Current State of the Metagame (From a 1v1 Perspective)

Hey guys, I have been playing CoH 2 since 2014 and have thousands of hours of in-game time played but the current state of the game for me is one of the least fun meta's to play in a long time. I believe it's because the average game length has increased and the game has become more tedious to play while encouraging turtle playstyles for some factions. I'll give my reasons for why the game has become tedious and unfun to play.

1. Sandbags still not being taken off mainline infantry units. To me something needs to be done about sandbags because they dictate almost all infantry engagements at this point, they either need to be made less available by moving them off of all mainline squads and putting them on engineer units only or maybe made so you can't build them while capturing territory or while in a capture circle or something. Having units with green cover everywhere makes it feel extremely difficult to attack without loads of indirect fire.

2. MG's being over-tuned with the formation buffs, initially I didn't believe these buffs would be a bad thing as I had gotten tired of MG's getting slaughtered from the front by attacking infantry blobs but the formation changes have made MG's much more difficult to kill in general with all units. I don't think all MG's are overperforming at the moment but I do believe the MG-42, Dshka, and 50 cal are all too strong with these changes. Individually they are fine but when you are able to build multiple of them and set them in interlocking fields of fire they can be extremely difficult to flank even with indirect fire. I also don't want to see forum warriors say jUsT bUiLd iNdIrEcT fIrE 4Head because you can't build a Katy, Stuka, or Werfer in the first 5-10 minutes of the game in a 1v1 and USF and Brits don't have non-doc rocket artillery. A mortar can help but when he has multiple mg's you can't smoke off all of them and from a pure skill standpoint microing a mortar with infantry flanks is tougher to do then spamming and a-moving mg's. Plus the MG's cost about the same as a regular infantry squad both manpower wise and pop cap wise meaning you can often build multiple MG's on top of having 3-4 mainline units to provide snares.

3. AT Guns are too cost/pop-cap efficient, at the moment AT guns are only 7 population capacity allowing the player to often be able to fit 2-3 into their pop cap while still having a sizable infantry and armor force. This becomes a similar problem to the MG's because while it's not too difficult to flank a single AT gun, it can be nearly impossible to deal with multiple AT guns spread out properly with snares or mines around them.

4. Map Design, I think a big issue with some of the maps currently at least in the 1v1 automatch pool is that they often have safe points. What I mean by that is there is typically a fuel and a munitions point much closer to one player than the other on both sides of the map instead of trying to make the most valuable resource points equidistant. What this leads to is most games being fought over specific areas while the other parts of the map have absolutely no action at all. Many maps pretty much force you to take the cutoff or have your cutoff taken because of how points are placed and in many cases you have to take the cutoff back because otherwise you have to try and take your opponents safe fuel which is much further away and gives the risk of overextension plus usually there are less territory points on the side away from the safe fuel. I don't think safe muni points are as problematic but having safe fuels allows players to sit on a decent income without having to hold a whole lot of the map. This becomes a bigger problem when the VP's aren't all equidistant to both spawn positions like on Crossroads. Allowing a player to turtle on 1 VP and hold multiple territory points plus the fuel and munitions without having to hold half of the map. In some cases you can hold 1/4th of the map and delay the game for 30+ minutes. VP's need to all be equal to both spawn positions distance wise because VP's tick too slowly when one player holds 2 and the other player holds the last one.

5. Snipers are still in a weird state, I'm definitely glad for the Pathfinder buffs against Snipers coming to the next patch but I still think snipers are extremely tedious to deal with and often require your opponent to make a significant misplay in order to kill them. With MG's being as strong as they are currently, a Sniper combined with 2 of them can be a nightmare on a lot of maps and it often feels that you have to build a counter-sniper or you don't really have a chance at countering the sniper. This in general just slows the game down significantly as you get bled hard for trying to push the Sniper so instead you have to build your own Sniper and play defensively instead. For the faction's that don't have a sniper you often have to rely on commander based units or abilities to help you deal with the Sniper.

In conclusion, all of these factors I feel have significantly increased the average game length at least in 1v1 and made the game feel far more tedious to play in general as you constantly have to slowly drain VP's and gradually wear them down with indirect fire while not overextending and overinvesting in indirect fire leaving you vulnerable to enemy armor. RNG already is frustrating to deal with and keeps me from grinding the game but on top of that, this meta makes the game kind of unplayable for me and unfortunately I don't believe the balance patch rectifies any of these issues. Apologies for the wall of text but I wanted to get this off my chest. How do other people feel about the current metagame and do you believe the patch will make it better? This doesn't include other mindboggling balance changes. (Ostruppen, Raid Sections, Sturmtiger buffs)

You really need to find and get to know and love your enter key.

What Kat Said. Sorry OP but nobody is going to read a giant block of text. I would suggest formatting it/being more concise/ using spoilers to group specific points if you want to go into deep specifics behind your thoughts.

Should be better...

I give +1 for 2 & 3. MG's crew is so widely spread that mortar can only use smoke to help flanking. Not killing crews with direct fire.

And AT pop goes to 10 would do maybe? 2mg + 2at is standard army nowadays.

1 is... IDK. There is actually few mainline infs. can do this without commander. volks & IS. Their faction is underperforming at 1v1 now. So it should be ok?

People coming to a forum and complaining about reading are another level though.

Sandbags are too important so I agree there they hsould be on Engis only. Buff their hp a hp and we'll get some really good fights imo.

1- I think sandbags are in a okayish spot at the moment, many time you catch infantry buidling them but I agree that disabling capping and building at the same time could have a better impact.

2- All HMGs could see a nerf: Axis HMGs could see a cone reduction to 90 degrees and allied HMGs could see reduction on their pack/unpak time and all of them get their initial values back at vet2. With such change you're hitting two birds with one stone, first you're making HMGs easier to flank for every one without touching HMG potential to stop a frontal blob and second you're addressing the map lane issue design on team game.

Well, that's what happens when the team that is in charge of the balance has it's own closed ecosystem. The balance is a simple circlejerk in that closed little ecosystem. Hence why 90% of good suggestions on these forums go ignored and the stuff that gets changed is mostly from the 1v1 scene input. I don't think anyone even goes through the Steam forums, and for a good reason... there's some heavily retarded stuff getting posted there. Brain cell-killing threads.

So the game is pretty much being balanced around the 1v1 symmetry.
You can't fault them though. Maintaining an assymetrical balance is downright impossible as the 1v1 "Pro" players need the game to be as symmetrical as it can so that the "skill" part is only down to the player and not the faction counters

People coming to a forum and complaining about reading are another level though.

This. What on earth are you complaining about guys, we are grown-ups who can read a multi-line text, right?

On topic: Agree on the MG problem (especially concerning team games), they demand to much micro from the opponent for too little micro of the user (again, in team games!). Arc reduction on vet0 sounds interesting.

On the sandbacks: What if every player would have a "budget" for sandbacks, say, he could only place 5 or so in the whole game, or only 5 per 30 minutes or something. That would certainly reduce the spamming and make the placement more strategical?

Well, that's what happens when the team that is in charge of the balance has it's own closed ecosystem. The balance is a simple circlejerk in that closed little ecosystem. Hence why 90% of good suggestions on these forums go ignored and the stuff that gets changed is mostly from the 1v1 scene input. I don't think anyone even goes through the Steam forums, and for a good reason... there's some heavily retarded stuff getting posted there. Brain cell-killing threads.

So the game is pretty much being balanced around the 1v1 symmetry.
You can't fault them though. Maintaining an assymetrical balance is downright impossible as the 1v1 "Pro" players need the game to be as symmetrical as it can so that the "skill" part is only down to the player and not the faction counters

1V1 symmetry has nothing to do with changes that have been made. Is has been blatantly obvious for a couple of years that they are trying to balance all modes which has in turn created 5 almost identical factions. This is either due to the limitations placed on the balance team by relic or the fact that trying to balance large team games and retaining asymmetrical is virtually impossible.

People coming to a forum and complaining about reading are another level though.

This. What on earth are you complaining about guys, we are grown-ups who can read a multi-line text, right?

Before OP edited his post, it was all written without a single space in between and no format. I waited till OP format it properly before reading it.


Regarding MGs, i think mortars are due to have a buff. Specially in the vet department. But nothing that buffs their auto attacks.

About the VP/resource perspective: i agree that the ticking when in a 2vs1 VP situation is too slow. I don't think a COH2 change is feasible but i would like for it to be revisited for COH3.

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