Profile of bämbabäm

My general strategy is to go light on tier 1 (only 2 grenadier squads and an HMG) and then use call in Ostruppen.

Well, IIRC the OT call-in comes at 3CP in this doc, so you really can't do this with Mobile Defense IMO.

They could always just slow down the CP counts as well I think, so that way it makes it much more difficult to hold your lines with just standard T1/T2 units without teching for a duration of time.

Only down side to this is the possibility of losing early gameplay diversity due to it effectively slowing down the timings of 1-3 CP times of call in units.

Making teching more attractive through increasing the effectiveness of these units over call-ins is the way to go though.

Well, CPs are fine I think. Having T34/85, Tigers & co. arrive even later is maybe too much of a nerf.

Increase the cooldown to (at least) 5-10 minutes - no more call-in spam. It sure is no final solution, but at least will makes things a little better until they finally find a solution to the underlying problem.

For whatever reason, USF gets the most expensive MG that is also locked behind a fuel wall.

The performance of riflemen compared to other early infantry is the reason.

I'm going to take the side of the OP on this one. I just got WFA on sale and you can see on my player card that my experience with USF has been painful. I'm still provisioning some game types, but I have yet to win a 4v4 LOL. I can't do anything but laugh at that. I'll play soviet and win and I'll play Axis and hardly ever lose. I play USF and the bigger the game gets, the more frustrating it is. The difference is, I'm not playing stupid like the guy in the videos, I'm actually outscoring everyone in the game in damage and often time kills too.

Well, your 3v3 with random mates says 60% win rate. Is there really that much of a difference to 4v4?! I really can't imagine... (last time I played 4v4 was vCoH2 beta)

I think there are a few reasons that combine here to make USF such a pain in particular, but overall hard for newbs. We need newbs in this game or it doesn't grow. If it doesn't grow, Relic won't make money and Relic won't be able to make new shit or keep the lights on. So please cast out all that bullshit about how bad this guy played. That's what newbs are supposed to do.

Instead of focus on his bad play(which he acknowledged in the game is partly responsible), listen to what he is saying. I actually kind of like him, because he's very aggressive, which I find is often a problem with newbs. He wants access to more diverse units at the start. I don't think this is too much to ask for. The teching tree for USF is all over the place with a lot of basic shit being locked behind a substantial fuel wall. There is no standard mortar(unless you want to count the pack howitzer, which costs a lot of fuel to get access to), the basic MG is behind a fuel payment that is not given at the start, unlike everyone else. There is no sniper, lol.

The really sad part is that it feels like fixing the USF will actually require design level changes and Relic has yet to ever go back on design. What's here is here.

Well, they didn't want to make simple copies of the other armies, which is good IMO. US is hard hitting, but they can't take much of a punch (their vehicles). Therefore their late game units need more micro, while the slow axis heavies can take more hits and therefore are easier to keep alive for noobs. But on the other hand, OH early game needs more micro than US IMO, because you need to reposition your HMG often or get rushed by riflemen. The only option would be to make every stage of the game require equal micro, which would probably lead to armies beeing too similar to each other. But even then there would be the same problem we have now (which will never change): the grass will always be greener on the other side for people playing only one army / faction, as they never the game from another perspective.

The other major point I would bring up is the matchmaking logic. I oppose it greatly. The idea of adding up rank and trying to make allies equal axis as close as possible among all players is dumb. This tends to result in extreme skill mixing making for frustrating experiences for ALL players not in 1v1. I feel all the game should try to get players of equal rank as close as possible into the same game, instead of grabbing a newb here and there to complete the addition method. If you join the matchmaking pool for a 3v3 and your prestige 1 rank 1, the game should try to pull you 2 allies and 3 opponents where all those players are also prestige 1 rank 1. If it cannot find an exact match, then it can expand up or down from that point by say 5 or 10 ranks. With this method you will of course still have varying skills in the games, but you will not end up with some that are well versed in gameplay and others that are fumbling around trying to keep up.

Wouldn't it be much better if the noobs play the noobs and the vets play vets? It would make ranking happen perhaps a little slower, since some of these unfair games pay out a tremendous rank increase if you win the handicap, but each individual game would be much more satisfying to play.

I completely agree with you on that. But the problem here is the same problem that leads to the searching % we see: the playerbase is too small for such a game to allow this. It already takes a while to find a game the way it is now, but changing from team-ELO = const to player-ELO = const would make searching a game a PITA, even as allies.