BETA update 7 feedback

[MarKr]

Here is a topic for you to share your feedback about the latest beta update in general. If you want to discuss something specific, please start a new topic - it is easier for us to track the issue in one topic than search through 7+ pages for posts that might be relevant to this or that topic. Thanks!

[kwok]

[insert obligatory "reworks suck, stop changing things for your own benefit even though you don't even play the game" complaint here]

Just kidding.
Hey, while you all give feedback on the latest beta changes, one thing we're hoping you'd put your mind to is how we will handle tank hunter doctrine reworks. This will probably the last "large structural change" doctrine rework we will do before we go into the "balance phase" of doctrine reworks and finally updating to the real live version. You can see the latest discussion on the topic here: viewtopic.php?f=15&p=32360#p32360

[TheUndying]

Is it intended that the Canadian infantry can get 3 Bren LMG upgrades?

If not, I'll see how to reproduce that bug, they're insanely strong with it.

[MarKr]

@ TheUndying: No, they're not. Thanks for the report

[TheUndying]

It seems that if you give them one Bren LMG and queue the second upgrade, you can select a third one.
Hope that helps.

[The New BK Champion]

Holly shit, that's a lot of feedback. Especialy form hardcore, dedicated bk players. Oh wait...

[TheUndying]

Got another bug to report.

As Brits, when you call in your Infantry and Tank HQ trucks, they don't automatically go to the selected point and deploy there.

They go to the rally point of the main HQ and just...stand there. Undeployed.

[Walderschmidt]

In Blitz doctrine, panzer IVs don’t capture points. Just the panther.

Wald

[MarKr]

It seems that if you give them one Bren LMG and queue the second upgrade, you can select a third one.
Hope that helps.

Thanks, it should work properly in the next update.

In Blitz doctrine, panzer IVs don’t capture points. Just the panther.

I just tested this and only the PIV F2 does not capture points, the PIV H/J, Command tank and StuGs work. The F2 will be fixed in the next update, if there is any way to reproduce the other tanks not capping points, please let us know here.

EDIT:

As Brits, when you call in your Infantry and Tank HQ trucks, they don't automatically go to the selected point and deploy there.

They go to the rally point of the main HQ and just...stand there. Undeployed.

We've noticed this too and been trying to fix it, with no success so far. But we're still looking into it.

[TheUndying]

Yet another thing with the Brits.

If your HQ building gets destroyed and you repair it, you can recruit US (!) pioneers there. They can't build any of the buildings but it is interesting nontheless.

I think just getting the HQ trucks back would solve a lot of issues. I miss them.

[Warhawks97]

I think just getting the HQ trucks back would solve a lot of issues. I miss them.

What was the actual reason that CW lost its truck?

[The New BK Champion]

I think just getting the HQ trucks back would solve a lot of issues. I miss them.

What was the actual reason that CW lost its truck?

Do devs still even keep track on "why" in any case?

[kwok]

I think just getting the HQ trucks back would solve a lot of issues. I miss them.

What was the actual reason that CW lost its truck?

Do devs still even keep track on "why" in any case?

Yes... in fact we do have a big excel sheet as well as cleaned up notes on every release log to show "why"..... you can literally find out why we made those changes in the changelog as well as the tons of other posts made by PLAYERS not devs... you realize almost 80% of the changes now are driven by players and not decided by devs? We personally disagree with 60% of them but we do it anyways? Do you realize that? Or do you just blindly say things to criticize now? Do you bring value here? Are you even complaining any more when your complaints literally make no sense to what's going on? Are you just being hypocritical by not listening or paying attention to the community asks and just fisting your own thoughts into topics claiming "THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE WANT"? Do you participate in the votes that are started as well as decided on by players? Let us know when you've climbed out of your own butt hole and looked around a bit, we are always happy to have you back in the community but not while you're just being grumpy for seemingly no reason except to antagonize every step similar to another old player that you yourself use to find stress over...

Also @warhawks, you were literally in the convo thread about CW truck changes (among others). viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3242 The topic died eventually, but devs kept discussing them. the main reason is basebombing was something impossible to control in a balanced way. Locking entire sectors from artillery on the frontline was something complained about BUT people still wanted to be able to reinforce from trucks on the front line. The change allows for both being able to artillery on any sector as HQs dont lock sectors anymore, trucks and gliders can still be deployed to reinforce from the front.

@undying so basically if the field and armor truck basically set up properly then there's nothing inherently wrong with the changes? we can figure that out probably... but i think the benefits of getting rid of the universally hated anti basebomb exploit outweigh a extra step in micro for britsh players.

[The New BK Champion]

7 betas, critical bugs amassed, going back and forth with some changes and I make no sense? You disagree with 60% of changes you implement yourself and I make no sense xD? I used to do constructive criticism, like 4 patches ago when you haven't turned everything upside down yet.

That's actually an excelent answer to my question. "Because people want it". That's the only reason I can see in the changes you implement aswell. That's why it's become one hell of a mess.

And all I have to say is that you made this mod more boring and especially more bugged than it was before, sadly. What is so hard in understanding "if it's working, don't touch it"?

[MarKr]

Bugs are to be expected with a rework of this scale, that is why the reworks are introduced and updated on the beta branch instead of the main branch.

We introduce the changes we disagree with because those are changes that the players request and vote for in public polls (as opposed to the complaints like "you just change stuff as you like it and don't care what the players want").

"One hell of a mess"...I bet that if we did what YOU want, you would be all like "yes, this is what the game should be" and you wouldn't give a rat's ass about the fact that majority of the players would feel the same way as you feel now...but that'd be OK because YOU would be satisfied and others can go f*ck themselves, right? Your vision of the game does not correspond with the vision of the majority and so, in your view, it is a "mess", yes we know it because your last... how many...7 or 10 post were all more or less saying "this sucks, revert it all back". Yes we know you dislike it, no we won't revert the changes because of your repetitive post.

And btw - we really have that excel sheet with changes and reasons for them:

[The New BK Champion]

I am not criticising your methods, I am criticising the extent. This mod was great even before you took over it. You took care of it and made if even better, balanced and enjoyable. At some point it was simply perfect. But don't you understand that after that point you are overdoing?

And if you are saying that I would be happy with leaving the mod like it was some time ago, yes I would. But that was a consensus of many years of mod developement. By adding small changes u would just polish what was already good enough. What you are doing now is changing docs layout, meta and mechanics extensively in a short time, effectively changing the mod's feeling entirely. That's not a consensus at all, even if that's what "people want". Even if you made those changes u want, but they would be introduced slowly and more cautiously, it would be more tolerable.

What people btw? How many active members are left? How many people vote? Dozen? Two dozens? That's hardly a credible argument for swinging around as a "majority".

Truth is you are not gonna gain many new players and by being always so passive agressive about someone being upset about the changes you are only chasing the hardcores away. Want me to do a list of old bk players who left in past year claiming that they don't like the changes?

Sure u can have everything your way (that dozen voting people's way, whatever), but you will be left alone here..

[MarKr]

Same old story...

"The mod was at some point perfect" - yes, maybe from your point of view. You cannot really say that the mod was truly balanced with the obvious advantage of Axis and especially few doctrines that were picked by players 80% of the time. Try to guess why Luft and Terror were the most played docs. Easy answer - they were WAY easier to play and had power advantage with very little downsides in return. I remember comments like "All the time I see several games in the lobby with full Axis team and empty Allies team. Lobby is opened for half an hour and nobody joins in to play as allies" do you really think that so many players preffered Axis because the game was balanced, the odds of winning were equal on both sides and people just felt more often like playing Axis? I've heard over and over again that playing Allies was harder because winning required a level of team cooperation that was very hard to achieve with a randomly assembled team while in the same situation winning as Axis was a lot easier. Again, where is ballance in this when one side is fundemantally dissadvantaged simply by its design?
Maybe it is because I'm talking about balance and you are talking about the "fun factor". Sure, playing Axis in the old settup was "more fun" because Axis had advantage. What about the receiving end? Doesn't that explain the short time it took to fill the Axis team and the long time to fill the Allies team? And how many players left the mod because of these issues? Sides not ballanced and consequent long waiting times for matches?

Speaking of players leaving - I've heard from many players that they left because the mod was "the same all the time, same build orders over and over again, same predictable tactics, same game flow, nothing new, no surprises" when the reworks were announced some old players that had left even said they would give the mod another try once the changes would be done. There is no way of knowing for sure how many players left for what reason but some players left because of the changes, some players had left even before that because of "no significant changes". Saying that these changes will kill the mod might seem very likely from your perspective but it might as well give a new breath to the mod and bring some old players back and extend the life of the mod a little bit more.
CoH is over 10 years old, if we keep the game as it was, some new players might come and some current players might leave. If we make radical changes some current players might leave and some new players might come and old players might return. One way or the other, the game simply will fade out eventually - that's what happens to every game in the end. We decided to try and give it something new in the form of reworks, trying to make all factions more balanced, getting rid of blatant abuses (which some players might have liked to use) and trying to make it so that every match starts with a 50:50 chance to win instead of 60:40 in the favor of Axis simply because they are Axis.
Maybe you're right and after the reworks we'll be left alone here, maybe you're not right and the reworks will actually have an overall positive impact, we're aware of both possibilities. You believe the result will the former, we believe it will be the latter. Neither can be sure.

[kwok]

I am not criticising your methods, I am criticising the extent. This mod was great even before you took over it. You took care of it and made if even better, balanced and enjoyable. At some point it was simply perfect. But don't you understand that after that point you are overdoing?

And if you are saying that I would be happy with leaving the mod like it was some time ago, yes I would. But that was a consensus of many years of mod developement. By adding small changes u would just polish what was already good enough. What you are doing now is changing docs layout, meta and mechanics extensively in a short time, effectively changing the mod's feeling entirely. That's not a consensus at all, even if that's what "people want". Even if you made those changes u want, but they would be introduced slowly and more cautiously, it would be more tolerable.

What people btw? How many active members are left? How many people vote? Dozen? Two dozens? That's hardly a credible argument for swinging around as a "majority".

Truth is you are not gonna gain many new players and by being always so passive agressive about someone being upset about the changes you are only chasing the hardcores away. Want me to do a list of old bk players who left in past year claiming that they don't like the changes?

Sure u can have everything your way (that dozen voting people's way, whatever), but you will be left alone here..

Okay... this is what I'm hearing you say, tell me if I'm wrong...

1. The game was perfect as it was before changes were made
2. People are leaving the game because there are too many crazy changes

First of all, so far almost no big changes were made to the live version, this is all to test the beta... So if the game was perfect before changes were made, then the player base shouldn't have declined...
Second, if people are leaving the game and there are basically no changes made... wouldn't that mean the problem is we are not making changes? Or should we be making negative changes some how and restoring bugs in the game?

In terms of active members... if anything we have more now than before.... If you look at the past forum posts they were mostly 4 people: tiger, warhawks, me, and probably you or sukin coming in 4th... Whatever "dozen" people is like 3 times the amount of participation we've had in the past...
Here is a comparison of topic viewing in 2015, a time a lot of players like you refer to the game as "popular" and way way before someone like me could've even influenced the game.

Here is in 2019 when I probably started proposing the doctrine changes

Here are topics specifically about the doctrine changes that just so happen to be grouped together.

Capture3.PNG (5.87 KiB) Viewed 3693 times

All those posts you can look back yourself and see what they are, what they are about, when they happened, etc.

The community isn't necessarily dying, it's losing players that are getting old and picking up newer people who don't post like Tiger or Warhawks. I literally have a new friend who messaged me on discord who is asking to LEARN how to play BK. This was just yesterday. He's really cool and also teaching me chess. To be fair, I've been working a lot and talking with people on the N and S American time zone and occasioanlly asia. So the communities in those areas talk to more, play more, try out the beta more, etc. The EU time zone I'm working and can't reach out to them. If you want to save the community you can reach out to them and tell them to talk shit about the beta on here. I ENCOURAGE that. I specifcally ask them to because we WANT to hear the bad feedback before we push the beta into the live version. The problem isn't that we dont' accept feedback or disregard players. It's that there post like yours that isn't even feedback at all whereas every other piece of available evidence to us says the opposite of what you claim. We can only act on what we know and have to try to get as much info from different places as we can, which means beyond your unconstructive complaining.

[Snazz]

I just like that I can build 25 pounders AND have an ammo income again xD

[kwok]

Me too.

[TheUndying]

If the Inf and Tank trucks would deploy normally, yes, it would be fine.

I still prefer making a forward base with my main HQ (and run the risk of losing it) but hey, it could be worse.

And I know this is probably just a weird side effect of some of the changes but for some reason the Axis AI spams out Pz 3 Ns like crazy.

[Viper]

checked the latest beta update changelog, but did not test yet.........although i am happy that some bugs i addressed seem to be taken care of, i will post topic and give feedback when i test, like i did before.

but now i only want to comment parts of this discussion:

"The mod was at some point perfect" - yes, maybe from your point of view. You cannot really say that the mod was truly balanced with the obvious advantage of Axis and especially few doctrines that were picked by players 80% of the time.

517 is very balanced. because it is ancient. and truth told, still more balanced than beta. because the beta is still a new birth.......long way ahead to be as balanced as 517 or close by.

the people who like to play only axis all the time, will always be like that, and people who like to play only allies all the time, will always be like that too. no matter of game balance......because players like this are biased since their first day in coh. they never played the other side to see which one is stronger. but they always pick a side based on personal preference straight away.

and both sides exist. players who prefer only axis are not more than the players who prefer only allies. you can always find both in the lobby. and usually players of this kind will always play the same maps, because it's the only thing they can play. so when you see a lobby with full axis or full allies, you cant judge balance over it.

and to define the "hardcore/elite" players......they are different, they can play all sides, and they always play well, no matter which side they pick or what map. of course each one of them might still have some faction they personally prefer, but overall, they are mostly hard opponents in any dress they wear.

The community isn't necessarily dying, it's losing players that are getting old and picking up newer people who don't post like Tiger or Warhawks.

just one little info about Tiger, i dont think he left/disappeared because he disliked the beta changes.......i was told tiger was in trouble with the egyptian police over political reasons. thats why he is gone for 3 months now. no idea when he is back.

[kwok]

517 is very balanced. because it is ancient. and truth told, still more balanced than beta. because the beta is still a new birth.......long way ahead to be as balanced as 517 or close by.

I will partially agree. The only point I agree on is that the beta is not balanced and far from it. But the point of the rework is to make things easier to balance in the long run as well as enable players to play their favorite doctrines in more scenarios.

but they always pick a side based on personal preference straight away.

This is partially why we chose to do the reworks. A lot of doctrines and even whole factions were not viable in 1v1s, so players not only wouldn't but couldn't play their preferred doctrines. The reworks lets them.

So I agree, we definitely dont' want to take away any player's ability to play their preferred doctrine. But we DO see a pattern of strong docs being chosen for their OP qualities and not necessarily their preference. We look at players who have patterns that don't change AND players that play any doctrine. We found a really really clear "preference" for luft doc for example which is why it was not reworked but just "nerfed" (and i use "nerf" with quotes because it's more like it had its power curve changed from strong early-mid game to strong late game).

It seems like people don't quite get it every time it has been said, the dev team members do not mod for themselves. The community often likes to remind dev members they don't play the game BUT ALSO say that the dev team makes changes for their own benefit. These two points contradict each other entirely. I've come to a point where I barely play as well (I see why devs don't play the game now). We make decisions based on what the community says/wants, all changes and reasons are more transparently traced and trackable now for everyone to see on this forum. BKChampion can repeat 50 times how the dev team changes things selfishly but it won't make it any more true.

just one little info about Tiger, i dont think he left/disappeared because he disliked the beta changes.......i was told tiger was in trouble with the egyptian police over political reasons. thats why he is gone for 3 months now. no idea when he is back.

I was not referring specfically to tiger, but many other plays like sukin, cyberzombie, shadow, etc.
About tiger, hope he is all right in his country.

[Snazz]

Which factions/doctrines are currently OP?

[Lionelus]

Hello

I'm not playing as much as before. Same for my brother (devilroach).
Yet changes and updates makes us want to come and play again
I'm glad this community is still alive. @dev, thanks for your work

I've tried the beta yesterday.
Got some feedback to give : specifically on the new features of the beta, and some others on old features
I'll make specific topic about these

Best
Lionel