Profile of ZombiFrancis

The desire for new maps in automatch is separate from the desire for new maps for CoH2. This nuance is something I see missed in these kinds of discussions. There are wildly popular maps and mods for CoH2. The difference with the Steam Workshop is that players get to choose.

People are very vocal about the features they don't like. It's not a great challenge to listen to that, nor to parse through the bull. From my experience the complaints people have about many maps are more to do with CoH2 mechanics than the specific map. But that is the thing: the onus is on the mapper to work around the limitations of CoH2 mechanics. It doesn't take expert players or 50+ replays of evidence to show a broken feature, a floating object, or a wonky bug.

It's harder for people to communicate the features that are working well for a map because they're busy playing the game on it. And that is the ultimate goal that mappers should be after: making a map people want to play the game on. Making a map you want people to play is something entirely different, and anathema to good content creation. At this point in the game, if there's ever going to be new maps made for automatch, then I think that mappers should collaborate in the early design phase, before hours of artistic energy are dumped into a map so moving a piece of green cover isn't like making Sophie's choice. Putting mappers in competition with each other I'm not sure has served the game or community well.

Barely anyone helped test Stadtschutt, and to this day I don't think it should've won nor been implemented into Automatch. But that's because I made that thing in 8 hours in the 11th hour of the contest. That abomination of a tacmap I made 20 minutes before submission deadline keeps me up at night. So much time and effort could be put in to improve and optimize that map, if only visually. But that's time and effort I don't have anymore, or rather ever had.

You can't get bent out of shape over criticism over a map, nor cast blame upon anyone on the state of a map if you're the one who made it. I feel bad that there's such an ugly map in 2v2 and that I had something to do with it. But at the same time I have zero animosity towards anyone in the community or at Relic for it. I've spent more time watching people play the map in obs mode or replays of maps after it was implemented and people don't love it, but they don't all hate it. There's changes I wish I could make, and errors I wish I could fix.

And that's the best any of us can hope for to be honest.

They killed all my mans.

Obers without their LMG34s are surprisingly balanced units against Allied infantry before adding in their own slot weapons performance wise. Their timing and cost have never really been in line, however.

The old Stormtroopers were similar in that fashion.

And you know, I've found it rather silly that both axis armies seem largely unable to throw a goddamn potato masher without bundling them together on an extremely latecoming or already effective close range unit.

Could place the upgrade in t3, but require three soviet tech buildings.

For the T1-T2-T3 unicorn.

The game has largely been balanced around how players, mostly specific high ranked ladder players, use individual units.

The way the AI (which does, for the record, cheat hardcore on expert) uses units has never been a concern for how the game has been balanced. I don't think it's even been a factor to be considered.

So, that said, you really must rely on learning, and then abusing, the way the AI works. You don't ambush or trick the AI in anything. You force the AI into making moves since it largely just reacts and counters to your movements and actions.

The AI often will break on itself eventually and just start spamming a single callin unit or sometimes just cease to act.