The OF faction metagames were always relatively stale, which is a big reason why most people disliked them relative to the vanilla factions. Brits consistently had the worst meta in CoH1, and they also had zero global upgrades, a trait shared, interestingly enough, with every faction in CoH2. Aside from that, your post is fairly misleading Donnie, but you were never a serious 1v1 player so I can understand the confusion.
Outside of the darkness that was the Piospam phase, the vanilla matchup enjoyed a very interesting and diverse metagame for much of the game's life (at least from 2.301 onward, which is when I started playing). Americans had standard 4 rifle starts into BARs, grenades, or M8, 5 rifle BARs into Tank Depot, 4ES and its many variations, weird WSC openings like the ones Seb loved on Semois, and most importantly a wide variety of lategame options, since every tier was viable depending on the map and situation. And this was the faction with less options in the matchup.
The options available to Wehrmacht players were too numerous to list, but the most exciting thing about Wehrmacht play in CoH1 was the fact that every top player had his own unique Wehrmacht style, and they were all equally viable. It wasn't just openings either; things like tech progression and vet timings varied greatly between the top tournament contenders, to the point where you could identify players based solely on their gameplay.
This isn't a CoH1 thread, but it bugs me when I see misinformation thrown around. CoH2 doesn't need to be CoH1 to be successful, but if CoH1 did something right, it was giving different styles and strategies relatively equal viability at a high level of play. |
Right. But the whole purpose of improving is to win more frequently. At the end of the day, that's what any competition is ultimately about.
You can argue that, as a player, using flavour-of-the-month strategies that have a high likelyhood of getting nerfed in future patches is short-sighted and will make you a worse player in the long run, but my point was it doesn't make sense to blame players for a stale meta because people will generally take the path of least resistance in competitive games. |
Yeh yeh, its always not our fault, it must be the game.
Its like talking to kids!
It's true though. You're playing a game where the main objective is to defeat your opponent. In general, winning in a boring way is a lot more fun than losing in a creative way for most people. Look at the CZ-75 in CSGO a few months ago, Marine-SCV all-ins in SC2 during the first year, Infestor-Brood Lord a few years later. Hell, even Piospam in CoH1. For a lot of competitive players, winning IS where the fun in the game comes from. I guarantee if you asked top tournament players, most of them would say that. When you're competing against someone else, winning is fun, and losing isn't.
So if there's one or two strategies that have the highest rate of success, people are going to use them, because it's all about giving yourself the best chance to win. That's why I've always hated the one-dimensional strategic nature of CoH2. With the exception of a few commander abilities, your entire strategic gameplan revolves around developing the most efficient unit composition. Without upgrades or some equivalent secondary strategic choice, the metagame devolves into finding the most efficient unit composition for the given patch and using it. |
Players naturally gravitate to the easiest way to win, that's true of every competitive game in existence. Don't blame the players, blame the game. |
In the past Relic has reset all ELOs above a certain level to a baseline value, without touching stats like wins, losses, etc. It makes sense that they'd do this with CoH2 eventually.
The problem is, a stats reset fucks up matchmaking for a while until ELOs normalize again. With a small community like CoH2's, it could take a while for ratings to settle down. |
Likely just a bug. |
You're right, you can't monetize an RTS as effectively as you can a game like Dota 2 or CSGO using Valve's model. That's exactly why I was so disappointed when I found out Relic was going to emphasize microtransactions so heavily with CoH2, because I think Valve's model is the only possible way to do microtransactions in a competitive game and it just doesn't work as well in an RTS, let alone a historical RTS that's very much grounded in the real world. Microtransactions in an RTS are futile from the beginning in my opinion, but we're stuck with this situation so Relic might as well try to make the most of it, and I don't think degrading items is making the most of it at all.
Even taking into account the genre's inherent weakness in this area, there are still a ton of avenues Relic could go down with regards to cosmetic DLC that could be profitable. Custom HUDs, super-detailed custom skins for single units, more victory strikes, custom base building skins/models, custom tactical maps, custom icon styles, custom voice packs, hell even alternative building skins/models for buildings on maps. Why do all heavies share a single skin? I bet you if they made some really kick-ass skins for the more powerful lategame units they would make a killing. Look at how popular custom skins were for CoH1, especially near the end of the game's life. If you make cool shit, people will buy it.
This durability/supply system is the easy way out in terms of time investment, just like monetizing commanders was, but it's ultimately going to hurt the game because it doesn't improve the player experience at all. It's a system that only makes sense if it's tuned to turn a profit for Relic, yet it doesn't actually add anything of value to the game. |
As far as balancing 4v4, it's a lot easier to balance then 1v1. Most of balance issues that are breaking 1v1 balance can be overcome by team builds and strategy. 4v4 only needs to be balanced with sledgehammer to get it to decent state.
However, units need to be designed with 4v4 in mind.
Problem in COH2 is that one army has extremely strong mobile armor and lethal AT infantry while other side has gimmicky slow moving armor that either needs combined arms or be set up in ambush to be useful. Add to that non-lethal AT infantry.
Tho both designs are deadly in 1v1, it's pretty obvious which massive shortcoming, team with durable mobile armor, will exploit.
That core design can never be overcome with tweaks to balance COH2 4v4.
Good point, I never thought of it that way. That makes a lot of sense actually. It's definitely all about the design. CoH2 would need major changes on that front to work competitively in large team games, I definitely agree with that.
Almost time for me to sleep. Anyways, that's what I meant when I said "currency system"; a system that's pretty much like Dota 2's. Really, there's no patent on the economy model Valve uses for Dota 2, so why doesn't Relic just use Dota 2's model? The game has potential to earn a substantial revenue just by selling skins, unit, weapon models and etc. I've spent $80+ in Dota 2 because the content they put out I feel is worth it; Relic just needs to make quality unit models/skins, vehicle skins and etc and people will buy it, as long as it doesn't affect gameplay.
That's the problem though, the supply/durability system described here is nothing like the system used in Dota 2 and CSGO. If they straight-up copied Valve's model that would be amazing. Paying for cosmetic items is totally legit, because it doesn't give you additional gameplay options and it's totally not necessary to do if you just want to play the game competitively. What isn't legit is paying for more gameplay options (different topic though) or paying to continue using your items over time.
If it's limited to only dropped items, it turns off the large number of people who play for that carrot-and-stick incentive of getting a drop after the game. Just look at the anger over the War Spoils system, and the backlash against Valve recently for their changes to the Dota 2 drop system. That's the best-case scenario, and it's still a major negative for a large portion of the community.
Worst-case scenario, they give durability to items you've purchased from the store. That's straight-up nickle-and-diming, and it flat-out discourages store purchases because nobody wants to pay more to maintain their virtual items. Valve's system works because they don't nickle-and-dime people, and instead release a constant stream of content that compels people to keep purchasing items, instead of taxing the items they've already sold. |
Dota 2 and CSGO actually don't have in-game currencies. You just buy shit with normal money and get the items forever. That's part of why their in-game economies are so successful IMO. |
Is it a language barrier thing maybe? Because you're using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. |