Why CoH2 feels so weird for me

Hey guys, we all know that currently the game is somehow strange, at least I feel this way.
Somehow playing CoH2 is a lot of fun, yes, but the game feels odd and I want to try why I think it is.

The game is almost 3 years old, so we get fewer patches, that's understandable.
The thing is that there are so many little bugs and stuff that playing CoH2 always reminds you of how unfinished it is.
If you don't think about it - No problem. Sure, some things are a bit unbalanced, but which game isn't?

But if you keep it in your mind then it is somehow a issue.

If a bug gets fixed, 5 other bugs come up.
The player base never knows on which topic Relic is currently working on - if there is something being worked on at all.

In my opinion the discovery of the vet bug is what made things even weirder.
Then they tried to fix it and somehow 'destroyed' the game - 1v1 Stalingrad weekend, 100 man echelon squads, full flamethrower engineers, etc.

What was the solution? Revert one gamebreaking bug to fix three others.

And this is how it has always been. Relic screws something up and while trying to fix it, they screw things up even more.

The absent communication makes things as bad as they are.
Most files of the FBI are not as secret as the Relic taskboard.

Let's think about all the small things that have been buggy for more or less time and influence the game in a small or big way.

- The pathing is totally fucked up, tanks make u turns when they shouldn't and a patch before they drove to the front with their asses first.
- The game freezes multiple times per match, no one knows why
- Female partisans bug (instead of fixing it, Relic simply put them out of the game).
- Current vet bug
- Vehicle shifting (tanks and vehicles simply driving through each other)
- Mines not detonating or doing 0 damage.
- Panzerwerfer instantly kills squads in buildings
- Players are able to see the enemy buildings in the base through the fog of war
- Absolutely random behaviour of bulletins stacking or not
- Missing (shiny) textures or strange squares appearing on the map for no reason
- Terrific optimisation leading to less than 20 FPS even with high end PCs.
- Memory leak making the game more and more laggy if the player plays multiple matches without restarting CoH2.
- Stuka (or other planes) loitering for much longer than they are supposed to.
- USF captain's antenna visible through the fog of war.
- A lot of missing voice files ingame

This was just the list that came in my mind after a few minutes of thinking about it. There are A LOT more. And this list is only about stuff that is in the current version of the game. Not to mention the sound bug that is 'probably' gone but was able to really HURT people with headphones because it was just so loud (And instead of fixing it, they said 'just play the game on medium audio quality' - No help for the 90% of players that do not visit the forums, thanks).

Don't get me wrong. CoH2 is still my favourite game. But all these little things prevent me from thinking of it as a 'great game'.
It may sound hard, but I am sure that most players would switch to another game if there was one - because of Relic. Lucky for them that there is none yet.

The demise of THQ shall be forever felt.

you're falling out of love

https://www.coh2.org/topic/49510/the-7-stages-of-falling-out-of-love

The game is almost 3 years old, so we get fewer patches, that's understandable.
The thing is that there are so many little bugs and stuff that playing CoH2 always reminds you of how unfinished it is.

sure but the game is still getting new content all the time so it should be treated like a new game.

its just that just when u think its fine they add more content that comes with more bugs. its a never ending cycle

I agree the whole shenanigans around the recent patch was utterly poorly executed.

On top of that list i'll add:

- Relic being absolute twats towards the community in their streams (Brad telling us to L2P, insulting the community in general etc.) which make them look even less professional than they should be.

It's pretty obvious that Relic is not caring that much about the game anymore.

Native Voices?
"Impossible!"

Badly designed ability?
"Remove it, instead of fixing!"

What about the memory leak and performance issues?
"..."

Reworking underused or worthless units/commanders (Scott, Royal artillery, Recon and Mechanized company etc.) ?
"Yes, maybe, someday, later."

What bugs me most is the slow process of balancing.

If the ground level wasn't built well enough, this will happen faster than expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_aging

We'll never know the internal workings of Relic, but it is clear they have some issues to work out with their QA pipeline and source control.

I do wonder how much the DOW2 engine legacy has plagued COH2 online play.

It is strange, I've never had a relationship with a game which I have loved / hated so much.

I had some strange feelings about CoH2 since october or september, can't remember correctly. The game changes so much, it's tiring to keep up.

I agree the whole shenanigans around the recent patch was utterly poorly executed.

On top of that list i'll add:

- Relic being absolute twats towards the community in their streams (Brad telling us to L2P, insulting the community in general etc.) which make them look even less professional than they should be.

Wait what? I don't remember this.

i hope they remove mortar pit and arty cover too

sure but the game is still getting new content all the time so it should be treated like a new game.

But it feels way more like:



Milk the sick and broken cow until it completely dies. Milk is still milk.

I feel you OP - I love this game... but i really dislike both the direction of the game-development and Relics inability to pinpoint and solve seemingly basic issues. Ultimately, it has led me to start looking around for a new game entirely to both play and stream on a regular basis... Somehow it just feels like it´s time to move on.

But it feels way more like:



Milk the sick and broken cow until it completely dies. Milk is still milk.

hahahahaha right on man totally agree

Just take one step back, one step, and it becomes all great. The game is fantastic and things are fun. That's how you'll feel one step back.

Those issues you list are not so terrible compared to how things have been (soviet hmg not suppressing e t c), and it was still fun then.