COH2 is to COH as Battlefield Heroes is to Battlefield 2

This got closed on the Sega forums, I didn't see that much vitrolic in it.

About 70 hours in, I'm realizing COH2 is a cartoony version of COH. It's fun, but the units move sluggishly, the effects (winter, arty) and low-contrast graphics design (hey, good idea, let's design trees high enough to obscure the screen and make every unit's camo blend in perfectly with the foliage and snow for realism!) are all at the expense of proper competitive gameplay.

You flank an MG in COH with bars, it goes down in 3-5 secs. You have to react that fast. In this game, unless they have a flamethrower, units shoot, and shoot and shoot. And not much happens. Cover matters, but not that much. It will still take a minute for small arms fire to do anything, by which time a higher tier unit is probably already on the field. T2 infantry with SMGs totally negates cover usage anyway since you're always charging in close and charging units don't take damage the way a rifle in COH would charging at volks in cover. Tanks fire at each other from insane distances across the map, silly tactics like RAM have replaced actual micro, grenades are hit or miss with apparently little AOE (Molotovs excepted). Your MG can sit in a building being flanked (if not using flame) for oh, a good minute or three before it suffers any damage. MGs suppress quick, but start killing only after about 30 seconds. Yes, noob, this game was made for you.

No tracers? What does that say? What it says is the developers wanted you to have fun running different units at each other. They don't want you to actually know where the fire is coming from so you can react appropriately. They don't want you to have to bother with directional cover (even though it's still in the game, I think!). They want stuff to randomly die (thus the original decision to have 160 damage mortars) and be silly-fun. They made a clown car and put it in the game, because it might be hard for Soviet noob players to learn how to flank an MG with infantry. To compensate they gave Germans silly strong tanks, so if they manage to hold out, they win. And oh, arty. Don't forget you can't possibly play the game without lots and lots of arty. And it's necessary, because the game is so slow and plodding with the blizzards, plus you can't risk engagements due to the retarded new population cap and upkeep system. If you attack with infantry, you'll never be able to afford to reinforce after and build new units. You arty each other because you have to, and all the top player 2v2s I've watched are devolving into the same stupid tank destroyer vs uber-tank/arty standoffs. All the decent games I've played vs equally skilled opponents have gone that way too.

Let's face it. We wanted a better COH, but we got the cartoon version.

"Moving sluggishly" is not a feature of cartoons. In fact in most cartoons people move faster than in real life. Low contrast design, camo, and screen-obscuring things are also the opposite of a cartoon. Your thread got locked on the CoH 2 beta forums probably because you've chosen a stupid, incorrect, provocative headline.

That said, I agree 100% with everything you say aside from the stupid cartoon/BF Heroes analogy and everything about visibility you've pointed out (like the things Inverse has pointed out in his similar thread) and all the stuff about combat speed and teching speed you've pointed out are totally right and make this game pretty disappointing overall compared to CoH.

Why did you start a thread attacking the developers and their game instead of making it helpful? If you actually cared about CoH, you'd care about making CoH2 into a better game. Blaming the devs for everything you hate isn't going to solve anything. Try writing positive feedback instead of hatemail that the devs wouldn't read.

If you don't want CoH2 to succeed, you're better off leaving the forums.

Why did you start a thread attacking the developers and their game instead of making it helpful? If you actually cared about CoH, you'd care about making CoH2 into a better game. Blaming the devs for everything you hate isn't going to solve anything. Try writing positive feedback instead of hatemail that the devs wouldn't read.

If you don't want CoH2 to succeed, you're better off leaving the forums.

I don't see any sign of "hate" in the original post. What I see is constructive criticism with a healthy dose of sarcasm, and if the devs can't take that, they should switch over to a job which wouldn't require them to interact with the public (note that the public in this case = potential paying customers).
There are good ideas and gameplay elements in COH2, but at the moment, the majority of vanilla COH vets are not satisfied with it and we have been offering ideas and expressing our discontent to the devs in the most civil way possible, especially in comparison to rabid fans of other game franchises.
Of course the devs will come to ignore any criticism since they have a small but significant number of fanboys jumping up to their defense every time a new thread pops up and screaming bloody murder. "Try writing positive feedback" - the hell does that mean? So any other kind of feedback has to be ignored by Relic? Is that statement supposed to be objective? And how does that improve the game exactly?
If you think schmoeing up to the devs will accomplish anything, please, do go on. Customers nowadays are not as naive as they were before, if they don't like a sequel to a game, most of them will just ignore it. Some will buy it in order to be faithful to the franchise or in hopes of it getting better down the line. But if COH2 does not live up to the expectations (see: sales) because of the devs acting all high and mighty, chances are they'll be let go by Sega and the franchise will die. Simple as that.
It is also well known and has to be reiterated many times apparently that the majority of the current Relic developers DID NOT WORK ON THE ORIGINAL COH. You are placing your trust on people who have not proven themselves yet.
Oh, and do try to keep bullying to a minimum... "If you don't want CoH2 to succeed, you're better off leaving the forums." - gimme a break...

Why did you start a thread attacking the developers and their game instead of making it helpful? If you actually cared about CoH, you'd care about making CoH2 into a better game. Blaming the devs for everything you hate isn't going to solve anything. Try writing positive feedback instead of hatemail that the devs wouldn't read.

If you don't want CoH2 to succeed, you're better off leaving the forums.

If sluzbenik doesn't care about whether CoH 2 succeeds or not, why bother writing up all these criticisms?

I think a more productive way to post in this thread would be to talk about the specific issues rather than attacking the tone. Since I agree with all the issues there isn't much for me to add except stuff like "+1" and "Inverse already posted about visibility" and so on but if you disagree with anything I think there's an interesting conversation to be had. So, where do you think sluzbenik went wrong?

I don't see any sign of "hate" in the original post. What I see is constructive criticism with a healthy dose of sarcasm, and if the devs can't take that, they should switch over to a job which wouldn't require them to interact with the public (note that the public in this case = potential paying customers).
There are good ideas and gameplay elements in COH2, but at the moment, the majority of vanilla COH vets are not satisfied with it and we have been offering ideas and expressing our discontent to the devs in the most civil way possible, especially in comparison to rabid fans of other game franchises.
Of course the devs will come to ignore any criticism since they have a small but significant number of fanboys jumping up to their defense every time a new thread pops up and screaming bloody murder. "Try writing positive feedback" - the hell does that mean? So any other kind of feedback has to be ignored by Relic? Is that statement supposed to be objective? And how does that improve the game exactly?
If you think schmoeing up to the devs will accomplish anything, please, do go on. Customers nowadays are not as naive as they were before, if they don't like a sequel to a game, most of them will just ignore it. Some will buy it in order to be faithful to the franchise or in hopes of it getting better down the line. But if COH2 does not live up to the expectations (see: sales) because of the devs acting all high and mighty, chances are they'll be let go by Sega and the franchise will die. Simple as that.
It is also well known and has to be reiterated many times apparently that the majority of the current Relic developers DID NOT WORK ON THE ORIGINAL COH. You are placing your trust on people who have not proven themselves yet.
Oh, and do try to keep bullying to a minimum... "If you don't want CoH2 to succeed, you're better off leaving the forums." - gimme a break...

I felt that the original poster expressed ill-intent with his writing, not constructive criticism. Most of it seemed to be simply criticism.

I understand that most of the vCoH players are not content with the current state of CoH2, and there has been plenty of civility. I did not find much civility in this post, mostly a negative generalization of how the game currently is followed by a majority of the issues that have been brought up previously in a number of threads. There is no reason to restate what has already been stated and is currently being discussed elsewhere (this thread, for example). If you want to express your opinion, go right ahead, but this thread seemed to focus on the bad aspects of CoH2 without offering how to fix any of the problems. As Tycho stated, some of the issues with the game are valid, and these are currently being discussed in other threads.

I'm not quite sure how believing someone wrote a bad-mannered post immediately makes me a fanboy. If you look at any other thread that talks about CoH2 issues and Relic, I don't 'jump to their defense'. There are issues with the game that need to be sorted out before launch. Repeating them with a generalization of the game being cartoony solves nothing. As for positive feedback, I agree that I was not clear with what I meant; writing anything that points out an issue and a potential solution, or a new issue that hasn't been discussed previously, would constitute what I believe to be 'positive feedback'.

I'm not quite sure how I'm schmoeing up to the devs, either. I haven't talked to a single Relic developer whatsoever, nor have I written anything that would be pointed at them.

Success and happy customers does equal sales, that is true, and players will not buy games that they dislike. However, I don't know why you think the developers are acting 'high and mighty' and are ignoring criticism. Do you have any specific feedback or articles from the developers saying they aren't going to listen to their playerbase? The game is in beta and has only been seen before by those that were in the alpha, which was different from how the game is currently. Updates have been released addressing the most pressing issues in the game (mortars, flamethrowers, tank imbalance, weapon team imbalance, etc). Maybe they aren't listening, although I have no way of knowing whether they are or not. Please let me know if you have concrete evidence as to what they are doing.

I believe most members of the forums understand that they aren't the same developers. They are still developers, though, and have released good games even if they may not have worked on the original CoH. SEGA paid a large amount of money to buy them, I imagine they have enough merit to make a decent game.

Bullying is not my intention. I was simply stating that if someone does not care to be constructive or help make the game better, coming here and complaining does not solve anything nor make anyone happy.

I apologize if I misinterpreted the original post and did any harm whatsoever. I want the CoH2 community to be a warming, welcoming, and positive place, and my intention was never to upset others. I did not feel that this thread helped to achieve that.

a lot of what the op says is true though... both conscripts and grenadiers are pretty much useless if not for their abilities.

still, most of those issues are simple balance issues and changing a few numbers around might fix those.

the plethora of indirect fire units does seem to appeal to newer players or scheldt lovers...

all things considered, i still feel like the visibility and UI issues are the most important ones, since balance issues can easily be resolved post launch.

all things considered, i still feel like the visibility and UI issues are the most important ones, since balance issues can easily be resolved post launch.

Yeah, as much as I hate having to get an upgrade to cut wire or watching units vanish sometimes when an explosive goes off and sometimes shrug it off like it doesn't matter, these things are fairly simple changes compared to the UI and not being able to see where the hell a sniper is shooting.

the plethora of indirect fire units does seem to appeal to newer players or scheldt lovers...

plethora = 2 per faction??

In defense of my metaphor, it's rhetoric. It's meant to get attention. And I'm negative I'm also not sure it can or will be fixed. I think this game design is what the producers wanted. This game is, once you figure out what the units do, much easier to play than COH, which has intricacies that do, in my opinion, make it the best RTS ever.

The funny thing is, it sort of sorts my playstyle, which is a bit too aggressive and willing to trade manpower for a tactical advantage or territory, especially when I play Russian. T-35s are nothing but anti-infantry turned ramming vehicles. I expect to lose my SU-85s chasing damaged Panthers, but if I knock it out, or get it down so far he'll spend the the next 5 minutes fixing it, it's worth it...

If they were going to fix it...Well, the early game has to come back. The early game has to matter. The pop cap and upkeep has to matter. It just doesn't right now and that is by design. Cover has to matter more. Not every early engagement should be won by whoever brings a flamethrower up fastest. Nades should be more dodgeable and buildings should be much, much weaker.

The whole new sector system is questionable...I think the cut-off/resource fight really helped define how COH played, and that is also a design decision, if I recall one of the interviews correctly. They wanted these big front-line type fights, not the intense cat & mouse, flank & maneuever, cut-off and counter cut-off, of COH...

plethora = 2 per faction??

Germans have mortar, arty field officer, mortar halftrack, Panzerwerfer, and some might count the Brummbar. Russians have mortar, heavy mortar, Katyusha, and that on-map arty thing.

Germans have mortar, arty field officer, mortar halftrack, Panzerwerfer, and some might count the Brummbar. Russians have mortar, heavy mortar, Katyusha, and that on-map arty thing.

Germans have a doctrinal on map equivalent too, no one ever uses it though.

That's what I get for only playing 1v1s where nobody bothers with that stuff. Good to know though. It should go in the German unit overview that CoH2.org has up.

Germans have mortar, arty field officer, mortar halftrack, Panzerwerfer, and some might count the Brummbar. Russians have mortar, heavy mortar, Katyusha, and that on-map arty thing.

firstly arty field officer provides indirect fire in the form of victor target, he doesn't have his own off map ability. Mortar half track, on map field guns and the 120mm mortar are commander exclusive units, so you will not always have them available. You can't fire the brummbar past shot blockers, you need a clear line of sight to fire on a target so it is most definitely not an indirect fire unit. Finally unlike the stucka, hummel or priest katyusha and Panzerwerfer are extremely fragile, so fragile that an upgunned scout car can kill a katyusha in one burst of it's auto cannon and a panzerwerfer is almost one shot by a t-34.

Yeah.

Non-doctrinal soviet indirect fire: mortar, zis3 field gun, SU-76, katyusha.
German: mortar, panzerwerfer.

that is a terrible analogy imo, just horrible.

Why did you start a thread attacking the developers and their game instead of making it helpful?

There's no hate on the OP, just the reality of things. And even if there was hate, it would still be okay, since there have been countless threads about how to improve the game and CONSTRUCTIVE threads, here and in the sega forums. They won't listen anyways, they are so pleased with their so fkkin good UI and shit, it's okay.

This is not the lollipop paradise, I hate people like you who defend devs to death even when they are doing a poor job, things must be said clear and straight.

COH was just more balanced because you got what you got.... With this game, it rewards you for playing tons and tons of games. Even if you play the computer... You get better Conscripts/Grens...

As much as I like striving towards something... it makes for an unbalanced fight say 1on1/2on2. What if you play a team that has gone for these unlocks and you have not or don't care about it. Even if you are of even skill, they might have a better loadout and it may/may not win them the game. I don't like that... and I know that's not changing. One of the rewards is like building 10% faster Conscripts/Grens...Etc... That's HUGE... I didn't go thru them all, but obviously there's tons of unlocks. If the game was truelly competitive like COH was...there's simply no need for that.
Sega/Relic should be able to remove the loadouts for hardcore mode for competitive reasons. This way....maybe all the commanders unlock, but... there are no bonuses to troops. They are all stock so everyone is on an even playing field.