State of balance - Thematic problems in CoH2

At the moment, I feel that CoH2 has some serious thematic problems that are exasperated by “balance” which at the moment, is focused on single units and stats of the unit being built rather than its relation to the rest of the faction and the underlying theme that the faction gives – that and a large amount of design flaws in certain factions (ie UKF) that make this game simply not as satisfying as VCoH ever was.

So, lets start with the themes of factions on initial release (not withstanding broken shit)

Soviets – Strong earlygame, very good assault units earlygame, had a choice between teching to either a generalist tank line or a Fire support line.

Ostheer – Defensive earlygame faction , not as good at taking ground but compensates for that with endgame combined arms strength

OKW – Strong Earlygame and lategame faction, specialist faction where units only excel at one certain thing and thats it, has 5 levels of vet so if you keep your units alive, you will be rewarded.

USF – Strong Earlygame and midgame faction – offensive faction with a lot of mobility and firepower through mainline infantry, lategame strength comes from numbers rather than individual units.

UKF – Defensive Earlygame and strong lategame faction – has very strong, expensive infantry that are very good for defending territory but not so good for attacking. Excellent tank options though
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Based on this, lets see where we currently are.

OKW – completely gimped – their veterancy, even up to vet 5, scales really badly with allies, esp USF and UKF, and a lot of their specialists units, although they required nerfs from release, have been simply overnerfed. That and with the power creep that resulted from commanders like Heavy Cavalry and factions like UKF, means that their specialist units are all of a sudden not as good anymore. That and, with gimped resource production, OKW now find themselves inferior to all allied factions at all stages of the game, which completely goes against the faction design of OKW. I’m perfectly fine with 5 levels of vet – its hard to earn, but if you earn it, then you should be rewarded. – TLDR – OKW is completely broken now Themewise.

USF – Rifles are finally strong now, and no longer as strong as RE, but frankly, their earlygame is waaay too strong now. One ability that really should not be in the game is smoke – Rifles are the strongest main line offensive infantry in the game and they can be spammed from T0 – why they need an ability like Smoke is beyond me. I mean Conscripts do perfectly fine without smoke against MGs if you flank, and the VCoH US did perfectly fine without abilities like smoke against MGs and Wehr, so I don’t understand why such a strong unit needs an ability like smoke. This causes problems for the Wehr theme which I’ll get to in a minute.

UKF – Absolutely the most design and theme-breaking faction in the game. We’ll start from release. For instance, there is no reason as to why such a defensive faction in the game needs an AT sniper – which I thought was a silly inclusion by Relic. Because of its ability to damage vehicles, there are no real hard counters to the AT sniper. Especially considering that the AT sniper is in the same tier as the ATG that comes reasonably early as well – I don’t see why the sniper should be able to damage tanks. Moreover, I don’t even understand why the Brits have a sniper unit. In VCoH, the Brits could put a scoped rifle in their Tommie squad, which was perfectly fine as it costed muni and had less range than the Wehr sniper, so you couldn’t go around and pop units anywhere without really thinking.

Now I mention the Tommie squad, Relic what was up with the -10% decrease in MP, making them cost less MP per model than a Gren? Considering that the Brits are a defensive faction, this change really was not needed. It now gives the brits a lot of offensive options now esp against Wehr with field heal and everything since Wehr would now be bled per model instead of Brits, especially when Brit infantry is in cover. That coupled with the most cost effective assault engineer unit in the game turns the brits into what was a defensive faction into a viable offensive faction which pretty much hurts not only the British but also the Ostheer and OKW themes as well.

Finally, since due to the nature of CoH2 and most maps, its impossible to deny the British fuel, and now with the buff to british offensive ability, means that the Brits overall will tech a lot faster that Ost (and OKW) with better tanks. I’m perfectly fine with Brits having good tanks, thats part of their design, but instead of toning down British aggression in the early game, it has been ramped up significantly as we can see from the last patch.

Because of this, Ost has been left in the dust – typically (except against Brits) Ost tends to have a good way of defending itself while being outnumbered, which I’m perfectly fine with. But it has a harder time taking map control. In VCoH, the thing that made it interesting when US were able to take a good amount of vet control was universal vet that Wehr was able to buy that allowed them to have the midgame-endgame strength. This doesn’t happen in CoH2, and with power creep thats been going on, means that Ost no longer has the offensive endgame material that has been a core part of its faction design to win.

At the moment, the only faction in a good place currently is the Soviets. Its mostly remained to its faction themes and is competitive throughout the game with many viable compositions available – except for the SU-76 which, rather than being a glass cannon TD, should be looked at more as a midgame unit with decent AT and decent barrage instead of really good SU-85 levels of TD and completely gimped barrage – I feel leaving the SU-76 in its current state while switching it from T4 when it had to compete with the Su-85 to T3 lazy balancing. This isn’t a theme issue so much as it is a historical issue – its silly for SU-76s to penn KTs.

TLDR: Relic, stop listening to community about individual buffs/nerfs of certain units because of balance and instead, pay attention to themes of factions/historical authenticity that you’re promoting in your advertisments, yet so badly ignore and neglect in your faction design and balance patches.

Your write up on the state of factions and balance in the game was very well done.

Only thing that set me off was "historical authenticity", because I absolutely hate the new "gritty realistic" look most units have now compared to the old comic Hollywood style COH1 had.

But that's like, my opinion.

Your write up on the state of factions and balance in the game was very well done.

Only thing that set me off was "historical authenticity", because I absolutely hate the new "gritty realistic" look most units have now compared to the old comic Hollywood style COH1 had.

But that's like, my opinion.

Thanks!

I don't mean historical authenticity as in everything has to be uber realistic or look realistic like in MOW or in every game, I mean it roughly has to follow historical performance balancewise - not for exact numbers but more like what unit A performed well against, what it didn't perform well against and so on. Of course there can be some artistic licence when it comes to that, but in same cases, eg the SU-76, it goes far too far.

Saying USF doesn't need smoke because vcoh americans didn't need smoke is ridiculous. Coh2 Americans are completely different then vCOH americans. In vCoh you could build MGs, snipers, mortars, and jeeps. All which helped them counter MGs. In COH2 they have nothing like that until they tech up and build another unit. Without smoke they won't have any way of countering MGs for a long time.

Saying USF doesn't need smoke because vcoh americans didn't need smoke is ridiculous. Coh2 Americans are completely different then vCOH americans. In vCoh you could build MGs, snipers, mortars, and jeeps. All which helped them counter MGs. In COH2 they have nothing like that until they tech up and build another unit. Without smoke they won't have any way of countering MGs for a long time.

I found in VCoH, it was perfectly viable to deal with MGs with rifles + nades alone.

And later, when they got BARs, it was perfectly fine too.

FTR most of the time, when I was playing Americans, I wasn't using snipers to counter MGs, it usually was for sniper wars instead.

For the record, I got up to Lvl 13 in 1v1 as Americans back before New Steam Version hit. I consider my play better now than it was before.

This is also based on my experience too - I never used smoke with Rifles in CoH2, yet I don't find MGs a problem, I deal with them in the same way I deal with them in CoH1 and it works. Its even easier because rifles, especially now, are a lot meatier than the VCoH rifles and also when you're capping, you could possibly sit behind cover and not get instapinned, unlike VCoH.

TLDR, VCoH had it a lot harder, but rifles countering (EDIT: taking out, countering is the wrong word) MGs happened all of the time - to the point where I'd consider it standard US play.

I found in VCoH, it was perfectly viable to deal with MGs with rifles + nades alone.

And later, when they got BARs, it was perfectly fine too.

FTR most of the time, when I was playing Americans, I wasn't using snipers to counter MGs, it usually was for sniper wars instead.

For the record, I got up to Lvl 13 in 1v1 as Americans back before New Steam Version hit. I consider my play better now than it was before.

This is also based on my experience too - I never used smoke with Rifles in CoH2, yet I don't find MGs a problem, I deal with them in the same way I deal with them in CoH1 and it works. Its even easier because rifles, especially now, are a lot meatier than the VCoH rifles and also when you're capping, you could possibly sit behind cover and not get instapinned, unlike VCoH.

TLDR, VCoH had it a lot harder, but rifles countering (EDIT: taking out, countering is the wrong word) MGs happened all of the time - to the point where I'd consider it standard US play.

Once again with the vcoh. The reason it was viable was because there where different things US could do. Thus axis didn't prepare for rifle spam every game. If you took away their smoke there wouldn't be anything stopping players from building multiple MGs and kubels to shut down rifle spam. And there is nothing else USF can do.

Not to mention on top of the lack of opening veriety. MG42s have a larger arc then they did in vCOH. And rifles are more expensive, thus reach the field slower and in less numbers. And kubels exist as well and are nowhere near as easy to flank as normal MGs.

So stop comparing COH2 to COH1, because the situations are completely different.

One ability that really should not be in the game is smoke – Rifles are the strongest main line offensive infantry in the game and they can be spammed from T0 – why they need an ability like Smoke is beyond me.

No mortars - no natural enemy for HMG. The logic that conscripts do without smoke incorrect. In this case, the player unnecessary rest of the troops, all he need more conscripts.

At the moment, the only faction in a good place currently is the Soviets.

Most T1 and T4 units except perhaps Katyushas and snipers are trash. The fact that players spam T2, T3 and call in troops, is hardly "good place". With this, you can win. But "good place"? No.

As relic said,OH and brits should be mid-late game stage factions but the fact is the OH suffers from the expensive late game tech cost while the brits don't. The 2 factions are really like but the brits has better units at every part except panzerwerfer and sexton.

With the recent buff of IS reinforce cost, it seems like this faction is too perfect now. It almost has no weakness at every stage compared to other fations. The sniper can counter its counter(222/kubal). The 6 pounder(280MP/7pop) is cheaper than zi3/pak40 for no reason. Heavy tier cost is cheaper than other factions, meanwhile heavy tanks have 1400HP while its counterpart (such as KV1) has 800HP. Alot of powerfull off-map abilities like the Artillery Cover which can pin infantry and damage vehicles engine. etc.

Agreed, smoke completely negates MGs, the OSTs most powerful early game weapon. Also, due to the terrible grouping of units in Coh2, one nade can easily wipe an MG squad. Even without smoke, riflemen are extremely lethal to MGs due to their mobility.

It becomes worse because of the veterancy,earlier it was struggle vs usf infantry now its mission impossible.Vetted rifles dodging bullets at point blank range,i've had it happen to me.

+1

Damage control by a CERTAIN person in 3, 2, 1... xD

Once again with the vcoh. The reason it was viable was because there where different things US could do. Thus axis didn't prepare for rifle spam every game. If you took away their smoke there wouldn't be anything stopping players from building multiple MGs and kubels to shut down rifle spam. And there is nothing else USF can do.

Not to mention on top of the lack of opening veriety. MG42s have a larger arc then they did in vCOH. And rifles are more expensive, thus reach the field slower and in less numbers. And kubels exist as well and are nowhere near as easy to flank as normal MGs.

So stop comparing COH2 to COH1, because the situations are completely different.

90% of openings in VCoH included 3-4 rifle opening as USF. It is by far the most standard opening in the game, you sometimes see stuff like 4ES but that is very rare, its almost always rifle rifle rifle rifle WSC if you didn't have lots of fuel, Motor Pool if you did

There are only two differences in the earlygame situation in VCoH and CoH2 I see.
1. Rifles are a lot weaker in CoH1 than in CoH2, at least unvetted rifles anyway
2. MG42s couldn't cap while firing as well - and capping makes them really vulnerable.

As for multiple MGs, well, if you spread them out, you deal with them the same way as you normally would as they can't support each other. If he grouped them up together, then congratulations, he's handed the bulk of the map on a silver platter to you, just tech to LT and get M20s as with so many MGs, he doesn't have the anti-vehicle presence to deal with it due to so much MP invested in his MG (which can't counter M20 until vet 1 anyway) and your fuel rate is a lot faster than he is.

The problem that I have with smoke vs MG is not the 1v1 situation (I wouldn't have so much of an issue with smoke to complain about it in the 1v1 scenario- EDIT: I don't mean 1v1 as in 1v1 game, I mean 1 rifle vs 1 MG). Many times when I see rifle vs MG scenarios, its often - Rifle chucks smoke, player moves entire blob through the smoke, thereby negating all of your crowd control units. Which is somewhat fine (not really) if at the end of the day, Grens > Rifles... except its often not the case, especially in recent patches, thats not to say I want rifles nerfed, I don't mind them strong, but I feel smoke is overkill.

No mortars - no natural enemy for HMG. The logic that conscripts do without smoke incorrect. In this case, the player unnecessary rest of the troops, all he need more conscripts.

Yeah believe it or not, I play full conscripts into Tier 3 Its not easy for your average player but for a vcoh player used to microing many rifle squads, its more or less the same (except you do have a sprint ability, which helps but is often not necessary when flanking

Most T1 and T4 units except perhaps Katyushas and snipers are trash. The fact that players spam T2, T3 and call in troops, is hardly "good place". With this, you can win. But "good place"? No.

Yeah believe it or not, I play full conscripts into Tier 3 Its not easy for your average player but for a vcoh player used to microing many rifle squads, its more or less the same (except you do have a sprint ability, which helps but is often not necessary when flanking

I'd disagree respectfully with that, The M3 has been in and out of the meta storing flamgineers and its still kinda viable (until the 222 comes out ), Penals have been so so.

And T4 - SU-85 is still a good tank, its outclassed by the SU-76 which is purely the result of lazy balancing (a point I've been making for many months). T-34/76 hadn't really been worked out properly by relic, but the T-34 is a bit tough so I'll give them a bit of room for that.

Anyway, my point isn't that all units are viable all the time, its just thematically in a good place - it plays to an idea and no balance patch has deviated from it.

TLDR: Relic, stop listening to community about individual buffs/nerfs of certain units because of balance and instead...

Democracy is a lie.


Anyway, I agree with most of your points. The fact that relic constantly neglects their own design is amazing. More importantly, I don't understand why they do harsh bufs and nerf either. "Flamers OP? Let's nerf them by 70%". "SU-76 UP? Move it to t3 and make it a SU-85". "ML 20 OP? reduce it from 300 to 240".

And then next patch, they would have to revert those changes. I'm pretty sure Flamers will be buffed pretty soon. Someone needs to Nerf their Nerf/Buff hammers.

That's the reason I haven't played the game for like 2 weeks. Even winning is not very fun.

Please stop bringing up the viability of Riflemen in vCoH without smoke. The biggest factor is that in vCoH you didn't have truesight. It was far, far easier to use units to scout and snuff out firing arcs of machine guns to flank them which is why Riflemen were viable without smoke-- the fog of war didn't take shot/vision blockers into account.

Please stop bringing up the viability of Riflemen in vCoH without smoke. The biggest factor is that in vCoH you didn't have truesight. It was far, far easier to use units to scout and snuff out firing arcs of machine guns to flank them which is why Riflemen were viable without smoke-- the fog of war didn't take shot/vision blockers into account.

On the flip side, it is far easier to sneak up on an MG because you didn't see a flank coming due to truesight than it was in VCoH, thereby increasing the chance of squadwipe.

I've been flanking MGs all the time without smoke as soviets and USF. It really is not needed.

Nice post. I agree with you! I also find it strange that we have units that are good at all ranges (rifles) and have units that are better at long to mid ranges (grens). In VCoH I can clearly remember volksgrenadiers and grenadiers winning at long to medium range and riflemen completely winning at close range and having a chance at medium range. Why haven't they implemented such a system in CoH2? It still wonders me every time I play.

Nice post. I agree with you! I also find it strange that we have units that are good at all ranges (rifles) and have units that are better at long to mid ranges (grens). In VCoH I can clearly remember volksgrenadiers and grenadiers winning at long to medium range and riflemen completely winning at close range and having a chance at medium range. Why haven't they implemented such a system in CoH2? It still wonders me every time I play.

Because CoH2 is a rushed game. Everyone from VCoH days clearly remembers what happened to CoH2 development - it was designed to be nothing more than milking money for THQ in its death throws.

Even with a 3 month delayed release, CoH2 was not great, it was considerably simplified compared to VCoH, but the DLC milking made it even worse (Shit like Sov WIndustry and Tiger Ace caused me to quit a game I had been playing for 18 months and go to World of Tanks)

To their credit, Relic have done a lot with CoH2 to make it far more playable and more accepting, although steam numbers showing a 75% playerbase drop in the first 4 months showed they couldn't keep doing the Sov Windustry and Tiger Ace bullshit they did. Even then, they have some gaping flaws in the game that they make - balance issues and bugs are kind of short term 1 month you can live with/live without issues. Things like optimisation and faction design on the other hand, thats going to stick around, and thats not what Relic are doing so well at the moment.

Saying USF doesn't need smoke because vcoh americans didn't need smoke is ridiculous. Coh2 Americans are completely different then vCOH americans. In vCoh you could build MGs, snipers, mortars, and jeeps. All which helped them counter MGs. In COH2 they have nothing like that until they tech up and build another unit. Without smoke they won't have any way of countering MGs for a long time.

Yeah I stopped reading when I read that.

Because CoH2 is a rushed game. Everyone from VCoH days clearly remembers what happened to CoH2 development - it was designed to be nothing more than milking money for THQ in its death throws.

Even with a 3 month delayed release, CoH2 was not great, it was considerably simplified compared to VCoH, but the DLC milking made it even worse (Shit like Sov WIndustry and Tiger Ace caused me to quit a game I had been playing for 18 months and go to World of Tanks)

To their credit, Relic have done a lot with CoH2 to make it far more playable and more accepting, although steam numbers showing a 75% playerbase drop in the first 4 months showed they couldn't keep doing the Sov Windustry and Tiger Ace bullshit they did. Even then, they have some gaping flaws in the game that they make - balance issues and bugs are kind of short term 1 month you can live with/live without issues. Things like optimisation and faction design on the other hand, thats going to stick around, and thats not what Relic are doing so well at the moment.

Agreed. I remember launch, it was a disaster. I always wondered why they removed things like Elefant and Tigers from normal tier structures after beta, this seems to answer it lol

As to OKW units being overnerfed, which was indeed needed after its launch, I tend to agree as well. I also feel that a lot of units don't seem to have a certain thing they are good at apart from a few select group of units. Next to this, the faction shouldn't be fuel starved with the fuel penalty, but should see something like a 90% mp income in my opinion. This would suit its theme much better as a hard pressed army that had manpower shortages after 4 hard years of war and destruction. I also feel Sturmpioneers need some love too, they take so long to vet up and are a pain in the ass since they always tend to lose models so quickly before they reach vet 3 (which takes ages). They don't feel like assault troops at all, requiring vet 3 to get a grenade (stun grenade mind you), when ironically sturmpioneers were some of the best armed troops in the Wehrmacht and all had grenades.

The Soviets are indeed in a good place and I don't want to see them removed from their good place that suits their theme so well. Yet I would like to see the AT grenade and the Molotov package to become one package. I think this would suit their core infantry better, since all the other factions either get a snare by teching to a single tier (panzerfaust on grens and panzershreck on volks) or getting vet (USF riflemen). (apart from UKF that is, which don't need it since their pak 40 clone comes around the same time as their sniper does, which can be a deterrent to light vehicles as well)

Yeah I stopped reading when I read that.

If you have problems with what I've said regarding smoke is not required to counter MGs, lets compare player cards then. I don't use smoke and I do perfectly fine.

BTW, I don't really play as much as I did, but I can tell you when I lose as USF, its not due to MGs or earlygame (I'd say my earlygame is the strongest part of my game in all factions) - its due to lategame mistakes I tend to make