Strategy in Company of Heroes 2

This is a great strategy game. Best there is. Love it!
I dont miss being rushed, game after game, by 3 flamers and 4 riflemen as PE.

I'm sure they're thinking about it but it isn't easy for them to come up with something. They can't overhaul their business plan entirely. Decisions like these could make or break the game so it's better to be patient and see what they will implement.

Should relic for example ponder on the blitzkrig mod style of abilities, there is no need to overhaul the business plan as they can just make certain abilities grayed out if you have not purchased the commander.

But there are a lot of really good suggestions provided in this thread - unfortunately I believe any changes will take ages to implement if at all, and hope it will not be too late for the die-hard fans.

EDIT: Big problem is most of the early commanders are only focusing on either KILL INFANTRY or KILL TANKS - no real balance of both.

Didn't read thread except the OP but I thoroughly agree. It was so rewarding and awesome when you upgraded all your rifles to bars, or gave the shermans the 76mm upgrade. Or likewise for Wehrmacht when you get vet 2 for a particular set of units you were suddenly much more powerful.

I was really bummed about that not being part of coh2, there has so far not been anything as satisfying as those, even though you can get doctrinal upgrades that do some similar things but not as game changing. Still enjoy coh2 though, but my hope is waning for it as the community is slowly dying out.

increase small arms fire and lower shocktroop armor, add decent mines to germans and make some fuel investment to lower upkeep and also lower upkeep with more territory controlled and i would love the game.

Pherhaps a bit on the side, but does anyone know why the cover and infantry damage was changes from vCOH? Was it (and a lot of other changes) something that the community requested or something the developmentteam figured out all by themselves?

Didn't read thread except the OP but I thoroughly agree. It was so rewarding and awesome when you upgraded all your rifles to bars, or gave the shermans the 76mm upgrade. Or likewise for Wehrmacht when you get vet 2 for a particular set of units you were suddenly much more powerful.

I was really bummed about that not being part of coh2, there has so far not been anything as satisfying as those, even though you can get doctrinal upgrades that do some similar things but not as game changing. Still enjoy coh2 though, but my hope is waning for it as the community is slowly dying out.

Er... the game had 1,500 more average people online throughout Jan than it did in Dec. The game is becoming way more balanced each patch, nice new features including more fixes to input lag/delay are on the way and the meta game is consistently evolving and maturing.

Also according to Relic's metrics CoH2 is way more alive than vCoH was at this point in time after release. So I'm not really sure how any of that qualifies as the community/game dying out...

Also according to Relic's metrics CoH2 is way more alive than vCoH was at this point in time after release. So I'm not really sure how any of that qualifies as the community/game dying out...

I am sorry, I don't mean to be rude but. The company makes a sequel to the sort of 'indie release' game that went on to become one of the best strategy games ever.

Fails spectacularly to carry over successes learned from that game and after recording magnificent sales numbers at release, has to employ tactics like removing number of players searching for automatch, disabling quit button, etc.

Then comes and compares the sequel to then almost unknown game and claims that it is doing better than original.
That is all fair and understandable, of course they wont say: 'we made some terrible decisions and this didn't turn out at all how we envisaged the game to fare, etc etc'

But how can you use it as an argument???
I don't have numbers, since I don't work for Relic. But I would bet my right arm that COH2 sold more copies before it was released than COH did by its first birthday. Probably second and 3rd too.....

P.S. We just had Christmas holidays and free weekend and sorry but player numbers were still unimpressive..... I wouldn't say Relic is out of woods with their fuck-ups just yet

Im just here to agree with Inverse:

A huge part of the fun in vCoH (and RTS games in general) for me has always been trying out new strategies/ways of playing the game.

The lack of global upgrades really takes that away (while I think that commanders are more interesting than vCoH's doctrines though).

Hopefully we'll see more global upgrades in (potentially) upcoming new factions.

I am sorry, I don't mean to be rude but. The company makes a sequel to the sort of 'indie release' game that went on to become one of the best strategy games ever.

Fails spectacularly to carry over successes learned from that game and after recording magnificent sales numbers at release, has to employ tactics like removing number of players searching for automatch, disabling quit button, etc.

Then comes and compares the sequel to then almost unknown game and claims that it is doing better than original.
That is all fair and understandable, of course they wont say: 'we made some terrible decisions and this didn't turn out at all how we envisaged the game to fare, etc etc'

But how can you use it as an argument???
I don't have numbers, since I don't work for Relic. But I would bet my right arm that COH2 sold more copies before it was released than COH did by its first birthday. Probably second and 3rd too.....

P.S. We just had Christmas holidays and free weekend and sorry but player numbers were still unimpressive..... I wouldn't say Relic is out of woods with their fuck-ups just yet

I am sorry, I don't mean to be rude but. This is the exact sort of attitude that hasn't, and never will help this community grow.

vCoH did a lot of things right, but whether anyone likes do admit it or not it also did plenty of things wrong. It was a great game but way too many people on this site view it through their nostalgia glasses and put it up on this pedestal that it doesn't live up to in reality.

CoH 2 has done a lot of things right but I'll admit some things wrong (I'm looking at you paid DLC commanders). The fact of the matter is that trashing the game and trashing Relic simply is not constructive. We've already seen them listen to us, the community, on multiple occasions and it seems like they're continuing down that path. We have a really good chance at growing a healthy community around the game, especially with Sega backing Relic - we should take advantage of the opportunity.

vCoH's problems were a lack of viable map options and a lack of timely support for large issues, such as the burst bug, Pak sniping, and ToV unit imbalance. Those issues have been improved upon with the Steam Workshop and more frequent updates in CoH2.

Nobody complained about the gameplay, which is why it's hard to understand why it was changed so drastically. The only real complaints revolved around ToV units (which were largely developed by the team that created CoH2) and snipers (which split the community; lots of people love them, lots of people hate them).

EDIT: To clarify, this is why I believe many vCoH players are frustrated with CoH2. I'm not saying Relic's approach won't work, I'm just saying I think it's the wrong way to do things, and it's clear that a lot of other people aren't particularly thrilled by it either.

The way I see it is, Relic had two directions they could've taken the game in. They could've said, "Hey, we want to turn every vCoH player into a CoH2 player, so we're going to aim for 95% conversion rate on those players and make a game that we think they're going to want to play, and we're going to rely on the word of mouth from those players as well as marketing/stream/other traditional avenues to bring in new players." But instead, they said, "vCoH was great, but it didn't have the mass appeal we need to make a game based on DLC work. So instead of catering to the vCoH audience and getting most of them into our game, let's aim for a 50% conversion rate and make a game that we believe will appeal more to the type of person who wasn't interested in vCoH in the first place."

Only time will tell if their approach is the correct one really. I think comparing player numbers from similar times in the lifecycles of the two games is silly because you're comparing a sequel to an original IP, and you're comparing two completely different games with different levels of depth and different business models that appeal to completely different audiences. I personally wouldn't be happy with 6000 concurrents a day when your previous game had that amount and more a year ago.

But this is a thread about strategy in CoH2 and how that can be made more interesting, so let's stick to the subject at hand.

But this is a thread about strategy in CoH2 and how that can be made more interesting, so let's stick to the subject at hand.

Three words, Anti-tank dogs

what i dont understand why people are freaking out so badly about coh2... yes it got problems but no problem yet have been even near the FUCKUP that was the brit faction... a faction designed for casual players that changed the way the game was played and even forced people who didnt even buy the expansion to play against brits.. i dont know how the later patches were but for years after OF release it was sim city arty spam 2k with all emplacements immune to small arms fire... THAT was more horrible than anything coh2 has yet pulled off.

I am sorry, I don't mean to be rude but. This is the exact sort of attitude that hasn't, and never will help this community grow.

vCoH did a lot of things right, but whether anyone likes do admit it or not it also did plenty of things wrong. It was a great game but way too many people on this site view it through their nostalgia glasses and put it up on this pedestal that it doesn't live up to in reality.

CoH 2 has done a lot of things right but I'll admit some things wrong (I'm looking at you paid DLC commanders). The fact of the matter is that trashing the game and trashing Relic simply is not constructive. We've already seen them listen to us, the community, on multiple occasions and it seems like they're continuing down that path. We have a really good chance at growing a healthy community around the game, especially with Sega backing Relic - we should take advantage of the opportunity.

People complaining about lack of strategy in sequel to one of the best RTS games ever should be constructive enough for Relic to act.
Community isn't growing because very few out of over 500.000 people who bought the game like it, and are prepared to turn it on and play.
What I think, or you say has nothing to do with someones desire to play the game or not. If individual likes it or not is the only thing that matters.

P.S. If someone has hugely successful platform to build on and doesn't at least keep it at that standard, yes I call that a fuck up...

Honestly, this could all be solved by making DLC commanders unlockable in gameplay as well as purchasable. Give players who can't wait a means to pay for commanders right away, and give players who would never buy DLC in the first place an opportunity to earn everything in the game that affects the actual gameplay.

Thinking about that actually got me excited about what could happen if Relic changed their DLC system to something like that.

The other advantage to Relic allowing players to grind for dlc is that, if the grind were tied to multiplayer, it would deepen the player base that was regularly on. Seems like a win/win. Plus by the nature of the milestones, it would probably promote testing out more strategies and honing skills with a variety of units, making the automatch community stronger overall.

I think there are really worrying signs here in regards to COH2's lifespan.

Its almost as if we're seeing attempts at "shocking" the game back to life to kick start a heart beat.

Initially you saw the "bargain hunter" effect - i.e. something was previously priced high - $59.99 - and now its ON SALE!! An influx on people jumped when they saw you could get a $59.99 game for $12!! Then they played it.....and then we saw the numbers return to "pre-sale" figures.

Then we see the price cut to $39.99....numbers tread water.

Then we had a FREE weekend! Numbers spike.

Then they played it.

And now look at the numbers playing today.

The defense of "well numbers are significantly higher than vCOH at this stage" just simply don't hold water when COH2 has vCOH's NAME and SUCCESS to trade on.

I think there are really worrying signs here in regards to COH2's lifespan.

Its almost as if we're seeing attempts at "shocking" the game back to life to kick start a heart beat.

Initially you saw the "bargain hunter" effect - i.e. something was previously priced high - $59.99 - and now its ON SALE!! An influx on people jumped when they saw you could get a $59.99 game for $12!! Then they played it.....and then we saw the numbers return to "pre-sale" figures.

Then we see the price cut to $39.99....numbers tread water.

Then we had a FREE weekend! Numbers spike.

Then they played it.

And now look at the numbers playing today.

The defense of "well numbers are significantly higher than vCOH at this stage" just simply don't hold water when COH2 has vCOH's NAME and SUCCESS to trade on.

You should consider that the average lifespan of video games has drastically dropped in recent years and thanks to Steam sales, so has their value.

COH doesn't attract your average gamer and I'm not at all surprised at the price drop we've seen so far.

We're part of a diminishing niche market and the fact that Relic is satisfied with their numbers may reflect a good measure of success within the available market share.

I don't know how useful talk of numbers is in a thread about how much people enjoy the game. It seems off-topic and there's a lot of people working with incomplete knowledge of the situation.

We're happy with the sales figures, and with the number of people playing. There's nearly 5,000 playing right now on a Wednesday afternoon.

Inverse's feedback is really valuable because he knows what he's talking about, and he's not going into speculation on things that he doesn't. He's not saying that the game is failing sales wise, just that it fails on a level of strategy, which is useful for us to hear and is something we can use to improve.

When SEGA releases it's next sales figures we're happy you'll get to see what numbers we've got. Until then we can't say anything specific.

Talking about how you see the game, how you enjoy it (or don't) is super useful feedback for us.

I am sorry, I don't mean to be rude but. This is the exact sort of attitude that hasn't, and never will help this community grow.

I paid $100 for this game because I was naive enough to think the game would not only be great but I would also get my moneys worth in content (which in reality the $100 DCE is probably the worst value of any product on steam, but that's another topic). Like I said in some other thread last night, the advertised "recommended" video card is inferior to mine and I can't even get a consistent performance on medium settings @ 1280x720. So with all the misleading information and/or lies (call it what you want) I have zero interest in helping Relic grow their community when the only thing they want to offer is paid DLC and the occasional balance patch for a game that doesn't even run correctly in the first place.