it's also up to the community to show they want it. By actually fucking turning up to competitive events for starters.

I agree, but it's hard when the game is so uninteresting competitively. We had pretty close to zero developer support for years in vCoH and yet we thrived because everyone loved the game and wanted it to succeed. CoH2 has done a very good job of pissing off and alienating all the people who loved vCoH and showed up to events and played and organized and dedicated their free time to it.

Maybe another group of people will come along and have the same passion for CoH2 that we had for vCoH, and maybe then the scene will thrive. But I'd think it would be a lot easier to retain and build on the community that grew around your previous game in spite of its lack of support than to throw them under the bus and hope a similar group replaces them.

With a large enough player base, you ensure that you earn quite a bit of money even with a very low conversion rate on your DLCs, whereas Relic seems to be trying to get a very high conversion rate (enforced by making the game borderline unplayable without the DLCs, or at least playing with a severe disadvantage) with a very small player base.

That's a smart way of looking at things.