Three universal changes that could expand CoH2's gameplay.

(Or more accurately: My personal gripes about the game I want to yammer on about in the Lobby.)

In no particular order:

Better signal pings.

The current signal ping is extremely intrusive and distracting. It creates a lot of repeating noise and it provides little information other than to catch your attention. If the soundbyte could be reduced to just ONE beep that doesn't stack with itself when spammed, the QoL improvements would be immense. At the very least just making that signal less annoying in some/any way would be so nice.

More dynamic territory points.

This has been my pet peeve of CoH2. The territory/resource point choices are incredibly limited. Even if no current maps are changed, if there could be official territory points that provide low/medium/high and a zero income strategic point, there would be so much more freedom and dynamic development of maps. With three resource point options total, instead of seven (not counting VPs), there's only so much that can be done building maps for this game. Hell, I had to build a whole mod (see sig) AND rip and modify maps directly to be compatible with the mod. (I had to reuse and modify single player and unused territory points to accomplish this goal.) And there's no reason it has to be that hard.

Active capture.

Remember how in CoH1 units had to actively 'use' a territory point to capture it? The decision to cap under fire (which resulted in similar penalties as repairing) offered a surprisingly important decision making process for players. The choice to stop de/capping was a choice that could be manipulated by both players to a significant amount. The danger of capturing territory was a rather important component of gameplay.

But there's capzones now. And these allow for a new dynamic: Team weapons can now capture territory (without having to be torn down, etc) and opponents are able to freeze the de/capping process by entering the capzone. This is a good dynamic, but at the same time, it doesn't have to come at the cost of active capping.

Simply, if a unit actively capturing a territory point could override this freeze while taking on extensive risk, that same dynamic could be reintroduced without significantly impacting/detracting from the current game mechanics. Freezing territory capture already implies a combat zone, so providing a player choice that could impact the outcome of a battle instead of just unit strengths could be an acceptable addition to the game.

I don't mean to say that CoH2 should be CoH1. I do mean to say that while I have my preferences, these are some aspects of CoH2 that I feel could be easily improved. I don't think they're that complex or hard to implement given that one is just shortening a sound file and I've effectively accomplished another myself.

Anywho, I thought I'd post this brainfart for posterity's sake. Anyone dis/agree with these sentiments?

I'd like to see some implementation of all three of your ideas although I think the low/medium/high territory points would require all-new maps.

To implement your third idea, you could simply remove all natural cover from capture zones and give them negative cover. It would provide a risk to capping under fire and fighting from capture zones but also retain the CoH2 mechanics.

I am kinda failing to understand what you are suggesting under active capture.

I'd like to see some implementation of all three of your ideas although I think the low/medium/high territory points would require all-new maps.

To implement your third idea, you could simply remove all natural cover from capture zones and give them negative cover. It would provide a risk to capping under fire and fighting from capture zones but also retain the CoH2 mechanics.

That's what I had to do in making my mod. In the original maps I've designed I always tried to make the capzones red cover and small but it put people too far out of their comfort zone.

I am kinda failing to understand what you are suggesting under active capture.

So you know how units have to be in a cap zone to capture a territory point?

You know how if enemy units are also in the cap zone the cap rate stops?

What I am suggesting is the ability for a unit to be able to 'use' a territory point to override that freeze. The unit would run to the physical territory point, incur a penalty not unlike repairing, but be able to finish capturing a point even if enemies are in the zone.

It seems like a pretty negligible change, but it introduces the kinds of player choices that could help improve gameplay.

no, new system is better

Sorry, but I hate the 3rd idea. One of the things that annoyed the hell out of me in COH1 was the capping system. COH2 did it right imo.

[...] Simply, if a unit actively capturing a territory point could override this freeze while taking on extensive risk, that same dynamic could be reintroduced without significantly impacting/detracting from the current game mechanics. Freezing territory capture already implies a combat zone, so providing a player choice that could impact the outcome of a battle instead of just unit strengths could be an acceptable addition to the game. [...]

Why would anyone want to "actively" cap a point while an enemy unit is in the cap zone?
If that ability gives a received damage and/or accuracy increase, it would simply be suicide.
Of course it provides a new choice, but I don't think it's a viable one.

you know, in the real world, soldiers have to make the choice between raising a flag on an arbitrary street corner or shooting at the enemy twenty feet away...

Lets not try and compare Coh2 to real life shall we?

I think it might be a kinda cool idea if you could force capture a point, it would make that last min point capture deny more interesting if you would instead of totally stopping a cap simply force them to take more losses for the point.

I would want it tested a lot before being put in the game tho. Might fuck with balance in many unpredictable ways.

Why would anyone want to "actively" cap a point while an enemy unit is in the cap zone?
If that ability gives a received damage and/or accuracy increase, it would simply be suicide.
Of course it provides a new choice, but I don't think it's a viable one.

When you are 95% of the way through capping a point. Or when it's a VP and you have less than 10?

It doesn't really matter so much in CoH2 though, I'll admit. This choice was more important when there were the kind of varied territory points I had mentioned. The 'high' territory points took a long time to cap, so being able to ambush a unit capping meant a major choice to make the time worth it or not. The generic territory points don't take that long to de/capture.

But at the same time, it makes it so you can actually ambush a capping unit. The timing of an attack on a unit/point is not just 'throw bodies into the cap circle before it's done' can mean a whole lot more. In a lot of ways close quarters combat is typically forced in holding territory, which I don't think necessarily should always be the case.

I fully support the reduction of visual noise for pings and minimap alerts. The alerts are lighting up 4 times, are huge and create a lot of visual noise on the vital tactical (mini)map. It should be reduced to 1 or 2 times, that would help a lot. Maybe add an option for that in the menus (along with hotkey setup but that's a whole different story). Your suggestion would fix part of the horrible UI for me.

Capping circles are a design choice. While I agree that they make the territory fluctuation quite fast compared to vCoH, I guess this is part of CoH2's identity and design philosophy now and surely deserve their own (controversial discussion). I'd say leave them be like they are now since changing that stuff implies a more fundamental change in design philosophy which is kinda late now if you ask me.

For the resource distribution among territory points I would say that giving more siginificance to certain points would be beneficial, since currently the dedicated fuel/muni points take much longer to cap, but give relatively little income of that resource to make a significant impact. I would suggest something like +4/+2 instead of +5/+3 for normal points, +9 instead of +7 for fuel points and +14 instead of +11 for muni points. The system in vCoH was kinda cheesy imo and led normal points being completeley ignored unless for connecting/cutting off sectors and made resource income too inconsistent imo (but also more critical). One could account for that when making maps, but the former suggestion can be applied directly and is less drastic.

You could also go and make it like in dow2 where you get more resources for holding a point for a longer time. This would reward players that frequently contest their opponent's points while holding their own and urge players to not ignore a part of a map completely. Of course all of this doesn't take faction design into account and would also promote camping, but I guess the mechanic of holding and contesting cutoffs is already doing it's job quite nice.

In the end there are many ways to implement resource distribution in different ways, but most of them would need lots of playtesting and a dedicated effort to iron out balance implications and refine the mechanics, therefore I just root for simple number changes that favor designated resource points a little bit more.

Just my 2 cents.

I fully support the reduction of visual noise for pings and minimap alerts. The alerts are lighting up 4 times, are huge and create a lot of visual noise on the vital tactical (mini)map. It should be reduced to 1 or 2 times, that would help a lot. Maybe add an option for that in the menus (along with hotkey setup but that's a whole different story). Your suggestion would fix part of the horrible UI for me.

I never really noticed how much they bothered me until I started playing CoH1 again. Once I had the comparison fresh it was all over.

Capping circles are a design choice. While I agree that they make the territory fluctuation quite fast compared to vCoH, I guess this is part of CoH2's identity and design philosophy now and surely deserve their own (controversial discussion). I'd say leave them be like they are now since changing that stuff implies a more fundamental change in design philosophy which is kinda late now if you ask me.

Oh no doubt it's late. But at the same time I feel like the lack of active capture is something that's contributed to a number of reoccurring problems with this game. For instance, maxim spam being superior to conscripts. If conscripts had the added advantage of being more readily able to capture territory without having to break down their weapon, it might help. I mean, it's not a direct fix, but it's my belief that there aren't one or two major things that need a single change in CoH2. There are just a number of subtle and universal issues that affect the whole game.

For the resource distribution among territory points I would say that giving more siginificance to certain points would be beneficial, since currently the dedicated fuel/muni points take much longer to cap, but give relatively little income of that resource to make a significant impact. I would suggest something like +4/+2 instead of +5/+3 for normal points, +9 instead of +7 for fuel points and +14 instead of +11 for muni points. The system in vCoH was kinda cheesy imo and led normal points being completeley ignored unless for connecting/cutting off sectors and made resource income too inconsistent imo (but also more critical). One could account for that when making maps, but the former suggestion can be applied directly and is less drastic.

You could also go and make it like in dow2 where you get more resources for holding a point for a longer time. This would reward players that frequently contest their opponent's points while holding their own and urge players to not ignore a part of a map completely. Of course all of this doesn't take faction design into account and would also promote camping, but I guess the mechanic of holding and contesting cutoffs is already doing it's job quite nice.

Indeed, there are many things that could be done. My suggestion is just one of them, but it really is where I find the greatest issue with CoH2. (The other is how every faction's vet is effectively the same.) The maps and resources are so incredibly generic that there is little purpose to maneuvering or positioning. Rarely can a player actually contest their opponent's resources without a total victory or defeat. It's not a game of what territory you hold, but how many. As a result holding territory is just simply not as important as consolidating map presence. Resources are more or less assured for both sides unless it's a roflstomp, and no faction (or map) really allows for opportunities for denying their opponent.

And most of all this change wouldn't affect any existing maps (necessarily), but would allow for much more superior development of new maps. But this suggestion has been one I've carried with me since '13, and it's really become highlighted after this whole map contest shenanigans. The reason there's so many subpar maps for CoH2, (and why the CoH1 maps that were ported just don't seem to work) is that there just simply aren't enough tools for map makers to create an interesting and balanced map.

There's just zero room for creating anything other than a fancy chessboard with balanced/identical cover and buildings.

In the end there are many ways to implement resource distribution in different ways, but most of them would need lots of playtesting and a dedicated effort to iron out balance implications and refine the mechanics, therefore I just root for simple number changes that favor designated resource points a little bit more.

Just my 2 cents.

I'll take pennies any day over being ignored by the apathetic.