Company of Heroes 2 closed Beta

[Drowsy Emperor]

Yeah, its one of the reasons CoH2 can't be an esport. Damage unreliability doesn't allow for detailed planning and a way to gauge outcomes.

 

It time its possible to work around many random elements but it still makes the game unpredictable. Which is a good thing if you're out to have fun, but a bad thing if you're trying to work out a dependable build.

[alanschu]

^ Yes this is very true. A lot of 'pro' esports types say that CoH isn't 'pure' enough because it has critical hits.

 

OTOH it's one of the things that makes CoH so awesome and makes it feel like a war movie. Your low health tank, billowing smoke, criticals the enemy Panther and all of a sudden the tables are turned. One grenade might wound a unit, the other take out half the squad. I love that.

 

Edit: Alan, the terrain now is a bit different, and elevation in buildings improves LoS.

 

I greatly prefer this as well.  And yeah, I should be clear that I was speaking about the original COH.  I haven't played the second.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Drowsy Emperor: Yeah, COH2 is more like a game of croquet or boules, rather than tennis or badminton. Still, in war, critical hits and all sorts of contingencies are very real factors, so you could argue that COH realism>StarCraft realism for that reason alone. Cover and sight certainly strengthens the "real feel" in COH2. War is never, ever a game of chess on a clean board with neat squares.

[Monte Carlo]

And yes, what I really appreciate is this "you are there"-quality that Relic has managed to instil into the game. StarCraft I probably wouldn't touch with a stick, but this makes me think I am reliving a part of history through a game - it's almost hindsight educational.

 

Quinn Duffy, the game director, always said that this was his vision. Almost exactly how you expressed it. He's a nice guy a posts a lot on the forums, he'd be as pleased as punch to read your comment I suspect.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Quinn should be very proud. Pulling that off in a RTS game is no mean feat. There's one thing in a FPS, but here you got the eagle-eye view and zoom in, and in some weird way the brutal context of war has never been clearer.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Drowsy Emperor: Yeah, COH2 is more like a game of croquet or boules, rather than tennis or badminton. Still, in war, critical hits and all sorts of contingencies are very real factors, so you could argue that COH realism>StarCraft realism for that reason alone. Cover and sight certainly strengthens the "real feel" in COH2. War is never, ever a game of chess on a clean board with neat squares.

 

Competitive RTS games aren't about realism but about planning, drilling strategies in and reacting quickly. 

 

There's nothing in any RTS game that resembles real war. What the CoH series is, is cinematic and exciting because it has unexpected elements and high production values. But not realistic.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

There's nothing in any RTS game that resembles real war.

 

True as true can be! COH2 is just a game of strategic and cinematic entertainment on a computer. Real war is unspeakable horrors IRL.

[Drowsy Emperor]

The nice thing about randomness is that it allows the game to be more noob friendly. Playing against better players in a chess like game is a soul crushing and frustrating experience. Its much easier to deal with defeat if something entertaining, or unexpected happens. If you're steamrolled by a fifth minute rush and completely unable to do anything at every turn the game stops being fun. And then it loses its purpose.

 

Which is why most people (I dare say, the great majority) never touch Starcraft 2 multiplayer.

[IndiraLightfoot]

On the horrors of war. Here's some extremely rare WW1 3D footage from the French side. It is indeed harrowing pictures:

http://io9.com/rare-3d-camera-found-containing-photos-from-wwi-669397198

[alanschu]

The nice thing about randomness is that it allows the game to be more noob friendly. Playing against better players in a chess like game is a soul crushing and frustrating experience. Its much easier to deal with defeat if something entertaining, or unexpected happens. If you're steamrolled by a fifth minute rush and completely unable to do anything at every turn the game stops being fun. And then it loses its purpose.

 

Which is why most people (I dare say, the great majority) never touch Starcraft 2 multiplayer.

 

 

What about Starcraft 1 or stuff like League of Legends?  (LOL has crits, but that's about it)

[IndiraLightfoot]

Alanschu: I haven't played them, so I wonder: Do you mean that they are not random all (except that LoL crit system) as opposed to, say, COH2?

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

The nice thing about randomness is that it allows the game to be more noob friendly. Playing against better players in a chess like game is a soul crushing and frustrating experience. Its much easier to deal with defeat if something entertaining, or unexpected happens. If you're steamrolled by a fifth minute rush and completely unable to do anything at every turn the game stops being fun. And then it loses its purpose.

 

Which is why most people (I dare say, the great majority) never touch Starcraft 2 multiplayer.

 

 

What about Starcraft 1 or stuff like League of Legends?  (LOL has crits, but that's about it)

 

 

What was random in Starcraft 1? I don't recall.

 

DotA and LoL have crits on certain heroes as part of their abilities but they're not random in any other way from what I know. Damage outputs are constant aren't they?

[Calax]

 

And yes, what I really appreciate is this "you are there"-quality that Relic has managed to instil into the game. StarCraft I probably wouldn't touch with a stick, but this makes me think I am reliving a part of history through a game - it's almost hindsight educational.

 

Quinn Duffy, the game director, always said that this was his vision. Almost exactly how you expressed it. He's a nice guy a posts a lot on the forums, he'd be as pleased as punch to read your comment I suspect.

 

So THAT's why the british squads keep yelling at Duffy for being an idiot in Op Front.

[alanschu]

Alanschu: I haven't played them, so I wonder: Do you mean that they are not random all (except that LoL crit system) as opposed to, say, COH2?

 

]

I'm 99% sure that Starcraft is completely deterministic.  What your unit says it does for damage is what it will do for damage, less any (also constant) armor effects.  League of Legends is similar, although it does have a random (but predictable) element with its critical hits.  There's no such thing as "You do 5-10 damage" with your attacks.

[pmp10]

 

The nice thing about randomness is that it allows the game to be more noob friendly. Playing against better players in a chess like game is a soul crushing and frustrating experience. Its much easier to deal with defeat if something entertaining, or unexpected happens. If you're steamrolled by a fifth minute rush and completely unable to do anything at every turn the game stops being fun. And then it loses its purpose.

 

Which is why most people (I dare say, the great majority) never touch Starcraft 2 multiplayer.

 

 

What about Starcraft 1 or stuff like League of Legends?  (LOL has crits, but that's about it)

 

Starcraft 1 was among the first RTS with a solid online matchmaking system.

LoL is free and you have a whole team to blame for any failings.

Gamers have really fragile egos and it's natural for most to try and shift blame from themselves.

 

And there was a little randomness in starcraft 1 as firing uphill had a considerable miss chance.

In starcraft 2 only attack delay is random.

Edited July 5, 2013 by pmp10

[Monte Carlo]

My albeit limited knowledge of the esports / RTS scene is that its getting big enough for different games to break through.

 

CoH2 is still small fry by comparison, but within a week of release there was a $1000 tourney for world champion. The community is small but its absolutely fanatical and very committed.

 

The criticals / variable damage mechanics means that 'pro' players need to be more adaptive in their approach as there are no absolute givens. Its the difference between American football (pre-planned plays, rigid tactics) and European soccer (more free-form).

[Calax]

IIRC in SC1 there was a bonus to being on the high ground.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

The criticals / variable damage mechanics means that 'pro' players need to be more adaptive in their approach as there are no absolute givens. Its the difference between American football (pre-planned plays, rigid tactics) and European soccer (more free-form).

 

This is what I was after! Thanks for the telling example.

[alanschu]

I don't know if the sports analogy works as well (since American football is still going to be heavily influenced by luck and players will need to be adaptive to how plays develop).

 

Something like Starcraft is deterministic.  As such, winning a battle comes down purely to the tactical decisions (what units did I build, how did I focus their fire, how did I group them) as opposed to some level of random variance.  So if a guy with 5 marines beats a guy with 8 marines, it means that the guy with 5 marines made better decisions during the combat to ensure victory.

 

With more random variation, it's possible that random number generator does well for one group, and poor for another.  While, over a lot of games, this all balances out (someone isn't going to be on an epic losing streak because of RNG), for isolated events they can make a difference.  Sometimes for yay, sometimes for nay.

 

 

Having said that, good players will still beat poor players, because even with the variation there's still going to be known expected values and a probability distribution to allow the player to make reasonably more informed choices.  I'd consider it more a comparison of something like chess (capability of all pieces is known and unalterable) to poker.  Good players tend to beat poor players in poker very consistently, but a poor player may get some luck and end up winning the odd round/game.

[Monte Carlo]

In case anybody is interested in CoH2's development, here is an interview with Quinn Duffy, courtesy of community fansite Coh2.org...

 

http://www.coh2.org/news/4977/quinn-duffy-post-launch-interview

[IndiraLightfoot]

Well , finally I have gotten back to this wonderful game, and a lot has happened since its release. It just got a patch where it leaves the old P2P multiplayer model for dedicated battle servers. I tried one 4on4 match today, and it works much better than before. No more "Snotwad is lagging"-messages! Yay! And huge amounts of balancing have occurred. I barely recognized anymore what was good, half-decent or bad anymore, which is great in itself. We actually pulled off a victory, despite me being the fifth wheel or rather no wheel at all. I captured two points and held one for two thirds of the game. The other three had captured points 8-9 times, and their kill stats were almost ten times higher than mine. I sneaked around. I built bunkers, and I hid in buildings and behind cover. At least my point drew a lot of enemy attention, and I just kept repairing bunkers and mortar half-tracks, so in essence sending hellish rain over the enemy without moving much at all.

 

As for the game in general, I never really got into it the first time round, since it's so deep and complex, so I am extremely rusty and just plainly suck at it, especially MP. I just learnt about more hotkeys today, and tricks how to exit a burning building without going through the burning wall (in essence, D and left click where you want to put your fleeing unit). The first thing I'm doing to get up to speed is to try my hand at the neat theatre of war-scenarios: Operation Barbarossa has been quite okay and varied (I love those "sneak behind enemy lines and take out officers"-operations, but Southern Fronts single missions have been the best ones so far. It was Monte who got me into this game in the first place, and he was right about the campaign and single player as a whole being one big tutorial for taking on human opponents later on. That's a pretty hefty tutorial, though. I've like 50 hours on the clock already, and I'm still pretty daft at it. What kind of punishing RTS game is this? I meant that in a good way!

Edited February 19, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Monte Carlo]

Ha ha ha. Welcome back.

 

I've been playing a lot of 3 v 3 and 4 v 4 and trying to skip tiers (like a fast T2 assault build with Pzgrens into T4 for Panther).

 

Now they've put Soviet shock troops back to 2 CP the game is less easy-mode for Soviets, too.

 

Edit - the battle servers are a massive improvement: input lag is almost eliminated and micro more crisp. It's more viable to dodge grenades and molotovs than it was before.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Monte Carlo

[IndiraLightfoot]

Ha ha ha. Welcome back.

 

Now they've put Soviet shock troops back to 2 CP the game is less easy-mode for Soviets, too.

 

Thank you!

And that is a welcome change. I enjoy playing as both sides, but the Germans so far have been more varied and fun on the micro-managing level. Sometimes, playing the Soviets in COH2 feels like spamming conscripts till they take a beating, press Retreat, then remix them into new full units, and out into the fray again they go!

[Monte Carlo]

The Soviets are more commander specific as your specialist infantry are call-ins.

 

So you can go shocks / T4 (for awesome anti-inf and AT) or guards / snipers into T3 (snipers bleed enemy MP while the guards screw up all early german vehicles). All the while you can make cons as your grunts. Cons are great - molotovs at 15 munis are a no-brainer as are AT nades.

 

At the moment I'm using the german assault grens a lot, into PzGrens then Panthers. If i'm doing really well I go for a quick T4. But T4s get rammed too easily by T-34s. The rock-scissors-stone model of CoH2 is very deep.

[IndiraLightfoot]

The rock-scissors-stone model of CoH2 is very deep.

How eloquently put! And it's true too!

 

Well, those theatre of war missions have certainly got me hooked, so I decided to get the one that I didn't have: Victory at Stalingrad. It was one of the tipping points of WWII, and true combat misery in more ways than one. I know a number of people who fought in that battle, on both sides actually. Let's just say that they were deployed there very young and scared ****less. They saw horrible things and were just happy to come out of it alive. One was actually a gunner. Had he been anything else in that tank, he would have been dead. A busted foot is a small price for your life.

 

I played the Kiev mission the other day when I all of the sudden came to think of the violent scenes in Kiev right now. When I play COH2 I do it all the time with the utmost respect for all of them who died for our sake, so we get to sit here and play games on computers. I know it sounds corny, but their spirits somehow linger over the entire game experience. Hmm, it's probably just Relic messing with my mind.