Profile of Fluffi

penals, to me, always had a (suicidal) tank hunter theme, so I think PTRS would feel right on them, intuitively.

Make the Penal PTRS upgrade requiring an additional building (T2/T3), and you can even increase a little its performance.
Otherwise people will simply spam Penals, get half of them PTRS and wait till IS-2/ISU or M4c sherman spam.

In general, more tech-dependant unit upgrades would make the tech tree more interesting, while making it feel more rewarding and giving a sense of progression.

I don't know, I wouldn't mind a new setting, I think. But no future bullshit, please, unless it has a quality backstory on Half Life 2 level. Everything that isn't a grim, atmospheric dystopia is annoying when it comes to future settings. Like, please no shiny buttons and shit, please no!

The problem with the ww2 setting is, that, as time passes, the whole emotional black-and-white portrayal becomes more and more difficult, since, through time progressing, it all becomes less emotionally involved.
What I mean is, it gets harder to hate the germans in games . You will notice, if you look at the tone of CoH 1 without expansion, that they were shown more like cartooney villains, but that tone has become more and more neutral. And it had to because if they want to make their regular soldiers out to be some inhumane monsters, all of them, people just find that iffy nowadays.

You know, that's the neat thing about settings like Starcraft or Lord of the Rings: The footfolk of the bad guys are not human, they are some despicable monsters, that makes it much easier to hate those guys.
I mean, if I play a game, I don't want realism, where there's no absolute good or absolute bad; in a game, I prefer black and white.
What I'm saying is, the germans are not the perfect bad guys they used to be. Even though history has not changed and we know they had an iffy political leadership / ideology to say the least, the perception of the regular footfolk has become more differentiated, making it harder to portray them as cartooney villains all together.
That might be a good thing per se, but since in games the footfolk are what you're gonna be killing most of the time, they have become less ideal bad guys, If you know what I mean.

Yes, over the top black-and-white can be shitty: Example: In vCoH 1, just look at the intentional ugly design of Grenadiers and the idle lines of the Wehrmacht faction. Then again, I never had a problem with the evil, cartooney lines they gave some Wehrmacht guys, in fact, I found that whole underlying tone of indoctrination and all (they even had red flags on the HQ) interessting, it made it more like a movie, more emotionally involving. Even if it's a bit over the top. Where it went too far for my taste was when they intentionally uglyfied the basic german footfolk, the Grenadiers, and still insisted that these represent regular troops of germany, even in the ingame unit description. Because then they got into the territory of willingfully dehumanizing them. But that is a detail many missed since they didn't bother zooming in all the time...

So what does all that mean for CoH 3??
It means: Relic, get the tone right!! The tone in CoH 2 (base game) was not too engaging, the germans had unknown uniforms that took away WW2 feel. WW2 is a brand. It has iconic things, iconic uniforms! Use them if you make World War games!
The germans of the Wehrmacht faction in CoH 2 didn't sound german enough and didn't look german enough. You have to be on point with the germans if you make a WW2 game in the European Theatre. Bring back a more cinematic feel to the genre, a bit more exaggerated, a bit more dripping with underlying tones of ideology, but refrain from plain insults like the Grenadier uniforms in CoH 1!

^^the same stuff also applies should they go for another historical setting or a contemporary one.

n
v
m

CoH 1's basic soundtrack was kinda boring. In multiplayer, there was only one track playing, and it was meh. Oppossing fronts made things a bit better, but it brought weird factions in exchange...

CoH 2's basic soundtrack gets the job done, but I personally find the soundtrack of WFA and The British Forces much more interesting and pretty perfect (even though it was the same composer, I think...).


Relic: It would be nice if community-made maps added to the map pool could have the WFA or Brits Soundtrack playing (at least if they are set on the western front) instead of the same generic eastern front one which is less enthralling, imo.