Core issues that plague COH2 community, in my opinion

You know what, I think I'll have to agree with you, but with a caveat.

I still believe that Automatch is still where all players should be directed to, even if there might be some other option.

First and foremost, automatch needs to be used. And despite the issues of one group of players being left out, the gains in automatch usage, especially for a relatively small playerbase, outweighs the loss. Even more especially in light of the playerbase already being divided in two via faction choice (since most players tend to play one faction).

There are a lot of problems with lobbies, for reasons already listed. Even if you don't agree, or don't see those problems as problems.

This decision wasn't made in a vacuum, even if it doesn't make sense initially.

I think there's a lot of good points raised in the OP, and the subsequent comments. I just do find it a bit amusing that it seems people are remembering vCoH the way that older people talk about air travel in the 60s'.

"Oh we'd all get dressed up and wear suits / fancy dresses to fly. Flying was civilized and an occasion."

CoH had/has it's problems and a lot of them are being ignored in discussions like this.

For example the ranks. This didn't stop people from complaining when they lost a match. It didn't stop them from rage quitting and flipping out. Or running to the forums or our email and complaining that the game was unbalanced.

The difference is that right now because balance is far less refined than it was after 6 or 7 years of vCoH more people are willing to listen. Also we're doing more frequent balance updates to refine the game's balance than we were 6 years on in vCoH, so it gives people new stuff to blame for their loss on a regular basis.

Further a lot of that rage was directed into the chat channels.

Marco you may have had some great experiences in the Rome chat, but let's not kid ourselves that the chats were refined book clubs with gentlemen exchanging ideas and debating strategy like civilized people. Sure that may have happened once in awhile, or in the early days but the majority of what went on there were the same dozen or so people camping out calling each other racial slurs and just doing their best to be the trolliest troll on the internet.

The existence of multiple profiles meant that there'd be a revolving door of 1 person saying the same thing as 6+ people.

Then there was the Berlin chat which THQ kept getting threats from the German authorities about because it was often infested with neo-Nazis who spent their time talking about cleansing the country of the minorities (mostly the one that the Nazis don't like).

I do think that finding a way for people who want specific type of custom games to meet is a challenge we want to figure out. But people have already raised some issues with the lobbies. It was a hive of team killing and unfair play. Not everyone mind you, and maybe you never had that issue. But a lot of people would find themselves in 2v2 games where the 3 other people were all working together.

vCoH is a great game and those things you raised were generally great features. But they weren't without drawbacks and the community wasn't a united happy bunch who never complained or fought or accused each other of hacking or the balance of being terrible. If anything I'd say the community is better organized now, provides much better support to new players and has a lot of tools (ex Twitch) to share their passion for the game.

The T-34 has had a large damage and small penetration buff. The SU-85 has not had its damage or penetration reduced. T34-85 has been unchanged (but still needs a buff). IS-2 has been improved. There's not been any nerf of Russian AT options at all.

su 85 had its speed reduced to the point it cant chase a p4 reliably, double it if you go for the focused looking ability, t34/76 are not reliable. even their ram is not a sure gun damage (i understand that you have a possibility of engine damage. but to me gun damage should be 100% of the times. that's it those are the options soviets have vs tanks. not counting the at gun, what are you going to suggest, to reduce my commander options? because you need doctrinal tanks to beat non doctrinal tanks?

to stay in topic. i think this is caused by German wining. and them being the majority.

Some players reminisce about CoH1 like Noun talks about pizza toppings. It is their passion and very few people understand their feelings and concerns .

su 85 had its speed reduced to the point it cant chase a p4 reliably, double it if you go for the focused looking ability, t34/76 are not reliable. even their ram is not a sure gun damage (i understand that you have a possibility of engine damage. but to me gun damage should be 100% of the times. that's it those are the options soviets have vs tanks. not counting the at gun, what are you going to suggest, to reduce my commander options? because you need doctrinal tanks to beat non doctrinal tanks?

to stay in topic. i think this is caused by German wining. and them being the majority.

The SU-85 was blatantly too good at chasing and reversing and basically just about everything before the changes. It still has really good AT, frontal armour and range, just needs to be backed up properly.

T-34 ram has a 100% chance of gun damage on a P-IV or anything smaller. Against bigger tanks, it depends on whether you flank with the ram. The higher damage and penetration is a huge (over 50%) net buff to it's AT capabilities.

I don't have a problem using either SU-85s or T-34s right now. Certainly both of them are much better than StuGs normally are. More or less every Soviet doctrine features some sort of other AT thing right now, if you want different options excluding the AT gun. You also have mines, which I think are really underused by Soviet players at the moment.

I think 'German whining' was right on the SU-85, which is in a much healthier spot. The T-34 has had a really substantial buff to its AT. Every other AT option in the Soviet arsenal (mostly doctrinal) except AT nades has either been buffed or kept the same.

I think there's a lot of good points raised in the OP, and the subsequent comments. I just do find it a bit amusing that it seems people are remembering vCoH the way that older people talk about air travel in the 60s'.

"Oh we'd all get dressed up and wear suits / fancy dresses to fly. Flying was civilized and an occasion."

CoH had/has it's problems and a lot of them are being ignored in discussions like this.

For example the ranks. This didn't stop people from complaining when they lost a match. It didn't stop them from rage quitting and flipping out. Or running to the forums or our email and complaining that the game was unbalanced.

The difference is that right now because balance is far less refined than it was after 6 or 7 years of vCoH more people are willing to listen. Also we're doing more frequent balance updates to refine the game's balance than we were 6 years on in vCoH, so it gives people new stuff to blame for their loss on a regular basis.

Further a lot of that rage was directed into the chat channels.

Marco you may have had some great experiences in the Rome chat, but let's not kid ourselves that the chats were refined book clubs with gentlemen exchanging ideas and debating strategy like civilized people. Sure that may have happened once in awhile, or in the early days but the majority of what went on there were the same dozen or so people camping out calling each other racial slurs and just doing their best to be the trolliest troll on the internet.

The existence of multiple profiles meant that there'd be a revolving door of 1 person saying the same thing as 6+ people.

Then there was the Berlin chat which THQ kept getting threats from the German authorities about because it was often infested with neo-Nazis who spent their time talking about cleansing the country of the minorities (mostly the one that the Nazis don't like).

I do think that finding a way for people who want specific type of custom games to meet is a challenge we want to figure out. But people have already raised some issues with the lobbies. It was a hive of team killing and unfair play. Not everyone mind you, and maybe you never had that issue. But a lot of people would find themselves in 2v2 games where the 3 other people were all working together.

vCoH is a great game and those things you raised were generally great features. But they weren't without drawbacks and the community wasn't a united happy bunch who never complained or fought or accused each other of hacking or the balance of being terrible. If anything I'd say the community is better organized now, provides much better support to new players and has a lot of tools (ex Twitch) to share their passion for the game.

+1 A lot of you obviously have fond memories of coh1 lobbies but while I am in no way an elitist, I avoided them like the plague. I played a lot of auto matches and even more custom games but lobbies and chat were so often filled with trolls and such over the top racism that I just couldn't stomach it after a point.

I didn't know that neo nazis were invading the community.

lol people whine about things that are on the internet. i think if you are bothered by racism on the net then you are actually a racist yourself cause its bugging you and your sitting there thinking how dare they. let them sit there and say that shit, just ignore. it doesn't affect anyone.

lol people whine about things that are on the internet. i think if you are bothered by racism on the net then you are actually a racist yourself cause its bugging you and your sitting there thinking how dare they. let them sit there and say that shit, just ignore. it doesn't affect anyone.

That sentence makes no sense at all.

That sentence makes no sense at all.

neither does bitching about racism on the net.

NOUN:

1 - Since the Steam integration the said offensive people could be easily banned and have their account suspended.

2 - Steam Account integration also means no Smurfing etc. such that the Smurf noob stompers etc don't/can't exist anymore (this looks to be the crux of your reasoning behind no custom public game lobbies) - the obviously good players will then be able to play against equally good players and vice versa.

I'd be happy with no chat lobbies to be perfectly honest - its the custom game lobby's that are killing the game in their current form.

If liability is the reason you're not introducing lobbies - then there are you answers.

I still have yet to hear a valid reason as to why we don't have custom game lobbies though other than the perceived "team stack" argument - which doesn't cut it.

Or just give lobby game for new comers (caual players) to enjoy the game rather than get raped by veterans in ranked, I hope it's not too late for a lobby implementation.

Just wonder why this game is not include lobby at first place

@PingPing:

You make some good points. I'm mostly responding to people's nostalgic memories of the halcyon days of vCoH.

We spent a lot of time and energy on banning people from vCoH for their chatroom behavior, and it really never solved the problem.

But yes, there's a lot of stuff that's in Steam CoH that'll cut that stuff down, especially things like smurfing.

I do think that finding a way for people who want specific type of custom games to meet is a challenge we want to figure out. But people have already raised some issues with the lobbies. It was a hive of team killing and unfair play. Not everyone mind you, and maybe you never had that issue. But a lot of people would find themselves in 2v2 games where the 3 other people were all working together.

- Yes there was Team killing and unfair play. Mostly small group of smurfs. Most games created with aim to be balanced.
Don't allow multiple nicknames with fresh stats I don't see the problem there
- I actually was subject of team killing often, we as the community did our best to name and shame, report those players. It was impossible due to constant in-game name changes and later on with $5 COH, reporting players was futile

But I find that point utterly insignificant, because I have experienced a lot more of that in COH2 then in COH. People search for games and then are AFK, about the same thing for me. Furthermore, at least in COH i could freely leave the game when that happens, or someone is abusing me. Right now I am being forced to quit to desktop if I want to leave I find that more insulting that some idiot kid, calling me names. I am sorry, but WTF? how is that for unfair play? Being forced to endure abuse and idiocy by Game developer.
You wanna talk about unfair play? anyone who doesn't have a team, searches randomly is subject to quite often team bashings, name calling and unfair teams. Or being part of the team, not by own design, who does that to some poor fellow players.

I don't see that many people calling for COH style chatrooms. I see a lot of people calling for custom public lobby games, where they can choose which game to play, with whom they want. To be able to chat to people IN GAME lobby (meaning 3 people chat to eachother while waiting for other players to join) Add in-game friends, would be nice 2.
Bottom line is, you are under impression that i see Lobby through pink glasses, well I don't. I remember vividly: Team killers, smurfs, drop-hacks, sync-hack, hackers, idiots whos main goal was to ruin game for others, waiting for an hour for good game than game crashing after 5 min, waiting for an hour for a game that is sync-hacked after 10 min, waiting for an hour and giving up because can't get the game going, being called names, abused, being called hacker/cheater, being called racist slurs, listening to abuse of others, being lobby hacked, playing vs teams of hackers, Waiting for 40 min and then for another 15 for AFK players anyone? and the list goes on and on

I would deal with all of that rather than play automatch 4v4's
- Sorry Noun, but maybe you are looking at automatch with pink glasses as well?
I get most of that ^ in automatch as well, at least when I can choose games and ignore players I have a chance to protect myself and have fun with normal people. Right now, I have no control and I don't have any desire to play the game.

I will leave it with this: Played 99 VP games, received 3 challenging Victory ribbons, 4 Hartbreaking loss ribbons, 17 overwhelming victories and 5 TOTAL VICTORIES. I had 5 games where other players couldn't cap the damn VP point once in the entire game.
That is just unacceptable for me.......

Whatever may happen from this discussions, I am extremely pleased that we are finally having discussion on this matter. No matter what the outcome.
At the end of the day, these are my feelings, experiences and wishes. The game should always be catered for majority, whether that coincides with my wishes? not sure, but quite possibly it does

I agree with OP on many of the issues raised. The biggest cause of this issue is the negativity of the player base. Every little thing that goes wrong they blame Relic and every other player who disagrees with them. These kinds of people fail to realise this game actually takes a lot of effort to improve and nothing can be perfect as soon as it is released. They do not actively try to make this game better and look at ways to improve, but just insult and complain about everything they think is bad.

The random factor of the game could have something to do with it. It can be frustrating when you lose a game because of random chance - so they take out their rage on the forums. But random chance is a core part of this game and what makes it strategic rather than macro speed.

The reason is kind of irrelevant, I think there just needs to be a overall better attitude of the player base. Stop complaining, stop whining - try to actually suggest ways of improvement. There's a point where negativity is productive, but some people on these forums go too far.

The biggest cause of this issue is the negativity of the player base ... There's a point where negativity is productive, but some people on these forums go too far.

*stares directly at you*

Ontopic: As Noun pointed out, neo-nazis etc abound. DoW2 unmoderated open lobby chat, for example, was a real cesspool. Hilarious, useful etc, but a cesspool nonetheless.

Personally, I get excited considering how much neo-soviet/neo-nazi ranting/raging there would be in an open unmoderated lobby, but I can understand Relic doesn't want that kind of action on its conscience.

I wouldn't hold them responsible for what happens in the chat, but clearly there are a lot of people who don't appreciate or understand freedom of speech, and would hold Relic/Sega responsible for what is said in there.