Mines and ram success are the biggest culprits in my opinion.
Mines are just aggravating. The AOE effect obviously does more damage to clumped units but there's no way to control squad formation so you can't avoid it as far as I know. Maybe someone will find a way to shift right click moves when walking through narrow spaces to avoid clumping (I may today a bit). The AOE is basically messed up from what I read somewhere, it should not do as much damage to more distant members of a squad as what it's doing. Compared to vCOH, the effect is much less predictable. In vCOH a full-health squad might lose some members and a significant amount of health, but would never just get wiped.
Ram is a game-breaking failure of design given the RNG probabilities Relic have built in to it. Disabling a piece of expensive late-game armor is too big of a strategic event to be left to an RNG roll given the number of times it will occur in game. The Tiger Ace simply brought this problem to the forefront where everyone could clearly see that many games in COH2 are won or lost on dice rolls. As Inverse said in another thread, it's not the RNG, it's the scale of the event the RNG is affecting. Many small RNG events contribute to the game's complexity and actually do raise the skillcap, but huge events with major consequences that will not re-occur often enough for the RNG to affect both players equally are completely detrimental.
For those who don't know statistics a brief explanation - with enough occurrences of an event determined by probability in game you approach the programmed probability. But given one or two events in game, you will not hit it, just as flipping a coin only 6x will not always result in 50% heads/tails. You need a really large number of events for the actual game to reflect the programmed probabilities of the event occurring.
You can get the probability on your side though - you need about 3 well-microed T34s to have above a 75% chance of disabling a Tiger (if I remember someone's math from beta forums correctly). That's why the best counter isn't AT guns or SU-85s, but ramming. But that's still, in my opinion, an unacceptable level of RNG for such a major game event.
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This is what it sounds like when doves cry.
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I AM STILL KING OF TIGERRAM2 AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT TRISTAN. I don't care how many more CPM you have...
That said, gg wp.
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What we need is for Relic to just come out and state what's now obvious:
1) COH2 is a casual RTS, not a competitive one.
2) The design focus is on "fun" units like the Tiger Ace or IS-2 that any noob can use successfully.
3) New commanders are to keep people interested in the game, not to provide strategic depth.
I know this is still hard to accept for diehards, but if you expect this game, given the faction design and teching system, the insane amounts of RNG, the resource system, the popcap and upkeep systems, to ever have a chance of being better or at least equal to vCOH, you are wrong.
It's a for-fun RTS where you dick around for a bit with infantry but eventually whoever has the best tank micro or lucky arty hits wins. The most strategic element is unit preservation (ie., faster CPM wins).
I was among the diehards. I don't care anymore. It's fun, it's casual, it never stresses me out like vCOH used to, and there's certainly no pressure. If I lose, there was doubtless some element of RNG I can blame it on, and if I win, that's cool, and I'll only be unhappy if I didn't get to play with my Tiger Ace/IS-2/KV-8 because they quit early. It's like that. And it's still a lot of fun. But it's not competitive or serious and you have to stop expecting it to be.
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Ah, but streams are an excellent way for people to learn the game too. If you stream, then other people can watch you play and give you tips and other assistance.
So how about some kind of "expert" logo next to high-skill streamers? Honestly, only Hans and Stefenn really commentate their games well, and explain what they're doing and why they're doing it. So that should be the biggest hurtle applicants have to get over, being able to talk and play. I'm sure there are a lot of top 100 players who can't/don't want to do that but may stream.
In any case, I really don't think you should make it some elitist thing. I think all streamers should stay on the same page on COH2.org. What Relic does in featuring people is their business...
Also, the people who have viewers have either been doing it for a long time and have followings, or give stuff away to attract them. I know there have been a couple of new streamers, who are definitely not top tier, doing that...
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Noun, I think it's also important to differentiate the livestreamers from the casters. Streaming is mostly a social activity, as most people can't provide detaied descriptions of what they're doing and why while playing. Casters can provide that, if they have enough expertise, or other entertainment value (ie., Rogers & Pounder).
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This unending negativity is really dragging everyone down. As I said in Sib's stream the other day, this community is like a bunch of heroin addicts complaining about their needle. If you don't like the game, stop playing it and GTFO, please. Noun's "wall of text" is chock full of good ideas about how casters could make more entertaining videos and support the game.
For myself, I have to say I was casting a bit when it came out but stopped because of lack of viewership. I never got many comments, good or bad. I tried to do a more tactically focused cast with specific explanations of what was clever or how someone won engagements and so on, with a dose of humor. They're here if you want them: http://www.youtube.com/sluzcast.
I think Noun really wants to see more highlights and so on, and this is not really in the COH casting tradition at all, but serves as something to draw people into a game. But let me tell you that takes real editing skill and time. Editing video is not easy, you need a powerful computer, etc., whereas talking over a replay is not very hard at all. I might go back to some regular casts if there was interest and particularly if I could find someone who I really "banter" and have good casting chemistry with, but editing is certainly not my forte, though it's a really good idea.
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I think if you hear it rev up and stop, that means there is something blocking. You need a pretty clear path.
But I do think there is a bug, this happens to me a lot: you click it and nothing happens, no sound, no nothing, doesn't seem to matter whether the tank is in motion or not, or if there's something blocking or not. At first I thought I'd misclicked but it's happened too many times to be a misclick. We would need to look at replay files, to see if the right command is being sent or not. I keep forgetting to do this, and I'm not sure which analyzer works best. The one Inverse did has not been updated and frequently won't read files.
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I just hope this battle servers will also make impact on streamers, I hate when everything is delayed by 2-3 seconds lol
Still waitin' on that laptop?
The patch notes have leaked, ask around.
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I don't understand this faction at all anymore. I think at some point you just have to give up map control and start defending. Obviously losing so much MP to the sniper was bad, but how do you get it?
If someone can watch this and tell me at which point I should have stopped harassing and just defended against the obvious Tiger, please let me know, because I really don't understand how to play this faction anymore.
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