Too much RNG

Title.

It has increased way too much in CoH 2, it does keep the game fresh and add unexpected twists but sometimes breaks/decides game and gives unfair advantages/disadvantages.

Those what need to be changed:

- Damaged/Destroyed engines.
- Vehicle abadonments.
- Call-in's veterancy and equipment (rifles, osttruppens, p4s for OKW).
- Remove the 5% bug.
- Flame crits (sometimes insta burns soldiers, sometimes takes ages to kill someone).
- Remove drunk gunners.

I agree, I can understand it being a kind of necessary evil for some weapons like mortar etc, but stuff like call ins with 'Random Amount of experience' really rubs me the wrong way. It's just introducing a dice roll that you can't control and where it's not really necessary.

Hmmm i feel like the RNG has been tone down quite a low in comparison to 6 months ago, for example.

I would honestly want to see mortars move away from the "wipe models or do no damage" and instead have a much larger AOE but damage models instead of killing them. Right now mortars just feels way too much RNG dependent.

Also mortars used to supress in vcoh, why was this removed? Soviet mortars need its crew down to atleast 4 in order for these changes to be implemented.

I also think there is just too much RNG.
These heavy crits man.. totally fuck up games.

I disagree. I can say quite confidently that I have never lost purely to bad luck.

The OP could be better laid out, but there is still too much RNG.

Heavy engine damage from the front, flame throwers blowing up in combat (why is this still a thing!?), and my current least favorite...crew shocks by IS-2, tigers, brumbars, and ISU-152's (what is the purpose of this?!?).

I disagree. I can say quite confidently that I have never lost purely to bad luck.

I don't think we're talking about losing cause of RNG, just the amount of it and the impact on the game

agree with op. too much rng still in the game.

I don't think I need to explain RNG to those who play the game.

Some RNG can be good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9ZI9kMsvRQ

However, some binary effects can be caused at random. What do I mean by that? An effect that either applies with 100% of its effectivity or with 0%. In theory those are ok with a large sample size but by the game's nature the sample size can be pretty small. In a large sample size it will work in your favor just as often as it will in the enemy's but this game has very small sample sizes: For example, the opportunities to AT-grenade a tank may be a few times per game and you normally only play each opponent once on the ladder (which itself has a massive sample size/population size problem). So if you AT-grenade tanks in a match 4 times, it is well within possibility that it might just bounce 3 or 4 times, which can very well massively diminish your probability of losing the match.

For example, some large explosives can have a tendency to miss completely (0% or very low damage) or to completely wipe the squad (100% damage). We've all had that one T-34 that completely misses that infantry squad for 3 shots in a row and the next game we might have one that fires 2 shots and wipes 2 squads with it.
In general the reinforce mechanic and squad size is a comeback mechanic (and a comeback/allowing for comebacks/recovery is good). But by that coin toss, the whole comeback mechanic can be circumvented by pure randomness.
Same counts for tanks' hp pools and repair abilities: They allow you to come back even when you had a few unlucky armor penetrates (randomness factor) in a row simply because the tank's hp pool is so high. With skill you can adapt and flee, repair and come back from a lost battle. Imagine tanks had a 5% chance to spontaneously combust when hit, that would kinda be like some lucky explosion rolls against infantry squads. It would decide games.

Engine criticals are another example: The tank is either affected completely (slowed), not at all (driving at normal speed), or by a very small chance devastatingly (cannot move at all or just barely). I would prefer a system that would either vary its effectivity (so e.g. a slow effect can slow it 20-60% instead of the static numbers) or a varying duration (overheated engine, cools down after 10-20 seconds).

However, I think some effects like the engine criticals are embedded so deeply into the game that changing them would completely wreck balance and unit design of many many units and changes to those are therefore unrealistic. But other things like big explosions can still be fine-tuned to be less extreme and more consistent.
Of course there would still be a randomness involved, at which point player skill can really shine (retreat at the right moment etc).

Are changes likely? I don't really think so.

rng is fine, it adds unpredictability to the game, which makes it all that more intense.

As a WWII commander, you have to accept the fact that sometimes the situation will go be put out of your control, your job is to adapt to it.

Didin't wipe a squad on retreat even tho it was 1 man and retreated thruogh 3 full health squads? L2P. Should of had 4 squads there.

Panzer IV bounced of 5 at nades? L2P. Should of thrown 6 and had some mines placed too.

Tiger got immobilized by at nade? L2P. Should of had some pioneers nearby.

rng is fine, it adds unpredictability to the game, which makes it all that more intense.

As a WWII commander, you have to accept the fact that sometimes the situation will go be put out of your control, your job is to adapt to it.

Didin't wipe a squad on retreat even tho it was 1 man and retreated thruogh 3 full health squads? L2P. Should of had 4 squads there.

Panzer IV bounced of 5 at nades? L2P. Should of thrown 6 and had some mines placed too.

Tiger got immobilized by at nade? L2P. Should of had some pioneers nearby.

Burts the L2P issues you have stated here are actually not L2P issues, these are RNG events outside of player control. L2P is when a player can better his position by better use of his units. Telling someone who reversed when they saw conscripts and faced their front armor to L2P when the AT nades get immobolize is silliness.

No one is saying RNG is not fun or a large part of this game, what they don't want (what we don't want) is RNG to allow extremely powerful events. I don't want AT nades or fausts to be able to get immobolize unless the tank is badly damaged and it gets hit multiple times. I don't want flamethrowers to explode by a model death since I cannot control which model gets the flamethrower or who gets shot at first in combat. These are not L2P issues. These are issues that make the game feel like, I lost because my opponent got multiple lucky rolls in a few rare high stake events and its over now.

To me this thread is worded wrong. There is not too much rng. There is wrong rng. Rng is a very good thing when applied correctly. This game runs on it. I don't think a lot of us would be here from 2005 if there was no rng. It's just badly implemented in some things.

I don't agree. RNG is what makes this game hilarious from time to time. Like a plane crashing on top of your HQ, an enemy tiger getting decrewed in your base. B4 shots scattering perfectly on the only place where there are no enemy units 5 times in a row.

Without these events, CoH2 would be a pretty bland game.

game is good with RNG. It's in a fantastic spot for me - the CoH1 days of high probabilities for engine destuction/immbolisation are over. Infantry are also much, much more consistent nowadays. There's not a lot in the game that i can hate RNG for - it's only every now and then and not 3-4 times a game.

I don't mind a bit of RNG, but I can't consider CoH ever to be truly balanced or fair as long as you can get things like squad wipes with a lucky shot from a tank or be lucky and get a better engine critical one time than another.

That's purely a dice roll. I understand that managing risks is part of the game too and is a competitive skill, but as I said, I feel the game could work without some arbitrary ones. Most obvious and recent are things like 'deploying with random amount of veterancy'.

I do also accept that there are other multiplayer/competitive games out there with RNG elements (Counter Strike for example), but I still feel that the ultimate aim of a game that wants to be truly 'balanced and competitive' should be to remove all random factors from the match.

Either way, I play the game purely for fun and try not to take it too seriously, because getting a 6 man squad wiped by a 'lucky' grenade would be too frustrating for me otherwise. Yes, I am bad at this game before anyone feels the need to point that out.

So any game with dice is not fair to you. Like Monopoly and other board games. That's a tough existence, to me. I'm ok as long as I have the same chance as my opponent.

Life is pretty much a big rng. Any one of us could be forced to being mixed up in any one of the world conflicts/tragedies happening lately.

So any game with dice is not fair to you. Like Monopoly and other board games. That's a tough existence, to me. I'm ok as long as I have the same chance as my opponent.

Life is pretty much a big rng. Any one of us could be forced to being mixed up in any one of the world conflicts/tragedies happening lately.

Maybe 'fair' is the wrong word. I would say it's not really a competition or balanced game though.

I can still play monopoly and have a ton of fun, same as Company of Heroes, but I probably wouldn't take Monopoly seriously enough to go enter a tournament for it for example. Company of Heroes isn't so RNG dependent that you can't have legitimate tournaments and good players etc, but I do think it takes away a bit of the competitive balance, if you know what I mean? While there are still top players and they'll win everytime against bad players, they aren't immune to something like 3 shots of an AT gun bouncing because of bad RNG, or a squad getting wiped out by a lucky grenade early in the match. Sure they can minimise the risk, which is a skill, as I said, but they can still fall prey to RNG which they have zero control over.

It's like, imagine if in Chess, you had a random chance of your Pawn not being able to kill a Knight. Like, you had a roll a dice when taking a Knight piece and if it landed on 1 then you couldn't take that piece. Sure you can say "hey it's only a 12% chance" or "You shouldn't put your pawn in that risky position", but it's still putting an element of chance in a game that otherwise is purely down to the players.

RNG is what makes CoH, CoH. Without it, it would not be the same. But there are some events that I think shouldn't exist in competitive play, and there are a lot of instances where the RNG factor needs to be toned down or completely removed.

Abandons are a novelty and are awesome when they happen, but the only time I'd like to see an abandon in a competitive match is when a US player carelessly loses a vehicle crew repairing their tank. Perhaps re-enable it as an option in custom games, but this is a hard one to sell.

Destroyed engine as opposed to regular engine damage should only occur when from specialised mines like the M20 mine, riegel mines, teller mines. I just think it silly when an AT nade/regular 30 munition mine has the chance to cause a destroyed engine. I'm also a believer of engine snares (fausts, at nades, rifle nades) being 100% chance of a damaged engine.

I think for the most part infantry combat and the randomness involved there is fine for the most part, most of gripes revolve around vehicle combat RNG.