Relic should see this

Hello,

First of all as i'm not native english, please excuse my poor englsih skills. I played since the opening of vCOH.

I'm here to expose my thoughts about the current balance and where's it is going. Some people (on twitch, steam, and some fan forums) said it was useless to post here since people:

-Polite form- on that forum are not clearly representative of all COH players.
-impolite form- because that balance section is the home of some nazi hardcore fanboys reponsibles for destroying the balance atm.

But i heard relic watch this sometimes so i wanted them to see players reports

From what i read before on this forum, here's the current Win/Loss ratio by factions atm

Win% 1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4
Ger 71.2 72.3 75.6 75.9
Sov 67.4 69.2 68.0 60.5

(those numbers are awesome, i don't understand why it wasn't discussed before, strange...)

But they are not really representative either, since those numbers counts some proplayers, which can deal with everything most of the time. the stats for average players must be even more funny for some reasons i'll explain after.



From what i read ingame and everywhere (except that forum) some people stop to play since they don't want anymore to bother fighting against something absolutely stronger, i think the currents stats of the game on steam represents that.

I really thought about it, and here's my thoughts about this problem.

-COH doesn't reward micro anymore, and Russians desperately needs micro. At some points the german faction is almost played with no micro at all. So a superpro player currently just needs to right click on a church with his MG to shut down an entire sector with their sniper's range (yeah you read that right), due to the extreme cover those buildings give, they'll need to organize a flanking, throw one molotov, understand that it'll kill only 2 people, looses 4 men, throw another molotov, loose again map control because of retreats... Just because someone right clicked on a house with a 240mp unit? ofc most of the players just don't care and will let their mg on the house without fearing flames... maybe because it needs one more click? or is it because the molotov is so weak people don't fucking care?

-Just imagine what is described before, and think that, on the other side of the map, the player is calmly capping everything, since his mg needs no micro at all. during that game, cons need to retreat, reinforce etc... Maybe you'll say there are other counters? clown car is now one shoted by conscripts (and i still see people whining about them, what do they want? to be instadestructed on the road by hitting a tree?) and mortars needs so much time that the german player can calmly call another mg, going through the map, and take's the first mg's place. (true story)

-Another thing is that cons are currently totally useless, everything is raping them except engineers (not the scout car anymore, raping all the T1) the most trendy strat at german side is to lock down everything with 2 mgs (yes it's possible on semois) and calmly upgrade their grens with lmg, which also needs no micro at all (it's designed to be more WAY damaging if not microed? WHAT'S THAT?)

about that, here's something interesting: LMG Grens on molotov's fire will kill the entire cons squad faster than they burn! why even bother dodging molotovs huh?

you wonder why russian spams snipers? it's because cons are absolutely raped by everything atm. i can't see another good counter right now, and i even see pro players on their stream just ragequit in front of the cons ineffectiveness, if they can't make it with their amazing skill, how can i manage it?

I think a major problem right now is the early game: Germans have clearly the advantage, but everyone knows they are designed to have advantage late game. So if they have the advantage early and late game, how can sovies win? the only way is by being A FCKING LOT more skilled than his german opponent (that's the case for the pros, slightly rubbing out numbers about the current balance). but if we could look at the average players, the current balance for the majority of players should show how fucked up the balance is.

Now, even some pros are saying the soviet faction is way off atm, but it seems that some people don't care and still are making post on the last 3 effective russian counters of the game, and still don't understand why they see everyday 80% of german players when searching an automatch.

I mean, just look at the numbers on the most balanced part of the game (and played by pros).

3-4% difference which includes open beta is fine.

Whats your Steam ID?

I definitely find playing Germans quite relaxing compared to Soviets. Gren LMG + MG42 provides a very simple and powerful opening. Part of the problem is map related - chokepoints and buildings - though. Let's see what next patch brings.

I don't know why people even still play Soviet. Oh because if they didn't no one would find a game..

But anyway, micro as Germans may as well not exist. There is nothing to flank, no threats you need to avoid. The only I can name is actually Molotovs and AT guns. But really, not much micro.

I don't understand why Germans get an instawin MG upgrade for their Grenadiers, and heavy MUCH MUCH more versatile tiers able to counter anything the Soviets produce. While as Soviets, you only build 2 buildings and it sucks.

There is no reason not go MG Gren Gren, 2 grens = any scout car is toast, and MG = all enemy infantry are now obsolete.

I hear you Arac. Let's hope Relic does too. Oh, and don't mind Nullist, he doesn't play Soviets anyway. I do feel that some of the problems are magnified by the types of maps Relic has put together but those are the maps we have so might as well balance to them.

Here's to hoping the next patch works wonders.

relic need to see this.



omg relic plz fix!

and this.



rant over

Fake accounts, everywhere.

relic need to see this.



omg relic plz fix!

and this.



rant over

Haha, it's quite funny to watch really in a horrible sort of way for my soviet playing heart.

Nice vids. That first one in particular.

Fake accounts, everywhere.

Wait, seriously that's your reply for this thread?
What? You think there's one soviet player who's upset and is just making accounts to spam unjustified claims in the forums?

Nice.

I'm pretty sure those are fake vids too

I think 1v1 and 2v2 games are pretty well balanced atm. 3v3 and 4v4 are definitely not, combined with such high intensity micro and babysitting units needed to play as Soviet, being main reason why more players are searching as German.

Personally, the only reason i play Soviets is because its easier to get game. But I do feel tired and feel that I am getting tension headache after 1 or 2 games.

Way are ppl still ranting about soviets not being balanced!!? everybody knows that!

lets see what happens in the next patch.

i find it hard to believe they will not make a step foreword in the balance issue, that will be dumb of them.

in the meantime i realized soviet players are getting better playing the underdog.

and when the fix will come, Germans will cry like little bitches!!

Snip

Godwin's.

The top 200 stats are pretty hard to divine anything from tbh. A lot of the accounts are people who don't play regularly right now and a lot of better players seemed to prefer Ostheer because it was generally regarded as less strong until last patch (whereas now a lot of streamers are switching to play more Soviets). If Relic had a more general set of data, I'd be interested.

Similarly, the Steam stats are not really indicative of in-game balance. In general a lot of the changes to Soviets came about partly as a result of previous tournaments where the Soviets completely dominated. Personally I think things like the scout car squad deaths on destruction change and the SU-85 cone sight change have actually made the Soviet faction more fun and engaging to play.

There's not really any truth that the German play doesn't involve a lot of micro. Armoured cars are very micro intensive, dodging molotovs is normally more micro intensive than dodging riflenades (not right now because broken sound). I agree that Germans are a easier/less stressful to play right now, if you're not above going the MG suppression bulletin and LMGs everywhere but I don't think the balance is actually massively off in general, just that the MG-42 needs a look-in, and a few things on each side are OP and UP (so, maxims a bit UP, KV-8 way OP etc. etc., LMG-gren OP, German Sniper very much UP).

A lot of your points are basically examples of extremely bad Soviet play (so, losing a clown car to 2 grens fausting is just bad play, similarly the Molotov charge on a really large building like the church just never works).

relic need to see this.



omg relic plz fix!

loooooool

in the next patch the mg42 will be officially renamed superman

loooooool

in the next patch the mg42 will be officially renamed superman

While I agree that mg42 is Op'd atm (especially in the building) I don't see much wrong with this video.

The way I see it, Soviet player did good micro play to flank Mg, but German player did well 2 to micro his mg, evade molotov and pin other squads. Then Soviet player for some reason attempted to keep fighting mg'42 and supporting eng while pinned down.

Good play by Soviet, Good play by German player. Soviet player was just fractionally late on couple of occassions.

This video doesn't say much about anything

Similarly, the Steam stats are not really indicative of in-game balance. In general a lot of the changes to Soviets came about partly as a result of previous tournaments where the Soviets completely dominated. Personally I think things like the scout car squad deaths on destruction change and the SU-85 cone sight change have actually made the Soviet faction more fun and engaging to play.

Yes they did, and now in the tournament held in this patch, did soviets actually win a single game? Every game I watched ended with the germans winning.

There's not really any truth that the German play doesn't involve a lot of micro. Armoured cars are very micro intensive, dodging molotovs is normally more micro intensive than dodging riflenades (not right now because broken sound). I agree that Germans are a easier/less stressful to play right now, if you're not above going the MG suppression bulletin and LMGs everywhere but I don't think the balance is actually massively off in general, just that the MG-42 needs a look-in, and a few things on each side are OP and UP (so, maxims a bit UP, KV-8 way OP etc. etc., LMG-gren OP, German Sniper very much UP).

As a player who plays both and finds soviets immensively frustrating to win against anyone with a clue right now, I really don't agree with any of these points.

Molotovs are a very low reward skill even if they land, they're 10 impact damage with 6 damage per second ignoring the RNG, so effectively they never kill anything outside of the RNG as long as you move out after sitting in it for a couple of seconds. Getting hit with a riflenade always carries a very big risk of having the entire squad gibbed, a molotov has no such immediate risk and is much worse in several ways (requires teching and has horrible range with a very obvious animation).

Armored car micro honestly isn't any harder than clown cars (the unit behaves far better because of the rotating turret) and is far more rewarding in terms of kills.

LMG42 completely removes conscripts from the game, which is why people just go snipers.

MG42 can be used earlygame to lock out all the important points with no real counter for the soviets to stall for T2, and after that can be used either as a bait to force soviets send vehicles/snipers to them, or as an offensive tool to neuter any soviet infantry push by keeping an mg42 with you to instasuppress anything that comes in front of your grenadiers.

FlameHT tends to be impossible to deal with without several guard squads or a lucky mine hit.

Basically I just trollplay as germans, never equip MG bulletins, only make at most one MG during an entire match, don't dodge out of molotovs until after they hit most of the time, and winning is still so much easier than with soviets. Soviets have the option of either going for the entirely predictable 1-2 conscripts, T1 and sniper cars and guards, T4 to which you can lose if the soviets play extremely good and keep on getting lucky, or some more unpredictable alternative build that you will pretty much always win as against germans if you don't mess up because the other units are so bad. As germans you can choose to do any number of things build wise, all of which work good, some so good (T2 vehicle rushes) that they force the soviets to get counters before you even make a single unit.

As germans since this patch I have won around 30 games and lost 4 (out of which two I lost to relic servers going down) while just messing around, with soviets I've been hovering far closer to losing every other game this patch while shedding tears of blood.

http://www.coh2.org/ladders/playercard/steamid/76561197970841350

But obviously because I'm not in top 20 with both factions this opinion is not worth anything.

Godwin's.

The top 200 stats are pretty hard to divine anything from tbh. A lot of the accounts are people who don't play regularly right now and a lot of better players seemed to prefer Ostheer because it was generally regarded as less strong until last patch (whereas now a lot of streamers are switching to play more Soviets). If Relic had a more general set of data, I'd be interested.

Similarly, the Steam stats are not really indicative of in-game balance. In general a lot of the changes to Soviets came about partly as a result of previous tournaments where the Soviets completely dominated. Personally I think things like the scout car squad deaths on destruction change and the SU-85 cone sight change have actually made the Soviet faction more fun and engaging to play.

There's not really any truth that the German play doesn't involve a lot of micro. Armoured cars are very micro intensive, dodging molotovs is normally more micro intensive than dodging riflenades (not right now because broken sound). I agree that Germans are a easier/less stressful to play right now, if you're not above going the MG suppression bulletin and LMGs everywhere but I don't think the balance is actually massively off in general, just that the MG-42 needs a look-in, and a few things on each side are OP and UP (so, maxims a bit UP, KV-8 way OP etc. etc., LMG-gren OP, German Sniper very much UP).

A lot of your points are basically examples of extremely bad Soviet play (so, losing a clown car to 2 grens fausting is just bad play, similarly the Molotov charge on a really large building like the church just never works).

Agree, a lot is just bad play

You think there's ... soviet player who's upset and is just making accounts to spam unjustified claims in the forums?

Yes, I do.

This video doesn't say much about anything

the soviet player could have tried a little harder with that one squad, but look at how much fire the mg squad took and still did not die or have to retreat. That is the problem.