Summary of Quinn Duffy's Q&A

With the Company of Heroes 2 Beta just around the corner, fans still have many questions about the game. Yesterday Quinn Duffy himself took the time to answer some of those questions on the official forums during a Q&A session. COH2.ORG has compiled the most interesting Q&A's for you here, so you don't have to go through 20 pages of posts.

Q: Will the pre-order customers get highest priority in the closed Beta? Rather than Eurogamer keys for example?

A: We're working out the final details, but pre-order players are a top priority.

Q: Does the date being pushed back to June allow you guys to implement observer mode from launch?

A: We don't believe we can get our current plans in place for ship. However, it is definitely part of our roadmap. We also feel we'll be able to get a much larger number of observers in any given game (compared to previous games that opened a couple of observer slots).

Q: What is the status on mirror matches in the beta?

A: Mirror matches are available in custom, currently disabled in automatch. One by-product of disabling mirror-matches is the potential for longer search times in ranked automatch. We'll have to see what those numbers look like. We have a telemetry server set up to be able to track that kind of data.

Q: Do we get both a summer and a winter skin without purchasing DLC, or just the plain all-yellow?

A: Skins do change during winter/summer games. Both armies have a default winter and summer skin set (troops get different uniforms, vehicles get snow dusted and frosted). Looks nice.

Q: Are there going to be additional game modes in multiplayer, besides victory points and annihilation? Are there any side games such as last stand from DoW2 in CoH2?

A: MP modes; no, not at this point. There will be a new mode that will be a fantastic way to introduce new content. We'll keep that one under our hats for a little while longer!

Q: Will it be easier to share custom maps in CoH2?

A: That's still under discussion as part of our tools updates and full understanding of the potential of steamworks for helping us deliver content.

Q: Are blizzards effects the same as they were in the alpha? We expressed our concerns on blizzards being a bit too punitive for players (especially new ones who can't check all their units fast enough) and basically causing turtling from any player of a decent level since he won't risk anything.

A: Blizzards have had a tuning pass - I don't remember exactly what state the beta will be in. Our goal was to make attack and defense equally viable. Work continues on that system - in fact, we discussed it this morning.

Q: Will smurfing still be possible in vCoH after the steam transition? And will there be smurfing in CoH2?

A: I'm not sure what the effect of smurfing will be when COH is moved to steam. I'll see if I can follow up. COH2 has no smurfing. If you want to smurf, please buy another copy of the game.

Q: What was the reasoning behind the resource-system changes?

A: There were a few reasons we looked at changing our resource/territory/economy system. First off, the system was pretty punitive. Losing a high point? Punitive. Having your popcap cut off? Punitive.

We wanted there to be comebacks in the game - it's all part of the concept of 'Every battle tells a story' - so we tried to design an economic system that is a little more resilient but maintains some connections to the original. We also wanted to focus on tactical play and we wanted it to be easier to make maps.

Q: What more can you tell us about the Command Pass and how it's going to work - timeline, content, etc.?

A: Content packs/Command passes are one of those legacy items that Relic and Sega are discussing. We'll send out more details when we're ready to discuss.

Q: Do you guys have a heavy post launch content planned other than just skins? Like new commanders, units, factions, etc?

A: Post launch content is a big part of our plans. We hope this will help keep the game fresh and vibrant.

Q: How much has the replay function been improved upon? Can I jump to different points of the video now? Is there more info displayed? Can I choose between different bits of info?

A: Functionally wise, they're quite similar to COH's. Our architecture makes some of the improvements we'd like to make challenging. However, it is on our list for improvements and we'll solicit community feedback.

Q: For multiplayer will there be different seasons where the leaderboard is reset? Will the players be divided into different leagues based on skill?

A: MP features like that are part of our roadmap discussion.

Q: While cold tech is a great gameplay changer, what kind of variation will we see in map selection? Will we see a 50/50 split of winter/summer maps, or will it be mostly winter maps? Will we see the same maps in both versions ('XYZ - Winter' and 'XYZ - Summer').

A: Maps are pretty evenly split winter/summer. Some maps will have both winter and summer variants - some at ship, some post ship.

Q: Will the map maker/editor/mod tools be available at launch? If so, to what degree? If yes, will there be steamworks on launch?

A: Tools support will happen post ship. i.e. I think it took us several months to get our World Builder out for COH.

Q: Will there be 3v3 and 4v4 automatch, same as that in CoH: O

A: Yes it will be like that. Because now we spend too much time waiting in lobby for players to join the game (3v3 or 4v4). Sometimes it takes more than an hour to fill up. In CoH: O even if you didn't have any friends online, you could check 4v4 and play with 3 random players. And matchmaking was very accurate and fast. Multiplayer experience was the best.

Q: The commander archetypes that are locked, will they be stored cloud/server side or client side. During alpha we saw people hack into encoded files to access units and commander archetypes as well as increasing their rank/profile not available to regular alpha players because those items were locked.

A: Progression and general security is an important part of the game. I'm not saying everything is hack proof, but we've made a lot of positive steps in that regard.

Q: Why has there been no information available to those people who preordered the collector's edition as to actually what we have purchased. The bonus XP etc, When will this information be available?

A: Relic and Sega are in discussions about the bonuses awarded in pre-orders and collector's editions. We'll have some information about that...um...soon. Sorry! I know how much people hate that word!

Q: Pre-match customization (intel bulletins, commanders etc) will certainly add variety to automatch; but could pose problems as far as custom/tournament games go. Will there be the option in custom games to enable or disable all pre-match customization?

A: We don't have an option to disable, but tourney organizers could create competition loadouts as a possibility. You can also not bring in any commanders. We've spent more time trying to balance the system. The original commanders in COH came in kinda late to be honest!

Q: How exactly is armour penetration handled? In COH, penetration was a % chance vs a given listed armour type in a table. I understand that's changed now in favour of a slightly simpler system that uses AP values on a weapon and an armour value on the entity. So, does a weapon's AP value have to exceed a given target's armour value in order for damage to occur? Is accuracy vs certain armour types still in?

A: As for armour, yes, we've significantly simplified the target system. Every weapon used to be tuned against every target type. Now the weapons and targets have single sets of data. Basically the armour and penetration is a straight percentage relationship. A penetration of 110 vs armour of 150 means deflection, whereas a penetration of 150 vs armour of 110 will penetrate 70+% of the time. Something like that.

Q: When a player quits/loses connection - what happens with his units?

A: Sorry. AI takeover. We were looking at assigning an AI based on player rank but I can't remember if that all went in. However, there are some intriguing possibilities with a reconnect - we're exploring.

Q: Has the cover-finding/dancing AI been improved from CoH1?

A: There are some fixes in the beta, but we've spent the last month improving and updating pathing for vehicles and infantry.