The balance should be centered around people who can play and don't make mistake every 2nd move and decision they do. For coh2 its pretty much top 200-300 players.
You know, the people who actually are capable enough to play the game in the intended way-applying correct strategies and necessary levels of micro and awareness to pull them off.
Glad you've asked this, because in fact, I am game designer(don't confuse with dev-the mistake we all make here when addressing relic, devs just code, designers do the ideas, math and data part). 
Not for relic obviously, but it doesn't matter(no, its not mobile time and money grabbing craps, but proper PC games), I work with both, player feedback as well as hard data, consult my opinions and decisions with other game designers and take feedback from QA team if there is any.
I can verify player feedback with actual data and let me tell you this: about 99% of player feedback is useless player whining about stuff they don't know anything about, but that 1% is valuable input worth listening to and at times even following, just like relic does.
For the record, so is Derek Smart.  |
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Volk schreks, much like all handheld AT weapons except for PTRS, should be absolutely terrible at maximum range.
The problem with blobs wielding them is that when they A-Move and engage at max range there is an exceptionally good chance a tank or vehicle will be damaged if not outright destroyed.
If that were throttled down to a rare chance and infantry had to get into close/mid range to hit with schreks, there would be a much less severe problem with schrek blobs.
I remember in vCoH the only blobs I ever had trouble with were rangers and paratroopers because zooks and recoilless rifles were pretty accurate at max range. And even then it was only recoilless rifles that had enough penetration to actually be a threat to the heavier tanks. |
Just accept the fact that you have to tailor your entire army's makeup and strategy entirely on the terms of the british player just to counter the press of a single button. It sucks, but some people get off on catching the dangling carrot, so it is here to stay most likely.
It is a lopsided amount of micro to handle, but emplacements as vetting, pop capped units is extraordinarily problematic in its own right. There's no way they can exist in their current form without needing something as straightforward as Brace.
Like COH1, the best way to effectively counter the British cheese is to play Allies.  |
Also for reference in CoH1 the 17-pdr took 3 pop (I would've made an Axis comparison but they had no emplacements). Did that cause problems? did it make the unit overpowered? I don't get where CoH2 got its enormous pop costs from or why, instead of balancing around resources and a roomy but existing pop cap we now have a balance around not being able to make a complete army because you can't make more units. Why? did it get it from DoW2 where it was a terrible idea too?
Flak 88. It was awesome. I don't remember what kind of pop cap it had, but the only time I remember pop cap ever affecting my game in vCoH was when I was pushed back and cut off from my territory. But that was always a result of mass retreats and getting completely pushed off the field, (which in vcoh was virtually a loss in and of itself, but is apparently acceptable for coh2.) |
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My question is: Why do win/loss ratios matter?
Are these the win ratios since the last major patch? Since the last major release? Since forever? Players with more games tend to have more balanced ratios, which to me, is what we're seeing here. Furthermore, it can sometimes take a while for metagames to stabilize after game changing releases and patches.
I'm not entirely sure it's the best metric for tracking game balance over the course of a few weeks, especially considering that these ratios appear to be cumulative.
I'd like to know how many players shifted or changed position in the rankings and by how much. Did people with 40-1 stats crash into a 42-20 W/L? That'd indicate to me that a patch changed the viability of a strategy greatly. Did the same people stay in the top rankings? That'd tell me that the changes may been more minor and didn't change the established gameplay.
But just straight W/L ratios of the top players seems highly suspect. |
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A lot of the motivations behind blobbing units is a result of the design on many maps, especially when combined with forward retreat points. It's worthy to note that the two culprits factions are factions with dynamic retreat points.
This mechanic, while ideally good and fun to reduce predictable monotony, it in practice throws off the flow and balance of virtually all maps. Especially when it is a feature lacking in the original factions, this cripples map design to be able to effectively take into account the impact of forward retreat points.
But that's getting beside the point. The point is it takes time and space to maneuver units around in a flanking position. When forces are fighting on the doorstep of their effective base half the game, it's hard to accomplish this. This leads to mass assaults and mass retreats as these dynamic HQs are often placed in forward positions, or at least outside of the base sector's defenses.
As a WFA faction or Brit versus a vanilla faction, the ability to concentrate forces from a forward retreat point is such an incredible advantage that it typically outweighs the benefits of tactical maneuvering by a longshot. |
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These bugs need to be fixed. |
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I've never really understood the purpose of pop cap in CoH2, especially since there's a great mechanic in place already: upkeep. The more units a player fields, the less manpower the receive. I don't see why the game couldn't be balanced around a 100 pop sized army, throttling manpower income exponentially as it grows beyond that size.
I get that there may be technical implications to pop cap for the purpose of preventing too many models on the field at a given time. I'm curious as to if this is the actual purpose of pop cap. |
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A lot of that has to do with there not being a coherent standard for developing and modifying the game. The balance team develops and programs ones way, the team working on new content does it another way, and individual staffers might adjust stats in their own unique ways. And there are a lot of variables that govern how each and every unit and ability performs in game. As the game ages, certain areas get a lot of focus, and then eventually fall out of favor. (Or in the case of, say, cheaper 222 upgun bulletins, outright ignored.)
Also, it seems common practice at Relic and by modders to just copy and paste existing numbers and then modify from there (Look at British bulletins, for instance: a lot of Soviet/Axis flavor text.) So even new content often has years of (overlooked) modifications and changes grafted into it.
So, it's not that Axis was designed to heavily be favored by bulletins, it's that Axis vehicles tend to share more of the same variables that the bulletins are affecting. Whether this is intentional or not is hard to determine. At this point in CoH2's life, it's an esoteric feature for the knowledgeable elite to guard: knowing the utility of which bulletins to use and stack. (This type of mindset seems to be geared towards the CoH2 community, as most of us have learned that all ingame info/tooltips is going to be inaccurate, even misleading at this point.) It can be rough for new players that don't know about this site or watching broadcasts/replays |
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Nerf the crap out of panzerschreks at range? Requiring volks to close at least medium range to have a reliable shot at hitting something would reduce their threat to vehicles when massed.
Things like the USF AA Halftrack would have a chance to be able to maneuver.
That or replace with panzerfaust. Ideally a non-snaring panzerfaust that deals considerable damage, so as to sap munitions from the OKW player before schreks become available on something like Obers. |
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