To Relic -- Ideas to fix DLC mess

...their pride doesn't allow them to fix their product....

this utter almost baseless notion of relic's hubris is very frustrating to read.

yes, this would resonate well when coh2 launched when apparently relic disregarded a lot of advice from top coh1 community members, but now then ever, they are more engaged, and it clearly shows that cruzz's bug finds had a lot to do with bug fixes of the upcoming patch.

they took a moderate step into "fixing" soviet faction, brits clearly shows depth that was missing from wfa fations etc etc.

this utter almost baseless notion of relic's hubris is very frustrating to read.

yes, this would resonate well when coh2 launched when apparently relic disregarded a lot of advice from top coh1 community members, but now then ever, they are more engaged, and it clearly shows that cruzz's bug finds had a lot to do with bug fixes of the upcoming patch.

they took a moderate step into "fixing" soviet faction, brits clearly shows depth that was missing from wfa fations etc etc.

I'm not denying that they are getting better. On the contrary, in my previous post I've mentioned that. And in my humble opinion I think they are doing this because we gave them a hard time. They finally answered. And maybe UKF sales were not what they expected them to be. Anyway, they are getting engaged yes, but they could listen to us earlier... as early as Alpha.

I realize as long as there is more content to get people are going to want to get it, especially for free, but honestly I think the DLC commander's importance in competitive play is vastly overstated. The core armies are perfectly capable of being used competitively. I've seen enough games where players either don't use any abilities from their doctrine or forget to even pick one to know that. It does open up new playstyles and options which is why I waste money buying them (my penchant for experimentation has likely cost me a lot of money buying those commanders.) but they're hardly the be all end all that people make them out to be. They're a crutch if anything.

All of the commanders that I regularly use are $5 each. I've been lucky enough to get them as drops.

While I don't think Relic are incompetent, I suspect when it comes to the biggest issue with the game (the Commanders and their lack of balance), their hands are tied.
They have to generate new income and that means making new Commanders and DLC too appealing to pass up - hence they have to appear very powerful compared to existing ones. Balance will always play second fiddle to sales and that is why Relic can't be trusted to create balanced Commanders as DLC. Look at the British Vanguard Commander for that or the two new ones.

Personally I think the whole Commander system should be rewritten:
- Commanders should be changed so that each has 9 abilities like the old left-hand/right-hand doctrine trees (from CoH), so that even after making the strategic decision of which one to use you still have to make tactical decisions during the game of where you invest the CPs at what point.

Games where you buy the overpowered faction/commander scare people away. Its balance that attracts people. A player picks up the game and gets destroyed not just by a better player but by a player with a p2win doctrine. You don't see that as bad?

Commanders need to be interesting and encourage different playstyles. The Soviet commanders are really good in their execution.

yes, this would resonate well when coh2 launched when apparently relic disregarded a lot of advice from top coh1 community members, but now then ever, they are more engaged, and it clearly shows that cruzz's bug finds had a lot to do with bug fixes of the upcoming patch.

People apparently mistook what happened at the end of COH1s lifecycle for the way COH2 would be going forward.

And that wasn't the case and was probably never intended to be

I don't think people want everything to be free. They want a finished game within a month or two after release.

I don't want a finished game within a month

Why am I not playing M44Online anymore? Because there is no new content.

To any defenders of DLC, TF2 micro-transaction is miles better. Warspoil mainly exists to troll players, make no mistake about that. Core commander for each faction is meh compared to DLC.

Shock Army and Guard Motor say hi!

So do Airborne and Infantry!


OKW aren't bad either, and Brits are still very early


You might have a point for Ostheer, but I view the Common Commanders for the original factions as vanilla ones where you learn the game and I think Blitzkrieg is pretty good for that.

Do you guys remember the old day? Developers an publishers used to make perfect games.

When this golden age exactly?

Before or after ET on the 2600, Daikatana or Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing?

Games where you buy the overpowered faction/commander scare people away. Its balance that attracts people. A player picks up the game and gets destroyed not just by a better player but by a player with a p2win doctrine. You don't see that as bad?

You misunderstand the point of my post. Of course I see it as bad. I was just saying that while I don't agree with the route they have taken, I can understand why they have taken it.

One of the worst things that can happen for the game is to have new players fresh with enthusiasm for the game, start playing only to be thrashed by Commanders that they don't have access to and appear to be unbalanced when compared to those they do have access to.

Games where you buy the overpowered faction/commander scare people away. Its balance that attracts people. A player picks up the game and gets destroyed not just by a better player but by a player with a p2win doctrine. You don't see that as bad?

Commanders need to be interesting and encourage different playstyles. The Soviet commanders are really good in their execution.

Exactly. Thats the reason i stopped playing hearthstone, which i think is an amazing game and really fun to play but as soon as you get rolled by p2w its not fun anymore. i would gladly pay for hearthstone but im not willing to spend money on free to play games. cause of obvious reasons.

on the side note, i have been playing coh2 almost everyday since the release and now im starting to lose interest to play it. coh2 as a competitive game is pretty much dead and no patch can change that.

next year we are gonna get afrika korps/new axis faction which will bring same new problems. coh2 and esports, never gonna happen, sorry.

I love the Commanders system. I think it is vastly superior to the CoH1 doctrines, and allows much more variety of units, abilities etc. I also did not like the business of having to actively spend Command Points, I like the way they now unlock things without active intervention, and thus allow the player to keep their head in the game. It's all great, IMO.

On the so-called P2W issue, I'm not hugely convinced that commanders actually make that big of a difference. If DevM can win top level tournament games without even picking a commander, how necessary are they really? Surely we know it's not the case that picking this or that commander, whichever happens to top of the popularity parade this week, does not guarantee a win.

We've got stats for wins by faction, does anyone know if it is possible to get stats for wins and losses by commander?

On the so-called P2W issue, I'm not hugely convinced that commanders actually make that big of a difference. If DevM can win top level tournament games without even picking a commander, how necessary are they really? Surely we know it's not the case that picking this or that commander, whichever happens to top of the popularity parade this week, does not guarantee a win.

USF has one strictly superior commander on 1v1 (Rifle) which was banned for the tournament.
Reminder that mechanized used to be good on release, when it was basically an M3 on steroids which also let people to put a sniper inside after it's was taken away on the M3.
Greyhound was a cheesy strat, where you rely on wiping as many squads as possible with it. IIRC the offmap was as good as artillery cover of brits on release. Still i think that on that time M20 > Sherman rushes was a better strat.

Exactly. Thats the reason i stopped playing hearthstone, which i think is an amazing game and really fun to play but as soon as you get rolled by p2w its not fun anymore. i would gladly pay for hearthstone but im not willing to spend money on free to play games. cause of obvious reasons.

Hearthstone problem for someone new is: either you play 2/3 decks (mostly aggro ones) or you stick to arena. There's plenty of different streamers with F2P runs for legend.
Nowadays they had add some ways to help new players (Tabern brawl giving packs, packs on quest and giving golden cards (dust) each month).

Shock Army and Guard Motor say hi!

So do Airborne and Infantry!


OKW aren't bad either, and Brits are still very early


You might have a point for Ostheer, but I view the Common Commanders for the original factions as vanilla ones where you learn the game and I think Blitzkrieg is pretty good for that.

Guard motor has fallen from Tier1 after the change on call ins. Shock army died with both 120mm and Howitzer nerf.
Airborne is meh after Rifle buffs and fuel timing changes
Scavenge and Vanguard are arguably better overall or at least on the top.
Besides Jaeger Armor for teamgames, i haven't seen in a while those commanders. Blitzkrieg is playable although on teamgames, but for 1v1, i'll rather have other ones (Mobile defense/Lighting)

DLC, "packs" and any other items relating after the purchase of the game is what I consider the "catch 22" in modern gaming. I was more then happy "back in the day" to plunking down $30-$40 dollars for a box "expansion" pack which included a faction, hand full of maps and broken/buggy mechanics, clearly op units and balance issues that wouldn't see a patch for 6 months, which only break other things.....that was a year worth of waiting. Now, at least in my eyes, the digital of age has brought about instant gratification in form of DLC. By no stretch of the imagination is it perfect, the fact that I have access to skins, commanders, entire single player and story driven content for a couple dollars is a huge thumbs up from coh1 where waiting for up to years for anything. The best part is, they can justify spending company assets balancing the game since its still making money. News flash kiddies, world does not work on free. Its find to bitch and complain about lack of content but when it's here and they ask you for a *gasp* $4 commander or even more shocking $12 faction it's relic corporate greed for you ladies and gents, you all just a bunch of hypocritical cunts. The last time I bought the British in a coh game it cost me $30 bucks with a cheesy story I didn't ask for, $12 bucks ($10 if pre order) that's a deal.

USF has one strictly superior commander on 1v1 (Rifle) which was banned for the tournament.

You are Green now so I think you can see the discussion on that, which I won't repeat here save to say that there was a wide range of opinion about what, if any commanders and units to ban.

Part of the objection to Rifle, and indeed Elite Armour is to purchasable Vet on principle rather than because of any OP ness.

Shock army died with both 120mm and Howitzer nerf.

Sry I meant Shock Rifle, Shock Army is terrible

Jump back to quoted post26 Oct 2015, 22:52 PMelchino7

USF has one strictly superior commander on 1v1 (Rifle) which was banned for the tournament.

You are Green now so I think you can see the discussion on that, which I won't repeat here save to say that there was a wide range of opinion about what, if any commanders and units to ban.

Part of the objection to Rifle, and indeed Elite Armour is to purchasable Vet on principle rather than because of any OP ness.

Shock army died with both 120mm and Howitzer nerf.

Sry I meant Shock Rifle, Shock Army is terrible

Yeah, i knew Ami opinions regarding those 2 commander. I think it can be interpreted that way, but i didn't meant to say that it was banned due to OPness more than I was correcting the fact that, if DevM was able to use Rifle company, he would had use it on the tournament.

#lelic

...perfect games...minimal amount of bugs and issues, no post-release bullshite, no need for frequent patches...

Now this is a prime example of memories growing sweeter with time. There were no patches because the developers simply had no interest in going back to patch games. There was no reliable way to distribute any patches either, so the effort would have been wasted in any case.

Any bugs were simply irritating features you had to live with. Do you seriously not remember all the bugs and crashes we had over the years? Several of them were especially infamous, like the difficulty setting in X-COM or the original two Fallouts being nigh-unplayable. I had many games I could not play through when bugs simply set in and repeatedly crashed the whole thing at some point.

And balance? Even good old classic Heroes of M & M 3 was never even close to balanced throughout it's lifetime, not even with multiple expansions put into it. We still happily played the hell out of that one, we didn't know any better.

The whole concept of going back and fixing games or balancing them was unthinkable back then. You just shelled out 50 EUR and made do with what you got, whether it worked well or not. Only sometimes would an expansion fix something in the base game, but that too was hit-and-miss.

Not to mention all the atrocious games the developers had the audacity to lay on the unsuspecting masses in the early 90's. With little access to reviews outside of often questionably edited gamer magazines, you were liable to buy crap simply based on what was said on the box..

USF has one strictly superior commander on 1v1 (Rifle) which was banned for the tournament.
Reminder that mechanized used to be good on release, when it was basically an M3 on steroids which also let people to put a sniper inside after it's was taken away on the M3.
Greyhound was a cheesy strat, where you rely on wiping as many squads as possible with it. IIRC the offmap was as good as artillery cover of brits on release. Still i think that on that time M20 > Sherman rushes was a better strat.

I'm not saying they don't make a difference; obviously they do, and obviously they would be pointless if they didn't.

What I'm asking, rather, is whether you really think a player who won a given game would have lost that same game if they had not used the "best" commander available? Do you really think that commanders make so much difference that they change a defeat into a victory and vice versa? I'm not convinced that is really the case.

I had a good read here:

http://www.pcgamer.com/how-400-virtual-knives-saved-counter-strike/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=pcgfb

Hope someone at Relic would give it a look for future projects

I'm not saying they don't make a difference; obviously they do, and obviously they would be pointless if they didn't.

What I'm asking, rather, is whether you really think a player who won a given game would have lost that same game if they had not used the "best" commander available? Do you really think that commanders make so much difference that they change a defeat into a victory and vice versa? I'm not convinced that is really the case.

Definitely some of the time, it's hard to say about 'most' of the time. There's no way of knowing to be honest. When Ostruppen came out and were 120-160mp, came at T0 and you could call in a unit every 30 seconds, they were absolutely unbeatable in 2v2 on some maps unless the Ostruppen player was utterly terrible. You could literally stick them in every building on a map. HelpingHans convinced himself this was some kind of genius strategy...

I understand the commanders are better now but still not to the point there are no banned commanders in a tournament.

Also, this is a full price competitive multiplayer 1v1 RTS. You shouldn't be having to put up with FTP Moba microtransactions in this sort of game.