Profile of Doomlord52

I think it could work. It's actually been done, too. Natural Selection 2 (a strategy-focused FPS game) switched to "community development" in 2014. The initial plan was to release a final patch to fix the major flaws of the game, but they've gone on to release over 40 patches (and counting).

It came from a similar situation: the dev team (NS2's was very small) didn't have time to work on their new project and also work on NS2.

We can only discuss our part in this, and I don't think Relic would be willing to leave the game to us because people are gonna start "LEL DAED GAEM" threads.

I honestly don't think so. We'd be going from 1 major patch every ~3 months to (possibly) a minor patch every week or so. While those on the forums might say "lol dead game, they let fans do their work", the vast majority of players aren't actually involved in any forums: they'd just see that suddenly the game is getting lots of updates.

I don't know about you, but when I see a "dead game" I have suddenly start getting updates, I'm inclined to try it out again.

On top of that, you'd also (hopefully) have an increase in quality. While the initial reaction from some players might be negative, I don't think they'd complain about frequent improvements and updates with clear communication.

So here are a few questions:
-How would we (or Relic) choose candidates for a "Dream Balance Team".

Active modders focusing on improvements, high-level players (tournament winners), and people they already talk to for feedback (iirc they do that).

-Who would we (or Relic) choose candidates for a "Dream Balance Team".

I assume you mean "who would we chose for a dream team"? In that case, I'd say the same as above.

-Who has the final say in that team?

Ideally, no one. It's supposed to work by consensus, not veto. Either way, it would be important to keep a balance mod active to be able to test ideas they aren't sure on.

-Does being a good player mean good understanding of game mechanics and a "Balance Insight"?

Top tier players are almost always top tier with all factions, so yes. Being a good player requires a good understanding of how everything works.

-How can they co-ordinate with Relic about number of patches, fixes (which are actually more important than balance).

No idea.

-And finally, how would we respond to their decisions?

Likely quite well.

Wait, so you believe the miragefla patch wasn't coh2's 2.602?

More like 2.301.

"Consistently lucky" should be a red flag statement; if you have to appeal to people being "consistently lucky", your argument probably doesn't make sense.

Unless you believe that 'luck' is some kind of abstract property assigned to people, there is no way for anyone to be 'consistently lucky'. Being lucky many times in a row is itself just another form of luck, and by necessity, all the more rare. 'Consistently Lucky' could well be the name of a super power.

The net result is that while a player may be lucky or unlucky from moment to moment, being consistently lucky is inherently rare and infrequent. And something that is inherently rare and infrequent is usually not of sufficient concern to warrant doing much of anything about.

Firstly, I meant 'consistently lucky' within a single game; obviously no one can be 'consistently lucky' across multiple games. However, the possibility for a 'consistent luck' streak within a single game to massively influence the match just isn't acceptable in a competitive game.

For example, maybe early on you get that lucky mortar-RNG 'miss' that actually hits (per my description earlier). Maybe in mid-game, you get lucky and the faust misses your AEC/T70/etc. and hits the ground instead (I had this happen 3 times in a row in ONE game). Then maybe in late-game, you get lucky and the enemy AT misses 3-4 times in a row against your critically low tank.

Those 3 events in a single game would result in a MASSIVE advantage for the 'lucky' player, which the 'unlucky' player could do nothing to counter. For a competitive game, luck just can't hold that much power, even if it is an unlikely possibility. If in a game like 'Dota 2', the final match of a massive tournament was decided by a consistent string of "5% likely" events, people would be outraged. You can't give a team a $9m+ crowed-funded prize for being lucky - the donators demand that the game be dictated and decided entirely by skill; that's the point of the game.

And how often wipes you listed above happens? Once per X games? Plus they also happen in your favour.

In a team game (2v2), 'random' wipes probably happen a few times per game (even when I was a sub-200 player). And I'm aware they can happen in my favor; I just don't like it. It feels cheap to get an advantage by doing literally nothing.

By the way. If you are behind green cover with full health, why would you live cover? In cover you can't be wiped by mortar/nade.

It can absolutely happen, green cover is directional. IF the mortar lands on your side of cover, you'll take full damage. In addition, being in combat implies damage taken. That means you'll have less HP to 'tank' the damage from the mortar.

And if you here mortar shell coming it's up to you to decide if you want to stick to cover, wait for the shell and then move, or insta retreator move out of the cover before the shell hit, so you must consider that moving out of cover can mean that this shell will land perfectly on you.

By your own definition, standing there would be "stupidity"; but let's look at it anyway.

Firstly, a mortar can insta-wipe; the shell damage is enough to do that on a direct hit, and as I said before, green cover is directional. Secondly, hit probability increases as you get closer to the true target (the exact target point): being very far off is unlikely, being very close is quite likely.

Knowing that, we can do go through some simple logical steps to take:
1. A mortar is firing at my unit; hence the 'true' target is exactly where my squad is standing.
2. Hit probability is greatest at the 'true' target location, and decreases as I get further away.
3. I still want to project map presence in the current area.
4. I do not want to lose the squad.

Hence, the optimal choice is to move away. The sub-optimal choice is to retreat (keeps the squad). The least optimal choice is to stay (most likely mortar hit location).

In the case of the mortar-scatter-wipe, the most optimal and least optimal choice are literally inverted (with the bonus of the 'least optimal' choice reducing damage taken from the attack squad, due to green cover). This is bad. At a fundamental level, playing and winning games is based upon making the 'most' optimal choice.

Am I saying CoH2 needs to become a 'solved' game? No. But the most optimal and least optimal choices should never invert entirely due to RNG.

If mortat was aiming at this squad and you decided to move, it's not random wipe.

Scatter is a function of RNG, and that scatter dictates where the shell would land. If that landing point is both where my squad currently is, and is NOT exactly where the mortar was aiming at, it is LITERALLY a hit dictated by random chance.





With that said, I want to know: what would you classify as a 'random wipe', provided they even exist?

And what's is RANDOM wipe? Seeing that part of the map is under heavy fire and despite that going there with infantry just to get wiped?

Standing in front of tank?

Watching flying nade without trying to dodge it?

That's not random wipe. That's stupidity or being out-microed.

A random wipe, as far as I'm concerned, is a full-squad wipe in which the player losing the squad could NOT have prevented it. For example; you have a squad in green cover fighting an enemy, and hear a mortar fire (for the sake of argument, it's auto-firing; NOT manual). Knowing that the mortar is most likely targeting the squad in cover, you move the squad out of cover and get about 4m from where they were when the mortar hits.

The mortar hits your squad perfectly and wipes it, due to the mortar's inherent inaccuracy.

For the player who lost the squad, there was no 'correct' move. Staying in position would obviously result in being hit by the mortar, since that was the intended target. Moving away resulted in a squad being wiped ENTIRELY due to RNG.

The same can be said for when a squad's AI bunches it up while moving (bad pathing), and then is wiped entirely by an AT-tank in the FOW. Again, the losing player couldn't prevent this; the game's AI forced the models to group up. Furthermore, the squad was wiped by an AT-focused tank, not an AI tank.

Once per X game is not often.

If you would do this, you would kill the whole game.

It's not win-win situation. It's win situation for worse player.

Except it's not. The game isn't based entirely around RNG; yes, it has random elements, but the game isn't designed to be decided entirely by random factors. The better player SHOULD always win; not the one that was consistently lucky.

If I keep my squad in front of a tank and get wipe I should blame myself for not retreating.

If I couldn't dodge nade/wasnt aware of it, it's becasue my opponent out-played me.

Etc etc.

But these aren't random. These wipes ARE entirely preventable, so they aren't random. The ones I listed above, with no 'winning' move, ARE. This is what needs to be prevented.

I don't like the idea of negative zeal because it seems so artificial and visually unintuitive, but increased AoE suppression is something I'll perhaps play around with.

While it does seem a bit fake or unintuitive, there's a lot of things in COH2 that work like that. For example, iirc at close range some weapons ignore cover bonuses, and its literally never mentioned in game nor is there an icon for it.

Sometimes gameplay needs to use artificial mechanics to work better, and I think this is one of those things. Blobbing is just so rampant and detracts from the core design so much that I think anything that could stop it should be used.

That said, it doesn't need to be counter-intuitive. When units get close enough together to apply negative zeal, there could be an icon displayed (similar to the cover icon) indicating the negative effects are active. Also, it does make sense for a 'realistic' standpoint; one model is going to have an easy time firing at targets and getting to cover, 15 models in the same area will just be in the way of each other.

Readability; the ability to quickly understand exactly what is happening in-game.

We could have smoke rounds that flood an entire control sector with smoke that's higher than the building, but it would be completely unreadable. Similarly, we could have rail-gun arty with explosions the size of several buildings, with massive amounts of lingering smoke - again, completely unreadable.

The thing CoH2 did so well (compared to CoH1) was making the game much easier to understand. We have a nice list of all our units in the top right, with their status (in combat, suppressed, etc.), we have a cleaner mini-map (less random lines), a cleaner UI (less blank space)... this carries over to gameplay as well.

Giant explosions, clouds of smoke, massive craters - they all look good, but they're bad for gameplay. When arty hits, you need to be able to see if you're units are in the area of fire, how close they are, and even exactly where the shell hit (so you can guess the target area). CoH1's massive clouds prevented that. In addition, by having the sizes, colors, etc. change significantly between what were historically very similar shells, it allows the player to understand what is actually being fired at them; quite important since historically similarly performing units have such drastically different stats.

Contrary to popular belief, the goal of a competitive game's graphics ISN'T to look visually stunning; it's to provide all the information the player needs in a quick and effective manner.