Profile of Hannibal

I have recently watched two of AE's casts side by side, one of CoH2 and one of CoH3.
I have gotten a better impression of CoH3 than compared to launch. The late game sound atmosphere actually sounded better than CoH2, at least when watching.
But CoH3 is such a mixed bag. Some sounds, especially rifle fite, many explosions and other effects are not only underwhelming, but almost ridiculously funny. Some offmap (I don't know what triggered it, maybe some officer call in) had tiny explosions that honestly looked like place holders for an actual animation. Many movement animations feel weird, and especially the sprint on retreat is too fast. The overall impression of the early game was still very underwhelming. Models felt weightless and the game is still lacking visually. That's not to say that there were no good explosions, good sounds or movement animations etc. There definitely are, even really well done ones. But the bad ones are kind of too obvious and just destroy the atmosphere.

CoH2 is also not top notch on all departments, but at least 95% I'd rate as good or better. There's fewer visual issues to stumble upon, although a big part surely is that I have just gotten used to them to be fair.
Not sure how many issues you actually notice during playing in CoH3

What's the news?

Sega wanted in on the 'funny crazy hero shooter' live service business after the boom half a decade ago and decided to make a cheap copy too little too late while handing it to their prime studio known for turn based strategy.
Backed up by no marketing campaign.

Surprisingly, the game was bad and failed. Surprisingly, there will be people fired.

How is that ESG?

There are a few different things that pushed maps towards the laney stuff.

1) Players need to blame something for their loss. Weird map? Blame it. Some trickier to play maps were made and they were universally hated. People were even told "Make an open field map. We are not looking at anything else."

2) Players only have three load outs. They want three useful commanders. If the map is too weird, it requires a certain commander to be viable. Which takes away from your other commanders. The game should have been designed better. If your infantry could be focused short/long by upgrades would help a lot. This is partially Relics fault by design.

3) Many players want to use a variety of weapons. If the map is too much of a maze you cant use team weapons at all. AT guns, for example, become useless. Now you have balance issues for team weapon focused factions.

4) Mappers only get one shot at making a map (unless you are WhiteFlash). You have to make the map as safe as possible. You cant risk people hating a section that is weird to play cause your map will get removed rather then reworked. This is Relics fault. Their apathy towards their own game.

5) Some players just like to play a certain style (A-move???). They will veto certain maps.


ANSWER
Relic needs to be much more active with the mapping community. They need to add maps more frequently and let mappers update them. Instead Relic is saying "We cant add maps cause we have small pee pees". As usual, doing the complete opposite of what they should be doing. I dont know how they stay in business. What other type of business can you be completely incompetent and stay open?

Thanks for the insight.
I guess on top of all that comes the "low maintenance" strategy that Relic used for CoH2 after UKF release. There were few employees working on CoH2, and those obviously couldn't do the most intricate analysis. Their feedback was that these 3 maps are not liked by players, most vetoed and rarely played, so they put 3 other maps in that were more similar to the liked maps.
It's the easiest way to maintain the game and community with the least amount of work, and people seemed to be happy and player numbers overall grew. Why risk this trend and maybe also your standing in the company to push for more varied maps that fewer people like, when all "objective" indicators say you are wrong?

It's a shame for CoH2 though. That's exactly why vetoes exist: Veto the maps that you personally don't like. Most of the maps in the current pool are good to very good by themselves. They do well what they are supposed to do: Longer range combat with some thoughtfully placed cover and garrisons in between, and every know and then a shot and sight blocker to dance around and create lanes and channels.
But they are all the same. The difference of playing Whiteball, Eindhoven, Rails and Metal, Redball, Essen Steelworks, Winnekendonk, Minsk... there's just none. Play the same standard build and same tactics and you'll be fine in 80% of the games.

CoH2 has seen a lot of maps rotated in and out in its 10 years life span. Some of them might not have fitted into competitive play, but they were fun and beautiful nontheless. The current map pool has some very good maps, but many of them feel pretty similar. Visuals might be different, but the play style is the same on 80% of the maps, which in turn leads to little variation in gameplay in CoH2.
I'll present a couple of my "favourites", or at least some that I found noteworthy from 2v2 and 3v3, because I play these modes the most. What were your favourite maps that you'd like to have back?


Lierneux
Beautiful map, don't know why it had to be removed to be honest. I loved how the map was seperated organically into three parts: The closed forest, the semi-open village and the open fields. It often lead to relatively clear matchups who would win which side, but I loved the unsuspected surprise of attacking on one of these allegedly "secure" areas, mini commando raids or, if these didn't work, the house to house fighting in the middle to get an edge towards either of the sides. Some surprise commander choices could also switch up who would dominate which area. There's also some cool ideas: The southern outmost forest road that was rarely used apart allowing flanking maneuvers and the more separated northern fuel that was almost its own area from the "main fields". The tree lines could lead to some weird pathing, I was still happy to play that map. Atmosphere was top notch, it really felt like company level battles placing mortars behind houses and infantry groups supporting each other, ATGs blocking roads etc.


Semoskiy (Winter)
I have fond memories mostly of the Winter version, however it was taken out of rotation soonish after I started playing online. Loved the frozen lakes in the winter version and blowing up the ice to sink tanks. Great stuff and good implementation of this feature. The northers side didn't see much action, but was always a good diversion strategy to draw away attention or just snack a couple of territories while the opponent was busy. On the negative, the houses generally were too dominant. If you got pushed to you side of the river, the game was sometimes just over. For the current maps, this has often been solved by moving houses or placing sight blocker bushes. Maybe this map could have seen a similar treatment. Otherwise I remember great matches and honestly would like to play it again.


Stadtschutt
Was in rotation for quite a while. It usually yielded good games, I didn't like the atmosphere and blocky design of the map. The map just never clicked for me. That's not how a city looks like. What's the weird green patch doing in the middle of the city? The lumber area? All the ruins are so far apart, as if no one wanted any neighbour in the vicinity of 50 meters. It just looked a bit cobbled together. For gameplay, every single part was well designed, although all of the were focused on long range combat. I even liked the usage of red cover here, forcing you to think about when and how to cross certain streets. I think this is the map that looked the most gamey to me: We have it because the gameplay works on it, not because it really feels like WW2 combat. A big plus though for the idea of putting some fences that block infantry movement in the early stages of the map, while you could later open those up by overrunning them with tanks.


Poltava
I had a love and hate relationship with Poltava. The map is so linear it you'd just get stuck in MGs and TDs. On the other hand, the battle in the middle around those four houses worked so god damn well. The red cover streets were sometimes frustrating, but overall promoted thoughtful moving and use of smoke and grenades to transition between the houses and from the sides to the middle VP. The VPs in the corners were unfortunately pretty safe but could yield some really fun fights since these were the "enclosed" areas of the map. Apart from this, there were quite some issues: The munition points were pretty hard to take due to bushes and fences that would lead to weird shooting and pathing. I also felt like the northern side had safer fuel, although the map is supposed to me symmetrical. the roads on the very sides of the map were a bit too decoupled from the rest. They were meant to be highways to the fuel and corner VPs, but somehow I rarely used them. My fondest memory is getting my Sherman stolen in one of the corners because I thought the crew was safe to repair there. Good stuff.


Trois-Ponts
Honestly one of the most freaking unique maps in automatch that I remember. It had serious issues, but I loved it. The middle VP on the bridge with no good retreat path and being a prime target for literally any artillery was atrocious - but sometimes in even a good way. Some games just ended by being pushed back to the base and then being artied to death because you couldn't safely cross your bridge anymore, definitely not one of the high points in design. But everything else was just so fun. The huge graveyard with the VP on one side with few vehicle entry points yielded really good infantry engagements early on and even good battles once tanks broke the walls. The enclosed VP on the other side in the courtyard was also great for infiltration and taking them unnoticed while the main fight was going on elsewhere. Actually, both VPs had cool infantry entry points. The wider area around the munition points were a struggle literally for map control to open up movement options and the possibility to get into the valuable middle VP. The houses were well placed and dominant, but manageable. I loved this map, despite some glaring issues. It was unique and offered some areas and play styles that are hard to replicate on the current map pool.


Hamburg Hafen
Not a "lost" map since it's still in rotation, but, for the love of god, a ton of lost potential. Mostly with the flanks of the map that are basically never ever used. I don't know why this was never fixed. The ruin area and the dry dock on the other side of the map look so cool, but there is barely any reason to ever be there. The channels, point placements, pathways and obstructions just make it so hard to ever use these areas effectively. At some point, the map makers realized that issue so the ruin area got an infantry bridge. Cool. Still, its hardly used. The dry dock would have benefited from some crossing as well apart from the main bridge. In previous game versions, you could also blow up the bridge and later on repair it. That was a neat feature, albeit not that great for competitive play. Looked cool for bot matches and low ELO play though. This map has unfortunately lost a ton of potential due to some bad map design decisions. It's one of the heaviest arty spam maps in the current rotation. It's not a bad map, but it feels like developing it has just stopped once it got to "okay", and the rest of the ideas that have been built in to 50% completion were just left to die.



Ettelbruck
Again not a lost map, just lost visuals. It is a good map for arty and a lot of explosions in a tiny area. A map with good interaction between team mates even at low ELO, because it just is so small. My only gripe is: We had visually more beautiful versions. The version I remember the dearest is a pre-war Ettelbruck with a beautiful café, I think even the middle and station sides looked more tidy. It was a version where you're fighting the very first fight in this city, and seeing what war does to a beautiful small town at the end of the game was the highlight for me. The current version is a "you're commanding the 10th assault on that area" version - half the stuff is destroyed already. Lost some of its flair. The main issue for me currently is that a Brummbar can completely block off one victory point with not much to do about it, otherwise gameplay is good, if arty is what you want.

Out of interest: What were the main improvements that made you change your review?

Regarding some points that you made (I hope this does not stray from the topic): I have only played the pre-alpha, I found the matches usually too short. A main mechanic is to keep my units alive, but especially the units bought later will see battle only a handful of times maximum. Didn't really like that one.
The CoH2 late game arty+TD spam is partially a map design issue. The maps in 3v3 and 4v4 are so narrow. The amount of firepower in each "corridor" is crazy in the late game, anything below a heavy tank usually doesn't cut it and flanking is nigh impossible, especially if you invest in 2-3 defensive mines.
The few open maps (such as Steppe and General Mud) are often vetoed out and have some other issues, such as a huge advantage for OKW, UKF and USF due to forward retreat points etc. But these are maps where mediums are viable to the very last second of the game, we just rarely see them.