FOTM gameplay

The whole discussion about patches got me thinking a little bit about why one would patch units of a game at all.

The most discussed element is "BALANCE". Fair enough, but I'm wondering if there is an equally important element, that barely gets discussed: There are occasional complaints that the "meta is stale". While this is often attributed to poor balance, but wouldn't a perfectly balanced game lead to "stale meta" to some extent?

So, isn't the point of a "balance" patch also to shake up the existing meta (to some extend independent of balance)?

Would it be conceivable to have a mechanic where units are tweaked slightly on a regular basis. Say, "Your soldiers are tired; all infantry units deal 10% less damage" this month and "All vehicles cost 10% more fuel" the next?

I guess this would require some thought to keep it balanced, but apart from that, could that be an interesting feature?

I always up for ANY balance patch that is more than just a set of small tweaks. The reason for this is exactly "shake up the existing meta" thing.

I believe that perfect balance is a myth. It is more interesting to discover and adapt, rather than play by some well known rules like "if he builds X I should go Y, or I will be disadvantaged".

Therefore, I really like your idea of incorporating something like "automatic meta shaker" into the game.

"All vehicles cost 10% more fuel" the next?

I would love to try some sort of 'infantry' gamemode that makes vehicles twice as expensive or removes medium/heavy vehicles all together just for the sake of variety.

I've always thought the initial infantry engagements in the first 10 minutes are one of the most interesting aspects of the game. Personally I would love for a mode that stretches these engagements out into mid-late game by delaying armor, especially in team games.

What the fuck is "FOTM"?

What the fuck is "FOTM"?

Feasible Offering To Mephistopheles.

What the fuck is "FOTM"?

Flavour of the month.

I think this was the original idea behind bulletins, while they were still powerful. Right now there is a pretty clear meta that works in all matches. In theory, if you could meet opponents who use different unit stats through bulletins, you would have to alter the strategy each time and there would be no clear meta.

There are a few problems with that. First, people didn't like constant changes at all. This is becouse there is only a few people who like to adapt and develop new strategies. Most of the playerbase just finds out what the current meta is and follows that blindly. These guys didn't like stats changing constantly. In effect bulletins have been nerfed to the point where most of them are useless and the others alter gameplay wery slightly. Secondly, bulletins make meta creation process longer, but the bulletin meta still exists some time after changes.

To remove this problems while using the bulletin system that is already present in the game, I think it would be a good idea to randomly select a subset of all bulletins that one can use in each month. For that to work, the bulletins would have to be more powerful than they are now of course.

There is one thing to mention. Most players seem to think that the units that stand out are "OP", while the mediocre ones are "ballanced". Of course, this direction leads to "ballanced" game. But also a boring one. What players really want, although many not realise that, is to counter powerful unit of the enemy with their own "OP" unit or ability.

An example of that is vcoh usf vs wehr. These armies pretty much have only units that would be classified as "OP" in current coh2. Yet they come in a way that zips the ballance together. When each unit comes to the field, it has a short window of opportunity where it can show it potential and then another powerful unit comes from the other side and counters. In fact, this is what we also had in ost vs sov matchup back in 2014, but it is long gone.