Profile of Tenshi

Hi!

I feel like I'm kinda cursed. I really like strategy games and I love CoH. I've played thousands of CoH games (inc many ranked, not just Scheldt wankathons), and although I cant say I was every awesome at it, I could stand my ground. My last account was over 1:1 win:loss. I know that people talking about balance or whatever need to have experience behind them else they're probably biased, but I feel like I have at least put the hours in to have a valid opinion.

Thing is, I really want to like CoH2 but so far playing it is like running at a wall face-first. I play mostly as Germany so far (an arbitrary choice but thats that). I'm having trouble getting on-board. I've played many ranked games of all sizes and yet to get near winning. In fact I have yet to even begin to get a vision of what winning would even begin to look like*. I mean I obviously know how the game works. I'm not a moron.

Firstly most often the Russians somehow have FAR more experience than ours. Maybe I'm unlucky, since german players outnumber russian ones by a few times. I don't get how that even works. But whether they are more or less experienced they seem to, with few exceptions, destroy my team in every game, sooner or later, often winning by 400+ points. I assume the game can't be that unbalanced. I'm sure if I switched to russia I would be no better. I don't want to be that guy, that assumes the game is unbalanced because I'm crap. But surely, by chance alone, I should have won by now.

Secondly so much of what I like about CoH seems to have been obfuscated. Like, I really can't grasp the point of blizzards. I don't see the point in the whole map being a deathtrap. I don't see why mortars are even in the game since everyone has them. They're just boring. I don't get why killing a russian weapon team is a weekend project for grens, while conscripts can take a burst from an MG in the face and force a retreat with a molotov. I get flanking and placement. I played mostly as USA later in CoH. I like the technology of LOS visibility but combined with blizzards and weird terrain it encourages indirect fire spam. And feels kinda arbitrary... when a randomly parked tank shoots a shell from two screens away and ruins a tank I am trying to micro against some infantry.

I am trying to phrase this in a constructive question other than WTF?? but I'm struggling. Is this normal? Am I supposed to get hammered by the world (who all seem to be innate experts) for ages then something will just click? What is that thing?

*with 2 exceptions. My first game was 2v2. We dominated for most of the game and then lost. Probably mostly by my exasperation at what was happening. I concluded that in order to win we would have had to have literally murdered them and destroyed their base as soon as possible (kinda like playing against Wehrm in innihilation in CoH), which kinda makes me wonder what VP is for. The other exception is a game where we did win, but I got kicked because of a lag vote made possible by one of their team lagging throughout the game (which used to happen in CoH).