Profile of Inverse

That's why I said we should use be able to use fuel to open up more commander slots. Or abilities or something.

I'm not sure COH1 was all THAT strategic...Eventually the US meta revolved around being conservative with rifles until you had a howie or Calliope to devastate unreachable Wehrmakt positions. And as for micro, most COH games at the highest level revolved around who had the better counter-sniping micro, a rather intense and difficult process that is far harder than dodging nades. I quit playing 1v1 when it turned into this crap, because it was just stupid and games were won and lost on the countersnipe.

The games aren't that different. In either game if someone goes T3, you have to get a pak, if you can't pull off a flank you wait for him to hurt himself attacking you before you counter-attack, you have harassing units and shock units (Rangers are really quite similar to shock troops, with added anti-vehicle). Mostly I think it's the fuel upgrades and fuel usage choices that separate the games, as well as the also rather arcadey nade/dodge game. Bars capable of suppression was also a really big part of COH in the early years, though in the last tourneys you saw it used less and less, but was a powerful force multiplier that added more resource-usage decision-making to the game...But arty made bar suppression less useful for most players once they realized that it wasn't really helping kill the med bunker.

Actually, nobody really relied on coutersniping because it was so unreliable. You'd try to kill snipers with flanks, artillery, or vehicles, and use your own sniper against their infantry to balance out the damage done by his sniper to your infantry.

But you're right, vCoH wasn't an incredibly deep game strategically, especially when compared to other RTS games like BW/SC2. In my opinion, however, it had the perfect combination of strategy and tactics, and sufficient strategic depth to make it interesting and challenging to play, watch, and analyze. The fact that CoH2 is even less strategically diverse than the already relatively simple vCoH is the thing that is extremely disappointing to me.

As much as i agree on vcoh had more strategic depth and it really needs to be added to coh2, coh imo was never a strategic game but a tactical one. Coming from starcraft coh was pretty shallow game when it came to build orders. I feel if relic fixes the input lag and make thightening up the controlling of units and make the readability better (as in seeing grenades coming and where they land) I really think this game has a bright future. Problem right now is soviet is swimming in munitions and molotovs costs 15 muni.. wtf?

While I agree with this to a point, once you got to higher levels of play in vCoH, the game was far more strategic than it was tactical. You can't really outmicro your opponents in high-level vCoH play because everybody has more or less comparable micro skills. You had to succeed strategically.

In CoH2, that really doesn't feel like it's the case. In all the games I've watched, casted, and played, it was always the player with better unit control that won the game. When you have such a basic tech structure, and no trade-off between tech investments and unit investments, you'll eventually reach a point where there is one agreed-upon ideal unit composition for both sides, and high-level matches become a contest of who can execute that composition better.

Vanilla CoH had, in my opinion, the ideal combination of tactical difficulty and strategic depth. From the start, CoH2 has leaned more toward tactics, which I believe takes away from the depth and longevity of the game.

And regarding commanders, I agree with Tommy; they create artificial depth. Even if the commanders were free, I don't think it would really solve anything. They limit a player's options to those that were selected prior to the game's start, rather than allowing a player to adapt seamlessly to his opponent's play on the fly.

You say that, but it took years for this depth to be aknowledged. This rosepainting of coh1 compared to coh2.. how much of it is a wish for coh 2 to be better rather than giving some credit.. some of us actually disagree with coh 2 being so bland and poor.

Is it also possible that people grew up in the meantime and now expect much more of a game?

Sure, I love colonization 1 that I played on my 486. I found the new civilization:colonization really bad in comparison. Do I have much in terms of arguments? No the latter was harder, more complicated and yet more gimmicky.

What it didn't have was the sakura blossom of childhood memories connected to it. And Coh1 was the "first" of it's type

But that's exactly what I said. Over the years vCoH's strategic depth increased even though no new content was being added, simply because the game's mechanics and design encouraged that depth. You had purchasable veterancy and lots of fuel-based upgrades to go along with the standard progression of tiers and unit production.

Compare that to CoH2 right now. There are almost zero fuel-based upgrades, and there's really nothing to spend your money on other than tier buildings and more units. That's my biggest problem with the game so far; it's incredibly bland from a strategic point of view, and it lacks mechanics that have the potential to add strategic depth in the future. There's nothing to spend your money on aside from buildings and units, so there's far less decisions to be made strategically. The only thing adding depth is all these DLC commanders, and if the only way to allow yourself access to the complete spectrum of strategic options is through DLC purchases, there is something incredibly wrong.

Essentially, it feels like Relic has made a game that requires drastic changes and additions before it feels like a truly compelling and challenging strategic experience. However instead of giving everybody access to these changes/additions, they're forcing players to pay extra for them by linking the changes to DLC commanders.

People compare early vCoH to early CoH2 all the time, but the comparison doesn't really make sense when you think about it.

When vCoH was being patched in its early years, the core game never changed. Sure, there were some pretty drastic changes to how units functioned and how mechanics worked, but the actual units themselves and the dynamic of the gameplay was exactly the same. Things like Strafing Run and Calliopes and infantry upgrades were heavily modified, but nothing was really added or removed. Tweaks were made purely to improve balance and encourage quality gameplay, not to add content or artificially create diversity.

Compare that to CoH2. No matter how brilliant Peter and the balance devs are, I don't see how it's possible to successfully balance a game when completely gamechanging content is being added on a monthly basis. The early stages of vCoH never had to worry about half a dozen new commanders every month, and balancing the need to make those commanders strong enough to encourage purchases with not screwing over the players that refuse to play.

And it's not even the balance that's my greatest concern. The core gameplay of CoH2 is incredibly simplistic when compared to vCoH, in my opinion at least. That's doubly upsetting when you realize that, strategically speaking, vCoH is technically a very simple game. Yet when you look back at early vCoH replays and walk through the history of the game, you quickly notice striking changes in gameplay and strategy. These changes didn't rely on the addition of new content, but rather the inherent depth of the original game.

Take, for example, the Americans vs. Wehrmacht matchup. Gameplay in the early years of vCoH revolved around heavy low-tier play with rushes to high-tier tanks. Veterancy was rarely touched, certain tiers were rarely used, and gameplay was fairly simplistic. Fast forward a few years and you have the emergence of T2 Terror with heavy veterancy and doctrine dependance for late-game strength. This change in strategy and gameplay was purely the result of players understanding the game better; no new content was needed.

I can't see a similar situation occurring in CoH2, and I don't think Relic can either, which is why they're attempting to artificially create this innovation by adding commanders that drastically change how the game is played.

Wehrmacht veterancy, for example, was bitched about by many players in the vCoH days. However, at the highest level of play, you rarely heard players complaining about it. Purchasable veterancy was one of the most interesting and strategically challenging aspects of vCoH play, and one of the main reasons why Wehrmacht was such a diverse faction strategically. It gave you something other than units to spend your money on, forced you to prioritize and manage your economy more intelligently, and opened up strategic opportunities for your opponents.

The problem I have with CoH2 is the fact that the base game is so painfully dull and simplistic, and the attempts by Relic to diversify that base game by releasing paywall-blocked commanders is needlessly segregating the community and making any well-intentioned attempts at balance completely futile.

It's not broken. Elo is just math, sure there's some variations but it's largely a set formula. The problem is the small pool of players searching at any given time. If you wait for better matches, people will bitch about long wait times. If you try to get players in the game faster, they'll bitch about imbalanced matchups. It's lose-lose.