Why are there so few good players in the CoH2 playerbase.

I don't think success has to be measured for "true competitive RTS games". If a strategy game as a whole is successful it can be the basis of a great multiplayer game through some balancing. I think that is the case with COH1. Probably most never played multiplayer in the beginning. (I didn't for over a year. Played campaign a few times, got bored but wanted a lot more so I clicked on the "Lobby" button and the rest is history.) And they could do whatever they wanted to balance the Wehr because no one played it in the campaign.

Total War certainly been successful franchise, but there is just way too much going on to balance all the factions especially since between the turn based empire portion and the tactical map rts there are soooo many moving parts. but it had a lot of people playing multiplayer, perhaps in the beginning as many as COH.

But the TW tactical engine might be an interesting start as an engine for a WWII squad/platoon level game. (would be interesting to use fuel instead of fatigue, have ammo limits on each unit, with the need to replenish). It already takes into account missiles, terrain, artillery, etc.

Number 1 - No rank system. Check any standard motivation table, you'll see "Recognition" high on the list. That goes for work as well as sports and hobbies.

Number 2 - No professionally organised tournaments. Kreatir and co. do a very good job but they don't seem to get support or sponsors from Relic. I could be wrong... I've rarely seen tourneys advertised in-game and rarely seen attractive prizes. Why invest a lot of time to become "pro" when there's no pay-of? Pros get paid. CoH2 doesn't pay.




I also think as Ohme said, they got cheesed and left. They come and have to face:

Blobs. US+OKW are blob-friendly. Blobbing kills this game.

Snipers/M3HT/Maxims - zero fun. Legitimate strategies but zero goddamn fun to face.

T0 vehicles when all you have is inf

Soviet core infantry not scaling. Goodbye vetted units, goodbye, you die so that I might live free of popcap.

RNG
RNG
RNG RNG
RNG

Hard to predict what's gonna happen = squad wipes.

And speaking of squad-wipes, the biggest turd in the CoH2 toilet = The ISU-152. I think that alone accounted for a large chunk of players. That and the SUPERTANK META

and shitty cheap 1-shot-kill soviet mine + demo spam >:/

Number 1 - No rank system. Check any standard motivation table, you'll see "Recognition" high on the list. That goes for work as well as sports and hobbies.

Number 2 - No professionally organised tournaments. Kreatir and co. do a very good job but they don't seem to get support or sponsors from Relic. I could be wrong... I've rarely seen tourneys advertised in-game and rarely seen attractive prizes. Why invest a lot of time to become "pro" when there's no pay-of? Pros get paid. CoH2 doesn't pay.




I also think as Ohme said, they got cheesed and left. They come and have to face:

Blobs. US+OKW are blob-friendly. Blobbing kills this game.

Snipers/M3HT/Maxims - zero fun. Legitimate strategies but zero goddamn fun to face.

T0 vehicles when all you have is inf

Soviet core infantry not scaling. Goodbye vetted units, goodbye, you die so that I might live free of popcap.

RNG
RNG
RNG RNG
RNG

Hard to predict what's gonna happen = squad wipes.

And speaking of squad-wipes, the biggest turd in the CoH2 toilet = The ISU-152. I think that alone accounted for a large chunk of players. That and the SUPERTANK META

and shitty cheap 1-shot-kill soviet mine + demo spam >:/

This is funny. Aside from "USF + OKW blobbing" every single thing you named was a complaint about allies and nothing about axis....

So people aren't playing because they all came to play axis and got cheesed on??? I am guessing not. I am guessing the problems like in both sides. And almost all of of the cheese stems from too much "difference" in the factions and too much play that doesn't actually look kind of like WWII (which is what they were looking for when they came to this). It is semi infantry combat to blobs to super tanks. vCOH at least mostly looked like what they expected and it took a bit to find the cheese because most games didn't have it. In COH2 it is often all you find.

I loved CoH 2 but after a year and a half of constant bugs (some of which were game-breaking), slow patches, poor balance, lack of competition (not saying I was the best - cuz I Wasn't - far from it; but it was still hard to find good games), lack of true competitive events (we had what... two? SNF and the Alienware which turned out to be a huge flop).

There are simply games with better communities and better competitive scenes out there.

I've tried playing a few games of CoH 2 here and there but... it just doesn't feel the same. Blobbing, spamming, instant squad wipes, crazy super tanks (ISU, Elefant, KT, JT) that make actually teching irrelevant. I mean what... we've had a call-in dominated meta for a year now? Maybe longer? It just gets old.

They've been trying to fix some things like guard button, and they fixed mark, and I guess they sorta fixed Soviet mines but we're left with Maxims, Soviet Snipers, M3s, Kubels, flame crits, B4s 1 shotting vehicles, schreck blobs, demo charges gibbing squads, terminator Obers, unkillable Tigers 2 shotting ZiS crews... I think I've made my point.

I guess, to sum up this post, over time I feel like the actual skill ceiling in CoH 2 has dropped drastically while the low-skill crutch style game-play elements have been buffed. Just doesn't lead to fun, innovative or challenging game play. Losing because a B4 one shots my P4, or because I, god forbid, actually tech instead of camping for a tiger and T34/85s come to ruin my day plain sucks.

Edit: It also doesn't help that Relic takes, literally, FOREVER to fix bugs.

This is funny. Aside from "USF + OKW blobbing" every single thing you named was a complaint about allies and nothing about axis....

Maybe because Axis has a lot more depth and strength than the Allies? Because their units and tech trees promote more than just making spam and cheese sandwiches? They're not perfect, but as a mostly allied player (due to wait times), the allied factions are poorly designed and equipped. German's weakest medium tank is the Panzer IV, and it's superior to the Sherman and T-34/76. Yet they also get the strongest non-doc tank, the Panther, that requires either doctrines, superior numbers, or specialist units to take down.

As far as USF goes, I'm most disappointed that Relic advertised the 76mm Sherman as a USF Tank in Lend-Ease doctrine and in Trailers, then suddenly gave us the 75mm instead, seemingly for the sole reason of making the Sherman underpowered against Axis armour and forcing you to go for M36's with their RNG cannon (random chance of 0 damage or 240 damage? perfect!).

vCOH at least mostly looked like what they expected and it took a bit to find the cheese because most games didn't have it. In COH2 it is often all you find.

Don't kid yourself, CoH1 is even worse with blobbing. Did you forget when Rangerblobs vs Fallschirm blobs were the meta? Or what about the British Lieutenant mechanic that forced you to blob everyone around that one soldier? Or Panzer Elite who were literally designed to blob Assault Grenadiers and Tank Hunters around Half-Tracks and run them into the enemy, they even got upgrades that increased the potency of blobbed infantry ffs! Take those rose glasses off.

CoH1 never really had a huge problem with blobs, at least at high levels. Sure, they're easy to win with at lower levels, but every game is going to have strategies that are easier to execute than defeat at lower levels. In tournament play you never really saw blobbing in the traditional sense because every semi-competent player could defeat it. You would see infantry-heavy strategies from time to time, sure, but a player who blobbed was always a player who was extremely predictable and extremely easy to take advantage of.

The best players of every faction used a variety of units because that was just the best way to play, and the best way to ensure wins, even though it was harder to execute. If you lost to blobs in CoH1, chances are you just weren't playing properly against them.

COH1 had pretty big problems with OF blobs because just like WFA their design promoted it. You were a 1v1 player, but in 2v2's blobs easily got out of hand.

Yeah I don't know shit about 2v2s. It's really easy to win by blobbing with OF factions in 1v1s at lower levels still, just hard against good players.

tbh, in terms of competition i dont think 2v2s work that well. Its not really so much a balance thing, as its just hard to watch a 2v2 game. a 1v1 game can have a lot of stuff going on and it can be tough to follow all the action as there gets to be a good 5+ units on each team on the field. But it is doable.. and its fun to watch.

in 2v2s all you can really do is kind of look at the minimap and see it change colors and look around for cool action as the game goes on. If the replay system had some kind of algorithm to some how magically find the best action that is most important in the match thatd be cool. though I'm not sure how they would ever come up with that. coh1 sort of had a camera system that did something similiar. though it just panned around to units at random.

It is not about the timezone , he is a german so he is in the EU timezone.
And as of now most of the good players in Coh are and always have been European players.

The game is still quite new , and since most of the old CoH pros stoped playing and did not make the switch to coh there are not so many good players.

But some good players are already coming back to the game and i think with the upcoming ESL support more players will be and copetition will hopefully rise.

Good read so far on this post.. I don't mean to go off track, but...

Most good Coh players always have been Euro players?? Really? Hook me up with a link to the ranking system that proves that.. If you don't mind...

Good read so far on this post.. I don't mean to go off track, but...

Most good Coh players always have been Euro players?? Really? Hook me up with a link to the ranking system that proves that.. If you don't mind...

Most pro coh2 player live in Europe Plane and simple

It is not about the timezone , he is a german so he is in the EU timezone.
And as of now most of the good players in Coh are and always have been European players.

*Cough* OMGPOP, Vindicare, Fortune, GiaA, Jamin, myself(yes I'm originally American[though I wish to represent the glorious land of Iceland atm]), etc.... *cough* I think the problem is mostly the timezone/playing schedule difference of a lot of people....I find coh2 most active for pr0s from 10 AM - 3 PM EST, and 7 PM to 1 AM EST. Which is a pretty small time slot, and also an inconvenient one for Merika' players due to our work/college/sleeping schedule/etc.. Honestly though I think there is a decent amount of players out there atm, it just depends on the times at which you decide to play, and the amount of games you wish to play. Although I will admit the amount of highly skilled players is very limited, mostly due to the game having a small playerbase/horrible optimization/small competitive scene/somewhat constant bugs(seriously, just today I have a bug where my new mic transmits static only when I play coh2, nothing else causes this lol)/balance issues/abusive strategists/highly inexperienced developers/bad marketing/somewhat frustrating gameplay if you don't have a patient mind.

Most pro coh2 player live in Europe Plane and simple

LOL, you are quite convincing.

The more I play the more I think this thread is just plain wrong. There are tons of very skilled players still playing. I had four consecutive extremely challenging games against different people today. Maybe I am just bad? But I think there is more than enough player base to keep things fun.

I think upper level players do not understand what "bad" is when they say they're bad. Just because you aren't a master doesn't mean you're bad. That aside, it's hard to get a good gauge on skill with all the spam and cheese around anyway, something I desperately wish could be corrected, but doubt ever will be.

WUUUUT? But...but... USF is a so UP faction.... USF is so weak... Axis is dominating the game. How come?! Oh, wait. I remember now. My friend reached place 100 on random 2v2 with soviets and he barely plays... 2, maybe 3 times a week. At that time, Axis was, of course, OP. As always.

Wow, much OP, so unbalance. Just like the reason I got to #1 USF 2vs2 in 11 games right around the great kubelcalypse was because the faction was batshit OP, not because
Show Spoiler

WUUUUT? But...but... USF is a so UP faction.... USF is so weak... Axis is dominating the game. How come?! Oh, wait. I remember now. My friend reached place 100 on random 2v2 with soviets and he barely plays... 2, maybe 3 times a week. At that time, Axis was, of course, OP. As always.

no one is playing usf. thats why its so ez to rank up

no one is playing usf. thats why its so ez to rank up

Aham. Then I guess USF players that I'm playing against are all ghosts or computer, in fact. Hell, I must be a ghost too, for the same reason.

@Cruzz
"JohnnyB
I would exchange lmg grenadiers on bar equiped rifles any day."

And why is that so odd may I ask?