Core issues that plague COH2 community, in my opinion

These are core problems that plague COH2 and greatly impact on COH2 player base and community.
(In my opinion, of course)
Many other issues and problems COH2 and its community faces are direct or partly result of these core issues. One or two of these will have great impact on many COH2 players and their desire to play the game

1. Rank (or lack of it)
I’ll use examples here, I think this might be the best way to communicate the core issue:
(ranks are indicative of player ability in scenario)

Coh 1 =
Rank 11 player searches for game and is automatched vs rank 16 player in 1v1 battle. He sees rank -16 and the hair on his head straightens up and adrenalin kicks in. Rank 11 player does his best in the game but losses the game.

Aftermath: players type GG, maybe rank 11 player blames keyboard and mouse a little bit or maybe asks for tip or two. (naturally there are always idiots here and there who abuse, drop hack, blame game, etc)
-Player level 11 Searches for new game and bemoans his luck of getting level 16 opponent, but is sort of happy with few nice moves he did.
-Player lvl 16, searches for game hoping he gets someone better this time, so he can rank up.
Coh 2 =
Player ranked 4563 searches for game, gets game vs some guy with weird name.
Player ranked 4563 tries his best but losses.


Aftermath:
-Player Ranked 4563 rage quits from main menu, goes on forum and starts posting about balance issues, accuses Relic of being Nazi or pleasing Soviet fanboys by nerfing those few units Germans have left to fight OP’d Soviets… Gets into argument vs someone who lost to opposite faction earlier, they get into 3 hour argument calling eachother names and trying to prove their favourite faction is deliberately and needlessly targeted by Relic’s devs for nerfs. Both are consumed by anger and hate Relic, COH2, Sega, Devs, Noun, eachother and who ever gets involved into argument. Neither considers possibility that they were just beaten by better player.
Tomorrow instead of turning on COH2, he goes on forum to check who wrote what on forums……
-Some guy (Ranked 162) goes to watch twitch channel or his replay after game. Spends couple of hours watching replays and discussing tactics on forum. Later on he searches for another game, wonders why there is so little people searching for games and why does it take so long to get a game. It’s a brain teaser, isn’t it?


2. Automatch 4v4 vs Custom game lobby

Having unit slightly Op’d in 1v1 game is abomination, a reason to flood forums with request for immediate balancing and patch.
Having maps that are slightly favourable towards one faction with few units Op’d is just a damn crime against humanity. Abomination and entirely acceptable reason not to play the game, wait for balancing patch to fix unplayable game.
These same players ^ find it ok for Relic to force other players into automatch 4v4 games, where ELO can’t possibly find 8 players of similar skill. Find it ok for Relic to disable ‘surrender on your own option’, so people can’t bail on the game that is laggy and terribly unbalanced. Find it ok, for Relic to try all sort of different things to force players into playing games they find utterly frustrating.
Half of the 1v1 player base quit playing because SU85 was OP’d, MG42 had insta suppression, and Relic comes and asks their opinion on 4v4 games and what do they think how to stop players bailing from 4v4 games. Naturally they give their opinion on mode that they don’t play and suggestions on what ‘casual players’ should do. Relic takes their opinion into account. Disregards players who are playing that mode and their opinions, complaints and suggestions. Seems entirely logical to me, I can’t see any issue with that. Can you?
Well for someone who plays both modes, this is how I find 4v4 game.
Lets say Relic decided to combat people complaining about balancing issues in 1v1 by adopting new system.
Before each game one faction would be randomly made from: extremely OP’d to highly OP’d, to significantly OP’d, to moderately Op’d, to fairly OP’d to slightly OP’d to almost balanced factions (resembles how ELO works in 4v4 games). Relic goes to 4v4 (casual) gamers on what they opinions are. They give their opinions. Some say that’s stupid, some say yeah that sounds like good idea because people can learn to play better when having to face OP’d faction.
That way when they eventually come to 4v4’s they wont have as much problem dealing with being double teamed until help arrives. Great idea, Relic goes and patches the game, ignores cries of 1v1 community. Half the players quit playing, other half finds it great because every other game they get to feel like best player there ever was in COH…….
4v4 players don’t care, because those who quit would never made good team players anyway.
Problem solved? Well not for 1v1 players who want good balanced games.
Fiercest and most vocal supporters of 4v4 automatch are 1v1 and 2v2 players who think that is the best way to train players into evolving into competitive 1v1 players, and swelling those modes with more players. (this doesn't include normal 1v1 players, who want everyone to have fun.)
Vast majority of actual 4v4 players have either quit game, are hanging around waiting in hope of lobby, or are still playing getting increasingly frustrated and entertaining the thought of quitting the game.
Relic, get your head out of the sand……….
The only players that actually benefited are those noob bashing smurfs from COH who formed teams and are having a blast beating randoms and beginners.
Smurf problem is solved in COH2 through steam and not being able to get new acc. Unfortunately biggest menace and cancer of COH after hackers is being given new avenue to continue with their practice of praying on weaker players and throwing insults at them.
Catering for newbies by trying to create path for them into community through automatch and no lobby? Well, they get abused by those forementioned ex smurfs who abuse them, they get abused by their team for not wanting to surrender, abused for being in the game as weakest player, etc.
If I received this much flack and abuse when I was newbie in COH, I too would probably stopped playing the game. Lucky for me, I found friends of similar skill set to play with and vs throughout my playing days. Progressing and learning while having fun. This system doesn’t benefit anyone except ex smurfs and minority group of players who don’t care about competitiveness at all.
P.S. I think we all agree that chat rooms COH style are unwanted by most, because they were just abuse vehicle for many. Game lobby chat, while waiting for game and ability to add friends and send whispers, I think most people miss that greatly

3. Soviet army is too hard for newbies to play with

When COH2 first came out, there were scores and scores of newbie players who were crying on Steam forums about Germans being OP’d and how it is impossible to win vs Germans. Yes that same time COH veterans couldn’t win a game as Germans. Naturally they were told to L2P and called noobs, etc.
Anyway, looks like most of them didn’t actually L2P they just quit playing instead.
I am going by their testimonies and accounts, but it seems that no one wanted to play as Soviet and 90% of newbies were searching as Germans.
Naturally, wait time was extremely long and when they did finally get the game it was vs players of greater skill who knew how to play with, at that time, OP’d Soviets. Poor things get their ass kicked badly either way.
Anyway, my suggestion for this is: Make couple of Soviet commanders more in line with newbie abilities. With mg42, bunkers, tanks that are more in line with Panther (or real tanks as newbies call for) Commanders where they can build couple of bunkers, HMG that can’t be easily flanked and work they way up, as they L2P to more specialized units.
We all started playing COH with USA by going for MG and mortars, artillery, etc. Crawled in front of MG with those ‘useless’ rifleman and wondered what is the use for those stupid paratroopers that can’t kill anything. Then we discovered that they can run fast and throw sachet charge on bunkers. Yay Later on we all called those useless rifleman, ‘vet 3 terminators’ at the time, they were just useless. Weren’t they? And back than everyone was newbie.
ATM, Soviets are to micro demanding and specialized army to reasonably expect from newbie to even be equal to newbie German. Let alone someone more skilful. According to many steam threads (where all the newbies are posting) Germans are better at everything, and playing as German is auto-win.

Sorry for the novel length, couldn’t say everything in few short sentences.

These are my opinions and observation, feel free to give yours.

My intention was not to offend anyone with this, only to highlight issues from which a lot of COH2 problems arise.

@OP Interesting view on the rank. Not sure I agree in total, but overall, I can understand the whole "I lost to a guy at lvl 16" feels far more understandable than losing to a "noname rank", and the aftermath of that.

About 4v4 lobbies, I tend to agree, but also lobbies might divide the playerbase to much so no games can be found. I also enjoy automatches more in CoH2 than I ever did in the first game.

Also hunting for a lobby game in coh1 when you dont want to play the scheldt or vire river valley or achelous river was quite painful. Also remebered alot of getting kicked out of game lobbies for having to low/high lvl, misleading game-names, trying to get ppl to join your own game when playing 2v2 etc. Looking back, I dont miss lobbies at all. The only thing I miss is actually choosing the map of preference, and thats actually not such a biggie for me.

About the rageposts and the community, I find it interesting that ppl are so into this game that they can go on a rage spree and what not. It's just a game. Yes you paid money for it, but it is still a game. You are not likely to lose a leg because you consider this or that unit OP. I think it would be better for the game and the community if the overall temperature went down some. Giving the devs constructive feedback instead of ranting.

No. 1 - runs both ways, I think. Either way, it beats CoH 1's experience for me, where you'd have smurfing all over the place (and get accused of it yourself if you did anything at all well). The really cool thing about that system was how thematically nice the badges were.

No. 2 - custom game lobby would help that section of players, I think. Also give the dicks that like badmouthing people somewhere else to go.

No. 3 - I'm not sure this is true. Your basic units are very easy to handle, you don't have to worry about saving munitions for upgrades, you just have to build buildings rather than tier up, you don't have to handle MGs as a semi-core part of your army. I think this was true with the old MGs making it extremely punitive to have any conscript mis-micro but now it seems OK.

@OP Interesting view on the rank. Not sure I agree in total, but overall, I can understand the whole "I lost to a guy at lvl 16" feels far more understandable than losing to a "noname rank", and the aftermath of that.

About 4v4 lobbies, I tend to agree, but also lobbies might divide the playerbase to much so no games can be found. I also enjoy automatches more in CoH2 than I ever did in the first game.

Also hunting for a lobby game in coh1 when you dont want to play the scheldt or vire river valley or achelous river was quite painful. Also remebered alot of getting kicked out of game lobbies for having to low/high lvl, misleading game-names, trying to get ppl to join your own game when playing 2v2 etc. Looking back, I dont miss lobbies at all. The only thing I miss is actually choosing the map of preference, and thats actually not such a biggie for me.

About the rageposts and the community, I find it interesting that ppl are so into this game that they can go on a rage spree and what not. It's just a game. Yes you paid money for it, but it is still a game. You are not likely to lose a leg because you consider this or that unit OP. I think it would be better for the game and the community if the overall temperature went down some. Giving the devs constructive feedback instead of ranting.

Agree, Either way has its benefits and issues.

For example I am for Lobby custom games, tho I hated it at the time of COH. Waiting for games, drop hacks, smurfs, like you said sometimes it was hard to get the game going at all. On the other hand, I think automatch 4v4's is even worse.

1. Disagreed. Absolute rankings (1-420.000) are a more accurate way to obtain knowledge about the true skill level of an opponent. Your example is flawed as you did not mention the rank of the opponent of "player ranked 4563". The aftermath varies between an "opponent ranked 145" and an "opponent ranked 4564", for instance.

2. Disagreed. Steam is a great way to add new friends and chat, while there is no necessity to even be ingame. Next to that, there is no chat lobby harassement.

3. Agreed. This is where balancing is for.

No. 1 - runs both ways, I think. Either way, it beats CoH 1's experience for me, where you'd have smurfing all over the place (and get accused of it yourself if you did anything at all well). The really cool thing about that system was how thematically nice the badges were.

No. 2 - custom game lobby would help that section of players, I think. Also give the dicks that like badmouthing people somewhere else to go.

No. 3 - I'm not sure this is true. Your basic units are very easy to handle, you don't have to worry about saving munitions for upgrades, you just have to build buildings rather than tier up, you don't have to handle MGs as a semi-core part of your army. I think this was true with the old MGs making it extremely punitive to have any conscript mis-micro but now it seems OK.

Yeah, number 1 you are right. Goes both ways. I just feel there is incredible amount of ranting and accusations flying around. I kind of considered if Rank could be issue. If it has any part or not, i am not sure.

For number 3, I went entirely by numerous threads I read on steam around release date. To me it's not hard to play as Soviet, but I can certainly see how newbie would struggle

1. Disagreed. Absolute rankings (1-420.000) are a more accurate way to obtain knowledge about the true skill level of an opponent. Your example is flawed as you did not mention the rank of the opponent of "player ranked 4563". The aftermath varies between an "opponent ranked 145" to an "opponent ranked 4564", for instance.

2. Disagreed. Steam is a great way to add new friends and chat, while there is no necessity to even be ingame. Next to that, there is no chat lobby harassement.

3. Agreed. This is where balancing is for.

Opponent of rank 4563 was 145 or whatever. Suggestion was that person who goes and has rant on various forums about balance, most of the time doesn't have a clue what his opponents rank was.

P.S. If I am not wrong, you could see your true rank in COH as well. If you go into leaderboars, it will tell you you are 853 or 4567 ranked player (albeit, only for ranked matches). Display rank was 1-20

I'd like to add Bulletins to that list. That they require level is irksome but add to that some random "do xyxy 20 times" & its a nightmare. You're totally reliant on the games current meta, I can't kill 20 T34s if 0 players will build them (I picked an easy to name unit for an example, no balance was harmed during the making of this point!).

Add to that the differing requirements for some e.g. the bulletin formerly known as 4% dmg for cons/grens. Use much needed ability xx times vs kill xx heavy tanks!

People are farming them, if we had lobbies atm they would probably be filled with people offering to trade bulletins in games for that sole purpose. I can't speak for others but it puts me off multiplayer, balancing an rts is hard but bulletins require every unit to be balanced 2 or 3 times.

I have other issues but they're with Sega/Relic as opposed to CoH2 & were discussed in the relevant thread.

Opponent of rank 4563 was 145 or whatever. Suggestion was that person who goes and has rant on various forums about balance, most of the time doesn't have a clue what his opponents rank was.

P.S. If I am not wrong, you could see your true rank in COH as well. If you go into leaderboars, it will tell you you are 853 or 4567 ranked player (albeit, only for ranked matches). Display rank was 1-20

This particular person has all the means to find the absolute rank of his opponent before he rants on forums. The suggestion was aimed at the classic ranking system (20-1), whereas I argued why it should display an absolute rank (1-420.000).

CoH1 has silimar means through the search player ability, although the absolute rank combined with a steam profile gives more information.

i agree. the mayority of german outcries have ended in the overnerf of the russian army. right now russians have nothing reliable that can take german armor scept an AT gun. have you noticed how soviet gameplay have taken a move into (lets kill all its infantry before tanks come)? once german tanks start rolling. is praying time for russians. you have to make a bunch of hussle and magic around the tank to kill it. still people complain about the weak tiger every time i face a tiger i remember the forum treads. and whonder who in their right mind thinks tiger needs a buff. i had to use 3 AT guns to beat a tiger because nothing else could penetrate its armor SU unrreliable, T34/76 unreliable, t34/86 unrreliable, IS-2 just tested unreliable, the amount of shots that bounce of the tiger is astounding and look! ramming, the tank anti tank option its unreliable too now!(not counting how expensive it is).

how is possible that tigers can go deep into my territory without fear of retaliation. aT nades dont hit it. its a superiour tank to every russian tank. ant its cost is around the same as the IS2, the same goes for panther, i have never seen an elephant again because of that. tiggers just steamroll everything.

i have hopes this suposed beta match that was shown a while ago brings more balance to the game. right now soviets are soo restricted in their build that. you cant do anything unless you are a.

i agree. the mayority of german outcries have ended in the overnerf of the russian army. right now russians have nothing reliable that can take german armor scept an AT gun. have you noticed how soviet gameplay have taken a move into (lets kill all its infantry before tanks come)? once german tanks start rolling. is praying time for russians. you have to make a bunch of hussle and magic around the tank to kill it. still people complain about the weak tiger every time i face a tiger i remember the forum treads. and whonder who in their right mind thinks tiger needs a buff. i had to use 3 AT guns to beat a tiger because nothing else could penetrate its armor SU unrreliable, T34/76 unreliable, t34/86 unrreliable, IS-2 just tested unreliable, the amount of shots that bounce of the tiger is astounding and look! ramming, the tank anti tank option its unreliable too now!(not counting how expensive it is).

how is possible that tigers can go deep into my territory without fear of retaliation. aT nades dont hit it. its a superiour tank to every russian tank. ant its cost is around the same as the IS2, the same goes for panther, i have never seen an elephant again because of that. tiggers just steamroll everything.

i have hopes this suposed beta match that was shown a while ago brings more balance to the game. right now soviets are soo restricted in their build that. you cant do anything unless you are a.

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.

This particular person has all the means to find the absolute rank of his opponent before he rants on forums. The suggestion was aimed at the classic ranking system (20-1), whereas I argued why it should display an absolute rank (1-420.000).

CoH1 has silimar means through the search player ability, although the absolute rank combined with a steam profile gives more information.

Yeah, I suggested that it looks like people rant more because they get beaten often by higher ranked/skilled but blame it on balance/map etc, because they are unaware of other persons skill/rank. Who really goes and looks for opponents rank after every game. (yes you can find it on this site)

Be it 1-20 rank, or 1-480000 rank, having neither displayed makes most players think they are top dog in the match.
I agree that 1-480 000 + steam is a lot better ranking system.

I don't like the fact there are no public chatrooms and no lobbies: when I came into COH it was only thanks to the "Rome" public chatroom that I met new Italian players who teached me the game, and thanks to lobbies I could find basic games where I trained with people who had my similar stats. Yes, public chats means also verbal harassment but overall if makes the community more united, because you can spread words in various chats when looking for players, you could even have serious discussions and you could organize tourneys better with everyone in the right chat, with whispers that didn't force you to actually add a specific person into your friend list.

I miss that in COH2 and I'd like to see it back

Perhaps we can have a mix of that.

I disagree that straight up lobbies are a good thing, but chatrooms can sometimes help.

I've always seen lobbies in CoH1 as a archaic holdover, more prone to exploitation than to be used as intended. 80%+ rooms I went in the lobby creator would be stacking the teams.

Likewise, if you want to talk about new players having issue with rank and higher level players, it gets worse with a lobby system since those same new players often don't understand how to go about finding an even match, if they can even find one at all.

Then lobbies pull players away from the automatch, where all players should.

Instead, perhaps they could just have chat rooms, but in the chat you can link up into parties that get put into automatch. Likewise, two parties can challenge each other and get dumped into custom game.

This way, the focus is still on automatching trying to find a good match.

But, even then, you will still get people just idling in chatrooms, much like idling in lobbies.

you don't have to add someone to friends list to talk to them.

Then lobbies pull players away from the automatch, where all players should.

I strongly disagree here - as do many others that dislike being forced to play VP Automatch.

Why "should" all players be in Automatch and Automatch only?

Just because YOU like Automatch doesn't mean you have the right to force that on ALL players.

Games are about enjoyment - and if you're not given what you enjoy - why bother playing?

I don't like the fact there are no public chatrooms and no lobbies: when I came into COH it was only thanks to the "Rome" public chatroom that I met new Italian players who teached me the game, and thanks to lobbies I could find basic games where I trained with people who had my similar stats. Yes, public chats means also verbal harassment but overall if makes the community more united, because you can spread words in various chats when looking for players, you could even have serious discussions and you could organize tourneys better with everyone in the right chat, with whispers that didn't force you to actually add a specific person into your friend list.

I miss that in COH2 and I'd like to see it back

A public chat would really be great. Other games have, and it could be used as a basic q&a as well.

Point #1: Ranking

Absolutely disagree. While ideally that would happen, the majority of the more casual player base gets automatch anxiety, and upon seeing the rank, will either surrender, bitch about automatch pairing incompetence, or at the end say something about unfair pairings. People actively seeking advice is few and far inbetween. In CoH1 the gulf between competent (played some games) and new people (this WW2 game looks cool) is absolutely huge - the newbies get roflestomped by level 5s even, are told they are scrubs, etc.

This is partly an issue of small playerbase with lots of veterans and no new blood. Overall, ranking is not a core issue, just a player issue. You get the same issues with CoD and BF3 and such.

Point #2 Custom Lobbies / Automatch:

Absolutely agree. Custom lobbies are the lifeblood of the casual community. Hell, plenty of people still clamor for annihilate in automatch. What I'd recommend is a hybrid solution fix: instead of individual games listed in the lobby, have all games listed by [Map][Type], distinguishing between [Scheldt][Annihilate] and [Scheldt][VP] only, with only one unique [Map][Type] listed. That way custom games are less segregated and you can actually get a game filled in less than a half-hour because there's 15 Scheldt Annihilates competing for players. Players, either through global chat rooms or friends, create a party, and the host joins a map. Maps are filled based on rank similarity.

Point 3: Soviets hard
Soviets play differently. It's a design choice. Relic has consciously made them different and asymmetrical, and that is a good thing. Making them similar will lose faction identity as a result. Nobody complains Zerg needs queens to inject, or they lose drones when they make buildings. Zerg just has a higher mechanical ceiling and requires players to constantly spread creep and inject whereas Terran can 1A and Toss can warp in in a hurry to defend. Because it's what they are. That said, Soviet late game still leaves little to be desired due to few cost effective solution to armor, both infantry or SU85.

Players who say one side is autowin is whats wrong with the community, its one thing pointing out particular unit imbalances but saying the whole faction has no chance of winning, really?...that is whats wrong.
The hardcore partisans want their side to be unbeatable, even if they don't play very well and whine like holy hell if that is not the case. I wish all the fanbois realize that when the nerf ball gets rolling it doesn't stop easily. IMO it's better to give more effective counters than just scalping the balls off of units.