I can guarantee you they will not focus on the Eastern Front again. They will want some sort of hook to differentiate it from the other games, and setting is the easiest way to change that.
If I had to guess it will either be USA vs Japan, or Brits vs Germans in Africa. The second one makes the most sense, they could easily churn out an expansion for that with USA vs Italy.
We've had a Western Front France and Eastern Front Russia. I'm expecting a Germany vs Allies in Germany. What would be really cool is an alternate history US vs Soviets 1950s-60s game.
Vault become necessary because it created lots of problem in COH1 where a simple fence good make quite a difference for faction that had access to early vehicles that could crash it like USF jeeps or UKF Trucks. Rails and metal being a good map to demonstrate the issue.
It does create a problem for Ostheer currently who can not built mainline infantry from T0 but it would probably be better for ostheer if HMG42 was swapped with grenadiers in T1.
US Jeeps in vcoh could not crush. Only faction with unit that could was Brits, and basing any future design decisions on potential problems reserved specifically to Brits (in either game) is a joke tbh. They both suck, start over from scratch.
IMO everyone who says vaulting is not important has not played a lot of vCoH to be honest.
It was a pain in the ass if your soldiers walked around a complete area to get to point B which took almost a minute and still with vaulting they could have been there in 3 seconds.
I think it is perfect the way it is. Auto vaulting could lead to much worse problems, just look at the vehicle pathing right now. Vaulting is something that distinguishes a good player from a very good one.
I don't like the idea to auto vault. You could also say your units should take auto cover. It's still a game where you win because of gameplay and decisions. And vaulting is not so micro intensive. TBH I usually vault about 1-2 times per game, but I am also not pro player.
I can think of one spot on one map where lack of vaulting really slows you down, and even there its a 20 second delay lol. If by pain in the ass you mean setting up a flank takes more time and effort because you are more limited in the approaches you can take, exactly, and the early game was better for it. Furthermore if use of vaulting is differentiating between the good and very good players, which I still find pretty hard to believe, in no way is that a good thing. What differentiates between the good and very good should mainly be strategy and offensive capability, not clicking on a fence.
Dumb idea. First of all while disrespectful its not breaking any rules. In most circumstances its polite to quit when game is over but if the other guy is being a sore winner pos then yeah I'm gonna do that. If I was a little behind and the guy GG'd me and told me to leave, when I decide the game is over I will leave....leave my computer and come back 15 minutes later.
I think there is some hope Relic learned what went wrong with COH3 and make a better game next time. There is very little to no hope that they will work with community to fix their game in a meaningful way after it releases. If COH3 comes out and you don't like it get the refund while you can, its not going to improve significantly over time. Nothing has with COH. Even when they eventually get some things right (like remove blizzards) its completely negated by the fact that they introduce new garbage ass factions.
It really is hilarious that this cycle has been repeating for over 4 years now where the old guard gets shit on by Relic, new blood comes along and think they are in tight with Relic and things will be better next time, realize the old timers were right, and so on. A huge chunk of the starting staffers here had interacted with Relic devs for over a year, whether it was organizing events, making the last patch, investigating cheating reports for them, and more. Then someone who has been on staff here for 3 months and has Kyle on their steam friends thinks they will become the new community liaison messiah and prove to Ami, Tommy, Sepha, Razor, Aimstrong, Marucs, etc. that they just didn't know what they were doing. I remember Ciez was one of the first people to say that the old school guys were assholes yada yada yada let me be the bridge...and now he is like 10 generations removed from the Relic inner circle at this point. Its futile people, when history repeats itself every 3-5 months for 4 years its time to take a fucking hint.
Since it looks like we might be getting a COH3 with Relic looking for feedback I think this would be one of the best things to bring back as far as mechanics go. Having a sort of asymmetrical balance between infantry defensive qualities was really interesting. For those of you that didn't play heres a quick oversimplified summary:
Soldier armour: very strong vs rifle fire. Weak vs flamers, SMGs, MG suppression.
Elite armor: (Rangers/Vet2 Grenadiers): Similar to soldier armour, 100% snipe on retreat
Airborne armour: chance to dodge sniper fire, less resilient to MP44 and FG42.
Sniper armour: more vulnerable to mines, can dodge rifle fire but vulnerable to automatic weapons
Infantry: Standard
Heroic: Very tanky, also hard to suppress (Knights Cross Holders)
Vaulting is NOT an objective improvement in the game. Maybe you like it, doesn't make it a massive upgrade. As GiaA said its just an extra click which is not adding any sort of strategy to the game, not even on a small tactical level. If you like vaulting just because it seems an intuitive feature for infantry, in that case it should be done automatically and on retreat. If you like vaulting because of the risk/reward associated with having a bad retreat path, 2 things:
A) I have roughly 2000 games played, and if hopping a fence has ever cost me units I otherwise would not have lost, it is such a rarity that does not justify its existence as a feature. If your defense of vaulting as a feature is the risk/reward with retreat paths, it better damn well result in unit deaths every 2-3 games.
B) Even if the risk/reward mechanic made a decent tangible impact on gameplay, which it really doesn't, you are detracting from other parrts infantry gameplay in the process. I'll go in to why in the next paragraph.
The reason the infantry play was better without vaulting comes down to controlling lanes of travel, and MG play. Whereas MGs could only be approached from so many directions before, now it is just about limitless. Don't use the whole "well its just up to the mappers to use the right objects" argument because most won't, and even if they did that removes the possibility of impassable green cover that is a strong point (what I mean is if you replace a stone wall with a tall wooden fence or hedgerow to block the movement, it cannot be a defensive position anymore). MG play was just right on the COH1 maps because while aggressive early game Wehrmacht play with MG42s was risky, it was a viable opening with good enough awareness. When you can be approached from 2-3x as many angles, this goes out the window and MG play is relegated to a sort of central defensive role and not as a viable offensive unit. Another level of depth added by no vaulting was the vehicle crush. Flanking was much more fun when it meant that you needed to maintain a foothold in certain points of the map just to protect an important flank route, then send infantry from about 4 different angles to converge all at the same time. Theres just too many positions on too many maps in COH2 where you only need 1-2 angles of attack because you have enough width to do a lazy frontal attack.
Best map of comparison I can think of is Angoville since its in both games. For the aggressive riflemen player it was important to maintain control of the road, you needed it to have access to more flanking routes on the left side of the map because the base fence. In COH2 you just spread out along the fence, hop over and send 4-5 units running straight. You can swoop from the side to improve chances of killing something on retreat, but previously this was a necessity just to win the engagement against a competent player.
GiaA a lot of Reborn guys that quit playing COH2 early on complained about the exact same thing (including Marinez, Arma, Newport....all top 5 COH1 players at one point). Just because the more active COH2 community people like it does not qualify it as a great feature.
I was watching a video about this shot with some marksman experts talking about how insane this shot is and one of them said the range tables for that would call for a 80mil adjustment on the scope due to distance. Other factors like humidity and wind on that day had to be calculated too, but the drop due to gravity alone was nearly 900 feet on that shot. If the target was standing next to Williams Tower, the barrel of the rifle would have been pointed at the top lol.
I think Relic is going for recency effect: sure its shit now, but people will warm up to it once new stuff comes out (which their so-called apology blog was meant to remind us of). Abandoning COH2 also means people will tire of the latter and start going into the former, which brings the next point:
When they release new content people will finally buy and forget about all the initial pain, and CoH2 will be remembered as that bugfest of old and DoW3 becomes the new de facto Relic fan favourite. Then rinse and repeat with CoH3.
After all that's basically what happened with DoW2. It's just a cycle.
Not happening. Relic is not Rockstar or Bethesda...there is no sizeable cult following that buys whatever they put out. This is not a dev that routinely pumps out a GotY, Relic had a good space game before phones had cameras on them, a gem with COH1 11 years ago, a few above average games, horrible expansions, and now this shit sandwich. I know there is a few people on here that really like Relic and buy all there stuff to "support the devs" or whatever in hopes that some day they will remember how to make a good game, but this is a tiny niche group. Most of us will probably buy COH3 because we are overly optimistic that 3rd times a charm, but Relic is wrong if they think that their fanboys will keep them afloat if their games continue to suck.
If you can hit guys while running left and right and fire a mg while jumping, it will suck for me.
challenging Gunplay is all that matters, however publishers keep ignoring that
LOL you would be the one to jump the extreme unicorn game its so hilarious. Reminds me of 3-4 games I've played. What games does that not describe? Battlefield, CoD, Red Orchestra, Squad, Day of Defeat, Day of Infamy, Arma, PUBG, and more. If you watched two minutes of the video you'd know this game was somewhat realistic and not Wolfenstein.
Going to be a large scale tactical game with resource capture points. You spend the resources (manpower, munitions, fuel....sound familiar?) on respawning and heavy assets like AT guns and tanks, maybe air strikes and artillery too. Vehicles will be multi crew. There will be a commander, not sure how big a role he plays but I imagine commander unilaterally chooses what vehicles to purchase. This basically sounds like CoH + Red Orchestra, but on maps that are much bigger like in Squad.