My thoughts about DBP and going forward

What ? Vet 5 penetration buff comes terribly late and only applies to first shot, while the gthing bounces to anything more armored than a medium/easy8

Su85 is faster, has vet 0 high penetration, low vet xp requirement, is cheaper, comes in a tier that comes faster...the only supposed advantage is an armor that may or may not bounce generalists shot now.
Where's the balance in that ?

Ps: OF COURSE...the SCOPE...if jadgpanzer 4 nerfs aren't compensated is because scope.
I'm sure that if after all the approved changes to jadgpanzer 4, if after all this "balance" and "normalization" of vet and such, if changelog listed:
-jadgpanzer4 penetration increased in line with other tier 4 TD's
-jadgpanzer4 rotation rate from 20 to 22 in line with other unturretted TD's
Relic would have SURELY got MAD

That's ridicolous...what was the scope for DBP ? Why jadgpanzer 4 nerfs are in scope and buffs aren't ?

Always the same meme of bad relic and bad scope...

JP4 did get an accuracy buff at Vet2 to help it perform its main role as a medium tank/TD killer.

Volks get RA bonuses at Vet1 on top of being very strong at Vet0, and on top of getting their cooldown bonuses earlier at Vet2.

VERY strong against who at vet 0?, rear echelons and soviet engineers?

JP4 did get an accuracy buff at Vet2 to help it perform its main role as a medium tank/TD killer.

That's something, as you answered to shadowlink, it looked like the scope didn't allow balance team to buff it.

So it's intended that jadgpanzer 4 fills a role as medium counter, despite being more expensive than any unturretted and slower ?
135 fuel for a slower stug with 60 range ? Not the best investment ever i would say.
Shadowlink pointed out the flaw comparing it to 85..it's either too expensive to be a medium only TD or has a way too low pen and should be redesigned to deal with heavies only/too.

Volks get RA bonuses at Vet1 on top of being very strong at Vet0

That's factually wrong, stats are still up to date since vet 0 stats didn't change...and volks aren't any better than anything but cons...debeatable post patch...

...
I don't want to call out specific people, but it isn't hard to see bias....

Yes, it isn't. Your player card, specifically the number of games played of each faction, shows yours.

It looked like the balance team tried much harder to be balanced in this last patch. The previous one was a wish list of every Allied nerf that Axis-only players wanted. Another patch like the last one would have been the end of community balancing.

As for people ignoring your posts, they mostly ignore everyone who isn't top-30, you included.

Yes, it isn't. Your player card, specifically the number of games played of each faction, shows yours.

It looked like the balance team tried much harder to be balanced in this last patch. The previous one was a wish list of every Allied nerf that Axis-only players wanted. Another patch like the last one would have been the end of community balancing.

As for people ignoring your posts, they mostly ignore everyone who isn't top-30, you included.

You're more than welcome to show me where my "bias" is in the stats I provided in any of my arguements. Just because I play one faction more than another doesn't mean it contains bias. You're more than welcome to show your playercard as well.

That's not so simple. When it comes to OKW veterancy, for the most part their Vet1-Vet3 bonuses are mostly identical to other faction Vet1-Vet3 bonuses.

However, at a closer glance, OKW gets their bonuses faster than other factions, due to OKW Vet1 not being a useless ability or something that could trivially belong to Vet0 (e.g., Riflemen AT nades could easily belong to Vet0). Volks get RA bonuses at Vet1 on top of being very strong at Vet0, and on top of getting their cooldown bonuses earlier at Vet2.

If you have OKW getting their passive combat bonuses much earlier than allied squads, just because Vet4 and Vet5 also need some screen time, then that's unmitigated disaster waiting to happen.

Sure, ideally we should have moved the Vet5 niche bonus (e.g., sight bonus) to Vet2 like we did in the revamp mod and go from there. However, the effort for this patch began at summer, and we don't have the energy anymore to argue with Relic on every single minute change. Thus, we pick the fights that are worth fighting for.

I understand that Volks in perticular get a -10% RA bonus at vet 1. However it isn't necessarily hard to chip something off vet 2 or 3 of rifles and add it onto vet 1 with the AT nade. Probably easier said than done of course but it's an idea.

JP4 also gains extra accuracy and pen with that round, and it's still damn beefy at Vet2.

It is, but again my complaint is more that the vet 5 damage doesn't really do anything. Another issue I have with it is the lower pen value, while most of the time its not really an issue against the paper armor of jacksons and cromwells, if your opponet gets an IS2 which has 375 armor you struggle to actually deal with it effectivly. A panther can out trade it, but that depends more on how badly the IS2 wants to scatter in that engagement. It just makes me upset that people complained about the KT being too strong, when they had TDs which had over 50% chance to pen frontally ontop of self sight/tulips etc, but the JP4 struggles against higher armor values.

Just gonna throw this in there. vet 5 JT still doesn't do anything.

We also received feedback from multiple top players that were abusing Maxims alongside us. They could all swear that even a 10% increase in suppression would keep maxim spam in-game due to glorious OKW teching design.

To be completely fair however, we didn't specify that they weren't allowed to use maxim bulletins in their testing, and we only had 2 weeks to find a solution. So, I'm not accusing them in anyway.

It's easy to sit back and criticise the people that tried to help playtest maxim spam back then. However, those guys busted their balls going through tenths of mod sub-versions when most people couldn't even be bothered to lift a finger to help us.

Indeed it is and personally I think the biggest flaw is the 6 man support team. I think they'd be a lot easier to take down if they didn't survive on retreat as much.

Ideally the Pershing shouldn't benefit from the 0.75 moving accuracy it gets, and it should cost a decent amount of popcap. At the very least now it actually yields experience to the enemy player when it gets shot at.

I don't know of any vehicles/units that still doubletap. Let us know if you find any.

Pershing, like Command Panther also need to be completely tier-locked.

The scott with its normal shell followed by its barrage. Similar to how the old ISG could do the same before the patch. While not gamebreaking like spearhead was, it is a little bit more damage.

That's a complaint you need to take to the scope police.

Part of the issue with this patch is that I never saw a defined "scope". So I assumed you guys had a rather large choice in what you could change, you just had to have it go through relic at the end for approval.

At the end of the day you're still probably the best modder here and I don't think I'd want anyone else leading the team, and I know relic handed you a spaghetti mess and you were basically told to "fix it" but with a scope. It's hard to see some things from the outside though, especially relics demands when they just work from the sidelines.

Agreed shaodw,and your just scratching the tip of the iceberg rbbit hole goes down way harder

i mean just look at this
Panzer IV
The Panzer IV for the OKW is being modified to have more powerful anti-infantry capabilities with a cost reduction to match its performance.

Cost from 360/150 to 380/140
Population from 12 to 14
Scatter from 7.5/6.4 to 6.5/5.54
Penetration from 120/110/100 to 125/115/110
Veterancy 2 scatter bonus from 0.75 to 0.866
Veterancy 4 range bonus removed
Veterancy 5 sight bonus requires the tank to remain stationary

So the goal was to buff its antiinfy while making it chea,any competitive player agrees p4 needed buff,but what we get a plain NERF

then we have this

M36 Jackson
The M36 is having its damage modified to be more reliable against tanks, including heavies, but less potent in terms of burst damage against lower health vehicles.

Cost from 360/125 to 400/140
Damage from 200 to 160
Reload from 5.2/5.8 to 4.375/4.975; does not affect HVAP
HVAP damage decreased from 240 to 200
HVAP penetration from 300/250/220 to 300/280/250
Penetration from 240/220/200 to 260/240/220
Health from 480 to 640
Veterancy 3 reload bonus from 30% to 15%

SO sounded more like tweaks and is a PLAIN buff

lets move onto okw infantry which i don't know why need vet 4 and vet 5 nerf to begin with

Volksgrenadier late game strength is being toned down by modifying their veterancy while their Incendiary Grenades are being adjusted to give opposing players time to react.

Incendiary grenades now have a 0.75 timer
Incendiary grenades no longer require a truck to be deployed.
Panzerfaust cost from 30 to 25
Veterancy 3 received accuracy from 0.9 to 0.86
Veterancy 4 weapon cooldown and veterancy 5 accuracy bonuses removed
Veterancy 3 self-healing moved to veterancy 5
Veterancy 4 sight bonus now requires the unit to be in cover

May wanna test vet 3 bars rifle and similar allied infy vs volks in tests sometime even BEFORE THIs patch,might be surprised

Sturmpioneers
We are expanding OKW’s options for starting infantry units by making pioneers take up less population, being cheaper to build and reinforce and allowing the squad to gain veterancy more quickly to scale into the mid-late game.

Build time from 40 to 28
Reinforce time from 10 to 7
Population from 9 to 8
Repair speed from 3 to 2
Minesweeper upgrade bonus to repair rate from +1 to +25% repair rate
Panzerschreck cost from 90 to 70
Panzerschreck upgrade no longer requires trucks to be setup
Veterancy requirements reduced to 580/1160/2320/2900/3770
Veterancy 4 15% weapon accuracy and -23% received accuracy removed.
Veternacy 5 40% accuracy modifier moved to veterancy 4


Goal : is to make them cheaper and scale them better
again its a blatant NERF,those miniscule cheap cost doesn't matter when in battle they will take more casualties and will Bleed more
and they got more speed repair nerf despite being more expensive repair unit wth

Obersoldaten
Obersoldaten are being made more accessible through a number of changes with only some slight adjustment regarding their late game veterancy to prevent them from over performing in the late game if the unit well preserved by the player.

Cost from 400 to 340
Population from 10 to 9
Reinforce time from 12.5 to 9.
Build time from 50 to 36
MG 34 LMG cost from 60 to 80
Veterancy 4 bonuses removed
New ability: Suppressive Fire. Squad temporarily causes suppression during the duration of this ability. No cost. Requires Veterancy 4

Obersoldaten MG 34 LMG

Damage from 6 to 4 when picked up by non-elite squads

AGAin little cost inconsequential cost adjustment disguised as A HUGE NErf i think these guys need just buffs and passive suppression turned into timed suppression ability only ..??


ANd we all know the axis heavy armor nerfs

its like them modders played some 3v3 and 4v4 as allies only

and i have already commented about mr.smith don't wanna waste breath on him
and here is how axis infy performs even before the patch where they get nerfed to oblivbion even if the goal was to make them better and disguising little cheapness with giant nerfs

https://www.twitch.tv/xamiak/videos/all

edit : test by russianhamster i believe discussed in decembr balance preview which were just ignored of course

but hey we buffed useless unit so look we aren't biased lol

not only that they just keep making axis stuff cheaper(but will bleed more due to combat nerfs so more expenisve really) but they don't do some for allied infy whats the point of calling okw elite..?? where's the flavour you are just also homogenizing all factions

the only GreAT thing about the patch is demo change and qol life stuff like trench stuff etc and bug fixes

which it should just have been excluding balance changes

Just one thing, Shadowlink.
The Jackson now has 640 HP, which means 4 regular AT shots will kill it, as will 3 shots from a KT. Because 240*3= 720.
I just wanted to pointed that out that such line from your OP is wrong, on both ends, wouldn't want people spreading false information like that.

Just one thing, Shadowlink.
The Jackson now has 640 HP, which means 4 regular AT shots will kill it, as will 3 shots from a KT. Because 240*3= 720.
I just wanted to pointed that out that such line from your OP is wrong, on both ends, wouldn't want people spreading false information like that.

Yeah i know I reread that wording when i was posting to smith a few minutes ago and the wording makes it sound like the jackson will survive after 4 shots (3 from KT) when that's where it dies. I'll fix that.

I understand that Volks in perticular get a -10% RA bonus at vet 1. However it isn't necessarily hard to chip something off vet 2 or 3 of rifles and add it onto vet 1 with the AT nade. Probably easier said than done of course but it's an idea.

Every change needs to be argued for, at length, with on people that live in different timezones, whose main activity is not being available 24/7 and patch a game pro-bono.

Moreover, in order for any change to be meaningful, there need to be provisions for doublechecking it got implemented correctly.

I can tell you that this time, I didn't have the time to personally go over all 1500 files to do the Q&A properly. So, we had to partition the workload about who checks what, and introducing a change at the last minute means that we need to check another ~160 values that would have to be rechecked; at the last minute.

Adjusting Veterancy values for OKW units sure sounds easy in theory. In practice that's another ~160 values I have to change manually using the Attribute Editor, and then manually double-check, again using the Attribute Editor.

I haven't got the time for that.

It is, but again my complaint is more that the vet 5 damage doesn't really do anything. Another issue I have with it is the lower pen value, while most of the time its not really an issue against the paper armor of jacksons and cromwells, if your opponet gets an IS2 which has 375 armor you struggle to actually deal with it effectivly. A panther can out trade it, but that depends more on how badly the IS2 wants to scatter in that engagement. It just makes me upset that people complained about the KT being too strong, when they had TDs which had over 50% chance to pen frontally ontop of self sight/tulips etc, but the JP4 struggles against higher armor values.

Said TDs have 0 AI potential and can blow up with frontal shots from just about anything. Just use a Panther vs IS2s.

Just gonna throw this in there. vet 5 JT still doesn't do anything.

What do you want the Vet5 to do? The easy fix is cutting Vet4 in half and moving it to Vet5.

Indeed it is and personally I think the biggest flaw is the 6 man support team. I think they'd be a lot easier to take down if they didn't survive on retreat as much.

In theory nerfing crew size to 4 sounds like a good idea, since every other weapon has 4-men. In practice Maxim also suffers from the deathloop, and no amount of wishing-well thinking is ever going to fix that.

So, we're just better off fixing Maxim's counters.

The scott with its normal shell followed by its barrage. Similar to how the old ISG could do the same before the patch. While not gamebreaking like spearhead was, it is a little bit more damage.

That's the first time I hear of this issue in the entirety of the DBP preview. While it was intended for the fix to also affect the Scott, I don't remember implementing this personally, and I definitely didn't have the time to doubleckeck every single vehicle that did do that.

Part of the issue with this patch is that I never saw a defined "scope". So I assumed you guys had a rather large choice in what you could change, you just had to have it go through relic at the end for approval.

There was never a defined scope. There was only an ever increasing number of units and abilities we were allowed to fix.

In the end it's about priorities. The hatchet stopped short of putting all USF and OKW vehicles in tech. Every other no brainer change pales in comparison to that.

Why volks get this @Incendiary grenades no longer require a truck to be deployed.@ ?
What the reson was to add it Mr.Smith ?

I have yet to read a post of criticism from an unbiased player in this thread lol.

Show Spoiler

USF doesn't have anymore an emergency tank at disposal.

Emergency tank? ;D

Most of the issues I presented in my post yesterday have been clarified by Mr. Smith, and I'd rather not see another fanboy war thread or balance thread. Since I personally have no other further questions for Mr. Smith, and he explained why most things occured, I'd like an orange+ or mod to lock this thread.

Lock thread please

Your wish is my command.

Readers of this thread should please pay particular attention to the Machine's post at #5.

COH2 was destined to be imperfect. It was by no means fully designed, when its parent publisher, THQ, foundered in December 2012. After an auction, Relic studios was acquired by SEGA who paid a full price for Relic ($26M) iirc, who then extended the time for publishing the game by approx 5 months.

Nobody, not even the hardcore fan, could claim that the first 6 months of COH2 was in any way successful.

COH2 suffered from lots of problems: not least, the desire of Relic to diverge from its successful predecessor and create a different game. In code, that meant dumbing down the game, in an attempt to make COH2 more attractive to the casual user. e.g. the 'come back' mechanic of COH2, or its linear progression, once a commander was selected. i.e. for those of you who never played COH1, once you selected a COH2 commander, you simply progressed through the CPs as you fought and captured: you never had to think about selecting an aggressive or defensive side of a commander: the game does it for you. Compare and contrast that with COH1, where you had had to make a choice which side of the commander tree you used, and then select those choices at the relevant CP: the game did not do it for you in COH1. It was another pressure with which you had to cope. Or, consider the early game with COH1: the bike, or the kettenkrad, or the Jeep, and yes, the BC. These things were so different, and it did not enhance the game to lose them

But back to topic. COH2 is better balanced than it was - readers should please remember that our community balancers do not have an open palette - they work within the balance scope handed to them.

And last: it is probably correct that this patch in the game's late life is more balanced towards team games. Because, in the commercial world in which we dwell, please consider this: 4v4 = 8 players who acquired the game; 3v3 = 6 players who acquired the game. 1v1 = 2 players who acquired the game.

And there is the perennial iceberg: the compstompers, who never appear in automatch, but who far outweigh the active players in automatch, and who pay the same price for the game.

For COH3, I hope that Relic somehow manage to reconcile these components more effectively: the clear answer is to balance 1v1 and 2v2 differently from 3v3 and higher, but do the player numbers warrant such a commercial investment of time?

/