CoH3 faster VP tick rate

If anything I think people have indirectly asked for slower tick rates.

One complaint for Coh2 is that the window for light vehicle play is too small. So in some game modes, they are never even considered. Stretching out the game a little would give them more room to be viable.

Maybe Relics thought was making the VPs faster would force you to decide on early power spike with lights over mediums later? If you are far ahead, close out the game with lights early? This would be fine for 1v1s, but bad for 4v4s. Especially since 1v1 players dont actually like to "play" the game. They want a fast chess match and once they think they have won, they get upset it is not over already. 4v4 players want a long slog with much death and carnage.

Maybe that is the answer, different VP times for each game mode: 1v1 (fast) to 4v4 (slow).

It is really hard to say what will happen in 4v4 since we have a new resource system. Maybe 4v4 will not a be myopic fuel charge every game, so, with faster ticks the VPs may become as important as fuel is in Coh2?

Not having to push fuel early would be great. It caused faction imbalances in start times.

EXAMPLE:
OKW would swarm a fuel almost a minute before some soviet builds get there. By then it is too late because the OST MG is setting up.

Having more lower value points could spread the fighting.

CoH2 could have also had proper LVs, but the way unit balance was handled (instant snare and 2-3 shots to kill) led to LVs barely being usable in the late game. They later got some secondary function such as recon, but using them in a fight once the first medium was out was always very very risky and not worth the micro.
Relic fixed this in CoH3. The vehicles just generally survive more hits. I think that's the biggest change to them.
Different tick rates across modes might work too, but I think it would be very odd and lead to a ton of balance and timing issues. If at all, the tick rate should be different to what you suggested. Large modes in CoH2 have more resources and you'll always reach end game units. There's no reason to make the game longer by increasing the VP tick rate. Small modes have less resources available, those games should be longer.
But resources should best be fixed via maps. CoH2's problem was, that all points provide both resources and a fixed amount of them, while you could never contest points in the back and rarely cutoffs. There's no real shortage of resources in large modes.

If CoH3 allows to place more, but each less valuable points and the map makers take more into consideration how those points can be contested despite having more units on the field (->larger maps?), how smaller vehicles can still play to their mobility advantage etc, we will probably see less differences between all modes, which in turn should make units easier to balance.

That's independent of the tick rate though.

Thing is, most likely then not, Relic (or what ever decided to make VP tick faster), obliviously looked at CoH2 and not at CoH1.

In CoH1 there wasn't really that much staling, because you always could harass enemy income and lower his pop-cap via points.

In CoH2, since all maps had only 2 fuel and 2 muni points and standard points are basically important only as a cut-offs, this led to staling and fights pretty much exclusively for VPs.

In CoH3, relic basically introduced vCoH res.system, but at the same time VPs are made as if its still CoH2, where people fight mostly only for VPs. Not to mention the whole other bucket of balance and design decisions, which led to a stalemate games in CoH2, unless its a 1v1 and 2v2 to some extend.

the thing is, nobody or no majority asked for a faster tick rates.

4s is perfectly tried and tested and everyone enjoys the late game carnage. the back and forth, the downtime and breathing space.

so why cut to 3s now? who asked for it?

considering coh3 seems more heavy into vehicles, i can get 3 p4 easily. cutting down the play time seems wrong.

tanks move faster, we can transport troops now, and forward auto reinforcing.... i hope coh3 do not become like dow3 where everything just happens and concludes...

Endless whine for last 5 years about doing something about end game always regressing into heavy tank spam was indirectly asking for faster games as attempts of extending mid game itself by strengthening LVs opened an option to play, not the solution to the problem, faster tick rate fixed that.

Personally faster tick rates felt pretty good.

But again, is it a bad thing?
I don't know about you, but I tend to lose concentration if game takes too long.
I won't exactly miss seeing 3 tigers/churchills/whateversuperunitlategame in a span of a single game from a single player.

Hell, shorter games do fix a problem of skipping mid game, rushing for late game armor and spamming it.
CoH3 is definitely mid-game oriented compared to 2.

Fully agree. The pace of CoH3 seems much more action-packed and condensed, avoiding stalling and long drawn slug fests.

Really like the change.

C'mon we all know this was something AE asked for so he could get thru a tournament faster and not eat up his whole weekend

Endless whine for last 5 years about doing something about end game always regressing into heavy tank spam was indirectly asking for faster games as attempts of extending mid game itself by strengthening LVs opened an option to play, not the solution to the problem, faster tick rate fixed that.

True. The faster game time meant stalling was a riskier proposition than before. Even stalling for a tiger was risky as allies can easily overwhelm axis infantry with proper upgrades (even if Tiger evens this out through pure tankiness and shock value, they still have to pay that not insignificant 900 manpower plus tech costs).

The faster tickrate is awful. Endgame was the best part of the game in which you fought the hardest and had most tactical options at your disposal.
Now they just gutted the end game. The game didn't become faster as in "everything is sped up", but the end game just got cut short.

In Coh2 end game set in somewhere between 20-30 min mark and a really good and exciting match ended between 40-60 min mark. So about 50% of a "good" match was in the end game.
Now in Coh3 the late game of a good match is only 33% of the whole match.

The faster tickrate is awful. Endgame was the best part of the game in which you fought the hardest and had most tactical options at your disposal.
Now they just gutted the end game. The game didn't become faster as in "everything is sped up", but the end game just got cut short.

In Coh2 end game set in somewhere between 20-30 min mark and a really good and exciting match ended between 40-60 min mark. So about 50% of a "good" match was in the end game.
Now in Coh3 the late game of a good match is only 33% of the whole match.

This is exactly how I feel. In 3, once you get access to your full arsenal, the game just ends within the next couple minutes (but usually before if the match was even slightly uneven). And even if they were to balance the tech pace around the shorter game length, that would just make the early and mid game feel too fast. Even tech balance aside, I just like the mechanics of 40-60+ minute games because they're so personal and intense.

This entire change feels like an effort to fix what isn't broken. If anything, the tech pacing of 3 is even better than in 2, because light vehicles are so much more impactful, which was one of the weak spots of 2, where they had only a short window to be truly useful. I do not understand why they'd fix the midgame problem only to chop off the endgame reward that comes afterward. Totally counter-intuitive, in my opinion.

Endless whine for last 5 years about doing something about end game always regressing into heavy tank spam was indirectly asking for faster games as attempts of extending mid game itself by strengthening LVs opened an option to play, not the solution to the problem, faster tick rate fixed that.

I think that making games end faster is kind of a band-aid fix for the complaint that lategame devolves into heavy tank spam. I'd rather have games at the length of CoH2 (or perhaps longer) than be as pressed for time as I am in CoH3.

A better solution would be to rebalance heavy vehicles so that they are a less overpowering unit type. They ought to be a tool in your arsenal rather than something so dominating. Admittedly I don't know what this would translate to, precisely.

I think that making games end faster is kind of a band-aid fix for the complaint that lategame devolves into heavy tank spam. I'd rather have games at the length of CoH2 (or perhaps longer) than be as pressed for time as I am in CoH3.

A better solution would be to rebalance heavy vehicles so that they are a less overpowering unit type. They ought to be a tool in your arsenal rather than something so dominating. Admittedly I don't know what this would translate to, precisely.

Literally anything you could come up with, we have already tested and tried in CoH2 lifespan, it didn't worked as games still devolve into tank/heavy tank fests outside of 1v1.

The only time people didn't spammed them was when they were overnerfed out of the game to the point of being hinderance rather then asset.

Who actually pays the bills at Relic? Casuals.

Why do casuals play Coh? To get giant tanks and see how many kills their arty pieces get.

This should be Relics prime focus.

Secondary focus should be 1v1 tournaments to get eyes on the game. But even the biggest tourney only had about 2000 viewers versus the 200,000+ that will be playing Coh2 to get big tanks and kill counts.

Relic needs to focus on the exhilaration of ending a massive battle and checking out how your units did. That is the essence of sales.

Casuals do not want to play chess and could care less about the minute details of balance.

EDIT:
If I was head of marketing I would make a video of some massive battle with a team of people playing. And alternate between explosive kill shots and people screaming "WHOA DUDE! That was awesome!!!". Intercut with a close up of someone wearing a headset and a radio voice screaming "Oh man thats a big tank! Its a Tiger! Its a King Tiger!"

End it with "Company of Heroes 3! Dont just play the battle. Live the battle."

Literally anything you could come up with, we have already tested and tried in CoH2 lifespan, it didn't worked as games still devolve into tank/heavy tank fests outside of 1v1.

The only time people didn't spammed them was when they were overnerfed out of the game to the point of being hinderance rather then asset.

It didnt work because any of these ideas had to abide by the CoH2 gameplay framework. CoH3 is a different game with a budget for gameplay changes, I don't see any reason to give up on the concept of balancing heavies right now.

EDIT: Actually, you know what? Implement a resource cost of some type for repairing vehicles, that scales with the "value" of the vehicle. Or just for Heavies.

EDIT: Actually, you know what? Implement a resource cost of some type for repairing vehicles, that scales with the "value" of the vehicle. Or just for Heavies.

We had that in coh1.
It prevented you from reinforcing infantry if you had mechanized gameplay, pretty much PE problem, which is DAK here.

We had that in coh1.
It prevented you from reinforcing infantry if you had mechanized gameplay, pretty much PE problem, which is DAK here.

That's only if the resource is Manpower. Even if it is manpower, this would just put vehicles on parity with infantry in terms of bleeding. You can't reinforce your infantry if you're bleeding heavily through other infantry losses, either.

Tying it to only the heavier vehicles would alleviate the PE/DAK problem, in any case. Your Ultralights and Lights don't bleed, but perhaps your Tiger does.

I'm sure there's space to play around with this concept again.

We had that in coh1.
It prevented you from reinforcing infantry if you had mechanized gameplay, pretty much PE problem, which is DAK here.

Well what's the problem with that? In CoH2, for example, we have soviets choosing between T1 and T2, either opting for stronger infantry or better teamweapon support. You're giving up one for another, (or you could do both at great detriment to yourself) just like you theoretically might be doing in this situation for DAK; you either play mostly with infantry, mix both and play around manpower starvation, or focus mostly on vehicles.

I don't personally see that as a big issue, especially when DAK has all the tools necessary to make infantry gameplay work, as well as having powerful vehicles to base their mechanized gameplay around.

It would also temper the base battlegroups a bit, especially the tiger, which only has that manpower cost. If you've been pressing the advantage with tanks already, and paying manpower to keep them in fighting shape, then I think it makes perfect sense that you shouldn't be able to easily snowball with the 900 manpower Tiger. (Which would otherwise be easy because Tanks help to minimize manpower bleed without such a mechanic.)

I also didn't play CoH 1 PE extensively (or any faction particularly much), so maybe there's some huge element to this that I'm missing here.

Tying it to only the heavier vehicles would alleviate the PE/DAK problem, in any case. Your Ultralights and Lights don't bleed, but perhaps your Tiger does.

I'm sure there's space to play around with this concept again.

I agree. I don't think it's a bad idea in principle. Unless Katitof can bring some examples as to why it crippled PE in CoH 1 or something.

Snip

You forgot the part where they are eating Doritos and drinking Mt. Dew and at the end they say "So extreme!" while explosions go off in the background and air horns blare.

Well what's the problem with that? In CoH2, for example, we have soviets choosing between T1 and T2, either opting for stronger infantry or better teamweapon support. You're giving up one for another, (or you could do both at great detriment to yourself) just like you theoretically might be doing in this situation for DAK; you either play mostly with infantry, mix both and play around manpower starvation, or focus mostly on vehicles.

A simple one.
It was bad, unfun mechanic and you already committed infantry to repair it.
Hence it didn't made it to CoH2.

I don't personally see that as a big issue, especially when DAK has all the tools necessary to make infantry gameplay work, as well as having powerful vehicles to base their mechanized gameplay around.

It would also temper the base battlegroups a bit, especially the tiger, which only has that manpower cost. If you've been pressing the advantage with tanks already, and paying manpower to keep them in fighting shape, then I think it makes perfect sense that you shouldn't be able to easily snowball with the 900 manpower Tiger. (Which would otherwise be easy because Tanks help to minimize manpower bleed without such a mechanic.)

When infantry needs reinforcing and healing, you just need to put infantry back.
When vehicle needs repairs, you need to pull vehicle AND infantry back.

You already are paying with map presence.
And DAK Tiger is extremely hard to get in equal game, you pretty much have to have passive enemy or stomp to call it in, it might be fuel free call-in, but it is not efficient one at all, especially given how DAK has 1600MP worth of upgrades as well.

I also didn't play CoH 1 PE extensively (or any faction particularly much), so maybe there's some huge element to this that I'm missing here.

I did, it was my main faction, you were spending half the time repairing halftrucks and P4s if you didn't go for def vet doom-blob of assault PGs.
If you went for Hotchkiss spam, you didn't even bothered repairing them.
PE back then also had dual panther call-in, which was also unreachable against equal opponent, because you couldn't stockpile all that manpower with double bleed.
People in this thread complain about too short late game, mp upkeep for repairs would put late game even further back, making it even shorter.

I agree. I don't think it's a bad idea in principle. Unless Katitof can bring some examples as to why it crippled PE in CoH 1 or something.

I'll do you a better one, CoH3 does not use CoH1 manpower economy and price points, it uses CoH2 ones, because that kind of economy is much better, even with the homage to coh1 mp cap points.

The sole fact whole CoH1 economy was abandoned for CoH2 should tell you enough about validity of its solutions.

What is this argument that you can't do something because a game 10-15 years ago has also tried it and it was not fun, so it can never ever be tried again?

The world has moved on. We can try stuff with new technology and new ideas.

good points

Alright. All that is fair enough.

I do think that there is somewhere that this mechanic can be placed, though. I wouldn't have any issues with heavier tanks like the Tiger, Panther, Black Prince being subject to this manpower drain in some way. After all, such Tanks would require more resources to repair, being that their parts aren't made in as large of a quantity as the mediums and smaller tanks. What do you think?

I always was hoping that CoH3 was more light and medium tank focused. That's part of my biased reasoning for adding this mechanic.