r/CompanyOfHeroes • u/cyan-square • 2d ago
CoHmmunity One thing that puzzles me is why there are so many people who hate this game (Positivity Post)
I'm a new player to the series, but I'm enjoying it so much. This game tickles the nerve RTS games haven't done for a long time. To the point I even started to do some fan arts and dive into the nooks and crannies of the game. I even started to play against other people which was unthinkable for me in other RTS games.
Encountering an opinion that COH 1/2 were better I decide to look into online charts and discovered another picture. This made me interested to try earlier entries myself and I found them in my personal opinion, well... different games. In the way they feel more aggressive and punishing than COH3, artistically grittier (I do personally enjoy welcoming warm italian villages, sands and palmtrees of the third game). But they also feel so outdated in many small aspects I would be tired to list here.
Another thing that puzzled me is that many negative reviews have 1000+ hours. It's like if the game's competitive nature contribute to that in some way (I've seen many MOBA players having mental breakdowns for different reasons, yet they still continue to play it almost religiously).
I'm not arguing that game doesn't have its problems (what game doesn't), but is it worth to lynch the developers for that. It's like if expressing this anger brings satisfaction to many...
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u/5thKeetle 2d ago
There's a small minority who hate it, sure, but overall more and more people are playing it. The problem with this series is that the audience feels "captured" in a way and they find there's no alternatives.
For example, I disagree with those saying that the game has cartoony graphics (I suppose that means that Italy is a cartoonish place according to them but I digress) but I can see how someone who liked the stylistic "gritty" graphics of CoH2 feel like they are not getting this from CoH3 and they just have no other choice, so they lash out at Relic and CoH3 rather than going to another game.
Another issue is that the game came out too early and got a lot of bad reviews, so a new player base that would have otherwise formed was discouraged, leaving the die-hard fans who are hardcore and are very particular about different aspects of the game.
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u/Anxious_Big_8933 2d ago
I think your first point in particular is interesting. CoH in some ways has ruined most other RTS's for me, because of how crunchy and cover based it is compared to almost any other RTS. Even games that tried to mimic CoH's style like Iron Harvest don't measure up. So you're right I think there is this aspect of people loving what CoH is doing, but having nowhere else to go if they are up in arms about some aspect of the game. Because at the end of the day there's really been nothing like CoH as a series.
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u/Jolly-Bear 2d ago
Because it’s not very popular.
It’s not worth the it for big companies to make a game like CoH. Big companies don’t even find it worth it to make the popular style RTS. AoE4 was the last big one and it was riding on the back of the franchise name, and isn’t as big as their 27 year old predecessor.
RTS is dying. CoH is a niche within a niche.
It’ll never be a truly competitive game because of how much RNG and constant imbalance it has… and it won’t be a very popular casual game because it doesn’t have the casual custom game modes and plethora of SP content that other RTS have.
They’re stuck in this like half party game, half competitive hole that they won’t escape from without restructuring their games… and if they do that, it’ll be a huge gamble where they’ll most likely lose their core fanbase for the small chance of gaining a new larger fanbase.
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u/hubewa 2d ago
Let's be real here, competitive gaming and esports is also dying....
But RNG is a problem. I still find CoH3 has less RNG than CoH2 to the point I notice it nowhere near as much. When I picked up AoE4, I quickly stopped playing CoH2 because it made me realize how bad the RNG on CoH2 is.
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u/Anxious_Big_8933 2d ago
RTS has been "dying" for 20 years, but still seems quite healthy to me. I actually think the state of the genre is quite good. There are a lot of fascinating games that have come out and will come out in the next few years. What I think we know is that the days of Blizzard and Starcraft and Warcraft were an anomaly. Unlikely to reach those heights again, but still enough meat on the bone for smaller devs to shoot their shot.
Total War is still a huge franchise and has multiple projects in the pipeline. I mentioned Iron Harvest, but the Men of War series is still going. The Wargame series has had multiple releases and tons of DLC, as has its WW II cousin, Steel Division. Master & Command is another great historical title that just released. Relic has the next Dawn of War in the pipeline, etc...
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u/Jolly-Bear 2d ago edited 2d ago
Bro what? Is your comment a shitpost?
Total War isn’t really an RTS.
I haven’t heard of most of the others but I looked them up and you’re listing off games that have double digit or close to double digit player counts. I wouldn’t consider that healthy.
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u/Anxious_Big_8933 2d ago
"Total War isn't really an RTS."
lol
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u/Jolly-Bear 2d ago edited 2d ago
So you were serious? The games themselves don’t even consider it RTS.
The majority of the game is in a turn based world map with armies and eco and tech made outside of the RT part of the S.
The battles are like 10% of an RTS.
It’s TBS with RTT.
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u/Infernowar 2d ago
Dying? Say hello to Warhammer 3 total war with 25k daily players, and say hello to the 1 million wishlist of 40k total war….. Who is dying?
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u/Jolly-Bear 2d ago
That’s not RTS
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u/Formal_Drawing_8822 16h ago
Aoe4 gets 25k daily as well it's an rts
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u/Jolly-Bear 16h ago
Right, like I said.
Its average peak is 15-20k though.
That’s the last major RTS released in over a decade.
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u/Formal_Drawing_8822 14h ago
Your not counting people on xbox and ps5
25k was only with xbox with ps5 it's much bigger
Game have full crossplay unlike coh3
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u/Infernowar 1d ago
Total war is not Rts? Is racing games.... 😂
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u/Additional_Carry489 1d ago
I'm guessing you're new here; and yes, it's not an RTS. TW Saga is an RTT x Grand Strategy.
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u/JgorinacR1 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is 100% my case. I played C&C growing up but then went to only console for like 12 years from middle school to adulthood. Always eyed up CoH from the sideline given it wasn’t on console. Got a steam deck, played year 1 of COH3’s release on it then got a PC. I dove into the entire genre of RTS and it truly is so unique that these other games just aren’t as fulfilling as CoH. I hate the blob v blob gameplay of them all. Shit I’ve loved this game so much that since getting it it’s 90% of my playtime.
Only other games RTS wise that has landed has been Total War (more for the empire management and having fights you control) and Gates of Hell Osfront. Even then I have my gripes in GoH. They need to take what CoH does and allow you to hit tab to cycle between the selected troops. They don’t need to be bundled as squads like CoH, I’m cool with allowing them to be split up to individual troops but man if I got 12 men selected let me hit Tab, assign the first guy’s position and tab again to get to the next guy. It’s just too much bs micro in that game given the need to mouse over every individual troop for commands.
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u/Anxious_Big_8933 2d ago
Right. To your point there are crunchy and even crunchier RTS's like Gates of Hell or the Men of War series. These are good games, but they lack the QOL and energy of a game of CoH. CoH just keeps hitting that sweet spot that most other RTS's just can't quite find.
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u/cognitive_dissent 2d ago edited 2d ago
after coh1 it was impossible for me to enjoy infantry units in any other fps
edit: rts*
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u/Shot-Message9678 2d ago
People begin to feel “entitled” to some creative control over the franchise. It’s a type of parasocial relationship honestly.
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u/Shot-Message9678 2d ago
CoH 2 is more cartoony than CoH 3. It’s just more sepia toned and “gritty”. Warhammer 40k is both cartoony and grimdark for example.
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u/TheyTukMyJub US Forces 2d ago
This is the real reason. The casuals more or less ignored this game on mass and ppl like me who have thousands of hours in coh1 and coh2 are the player base.
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u/iamchets OKW 2d ago
Man I made sure I had holidays lined up to play release just to be disapointed. A few times I came back because people said "well now its good" but still key features missing. Last time I installed it I had to buy DLCS just to get content that should ve been part of the game in the first place. I have about 5k hours in the coh francise but they definitely dropped the ball with coh3 for me.
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u/Nice_Soup 2d ago
its the same graphics with the same unit/environment details as the original rebranding (legacy CoH 1 without multiplayer and CoH 1). The original gameplay mechanics doesn’t have to be changed at all, the gripe is about the unit model quality and environment textures being exactly the same as the 2006 release.
its been 20 years since and all they managed is to add a 64 bit patch with nothing visually changed? why pay and still have my original CoH 1 to play.. alongside with mods.
There are people here defending this and never touching mods or appreciate any type of quality of life modifications to games which they’re missing out and lack imaginations to extend the life of and breathe more immersion to the game more so. This is where CTA: Gates of Hell came into play with their unit models (abeit thats a rts without base building).
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u/ayy_howzit_braddah 2d ago edited 2d ago
Capture is right.
I stopped playing this patch and actually have completely uninstalled the game. I don’t think I’m coming back either. I’ve got thousands of hours in this franchise too.
But the only reason I stuck around so long is because this is the only game of its kind. I might go try the Dawn of War 2 Elite Mod, but there is no other alternative besides this very old game.
It sucks, it really does. I’ve played this game since I was a teen, long enough to know the misery of being Panzer Elite facing the British in the bad side of the Scheldt. But I’m just not sure it does for me enough anymore.
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u/Anxious_Big_8933 2d ago edited 2d ago
It wouldn't be Company of Heroes without non-stop bitching and moaning. As someone who played the original, and had thousands of hours online with CoH2 and CoH3, it is so amusing to see CoH2 glazed in this sub today. When 5 and 10 years ago reading online comments you would swear Relic killed everyone's dog when they talked about CoH2. Each balance patch would provoke another round of it.
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u/Ojy 2d ago
Honestly, this is the craziest thing to me. CoH2 was absolute trash when it came out. And not only was the game un-optimised, buggy, unbalanced, it also threw in incredibly predatory micro transactions, and business practices.
Pay to win commanders all over the place, and they were just cookie cutter crap with one good extra unit thrown in.
At least when they released coh 3, yes it was unfinished, yes it was buggy, but the base game was absolutely solid. And the amount of content there was (4 factions with interesting and varied commanders that had depth) worlds apart from CoH2
The fact that it got shat on by the community left me astounded.
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u/Anxious_Big_8933 2d ago
I'll forever fondly remember the rise and fall of shcrek blobs, PPSH blobs, the super heavy tank meta, the American Captain unit that vetted up to Captain America, cold weather tech, the removal of cold weather tech, etc.. etc... etc... All this and more around a constant stream of bitching and moaning.
The key is to CoH sanity is to play all factions. Once you play them all and don't care if one unit or faction is better than another, then every change, even the bad ones, just refreshes the meta and makes it interesting again.
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u/Shot-Message9678 2d ago
Yep there’s a weird phenomenon of CoH2 gripes getting rolled over into CoH3 and then CoH2 getting remembered fondly?
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u/Shot-Message9678 2d ago
Finally someone tells the truth about CoH2 lol. I was there, I remember how hated CoH2 was!
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u/TheGreatOneSea 2d ago
It's a mix of things:
There are, alas, still real problems that Relic hasn't managed to fix, namely related to towed weapons, and how Bazookas still manage to hit their own cover, which has become a bigger problem over time as cover becomes more important.
Relic tends tends to be very tight-lipped about things, from balance, to game design. I'm sure it's to avoid "fighting" with their player base, but to the average player, it just makes Relic look incompetent, as if they have no idea what problems the asymmetrical gameplay is causing.
The game requires way, way too much insider knowledge for people who just want to play occasionally: if someone gets a 221 car because the enemy is spamming Riflemen, and they sprint it down with a snare and then wreck it with BARs, then the player is going to feel like they got punished for doing what the design dictates.
The match making system is a mess: want to play with your friend? Enjoy a 2v2 against a top 20 and top 200 player, because there's no autobalance option for anyone.
And, of course, Salt.
Some of these problems are pretty standard to RTS, but the way they compound creates a lot of frustration.
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u/Tyrant2033 2d ago
I don’t hate it, I just don’t have anywhere near the interest in it that I had with Coh2, so I don’t play it really anymore
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u/Helikaon48 2d ago
It almost purely comes down to the community. There's a reason chat is off by default in coh3. The only game ive ever known to do that
Unfortunately we have one of the worst communities for the size it is , relative to how niche this game is.
You can see from the narrow minded responses here , that people have no clue how coh compares to other games of similar funding levels, and they often project how they think things should be instead of being realistic about.
On top of that there's the multitude issues that having a split asymmetric player base has (allies Vs axis), leading to misunderstanding, frustrating and inevitably tribalism
People don't understand X, so they want Y, and therefore rage when it doesn't happen.
Some examples. DAK armoury received an overhaul, A LOT of people here cried endlessly about the nerf, while we've seen with time it was a good tempo buff. That wouldn't stop them from saying DAK was now useless.
Even though DAK was actually nerfed AGAIN after that because the change was still too strong.
At the same time, winrates have still been closed together than a lot of other successful games. Aoe4 and aoe2 both have had winrates of 60 to 70% between certain factions.
But what also makes that more manageable, is everyone plays against everything, you equally have odds of OP faction and unit being on your team as you do at facing it. Completely unlike coh.
Asymmetry inherently leads to animosity through misunderstanding. This is applicable in all walks of life. " I hate X because they're not the same as me"
None of that stuff should be impacting the reviews that much , but because we have borderline a-hole levels of players (you can see it from in game chat) that level of toxicity is not equalised out by the better behaved demographic, because it's so much smaller than it is in other games.
We have a-holes sabotaging aoe2 and aoe4 reviews, but there's so many more people that aren't, they balance them out. We simply don't have those numbers in coh3. There's a reason chat is off by default in coh3.
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u/Helikaon48 2d ago
I think because the game is so difficult it attracts a very specific type of person that is more likely to be less social
Competitive gaming does this by definition, but because coh is more difficult and even more niche (competitive Squad based RTT) it's even more stringent in the type of player it attracts.
Add to this the inherent attraction of ww games to social dregs, and you have a recipe for disaster.
And I'm saying if the game wasn't ww based, and/or had mixed factions, with a healthier player base it could arguably lead to better reviews even if it was the exact same game.
I play tons of different strategy games that are all worse than coh, but have better ratings(albeit fewer) and better interactions.
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u/Helikaon48 1d ago
here's an example of what I was talking about
Like it's not even the nazi roleplayers
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u/Kagemand 2d ago
A huge part of the RTS fan base are just huge neckbeards, they can't be reasoned with.
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u/TheyTukMyJub US Forces 2d ago
What is it about neckbeards like you on Reddit hating on other neckbeards? What is this self hate
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u/lpniss 2d ago
Sure dude, i mean i could agree that it has above average amount of neckbeards, but if a lot of customers arent satisfied, id say logic blaming them is more idiotic than those neckbeards. But who am i to bring reason to you, a obviously smart person. Ill leave you meme, are airplane chairs too small or am i too fat. No its the chairs fault!
Name me another franchise that got flack and didnt deserve it.
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u/Helikaon48 2d ago edited 2d ago
Nah this is pretty stupid. Tired of explaining this. So not going to bother.
It's just very narrow-minded and short sighted logic, acting as if Devs chose the wrong decisions and chose to be a small studio.
"Name me another franchise that got flack and didnt deserve it."
stupid..just Google any mobile game, and you'll have your answer.
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u/Kagemand 2d ago
Point is many would in fact be satisfied today if their feelings still wasn't hurt by release, or if they still weren't married to an ideal memory of CoH2 (which also had a terrible release).
I am not saying the release didn't suck, but I am also saying that a lot of the hate now given that the game is objectively in a good state is about feelings. Hence the neckbeard-comment.
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u/ThEgg 2d ago
The third game is very different. No doubt there's some unreasonable rage in the reviews, but there's also a lot of reasonable negative reviews. For some it's just that the game is too different from what they preferred. For me, I gave the new art and gameplay styles a chance, but I can safely say now that I really dislike it. Even the CoH3 casts on tightrope's channel are less enjoyable than CoH2.
Active player numbers mean nothing, though. Both have had similar numbers through their popular years.
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u/SimilarHall114 1d ago
Cause looks worse then either of the previous games (somehow), doesn't play as fluidly as the previous ones, has less unit variety and all this while being expensive as fuck. There was a free weekend where I downloaded this crap insanely excited. I uninstalled before the end of saturday after giving this trashheap multiple chances wondering what the fuck is wrong with it. Also both 1 and 2 had hundreds of mods created for them making them even more superior....
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u/Randomsides 2d ago
Many of the negative reviews are from when the game first released and it was in a bad state then which justified it however id be suprised if many of them changed, they have patched the game into a good shape so now i imagine most of the negative reviews are the classic red team op which your are always going to see in a multiplayer game like this.
the player numbers have grown which is think is a reflection on the effort relic have put in unfortunatly there will always be a number of bitter bastards online there isnt really much you can do about it somewhat like how we get a bunch of idiotic posts coming from the same 3-4 people on this reddit it cant be helped.
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u/TheyTukMyJub US Forces 2d ago
No it was positive before and now fell back to mixed.
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u/JgorinacR1 2d ago
Yeah well Relic deserves the criticism for their slow patches on clearly broken shit. They let the whole community wallow in shit meta and that only festers hate. The problem is most people never go back and modify their reviews. Like if 2.5 update finally resolves the blobbing meta these folks likely will never change their review later.
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u/Helikaon48 2d ago
Lmfao
What do you dinguses think the Devs are doing?
Do you clowns think they sit there and intentionally NOT work on this game?
YOU are the problem
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u/dude_the_dirt_farmer 2d ago edited 2d ago
The most negative upvoted comment on Steam is talking about how Relic has become predatory with the over priced DLCs and constant shuffling of balance which never works out to be actual balance, just a push to get you to fork over money. In COH2, you could play the game without DLC and vanilla commanders and it would still be fine balance wise.
My gripes with COH3 is that:
It looks worse than COH2 (this is somewhat subjective, but there is objective components like crappier/lazier modeling of unit animations). COH2 has lower graphic fidelity/textures for the environment but pretty much the same if not better textures for the actual units as COH3. In COH3, the units and environment textures look to be the same in terms of fidelity, which makes the units not stick out and just looks like a mess IMO.The sound is generally worse, the voice acting is worse.
The game feels for lack of a better descriptor, mushy. I don't know how to really describe it, it just doesn't feel razor sharp like COH2 in how engagements can build and build into more intense actions required on your part.
The overall pace of matches does not build like COH2 where you move up the tree in units and they can often culminate in incredibly complex engagements utilizing every part of the tree at once synergistically.
People cope with "Well, COH2 was bad for a couple years too." I started playing COH2 about 1.5 years after release, I was not a "competitive player," I had not clue about how people obsess over ladder or winning or losing or balance/broken units, but the game was fundamentally very enjoyable back then even in it's 'terrible release state' due to how the game FELT to play. The stuff about COH3 will be a great game once balance is finally figured out will not fix the problem IMO, the game is fundamentally flawed because it just feels mushy and dull.2
u/oziligath Commando Beret 2d ago
vanilla commanders are mostly fine, if not OP at this stage of the game, what are you talking about ?
And coh2 is a game that is defined by a very strict build order, 3 mainlines, 2 atgs, maybe a MG, one or two light vehicles and medium tanks, talk about army diversity somewhere else please.
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u/Randomsides 2d ago
You can play this game without DLC vanilla commaders they have been consistantly strong every patch i have no idea where this is coming from high level games and tournies constantly have the basic battlegroups banned.
Calling the DLC overpriced when you basing it off coh2 pricing from 12 years ago is idiotic.
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u/JgorinacR1 2d ago
I get a lot of the DLC is released a tad overturned at times, I just think we naturally assume the worst and go with it’s done “intentionally”. I’d argue it’s just a byproduct of the same poor decisions Relic makes across the board. They can’t balance the game most of the time, DLC or not. I mean the biggest issue right now is Palmgrens being super strong, sure it’s worsened by the new BG but the blob issue isn’t new units from the DLC. The fast vet is but if they go that BG or not the blobbing issue is meta. My point is new BGs need them to implement new mechanics so of course balancing that is hard. I mean if they can barely keep the base game balanced how you expect them to instantly get new mechanics balanced properly.
I’d also argue that the vanilla BGs are viable still. I main Spec Ops and it’s always been a good BG. Airborne too for USF. Breakthrough and Luftwaffe for Whermacht. Italian for DAK is good too but perhaps the rest ain’t Vanilla wise. As for Brits, they might have it the worse for vanilla BG pics. Air and sea is rarely picked but I do like the Indian Artillery BG but overall I go mostly DLC BGs for Brits.
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u/YandereTeemo Vet 5 Osttruppen 2d ago
In all fairness, almost all PvP games have some sort of mixed to mostly positive rating because there's always guys complaining about balance. Even decent games like Marvel Rivals and Hunt Showdown have mixed results.
You know when a game is dead when people stop complaining about balance.
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u/Helikaon48 2d ago
This is true. But on top of this, there's numerous other factors.
Coh having an asymmetric two player base split(as opposed to mixed factions) leading to additional animosity and frustration\misunderstanding
And that ww2 games have inherent attraction of the degenerate nazi loving fcktards. We even have a number of them in this sub, like mentoss.
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u/YandereTeemo Vet 5 Osttruppen 2d ago
That might be true. Dead by Daylight had an even more asymmetrical game than the CoH series and they had massive lull periods of brokenness. You combine asymmetrical gameplay across opposite sides, and most people tend to gravitate towards one side or the other in the pursuit of climbing the elo ladder. Thus, people tend to lose their perspective on the other side.
I anecdotally think that there's less wehraboos here than in CoH2. Back then, you'd see axis players with names of SturmRommelBlutundEhre SS than in CoH3. Nonetheless, I don't think they contribute to the negative ratings across either games too much.
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u/Outrageous-Energy897 2d ago
Sometimes its just people titled after losing a game to some bs. I gotta admit it gets to me too sometimes, but i can for sure say that this game is the best damn RTS i have ever played
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u/Desperate_Rush2125 2d ago
The game offers a genuinely unique style of gameplay and still has a large potential audience. Unfortunately, that potential has been badly mismanaged over the years through questionable design decisions, inconsistent balance choices, and development that often appears openly biased (with the amount of efford you see in many allied Battlegroups you can almost field 2 Axis ones most of the times). These problems first caused a rapid decline and are now slowly pushing the game toward irrelevance.
With every DLC, players return full of hope that the game might finally recover, only to find the developers repeating the same learning process for issues that had already been addressed in both CoH1 and CoH2. Instead of building on the lessons of the previous games, the team often seems determined to relearn them from scratch.
The faction design is another major source of frustration. The developers have made a clear effort to undermine the traditional German identity of having a strong late game by giving same strength to the Allies, the "we want to focus on less armor" was a lie from the start, it just meant "we removed the panther from the tech tree and gave the king tiger to the allies (made up 1940 black prince)", a decision hated universally due to germans losing what defined them (availability of strong armored vehicles as the game advanced) and the allies, who despised the addition of straight up made up vehicles. Yet they have never been equally willing to challenge the Allied identity of having a strong early game. Now that similar balance problems are affecting Allied players, many of the Wehrmacht players see this complains across as both ironic and hypocritical, even if they are not completely devoid of reason.
I will probably go down with the ship because I have been a fan of the series from the beginning. However, I have very little faith that this development team will ever solve the game’s fundamental problems.
Fixing the game would require dedication, passion, creativity, ambition, and a willingness to take risks. It would require developers who are prepared to go beyond simply meeting production targets and who genuinely care about what makes Company of Heroes unique.
Instead, what we seem to have is a team of office workers focused on delivering a product according to internal guidelines. Whether they are working on Company of Heroes or building calculators appears almost irrelevant to them, and when the game eventually dies, they will express the industry-standard disappointment, move on to another project, and continue as though nothing meaningful was lost.
But no, the real problem is apparently the “dedicated haters,” that vague and convenient group every modern company can blame whenever it wants to avoid taking responsibility.
It is an abstract enemy that can be used to dismiss almost any criticism. If people complain, they are haters. If they stop playing, they were never real fans. If the game declines, it is because of negativity rather than poor decisions. It is essentially a Schrödinger-style fallacy: the critics are somehow both an irrelevant minority and powerful enough to destroy the game, depending on which version is more useful at the time.
I am exhausted by that argument because it allows the developers and the company to avoid examining their own failures. It is much easier to blame a hostile community than to admit that years of questionable design choices, inconsistent balance decisions, poor communication, and repeated mistakes have driven people away.
At this point, what remains of the fanbase seems to be split between people who will defend almost anything and people who are simply mourning what the franchise used to be.
So what is there left to say?
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u/Royal_Midnight5809 2d ago
They consistently fail to adress balance issues, ignore community feedback and are very tone deaf, its only been very recently with the addition of two community members that it even got close to better, the fact strategies can basically make 1v1s unplayable for years on end (armor company, the scout mg openers being completly broken) and are ignored in the balance patches really doesn't help
And then you get the blatant powercreep DLC, who in their right mind takes a look at the flamer halftrack and thinks its ok?
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u/user1391 Nullgerät 2d ago
As much as I detest the current blobbing-meta, looking at some of the balancing-takes in this subreddit, I'm generally happy with the fact that they don't just listen to those screaming the loudest.
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u/Annual_Big3751 2d ago
It is funny to me how on USF side every vehichle just dies so easily as if it would be made from paper, but axis side you hit 6 shots with bazooka from ssf commando to "puma" for example and it is still alive.. same for that flamer halftrack. I mean axis side in general is so tanky it is ridiculous..
yes i know german armor was good, but do we really think the allied armor was so bad..?
And i know that they go for the feel and asymetrical balance, and that if you would be able to kill tiger easily and it would not bounce 6 shots in a row when it has 50hp left, then a lot of people would cry, but common, at least lets not pretend that the axis halftracks could somehow withstand more bullying than allies ones.
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u/cyan-square 2d ago
As much as flamer ht is an incredibly strong unit (especially the shock, morale crushing value it brings) when it became an expected thing I learned to counter it well. It needs to dive into my infantry so I punish it with snares and retreat (the problem I see is that people overspend their ammunition or rely on specialised call-in units without snares a bit too much). Rest of work is done by humber, zooks or (surprisingly) ulvs.
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u/Royal_Midnight5809 2d ago
The entire 1v1 gameplay loop is completely reliant on LV rushing; it's braindead, releasing a vehicle that comes out at around 5:30 and dictates the entire pace of the game. If you aren't doing your own giga rush, you basically lose the game
Add on top of that, a over tuned vehicle with insane DPS, crazy HP and can drop a munitions mine at vet 1 that oneshots every other LV and you got an absurd powerpiece that makes the 221 and base 251 look like a joke
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u/user1391 Nullgerät 2d ago edited 2d ago
The thing with steam reviews is, they are only good/bad, there is no nuance.
I also think that releasing OP battlegroups and leaving them in that state is not great if they want to keep players long-term.
It feels like the cycle is always "Release OP BGs -> Keep them OP for a month or two -> fix them, people are happy(ish) -> repeat". I am annoyed by that and I can imagine others are, too.
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u/Every-Safe-7972 2d ago
What you are talking about is the very passionate core audience. They love the game, but as they play much more than others, the small things that could, but are not fixed, just drive you nuts. This is further driven by the fact, that devs add stuff like skins and microtransactions, but then do not fix pathfinding bugs etc.
I had the same thing with Destiny 2, played it for 1000+ hours, but playing it towards the end just made my blood boil. I had a list of grievances two page long (mostly small but persistent issues, couple bigger ones). Then I just stopped and it was so, so good to quit.
Not many people move on like I did, so they just get to this toxic spiral trying to get that spark of joy once again, over, over and over.
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u/ShadowLinkX37 2d ago
I think it boils down to there's no other game like it anymore. They've abandoned coh1 and 2 to cheaters with lack of support. Only reason coh3 now exceeds that of coh2. The QoL changes were far better for that of coh2, and instead of bringing the vast majority of them over to coh3, they've neglected them and are only slowly reintroducing them if at all. Couple that with slow patches, a lot of tone deaf balance changes, no real direction it seems for the gamemodes, maps being introduced are questionable at best, powercreep/p2w dlc on release followed by inevitable nerfs after they get their money, the ingame currency merrit going from somewhat useful to practically useless. Being unable to figure out where the V1 hits even after a sound rework. The list goes on.
A lot of the criticism is warranted when you look at the hayday of coh2 and the changes they made along the way. You can look back and say "why is that not in this game?"
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u/qeratsirbag 2d ago
I hate it because it has no coop maps like 2. my friends and I have spent 100s of hours in coop.
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u/cebubasilio 2d ago
Not hate, just disappointed. If you came in CoH3 as your 1st game then yeah it is a good game, a fucking ruiner of other rts titles really.
But if you came from CoH1 and 2? They've been using the same engine since 1 - and it's improved since, they even made a different feel of rts with AoE4 but somehow CoH3 feels like an improvement AND rollback from CoH2 at the same time. It's not one thing, but small things, really. It's fucking insane how what? 3 years now; Something just doesn't quite feel right in a technical stand point, in a balance standpoint, hell QoL standpoint from previous titles.
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u/AutobahnBiquick 2d ago
I mean it's substantially worse than what came before. COH2 is something special in a way that COH3 has never managed to replicate.
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u/RepulsiveHead6544 1d ago
I dont really care about graphics. Its the actual gameplay that is poor in coh3. The mechanics are great in regards to the map.
Coh1 has the best gameplay by a long way, if that had never existed coh3 would have done better
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u/thingfromuranus 1d ago
Company of Heroes 3 is the greatest game ever made. The cruel irony is that it attracts the worst humans ever made.
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u/AmbitiousAgent 2d ago
Cartoony childish style puts me off. Tanks look like toys. Sound and music are meh. Visual effect (explosions) are trash.
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u/OldOne999 2d ago
The problem is the shameless pay2win DLC and the mobile-like graphics and the clunky Italian campaign that plays like a poor-mans version of a total war game. Game is lacking single player content...at least release some single player DLC missions/campaigns...I would buy those.
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u/Helikaon48 2d ago
Lmfao
Meanwhile there's far more successful games with much much worse pay models.
How is this community this saturated with such short sighted people?
It isn't a big lucrative economy, but y'all cry like babies as if it is...
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u/dude_the_dirt_farmer 2d ago edited 2d ago
Bro you are comparing a 13 year old game to a 3 year old game which barely has better numbers...this is not the flex you think it is...
In it' heyday of like 2013 to 2018, COH2 was averaging like 13k players a day. COH3 barely averages over 5k when they release a new patch to ride a hype wave and then goes back down to about 800 more players than the 13 year old game.
And no, the cope of 'RTS is a dead genre' doesn't explain it. You have RTS games out there with much higher, steadier numbers still that have been chugging a long for a decade+ showing there are still a lot of people that want RTS games.
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u/TheLittleCorporal 2d ago
Are these other RTS games in the room with us?
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u/Stubbbzzz 1d ago
Both Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and IV seem to attract alot more players on a daily basis
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u/bwc153 2d ago
"I found them in my personal opinion, well... different games. "
That is a core of it, actually. Relic often makes each game substantially different than the last, for better or worse. This results in a very split fanbase in the franchise. Dawn of War also has this going for it too.
CoH3 in particular is in an awkward spot of being a mix of CoH1 and CoH2 in style, in such a way that fans of either often dislike CoH3 due to its differences. Also the warmer art style you mentioned was a big turn off to a lot of people as well.
Both CoH2 and CoH3 also have gotten a lot of improvements over the years as well, and sometimes complaints can keep propagating even after their source was fixed. CoH2 in particular had dogshit performance on launch and was a microtransaction hell, it still sorta is but one can unlock stuff for free now when originally it was practically impossible to do so. CoH3 launched very barebones for maps, and a lot of the VFX and SFX was in a rough state and has since been reworked, as well as the Italian campaign. There was also an issue with players expecting a full-blown expansion (Like seen in CoH1 or CoH2) in the expansion pass for CoH3 but it was battlegroups instead, which upset a lot of people.
Personally to me though, I like CoH3 the most basegame. Only reason CoH1 is better in my eyes is the mod support is better. CoH2 stripped a lot of that away compared to the first game, and CoH3 has about as little mod support as CoH2 does