Patch Notes 20/08/2013

NEVER! This thing killed 3v3 and 4v4 team games in vCOH cuz it was impossible to find any team to play against. So if wanted to play 3v3 or 4v4 game with your friends, you have to go for custom game and then wait and pray till or ever any other random 3 or 4 people will fight. This killed vCOH for me and my friends cuz it took many many minutes to play a game (and after lets say 20 minutes of waiting they got owned and quit in 10 minutes).

Consider how long does it take to find enemy even in 2v2 right now. Separating team and nonteam games in COH2 (game with very low active players) will lead to fast end of teamgames in general.
Lets compare it with SC2, theres no arranged vs non arranged ladders and the game is still fun to play everytime with almost no waiting time between matches. Why is it so?

+1

vCoH has separated arranged team automatch and it's not good at all. It totally killed team automatch there. Also, it's impossible to team up with a single team mate and play a 3v3 or 4v4, with random players filling up the slots.

I think arranged teams work well when you have a huge player base like in Starcraft. For CoH, I would keep the automatch system simple, dividing the playerbase the least possible.

in my opinion there should be 2v2 at and 2v2 random as 2 different game modes, maby u could choose what you wanna play when u with team mate vs teams for some challenge or vs random for some luls. at the moment when its mixed its not fun and in general skill level in team games is way lower couse of that, playing vs noobs all the time makes you play way worse then vs teams. atleast 2v2 needs to be separated, 3v3 and 4v4 can stay mixed

Lets not forget that you have no idea if you play against friends or random guys so you play as good as you can and later you should not care if you owned friends or random guys or got owned by them.
In SC2 for instance I and my friend got owned many times by random guys simply cuz they got better skill and our Teamspeak did not help us at all.
So what I am trying to say here is that with good system joining together players with sort of the same skill level there still can be very good and "balanced" 2v2 games without seperate ladders.

So what I am trying to say here is that with good system joining together players with sort of the same skill level there still can be very good and "balanced" 2v2 games without seperate ladders.

There can. But the reality is that it is extremely unlikely. In SC2 you have the phenomenon that you can get "stuck" in platin league because of ATvsRT arrangements. But you have to slough through "plat hell" for dozen of games with widely fluctuating allies until you get lucky and a kill streak that gets you into diamond league. Once you hit diamond league the quality of games improves tenfold, as the difference between coordinated and non-coordinating players gets smaller. In CoH2 I already see the effects of elo-hell aswell.

In the end it's not fun and just frustrating.

Of course there is always "lol just play 1on1 noob", but why does RT even exist then? To provide the stomping grounds for AT?

To raw:

I play team games (not only COH2 but in general) only with friends so I dont have yr POV but my point stands still. It can be "balanced" in that way that AT team can be matched up against random players with higher skill to "compensate" AT vs nonAT issues.

However what I know for sure from vCOH 2v2 random ladder is that many of those high level players (lets say 14 and above) were happy if they managed to get to rank 10 in AT ladder if they teamup together. They simply suxed in game and got those ranks from abusing random shit like Roos, PapaSniper blob and such.

Maybe a lot of the problems will be resolved if they put in an in game voice chat, so you can at least talk to your teammate even if you don't know him.

I play 2v2's just for fun though and dont care too much about losses, 1v1 is more competitive by nature, and the game is balanced around 1v1.

2v2 can be a lot of fun, but one should unfortunately be able to shrug off a loss if you get a bad teammate and don't have friends online to team up with. The teammates you get when you are ranked higher should be better though...?

There can. But the reality is that it is extremely unlikely... [shortened]

In the end it's not fun and just frustrating.

Of course there is always "lol just play 1on1 noob", but why does RT even exist then? To provide the stomping grounds for AT?

As an avid player of Random Teams (my friends mostly like shooters and my time restrictions make it hard to play with other people I know even casually) I feel that, while it's entirely possible to have excellent 2v2s with random teammates, it's more often that arranged teams (often you'll see people with clan tags in their steam usernames teaming together) will just stomp you and your random ally simply through coordination. In many cases, it's obvious that the AT you're against has a plan in place, and tactics which require planning and coordination to pull off are more common when facing ATs.

All that to say, i do think that, if the population supports it, it would be better to have arranged teams either have their own queue or at least preferentially matched against other ATs. It's possible that RTs can beat/outperform ATs, but it's IMHO much more likely that the AT will walk all over the RT.

In short, my experience matches Raw's from the post I'm quoting.

I would suggest you get a friend in the game to play with. I was added by a guy after a game and we played again two days later. Perhaps Relic can add a "Friend DLC" for you so you can buy one. Or maybe a monthly subscription friend who removes you from steam if you fail your payments.

Joking aside (I wasn't really joking, buy my friendship for 100€) what you are asking for is bascially a handicap system where handicapped players can chase the notion of a fair game where no fair game is guaranteed. The matchmaking system isn't a fireproof provider of evenly matched teams which you all know if you have actually played. You get stomps, you get stomped and between these you get games that drag out in a even manner more or less and these are the most enjoyable, losing CAN acually just be the derp feeling at the end of the game after much back-n-forth for 30-40 minutes.

Losing is how you improve, a loss today builds toward a victory in the future. You don't get better from winning the stomps, you get more prepared from the even games and you learn harsh lessons from being stomped. If you play casual expect to lose against people who have played a lot.

In COH1 two friends liked to use some tricks to get AT vs RT, basically they were counting the bars on the automatch indicator, if they were matching there was a very high chance they would be put together, if they weren't matching they canceled and tried again.

They crushed a lot of high levels 2vs2 random teams with this simply because they could coordinate perfectly. Arranged teams have a huge advantage, if you play random the best thing is to not take it seriously unless you want to ragequit.

@Blovski - Just to clarify I said the StuG is a strong counter to the T34, not that it performs better vs. the T34 than the SU-85. For the time being, no changes are planned that will modify the performance of the StuG vs. the SU-85; at least in a direct manner. The SU-85 is designed to be better than the StuG in terms of AT, given it has a higher cost and higher AT allocation.

A SU-85 requires 3 shots to kill a StuG unless it is vet 2. A StuG requires 4 shots to kill an SU-85. Also keep in mind target weak point is a guaranteed penetration, meaning a vet 1 StuG can still be relevant vs. heavier armor.

Yeah but those shots aren't going to matter if the su85 outranges it. It's the combo of longer range and fast reverse speed that completely shuts down the stug. I really think it needs its range back to 60 if its going to have any chance against those.

PATCH!!!

Update August 22nd, 2013



Bug Fix



Addressed an issue where Skins would be unequipped when restarting the game

Yeah but those shots aren't going to matter if the su85 outranges it. It's the combo of longer range and fast reverse speed that completely shuts down the stug. I really think it needs its range back to 60 if its going to have any chance against those.

This is my opinion as well. Think it would also give a hulled down StuG some sort of metagame value.

I don't see anything in these changes that makes me willing to come back and play the game yet. As a player that prefers to play as the Germans, it got tiring getting spanked by SU-85s, and nothing has been modified to change that. It seems to me that Soviets now have more options due to the improvement of the T34/76. Plus, the KV-8s are now even more difficult to deal with. Unfortunate.