Problem is not the AT themselfs, even randoms are capable of winning vs AT teams, when the match is fair skill vise. AT team surely will have an advantage, but its not the over the top one.
Particularly in CoH2 problem with AT teams is AT rank and the way its made is complete and utter BS. Game simply doesn't take into a consideration individual AT players ranks, which leads to MM being garbage.
There is no easy way to even fix this problem. You cant take individual ranks, because there are people who exclusively play AT and dont have solo rank, but you also cant have this "artificial" AT rank because for the game rank 14 AT consisting of top 10 players is equal to legit AT of rank 14 players for instance.
There is also no reason why the game should take your "random" rank as a basis for your AT skill. The most obvious one is that performance will heavily differ, but also just a practical one that you already mentioned: Not everyone has a solo rank, or at least a recent solo rank. CoH2 matches last between 20-60 minutes regularly, if I can only play a couple of matches per week, I want to play them with friends if possible, and I assume there are many more cases like mine. And many more issues: What do you do if your ranks/ELO ratings differ a lot? Which one is being prioritized or overweighted to estimate your skill for the match up?
The only solution would probably be, instead of changing how AT works, change how randoms vs AT treated. Randoms should be rewarded more or pushed less when playing against AT teams for sure, at least it this would soften the unfairness of the MM.
And the second solution would be making AT teams prioritise playing against other AT teams. Because right now, MM just throwing AT teams against randoms simply because it allows to find game faster.
But how would you calculate that factor for reward and punishment when winning or losing to an arranged team? You need to analyze some data on that to make an educated guess. And if you already have this analysis, why would you not try to fix the problem at the root? You can estimate how much of a benefit it is to be an arranged team, e.g. an AT has a 60% win chance over randoms in an equally skilled game. If you already have those data points, you can just start to upmatch the AT until they have roughly 50% win rate again.
Other games have it definitely easier to get this data, but I am fairly certain that e.g. Rocket League does exactly that on ranked ladders. They have an easier way to generate data. On the other hand, CoH2 now also has a couple of years of data available, even if you delete the shoddy first couple of years.
Another problem is, that it will be difficult to e.g. properly rank 3v3 and 4v4 ATs. The majority of players there are randoms. If, as an AT, you don't gain much from winning against randoms, how will the game be able to ever properly match you, unless it completely detaches you internal ELO rating from your actual rank, at which point the rank will be pointless. |
There is no way to achieve "fairness" in randoms vs arranged. It is inherently massively unfair no matter the player skill involved. It should not effect a competitive ladder whatsoever. I honestly don't care if this leads to massive drops at the start. Random teams should not have to fight arranged (if they don't want to).
Also, metas come and go, at times you can have severely cancerous synergizing metas dominating that will skew things even farther in the direction of arranged vs random, IE the current state of 4v4 with pathfinder shit.
Purely logically speaking, there is definitely a way to do adjust the picked ELO for arranged teams and randoms. The question is just, if the data Relic has is enough to adjust for the tons of variables that come with a normal CoH match.
CoH is not big enough to split the community any further, we cannot separate randoms from arranged teams and let them play on different ladders. Match maker fuck ups aside, there is currently just enough players to get a decent match up during prime time. And my experience mostly comes from 2v2 and 3v3 with 2 similarly skilled friends, which makes it way easier for the match maker to find opponents. Most matches here are fine, but some games are really unfair in skill in one or the other way, even despite this already being an "easy" mode for the matchmaker to find suitable opponents. Other modes and randoms have it harder, and then try playing outside of prime time...
There is no feasible way for CoH to create even more separately handled ladders without killing the game outright. The only option is to somehow get 5x or so the player base on a constant basis, and that's not going to happen. |
+1
Randoms should get severely rewarded if they win against arranged teams, but nothing should happen to their playercard if they lose normally (only if they abandon their team early)
This system probably won't work at all, because the only way for randoms would be up. What could happen though is to weight wins and losses accordingly. However, if you already have discovered the needed weight to make it fair, you can just set up a proper match up in the first place (i.e. lower skill arranged team vs higher skill randoms). They should have tons of data of CoH2 to make a decent guess for CoH3, how much stronger an arranged team is, just because they are "arranged" and not random. |
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As with any other game:
Don't pre-order, I guess? |
AAHT is actually very reliable when in AA mode. There is an issue when in ground mode when planes fly close to the AAHT since the cabin does not allow the weapon to track targets in 360 degrees.
I probably did not switch on AA mode back then, but I remember that the AAHT starts spinning around weirdly if planes fly in range, but outside of the arch, which often forces you to use hand brake.
I guess AA mode fixes it, but needing to activate that mode specifically for an >anti air< half track to actually not bug out while shooting at planes just adds to the clunkyness. |
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Your ELO was higher than the enemy team's. The ELO estimate expected you to win, but you lost. Therefore, you get a "high" penalty and downranked.
Second game, your ELO and the enemy team's ELO are more closely matched. The game is closer to 50:50, therefore you don't get as much of a bonus if you win.
Basically, everything working as intended.
The same thing occurs if your ELO was always higher than the ELO of the enemy team (which, if I get you right, probably was not the case). Then you get penalized for losing, but don't gain much from winning since you were expected to win in the first place. Also here, everything working as intended. |
Penals:
...
3. Picking up just 1 PTRS allows a regular Penal squad to use AT satchel while still having most of its AI.
If I play Penals and my Guards drop a PTRS, I often try to pick it up with a Penal squad to get another satchel.
On the other hand, if you Penal drops a PTRS, the best choice is to pick it up with a Combat Engineer. Otherwise, just leave it be and hope that the Axis player gimps their squad by picking it up.
Assault Guards:
1. IF you pick up a weapon you can no longer get the Thompson upgrade.
2. However, if you upgrade Thompsons first you can still pickup another weapon. Flamethrower is a great choice as you will dominate all short range squads. LMG is also good as you will do great damage at all ranges. Shreks/Zooks work extremely well also as Assg get a unique reload bonus at VET2 along with zook specialist. So you end up with a do it all squad.
The Thompson upgrade should (have) definitely be fixed. It doesn't make sense that you can't upgrade after picking up a weapon, but the other way round it is fine. |
What is rally? If your talking about the rally point that is only available in Airborne but not Terror Tactics. Airborne ACC vet is overall worse than the other Soviet elite units also but probably to late to address.
Good point. I somehow connect the airborne rally point with airborne Guards, probably because they have existed only in combination for a long time.
The accuracy veterancy bonus not especially bad. Guard Rifles get +30% as well. Almost every unit in the game either gets +30% or +40% in total. On a quick search, I can't find a real pattern, it is not depending on elite/non-elite nor the optimum range. However, that doesn't mean though that Airborne Guards couldn't use a +40% buff instead the +30%. Maybe that is what they are lacking. |
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The video that OP mentions is focusing only on Guards in green vs green cover fights, which is the only setup where the bug is present and PTRS Guards perform better than they should. Then he puts the conclusion out, that PTRS Guards are always the better choice. It would be interesting to see how they perform in neutral and yellow cover though and if airborne Guards have their advantage in these situations. Especially since late game and team games are more about yellow cover than green cover.
As someone else said already, PTRS shots neglecting damage reduction of green cover is probably one of the most "realistic" bugs CoH2 ever had. Nevertheless, this oversight should have been fixed, since PTRS Guards are not supposed to act that way.
The Obers and Guards matchup is fine, even without the fix. Those units cost a similar amount of resources and Obersoldaten win reliably. The test Gonk made was again only green cover to green cover, which is only representative of a fraction of the fights that will take place.
Now, one could make the argument that PTRS Guards are "allrounders" and Obers AI specialists, which is true to a certain extend, but: Guards have high AI specialization as well. Their PTRS works mostly against LVs but already has problems against mediums (their DPS gets reduced to about a third of what they would have against LVs). So past 15 min, they move to a mostly AI role with a "soft snare". Second, Obers also have some utility that is not directly combat related: The defensive Blendkorper with even some minimal anti vehicle defense, the booby trap and sprint. Plus, they can make a makeshift MG with suppression at vet4.
All in all, if Obers win roughly 50% in green cover fights (to be taken with a grain of salt since Gronk seemed to have only a whopping 4 tests) and probably most/all of all other long range fights, then there is no problem.
The question that should probably be asked is: Are airborne Guards too weak? They cost slightly more than Obersoldaten, a worse grenade, the overall utility I'd probably call roughly even (strafe + rally + infiltration spawn vs Blendkorper + sprint + booby trap) and still lose to Obers (again, only 4 tests by Gonk, but looking at the remaining HP there were no really close calls). |
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While a delay would surely be beneficial, CoH3 will be way better in the long run.
That judgement is obviously pure gut feeling, but from what Relic showed so far, they at least seem to know and work on 90% of CoH2's shortcomings. I assume CoH3 comes out fairly buggy, with acceptable optimization and probably overall bad balance. The first >half year will probably be fixing glaring issues and balance, as well as implementing some more "basic" and QoL features.
But there's a lot of promising signs that Relic/CoH3 will fare better. As mentioned above, Relic at least acknowledges a lot of issues and declares they were working on them. If that's really true will be seen, but it's not that they'd completely neglect where designs in CoH2 failed and kept pushing for it. Engagement of the community is higher as well as their hiring of community members into staff might potentially give them a bit better look/understanding how the game looks outside of their testing, at least as long as they actually have to say something.
The current visual fixes regarding contrast and visual hierarchy gave me confidence, that at least that part of the company knows how they can fix stuff quickly if the community calls for it. It's probably blindness to your own work that makes it often hard to detect room for improvement. It could be a hint that Relic does not have sufficient reviewing procedures. It is overall shitty to outsource that part to the community, but overall it can still yield a good game.
Other smaller factors will likely also contribute in the long run to a better game. Just to mention one: While it initially doesn't sound special that there will be four instead of the usual two factions at launch besides having twice the amount of equipment to play with, it will surely make the introduction of new factions via DLC smoother. CoH2 suffered a lot downstream from the DLCs, because Wehrmacht and Soviets have been balanced so intricately to one another, that - in combination with Relic's shoddy design for the new factions - the introduction of the new factions not only lead to problems for the new ones, but heavy changes on the old ones as well. Having four factions at launch will at the very least mitigate that.
I haven't followed AoE4 an awful lot, but from what I get the factions there are also more asymmetric than in AoE2, and the faction balance has become alright. The game also seems to regain players at the moment, so Relic seems to be able now to weather some storm and improve the game they have.
And last but not least: CoH is Relic's core franchise. They have more interest in keeping CoH alive than AoE, so in the end they'll also invest more resources into CoH if need to be.
My best guess is that buying CoH3 6-12 months post launch is probably the best strategy if you like the franchise. At this point, the game should be decently fixed with the initial weaknesses being addressed to not distract from the actual improvements.
(edited typos) |
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