COH ONLINE: what was it about?

Jump back to quoted post15 Oct 2018, 08:56 AMDonnieChan

I can't understand how a game concept like that can be successful

Jump back to quoted post9 Dec 2018, 16:27 PMMajorBloodnok

Lest you forget Harlequin COHO: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd5A1F189UQmBTe433209Ag



COHO was aimed at the casual player and also at eliminating piracy in China with the FTP mode. It was launched in China first.

COHO could never hope to compete with COH1 competitively, from which it was derived. And to that extent, serious COH1 players often held COHO in near contempt. Nevertheless, COHO was fun to play - its multiplayer was far superior to COH1 (Hero units etc notwithstanding).

Edited

Jump back to quoted post14 Oct 2018, 21:29 PMJae For Jett

COHO was actually where I first became acquainted with the franchise!

It was a free to play "version" of vcoh.

I believe it had some (all?) of the main campaign missions from vcoh.

COHO only included the american and wehrmacht forces, no brits or PE.

I think the maps were the standard vcoh map pool?

Yes there were microtransactions/p2w stuff (more on that later).

There was actually an insane degree of customization which involved "hero" units (again, more on that later).

So when first starting COHO, you were prompted to select a faction and a commander from that faction (same ones as vcoh). That commander started at level 1, and starting off you actually only got to select and use one ability from that commander. As you played, you gained experience for the commander you were playing, and as you leveled up you got to select more abilities and actually upgrade them (similar to the sort of upgrades you see for abilities in COH2's Ardennes Assault campaign). The commanders actually included more abilities than the ones in vcoh did (for example, wehrmact's terror doctrine could get a terror officer which wasn't present in vcoh). Honestly, there was actually some extremely cool and fun stuff. Once you upgraded your abilities enough, you could repurchase KTs after your first one gets destroyed, have two pershings on the field at once, and the terror officer could get an execution shot similar to recon tommies' snipe ability.

As you leveled (if I recall corectly), you were given "hero" (dont remember the actual name) units. These units could also be purchased through any of two currencies (one of which was earned through playing, the other of which was purchased with real money like most other f2p games). The hero units were special versions of units found in the base roster of the factions. Hero units were actually fairly unique and didn't gain veterancy in the normal sense... Their veterancy/levels were actually persistent through separate games and they had 5 levels. The unit would start at level 1(?) and would already have their first bonus, immediately differentiating them from their counterpart in the base roster. These hero units ranged from "basically the same as the base unit" to "this feels like an entirely new unit." Some examples include the American forces' charismatic engineers which could become as large as a 5 man squad at their highest level, and Whermacht's close combat volksgrenadiers which started with mp40s. Trust me, the variety was actually pretty insane.

I also recall some sort of bulletin system. I remember them being similar, but perhaps more impactful, than coh2's bulletin system. One bulletin that I remember in particular was one that armed Wehrmacht's pioneers with rifles instead of their usual mp40s.

Also IIRC, the game didn't have lobbies or a server browser.

With all of that variety, leveling up, purchasing of hero units with real life money, and players instantly being able to build "vet 5"/level 5 units if they played a lot, balance and the p2w aspect were fairly large issues - I'd like to think that this made it more fun...

Besides these things and the menus being different, COHO was the same as vcoh.