I watched plenty of vCoH 2.601 games a few months ago. I picked them from the most wubbed replays on GR and they included players like Razor, Seb, Freestyler, GosuStarcraft (aka HuK), Kot, Aimstrong etc. And to be fully honest the meta back then was just as bad as what we have in CoH2 atm if not worse. Almost every single game goes like this (maybe 9 out of 10):
-high skilled early game by both players with nice rifle flanking great mg play->highly entertaining and nice to watch and waaaay better than what we have atm
-ami goes infantry in every single game
-wehr goes either t1 t2 t3 or t1 t3 and ends up spamming pumas but even the very best players with top notch micro have awful vehicle control and suicide them like crazy against Rangers, Sticky Riflemen, M10s or AT guns.
-american build is heavily infantry based (eg Rifles+multiple Rangers+Supply Yard Upgrades+Inf Upgrades+Howitzer)
-players stick to their build no matter what happens->howitzer gets destroyed after one barrage by firestorm ? Build another one ! First Puma dies after one minute ? (this happens in a surprisingly large percentage of the games) Build another one !
-some units are built in most games but barely have an influence (Nebelwerfer get like 3-4 kills per game on average, other than that all they do is denying ground and forcing american at guns who seem to miss pumas 90 % of the time to move)
Clearly I watched different games than you. Or maybe 2.602 was different than 2.601?
But VCOH was not perfect, which is why so much hope was placed in COH2. Trusight is definitely a superior technology that adds tactical elements vCOH didn't have. And the "cloaking" mechanics make more sense (you can't be moving and have to be in some sort of cover) than invisible kettens and AT guns moving around the map.
I can't decide if the resource system from points makes more sense or less, but it does make individual points less important than they were in vCOH.
I would add that I don't like the sniper meta in vCOH. It breaks the WWII feel. No one came out of WWII thinking that the way to win wars was to make snipers a defining part of their ground war strategy. |
The problem with CoH2 is the game only has units. Sure, there's a fuckload of units, but at the end of the day it's still just units, and there's always going to be an ideal unit for every role when you don't have something like upgrades there to add variety.
As long as the game lacks strategic options beyond just building units, it's going to have a stale metagame. Saying CoH1 had all this time to mature makes sense in theory, but when you actually look at the games it's obvious that the potential for CoH1 was there from day 1, whereas CoH2 has lacked that potential for its entire life so far. CoH1 had rifle upgrades and supply yard upgrades and global veterancy built right into the core game, and it just took a while for players to understand how to combine these complex elements together effectively. CoH2 has a ton of units, but it doesn't have the extra dimension that comes with giving players upgrades and different means of improving their forces beyond simply improving their numbers. The only real strategic choices you make in CoH2 are "Do I build unit A or unit B?", "Do I build a unit or build a tech building?", and "Do I build a weaker unit now or save up and build a stronger unit later?". The entire game is composed of strictly these three options; it's no wonder the metagame is stale.
CoH2 isn't really about strategy right now, it's about tactics and unit control. And at that it does a great job; it gives players a lot of ways to outplay their opponents with unit control, arguably moreso than CoH1 did. But adding more commanders with more units isn't going solve these metagame problems if the core design issues of the factions aren't addressed.
You missed a few other strategic dimensions...
- Tech TREES: You had to make a choice. Going one direction meant not going or delaying the other.
- Timing: Games move and progress much faster in COH2 vs. the VP counter. The VP counter means semi-contested games will last 30-40 minutes but late game and heavy tanks can be reached by 12-15, so most of the game is played in "late game" heavy call-in mode.
- Popcap: I am not sure which is the superior system, but it but the vCoH system added another facet. One strategy to stifle Wehrmacht vet3 was to just not let them get as many units. If you held enough points then sure their vet3 tiger lasted forever, but even if they were building up a huge bank of manpower they can't use it if their pop cap limit is reached. |
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Yes, build it yourself. It really doesn't take a tech head to do it. And as one of the old geezers on this board who worked with PC's since the 80's I can tell you that the fit-and-finish on the products (particularly the cases) made in the last 10 years has got sooo much better. And the operating systems make it so easy to install hardware.
(Anyone as old as me remembers com ports, lpt ports, game controller ports and IRQ conflicts. Today that sounds like you are talking about vacuum tubes.) |
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Not a funny quote... but I still always love hearing the US...
"Enemy unit.... downnnn" |
MP penalty?
I dunno...
Change thier vet.
Vet 5 OKW units receive force fields and laser guided armaments
Pretty much this is the problem. How is the '44-'45 model of the German army one where the 14 and 50 year old members of the Volksturm becoming better soldiers than veteran Soviet and American 20-25 year olds? How are the grizzled veterans of the Eastern Front now able to achieve even higher levels of vet to demigod like combat abilities?
Volks should have looked more like Ostruppen (but with fausts, maybe even cheaper ones, but ones that can miss) and Obers more like the combat progression of COH1 Brit commandos in that they were powerful when they cam out but they couldn't achieve veterancy and didn't benefit from officer buffs. Maybe throw in some sort of middling (wehrmacht infantry divisions) troops.
the problem is both in look/feel and in balance. An easily achievable vet 5, that no other faction can match, is just stupid/silly. |
If you wish to talk balance you need at least a 100 games in 1vs 1 with each faction. otherwise you dont understand the balance . You dont even know the weaknesses and strength of the factions let alone be able to talk about balance.
That is just stupid. It is like saying someone can't discuss football unless they have played a season in a premier league. It also is like saying that if you have played a season you can speak to the subject even if you are a moron who only knows how to play.
People can learn from playing, from watching, and from different amounts of each. And others can spend thousands of hours doing it without actually understanding balance or game design. |
i actually liked the medic bunkers, did anyone else?
no one in coh1 complained about zombie grens or zombie rifles, because it was just part of the game, and that system was different from any other RTS at the time...
Oh, there was plenty of bitching about zombie grens. It was just a much more powerful mechanic than zombie rifles (and still is). You could get a 4 man gren squad for 88mp (the 4x22 it cost you to replenish a volks squad) and from a hard bunker, which could be further hardened if you went defensive. That 88mp squad will come out with whatever vet you have bought so far.
OTOH a medtent took 6 bodies (6 x 27 = 162mp vs 270 new) to give you an unvetted rifle squad and the medtent could be destroyed with small arms and could not be garrisoned. Sorry, the two just aren't even close to the same thing.
but this points out something else. How a similar mechanic can actually play so differently. Factions don't need to be as different to be fun as they are in COH2, which would make them easier to balance. |
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No. And for two reasons.
1 - Tanks weren't recovered in the middle of battle. Right after... ok, but no one did this in battle.
2 - I don't trust Relic to design it or to balance it.
For one thing, there was never a Bergetiger, yet that is the only Armoured recovery vehicle to appear in COH1.
OTOH, 347 Bergpanthers and 170 Bergpanzers were made, but they don't appear. The US had over 1500 of the Sherman variant (m32) alone, not to mention many other types, and the Sherman was an easy to repair tank for which a lot of parts were available. The German tanks were not easy to repair due to the diverse amounts of AFVs, multiple versions of each, and a supply chain that was under duress due to allied bombing. |
That the war lasted as long as it did is truly difficult to explain ex post.
Logistics.
As the Germans themselves learned in '41 and '42 you can only amass the huge numbers needed for the attacks on a front-wide scale over a great deal of time. Each major offensive took months to stage. The staging of D-Day took years because you have to have most of the material you would need already staged in the UK and to get it first onto and then over the beaches meant no ports, roads or rail.
And none of these massively staged offensives was able to supply an army on the move farther then a several hundred mile advance. At that point your forces outdistance your bases by too much to keep them supplied. This happened in Barbarossa, it happened in France '44, during Bagracion. Meanwhile the opponent prepares a defense while you await your resupply, and then you need another massive offensive, which entails months of resupply and stockpiling for the next push.
The allies had a shorter distance to cover, so one operation got them to the German border and the next over the Rhine. The distance of the breakout from Normandy until they ran out of steam was similar to the distance covered by the Germans in '40. The Russians also covered the greater distance in fits and starts. The Germans covered more in '41 because their opposition was unprepared to put up the kind of fight that would reduce the potential progress (use up materiale), but they too sputtered after the first several weeks. Likewise the Russians were able to push a bit further than average in '45 because they had a lot less opposition by that time.
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I never understood what the fun of larger teamgames is.
Ofcourse larger teamgames will be axis favoured. Because its easier to stall and tech.
Funny thing is there are is one simple change that will not affect 1v1 AT ALL though it will affect 2v2 a little (and 3v3 and 4v4 a whole lot, which is kind of the point, no?)
If you increase OKW fuel income to 100% with a commensurate increase in the fuel cost of everything, then you will have fixed one of the broken parts of 3v3 and 4v4, which is that OKW no longer benefits out of proportion from fuel caches, fuel drops, etc.
2v2 will be affected but I am not sure to how great of a degree and I have not yet thought if there is an easy way to compensate. (That is assuming that the synergy between Ost and OKW is not a problem in 2v2). |
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