Faction comparison by Relic

No faction should have a point in the game were it's better than other factions.

O M G

I 100% agree with something Alex said.

I have said it many times since USF came out... It is an absolutely f-cked game design concept.

Early strength means that given equal skills you should be able to dominate (if not every time then most of the time). Of course if you do you have an unsatisfying 5-10 minute game that felt like you were always winning. Unsatisfying for you, frustrating for the opponent, and when the tears flow the "strong early faction" will get nerfed.

The mirror image is that the opponent gets to feel like he survived and outplayed when all he did was last until his forces were "OP" (yes, for most of us equally powered forces are not equal if the micro required to make that happen is ratcheted up really high). That implied skill early on, and they get a "satisfying" victory because they made the "come back" when really the game was just to survive long enough. Of course nerfing the "strong early" factino helped, didn't it?

The strengths should absolutely NOT be asymmetric over time! They can be different, but they should not be asymmetric. This chart just shows there is a fetish at Relic for difference for difference's sake.

No faction should have a point in the game were it's better than other factions.

Then you are playing the wrong game. This is how it was in CoH 1 and people seemed to think it worked fine there, it is also what made it special.

Perhaps you are reading it wrong; to me it means that you have a window which you have to capitalize on in order to compensate for your weaker period. In CoH 1 it meant that Americans had to be agressive early and get enough of a VP lead to win the late game during which the Wehrmacht had their window. As the Wehrmacht you did the opposite; you hade to hamper, and not lose, the Americans enough in the early game so you could win in the late game.

It made for beautiful games in my honest opinion.

-->Making factions stronger at different phases of the game means automatic balance scaling issues. It guarantees that whomever has the best "late game" faction is more and more powerful in larger game modes where the probability of the match reaching late game approaches 100%. Thus, you can never have a game where the 1v1 and 4v4 are both balanced. To a smaller extent even 2v2s become skewed by this effect, a mode which is still highly competitive. If you balance for 1v1, then 3v3 and 4v4 become the late game faction's bitch. If you balance for larger games, then the early game factions will be OP in 1v1s. Balancing around resource shortages for OKW also has the same problem when combined with OH teammates and cache resource sharing.<--

Also a keen observation. This is probably the root of COH2's balance problems. How could it/should it be resolved?

Same way it was resolved in COH1, make the factions not AS different. A bunch of small differences add up quite fast. The best balance was VCOH, and before you look at the vet they KIND OF look the same. Each has a mortar, a HT, an MG, an ATG, a sniper, a scout vehicle, a light vehicle, AT armor, medium armor, etc. and most of the "other" units don't show up until pretty late in the game. Yet even before Vet differences they play very differently. The "like" units are not the same and not in the same tiers, etc.

Finally they balanced "bought" vet with really good earned vet3. (On armor I think the vet is a bit less balanced).

But in COH2 everything has to look different. With 4 such different teching structures and with a GOAL of different factions it isn't shocking that they end up with balance problems.

The same drive to make TOV factions so different is what messed up the PE and Brits. They would have played differently just because Infantry Sections/=Rifle squads, Fireflies weren't M10s, emplacements, etc. They didn't need infantry blobs to be different

Then you are playing the wrong game. This is how it was in CoH 1 and people seemed to think it worked fine there, it is also what made it special.

Perhaps you are reading it wrong; to me it means that you have a window which you have to capitalize on in order to compensate for your weaker period. In CoH 1 it meant that Americans had to be agressive early and get enough of a VP lead to win the late game during which the Wehrmacht had their window. As the Wehrmacht you did the opposite; you hade to hamper, and not lose, the Americans enough in the early game so you could win in the late game.

It made for beautiful games in my honest opinion.

It made for a game that took years to balance because of it. The original automatch maps probably didn't help either. (Achelous, Lyons, Scheldt, Beaux lowlands with a destructible bridge, etc.)

you missed a part of the game possibly. If it went on long enough and you used your late game army properly then it was possible for US to "come back". Vet3 US Rifles made up for a lot of sins, and a well vetted US force was something a Wehr could fear. I think vet3 on armor should have had a survivability reward too, but other opinions may differ.

This clock thing is silly.

Just make cache not benefice 100% to OKW faction. Sharing resources is part of teamplay, but should be much less rewarding for OKW.

They don't get 100% resources from caches.

They don't get 100% resources from caches.

Yeah, isn't it like half the resources an ost would recieve from caches?

I think its +2 additional fuel if a fuel cache is put on a sector for OKW.

Yeah, isn't it like half the resources an ost would recieve from caches?

I think its +2 additional fuel if a fuel cache is put on a sector for OKW.

The cache income is multiplied by .66 like all other OKW fuel income. Although the number it shows will be a rounded one.

The main problem of balance is in 3vs3+ format :

Causes:

OKW early advantage is snowballing into a bigger advantage, the more the game last.

Explanation :

A dead unit can't bet vet, a denied resource can't be converted into units and so on. So when the OKW faction is well played, it's early advantage minimize even nullifie others factions later advantages.

Add the fuel cache sharing effect and their main weakness is greatly reduced.

A team of 3 OKW players + 1 Ost (CAS or others) is very powerful and will nearly always win versus a team of players with the same skill level.


Solution to the OKW early advantage snowballing :

-1) Adjust the starting OKW's manpower to the size of the game (a lesser value the bigger the game is.) (*Could be apply to the other factions to fine tune the balance*.)

-2) Divide the resource cache sharing bonus by the number of players in the team before adding it to the players resources pool. (Apply to all factions)

Conclusion:
-Won't change the balance at all in 1vs1
-Will balance the game in 2vs2+ team format.

Thanks you.

Comments ?

That is the opposite of how OKW is supposed to be played. OKW has the worst defensive options in the game due to lack of a capable MG, no viable emplacements outside of the Pak43, and the fact that you have no area denial outside of the Schwer HQ (which isn't super hard to destroy). Your supposed to use your trucks as spring boards to maintain constant unrelenting assaults that were your enemy down to nothing.

Unit preservation is everything; you cannot afford squad wipes at any period in the game nor can you afford armor losses. Late game power comes from the efficiency offered by 2 extra levels of Vet not invincible tanks.

Also with the Pak 43 doc you get bunkers, which make the emplacements a bit okeish

Also with the Pak 43 doc you get bunkers, which make the emplacements a bit okeish

Eh, having to upgrade bunkers with the MG takes away munitions I like to use on mines. But they aren't bad. It's better to make trenches/bunkers to put racktens in.

This infographic is Marketing Bullcrap and an example of how utterly disconnected the devs are from the players.

Since when soviets relied on making new squads instead of relaying on veaterncy? Doesn't that go against the back bone of coh? you get rewarded with for good unit preservation and they get stronger with vet? well cons still suck with vet so it doesn't matter, but do relic really think people let all there infantry die and just buy more? Is there some kind of patch I am not aware of? Was there a change that makes soviet units cheaper as the game drags on?

It made for a game that took years to balance because of it. The original automatch maps probably didn't help either. (Achelous, Lyons, Scheldt, Beaux lowlands with a destructible bridge, etc.)

you missed a part of the game possibly. If it went on long enough and you used your late game army properly then it was possible for US to "come back". Vet3 US Rifles made up for a lot of sins, and a well vetted US force was something a Wehr could fear. I think vet3 on armor should have had a survivability reward too, but other opinions may differ.

I may not have been clear enough but that was also a point I was trying to make. You had the advantage during these windows and it didn't mean that you would be able to crush your opponent, just that you had the edge. Like you stated, you could come back.

Again it proves how fucked up Relic management is, where are the internal communication?

Then you are playing the wrong game. This is how it was in CoH 1 and people seemed to think it worked fine there, it is also what made it special.

Perhaps you are reading it wrong; to me it means that you have a window which you have to capitalize on in order to compensate for your weaker period. In CoH 1 it meant that Americans had to be agressive early and get enough of a VP lead to win the late game during which the Wehrmacht had their window. As the Wehrmacht you did the opposite; you hade to hamper, and not lose, the Americans enough in the early game so you could win in the late game.

It made for beautiful games in my honest opinion.

Wrong.

In US vs Wehr matchup, you dont have to capitalize all the VP and cut all fuel to win as US.
If you even watch top players play, like Inverse, Aimstrong, 3 Rifle Sniper/Tank Depot defensive play also wins them games.
Wehrmacht dont automatically win when they tech up to T4 and get ostwinds and panthers, even Tiger out.

Armor company is a late game doctrine for armor.
Infantry company is good when you go defensive and start hammering them with 105 and snipers.

[soviet army] limited unit upgrades force player to build fresh new units

why.jpg

If this is the case, Relic is really late on lowering the cost of replacements late-game.

the poster looks like it was made by that idiot Ben Kuchera from polygon, an example of his work.


Seriously, is their marketing department comprised of a monkey chain smoking fags or something???? Do they even play their own game or are they there just to massage their CV to get a job at another company that pays better????

No bloody passion from these people at all, why should I buy their game when they don't show the slightest bit of investment in their own products?

Their atrocious NDA is in place due to an exclusivity agreement with PC Gamer. Well worth the time when all you can get from this is such an insipid, uninspiring, uninformative and uninsightful piece of writing.

http://www.pcgamer.com/company-of-heroes-2-the-british-forces-dig-in-under-fire/

The writer is clearly there just to pick up his pay cheque, nothing more. There's no passion or understanding of the game at all. It doesn't enthuse the readers to get involved with the game and shockingly there is a whole paragraph dedicated to his view that the game should be made free to play.

A volunteer writer from this website who pours their heart and soul into this game because they love it could do a much better job if given the platform!

I should also add that people are still very pissed off ( and rightfully so) when Relic Promised that there would be no gameplay elements tucked behind a paywall for multiplayer and low and behold at launch we had gameplay elements tucked behind paywalls and they never ever said "Look guys we're sorry, we got your hopes up." Due to this there are barely any conversations about the game outside of enthusiast outlets such as this site, the official forums and reddit.

pls tell me how to counter enemy armor as usf without m10 or m36

It's not impossible. Bazookas with an AT that has a wide arc and no need for sighting at vet 1 also with armor piercing goes a long way.