Thoughts from a casual.

Long time salty CoH & CoH2 vet here. Bought back in after some cautious positivity on a podcast and... yeah.

CoH3 is interesting and no mistake.

About me: strictly casual teamgame player. Just want to play for a few hours and have some interesting games with randoms on big maps with lots of variety where I don't have to stress. I've tried to play all factions equally, leant heavily on Wehr recently because I couldn't get them to work with non-meta builds. After not being able to get them to work (grens are god awful) I refuse to play them from now on.

Firstly, the good.

1. I think all factions have the capacity to be well and interestingly balanced. CoH2's factions had some fundamental design problems that CoH3's seem to lack. They have their own styles and some cool units.

2. Doctrines are much more interesting - even if the interface is god awful.

3. I actually like the shorter games. CoH2's games always ended with heavy tank thunderdome which was repetitive and played into the strengths of only one side. Tanks arriving on the field now feels more special.

4. Artillery being rarer makes for more interesting games. 3/5 sides having non-doctrinal rocket artillery in CoH2 just wasn't very fun. Indeed, I think things like the nebelwerfer need a small improvement so they can be something more than a mild inconvenience.

5. Tanks do damage to infantry. They have weight. They mean a lot. The days of watching tanks plink away forever are gone, thank god. Tank gameplay in general I'm pretty happy with. Pathfinding isn't ideal, but both sides have access to strong armour and have interesting foibles. M3 Lees v Pz3Ls has made for some exciting fights. Panzer IVs and Shermans being the super tanks of the game is a pleasant change.

6. I've heard lots of complaints about the sound. I find it pretty good. The vehicle sounds in particular are excellent.

That brings me to the bad however...

1. The blobs. Dear lord the blobs. Worse than anything in any other title. I can see where Wagner at Bakhmut have been getting their tactics from. 3 games in and still no attempt to penalise blobbing. You'd think increasing suppression and received damage the more units are near one another would be a thought, but no. Why even call it a tactical RTS?

2. The balance. Some favourites:
- British AT rifle sections. They can take on most mainline infantry and hit vehicles that are meant to counter infantry very hard. Wehr suffers particularly from this as their automatic weapons do very little damage. I don't want a return to the days of the PTRS being completely pointless, but AT rifle sections need to be hard countered by infantry so they can't be effectively blobbed.

- Free flares. I like that we have more of them, but coupled with how blobbing recon infantry is meta and there's just no hiding.

- Wehrmacht balance generally. The base lineup (excluding doctrinal luftwaffe which seems to work fine) just isn't any good. The absence of early armed vehicles to chase down snipers until after the enemy has AT infantry I think is a critical weakness. A lot of its weaknesses though also tie into the above. At least AK can use aggressive vehicle plays to get the sniper if the US player messes up.

- AA, in particular the British polsten, is 100% worthless.

- US blob removal options are critically poor. MGs across the board lack the ability to manage them and the US faction lacks things that can make a big explosion or lots of fire to deal with them. If you picked the wrong doctrine or the axis player isn't stupid then you're screwed. The amount of AT infantry around means that their light vehicles are more or less nullified.

3. The meta. I despise it. I'm quitting the game until it gets a patch because of it. Each faction has about one way to play. If you play outside of it, you're screwed. Only Afrika Korps seems to bring interesting choices to the game. About the only counter to the US sniper + pathfinder meta is to quit and get on with your life. As above - this is apparently a tactical RTS game. Following a build order isn't that.

4. Half the issue with CoH2's balance were that the maps were often very poorly designed with there usually being only one or two ways to approach a position that could be easily locked down and favoured one side. Whilst those issues have been pretty much fixed in 3, there's a near total absence of cutoff points in the maps we have. The game suffers a lot for it.

But, frankly, there's some ugliness here as well:

1. Can't repair bases. Base buildings have extremely low HP. I like that they can be destroyed in a reasonable time, but I just lost a game in the first 10 minutes because an AK player destroyed my base and then I couldn't repair anything. We were losing anyway, because blobbing, but what seemed like 5-6 mortar bombs from their halftracks removed everything I'd built.

2. Half the icons are from CoH2. Sloppy. Very sloppy. Can I get 30% off because I own CoH2 if we're going this way Relic?

3. Buildings are odd. Entering and exiting them is very janky. I swear I've lost squads because they just stand at the door for 1-2 seconds getting shot despite me ordering a retreat. As others have said. I swear you take more damage inside them than in green cover.

4. Blobs again. Because they suck and are boring to play against.

5. The interface needs... something. I've found it way too easy when a game is tight to queue the wrong units as Wehr because their buildings look the same and have very similar units. (T2 & 3 have 1 infantry and 3 vehicles in both their panels and doing the wrong one is way too easy). Readability at a glance needs to be worked on.

6. The balance. CoH2's balance could be rage-inducing at times, but the worst of the pre-release beta in 2014 were mortars being massively OP, magic reversing SU-85s and scout car snipers (oh, and the armour gameplay, but that never got fixed). I cannot recall there being only one way to play the two factions back then.
Frankly, something is rotten in the way balancing is handled in these games. Whether it's the way it's playtested, or the way feedback is actioned, or the kind of people giving feedback, or the fundamentals of what balance is meant to look like, something is wrong. In 2015 when I was in the open balance test we were deluged with a bunch of doctrines that never saw the light of day and we never knew what was next to be released, so that utterly unbalanced things were pushed out (i.e. the Tiger Ace doctrine - what a joke that was). I'm late to the party here. The game's been played by lots of people for a while now - and still it sucks?

So, yeah. These are the thoughts of a guy who plays casually and props up player numbers. Except that I'm out until the next patch.

The game in it's current state was fun initially, but I've had about enough of playing exactly the same pathfinders, fallschirmpioneers and AT rifle section meta every game. See you after the next patch.

Well written imo.

Though a few things I'd add:

- You cant complain about AT sections without talking about Jäger Schreck blobs

- I think a big reason for why the blobbing is so disgusting right now is the fact how dumb and OP the heal-trucks on the frontline are, especially with auto-reinforce enabled so you can literally shut your brain off.
Another reason for this is weak MGs with bugs as well



Youtube clip TL;DW
Suppressed squads seem to have 0 suppression recovery penalties if they're getting shot at like they did in CoH2...

You'd think increasing suppression and received damage the more units are near one another would be a thought, but no. Why even call it a tactical RTS?

I agree with you on this for sure. I thought it was a problem in COH2 as well. There are so many mechanics available to punish the use of blobbing on a game design level (Things like giving infantry bunched up a negative cover modifier, Friendly fire damage penalty, etc).

Blobbing and clicking attack move around the map should not be as viable a tactic as it is.

- You cant complain about AT sections without talking about Jäger Schreck blobs

Strongly disagree with you.

ATtommies perform very well, have snares, rifle grenades, avalaible at the start and basically do not have any penalties since their accuracy against infantry is insane.

Jaegershreks while being badly designed are not as near as bad.

Jaegershreks while being badly designed are not as near as bad.

Jägerschrecks have a very low target size, making it nearly impossible to bleed them. They also have G43's stock which are good vs inf and they have a 160 damage 4 seconds reload Panzerschreck which can one-shot clumped squads

As comparison, a bazooka deals 60, BOYS AT rifles 50 and a medium tank 120 damage. You don't need a snare if you have the dps of the Panzerschreck


Im sorry but saying they're "not even nearly as bad" gives me the impression you never played against good Jäger spammers before

Im sorry but saying they're "not even nearly as bad" gives me the impression you never played against good Jäger spammers before

Exactly. Across all gamemodes all my games as allies did not include a game with jagerspammers who were winning.
But in 95 percent of the games I see ATtommie blobs if I play 2v2+ mode which includes brits.
That's why I say that this is a worse case and it need immediate attention because there is no excuse for a faction designed like brits to have this kind of unit in a first place.
Again, I agree with you that jaegershreks are not balanced or well designed, but clip which you have shown looks more like a bug, which should be adressed, rather than balance issue. And again, haven't notice a shrek blob on a video: there is a 1 squad on clip. Maybe others are hidden somewhere, but should we really discuss how much ATtommies british player can have on 9 min mark in 2v2+ game mode?
Also, haven't seen anybody in 3v3 and 4v4 who got into 3+ winstreak by spamming jaegershreks, while definitely seen those as ATtommie spam since this is a simply no-brain upgrade without any serious disadvantages.
ATtommies are easily abusible, broken and also simply a not-required unit. Brits will not lose anything except maybe some early game advantage (which is already insane as brits in 2v2+) if tommorow Relic simply removes AT-section upgrade.
(actually imo it is a right descision to balance UKF)

I think DAK is fundamentally miss-designed in certain areas. Namely that they don't have handheld at options. The Pjäger call-in is nice, but 4 men are squishy, you can't get them "on demand" and they struggle against anything that's not a light vehicle. The issue is that at is really hard to get for DAK. Just think about, you need to spend another 45 fuel just to be able to build AT guns, which suck anyways and are unusable on certain maps. The heal is another thing that is just mind-boggling stupid.

The only thing they have going for them are 8rads, Stugs and Carrot spam (for now at least). But the design is really limited. I think it's a fundamental weakness in the design philosophy of "units are weak but scale with upgrades". That still means you have to spend 300 MP for the weakest mainline, while 200mp paths, 260mp sections and riflemen rip you a new one from the get-go...

I think DAK is fundamentally miss-designed in certain areas. Namely that they don't have handheld at options. The Pjäger call-in is nice, but 4 men are squishy, you can't get them "on demand" and they struggle against anything that's not a light vehicle. The issue is that at is really hard to get for DAK. Just think about, you need to spend another 45 fuel just to be able to build AT guns, which suck anyways and are unusable on certain maps. The heal is another thing that is just mind-boggling stupid.

The only thing they have going for them are 8rads, Stugs and Carrot spam (for now at least). But the design is really limited. I think it's a fundamental weakness in the design philosophy of "units are weak but scale with upgrades". That still means you have to spend 300 MP for the weakest mainline, while 200mp paths, 260mp sections and riflemen rip you a new one from the get-go...

DAK is good, besides the fact that PGs are over-priced, but PGs being shit is more of a problem of their damage profile, which resembles shotgunts rather then bolt-rifles.

But aside from PGs and 250, almost every single stock DAK unit is usable and good. Ones you start getting upgrades they become even better, DAK has the most cost efficient units in the game. As for AT options, dak can just use upgraded Marders, which is by far the best TD in game.

On the other hand try to play non-meta Wehr to actually see what is miss-designed faction really is.

DAK is good, besides the fact that PGs are over-priced, but PGs being shit is more of a problem of their damage profile, which resembles shotgunts rather then bolt-rifles.

But aside from PGs and 250, almost every single stock DAK unit is usable and good. Ones you start getting upgrades they become even better, DAK has the most cost efficient units in the game. As for AT options, dak can just use upgraded Marders, which is by far the best TD in game.

On the other hand try to play non-meta Wehr to actually see what is miss-designed faction really is.

That's true, Wehr is pain. I have the feeling that a lot of these factions are not really thought-through at all.

Well written imo.

Though a few things I'd add:

- You cant complain about AT sections without talking about Jäger Schreck blobs

- I think a big reason for why the blobbing is so disgusting right now is the fact how dumb and OP the heal-trucks on the frontline are, especially with auto-reinforce enabled so you can literally shut your brain off.
Another reason for this is weak MGs with bugs as well



Youtube clip TL;DW
Suppressed squads seem to have 0 suppression recovery penalties if they're getting shot at like they did in CoH2...

I can't disagree with you on either count.

In a properly balanced game jagerschrecks would be nerfed too. To be honestI find them less of an issue simply because of the other problems Wehr has. Brits seem to have a lot more ways to play at the moment and seem to have the potential to counter them a bit better thanks to all the artillery they have.

As for the reinforce trucks, 100%. In that game where my base was destroyed by mortars 10 minutes in, they were able to charge in their entire armies with two trucks and we could do nothing to stop them as they were being reinforced constantly. As said, the game was already lost, but... yeah.

Good thread! It is really a slap in the face what mechanics relic introduced and left out and on top of that dumbed down.

- Free abilities were never a good idea (SU-76 barrage anyone?)
- Crushing was a good mechanic as you needed to understand on how the game processes your commands and how inf. AI tries to avoid it. (not in coh3)
- Auto reinforcing med trucks makes even the utmost mouthbreather into an secondhand-Aerafield, in coh2 it was atleast finicky and micro intensive to do so. (I myself was too clumsy to abuse the OKW medtruck for example)
- Again we have factions which are lacking in crucial aspects of the game e.g. AA-capabilities. Brits are done if they only have the polsten AA-truck.
- All call-ins have laughable cooldowns and are easily abused. Brits armored company dont need to tech at all for example. Inf spam -> Crusader AA spam -> Churchills spam.
- All the SP-people who played the SP content and paid 60€ for the game are screwed. You dont get the same experience like your first playthrough and as of right now the experience is attrocious.
- Even after 1.1 (Actually 1.0 if you ask me) we dont have any information about buffs/debuffs affecting our units.

Coh3 feels like its the creation of two first-cousins. Its a dumbed down version from the predecessors while the games end before they start to be satisfying.
In coh2 you could bask in the breakthrough you achived after a long struggle/stalemate. In coh3 it simply ends the game. Currently this game is not as satifying to play as coh2.
Usually after 3-4 matches im burned out with coh3.
This didnt happen with coh2, given though, at that point it was properly polished.

- Auto reinforcing med trucks makes even the utmost mouthbreather into an secondhand-Aerafield

Nice one

The pathing is also 100x worse in COH3. It would be nice if units actually responded and moved where you told them too.

Coh1/Coh2 were superior in this aspect (even though it was quite bad)

- Auto reinforcing med trucks makes even the utmost mouthbreather into an secondhand-Aerafield,

Aerafield right now