I do accept your opinion but I can't really agree with the reasoning behind it.
COH2 started with some level of consistency that made the game more "readable" (can't agree about intuitive), for instance Ostheer vet bonuses where the same across vehicles and "Blitzkrieg Tactics" provided the same bonuses to all vehicles.
That created balance issues since certain bonus where to high for certain vehicles (like the FT) and was less "intuitive" since a Tiger gained the same bonuses as an ostwind.
Over the years Relic realized (that as I had suggested) bonus and abilities should be customized to fit specific units. That makes balancing easier.
Consistency is a good thing but that does not mean that things should be identical, all what needs is categories of abilities/bonus with similar usage.
Yes I agree to this. Your comparisons however are not equivalent. The Blitzkrieg does "the same thing" on all units. You'll still get maneuverability and target size buffs. The extend is tailored for balancing, but you'll press the button for the same reason on all units, and it will basically do the same thing for all units. Both variants of this ability do what the player expects and wants them to do, even if they are not aware of the minor differences.
Here, we can also see that minor alterations in abilities don't really confer well to communication: OKW's combat Blitz is pretty different ability. Still, many players don't know that this ability is much more offensive than the one of OST (as seen by e.g. Tightrope's explanation videos), despite having a (slightly) different name and icon. Because visually, they do the same thing: The tank goes faster. Minor differences like acceleration boosts are not recognized by players that easily, and no one will ever be able to tell if that shot that connected/missed was now due to the ability buff or pure luck.
Changing the icon is a good start, but if the names are similar enough and they visually do basically the same thing on the battlefield, there will be confusion. The clearer the differences are, the better and more readable the game will be.
Which directly ties into this point:
As for "readability" it is not hard to achieve by using specific names for categories, icon and in game descriptions.
For instance:
a good example is the commando grenade, has a different icon with a shield on it, a different name and a description of the effects. In addition the ability is designed around the unit.
an inferior example is USF smoke grenade that has little indication on the icon, effect is explained on description but the effect seem arbitrary (at least to me).
I obviously disagree to that.
We have a similar situation as to above: There's minor alterations to the icon and ability name, but visually they do pretty much the same thing. This is exacerbated by the fact that even the normal smoke grenades have different names and icons, making it even harder to spot differences. I agree that the USF smoke effect is very arbitrary, actually both of these abilities are designed very badly. And this is exactly why I disagree with how I understand your main proposal. We have other examples of that where names are shared orsimilar, icons are shared or similar etc. Some are Hull down (KV1 and OST), Target weak point (OKW Command P5 and SOV), camouflaged AT guns, multiple OST units had a "heat shell" ability before it got partially renamed, different types of automated vehicle repairs that actually have completely different icons and names, yet people complained on this forum multiple times that they are so much different and how one is stronger than the other. On all these and other examples, even if players understand that there is a difference, it is not really obvious what the difference is. Point is: Icons, names, descriptions are not enough. If two abilities are too similar, players will assume that they behave similarly. This might be the fault of the players themselves, but it is still bad game design to not account for that. The most obvious solution is to clearly differentiate them on a visual basis on the battelfield.
Obvious and intuitive differences are fine. 152mm shells producing more smoke than a Nebelgranate is pretty intuitive. 152mm shells doing some minor damage would also be intuitive.
Smoke grenades like the Nebelgranate producing light cover, while 152mm block vision might also be intuitive, although I would guess that Nebelgranate also has a completely obscured area, especially if you overlap multiple of them. Anyway, that would be suspension of disbelief for me, those details would be hard to communicate to the player and the simple solution is fine.
But I don't see a benefit in specialized smoke like e.g. the Churchill's smoke giving additional buffs to infantry in it (although it would make sense gameplay wise as an infantry tank), then the smoke of an Scott giving different buffs, mortars again having different buffs etc. Even if there are reasons - different payload size, different chemicals etc - the game would not be readable or intuitive.
The overall idea begs the question where you set the cut offs. Even handheld grenades had different sizes. Then there is the 75mm Scott, 81mm mortars, 105mm howitzers, 120mm mortars, 152mm howitzers all using different shells, payloads etc etc. How many classes are necessary, where are the cutoffs?
Keep the system simple and understandable:
E.g. All smoke blocking sight OR giving the same set of bonuses would be okay, just the size of the cloud is different. That's an easy system. The best one for deep gameplay? Probably not, but understandable and -for the most part - intuitive. At least as intuitive as almost any other system that you want to represent in an arcade game.
(edited for clarity and added points)
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cblanco ★ 
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