Can't afford to leave 3vs3/4vs4 behind

Playing the game in 3vs3/4vs4 arranged teams since release and nothing changed (apart from Opel blitz bonus not beeing available for whole axis team and that took a full year too). CoH2 is one of the few RTS games I played that is not able to bring balance to 1vs1 without screwing it in other game modes. Why?

Ressource inflation(without CP inflation), ressource system and akward population values for medium and heavy tanks (especially the super heavy ones) ruin this game modes.

Just read a thread about fixing the panther, yeah maybe from a 1vs1 point of view, answer is swarm it with T34, yeah cool. But what if you are maxed out at 100 and you are facing 3 Panther (48 population) with your 5 T34 (50 population)? You'll see its not that easy, especially when there are 8 players around and you don't have the room to pull off a successful flank without running in other stuff. Let the comet cost 24 if you ask me, but the Ostheer Panther at 20 (OKW version at 22) and a Super Heavy above 30. Yes, it should feel as if it is a 1/3 of your army.

Then I read a thread about M10 coming way to early and I have to say no! Again this may be true for 1vs1 but is not for other game modes. Many tanks/units got delayed in CP cost in the name of balance already. Resulting in every CP dependent call-in of every faction coming way too late in 3vs3/4vs4 in comparison to tech units. A Bulldozer for 10CPs for example will hit the field very likely after the Kingtiger is present already.

There are 1vs1 game mechanics like OKW not able to build fuel caches (they have strong infantry and ressource gain via salvaging to make up for that). In 3vs/4vs4 their Ostheer mates just build the caches while OKW are still salvaging on top. Even a blind man should see that something is not okay with this ressource system, but Relic doesn't care.

This game isn't able to scale balance, thats so akward. I know Mr. Smith already talked about population values of tanks (especially super heavy) and wrong repair rates but thats only one of the many problems that have to be adressed. 3vs3/4vs4 favors OKW/Ostheer/Brits while USF clamps to this gamemodes once they got 10 CP to bring the single really overpowered USF late game unit named Calliope to the field and Soviets just perish unless someone else of the team pulls of some good teamwork and brings good infantry for them so that they just spam SU85 plus mines/demos like there is no tomorrow.

Then you have Ostheer and Soviet without forward retreat points, a joke on all the big maps, where everybody else just retreats a few "inches" on the map while they move the whole way back and forth.

For years there was no real competitor, but with Steel Division and Sudden Strike 4 at the horizon, there could be some serious aspirants for the playerbase of big game modes that is disappointed by years of years without a real change. Same theme and a similar mix of tactics and arcade makes them attractive. I would switch myself and so would my gaming group if one of these turn out to be a better balanced multiplayer experience for the real big battles. Don't let your playerbase down. Once people start moving, matchmaking will be worse resulting in more people leaving. Better be prepared in time for that whats coming this year.

but Relic doesn't care.

I disagree with many of your points but the most important one you made I have quoted.

This game never was and never will be balanced for more than 2v2 at best. Probably need to just learn to accept that and you might start having fun again.

as long as relic refuse to separate 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3+ for balancing - which will be a harder work, you'll just have to deal with it. aand with so many people just jumping on a bandwagon yelling "let team modes die, but not 2v2 because i play 2v2 occasionally... but let 3v3+ die..." BS, i doubt we will see an improvement in coh2 or even in future relic titles.

if the community balance teams get more power to do things, we might still have glimmer of "hope", but i mean, the game is already 3+ years old.

and you cant micro balance teammodes like 1v1. a lot more variables and 6-8 players mean you have to rely way more on player's ability to #adapt. so only fix big shits like stupid super heavies, rocket arties, FRP. and maps if you have time.

...so only fix big shits like stupid super heavies, rocket arties, FRP. and maps if you have time.

But this would help so much already. Fix the things you said and some op bs like Ostheer Stuka Dive Bomb and UKF Artillery Cover and we are in a very good spot already.

Some thing can be balanced for all game modes at once. Take M10 call-in for example. You will always find threads about skipping USF tech going directly into M10 is too potent. Then why we shouldn't bind all vehicle/tank call-ins to their appropiate tech but leave them as a call-in (like Kingtiger for example)? That way you balanced timing in 1vs1 while you did in 3vs3/4vs4 at the same time. While ressources are inflated there and CPS are not you would have always the same timing in comparison to tech units across all game modes. Simple isn't it?

What I want to say: It is possible to balance all game modes in one go (at least for the most akward things), you just have to think about different approaches to balancing.

the real problem of team games is not the balance but the map, especially a few 2v2 and most 4v4 ones.

if they were more width and less narrow, there would be much more opportunity to flank and it would be somehow a 4 x 1v1 happening in 4 part of the map instead of the clusterfuck happening right now.

game could perfectly use the same balance for 1v1 and 4v4 if the map were OK, but in the current state it push people to blob / use arty or lockdown sector with MG42.

good luck killing 3 mg42 in early game with usf mortar, by the time it's done the german will have already secured the fuel for long enough to rape you with pzer4 & more.
(it's even worse with brits sim city or soviet maxim - 120 mm)

when you look at other games, STEEL DIVISION NORMANDY 44 per exemple, they simply use a defined map size for 1v1 ( let's say 1000 square killometer) and if you decide to do a 10v10, which is possible on that game, then the map size would be increased to 10x1000 = 10 000 square kilometer.

it works very well, but if now you compare the 1v1 map size with the 4v4 map size of coh2, especially the width, then you notice it's barely 2 times bigger resulting in this bullshit game.

I disagree with many of your points but the most important one you made I have quoted.

This game never was and never will be balanced for more than 2v2 at best. Probably need to just learn to accept that and you might start having fun again.

The game could be balanced without breaking 1vs1 for sure. Plz stop saying it'cant.

as long as relic refuse to separate 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3+ for balancing - which will be a harder work, you'll just have to deal with it. aand with so many people just jumping on a bandwagon yelling "let team modes die, but not 2v2 because i play 2v2 occasionally... but let 3v3+ die..." BS, i doubt we will see an improvement in coh2 or even in future relic titles.

if the community balance teams get more power to do things, we might still have glimmer of "hope", but i mean, the game is already 3+ years old.

and you cant micro balance teammodes like 1v1. a lot more variables and 6-8 players mean you have to rely way more on player's ability to #adapt. so only fix big shits like stupid super heavies, rocket arties, FRP. and maps if you have time.

But We all already know what are the few problems for the large team format, let'just work to fix it.

Example : We know that supplies cache's impact grow with the number of player.

You divide the bonus given too all by the number of players of that side round up. That would greatly help already...

Make attack ground do less damage, so Hmg like .50 can survive long enough to suppress the bazooka/shreck bloob shooting it. It's a plague now.

And so on...

The key here is balanced enough to be fun and fair for all.

You dont need 5 t-34s to kill a panther, ever heard of an su-85 tank destroyer?

A player who does nothing but caches has no army, that means you should be able to push through him and effectively destroy his caches that he wasted Manpower on..

As for USF they are absolute trash for 4v4 make no mistake, unless you purely cheese your opponent with calliopes or something...

Dear General, thank you for a well written perspective on 3v3s and 4v4s.
Overall I am with you.
now:
HOPE :-)

.....

+1

We switch now for playing axis side and it is much more easier. Maybe it's the fact that we are not yet in the first 100. But all we need is hold for 20 min and then rolling enemy with heavies.

From my point of view, the fundamental problem are Heavy TD, KT and TA. Everything below them are more better and better ballanced.
Fuel price in team games means nothing. You have plenty resources, so wrote general_gawain much depends on the population limit.

Playing the game in 3vs3/4vs4 arranged teams since release and nothing changed (apart from Opel blitz bonus not beeing available for whole axis team and that took a full year too). CoH2 is one of the few RTS games I played that is not able to bring balance to 1vs1 without screwing it in other game modes. Why?

Ressource inflation(without CP inflation), ressource system and akward population values for medium and heavy tanks (especially the super heavy ones) ruin this game modes.

Just read a thread about fixing the panther, yeah maybe from a 1vs1 point of view, answer is swarm it with T34, yeah cool. But what if you are maxed out at 100 and you are facing 3 Panther (48 population) with your 5 T34 (50 population)? You'll see its not that easy, especially when there are 8 players around and you don't have the room to pull off a successful flank without running in other stuff. Let the comet cost 24 if you ask me, but the Ostheer Panther at 20 (OKW version at 22) and a Super Heavy above 30. Yes, it should feel as if it is a 1/3 of your army.

Then I read a thread about M10 coming way to early and I have to say no! Again this may be true for 1vs1 but is not for other game modes. Many tanks/units got delayed in CP cost in the name of balance already. Resulting in every CP dependent call-in of every faction coming way too late in 3vs3/4vs4 in comparison to tech units. A Bulldozer for 10CPs for example will hit the field very likely after the Kingtiger is present already.

There are 1vs1 game mechanics like OKW not able to build fuel caches (they have strong infantry and ressource gain via salvaging to make up for that). In 3vs/4vs4 their Ostheer mates just build the caches while OKW are still salvaging on top. Even a blind man should see that something is not okay with this ressource system, but Relic doesn't care.

This game isn't able to scale balance, thats so akward. I know Mr. Smith already talked about population values of tanks (especially super heavy) and wrong repair rates but thats only one of the many problems that have to be adressed. 3vs3/4vs4 favors OKW/Ostheer/Brits while USF clamps to this gamemodes once they got 10 CP to bring the single really overpowered USF late game unit named Calliope to the field and Soviets just perish unless someone else of the team pulls of some good teamwork and brings good infantry for them so that they just spam SU85 plus mines/demos like there is no tomorrow.

Then you have Ostheer and Soviet without forward retreat points, a joke on all the big maps, where everybody else just retreats a few "inches" on the map while they move the whole way back and forth.

For years there was no real competitor, but with Steel Division and Sudden Strike 4 at the horizon, there could be some serious aspirants for the playerbase of big game modes that is disappointed by years of years without a real change. Same theme and a similar mix of tactics and arcade makes them attractive. I would switch myself and so would my gaming group if one of these turn out to be a better balanced multiplayer experience for the real big battles. Don't let your playerbase down. Once people start moving, matchmaking will be worse resulting in more people leaving. Better be prepared in time for that whats coming this year.

Start playing 1vs1 or at least 2vs2.

after getting crushed few times and then starting to win some you will unerstand the game mechanics much better.....


and your problems will solve automatically

Resource inflation being an issue is a myth (read below). Maps are the real issue behind 4v4 woes. However, given that all maps have the same characteristics, we can't change that.

To reclaim some level of balance for that mode, I think we need to balance how some core mechanics scale. That's because minor bullshit in 1v1 become major issues in 4v4.

Popcap normalization

I don't care what tech level, or what perks a faction is supposed to have (e.g., tanks/infantry), or whatever. The moment that unit A performs better than unit B, A should, simply have higher popcap.

This is especially true, if those units have such a dramatic footprint on 4v4 that everything revolves around it. This is particularly true for the following units:
- Super-heavies (all of them)
- FlakHQ gun

Having a popcap-favoured faction incentivises the players to camp as much with that faction until they reach a critical mass of armour. When that moment comes, the winning faction can just a-move their units and win, leading to frustrating experience.

(veterancy discrepancies also fit into popcap discrepancies, since you can get so much more bang for your popcap if your units scale simply better).

Repair speed normalization

When one particular faction gets easy access to ridiculously over-the-top fast repairs, their allies also benefit from them, tipping off balance even further. The mode is already punishing enough for infantry.

Super-glue repairs make infantry even more irrelevant, as armour can be instantly repaired anywhere on the field. At the same time, infantry often has to retreat all the way back to the base to run back on the field and get reinforced.

The answer to this one is nerf everyone's repair efficiency to EFA levels.

Forward retreat points

Team-games last long. If for every retreat you make your infantry has to walk up half of the distance the enemy factions do, that immediately puts you in a position of great advantage.

Also, if it only takes a 20 second roundtrip time to break suppression, you wouldn't think twice before hitting retreat.

Basically, to address forward retreat points, we either need to remove them (super tricky), or make them more vulnerable (with the appropriate resource cost changes) to avoid sector lookdown. Compare MedHQ to forward assembly durability for instance.

Wunderwaffe

You all know which particular units over-dominate these modes, thus there is no need to introduce the Elefant in the room.

Nevertheless just with repair normalization, by increasing how long these behemoths have to spend in the garage after a failed attempt at their lives will already help balance things out. Attaching an appropriate popcap cost to those units will make it even better.

the real problem of team games is not the balance but the map, especially a few 2v2 and most 4v4 ones.

if they were more width and less narrow, there would be much more opportunity to flank and it would be somehow a 4 x 1v1 happening in 4 part of the map instead of the clusterfuck happening right now.

game could perfectly use the same balance for 1v1 and 4v4 if the map were OK, but in the current state it push people to blob / use arty or lockdown sector with MG42.

good luck killing 3 mg42 in early game with usf mortar, by the time it's done the german will have already secured the fuel for long enough to rape you with pzer4 & more.
(it's even worse with brits sim city or soviet maxim - 120 mm)

when you look at other games, STEEL DIVISION NORMANDY 44 per exemple, they simply use a defined map size for 1v1 ( let's say 1000 square killometer) and if you decide to do a 10v10, which is possible on that game, then the map size would be increased to 10x1000 = 10 000 square kilometer.

it works very well, but if now you compare the 1v1 map size with the 4v4 map size of coh2, especially the width, then you notice it's barely 2 times bigger resulting in this bullshit game.

This.

Resource inflation being the issue behind unpleasant 4v4 experience is a myth.

All maps have an equal amount of territory and fuel points. This same goes for 1v1 maps as well as 4v4 maps. 4v4 just adds more players. This dramatically decreases the number of territory points that each person needs to capture. As a result, everybody is spamming "power units", armour becomes dominant, since you need only that much infantry to capture territory points, so on and so forth.

The moment a team gets pushed out of a territory point, the gains become instantly capitalised, a new MG line forms and it becomes impossible to harass. if the losing team doesn't get their shit together, this can easily snowball. In 1v1, it's a bit like musical chairs; you just smoke and flank.

The moment you take resource inflation away, something entirely new happens. You have manpower becoming more abundant, while fuel will become incredibly more scarce. MG spam will be able to lock down entire sectors. People will not be able to push through MG spam with anything but mortar (and emplacement) spam; that's a direct consequence of grenades becoming more scarse. So on and so forth.

Basically, if you take away fuel/munitions inflation, the game will revolve around an even more prolonged phase of artillery spam the likes you've never seen before.

Given that early game dominance will be dictated by (asymmetrical) access to mortar pieces, and given that those units will probably never be balanced "to the point", you're just adding a whole new level of pain for your 4v4 experience.

I hope someday there will be 'scope' in maps 2v2/3v3/4v4. Although it is a tiny scope.

Resource inflation being an issue is a myth (read below). Maps are the real issue behind 4v4 woes. However, given that all maps have the same characteristics, we can't change that.

To reclaim some level of balance for that mode, I think we need to balance how some core mechanics scale. That's because minor bullshit in 1v1 become major issues in 4v4.

Popcap normalization

I don't care what tech level, or what perks a faction is supposed to have (e.g., tanks/infantry), or whatever. The moment that unit A performs better than unit B, A should, simply have higher popcap.

This is especially true, if those units have such a dramatic footprint on 4v4 that everything revolves around it. This is particularly true for the following units:
- Super-heavies (all of them)
- FlakHQ gun

Having a popcap-favoured faction incentivises the players to camp as much with that faction until they reach a critical mass of armour. When that moment comes, the winning faction can just a-move their units and win, leading to frustrating experience.

(veterancy discrepancies also fit into popcap discrepancies, since you can get so much more bang for your popcap if your units scale simply better).

Repair speed normalization

When one particular faction gets easy access to ridiculously over-the-top fast repairs, their allies also benefit from them, tipping off balance even further. The mode is already punishing enough for infantry.

Super-glue repairs make infantry even more irrelevant, as armour can be instantly repaired anywhere on the field. At the same time, infantry often has to retreat all the way back to the base to run back on the field and get reinforced.

The answer to this one is nerf everyone's repair efficiency to EFA levels.

Forward retreat points

Team-games last long. If for every retreat you make your infantry has to walk up half of the distance the enemy factions do, that immediately puts you in a position of great advantage.

Also, if it only takes a 20 second roundtrip time to break suppression, you wouldn't think twice before hitting retreat.

Basically, to address forward retreat points, we either need to remove them (super tricky), or make them more vulnerable (with the appropriate resource cost changes) to avoid sector lookdown. Compare MedHQ to forward assembly durability for instance.

Wunderwaffe

You all know which particular units over-dominate these modes, thus there is no need to introduce the Elefant in the room.

Nevertheless just with repair normalization, by increasing how long these behemoths have to spend in the garage after a failed attempt at their lives will already help balance things out. Attaching an appropriate popcap cost to those units will make it even better.



This.

Resource inflation being the issue behind unpleasant 4v4 experience is a myth.

All maps have an equal amount of territory and fuel points. This same goes for 1v1 maps as well as 4v4 maps. 4v4 just adds more players. This dramatically decreases the number of territory points that each person needs to capture. As a result, everybody is spamming "power units", armour becomes dominant, since you need only that much infantry to capture territory points, so on and so forth.

The moment a team gets pushed out of a territory point, the gains become instantly capitalised, a new MG line forms and it becomes impossible to harass. if the losing team doesn't get their shit together, this can easily snowball. In 1v1, it's a bit like musical chairs; you just smoke and flank.

The moment you take resource inflation away, something entirely new happens. You have manpower becoming more abundant, while fuel will become incredibly more scarce. MG spam will be able to lock down entire sectors. People will not be able to push through MG spam with anything but mortar (and emplacement) spam; that's a direct consequence of grenades becoming more scarse. So on and so forth.

Basically, if you take away fuel/munitions inflation, the game will revolve around an even more prolonged phase of artillery spam the likes you've never seen before.

Given that early game dominance will be dictated by (asymmetrical) access to mortar pieces, and given that those units will probably never be balanced "to the point", you're just adding a whole new level of pain for your 4v4 experience.

Nice to see someone else who understand the real problem.
This said, most of the people here will keep asking for balance change from 4v4 point of view and bitch when you don't do that.

The sad truth is that this game will never be 'fine' in most 2v2 maps and almost all 4v4 maps because of bad map design.
Even with a thousand balance patch, if maps stay like they are, you won't be able to fix this problem Smith.

Offtopic : i watched hans 5 minutes playing DOW3 yesterday and it looks like relic did exactly the same mistake making the team games a damn blob fest.

- Standardized reparations in all factions
- Repair boost only in medium and light

What are you guys talking about " balanced for 1vs1 2vs2 3vs3"???

If the game is balanced for 1 vs1 then its balanced for 2vs2 , 3vs 3 and 4vs4 . If a unit is op in 1vs1 it will be op in 2vs2, 3vs3 and 4vs4 . You are adding players at a 1-1 ratio not 3vs2 or 4vs1 . This increased player myth needs to be put to curb because its all nonsense.

Nice to see someone else who understand the real problem.
This said, most of the people here will keep asking for balance change from 4v4 point of view and bitch when you don't do that.

The sad truth is that this game will never be 'fine' in most 2v2 maps and almost all 4v4 maps because of bad map design.
Even with a thousand balance patch, if maps stay like they are, you won't be able to fix this problem Smith.

Offtopic : i watched hans 5 minutes playing DOW3 yesterday and it looks like relic did exactly the same mistake making the team games a damn blob fest.

IMO, if 2v2 maps get removed from the 3v3 pool, and spawn points get standardized (so that you don't have 1 team randomly getting the crappy spawn), 3v3 could become a niche niche for teamwork-oriented players.

4v4 could remain the plus-size gamemode, and with those modifications I described, it will become meaningful again. Right now it's super-heavy abuse vs calliope & brits. Everything else feels like a filler to lead up to that.

What are you guys talking about " balanced for 1vs1 2vs2 3vs3"???

If the game is balanced for 1 vs1 then its balanced for 2vs2 , 3vs 3 and 4vs4 .

Yes you are right, it's the case in 99% percent of the games.
usually the more people there are playing on a map, the bigger the map is.

But RELIC in its infinite wisdom decided to make very narrow map for team games, especially 4v4.
-> it make sector lockdown with MG, blob and artillery spam the only way to win.

exemple : a Jadgtiger in 1v1 is not considered as OP, most people wouldn't even get it because it can be flanked easily and it's a lot of micro needed to keep it safe.

But on a 4v4, flanking is almost impossible so a jadgtiger can't be beaten from the front by common units and become OP.


That's another reason why you will never ever see static artillery in 1v1 when it's common in team games.

as long as relic refuse to separate 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3+ for balancing - which will be a harder work, you'll just have to deal with it. aand with so many people just jumping on a bandwagon yelling "let team modes die, but not 2v2 because i play 2v2 occasionally... but let 3v3+ die..." BS, i doubt we will see an improvement in coh2 or even in future relic titles.

if the community balance teams get more power to do things, we might still have glimmer of "hope", but i mean, the game is already 3+ years old.

and you cant micro balance teammodes like 1v1. a lot more variables and 6-8 players mean you have to rely way more on player's ability to #adapt. so only fix big shits like stupid super heavies, rocket arties, FRP. and maps if you have time.

This is almost the entirety of the imbalance in 4v4. Add to it offmaps like the soon-to-be-nerfed Artillery cover and probably-never-to-be-nerfed Stuka CAS and Stuka dive bomb and you have pretty much all of the problem.

yep. there is not that much to fix to be honest. but how do you fix super heavies for 3v3+ when they are already balanced for 1v1? same with rocket arties, FRP.