There seems to be a wave of general negativity permeating both CoH2.org and the official forums lately that, if I hadn't been playing the game, would probably convince me CoH2 has never been in a worse state that it currently is and is nigh unplayable. I won't try to convince people to love the game, but since I do, I felt obliged to start this topic.
The game is obviously not perfect (more on that later), but currently when I play a 1v1 or 2v2 AT (or with a decent random partner) game, the three most important conditions for an enjoyable game are met:
-I win or lose mainly due to my being better or worse than my opponent, or making mistakes;
-I feel free to use a variety of tactics and build orders while not sacrificing or severely worsening my chance to win;
-I have fun.
I understand and agree with a lot of the issues repeatedly brought up on the forums, especially regarding the slow bugfixing and new bugs introduction. There's really no excuse for it so late after release, considering Relic has been working with more or less the same engine for about a decade. However, I've also witnessed on numerous occasions people (on my team, or the opposition) playing truly badly (from a tactical and unit preservation point of view) and then blaming balance in the chat.
I'm not saying balance and unit design issues do not exist. I do feel, however, that, once a certain skill level is achieved by all players involved, balance issues are enough to decide a game by themselves only when the skill levels of the opposing teams are very close, and even then luck and RNG (and, unfortunately, an untimely bug) could easily be more important. The nature of CoH (and one of the reasons I love the game) is such that the way a unit is used or opposed may produce vastly different impressions of that unit's performance, which is why I am also willing to argue that the game can only be realistically balanced at one skill level, and that must by necessity be a relatively high skill level. I don't mean ladder position, merely a certain minimum knowledge of the most common mistakes, unit roles, and ability to efficiently control a certain number of units at all times. And there's nothing wrong with that - it's a competitive game (by which I simply mean one human plays against another) and the inherent goal of every competitive game is to win and be (and become) better than your opponents, and improving my game is actually the most enjoyable aspect of CoH to me.
All of that being said, there are several areas where I think small changes to the game could bring big improvements to the gameplay:
- Intrafaction balance - there are now a number of viable strategies, but if some of the forgotten units and commander abilities were made more viable, that number could be
big;
- Long (enormous, that is) range units - Jadgtiger, ISU152, Elephant (I also hate the Sturmtiger, but that's personal
). I don't think the survivability their long range provides is currently offset enough by weaknesses such as price or speed. Again, though, as with other balance issues (which I'd rather not get into), most of the time it's mistakes losing a game, rather than units winning it;
- In 2v2 matchmaking (and I assume it applies to larger game modes, though I've no experience there) I've sometimes been matched in less than ten seconds with teammates that have been frankly bad, while opposing a team of two decent to good players. As far as I know, the matchmaker considers 1+3 to be equal to 2+2, and while that's true in maths, it's not necessarily so in skill level terms. If the playerbase allows it, matching within teams as well as between teams would prevent a lot of frustration, and I myself would gladly wait twice as long for a ten times more enjoyable game.
Now that I've typed a novel, I realize I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this topic is
. I guess I just wanted to see a positive title for once. I realize most of the people coming to these forums love CoH, and most of the complaints are not because people think CoH is bad when it could be good, but rather that it's good when it could be utter brilliance. I myself won't buy AA before some of the most glaring bugs are fixed. However, I also don't think things are as bad as they could seem to someone simply visiting the forums. IMO, CoH is still ages ahead of the competition in terms of enjoyable, challenging and original gameplay, it has improved drastically since release, and I've no doubt it will continue to improve with time.
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Muad'Dib
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
