Why does this game limit itself to 4v4? Why don't we see a 7v7? A 15v15 maybe?
This would require Relic to actually do some work on the games Engine which is most likely never going to happen. Though I will say it would be nice to see. |
I get it simply for the T-70. The goal is to try to get the T-70 to vet 3 for the sight bonus. Using the Recon ability at Vet 3 you can see a large chunk of the map. |
The biggest hindrance to competitive play is RNG, map imbalance and terrible unit pathing. |
Janne252 is the best |
The issue lay in the fact that it's dumb how you have Allies which excel in the early game and the Axis who excel in the late game, resulting in an insanely dumb way of balancing were if the game lasts a certain amount of time Axis auto win (Unless you go all in with all IS2's) but it remains extremely easy for allies to win the game in the first 5-9 minutes.
The factions should honestly be more based around counters rather than a ever escalating 1 up contest in the way current tech structures work. Since in a game of "Who has the biggest dick" Axis will normally win (with the exception of the IS2 which is the second best Heavy in the game).
You know that Riflemen vet up quite fast when using Zooks to right? They just only have 3 levels instead of 5.
Well the good thing is that since PQ is gone we might be able to get some real balance changes in. I agree that the way Relic tends to balance things is rather subpar. |
Well if you have ever played against Soviet Industry they are not exactly spamming infantry as well as tanks. It is the OKW Infantry Blobs that end up defeating you not the vehicles. Also while yes they may not be limited in Ammo or Fuel it is kind of hard to make tanks if you do not have any manpower. With the right numbers in place it would work and make the faction more interesting to play. |
As it stands we can all agree that the new factions are poorly designed. Relic as a business fails because they fail to engage customers and gather feedback as to what they want. They hide behind the NDA wall and release products that they want to play not what we as a consumer want.
With that said prior to the release of WFA we had tons of information on USF and almost nothing on OKW. Most of the design issues with the faction could have been avoided if they had an open beta and listened to feedback.
OKW Flawed Design- As faction design goes they feel rushed, lazy and quite honestly Relic could do better than this. Relic seems to copy and paste things from the other games they have worked on and just throw it in. Volksgrenadiers are basically Plague Marines from Dawn of War 2 with a skin change while copying the truck mechanics from the British in COH 1, one mechanic that had tons of negative feedback. Considering how during the early COH 2 beta Shock Troops had the ranger tooltips at the victory screen it seems apparent that they half ass it when it comes to creating things in COH 2.
OKW Theme : The overall theme of this faction is to portray Germans during the end of the War. Low on resources and battle hardened experienced troops. Now the theme that relic has planned and the execution is poorly thought out.
Thoughts and Ideas : I for one do not like to see endless hordes of Volksgrenadiers like it is Starcraft 2 with hordes of Zerglings rushing across the map dying wave after wave until they break the enemy. At the same time Volksgrenadiers are needed.
Why Volks are needed - It is Not because they lack good vehicle AT, puma, Jagpanzer and so on are all pretty good and quite strong at what they do. The issue comes due to the resource penalty. If you lose a Puma or Jagpanzer it is pretty much GG as you cannot easily replace your fighting force like Soviets can. Losing a T-34 is not as big a deal as losing a Jagpanzer because you can replace it as well as having Fuel Caches as well to increase the fuel gap even further between how many vehicles can be put out on the field. Anyone who argues otherwise simply has not played OKW or faced good allied players. Also Raketenwerfer is rather unreliable as it tends to get 1 shotted by everything without doing any damage. On top of that OKW has plenty of manpower. So much so in fact that if playing OKW, I could have plenty of volks on the field and still float manpower as I have nothing else to spend it on. Volks are cheap and a reliable form of Anti tank without requiring a fuel cost. Soviets have the Zis as a backup. Whermact have paks. Even American AT Guns are more useful than the raketenwerfer. This leaves OKW as Volks with being the only reliable form of anti tank. Fixing Raketenwerfer would not fix Volks Spam, it would make the factions anti tank ability even stronger than what it is now. The real problem is the manpower issue. Here is how we tackle that issue while at the same time addressing other issues with the faction. I for one do not particularly favor one faction over the other and would like to see a well balanced game.
Possible Solutions - As Relic is unlikely to provide sweeping changes to the faction the best that we can hope for is tweaking what we have. Realistically no matter how hard people cry for Panzershreks to get removed from Volks, even if 95% of the playerbase agreed on this Relic does not listen to its customers very well with the exception on the recent poll involving ISU/Jag. Hopefully this is a trend they will stray away from in the future.
Resource Conversion- This is the solution to all of the problems in regards to OKW. The Mechanized building allows you to convert Fuel into Ammo and Ammo into Fuel. Instead of converting Ammo or Fuel I propose converting Manpower instead of ammo into fuel or fuel into ammo. This would also solve issues with being paired up with Whermact players who builds Fuel/Ammo Caches as the OKW could gain large resource income defeating the purpose of the faction being limited on resources. The resources gained from Caches do not come at a cost to the OKW player which results in team games being a mess right now.
The Conversion Ability would be changed as Follows : Convert Manpower into Fuel/Ammo. While Active The player would convert a portion of his manpower income to gain Ammo or Fuel (Depending on Building made, more on that later) Think of the ability working the way Soviet Industry works with how it converts I believe 60 manpower (if I am not mistaken?) to gain +13 Fuel.
Each Building has its own Resource Conversion : Split up the Conversion Ability so that instead of both abilities being in the mechanized building each building has its own conversion.
Battlegroup (Healing Building) Would Allow you to convert Manpower into fuel. Having it convert Manpower into Ammo would promote Panzershrek Spam which is why I opted for Manpower into Fuel Conversion with this building.
Mechanized (Repair Building) - Getting this Building allows you to convert Manpower into Ammo. Basically by splitting up the conversion ability between Battlegroup and Mechanized it promotes different build orders. You always see Battlegroup into Flak HQ, or Mechanized into Flak HQ, by splitting the Conversion abilities between the two buildings it opens up the choice between Going Battlegroup->Mechanized->Flak or Mechanized/Battlegroup into Flak HQ. To make getting battlegroup/Mechanized Worthwhile both conversion abilities could be activated at the same time.
What this would Fix - By allowing the player to convert Manpower into resources it would make Manpower an important resource. This means that no longer would you want to mass volks and attack move to victory as taking model loses would actually hurt. It would reduce manpower float on OKW and open up more vehicle based gameplay while also creating new strategies between teching up instead of the same thing which is rush Flak HQ. Also since the player is converting Manpower instead of Ammo/Fuel it would alleviate some gameplay problems when it comes to having a Whermact team mate building Ammo/Fuel caches and converting resources to get a high income. Numbers for the Conversion ability would obviously have to be tested and tweaked to get this right but I feel this would be the best solution to not only reducing infantry spam as a whole but also allowing for OKW to field more vehicles. By having the ability to field more vehicles, losing a single tank would not be as devastating compared to the other factions especially since they can all build Fuel Caches (essentially converting manpower into fuel in a different way)
Certain vehicles will have to be adjusted in Strength (such as Jagpanzer 4 to prevent jagpanzer 4 spam meta) but these are numbers that can be tweaked without requiring too much work on Relics part while addressing the issue at hand.
Ammo Dumps - Aside from Panzershrek upgrade (90 Ammo) the OKW lack ways to spend ammo. With being able to convert Manpower into Ammo/Fuel to negate the resource penalty we can address other units that players have issues with in terms of balance such as the Stuka. By being able to convert Manpower into Ammo the player could potentially have alot of ammo and nothing to spend it on. Here are some ideas to add ammo dumps. The Goal here is to give the player incentives to spend ammo on other things besides Panzershreks and to overall make the Manpower->Ammo conversion more useful.
SdKfz 251 "Stuka zu Fuß" Half-track- could come with an ammo cost to fire each barrage.
Sdkfz 251/20 Half-track w/Infrared Searchlight - Give this unit an ability to focus its spotlight granting the player sight on areas the Searchlight covers for x amount of time. Costs Ammo
SdKfz 234 ‘Puma’ Heavy Armored Car - Ammo Cost on abilities increased to prevent spamming.
Obersoldaten - They Can pay for the LMG upgrade that they have.
Sturmtiger - Pay Ammo to substantially reduce reload time (would have to be expensive 150-200 to be on par with other strikes other factions have)
7.5cm le.IG 18 Infantry Support Gun- Add an ability to let it fire incendiary rounds at vet 0 - Costs Ammo, Useful to help clear out buildings as this unit takes forever to clear something out of a building reliably. Would also be useful to force maxims and such to move and re-position.
Sturmpioneer Squad - Allow the SturmPioneers the ability to drop the Medical Boxes at vet 0 instead of requiring Veterency. The heal from the Medical Boxes cannot be used in Combat like it used to so being able to use it at vet 0 would allow for Mechanized Building opening to be viable as you can still heal your units although at a cost.
Final Thoughts:
I feel that this would be the overall best solution to the issue that most parties could agree upon. It would reduce Volksgrenadier Spam by addressing one of the factions issues which is excess manpower combined with cheap reinforcement costs on some of its units while opening up more strategic gameplay. Doing damage to volks would actually mean something as oppossed to being shrugged off and actually cause manpower bleed for poor gameplay. I would prefer if instead arguing for Panzershrek removal we could tweak this idea and address multiple faction design problems as a community together since OKW is not the only faction with some issues as the other factions as well need somethings fixed. The goal is to make the game as balanced as possible while making each unit have a place and use as we have some rather lackluster units/commanders in the game at the moment.
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As someone who plays all the factions, I don't have a problem with OKW Volks blobs. Sure it is annoying but there are ways to deal with it. With that said removing Panzershrek from Volks would require an overhaul of the faction.
While it is true they have anti tank options in each tier,Losing a single vehicle as OKW is extremely punishing. First off Allies can build Fuel Caches, combine that with the fact that OKW has a resource penalty and they start to pull ahead and will be able to put out more tanks on the field. Especially taken into consideration cheesy Strats that forego teching and involve spamming out KV1/ISU/T34-85's out.
With that said it is very boring gameplay to see the same strat played every game and even more boring to play as OKW and have to spam volks in order to have reliable anti tank options.
Now even though I have been defending Volks thus far, I would like to see panzershreks removed from volks if :
1. Resource Penalty Removed
2. Volks Given MP-40 upgrade and panzerfaust
3. Rakketenwerfer increased in price with a boost in health/faster aim
4. Infantry Support Gun price slightly decreased/Improved vs Buildings
5. Tanks adjusted in performance to be balanced with the increased resource income (Mainly Jag, puma being too strong if you could spam them)
6. Able to build Fuel/Ammo Cache
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My biggest gripe with Coh 2 aside from the terrible unit pathing is the lack of upgrades for units. Concripts should be able to upgrade to PPSH later on in the game. |
This unit would be alot better if they fixed the vet 1 ability on it so that it is actually useful. |