Profile of braciszek

This is a necroed thread, look at the date of complaints. Stug e has been buffed nicely since these complaints.

INB4: Sorry for wall of text, but its my agreement with the OP and my explanation on why some things are "wrong" to design.

There are, unfortunately, design limits in video games. Not everything can be designed and expected to balance out with everything else through tinkering. Homogenizing things does make balancing a lot easier, but it makes things look dull and boring (and lazy). However, there are some fundamentals to design such as in a faction, and the basic fundamental is: "this unit is strong vs blah and weak vs bleh". Mg's are strong vs. all infantry and weak against flanking and indirect fire. Mortars are good vs. static positions but weak to direct confrontations. AT guns are strong vs. vehicles but weak to indirect fire, flanking, and infantry. Infantry are there to take the hits and provide infantry support. A big example of the breakdown of the basic "rock,paper,scissors" combined arms is WFA's strong design around superior and flexible infantry that can do the jobs of the mortar, the AT gun, and the mg.

USF has only one main infantry squad. Riflemen. They can be equipped with bazookas and take out tanks. They can be equipped with LMG's and be super powerful at range (mainly m1919 since BAR is medium range oriented). Also, m1919's have suppression options, because who needs to bother through the hassle of needing something as important as an mg? Technically, RE's can provide the job of suppressing, with volley fire and the building of mg defenses. Already the infantry take over the basic functions of an army. USF's mg is very powerful, but it can easily be defeated by the infantry squad it suppresses through the sheer firepower of the enemy and through grenades. The AT gun struggles to counter heavy armor. And the pack howitzer is slightly too expensive, making it a choice that is looked over. The support weapons, which should be strongly represented in every match, are underdogs while Relic's design of Riflemen "über alles" casts a shadow over what truly makes a faction.

OKW has no real support weapons. Taking the stock inventory into account, the two included support weapons cannot be relied on to do their function. The R43 is a defensive weapon, as it starts with shorter range and is best used in buildings. It also has a slow reaction time making it easier to counter with vehicles, the unit it is supposed to best counter. The kubel technically counts as an mg, but it cannot be relied upon past 10 minutes into the game. A core function that becomes redundant as the game goes on, regardless if it starts out powerful, is not a good model for reliance on support weapons. The faction's true mg, the mg34, is doctrinal. Automatically it does not serve a core faction because it is unfair to expect a player to select commanders with the mg34 every game. IMO, kubel and mg34 should be switched so OKW has suppression that can be used throughout the game and can choose a commander to be aggressive early game. Next, it takes forever for the leig to remove the enemy from afar. The same amount of resources can go to a unit that can march up the enemy and shred it in seconds. So while these options are crippled, OKW is designed so the player can indefinitely choose to build infantry that can obtain 5 levels of vet as to become powerful enough to erase their counters. Volks can have panzerschrecks which penetrate all stock USF vehicles at max range... (But the broken part is that handheld AT weapons give them vet, which ruins the entire vet system). While they may not have AI output, they eventually become super resistant to small arms and counter nearly all vehicles. For AI firepower, they have obersoldaten which also become super tough, but mainly they have extremely high firepower for a mere manpower cost... Which is credited to a weapon that is usually mainly obtained through a secondary currency, munitions (not helping that the lmg34 has twice the DPS of the lmg42 and can be shot on the move, but not saying that m1919's are that much better at being broken). Plus, obersoldaten eventually gain the ability to suppress squads. Vetting isnt hard with a high DPS LMG. Being designed different is not exactly good for the game...

While Soviets and Ostheer arent perfect either (in which the SU is based off of vCoH US design), at least they were designed around the tested idea of core fundamentals, valuable information gained from the progress of CoH's balance. So I am allowed to tell recommend people to buy CoH2 WFA 5 years from release, which includes aspects that will take years to refine to be accepted as a polished game. So technically, WFA was not finished the day it was released.

SUM: WFA factions are a good example of the breakdown of combined arms mentioned in the OP, and Relic's use of untested success in design has led us to our current situation. This i bet is why the RTS business is fairly small, since its so hard to make a game where all the factions arent alike, and for the game to be balanced and interesting - not faction biased in areas. The genre being designed around WW2 doesnt help.

Its mainly about faction design. As long as terrible design choices with little foresight arent permanently put into the game... Then it could work.

Im hoping before any new content is added that they would release a good and reasonably priced(AA ruined hope for that) Kursk DLC, with new commander and new units. I think I remember Relic mentioning that it was somewhere in their agenda? - That was mentioned months ago and perhaps on the official forums. Anyways, it would be the first thing worked on if they planned to expand on the Eastern Front.

I would expect more factions within a year of WFA's first mentioning, but if Relic decides to release new factions every year like that, then... Damn. Good luck with balancing.

As for next faction preference, Japan-USMC could be cool, but in order to be balanced, they would have to be alone and separate. I feel like it would hinder the design potential of both if they have to be balanced against factions other than each other. The reason being is that i cant see Japan surviving against ISU's and IS-2's. They never faced those, at least if Japan's forces are designed around the Pacific front. It would be too silly to design a faction based on a real nation and give it the ability to fight enemies it did not fight, since the army is certainly not oriented around fighting an army it did not encounter.

Commonwealth, on the other hand, could be designed with the other four factions. Powerful enough and their army composition fits the game. Italy could be a candidate as well, but i wouldnt know how to start to balance and design their army to survive the current Allied factions.

There is still a grenade bug in the game. Riflemen dont like using AT nades or smokes. Fusilier AT nade also fails like the riflemen AT nade.
But i dont think it only applies to riflemen. I told a shock squad to throw a grenade at a house, and Dimitri held the grenade close to his ear as if he was listening to the ocean from a sea shell. Anyways, i cancelled the move and told it to throw the grenade again and Dimitri did the same thing. Only until i told the squad to move 5 feet to the left did Dimitri throw the grenade.

And the trend of allied players not wanting to use combined arms continues.

"Allied players". Its the meta of every faction spamming their best unit which is more effective than bothering with weapon teams that get mowed down by said blobs. It does not only affect "Allied players". Unless you know how to effectively win better than the meta as "Allies" using said combined arms.