Gamereactor interview

It's not arbitrary but it's a blind choice - you have to commit to something with literally zero knowledge of what your opponent will be doing. I don't have a problem with that. It means you have to make a strategic choice in a vacuum, which is weird but not automatically bad.

What worries me, though, is that you get an archetype for preordering the game on Steam if enough people preorder (reward tier 3). And we all know how good Relic is at balancing things. So archetypes might be the next Kangaroo Carriers/T-17s - you can buy them for real money and get the more powerful ones.

If its anything like the Mastery and Rune page system in League of Legends, then It will only create more variations in playstyle. Stagnant play is something we all want to avoid.

If its anything like the Mastery and Rune page system in League of Legends, then It will only create more variations in playstyle. Stagnant play is something we all want to avoid.

That's exactly the kind of thing I want to avoid.

Let me clear it up - adding "Commanders" or "Runes and Masteries" or "ToV Units" does not make the game worse, it makes it worse than it could have been if all those options were moved into the game itself.

But they are in the game. Just that instead of doing it in a more crutchy fashion in the game on the go. This is part of a pre-game strategy. Some strategy can happen before the match itself happens you know.

It's not really strategy when nothing is influencing it. All it does is create situations where your "Commander" is weaker or stronger against whatever "Commander" your opponent selected. Just putting you on the back/front foot before the match even begins, through what it essentially a dice roll.

Imagine if COH1 had you select Doctrines before the match. There's nothing gained from it being locked in beforehand. Sure, you go into a game intending to use a certain build order or tech choice. But it isn't locked in. If your opponent adapts to it, you adapt in turn.

This just takes something that should be a means of gaining the upper hand on your opponent and makes it arbitrary. Single player. That isn't the point of a multiplayer match.

It's not really strategy when nothing is influencing it. All it does is create situations where your "Commander" is weaker or stronger against whatever "Commander" your opponent selected. Just putting you on the back/front foot before the match even begins, through what it essentially a dice roll.

Imagine if COH1 had you select Doctrines before the match. There's nothing gained from it being locked in beforehand. Sure, you go into a game intending to use a certain build order or tech choice. But it isn't locked in. If your opponent adapts to it, you adapt in turn.

This just takes something that should be a means of gaining the upper hand on your opponent and makes it arbitrary. Single player. That isn't the point of a multiplayer match.

My guess is that you'll be able to see what your rival is doing and adjust your play style, and that it will be level based too. For example you could level up and unlock an ability that makes a certain tank 15% less fuel to build, or arty has an extra shots in a barrage or something. Your opponent will see that before hand and will have to adjust his/her plans for it. Each player will have his/her own strengths and weakness and its up to rival player to dissect this and find the best way to play against each player. Knowing something like he might be able to get the tank out a bit faster then normal, or his support weapons might pack a bigger punch, or his cheaper infantry will let him get an extra squad etc. This could add a lot of variety, a light tank rush on the same map, for the same faction could play out very differently based on the player choices.

Of course this has the potential to be unbalancing or if it is permanent you could screw yourself over if you choose the wrong abilities. As long as we have the potential to freely change our ability's and are aware of the opposing then it should be fine.

I'm with Kolaris on this one - if we're making bets, I'm going to bet that it will be like LoL rune pages or T-17s/Kangaroo Carriers/Schwimmwagens and you'll set this stuff up outside of the match. Then if you get into the game and it turns out you built your commander for +infantry power and your opponent went for +strafing run power you're going to be at a disadvantage compared to fighting an opponent who built +tank killing power.

But really it's kind of pointless to speculate before we know when these archetypes are chosen: in the game before the match starts, during the match, or before the match is made when you don't know who your opponent is.

If its anything like the Mastery and Rune page system in League of Legends, then It will only create more variations in playstyle. Stagnant play is something we all want to avoid.

What do you mean? The game meta is the same in League of Legends for years. Almost everybody uses the same runepages and masteries (per champion ofcourse). There is really little variation and room for creativity since it's all pretty straightforward what the best build is. They will try to improve this in season 3.

Back to Coh.
It's actually an interesting concept to have a presetup in your game.(COHO fans FTW)
Your mindset does gets strategically challenged which adds to gameplay imo.
However there is also the risk that it makes the strategies straightforward, which would make the game silly, boring, predictable, static. (We really don't want to see Opposing Fronts make or break gameplay any more.)

The way it is now you have a way to respond in the game through doctrines, which allow you for more tactical gameplay and more dynamic interaction between the players. In the end (balance issues aside) the player with the strongest skill+mindset will win the game. That's the way it should be at least. Not the player with the strongest presetup.

But maybe you can combine both in 1; you could for example make several (3 cough cough) presetups and you can still all choose them in-game; granting yourself a wide array of tactical options.
However the way presetups can be made should be limited somewhat or SHOULD be known to the opponent so he knows what he could be expecting and have a proper response to it.

Perhaps it could be as simple as an option that turns pre-setups off for competitive play.

problem with pre-chosen things imho is that it can lead to a bit of rock-paper-scissors (like kolaris said). put those things in the game and they're fine (if balanced correctly). we all know how good relic is at balancing the game, so adding things that make the game that much harder to balance can not be in anyones interest (if they fancy themselves competetive players).

there's so many things that i don't like about coh2 already (like all the things that make the gameplay more static and campy like coldtech, frozen rivers that break in like bridges, bridges, etc. etc.), this is just one more thing... but i still have faith in relic making this the game that we all want coh2 to be, even if it might take another year or so.

I wasn't even thinking about potential imbalance, but here's this to think about -

This is essentially what DoW2 had with Commanders. You have 4 factions with your core units, but you also selected 1 of the 3 Commanders before the match, which influenced subtle things about your faction.

Towards the end of DoW2's lifespan, many top players wished that Commander selection happened in the game rather than before it. The reason was simply that certain commander matchups were nigh-unwinnable, despite the factions themselves being considered pretty well balanced.

I don't think what they outline in the video will influence the game as much as Commanders in DoW2, but it will definitely make things exponentially more complicated to balance.

Choosing doctrines/vehicles(like ToV) or whatever before a match is disgusting. It's just more of that commercial league of legends circlejerk about masteries and shit for noobs. This is an RTS not some super mario.

If you look at some of the most succesful RTS, wc3, coh(to some extend), brood war and now sc2... none of theese have this kind of coin flippy thing where you get to choose what you are gonna do before even knowing WHAT and WHERE you are playing against.

I really don't want CoH2 to be like CoH: O, that game was realy bad for a competitive player stand point. Sure, for someone who plays the game like at max 1-2hours a day, it's brilliant.

Sadly it doesn't even surprise me at this point that things are getting this casual, you just gotta check how many sells BO2 had, it's disgusting.

Choosing doctrines/vehicles(like ToV) or whatever before a match is disgusting. It's just more of that commercial league of legends circlejerk about masteries and shit for noobs. This is an RTS not some super mario.
before even knowing WHAT and WHERE you are playing against.

I don't think you understand League of Legends very well. The way runes and masteries are implemented in LOL is fine, because you don't select them at random before the game, you select them in champion select, when you can see what you opponent has, what lane you're going up against (unless the enemy team goes for an unconventional lane or jungler and fools you, which is also fine, because it just add lots of strategic depth to the champion selection stage). You adjust your runes and masteries for your lane.
The way unit preselection was implemented in TOV was bad because, you had no idea what you were going up against before the mach started.

Interesting watch ty for the link Dane

@Kolaris: Well Doctrines from what i know still operate like they do, IE, in match. With a greater amount of abilities than the commander archetypes.

And one could just as well argue than rather it being about adaption in game, it's all about a crutch, instead of understanding how doctrines fully work and how you work, you instead use it as a band-aid to just cover up your mistakes

There are two sides to everything, and while i can see what you are talking about. I Don't quite buy it. Partly because we have yet to see everything. We don't know the full extent of the system. Since we don't know the other half. Doctrines.

But even then, why would it put you on a backfoot ? You made the choice, ergo you must have a reason for making that choice. Perhaps you went for the commander who might give you some different armour choices and will then tailor your strategies around that.

Or you went for the more infantry heavy commander or the support fellow. The only way for what you say to make sense (ie, locked in arbitrarily) would be if the players had absolutely no understanding of what they were doing

Of course there will be advantages and disadvantages. But then you might as well argue that the sides should only choose armies while they're ingame as well. Or maps.

Discussing all this before you actually saw what the abilities is rather pointless, isnt it? I mean, I get healty scepticism but you jump so far in conclusions that you made a whole story of how it will look like without even 1 piece of information on what it will actually be. Hold your horses, beta will be out soon, things are viable to change, people that get in the closed beta will try to make this the best game CoH franchise deserves

And that is a good point. We have yet to try it. And if something doesn't work, we should have a chance to make it work

I'm confident in relic's ability to work with the community feedback in the beta to make a more competitive friendly game.

Hold your horses, beta will be out soon, things are viable to change, people that get in the closed beta will try to make this the best game CoH franchise deserves

The question is though: what kinds of people? You need people that understand the mechanics of the game, and learn them really fast. People that have insight in synergies between different units. People that have the capacity to learn what every single unit does in order to be able to counter your opponent. People that have the micro skills, to fully utilize a unit's potential. People which experiment a lot with unit-behaviour to find potential exploits. (Ghost TT, cap walk, resource refunds on deleted structures... etc.)

We don't need some random casual players, who get random keys. They would for example say that the King Tiger is OP. Or it would be like a noob playing LoL for the first time, he would say Tryndamere is OP whilst Tryndamere is completely useless in competitive play. (Sorry for the LoL again; but it is the big example of a successful game.)


Ye I should definitely be in it ..

Having doctrines that you choose beforehand allows relic to expand on doctrines and make them impact the game even further than before. They can easily create 3 different styles and approaches to each faction and since only 2 factions will be featured in the game that variety will make it easier for new players/more casual players to play the game without getting bored at lack of content.

Sure it creates more match ups and make the game harder to balance, but the positive side of that is more creativity and variety can be put into the doctrines.