Profile of Morrissey'sQuiff

Why is any of this important, you might ask? Well ask yourself this question: Are you playing this game because you simply love the mechanics, or are you playing this game because of something more? If Relic kept the exact same engine, the exact same unit types, and the exact same mechanics, but made it a game about Kittens vs Puppies, would you still play it? Every single unit on the Kitten team behaves exactly like an American unit, and every single unit on the Puppy team behaves exactly like a Wehrmacht unit. The mechanics are all the same. If this is true for you, then you don't really love COH...you just love the rules system that Relic built. And let me tell you, you'll be even happier with other RTS games out there. Because there are better ones. Heck, you can even Sci-Fi it up with DOW2.

If you allow the Russians to fight the Russians and the Germans to fight the Germans in COH2, what's to stop us from really changing *anything* about the game for the sake of balance? It becomes trivial to introduce totally non-authentic concepts and powers to either side, since you've thrown any sort of historical authenticity out the window. If we get mirror matches, I hope someday in future DLC we'll be seeing the Japanese vs the Germans, the Americans vs the Brits, and the Italians vs the Chinese. Maybe we'll throw in an alternate universe DLC pack that includes a Martian invasion of the Third Reich, because it doesn't matter anyway, we're not actually dealing with World War 2 anymore.

This is a terrible strawman. You could use that argument against any RTS and make the same point. If SC2, C&C, MoW or DoW was kittens, puppies and hamsters, of course people would be turned off. But that doesn't have anything to do with mirror matches, or CoH, in any way, shape or form.

To answer the bolded question: yes, I've played CoH since retail because of the mechanics and an interest in WWII. However, I've played CoH for so many years now that my fondness of the WWII aspect has almost completely dissipated. CoH is much, much more than its setting, to me. And no, no other game touches its mechanics - certainly not DoW II's horribly watered-down attempt at it. But if it did, and it did them better? I'd play that. A worse game with a preferable setting or richer authenticity is still a worse game.

Authenticity is just as bad an argument against mirrors as realism is.

"As a competitive gamer the hardest thing to do is to acknowledge your mistakes and learn for them instead of making endless excuses." Daigo Umehara

Proceeds to get 6-0'd by Infiltration.

This is just awful. Literally the most important thing for a competitive online community and it won't be there on launch? That's really shooting yourself in the foot.

And what's the best way of finding out whether it's boring or not? You can either look at some existing games, or you play the damn alpha. Since the second option takes a lot less extrapolating and assuming, why don't we pend judgement for a bit?

This is literally exactly what I said in my 2nd post in this topic. I completely agree.

Say you're playing a BO3 Wehr vs Wehr mirror match to find the best player. Unless the map is totally symmetrical one starting position will be better than the other, so you switch sides in the second match. It's a draw after two games. How do you decide who plays from which position in the last game?

How is this any different from the current BO3 situation?

That's an issue of map imbalance. Mirror matches aren't going to suddenly make the game 100% balanced, I'm certainly not claiming that, but they will completely eliminate utter one-faction dominance on maps where a single faction is absolutely more suited to that particular map. Most of the "bad" maps in CoH are considered bad for that very reason: they absolutley favour one faction over another, thus making them unplayable in tournaments, which leads to Ango/Langres/Semois every single time.

it's a crazy assertion that i was talking about the alpha, since i never said i was in the alpha, and even if i was, i would break an NDA by talking about it.

and it IS a reasonable argument against them.... like you said: "then they shouldn't be in the game".

I never mentioned you being in the alpha, so I didn't make an asserion and really have no idea why you went off on one there. You are making definitive statements about a game that has barely even begun alpha testing. That's what I said there. And no, it isn't a reasonable argument. Pure speculation of the potential meta-game based on absolutely nothing other than your own imagination isn't an argument.

Mirror matches shouldn't be in the game if they're unable to be balanced. Just like abilities, or units, or commanders or maps shouldn't be in the game if they're unable to be balanced. Should they remove absolutely everything before even testing it, "in case it can't be balanced?" No. That's mental. That's my point.

and to quote you: nobody has made a reasonable argument FOR mirror matchups. and if you start quoting them: they are all unreasonable :-P


about completely symmetric maps: i can't image anything more boring than mirrored maps for mirror matchups...

Razor, Seph and TychoCelchuuu have all brought up some good, well-reasoned points that support mirror matches. And again, your entire argument has boiled down to "it's boring, I don't like it."