I don't trust the official balance team.

Please, for the love of god, stop using that site for 4v4. As a 4v4 tournament player I can guarantee you that arranged team vs. arranged team in 4v4 is completely balanced or depends on the map.

Random 4v4 automatch is a shitfest of monkey apes that cant deal with the tech tree of USF and soviets. For example soviet t1 players that get rekt by blobs and tank rush because they dont know how to counter it without a HMG or AT gun. Same story with USF tech tree as HMG and AT gun + packhowie are kinda mutually exclusive. Both axis factions always have MG, AT guns and indirect fire no matter how they tech. I have seen it sooooooo many times now on playercards where someone had 60% winrate as axis but 40-45% winrate as allies because of this (ofc the player was just bad as well)


Oh and there is also the 4v4 matchmaking. We (a lot of 4v4 players that I know & myself) have a saying "Do not search allies 4v4 in dead timezones, only in EU afternoon time. You will always get unwinable games."

Then you decribe yourself that the game isn't balanced but strong team communication overcomes it. The "don't play random" doesn't work as a counter argument but as a workaround to the imbalanced state of the game.

no offense to any Chinese players, but you really don't care about anything or anyone else but yourselves from my experience.

Offense taken. Just kidding

Anyway, I think it is a good time to sort this thing out.

There is something a little bit weird when we type Chinese. Our keyboard layout is the same as the US one but requires secondary input software. We may turn that thing off by pressing the Shift key. And you should also know what else the Shift key does in the game. Anyway, if we accidentally trigger that in the game, it may lead to a crash. This is why, especially when playing with Chinese players, you will not receive any response from them at all or, for the best, all capital letter wired messages.

Yeah, I also know Chinese players tend to be very selfish. You can blame it on us, and then we can blame it on our education system. At least in school, they taught us not to trust anybody and treat everyone we know as a competitor.Treat all suggestions from a foreigner as lies unless they are from your supervisor. However, there is one thing I can promise you. We care about winning a game more than everybody does. So, maybe your Chinese teammate won't give a shit about your request, but they for sure are doing things they think that will grant you guys the victory. Like what we liked to say in my city: Seal up your dirty mouth and do your fking job.

Offense taken. Just kidding

Anyway, I think it is a good time to sort this thing out.

There is something a little bit weird when we type Chinese. Our keyboard layout is the same as the US one but requires secondary input software. We may turn that thing off by pressing the Shift key. And you should also know what else the Shift key does in the game. Anyway, if we accidentally trigger that in the game, it may lead to a crash. This is why, especially when playing with Chinese players, you will not receive any response from them at all or, for the best, all capital letter wired messages.

Yeah, I also know Chinese players tend to be very selfish. You can blame it on us, and then we can blame it on our education system. At least in school, they taught us not to trust anybody and treat everyone we know as a competitor.Treat all suggestions from a foreigner as lies unless they are from your supervisor. However, there is one thing I can promise you. We care about winning a game more than everybody does. So, maybe your Chinese teammate won't give a shit about your request, but they for sure are doing things they think that will grant you guys the victory. Like what we liked to say in my city: Seal up your dirty mouth and do your fking job.

This is a very cool and insightful post! Thank you. Removing some of the mystery between races does a lot to erase the xenophobia (racism) we as humans tend to fall back on (from 100k years of evolution).

A friend of mine used to say how people from different cultures all think differently. Be it from schooling, day to day life, and even your language structure. It all affects your logic.

When we would work with people from other countries and ask important questions they would always say "Yes". No matter what we asked. But maybe Yes meant, I understand your question and not affirmitive the answer is Yes. So we would go in circles for days. Is the building on fire? "Yes".

Add this to not speaking the same language and technical issues like the shift key issue really helps explain all of the weird things you see in random games.

We need more of this. If everyone spoke the same language it would go a long way to world peace as we would have the same basis for logic, etc. And if people explained their gaming cultures maybe we could all stop spamming "NOOB" in games

This is why the most important thing Relic can add to COH3 is more pinging options that help communicate / coordinate things like recon, arty, pushes, etc. because many games can have 4-6 different cultures and languages. With NO WAY to talk to each other.

Offense taken. Just kidding

Well I didn't know that. I have never ever seen a Chinese flag in the profile that said one word during the game. I do agree that people want to win but it would be much easier with teamplay. Funny, now I know why I've never ever gotten a reply to my "Gl Hf" at the start of the game xD.

Then you decribe yourself that the game isn't balanced but strong team communication overcomes it. The "don't play random" doesn't work as a counter argument but as a workaround to the imbalanced state of the game.

This is a bit of a misunderstanding.

He's talking about 4v4 arranged teams, where BOTH teams are communicating. This levels the playing field.

It isnt a case of communication covering holes, it's a case of having players on both teams who know how their factions actually work, which results in games being reasonably well balanced. Random matchmaking just has too many retards in it to draw any real conclusions, Aerafield described the reason why allies have lower winrates in his post.

That is not a reason, otherwise axis win rates would be dragged down equally, if balance exists.

Please, for the love of god, stop using that site for 4v4.

The numbers speak for themselves. Take Dota 2 or League of Legends for example, most heroes hover around the 50% win ratio regardless of skill bracket. Now granted neither of those are COH but they balance around the entire community not the top 1%.

I have no problem winning regardless of what faction I play as I play all of them equally. COH 1 and COH 2 combined I probably have well over 10,000 hours played. I am the minority as most people will not invest that much into a series.With that being said you can't balance a game around the top 1% while a majority of the player base is struggling as evident by the numbers because at the end of the day the only people left playing the game will be those 1% which isn't good for sales or the community as a whole.


There are serious design issues in the game. The Balance Team also has a history of creating game breaking issues such as the SturmTiger, Fallshirmjagers, JLI and a whole list of other issues that have usually been favored towards Axis while at the same time nerfing the bandaids that other factions relied on.

You can't give a faction counters to everything stock while limiting other factions to pick and choose certain tools from Commanders and expect the game to be balanced for the vast majority of players.

It isnt a case of communication covering holes, it's a case of having players on both teams who know how their factions actually work, which results in games being reasonably well balanced.

Trying to understand your argumentation: If it is even at arranged teams with players that understand their faction, random allied players seem to understand their faction less than random axis players. If we assume that allied players aren't more dumb than axis players on average this leads to the conclusion that allied factions are harder to understand.

Game is not balanced if one faction is harder to understand than the other. For me that is the basic conclusion out of your sentence.

This is a bit of a misunderstanding.

He's talking about 4v4 arranged teams, where BOTH teams are communicating. This levels the playing field.

It isnt a case of communication covering holes, it's a case of having players on both teams who know how their factions actually work, which results in games being reasonably well balanced. Random matchmaking just has too many retards in it to draw any real conclusions, Aerafield described the reason why allies have lower winrates in his post.

Communication covers holes and gaps equally for both sides but doesn't make the game more balanced on itself.

If you could read, you'd see that I don't want any sort of stock rocket arty on USF, pak howi and scott should be enough, but after the mega nerfs, they have become less than obsolete at fighting late blobs. And USF does not have very strong infantry. Rifles are great close range, lose long range against both volks and grens. 2x BAR reinforces medium range firepower when all of the combat is done at long range where Obers dominate along with MG grens. If you actually played this game at any level other than rank 9000, you'd know that the notion that USF has some Godgiven infantry is false. Are rifles strong? Yes. Do they sh** on volks or grens? Only on close range. Hence why you see kubel start vs USF all the time. Kubel vs Rifles is a won engagement. Spios + kubel + volks >> 2x rifles + echelon.
Same goes for OST. Pios + MG42 on most teamgame maps = locked down area of the map.

Play USF in higher brackets and you'll see how the "USF Infantry stronk" diminishes quickly

And yet Rifles are best mainline inf stats wise and they shit on both volks and grens, but wow combined arms are suddenly supperior then just inf. Thats the whole point why WFA factions are objectively shit.

All they can do is spam mainline into more mainline, unlike Ost\Sov who actually can adapt to the situations and maps by getting different units. And both sov\ost are asymetrical yet have access to the same tools but in different ways.

WFA instead are always were either shit or OP. And its good that your brought howi and scott into discussions, since they were supposed to cover USF lack of rocket arty by ... being overpowered in a first place, because of how strong rocket arty are. And they rightfully got nerfed because they needed that nerf, leaving us with the mediocre units they are, because again the only way they can cover lack of rocket arty is by being broken stats wise.

On top of that you can safely add bad map desing, bad economy system and bad resource system in teamgames and you end up where we are right now.

Again if factions are desinged to have same tools in stock it doest make them mirrored to begin with.

Oh and there is also the 4v4 matchmaking. We (a lot of 4v4 players that I know & myself) have a saying "Do not search allies 4v4 in dead timezones, only in EU afternoon time. You will always get unwinable games."

While I do agree on the fact that AT vs AT is very different story from the random vs random; You could(can't find it after site remodeled for CoH3) check win streak of AT on both Axis & Allies. IIRC, Axis had more win streak. (They both had high WR thx to AT vs random)

Anyway, below screenshots mean nothing in this thread. Because it is clear that we all are looking at the TOP 200 only games for WR. That is, all players that are participated in the game have 200+ rank in any game mode. I'm not saying 200+ rank players are very decent player, but at least they know the basic of the game.

The numbers speak for themselves. Take Dota 2 or League of Legends for example, most heroes hover around the 50% win ratio regardless of skill bracket. Now granted neither of those are COH but they balance around the entire community not the top 1%.

I have no problem winning regardless of what faction I play as I play all of them equally. COH 1 and COH 2 combined I probably have well over 10,000 hours played. I am the minority as most people will not invest that much into a series.With that being said you can't balance a game around the top 1% while a majority of the player base is struggling as evident by the numbers because at the end of the day the only people left playing the game will be those 1% which isn't good for sales or the community as a whole.


There are serious design issues in the game. The Balance Team also has a history of creating game breaking issues such as the SturmTiger, Fallshirmjagers, JLI and a whole list of other issues that have usually been favored towards Axis while at the same time nerfing the bandaids that other factions relied on.

You can't give a faction counters to everything stock while limiting other factions to pick and choose certain tools from Commanders and expect the game to be balanced for the vast majority of players.

I agree completely. If anything, Relic should be paying attention to the experience that newcomers have with this game and the next. Having played this game since release, I can come up with strategies against dumb stuff like ST, so it doesn't hit me as hard. New people however are different, the level of frustration could have them put the game down for good and not even bother with coh3. The lower skill tier levels would be more important from a sales level, I would think. Ideally, all skill levels would be on even playing field.

Lets keep in mind, this cannot be explained away with asymetrical balance. It is STILL supposed to balanced.

Trying to understand your argumentation: If it is even at arranged teams with players that understand their faction, random allied players seem to understand their faction less than random axis players. If we assume that allied players aren't more dumb than axis players on average this leads to the conclusion that allied factions are harder to understand.

Game is not balanced if one faction is harder to understand than the other. For me that is the basic conclusion out of your sentence.

I'm not sure I agree.

A faction being a little harder to grasp, but having the same power-level as other factions isnt what I'd called "imbalanced". Axis and Allies apparently have a similar winrate assuming both sides understand how to play, this is fine and good.

There's simply no sense in trying to balance around players who do not understand the game/their faction.

Communication covers holes and gaps equally for both sides but doesn't make the game more balanced on itself.

Then how do you explain arranged vs arranged teams having close winrates?

I'm not sure I agree.

A faction being a little harder to grasp, but having the same power-level as other factions isnt what I'd called "imbalanced". Axis and Allies apparently have a similar winrate assuming both sides understand how to play, this is fine and good.

There's simply no sense in trying to balance around players who do not understand the game/their faction.

Nope you're wrong, if faction knowledge was enough then we would have 50% balance regardless of learning curve of each faction. But that's not the case, what bring this supposedly 50% between arranged teams (I didn't see any data supporting this claim) is communication that cover the gaps and lacks, with communication you'll obviously not ask an USF player lacking arty in its loadout to cover this function, but also - and more important - you'll define the strategy before the game start with specific commanders on each player's loadout, thing impossible to do in random.

You can be the best player in random, if you don't have the correct synergy with your random mates on each loadout as allied, then you've already lost unless facing much weaker opponents. Axis do not face this issue as their stock army already cover 100% of the functionalities required in any matches.

Then there are other aspects that favor Axis such as starting with the best unit available or being able to build them right from the start and having excellent synergy. Maps that are at best balanced between factions but for a big part favor Axis and obviously the best end game units stock wise and only sharing this state with some Commander specific units available on Allied side.

HMGs and Spio can be defeated easily with communication early on, the same with late game big units even if you don't have yourself any equivalent on the field, with communication. But communication isn't an active part of the game design, units haven't been designed with communication in mind. Communication just appears to be a decisive factor today, but that hasn't been always the case when the game was so badly balanced, even communication couldn't help.
Communication allows players to overcome gaps and lacks but is not part of the balance. Remove those gaps and lacks and Allied factions will not suddenly out pass Axis one on the the arranged team win rate, it will probably promote and enable more strategies, diversity and more commanders.

But we all know that gaps and lacks aren't going to be fulfilled because Relic doesn't want. That shouldn't be a problem, you can still balance the game with gaps and lacks but not with the decisions taken on the last patches.

Nope you're wrong, if faction knowledge was enough then we would have 50% balance regardless of learning curve of each faction. But that's not the case, what bring this supposedly 50% between arranged teams (I didn't see any data supporting this claim) is communication that cover the gaps and lacks, with communication you'll obviously not ask an USF player lacking arty in its loadout to cover this function, but also - and more important - you'll define the strategy before the game start with specific commanders on each player's loadout, thing impossible to do in random.

You can be the best player in random, if you don't have the correct synergy with your random mates on each loadout as allied, then you've already lost unless facing much weaker opponents. Axis do not face this issue as their stock army already cover 100% of the functionalities required in any matches.

Then there are other aspects that favor Axis such as starting with the best unit available or being able to build them right from the start and having excellent synergy. Maps that are at best balanced between factions but for a big part favor Axis and obviously the best end game units stock wise and only sharing this state with some Commander specific units available on Allied side.

HMGs and Spio can be defeated easily with communication early on, the same with late game big units even if you don't have yourself any equivalent on the field, with communication. But communication isn't an active part of the game design, units haven't been designed with communication in mind. Communication just appears to be a decisive factor today, but that hasn't been always the case when the game was so badly balanced, even communication couldn't help.
Communication allows players to overcome gaps and lacks but is not part of the balance. Remove those gaps and lacks and Allied factions will not suddenly out pass Axis one on the the arranged team win rate, it will probably promote and enable more strategies, diversity and more commanders.

But we all know that gaps and lacks aren't going to be fulfilled because Relic doesn't want. That shouldn't be a problem, you can still balance the game with gaps and lacks but not with the decisions taken on the last patches.

^ Yep

If I'm not mistaken, both in coh1 and coh2, the reasoning for having gaps in the design of add on factions, was because they would release with really OP shit that breaks the usual mechanics of the game. At this point in the maturity of CoH2, those gaps have diminished significantly. UKF has had it's emplacement abilities so crippled that OKW is really the emplacement king, putting trucks all over the map that are extremely resilient and time consuming to dislodge. USF pretty much can't do anything well that I can think of. OKW has been warped into something very different from it's design(remember the reduced income?).

^ Yep

If I'm not mistaken, both in coh1 and coh2, the reasoning for having gaps in the design of add on factions,

Was asymmetrical imbalance. It never worked and shall never work, but whenever someone tries to fix that, people scream "mirrored" faction or "losing the flavour" (eventho it was the best thing that happened to OkW). Now it's too late and relic will not allow the balance team to fix it.

Strangely enough, I think we are all in agreement: the gaps makes allied factions harder to learn and therefor at lower levels the axis rule.

I do think that cannot be fixed anymore by the balance team by shuffling around stats. Making the scot or pack howi fill the gap of the calliope simply is not possible without breaking either unit. Not to mention the madness that is brits.


P.s. I do understand now why 5 man (stock)grens, while theoretical necessary, will never be implemented: it's the one thing holding back ost from being the perfect faction and utterly dominating every gamemode.

I do think that cannot be fixed anymore by the balance team by shuffling around stats.

The failure of the actual balance team is its incapacity to see the balance in any other form than stats. Balance is much more than that.

Making the scot or pack howi fill the gap of the calliope simply is not possible without breaking either unit. Not to mention the madness that is brits.

I'd really like some explanation about that.

Yeah the state of balance for team games in the current iteration is petty dire.

ST change is greatly needed (no idea why relic has to drag their feet so much) but it will also mean that we go back to the dark days of everyone using Pzfussiliers every. damn. game.

ST change is greatly needed (no idea why relic has to drag their feet so much) but it will also mean that we go back to the dark days of everyone using Pzfussiliers every. damn. game.

This is the problem I have with the balance team right now. They refuse to nerf pfusi's, bunkers, etc because they're not an issue for them. Why? Don't know. Maybe it's because they have godly micro and don't think we're worthy of making changes because we're only top whatever, but not top 3. Maybe it's because they play in AT stacks of the best players and they're not an issue for them because they club everyone else because they can't have equal skill to their AT lineup. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see 90% DPS on the move units is pretty stupid and when they're picked every game maybe there's an issue.