Wow, I seriously hope you are trolling or being sarcastic.
Bringing a non-balanced game to the competitive scene is unrealistic.
I can't say what will happen with Relic's attempts at entering the competitive scene. But there are tournaments now ( I don't need to tell you that I guess), and a ladder. Therefore there is some level of competition even in this state. So really it's just a matter of the player's perspective of "what is balanced enough" to get them to stick around.
That being said. I don't ever expect this game to be statistically balanced on all maps for every possible commander choice. Do you honestly?
The population is going down as we speak, I don't have the table with me but VonIvan posted it somewhere.
Rethink your answer.
The population for the vast majority of games out there follows a decaying exponential curve broken up by peaks of activity with the release of new content, sales and school vacations.
Here's the steam chart for CoH2: http://www.steamcharts.com/app/231430
The exceptions to the rule are the likes of TF2, Dota2 and CS:GO.
The only realistic goal for Relic is to make that decaying curve as flat as possible while introducing meaningful content in order to bring in new players.
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Also just a note about being patiënt.
I agree to a certain point, but the game is over a year old and balance is not good. After a while people get tired about the fact that the game always changes, going from left to right and still not being balanced.
Its a gamr you bought to enjoy, not to wait a year and still be frustrated.
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. |
While CoH2(The Western Front Armies expansion to be specific) is actually fun to play, CoH1 is just simply better I think for a number of reasons.
First of all, CoH1 just feels better and the mechanics just seem to work better and dare I say flawlessly. CoH2 has improved on some of those mechanics and taken steps back as well, and CoH2 also has more bugs from my experience but not enough to severely drag down the games merits.
CoH1 also had the British Army so that automatically makes it better than CoH2 in my opinion. Relic can remedy this though by reintroducing the British Army in CoH2, by giving it an overhaul so it doesn't feel like they're copy-pasting the British faction from CoH1 into CoH2.
If we actually get off the "I hate CoH1 bandwagon" and look at CoH1 objectively, then it's pretty clear that it's a damned fine game and one of the greatest rts games ever created. Everything in CoH1 works flawlessly from doctrines, unit abilities and to map design. CoH1 also has less bugs than CoH2, but i'm inclined to believe it has more to do with the CoH2 engine than the devs themselves; CoH2 is horribly optimised due to the engine and not even Valve I think could work with the CoH2 engine and fix it.
Now, there's a number of reasons why CoH2 isn't as good as CoH1 and why Relic isn't the same anymore, but a large part of that is because the original team(Josh Mosqueira, Brian Wood and etc) isn't the same team that made CoH2. As much as I hate to say that one man really made CoH1, Josh Mosqueira was an extremely skilled developer and him moving to Blizzard(Who proceeded to lead the development on Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls mind you) really hurt Relic. The fact that Brian Wood(Another CoH1 veteran dev) died leaves not that many veteran people left that worked on CoH1. Quin Duffy comes to the top of my head as one of the few veteran developers that's still with Relic.
We also can't forget that the whole bankruptcy incident with THQ really affected the quality of CoH2 when it initially released, so there's another reason why Relic ins't what it used to be compared to their 2006-2010 version.
That's right. vCoH is superior, dare I say perfect, because some people felt objectively better playing it. Also, the initial developers had names and have moved on to better games whereas the current developers are still working on CoH2. Oh and the British. |
Disagree. OKW units in general have to be seen in the light of their whole faction design. Thats how Sturmpios make sense.
It's not about disregarding the faction balance as a whole, it's about having a discussion on a single subject at a time (because humans are terrible at multitasking ideas).
Here, we discuss whether or not the puma overperforms, not how the faction balance will be affected by any nerf or what else needs to be buffed.
On topic, yes I think the puma overperforms. It's too good at too many things and not intuitive to counter as it performs more like a tank than a car.
I acknowledge that other stuff will need to be looked at should this unit be nerfed further. |
It worked fine in vcoh and that game didnt have this high upkeep system which is way better and should be switched to.
How do you know it worked fine? And what is "fine" anyway? |
Choose different cities to run tests with. It might be worth choosing one near where Relic's stats servers are (although I have no idea where that is).
I think it's in New York. |
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Increasing the CP cost on callins based on current performance is probably the easiest solution.
That's the core of the issue after all:
It's simply too easy and cost-efficient to hold out until callins are unlocked.
So make it harder to hold out. The mechanism for that is already in place. |
Back in vCOH, the upkeep of each units are different, it really helps balancing the ridiculous spam. I have no idea why COH2 making simplified, the more popcap you have, the more upkeep you pay, and let those stupid crap happens. Both players spam up to 8+ Cons to 5+ T-34/85 without a single building. No one would crazy enough enjoy playing against this bullshit.
Relic, if you want COH2 being more success than vCOH, please give up that stupid system, it is the only logical way to solve blobs problem.
But the upkeep of each unit IS different in CoH2 as well. Can you detail how the old upkeep system would help discourage the kind of spam you describe?
This looks to me like the same old call-in efficiency problem, and not necessarily a population problem. |
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It's a long one but there's some nice tank micro on Blitz' part and lots of volks flaying about.
gg |
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+1 To everything (except maybe OST sniper changes).
-I'd also add in the su-76 <-> t70 swap.
-Manpower to fuel conversion in soviet industry needs to be looked at as well. It feels more like a penalty than anything else.
-Luftwaffe commander used to be UP in 1v1. Now that drops can't be stolen, it actually feels balanced. I can see it being problematic in team games though. |
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