Profile of ShadowLinkX37

Have you tried some basic solutions? Restart PC, run as admin, update drivers?

Most of the issues I presented in my post yesterday have been clarified by Mr. Smith, and I'd rather not see another fanboy war thread or balance thread. Since I personally have no other further questions for Mr. Smith, and he explained why most things occured, I'd like an orange+ or mod to lock this thread.

Lock thread please

Yes, it isn't. Your player card, specifically the number of games played of each faction, shows yours.

It looked like the balance team tried much harder to be balanced in this last patch. The previous one was a wish list of every Allied nerf that Axis-only players wanted. Another patch like the last one would have been the end of community balancing.

As for people ignoring your posts, they mostly ignore everyone who isn't top-30, you included.

You're more than welcome to show me where my "bias" is in the stats I provided in any of my arguements. Just because I play one faction more than another doesn't mean it contains bias. You're more than welcome to show your playercard as well.

That's not so simple. When it comes to OKW veterancy, for the most part their Vet1-Vet3 bonuses are mostly identical to other faction Vet1-Vet3 bonuses.

However, at a closer glance, OKW gets their bonuses faster than other factions, due to OKW Vet1 not being a useless ability or something that could trivially belong to Vet0 (e.g., Riflemen AT nades could easily belong to Vet0). Volks get RA bonuses at Vet1 on top of being very strong at Vet0, and on top of getting their cooldown bonuses earlier at Vet2.

If you have OKW getting their passive combat bonuses much earlier than allied squads, just because Vet4 and Vet5 also need some screen time, then that's unmitigated disaster waiting to happen.

Sure, ideally we should have moved the Vet5 niche bonus (e.g., sight bonus) to Vet2 like we did in the revamp mod and go from there. However, the effort for this patch began at summer, and we don't have the energy anymore to argue with Relic on every single minute change. Thus, we pick the fights that are worth fighting for.

I understand that Volks in perticular get a -10% RA bonus at vet 1. However it isn't necessarily hard to chip something off vet 2 or 3 of rifles and add it onto vet 1 with the AT nade. Probably easier said than done of course but it's an idea.

JP4 also gains extra accuracy and pen with that round, and it's still damn beefy at Vet2.

It is, but again my complaint is more that the vet 5 damage doesn't really do anything. Another issue I have with it is the lower pen value, while most of the time its not really an issue against the paper armor of jacksons and cromwells, if your opponet gets an IS2 which has 375 armor you struggle to actually deal with it effectivly. A panther can out trade it, but that depends more on how badly the IS2 wants to scatter in that engagement. It just makes me upset that people complained about the KT being too strong, when they had TDs which had over 50% chance to pen frontally ontop of self sight/tulips etc, but the JP4 struggles against higher armor values.

Just gonna throw this in there. vet 5 JT still doesn't do anything.

We also received feedback from multiple top players that were abusing Maxims alongside us. They could all swear that even a 10% increase in suppression would keep maxim spam in-game due to glorious OKW teching design.

To be completely fair however, we didn't specify that they weren't allowed to use maxim bulletins in their testing, and we only had 2 weeks to find a solution. So, I'm not accusing them in anyway.

It's easy to sit back and criticise the people that tried to help playtest maxim spam back then. However, those guys busted their balls going through tenths of mod sub-versions when most people couldn't even be bothered to lift a finger to help us.

Indeed it is and personally I think the biggest flaw is the 6 man support team. I think they'd be a lot easier to take down if they didn't survive on retreat as much.

Ideally the Pershing shouldn't benefit from the 0.75 moving accuracy it gets, and it should cost a decent amount of popcap. At the very least now it actually yields experience to the enemy player when it gets shot at.

I don't know of any vehicles/units that still doubletap. Let us know if you find any.

Pershing, like Command Panther also need to be completely tier-locked.

The scott with its normal shell followed by its barrage. Similar to how the old ISG could do the same before the patch. While not gamebreaking like spearhead was, it is a little bit more damage.

That's a complaint you need to take to the scope police.

Part of the issue with this patch is that I never saw a defined "scope". So I assumed you guys had a rather large choice in what you could change, you just had to have it go through relic at the end for approval.

At the end of the day you're still probably the best modder here and I don't think I'd want anyone else leading the team, and I know relic handed you a spaghetti mess and you were basically told to "fix it" but with a scope. It's hard to see some things from the outside though, especially relics demands when they just work from the sidelines.

Hooligan and Bloodnok, this is not a resignation, so don't take it as such. However if you feel their is a site rule I've broken from this post feel free to discipline me. Show Spoiler

Backstory: if you like

I've been on this site for a full year now as a member, and I've come a long way from my first replay review of aerafield's gameplay to strategist to referee. I've played CoH2 an additional year ontop of being a member here, so 2 years. My friend introduced me to CoH2 after persuading me to buy it, and unlike coh1 which I played a bit of, I fell in love with this game immediatly.

I learned the basics from my friend and coh1 experience, and I learned further mechanics from the GeneralsGentlemen shoutcasts. TheMachine was extremely helpful in learning counters and gameknowledge and through his advice and my drive to push myself further up the 1v1 ladder. Eventually I found Tightrope's videos as well as HelpingHans tips of the week, and with all of the information at my disposal I climbed the 1v1 ladder ranks only limited because of my experience and skill.

Eventually TheMachine taught me how to use the mod tools to look up information myself, things like armor, HP, percentage to penetrate, rate of fire, etc. Armed with statistical knowledge of how engagements should go I climbed even higher up the ladder while I took favorable engagements and retreated from ones I knew I'd lose. Eventually reaching top 100 where I am today, with as minimal cheese as I can use (most of the time).

My justifications

Every once in awhile I'll jump into shoutbox, with the rare exception of making an actual thread about balance, and complain about X mechanic/unit that is horrid to deal with or too unpredictable that it doesn't create diversity or fun, just frustration. I've done this with "Main gun crit", OKW's lack of smoke (now fixed), T34/76s at 80 fuel post June 2016 buff, maxim spam (pre March 2017 nerf), JT/ele (post DBP), and many others. Sometimes people understand my frustration, sometimes they don't, but what matters is if the mod team understands them. 3 people, for the most part.

What I don't understand

What I don't understand is how even when I put solutions that are very ethical, simple, and create balance into modders hands, they're simply ignored. And I mean basic things to fix like OKW vet 5. Take vet 5, and make the XP required to get it equal to that of vet 3 of other factions, and balance the stats accordingly and evenly distributed. I just fixed vet 5 in 1 sentence. From my understanding relic doesn't want to remove the "fancy" 5 stars OKW gets. That's fine, since with this idea OKW still gets its fancy vet 5 cosmetic stars, yet its balanced. Instead most of the vet 5 bonuses have been nerfed, but still require the same XP as before.

Compare the JP4 to the SU85. The SU85 is 130(?) fuel where the JP4 is 135. The SU85 has 220 max range pen, while the JP4 sits at 170. The SU85 has a 5.4sec reload, while the JP4 has a min of 4.3 and max of 5.2. 85 has better scatter, and can spot for itself if needed. JP4 now has a reveal range in cloak of 20, which is over half of the standard infantry sight range, and the vet 2 and 5 bonuses were nerfed. Most noteably vet 5 instead of +150% damage on first strike from cloak, now deals +25%. So instead of a 400 damage round, it now deals a 200 damage round. This wouldn't be that big of an issue to me, if there was an actual value in having that additional 40 damage, but there is not a single piece of armor in this game that has 680 HP and would die in 4 shots instead of 5. I didn't do that math for larger HP entities like the churchill or KV variants. Meaning that although vet 5 is fancy, that extra damage actually doesn't do shit. And now for the biggest offender of the SU85 comparison to the JP4. Vet requirements for vet 3 on SU85 is 7160 xp. JP4 is 14298. Nearly double what it takes to get vet 3 on the 85, and its amazing veterancy doesn't do a damn thing.

People seem to think because 5 > 3 that all OKW things are just significantly better because vet. While I think there are some units that are, some are far from it. For example the LeFH compared between Ostheer and OKW. They gain the exact same vet bonuses, except the ostheer one has significantly lower xp requirements for its peak potential. However because of the scatter values, technically the OKW one is still better when fully maxed.

When I told miragefla how the maxim felt post march 2017 nerf but pre GCS patch, I told him "it felt like a shitier 50 cal". But it was not changed for the patch, and the justification was they didn't receive enough feedback IIRC. I understand I'm just 1 person, but was I wrong about it? Same arc, weaker suppression, slower setup time. Sounds like a shitier 50 cal.

The pershing fell from meta after the stuart nerf, because USF needed a faster solution to the luchs. The m10 was never very far from the meta anyways, became the dominant force post GCS patch simply because of the luchs and its ability to seal the game against any threat against lategame OKW. Command panther callin? No problem, 3 m10s at the same price and no chance for the panther to deal 12 hits before the m10s could deal 5. KT? same deal. Although higher armor and more damage, its slow speed was its downfall against the m10s since it could be circled and killed. I've even had games where I backed my KT against a building to force front pens, and still couldn't deal with 4 m10s frontally. Now that the KTs scatter has been nerfed, it is significantly less lethal vs infantry. I think it was justified since clump wiping lategame squads isn't exactly fair, but then guess what came back to the meta? That's right, the pershing. Similar scatter and AoE to the prenerf KT and -50% reload at vet 3. Talk about deleting squads. Yet somehow avoided nerfs aside from double tap being fixed for most vehicles (Yes I still know of a few which can). There is very limited answers from OKW to deal with a pershing and a good player. The pershing, given stats hold and you arn't dealt horrid RNG, WILL out trade a panther at max range. The JP4, 56.6% chance to pen at max range, and if you get flanked or caught out you lose that JP4. KT can potentially answer, but costs more and is less effective vs infantry. Lastly, guess what just received a nice role change. The jackson, now takes 3 KT shots or 4 standard AT shells to kill, is highly mobile, and can easily kite a KT.

What I want

I just want balance and for the player who exerts the most skill and strategical thinking to be the victor of a match. I want EVERY faction to be viable with STOCK tools that allow them to deal with ANY issue. Most noteably, only 2/5 factions have non doctrinal flamers. And probably most importantly, I want the mod team to actually listen to the community, or at the very least, justify the changes when they're done if they're asked. I understand that they do this with most of the things they do. For example, most people could see conscripts could use a buff, so they buffed them and no one really contested that. What I contest is a strong mainline infantry, which has oorah, a snare, flame grenade, trip flare, merge, and 6 men. Although I want cons to be good, they need to sacrifice something more than 4 damage per shot.

I don't want to call out specific people, but it isn't hard to see bias. And I know since I've talked with 2/3 memebers on the mod team which factions they like and how they justify x,y and z. Please also note that I'm not saying this patch was biased, since I think 80% of it were just and thoughtful changes. Especially the QoL changes that were just 100% helpful. Noteably the cloaking changes; when revealed units move at normal speed instead of adding the extra micro to disable cloak. However some changes looked 100% loaded. Noteably the luchs change. One could argue they waited till the "final patch notes" 2.0 to throw an additional 45 seconds to the build time so outside members could not contest it as much. Although this was changed down to 75 seconds (-10) for the final notes, you can see how that change looks loaded. Other changes like I mentioned above, pershing unnerfed while KT was nerfed, JP4 wasn't compensated for vet nerfs, etc.

I want to support my fellow staff members and the mod team to help construct a better game, but if I (a decent player with "solid" knowledge of unit stats comparable by only a few) needs to point these things out to a team which is leading our game at this point, I don't know if I want those people leading, at least not without additional help. I understand its in their free time, and I want to believe they're trying to maintain non-bias as best as they possibly can, and guilty I'm not without any bias either, but I feel bias potentially crushed this game this patch. Part of the reason was it was targeted at teamgames, and that gamemode is just an indirect clusterfuck anyways. Even after testing the new JT/ele, and I'll admit they're nerfed and toned down a good damn margin in those big game matches, the mode still turns into that indirect clusterfuck of "will I survive the 4th rocket barrage without losing a squad". Which is why I think it was a mistake to target teamgames as the main gamemode change. Unfortunatly 1v1s are practically dead.

At the very least, CoH3 2020, and this time not take 2nd largest RTS behind Starcraft, but largest RTS.

Sorry for the wall of text and I'm sorry if I offend anyone, perticularly the mod team. You all have done phenominal things for this game when relic nearly kicked the bucket, but I just want the best for a game I've enjoyed even for a brief time.

Patch out