So much of a Coh game is moving your units up the map looking for the enemy. This means probing into Mgs at times. This equals mass retreating to your base.
And in most 2v2 games, there are long periods where entire armies are in base healing.
Having faster VP tick rates will destroy the game flow.
I was thinking they may have sped it up to get more players in/out of games for the tech test.
Dirty_Finisher was playing and trying to see how fast they could win on VPs. Trying to hit 10 minutes. He lost interest in playing Coh3 and went back to Coh2. But I think they hit 12 minutes for sure.
The few games I watched on streams rarely got to late game. This could be due to no ELO for any players yet.
Draining all 500 VPs with a triple cap will take roughly 11 min in CoH2 and 8,3 min in CoH3. Add an additional 2-3 min game start where you just build units and cap points without much fighting and you'll end up with let's say 15 min for CoH2 and 12 for CoH3. That's the quickest achievable time without surrenders.
For single VP advantage that timings go up to 33.3 and 25min, respectively, plus startup times. This roughly correspond to the approximate game lengths.
CoH2 is basocally one player draining the other down with a 1 VP advantage, with a lot of fuckups along the way. |
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I am highly skeptical about the faster tick rate in CoH3.
As a reminder: CoH2 had a tick evaluation every 4 seconds, meaning every 4 seconds one side loses victory point from their counter according to the difference in held VPs. CoH3 lowered this to 3 seconds. If the mechanics in CoH3 lead to at least a roughly similar pace, games will be finished 25% quicker. A normal and balanced CoH2 game usually lasts 30-40 min. For CoH3, these games would be reduced to 22,5 and 30 min, respectively. Unless the game is slowed down considerably or VPs are more frequently "contested" and neutral, games will be shorter.
This is likely part of the "more casual" approach to CoH3. Shorter games means you'll be able to fit one match in if you don't have that much time, or it is not as big of a commitment for the evening if you want to play another game. Additionally, it becomes easier to calculate how much time you have left before you lose the match.
However, given that CoH3 feels more tactical and seems to have a bit slower approach to gameplay than CoH2, I don't see how those two designs benefit from each other. Higher tech tiers might not really be played if the game ends in 20 minutes. It also compresses other mechanics: Buying battlegroup abilities did not feel like a real investment, because currently Relic wants you to unlock everything within one game so you need to gain them very quickly as well. Obviously I was not playing efficiently, but I often had command points "left over". More competitive players will train this more quickly, but especially considering that the game aims at a casual audience too, having those points left over allows you to buy "whatever" and won't be a strategic decision where you fight until you get enough points to unlock that one unit you want.
There will be less back and forth. There are only so many times a unit can retreat, run to the front and fight until the time is over. Especially when they come late into the game. This in turn influences balance: If you buy a unit at the 20minute mark and the game is expected to last only 25 min, the unit has only 5 min to pay itself off. That's basically drive to the front-> get damaged -> repair -> front one more time -> game over. Therefore, it needs to be very strong compared to an early unit. If you'd expect the game to last 35 min instead, it suddenly has 15 minutes for payback, which not only allows more back and forth as described above but also the unit to be weaker compared to early game units.
On the neutral side I'd note matchmaking: Shorter games will mean that players will be more often available for the matchmaker. You'll spend more time queued up and less playing, but have better games, too.
To sum it up:
I am concerned that the - probable - faster pace will actually make the game worse because its mechanics won't be able to develop. |
If you feel it is giving the enemy an advantage leave it on.
That's not his point. His point - which I don't share - is that reinforcing were a skill that adds to the overall gameplay. Auto reinforce would remove that skill of the game.
It is obvious to all that people with auto reinforce will be at an advantage. |
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OP has very good points.
CoH3's gameplay looks good. You can see that they aim for a lot of variety in builds, teching, units and many more. It's great. Many things will cause issues down the line and be redesigned/removed, but overall it is a big step forward from CoH2 even after years of patches.
Assuming that there will be no major overhaul until release, I'll rate the game "okay", a bit worse than CoH2. I won't play at launch, but probably 6-12 months down the line, once the major things got fixed. I personally don't have many reasons to doubt that CoH3 will be the better game in the mid and long term. |
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I've player a bit more against easy AI to have time to read and observe what is happening.
I also think it is mostly the audio an visual effects that are a let down.
Some of the audio is good, especially the voice acting and also some weapon sounds, but the majority is mediocre and many other samples are just bad. Flate, toneless, no depth. Not sure how to describe it differently. But they have also very cool examples. From a barrage, one shell hit a tank wreck and bounced off it with a satisfying "pling". This was really nice. But unfortunately these are not the norm.
Graphics in general are okay with room for improvement especially regarding readability on some maps. Explosions overall are pretty bad though, probably the biggest let down. The barrage of the DAK support tractor literally looks like a placeholder animation. The Stuka zu Fuß has a big boom, but the explosion looks everything but organic. The 2D sprites are too obvious and don't really look how they should. Generally, there is not enough dirt being tossed up. This explosion has visually a big radius, but doesn't really do enough to infantry.
The vehicle damage model is really nice, but I found it slightly odd that all vehicles at some point just looks like someone has dumped a boatload of coal on their front half. |
I'm wondering what people will say about the restoration of enemy tanks. People whined about how unfairly abandoned tanks were when you broke through to the enemy and were abandoned there. Now imagine a common situation in CoH when a team makes a big tank attack and dies in the rear. And all these tanks will then return to pump you up. Remember kids - abandoned tanks are RNG and bad. And restored tanks are good.
Comparing CoH2 abandons with CoH3 restoration does not make much sense.
Players complained because it was truly random, and also so rare that you the cost calculation would always be on the side of diving and potentially sacrificing that vehicle. So you'd dive, and then get that 5 % chance of an abandon that might turn around the whole game since the enemy is - with an investment of 1-2 min repair time - suddenly ahead of you despite you doing the correct calculation of diving. In those 5% of cases, CoH2 is literally punishing you for doing the correct thing.
As far as I can see, all (?) vehicles in CoH3 will be recoverable initially. This way, you can include it into your estimation of a positive outcome from the very start, and the game does not screw you over. If it was not worth it, it was your mistake.
Does the recovery make for good gameplay? I personally doubt it, since those dives that snipe 2-3 Katys have been hilarious in CoH2 and sometimes also the only way to reduce the artillery burden in large modes. We have to see how the meta develops in CoH3. It overall does not feel like those dives are really worth it though with all vehicles being much beefier. |
I think it's great to hear this. But let's just play a little and enjoy it? It's a tech stress test, not a full release yet.
Just picking this part out for clarification: What you see now is 99% what you will get on release. We don't know how old the build is that they handed to us, but assuming that it is less than a month old, there will only be 2-3 months between this build and the release build.
That's not an awful lot. They're squashing bugs and search for errors that can only be produced when the game is released to a wide audience (like e.g. AMD GPU users getting constant bugsplats on startups, which Relic probably could not reproduce if they run mostly Nvidia GPUs and only have very limited AMD GPU test systems).
There will be no major changes in balance, graphics or gameplay. And that's not only me saying that, this is pretty much also what Relic said themselves when asking for feedback: Feedback will be incorporated post-launch, not pre-launch. |
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It's a good feature. 90% of the time you'd reinforce your squads anyway, the times when you need to save the MP to build your tank a bit earlier do exist, but are rather rare.
It reduces stupid and mindless clicking. There is nothing tactical or strategic about spamming the reinforce button. Instead, it frees time for actual micro management and unit positioning. |
Thread: Smoke12 Jan 2023, 09:59 AM
A single line of trees/bush is a shot blocker and units will not fire pass them.
An attack ground order can make a weapon pass it and it will pass through without colliding with it. The same applies to smoke that acts as a shot blocker.
The shot blocker part of smoke is what I mostly do not like in the current implementation where you an have units hugging each other and still not firing on each other.
Yes I agree that this is nonsense, but could be solved by some minimal vision/combat range, where shooting is allowed. Then at least units within the smoke could shoot each other, while units outside of it cannot. |
- no kill counters, for me a big deal for learning the game and seeing what my top performers actually are. ( I fell like the italian field howitzer doesnt kill anything)
They are there. They are just displayed when you hover over - I think - the unit portrait or something. Slightly hidden, but at a spot that made sense.
- on a very positive note: The game gives you reminders of e.g. MP lying around or having command points to spend. This was great. |
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