Some ongoing gameplay issues and bugs

Trying to distinguish these from flavour-of-the-month balance problems(Ostruppen, for instance).

1. heavy engine criticals from a single faust or AT nade on a tank are an instance of the RNG just being too jumpy. It will often completely win one player a game.
2. German S-mines - does anyone use these? They cost way more than a minesweeper, take a very long time to set-up, and don't really do enough damage to stop people just walking or driving over them.
3. German sniper requires tender love and micro to get any use out of him regardless but thanks to his really low HP pool, he can go down in just a few lucky small arms shots, will die to a mortar shell landing anywhere in his vicinity, and frequently gets sniped by all sorts of things that shouldn't (like, an SU-85, for instance). Making his health that of a standard infantryman would probably improve the German sniper's viability in 1v1 a lot, while still not making him any more survivable than 1 shock trooper model.
4. Grenades are bugged all over the place. Riflenade warnings have been messed up and now come as the grenade hits, which makes playing against Grenadier spam require constant eyes on the units and even then quite challenging. Guard grenades and I think bundle grenades both frequently don't refund if cancelled.
5. KV-8's stats have been too good for a long time. I think it's kind of alright. Armour and health could be lower but I feel the gun changes really improved that situation
6. The T-70 is still a certifiable pak and shrek-dodger. The small target size makes countering it with either paks or shreks something of a matter of luck even if you position well and the Soviet player badly mismicros it.I feel the T-70's alright now, personally, as far as dodging goes
7. Veterancy I know is getting looked at. As-is, German vet 2 units are very easy to keep alive and German squads do more DPS so Ostheer players will usually end up with more veteran squads at the end of a game than the Soviets, all things being equal. A more gentle gradation from vet 0 to vet 1 to vet 2 would probably help this balance a lot. Fixed, or at least changed to the point where this is no longer relevant
8. Blitzkrieg on vehicles with engine damage seems a bit too much of a get-out-of-jail free card.
9. Some of the maps seem very favourable to one side or the other (so, Langres north start is pretty bad, Kholodny right is usually harder than Kholodny left, the new Kharkov one seems to be far better for the South player as well). I'm not sure to what extent this is underlying issues with the map layout and twe it's still people learning to try different things on the maps.

edit: added points I forgot at the time -
10 - T-34/85s are really underperforming for the cost on account of the very high reload time. Especially since the T-34/76 buff they don't really seem to match up. Has been adjusted both in terms of cost and effectiveness. They look OK on paper now. We'll see in practice.
11 - Flamer explosion criticals are very cool but they're also really problematic just because there's something like a 2.5% chance (I think it's 10% when the flamer model dies, right?) of an expensive muni investment vanishing on the first model that dies. The same problem doesn't apply to other muni investments like the LMG, which only drops on a squad wipe I think, or the DP machine gun, which can be picked up and recovered if dropped. I think it'd be a really good idea to make the flamer crit only have a chance happen if the squad is at half its models or less (so, when the second last or last combat engi or pio dies), to make this an element of the RNG you could work around. Has been adjusted to the level I thought it was from a higher level. Flamers have been improved against buildings. This may be fixed.

Generally, the game has come along a lot since release both in terms of balance and how it feels to play. Gj balance devs.

NB: Italicised points have been addressed. We'll see if they've been fixed enough as the patch meta develops. So far they seem to have been improved.
Updated, based on 12/11/13 patch

All good points, except for this shoehorned addition, which is a false premise:

German squads do more DPS

1. AT nade and faust there is chance to not damage tank now, i have see 3 AT nade didnt do damage to a elefant and IS2 stand 2 faust without engine damage so it is pretty good right now i say.

2. S-mines is joke, lol i see german plant those actually there is a little sign on top of the ground and pretty much tell enemy there is enemy mine field i guss it is more treating than damage

3. i agree on german sniper, it have no flare no sprint and yet more paper than russian sniper team

4. i thought rifle nade warning is broken due to rifle nade cancellation thing, they should change the warning the sec enemy going to fire a nade no matter is going to be cancel or not. and yes they should fix nade cancel refund, those nades are not cheap.

5-9 i agree

from http://coh2-stats.herokuapp.com/squads it shows at range 10 Gren squad do 15.0998DPS and Conscript Squad do 15.2381DPS before upgrades, so without upgrade Soviet Conscript Squad actually do little more damage, for other squads they are not really compareable as all other squads design differently but i will list their DPS at range 10 before upgrades, All DPS affect AI only not AT
PIO do 11.8892
Ospruppen do 12.1905 without coverbuff
Agren do 25.8462
Pgren do 53.1064 and will be half of it once upgrade to shreks
Combat engineer do 11.8892
penal do 34.6744
Guards do 22.1326
Shock do 40.8951

All good points, except for this shoehorned addition, which is a false premise.

At their maximum potential, it's true. PGs outdamage every other squad, Shocks at all ranges and Penals up close, Grenadiers with LMGs and AGrens outdamage all possible conscript and guard (minus PTRS) iterations, not even considering G43s, and Pioneers win out over Engineers up close too. Maybe Penals could do better with flamer AOE, but just looking at numbers the Germans have generally peak at higher DPS.

new Kharkov one seems to be far better for the LHS player as well

I feel the same way too when playing it, but I'm not sure why- distances from the base to the points are quite similar, and the distance from the cutoffs to the centre is roughly symmetrical

German sniper requires tender love and micro to get any use out of him regardless but thanks to his really low HP pool

I can't micro snipers to save my life, but watching people stream and use them effectively (Symbiosis, Stephenn, Barton, etc etc) I don't think they're that bad, especially since Soviets don't go T1 that often now.

The rest I agree with- the next patch will apparently address AT gun vs small vehicle accuracy and the over-the-top veterancy.

At their maximum potential, it's true.

Which is not representative of the entire potential, only of one narrow extreme.

It is ONLY true at that maximum potential, which is achieved through a combination of cost, unit retention and veterancy, and is present only for a fraction of the game.

Which is not representative of the entire potential, only of one narrow extreme.

It is ONLY true at that maximum potential, which is achieved through a combination of cost, unit retention and veterancy, and is present only for a fraction of the game.

LMG grens I believe are more commonly used than PPSH scripts. PGrens I don't see that often now, maybe a squad every game? but still more common than Shocks. I haven't faced or used or seen Penals used for a very long time either. Guards aren't exceptional anti-infantry for their cost but they aren't bad either with the DPs.

So technically he's right- German infantry squads do more DPS at maximum potential, have equal DPS (never lower by any significant amount) at most stages of the game (discounting penals), have greater potential without doctrine, and only Shocks come close to the DPS of Pgrens when including doctrines. LMG grens out-damage everything else, and they appear without CP requirement or tech requirement. A not insignificant number of players get them with their first 60 munitions, which is usually four-five minutes in without the high munition point.

So, not really for just a fraction of the game...

Though the caveat is that this is all just meaningless comparison- shocks still wipe the floor with PGrens, inferior DPS notwithstanding, for example.

@Strummingbird: The following is a false statement.

German squads do more DPS

I dont understand why you waste your time trying to justify by all manner of contrived means what is still a false statement.

The "maximum potential", which is the narrow and vacuumed criteria which you present as a scenario in which the statement COULD be true, exists for a fraction of the game, if even that, and is no basis to make an absolute statement as the one above is absolute.

You are trying to split hairs on a statement that is flawed in and of itself.
You aren't getting anywhere with that. There are so many breaches of the rules of argumentation in your post, I am really quite surprised to see something like that from you.

The statement is false. Defending it may be an interesting academic exercise in debate, by contriving specific scenarios and narrow criteria in which it is true. But that is all irrelevant and invalid, since the statement is made as an absolute. It doesn't even literally make sense, since it means every German squad does more DPS than every Sov squad, which is in and of itself ridiculous. Some German squads do more DPS than some Sov squads, and some Sov squads do more DPS than some Ost squads do.

It is false to categorically state that "German squads do more DPS", on so many levels.

Reading your post, its like you are deliberately trying to find some way to justify and defend a false statement, simply because it is I that pointed out that it is false, rather than addressing the statement itself, as false, which it is, both in syntax and real applicable measurable claim.

The rest of his post is good, but he had to shoehorn this one false generalisation in there, and its not the first time. This is propagating and perpetuating myths that simply are not true from a stat basis, or infact even from a practical basis when the units are correctly used.

@Strummingbird: The following is a false statement.



I dont understand why you waste your time trying to justify by all manner of contrived means what is still a false statement.

It is false if you look at it from a certain angle- a two-man pioneer squad counts as a 'squad of german infantry', and it does less DPS than a fully manned Shock squad, so yes, technically it is false.
But the intent of the statement (or how I read it at least) was that German squads, in general, have equal or greater DPS than equivalent Soviet squads in the majority of the situations in-game, as I already explained. Hence, when looking from a gameplay perspective, German squads will, for the most part, do more DPS than the 'counterpart' (or rough counterpart) Soviet squad due to a combination of upgrades, doctrine/non-doctrine factors, and tier layout of both factions. Therefore, it can be regarded as the truth from another point of view, one I think is altogether more reasonable given that absolute truths are near impossible to pin down with certainty without many, many stated exceptions and caveats, all of which can possibly be inferred by the reader.
I'm sure Blovski will, of course, be happy to explain what he actually meant by the statement, so I won't project further my opinions onto his statement.

from http://coh2-stats.herokuapp.com/squads it shows at range 10 Gren squad do 15.0998DPS and Conscript Squad do 15.2381DPS before upgrades, so without upgrade Soviet Conscript Squad actually do little more damage, for other squads they are not really compareable as all other squads design differently but i will list their DPS at range 10 before upgrades, All DPS affect AI only not AT
PIO do 11.8892
Ospruppen do 12.1905 without coverbuff
Agren do 25.8462
Pgren do 53.1064 and will be half of it once upgrade to shreks
Combat engineer do 11.8892
penal do 34.6744
Guards do 22.1326
Shock do 40.8951

your combat engineer number is wrong. its correct on the site though, 10.16 dps. also, it seems there a mistake with guards. his number assumes guards have 6 mosins, which is incorrect. so that dps number is too high.

hopefully tensai sees this. id be very curious to talk about dps formulas with him. most of his dps numbers match our spreadsheet, but some are very off. im not sure who is right, but there seems to be an issue with burst weapons, but only some of them. shocks and pios match (or atleast very closely). pgrens and agrens are pretty different though. my numbers are 45.39 for pgrens and 28.21 for agrens.

im curious why some burst weapons match, some are high and some are low. i already double checked the pgren stats and they are identical, so the issue is in one of our formulas.

but back on topic about germans doing more dps, it is actually somewhat true. this isnt a very easy or fair comparison though because the only infantry that really mirror each other are cons and grens. osttruppen have good dps, but have the worst durability of any squad in the game. there is no counterpart to penals, but they have very good dps. shocks could be compared to pgrens, but shocks rely on their high armor rather than dps (which is enough to let them win against pgrens). guards also have much better durability than german squads to make up for their lack of dps.

Trying to distinguish these from flavour-of-the-month balance problems(Ostruppen, for instance).

1. heavy engine criticals from a single faust or AT nade on a tank are an instance of the RNG just being too jumpy. It will often completely win one player a game.
2. German S-mines - does anyone use these? They cost way more than a minesweeper, take a very long time to set-up, and don't really do enough damage to stop people just walking or driving over them.
3. German sniper requires tender love and micro to get any use out of him regardless but thanks to his really low HP pool, he can go down in just a few lucky small arms shots, will die to a mortar shell landing anywhere in his vicinity, and frequently gets sniped by all sorts of things that shouldn't (like, an SU-85, for instance). Making his health that of a standard infantryman would probably improve the German sniper's viability in 1v1 a lot, while still not making him any more survivable than 1 shock trooper model.
4. Grenades are bugged all over the place. Riflenade warnings have been messed up and now come as the grenade hits, which makes playing against Grenadier spam require constant eyes on the units and even then quite challenging. Guard grenades and I think bundle grenades both frequently don't refund if cancelled.
5. KV-8's stats have been too good for a long time.
6. The T-70 is still a certifiable pak and shrek-dodger. The small target size makes countering it with either paks or shreks something of a matter of luck even if you position well and the Soviet player badly mismicros it.
7. Veterancy I know is getting looked at. As-is, German vet 2 units are very easy to keep alive and German squads do more DPS so Ostheer players will usually end up with more veteran squads at the end of a game than the Soviets, all things being equal. A more gentle gradation from vet 0 to vet 1 to vet 2 would probably help this balance a lot.
8. Blitzkrieg on vehicles with engine damage seems a bit too much of a get-out-of-jail free card.
9. Some of the maps seem very favourable to one side or the other (so, Langres north start is pretty bad, Kholodny right is usually harder than Kholodny left, the new Kharkov one seems to be far better for the LHS player as well). I'm not sure to what extent this is underlying issues with the map layout and twe it's still people learning to try different things on the maps.

Generally, the game has come along a lot since release both in terms of balance and how it feels to play. Gj balance devs.

Well said!
I agree with your points

Thanks for the posts, guys

@Appleseed, yeah, but the chance to not damage a tank is based on armour, so you have some level of control/ability to make predictions over it. The chance for a heavy engine critical seems to be purely random.

@Strumming, I had a dim moment and meant I think RHS is favoured with Kharkov. I think it's about the cut-off. One's surrounded by shotblockers, one by green cover. And it also feels much easier to get to, no clue why. It is a really fun map to play, and I think I haven't really played enough to know if it's actually imbalanced or just needs me to approach the map differently.

My objection with the snipers for the Ostheer is that while I've managed to get good use out of it, there's a pattern of about 10 minutes of extreme micromanagement of a sniper to get 20-30ish kills followed by him dying instantly to something unpredictable the Soviet sniper team would survive every time. I think making him 80hp would allow the Ostheer sniper to be just a tiny bit more forgiving and more of a problem. The difference in sniper micro required by the two sides is hugely in favour of the Soviets right now, and I think it still would be even if the Ostheer and Soviet snipers were given identical health pools.

All good points, except for this shoehorned addition, which is a false premise:

A bit overcompressed on my part and not universally true, certainly. In terms of the things you actually see in almost all 1v1 games, German infantry will have LMGs, pgrens and MG-42s, all of which do a lot of damage and pose a big threat to retreating units. Hence they tend to get more squad kills on retreat with infantry than the Soviets. By contrast, Soviet T-70s/34s, flame cars and snipers are the things that can get the Soviets a lot of squad kills because of small unit sizes and ignoring armour. I wasn't making a big point about overall balance there. Strumming has more or less explained what I meant by the remark which was, I agree, if taken literally, untrue.

--

Adding a couple more points

10 - T-34/85s are really underperforming for the cost on account of the very high reload time. Especially since the T-34/76 buff they don't really seem to match up.
11 - Flamer explosion criticals are very cool but they're also really problematic just because there's something like a 2.5% chance (I think it's 10% when the flamer model dies, right?) of an expensive muni investment vanishing on the first model that dies. The same problem doesn't apply to other muni investments like the LMG, which only drops on a squad wipe I think, or the DP machine gun, which can be picked up and recovered if dropped. I think it'd be a really good idea to make the flamer crit only happen if the squad is at half its models or less, to make this an element of the RNG you could work around.

Large building collapses from one nade or mortar hit would be an area where the gameplay could be improved a bit but but I appreciate that is probably a lot of work to fix (because it's about the sides of the building) and the balance team are definitely aware of it so I don't really want to put it on the list.

Don't forget the Elephant, how hard to kill that thing.

I've posted this elsewhere, but remember to not fall into the trap of thinking DPS means everything. This isn't Starcraft.

You have to factor in targets and time to kill an individual man, along with cover and other relative benefits. This not a game where squads will shoot at each other, with no one dying, until suddenly everyone is out of health and keels over.

The big thing though is that the Gren LMG, G43s, and even the PTRS are high individual damage weapons. Basically, they kill a squad member very quickly, or drop an individual's health so low that basic small arms will kill him more quickly. This sudden death will drop DPS for the target squad and start a downward spiral if other actions aren't taken by the target.

The LMG is the best example of this, the high DPS from that gun upgrade is applied to usually just a single man in the target squad. It's not enough to kill in one burst at full health, but if he's taken a bit of damage, then individual men will drop quickly.

The PTRS will sometimes land a direct hit on infantry and kill instantly when it does, this acts the same way.

The PGren StG44s can sometimes do this, but mostly because as they charge a unit with guns blazing, the closest targets are prioritized, putting more damage on those men and dropping them sooner. This doesn't happen if they get the jump on something and everything is in range the moment they open fire though.

Similar things happen with Shocks.

And the best example being the sniper.

Soviets tend to lack this type of weaponry in their basic infantry, but they make up for it with a lot of up close, or high damage, abilities and support. Such as the molotov.

It's a balance scheme that is a lot more complex than just DPS, where DPS is just one part of the equation.

*snip* insightful post on how weapons work *snip*

Can we not get sidetracked by the DPS discussion? It was a small subcomment about the Ostheer being a bit better in practise at killing units on retreat and also better at surviving retreats themselves that got blown out of proportion by being picked out of context. The main point I was making there was that the veterancy system makes it a bit harder for the Soviets to preserve their veteran squads and to finish off Ostheer veteran squads. The same is true of vehicles. I know veterancy is being looked at so we'll see how it plays in a patch or two. I only really included it for the sake of comprehensiveness.

I suppose most of this discussion is moot until the next patch where it's already been confirmed their working on the vet system.

OP, I agree with most of your points. I would add that LMGs are a bit too cost-effective right now too.

problem with LMG42 is it hits the field too early, the DPS is great but it need setup and can't fire while moving so it is pretty even, if it hits the field after T2, it could be great, but that brought out another problem is gren without LMG42 can't even win a fight with a combat engineer have flamer upgrade, if they tune down the DPS of LMG42 then it become kind worthless due to it need setup, maybe give it a suppression and bring down the DPS? man i have no idea how they could balance it

The asymmetric veterancy progression on infantry is/was fine on paper.

Apparently, however, Ost getting its full defense buff at Vet 2, is more advantageous than Sov getting half and half. I am goddam sick and tired of people who whine and post without even knowing WHAT the Vet buffs actually are, though.

I still think the difference in veterancy was important for meta overall, especially in terms of Ost unit retention, which was and is more crucial for Ost than it is for Sov, and though Im interested to see what Relic does to "solve this perceived problem", I'm not convinced Vet was/is the way to do it, or that the changes will be anything like what people are complaining about, because the actual problem really isnt, imo, anything like what people are stating it as.

OP, I agree with most of your points. I would add that LMGs are a bit too cost-effective right now too.

Yeah, that's one of the bigger balance issues right now imo. They vet up very quickly, can often take two conscript squads and force a lot of molotovs to keep them moving. I'm not really sure what the solution is for that. Slightly higher muni cost or lower DPS/DPS reduction at short-mid range to make it a bit of a more long range weapon I guess but either of those coudl reasily m

@Nullist: the one standout, everyone-should-agree veterancy problem in my view is the .45 damage received multiplier from German vehicles at vet 2. I think we can all agree that it feels really strange to play against, especially when the veterancy is popped mid-engagement. The rest has been argued at length and there isn't such a clear problem fro how the game feels.

@Nullist: the one standout, everyone-should-agree veterancy problem in my view is the .45 damage received multiplier from German vehicles at vet 2. I think we can all agree that it feels really strange to play against, especially when the veterancy is popped mid-engagement. The rest has been argued at length and there isn't such a clear problem fro how the game feels.

I suppose options are:
-Make Ost Vet like Sov Vet is. 50/50 at Vet 2 and 3.
-Make Sov Vet like Ost Vet is. Defense at Vet 2, offense at Vet 3.
-Make Vet 2 100% offense and Vet 3 100% defense. But that creates unit retention problems.
-Fraction the Vet, so 25/75 at Vet 2 and 75/25 at Vet 3, or vice versa.

I mean if they want to keep the Vet system consistent with what it is now, instead of making Vet bonuses unit specific or somehow fundamentally different in nature per faction, which would lead to a balance nightmare and even more clueless players lost in a sea of disassociated and difficult to find/interpret stats.