With the Go4 CoH2 ESL Tournament Series just around the corner, the current state of game balance has become a hot(er) topic of late for not only the community but for Relic as well. To add fuel to the fire, the recent revamp of the OKW have made some worried that this faction is now over-performing which may lead to a one sided tilt for Axis players during the upcoming competitions. This is something here at Relic that we have been monitoring very closely over the past few weeks and we feel we have made the necessary adjustments to ensure that all five factions are performing within an acceptable margin.
The data below depicts the win ratio by faction for the top 250 players in CoH2 and is broken down into two separate weeks: December 7 - 13 (Post December 3rd Update) and December 14 - 20 (Post Dec. 10th's Hotfix and Dec. 17th's Modding Update). Each week tells a story about the state of balance and how it has changed with each update that has been released this month.
POST DECEMBER 3RD UPDATE*
*Win ratio of the top 250 players from the week of Dec. 7 - 13
As mentioned, the December Update came with a major revamp to the OKW. As players learned the new meta for this faction, Relic monitored win rates closely to keep an eye on the state of balance. As depicted in the image above, the win ratio for the OKW shot up to around 65%, roughly 9% higher than that of the next closest Allied faction. This fell outside of an acceptable margin and therefore was adjusted in the December 10th Hotfix.
Another faction worth noting in this image is the UKF. As shown above, The UKF were at the time the most under-performing faction and thus were the recipient of a small balance change on December 17th to increase their performance.
POST DECEMBER 10TH & 17TH PATCH*
*Win ratio of the top 250 players from the week of Dec. 14 - 20
As show above, the December 10th & 17th patches had a strong effect on re-stabilizing the 1v1 game balance between all factions, with an average deviation of under 2% between USF/Soviets and Wehrmacht/OKW.
Although still relatively under-performing compared to other factions, the UKF has also seen a performance increase of approximately 8%. With less than a week's worth of data since this faction received an adjustment, we feel it is likely that their performance will increase as we gain access to additional data. If needed, the UKF will receive additional adjustments until it falls within the same win margin as other factions.
BALANCE: THE ROAD AHEAD
In the midst of ESL, our goal is to do as little balance changes as possible to ensure gameplay stays consistent and fair for all tournament participants. As demonstrated in the last two patches, future patches will receive only small, calculated changes to a single over or under performing faction in a continued effort to keep all factions as closely balanced as possible.
Once the team feels that the state of 1v1 is as balanced as it needs to be to run a fair ESL tournament series, efforts will then be focused on ensuring team games fall within the same acceptable margins as well.
Source : http://www.companyofheroes.com/blog/2015/12/23/game-balance-the-state-of-1v1-for-esl