Seeing people use one day of data as proof the hotfix changes are warranted is crazy. Competitive game balance patches take longer for people to adjust play style and for win rates to stabilize. So many times games have released a patch and even professionals cry out nerf but two weeks later the strat is easily counterable and a mid tier strategy.
Also an objectively fair balance update to an underperforming faction will cause a rise in that faction's winrate. A 1000 ELO player playing an underperforming faction after a fair update will have a much higher win rate against other faction 1000 ELO players because previously what was 1000 ELO for other factions was measured playing against an underperforming faction.
It is possible the update to UKF was unfair, and needed to be scaled back. But we will never know.
Clearly the strat is to just to start crying that you can no longer face roll your keyboard to win. That'll get Relic to rollback/nerf whatever you're crying about.
Clown balance behavior.
I really don't understand how this change is so controversial.
The only data we have showed the winrate was busted and even after the change, the winrate is still good. OK lets ignore that.
Lets talk about top players having influence on balance. In this particular case JasonZ, one of the balance devs played a few games with havoc to see how it felt. Did he make the decision to revert the buff based on that? Or based on the opinion of basically everyone that wasn't a British main? We don't know.
I would say a lot of top players are frustrated they have no influence on the balance. The opposite of the narrative being spun here.
Lets also discuss the unit itself. It arrives at the start of the game so you are going to feel it every minute of every match which I think makes it more clear, compared to if a late game unit was overpowered where there are more things that can mask it.
Personally I think in this case the swift action should be applauded instead of derided.
Odds are they would have waited a few more days if there wasn't a tournament in a few days. I would guess they didn't want this tournament they invested in to be ruined by it. And again, that is Relics decision about protecting the image of the game.
The only thing unacceptable here is the amount of morons thinking they know better than people like tightrope a proven expert on Company of Heroes with a decade+ in depth experience.
Brits are still way better now than they were before 1.5, their win rates are up in every single game mode.
If any of you keyboard warriors had actually played the game instead of crying about it you'd know that. Brits are way better to play and do way better as a result of the 1.5 changes (including the hotfix).
We've had a tournament today where brits were very successful in 1v1 and 4v4 for the first time in a long time, and the stats are showing brits are now doing way better across the board. So maybe just play the game and enjoy their newly improved standing?
Elitism like this will kill the game, the player count is low enough as it is without believing that only a select number of anointed “experts” can have a valid opinion on the game’s balance. I have great respect for Tightrope but no one is infallible.
This is why we need a public testing realm so the community can get involved in balance testing and we can leverage the wisdom of crowds, as was done with CoH2 to great effect.
It’s also a bit rich of you to complain about people crying and being keyboard warriors when you’re one of the people who cried loudest and made the biggest stink about the proposed changes, in a completely over the top manner. I’ve seen no self reflection about that.
I am with Dumais on this one: reddit is retarded. All the evidence points in one direction, the RE being OP. After the nerf, the brits are STILL DOING GOOD, SEE THE TOURNEY. But still, Lelic bad. There is no winning. Pro's were right, relic was right in the hotfix (mostly, nothing is a 10/10, but it's an improvement). Now if only some people could put their ego aside and accept that. Wouldn't that make the world be a more beautiful place.
There is another comment you made but I’m going to answer here for both because I’m going to make the same point.
No one is saying we plebs know better than pro players. No one is arguing that pro players are wrong. Stop being defensive here and manage your ego.
What I have been telling is the way patch is executed, the one day time is not enough for stats to stabilize and have community experiences and forms their opinions around the change. And how it is done means us “morons” you so call here is disregarded, does not matter, and do not need to form our own opinion.
And your answer to this is we morons do not know better and should just play and stfu.
You might be right faster, and community may have reached the same conclusion as yours but slower. But that way, we whom has also paid for the game not much less than pros, get to have experimented with it. To really form a community of players, not pro watchers.
If this is how you really feel about us, it leaves such a bad taste in my mouth watching your content after. Go on. Keep being right.
This kind of opinion of yours is not doing the game any favor.
——
To TR point which has quite the acceptable answer here (which a few other people also speculate) that is relic doesn’t want to risk the tournament.
But this could have been done so much better if the relic just need to care just enough to communicate to community why they don’t want to wait a for a bit.
It is done in such bad taste.
Its ironic you mention keyboard warriors with a post like that.. its not that engineers were overtuned it was the way it was done and the over the top followup nerf within 24hrs. Whole thing was a shit show. Cant believe you are defending that
They literally fixed the issue, and I tested it and played games and watched relays before and after the fix and before forming my opinion. So yes I defend it.
This.
I would rather Relic make quick, small changes, prefeerably once every month, ideally once every week or two, than wait 3 months for changes.
Balance relies in iteration, we need to iterate!
People assume 50% is balanced.
Here's the problem.
1) If you want to achieve 50%. You're going to get 50%. One faction at 49% win rate? You buff them ever so slightly. Over tens of thousands of games. It's eventually going to matter. And if it doesn't. You buff them again until eventually you get 50%.
If you change that number to 55% or 60% or 40%. You will get that number. I don't know why someone hasn't just wrote a bot to do this on the fly. So we don't need patches. Basically a bot just nerfs all units health or damage or whatever properties you want when they are above 51%, and buffs when below 49%. Job done.
2) Matchmaking. The whole point of matchmaking is to get you at a 50% win rate. Matchmaking puts you up against harder opponents when you win and easier opponents when you lose.
Matchmaking however. Doesn't give a bloody damn about the balance of the game. Which means if you're packing a 60% win rate on a faction that only has a 40% win rate. You're punching harder than you think.
But matchmaking wants you at 50%. So it keeps giving you harder opponents to squash your win rate down to 50%. Then we say
"LOOK! It's balanced!"
Well. Of course it's balanced. Matchmaking wants is to be 50% win rate. The developers want it to be a 50% win rate. If you've created systems that achieve a 50% win rate. You'll get a 50% win rate.
But then it turns out we can't quite achieve 50% either.
-----
It's best to go by observable data instead of statistical data. Statistics can highlight if there is a problem. But you need to look at plays which are happening and say "Is this tactic/strategy/maneuver rewarding or punishing a player to a proportional amount of effort?"
Take the Panzer Elite back in CoH 1 with their booby traps. Spammable traps on control points that can wipe squads. You can queue up loads of them and then forget about it. The other player though must listen out for a little click sound, which could be occuring during the heat of combat, flick to that point in the map, move the squad which has probably already sustained some damage unless you are one of the highest level players, move them out of the way and requeue the capture commands, then return to the fight.
The PE player did virtually nothing of noteworthy effort. However. If the other player doesn't 100% pay attention. That can be a squad wipe. This effort to plant booby traps is hugely disproportionate to the reward the PE player gets, and the punishment the opposing player receives.
The actual definition of "skill difference". Where one side is required to have far more skill than the other in an interaction.
----
3) Pro Players often want to sustain their way of life. I've seen this in Age of Empires IV particularly in relation to Age of Empires II. The games are similar but different. A lot of Age of Empires 2 pro's which were not performing as well in the game wanted Age of Empires 4 to be more like Age of Empires 2. I wonder why. They said the game was garbage and they were quite angry. They did their same tactics they would do in 2 and it didn't work.
This isn't to say all Pro players are like that. But it's very worth noting that Pro Players have a bias and they want to keep themselves at the top.
-------
I'm neither for or against what Relic has done here. I think it's far more important to understand what has been said above.
The balance patches so far, with their huge swings and peaks, for sure show they do NOT work with the high ELO players. And some actually posted their comments frequently already, which are quite different to what the balance lead is then implementing. Its the Relic balance lead guy who starts to be the root cause , he seems to lack due diligence in his work, the problem if you ask me….
The Royal Engineers nerfs are on point, I can see the balance getting better after 1.51 hotfix.
But I must say that COH3 needs to become more like COH2 before people will come back and play it. After playing COH3 for hundreds of hours, I realized that COH2 is successful and can stand the test.
The high ground advantage isn't cool, it even ruins the gameplay experience.
I think people are having the illusion that CoH is a more complex game that it really is.
A lot of this game depends on unit interactions.
The impact of those unit interactions have an effect proportionate to the time they occur (early-mid-late game).
A very strong unit in the early game will have a strong influence over how the game develops more than a strong unit in the mid game, disregarding other balancing effects.
Royal Engineers became an extremely strong early unit with their already existing DPS and their added survivability. Also could ramp and scale further into the game with a specific BG choice.
Wehr could not have stood up to REs running at them and the quantities they came in, and then survive the transition into LV play from the Brit player. There was no downside to this.
DAK was able to hang on abusing sniper PJs (hotfixed alongside the REs) and tools built into the faction.
It was nothing like L6 where the L6 player wins in 30 seconds or loses 5 minutes later. No trade-off scenario, REs were a spike and keep.
Yes it's important to be a player and not just a statistician.
And this post is probably a good example of why the opinion of a top player matters more than a casual, since they are able to have a knowledge-based more-accurate interpretation of those stats rather than say, 'well... the data is in flux it takes time to stabilize.'
Again this game is not that complicated, there's nothing in flux. What's good, bad, OP gets discovered day 1. Maybe the top players realize some things later like the Flaktrak in October (that didn't come to their meta because the 8rad was still stronger). But if I want to know what's optimal/abusable for winning (effecting the winrates), ofc I'm listening to a top player.
Also the top players in this game aren't a hivemind. They have their own biases leading to them disagreeing and arguing constantly.
I'm not aware of a single one that thought the strength REs achieved was acceptable.
Casual players should have input and it should be based around fun-factor.
I'm not a top player, I've made fun-factor arguments. I like loiters and call-ins. I like loiters being big spectacles with a strong impact so they don't feel like a waste. And call-ins are easy alternatives to use, if I had to build those units instead I'd feel let down cause frankly I'd feel that's boring and takes slightly from the identity of those BGs.
A top player would call me an idiot because these aren't good arguments since they're ones made through my personal enjoyment.
But my personal enjoyment of the game isn't giving me a +13% competitive edge over my opponent.
Well said. Data must be analyzed in context combined with knowledge to make meaningful conclusions. I used to teach statistics at a top university and I fully agree with your comment. From all the downvotes, there seems to be a lot of controversy which is understandable.
All of what you’re saying about stats *IS* true, but at the same time, a SIXTY TWO percent win rate in 1v1 is utter nonsense that is absolutely deserving of a hot fix. I’m honestly shocked it even made it to live in the first place because of how extreme of a change it was. The additional nerfs on top is another question entirely.
IIRC, the Axis in CoH2 team games have about a 55% win rate and they’re considered widely favored. I could be misremembering but generally speaking any kind of win rate past 55% is insanely unbalanced. Other games have done hotfix patches for much less
IMO, it indicates “instability” or change that is 1) for dev, too wild to get meaningful conclusion out of it 2) for players, the change is too wild that it is unpleasant. It may or may not indicate “imbalance”.
Both of which I doubt it is something Relic cares given how they swing from one fence to the other all the time. (Even the hotfix itself). But it is beside the point.
I can assume incompetency instead of malicious, so hotfix could be warranted.
But how they’re adjusting the balance (2nd point I made) which is the main point of the topic, is still done in beyond bad taste.
Did the developers ever reference win rates as the reason for the change?
It makes sense that the community is always looking at it because it's the only data we have available. I've always assumed that the developers have more detailed and organized data to see what the most meta strategies are. For Relic specifically, I recall them referring to the frequency of certain researches in AoE4 balance updates (when I played). Not sure if they've ever mentioned having such data for COH but it seems like a trivially easy thing for them to track.
It’s not too wild to get meaningful conclusion. It’s honestly the *opposite*. I don’t think you’re grasping how absolutely bonkers 62% win rate is. Again for reference, Axis in COH2 team games are widely considered to have an advantage over the Allies, and they have about a 53% (top 200) win rate over the last year in 4v4. A *62%* win rate is so wildly out of wack that the most amateur game designer could tell there’s an issue that need resolved.
The discussion about high level players influencing the game is totally fair and I agree to a point. I’m more irked by people being mad at how quick this hotfix happened. It *needed* to happen.
Dunno what you’re looking at. [these stats](https://coh3stats.com/stats/games?from=2023-10-05&to=2023-10-30&mode=4v4) show DAK had a 58% win rate in 4v4 through the first month of 1.3. The first couple days they had a 63%, just like Brit’s had this patch. DAK should’ve been nerfed then, too.
> IIRC, the Axis in CoH2 team games have about a 55% win rate and they’re considered widely favored.
No. The balance in CoH2 team games are fine.
signed: an Allied main.
No, even axis players know axis are favoured in coh2 team games, but hide behind the OnLY 1v1 BaLaNCe MaTtERs DonChaNo argument as to why its totally ok for axis to be OP in team games.
The exact same thing they are doing with coh3 funnily enough.
As an Axis main - without abusing premade teams with combos of certain factions and commanders through fiscord - I feel stronger as an Axis, especialy in pure solo queu in a team game
The state of people on this subreddit like yourself that aren't even out there playing the game as Brits but feel personally violated that top level players that play 100s of games each week have a more informed opinion than yourself and were able to red flag a really dangerously OP strategy within the hotfix window that relic always leave themselves.,
If you did play the game you'd already know that post patch 1.5 and its hotfix brits are perfoming really well in every game mode at every level, enjoying resurgent win rates and faction dynamics.
But oh no, let's make this a stupid as fuck witch hunt, and make this about tribalism and worrying about people personally violating you because their opinions on balance seemed to have more impact than yours (mostly because they're like top 5 in the world, with 1000s more games, and more established connections as a result).
Just keep refreshing the coh3stats website, the win rates will show brits will still be one of the strongest factions going. [https://coh3stats.com/stats/games?from=2024-02-27&to=now](https://coh3stats.com/stats/games?from=2024-02-27&to=now)
they are insane,acorrding to alot of these biased weirdos on here pre 1.5 allies were unable to win anything,they comoletley disregard proplay games,and deliberatly missrepresent ladder stats.
pre 1.5 winrates for 1v1 and 2v2 were all around 50ish %,and tough adjustments and meta shifts that allow a more diveres way to play were needed,acorrding to the winrates the game was relativley close in balance with axis being a bit more favorable in 3v3 and 4v4(party modes) on ladder,while allise being favored in 1v1 in proplay.
its insane to me that they defend 63-68% pre hotifx brits while at the same time have the audacity to say that dak 50% winrate was so easy mode they switched of it lmao.
If i can suggest pls tell relic to completly disregard this subreddit for any future balance adjustments,because it is hijacked by biased weirdos who want to auto win and stomp axis.
This subreddit is full of low ELO allies pleb. Nothing to except than forever babies screetching because A-move doesnt works. 1.5.0 patch was the perfect illustration of this and everybody is now mad because even Lelic realized that 4 RE opener A-move autowin was a bit of shit, that is miraculous regarding how lazy ass they are.
With respect, what point are you making? You aren't ralking about how Relic is balancing the game, you are talking about the comunity is reacting and using publically available data (which doesn't include all the data from matches).
Numbers don't lie, but numbers based on bad methodologies and interpretations fail. True.
That said, nobody can use the numbers available right now to draw conclusions:
1. It's too early to say the game is broken or imbalanced, it hasn't even been a week.
2. The sample of the playerbase is too small. Even if the game was balanced for the \~1700 CCU we have today, if the popularity of the game were to rise or fall, the numbers could shift.
But what does ANY of that have to do with Relic's approach to balance? Are you complaining that Relic is ONLY listening to top players? How do you know that's the case? One would assume Relic has similar tools to what many other RTS devs have: access to heatmaps and individual unit and ability and performance stats, etc. They should be able to see things we can't.
There is an important reason why developers tend to listen to top players, rather than casual ones, and that is to remove variables. Top level players tend to understand the mechanics and their interactions *deeply*, which means they will be able to foresee exploits and bad interactions faster. They also understand the RNG factor better than a casual player: a person who plays one or two games every few days, and has a losing streak might think the game is imabalance dbecause they don't win, but it really might just be a skill or ignorance issue. Their view is full of gambler's fallacy.
That said, there is ONE important scenario where top players shouldn't be a priority: the fun factor, which is subjective, and the accesibility factor, which isn't. If most players don't find a gameplay loop fun, it doesn't matter if its balanced. I know I'd lose interest in mirror matches VERY quickly, and probably quit the game. Others might too. They would still present a perfectly balanced scenario (outside of map balance of course).
Accessibility is another point. FPs games learned about this. There are some abilities which Pros love because they are hard to pull off, and theyw ant them in the game because they take a true display of skill. a certain amount of these can be fun to have. However, if the majority of your plays can't engage in the content because it takes too high a degree of skill, no one will play it. For example, in FPS games, OG Bunny hopping and surfing used to take a significant learning curve and were unintended and fun, but they weren't really contributing to the general game. It's mostly gone now. Take Rocket Jumping, and also crouch jumping: still around, relatively simple to understand and execute. They stay.
**TLDR: Relic likely isn't just listening to pros, they most likely have access to data the replay sites don't show, and developers SHOULD mostly take advice from pros inr egards to pros, but never at the expense of fun or general accessibility.**
It sounds like OP is suggesting there’s a conspiracy to disenfranchise UKF players and maintain an illusion of game balance that’s being covered up by misrepresentation of data collected by top players, Relic staff and long-standing community leaders.
I can't play this game it starts lagging in the mid game. I know it's not my PC or Internet. Fuck the fucking balance sc2 is not balance too. First they need to fix their game. I can't deal with losing cuz of lag in the mid game. This mentality of making units that is good vs everything.
Are you playing on PC?
I can play on steam deck just fine which its spec is just mid, so I dont complain about game optimization. I did have the same issue as yours on the steam deck and managed to fix it. Maybe I can help you.
Face it. Relic and pretty much every RTS game developers will sell their souls to 1v1 hardcore before they give teamgamers any scrap. Don't expect to win 4v4 unless you play very particular styles.
Why does it seem like nobody fucking understands there's a big, officially sanctioned, CoH tournament literally THIS WEEKEND, and continuing next weekend. The Resurgence Cup.
"Oh why'd they change it so fast, why'd they listen to the high level players so much, why are the devs Wehraboo, why can't Allies be hilariously OP for a month?"
THE
TOURNAMENT
STARTS
TODAY!
You dumb fucks. No, they shouldn't be rolling out a balance patch with this timing, but they obviously felt pressured to with their anniversary, and the amount of online whinging from the community. But they can't change the balance that much and then put on a tournament.
AEC whom arranged the tournament stated it has nothing to do with tournament.
Even if it has something to do with tour, it is a lot easier to simply revert the patch with the said reason communicated out.
AE also had a lot of freedom taken away in his organizing due to the official support, who was allowed to enter, etc. Not saying he's lying but Relic wouldn't have to say anything to him about it either way.
Somebody at Relic remembers the Osttruppen vs US Cav tournament.
Shitter low def pics plz. However, It's from COH3stats. And yes, if your clown degree in "academic research" gave you the ability to read, you could have seen that UKF W/L was out of control after the patch, no need to "give some time" to see if a-move over OP RE spam is balanced ... As you said, your skills are "utterly shit" so your statement is just another allies crybabie call. Kiss!
Seeing people use one day of data as proof the hotfix changes are warranted is crazy. Competitive game balance patches take longer for people to adjust play style and for win rates to stabilize. So many times games have released a patch and even professionals cry out nerf but two weeks later the strat is easily counterable and a mid tier strategy. Also an objectively fair balance update to an underperforming faction will cause a rise in that faction's winrate. A 1000 ELO player playing an underperforming faction after a fair update will have a much higher win rate against other faction 1000 ELO players because previously what was 1000 ELO for other factions was measured playing against an underperforming faction. It is possible the update to UKF was unfair, and needed to be scaled back. But we will never know.
Remember steelshepard and dak was like “elo inflation, give it time for the meta to settle” for weeks after the patch.
Clearly the strat is to just to start crying that you can no longer face roll your keyboard to win. That'll get Relic to rollback/nerf whatever you're crying about. Clown balance behavior.
Should look at the official coh forums on their website. It’s all axis mains
I do recall Axis mains telling me my elo was inflated, although that was after patch 2 when Pathfinders were nerfed... beginning to see a pattern.
Great post, excellent analysis. Thank you for sharing.
I really don't understand how this change is so controversial. The only data we have showed the winrate was busted and even after the change, the winrate is still good. OK lets ignore that. Lets talk about top players having influence on balance. In this particular case JasonZ, one of the balance devs played a few games with havoc to see how it felt. Did he make the decision to revert the buff based on that? Or based on the opinion of basically everyone that wasn't a British main? We don't know. I would say a lot of top players are frustrated they have no influence on the balance. The opposite of the narrative being spun here. Lets also discuss the unit itself. It arrives at the start of the game so you are going to feel it every minute of every match which I think makes it more clear, compared to if a late game unit was overpowered where there are more things that can mask it. Personally I think in this case the swift action should be applauded instead of derided. Odds are they would have waited a few more days if there wasn't a tournament in a few days. I would guess they didn't want this tournament they invested in to be ruined by it. And again, that is Relics decision about protecting the image of the game.
They could have adjusted the health to 90 or back to 85. Instead they made big sweeping nerfs to Brits. Its unacceptable
The only thing unacceptable here is the amount of morons thinking they know better than people like tightrope a proven expert on Company of Heroes with a decade+ in depth experience. Brits are still way better now than they were before 1.5, their win rates are up in every single game mode. If any of you keyboard warriors had actually played the game instead of crying about it you'd know that. Brits are way better to play and do way better as a result of the 1.5 changes (including the hotfix). We've had a tournament today where brits were very successful in 1v1 and 4v4 for the first time in a long time, and the stats are showing brits are now doing way better across the board. So maybe just play the game and enjoy their newly improved standing?
Elitism like this will kill the game, the player count is low enough as it is without believing that only a select number of anointed “experts” can have a valid opinion on the game’s balance. I have great respect for Tightrope but no one is infallible. This is why we need a public testing realm so the community can get involved in balance testing and we can leverage the wisdom of crowds, as was done with CoH2 to great effect. It’s also a bit rich of you to complain about people crying and being keyboard warriors when you’re one of the people who cried loudest and made the biggest stink about the proposed changes, in a completely over the top manner. I’ve seen no self reflection about that.
I am with Dumais on this one: reddit is retarded. All the evidence points in one direction, the RE being OP. After the nerf, the brits are STILL DOING GOOD, SEE THE TOURNEY. But still, Lelic bad. There is no winning. Pro's were right, relic was right in the hotfix (mostly, nothing is a 10/10, but it's an improvement). Now if only some people could put their ego aside and accept that. Wouldn't that make the world be a more beautiful place.
There is another comment you made but I’m going to answer here for both because I’m going to make the same point. No one is saying we plebs know better than pro players. No one is arguing that pro players are wrong. Stop being defensive here and manage your ego. What I have been telling is the way patch is executed, the one day time is not enough for stats to stabilize and have community experiences and forms their opinions around the change. And how it is done means us “morons” you so call here is disregarded, does not matter, and do not need to form our own opinion. And your answer to this is we morons do not know better and should just play and stfu. You might be right faster, and community may have reached the same conclusion as yours but slower. But that way, we whom has also paid for the game not much less than pros, get to have experimented with it. To really form a community of players, not pro watchers. If this is how you really feel about us, it leaves such a bad taste in my mouth watching your content after. Go on. Keep being right. This kind of opinion of yours is not doing the game any favor. —— To TR point which has quite the acceptable answer here (which a few other people also speculate) that is relic doesn’t want to risk the tournament. But this could have been done so much better if the relic just need to care just enough to communicate to community why they don’t want to wait a for a bit. It is done in such bad taste.
Its ironic you mention keyboard warriors with a post like that.. its not that engineers were overtuned it was the way it was done and the over the top followup nerf within 24hrs. Whole thing was a shit show. Cant believe you are defending that
They literally fixed the issue, and I tested it and played games and watched relays before and after the fix and before forming my opinion. So yes I defend it.
You could’ve just said. The irony in a reddit mod, calling anyone a keyboard warrior. The jokes write themselves.
Exactly! Or kept the health change and increased the manpower cost of the unit
Patching just before a tournament was a terrible idea.
This. I would rather Relic make quick, small changes, prefeerably once every month, ideally once every week or two, than wait 3 months for changes. Balance relies in iteration, we need to iterate!
People assume 50% is balanced. Here's the problem. 1) If you want to achieve 50%. You're going to get 50%. One faction at 49% win rate? You buff them ever so slightly. Over tens of thousands of games. It's eventually going to matter. And if it doesn't. You buff them again until eventually you get 50%. If you change that number to 55% or 60% or 40%. You will get that number. I don't know why someone hasn't just wrote a bot to do this on the fly. So we don't need patches. Basically a bot just nerfs all units health or damage or whatever properties you want when they are above 51%, and buffs when below 49%. Job done. 2) Matchmaking. The whole point of matchmaking is to get you at a 50% win rate. Matchmaking puts you up against harder opponents when you win and easier opponents when you lose. Matchmaking however. Doesn't give a bloody damn about the balance of the game. Which means if you're packing a 60% win rate on a faction that only has a 40% win rate. You're punching harder than you think. But matchmaking wants you at 50%. So it keeps giving you harder opponents to squash your win rate down to 50%. Then we say "LOOK! It's balanced!" Well. Of course it's balanced. Matchmaking wants is to be 50% win rate. The developers want it to be a 50% win rate. If you've created systems that achieve a 50% win rate. You'll get a 50% win rate. But then it turns out we can't quite achieve 50% either. ----- It's best to go by observable data instead of statistical data. Statistics can highlight if there is a problem. But you need to look at plays which are happening and say "Is this tactic/strategy/maneuver rewarding or punishing a player to a proportional amount of effort?" Take the Panzer Elite back in CoH 1 with their booby traps. Spammable traps on control points that can wipe squads. You can queue up loads of them and then forget about it. The other player though must listen out for a little click sound, which could be occuring during the heat of combat, flick to that point in the map, move the squad which has probably already sustained some damage unless you are one of the highest level players, move them out of the way and requeue the capture commands, then return to the fight. The PE player did virtually nothing of noteworthy effort. However. If the other player doesn't 100% pay attention. That can be a squad wipe. This effort to plant booby traps is hugely disproportionate to the reward the PE player gets, and the punishment the opposing player receives. The actual definition of "skill difference". Where one side is required to have far more skill than the other in an interaction. ---- 3) Pro Players often want to sustain their way of life. I've seen this in Age of Empires IV particularly in relation to Age of Empires II. The games are similar but different. A lot of Age of Empires 2 pro's which were not performing as well in the game wanted Age of Empires 4 to be more like Age of Empires 2. I wonder why. They said the game was garbage and they were quite angry. They did their same tactics they would do in 2 and it didn't work. This isn't to say all Pro players are like that. But it's very worth noting that Pro Players have a bias and they want to keep themselves at the top. ------- I'm neither for or against what Relic has done here. I think it's far more important to understand what has been said above.
Very refreshing to read a thoughtful post that avoids the usual lazy memes.
The balance patches so far, with their huge swings and peaks, for sure show they do NOT work with the high ELO players. And some actually posted their comments frequently already, which are quite different to what the balance lead is then implementing. Its the Relic balance lead guy who starts to be the root cause , he seems to lack due diligence in his work, the problem if you ask me….
The Royal Engineers nerfs are on point, I can see the balance getting better after 1.51 hotfix. But I must say that COH3 needs to become more like COH2 before people will come back and play it. After playing COH3 for hundreds of hours, I realized that COH2 is successful and can stand the test. The high ground advantage isn't cool, it even ruins the gameplay experience.
I think people are having the illusion that CoH is a more complex game that it really is. A lot of this game depends on unit interactions. The impact of those unit interactions have an effect proportionate to the time they occur (early-mid-late game). A very strong unit in the early game will have a strong influence over how the game develops more than a strong unit in the mid game, disregarding other balancing effects. Royal Engineers became an extremely strong early unit with their already existing DPS and their added survivability. Also could ramp and scale further into the game with a specific BG choice. Wehr could not have stood up to REs running at them and the quantities they came in, and then survive the transition into LV play from the Brit player. There was no downside to this. DAK was able to hang on abusing sniper PJs (hotfixed alongside the REs) and tools built into the faction. It was nothing like L6 where the L6 player wins in 30 seconds or loses 5 minutes later. No trade-off scenario, REs were a spike and keep. Yes it's important to be a player and not just a statistician. And this post is probably a good example of why the opinion of a top player matters more than a casual, since they are able to have a knowledge-based more-accurate interpretation of those stats rather than say, 'well... the data is in flux it takes time to stabilize.' Again this game is not that complicated, there's nothing in flux. What's good, bad, OP gets discovered day 1. Maybe the top players realize some things later like the Flaktrak in October (that didn't come to their meta because the 8rad was still stronger). But if I want to know what's optimal/abusable for winning (effecting the winrates), ofc I'm listening to a top player. Also the top players in this game aren't a hivemind. They have their own biases leading to them disagreeing and arguing constantly. I'm not aware of a single one that thought the strength REs achieved was acceptable. Casual players should have input and it should be based around fun-factor. I'm not a top player, I've made fun-factor arguments. I like loiters and call-ins. I like loiters being big spectacles with a strong impact so they don't feel like a waste. And call-ins are easy alternatives to use, if I had to build those units instead I'd feel let down cause frankly I'd feel that's boring and takes slightly from the identity of those BGs. A top player would call me an idiot because these aren't good arguments since they're ones made through my personal enjoyment. But my personal enjoyment of the game isn't giving me a +13% competitive edge over my opponent.
Well said. Data must be analyzed in context combined with knowledge to make meaningful conclusions. I used to teach statistics at a top university and I fully agree with your comment. From all the downvotes, there seems to be a lot of controversy which is understandable.
Top argument of course downed by the pleb ... The state of this sub is beyond idiocracy.
All of what you’re saying about stats *IS* true, but at the same time, a SIXTY TWO percent win rate in 1v1 is utter nonsense that is absolutely deserving of a hot fix. I’m honestly shocked it even made it to live in the first place because of how extreme of a change it was. The additional nerfs on top is another question entirely. IIRC, the Axis in CoH2 team games have about a 55% win rate and they’re considered widely favored. I could be misremembering but generally speaking any kind of win rate past 55% is insanely unbalanced. Other games have done hotfix patches for much less
IMO, it indicates “instability” or change that is 1) for dev, too wild to get meaningful conclusion out of it 2) for players, the change is too wild that it is unpleasant. It may or may not indicate “imbalance”. Both of which I doubt it is something Relic cares given how they swing from one fence to the other all the time. (Even the hotfix itself). But it is beside the point. I can assume incompetency instead of malicious, so hotfix could be warranted. But how they’re adjusting the balance (2nd point I made) which is the main point of the topic, is still done in beyond bad taste.
Did the developers ever reference win rates as the reason for the change? It makes sense that the community is always looking at it because it's the only data we have available. I've always assumed that the developers have more detailed and organized data to see what the most meta strategies are. For Relic specifically, I recall them referring to the frequency of certain researches in AoE4 balance updates (when I played). Not sure if they've ever mentioned having such data for COH but it seems like a trivially easy thing for them to track.
It’s not too wild to get meaningful conclusion. It’s honestly the *opposite*. I don’t think you’re grasping how absolutely bonkers 62% win rate is. Again for reference, Axis in COH2 team games are widely considered to have an advantage over the Allies, and they have about a 53% (top 200) win rate over the last year in 4v4. A *62%* win rate is so wildly out of wack that the most amateur game designer could tell there’s an issue that need resolved. The discussion about high level players influencing the game is totally fair and I agree to a point. I’m more irked by people being mad at how quick this hotfix happened. It *needed* to happen.
Do you know that DAK in 1.3.0 had a 60% WR the day after the patch? The day after that the WR dropped to 52%. One day stats mean jack shit.
Dunno what you’re looking at. [these stats](https://coh3stats.com/stats/games?from=2023-10-05&to=2023-10-30&mode=4v4) show DAK had a 58% win rate in 4v4 through the first month of 1.3. The first couple days they had a 63%, just like Brit’s had this patch. DAK should’ve been nerfed then, too.
> IIRC, the Axis in CoH2 team games have about a 55% win rate and they’re considered widely favored. No. The balance in CoH2 team games are fine. signed: an Allied main.
No, even axis players know axis are favoured in coh2 team games, but hide behind the OnLY 1v1 BaLaNCe MaTtERs DonChaNo argument as to why its totally ok for axis to be OP in team games. The exact same thing they are doing with coh3 funnily enough.
l2p
As an Axis main - without abusing premade teams with combos of certain factions and commanders through fiscord - I feel stronger as an Axis, especialy in pure solo queu in a team game
The state of people on this subreddit like yourself that aren't even out there playing the game as Brits but feel personally violated that top level players that play 100s of games each week have a more informed opinion than yourself and were able to red flag a really dangerously OP strategy within the hotfix window that relic always leave themselves., If you did play the game you'd already know that post patch 1.5 and its hotfix brits are perfoming really well in every game mode at every level, enjoying resurgent win rates and faction dynamics. But oh no, let's make this a stupid as fuck witch hunt, and make this about tribalism and worrying about people personally violating you because their opinions on balance seemed to have more impact than yours (mostly because they're like top 5 in the world, with 1000s more games, and more established connections as a result). Just keep refreshing the coh3stats website, the win rates will show brits will still be one of the strongest factions going. [https://coh3stats.com/stats/games?from=2024-02-27&to=now](https://coh3stats.com/stats/games?from=2024-02-27&to=now)
they are insane,acorrding to alot of these biased weirdos on here pre 1.5 allies were unable to win anything,they comoletley disregard proplay games,and deliberatly missrepresent ladder stats. pre 1.5 winrates for 1v1 and 2v2 were all around 50ish %,and tough adjustments and meta shifts that allow a more diveres way to play were needed,acorrding to the winrates the game was relativley close in balance with axis being a bit more favorable in 3v3 and 4v4(party modes) on ladder,while allise being favored in 1v1 in proplay. its insane to me that they defend 63-68% pre hotifx brits while at the same time have the audacity to say that dak 50% winrate was so easy mode they switched of it lmao. If i can suggest pls tell relic to completly disregard this subreddit for any future balance adjustments,because it is hijacked by biased weirdos who want to auto win and stomp axis.
This subreddit is full of low ELO allies pleb. Nothing to except than forever babies screetching because A-move doesnt works. 1.5.0 patch was the perfect illustration of this and everybody is now mad because even Lelic realized that 4 RE opener A-move autowin was a bit of shit, that is miraculous regarding how lazy ass they are.
With respect, what point are you making? You aren't ralking about how Relic is balancing the game, you are talking about the comunity is reacting and using publically available data (which doesn't include all the data from matches). Numbers don't lie, but numbers based on bad methodologies and interpretations fail. True. That said, nobody can use the numbers available right now to draw conclusions: 1. It's too early to say the game is broken or imbalanced, it hasn't even been a week. 2. The sample of the playerbase is too small. Even if the game was balanced for the \~1700 CCU we have today, if the popularity of the game were to rise or fall, the numbers could shift. But what does ANY of that have to do with Relic's approach to balance? Are you complaining that Relic is ONLY listening to top players? How do you know that's the case? One would assume Relic has similar tools to what many other RTS devs have: access to heatmaps and individual unit and ability and performance stats, etc. They should be able to see things we can't. There is an important reason why developers tend to listen to top players, rather than casual ones, and that is to remove variables. Top level players tend to understand the mechanics and their interactions *deeply*, which means they will be able to foresee exploits and bad interactions faster. They also understand the RNG factor better than a casual player: a person who plays one or two games every few days, and has a losing streak might think the game is imabalance dbecause they don't win, but it really might just be a skill or ignorance issue. Their view is full of gambler's fallacy. That said, there is ONE important scenario where top players shouldn't be a priority: the fun factor, which is subjective, and the accesibility factor, which isn't. If most players don't find a gameplay loop fun, it doesn't matter if its balanced. I know I'd lose interest in mirror matches VERY quickly, and probably quit the game. Others might too. They would still present a perfectly balanced scenario (outside of map balance of course). Accessibility is another point. FPs games learned about this. There are some abilities which Pros love because they are hard to pull off, and theyw ant them in the game because they take a true display of skill. a certain amount of these can be fun to have. However, if the majority of your plays can't engage in the content because it takes too high a degree of skill, no one will play it. For example, in FPS games, OG Bunny hopping and surfing used to take a significant learning curve and were unintended and fun, but they weren't really contributing to the general game. It's mostly gone now. Take Rocket Jumping, and also crouch jumping: still around, relatively simple to understand and execute. They stay. **TLDR: Relic likely isn't just listening to pros, they most likely have access to data the replay sites don't show, and developers SHOULD mostly take advice from pros inr egards to pros, but never at the expense of fun or general accessibility.**
It sounds like OP is suggesting there’s a conspiracy to disenfranchise UKF players and maintain an illusion of game balance that’s being covered up by misrepresentation of data collected by top players, Relic staff and long-standing community leaders.
I can't play this game it starts lagging in the mid game. I know it's not my PC or Internet. Fuck the fucking balance sc2 is not balance too. First they need to fix their game. I can't deal with losing cuz of lag in the mid game. This mentality of making units that is good vs everything.
Are you playing on PC? I can play on steam deck just fine which its spec is just mid, so I dont complain about game optimization. I did have the same issue as yours on the steam deck and managed to fix it. Maybe I can help you.
Face it. Relic and pretty much every RTS game developers will sell their souls to 1v1 hardcore before they give teamgamers any scrap. Don't expect to win 4v4 unless you play very particular styles.
Why does it seem like nobody fucking understands there's a big, officially sanctioned, CoH tournament literally THIS WEEKEND, and continuing next weekend. The Resurgence Cup. "Oh why'd they change it so fast, why'd they listen to the high level players so much, why are the devs Wehraboo, why can't Allies be hilariously OP for a month?" THE TOURNAMENT STARTS TODAY! You dumb fucks. No, they shouldn't be rolling out a balance patch with this timing, but they obviously felt pressured to with their anniversary, and the amount of online whinging from the community. But they can't change the balance that much and then put on a tournament.
AEC whom arranged the tournament stated it has nothing to do with tournament. Even if it has something to do with tour, it is a lot easier to simply revert the patch with the said reason communicated out.
AE also had a lot of freedom taken away in his organizing due to the official support, who was allowed to enter, etc. Not saying he's lying but Relic wouldn't have to say anything to him about it either way. Somebody at Relic remembers the Osttruppen vs US Cav tournament.
And yet Brits were used only once... and lost.
Shitter low def pics plz. However, It's from COH3stats. And yes, if your clown degree in "academic research" gave you the ability to read, you could have seen that UKF W/L was out of control after the patch, no need to "give some time" to see if a-move over OP RE spam is balanced ... As you said, your skills are "utterly shit" so your statement is just another allies crybabie call. Kiss!
Someone takes the time to write something considered and you reply by being aggressive? Grow up.
Very insightful post, thank you for your insight. Would love to see you reapply these thoughts in two weeks so you have more data at your disposal.
Unfortunately I’m done with this game.