COH2 Connundrum

I am not going to speculate about what is possible inside a game development company, but if relic is serious about actually fixing the game then they are going to have to make quite a few changes behind the game code.

My recommendation would be to go back to behind the scenes in COH and look at how certain things work, and engineer them back into COH2.

I'm talking about how explosions work ( right now its all or nothing and its game breaking), how infantry move, tank combat ( damage tables and armour classes), how small arms fire works ( at this stage some weapons simply melt infantry and its game breaking - iv seen instances of units retreating almost instantly and being wiped out - terrible design im looking at lmg for grens for starters)

Simply put there is absolutely now way to "balance" or fix the game as it stands in current design, simply too many issues to deal with and its not possible. The game does not have enough variables play around with and then you see the sledgehammer balance approach - basically the team does not have enough factors to use finesse when it comes to certain units.

The more variables a game has to tinker with the easier it becomes to buff or nerf a unit subtly to make it useful and then the better the game will play in the end.

For example think about how engine criticals use to work and how they effected the game for the better (in COH) take a unit like the t70, say it takes a hit from the pak gets damaged, then the player is too slow to react and takes another hit on the way out. It is now left with minimal health - in coh there would be a huge chance of engine damage and it would probably slow to a crawl and get killed but in COH2 it simply gets away, even though the player overextended and should have lost his unit - now it comes back to the game in 3 mins, with veterancy due to taking damage. Now engine damage its a on/off switch from t0-t1 units using and "ability" - this in itself is completely against everything COH was, not too mention being completely a game breaking design.

This one tiny scenario shows everything that is wrong with the game - no one that ever played coh for more than a few casual games would say the above scenario is how it should work.

Add another 50 small issues which all compound and then you get the game in its current state.


So either go back to the drawing board and come up with a substantial patch that adds a lot more variables into how things work - then play around with those until the game sits at a better spot or change focus completely on the game because the online play wont get any better than it is , will just shift what works and what doesn't from patch to patch.


I believe this to be the feedback relic got right from the beginning from pro players but for whatever reason it never took them up on it - be it money, time or other issues.

Either way to anyone involved in the game ( developer or otherwise) its now clearly obvious to be a huge issue and has to be addressed if there is any hope of the game growing.

The community is large enough and passionate enough that relic could do this and weather the storm and still make a lot more money at the end of it - or they can slowly kill off its fanbase and face god awful sales from any of their other games from now on.

I paid more for COH2 because I use to love relic and wanted to support them, now like many others I would never pay for a relic product again unless I was completely sure that it was up to quality. I have not paid for a single DLC, the expansions or anything else in COH2 even though I owned 3 copies of COH, 2 copies of Opposing Fronts and a copy of tales of valour.

For example think about how engine criticals use to work and how they effected the game for the better (in COH) take a unit like the t70, say it takes a hit from the pak gets damaged, then the player is too slow to react and takes another hit on the way out. It is now left with minimal health - in coh there would be a huge chance of engine damage and it would probably slow to a crawl and get killed but in COH2 it simply gets away, even though the player overextended and should have lost his unit - now it comes back to the game in 3 mins, with veterancy due to taking damage.

This entire segment is flawed. T-70's are killed in 2 hits from any Anti-Tank gun or 3 hits from a Panzerschreck / Panzerfaust. I understand what you mean about Engine Damage being a random crit, but they took that away in favour of leaving Engine Damage for Mines / AT abilities. Engine damage and the like is still a very rare alternative to unit death, but afaik it doesn't happen randomly once you hit 30% health.

Now engine damage its a on/off switch from t0-t1 units using and "ability" - this in itself is completely against everything COH was, not too mention being completely a game breaking design.

This was done so you wouldn't be able to just tank rush unpunished. Tanks in CoH2 are more lethal than in CoH2, and as a result Infantry AT was given the ability to 'snare' them and prevent abuse.

The community is large enough and passionate enough that relic could do this and weather the storm and still make a lot more money at the end of it - or they can slowly kill off its fanbase and face god awful sales from any of their other games from now on.

The entire post just reads like "Everything's broke and the only way to fix it is to make it like vCoH."

The entire post just reads like "Everything's broke and the only way to fix it is to make it like vCoH."

Mechanically the game should be like vCoH, if they are going to call it CoH. Not saying the factions and units and abilities should all be a WM+US copy paste with re-skin, but mechanically the game should play the same or very similar.

Mechanically the game should be like vCoH, if they are going to call it CoH. Not saying the factions and units and abilities should all be a WM+US copy paste with re-skin, but mechanically the game should play the same or very similar.

It's a different game. It shouldn't play the same. What would even be the point? It's not an expansion to CoH1.

you give a long speech about how relic should fix the game but with one example, which is also a bad one. because of this, your essay boils down to "fix coh2/ make it more like coh"

your example(t70 v. pak) is bad because as the game stands right now, the pak will almost always get the a second shot off at any vehicle that does not reverse right away( and i do mean literally right away) as soon as they get into the pak's range.

and unlike you suggest, the t70 can and will die many times instantly from the pak's second shot. it won't always have that sliver of health left.

so i do not think there is anything wrong with that. but you do. but instead of presenting it as a possible issue, you declare it as an issue that need fixing, which does not bolster your stance... for me at least.

It's a different game. It shouldn't play the same. What would even be the point? It's not an expansion to CoH1.

and unlike you suggest, the t70 can and will die many times instantly from the pak's second shot. it won't always have that sliver of health left.

Afaik the only way to get out "with a sliver of health" as OP said, would be for it to get a gun destroyed critical. Which ironically, is a hell of a lot rarer than vCoH's 5% fug.

you give a long speech about how relic should fix the game but with one example, which is also a bad one. because of this, your essay boils down to "fix coh2/ make it more like coh"

your example(t70 v. pak) is bad because as the game stands right now, the pak will almost always get the a second shot off at any vehicle that does not reverse right away( and i do mean literally right away) as soon as they get into the pak's range.

and unlike you suggest, the t70 can and will die many times instantly from the pak's second shot. it won't always have that sliver of health left.

so i do not think there is anything wrong with that. but you do. but instead of presenting it as a possible issue, you declare it as an issue that need fixing, which does not bolster your stance... for me at least.

In a simplistic sentence that is exactly my point - it should be like COH, and thats not a bad thing.

Ill give you another example for instance - mortars.

In COH they are simply deadly, they can wipe a whole squad if they are bunched up on a direct hit, and thats fantastic in my eyes as in real life the same can happen, but they have a critical flaw.

They are support weapons and a simple flank will wipe then out in seconds so if you rely on a mortar spam tactic you get punished well before they do enough damage to pay for themselves.

In COH2 its not like that, it takes soo long to wipe out support squads that you can spam mortars and be completely rewarded - especially as soviets. I do this myself, I tend to build 2-3 mortars if I can get away with it as with 6 man squads you can nearly always escape.

There is a rock, paper scissors gameplay in COH that was amazing - the game was flexible enough to enable great battles and maneouvres but allowed for quick, desive and crippling engagements when the time needed.

In COH 2 its the opposite instead of being rewarded for flanking your enemies camping position with mortar /mg spam, they get to run away with little damage.

As for the pak example thats complete BS - as the game stands right now ( and for the longest time) if a vehicle drives past the pak laterally, it swivels sooo slowly that its lucky to get a second shot at a vehicle, then it has to go through the horrible dice roll of weather it hits or not, or if it hits some grass, fence or trees. If you do the same thing in COH the at gun instantly locks on to tanks and "jumps" into position instantly, totally punishing any vehicle dumb enough to start driving in its fifiring range. ( basically the at gun had one job to do, and it did that job well, in COH2 the at gun has one job to do, and it does so horribly - this goes for nearly every unit in the game, and if not that then they do their job so effectively that its just plain stupid - isu152 one shot squad wipes, grenades either doing nothing or killing half a squad even after they moved out of a reasonable range of grenade ect)

There was a randomness element in coh that made guns miss but it was rare enough, and worked in such a way that it added to the game instead of detracted.

Basically if a vehicle fucked with a AT gun it was bye bye time for the vehicle - its not like that now.

IN a sentence COH had it shits together and COH2 is a sloppy mess and its painful to watch and play if you are more than just a casual player.

It's a different game. It shouldn't play the same. What would even be the point? It's not an expansion to CoH1.

Wow I totally didn't see it like that! Good job, it is a different game !

This is why they should change all the core mechanics that actually made COH probably the best RTS of all time with no reason, no explanation and for the worse in nearly all cases.

But when they do that they should totally make it a direct sequel to the original game and therefore cash in on all the fans of the first that actually expect the COH2 to have similar quality and gameplay.

Further than that, they should just outright lie and lead people on about making the game even more competitive for online play than the original, all the while making it sound like it will be a worthy successor.


If they wanted to make a game completely different to COH then don't call it COH2 and don't like through your teeth about it.

Either it was completely malicious and they had no intent on making a game that was similar and therefore unacceptable or the guys making the game just had no idea, and its still unacceptable.

Use any other popular game for example - imagine if the next call of duty game was hyped up to be what the last one was and more - but in the end it used a new game engine that made it slower, jerkier and broke a lot of the core things that people love about the franchise ( no looking down the sights, no customization, no killstreaks) - do you think it would still be ok to call it a call of duty game? and do you think people would be saying, its call of duty 5, its a completely different game to COD 4 and therefore should be completely different?

The thing is, Coh1 is still running and maintains a decent player base. So it's perfectly viable to just keep playing that.

I suspect the vast majority of Coh2 players prefer the Coh2 way, but who knows, maybe we're just here for the war spoils

snip

point taken. we'll just agree to disagree.

on the flanking issue though, i don't think there is a simple way to fixing it. because some units just obliterate weapons teams flanking or not while others do only just enough damage to force retreat when flanking good. except when flanking with CE or RE.

The thing is, Coh1 is still running and maintains a decent player base. So it's perfectly viable to just keep playing that.

I suspect the vast majority of Coh2 players prefer the Coh2 way, but who knows, maybe we're just here for the war spoils

Yeah thats true - the problem is for me anyway, no matter how much i like COH its an old game, and iv played it hundreds if not thousands of times. I love the eastern front, and I love true sight ect and you cant just play the same game over and over again.

You may be right, but I think that the majority of players simply don't think about how much better the game would be if you put in the underlying mechanics of the original into this game. In fact some of the players probably wouldn't even notice, or if they did tey would just think the game is "running better" without being able to put a finger on it.

point taken. we'll just agree to disagree.

on the flanking issue though, i don't think there is a simple way to fixing it. because some units just obliterate weapons teams flanking or not while others do only just enough damage to force retreat when flanking good. except when flanking with CE or RE.

Yeh for sure we both have different opinions and thats cool.

I agree with that and hence the whole rant wrote up ( its about issues like you state above, and many many more) - im sure if you looked into it squads in coh had less HP and weak armour class that made it easy for units to kill them, and thats simply not possible in COH2 due to the lack of variables that the developers can control.

Just another fall back of doing a dodgy job with the game.

I suggest you play vCoH, cause coh2 is never ever going to be a replica of vcoh.

I suggest you play vCoH, cause coh2 is never ever going to be a replica of vcoh.

Overrated line coming next.

A man can always dream.

I suggest you play vCoH, cause coh2 is never ever going to be a replica of vcoh.

I don't want a replica - I want a game that is based off the foundations of its predecessor. A game that uses the same mechanics in a different setting - even with changes to resources, factions, maps ect the base game can be the same and it would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now.

I really don't understand the mentality of sticking up for terrible design choices - especially when there was no reason to change things.

What was wrong with tank battles of COH? and how explosions worked? How infantry battles worked? What is the improvement to the new system?

Guess what - all this stuff can be fixed. Relic is a company that builds games, they can go in and add features into this game and make it better.

Apologists that try to play it down, saying its a "different game" give them a case against doing so - Relic wrongly assume they can weather the storm and continue to make money off a poorly made game.

I think they are taking their customers as complete suckers - and if they didn't do it on purpose they should by now at least know they made a big mistake and spend some time fixing it. That called customer service.

The good will they would generate would be rewarded, and the improvements to the game would bring back players, more players would bring in more money - so its a win win for all.

The business case for bringing these in a strong - what is the most popular patch they ever brought in?

The patch that tried to fix infantry combat to a state that was something comparable to how it worked in COH.

You can argue any way you like but its almost unanimous that patch was a big step "in the right direction" and it was - but its just a drop in the ocean if thats the only fix they will bring in.

I don't want a replica - I want a game that is based off the foundations of its predecessor.

You're in LUCK! We have COH2!

You're in LUCK! We have COH2!

Not quite maybe just on the surface

I think CoH2 has a lot going for it over vCoH.

In vCoH, you could flank an AT gun with a tank, drive up close enough to run it over, and then it would just swivel around and DPS your tank to death even if you took minimal damage during the flank maneuver. CoH2 is less "rock paper scissors" so you actually get rewarded for flanking AT guns and such - if you sneak up on an AT gun with a tank, that usually does not end well for the AT gun.

I think CoH2 has a lot going for it over vCoH.

In vCoH, you could flank an AT gun with a tank, drive up close enough to run it over, and then it would just swivel around and DPS your tank to death even if you took minimal damage during the flank maneuver. CoH2 is less "rock paper scissors" so you actually get rewarded for flanking AT guns and such - if you sneak up on an AT gun with a tank, that usually does not end well for the AT gun.

What do you mean the AT gun would DPS your tank to death? If you flanked them, it's still rewarding in vcoh.

To the OP, I agree with you. The explosives in this game should be more similiar to vcoh along with the AT guns.