Blizzards don't add strategic depth

I agree. This, to me atleast, is a "cup half full vs cup half empty" dilemma.

One side sees death by freezing as a hard limitation that restricts strategy negatively.
One side sees death by freezing as a hard limitation that restricts strategy positively.

On my own behalf, perhaps because I live in Finland, understand the dangers of cold intimately, and served through two winters in themilitary, and because of my predeliction towards the historical Finnish/Soviet engagements in winter, I may be biased.

On my perspective of the opposing view, I suspect it is related to the predeliction of vCoH vets to want the game to remain as vanilla as possible, also through the new Blizzard minigame phase.

Judging from what I have read, a more mutually constructive direction for discussion might be to talk about the currently existing timers before model loss and the timers and quantity of combat modifiers from cold.

This presents an opportunity for compromise for example in practical terms of increasing the timer before model deaths, and adjusting the values of combat modifiers from cold, without removing death, but still increasing the scope for decision making regarding infantry during blizzards, as is the main concern of one side, and the necessity for the hard limitation of death on the other.

Can we agree on this?

Freezing doesn't "restrict' strategy at all because it's pointlessly easy to avoid. Just go into cover or a building or next to a fire. You keep posting about how you're so much more knowledgeable about how dangerous cold is in real life and about how us vCoH vets want the game to be exactly the same, but you're ignoring how we constantly say that the cold is not dangerous and how it's not a change from vCoH because it's so easy to keep from freezing. We want a change from vCoH because right now it is the same as vCoH, because freezing to death doesn't matter here any more than it matters in vCoH. It's about as easy to avoid here as it is in the first game.

Bumping up the "how long would it take to freeze to death" timer would make dying from cold even more pointless and make it even less of a strategic decision, which is impressive because it barely is one right now.

I have rarely let them die. Has to be said if there's not a fire in the immediate vicinty, or a building, then it's retreat every time, even if it does mean losing the point.

Incidentally - has anyone used attack ground with a flame unit to set fire to trees or similar and *then* get them next to it? Seems as though it would be a faster, albeit more temporary, solution to building a fire.

...and completely OT, I've noticed flamer packs being dropped in the latest version. Is this a change?

Flamers had always dropped in CoH2 Beta.

I haven't had much success using flamers to heat stuff up, honestly.

I have to agree with you, Basilone.

Blizzards are almost completely useless at this point, and are a detriment to gameplay. They hit every ~6.5 minutes, and basically KILL the momentum of a game.

Are you on a roll, taking over a map? Too bad. Blizzard puts that on hold for about 2 minutes, giving the enemy team time to recoup. Even if you don't camp beside a fire and keep moving, the move speed penalty is more than enough.

Right now, all blizzards do is add in a mandatory 'recoup' time. TBH the blizzards are the one reason that snow maps are actually FAR worse than Summer maps.

cold is not dangerous

And yet you want to remove the one thing that makes it dangerous at all.

I don't think he doesn't want cold to be dangerous, Nullist. He wants the cold to be tactically relevant. Right now, it isn't for many of us. That's the entire point he's been trying to make for the past like... 3 pages.

I have to agree with you, Basilone.

Blizzards are almost completely useless at this point, and are a detriment to gameplay. They hit every ~6.5 minutes, and basically KILL the momentum of a game.

Are you on a roll, taking over a map? Too bad. Blizzard puts that on hold for about 2 minutes, giving the enemy team time to recoup. Even if you don't camp beside a fire and keep moving, the move speed penalty is more than enough.

Right now, all blizzards do is add in a mandatory 'recoup' time. TBH the blizzards are the one reason that snow maps are actually FAR worse than Summer maps.

I thought they removed the move speed penalty.

It was removed, or they changed it back?

Anyway, if you state that the blizzard puts your army on hold for 2 minutes, then that's your problem. I dont have any problem moving my units during blizzards, its harder to see the enemy, but that doesnt mean i can't make a good sneak attack from all flanks, all because he wont see me coming untill im pretty close. And now that you can build fireplaces even turing blizzard, its not a big gamechanging factor anymore. You loose a game because of blizzard? learn to play!

Ofc im pretty sure its more to do with a person getting frustrated ("omfg.. blizzard again?! .. i can't be arsed") over the blizzard because how they are and not giving it a chance to perhaps learn to enjoy it. Some people can be really stubborn because ("OMG THEY DIDNT DO THINGS MY WAY!") how they think things should be. Give the cool mechanism a chance, i did and i don't get negative emotion because another blizzard hits. I find it really neat, because it looks cool with maxed out graphics and it gives the real feeling of the winter back then.


"From the mappers side of things"
I hope relic will include maps that dont have blizzard at all, as there were days that the sun shined bright and the weather was clear. If you can make winter maps without the blizzard then you already have 2 options how to make a winter map, so you can become really creative because you actually have the chance to control how the weather behaves in your map.

It wouldn't be a bad design decision, if each map in automatch had slightly different characteristics. So you know certain maps have very few Blizzards, others have none at all, etc.

In an ideal world, Blizzards should affect and compliment the map's design.

I thought they removed the move speed penalty.

They might have lowered it since Alpha, but it's there.

Anyone got any concrete figures on cold timers to death and modifiers?

In an ideal world, Blizzards should affect and compliment the map's design.

Very cool (pun intended) suggestion. Perhaps also a "Forecast XX% chance of Blizzards" in the map description on the match loading screen.

I think it would be interesting to have a map that has a persistent blizzard that never goes away from the start.

OMG, you dig a one year old thread as your first post

Well it's not like blizzards have changed at all so I guess it's all still relevant.

I think it would be interesting to have a map that has a persistent blizzard that never goes away from the start.

Why would you want this? That sounds like a terrible idea imo.

Although I agree this definitely shifts towards necro posting, and is not immediately related to the discussion about strategic depth in blizzards.

Leave this man alone. You can necro a thread and people cry or you can create a new thread and someone tells you to use the search function. Either way, nobody is satisfied. ^^

Blizzards are a pain for every game. CoH is a fast paced game where you need to capture points and apply pressure to outcap your opponent. Every feature that interrupts this, contradicts the thought behind CoH and good gameplay imo.

Thus, I have all Blizzard-maps vetoed. A map with continuous snowstorms would be the first one I´d lock.