Like:
- Easy squad management e.g (MOW is impossible to micro)
- Fun asymmetric combat
- LOS mechanic
- Interesting gameplay changers (ice, mud, Snow)
- skill > Unit count
- RNG (Makes for a fun viewer experience and adds tension)
- VP remind me a lot of Keybuildins from Shogun 2 Total War
- Commanders add diverse gameplay
- Tight nit community
Dislike
- How long it takes for patches to hit
- Patches are often deployed to buggy and could use another day or two to fix
- Certain factions lack counters to super late game units (unless you throw everything at them e.g Jagtiger)
- LOS mechanics doesn't always work right
- Lack of large team game balance
- Lack of community involvement in patchs
- Competitive focus on only 1v1
- Lacks community Report features and time bans for leaving automatch early
- Laggy menus (GUI)
- Lack of adjusting old commanders and units
- Poor twitch integration
- Lacks UI customization options
If anything you can narrow a lot of CoH2's issues to its business model, balance, and GUI.
All of that is compounded by limited community involvement and lack of quick small patches that adjust to the meta. The lack of a quality QA team is scary and often leaves players frustrated when the patch could have easliy been delayed to fix issues at the last minute. I don't hate Relic but I wish they involved more top tier players to help balance large issues. The lack of a team balance makes playing with friends boring or frustrating as the game doesn't scale nor have separate balance modes.
I just wish they were more proactive in making CoH2 an amazing RTS as the building blocks are there.
I prefer CoH as there are no other games on the market that fill the game that it fits, MOW is to over the top and Total War has no multiplayer scene. SCII is just boring and crazy macro and build orders.