New Patch Balance

a most needed poll


Playing in 2 vs 2 + games as sovyets has become much more unplayable than before...

But Relic has done the right step in terms of meta-game

Anything but 1 vs 1 is just unplayable as Soviets (unless one player is a computer)
yeah, past few games were just awesome:
- two pios running and killing everything, early Pgrens
- grens throwing nade and killing 5 (sic!) penals in green cover
- all they need to do is to keep one victory point (sometimes even this is not necessary) and wait for late game where soviet armor is just funny. Please, don't bring "mine everything" discussion here.

I'm talking here about normal players - anyone with half a brain will launch nebelwerfer to remove all mines and then launch Panthers / Tigers / Elefants.

Artillery counter? All you need is to send suicide squad, get visibility and send a plane or artillery strike or whatever you won't - million half-tracks with AA guns won't be able to stop it.

IS2... yeah, Goliath with paper armor.

AT guns maybe? Thanks! Let me send flame mortar half-track for some XP

I played (yes, PAST TENSE) for the cool, sometimes epic battles (2v2+). Now I'm done and need a break. Germans are just too easy to play and Soviets are just too frustrating.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm just pissed for wasting my afternoon playing this broken game!

This is my first and will probably be my only post. I have about 450 hours on record playing this - and only - game since last summer and I have to admit it is extremely addictive.

I am an average player and I played both factions about 65/35 prioritizing soviets. I always play 2v2 or 3v3. I do micro above average from what I can see and work hard on flanking and building strategies to outrun the enemy.

I was wondering at one point if the game was "nerfing" good players vs weaker players as I sometimes have hard time beating up less skilled players (either side). But I got over it assuming RNG was doing it's frustrating job.

It is literally awful since the patch. I have won one single game being soviet and I am getting beaten up by blobs throwing nades and decimating all i have (I loose 3 guys or more 95% of the time- even got 10 guys killed on 2 spread squads with a riffle nade) as opposed to me killing about 1, maybe 2 guys OR none 95% of the time ! I never kill anyone with a molotov unless the guy sits still in the fire as opposed to me loosing at least 1 or 2 guys instantly when I get one thrown at me.

I thing sure is that I cannot dodge a nade nor a molotov in any case. I even sometimes retreat slightly before it's thrown and still get decimated often. I do have lucky shots thought, about 1 for every 25 lucky shots against me.

I will skip the tanks part as this post is already pretty long and I'm having a hard time getting there anyways since 3 days.

I am getting to wonder if my computer would be the problem, as if I was a second behind the action. Problem is that my mate is pretty much feeling the same situation. I have a I7 laptop running @ 66% details and all the lest is low res. It lags very little to not at all.

Anyhow, I was looking for a good reason to remove this game and get my life back. I think this update was it.

Thanks, I have exactly the same feelings

But it's simply not fair for one faction to be much easier to control than the other. If they want to make Ostheer micro as difficult, I am all in favor of that, I said as much in one of my other posts and that's my favored solution. But it's very unfair and mean-spirited of you to berate the vast majority of players for what is currently a clearly imbalanced game.

+1

It´s good that they are making the game have more thoughtful decissions. It´s time this applies to the german side also.

RNG is the problem.
Balance means making some rules when this happens - this is the outcome, and BOTH factions should have a neutral outcome when opposed to each other.

Let's say the game is perfectly balanced, the RNG comes and pisses on the balance.
This is the fucking problem of the game, just look at this.



This happens every game with every player.
This is why noobs can beat skilled players.
This is why people quit the game.

People want; When I do X, Y is the outcome.
Compare it with another RTS, Age of Empires: When I get cavalry I can beat those archers, simple as that.
Ok make it a bit more interesting and add SOME Rng, specially with accuracy of arty, but how in god's name can you balance a game that is random generating outcomes?

e: This is a reply on the endless; WHO IS MORE OP - topics that are coming everyday, after every update/patch. Next update will be the same, but maybe than the soviet will be OP.
I think we are concentrating on the wrong topic.

Discos.

I closed this point for me after having played successfully a bunch of games as Germans without selecting commander at all till the very end !!!!

Germans have become a real "easy mode"

Notice how it's locked now? It hit a sore spot but gathered a lot of support. The vicious cycle of balance patching will continue until the broken process is fixed. A proactive approach of opening up the beta server to additional folks would go a long way to fixing some of the obvious issues before the patch is published.

Noticed. In my humble opinion, I think the discussion was easily deviated in the wrong direction by putting "obvious soviet side facts" in the top thread.

That removed, I think you could have gotten better attention on your main purpose...at least for more than half a page!

This happens every game with every player.
This is why noobs can beat skilled players.
This is why people quit the game.

People want; When I do X, Y is the outcome.
Compare it with another RTS, Age of Empires: When I get cavalry I can beat those archers, simple as that.
Ok make it a bit more interesting and add SOME Rng, specially with accuracy of arty, but how in god's name can you balance a game that is random generating outcomes?

[Slightly OT, more focused on your style than content]
Interesting point of view, but you are not speaking for all people. This "People want" turns your post from an observation and opinion to exaggeration and propaganda. You want it, I guess quite some people want it, but certainly not everybody.
[End OT]

Actually as much as I tend to curse RNG when it treats me unkindly, I still like the RNG a lot. I think especially for abilities the randomness should be reduced (Heavy engine dmg due to AT-nade), but for accuracy/scatter/penetration it's fine. I like the fact that the outcome is not always certain, but that there is some randomness. Let me elaborate why:
Games like *craft, Age of Empires and CnC are using a rather simple model and the outcome of a battle can easily be predicted. For such games muscle memory and knowing which unit counters which (as in, which Build Order) is most important. Games tend to play out pretty similar due to the rock-paper-scissors system behind units. Strategies tend to be made prior to games and then just followed.
Company of Heroes on the other hand is less predictable. You can on average say how good a unit performs against another, but you cannot say for certain. For some weapons (small arms) the simple amount of shots fired causes the RNG to be only visible on the scale of a small engagement, but over the whole of the game it disappears. If a unit overperforms one fight chances are it will underperform in another. For tank shots the RNG plays a far bigger part, since they will most likely only fire a couple hundred shots per game. Overall, you cannot predict how a fight will end - You can say in 99 out of 100 cases this side will win, but you cannot say for sure. Overall, this makes the game a lot less linear and increases complexity as well as requirements to player skill. While in games like SC2 mostly muscle memory is important, here you need to adapt to the situation need to watch fights more closely, since you cannot predict the outcome. I like that, since it keeps the game interesting (the same fight doesn't always end the same way) and thrilling to watch. As I said prior, there are some parts about the randomness I dislike - The ones with a low chance, high impact like for example flame crits or heavy engine dmg from atnade/faust.

I guess different people just want different things from the game. Maybe find some compromise by reducing RNG (as was already done with grenades), but I would not completely remove it, since it's an integral part of CoH in my opinion.

I'm pretty disappointed they are patching the game so quickly. I understand that Relic fears they will alienate players if they don't hotfix what appear to be problems, but let's be honest: the vast majority of people who play the game are not very good. They also don't really know what they are talking about. People can't win with their old strategies, and new strategies don't immediately work, so they blame balance. The fact that anyone posts any strong opinion at all before playing the patch for at least a week or two is ridiculous, but I don't expect that to change.

The fact is that you are dismissing 99% of player base because they are not very good and they don't know what they are talking about.

Game should be playable and balanced for very skilled and semi-skilled equally, ideally. Until it is close to that, this game has no future.

It's also fact that adapting to new patch is only really problem for one faction. It's safe to conclude that both sides will be adapting and exploiting new strategies simultaneously and one faction adapting is easy, while playing other is very hard.

Smells like balance problem to me.

Balance never was a fact in this game. Since the start, they could not give a good balance version -with new OP commander or imba patches-. But i have to say the last patch just completely destroyed the game. It is now impossible to play soviets instead you want to play only with one STRAT -pretty boring- and relying only on enemy mistakes and luck.

As a customer of the game i no longer gonna play this game untill they can give a proper version to play. Btw the problem, as the majority of people said, is that soviet army is pretty much harder to micro than axis, luck is like 50% of game and they can not give a proper basic equal infantry -greens>>>>>>>cons-. In that situation its stupid to play this game, take it as a customer strike -plus watching for June 2 new armies that gonna destroy the balance (if they can get it) x100 times more-. How can you come with new armies without fixing the ones you have? SEGA epic fail. What could be a good game (like coh1) and it can't be.

Regards,