1vs1 Removing map from automatch

huge whiteflash post here

+1 all of this.

Whiteflash, I’m sure you’ve seen in the past that relic never go for “simple solutions” even when those solutions are better in the end result. Relic do as they please with a select few who have a remote influence in their minds. Asking them to quite literally “admit they’re wrong and do something suggested by a fan of the series” has never, at least publicly been done.

In all regards they have full control, but that doesn’t make it the best control.

I feel like the rate of progress on the map pool the 6 months to year has been pretty reasonable, especially compared to the rest of the games history and given that it is largely driven by volunteer efforts.

However I am not a mapmaker so perhaps I don't understand whiteflash's frustrations.

Anyway I voted Arnhem because that is a veto for every faction for me. Minsk I don't see as a competition suitable map but I don't mind playing on it as it brings about much different strategies due to its large size, kind of reminds me of Lost Temple in WC3. Kholodny winter is inferior to summer for sure however I wouldn't mind 2 versions of Kholodny in the map pool if the winter version was better and offered some meaningful differences.

Before you read ....
I urge people to show support for this post on this thread if they care about the ladder map pool.

Thanks for posting the data on maps and win rate. It confirmed what I thought was happening when I played certain maps, such as LaGleize (when it was in) as OKW or Karkhov and both Semoisky's as USF.

I agree that using the veto rate would be helpful but do think the map pool is better than a year ago. Also,some of the problem maps didn't seem to be problems before the last imbalance patch.

Minsk is pretty bad, but Arnhem has the ultimate building cancer which makes it really annoying to play.

KF winter is fine, it is an above average map. The map pool is so small as it is. Not worth removing. It's still fun to play, even though it's inferior to the KF Summer. Isn't it also the only winter map left in 1v1 automatch?

I feel like the rate of progress on the map pool the 6 months to year has been pretty reasonable, especially compared to the rest of the games history and given that it is largely driven by volunteer efforts.

However I am not a mapmaker so perhaps I don't understand whiteflash's frustrations.

Anyway I voted Arnhem because that is a veto for every faction for me. Minsk I don't see as a competition suitable map but I don't mind playing on it as it brings about much different strategies due to its large size, kind of reminds me of Lost Temple in WC3. Kholodny winter is inferior to summer for sure however I wouldn't mind 2 versions of Kholodny in the map pool if the winter version was better and offered some meaningful differences.

Hmmm, I dislike Minsk because its large size and long distance to "enemy" VP leads to annihilation-style games that often take an hour or more, much like why I auto-veto Angoville.

Kholodny Summer has been patched significantly, and East player actually has a chance now. Perhaps we could give the Winter version a chance to be fixed as well, instead of letting it fester as the most imbalanced of all maps in the automatch pool in terms of spawn position. Road to Cutoff has a similar problem, with north spawn being heavily disfavoured. I believe this is what Sturmpanther was alluding to in his reply to you, Whiteflash.

Imho spawn imbalances are the worst type of imbalance - a map being garrison hell or having red cover everywhere simply forces a different playstyle. Certain players don't like certain maps because of playstyle preferences, but being East on Kholodny Winter has nothing to do with how you play. It just starts you off with a massive disadvantage 50% of the time. Whether it gets fixed or it gets pulled, I would definitely vote for something to be done to it.

Option 1: use the LARGEST sample size possible; data

Option 2: use the BEST data possible

Option 3: at least be more transparent with data

Especially when the community is eager to be engaged with not only supporting the game, but developing and maintaining content for it as well.

+1 on all points made.

Data is great. It tells you some very cool things.

DEVILS ADVOCATE
It does not tell you who is vetoing the maps. There is a large range of player skill involved in the data. And there are players, like myself, who tend to not veto any maps until they have played them enough to find something they don't like about them. And that something may have nothing to do with balance. Balanced or not, sometimes a map is just not fun to play on.

Only the top 200 players (level 16) can truly speak to balance as they have played and strategized enough against players of their own caliber to get valid results. But even these players may not know why the map works. They just know how to get around its flaws in a way that fits their play style.

I think the poll represents these things:
- What Relic thinks needs to be removed?
- What the "inner circle" wants removed?
- (The vote) What the community feels when they play these maps?
- No one has offered any reason/desire to improve these maps?

I try to answer / explain you both at the same time. And i will list it, so its easier to see and talk.

1. Relic give almost /no ressoruce to improve coh1 or coh2. This game is old and they focus on new projects. Means the patches are community based.

2. Yes I don't have that hardcore scope as it is for unitpatches. Because DBP was such a success, so Relic gives me alot of freespace. But 1 thing is clear from RELIC: They don't want to remove many maps. Aka to have only like 6 maps in 1vs1. So removing maps is not that easy to bargain from relic as you guys maybe think. Same counts for adding new maps into automatch. Don't forget; Its THEIR GAME.

3. It is super fucking time gorging. Most people have 0 idea how much time it cost. And that for free!

4. The first big improvement happend in the DBP. And i think I can say, it was a super success the mappatch at all; reworking and removing maps. So that should speak for me, that I understand something about maps; Whiteflash. Yes I self never created an own map. I don't have this time. Tho I would say I learnt alot about how maps and WB works and why some maps are bad other good. The next fact is, that I play 1vs1 to 4vs4. So all Gamemode on a high lv (less played in 1vs1 tho. That's why i am very careful in 1vs1 map decision!). So i know the gamestyle on the maps. If not, I could not make all this decisions (from strategy)

5. But thats why I self don't change the maps. I tell / ask mapmakers to make the changes. So i can't fuck up the map Tho I have always to double check their works and like: they cutting a fence, but its to small for britpak. But works for normal inf and other paks. Or they replace a house, but you can't go inside the house. Or they add the HP from the house, but its not working, or they just forget to remove a car; putting some wood things to green cover or bushes, so that units will stay in yellow cover and not green cover; houses with 1 doors, etc. Happend all already. There is alot difference between WB and ingame.

6. Top 10 players from 1vs1, 2vs2: When you work a while in this buisness ( Maps or unit patch) you will see very fast 2 things:
First many of them don't care in start to improve anything. This would cost THEIR TIME LUL. Its always easier to complain, when the unitpatch or mappatch is out.
Second many of them can say you: This map is unfair or the brits vs wehrmacht etc. But they tell you only the obvious thing. Not WHY it is. Its always like: North side is easier / OP, but don't ask me why. Reason: They don't know the stats from the units or the pathing, timing from each points. Best example: Nobody said from top players in 1vs1 ever, that like fuel or vp points are wrong from timing on famyonville.


7. Indeed, when someone had bring good infos and time for a special map, I had consider to let the map in the pool as well. But my time is limited. I personal think this Mappatch will be awesome again. Alot of good changes are in.

8. When I think back before DBP about ingame situation. I always self was complaining about maps and had no idea what maps gets my veto. Because I needed like dobule amount of vetos to get rip of all the bad maps. Right now i acutally have sometimes the case, that I have 1 veto remaining in 3vs3, 4vs4. And in somecase in 2vs2 as well. So i think the system of work kind of work. The map and mappool in the automatch are way better now. When you think back in the past, how it was. I personal would not want to play in 2016-2017 back^^. Pls don't forget that. I always have the feeling for some people: " you give them the small finger, and they just grab for the whole hand"

9. I think the poll for the DBP for removing maps from 1vs1-4vs4 each worked very well. Had around 100 people voting for each modus. I personal always prefer to have more data instead of only 1. And yes there i put almost all maps to vote. This time I did not; REASON: I knew people did not checked the reworked version out from westwall, lost glider, angoville etc. They almost never do. So it would make the poll wrong. It happend already for unitpatch mod: We asked always: Did you played the mod, before you vote, but we all know you just can lie LUL.

10. Stats about how often a map got picked/ played: You asked why I think they are not that strong. I see you really like and prefer Stats, whiteflash.
The game is not only played from top 100 players! So alot of games happens on low elo as well. Don't forget that!
And about Road to khaorkov. The only way I can explain it to me, why it is the second most picked map:
People think: " Hey, I have a 50% chance, that I get south side and almost a freewin on a map. feelsgoodman". North side is really hard to play. So acutally this map should be completed on the bottom on the played maps.
--> Means the stats does not work here very well. Because when you are the second most palyed map from like 20 maps; this map should be super good! Oh wait

11. Since you think poll and asking the community is timewaste, we will not ask them about 2vs2. I just will announce here right now for people, who are interest in maps and read this whole thread: 1 2vs2 map will get removed! Hype.

12. Next problem is Wintermaps. Relic and me prefer to have wintermaps in this game. It looks good and you have skins for your vehicles in winterversion; its a part of this game. Yes I agree to have the complete same map in sommer and winter makes not really sense. And for people who hates the map anyway, it cost them 2 vetos for 1 gamestyle-map
So right now there will be follow Wintermaps:
1vs1: Westwall and Semoskiy Winter
2vs2: Moscow Winter and Semoskiy Winter
3vs3: Resh Winter, Oka river and Lagleize
4vs4: Vielsam and Lagleize

I hope I could bring some light in this here all.

What´s all the fuss about? I don´t get it.

Sturmpanther just asked us what we think, that´s it. Let´s show some faith in what he and Relic are doing.

And WhiteFlash, right now Sturmpanther and some others (noteably Rosbone) are reworking a lot of maps for the big map patch that is about to come in the next months. You don´t seem to contribute anything to it, I don´t know why that is but maybe instead of writing walls of self-righteous text actually reworking the existing maps and making them better would do more good for the community.

Sturmpanther, Rosbone and the others that contribute and spend a LOT of their time reworking those maps barely get any credit for it at all. Which is just sad.

Please reconsider this voting course of action and focus on a solution like any designer would in any other design environment with constraints and a clear goal.

That assumes Relic's goal is "make the best 1v1 map pool possible within a realistic timeframe."

At this point, I'd wager their goal is "keep the community alive until CoH 3 at as low a cost as practical."

I have no doubt your methods would be effective, but they'd require Relic to divert mapmaking resources to CoH 2 and to pay Valve more patching fees.

While I'm sure there are a lot of people at Relic who care about CoH at some point you've got to make the business case to a decision maker who doesn't. I'm not sure there's a business case for putting more money into improving the automatch pool methodology when the majority of the playerbase won't appreciate it anyway.

About 2 versions of the same map (summer + winter) : I always wondered if it would be a good idea to put both versions into 1 map on the mappool. So whenever you get that map in automatch, there is a 50/50 RNG roll that you either get the summer or the winter version (in case that is even possible without having to change the code of the game files.)

But vetoing both versions would consume only 1 veto then

About 2 versions of the same map (summer + winter) : I always wondered if it would be a good idea to put both versions into 1 map on the mappool. So whenever you get that map in automatch, there is a 50/50 RNG roll that you either get the summer or the winter version (in case that is even possible without having to change the code of the game files.)

But vetoing both versions would consume only 1 veto then

Will not happend from coding.

"Because DBP was such a success, so Relic gives me alot of freespace."

The definition of success must have changed since i last checked ...

Since the community started contributing to patches, the game has become tedious and obnoxious in so many respects. Every faction now is almost the same. This is because the balance contributors from the community couldn't actually do any better than relic (worse imo) so they just made every unit viable so as to hush any outcry from people opposed to the decisions taken. So now we have double mgs for everyone in every game, snipers every game, double scott bs, double scout car cheese, double 120 morters that cannot be killed, double morter half track,flamer ht every game, guards every game, bar blobs and tommy spam. I just quit a game where my opponent built 3 maxims and 2 morters, and probably would have spammed guards. I don't care if I could have won or lost, I just loath that style of play and it is everywhere now. It is so rare now to get a interesting game because so many people just cheese it out as hard as they can. Don't kid yourself if you think the game has improved because in reality what has been done is to make every cancer strat viable. What should have been done was to refine strats.

If you try responding with numbers then I would argue to look at community member cards and see how many people have not played recently or only dabble with 1 faction. If recent patches were a success then players would flood back to the game which is sadly not the case. The numbers are purely new blood and team players.

Fiddle with the maps all you want but while ever there are still lag issues and pathing issues and map hackers and boring ass monotonous gameplay, your just fooling yourself if you think it makes any difference.

/End rant.

Ps. Whiteflash is right, but sadly it doesn't really matter...

The definition of success must have changed since i last checked ...

Since the community started contributing to patches, the game has become tedious and obnoxious in so many respects. Every faction now is almost the same. This is because the balance contributors from the community couldn't actually do any better than relic (worse imo) so they just made every unit viable so as to hush any outcry from people opposed to the decisions taken. So now we have double mgs for everyone in every game, snipers every game, double scott bs, double scout car cheese, double 120 morters that cannot be killed, double morter half track,flamer ht every game, guards every game, bar blobs and tommy spam. I just quit a game where my opponent built 3 maxims and 2 morters, and probably would have spammed guards. I don't care if I could have won or lost, I just loath that style of play and it is everywhere now. It is so rare now to get a interesting game because so many people just cheese it out as hard as they can. Don't kid yourself if you think the game has improved because in reality what has been done is to make every cancer strat viable. What should have been done was to refine strats.

If you try responding with numbers then I would argue to look at community member cards and see how many people have not played recently or only dabble with 1 faction. If recent patches were a success then players would flood back to the game which is sadly not the case. The numbers are purely new blood and team players.

Fiddle with the maps all you want but while ever there are still lag issues and pathing issues and map hackers and boring ass monotonous gameplay, your just fooling yourself if you think it makes any difference.

/End rant.

Ps. Whiteflash is right, but sadly it doesn't really matter...

You and the community can talk about patches if it is going worse or better with them. But in another thread. You are talking about Unitpatches.
I talk atm right now about Mappatches, since all this here is focused on maps...
And meta will be always there. You have this in Overwatch and LoL, Dota etc.
And when I am not wrong, alot of people came back with the DBP patch.
But w/e wrong thread here^^

Since the community started contributing to patches, the game has become tedious and obnoxious in so many respects. Every faction now is almost the same. This is because the balance contributors from the community couldn't actually do any better than relic (worse imo) so they just made every unit viable so as to hush any outcry from people opposed to the decisions taken. So now we have double mgs for everyone in every game, snipers every game, double scott bs, double scout car cheese, double 120 morters that cannot be killed, double morter half track,flamer ht every game, guards every game, bar blobs and tommy spam. I just quit a game where my opponent built 3 maxims and 2 morters, and probably would have spammed guards. I don't care if I could have won or lost, I just loath that style of play and it is everywhere now. It is so rare now to get a interesting game because so many people just cheese it out as hard as they can. Don't kid yourself if you think the game has improved because in reality what has been done is to make every cancer strat viable. What should have been done was to refine strats.

If you try responding with numbers then I would argue to look at community member cards and see how many people have not played recently or only dabble with 1 faction. If recent patches were a success then players would flood back to the game which is sadly not the case. The numbers are purely new blood and team players.

Fiddle with the maps all you want but while ever there are still lag issues and pathing issues and map hackers and boring ass monotonous gameplay, your just fooling yourself if you think it makes any difference.

/End rant.

In my opinion the main issue is that the balance patchse were always "balancing" the meta units while ignoring the unused ones. That made the game boring to an extent. The list of unusable units/abilities is just endless but somehow the balance team forgot about them. Maybe "scope" had something to do with it too, I don´t know.

I wrote about this in another thread already, they just used a very lazy approch to balancing. Especially Soviets suffer from this, they have a ton of units and abilities but most of them haven´t been touched in ages and are unusable in the current game. 80mm mortar, Maxims (situational), AA HT, T34 76, KV8 KV2, KV1 (outside 1v1), Dshk, M42 at gun, AT and AI Partisans, IL2 strafe, B4 howitzer, Rapid Conscription, Shocks (arguable).

Then you have units like wiping machine T70 with insane vision at vet 2/3, self spotting 60 range SU 85, counter-everything Guards, PPSH cons that win almost every 1v1 fight with vet unless fighting vs "elite infantry", T34 85s with 800 HP etc. Instead of allowing you a wide range of possible build orders, units etc you are basically forced to play the same boring units over and over again if you want to have a chance to win.

The same could be said about UKF too, their list of garbage units/abilities is very long too. Only difference is that they got all their crutches removed.

In my opinion the main issue is that the balance patchse were always "balancing" the meta units while ignoring the unused ones. That made the game boring to an extent. The list of unusable units/abilities is just endless but somehow the balance team forgot about them. Maybe "scope" had something to do with it too, I don´t know.

I wrote about this in another thread already, they just used a very lazy approch to balancing. Especially Soviets suffer from this, they have a ton of units and abilities but most of them haven´t been touched in ages and are unusable in the current game. 80mm mortar, Maxims (situational), AA HT, T34 76, KV8 KV2, KV1 (outside 1v1), Dshk, M42 at gun, AT and AI Partisans, IL2 strafe, B4 howitzer, Rapid Conscription, Shocks (arguable).

Then you have units like wiping machine T70 with insane vision at vet 2/3, self spotting 60 range SU 85, counter-everything Guards, PPSH cons that win almost every 1v1 fight with vet unless fighting vs "elite infantry", T34 85s with 800 HP etc. Instead of allowing you a wide range of possible build orders, units etc you are basically forced to play the same boring units over and over again if you want to have a chance to win.

The same could be said about UKF too, their list of garbage units/abilities is very long too. Only difference is that they got all their crutches removed.

This is a perfect summary of one huge problem this game suffers from

U know the game´s in trouble when the best advice one can get is to NOT be creative with build orders and rather stick to the meta

refine maps that are understood to be salvageable and dump the rest

Bravo WF, Bravo!!!!

Skewed arguments against maps based on opinion can be become easily distorted. The views of some can influence the many. Use SiphonX's data
https://www.coh2.org/news/59489/automatch-statistics-map-vetoes-and-win-percentages and stay objective. Numbers are neutral.

1. Relic give almost /no ressoruce to improve coh1 or coh2. This game is old and they focus on new projects. Means the patches are community based.

Yes. This has essentially been the case since after British release in September 2015. CoH2 has been operating on community based support for as long as it hasn't.

Yes I don't have that hardcore scope as it is for unitpatches. Because DBP was such a success, so Relic gives me alot of freespace. But 1 thing is clear from RELIC: They don't want to remove many maps. Aka to have only like 6 maps in 1vs1. So removing maps is not that easy to bargain from relic as you guys maybe think. Same counts for adding new maps into automatch. Don't forget; Its THEIR GAME.

Yes. Though let us also not forget that Relic doesn't really communicate with the community of their game. I mean, you're telling the community right now that Relic is very clear they don't want to remove many maps. As far as I can tell that's only been relayed to you in private, as anyone else only knows because of this post in this thread. Now, see point 1. This game relies on community based support, and has for years. Transparency on Relic's part would go a long way to support user generated content.

Points 3-10

:|

11. Since you think poll and asking the community is timewaste, we will not ask them about 2vs2. I just will announce here right now for people, who are interest in maps and read this whole thread: 1 2vs2 map will get removed! Hype.

Well based on the options provided, minsk and arnhem need to go. Another thing to note, based on gathering data from vetoes is that some people, like myself do not veto some of the worst maps because I can assume most people in my ELO will veto it for me so U can use it on another map. So for example when semois summer was in the pool i would leave it unticked when searching as certain factions. If enough people do this OR there are people who dont veto at all then it would be certainly greater than our margin of error, making that data insubstantial in determine the worst maps. Food for thought