Profile of Rosbone

Four OKW players usually = lose. You have NO counter to MGs. None. Zero. Mgs, UCs, scout cars, and snipers are gonna make you have a real bad day. You will never see the fuel. By the time you get a truck up and have some healing the enemy will be at the truck destroying it. Putting you even further behind.

Sadly, Coh2 is dead. Relic will never adjust anything ever again. Everyone needs to switch to Coh3 or they will go out of business. And since coh3 is so meh, they will be out of business soon.

The shadow darkness is a setting in the Worldbuilder.

On cloudy or high humidity days the light gets diffused and the ambient light goes up. So shadows are lighter because light is reflected/refracted and going around the shadow casters.

That is one of the things Relic did that I dont know much about or see any difference. They added a lot more light modeling code/settings. Strange to spend so much time on lighting and then disregard Specular, which is way more important.

vCoh and Coh2 also have settings to make the textures look wet. This does not exist in Coh3. The settings are there, but they do nothing. That is the stuff that makes me sad for Coh3. Will this little stuff ever get added? Maybe. Maybe not. But we got a skin store and leaver penalties.

Here are a few screenshots from Coh2 and Coh3. All pics are taken at 2k res and max texture setting.

COH2 ELST OUTSKIRTS 1


COH3 ELST OUTSKIRTS 1



COH2 ELST OUTSKIRTS 2


COH3 ELST OUTSKIRTS 2


RESOLUTION COMPARISONS
TEXTURES
Coh2 textures are softer. They have a lower Texel/Meter value. Meaning there are less texture pixels per meter of terrain.

This makes the units standout more. They pop out of the picture more. Because their outlines are always crisp by nature. This crisp outline stands out against the blurry textures they are standing on.

Coh3s higher Tex/M means the ground is as sharp as the unit outlines. The camera also appears to be further out (or units are smaller) which also makes their outlines harder to pick out visually.

The stones on the Coh2 roads are blurry white patches. The stones south of the road in Coh3 are sharply rendered huge rocks.

SPECULAR LIGHTING
Coh2 textures use specular lighting. Coh3 barely uses it and you have to be directly facing the sun to see them. Coh2 metal objects appear more real. Their are glints of highlight on the tread paths on the road.

Coh3 has higher resolution and almost no specular lighting. Everything looks fake and made out of chalk.

In Elst Coh2 #2, the road and rocks are all being lit by the sun. They are brighter. Coh3s road has no specular light at all. It looks like a flatly lit diorama.

SUMMARY
- Units stand out better in Coh2 due to softer textures and lower camera.

- The Coh2 lower res textures tell your brain you are far away and cant see much detail. Coh3s sharp textures tell your brain you are right on top of this thing and can see all of its detail.

- The smaller Coh3 models on top of the detailed terrain tell your brain, these units are very small. Because they are small but I can see detail in the ground. Your brain sees this disparity and calcs that the units are about the size of a rabbit.

- The lack of specular lighting in Coh3, tells your brain this is not real. These textures do not interact with the lights of the world.

OPINIONS
Coh3 looks amazing. If they added specular lighting it would be fantastic. The added detail is much more realistic. Some map textures could be retouched to reduce their size/detail, especially road splines.

I see reviews all the time where people are complaining the camera is too zoomed in. The camera is actually further out in Coh3 than Coh2. But the texture detail and model sizes are tricking peoples brains into thinking it is more zoomed in. We should also assume a lot of players want Steel Division level of zoom outs, so their complaints are legit.

People say "This is a mobile game!". Again the disparity in texture detail to model size throws off the realism. The lack of specular lighting also makes the game look flat and not real.

However, fixing those would be largely irrelevant to me if the off-maps aren't changed.

edit: After playing a bit more, I think the generally "spammability" and "blobbing" might actually be worse than the off-maps. There just aren't enough tools to effectively punish blobs, at least until late game.

I dont know any player ever that likes single click magic off map. Its also really hard to balance. How much is too much.

But the spam issue I think may have driven the arty. Each faction needs a calliope or Katy that is effective. And from what I hear from players, that does not exist. The next best thing could be one click area denial abilities? Like Coh3 arty?

It is complicated because what Coh3 lacks are the things people complain about from Coh2: Large tanks and massive wipe rocket artillery vehicles. Which is also the fun thing that makes the play super dynamic in team games. But it is also cancer if not tuned well.

If it is too strong, every game is just arty spam. If it is too weak(coh3), everyone spams units and blobs like monkeys.

I feel like Relic tried to have area denial arty and then tune MGs to find the sweet spot.

But I hear the same thing over and over from Coh2 fans, there is too much to change for Coh3 to ever be good.
- Inf tuning. TTK issue.
- MG tuning. Blob issue.
- New rocket arty vehicles. Blob issue.
- Tank Crush. Blob issue.
- Take more damage on retreat. No get out of jail free clicks. Tactics issue.
- Light vehicles too strong. Vehicle blob issue.

Since no one really streams 2v2 and up, it is hard to say what Coh1 fans feel about Coh3 from their streams. Most are 1v1 players who may dabble in 2v2 occasionally.

A possible quick fix would be hidden demos with a large AOE that don't do too much damage. You severely weaken a blob but dont wipe many of them. This lets a 1v1 player just retreat and heal, but not lose anything. And 4v4 blobs would become very weak and vulnerable. Then the retreat costs lost time on the field and some resources. So blobbing becomes a punishment as it should. The demo price would need to be adjusted so it cant be spammed in a 1v1. 125 munis etc.

Another fix, everyone gets an AVRE type vehicle. You blob on me, I will Avre your blob and win in one shot. I am a fan of this because it forces some micro tax. You dont just click somewhere and forget it. It also taxes your repair ability.

Ultimately Coh3 needs to start heading in the Coh2 direction.

But what do I know. I am just some nub. I dont even play these games.

The fact that the last "bargain bin" games I saw were the original DOOM and Age of Empires games... this is still a pretty high bar to put on CoH 3, and by high, I mean virtually unobtainable.

Uhhh, that means I have to lower my expectations even further....

The game seems to be getting stomped in the Steam reviews from free players. I applaud the idea, but feel it premature to let people play it when it is still in a beta state. Especially when the players will almost ALL be campaign players and the campaign has a bug that soft locks the game.

So it is less of a "see what you are missing" and more of a "see why you didnt pay for this" situation.

But a few reviews sounded like people were going to buy. So that is good.

Hey Relic you put out the game premature. Now you put out the free weekend premature. Have you tried thinking about baseball or maybe bums playing tennis? Just trying to help.