Relic: Please hand over the balance to the community

idk bout miragefla balancing this again i only like a few of his changes. i rather relic just try to be more active. most players wont be good balancers cuz they will have some biased in them. i think ill be a great balancer but its better to leave it for the creators

it has to be top players. watching WPC, many people who spend a lot of time on the forum might be surprised to many, many of the strategies deployed by the top players. a great example would be the games where barton relied on rakentenwerfer and ostwind to beat shadowada and almost beat Jesulin (or did he barton win that game)? the two units that are time and time again regarded as "UP", "trash" or "useless" were Barton army's backbone and it challenged even the biggest names in this community.

1-Rak problem is mostly against light vehicles. IIRC Barton's rak couldn't deal with the Dodge (missed) or the Stuart. Aim times messes with the unit but on the same hand, i'll say that no speed penalty on vet1 is REALLY good (for that level of vet).

2-No one complains about Ostwind, specially on 1v1, from OKW. It's mostly the OH version (either it's role on T3 or cost/performance). Everything that is a call in, is better.
If it's about AA, the only great unit is the Centurion, followed by OHW/USF AA HT. Both Ostwind and M5 sucks. Almost all AA against single strafe sucks (on that Barton's game, i remember seeing double vet3/5 Ostwind not been able to deal with Jesulin recon plane).

Ostwind performance DO suck if it's on the move. On that game, Barton mostly fended off infantry coming to it and vet quite a lot through received damage (from those zooks).
Lack of manual reload makes its a bit unreliable sometimes.

1-Rak problem is mostly against light vehicles. IIRC Barton's rak couldn't deal with the Dodge (missed) or the Stuart. Aim times messes with the unit but on the same hand, i'll say that no speed penalty on vet1 is REALLY good (for that level of vet).

2-No one complains about Ostwind, specially on 1v1, from OKW. It's mostly the OH version (either it's role on T3 or cost/performance). Everything that is a call in, is better.
If it's about AA, the only great unit is the Centurion, followed by OHW/USF AA HT. Both Ostwind and M5 sucks. Almost all AA against single strafe sucks (on that Barton's game, i remember seeing double vet3/5 Ostwind not been able to deal with Jesulin recon plane).

Ostwind performance DO suck if it's on the move. On that game, Barton mostly fended off infantry coming to it and vet quite a lot through received damage (from those zooks).
Lack of manual reload makes its a bit unreliable sometimes.

obviously i do not have exact counts but i can bet my life that Ostwind came up in multiple discussions recently where many people complained about it. comparing it to centaur what not. von ivan also made it in his match against jove.

rak. what you say might be correct, i have no reason to doubt. but rak's ability to cloak and retreat were what kept barton's rak alive, vet up and great at killing. the same features that got sidelined multiple times under the guise of "i don't care about that I want my ATG to anti tank" bblah blah BS.

--------------to OP

there were many other "abnormalities" that occurred in the top 16 so far if your gauge of balance came from here or the official forum. handing over the balance to general community would be the worst thing that can happen to this game.

While we're at it, please hand over the servers to the community.
Oh, and the source code. Thanks.

1-Rak problem is mostly against light vehicles. IIRC Barton's rak couldn't deal with the Dodge (missed) or the Stuart. Aim times messes with the unit but on the same hand, i'll say that no speed penalty on vet1 is REALLY good (for that level of vet).

2-No one complains about Ostwind, specially on 1v1, from OKW. It's mostly the OH version (either it's role on T3 or cost/performance). Everything that is a call in, is better.
If it's about AA, the only great unit is the Centurion, followed by OHW/USF AA HT. Both Ostwind and M5 sucks. Almost all AA against single strafe sucks (on that Barton's game, i remember seeing double vet3/5 Ostwind not been able to deal with Jesulin recon plane).

Ostwind performance DO suck if it's on the move. On that game, Barton mostly fended off infantry coming to it and vet quite a lot through received damage (from those zooks).
Lack of manual reload makes its a bit unreliable sometimes.

Scavenger doctrine is simply the best 1vs1 doctrine vs USF.
CP8 Ostwind comes at a moment hard counters are minutes far behind, even more if the USF player invested in fuel upgrades and a stuart.
Ostwind + raketen has always been a really good combo.
I let you watch again the match Barton vs Jesulin but Barton has been able to last really long after being dominated, to call 2 king tigers just because Ostwind + raken is one of the most powerful combo in game. This and being lucking to not lose his raketen when they were clearly over extending and had to retreat through various Jesulin's squads.

rak problem = any atgun problem. Do you think pak hits better t-70 and stuart? Do you think M1 hits better kubel and 222?
Rak missing problem is a perception issue of some people here only playing OKW. Aim time is balance with the camo, you can't have the same aim time as any other atgun and also being able to camo till mid range shot from your target. If you can't acknowledge that, better not be part of the balance team.

it has to be top players. watching WPC, many people who spend a lot of time on the forum might be surprised to many, many of the strategies deployed by the top players. a great example would be the games where barton relied on rakentenwerfer and ostwind to beat shadowada and almost beat Jesulin (or did he barton win that game)? the two units that are time and time again regarded as "UP", "trash" or "useless" were Barton army's backbone and it challenged even the biggest names in this community.

Ostwind and raketen blob is the strongest, most meta OKW tactic since 2 years ago. How do you turn this around to be praise for Barton for using UP units?

If you saw someone use OKW in a tourney WITHOUT going scavenge, that would be news.

Scavenger doctrine is simply the best 1vs1 doctrine vs USF.
CP8 Ostwind comes at a moment hard counters are minutes far behind, even more if the USF player invested in fuel upgrades and a stuart.
Ostwind + raketen has always been a really good combo.
I let you watch again the match Barton vs Jesulin but Barton has been able to last really long after being dominated, to call 2 king tigers just because Ostwind + raken is one of the most powerful combo in game. This and being lucking to not lose his raketen when they were clearly over extending and had to retreat through various Jesulin's squads.

rak problem = any atgun problem. Do you think pak hits better t-70 and stuart? Do you think M1 hits better kubel and 222?
Rak missing problem is a perception issue of some people here only playing OKW. Aim time is balance with the camo, you can't have the same aim time as any other atgun and also being able to camo till mid range shot from your target. If you can't acknowledge that, better not be part of the balance team.

I'll argue that Barton been able to survive to extend the game to 1 hour were due to the map (never liked Crossing as USF against either faction) but specially some miss micro from part of Jesulin when managing their tanks (that middle push with all tanks getting stuck was painful to see). This was balanced by Barton losing infantry squads left and right (those SP with Schreck and zook would had been a pain to deal with if they survived).

Anyway, if you could read between lines, you would realize i'm not saying that both units are USELESS. I've said it plenty of times, Scavenge is a great 1v1 commander and i'll argue it's the "Guard Motor" of OKW.

I do think normal At guns have less problems than rak to hit light vehicles. Range and aim time makes the difference. A light vehicle moving perpendicular through the arc of an AT gun will get shot at. The same thing can't be said about the rak.
Yes, rak and AT guns are completely different units which different pros and cons. Crew survivability, range, aim time vs cloak, garrison, retreat, scaling.
I've already said that it's more than questionable the vet 1 bonus (no speed penalty) but i don't think that at vet 0 are such an amazing unit. Cloak is there to offset the vulnerabilities of the rak, but i don't think that's enough to help OKW on the early game.
I do think it's an undervalued unit for the medium tank stage, specially if you get a pair of them, but i do get the complains about the unit.

Ostwind and raketen blob is the strongest, most meta OKW tactic since 2 years ago. How do you turn this around to be praise for Barton for using UP units?

If you saw someone use OKW in a tourney WITHOUT going scavenge, that would be news.

I am not praising Barton.

i also did not state any concrete opinion on rak or ostwind. i am not playing technicality game here. i am not playing "i said ABCE not ABCD" game.

The matter of the fact is that if relic listened to dozens of whine threads about ostwind and raketen (which I agreed with the general sentiment), Barton could've been top 4 now. and I am saying that no plebs, including myself, should have any voice on balance where only the top players can truly use units to their fullest potential.

I admit, that example was not the best for the reasons you stated.

CoH2's community is too fractured to take control of the game.

Honestly, I find that defining *which* community would/could take over balance to be as problematic as anything.

Relic is overambitious if anything. They keep announcing all these big things only there's no manpower behind their announcements so they always end up disappointing. They supported it for about 18 months and they should've winded down afterwards.

Almost everything they did after their big 200 ms input lag decrease patch was a patchwork of terrible especially with regards to balance.

Advanced Cancer was really the last straw. What the hell were they thinking? And they left that crap broken for months. I don't think the gamebase has recovered from that nonsense.

They tried to make amends with a beta for once and then ignored the beta and rushed changes that weren't tested like USF super mortars. Seriously?

They not only rushed that change, they changed OKW in a huge way ... a design change which takes many patches to tune and fix properly. But we've heard nothing since they released the last big tuning patch.

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I just wish Relic would stop leading us on with the next big thing. Have small, achievable goals. Stuff like optimization and slightly tweaked weapon tables. Release commanders that won't break the game (basically remixes of current commanders).

TBH, I don't even think there's a lead game designer left on the game. All the patches seems like stuff a staff engineer thinks about all of a sudden on a Friday rushes to completion. They should give balance to the community or at least get a guy that knows what he's doing and make small changes. We know that it's not profitable for them to support an old game anymore so they should do their best just to leave the game in a playable state.

So, I guess it's safe to say we hear the drumbeat and death rattle of the game then?

true. like it happened with the last patch by mirageflak? wait.. only lelic gardened it up.. better balance than ever.. thanks to a community member.