Building a mod with just those features is, quite simply, a complete waste of time. That's because, even if the changes are reasonable, there's nothing interesting to test.
FRPs and Call-ins, sure; everybody knows those need a nerf.
Repair speeds? The only way to test this is playing a game and counting the seconds until your tanks are back online.
Emplacements? To test them, you need to find somebody that builds emplacements, and somebody that loves playing against emplacements. I don't know of anybody like that.
I understand. And to be absolutely clear, I am inquiring and trying to discuss, not trying to make the community patch maker into somekind of new nemesis like how Relic was treated by vast majority for 3 years. Now to many of those same people, Relic became the good guy LOL!
We've all watched the KoTH tournament and cringed together as some of the top players were misusing units and abilities. None of us saw a single game where Penals and DSHK were fielded in that series. This is, even though, nothing has changed between then and now (live version). During the tournament, Penals were considered a "dead" unit. That's because people didn't invest the time required to figure out the meta.
When people need time to figure out units and meta is good. I do not know when M8 HMC got buffed to 400hp but I used to and still go double scott 2v2+ for last six months because I realised how much of a wipe machine it was. And from my personal experience, I see more and more USF players getting Scott in team games past six months. Not all potentials are seen at first, second or sixth glance.
At the same time, even relatively minor changes require a lot of scrutiny. You can't have scrutiny without a lot of playing, and you can't have a lot of playing if the mod isn't engaging enough.
When we were forced to rush Maxim changes through the gate, we only had a week of preparation time, during that time we received a lot of feedback. However, during the remaining month people simply got bored of the GCS preview mod, we stopped receiving feedback altogether, and the result is the potato-level Maxim you can now experience in the live version.
So, there's no point in building a mod, if it is only ever going to be launched once and never replayed; We could have just stuck with the patchnotes instead and save ourselves months' worth of effort.
Also, I'm never going to make a bugfix-only mod ever again. There's no point in that, ever. There's simply too much effort involved in fixing the bug, wasting 100's hours of effort playtesting them, documenting them, asking for approval for Relic about which parts of the bug we're allowed to fix, then reimplementing the bugfixes, retesting them, re-porting the bugfix when it's time for the live version, re-playtesting it, etc. No; when I fix a bug, I want to play a game that's worth playing without having to encounter that bug again.
Yes, small changes need a lot of scrutiny to find out if they are needed. And a lot of scrutiny is needed to see if the changes was beneficial. And an astronomical amount of scrutiny is needed if you have million small changes.
I think that is my main case: touch as little and broadly as possible. You can still significantly change to game in a way that it is worth it. Just like how only bug fixing might not be worth it, I'd argue that micro management of individual units like you guys are doing with most infantry units are not worth it because it is and will be impossible to gauge how successful the changes are or even needed!
i.e. the Tommy change
"We find that the fact that Tommies have to endure extremes during the early game, makes play and counterplay options vs the British faction too narrow. A major reason for this are the relatively-high strength of cover bonuses in the early game, as well as the poor moving performance of the unit."
I don't get this argument at all. When Tommies are cover when you approach during early game, you dont touch the damn Tommies with 50m pole. You try to catch them in motion by engaging smartly like rushing head on with first sturmpio to catch the first Tommies offguard or by using hmg42 etc etc. I do not see what is limiting at all.
I actually want to know how many people that matter (constructive posters, top players) complained about Tommies to bring about this change.
Instead, the point of this mod is:
- to have changes prepared that are on a good enough level. E.g., if Relic wants us to redesign e.g., Soviet infantry, OKW scaling, indirect fire this is the template we would start from.
- Provide a glimpse as to how those changes would play out in the end. Do the factions end up being interesting and fun, or do you end up with Infantry & TD spam?
- Be fun and engaging enough to play, so that the forementioned points can be playtested sufficiently
If you want a starting point into the mod, focus on a particular matchup, and build up your knowledge from there. Pick 1-2 of the factions that received the least amount of invasive changes (e.g., Soviets, OST, USF) and stick with Vanilla commanders. Then, as you begin to feel more comfortable, fork out from there.
With all due respect, almost every changes except the four I mentioned are not really redesigning in terms of what "re-designing" means in this forum. Yes, technically everything you guys are doing is re-designing but in terms of CoH, it is really just re-balancing. 90% changes are not affecting the tech or a gameplay feature, they are just series of nerfs and buffs to make the infantry engagement slightly different than they are now.
If this was right after SNF5, I would completely back this project of micromanagement. I mean 5 cons v. 5 grens all the time was disgusting. But I saw diversity of playstyle among the top players in GCS and during my own games.
If you guys were experimenting with global upgrades to change the dynamics to add depth and more dynamics instead of just dynamics by nerfing and buffing, I would support fully because even though it would be harder to balance and cause more upheaval, I think it would be a worth while experiment.
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