Relic, let the community balance the game

I will never understand why there are "fanboys" (I hate that term) in the first place. Shouldn't players be interested in fair balance on both sides since well, you usually switch factions now and then.

Identity politics. Also people enjoy forums drama.

you usually switch factions now and then.

You do. Lots of people only play one faction and don't even realised how biased their perspective becomes as a result.

Personally, I don't really enjoy USF and have to take extra care to suppress my inner fanboy when discussing balance

Crowdsourced ideas are generally the way to go. Yeah, you get a lot of shit, but if you have the right people filtering it, it can be good.

But this will never happen and I'm surprised if anyone would seriously suggest it. There's no reason why someone would hawk off their own job to a bunch of unpaid people on the internet. Self-redundancy is just not a good move.

Additionally, presuming that wasn't a barrier, it patching shit costs money. Admittedly, I don't know how much, I'm assuming a significant portion goes into the cost of labour required for making patches in the first place(Cutting out the design side, we still need programmers to implement it) and then making use of the Steam servers to ship it(Which I'm assuming is significant, as otherwise Relic would be giving us rapid, small, incremental patches), you'd want to be sure what "the community" is proposing is a high quality, professional production. Can you really be sure of that? If I was the person pitching this, I wouldn't be able to say so.

So just have the developers look through the ideas and try them out themselves, that should curb any worries. Well, at that point isn't that basically the current set up, just with more transparency from the developer end? I wouldn't complain about that.

Last time Relic let community do something we got defensive commanders, which are quite literally THE most useless and unfun commanders to play so.... yeah....

Damnit, that was going to be my line

Well soviet commander was "fun" till they hit it with the nerfhammer.

We tried this before and it failed. It worked on vCOH 2.602 because Relic knew it was EOL and they didnt have a business model setup to make any more money off of it so it was in their best interest to close that chapter with good balance at least. That was some of the most fun I've had in the community and the communication between Devs and Expert/Veterans was excellent.

COH2 is in a much different place with a much bigger business goal in mind. We tried bringing in expert players from the very beginning to guide Relic on what needed to be done to make this game a success from LAUNCH not 2 years later but needless to say it didn't last long as Relic did not like most of what we had to say. We hoped that we'd carry on the momentum from the 2.602 patch with the same folks but it was completely different and quite disheartening. 2 years later now and they're just now talking about implementing leaderboards, balance nor functional features is not #1 priority, new DLC content is. New factions, skins, commanders, all the things that make money for the business is what funds new functionality and balance patches etc.

Last time Relic let community do something we got defensive commanders, which are quite literally THE most useless and unfun commanders to play so.... yeah....

they're ok. the soviet one is hampered by DShKs being shit and both of them have issues with czech hedgehogs being cp3 but there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with them.

they're ok. the soviet one is hampered by DShKs being shit and both of them have issues with czech hedgehogs being cp3 but there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with them.

I'm pretty certain that no one is using them*

Which means they are neither powerful nor interesting.


There is one guy I know who uses Soviet Defensive Commander and makes it work.

Apart from that, nada.


*That's based on my observation. Also if someone was using them, someone would have started a thread saying they were OP.

they're ok. the soviet one is hampered by DShKs being shit and both of them have issues with czech hedgehogs being cp3 but there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with them.

Soviet Defensive Commander has nothing beyond CP2; and almost everything in both is available in better doctrines.

The one exception is tank traps

I will never understand why there are "fanboys" (I hate that term) in the first place. Shouldn't players be interested in fair balance on both sides since well, you usually switch factions now and then.

+1000

I will never understand why there are "fanboys" (I hate that term) in the first place. Shouldn't players be interested in fair balance on both sides since well, you usually switch factions now and then.

Apparently to some faction choice equals to girlfriend of wife choice and hell, they are devoted, choosing death before "cheating" with another one.

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

I will never understand why there are "fanboys" (I hate that term) in the first place. Shouldn't players be interested in fair balance on both sides since well, you usually switch factions now and then.

Well, first of all, WW2 is still a very sensitive topic, and it is a part of human history, unlike for example SC2. Which means that some people take pride in their history, and they prefer playing a specific faction just because of this reason. You would be suprised how many of these people there is in coh2.

Then, even an unbiased person and a top player can still have a completely wrong opinion on balance. Quentin is an excellent player, however, he actually thinks that OKW is the weakest faction, while for example Cruzz and many other players thought that OKW was batshit OP.

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

That's a point in favour of committees, then?

Would be great! This way one patch could fix almost everything. Just take top 10 players that are not biased and care for game. We were waiting for 6 months and get a meh patch. When can we expect next one? Q4 2016?

I actually think Relic should promote a comp-stomper to be Balance Designer. Think about it - comp stompers wont have any idea at all on how MP balance works, but still know all the units in the game and their costs. Therefore, they wouldn't have any bias towards the performance of any particular units in MP, and thus will create a perfectly balanced patch with no bias at all

Come on guys, just use a little logic and you can figure it out MVGame

That's a point in favour of committees, then?

No, it is the opposite.

Soviet Defensive Commander has nothing beyond CP2; and almost everything in both is available in better doctrines.

The one exception is tank traps

... The AI mines and the small AT-guns. (You don't get that MG in many docs either...)

... The AI mines and the small AT-guns. (You don't get that MG in many docs either...)

Correct, the AI mines are unique

But Dishka comes in Lend Lease and the 45mm is in Urban Defence - where it is a bit more potent inside the FHQ aura

No, it is the opposite.

Aren't they significantly more survivable and significantly easier creatures to maintain than horses?