"Blobbing"

Ok this needs to be said, because apparently nobody gets the concept

Yes there is blobbing in this game, that "blob" is your ARMY. and it makes perfect sense to "blob" your army together, would you rather split all your units up and lose them 1 by 1 like an idiot? i'd like to think not

seriously this whole concept of blobbers are noobs and whatever needs to stop soon. Do you know why? Because EVERY RTS HAS "BLOBBING". Look at starcraft 2. blobbing. age of empires? blobbing. command and conquer? blobbing. grey goo? blobbing. get the point?

the reason that "blobbing" (goodness i hate saying that) is so annoying to play against is because the AOE in this game is unreliable. if artillery had a 100% accuracy where you clicked nobody would have a problem with this so please don't blame the people who combine their arms so they have the most efficiency of their forces.

Am i alone in this thinking? Am i (no pun intended) crazy for thinking that your "blob" is your army and it's supposed to be strong, because if not then your army is pathetic.

(ps) i'm not a fan of volks blobs or saying those are balanced, i'm just talking about "blobbing" in general soviets grouping together, grenadiers gathering, rifilemen pushing together as a blob etc.

If mg's would be better we wouldnt have this problem

Well the reason I hate blobbing is simply that in theory the player with combined arms should have an advantage over the enemy who just bunches up all his forces and send them in one direction.

You simply lack the tools to counter blobs effectively. As Mackie stated, MGs are unreliable since sometimes they supress with their first volley, sometimes they don't, sometimes they start reloading as soon as they see your opponent, sometimes the MG gunner gets shot instantly. And you are right, Arty is unreliable aswell. Again, too much RNG involved in here.

DoW 2 has no blobbing


On a serious note, I've seen what I think people complain about, the most common of those happen with OKW, when they reach a critical mass of shrecks and obers, if you didn't wipe some of those squads previously you'll find yourself in an unmanageable situation no matter how much indirect fire you have, this can and does happen with every faction, but it's most complained and seen with okw because they are the only faction that can mass enough AT on a rather durable and cheap squad to mix in with the best infantry in the game and simply push up any position with MGs,AT guns,Mortarts being completely powerless.

And considering how this game works I think people expect more of a dow2 approach, do you remember crazy? You had your core units and sometimes your hero pushing the front (let's say 2x shootas and a WB) while the rest of your army was making flanking manouvers from both sides (nobs,sluggas,tanks etc) to break up HWT/lascannons/main line infantry positions.

But I still think the core problem of this lies in unreliable support teams, pretty much, the only functional setup team in CoH2 are AT guns.

The problem with comparing SC2 to CoH2 in this regard is that CoH2 is pretty much exclusively a tactics and positioning game. In SC2, there are a lot more variables affecting the outcome of a fight: economic strength, macro ability, upgrades, unit composition, and then finally micro and positioning. SC2 is a lot more about mechanical skill and strategic decision-making than micro and positioning except at the absolute pinnacle of professional play. There are a wide variety of ways to outplay your opponent, so something like unit positioning can be de-emphasized relative to other aspects of the game.

In CoH2, the only way you can reliably outplay your opponent is through superior positioning and tactical decision-making. Because of that, a lot of emphasis has to be put on rewarding intelligent positioning and punishing lazy positioning, because if you don't reward intelligent tactical play then you aren't giving players any way to differentiate themselves from those with lesser abilities.

Now, the issue isn't that blobbing exists, it's that players need to be rewarded for positioning their units intelligently instead of simply blobbing them. Smart positioning and intelligent tactical play should be difficult but also more rewarding than blobbing, because if blobbing is easier to execute and equally rewarding then it's going to be used all the time and it's going to be very difficult for good players to rise above bad players because everyone can box a group of units and attack-move.

I can't speak to CoH2, but CoH1 struggled with this a lot over the years. It eventually reached a good point in balancing blobbing vs. positioning in all but one match-up: American infantry blobs against PE. Current American vs. PE play is dominated by American infantry blobs that are very easy to use and very difficult to do anything about. This gives American players a lot more consistency against PE, and it results in a mismatch of effort required by the two factions in the earlygame, because the American blob is as strong, if not stronger, than well-microed PE infantry formations.

I guess that's my long-winded way of saying it's not a simple matter of blobs are good vs. blobs are bad. In a game like CoH2 where tactical and positional decisions make up the bulk of the player choices in a game, blobs should be easier to use but weaker in power than properly microed and positioned infantry. However, striking the proper balance takes time and a lot of trial and error.

but blobbers are fairly easy to beat from my experience
makes them extremely susceptible to aoe explosive attacks as well as properly positioned suppression platforms.

on one hand you have blobs like schreck volks/obers. then you have the other extreme: demos... and then there is random shit in between like the B4, planes crashing, pathing........

and how easy blobs are to counter depends a lot on what units/globals you have available. fear artillery and a katy? OKW infantry blob not so much of an issue. playing as USF? much harder. OKH with grens vs riflemen/left-tenant/vehicle early game? eh, fair bit of disparate effort there...

i get the combined arms thing, every faction does this except okw which i'm fine with, but it just seems like everyone enjoys hating on the fact that you're "blobbing" your forces together. the only thing that can be done is relic fixing the reliability of aoe explosives which this RTS needs imo.

it just gets frustrating seeing people call eachother blobbers when it's common sense to gather your forces to get the maximum firepower.

and yes ace dow2 had blobbing, who could forget the classic toilailee tac blob?

on that topic: build two of the same unit>blobber achievement.

That's the point, right now 2 or 3 squads of double BAR rifles or 2 Obersoldaten squads can frontally assault your MG and wipe it. As Mackie, Luvnest and Inverse said, we do not have effective crowd control mechanics. MGs dies too soon (mostly because the gunner dies first-this has been fixed in Kappatch) and "mindless blobbing" is too damn effective. A blob of 3-4 Volks and 2 Obersaldaten is unstoppable. In Theory you can suppress them, but it's hard to perform in the game.

in terms of sportmanship i dont see anything wrong with blobbing.

In terms of strategy its a risky tactic. it can be very effective, but you also risk losing eveything very quickly or risk going on a full retreat of all your squads because of an artillary barrage

It's simply a part of the game though. figuring out how close to keep your squads so they can support eachother and win engagements, but not bunching up so much that you lose map control.

In order to even play this game you must blob. its just a matter of what extent are you blobbing.

Because EVERY RTS HAS "BLOBBING". Look at starcraft 2. blobbing.

You simply lack the tools to counter blobs effectively. As Mackie stated, MGs are unreliable since sometimes they supress with their first volley, sometimes they don't, sometimes they start reloading as soon as they see your opponent, sometimes the MG gunner gets shot instantly. And you are right, Arty is unreliable aswell. Again, too much RNG involved in here.

As stated above, the counter tools to a huge infantry blob are too unreliable to be used consistently. Surely well placed demos etc can punish the blobs, but thats not very dynamic and limited to one faction (non-doc). The biggest difference when comparing to SC2 is that in SC (the mechanics are quite a lot less complicated, granted) you can easily punish unmicroed "blobs". In CoH2 you might need a single shell from a T34 or Tiger to drop several entities at once, or you can have a Katyusha barrage that does less than the previous example. HE explosives still can somewhat reliably counter all sorts of blobs most of time, and a buff to them would just cause single squads to get wiped continuously. Not very rewarding either.

Slightly OT: I know this is not a topic on how to solve blobbing, but what I would like to see is MGs getting a slight cost increase and a dramatic increase in performance. I also believe that units shooting from a cover should be more accurate. Example: Oorahing over red cover to hug the grens in green cover and only losing 0-2 models in the process is wrong in my opinion.

That's the point, right now 2 or 3 squads of double BAR rifles or 2 Obersoldaten squads can frontally assault your MG and wipe it. As Mackie, Luvnest and Inverse said, we do not have effective crowd control mechanics. MGs dies too soon (mostly because the gunner dies first-this has been fixed in Kappatch) and "mindless blobbing" is too damn effective. A blob of 3-4 Volks and 2 Obersaldaten is unstoppable. In Theory you can suppress them, but it's hard to perform in the game.

what you expect a single MG to stop an entire army? Thats ridiculous. If that were even remotely possible then wed just have MG blob armies.


Theres a huge number of tools to counter blobs. Theres just no counter to blobs that involve using only a single unit or a single ability.

what you expect a single MG to stop an entire army? That's ridiculous. If that were even remotely possible then wed just have MG blob armies.


There's a huge number of tools to counter blobs. There's just no counter to blobs that involve using only a single unit or a single ability.

I do not expect a MG to suppress an ARMY, but what about 2 double BAR rifles mindlessly rushing you? In some cases they do frontally kill the gunner and you have to fall back. What about 2 Obersoldaten squads? Thy snipe the gunner and force you to fall back. I also have nothing against heavy infantry builds (as romeo likes to call it TACTICAL BLOBBING). If someone wants to go infantry heavy, use smoke, flank etc. I'm fine with it. But right now single unit bobbing is too damn effective, specially Volkblob, Obersoldaten blob, or double BAR/M1919 Rifles.

Your second point is valid, and that's mostly referring to Volksblob at higher vets which can counter vehicles and kill MGs with stock or doctrinal grenades. All I'm saying is they should somehow make "A-move" tactics less effective.

Yes blobbing is one thing, but entire factions having no viable tactic besides spamming entire hordes of blobs like the OKW and especially US forces do, then that is a game disorder.

It is almost as if Relic wanted this to happen, who would design factions with vet 5 god abilities or overperforming rifle and airborne blobs with lmgs that melt anything away.

Honestly, I see more blobing after the release of WFA than I ever did before it.

The reason of blobs is very simple. No MG, no mortar, no sniper.
All you need to do is to make Rifles or Volks.

OST can get MG or Mortar at the beggining. Same for Soviets (even more options). That's why these factions are blobbing less.

It has a core in game design. That's all.

The reason of blobs is very simple. No MG, no mortar, no sniper.
All you need to do is to make Rifles or Volks.

OST can get MG or Mortar at the beggining. Same for Soviets (even more options). That's why these factions are blobbing less.

It has a core in game design. That's all.

This is exactly right, OKW and USF promotes blobing thus more blobing now than before WFA!

blobbing is just fucking boring, why even play an rts like this if your going to do that, I don't get it...