Profile of Turtle

It will make the game different, with a chance of being better.

Anyone who thinks the game has no chance to be better from these changes are too mired in the past.

But, it's a very careful thing, and Relic/Sega hasn't shown they can do that.

Free to Play is happening, none of these changes would work without it. And these changes are happening. The question isn't whether you raging against it will do anything, but rather how you can guide it into something that plays better.

Relic will never change this.

Which is also why they've missed out on the entire growing market for team based RTS games. Relic doesn't have to, and should never try to chase stuff like the MOBA market, but there's a real reason why people stopped watching Starcraft 1v1s and starting watching 5 man teams doing amazing things together.

Sure, a lot of their players only do single-player or comp stomps. But that's because 3v3 and 4v4 are such a damn slog most of the time, punctuated by some amazing games once and a while.

Balancing HMGs has always been problematic.

Tune them to work too well at suppression and you have situations that video before, back when HMG teams were ridiculous.

There's just so little room to tune them that it's hard to get meaningful differences between 2 HMGs. I've always thought that for CoH2 they should have looked into more mechanics for them.

Stuff like the MG kubelwagon's ability to start firing instantly, but only suppress after a certain time is interesting.

Another aspect that they could use is Stopping Power, namely, an MG firing at a unit could slow that unit down if it was moving towards the MG but not if it was moving away or perpendicular to its line of fire. The effect would be small, but still significant, and would happen instantly. Units caught wouldn't be suppressed until they had been shot at the normal amount to be suppressed.

This would allow units to flank even if caught by just a bit of fire. It would definitely cut down on instances of squads Oorahing in to throw a molotov. It would also give time for the MG, even with low suppression, to suppress a unit it was directly firing at since that unit would be in its sights for longer.

It might be reasonable to alter weapon team behavior to include options for its members to stand back from the weapon, staying prone. Also alter the animations to have them get up and go prone at a faster rate.

It sacrifices their own shooting and efficiency for weapon survival.

It's not about being patient really, it's about expectations.
Expecting that a game of this level of complexity and volatility be balanced is unrealistic. There are too many variables, too many interactions and too many play-styles to consider. The best you can hope for is that it won't be horribly unplayable for too long, and that slowly but surely small steps towards balance are made, until the release of new content or until some fundamental mechanic is altered.

It's also unrealistic to expect the game to not change over time. The market is too oversaturated for a multiplayer game to survive more than a few months without releasing new content or having to re-invent itself. Yes this can cause frustration in people who invested a lot of time in learning the game only to find themselves having to relearn to play again after a new patch, but it's also the only way to maintain a healthy player population.

Actually, you can expect a game of this complexity to be balanced. And you can definitely expect them to keep working towards that balance if they want to keep selling DLC to us.

Expecting otherwise is null, you might as well not play anything if you don't expect some level of quality.

And we can point to many, many instances of Relic/Sega's own policies cashing in and sacrificing balance for that.

The people who want balance the most are also the ones most interested in the game changing over time.

I'm more than willing to have a proper level of patience, but don't confuse patience for blind acceptance.