Profile of Inverse

CoH2 is a bit of a clusterfuck, mostly due to the THQ situation and the game being rushed out.

The commander system is crap, the ui is crap, the engine optimization is crap, the game is full of things that were worked on years ago and dropped never to be touched again.

CoH2 is still good and still has a few more years left in it, but saying there is nothing to look forward to in CoH3 is just wrong.

This is the real reason a sequel would be nice. CoH2 has a really shitty base because of the whole THQ fiasco. CoH3 with a from-the-ground-up new engine and a design that doesn't stem from a business model would be very interesting.

However, there are a lot of reasons why a sequel probably won't happen, and I personally don't think it will. WWII and RTS games are far less popular now than they were 5 years ago, CoH2 has a ton of DLC that would be abandoned in a new game, CoH2 was a lukewarm success relative to a lot of other games these days, and funding a from-scratch RTS today when its predecessor was only mildly successful is a pretty huge risk to take. I'd love to see a CoH3 where Relic is given the freedom to design the game they want to make, but I don't see that happening for a long time, if it even happens at all.

Terrible poll options.

CoH2 as a strategy game has a whole lot of room for improvement. Minor balance tweaks and stat changes aren't going to make the game any better or attract any new players. Major design changes are the best way to keep a game fresh and attract new attention.

There's also the hilarious fact that none of the "radical" changes people are all terrified of are actually radical at all.

Am I totally out of line to think that this change is a DESIGN change that will affect balance? A Design change that will not improve the game objectively. the most convincing argument is 'it will speed up the early game'. does early game need speeding up? i don't think so.

This is a SUBJECTIVE DESIGN change that WILL affect BALANCE. Maybe it will somehow fix all the problems. Probably not since you know... logic. Yes, I should not have quoted thunderhun's quote fully, i only agree with partially so my position might not be as clear but all I am saying is that:

This is a SUBJECTIVE DESIGN change that WILL affect BALANCE most likely negatively.

You can't make any meaningful change to any competitive game without there being some sort of impact on balance. Balking at design changes because you don't know how they will affect balance is a great way to dismiss all but the most miniscule of incremental changes. Your concerns, like those of others in this thread, stem from a fear of bad balance that is irrational and near-sighted. You're taking a one-month view of a change when you need to be looking a year out. Can you give me a reason this change doesn't work that isn't "it might affect balance in some way for a few months"?

From my perspective, I see a lot of objective unit control improvements that this change brings. You'll be able to double-tap a building hotkey and center your camera on the exact location where your units will spawn. You won't have to worry about southern and eastern spawning positions forcing you to wait seconds before units walk into your camera view so you can select them, while your opponent in the north or west has no such delay. You won't have to worry about certain unit abilities arbitrarily being unusable until units cross a magic line, before which they are on the map but not "on the map". You won't have to wait a completely random amount of time between when a unit finishes construction and when that same unit is fully usable, an amount of time that is different for every starting position on every map. And you won't have ridiculous antipatterns, like juggling rally points to choose spawn locations and retreating the moment units enter the map proper in order to save a few seconds, that add artifical complexity that is neither fun for players nor entertaining for spectators.

All of that means quicker, more consistent access to your infantry units and their abilities; it's hard to see how that can be construed as being bad for the game. But when you're obsessed with seeing balance impact in every little thing, you lose sight of how changes can affect, and improve, the game on a more fundamental level. Balance will go up and down whether this change is made or not. This is an opportunity to strengthen the game's foundation by removing some frustrating control mechanics. The long-term impact is far more important than the short.

Or we don't break thats not broken.

Since the alpha of Coh2 no1 has ever complained that this system is broken/evil/you name it what it is.

#ADAPT

The community did it.

Maybe vcoh fanbois will do it #jesuisoffmapspawn

There were lots of reservations about the new spawn system during alpha/beta and when the game first came out. The reason people stopped caring was because these days most of the community has no experience with any other system (very evident from some of these replies), and the people who do have experience never imagined it would get changed because the benefits would be relatively minor. But the benefits are definitely there, and if Relic is willing to make the change there's no reason to discourage them from doing it.

On an unrelated note, the obsession with balance in this community is such a major deterrent to innovation. People have to realize that when it comes to major design changes such as this one, you have to look at a longer period of time than just a month or two. Any major design change is going to fuck with balance in the short term, but fundamentally change the game (for better or for worse) in the long term. That's what this debate should be about: whether this change is better or worse for the game in the long term, once the minor balance hiccups have been ironed out. Some people in this thread have brought up legitimate design issues related to this change (OKW trucks and map design implications for example) that absolutely need to be addressed. But if your only argument against this change is that it will screw up balance, you need to realize that you're taking a short-term view of a change meant to have long-term implications.

This thread isn't about whether professionals are inherently better than non-professionals, it's about how Relic should hire professionals. Which is silly when you realize that when it comes to CoH2, everybody working at Relic is by definition professional and everybody in the community is by definition non-professional.