If you were in charge of a Relic developer team....

I voted core game. No point doing balance, when it'll get messed up when the core game gets redesigned...

Jump back to quoted post14 Feb 2015, 08:29 AMCruzz

OKW is a badly designed faction because they have no real option except a massive infantry blob, and even that infantry is all equipped exactly the same as they have no differing infantry upgrades either. Just twiddling numbers around is not going to change the fact they have no real support weapon play, and their resource income situation coupled with stupidly good AT on their base infantry makes skipping all their lighter vehicles and going straight to heavy vehicles the optimal choice in every game. From a purely design rather than gameplay point of view it also makes no sense for the late war german faction to have almost no automatic infantry weapons but have massive squads of cheap infantry rivaling the soviets.

Soviets are badly designed because without a (very specific) doctrinal choice they lack both infantry that can do anything in the late game, and vehicles that can do anything in the late game. Far better designed than the massive blobberino of OKW, but that's not high praise.

USF are a version of OKW that doesn't get any heavy tanks to hinge on in exchange for not having the weird resource situation. They too, like OKW, lack meaningful support weapon choices, leading to heavy infantry blobs, and their armor situation quickly deteriorates in the late game due to the high DPS paper armor vehicle selection coupled with the lack of infantry support at that stage of the game.

Big +1 to Cruzz, laying down the law up there. He speaks the truth and he speaks it well.

The truth will be in the numbers. Vote community, vote hard.

According to survey many votes of balance. Your advancement secret information is that there will balance patch?

I would hype community about incoming stuff. Cause right now hype is dead.

Core game/Armies/units...
That will fix a lot of balance issues as well. and/or make it easier to balance game, also it will help with game having decent balance across game modes

I would hype community about incoming stuff. Cause right now hype is dead.

I would hype everyone, not only community. People are not aware of this game.

I would hype everyone, not only community. People are not aware of this game.

Really? People are not aware?

You cannot miss it if you are on steam. Google 'RTS games" or search 'RTS games' in any shop and it will pop up.
COH2 was bought by 500,000 people +

It's being advertised and written about in game magazines too.

People are aware, that's not the problem....

i amnot a psychopath but i would add more glore, exploding body parts etc.

OKW is a badly designed faction because they have no real option except a massive infantry blob, and even that infantry is all equipped exactly the same as they have no differing infantry upgrades either. Just twiddling numbers around is not going to change the fact they have no real support weapon play, and their resource income situation coupled with stupidly good AT on their base infantry makes skipping all their lighter vehicles and going straight to heavy vehicles the optimal choice in every game. From a purely design rather than gameplay point of view it also makes no sense for the late war german faction to have almost no automatic infantry weapons but have massive squads of cheap infantry rivaling the soviets.

Soviets are badly designed because without a (very specific) doctrinal choice they lack both infantry that can do anything in the late game, and vehicles that can do anything in the late game. Far better designed than the massive blobberino of OKW, but that's not high praise.

USF are a version of OKW that doesn't get any heavy tanks to hinge on in exchange for not having the weird resource situation. They too, like OKW, lack meaningful support weapon choices, leading to heavy infantry blobs, and their armor situation quickly deteriorates in the late game due to the high DPS paper armor vehicle selection coupled with the lack of infantry support at that stage of the game.

This is why Relic needs to hire cruzz to improve their game.

OKW is a badly designed faction because they have no real option except a massive infantry blob, and even that infantry is all equipped exactly the same as they have no differing infantry upgrades either.
OKW has an AT gun, like every other faction. If their AT gun is crap, increase its numbers.

If volk blobs and Ober blobs make every other OKW unit useless, reduce their numbers and increase other units' numbers.


Just twiddling numbers around is not going to change the fact they have no real support weapon play, and their resource income situation coupled with stupidly good AT on their base infantry makes skipping all their lighter vehicles and going straight to heavy vehicles the optimal choice in every game.
Everything here can be fixed with numbers
No real support weapons: Buff MG34 and Poopchen.
Panzershrek OP: Make it cost more/reduce its damage
Heavy Vehicles OP: Nerf heavy vehicles
Light Vehicles Unnecessary: Reduce effectiveness of non-light vehicles so that light vehicles are relevant


From a purely design rather than gameplay point of view it also makes no sense for the late war german faction to have almost no automatic infantry weapons but have massive squads of cheap infantry rivaling the soviets.
Game design is not necessarily the same as historical design. If I made a game replacing all of COH2 units with pieces of food (apples, oranges, bananas, pizzas) it would be the exact same game design, but with terrible historical accuracy.



Soviets are badly designed because without a (very specific) doctrinal choice they lack both infantry that can do anything in the late game, and vehicles that can do anything in the late game. Far better designed than the massive blobberino of OKW, but that's not high praise.
Base infantry sucks: Buff base infantry.
Vehicles suck: buff vehicles



USF are a version of OKW that doesn't get any heavy tanks to hinge on in exchange for not having the weird resource situation. They too, like OKW, lack meaningful support weapon choices, leading to heavy infantry blobs, and their armor situation quickly deteriorates in the late game due to the high DPS paper armor vehicle selection coupled with the lack of infantry support at that stage of the game.
HMG50.cal useless: buff its damage/survivability
USF armour sucks: Buff its armour

in quotes

Really? People are not aware?

You cannot miss it if you are on steam. Google 'RTS games" or search 'RTS games' in any shop and it will pop up.
COH2 was bought by 500,000 people +

It's being advertised and written about in game magazines too.

People are aware, that's not the problem....

Well a lot of my friends are not aware of the game. I mean they are, but they are not aware of the game mechanics like RNG bases stuff like Accuracy, armor, etc. Maybe they are ignorant I don't know. But this game has the potential to convince non-RTS players to buy and play it. That's what I'm talking about. Specially when we have a lot of Compstompers and ToW players who only play it because of the WWII atmosphere.

Honestly the game gets a bit boring, I'd like to see new maps and new viable commanders that offer some new strategies.

Honestly the game gets a bit boring, I'd like to see new maps and new viable commanders that offer some new strategies.

Consider how suck the current maps are, I don't want any maps

Yes there are blobs, even in vCoH there were blobs. Gren spam was the most common thing a whermacht player did back then. Americans made 4 rifles which is the case right now aswell.. but back then, no one complained.

Could we pretty please keep specific balancing issues out of this thread?

Who would have thought that

Revisiting existing content and making adjustments (example: unit balancing, map balance, bug fixes)

gets the most votes?

Surprise, surprise

Improve & Expand the Veto System
I would improve and/or expand the veto system and make it more complex so each ladder player have more options to even the playing field for competitive play. Why? Because with all the new content, commanders, maps and "maybe" 2 new factions (total of 6 factions) it would be impossible to ever make COH2 balanced for competitive play. For custom games and single players new content and customized commanders is not a big problem but for competitive play balance is way more important than new content. I fully understand new content can potentially attract new players (who might not be interested in multiplayer) but it should be implemented more gradually and carefully for competitive play.

1) If new factions come then plz allow ladder players (easy fix to improve balance) to at very least veto one faction like they currently veto maps. It's obvious some maps and match ups are not balanced for competitive play and the easy fix for that is to give ladder players more options to decide for themself how to play.

2) A veto system could also be implemented for certain unbalanced commanders similar to what is done in community tournaments where only specific "balanced commanders" are allowed to even the playing field.

3) A 50% chance based veto system for maps and factions is another option that might work to even the playing field for competitive play.
As example, if both ladder players veto the same map they have only 25% chance to get a match up on that map or 50% chance if only one veto apply or 100% chance without any vetos.

4) Veto other players. Give ladder player's the option to temporary veto (blacklist) players for 24 hours - limited to max 10 players at a time. A temporary ban or warning from Relic due to player exploits or whatever is rather ineffective imho. A potential "community" ban would give each player the option to "police itself" against players that have a bad reputation. In short, if enough players ban/veto a certain player that person would be "punished" by a longer matchmaking period or getting match with lower ranking players.

COH2 Bootcamp - Help new players join the fight for axis/allied glory

Second to this Veto system, I would create one ingame "bootcamp" for new players to join (axis or allies bootcamp to foster some friendly competition between both). One way this could work is that when new players sign up they can choose which "mentor" that are available to help them. As reward for the mentors involved they get a free "war spoil" for every ladder game the new player win. To avoid exploit, each mentor involved can only have 3 student at a time and only for the 50 first ladder matches.

To improve communication for those invovled all the ladder matches the student play would then be stored on the COH2 "bootcamp" server and only accessible by the mentor + student who can then watch and analyse the replay without both beeing online at the same time. Nor do the student need to upload replay COH2.org.

Personally, I believe there are a fair amount of experience players (myself included) who under the right circumstances would be willing to "mentor" new players that want to learn.
However, there need to be a well organized ingame communication system in place to support it. Outgame this bootcamp should have each own twitch channel so its easy to get feedback from other mentors and store VODs training tutorials. If something like this became a success I would take it a step further and make it possible for new players or "followers" to donate "virtual assets" directly to their mentor.

Then every once in a while Relic could run a "community spotlight" and highlight the mentors and bootcamp that has been doing well based on ingame statistics.

I think a successful bootcamp (player academy) could be a win-win deal for all involved. a) New players can quickly get help both ingame and outgame, b) Relic get more players involved with the community thx to the bootcamp which in return attract more players as friends tell friends to buy this game, c) mentors can use their player experience to get reward either ingame or outgame for their "community service". Everybody wins.

COH2 Bootcamp - Help new players join the fight for axis/allied glory

You could do this in CoH1. In lobby there was ranking and you could give your lobby a name.
So for example: Rank 1-5. People with higher ranks were kicked. It was a fun way for me as noob to learn how to play the game.

Personally I miss the lobby system from CoH1. It was more fun and the visual rank next to your name was a nice achievement.

OKW IS FOR NOOBS

OKW is a badly designed faction because they have no real option except a massive infantry blob, and even that infantry is all equipped exactly the same as they have no differing infantry upgrades either. Just twiddling numbers around is not going to change the fact they have no real support weapon play, and their resource income situation coupled with stupidly good AT on their base infantry makes skipping all their lighter vehicles and going straight to heavy vehicles the optimal choice in every game. From a purely design rather than gameplay point of view it also makes no sense for the late war german faction to have almost no automatic infantry weapons but have massive squads of cheap infantry rivaling the soviets.

Soviets are badly designed because without a (very specific) doctrinal choice they lack both infantry that can do anything in the late game, and vehicles that can do anything in the late game. Far better designed than the massive blobberino of OKW, but that's not high praise.

USF are a version of OKW that doesn't get any heavy tanks to hinge on in exchange for not having the weird resource situation. They too, like OKW, lack meaningful support weapon choices, leading to heavy infantry blobs, and their armor situation quickly deteriorates in the late game due to the high DPS paper armor vehicle selection coupled with the lack of infantry support at that stage of the game.