What are the "Lessons Learned" from CoH 2?

Relic hasn't finished with CoH2 yet, it's actively patched and they have plans for future content. With that said, we have had the game in our hands for roughly two years now. I'd like this thread to be a discussion about what they did in CoH2, what worked, what didn't work, and what lessons we can take from it into the future development of the franchise.

To start with, I'll list a few major things (off the top of my head) that were designed to be different from the first game:

• There is an experience system with ranks independent of the automatch ladder rank and hidden "player skill ranking".
  
• You can see the enemy "experience level", but have no indication of their ladder rank / true skill level without the use of an external service.
  
• Instead of a choice of three doctrines per faction (each with two sub-trees to go down), there are six or more doctrines per faction, which are unlocked in a linear fashion within a game. You choose three to take into a battle with you.
  
• Extra commanders beyond the "basic" level can be purchased as DLC, or unlocked either through the experience system (previously) or war spoils system (more recently)
  
• Population cap is fixed (100), rather than associated with map control.
  
• Strategic points now yield both fuel and munitions income, and can have this income doubled with a "cache". However, dedicated Munitions and Fuel points can no-longer be secured / enhanced with an observation post.
  
• Units now capture by being inside of a "capture area", rather than needing to undertake a dedicated "capture action" which exposed them to extra damage from enemies (as in coh1). This also implies that weapon teams can capture while setup and firing.
  
• There is a weather system that allows for Blizzards on some winter maps.
  
• There is a water/ice system on some winter maps that can result in some kinds of units falling into the water when an explosion goes off near them. Water re-freezes over time.
  
• Infantry can vault over obstacles.
  
• Vehicles now have a "reverse" movement option. This gives you more control over the movement of vehicles.
  
• Vehicles can now be abandoned / decrewed, allowing them to be captured by the enemy.
  

Conceptually, the faction designs for CoH2 have both similarities and differences from the first game. But in the "vanilla" matchup between the USSR and Germans, Both factions have good tools to use at every stage of the game. With the WFA, USA and OKW had a more "time asymetric" design, the OKW designed to have super powerful late game units and the USF having no heavies. However this has been moderated a bit with patches, and arguably in the current patch the OKW are underpowered (in 1v1, at least; they still dominate team games).

Not core design principles, but CoH2 does differ in the following ways "generally":

• Lethality versus infantry is increased, both from enemy infantry and enemy armour.
  
• There are now units that are capable of supressing on the move / vehicles that suppress.
  
• There are far more mechanisms to convert different types of resources than there used to be.
  
• Call-ins cost fuel instead of just manpower, but the heavy vehicles are no-longer limited except in one case.
  
• Not actually a deliberate design decision, but it subjectively seems that in CoH2 it's harder to notice when units are in major trouble, the alert sounds seem to blend into the background more. Not sure exactly how to describe this or what causes it, but this was also pointed out recently by HelpingHans on a stream. Units accidentally getting wrecked when you look away without even noticing seems to happen way more often.
  

There are problems in the current state of the game. Everybody will have their own opinions, and not all of them are "new" to CoH2. I will try to encapsulate what I think Relic should take away from their experience in the first two games:

• The "experience level" concept is useless and should not exist. If you want to have one for some reason, tied to unlocks, I certainly don't need to know what my enemies experience level is, since it has no meaning. It's actively misleading to new players who don't know what it all means, so it's actually worse than giving no information about the enemy.
  
  
• While having many commanders added versatility to the game, in reality only a few of them are competitively viable for each faction. It's a tough call, but I think focussing on having fewer, but more rounded and interesting commanders would be preferred, or a return to the old doctrine system.
  
  
• The design of strategic points giving resources created implicit game mode imbalances. Whereas previously it was viable to have large team games with only a few resource points and mostly made of empty strat points, now you will inevitably have huge resource inflation in large team games with many strategic points. Since you can plop caches on everything, it means that you always end up with these stupidly large heavy tank spam games.
  
  
• 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".
  
  
• Factions should never ever ever ever ever be designed to have advantages in some stages of the games but not others. I mean, precise timings can be different, that's understandable, the idea of "early game faction" and "late game faction" are implicitly problematic and as above, cause innate imbalances across game modes. Large team games will always go longer and be more likely to reach late game, while in 1v1s its viable to shut somebody down completely with an early game faction. Either way, it means that you are forced to baalance some game modes at the expense of others. This is BAD.
  
  
• Randomness has a place, but it is "too strong" in CoH2 currently. Plane crashes are a particularly bad offender, but the desire to include more and more "big" units with huge explosions has also been an ongoing balance issue that has caused a lot of grief.
  
  
• Blizzards are shit and I hate them
  
  
• Some engine limitations need to be overcome. There is NO side armour on tanks, and forward/backward speeds are currently unable to be separated. A tank can reverse as fast as it can drive forwards. By de-coupling these variables, and making forward/backward movement different, we add interesting balance possibilities to the game. Additionally, by including side armour, medium tanks will become more viable as 'flankers' since you will no-longer need to get BEHIND an enemy tank in order to get a benefit from positioning.
  
  
• Please spend more time on optimizing the game. The first game was a resource hog to some extent, but it was also cutting edge graphically. CoH1 holds up surprisingly well against CoH2 (although 2 is clearly superior), yet 2 runs like shit on every computer ever made. I suspect part of this was development problems caused by the THQ financial situation, but when making a new game, starting from scratch, please pay more attention to this stuff.
  
  
• Please include custom games/ lobbies from the start. Thanks for adding them, but there was no reason why CoH2 on day 1 had less features than CoH1 and every other RTS had.
  
  

Sorry for the big wall of text, but I hope we can get some good discussion going.

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

Well this wasn't as successful as I'd hoped

I can see you devoted a lot of time to this post. Frankly, I commend your effort to bring some form of intellectual analysis to the game. I hope to return the favor by giving you some intellectual critique, and helping move the point along. It's 3am, and I have written over 30 pages of University final papers in 48 hours, so I won't actually go through the process of reiterating all your points. In online content in particular, format is essential in getting your point across. Try playing with it a little bit.

In general, I found many of your points to be "easy picking" when it comes to COH2 gripes/problems. There is some redeeming analysis, however, and my suggestion to you is that you "boil down" your thread by way of making your points more concise. Focus less on listing "features" of COH2, and look more critically (and concisely!).

Your use of formatting is also commendable, I suggest taking it a step further:

Introduction

Relic has made clear it intends to continue supporting COH2 for some time. As we approach the two year mark of its release, we have an opportunity to intellectually examine the game. I would like to have a discussion about what COH2 improved over COH1, where it failed to improve on the original, and what lessons should be carried forward.

What went right?

• Vaulting added additional depth to infantry movement, opening up new tactics.
  
• Vehicle reverse increased player control over vehicles.

Where has COH2 fallen short?

• Strategic depth in tech structure reduced variety in strategic game play
  
• Excessive RNG in the form of vehicle crits, thermo-nuclear plane crashes, and other unpredictable game elements which adversely affect game play.

What lessons should we learn?

• Engine limitations need to be overcome in order to incorporate side armor and reduced speed when reversing.

Again, your effort is commendable, and I hope something good comes of this thread. Feel free to use my formatting if you believe it will enhance the readability/engage-ability of your thread.
Show Spoiler

What I´ve learned from Coh2:

A) Blobbing is king

- MGs that can suppress multiple Squads that can run into their arc of fire are overpowered and immediately nerfed.

- Blobs that run into the MGs arc of fire are balanced.

B) If a unit is currently slightly over-performing, expect it to be over-nerfed in the next patch

aa) Relic has a tendency to not only nerf the over-performing unit but also buff the over-performing units counters. Just remember the time the Panther was useless? Or how fragile the KT is now? Added to that the M36 penetration went up making everything even worse.

bb) Or the unit is nerfed in one patch. Then out of the sudden the following patch another nerf appears out of the blue that has never been asked for. Stacking with the previous nerf and kicking the unit effectively out of the game. Examples: Panzerwerfer, Pak43. Maxim or SU-85 don´t even matter any longer? Etc.

Blizzards are shit and I hate them

And that.

Well I take your point, I was typing up the post during quiet moments at work and didn't quite realize how long it was until I posted it. Editing passes are usually optional for forum posts

Was hoping others might have other thoughts to share regarding what we learned based on COH2 that we could apply to a new game. I had a few thoughts on faction design, the other information was supposed to prompt people's memories about what we'd tried differently in CoH1 and CoH2 as a point of comparison.

That a single game CAN make me log +1000 hours.

• Blizzards are shit and I hate them
  

I think blizzards are great. They add several tactical implications making the game deeper in a good way. And deeper is better.

• Factions should never ever ever ever ever be designed to have advantages in some stages of the games but not others. I mean, precise timings can be different, that's understandable, the idea of "early game faction" and "late game faction" are implicitly problematic and as above, cause innate imbalances across game modes. Large team games will always go longer and be more likely to reach late game, while in 1v1s its viable to shut somebody down completely with an early game faction. Either way, it means that you are forced to baalance some game modes at the expense of others. This is BAD.
  
  
  
• Please spend more time on optimizing the game. The first game was a resource hog to some extent, but it was also cutting edge graphically. CoH1 holds up surprisingly well against CoH2 (although 2 is clearly superior), yet 2 runs like shit on every computer ever made. I suspect part of this was development problems caused by the THQ financial situation, but when making a new game, starting from scratch, please pay more attention to this stuff.
  
  
• Please include custom games/ lobbies from the start. Thanks for adding them, but there was no reason why CoH2 on day 1 had less features than CoH1 and every other RTS had.
  
  

+1000

You forgot the trusight system, which adds a lot of strategic options that didn't exist prior in COH1.

But I think that shows some of the weak points. They changed too much. There were all the new tech (vision, vaulting, reverse, winter/blizzard, abandoned vehicles) coupled with the improvements in the UI (seeing all the units and their status). All of this was cool.

Then they changed the commander/call-in function, the way the resource points worked, and the upkeep costs and popcap limitations. That isn't cool or not, it is different and may or may not work better strategically. And the game progresses much faster through the early and mid game stage, which I think is a negative.

If you had plopped the COH1 Wehr and US factions into the new tech, the game would have still played like it was COH2. Plop them into the new strats and it would look like a mod of COH1. Together it is COH2 but even more different.

But then I am not sure they needed to change the factions so much. Too much of it is difference for difference's sake. Why do factions need different tech AND different focus of units? And added to all the strategic and technical changes? It plays so differently from COH1 that their similarity is more one of scale and unit choices. (Switching to Latka Gravas' voice: "you have your tank, your support weapon teams, your squads.")

It didn't have to be so different and I think it would have been better had there been less difference.

I think blizzards are great. They add take away several tactical implications making the game deeper in a good way boring.

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.

Removing Damage table per units was a bad idea for the balance.

• There are now units that are capable of supressing on the move / vehicles that suppress.

You don't remember panzer elite halftrack do you

You don't remember panzer elite halftrack do you

I honestly do not remember how it worked, that is correct. Silly considering I played 700+ hours of CoH1, but there you have it. Haven't played PE since coh2 came out. I do remember the IHT, reinforcing etc, but even after you saying it, I don't remember it being a suppression platform. Like, I'm looking it up, and you're correct, but I still can't remember it

Removing Damage table per units was a bad idea for the balance.

I'm not entierly sure, it didn't really made much sense why X infantry was bullet proof but snipers could hit it even on retreat while another while still resilient to bullets seemed to be wet from gas and popping like matches when flamer was near.

Removal of damage tables improved infantry combat a lot. Target priority was a bigger concern.

You don't remember panzer elite halftrack do you

Wirbelwind also could do it.

Churchills could do it with ability.

PE G43s and BARs could suppress on the move with the ability.

I'm not entierly sure, it didn't really made much sense why X infantry was bullet proof but snipers could hit it even on retreat while another while still resilient to bullets seemed to be wet from gas and popping like matches when flamer was near.

Removal of damage tables improved infantry combat a lot. Target priority was a bigger concern.

...

PE G43s and BARs could suppress on the move with the ability.

You can keep damage tables and not use them. But removing them means you don't have the tool around when there might be a situation where a tweak to damage tables is what is needed for balance.

And G43s were worse that suppression. They were a pure snare ability. Units would slow even on retreat.

• Deep snow is pudding and I hate it
  

Fixed that for you

On the topic of OKW and US being 'Strong in late game and early game' respectively, was that ever true?

I thought the idea wasn't so much that they were strong early/late so much as OKW focused on fewer, stronger units, but US focused on strength in numbers?

I'm not entierly sure, it didn't really made much sense why X infantry was bullet proof but snipers could hit it even on retreat while another while still resilient to bullets seemed to be wet from gas and popping like matches when flamer was near.

Removal of damage tables improved infantry combat a lot. Target priority was a bigger concern.


Wirbelwind also could do it.

Churchills could do it with ability.

PE G43s and BARs could suppress on the move with the ability.

Well you do what you want with the table but at least you can modulate units dps and hard counters. In Coh2, a powerful unit is a powerful unit and you can only nerf it or up it vs class inf or tank.

Personally, I think Relic needs to watch Band of Brothers again.

I'm personally not a fan of band of brothers, but the way relic based their original game on Band of Brothers was one of the factors that made the game great.