Commander Update Beta 2021 - Ostheer Feedback

The elefant could stablize a fight vs these tanks and in my humble opinion its being nerfed unnecessarily.

It still can, now it will just require the effort of combined arms like everything else in this game. And the commander will no longer be so versatile that it can be (more than) double as popular as the second next most popular commander in 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 (https://coh2stats.com/stats/month/1619827200/4v4/wermacht?statsSource=all). There's no other commander in the game that's even close to being this overpopular. It definitely deserved to get nerfed if we want to promote a more health commander diversity, which was the goal of this patch.

Jaegar armor will still get picked to oblivion even after receiving endless changes as long as its the best elefant commander. Add elefant on other commanders/ buff the 2nd elefant commander or just delete the elefant to promote diversity.

Jaegar armor will still picked to oblivion even after receiving endless changes as long as its the best elefant commander. Add elefant on other commanders/ buff the 2nd elefant commander or just delete the elefant to promote diversity.

Jager Armor: 3 recon options, slightly improved infantry, ele

Fortified Armor: 1 recon, the improved CP4, panzer smoke, ele and hull down, which is very good now (hull down panthers are cheap alternative to ele)

Fortified Armor looks pretty fancy to me now.

Jager Armor: 3 recon options, slightly improved infantry, ele

Fortified Armor: 1 recon, the improved CP4, panzer smoke, ele and hull down, which is very good now (hull down panthers are cheap alternative to ele)

Fortified Armor looks pretty fancy to me now.

I don't see that as better imo, you'll also tend to float on munitions with no way to spend it. Hull down is overrated one atg will just get vet and will still outrange your tank. Its just like dealing with a squishier unmovable kt.

Besides it will still be whichever the best elefant commander in team games will be the most picked its no brainer.

I'm not in the balance team.




I don't think this justifies your claim about alienating the playerbase. This forum consists of roughly 25 people posting regularly. That's not representative at all.

Regarding the pro players: You're confusing two things here: the actual balance team members roughly half of which are teamgame players (presumably because teamgame balance should be taken into account as well) and the players that give direct feedback outside this forum ("pro" players using the term VERY broadly). The critique you're talking about is levelled at the balance team members themselves. It is argued that there's a lack of high level 1v1 representation in the balance team but that's a moot point.



There's two practical problems with this:

A. WHO is the community? As I said earlier this forum certainly isn't more representative than some random private discord with 50 people. There's so many different sub communities it's impossible to discern any popular consensus. The only way to do it would be doing Votes about balance topics ingame so every player has a say. If you see that as a valid way of fixing the game we'll just have to agree to disagree. And btw at that point we both would have an equally valid claim to our sides of the argument winning the votes.

B. It is logically impossible to balance the game around non optimal skill levels. There's no consistent unit strength if players don't at least approach optimal play. Casual player A may be really good at using snipers while Casual B sucks at it. Are snipers strong or weak? You just have to assume the most optimal usage of a unit that is still realistic. How do you determine that usage? You look at the best players.



You're just mentioning some of your own suggestions here. I could make the same exact argument mentioning some of my own ideas claiming that my side of the isle has been ignored. The fact that some of the stuff exists in mods doesn't mean it's within the scope of what the balance team is actually allowed to implement. Again, if anythign relic is to blame here.

Virtually everyone has made suggestions that haven't been tested. 99% of ideas fall under the table because there just isn't enough time to test everything.

So it's the 2nd option then, alright.

And if you want more justification about the alienation of the playerbase you should be more than free to go onto the official and Steam forums as well to see what people think about the recent changes, and while yes most of them are trolls, there are some that do provide some valid points as well but as with everything you just need to filter out to actually find them which is something I think hasn't been done properly.

I also love how people say that I am a very confused person and perhaps even a cynical individual, next I'll be slandered as an 80 year old pensioner as well.

And I doubt that there's a "lack of high level 1v1 representation in the balance team" when top ranking 1v1 replays are being used as excuses for a out of the blue last minute balance changes but okay.

As far as who is the community, of course it's impossible to get feedback from everybody when you take into account that again, there are almost 10,000 people playing each day and only a few of them bother to even give feedback, opinions and suggestions about the balance and direction of the game, and even less % of that being actually serious non-trollish or biased arguments.

But if no proper attempt is made to filter out the trash from the actually good suggestions, feedback and ideas and then those are not even tried to be tested then what is the point of any of this?

It's just reduced to an echo chamber of "X unit needs a nerf, Y unit needs a buff" with the balance team using that as an excuse to just disregard everything do whatever they think is right.

Lastly, they're not just my suggestions but things from the community. The USF base redesign has been in circulation for a very long time now, anybody with even some general knowledge of history and especially when it comes to tanks/vehicles and specifically German such would know that the Sturmtiger was not used as some short ranged assault gun/siege type weapon but as a long ranged heavy mortar, also implied in it's German name "Sturmmörserwagen 606/4 mit 38 cm RW 61", as in literally Storm/Assault mortar, mortar being an indirect fire weapon, not a direct fire one.

The same thing could be said about the 25 pounder emplacement idea, it was mentioned before even in the British commander feedback topic, I just repeated it later which you can also see for yourself and I decided to use it as an example off the top of my head. It's very hard to attribute an idea to a person like some people I see claim that an idea is "theirs" while in reality it could have been mentioned elsewhere before them or it just generally makes logical sense, like for example the OKW HQ trucks being able to pack up and redeploy like the British HQ trucks from the first game.

Funny you should mention these, because the USF base was proposed to Relic (up to two times now) but they rejected it and the 25 pounder emplacement was discussed for this patch internally but rejected. So 2 out of your 3 examples of community ideas were at least considered. But not everything can make it into the game. There is a ton of community feedback and suggestions that did make it into this patch and every patch before it.



You're projecting. It was not our choice to skip a V4 of the preview mod. The build just kept crashing at the time and Relic decided that at that point it would be more productive to stop trying to get it to work and instead focus their limited time on starting the implementation of the actual patch.

And no reason was given for either of those ideas. I also wonder why for example no feedback was gathered for the Grenadier camo change before the official patch release if you claim that "a ton of community feedback and suggestions" had made it in this and past updates.

Oh so the blame is being shifted over to Relic now who wanted a crashing update be released to the public instead of the internal test version being released instead to see if the issue was fixed or not and then being forced to do a roll back in the live one.

I see, all makes sense now.

And no reason was given for either of those ideas. I also wonder why for example no feedback was gathered for the Grenadier camo change before the official patch release if you claim that "a ton of community feedback and suggestions" had made it in this and past updates.

We are not full time devs. We don't have the time to answer or elaborate on every single suggestion or piece of feedback. Sometimes things get absorbed, sometimes they are considered, sometimes we respond, sometimes not. We can't do it all, this is not a full time job. What you are asking for (responding to every single suggestion and explaining every single decision) is totally unreasonable.

Have you also considered that perhaps you've missed things yourself?
I have explained on this forum before why the USF base was rejected.

Oh so the blame is being shifted over to Relic now who wanted a crashing update be released to the public instead of the internal test version being released instead to see if the issue was fixed or not and then being forced to do a roll back in the live one.

I see, all makes sense now.

That is not at all what I said. The build crashed, i.e. Relic's patch program (I have no idea about the specifics) kept crashing trying to update the beta build. That didn't have anything to do with the stability of the beta or changes themselves, only with their patch program. It is totally unrelated to the performance issues that the final patch caused in the live game, except that perhaps it would've been discovered earlier if the V4 of the beta had able to be deployed.

We are not full time devs. We don't have the time to answer or elaborate on every single suggestion or piece of feedback. Sometimes things get absorbed, sometimes they are considered, sometimes not. What you are asking for is totally unreasonable.



Projecting again. That is not at all what I said. The build crashed, i.e. Relic's patch program (I have no idea about the specifics) kept crashing trying to update the beta build. That is totally unrelated to the performance issues that the final patch caused in the live game.

As I said I know that the community dev team is doing this in their own spare free time free of charge for the rest of the community and I like many others I believe appreciate that very much.

But it just sounds like a bad excuse on why not elaborate on a lot of design and balance decisions.

What I am asking for is more transparency that's not shrouded in mystery and high ranking 1v1 replays being used as an excuse for a last minute balance change with no regard as to the opinions of the community at large.

This is not the first time an update has been released after weeks of silence and internal testing with out of the blue changes and I doubt it will be the last.

There should just be a mod which is the ideal game balance based on community feed backs. I'm even up to pay whoever

There should just be a mod which is the ideal game balance based on community feed backs. I'm even up to pay whoever

Good luck with that, because there is no mythical, unified, single minded unicorn you call "community".

Community based feedback is all over the place, top players will identify issues, issues will be addressed and then a mass of vippers, wolfes and others will just swarm in with polar opposite ideas.

You can't have higher infantry lethality and lower infantry lethality and so on.

It still can, now it will just require the effort of combined arms like everything else in this game. And the commander will no longer be so versatile that it can be (more than) double as popular as the second next most popular commander in 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 (https://coh2stats.com/stats/month/1619827200/4v4/wermacht?statsSource=all). There's no other commander in the game that's even close to being this overpopular. It definitely deserved to get nerfed if we want to promote a more health commander diversity, which was the goal of this patch.

other commanders should be made more appealing rather then nerfing actually good commanders.

thats a much better way to improve diversity rather then nerfing stuff down

other commanders should be made more appealing rather then nerfing actually good commanders.

Not really. One should decided on benchmark commander for each faction and try to bring as many commander as possible to that benchmark.

In addition there are simply some combination that simply should not exist and Ele/ISU stuka/Il-2 are some of those combos that should not exist.

thats a much better way to improve diversity rather then nerfing stuff down

Again not really. Power creep rather high in over the years and it turn the game from strategy to arcade.

doesnt really matter much as relic has decided that mapmakers (whiteflash) are allowed to disallow abilities like the one above (and also forward HQ and brit FOP) and still be featured in the official map rotation. on some maps (as white flash plans to disable abilities he doesnt like in all his maps) this one will be a 4 ability commander

This is absolutely moronic, what a joke

So it's the 2nd option then, alright.

I don't know what you're implying. I'm not acting in bad faith. I'm just trying to bridge the gap between this forum and the "elite". I'm not part of it but still closer than anyone else posting here as far as I can tell. I'm trying to adress precisely the kind of intransparency you're criticizing.

I also love how people say that I am a very confused person and perhaps even a cynical individual, next I'll be slandered as an 80 year old pensioner as well.

I don't think any of this about you. We're just disagreeing that's all.

And I doubt that there's a "lack of high level 1v1 representation in the balance team" when top ranking 1v1 replays are being used as excuses for a out of the blue last minute balance changes but okay.

Please try to understand what I'm actually saying. I'm not a native speaker so apologies if I was being unclear. I never made that argument. I was just correcting an argument you referred to and accidentally misrepresented . You framed the "not enough 1v1 player critique" as some kind of indication that the "pro" players lobbying weren't even pros because half of them or more play primarily 3v3 and 4v4. I only corrected that point saying that the critique is only aimed towards the balance team itself and not the "pro" players advising them.

And if you want more justification about the alienation of the playerbase you should be more than free to go onto the official and Steam forums as well to see what people think about the recent changes, and while yes most of them are trolls, there are some that do provide some valid points as well but as with everything you just need to filter out to actually find them which is something I think hasn't been done properly.


As far as who is the community, of course it's impossible to get feedback from everybody when you take into account that again, there are almost 10,000 people playing each day and only a few of them bother to even give feedback, opinions and suggestions about the balance and direction of the game, and even less % of that being actually serious non-trollish or biased arguments.

But if no proper attempt is made to filter out the trash from the actually good suggestions, feedback and ideas and then those are not even tried to be tested then what is the point of any of this?

But that filtering process is precisely what's happening when good playeres get more of a say than people who don't have a record of playing themselves.

Also how is the balance team realistically supposed ot parse official forum, steam forum and coh2.org when large parts are trolls and even the non troll posts go into completely opposite directions? You're acting like there's some kind of consensus in this forum when 99% of the time people are bashing each others heads in metaphorically speaking.

It's just reduced to an echo chamber of "X unit needs a nerf, Y unit needs a buff" with the balance team using that as an excuse to just disregard everything do whatever they think is right.

I don't think plurality of opinion is lacking in the balance team. Members seem to have pretty different views and priorities.

Lastly, they're not just my suggestions but things from the community. The USF base redesign has been in circulation for a very long time now, anybody with even some general knowledge of history and especially when it comes to tanks/vehicles and specifically German such would know that the Sturmtiger was not used as some short ranged assault gun/siege type weapon but as a long ranged heavy mortar, also implied in it's German name "Sturmmörserwagen 606/4 mit 38 cm RW 61", as in literally Storm/Assault mortar, mortar being an indirect fire weapon, not a direct fire one.

The same thing could be said about the 25 pounder emplacement idea, it was mentioned before even in the British commander feedback topic, I just repeated it later which you can also see for yourself and I decided to use it as an example off the top of my head. It's very hard to attribute an idea to a person like some people I see claim that an idea is "theirs" while in reality it could have been mentioned elsewhere before them or it just generally makes logical sense, like for example the OKW HQ trucks being able to pack up and redeploy like the British HQ trucks from the first game.

Again we don't know whether any of this is withing the scope of the patch (I highly doubt it) and the fact that these ideas have been circulating doesn't mean that they are actually agreed upon by a majority or even a significant minority.

I don't know what you're implying. I'm not acting in bad faith. I'm just trying to bridge the gap between this forum and the "elite". I'm not part of it but still closer than anyone else posting here as far as I can tell. I'm trying to adress precisely the kind of intransparency you're criticizing.



I don't think any of this about you. We're just disagreeing that's all.



Please try to understand what I'm actually saying. I'm not a native speaker so apologies if I was being unclear. I never made that argument. I was just correcting an argument you referred to and accidentally misrepresented . You framed the "not enough 1v1 player critique" as some kind of indication that the "pro" players lobbying weren't even pros because half of them or more play primarily 3v3 and 4v4. I only corrected that point saying that the critique is only aimed towards the balance team itself and not the "pro" players advising them.




But that filtering process is precisely what's happening when good playeres get more of a say than people who don't have a record of playing themselves.

Also how is the balance team realistically supposed ot parse official forum, steam forum and coh2.org when large parts are trolls and even the non troll posts go into completely opposite directions? You're acting like there's some kind of consensus in this forum when 99% of the time people are bashing each others heads in metaphorically speaking.



I don't think plurality of opinion is lacking in the balance team. Members seem to have pretty different views and priorities.



Again we don't know whether any of this is withing the scope of the patch (I highly doubt it) and the fact that these ideas have been circulating doesn't mean that they are actually agreed upon by a majority or even a significant minority.

That's my problem, what is the scope exactly?

Nobody knows or can give an answer and that's the lack of transparency that's I'm talking about.

It just sometimes feels likes the community dev team hijack the balance of the game to fit their own views and needs, because of what Sander said about not elaborating and explaining why this is that and so is so.

What frustrates me the most is that this game can be a lot better, a lot more fun and a lot more balanced in my opinion as well, it has the potential and I would say mods prove that.

But for some unexplainable god damn reason it's not allowed to be, as an example again the model editing and importing being still disabled while that's not the case for something like the Men of War series of games which thrive upon it's modding communities and ability to be overhauled and turned into pretty much anything.

LoL developers have a different opinion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpBh9UMOvlU

They are lying to your face and you are buying that lie. PR words coming from the team who has "200+ collective years of professional game design experience"

Don't judge them by what they say but by what they do.



As far as the cammo change goes, i think it's simple a band aid with not too much thought or time put behind it.

LoL developers have a different opinion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpBh9UMOvlU

Completely substanceless PR video, my point still stands.

Edit: didn't notice elchino just posted the exact same thing

So if its still possible to do after the change, why exactly are they even doing this. It's not even effective as a nerf to the thing it's SUPPOSED to be nerfing Lmfao. Literally sucks no matter how you look at it.

Can people at least try to understand what someone is saying? The sprinting part still persists. The other part of the problem doesn't.