Profile of Hannibal

There is little point to argue if the "rush to final tier" is happening or not, it is happening.

Compare to when? Release+1-2 years? Maybe. But you yourself said that these versions are so old you don't want to discuss them. There were true medium rush metas 2-3 years ago. Also as Aerohank said, LVs have become mandatory or at least meta 2 years ago so there seems to be incentive not to rush mediums/final tier.

snip

Multiple people have provided their opinions about your claim as well as the alternatives, yet you brush those off as "not the point of this thread".

You also made a lot of claims and do not back them up.
How does making mostly backteching more available decrease unit/build diversity? There are some points to be made for this but a lot against, and you keep ignoring the ones against. What are the alternatives? You don't discuss any of them although others and I have pointed towards them. And there is absolutely no use to saying a direction were "good" or "bad" if you neglect the alternatives.

I was going slightly off topic - sorry for that -, but I think I at least properly responded to one of your posts. I will keep it shorter and more focused in this one.

It does not really matter how many different units are available if "last tier rush" is the optimum strategy. Unit/tech that delay that strategy will simply be avoided.

Apart from maybe the very first versions of the game (I did not play on release, but what I vaguely remember from 2014/15 is that Soviets had a split tech path and the T34 for example was in T3 or so), the game has been designed for a last tier rush ever since. The only exception being Ostheer since Osts T3 can actually deal with most of Allied armor.

That is not the "base assumption" nor is this a thread claims that everything was roses when Relic was doing patches and everything is bad when the MOD team took over.

The basis of this thread is the patch notes (included in op) and series of changes over in many patches that are have reduced tech cost and "back tech" cost (I would add here making many doctrinal vehicles available only via last tier). This clearly makes a "last tier rush" strategy more efficient.

You said since the balance team took over tech paths have become more linear and therefore builds less diverse, which implies that it was the opposite before (I never said you were assuming everything was perfect back in the day, but essentially this thread exists because you think CoH2 got worse at least in this special regard).
I agree: Units have become more available in general. Mostly though, changes aimed to give every faction similar tools (all factions should have access to MG, ATG, mortars, a source of smoke etc...). Back teching often does not diminish the window of opportunity for units. If, e.g., A Soviet T1 player backtechs to ATG in the mid game, neither the windows of opportunity of Luchs/Puma nor of a P4 are diminished.
You cite CoH1 as a good example of needing to chose techs exclusivle (I never played it so I can't judge). But for the most part these exclusive tech structures just brought a lot of problems for balance and are partially still not solved (SOV, USF and OKW all T1/2).

Even Sander93 posted did not deny such a trend and said: "incentive has always been there"

Relic was never a fun a the "smallest" steps, on the contrary Relic was notorious for overbuffing and overnerfing things in their patches.

Neither did the MOD patches used small step (at least early pachtes)on the contrary some of the MOD patches where the most radical ones. [will snip the rest for brevity]

Sanders post makes it unclear whether he is talking about balance team or CoH2 in general. Because in all versions of CoH2 the lighter vehicles got more and more useless when heavier versions came out. The Scout car was never useful past minute 6-7+, the 222/251 were also only useful until another "heavier" LV hit the field and even more diminished in usefulness once medium tanks arrived. There have been some other strats (like SU76 spam) that worked as well, but many were based on call-in strats that bring their own problems as well.

Regarding the "smallest steps": Balance team changed tech paths as much as needed (see USF), but if there were two potential solutions to a problem, they usually took the one that costs less effort, would be easier to fix/revert if it turned out bad or the one that had the most predictable consequences (in the end, these were mostly stat tweaks).

To repeat myself: In this game, there has always been an incentive to tech up and get better armor on the field. The only way to not play like this are rush tactics were you put all eggs into one basket and can insta-forfeit if you fail the strat.

As the last point, I want to come to what - I think - is the core of this discussion:
Lighter vehicles become less useful the longer the game goes, sometimes even to the point where it is almost better to throw them away. If light vehicles were useful in the late game, there would be less incentive to get your highest tier up asap. But they are not, so every one wants heavier tanks quicker than their opponent.
In other threads you often suggested to prolong game phases by delaying units. I already remarked how this would cause reworks for the power level of most units although I generally agree. But in the end it would not solve the problem: Last tier would still be top choice, you'd just need longer to get it. And the player that can use these units first wins if the other one does not tech up.
The only real solution is to increase late game utility of early units. I once made a whole thread about this so I will not repeat myself now, but balance team also implemented a ton of these utility buffs for light vehicles and is still expanding them in the current patch.

Going to COH1 system in not realistic option but looking within the the COH2 system one will notice than since the MOD team has taken over of there a continues serious of tech changes reducing cost and allowing access to everything that turn tech choice to more "linear" system.

That imo creates a number of problems. One of the biggest is greatly decreases build diversity since player are "given an incentive to rush towards their final tier" creating a singe optimum tech choice.

That also reduces the "strategic" element of the game since the is a single optimum strategy.

I really hope that the MOD take this into consideration and have a real debate on the issue. If the MOD continues down this direction of less tech choices imo it should at least be a concussions decision that was taken after proper thinking instead of something that just happened.

I think what you mean is that the builds between games can become more similar since it is easier to back off of a failing strategy and fall back on something that is working. That I would support, but saying that having more units available decreases build diversity within a single game does not make sense, neither using pure rational nor real in game experience.

I disagree with your points though, because they have a base assumption that was just not there: that the game allowed for multiple builds when the mod team took over. This is not true, there were meta strats back then and playing off meta was even worse than today. Back then if you committed as, say Ostheer, fully to T3 but your strategy failed, the game was already over with no chance to recover (or a call in commander, support weapon spam etc etc). In that regard, the game was already linear teching back then because some tiers were simply not viable.

I don't assume that Relic assured the mod team continous patches for 2+ years back then, so their most viable option (especially regarding that they are not a dev team) was to take the smallest steps with the highest gain possible.

Everything else would have likely taken a real dev team that works on it full time, at least until the foundation for multiple tech paths is laid out properly. But obviously no one can expect that from 'free' workers that don't even get full mod tools.

CoH2 further amplifies that issue with their faction design: Does every faction need to have 2+ tech paths?. Not all factions had all basic tools at hand (USF lacking either MG or ATG, UKF lacking smoke and snares, OKW lacking T2 healing that does not force you to dump all your munis...). How do we deal with that? Factions that lack something need to be OP in other regards, but then what if they DO tech everything? Default win? Are techs exclusive? How do we cramp enough utility into 3 units per tech (adding more is not an option) without breaking these? This is one of the main problems this game had for ages. Even Relic could not fix these although they had theoretically more resources and started with a full design of the faction in mind. Yes, maybe many of these issues could have been fixed by number tweaking alone, but this is a HUGE undertaking that does not make sense if you don't know how long Relic support will go. And I don't blame them for taking the easier and more obvious router.

Now the only thing I think you can really critisize the members of the mod team for is that they (afaik) never discussed their vision of the game in case we get as many patches as we got now. For the most part, only Sanders posted his visions, but also that only more recently. If I don't misremember, there was no 'if possible, faction X should look like this...' message that the community could agree or disagree with. But this is almost as much Relics fault as well for almost completely cutting support for one of their games and handing it over to the community without any directions or control.

What we now have after 2-3 years of community patching is undoubtedly a better game with more units and viable builds than ever. Yes, part of this price was to make gameplay more similar and you can critisize that for sure. But saying that the game was better and more diverse before they took over is plainly wrong and leaves out that we basically moved from abusive strat to a different one between patches (almost as we do now), but in contrast to that there was next to no strat outside of the meta.

I already have, with multiple top players opinions in post 299 (master league discord voting done only by the tops).

The only point this vote proofs is that even among top level players there is absolutely no concensus about grens

I'm no game designer. I'd change it in a way that it won't mess with your interface. Out of the top of my head: Maybe something in the direction of making the units camouflaged in cover and slightly faster when out of combat but with a bigger detection radius. This way it still fits the theme of the commander and allow your units to creep up on the enemy, jumping from cover to cover in order to close in (like they did historically at the beginning of the battle of the bulge on which the commander is based) without casting a magic spell where your units suddenly disappear from the minimap.

Slightly off topic, but I think this debate at least partially comes down to which value we want to give to the mini map / tac map. Do we see it as an addition to the normal "direct camera"? Or a real alternative? Do we expect players to be able to play both ways?
What radio silence does in the end just like other abilities is increase the micro tax of the opponent to keep his units efficient, since he needs to check more frequently if they are okay and well positioned. Other abilities (off map smokes and recons) do that too although in a different way.
I think there is nothing inherently wrong with modifying HUD elements of your opponent. RUSE for example did an exceptional job at that. But where I think that this ability falls short is that it does not really work for all players. I see the tac map more as an addon. Nice to have to get a better overview, but in the end I don't use it that often. Other players spent half their game in that, and again others don't use it at all. So half of the ability is either worth more than its price or nothing at all.
I don't know if your suggestion is the perfect solution to this since it could create a whole lot more issues, but it is at least unique and would fir the theme. I like it, definitely worth a try.

I still don't see how 20 munitions infiltration are justified. They can result in a squad wipe quite easily. And by looking at their price tag you can usually afford them without much resource handling. Also they are hard to dodge, because they get thrown around erratically that even if you dodge you still get caugt in the blast.

Yes, I see your point. I don't view them as a major problem at the moment, but maybe that's because the whole commander has fallen out of favor. Maybe some changes to the AoE stats could fix it. Although I'd rather change them to a more consistent, but overall less damage.