My real problem with COH3

Elchino was clearly stating that you can only play the meta strategy (probably 1-2 build orders per faction, I paused CoH2 in 2016 so I don't know) and those 1-2 meta strategies were similarly powerful across factions.
He also clearly states that everything beside that is not. Which goes to show that the "game" was definitely not in a good spot balance wise.

That is diversity issue and not a balance issue, having units or commander than are never used is not a balance issue.

According to stat of the time after "JUNE 21st 2016 BALANCE UPDATE" the 1vs1 winrates for 1-250 on July 10 for instance had USF at 68.1 win rate, Soviet at 63.4.

Also non-doc Elefant etc is part of "pre 2016" and also aprt of Relics decision how they wanted the game to be. There was A LOT of bullshit around when they balanced the game, not only in pre-alpha, and not only on release commanders. And there is no reason to exclude those in the first place. They were all Relic's decisions.

CoH2 was a mess on pre/release but that is not entirely Relic fault since the inherited the game from THQ.

My point is simply idea that Relic "messed up" completely until 2016 and the "balance was the worst mess ever." because they had "we know it better" while the game suddenly become balanced once the MOD team took over is great simplification and to be honest false.

Relic did work with community member at the time so of which dropped out because they where being blamed for decision taken by Relic an Relic alone sometimes contrary to what those user had pointed out.

Did Relic mistakes in balance ?
Yes they did, biggest probably was that the focus more in shifting the meta with huge nerf and buffs than balancing the game.

Did the mode mistakes in balance?
Yes they did, especially in the early patches when they also applied huge nerf and buffs and when instead of trying to fix one commander at the time the focus more of bypassing the limitation Relic put in place. Most of their mistakes seem to derive from being too optimistic and trying to fix too many thing at the same time.

On the other hand the become better at it and have done great work in five years.

(edited)

That is diversity issue and not a balance issue, having units or commander than are never used is not a balance issue.

If one unit is severly overpriced for what it can do, it is a balance issue, regardless if other units are priced decently. And if a large portion of your game's content has that OP/UP status, it is fair to say that the game itself is not balanced.

Otherwise we'd not have "balance" discussions but "diversity" discussions for years now, but this is just a change of phrasing with no benefit.

According to stat of the time after "JUNE 21st 2016 BALANCE UPDATE" the 1vs1 winrates for 1-250 on July 10 for instance had USF at 68.1 win rate, Soviet at 63.4.

I don't have a pony in this race, I don't care which patch was the biggest fuck up in CoH2. The stats you show though clearly indicate that ouraa flamer Penals were not the biggest issue since USF does not have access to them.

If one unit is severly overpriced for what it can do, it is a balance issue, regardless if other units are priced decently. And if a large portion of your game's content has that OP/UP status, it is fair to say that the game itself is not balanced.

Otherwise we'd not have "balance" discussions but "diversity" discussions for years now, but this is just a change of phrasing with no benefit.

If unit is "severely overpriced" it will not be used and that will not effect faction balance. That is balance issue of the unit and not a balance issue of the faction/game.

Win ration do not take into account how many different types of units are being used.

If the game is balance playing meta it is balanced, it might be boring but it still balanced...

I don't have a pony in this race, I don't care which patch was the biggest fuck up in CoH2. The stats you show though clearly indicate that ouraa flamer Penals were not the biggest issue since USF does not have access to them.

Which patch was the worse that is not really to relevant to my point either.

(As for USF having higher win rates that was probably due to bugged and the completely broken USF mortar at the time but at least we did have to wait 6 month for that to get fixed)

My point is that claim Relic did everything "wrong" on their own and community did everything "right" is false.

And Relic did not work on their own they had the help of people like helping hans, zarok, Big rat, Luvnest and other...(forgive if I got any name wrong and for not remembering all names)

While I don't agree with a lot of changes the balance team has made, and there have been much better solutions presented on this forum than the ones they implemented (eg. lastest E8 change), they have made the game much better and generally greatly improved it. They did help out with the USF lategame and toned down some axis lategame. Also ISU152 HE was fixed. They retained the usefulness of the HE round by lowering the range to 60, which "nerfed" it in a sense that you won't be able to cheese snipe infantry across the map.
Sure the axis is generally stronger and more complete in teamgames, not to mention easier to play, but overall there is nothing big that the balance team screwed up. Sure, some things still remain unbalanced and funny, but nothing major. 1v1 is balanced well and 2v2s, to a great extent. USF is a bit of a meme faction come lategame in teamgames but in 1v1s it's probably the strongest faction given it's versatility and lack of 5 panthers rushing you.

Also there is the fact they made some great QoL improvements. The manual reload for one. As a USF player myself, AAHT is a mixed bag. One one hand it's great in firepower, on the other, it's buggy and extremely hard to use. You can't just "attack" units with it because it will get into a rotate loop, you can ground target only if you press "stop" after using ground target. AA part of the unit is buggy with infinite tracking, which they fixed by adding the 360 AA mode.
But the biggest is: Reload on the main gun takes 9 seconds. Puma, Luchs, 222... are all LVs that can kill the AAHT if it's not on a full clip. If any of those LVs catch the AAHT with a few shots left on the main gun, the AAHT is destroyed. Lo and behold, the manual reload fixes that.

Again, I wish they didn't make some of the changes they made:
E8 with of 800hp/235 armour + MG buff + fuel nerf instead of the gunnery ability
Scott/pak howi overlap in role
Calliope retains 3 shot kill but it's mobility is severely weakened, either after using barrage or generally. (achpawel made a good suggestion on one thread)
Giving rangers some abilities or reducing cost because right now they are not a justified 350 MP/10 pop cap unit (unless you spam zook rangers in 4v4 and your teammate plugs the holes).

Sure they could have made a better job, but the fact that did not get payed a dime coupled with the fact that the game is vastly improved compared to a few years ago, I'd say job well done.

If unit is "severely overpriced" it will not be used and that will not effect faction balance. That is balance issue of the unit and not a balance issue of the faction/game.

Win ration do not take into account how many different types of units are being used.

If the game is balance playing meta it is balanced, it might be boring but it still balanced...

Then we have a different view on this one.
I view the game as more than just the couple of units that are meta. And if you can't fairly use a large chunk of what the game actually promises and tries to offer, I call it unbalanced.

Then we have a different view on this one.
I view the game as more than just the couple of units that are meta. And if you can't fairly use a large chunk of what the game actually promises and tries to offer, I call it unbalanced.

Of coarse you are entitled to your opinion and I will no debate this issue further but since in most cases we are using win rates as indication of overall balance and unit diversity is not included let try to keep things simple. If we start talking about individual units balance winrates go out the window.

Hard disagree. Community balancers are keeping the game alive by suggesting changes and keeping the game fresh. Otherwise the game would be stale without changes and we wouldn't be here without the community that is staying with the game because its refreshed every now and then. They do not have faction favourtism, only that they want a 50/50 WR for 1v1s.

I do hate how they only balance for 1v1s though. 1v1 is not the majority of games played and a lot of changes for balancing 1v1 have ruined or unbalanced team games. Which is why I refuse to watch any 1v1 tournaments/game or support any 1v1 games. I guess I am slightly 'agreeing' with your second point here. Asymetrical factions means balancing for 1v1s to a 50% WR for all factions is nearly impossible because every change has a butterfly effect.

You've got a nice point which I cannot ignore.

Perhaps saying that community cannot balance shit was a bit too much. What I meant in depth was that there are more ways to balance a mechanic rather than a straight up numbers game.

For example, for years people complained of Sturmtiger being too OP. So what did the balance team did? They just removed some vision and the ability to repair and reload. So basically they asked for 2% more micro for a still very potent killing machine. Guess what? The community thinks now that sturm is balanced. It's just retarded.

Maybe if there is a new system in place. Who knows. Asymmetrical balance is not and should not be a stats game.

You've got a nice point which I cannot ignore.

Perhaps saying that community cannot balance shit was a bit too much. What I meant in depth was that there are more ways to balance a mechanic rather than a straight up numbers game.

For example, for years people complained of Sturmtiger being too OP. So what did the balance team did? They just removed some vision and the ability to repair and reload. So basically they asked for 2% more micro for a still very potent killing machine. Guess what? The community thinks now that sturm is balanced. It's just retarded.

Maybe if there is a new system in place. Who knows. Asymmetrical balance is not and should not be a stats game.

The ST example was completely off mark.

ST had a number of issues mainly with its projectile that exploded with no reason that made the very difficult to balance. The mod team actually solved these issues and thus the previous changes kicked in and made the units OP for a single patch.

Before the projectile fix the unit was UP in the hands of the majority of players and only OP in the hand of the few that had master bypassing the bugs.

Actually I disagree that the balance is something what could be done only by professionals, it imo even can be done by the amatures IF they have proper game vision and they are not biased.

On the other hand community balance team not only made patches, but they shaped the game into something different, thats why probabaly a lof of people dont like them.

Because the core concepts of the game were changed by balance team, not only unit stats\costs.

Imho overall the design in coh3 is far superior, probably because the community involvement specifically mentioning the big issues. Though some of the old issues that made old coh kinda awful are coming back (Looking at you call ins, stupid fucking mechanic)

Actually I disagree that the balance is something what could be done only by professionals, it imo even can be done by the amatures IF they have proper game vision and they are not biased.

On the other hand community balance team not only made patches, but they shaped the game into something different, thats why probabaly a lof of people dont like them.

Because the core concepts of the game were changed by balance team, not only unit stats\costs.

Thank you for speaking what's on my mind. Yes, that's exactly what they did.

They took the foundation of an assymetrically balanced RTS game with excellent flavor and maybe not so great mechanics and they made it into a bland 5 faction reskin game. Sure, one could argue that not everything is like that:
OKW still cannot build caches, alluring to its old "Last German stand in Ardennes" which I really really like but is horribly out of date.
USF and OKW don't have T0 MGs.
etc etc etc

But I still cannot shake the feeling out of me that COH2 is something really different from what it set out to be. Sure, I still enjoy it because I consider myself pretty good at it and every game is fun for me. Sure I could play COH2 for at least 3 more years without feeling the need to change anything.

However, with COH3 coming I really feel the could be some introspection in the whole debacle and the devs coming to the realization that COH2 was a lot of things COH3 should not be.

Just my feelings, whatever.

yoou shouldve seen the balance in 2014...

Lmao I started playing this game the minute it went out. I even went and upgraded my shitty pc in order to run COH2 at max. I know what I'm saying don't worry.

Imho overall the design in coh3 is far superior, probably because the community involvement specifically mentioning the big issues. Though some of the old issues that made old coh kinda awful are coming back (Looking at you call ins, stupid fucking mechanic)

I really don't understand why they're sticking with Call-ins as a mechanic. Especially with a new game releasing, I don't see any reason they can't change the system to have all "call-in" units be buildable from appropriate structures.

Even paratroops can be done this way, by merely having them be built at base, and subsequently deployed from the air.

I really don't understand why they're sticking with Call-ins as a mechanic. Especially with a new game releasing, I don't see any reason they can't change the system to have all "call-in" units be buildable from appropriate structures.

Even paratroops can be done this way, by merely having them be built at base, and subsequently deployed from the air.

Keep your streamlining to yourself. If you want to design a game that is pure starcraft e-sport title, then learn C++/unity or unreal and make it, otherwise stop with the cookie-cutting BS. Paratroopers deployed from the base. I have a feeling like you want to be a professional COH player but the only thing keeping you from becoming is COH itself.

Keep your streamlining to yourself. If you want to design a game that is pure starcraft e-sport title, then learn C++/unity or unreal and make it, otherwise stop with the cookie-cutting BS. Paratroopers deployed from the base. I have a feeling like you want to be a professional COH player but the only thing keeping you from becoming is COH itself.

How is this "Streamlining" in the slightest? How is it "Cookie-cutter BS"?

Take your meds.

How is this "Streamlining" in the slightest? How is it "Cookie-cutter BS"?

Take your meds.

Paratroopers being deployed from the field.... What's next? Falls driving heavy tanks?
EDIT: The same way you streamline to reduce resistance, you streamline to reduce complexity in games. In this case, paratroopers/falls. Why do I even bother, it's not like your advice will go through

Paratroopers being deployed from the field.... What's next? Falls driving heavy tanks?

I present to you abandon vehicle mechanics

I present to you abandon vehicle mechanics

I don't get it. Vehicle abandonment is a good mechanic in COH2. What's wrong with it. Definitely adds another layer, especially to 1v1s

I don't get it. Vehicle abandonment is a good mechanic in COH2. What's wrong with it. Definitely adds another layer, especially to 1v1s

Because Fallschirmjäger squads can capture an abandoned tank just like any other infantry squad.

It was more of a tongue in cheek comment anyway

Paratroopers being deployed from the field....

Learn to read. This isnt what I said.