4v4

why so categorically ?

I only can repeat: have you noticed that topics concerning balance problems in 3 vs 3 , 4 vs 4 modes have being emerging increasingly ?

What does it mean ?

At lager scale it means that people nowadays are more interested in team modes rather than in 1 vs 1 in all games, and COH2 is not an exception.


There are measures to settle properly balance in team games not abusing 1 vs 1 modes! It is only question of wish and hard work.

I fell that it means the underlying balance of the game is wrong. like I said before WF all game modes were very balanced. I think the majority of people will say that was the best time for balance in CoH 2. All this balance come from 1v1s game changes. I dont know if it was just luck that these changes had a positive effect on 3v3s and 4v4s, or relic took the time to think about these change in a 3v3 or 4v4 setting. Either way I still say,"Although I have found that so long as the main game mode is balanced the other modes are very closes to balance as well." If not balanced in the end.

Seems like there are two main issues people bring up:

1. Heavy vehicles/Call-ins come in too early and dominate games.
2. Losing initial engagement is too punishing due to distances to objectives.


Regarding #1, I think fuel and CP income should be scaled to size of teams. Something like:

Income = -1/6 * Team Size + 7/6

So for 1v1: Income = -1/6 * 1 + 7/6 = 1 (or 100%)
2v2: Income = .83 (or 83%)
3v3: Income = .67 (or 67%)
4v4: Income = .50 (or 50%)

Lengthens early game, delays heavy tanks and call-ins. All without having to impact 1v1 balance at all.

Regarding #2, the maps are just not well designed mostly, and need to be fixed. Relic has explicitly said they're working on that.

Seems like there are two main issues people bring up:

1. Heavy vehicles/Call-ins come in too early and dominate games.
2. Losing initial engagement is too punishing due to distances to objectives.


Regarding #1, I think fuel and CP income should be scaled to size of teams. Something like:

Income = -1/6 * Team Size + 7/6

So for 1v1: Income = -1/6 * 1 + 7/6 = 1 (or 100%)
2v2: Income = .83 (or 83%)
3v3: Income = .67 (or 67%)
4v4: Income = .50 (or 50%)

Lengthens early game, delays heavy tanks and call-ins. All without having to impact 1v1 balance at all.

Regarding #2, the maps are just not well designed mostly, and need to be fixed. Relic has explicitly said they're working on that.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that would make Axis factions even stronger.
Till the time any allied tank will hit the field, wehrmacht and okw will have won the game already. They can utilize Manpower and munitions better than the allied factions, especially the OKW. Till the time your first t34 comes out I will have already vet 4 volks running around with shrecks or endless mines on the field.
Sure you'd never see Heavy tanks, but they are not really needed for winning.
Imagine a time window in which Obersoldaten can freely melt infantry without fearing a sherman because you raketenwerfer and volksshrecks have just taken a sherman out.

The game is won by better tactics and micro. Heavy tanks just don't penalize mistakes that much.
On low level 3on3 4on4 people have bad micro and tactics, therefore the deciding factor sometimes seems the heavy tank.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that would make Axis factions even stronger.
Till the time any allied tank will hit the field, wehrmacht and okw will have won the game already. They can utilize Manpower and munitions better than the allied factions, especially the OKW. Till the time your first t34 comes out I will have already vet 4 volks running around with shrecks or endless mines on the field.
Sure you'd never see Heavy tanks, but they are not really needed for winning.
Imagine a time window in which Obersoldaten can freely melt infantry without fearing a sherman because you raketenwerfer and volksshrecks have just taken a sherman out.

The game is won by better tactics and micro. Heavy tanks just don't penalize mistakes that much.
On low level 3on3 4on4 people have bad micro and tactics, therefore the deciding factor sometimes seems the heavy tank.

I disagree. Soviet mines are better than OKW, shocks are arguably stronger than obers without armor in the picture, and with zero fuel investment required. I could take the paragraph you wrote above, replace unit names with allies' equivalents and it'll sound just as plausible.

Till the time any axis tank will hit the field, SU and US will have won the game already. They can utilize Manpower and munitions better than the axis factions, especially the SU. Till the time your first P4 comes out I will have already vet 3 rifles running around with 1919s or endless soviet mines on the field.
Sure you'd never see Heavy tanks, but they are not really needed for winning.
Imagine a time window in which shock troops can freely melt infantry without fearing a luchs because you zis and AT nades have just taken a luchs out.

Slowing down CPs will hurt those who need CPs, which isn't the Axis factions.

One of the biggest problems is the amount of resources in 4v4 and shared resources. You are not punished for building fuelcaches or ammocaches plus everyone benefits from them.

The high resources makes it easy to constantly pump out tanks and making coh2 a brody tank war every game.

How many times are you floating 300 plus ammo or fuel in the later game?
Its just too much.

Well:

1) What you get for your buck is not necessarily the same across factions

2) Pop Cap tends to be the limit not resources

100 pop cap of OKH and OKW is better than 100 pop cap of USF, not necessarily Sovs


And we like tank wars, that is why we play 4v4 in the first place

I disagree. Soviet mines are better than OKW, shocks are arguably stronger than obers without armor in the picture, and with zero fuel investment required. I could take the paragraph you wrote above, replace unit names with allies' equivalents and it'll sound just as plausible.

Both mines are equal, dealing same amount of damage.
Shocks have armor, Obers have RA >>> which is practically the same

Reducing incomes is not as easy as it sounds. You are not taking into account initial amount of fuel, teching cost, timing to field counters, etc.

You are going to play 8 mins with only Rifles? What will you do against a Kubel? German sniper? SOVIET sniper? M3?
What about mp? It stays the same or also scales? Cost of the units?

Both mines are equal, dealing same amount of damage.
Shocks have armor, Obers have RA >>> which is practically the same

Reducing incomes is not as easy as it sounds. You are not taking into account initial amount of fuel, teching cost, timing to field counters, etc.

You are going to play 8 mins with only Rifles? What will you do against a Kubel? German sniper? SOVIET sniper? M3?
What about mp? It stays the same or also scales? Cost of the units?

I thought SU mines were more efficient, but I'm sure you know better. Ok still balanced though.

Can tweak initial fuel amounts, though it seems to me they're mostly there due to the varying cost of necessary starting buildings.

Kubel, sniper, M3, all these are things people have to deal with now in 1v1, except now you should have combined arms to deal with it better. M3 for kubel, OH sniper/scout car for SU sniper. Seems fine to me.

MP stays the same. Cost of units stays the same.

BTW, I used to play global conflict with you and Sarantini

And we like tank wars, that is why we play 4v4 in the first place

Please refer to yourself instead of generalizing.

van Voort uses the royal We

Why can't there be limits to units per tier. So an example is limiting the number of maching gunners to perhaps 1 or 2 per tier to avoid spam? Just seems that team games just end up being who can field more mg's early game, lock sectors down, bring in mortars then tanks.

Genuine question: Why doesn't Relic say "screw 1v1, let's make COH2 a team game with 4v4", considering more people play 4v4 than 1v1? It just makes more sense.

It isn't impossible to balance 4v4, it's 'very difficult' to balance 4v4 and 1v1 at the same time.

Genuine question: Why doesn't Relic say "screw 1v1, let's make COH2 a team game with 4v4", considering more people play 4v4 than 1v1? It just makes more sense.

It isn't impossible to balance 4v4, it's 'very difficult' to balance 4v4 and 1v1 at the same time.

Where do you have the info from that more people play 4v4?

In the long run I believe that competitive 1v1 and 2v2, with semi-playable 3v3 and 4v4 will sustain this game over only balancing for 4v4. The problem with only setting the game up for 4v4 is that you have to get 8 people into a single RTS game and unlike a FPS that is a lot to ask. The reason being that a single RTS match can take 1-2 hours for a single match and that can get boring for people who lose ground early and then spend an hour trying to get back ground only to lose in the end. You also have the problem of trying to coordinate with 3 other people who need to manage several units at once and one sub-par player can lead to a very frustrating experience. I believe 4v4 can be playable, but I don't think it will ever be as playable as people want due to how CoH2 is structured. You are meant to get to the late game by at least 20-30 minutes in and I just believe that abusive early strats will reign if you extend that time by lowering resource rates. Do you really want to face Maxim spam for 30-40 minutes with no tanks due to the fuel rate being significantly lower?

I would start by saying I really enjoy the games Relic makes and especially the CoH/DoW2 games. There is however some comments I would like to make about the balance practise. The following arguments are based on 700+ hours experience, there are no real accessible data to justify the arguments so must be viewed through player experience. (This is in it's self would be argument for the community to have access to game generated data collected by Relic.)

The current 1v1 balance ethos is damaging to team game play-style as it is. The current team games sees fortification of key strategic ports with a focus of forces drawn to these points. This is converse to 1v1 where the over committal of forces decreases map control and ultimately a loss in resource income. Previous patches expected a certain level of unit control and player cooperation to capture the strategic points in the opening minutes of the game. Complete control of points where normally decided between the 5-10 min mark entering the fortification phase of the points. Early control of of these points has swung in favour of a certain faction due to a particular unit's ability to rapid redeployment and to rapidly suppress the enemy's early attempts to control these points. The balance changes where to improve an underperforming unit in 1v1 but has had an untended effect of easy early control of key points in teams games. Whether the balance change impact was considered for team games is unclear. Ideally there should not be any one go to form of opening to ensure early success.

Teams games often see quicker teching and build up of forces due shared resources and locked resources points. This is something that is not seen in 1v1 unless there an uneven match in skill. The 1v1 ethos creates a dynamically swinging flow of map control and thus fluctuations resource incoming. Swinging map control is seen to be much less in 4v4 games, lines are often drawn early in the game. Sharing resources in itself is not a problem as both sides have the ability but with one side to having the ability rapidly control and thus lock down strategic points undermines a balanced level of teching/build up forces. Additionally the sharing of resources has negated the disadvantage one side had in reduced in fuel income which limited their ability to field strong preforming units early on in 1v1 games.

Substantial losses a by player in team games can be countered by savvy teammates to fill gaps caused by lost units giving time to recover. Substantial losses is a death blow in 1v1. Experience players can carry less experience players to the late game where one side has particular advantage with heavy armour. Consolidated heavy armour can be very difficult to counter and one side often requires much more team mate coordination then other side in order to counter the armour threat. This problem was enhanced by changes to improve an unit's performance in 1v1.

These three arguments are a bases to a discussion that 1v1 balancing ethos is damaging to team game approach. Although the above arguments will have counter arguments to a lesser or greater extent they are only to demonstration how team games are often played out and the effect of the current balance approach has on this.

It has been suggested that team game balance is impossible as other RTS have the same problem. I put forward that is because RTS are exclusively balanced around 1v1 with influence from 2v2. If the game was exclusively balanced for team games there would be certainly an improvement in team game experience.

I pose a question. Why exclusively balance around 1v1? In some RTS games where 1v1 extremely popular and leads to massive tournaments of huge cash prizes focus on 1v1 is important. I don't believe this is the case for CoH2, and without access to data I suggest this unlikely to be the case for a long while. Relic's continuing revenue for the game is driven by reoccurring dlc (the merits of which can be discussed elsewhere). This reliance requires a large active and happy community. My understanding (again without data) is that team games are the most popular form of consumption of the game. If this is true It makes sense in my mind to carter to the majority if it is relied on for continuing support for further revenue streams.

Catering to the massive could be achieved in one of two ways. The first approach could be to change the focus of balance to team games forcing players to cooperate more closely to achieve victory and improving the satisfaction of the team experience, this may require a massive think of the game approach. This unlikely to happen due to an ingrained tradition that 1v1 should be the primary concern of RTS. Relic has always been a company to do new and exciting things which make them their games so attractive. My hope there would be some thinking outside the RTS box when it came to team games, make cooperation core to the game.

The second approach is to allow the community to do it's own balancing through mod support and the Steamwork shop. The team balance mod could be sold on the workshop to Relic's benefit and also support the modders. In this case there must be strong support by Relic by allowing mods to search through auto match system. Only allowing custom games to support modding would undermine players will to look for games.

tl;dr: Conjecture and speculation based on experience with out access to data suggests the current 1v1 balance ethos breaks current team game play-style based on 3 arguments; team-games are fortification of key points, rapid teching and sustaining losses. Under the impression that team games the most popular form of the game, focus on 1v1 balance is at risk of undermining the larger community and thus a revenue stream. Suggested a refocus on balancing to appease the majority or facilitate community balancing through modding.

Nice post Thomas. I think you raised a lot of good points about balance around 4v4 and how units work within them

I know you hate to hear it, but it's true. You can't balance the game for 3v3 and 4v4 without ruining 1v1 and 2v2.

For those of you who are CoH1 vets, you'll remember that 1v1 and 2v2 were very well balanced. 2v2 was actually a little to difficult for Axis because the Brits boost in resources made it too difficult to win early game.

But 4v4 games in CoH1 favored axis, b/c axis could actually drag out the game and get heavy tanks and buy vet 3.

It's always been like this and unless you want to homogenize the factions and make them exact mirrors of each other, you have to accept the fact that the lion's share of the balance teams efforts has to remain on 1v1 and 2v2.

But it didn't have to always be like that. There were enough differences between US and Wehr that you didn't need bought veterancy to make them different. Bought veterancy I think cheapened the Wehr. I didn't play them for a long time, and when I did start there was this weird feeling... You would wipe an opposing squad and there wasn't ever that satisfying feeling of watching the veterancy chevron float up in return as a sort of "good job". And never that desperate need to keep a vet3 alive that allies had since any new unit you bought came out with that vet.

Bought veterancy would not have changed the imbalances between the mortars and the mgs, the med tents (soft, one free unit for each 6 men, un garrisonable) and the bunkers, the HT and Pak coming T2 vs T3, turreted AT and AI Allied tanks vs. the Suh & Stug, jeeps vs bikes, etc. etc. Small differences add up, and add up fast. And there were lots more of them. (Invisible units, arty disparities, armor disparities, etc.)

Relic's continuing revenue for the game is driven by reoccurring dlc (the merits of which can be discussed elsewhere). This reliance requires a large active and happy community. My understanding (again without data) is that team games are the most popular form of consumption of the game. If this is true It makes sense in my mind to carter to the majority if it is relied on for continuing support for further revenue streams.

Catering to the massive could be achieved in one of two ways. The first approach could be to change the focus of balance to team games forcing players to cooperate more closely to achieve victory and improving the satisfaction of the team experience, this may require a massive think of the game approach. This unlikely to happen due to an ingrained tradition that 1v1 should be the primary concern of RTS. Relic has always been a company to do new and exciting things which make them their games so attractive. My hope there would be some thinking outside the RTS box when it came to team games, make cooperation core to the game.

The second approach is to allow the community to do it's own balancing through mod support and the Steamwork shop. The team balance mod could be sold on the workshop to Relic's benefit and also support the modders. In this case there must be strong support by Relic by allowing mods to search through auto match system. Only allowing custom games to support modding would undermine players will to look for games.

Super post with considering suggestions. Suppose 3 vs 3 , 4 vs 4 were excluded from the Coh2 in this case the player base would reduce to 2000-3000 players and would never rise again.

Dev Team - listen to the community !!! There has been a very unhealthy situation around the game !

I just don't understand Relic's standpoint on team games. They have made the game modes, they are very popular, but Relic don't want to support/balance them (as said in their own words).

There will come a point in the future where people will just stop playing these modes, if the current situation continues.

Will they go on to 1v1? I don't know, but speaking from a personal stance, I won't. I just don't enjoy the 1v1 side of the game.

I don't want to make threats against Relic, by saying "if you don't do this, I will...", but I have to be honest, I'll just move onto another game. The general feeling amongst my friends that play, mirrors my own.

I also don't want to irk the exclusive 1v1 players either. I personally think all game modes should be equally supported, as that's how the game was marketed.

1v1 players should also be more understanding and considerate of those that enjoy team games. You also benefit from the revenue stream, team players bring into relics coffers. If those players disappear, the frequency and quality of any future updates will be impacted, which means the quality of your 1v1 game also suffers.

Consider that.