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What are the "Lessons Learned" from CoH 2?

12 Jun 2015, 17:12 PM
#21
avatar of What Doth Life?!
Patrion 27

Posts: 1664

I'm personally not a fan of band of brothers...


Wait... WUT?!
12 Jun 2015, 17:13 PM
#22
avatar of BrutusHR

Posts: 262

my lesson learned from COH2 is don't trust Relic...


Nailed it.
12 Jun 2015, 17:23 PM
#23
avatar of __deleted__

Posts: 1225

Hm. I don't think "Band of Brothers", whatever its merits, had much to do with the qualities of the game.
What made vCoH great and really set it apart from other RTS franchises was the infantry combat, especially the flanking dynamic, both setting them up and defending against them. A good 1v1 with multi-directional timing pushes (ie. popping BARs/nades/flamers) and sublime light vehicle micro on the US side, and prediction, wiring, mine placement, Mg-flipping/Pak movement on the Wehr side etc, was an artform in its own right that unfortunately CoH2 has not quite managed to replicate.
Another brillant aspect and great strength (but also great weakness and at times utterly infuriating - RNG escapes) were sniper duels.

Addendum: A few central lessons learned from CoH2 specifically, off the top of my hat:

It appears impossible to balance the game for both 1v1 and ie. 4v4 simultaneously.
The RNG element needs to be toned down where it has the potential to be gamebreaking, meaning, specifically in vehicle combat, heavy engine crits from fausts, abandoned tanks etc.
The same goes for hardcore oddities, ie. skillplanes crashing into your ambulance and killing all your vet infantry, happened to me more than once.
Balancing in general needs to be gradual and careful, there is an eclatant history of overnerfing/buffing, ie. the OH sniper, going from a liability in one patch that would often go down to a single conscript volley from range to all but unkillable with small arms fire until severely mismicroed etc etc.

Also, maps: The impact of maps at least in specific matchups is simply too great. Within maps, the impact of starting positions defies all belief, ie. Kharkov West, Langres North, La Gleize North, etc.
12 Jun 2015, 17:24 PM
#24
avatar of MarcoRossolini

Posts: 1042



Wait... WUT?!


A lot of Band of Brothers is cool and great, but it felt too sanitised, not enough swearing, not enough talking about girls at madame so and so, etc. They're young men, with other young men, yet they act perfectly.

Plus there's this feeling the E Company was the finest company in the ETO... which is okay for the esprit de corps of the unit, but you don't see other units being lauded for being able to do XYZ.

Overall it left me with a not particularly nice taste in my mouth, despite the combat being great.

12 Jun 2015, 17:45 PM
#25
avatar of pigsoup
Patrion 14

Posts: 4301 | Subs: 2


  • When designing factions, more attention should be paid to how concepts scale to larger team games. For example, it's not a secret that 3v3 and 4v4 are *extremely* axis favoured. It's ok if large team games are not quite as balanced as 1v1, but they should not be left to rot in the wind just to satisfy the core competitive ranked players. There are a LOT of people who play it and it should enter into the equation at some point, even if it is not considered "priority #1".


this. i get balancing 1v1 - 4v4 is hard.

but did Jagdtiger really needed to be in the game? did relic have to add sittard? even one of the first community maps to be added, angermuede a.k.a. lanefest at its best, had to be added? what up with vielsam (mines in the middle from the get go), hill 331 (first mud map)? why does 3v3+ has to be an experiment shit ground for shittiest implementation for shit to decent ideas? and if scheldt does get added with no more vetoes, it is clear relic don't care two shits about 3v3+ still. at least directly.
12 Jun 2015, 17:55 PM
#26
avatar of AvNY

Posts: 862



A lot of Band of Brothers is cool and great, but it felt too sanitised, not enough swearing, not enough talking about girls at madame so and so, etc. They're young men, with other young men, yet they act perfectly.

Plus there's this feeling the E Company was the finest company in the ETO... which is okay for the esprit de corps of the unit, but you don't see other units being lauded for being able to do XYZ.

Overall it left me with a not particularly nice taste in my mouth, despite the combat being great.




I think you are projecting a bit too much of our own times on that period. People certainly swore less then than they do today. People swore less 30 years ago than they do today. It just wasn't acceptable behaviour. As to "girls" the army tried hard to keep this from happening. And frontline units would have found little time to try it.

As to Easy Company, chalk some of it up to Esprit de corps and to their officers. They really did have some very good ones who survived with them through combat. Richard Winters was by all accounts a gentlman and a gifted leader of men. The unit was hard trained by Capt. Sobel. And it contained leaders like Sgt. Lipton who would go on to become a successful corporate executive after the war. Were they the best? How do you even measure that? But they certainly felt they were.

Band of Brothers is a story of a remarkable unit. I am sure others could be told. And I would guess some of it was sanitized, but if so it was more likely by the men as they recounted the stories than by the producers.

Here is a documentary about Easy Company:
12 Jun 2015, 18:12 PM
#27
avatar of MarcoRossolini

Posts: 1042

Each to his own I suppose then. :) I'm not in the mood for a protracted argument.

Suffice to say, books written by other combat veterans regularly involve trips to brothels and heavy swearing and drinking.

I believe also there were books put out by other combat veterans of E Company who shed some light on some of the less wholesome activities of E Company's members.

(heh, looks like I'm about to get into a protracted argument anyway.)

12 Jun 2015, 18:17 PM
#28
avatar of VonIvan

Posts: 2487 | Subs: 21

  • Don't trust Relic to keep their promises. :foreveralone:
  • If Relic is excited, expect a long delay for whatever they're excited about. :foreveralone:
  • The excitement can either be a good thing or a bad thing balance/game wise :foreveralone:
  • More Optimization patches=Smoother/more relaxing gameplay(WE NEED MORE) :foreveralone:
  • Improvements on useless doctrines actually helps the meta evolve from something stale into something with more flavor. :foreveralone:
  • Relic balance patches that take more time and effort seem to be more effective than quick patches/patches focused on a single doctrine/faction :foreveralone:
  • Relic hates the word "alpha" :foreveralone:
  • NDA is Relic's favorite shield :foreveralone:
  • Relic streams provide little information about why Relic is so excited :foreveralone:
  • Relic's choices of maps added into the automatch pool need to be voted on by the community. Because when they choose the maps we get things like La gleize, stalingrad, Bystraya, Einhoven, Road to Kharkov, Minsk Pocket, and Semois Winter(not a bad map but deep snow/cutoff/fuel positions suck). :foreveralone:
  • Relic DLC, no more is needed to be said. :foreveralone:
12 Jun 2015, 19:16 PM
#29
avatar of WingZero

Posts: 1484

Honestly, I hope they remake Coh1 with Coh2 true sight features and some of the other good ones.
12 Jun 2015, 19:26 PM
#30
avatar of TheSleep3r

Posts: 670

Honestly, I hope they remake Coh1 with Coh2 true sight features and some of the other good ones.


mfw they add dlc doctrines

12 Jun 2015, 19:33 PM
#31
avatar of Tea Maker Machine

Posts: 270

  • That quantity almost always wins over quality
  • That 5 level veterancy is bullshit when you can barely reach level 3.


12 Jun 2015, 19:41 PM
#32
avatar of BrutusHR

Posts: 262

Honestly, I hope they remake Coh1 with Coh2 true sight features and some of the other good ones.


Yeap, vcoh with truesight and better UI and il pay full retail price for that...
12 Jun 2015, 19:59 PM
#33
avatar of ZombiFrancis

Posts: 2742

Vaulting went right, except for the fact that it can't be done on retreat, only as a direct player controlled action. Also the way squads turn into the human centipede when vaulting can be silly and usually an invitation for squads to get wiped.

TruSight went right, except for the fact that it's actually kind of glitchy with how it affects the AI. LOS blockers act as invisible shot blockers, which leaves things like tanks rotating their turret because a tank drove past a tree or the smoke from a wreck causing things like ATGs to decide their only choice is to rush forward to melee range. Not to mention most maps have LOS blockers in seemingly random/unintentional positions. The way a single tree can cut off the vision of an entire army advancing can be pretty silly. Having units walk 'into' an LOS blocker and disappearing/becoming blind is also kind of silly. For smoke, sure, but on corners of buildings and hedges it's silly.

Snow and mud worked well, except for the fact that infantry squads can't figure out how to avoid them while pathing, and they effective act as molasses for squads when one entity gets mired in it. The (arbitrary) placement of deep snow and mud on maps probably ruins these mechanics more than anything.

Ice works well, except that there's no deep v shallow distinction for ice, which leads to tanks being swallowed by the earth because their front end was on 2 inches of ice.

Blizzards, well, never worked well. They were a sort of cool feature, but for multiplayer gameplay it never played out to be, well, fun. I feel that if blizzards were ever to happen, maps should just start in a blizzard for the first minute or two, and then never occur again, or happen at like the one hour mark. They occur too often and for too long for any game that utilizes Victory Points, such as all of automatch.
12 Jun 2015, 20:36 PM
#34
avatar of AvNY

Posts: 862

Vaulting went right, except for the fact that it can't be done on retreat, only as a direct player controlled action. Also the way squads turn into the human centipede when vaulting can be silly and usually an invitation for squads to get wiped.

TruSight went right, except for the fact that it's actually kind of glitchy with how it affects the AI. LOS blockers act as invisible shot blockers, which leaves things like tanks rotating their turret because a tank drove past a tree or the smoke from a wreck causing things like ATGs to decide their only choice is to rush forward to melee range. Not to mention most maps have LOS blockers in seemingly random/unintentional positions. The way a single tree can cut off the vision of an entire army advancing can be pretty silly. Having units walk 'into' an LOS blocker and disappearing/becoming blind is also kind of silly. For smoke, sure, but on corners of buildings and hedges it's silly.

Snow and mud worked well, except for the fact that infantry squads can't figure out how to avoid them while pathing, and they effective act as molasses for squads when one entity gets mired in it. The (arbitrary) placement of deep snow and mud on maps probably ruins these mechanics more than anything.

Ice works well, except that there's no deep v shallow distinction for ice, which leads to tanks being swallowed by the earth because their front end was on 2 inches of ice.

Blizzards, well, never worked well. They were a sort of cool feature, but for multiplayer gameplay it never played out to be, well, fun. I feel that if blizzards were ever to happen, maps should just start in a blizzard for the first minute or two, and then never occur again, or happen at like the one hour mark. They occur too often and for too long for any game that utilizes Victory Points, such as all of automatch.


+10

Good synopsis.
13 Jun 2015, 00:43 AM
#35
avatar of What Doth Life?!
Patrion 27

Posts: 1664



A lot of Band of Brothers is cool and great, but it felt too sanitised, not enough swearing, not enough talking about girls at madame so and so, etc. They're young men, with other young men, yet they act perfectly.

Plus there's this feeling the E Company was the finest company in the ETO... which is okay for the esprit de corps of the unit, but you don't see other units being lauded for being able to do XYZ.

Overall it left me with a not particularly nice taste in my mouth, despite the combat being great.



I recently read the book Band of Brothers and the first series stays very close to the source material and is focused on tactics and the overall Company's experience rather than being about individual soldiers and their perspective. If you want a more personal approach then you may like the Pacific: the BOB set in the Eastern Theater.
13 Jun 2015, 00:46 AM
#36
avatar of ThoseDeafMutes

Posts: 1026


It appears impossible to balance the game for both 1v1 and ie. 4v4 simultaneously.


As myself and a couple of others have alluded to, it's really a question of design as to whether things work in both modes. Two immediate problems spring to mind - the first is some factions having more powerful late games than others, and the second is that some factions are designed around resource limitations. By "some factions" I mean "OKW". USF also has a "weak late game" on paper, although after patching it's now fairly strong (albeit still the worst of all four, as win statistics indicate) as long as you go for Airborne and have great micro with your Jacksons.

The reason these two concepts are problematic are because the more players you add, the longer a game will be able to go for on average. Any one player's mistakes are diluted by his teammates. A catestrophic breakdown in one sector with multiple squadwipes is almost guaranteed doom in 1v1. It's a big problem in a 2v2. In a 4v4, it's often not a big deal. Early game advantages enjoyed by USSR and USF (which sometimes cause them to be OP in 1v1), now don't count for much, since the early game goes for a couple of minutes, while the "late game" goes for however long the match does, after about the 15-20 minute mark.

Because teammates get shared resources from a sector, and because caches allow for the sharing of resources, and because there are fewer sectors per person in larger team games, this means that any resource limited faction is less resource limited the larger the game modes become. In a 2v2, OKW with an OH partner is still pretty constrained, although not as much as 1v1. In a 4v4, an OKW player may as well have full fuel income. Because there will be so many caches around that it basically doesn't matter. "Stronger, but fewer units" becomes "stronger, and basically as many units". Hence, in 4v4, OKW still dominates even in the current patch, as they languish and wither in 1v1 modes.

I would argue that Ostheer and Soviet don't really change much between game modes. You get "more stuff" and things are more disposable, but the actual discrepancy between them is smaller than it is between the WFA factions. And I would say that the reason this is boils down to their factions not being designed in ways that cause scaling problems. As such, I suggest that in future, factions should be designed with these principles in mind - balance by resource manipulation will cause problems, and balance by strength at game phases will be a problem, because in all cases, those two things will inevitably be diluted or become imbalanced by the act of scaling up the player count.

Vaulting went right, except for the fact that it can't be done on retreat, only as a direct player controlled action. Also the way squads turn into the human centipede when vaulting can be silly and usually an invitation for squads to get wiped.

TruSight went right, except for the fact that it's actually kind of glitchy with how it affects the AI. LOS blockers act as invisible shot blockers, which leaves things like tanks rotating their turret because a tank drove past a tree or the smoke from a wreck causing things like ATGs to decide their only choice is to rush forward to melee range. Not to mention most maps have LOS blockers in seemingly random/unintentional positions. The way a single tree can cut off the vision of an entire army advancing can be pretty silly. Having units walk 'into' an LOS blocker and disappearing/becoming blind is also kind of silly. For smoke, sure, but on corners of buildings and hedges it's silly.

Snow and mud worked well, except for the fact that infantry squads can't figure out how to avoid them while pathing, and they effective act as molasses for squads when one entity gets mired in it. The (arbitrary) placement of deep snow and mud on maps probably ruins these mechanics more than anything.

Ice works well, except that there's no deep v shallow distinction for ice, which leads to tanks being swallowed by the earth because their front end was on 2 inches of ice.

Blizzards, well, never worked well. They were a sort of cool feature, but for multiplayer gameplay it never played out to be, well, fun. I feel that if blizzards were ever to happen, maps should just start in a blizzard for the first minute or two, and then never occur again, or happen at like the one hour mark. They occur too often and for too long for any game that utilizes Victory Points, such as all of automatch.


Even despite the no vaulting on retreat, it's still a great change. So I will definitely give Relic kudos for it. True sight is absolutely glitchy as all heck, the real problem IMO is when tank wrecks instantly block line of sight. If they gradually reduced LOS as smoke stated pouring out that would be one thing, but so many times I've seen a tank die then suddenly two tanks that obviously do have a straight bead on each other start going full-stupid repositioninig around the wreck in the most inefficient way possible. It's SO BAD when it's a turretless TD like the SU or JPIV or something as well.

Blizzards are a mixed bag. I can't stand their current implementation, but it's really just the extra micro-tax caused by units freezing that is the problem. It makes players hesitant/cautious and slows the pace of the game dramatically until its over. However, the idea of weather conditions reducing line of sight dramatically does create an interesting tactical variance. It's just... it's paired with this other garbage all in one annoying bundle.
15 Jun 2015, 08:56 AM
#37
avatar of Trubbbel

Posts: 721

Fixed.

They are dull and slow down the flow of the game. Usually the two parties wait that the blizzard is gone to attack again.

What you usually do is not the same thing as that there aren't interesting tactical implications that one can take advantage of.
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