So I played CoH2 again...

Optimization must be a priority for Relic, otherwise they are going to start to lose players.

- Actually, It is happening now. Some streamers like Cataclaw drop COH2 because of Balance + Performance issues. I'm not sure if he still play it sometimes but I never saw he streaming lately.

- I stop being a competitive player and turn back into casual ( used to rank 14 in 2vs2, top 30 OKW + US + Ostheer and spend 6 hours everyday to play this game )and I know a lot of my Clan teammate don't spend much amount of time on COH2 anymore but rather playing Dota 2/ CS:GO ( I prefer CS:GO and currently rank Nova 2 )

- Relic better get in shape or before you know it, this game will be history. ( And atm I think COH2 is being know as " Not as good as vCOH " by some people). True that vCOH used to be tons of problem too but come on, can't they learn anything from those mistake in the past ?

I can't relate to those with performance issues. I have 2 computers capable of gaming. I built my desktop on AMD and ASUS built my laptop on Nvidia. Both systems run the game without stutter. I've got everything enabled on my desktop and I turned a few settings down on laptop for good framerate (funny thing is, I didn't know that I was on battery power while I was testing it).

My desktop has an i5 3770k, 16GB of RAM(not that ram matters as much), and crossfire 290x

My laptop is Asus ROG G750JX-TB71, it has a gtx 770m.

+1 to everything Inverse said. Also I don't know if anyone else has issues with this, but the snow is so white on the "winter" maps that my eyes are usually bloodshot red and watering like a mofo in as little as 20 minutes even with the brightness turned down a bit. I can play other games for several hours in a dark room before this starts to happen. There needs to be at the very least an option for a blue'ish tint to the snow, even though I want to its hard to get back playing this game because my limited play sessions are rarely longer than 2 games (3 max) because of my eyes.

PS: Back when I was playing vcoh competitively on a laptop that got 15-30fps, the camera panning still felt crisper than it does in CoH2 when its running 30-50fps.

It sounds like you are playing the game in the dark. It not good for your eyes to do so. Also, try to drink some water during extended sessions, it helps me. The big problem though, is the huge contrast in brightness your getting between the screen and the rest of the light. It's very similar to having the cops shine their bright ass flashlight in your face in the middle of the night. You need some dim ambient light and you won't get strain anymore. I have a hall light just outside my room that I turn on, so my room is dimly lit, but doesn't overpower my monitor. I hope something in all this text can be useful for you.

i haven't been playing much recently either, mostly on account of balance. those games i have gotten have been 90% shit, either from drops (i played 5 games one night, none of which lasted longer than 15 minutes) or from cheese. coh2 just isn't fun to play.

I really think all the complaints about the CoH2 UI are unfair. If you compare the CoH1 and CoH2 AI CoH2 comes out ahead actually. Inverse why aren't you mentioning the lack of a health bar for tanks that are not selected in CoH1 ? Or the extremely useful unit list in the top right that relic implemented with CoH2 ? I think these aspects are way more significant than the problems that you brought up. I do agree on the tac map issue btw. Never experienced the visibility problem on snow maps so I can't comment on that one.

Because interface issues are subjective. When I play CoH2, I don't see a single interface change that provides more useful information in CoH2 than it did in vCoH. Vehicle health bars being always viewable is irrelevant to me because vehicle health is far less granular than infantry health; it always takes the same number of shots to kill a vehicle using a specific weapon or collection of weapons, so after a while you don't need health bars to know how much HP a vehicle has because you can just count the number of hits it's taken from different damage sources. Would it have been nice to have? Of course! But I never felt like I was being deprived of vital information in vCoH because vehicles didn't have always-visible health bars. Infantry engagements, on the other hand, have a lot more variables in play, and are much closer in terms of outcome. I value quickly accessible HP information a lot more in those fights, and in CoH2 it just isn't easy to see because icons and HP bars are semi-transparent.

As far as my play and priorities are concerned, CoH2's UI is larger, displays less useful information, and is cluttered with more useless information than vCoH's. I don't, for instance, think the unit icons in the top right are an improvement over the unit shields in vCoH. CoH is a small-scale RTS, and the top-right icons in CoH2 take up a lot of space and display more information that I would ever care about because I want to be monitoring and adjusting my units on the field at all times anyways. Furthermore, they aren't easily collapsible and expandable because you have to click the arrows instead of simply hovering over a shield. They also don't clearly separate into control groups (instead the icon just gets a number indicating the control group), making control group usage more difficult.

And this is all ignoring the huge problem of visibility in CoH2, which I intentionally left out because it's been discussed to death and it's obvious that Relic either disagrees or doesn't care. In vCoH, you always knew when two units were fighting because 90% of weapons had very visible tracers. Things like snipers and AT guns left noticeable contrails behind their shots that let a player know at a glance where these units were stationed and where the damage was coming from. CoH2 removed these for the sake of realism, but in doing so made it extremely frustrating to locate the source of any off-screen damage. Add to this the clutter on the tactical map and the previously-mentioned contrast issues on winter maps and you end up with an extremely frustrating gameplay experience.

It's true that Relic has, in general, exposed more information to players in CoH2 than they did in vCoH. I just know that for me personally, the information they added is irrelevant to my gameplay, while the information they obscured is information I want to have instantly and effortlessly accessible so that I can make intelligent decisions in a split second.

...As far as my play and priorities are concerned, CoH2's UI is larger...

If I remember correctly, A_E (forum member) did a comparison of the 2 UI's and CoH2's UI was smaller.


I wish that there were options for the UI; CoH1, CoH2, a minimalist UI, etc.

Yeah, the game's optimization leaves a lot to be desired. I can run Far Cry 3 at max settings with 60ish FPS, I can run Diablo 3 at max settings no problem, hell I can run Crysis 3 at high (not max) settings with decent FPS, but I need to tone down the options to medium if I want a steady experience in this game. Sure, RTS is a more demanding genre generally, but I can also play DoW2 on max with very few problems, and CoH2 isn't that better looking.

As for the UI, the biggest problem I have is how uninformative it is. That big box at the bottom of the screen between the map and order grid? Why does it only contain a general unit desription? Why not unit HP, armor, damage, that sort of thing? Why must we dig into the game's files to know something as basic as the amount of HP and armor on a Panzer 4? This information should be readily available to the player in game. I know of very few RTSs that do their best to hide that stuff from the player. I do dig the unit list however, that was a good change.

It's also true that the menus are sluggish. I wish we had an option to disable all the background animations, I'm pretty sure this is what's making them all so slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R8DJCOzfLQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDSE0hCFp4

I wish that there were options for the UI; CoH1, CoH2, a minimalist UI, etc.

Ye more options for the UI would be really nice.

Why does it only contain a general unit desription? Why not unit HP, armor, damage, that sort of thing?

Hell no son, hell no. One of the biggest issues is that you get thrown too much useless information at your face constantly distracting you from the actual game.
Unit stats won't help you at all, they will only confuse players. There are so much variables with weapons and armor...

That being said: if there was an information panel OUTSIDE (in main menu) the game, giving unit stats, that would be nice.

Things like snipers and AT guns left noticeable contrails behind their shots that let a player know at a glance where these units were stationed and where the damage was coming from. CoH2 removed these for the sake of realism, but in doing so made it extremely frustrating to locate the source of any off-screen damage. Add to this the clutter on the tactical map and the previously-mentioned contrast issues on winter maps and you end up with an extremely frustrating gameplay experience.

Well actually you are alerted of the area in which the sniper or AT gun fired at you. If you look at the mini-map or circular map in the lower left hand corner of your screen, when an enemy fires on you the map shows a little circle of red indicating where an enemy vehicle or infantry unit fired on your inf unit or vehicle. And it continually shows you where on both maps by blinking slowly for about 2-3 seconds.

Well actually you are alerted of the area in which the sniper or AT gun fired at you. If you look at the mini-map or circular map in the lower left hand corner of your screen, when an enemy fires on you the map shows a little circle of red indicating where an enemy vehicle or infantry unit fired on your inf unit or vehicle. And it continually shows you where on both maps by blinking slowly for about 2-3 seconds.

You're right, but that's not immediately visible. Unless you're looking at your minimap at the time of the shot, you don't get any immediate feedback. In vCoH, the moment you got shot by a sniper, an AT gun, or an MG, you instantly knew from which direction the damage was coming from because of the tracers, and you could immediately adjust your unit's positioning accordingly. In CoH2, if you're looking at the minimap when the shot happens, you get the immediate feedback but you can't easy tell which unit is being targeted; if you're looking at the playing field, you get nearly no information at all, since you can barely tell which unit is being targeted and are given no information on where the damage originated.

The addition of a minimap alert is nice, but removing the immediate visual feedback from the shot itself is a major step back. I'd rather have that information right in front of me immediately instead of tucked away in the corner of the screen.