Profile of Hannibal

What? You mean to say that the table is not objective, but you don't mean to say that it is not true?
This data is not taken from the head, but from tests, this is not an opinion. Tell me specifically which indicators are lies. In this table, everything is in fact.

If the numbers are not true (not objective), then tell me what exactly is wrong. But it is "objectively" to say that everything is in order with mg34, when this is obviously not the case.
If you're not saying these numbers don't lie, then what do you mean by "objective"? I see only an attempt without arguments to prove to me that I am wrong.

"per se" in this context means that the table is not automatically wrong because it is subjective. You're also not showing real data nor the method used to collect it, you're mostly showing (subjective) conclusions. Data would be "After 10 tests of the Maxim shooting Volks, the Volks had 73% health left on average".

Anyway, my main concern is:
Some of this data is questionable.
Suppression of the MG34 for example is, according to the table, lower than of the MG42. From what I know and from what Sanders (balance team member) posted, the difference is until an enemy squad is suppressed is very small. I don't have any hard data on that personally, but it was mentioned in previous discussions. Suppression apparently also depends on the squad size of the targeted squad. Axis MGs mostly shoot at 5-6 model squads for most of the game. As Allies, you're rather in the range of 4-5. Additionally, higher damage weapons like the Vickers can have the issue of sniping the model before suppression, leading to a small break in shooting and enemy units sometimes traversing out of the arch. Low damage can be a good thing if you only want suppression.

Next, the single bullet damage and the "whole line damage" (here I assume you mean total damage between reloads?) don't really matter. The M2HB looks 4 times better than let's say the MG42 in the single bullet damage. Does it do 4 times the damage when you test them in game? No it does not. This metric does not give any info since MGs will almost never connect only one single bullet.
Similar is the whole line damage. You classify the M2HB as medium, the MG42 as high. What if the MG42 needs longer to cycle through the belt? This is the DPS data on all HMGs against target size 1 infantry.



M2HB, MG42, Vickers and Maxim have similar damage at max range. Yet, the M2HB is classified lower.
Also, those four MGs split at mid range. A similar difference lead to the MG34 being classified as lower damage and the Dshk as high damage. Now, do we compare at max range, slightly below max range, mid range? Options are endless. Abilities of the MGs are neglected or only quickly brushed over, and so are penetration values that can come in handy vs light vehicles, cost for the most part and population.

I fully understand that the table is there to give a quick overview and it is fully okay and even necessary to leave out information. But I would not take it at face value as the only basis for discussion, for the reasons I just described: There are too many nuances missed. Especially since no one knows how exactly the table was made and how you collected the data and came to those conclusions.


By the way you respond I assume you know the person who made the site or maybe you even made it yourself. In that case: Very good job! Kudos to you!
But please be aware that many of those classifications ("good", "poor", etc) are sometimes wrong or at the very least not shared by all others. That's why I said those are subjective.

DOTA2 use it with fairly good success. You even must play a certain amount of game or having a certain playtime in non-competitive lobby before being autorized to hit the competitive button when you're new.
Bottom end of competitive ladder is still full of toxic players but new players are not mixed with them. I don't know what you don't understand with this concept.

DOTA2 has currently about 100x the playerbase of CoH2. It is also free to play which ensures a constant influx of new players to populate those "unranked" matches. I don't really know the game apart from it being a popular moba, so I can't really comment on how many game modes there are and how well they are populated, nor do I have even a gut feeling about how many players play it online vs how many do bot matches. Anyway, the main point is that CoH2's playerbase is already fairly small. It is one of the largest strategy games out there, yes, but there is a lot of singleplayer content, diminishing the number of players that play a) online and b) competitive which then get divided into 4 different modes. The MM does not have an awful lot of players to draw from to create fair matches.

The next thing is, what does a forced unranked system achieve, potential player base issues aside?
- Reduce toxicity?
Surely not. Toxicity is not rank dependent, there are cunts all over the ladder. And even if we assume the majority resides at the bottom, then what: Do new players get 10-20 "toxicity free" games before being thrown into the snakepit? I doubt this helps THAT much. Also this assumes that new players can't be toxic by themselves. Who ensures that those 10-20 initial games are a "safe space"? How do you ensure it? And if you can ensure it, why do you not do that for ALL of the games?
Your argument only works in the first place if you assume that toxic players are mostly low skill players that have a lot of matches, while new players or higher skill ones were not toxic. I don't know what you base that on.

- Diminish ELO hell/create fair games?
How? New players are bad at the game, yes. That's somehow the point of it. Even experiences players with hundreds of hours can still be shite at the game (and believe, I must know...).
I really don't get how this mechanism is supposed to diminish ELO hell, assuming that exists in the first place.


The games that used the system of gating off new players from old ones used it from what I know for a different reason: To protect the establishes community from people that still need to read the description texts of units and abilities. It ensures that players have at least a very minor grasp of how the game works.
If you describe ELO hell as being matched with these players, then I can agree. Although at this point you should be able to take on multiples of them. But we're not talking about that level of play here. We're talking about just heavy misjudgement of tactics and lack of micro, and I have seen players with a hundred games still perform poorly in that regard. You can't block them out.


Much of this could probably be improved by proper match making on Relic's side. I assume though that unless CoH3 grows hugely, 4v4 will always be a vulnerable mode. It is just logically damn hard to find players in somewhat the right skill range.

This thread made me want to try agin 4vs4 yesterday. First 4vs4 game since long and directly vs an arranged team, probably casted on twitch btw. Game lost.

I'm geniusly curious how 1 person can uplift his random teammates vs a team. I can agree, understand, that 1 really good player using a cheesy strat can do it at really low level but even then it all depend on the rest of the team to not themselves colapse vs their proper opponents.

That's not really what the discussion is about. Not adjusting for arranged teams is indeed a big problem in Coh2 matchmaking. But the point that Rosbone and others were trying to make - agree with it or don't - is that once you lose too much ELO, it is hard to regain it. This must be true for matches with all randoms as well, not just for arranged teams.

In my opinion, with Coh3 Relic should enhance the most their new non-ranking lobby where people could simply play chill&learning at low level and within this enhancement have a pretty serious ban politic on who would have the "funny" idea to come there with a smurf and fuck it up for the new comers and learners.

There is definitely a need for a safe place for new players to learn the rope of multiplayer.

I'd doubt that another lobby will hugely benefit CoH3, as it would just split the player base further. They need to optimize their matchmaking though.
I think everyone understands that it will take some placement matches in the beginning, which is what every ELO system does to estimate your skill. Losing a game or two more than usual should not matter for the benefit of the system. If someone quits the game because he lost 6-7 out of 10 placement games, he wouldn't be around for long anyway.
The other option is also already existing: Custom matches. There just needs to be a proper and easy way to estimate the skill of each player in the lobby as well, and then you can kick people who are too good and want to stomp new players.

In addition, I have been testing coh2 recently. I finally found the reason why the archive capacity of coh2 will grow larger and larger for no reason.The previous RTS game save system only saved the present situation and did not save the battle process. This is good. In this way, you can play a game as long as you want. AI will not become dull and stupid and bug due to the larger and larger archive. But when I play COH2, I find that the save mechanism of COH2 is actually the save the process of the battle. Why do I say so? Because when I play a game of battle and save, then quit the game, turn off the computer, and then play again next time, I find that AI becomes stupid and bugs appear earlier and earlier. So I did an experiment: when playing the same game of battle, I played for 20 minutes every time, then saved, then shut down the computer, let the computer rest for 1 hour, then read the archive, and then continue to play for 3 minutes, and deliberately let my troops be destroyed by the enemy, and a large number of them die together with the enemy, which reduced the number of enemy and our units on the battlefield, I did this to reduce the number of enemy and our units on the battlefield before saving, so as to eliminate the possibility of increasing the archive capacity caused by too many enemy and our units.And I was surprised to find that the archive capacity I played only for 3 minutes with a large reduce of unit number,was 2600 KB larger than the archive capacity I played for 20 minutes before, so I understand, The archiving of COH2 is not save the end of the battle, but the whole process of battle!This is very bad. First of all, the archive capacity is very large, usually more than 60000kb. In the later stage of the battle, it will cause AI to become stupid and bug. The game is more and more easy to jump out and other strange phenomena and Bugs will happen, which will destroy the game experience. I hope this bad save mechanism can be changed in COH3,the save mechanism shouldn't save the battle process, but save the battle present situation.

I think this stems from how the replay feature works. The game does not save any state of the units, but player inputs etc and based on this simulates the battle how you experienced it.
I assume since Relic wants to also have the replay for Bot games, they just used the same mechanism for save games. Otherwise you'd need to keep both the replay file as well as the save game in seperate files. Which is possible, but somehow double the work.

I don't fully understand yet though how this should influence the AI. Do you have any ideas? The game itself might become buggy, yes, but not fully sure how this influences the AI, especially after rather short games.
Could you also elaborate what you mean by "the AI becomes more and more stupid"? The AI is always stupid, even on the hardest difficulty. Apart from some rare and surprisingly coordinated pushes, it mostly forgets its squads on the front line and lets them die.

I agree with the general notion. 2v2 maps are usually to small so that it is not really worth the resources to go for an FRP. The only factions that sometimes do that are OKW if they go for T1 anyway and USF since they can establish a forward base by regular teching, although it is very susceptible to the Stuka. In 3v3, they can be super strong on some larger maps.

My solution to FRPs is to just remove them. They are hard to balance and devalue soft retreats. They punish proper micro and risk assessment. If you played too risky with your units, the retreat should force them back to base. If you micro properly and assess the risks correctly, a soft retreat to replenish troops should be enough.

OST has the best design on this in my opinion.

The only other option would be to make a real play style out of it, but then you need to commit with basically your whole base. I doubt this would really work in CoH though. In the current system of CoH2, you can have a full base in the back and still cheese FRP strategies with comparatively small cost and risk.

What should probably also be done is that units under fire cannot reinforce anymore, unless they are in the base sector. This could then also be used to set apart some elite squads like paratroopers that might still be able to reinforce in combat.