Profile of CieZ

Dusty... you are the weirdest person in the CoH 2 community.

That being said... I you.

I might solo cast this or something tomorrow out of boredom/waiting for the patch if I have time.

Personally I think the only things that should 1 shot squads are off-maps or other artillery type units. Off maps are almost always avoidable, but should punish people who aren't playing attention. Artillery like the werfer/katy/howitzers is generally avoidable and doesn't wipe main-line infantry too often - plus there needs to be a solid counter to massed support weapon teams in the mid/late game - and vet on support weapons, while nice, is not as impactful in most scenarios as vetted elite infantry. I think the walking stuka could use a minor nerf, or a slightly longer time between showing the shadows of where it is hitting, and it actually landing. This way it would still be great against support weapons, but avoidable for other squads.

I mean, to be fair - double Soviet is the strongest 2v2 combination for sure. But to make such sweeping claims as Sierra has made, they must be... tested...

That incident was a while ago and I think both sides have said more than enough on the subject. Can't we all just go back to making fun of evalance?

I approve of this message

I'm probably biased in favor of Brad because of having played with him so much on live and alpha, he's actually really chill - but a lot gets lost in translation on the internet. He probably shouldn't have done what he did but oh well. Enough about Brad... HOW BOUT DAT EASY WIN?

Nice post Pwnage, and others.

To clarify a little bit on the section of my post about RNG - RNG is a good thing in games, even competitive ones. It makes the game harder, or impossible to "solve" and increases replay-ability. Plus it forces the players to constantly make on-the-spot decisions more frequently and rewards good game instincts and gut reactions. This is one of the things I love about CoH 2 compared to SC 2 (which is an amazing RTS in it's own right) - but SC 2 meta tends to revolve around really specific "solved" timings and build orders on the maps. You have to memorize like 25 different opening timings (down to the second) for each match up and other stuff like that. For people that like chess style RTS, SC 2 is great. For those of us that don't - it gets tedious.

Anyways, infantry RNG with accuracy, cover etc is a good thing. It keeps you on your toes early game but experienced players will be able to determine which unit will win any given infantry fight at least 90% of the time. Sure sometimes the Cons are just going to kill two models while running through the red cover road even though your Volks are in green cover. It happens. But you can still react and retreat your Volks and if this engagement, or a similar one (where you opponent makes a bad move) happened another 10 times in the game, you'd come out ahead. You can recover from something like that. Even AT gun and tank RNG is fine with penetration and front/rear armor - because, again, the player has a lot of influence over the range at which they're engaging and whether or not they're pushing for the rear armor, etc etc.

I think you guys get the point.

Now, my gripe with some of the current RNG revolves mostly around squads getting randomly 1 shot. As I said before, there's no counter play to this. Oh look the ISU just killed ANOTHER vet 5 Volk squad with schrecks. First of all, it took no skill whatsoever of my opponent to do that - the tank saw the Volks and boom they're gone. Sick. Second of all, outside of trying to spam move orders to force to squad to not clump up or being paranoid and retreating constantly every time I think the ISU is going to shoot, there's no counter play. (Neither of these things really work anyways). No amount of skill on my part will overcome that ISU 1 shotting my squads. My cat could be "microing" the ISU, and it'd still 1 shot things. Bad design, bad for competitive play.

Then onto truly game breaking (as if losing vet 5 squads in the blink of an eye wasn't bad enough) RNG like abandons and death crits. I'll cite mine and Sib's recent game 1 vs allstars in Romeo's tournament. I don't want this to come off as QQ I lost b/c of RNG - that's not what I'm getting at. I played the early game *VERY* poorly (losing my sturms and kubel in like 6 mins) and could have played the end better (allstars played well, not taking anything away from them either) but there was some really frustrating RNG. In this one game alone their M3, Katyusha, and ISU 152 all got death crits, preventing them from being destroyed. All of these units have a big impact on any game that they're in. So let's break it down, for those that are still reading this long post.

M3 - M3 is really hard for OKW to deal with early, it helps having Ost in the game for fausts but the M3s ability to harass and chase goes unopposed for a while. Getting a death crit on the M3 from my first schreck shots is disappointing because I made that investment (instead of mines or nades or G43s) in order to counter the M3. I should have gotten the kill, I didn't - my investment was in a way punished and my opponent got to continue being annoying with the M3 in a situation where it should have been dead. Poor design, especially on a little scout car. Like is it really going to still be driving after getting hit in the face with a schreck? Cmon now...

2 - The Katyusha. Sib actually recon'd and stuka bombed the Katyusha because it was vetting up fast and causing us a big headache. Allstars were pre-occupied with micro elsewhere and didn't notice the Katy being Stuka'd. Killing this would have had a HUGE impact (I'm pretty sure it was already vet 2 at the time). Instead - it gets a death crit, gets a ton of vet, Sib threw away a ton of munitions for nothing (there's no way he could predict a death crit). Obviously this is a huge swing in momentum AND additional levels of vet for the katy. So really, because of this death crit we helped our enemies. And plus, how is a Katy going to live from a giant bomb being dropped on it?

3 - This was the biggest of them all, the ISU 152. So it was super late in the game, both teams were low on VPs and I had a ton of resources banked - enough for another JT actually. I had been playing the keep-away game with the ISUs for a while, since the JT can never really kill ISUs against decent opponents - but at least I can control the VPs and bleed and just hope that my squads don't die faster than the enemy bleeds VPs. So anyways allstars makes a solid flank with some T34/85s and calls in a bombing run on my JT. Good move by them - puts me in a rough spot. Luckily their ISU is 1 hit from dead, and I have a second JT coming. Instead of trying to save my JT - which probably wouldn't have worked anyways, I go for the trade. I wanted to trade my JT for their vet 2 ISU - since I have another JT coming and they have like 30 VPs or whatever left. All I'd have to do is keep their second ISU away long enough for them to bleed. My JT gets the kill shot on the ISU, it connects anddddddddddd main gun crit. My JT dies (as I knew it would) and now instead of my one new JT vs their one new ISU it's my fresh JT against a vet 2 ISU AND a fresh ISU. No way to win that. Had their vet 2 ISU died, as it should have, they couldn't have pushed us out of mid and would have bled the final VPs.

Anyways, I'll say it again - my explanation was NOT meant to be QQ or take anything away from RunToTheSun and Symbi, they played pretty well. I definitely played poorly for most of game 1. I just wanted to use a recently example to highlight the ways in which even tiny amounts of RNG (5% chances) can end up swinging a game drastically. It's frustrating as a player to lose a game off of a 5% chance, especially when you make the right call and in 95 games out of 100, you would win because of the call you made.

TLR - Some RNG is good, and should stay. Infantry combat, indirect fire and tank combat are all examples of this. Death crits, abandons, 1 shot'd squads, immobilize/engine destroy etc are bad RNG and are extremely detrimental to legitimate competitive play.