CoH3 faster VP tick rate

I am highly skeptical about the faster tick rate in CoH3.

As a reminder: CoH2 had a tick evaluation every 4 seconds, meaning every 4 seconds one side loses victory point from their counter according to the difference in held VPs. CoH3 lowered this to 3 seconds. If the mechanics in CoH3 lead to at least a roughly similar pace, games will be finished 25% quicker. A normal and balanced CoH2 game usually lasts 30-40 min. For CoH3, these games would be reduced to 22,5 and 30 min, respectively. Unless the game is slowed down considerably or VPs are more frequently "contested" and neutral, games will be shorter.

This is likely part of the "more casual" approach to CoH3. Shorter games means you'll be able to fit one match in if you don't have that much time, or it is not as big of a commitment for the evening if you want to play another game. Additionally, it becomes easier to calculate how much time you have left before you lose the match.

However, given that CoH3 feels more tactical and seems to have a bit slower approach to gameplay than CoH2, I don't see how those two designs benefit from each other. Higher tech tiers might not really be played if the game ends in 20 minutes. It also compresses other mechanics: Buying battlegroup abilities did not feel like a real investment, because currently Relic wants you to unlock everything within one game so you need to gain them very quickly as well. Obviously I was not playing efficiently, but I often had command points "left over". More competitive players will train this more quickly, but especially considering that the game aims at a casual audience too, having those points left over allows you to buy "whatever" and won't be a strategic decision where you fight until you get enough points to unlock that one unit you want.
There will be less back and forth. There are only so many times a unit can retreat, run to the front and fight until the time is over. Especially when they come late into the game. This in turn influences balance: If you buy a unit at the 20minute mark and the game is expected to last only 25 min, the unit has only 5 min to pay itself off. That's basically drive to the front-> get damaged -> repair -> front one more time -> game over. Therefore, it needs to be very strong compared to an early unit. If you'd expect the game to last 35 min instead, it suddenly has 15 minutes for payback, which not only allows more back and forth as described above but also the unit to be weaker compared to early game units.


On the neutral side I'd note matchmaking: Shorter games will mean that players will be more often available for the matchmaker. You'll spend more time queued up and less playing, but have better games, too.


To sum it up:
I am concerned that the - probable - faster pace will actually make the game worse because its mechanics won't be able to develop.

I am a huge fan of the faster tick rate

Personally I strongly dislike the faster tickrate.

Well I had games which lasted around 30\40 mins, but they were really back and forth ones, in terms of VPs control. I belive in CoH1\2 it took ~15 mins, to win with triple VPs and ~20-25 mins to win with double VPs. In CoH3 its like @10 mins to win with tripple VPs and ~15 mins to win with 2 VPs.

But over-all it indeed feels way too fast. Whole teching feels way too fast tbh, its not like the game is slow and VP tick rate is fast. Game is over-all very fast.

While its debatable if game should be as slow as CoH1\2, right now it for sure globally should be like 25%-30% slower over-all.

So much of a Coh game is moving your units up the map looking for the enemy. This means probing into Mgs at times. This equals mass retreating to your base.

And in most 2v2 games, there are long periods where entire armies are in base healing.

Having faster VP tick rates will destroy the game flow.

I was thinking they may have sped it up to get more players in/out of games for the tech test.

Dirty_Finisher was playing and trying to see how fast they could win on VPs. Trying to hit 10 minutes. He lost interest in playing Coh3 and went back to Coh2. But I think they hit 12 minutes for sure.

The few games I watched on streams rarely got to late game. This could be due to no ELO for any players yet.

I agree. Felt like matches were over before one could enjoy mid-late gameplay. With better matchmaking I don't see a problem with COH2's rate. Or at least something halfway, if devs and players have arbitrarily decided coh2 got it wrong for the last 9years.

So much of a Coh game is moving your units up the map looking for the enemy. This means probing into Mgs at times. This equals mass retreating to your base.

And in most 2v2 games, there are long periods where entire armies are in base healing.

Having faster VP tick rates will destroy the game flow.

I was thinking they may have sped it up to get more players in/out of games for the tech test.

Dirty_Finisher was playing and trying to see how fast they could win on VPs. Trying to hit 10 minutes. He lost interest in playing Coh3 and went back to Coh2. But I think they hit 12 minutes for sure.

The few games I watched on streams rarely got to late game. This could be due to no ELO for any players yet.

Draining all 500 VPs with a triple cap will take roughly 11 min in CoH2 and 8,3 min in CoH3. Add an additional 2-3 min game start where you just build units and cap points without much fighting and you'll end up with let's say 15 min for CoH2 and 12 for CoH3. That's the quickest achievable time without surrenders.
For single VP advantage that timings go up to 33.3 and 25min, respectively, plus startup times. This roughly correspond to the approximate game lengths.

CoH2 is basocally one player draining the other down with a 1 VP advantage, with a lot of fuckups along the way.

I'm really not a fan, in coh2 you can choose between prioritizing resources of VPS (especially important in tournaments) here its. "Rush VP now!!" otherwise you end up 3 min into the game and have lost already like 50-100 vps, which is even more bizaree given how ridicolous the resource placement are on these maps (4 corner munis on tunisia, am i just not meant to take those resources at all lol?)

The way I see how the faction are design if you decrease the tick rate you'll need to nerf quite heavily late game units of 3 factions.
I never felt the VP ticking too fast, and that I didn't get to use my late game units. I think there are choices to be made, or you want a strong early game or skipping some for stronger stock units and there is a variety of choice to avoid pumping fuel. Same goes for upgrades, I don't think the game is made for you to research all of them but some according to your strategy.

One of my last game I was able to call 2 Churchill one after the other was destroyed and 2 build 2 stock heavy tank (can't remember the name) on a 1vs1 + different other medium tanks on the mean time. The game was pretty even and interesting, I learned a lot playing it.

I'm really not a fan, in coh2 you can choose between prioritizing resources of VPS (especially important in tournaments) here its. "Rush VP now!!" otherwise you end up 3 min into the game and have lost already like 50-100 vps, which is even more bizaree given how ridicolous the resource placement are on these maps (4 corner munis on tunisia, am i just not meant to take those resources at all lol?)

Yes this, well said. You'd be someone that'd know; are there even ideal capping orders in COH3 maps? From my relative time with it, it's just cap all the points on your side of the halfway point in whatever order you want until you reach the vp. Or rush the vp.

Yes this, well said. You'd be someone that'd know; are there even ideal capping orders in COH3 maps? From my relative time with it, it's just cap all the points on your side of the halfway point in whatever order you want until you reach the vp. Or rush the vp.

The maps are weird, twin beaches is the most interesting one, you have multiple approaches there since the resource spread is relatively equal (You can attack south, and get a decent postion with lighthouse, but lose out on muni advantage, or go north, which while far better to hold, is far worse for support weapons)

Road to tunisia is just a lesson in old coh2 maps, think back to the OG faymonville, with the super mansion in center that gives you an overwhelming advantage. Munis are in corners of the map (with it feeling even worse since full HP squads are only really punishiable with OP light vehicles like 8-rad or greyhound)

I'll probably make a map review/feedback thing, eventually if i get antsy enough.

The way I see how the faction are design if you decrease the tick rate you'll need to nerf quite heavily late game units of 3 factions.

I did not play enough to be able to judge if that is true, but if it is, it would be almost the same mistake as in CoH2 back when Axis were about holding out until they get their heavies. This one faction would be screwed then

I never felt the VP ticking too fast, and that I didn't get to use my late game units. I think there are choices to be made, or you want a strong early game or skipping some for stronger stock units and there is a variety of choice to avoid pumping fuel. Same goes for upgrades, I don't think the game is made for you to research all of them but some according to your strategy.

One of my last game I was able to call 2 Churchill one after the other was destroyed and 2 build 2 stock heavy tank (can't remember the name) on a 1vs1 + different other medium tanks on the mean time. The game was pretty even and interesting, I learned a lot playing it.

I also don't think that you're supposed to get all upgrades. I am not even sure you're supposed to get all tech buildings. Still, the tick rate means that stalling is basically impossible and that making one larger mistake that costs you VP control for very few minutes will almost instantly cost you the game.
Build variety might be higher, but I fear that overall strategy variety will be lower.

I personally don't think that "early rush" strategies are good for a game in the style of CoH, and faster tick rates will make those much easier. They don't fit the play style and epic presentation.

Also, I am afraid that making one mistake that forces you off the map will be unrecoverable from.

I did not play enough to be able to judge if that is true, but if it is, it would be almost the same mistake as in CoH2 back when Axis were about holding out until they get their heavies. This one faction would be screwed then


I also don't think that you're supposed to get all upgrades. I am not even sure you're supposed to get all tech buildings. Still, the tick rate means that stalling is basically impossible and that making one larger mistake that costs you VP control for very few minutes will almost instantly cost you the game.
Build variety might be higher, but I fear that overall strategy variety will be lower.

I personally don't think that "early rush" strategies are good for a game in the style of CoH, and faster tick rates will make those much easier. They don't fit the play style and epic presentation.

Also, I am afraid that making one mistake that forces you off the map will be unrecoverable from.

It is not about stalling until getting heavies. I had a game as USF where my opponent didn't build any lights and mediums and I didn't took advantage of it and then before I knew what was happening I had 2 Pz4 in front of me at mid game.

You can recover from a mistake, that is not even debatable, now you cannot probably recover from 2 mistakes or if you don't do the right thing to get back on track. The game forces you to do certain choices with every factions you play so to put you at disadvantage your opponent also had to play a certain way that can still be countered with the right decision. Also having to select between T2a or T2b or even T1a or T1b in case of USF, you can play with it and build around what your opponent is doing.
I had games that I felt in the pocket that went sour and game I thought I'd lost be won because I brought the right unit into my folder to counter my opponent.

And from this perspective this is why I think this ticking is correlated with what the Wehrmacht, DAK and UK can field on the late game, Tigers and Churchills are clearly aliens in this game, at least at the moment and giving them too much room would bring us to the issue we had in Coh2 with such units.

I hated the idea of faster VP ticks even on paper, and once I played the technical test, I hated it even more than I thought I would. I thought maybe I'd be able to get used to it, but all it did was make games end right as they picked up. Easily my #1 complaint about the technical test. I will be extremely disappointed if they keep this change, because I like so many other things about the direction of CoH3.

I played 30 hours of the technical test, and my opinion on this only solidified the more I played.

Faster tick rates are bad. Not sure why it was implemented in the first place. The lenght of the games was perfectly fine in COH2.

Having played literally hundreds of hour plus slugfests in COH2 4v4's, I wouldn't mind some change. However, one thing that I noticed is that the faster tick rate more-or-less eliminates the comeback mechanic that could make some COH2 games fun. Now, you can have one bad battle, then you're forced to attack when you don't have a decent army because you're losing ticks too fast. It's going to cause a lot of people to quit as soon as they lose a battle, which won't be good for multiplayer gameplay.

So much of a Coh game is moving your units up the map looking for the enemy. This means probing into Mgs at times. This equals mass retreating to your base.

And in most 2v2 games, there are long periods where entire armies are in base healing.

Having faster VP tick rates will destroy the game flow.

I was thinking they may have sped it up to get more players in/out of games for the tech test.

Dirty_Finisher was playing and trying to see how fast they could win on VPs. Trying to hit 10 minutes. He lost interest in playing Coh3 and went back to Coh2. But I think they hit 12 minutes for sure.

The few games I watched on streams rarely got to late game. This could be due to no ELO for any players yet.

I went for the same strat and made it to 500-0 in under 11 minutes in a 2v2 (will add screenshot later).

All I had to do was to drop pios on the vps and backcap with the kettenkrad, then build two flak 38's and camp for 10 minutes. This deletes any fun or strategy from the game, since there is not much the enemy can do, if one goes hard on this kind of playstyle. There is no comeback from a mistake or early fuk and You get punished even further You decide to tech against this.

In the predecessors you could have games anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes, where You can fuck up and manage to comeback with all kinds of strategy. Deciding a game that early has no appeal and is just boring af, this needs a change imo.

EDIT: ss attached: https://ibb.co/J3fG71v

I am a huge fan of the faster tick rate

+1

Equal games will drag anyway, but 3:0 will not anymore.
Not every single game has to devolve into endless end-game tank and arty spam regardless of how well you do.

I went for the same strat and made it to 500-0 in under 11 minutes in a 2v2 (will add screenshot later).

All I had to do was to drop pios on the vps and backcap with the kettenkrad, then build two flak 38's and camp for 10 minutes. This deletes any fun or strategy from the game, since there is not much the enemy can do, if one goes hard on this kind of playstyle. There is no comeback from a mistake or early fuk and You get punished even further You decide to tech against this.

In the predecessors you could have games anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes, where You can fuck up and manage to comeback with all kinds of strategy. Deciding a game that early has no appeal and is just boring af, this needs a change imo.

I'm not sure I'd read that much into one game (commenting about the winning strat). There were a lot of trash players this weekend. Sometimes I'd try things that made me one of them. The fact that your opponents didn't have a counter doesn't mean that it will be unstoppable in multiplayer.

I do agree that there isn't a comeback from a mistake. It's going to lead to a lot of early drops and will be terrible for 2v2+ multiplayer.

+1

Equal games will drag anyway, but 3:0 will not anymore.
Not every single game has to devolve into endless end-game tank and arty spam regardless of how well you do.

I think the problem here is not the triple cap, but rather double cap. I myself, only got 20+mins games only few times. One which was basically a comeback from less then 100 points, second one where VPs were constantly switching hands or remained uncapped.