Profile of Napalm

Hello internet strangers,

Welcome to hard dose of reality. Today I'd like to talk about a the black swan of balancing issues and that is the 4v4 game mode.

The problem

Axis are simply better at 4's than Allies. The only hard data (publicly available) to support this is the win/loss ratios. Hats off to community member Legends for putting this data together. You can read more about his assembled data here.

- Soviet OKW US Ostheer
4vs4 0.543 0.854 0.576 0.832

Compare this to the 1v1 game mode and you'll see that the gap has closed substantially. One could almost say that 1v1 is rather balanced.

- Soviet OKW US Ostheer
1vs1 0.709 0.698 0.664 0.667

If you are a fan of data and having hard numbers available, please consider supporting my numbers are sexy thread on the official forums. Ultimately, Relic holds the key to that beautiful data.

What cannot be done

What could Relic do to close the gap for that win/loss ratio in 4's? Could they hammer the OKW units with a series of nerfs? Sure. Could we remove some commanders away from the OST? Yep. Could we limit super call in units? I don't see why not. The catch to all of these things is that in reality, they cannot be done without affecting the balance of 1's. Relic has stated the following about the matter:

To be clear the team still works on balancing the larger games, but they start by building up from 1v1 upwards. If 1v1 isn't balanced it's unlikely that 4v4 will.

It's a building block, the base. - Noun

In my opinion, ignoring 1's for a moment, doing the above would just kind of make the game a little more boring and stale. How many times have you had an Axis opponent drop because they lost their precious Tiger Ace?

The real issue

What is the real reason why Axis are so damn good at 4's? I've given this a lot of thought and I can say it is three things.

• Better armor. In 1's the better armor is managed by Allied players through combined arms. In 4's it is not as easy as the combined arms counter is countered by the Axis combined army. For example, a JadTiger with King Tiger and regular Panther's as support are better than an Allied combined army of Sherman's supported by a Jackson and an ISU. Some of the Axis armor also has high survivability with smoke and blitz being available. Because of the inability to kill the armor it contributes to the "critical mass" theory presented by ohme. At some point in time the Axis armor will out number the Allied armor and a comeback will be highly improbable.
  
• Doctrines that work well together. Luftwaffe Supply, Elite Troops, Breakthrough and a commander with a 'halo bonus' unit. Not much needs to be said about this combo as it really speaks for itself. You have a doctrine that can provide resources, training, excellent late game armor, and a 'halo bonus' to the already good armor. This is just an example team composition but others exist. Over time I suspect Axis players will start to run with both the Command Panther and Command PiV as their halo bonus's apply to all team members armor.
  
• Resource starvation is less of a hindrance in 4's as the OKW can allow their team members to do the heavy lifting early and mid game and bring out the unlimited King Tigers in late game. Because this unit is non-doctrinal every OKW player poses a late game threat.
  

What could be done

I like this game. I want to keep it interesting and dynamic. I feel the best way to solve the problem is through the introduction of additional Doctrines. These Doctrines would have a very specific gap to fill.

• USF needs its version of the IS2/Tiger/and to a lesser extent a King Tiger.
  
• Both Soviet and USF need doctrines that provide units with a 'halo' style bonus.
  
• USF needs its version of Soviet fuel drops/OST fuel and munition drops/OKW munitions to fuel ability.
  

I believe if the doctrines are well thought out it would have no harm on the balance of 1's.

The challenge

This community will have to come to terms that this requires DLC of some sort. Relic will also have to acknowledge that this is indeed a problem that needs resources dedicated to it to fix.

Much rawr

Don't praise them too quickly about fixing 3v3 and 4v4 game modes. Lets see it action for awhile. There are some reasons why these game modes can never be balanced but I'll get into that in another thread.

The paying customers whom bought this game for the larger game modes would argue otherwise.

Add me on steam and find out. We have a few exotic bears around these parts.

Welcome to The Angry Bears.