Why Relic Needs to Stop Listening to the Community

I like the choice of words, CoH2 has been castrated.

Just because certain players vocalized their anger at losing, and the recent changes reflect these players not everyone else.

There are different players in CoH2:

* Mr. Kick-Butt: All he cares about is that he wins the game. If he loses then this is excuse for flaming on a new thread (Probably one of the most vocal in forum. He plays OST only and he must win always otherwise the game is unbalanced. He will flame if his Elefant got rammed and IL-2 bombed or if his army got Stuka Dive Bombed. I know there are many players who aren't like this and don't mind losing to meme abilities, like myself. Along with many others, idt I have ever complained about my ambulance + major getting Stuka'd because I know I abuse my own fair share of meme abilities)

* Mr. Genre: This player will get upset if the game does not behave like other RTS games of this genre (you need to watch out for these players because they don't have COH2's uniqueness in mind. A lot of these may have already left early on though and nonexistant)

* Mr. MinMax: Generally the competitive players who attempt to exploit mechanics and stats and aware of all the stats of the game (Cruzz is a good example. Perhaps I fall into this too)

* Mr. Designer: These players want the game to be a different game and their opinions are based on this different version of the game they have in their heads (For Relic, these guys are worth listening to but be aware that they have a different game in mind. I think these guys are responsible for changing CoH2 so much as they have a different more competitive castrated version of the game in their heads. They are thinking Starcraft-esque games that don't have much RNG and casual meme abilities. From the comments you are getting in this thread, I am 100% sure that there are folks here who totally did not like Relic's design direction for CoH2 during release, WFA release, and UKF release. They have a different game in their head and want to change the game to what they have in there head. And there are players who appreciate and love Relic's designs and want to play what Relic's idea of a game is --- and these guys are the majority of players in CoH2 that unfortunately are not very vocal. They are playing skirmish or the quiet players you don't see flaming on the forum always. Most players playing CoH2 don't complain about the game, neither are they super eager for balance patches. Like myself, I've always been more eager for content patches that added new commanders)

* Mr. History: Wehraboos, and history fans and players who really like the WW2 scene and weapons. They will get upset at things like unit scale and penetration of tanks which don't match reality. (You get a lot of these in CoH2. That's why realism mod is pretty popular)

* Mr. Bubble-boy: Upset at the game because of some one single bad experience like his Ober squad getting killed by a skill plane. (Also a lot of these in the forum. REMOVE SKILL PLANES! ... okay... what about the vast majority of players who don't mind skill planes killing half of his army every once in 200 games?)

On the whole, our positions agree. I've never been a balancer. In fact, there is no balance, people are biased and subjective, so that the balance of the war will never pass. I have always been interested in new content that gives a new breath or a second life to the game. I maintained the original vision of the factions. And I don't really like the fact that they were simplified and made more clones of each other. I am also extremely disappointed with the removal of the "Blizzard" mechanic. One of the fundamental mechanics that Relic was proud of and said that it was the new engine and the new part that was able to implement what we saw in this mechanic.

On a side note I've also liked blizzards and deep snow/mud mechanics, but they were put in the game without proper thinking.

I miss this, it was fun having a world-event sort of thing. It was fun because you know every player is affected not just yourself. 4v4s on Rzhev were fantastic.

Idk about mud, it just made you slower which is annoying. It didn't create windows of opportunities like blizzards did

Guess who got cold tech removed Not the majority, but vocal minority

I miss this, it was fun having a world-event sort of thing. It was fun because you know every player is affected not just yourself. 4v4s on Rzhev were fantastic.

Idk about mud, it just made you slower which is annoying. It didn't create windows of opportunities like blizzards did

Guess who got cold tech removed Not the majority, but vocal minority

Was it the vocal minority or the fact that half the PC couldn't handle the hailstorm?

Was it the vocal minority or the fact that half the PC couldn't handle the hailstorm?

This is actually the reason. Vipper is right. Removing the blizzard was a beneficial play. While I never had an enthusiast level computer, it was pretty powerful in a way that it could always play new titles on High at 1080p. However, that mechanic brought the fps to a standstill on each configuration I owned. It was a welcome change

I like the choice of words, CoH2 has been castrated.

Just because certain players vocalized their anger at losing, and the recent changes reflect these players not everyone else.

There are different players in CoH2:

* Mr. Kick-Butt: All he cares about is that he wins the game. If he loses then this is excuse for flaming on a new thread (Probably one of the most vocal in forum. He plays OST only and he must win always otherwise the game is unbalanced. He will flame if his Elefant got rammed and IL-2 bombed or if his army got Stuka Dive Bombed. I know there are many players who aren't like this and don't mind losing to meme abilities, like myself. Along with many others, idt I have ever complained about my ambulance + major getting Stuka'd because I know I abuse my own fair share of meme abilities. Most of the players always complaining about some other faction being OP fall into this category because they lost with their main faction. If he lost to OKW late game, then CoH 2 sucks and OKW is OP... have you ever considered that OKW is SUPPOSED to be better late game!? And that not everyone plays your main faction, you don't need to always win, and perhaps you just need to learn to play instead of blaming the faction.)

* Mr. Genre: This player will get upset if the game does not behave like other RTS games of this genre (you need to watch out for these players because they don't have COH2's uniqueness in mind. A lot of these may have already left early on though and nonexistant)

* Mr. MinMax: Generally the competitive players who attempt to exploit mechanics and stats and aware of all the stats of the game (Cruzz is a good example, Fortune, and many competitive esports players. I think I fall in here too as a meme ability abuser, sandbag ghoster etc.)

* Mr. Designer: These players want the game to be a different game and their opinions are based on this different version of the game they have in their heads (For Relic, these guys are not worth listening to too much as they have a different game in their mind, but sometimes consider their ideas... end of convo. I think these guys are responsible for changing CoH2 so much as they have a different more competitive castrated version of the game in their heads. They are thinking Starcraft-esque games that don't have much RNG and casual meme abilities. From the comments you are getting in this thread, I am 100% sure that there are folks here who totally did not like Relic's design direction for CoH2 during release, WFA release, and UKF release. They have a different game in their head and want to change the game to what they have in their head. And there are players who appreciate and love Relic's designs and want to play what Relic's idea of a game is --- and these guys are the majority of players in CoH2 that unfortunately are not very vocal. They are playing skirmish or the quiet players you don't see flaming on the forum always. Most players playing CoH2 don't complain about the game, neither are they super eager for balance patches. Like myself, I've always been more eager for content patches that added new commanders)

* Mr. History: Wehraboos, and history fans and players who really like the WW2 scene and weapons. They will get upset at things like unit scale and penetration of tanks which don't match reality. (You get a lot of these in CoH2. That's why realism mod is pretty popular)

* Mr. Bubble-boy: Upset at the game because of some one single bad experience like his Ober squad getting killed by a skill plane. (Also a lot of these in the forum. REMOVE SKILL PLANES! ... okay... what about the vast majority of players who don't mind skill planes killing half of his army every once in 200 games? Funniest moments ever were when this happened. You can owe a lot of COH2.ORG trending hot list to skill planes and demo charges)

No offense my dude but I think you're full of yourself, not to mention that you're a hypocrite as well.

Mr. Designer, really?

I mean excuse me but weren't you the guy that said that you were an actual game developer?

And Mr. History being all Wehraboos and I'm guessing racists and also Nazis for wanting to play a WW2 game that's set in well, WW2.

I mean obviously a game is still a game meant for entertainment and fun so it won't be 100% historically accurate and that's understandable but fuck me, the leftist in you is really showing here.

No offense my dude but I think you're full of yourself, not to mention that you're a hypocrite as well.

Mr. Designer, really?

I mean excuse me but weren't you the guy that said that you were an actual game developer?

And Mr. History being all Wehraboos and I'm guessing racists and also Nazis for wanting to play a WW2 game that's set in well, WW2.

I mean obviously a game is still a game meant for entertainment and fun so it won't be 100% historically accurate and that's understandable but fuck me, the leftist in you is really showing here.

You know, I already know a lot of friends who left CoH2. And their motives are surprisingly similar, they all sound in a generalized way: The game has become worse, it feels like patches are made by some people who want their game. And it perfectly reflects the mood of the person you are quoting. You can agree or disagree, but people leave and leave with the same motives, they don't like where the patches lead.

No offense my dude but I think you're full of yourself, not to mention that you're a hypocrite as well.

Mr. Designer, really?

I mean excuse me but weren't you the guy that said that you were an actual game developer?

And Mr. History being all Wehraboos and I'm guessing racists and also Nazis for wanting to play a WW2 game that's set in well, WW2.

I mean obviously a game is still a game meant for entertainment and fun so it won't be 100% historically accurate and that's understandable but fuck me, the leftist in you is really showing here.

I didn't mean Mr. History or Wehraboo in a condescending tone?? There's nothing wrong with loving the historical aspect of CoH2, in fact I think its good that a huge chunk of the gamers love the historical aspect. Leftist what? I think CoH2 does a pretty good job in balancing between history and fun unlike Men of War. No I don't think history lovers are nazis... and I am arguing in favor for the more casual community that Relic is targeting.

I'm actually arguing that the history lovers in the COH2 community is a larger portion than the competitive community that wants everything balanced. And they aren't very concerned about whether demo charges wipe squads

Regarding Mr. Designer, I'm not trying to change the game, I prefer it to be like how Relic had it on release pre-balance patches, not how the community wants it but how the designers originally had for CoH.

I personally wouldn't mind if they brought back Sittard summer.

There. I said it.

I lost brain cells reading this thread, I used to play team games way back when it was a complete and utter imbalanced clusterfuck. It wasn't fun. It was shit. The best part was doing customs, but it always devolved into the same sleep-inducing trash that team games usually will be.
At least now it's playable and somewhat enjoyable.

You have to be genuinely delusional or be looking at the previous coh2 versions with rose-tinted glasses because Jesus christ, it was an unfun retarded mess. (Like invisible demos, Can't do anything to counter it so you had to blob your entire army behind a sturmpio, wow so much 'fun')

I lost brain cells reading this thread, I used to play team games way back when it was a complete and utter imbalanced clusterfuck. It wasn't fun. It was shit. The best part was doing customs, but it always devolved into the same sleep-inducing trash that team games usually will be.
At least now it's playable and somewhat enjoyable.

You have to be genuinely delusional or be looking at the previous coh2 versions with rose-tinted glasses because Jesus christ, it was an unfun retarded mess. (Like invisible demos, Can't do anything to counter it so you had to blob your entire army behind a sturmpio, wow so much 'fun')

100% agree, large teamgames back in the day were always heavily favored for one side depending on the patch. It was common that 90% played axis and after another patch the majority queued for allies. It was always a massive imbalance and especially since there was the teamgame focussed balance patch it got much much better. You have to be mental to think teamgames were fun on the receiving end back then.

The original design of CoH2 was utterly garbage, which is why the playerbase tanked soon after release. Lelic were unable to properly balance a more asymmetrical game, and balance is far more important than stupid power-fantasy ideas of wanting "Everything glaringly overpowered"

A balanced game is far more fun than a game where you rely on one/two aggravatingly overtuned options that obliterate the enemy. The game is currently in the best state it has ever been. Further RNG removals (Abandoned crits, main gun crits etc) are absolutely justified. Casuals should not be catered towards, all design should be top-down.

Think we have to clear up something.

Design and balance are different things so one should not blame the design if the game was not balance.

The game at release was plagued with bugs.

The game at release had many things random event that where way to impactful.

The game had a factions that where more distinct.

The game had a number of other features some of which where cheese.

Many of this thing have been fixed/reduced/removed and it has become easier to balance the game.

I just want to add something about casuality. While it cant be denyed that during most of its time coh2 had a lot of casual mechanincs, which were questinable competitively and indeed blowing up blobs with democharges or shooting sturm across the map without any collision were fun, BUT.

A lot of ppl here look at this casuality from a perspetive of player who at least have basic knowlage of the game and how it works.

Imagine awarage Joe, who decided to pick up game and just play it, even casually. Excluding learning curve, fallowing more casual desing, with "OP this countered by OP that", his experience wont be plesant. Like at all.

Its kinda funny in a sence that only true tryhards in general will benifit from this kind of casuality and design, because they will master this 1 one unit or one strat and will be still playing competitively. I mean hell, tryhards were winning consistently against OKW\USF\UKF on their releases.

While ppl who just want to pick up the game and play it will suffer from it.

In other words, properly balanced and fair game, is more casual and casual friendly.

I just want to add something about casuality. While it cant be denyed that during most of its time coh2 had a lot of casual mechanincs, which were questinable competitively and indeed blowing up blobs with democharges or shooting sturm across the map without any collision were fun, BUT.

A lot of ppl here look at this casuality from a perspetive of player who at least have basic knowlage of the game and how it works.

Imagine awarage Joe, who decided to pick up game and just play it, even casually. Excluding learning curve, fallowing more casual desing, with "OP this countered by OP that", his experience wont be plesant. Like at all.

Its kinda funny in a sence that only true tryhards in general will benifit from this kind of casuality and design, because they will master this 1 one unit or one strat and will be still playing competitively. I mean hell, tryhards were winning consistently against OKW\USF\UKF on their releases.

While ppl who just want to pick up the game and play it will suffer from it.

In other words, properly balanced and fair game, is more casual and casual friendly.

I see a lot of posts here about how balanced play makes the game more enjoyable. Honestly not for me. In the old games, the game was much tougher, more vicious, bloodier, it was a game that gave such a huge amount of adrenaline that it made you tremble from it and not sleep at night. Because of the imbalance, the games were so hard and the teamwork was much more difficult and required more skill, because of this my friends and I were in the top 50, a team of three for allies. Victory with 0 - 1 Victory Points was a very common occurrence at a time that you practically don't see now. Summer Rzhev was just crazy and bloody. People played furiously until the end. Now in the "balanced" game there are only whiners and noobs. They leave after the loss of the only squad, shouting in the chat that all the noobs are either losing their blob and shouting that all the noobs are leaving. You can prove here as much as you like that the game is better now, but I would never have exchanged the original Company of Heroes 2 for this if it was as it is now. It was this Company of Heroes that gave me a ton of unforgettable experience and love.

Casuals should not be catered towards, all design should be top-down.

Ideally the game could have supported both. By offering extended mod / custom game support and fun casual gamemodes like vCoH's Stonewall, with pve balance being as wacky as anyone wants it to be. And the more competitive players using standard ranked matchmaking within a well balanced pvp environment. But we're left with only the latter sadly, so there have to be priorities.

I didn't mean Mr. History or Wehraboo in a condescending tone?? There's nothing wrong with loving the historical aspect of CoH2, in fact I think its good that a huge chunk of the gamers love the historical aspect. Leftist what? I think CoH2 does a pretty good job in balancing between history and fun unlike Men of War. No I don't think history lovers are nazis... and I am arguing in favor for the more casual community that Relic is targeting.

I'm actually arguing that the history lovers in the COH2 community is a larger portion than the competitive community that wants everything balanced. And they aren't very concerned about whether demo charges wipe squads

Regarding Mr. Designer, I'm not trying to change the game, I prefer it to be like how Relic had it on release pre-balance patches, not how the community wants it but how the designers originally had for CoH.

I don't understand where you get your majority claim from. The player numbers actually point into the opposite direction.

No offense my dude but I think you're full of yourself, not to mention that you're a hypocrite as well.

Mr. Designer, really?

I mean excuse me but weren't you the guy that said that you were an actual game developer?

And Mr. History being all Wehraboos and I'm guessing racists and also Nazis for wanting to play a WW2 game that's set in well, WW2.

I mean obviously a game is still a game meant for entertainment and fun so it won't be 100% historically accurate and that's understandable but fuck me, the leftist in you is really showing here.

Didn't you blame him for using a comrades meme earlier lol?

Ideally the game could have supported both. By offering extended mod / custom game support and fun casual gamemodes like vCoH's Stonewall, with pve balance being as wacky as anyone wants it to be. And the more competitive players using standard ranked matchmaking within a well balanced pvp environment. But we're left with only the latter sadly, so there have to be priorities.

By balancing for the top level you naturally create a game that is fun for the lower levels as well, though.

Stuff like Stonewall and Assault are arguably rather separate from "multiplayer balancing", they're not hugely relevant, though something similar making a return in the future would be fine.

Further RNG removals (Abandoned crits, main gun crits etc) are absolutely justified. Casuals should not be catered towards, all design should be top-down.

This is the worst thing could happen to coh2, the day this happen I will play another generic RTS, this is why people bought coh1 and coh2, this is what make this game different from other RTS, funny, you say casuals, I am pretty sure of those 8k playing probably 6-7K are casuales or people that play may b 3-6 times peer week, what you said is like removing sync kills from DOW... guess what happened with dow3 ( total failure).

This is the worst thing could happen to coh2, the day this happen I will play another generic RTS, this is why people bought coh1 and coh2, this is what make this game different from other RTS, funny, you say casuals, I am pretty sure of those 8k playing probably 6-7K are casuales or people that play may b 3-6 times peer week, what you said is like removing sync kills from DOW... guess what happened with dow3 ( total failure).

+1000

By balancing for the top level you naturally create a game that is fun for the lower levels as well, though.

Stuff like Stonewall and Assault are arguably rather separate from "multiplayer balancing", they're not hugely relevant, though something similar making a return in the future would be fine.

Starcraft -> Not fun for casuals, but good esports game. You think vCoH and CoH2 were designed for competitive players? Relic made Impossible Creatures for crying out loud, they aren't esports designers. CoH isn't esports-ready and its wildly successfuly, I think that should be a sufficient argument.

You think vCoH and CoH2 were designed for competitive players?

To be frank here, if we take vCoH, original US vs Wehr macth up, then it was competitive and balanced, even being completly asymentrical. Aswell as over-all vCoH had much less pure RNG mechanics. Not strate of the bat, but nowhere near how much Sov vs Ost was fucked up.

OF and TOW pretty much responsible for all the BS vCoH had, like roos spam and overall blob nature of PE and British.