Profile of NinjaWJ

Jump back to quoted post1 Oct 2014, 17:06 PManubis44

I believe it's a mistake to assume that 3 vs. 3 and 4 vs. 4 players are 'casual'. I've been playing COH since 2006, on average several matches per week, and I've never really been interested in 1 vs. 1, and only rarely have I played 2 vs. 2. Am I a 'casual' player? Why don't I play 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2? Because for me, the game stops being a 'game' when there are enough random elements introduced to eliminate the predictable, causality of a small match: in short, it's more like real war, rather than chess, which I find infinitely more stimulating. It's boring to me to realize only 5 minutes into a match that, because you didn't take the 'farm house', you've lost, and it's GG. Utter stupidity as far as I'm concerned. In a 4 vs. 4, if you are having trouble taking the 'farm house', you can ask an ally to provide reinforcements, while still leaving 2 other teammates to continue with other objectives, and possibly reverse a potentially serious setback without simply having to 'GG' and start again. Or you could find that enemy has allocated 3 players worth of troops to take an objective rather than only one player's worth of troops -- the random element is much greater with more players. In a 1 vs. 1, you know EXACTLY how much force your opponent can possibly have, and the only variable will be where they are. Boring IMHO. Kind of like being able to count cards. I crave the sheer unpredictability of war. It's like playing chess, but your opponent might have 3 bishops instead of 2, or 2 queens and no knights, etc.

In addition, as I mentioned in an earlier reply, I find the chatter of comrades over the headset adds a level of verisimilitude that's missing if you're by yourself, or only communicating with one other ally. The chaos of trying to get your colleagues' attention during a crucial battle event is something that's utterly missing in a 1 vs. 1. I'm sure I'm not the only player who craves that kind of auditory battle-atmosphere. In fact, I think a future version of COH should require players to connect their headsets into the game engine itself, so that if/when one of the 'radio intercept' abilities is activated, you can actually listen in to the chatter of opposing team for a few seconds without them knowing. Yeah, I know there are potential issues with this (people refusing to patch in, and using skpye instead, players not speaking the same language, etc.) You could require the players to patch in to the game with headsets before the match starts, and use voice-pattern recognition to force them to really do it or the game will not start/or it will stop in mid-match, but I digress.

Jump back to quoted post1 Oct 2014, 14:42 PMZombiFrancis

The problem with 3v3s and 4v4s is that no faction is really designed to cope with any amount of 2v1 action.

You can double and triple team players in these game modes, and all you really sacrifice is one or two territory points amounting to a measly few points of fuel or munition for a given period of time.

How do you balance that?

Map design for games greater than 2v2 is a challenge because it either becomes a series of concurrent 1v1s, or a situation where an otherwise competent player gets facerolled by a second player's entire army and loses 1000ish manpower in one maneuver.

That's a challenge to recover from, and it's not really something that's easily preventable or countered. This game just isn't designed to have players facing superior numbers. The main/only counter to that is to have your own team simultaneously double team the opponents.

But ultimately, the whole strategy behind virtually every metagame decision is just reaching the critical mass of firepower, and no one player alone can field units faster than multiple opponents. The fact that maps overlap for 3v3s and 4v4s doesn't help, because it more or less leaves it to be a diceroll to how well balanced the front lines are every game.

Jump back to quoted post30 Sep 2014, 11:34 AMvan Voort

First they looked at my player card, and they told me I only played one faction, so my opinion didn't matter


Then I played all factions, but they told me I only played team games and the balance is around 1v1, so my opinion didn't matter


Then I played 1v1, but they told me I wasn't good enough because the game is balanced around top players so my opinion didn't matter


Then they looked at the top 200 players across all factions and all games modes, and they said this wasn't accurate because it doesn't reflect the game as a whole


But it didn't matter because I'd long since stopped listening to these idiots who will always find a reason to reject things they dislike