Aight I've been very positive of the game lately but these games seriously wehr is busted.
I've no idea what paint twitch is huffing but if the USF mortar is OP I've no idea what to say about wehr MGs into T3, the nebel literally oneshots both ATGs and team weapons. They don't even get decrewed if they get hit by a rocket, the support weapon gets blown and the team stands in base with no weapon costing supply.
I had a USF MG in a building this game in 2v2 that was set up in a building and he literally sprinted straight into the arc and killed it with grenades. It's so far from the USF experience with MGs I've no idea where to begin, there's literally no reason for the USF MG to have the super short range it has.
Edit: I think I'm gonna try to convince my gaming duders to start playing axis in team games, it's really miserable right now even in 2v2s.
The Air Support Centre is the biggest problem in my opinion. Both infantry and mechanized you can work around with other stock tools (in theory at least), air has no equivalent. That's just an extension of the "USF has no indirect fire other than mortars" decision though. If they're going to keep that going forward then the USF needs powerful tools like the Easy 8 to wipe out weapon teams.
I don't really know what the US MG is meant to be good at. With the MG42 it's obviously just good at everything and the Vickers is supposedly good for damage, but what does the 30 cal outside of a load of drawbacks? Narrow arc, normal set up time, bad veteran abilities... it's actually somewhat comical that they gave it button vehicle with a horribly narrow arc - while the MG42 once again gets the "remove light vehicles" incendiary ability. In CoH2 the US MG at least had damage and penetration going for it, while the maxim had 6 men and was (for a time anyway) an offensive unit with a quick setup. I just struggle to see what the 30 cal is meant to have going for it beyond being a basic MG that you can air drop in at the start of the game.
Had another 2v2 basically carried by the Easy 8 - sort of. It wasn't so much that the E8 was singlehandedly destroying them (although it did wipe quite a few squads), it was that they had prepared absolutely no AT up until that point beyond single isolated Marders, and I'd eaten each one of them alive for no loss. Any other tank would have done much the same had it landed at the same time. It was satisfying though since I'd basically had to play 2v1 most of the match. It was a combo of a Wehr player spamming MG42s (seriously, he had like 5 of them all over the place) into nebelwerfers while the DAK player was Bersaglieri into StuG D/Marders (if he ever got that far). Map was Aere Perennius. Final blow was switching from my VP to expose just how little AT they had on the middle VP and then they quit. MVP was probably the MG42 I liberated and set on one of their fuel points. Held to the very end.
I'm still expecting to get rolled when anyone good comes into the match, but there are some satisfying games now and again.
USF MG also has less range. Combined with less suppression and axis grenades being strong makes it a trap. I've never had a successful one, you can't even protect the backline. I've never not crushed someone who went a bunch of USF MGs as axis myself.
The CoH community generally continues to be awful. There's the usual 'steam charts!' spam actively willing the game to fail, axis players wondering why their queues are so long and the same axis players crying for "leaver penalties" - because you should be forced to let them play out their wehraboo power fantasies no matter how dull it is on the receiving end. I find it funny any time it comes up, because the best way to kill my interest in the game entirely would be to implment f2p style punishments in a game I paid full price for.
Indeed, I did have a game like that earlier. 3v3, playing USF, got stuck on Mignano summit. Since the map is awful, I decided to mess around with the special operations battlegroup and it's really quite terrible. First off, found out that units can't shoot out of the weasel. It makes the alternate weasel with flame engineers for 1 cp even more baffling as a choice - it's quicker, easier and all round better just to build engineers in the first place, and it can't even do the one thing I'd expect from that combo. The rest of the BG just doesn't offer anything interesting - SSF are kinda weak, the wizzbang is pretty poor as well and the rest of the abilities are situational or uninspired.
Going off meta was a death sentence at any rate. I played poorly trying to fit the pieces together and the whole thing was generally a shitshow - one that we were technically 'winning' but it was pretty obvious the axis players were just letting us hold 2 VPs until they got their Tigers and the likes. There was no question of them actually losing the game, the map was far too imbalanced in their favour for that. I quit about the moment the tigers started showing up.
Much as I hate the doomsayers in the community, the game is not in a great place right now. The core problem as I see it is that Allies simply aren't fun to play in team games. USF end up crippled by a lack of indirect fire and the british were gutted by the last patch. The game is still lacking many key features like replays and overall shows a lack of care and attention to detail. The weasel call in above is a perfect example of it - there's no choice to be made, one of the choices is just entirely pointless. I don't know if the game actually has a soundtrack beyond the main menu theme. It all feels like it's about 6 months away from ready.
Special Operations Battlegroup... before the recent patch that was the one I felt most comfortable with. I was not comfortable with old easy-eight stall (way too much manpower cost) and my assault engineer builds were floundering against good players who could punish their mid-to-late game weakness while fighting them off early game.
It inspired me to go heavier into BAR Riflemen and realize that they were actually good. After all, the patch only buffed them by 15%. The hardest thing was just getting them out safely.
The weasel is still quite good I think. Mostly because it vets up quickly and the "Medical Layer" ability is quite good. Send out your weasel, cap, harass, kill and vet up. Heal your troops up on the field so that they are always fighting at full HP - which makes a big difference between fights at saving manpower. When it becomes difficult or scary to keep it alive (~8+ minutes) send it home - the Aura on the heal is so large you can park it between two bases and it will heal both you and your ally's units for the rest of the game. You can also use it to drop off mortars in base and get cheap indirect fire.
Alas, not much else is worth writing home about in the battlegroup.
The "mark vehicle" ability is tragically slow to activate. You spend 50 munitions and then... 10-15 seconds later it gets marked? It's absurd. The whole point of the ability would be to punish an enemy dive or facilitate your own dive. It activates so slowly though that it's almost always too late against anything. The vet1 Captain Mark Vehicle happens instantly. Why is the delay so long?
The same issue often lies with the smoke barrage which feels like it takes ages to come in. This has only gotten more punishing in the new world of MGs where every second counts as you get pinned so fast your troops get eaten alive.
Raiding flares are okay. Vision + infantry combat bonuses seems good. Vision is almost always useful for the right price.
SSF Commandos are also just okay. They're a bit expensive for their performance... and have really struggled as StuGs have become more popular as Bazookas are really bad against StuGs. I think that the buffs to the Chaffee/Motor Pool have make people a bit more afraid of just spamming StuGs though so they might do better now.
Assault Operation... I tried to use this in a pair of games and it felt utterly worthless as a combat ability. I just couldn't perceive a difference in durability and the ability is quite expensive. I generally do not put a large amount of value on changing capping speeds - that's more of a 1v1 bonus. If you want a buff for a fight you'd probably be better off with raiding flares which is cheaper and provides better utility with vision.
Air resupply is decent to good. Munitions for fuel is not a bad trade. AT Guns are good. Though the M1919HMG is weak, an HMG is still an HMG.
The Whizzbang... honestly if this thing was decent it could transform everything. Tech-skipping for an easy eight is good, right? The predominant strategy of the day! Why not for a different Sherman, one that can be artillery too! The absolutely tragic range is a problem. You could DOUBLE the range and it would not even make this unit close to overpowered which is really saying something. It feels like it would be balanced if it was just a sherman that could fight normally while firing a barrage every 2 minutes, which also raises alarm bells.
It is probably the weakest battlegroup now... so many of these abilities need some attention.
you guys werent kidding about weapon support teams. I flanked a german MG with 2 infantry squads and they couldnt do any meaningful damage during the time it took it to turn around and suppress them both
My friends and I did encounter an Allied cheese that seemed to work. They just went full Airborne Machine Gun Spam. By the time we got out Flamethrowers and Clown Cars it felt to late (also did not help that I lost my Clown Car to a flamethrower)
Did not help that we all accidentally went DAK so we did not have easy access to mortars.
Yeah, I think I'm done with this game outside of comp stomps. Tired of MG42s that instantly pin squads. Makes the early game as allies super hard because all you can do is retreat.
There's a developer stream on the 18th May about upcoming changes. Hopefully a patch comes sooner rather than later.
Personally, I found things were getting a bit too stale. Even ignoring the MG42 spam, there just wasn't that much variety to strategy. I'm saying this from an allied point of view, but most USF games played out as Armoured Battlegroup, Riflemen into Chaffees and wait for the Easy 8 - most other strategies just ended up in a loss. The british simply weren't an option after the last patch.
I do wonder if the whole battlegroup setup is part of the problem. The way some of them are set up you're basically funneled into going all-in on one specific strategy and hoping it works out. For example, british armoured (Centaur then Churchill), pre-nerf USF airbourne (pathfinders -> T2 -> T4) and the current USF armoured. Each of them was set up with that kind of play in mind - specifically a heavy emphasis on tech skipping which further discourages build diversity. I'd like to see a heavier emphasis on stock units rather than battlegroups determining strategy.
Edit: They've also just announced a "temporary fix" to matchmaking times. They state:
"This change will help normalize matchmaking times for all players. Normalizing matchmaking times will reduce the number of players facing long queue times, at the cost of slightly longer queue time for others."
The cynic in me wonders if this just means allied players waiting longer to lose.
Part of the issue is the smaller the player base, the harder it will be to find even matches. Especially with Axis queue times already being much longer.
One new 3v3 map. It's a bridge map and won't be in PVP automatch (available in custom games and coop vs AI automatch only).
Audio overhaul for a number of weapons.
Strafing runs adjusted (timing and angle of the drops).
Loiter overhaul. Some vague allusion to balancing skill planes, but quick to point out "it's not a full balance pass".
Player name labels.
Bug fixes.
Notification system overhaul.
Longer zoom level.
Have to admit, I'm a bit disappointed if the summary is accurate. Fully aware that development is hard and time consuming but can't help but think "is that it?". I just keep getting the impression that there simply hasn't been that much resources thrown at CoH3, like it's a pet side project that only got made because a handful of devs wanted to. It launched unfinished, devs have been playing catchup on bug fixes and some of the most important basic features simply aren't there yet (namely, replays). I really want it to succeed but it needs Relic to really commit to it.
It is a bit of a strange choice. It isn't great optics. A load of people expected the Benghazi map on the workshop to be included (since it is a Relic map) but doesn't seem to be any talk of that happening.
Also, not mentioned in that summary is that paradrop planes will be made invulnerable.
Doesn't look great. Hard to say what effect it will have on CoH but that's a significant number of people and the game isn't in a great spot to start with.
Well, checking back in on this doesn't look great. I bet they had to layoff a bunch of people because the game sold like crap and isn't super popular. Their analytics team probably crunched the numbers and the cost to fix stuff will be too high for the return they would gain, and the timeline needed will put them up against stormgate and tempest rising. Maybe I'll pick this up when it's perpetually $3 like coh2 for the last decade.
Well, checking back in on this doesn't look great. I bet they had to layoff a bunch of people because the game sold like crap and isn't super popular. Their analytics team probably crunched the numbers and the cost to fix stuff will be too high for the return they would gain, and the timeline needed will put them up against stormgate and tempest rising. Maybe I'll pick this up when it's perpetually $3 like coh2 for the last decade.
Dang.
I can't say I felt the hype playing the CoH 3 beta -- I wound up not buying it as it didn't really feel like an upgrade as much as just kind of different.
Buuuut I wasn't expecting it to fail in anything close to a similar way as Dawn of War 3 did....not sure what the #s are, but the result being 121 layoffs is not good.
CoH3 clearly wasn't ready for prime time but came out anyways. Sega probably had Relic release early because they needed numbers to look better and when that failed got out the axe.
This is what Relic said about the reason for the layoffs:
Why we are here
As we have discussed in previous Assemblies and seen across the tech industry, this past year has been incredibly difficult. The combination of significant project delays, rapidly rising costs, high inflation, and foreign exchange rate fluctuations have had a combined negative effect on our business. As a result, the measure of success for a studio of our size has grown, and it has put more pressure on our titles to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
All of these factors have led us to the decision with SEGA to reduce our studio size substantially and refocus our efforts. We will continue to support our core titles, including Company of Heroes 3, and our upcoming projects to ensure they’re successful for us. We believe that making this very difficult decision now will help secure a strong future for our studio and our business.
I know this doesn’t make it any easier for those who will be leaving us. Your dedication and hard work have helped us grow and deliver games and helped make this an amazing place to work. We will be doing everything we can to treat you with respect, communicate openly with you, and support you.
'Significant project delays' is an interesting note, especially given that CoH3 was delayed by a few months. It absolutely would not have been ready for their initial launch date though. Beyond that, it does sound like a tacit admission that CoH3 underperformed.
I guess it's something at least, but I still really question why a functional replay system and surrender button has been so far down the list of priorities. Meanwhile, this mod exists and implements most of the requested features along with a few other changes: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2979656008
If you believe Reddit, it was made by a former Relic designer (who left shortly before the layoffs). Can't be used in automatch obviously, but it's an excellent proof of concept. It makes me further question how the game is being managed by Relic.
they're experts at getting the microtransaction system released. when it comes to basic multiplayer features... it will take months if ever
i've moved on. such potential totally wasted.
still baffled at how planes and loiters are a hot topic when every faction has AA vehicles but NONE of them are capable of killing a plane before it does damage, and the only one that COULD kill a plane was nerfed specifically so that it could no longer do that
I just don't understand their thought process really. I can understand the microtransactions being put in early - they may need the revenue, or execs may be putting pressure on to get that recurring revenue. I can understand bugfixes and the campaign mode getting a lot of work early on - it's the 'main mode' for a lot of people and the whole game was pushed out too early. What I can't understand is the callous disregard for implementing core features like replays and balance. Up until now replays haven't even featured on the roadmaps! Probably one of the most important features both for players, the community and the free marketing you get from streamers etc analysing them - and yet there's still no timeline for them actually being implemented properly.
On balance, the last patch was a bridge too far. Gutting the brits while also failing to deal with any of the overly strong axis tools broke the back of the allied playerbase in pretty much anything higher than 1v1 and there's no adjustment in sight. Anecdotally, it does seem like the allied playerbase has dropped rapidly, with axis complaining about queue times, and after they 'fixed' that it became hugely uneven matchups with the axis players ranked well above their allied opponents. I'd hoped that the series of balance hotfixes around launch would set the tone for a somewhat more reactive Relic, and for a while they almost got there - or at least it felt that way until axis started to further figure out what worked, but then they caved into the wehraboo screaming and went the completely wrong direction instead. I'm still hoping for some sort of course correction but after the layoffs I doubt they'll ever address the core problems with some of the factions (e.g. the USF and their total lack of indirect fire).
Personally, I tended to prefer playing as the brits so the last patch just killed my enthusiasm almost entirely. I switched over to the US for a bit and found them reasonably capable (although suffering endgame with effectively no indirect fire tools, moreso in larget team games) but also felt they were a bit one-note and repetitive. Armoured battlegroup, riflemen, chaffee, Easy 8. Same thing nearly every game.
No siginficant balance changes. Indeed the only explicit balance changes were buff to axis plane abilities... I doubt the plane changes will make a huge difference to the overall balance. After all, it would mostly affect the USF (by making the air support centre stronger... maybe) while the UKF will be left to struggle.
Edit: To add to the hilarity, the plane changes have made the DAK stuka anti tank loiter ridiculous. A fast, basically unavoidable strafe that will kill a crusader outright in one pass, or about 92% of a medium tank's health (used a Pz4 for testing). The UKF version isn't anywhere near as potent.
Edit 2: They also accidentally put the new 3v3 map in PvP automatch anyway. I've seen a few people actually like it that way though!
Edit 3: ...and it's gone. Would have at least liked to try it in a real match, but oh well.
I know this technically isn't the place, but since the Dawn of War thread is long since dead...
I decided to poke around DoW3 to compare it to how CoH3 turned out. I hadn't played it since the pre-launch beta and only picked it up when it was going for peanuts in a sale.
It really was that bad.
Only played skirmish and a bit of campaign since I imagine the MP scene is long since dead (and even if it isn't, I had little interest anyway) so can't really say how it plays out against a real opponent but the core problems were obvious all the same. At the centre of it all was the decision to scrap every advancement Relic had made in the RTS space in favour of mimicking 90's style RTS with disposable armies and bases being the centre of everything. They ignored everything from DoW2 in particular despite how good it was - levelling was gone, cover was gone, suppression was gone, sync kills were gone, victory points were gone, tactical gameplay was all but gone and the 'elites' lacked the finesse of DoW2's heros (no levels, no wargear, just a massive power spike when they hit the field). I struggle to identify any elements of DoW2 in DoW3. Instead we got regressions to DoW1's largely pointless base building (complete with otherwise pointless builder units!), generic damage/health upgrades (lv1/2/3 damage/health, how original!) and gameplay that tends to a static slog around entrenched points. Then there's all the other issues on top of that - like every map being lane based, the power core mode in general, the wildly exaggerated unit animations andthe particle spam making it all utterly unreadable anyway. One of my biggest pet peeves was that they got Paul Leonard-Morgan to do a pretty decent soundtrack, then stuck a single, fairly inoffensive and muted track as the backround for all races in skirmish/MP. Using glorified elevator music is a great way to kill any atmosphere.
I could go on and on about all of the various choices that I disliked but six years later I'm still annoyed about how much of a disappointment it was. It simply wasn't a Relic game. But hey, at least it had replays - now expected sometime around 'fall' for CoH3 according to Relic.
By comparison, CoH3 is much rougher than DoW3 - it's lacking basic features like replays, profiles aren't there, no account progression despite it obviously being planned, no in game leaderboard (remember that the current one was a last minute decision around launch) etc. CoH3 was clearly pushed out the door way too early and, if it were an indie studio, would have been labelled early access. These are all things that could be fixed with time though. The core gameplay is good, even if they need to actually balance it. No amount of time spent on DoW3 would have made it good.
there is a major patch today that looks like sort of a "this is how the game should have been released" patch...
my expectations are low because the game has hardly any regular players anymore but maybe they're gearing up to repeat CoH2 where they have a free to play type thing and the game rebounds and becomes active again. i can dream.
Quite a lot in the patch. Hoping that the balance changes improve things for the allied side, or at least the UKF. I've struggled to mount much enthusiasm for the game since the April patch that obliterated the UKF. At a casual glance, I'm seeing a few numbers tweaks but no real change on core issues for the brits. Well, I guess they get the training centre for free now but it still seems like Relic don't know what to do with it. It's possible that the overall changes have benefitted them though, just have to try it and find out.
I'll be interested to see how a lot of these "game feel" changes play out. Movement of vehicles in proximity to other vehicles was really bad before. "Circling" a Marder or fixed gun tank was basically impossible as the pathing would get stuck as you approached.
Yeah, it really does feel like "this is how it should have been" patch.
I am a bit mystified by some things that feel like they should exist - an actual nerf to the MG42 rather than an adjustment - but skimming over these they seem good. Bad units got some improvements. Unit control theoretically got better. The OP units got extremely minor tweaks - but they were manageable units before and many other units got straight buffs.
Except maybe that USF buffs are going too far? USF is a pretty strong contender right now - I feel pretty comfortable with BAR Rifle spam - and the Air Support Center last patch went from "okay" to "pretty incredible". It just received more buffs and some anti-aircraft units on the axis side got worse at shooting down planes. It can be pretty oppressive to fight against efficient Riflemen where your team-weapons can't operate because a strafing run is called in every engagement.
i didnt expect to really notice or appreciate the tank/crew weapon changes but actually it really does stand out how snappy and responsive everything is now and it kinda makes the old system seem like it was all bugs
ok ill bite, gonna do some campaign to de-rust this week
I know this technically isn't the place, but since the Dawn of War thread is long since dead...
I decided to poke around DoW3 to compare it to how CoH3 turned out. I hadn't played it since the pre-launch beta and only picked it up when it was going for peanuts in a sale.
It really was that bad.
Only played skirmish and a bit of campaign since I imagine the MP scene is long since dead (and even if it isn't, I had little interest anyway) so can't really say how it plays out against a real opponent but the core problems were obvious all the same. At the centre of it all was the decision to scrap every advancement Relic had made in the RTS space in favour of mimicking 90's style RTS with disposable armies and bases being the centre of everything. They ignored everything from DoW2 in particular despite how good it was - levelling was gone, cover was gone, suppression was gone, sync kills were gone, victory points were gone, tactical gameplay was all but gone and the 'elites' lacked the finesse of DoW2's heros (no levels, no wargear, just a massive power spike when they hit the field). I struggle to identify any elements of DoW2 in DoW3. Instead we got regressions to DoW1's largely pointless base building (complete with otherwise pointless builder units!), generic damage/health upgrades (lv1/2/3 damage/health, how original!) and gameplay that tends to a static slog around entrenched points. Then there's all the other issues on top of that - like every map being lane based, the power core mode in general, the wildly exaggerated unit animations andthe particle spam making it all utterly unreadable anyway. One of my biggest pet peeves was that they got Paul Leonard-Morgan to do a pretty decent soundtrack, then stuck a single, fairly inoffensive and muted track as the backround for all races in skirmish/MP. Using glorified elevator music is a great way to kill any atmosphere.
I could go on and on about all of the various choices that I disliked but six years later I'm still annoyed about how much of a disappointment it was. It simply wasn't a Relic game. But hey, at least it had replays - now expected sometime around 'fall' for CoH3 according to Relic.
By comparison, CoH3 is much rougher than DoW3 - it's lacking basic features like replays, profiles aren't there, no account progression despite it obviously being planned, no in game leaderboard (remember that the current one was a last minute decision around launch) etc. CoH3 was clearly pushed out the door way too early and, if it were an indie studio, would have been labelled early access. These are all things that could be fixed with time though. The core gameplay is good, even if they need to actually balance it. No amount of time spent on DoW3 would have made it good.
Heh it's interesting because our perspectives on DoW2 and 1 are flipped -- I think 2 is a massive downgrade and I still play Dark Crusade/Soul Storm a few times every year, but just don't enjoy 2 despite many many attempts.
But we can still agree that 3 is terrible. I played the beta, I bought it, man they just made some bad decisions. The MOBA thing where you get bonus resources for taking out the opponents tower thingy is just such a stupid decision for an RTS. They put in anti-snowballing measures, but just un-did it all with that. It made every multiplayer game just a big rush to kill your enemy's tower, get the resource boost, and then steamroll the rest of the game. And it just feels bad -- the units feel like tiny little things without any real impact, and I say that as someone who was excited because I wanted to return to the scale of 1 and the base building and such. But it just had none of what made 1 good, and they went too all in on making it a "clean e-sport" without any kind of charm (the lack of sync kills being an obvious one).
DoW3 just had no soul to it, and chasing e-sports was definitely part of it. Too predictable and by the numbers. I prefer RTS with a bit of randomness that you have to work around. The overall presentation (lack of sync kills, generic upgrades etc) stung quite a bit as, for me at least, Dawn of War 1 was my introduction to 40k as a franchise and Relic really nailed the tone there. Every 40k game afterwards wishes it had voice work as memorable as DoW for example.
Yet to try out the new CoH patch but have to laugh at how they still manage to have very 'Relic' bugs. Whatever they changed, they made it impossible to build the 17 pdr or the Flak 36. It'll always just say you have insufficient resources.
DoW3 just had no soul to it, and chasing e-sports was definitely part of it. Too predictable and by the numbers. I prefer RTS with a bit of randomness that you have to work around. The overall presentation (lack of sync kills, generic upgrades etc) stung quite a bit as, for me at least, Dawn of War 1 was my introduction to 40k as a franchise and Relic really nailed the tone there. Every 40k game afterwards wishes it had voice work as memorable as DoW for example.
Yet to try out the new CoH patch but have to laugh at how they still manage to have very 'Relic' bugs. Whatever they changed, they made it impossible to build the 17 pdr or the Flak 36. It'll always just say you have insufficient resources.
I will forever have Blizzard and Relic RTS unit barks stuck in my head.
definitely a lot of bugs still... but the balance to my eye seems way more reasonable. i think US might even be decisively #1 now but its hard to say. the offmap changes were so severe I think it will take another couple of weeks for build orders and battlegroups to be tested
i know the british airburst off map is utterly insane now.... it was basically just a free mortar barrage before.. now its... total devastation. if you pin a blob and they dont hit R when those flares go down, its over for them. 1-shot delete
Second hotfix finally rolled out. Fixes some performance issues, some nerfs to the Air Support Centre and finally fixes the 17 pdr and Flak 36 being unbuildable. Taking over a week to fix core units not being purchasable is pretty bad. A bug of that magnitude should have seen an urgent hotfix. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1677280/view/3676677406070124572?l=english
Gave it a few goes, but the brits feel just as bad as when they crippled them. Same core problems as before - which is hardly surprising since they got effectively no buffs. The training centre is free, but the buffs it gives are still arcane and don't really seem to have much effect at all.
The new 3v3 mp (Benghazi) really does highlight just how much of an axis playground the game is. With all the buildings it's a haven for MG42s, axis indirect options are much better (so don't try using any MGs of your own) and the bikes can fast cap through any gap in your lines. Also a haven for close quarters infantry where, once again, the axis have just plain better options. I've tried using commandos a few times and they have all the combat power of a wet sock. Sure, if you somehow get close to something they might damage it enough to force a retreat - at which point the stupidly short range weapon profile ensures the enemy will survive the retreat.
That the MG42 is still as ridiculous as it is baffles me. It has basically no weakness. Even if you do flank it they can just casually reposition it and instantly win the fight - and that's assuming they have just one MG42. They'll almost certainly have more.
I'll keep trying but it remains clear that they do not give the slightest shit about the british faction.
I'm not even sure if they could be fully fixed with the current setup. Having the fewest stock units of all is a pretty big handicap, as is setting them at the earliest point of the war relative to all other factions. Loosely, brits are 1941, DAK are 1942 and USF/Wehr somewhere around 1944. The most obvious effect from this is that the british tanks will always be rubbish.
They could start by actually finishing the faction though. A load of their unit have no vet 1 (beyond a vague stat boost), or a vet 1 that's so conditional that it may as well not be there - case in point, the infantry section vet 1 has so many conditions attached to it that it'll simply never trigger. Then there are the units that are weaker than everything else for no real reason, like the basic mortar. It fires 4 shells per barrage compared to everyone else's 6, fires them slower and the vet 1 bonus is undetectable. It feels as though the unit has been 'balanced' entirely around the extra shells ability in the Indian Artillery battlegroup - and in the end all they've done is remove it from the base roster and given you the option to get it back in a battlegroup. There's also the flak truck which has simply never been good.
I don't know what to do with the training center, and evidently neither do Relic.
Overall the british feel a bit thrown together from scraps and not really finished. A pity since I hoped they'd be the 'lead' faction on this one.
I did see people on the reddit complaining that the US Air Support Center is broken. Made me laugh, the Axis players complaining that the game isn't tilted in their favor.
If they listened to reddit the axis would have better everything compared to the allies. So no real change then...
I've seen all sorts of ridiculous complaints - strosstruppen not better than every single allied unit, grenadiers and panzergrenadiers (DAK) not strong enough, AA units not able to completely negate all air abilities... There's a definite underlying current of wehrabooism for most of it. The worst part is that Relic always give in. DAK were buffed so that they don't need their core mechanic (the vehicle support thing) as much. Nerfs to the air support centre were as quick as the fix to the 17pdr being unrecruitable. I could go on about it but generally they're very quick to appease axis players and very slow to give the allies anything. Hell, it has been three months and they still haven't really looked at the brits despite them consistently underperforming.
I know I'm a broken record here but I can't stress enough just how badly the MG42 breaks the game, especially in team games. It completely locks down huge areas with next to no effort. If will decisively win any infantry fight if it opens fire. Its natural counters are all far too slow and easily avoided. The vast majority of games play out with wehr building 3 or so MGs, locking down the VP/fuel/whatever else is important, mortar for counter battery and maybe an MP40 gren or two to push forward and distrupt counterattacks. There's a very slight window where a humber or similar could push back, but that's trivial to counter. Then just wait for the PzIVs to roll out.
i dont think this game has a balance team or even a balance person. feels like theres maybe one balance guy who is responsible for both this game and aoe4 at the same time
i had a longer rant prepared but I think that the above is really just what it comes down to. this doesn't feel like a serious RTS. I've been a warcraft 3 fan for many years and blizzard is pretty notorious for how badly they've treated that game, but for all its ills, that game is hella balanced, and even in the current Blizzard regime when they do their patches they are detailed, thoughtful, and mostly bug free
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I've no idea what paint twitch is huffing but if the USF mortar is OP I've no idea what to say about wehr MGs into T3, the nebel literally oneshots both ATGs and team weapons. They don't even get decrewed if they get hit by a rocket, the support weapon gets blown and the team stands in base with no weapon costing supply.
I had a USF MG in a building this game in 2v2 that was set up in a building and he literally sprinted straight into the arc and killed it with grenades. It's so far from the USF experience with MGs I've no idea where to begin, there's literally no reason for the USF MG to have the super short range it has.
Edit: I think I'm gonna try to convince my gaming duders to start playing axis in team games, it's really miserable right now even in 2v2s.
I don't really know what the US MG is meant to be good at. With the MG42 it's obviously just good at everything and the Vickers is supposedly good for damage, but what does the 30 cal outside of a load of drawbacks? Narrow arc, normal set up time, bad veteran abilities... it's actually somewhat comical that they gave it button vehicle with a horribly narrow arc - while the MG42 once again gets the "remove light vehicles" incendiary ability. In CoH2 the US MG at least had damage and penetration going for it, while the maxim had 6 men and was (for a time anyway) an offensive unit with a quick setup. I just struggle to see what the 30 cal is meant to have going for it beyond being a basic MG that you can air drop in at the start of the game.
Had another 2v2 basically carried by the Easy 8 - sort of. It wasn't so much that the E8 was singlehandedly destroying them (although it did wipe quite a few squads), it was that they had prepared absolutely no AT up until that point beyond single isolated Marders, and I'd eaten each one of them alive for no loss. Any other tank would have done much the same had it landed at the same time. It was satisfying though since I'd basically had to play 2v1 most of the match. It was a combo of a Wehr player spamming MG42s (seriously, he had like 5 of them all over the place) into nebelwerfers while the DAK player was Bersaglieri into StuG D/Marders (if he ever got that far). Map was Aere Perennius. Final blow was switching from my VP to expose just how little AT they had on the middle VP and then they quit. MVP was probably the MG42 I liberated and set on one of their fuel points. Held to the very end.
I'm still expecting to get rolled when anyone good comes into the match, but there are some satisfying games now and again.
Indeed, I did have a game like that earlier. 3v3, playing USF, got stuck on Mignano summit. Since the map is awful, I decided to mess around with the special operations battlegroup and it's really quite terrible. First off, found out that units can't shoot out of the weasel. It makes the alternate weasel with flame engineers for 1 cp even more baffling as a choice - it's quicker, easier and all round better just to build engineers in the first place, and it can't even do the one thing I'd expect from that combo. The rest of the BG just doesn't offer anything interesting - SSF are kinda weak, the wizzbang is pretty poor as well and the rest of the abilities are situational or uninspired.
Going off meta was a death sentence at any rate. I played poorly trying to fit the pieces together and the whole thing was generally a shitshow - one that we were technically 'winning' but it was pretty obvious the axis players were just letting us hold 2 VPs until they got their Tigers and the likes. There was no question of them actually losing the game, the map was far too imbalanced in their favour for that. I quit about the moment the tigers started showing up.
Much as I hate the doomsayers in the community, the game is not in a great place right now. The core problem as I see it is that Allies simply aren't fun to play in team games. USF end up crippled by a lack of indirect fire and the british were gutted by the last patch. The game is still lacking many key features like replays and overall shows a lack of care and attention to detail. The weasel call in above is a perfect example of it - there's no choice to be made, one of the choices is just entirely pointless. I don't know if the game actually has a soundtrack beyond the main menu theme. It all feels like it's about 6 months away from ready.
It inspired me to go heavier into BAR Riflemen and realize that they were actually good. After all, the patch only buffed them by 15%. The hardest thing was just getting them out safely.
The weasel is still quite good I think. Mostly because it vets up quickly and the "Medical Layer" ability is quite good. Send out your weasel, cap, harass, kill and vet up. Heal your troops up on the field so that they are always fighting at full HP - which makes a big difference between fights at saving manpower. When it becomes difficult or scary to keep it alive (~8+ minutes) send it home - the Aura on the heal is so large you can park it between two bases and it will heal both you and your ally's units for the rest of the game. You can also use it to drop off mortars in base and get cheap indirect fire.
Alas, not much else is worth writing home about in the battlegroup.
It is probably the weakest battlegroup now... so many of these abilities need some attention.
Did not help that we all accidentally went DAK so we did not have easy access to mortars.
Game is just not fun.
Personally, I found things were getting a bit too stale. Even ignoring the MG42 spam, there just wasn't that much variety to strategy. I'm saying this from an allied point of view, but most USF games played out as Armoured Battlegroup, Riflemen into Chaffees and wait for the Easy 8 - most other strategies just ended up in a loss. The british simply weren't an option after the last patch.
I do wonder if the whole battlegroup setup is part of the problem. The way some of them are set up you're basically funneled into going all-in on one specific strategy and hoping it works out. For example, british armoured (Centaur then Churchill), pre-nerf USF airbourne (pathfinders -> T2 -> T4) and the current USF armoured. Each of them was set up with that kind of play in mind - specifically a heavy emphasis on tech skipping which further discourages build diversity. I'd like to see a heavier emphasis on stock units rather than battlegroups determining strategy.
Edit: They've also just announced a "temporary fix" to matchmaking times. They state:
"This change will help normalize matchmaking times for all players. Normalizing matchmaking times will reduce the number of players facing long queue times, at the cost of slightly longer queue time for others."
The cynic in me wonders if this just means allied players waiting longer to lose.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/13l74ib/summary_of_the_brass_leopard_patch_changes_from/
Have to admit, I'm a bit disappointed if the summary is accurate. Fully aware that development is hard and time consuming but can't help but think "is that it?". I just keep getting the impression that there simply hasn't been that much resources thrown at CoH3, like it's a pet side project that only got made because a handful of devs wanted to. It launched unfinished, devs have been playing catchup on bug fixes and some of the most important basic features simply aren't there yet (namely, replays). I really want it to succeed but it needs Relic to really commit to it.
However, releasing that map when the current map pool is so bare? WTF?
Also, not mentioned in that summary is that paradrop planes will be made invulnerable.
Doesn't look great. Hard to say what effect it will have on CoH but that's a significant number of people and the game isn't in a great spot to start with.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
Dang.
I can't say I felt the hype playing the CoH 3 beta -- I wound up not buying it as it didn't really feel like an upgrade as much as just kind of different.
Buuuut I wasn't expecting it to fail in anything close to a similar way as Dawn of War 3 did....not sure what the #s are, but the result being 121 layoffs is not good.
That sucks.
'Significant project delays' is an interesting note, especially given that CoH3 was delayed by a few months. It absolutely would not have been ready for their initial launch date though. Beyond that, it does sound like a tacit admission that CoH3 underperformed.
I guess it's something at least, but I still really question why a functional replay system and surrender button has been so far down the list of priorities. Meanwhile, this mod exists and implements most of the requested features along with a few other changes:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2979656008
If you believe Reddit, it was made by a former Relic designer (who left shortly before the layoffs). Can't be used in automatch obviously, but it's an excellent proof of concept. It makes me further question how the game is being managed by Relic.
i've moved on. such potential totally wasted.
still baffled at how planes and loiters are a hot topic when every faction has AA vehicles but NONE of them are capable of killing a plane before it does damage, and the only one that COULD kill a plane was nerfed specifically so that it could no longer do that
what mindset even goes into that
On balance, the last patch was a bridge too far. Gutting the brits while also failing to deal with any of the overly strong axis tools broke the back of the allied playerbase in pretty much anything higher than 1v1 and there's no adjustment in sight. Anecdotally, it does seem like the allied playerbase has dropped rapidly, with axis complaining about queue times, and after they 'fixed' that it became hugely uneven matchups with the axis players ranked well above their allied opponents. I'd hoped that the series of balance hotfixes around launch would set the tone for a somewhat more reactive Relic, and for a while they almost got there - or at least it felt that way until axis started to further figure out what worked, but then they caved into the wehraboo screaming and went the completely wrong direction instead. I'm still hoping for some sort of course correction but after the layoffs I doubt they'll ever address the core problems with some of the factions (e.g. the USF and their total lack of indirect fire).
Personally, I tended to prefer playing as the brits so the last patch just killed my enthusiasm almost entirely. I switched over to the US for a bit and found them reasonably capable (although suffering endgame with effectively no indirect fire tools, moreso in larget team games) but also felt they were a bit one-note and repetitive. Armoured battlegroup, riflemen, chaffee, Easy 8. Same thing nearly every game.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1677280/announcements/detail/3682301832791578759
No siginficant balance changes. Indeed the only explicit balance changes were buff to axis plane abilities... I doubt the plane changes will make a huge difference to the overall balance. After all, it would mostly affect the USF (by making the air support centre stronger... maybe) while the UKF will be left to struggle.
Edit: To add to the hilarity, the plane changes have made the DAK stuka anti tank loiter ridiculous. A fast, basically unavoidable strafe that will kill a crusader outright in one pass, or about 92% of a medium tank's health (used a Pz4 for testing). The UKF version isn't anywhere near as potent.
Edit 2: They also accidentally put the new 3v3 map in PvP automatch anyway. I've seen a few people actually like it that way though!
Edit 3: ...and it's gone. Would have at least liked to try it in a real match, but oh well.
I decided to poke around DoW3 to compare it to how CoH3 turned out. I hadn't played it since the pre-launch beta and only picked it up when it was going for peanuts in a sale.
It really was that bad.
Only played skirmish and a bit of campaign since I imagine the MP scene is long since dead (and even if it isn't, I had little interest anyway) so can't really say how it plays out against a real opponent but the core problems were obvious all the same. At the centre of it all was the decision to scrap every advancement Relic had made in the RTS space in favour of mimicking 90's style RTS with disposable armies and bases being the centre of everything. They ignored everything from DoW2 in particular despite how good it was - levelling was gone, cover was gone, suppression was gone, sync kills were gone, victory points were gone, tactical gameplay was all but gone and the 'elites' lacked the finesse of DoW2's heros (no levels, no wargear, just a massive power spike when they hit the field). I struggle to identify any elements of DoW2 in DoW3. Instead we got regressions to DoW1's largely pointless base building (complete with otherwise pointless builder units!), generic damage/health upgrades (lv1/2/3 damage/health, how original!) and gameplay that tends to a static slog around entrenched points. Then there's all the other issues on top of that - like every map being lane based, the power core mode in general, the wildly exaggerated unit animations andthe particle spam making it all utterly unreadable anyway. One of my biggest pet peeves was that they got Paul Leonard-Morgan to do a pretty decent soundtrack, then stuck a single, fairly inoffensive and muted track as the backround for all races in skirmish/MP. Using glorified elevator music is a great way to kill any atmosphere.
I could go on and on about all of the various choices that I disliked but six years later I'm still annoyed about how much of a disappointment it was. It simply wasn't a Relic game. But hey, at least it had replays - now expected sometime around 'fall' for CoH3 according to Relic.
By comparison, CoH3 is much rougher than DoW3 - it's lacking basic features like replays, profiles aren't there, no account progression despite it obviously being planned, no in game leaderboard (remember that the current one was a last minute decision around launch) etc. CoH3 was clearly pushed out the door way too early and, if it were an indie studio, would have been labelled early access. These are all things that could be fixed with time though. The core gameplay is good, even if they need to actually balance it. No amount of time spent on DoW3 would have made it good.
my expectations are low because the game has hardly any regular players anymore but maybe they're gearing up to repeat CoH2 where they have a free to play type thing and the game rebounds and becomes active again. i can dream.
https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/blogs/67-emerald-bear-mission-briefing
https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/blogs/68-pc-emerald-bear-1-2-0-patch-notes
Quite a lot in the patch. Hoping that the balance changes improve things for the allied side, or at least the UKF. I've struggled to mount much enthusiasm for the game since the April patch that obliterated the UKF. At a casual glance, I'm seeing a few numbers tweaks but no real change on core issues for the brits. Well, I guess they get the training centre for free now but it still seems like Relic don't know what to do with it. It's possible that the overall changes have benefitted them though, just have to try it and find out.
I still play this game occasionally with friends.
I'll be interested to see how a lot of these "game feel" changes play out. Movement of vehicles in proximity to other vehicles was really bad before. "Circling" a Marder or fixed gun tank was basically impossible as the pathing would get stuck as you approached.
Yeah, it really does feel like "this is how it should have been" patch.
I am a bit mystified by some things that feel like they should exist - an actual nerf to the MG42 rather than an adjustment - but skimming over these they seem good. Bad units got some improvements. Unit control theoretically got better. The OP units got extremely minor tweaks - but they were manageable units before and many other units got straight buffs.
Except maybe that USF buffs are going too far? USF is a pretty strong contender right now - I feel pretty comfortable with BAR Rifle spam - and the Air Support Center last patch went from "okay" to "pretty incredible". It just received more buffs and some anti-aircraft units on the axis side got worse at shooting down planes. It can be pretty oppressive to fight against efficient Riflemen where your team-weapons can't operate because a strafing run is called in every engagement.
ok ill bite, gonna do some campaign to de-rust this week
Heh it's interesting because our perspectives on DoW2 and 1 are flipped -- I think 2 is a massive downgrade and I still play Dark Crusade/Soul Storm a few times every year, but just don't enjoy 2 despite many many attempts.
But we can still agree that 3 is terrible. I played the beta, I bought it, man they just made some bad decisions. The MOBA thing where you get bonus resources for taking out the opponents tower thingy is just such a stupid decision for an RTS. They put in anti-snowballing measures, but just un-did it all with that. It made every multiplayer game just a big rush to kill your enemy's tower, get the resource boost, and then steamroll the rest of the game. And it just feels bad -- the units feel like tiny little things without any real impact, and I say that as someone who was excited because I wanted to return to the scale of 1 and the base building and such. But it just had none of what made 1 good, and they went too all in on making it a "clean e-sport" without any kind of charm (the lack of sync kills being an obvious one).
Yet to try out the new CoH patch but have to laugh at how they still manage to have very 'Relic' bugs. Whatever they changed, they made it impossible to build the 17 pdr or the Flak 36. It'll always just say you have insufficient resources.
I will forever have Blizzard and Relic RTS unit barks stuck in my head.
i know the british airburst off map is utterly insane now.... it was basically just a free mortar barrage before.. now its... total devastation. if you pin a blob and they dont hit R when those flares go down, its over for them. 1-shot delete
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1677280/view/3676677406070124572?l=english
The new 3v3 mp (Benghazi) really does highlight just how much of an axis playground the game is. With all the buildings it's a haven for MG42s, axis indirect options are much better (so don't try using any MGs of your own) and the bikes can fast cap through any gap in your lines. Also a haven for close quarters infantry where, once again, the axis have just plain better options. I've tried using commandos a few times and they have all the combat power of a wet sock. Sure, if you somehow get close to something they might damage it enough to force a retreat - at which point the stupidly short range weapon profile ensures the enemy will survive the retreat.
That the MG42 is still as ridiculous as it is baffles me. It has basically no weakness. Even if you do flank it they can just casually reposition it and instantly win the fight - and that's assuming they have just one MG42. They'll almost certainly have more.
I'll keep trying but it remains clear that they do not give the slightest shit about the british faction.
when you compare what ufk has at all phases in the game to even USF, you can see something is obviously wrong
They could start by actually finishing the faction though. A load of their unit have no vet 1 (beyond a vague stat boost), or a vet 1 that's so conditional that it may as well not be there - case in point, the infantry section vet 1 has so many conditions attached to it that it'll simply never trigger. Then there are the units that are weaker than everything else for no real reason, like the basic mortar. It fires 4 shells per barrage compared to everyone else's 6, fires them slower and the vet 1 bonus is undetectable. It feels as though the unit has been 'balanced' entirely around the extra shells ability in the Indian Artillery battlegroup - and in the end all they've done is remove it from the base roster and given you the option to get it back in a battlegroup. There's also the flak truck which has simply never been good.
I don't know what to do with the training center, and evidently neither do Relic.
Overall the british feel a bit thrown together from scraps and not really finished. A pity since I hoped they'd be the 'lead' faction on this one.
I've seen all sorts of ridiculous complaints - strosstruppen not better than every single allied unit, grenadiers and panzergrenadiers (DAK) not strong enough, AA units not able to completely negate all air abilities... There's a definite underlying current of wehrabooism for most of it. The worst part is that Relic always give in. DAK were buffed so that they don't need their core mechanic (the vehicle support thing) as much. Nerfs to the air support centre were as quick as the fix to the 17pdr being unrecruitable. I could go on about it but generally they're very quick to appease axis players and very slow to give the allies anything. Hell, it has been three months and they still haven't really looked at the brits despite them consistently underperforming.
I know I'm a broken record here but I can't stress enough just how badly the MG42 breaks the game, especially in team games. It completely locks down huge areas with next to no effort. If will decisively win any infantry fight if it opens fire. Its natural counters are all far too slow and easily avoided. The vast majority of games play out with wehr building 3 or so MGs, locking down the VP/fuel/whatever else is important, mortar for counter battery and maybe an MP40 gren or two to push forward and distrupt counterattacks. There's a very slight window where a humber or similar could push back, but that's trivial to counter. Then just wait for the PzIVs to roll out.
i had a longer rant prepared but I think that the above is really just what it comes down to. this doesn't feel like a serious RTS. I've been a warcraft 3 fan for many years and blizzard is pretty notorious for how badly they've treated that game, but for all its ills, that game is hella balanced, and even in the current Blizzard regime when they do their patches they are detailed, thoughtful, and mostly bug free