So I played CoH2 again...

...and it was actually pretty fun! The gameplay feels vastly better now than it did when I last played months ago, and while I didn't play enough to get a grasp of things strategically to the point of being able to comment on that aspect of things, I generally enjoyed myself.

But despite this drastic improvement in gameplay, I really can't see myself continuing to play. Why? Because while the core gameplay itself is far better than it used to be, the act of playing the game is still ridiculously frustrating and terrible.

I know there have been a million threads about CoH2's problems on here, but I wanted to post this because for the longest time I had asserted that CoH2's biggest problem was its core design and unsatisfying gameplay. I no longer think this is true. Don't get me wrong, CoH2 is far from perfect, and there are still a lot of really glaring gameplay issues, but the game's core playability problems come from two entirely different areas: performance and interface.

I still can't believe how terrible CoH2's performance on modern machines is. I have a pretty good rig (i5 2500k @ 4.4GHz, HD6870, 8GB RAM), and when I ran the performance test yesterday on bare minimum settings, I got a whopping average FPS of 41, with a minimum of 28 and a maximum of 61. On bare minimum settings, without streaming, without anything else going on. This is a rig that can play Crysis on medium at 60+FPS, vCoH while streaming at 1080p at 100+FPS, Dota 2 and CSGO maxed at 80-100+FPS. Yet it can barely keep above 60FPS in CoH2 matches, and struggles to keep 30FPS while streaming at 720p. Playing an RTS at sub-60FPS is probably the most frustrating thing in the world, and there's no excuse for it to run at anything less when you take into account how subjectively terrible it looks at minimum settings.

And the poor performance isn't even limited to in-game. How is it that when I mouse over a clickable button in a menu, the background video actually starts stuttering and drops to 15FPS? Use the CoH2 menu interface, then use the Dota 2 or CSGO menu interfaces; the differences are striking. CoH2's menus are so sluggish and frustrating to navigate; though visually appealing, interacting with them gives a real feeling of tackiness. Compare that to the CSGO menu, for instance, which is crisp, clean, and incredibly responsive. I don't understand how the game can be so poorly optimized that even the menu interface performs extremely poorly.

But performance isn't the only thing that hasn't improved since the last time I had played. Somehow, someway, the already-polarizing CoH2 user interface has actually managed to get worse. The biggest new problem I noticed was the painfully cluttered tactical map. I cannot fathom how a UI designer could think it was a good idea to put the resource income values of every single point overlaid on the map, with no option to hide them. That's information that you memorize after your first game; why is everyone being forced to see it every single time they open the tactical map? I can't count the number of times yesterday that I had to consciously look for capture points to click when I opened the map because of these numbers, instead of just being able to open it and issue my commands without thinking.

On top of the new issues, there are still serious problems with unit and information visibility in CoH2. On winter maps especially, where there is very little contrast between the white snow and the light blue unit icons/health bars, it is extremely difficult to gauge at a glance the status of a fight because the icons and health bars of units you don't have selected go semi-transparent. This mixed with the white backdrop means you can't just glance at a unit and see quickly their number of men remaining and their current help because it all blends in with each other and the background. Why there hasn't been an option added to make unit icons/health bars opaque at all times I do not know. It's a simple change that would drastically improve the playability of the game.

Like I said at the start, CoH2's gameplay has come a long way. I had a lot of fun playing against the new factions, but I felt like I was fighting the game every step of the way. I want to enjoy your game, Relic; please quit putting so many technical and aesthetic boundaries in the way of me doing so.

Turning my image quality to the absolute lowest setting has been the best change I've made recently. Removes all shadows and its 10 x easier to discern what is actually cover and what is just visual fluff.

Also gave somewhat of a performance boost. I think things like Shadows are a real FPS killer in games in general. But I'm not trying to defend bad optimization, we still don't have SLi support heh.

Yeah, the numbers I posted were with everything absolutely minimum, with the exception of world resolution or whatever it's called that I kept at 100%.

Because if you dont keep it onto 100% it is getting totally unplayable!

Noticed that onto my notebook

Agree with all you've said.
Also can't get why units die so fast? Even vet3 infantry can die in 5 sec. I don't talk about howi shot or smth like that, just infantry battles.

Wait higher resolution gives better FPS?I thought opposite?

I play with all setting on lowest (also messed a bit around in the cfg) and get a nice fps between the 30 and 40. I'm happy with that cos im playing on a low end laptop. I don't understand how all those people with good rigs can have so many problems.

Got to say, I completely agree with your thread here. Liked to see you play the game and I hope we will see you stream more CoH2 in the future

Anti-Aliasing is what causes a drop in FPS for me. When I turn it off it suddenly runs smoothly. On low it still runs smoothly but when the fighting actually starts it starts to get laggy, not to mention blizzards, snow and rain. I remember thinking during the beta "Wow, this is pretty well optimized" and I could run it pretty well. But they changed something with anti-aliasing a few weeks before release and now it eats a lot of performance.

Welcome to the club, WFA optimization appears to be worse for many players (from talking to people).

Enjoyable game, but I don't play too much due to it at the moment.

I know for sure smoke is badly optimised, if you zoom into it FPS will drop down to like what feels like 5-15fps.

But overall it mostly runs pretty smoothly for me except in really really heavy fighting (like lots of units + planes & arty in small area) which doesn't last long and doesn't happen all that often.

On all max settings (including AA) I have min 26.00, avg 36.76 and max 52.32 FPS. i5 4590, 8GB Ram, R9 270X and 8.1 64 bit.

I do think the call in meta is getting very stale though.

Relic fix optimization in game. Lie, that which unites Relic and politics

I had to lower detail from medium to low (or minimum if it is a snowy map) after WFA released.
The menu was smooth in the beta but it seems they capped the framerate in it for some reason.

L2P MVGame, the performance is bad intentionally , because good players can micro even without good FPS #Esports.


On a more serious note, seriously the perfomance needs a fix, it's really poor.

Don't wory, they're adding a new single-player campaign. You won't even notice these issues once you fall into the atmosphere of the Ardennes and stomp dat comp!

Even all these comments about 'lower your settings' are pretty damn funny. Don't take it personal guys, I mean the following;

Relic makes the game so beautiful, but "no one" can run it.
And on the lowest settings, it still is not working properly.
60 FPS on a GeForce Titan is just plain pathetic.

My rig is an absolute beast, I have 50 stable fps (sometimes drops a bit but lets call it stable), other games run +100 FPS maxed out, and this game is just so poorly optimized. It has been said 100 times, but I think it's one of the biggest issues that really need fixes.

Relic, when you will show your game in the ESL and Twitch will stream your biggest matches, you don't want these FPS drops, you don't want unresponsive lagspikes cause of design.
The game is in serious troubles, Siberian has said it 1000 times, your players have told you plenty of times. People can't join the game cause the vast majority of the rigs can't even handle 100% resoluteion and some higher settings.



/Signed Inverse.

The way I see it: no optimization, no quality e-sports.

This e-sport dream needs better preparation or else it is bound to fail. Optimization problems have existed since day one. Has Relic at least commented on these issues? Only very vaguely, unless I missed something...

The way I understand is that it is not a priority in their support plan for the game.

+1 to op. Lets hope for some optimization.
Will watch if you stream coh 2.

I was concerned it was just me and choosing bad parts when building my new PC, but I was concerned with CoH2's performance as well. I really do hope they fix it, because the game really doesn't look and play as well as it really could at this point.

Agreed, it is a sign of bad work, based on my industrial experience.

Hi,

I don't know why Coh2 perform so poorly on your computer (i5 2500k @ 4.4GHz, HD6870, 8GB RAM), but on mine, an old (i7 860 @2.8GHz, HD5870, 8GB RAM and no ssd disk) It perform great for my taste.

So I decide to post my display options :



Display test : Average 31 fps max 59 fps
(no lag in 4vs4 match)

Sound option is : Quality low in 7.1 discrete
*( The sound option seem to have a lot of impact, if i set it to high quality then it will slow the game. )*

Also, i had a few lag spikes that went away by defragmenting my harddisk. Best to defragment your window swapfile too.

I always play 3v3 or mostly 4vs4 match and it play very well (no slow down) except when everyone is also frozen.

I hope it help, because you should be playing with higher settings then me without any hiccups.

Hoping to see you in a team 4vs4 match !!!!