Profile of TychoCelchuuu

Basically the same as your tip, except click on "Site-Wide Thread Index." That's the page I bookmarked and it's the only one I ever check.

If I had way more free time and a group of people to play with I think I'd love Dota 2. Unfortunately it's one of those games that rewards as much as you can put into it, and I don't really want to devote that kind of time to a video game at this point in my life.

Valve is really great about all the little things, though - I think this game might have the best lobby/searching/replay watching/spectating/etc. system of any video game in the history of all time. And I love how they're doing the free to play thing the right way, by not tying any choices or powers to money - that's one big reason I'd never get into League of Legends.

I just wish Dota 2 were a game where the average match was 15 minutes or something (sort of like Bloodline Champions) and where you didn't need a more or less encyclopedic knowledge of item and hero builds.

I think there are lots of ways to make a game 'casual' players will enjoy. Some of them are compatible with making a very good competitive game, and some of them aren't. CoH is a game that 'casual' players love - it's the highest reviewed RTS game of all time. It's not a perfect competitive game but it does a lot of things right and more importantly it's unique. The flanking, the infantry combat, the cutoffs, the doctrine choices, and so on make it a really great RTS game for people who play to win and not to compstomp or chill out in 3v3s or arty spam.

CoH 2 changes a lot of stuff (like upkeep, how resources/territory works, etc.) to make it more accessible to new/bad/'casual' players, and it's possible that this works, but the downside is that it makes it a much worse game competitively. There are ways of making games that are appealing to competitive players without hurting casual players - you don't have to make Starcraft II to be a good competitive RTS. In fact, you can make the original Company of Heroes. Relic doesn't seem to think this is possible. I think the changes to the original CoH formula, which more or less break it, have been made for worse/newer/'casual' players (in fact they've said as much) and that's a real shame because breaking the awesome CoH style game for competitive players isn't necessary.

^That's a great first post if I ever saw one.

I think all casters don their smilie faces when casting. Or at least, try to look at it from the bright side. No one wants to listen to one hour of complaining and brooding about a product we're all (probably?) interested in, even if many of us feel a bit skeptical.

Pretty much. It's fine to be critical but if you're just shitting all over the game there's no point in casting in the first place, really. Casters want to make a video fun to watch and no matter how many things are wrong with CoH 2, constantly pointing them all out isn't going to make it more fun.

But of course on the other hand Relic has done a ton of things to make CoH 2 less fun to watch too so maybe we'd just be doing our part At least they added ice. That shit's exciting.

This same thread on the CoH 2 beta forums is really interesting because Quinn Duffy replied. He says:

Haha. Anything is possible. Seriously.

The challenge we had with side armor and the different values we had was finding a system that was reasonably fair to the attacking player and the defending player. With a single value for side armor (say applying different values to each side of a four sided box) you actually lose a lot of front armor, because you as a defending player have to have your tank facing directly forward. Any shot, even glancing, on the side armor becomes a side armor hit.

Some games might model the angle of the incoming shot and determine penetration, and again that kind of thing is entirely possible, but it adds a lot of simulation and may have odd results that are hard to visualize.

Our approach to creating decent front coverage was to apply the front armor to the front 180 degrees of the tank. That allows the defending tank to receive the benefit of facing their front armor even if they're not directly facing the attacking tank.

One of the things we do is look at the intent of an issue, in this case you'd like something to encourage and reward flanking.

- I would agree wholeheartedly that we want to encourage flanking, but side armor might not be the best answer (or it might, I'm just speculating here).
- We could look at special criticals for penetrating side hits - maybe you have a chance to hit the treads more frequently. That's more engineering though.
- We could look at vehicle roles - perhaps lighter faster tanks like the T-70 could be used. The 45mm could penetrate the weaker armor of most German tanks.
- We could shift the 180 forward of center so that more of the tank's side would be 'rear armor'.

And there are some things we did do to help flanking;
- We continue to work on vehicle pathing to improve the ability to flank.
- We've added more 'sticky' targeting, so the vehicle remembers your target and that allows you to flank more effectively without your tank choosing a new target every time you issue a move order

Anyways, there are a number of potential solutions to help address the issue.

Hope this helps!

Quinn

To save time and to see if the people here can help out (the beta forums aren't so great...) here's what I posted:

I'm not really understanding the "defensive" player vs "offensive" player distinction: presumably the defensive player is someone whose tank is sitting still and the offensive player is the one sending the tank forward to attack? That's not really how tank combat works in CoH, though, is it? Generally both players are moving their tank, or the one sitting still is the one that is immobilized or engine damaged, which tends to be the "offensive" player because they have to drive into enemy infantry/AT and risk engine criticals on the offense.

But because generally both players are moving their tanks, getting a side hit on the enemy makes it just as easy for the enemy to get a side hit onto you, doesn't it? Because you don't have time to retarget your tank so that its forward armor is facing the enemy tank any more than they have time to always keep their tank's forward armor facing you.

So, qduffy or anyone else: can you explain the offensive/defensive distinction? Is it just meant to cover cases where one player (aka the "defensive" player) isn't paying attention to their tank at all and it is thus sitting still long enough for the player who is microing (the "offensive" player) to move their tank to the side, then turn the body of their tank so that it's facing the "defensive" immobile tank?

Someone tried to respond but it wasn't very helpful so I am still super confused.