United States
Nope you're wrong, if faction knowledge was enough then we would have 50% balance regardless of learning curve of each faction. But that's not the case, what bring this supposedly 50% between arranged teams (I didn't see any data supporting this claim) is communication that cover the gaps and lacks, with communication you'll obviously not ask an USF player lacking arty in its loadout to cover this function, but also - and more important - you'll define the strategy before the game start with specific commanders on each player's loadout, thing impossible to do in random.
You can be the best player in random, if you don't have the correct synergy with your random mates on each loadout as allied, then you've already lost unless facing much weaker opponents. Axis do not face this issue as their stock army already cover 100% of the functionalities required in any matches.
Then there are other aspects that favor Axis such as starting with the best unit available or being able to build them right from the start and having excellent synergy. Maps that are at best balanced between factions but for a big part favor Axis and obviously the best end game units stock wise and only sharing this state with some Commander specific units available on Allied side.
HMGs and Spio can be defeated easily with communication early on, the same with late game big units even if you don't have yourself any equivalent on the field, with communication. But communication isn't an active part of the game design, units haven't been designed with communication in mind. Communication just appears to be a decisive factor today, but that hasn't been always the case when the game was so badly balanced, even communication couldn't help.
Communication allows players to overcome gaps and lacks but is not part of the balance. Remove those gaps and lacks and Allied factions will not suddenly out pass Axis one on the the arranged team win rate, it will probably promote and enable more strategies, diversity and more commanders.
But we all know that gaps and lacks aren't going to be fulfilled because Relic doesn't want. That shouldn't be a problem, you can still balance the game with gaps and lacks but not with the decisions taken on the last patches.
^ Yep
If I'm not mistaken, both in coh1 and coh2, the reasoning for having gaps in the design of add on factions, was because they would release with really OP shit that breaks the usual mechanics of the game. At this point in the maturity of CoH2, those gaps have diminished significantly. UKF has had it's emplacement abilities so crippled that OKW is really the emplacement king, putting trucks all over the map that are extremely resilient and time consuming to dislodge. USF pretty much can't do anything well that I can think of. OKW has been warped into something very different from it's design(remember the reduced income?).
Relic Entertainment
