Profile of Plokite_Wolf

It is the industry way of dealing with piracy.

Nominally yes, but it's the most pathetic and stupid way imaginable to do so. It also indirectly brands everyone who ever used LAN as pirates, which is simply false.

Welcome to a new genre in strategy games. RTT or real time tactics. Consider CoH or even Relic's games, as a middle point between RTS and RTT. If you ask what's the difference, welp think about games on which the macro aspect is less focused on in favour of micro tactics. There's less attention on base building, technology and resource gathering in favour of focusing on combat tactics.

More "pure" RTT would be Men of War, Wargames series or even the combat aspect from Total war games.

I'm fully aware of RTT, though I don't like it mixing with RTS

When I want to play RTT, I fire up Commandos.

First off, have some respect for the men and women that gave their lives then just so you can even comment right now behind the safety and comfort of your computer, wherever they came from, and never forget that not the Soviets but the Canadians are every year celebrated by your country.

It's not that I wish to negate the role of the Americans in the war, it's that I wish to negate the Hollywood propagandist view thereof. Don't know about you, but over here, our history books say the war started in Poland in '39, not France in '44 And Yugoslav partisans, whom we actually celebrate on 22nd June every year, were very much sided with the Soviets until the Tito-Stalin split of '47 so there

Single Player content was only handled well for the Ardennes Assault campaign in my opinion, some Theater of War missions felt half assed or too hard without a competent teammate and were ultimately abandoned in the end, same as the Soviet Campaign. Campaigns in CoH were handled much better and the stories mattered as much as the gameplay there as well if you ask me, you could actually feel the struggle of the characters.

I was actually referring to the handling of accessing the AI skirmishes, as I hadn't touched the campaign prior to the first post (I did play some of it last night and this morning), but it's nice to know what the AA campaign plays like.

I would even go a step further and make the original Soviet campaign a DLC, cut the 2 Eastern Front Armies in 2 same as the Western Front Ones and there you go, if they even go ahead and like make the game Free to Play that would be even more perfect if you ask me, then all of this DLC would be actually worth it.

So... you'd get nothing at the start?

I can't comment about match maker but they did the right thing by adding Workshop support for maps for both games, most recently I went back to CoH and I played for about 2 weeks or 200 hours all on custom maps.

Well, in older RTSes, custom maps were the icing on the cake, not the biscuit, cream, and decoration at once.

(Sorry if this is more appropriate in COH2 Central, the forums for some reason wanted me to use a subforum specifically).

So yeah, like I said in in my intro thread, I'd like to share my thoughts on CoH2, now that I finally have a PC that can run it in any capacity and, full disclosure, I got it during the official giveaway on Steam late last year. Also, this is based on ~2 hours' worth of skirmishes, and unlike with other games, I didn't start with the singleplayer campaign. We are talking of the base game, no DLC whatsoever.

I like to have a more varied RTS "diet", so I already have experience with the likes of the Command & Conquer series, Dawn of War 1, WarCraft III, Age of Empires/Mythology series, Star Trek: Armada 1 and 2, a bit of StarCraft I and II... all the good stuff, so I'm talking from the perspective of someone who played all those, but had limited exposure to CoH.

What I like:

* the setting - finally, a major WWII game that doesn't feature Americans masturbating over D-Day that is wrongly presented as the start of the war somehow. Also, I have a soft spot for snow, since I live in the Med and I see it once every 5-6 years, and for a very short time. I've still yet to fully investigate on why exactly people in the whole CIS wanted this game banned, but I'm happy to play as the Soviets.

* the new mechanics - so not only did they not break the cover mechanic from Dawn of War 1 and Company of Heroes 1, but they also allowed infantry to jump over walls and trees, which does take a special command to do from my limited experience and therefore extra time, but it's so cool to have. Also, whoever made the blizzard mechanic, if you're reading this, you're the MVP. (And my overly cynical self is not that easy to impress ).

* handling of singleplayer content - even while offline, skirmishes are accessible. In this day and age of pointless always-online-ness, that sadly no longer goes without saying, but at least someone thinks with their heads.

* visuals - apart from the game looking outright astonishing from the details perspective, it also goes into such details as disabling non-historical skins, which I find commendable. Most of the interface is also top-notch, though the buildings and defences menus could've been merged.

* the character - more so than I've seen of CoH1, units have a lot of sass in their responses. A little thing, I know, but a little cheese never hurt anyone.

What I hate:

* starting content vs. DLC - why has it become an unwritten rule to strip content that can easily fit in the base game or a singular meaty expansion pack and make ten billion DLCs out of it? The original CoH may have had only two factions at launch, but why did CoH2 also have to? And why are even commanders that come with the DLC... DLC in themselves? And what is skin DLC doing in an RTS?

* loot - same as lootboxes in other games, fuck that shit with a pneumatic drill right up the arse.

* map variety - in older RTSes, you'd get a lot of default maps without having to rely on expansions and fan-made content. Here, you just get a truly pathetic map count, and to add fuel to the fire, the interface also shows the maps for the DLC you didn't buy (just grayed out), so the base game is really thin in this aspect.

* bases - an RTS without bases is not an RTS. As with CoH1, bases seem to be pretty much ignored after the first 2-3 minutes completely except for making an odd unit or two if your micro sucks and you lose troops.

* LAN - Relic, you old sheep! Not only did you gut LAN in the post-GameSpy versions of Dawn of War 1 and split Company of Heroes 1 into two versions, but you also gave the middle finger to the only way one can play multiplayer when the official servers go down! Sure, nobody expects Steamworks to croak in the foreseeable future, but is future-proofing so much to ask?

* tutorial - instead of always the same barely-bare-bones tutorial for people who never played an RTS, I expected something that'd tell me something about mechanics unique to the game, like the commanders and their support powers.

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As a summary feeling, I love Company of Heroes 2, but I also hate it. I believe it has the most polished RTS gameplay in many, many years (alongside StarCraft II), but I'm also disgusted by the way it's monetized. I need help, because I don't know which voice to listen to.

What I wonder is:

• whether there is any number of fellow noobs online who also aren't casual-minded turtlers, but also not toxic nutjobs
  
• are the DLC factions worth it even on sales
  
• how many people still care for and play CoH1