OFFICIAL POLL: Removing the original factions plus adding in retreat and vet

[Capt. Malashenko]

EF team made a hell of a job just getting this far with this mod. But some people have to understand that they can`t do everything on their own.
We would all be happy to have smooth game with ranking system and no bugs. But that simply isn`t the case.
Even if some aspects of the Soviets came more as a technical necessity, they really left their mark on the whole faction.

No retreat - no faction has it, it`s dynamic and makes you think where you send your troops, besides, Soviet inf. dies pretty fast, and most of the time it simply doesn't pay-of retreating them.

No re-crew - to quote Major Danko: Our honorable soldiers would never pickup axis heavy weapons to use them! - again, it brings a completely new approach to battle and strategy.

Veterancy - I don`t know why people like to duplicate play styles so much?- Vet system is original and well balanced, if you want to rank up your soldiers, you have 3 other factions to do so.

EF team made a fantastic job, using limitations to their advantage, and made a very different and fun to play faction, and even if Relic would fix all this problems, changing Soviets to "match" the US or Brits would be nonsense, it would trigger the change of whole faction-structure along with the whole new balance, and loose much of it`s potential.

The main problem here are not the Soviets - but the Ostheer. My suggestion to our EF comrades would be - do what you feel is right.
This mod will never die, it`s just to good. And what ever you choose to do, it can be fixed or adopted later.
Personally, I would`nt mind having an Axis faction that fights to the last, no surrender - no retreat. After all, Eastern Front was not just a clash of armies - but ideology`s - where both sides fought to extinction, and that just might be the mark of this mod. Heavy weapons were never left - rather destroyed (this was especially true for the Germans), I believe this approach is worth exploring, even if we would have to renounce some things we love to use in game - we would gain much more.

[Paciat]

The main problem here are not the Soviets - but the Ostheer. My suggestion to our EF comrades would be - do what you feel is right.

The easiest way to deal with no recrew with Ostheer is to not give them recrewable weapons!
No heavy MG, just LMG squads (it would work like US BARs)
No AT guns (maybe 7,5cm AT emplacements - UK emplacements ralelly get decrewed). This icludes 88s.
No mortars, a halftrack could have a mortar or a 150mm nebel upgrade (weaker than walking stuka).
No howitzers, just doctrinal mobile medium arti. (Wespe)

Personally, I would`nt mind having an Axis faction that fights to the last, no surrender - no retreat. After all, Eastern Front was not just a clash of armies - but ideology`s - where both sides fought to extinction, and that just might be the mark of this mod. Heavy weapons were never left - rather destroyed (this was especially true for the Germans)

Is no vet and no retreat also a must have COH engine bug?
I allways thouth that ist becouse Devs wanted it that way.

Anyway Germans made some good tactical withdraws in N. Africa, Italy, France but the Eastern Front was a different story.

[BurroDiablo]

No Vet and No Retreat was a design decision, it's not like the Recrew bug. These could be reimplemented quite easily although we'd obviously want to make them stylised to match the Soviets.

[Zerstörer]

If that were true, we wouldn't be having  threads like 'is the mod dead? No one is playing online' etc. And these where not exaggerations for anyone who logs on can see that.

99% of the first two weeks feedback and balance bugs(and we are talking about many hundered of these bombarding us !!) were about not being able to re-crew/retreat/prop war...then ranking,vet ...couple dwith the bad balance (which of couse some people funnily enough liked!)

The truth of the matter is that if the majority of people did like it we would be having loads of regular online gaming and of course bucket loads of good replays both here and in GR showing some nice competitive play. But that's not the case.

Being unable to re-crew is an engine limitation which we begged Relic to fix. But this isn't going to happen. If they had fixed it we would have added it imediatelly without any debate whatsoever.

Similarly with prop war, I totally fail to see why anyone would be ok with this as it practically takes away the Terror doctrine from the game. The only way I can see someone being ok with this is...if they're comp stomping against WH all they time and love the fact that their blob can't be proped.-This in terms means an unfixable bad balance issue, yet some would be ok with that indicating balance is not on their mind.

As a 6th faction Ostheer will suffer from the same issues. Add to that the fact that balancing two new flawed factions with 4 others the chances of having any semblance of decent balance is highly unlikely.

There is NO existing veterancy for infantry or vehicles.  The infantry has upgrades much like the rifles get stickies/nades of brits /WH getbrens/lmg etc. That ain't vet. Its like saying, you research nades so your rifles become vet1, you research stickies and they become vet2, then you research bars and they're vet3.
NO. Weapon upgrades and veterancy are TWO SEPERATE functions in the game

[WartyX]

Interesting response from Thunder (Relic's community manager), over at the official Company of Heroes Community:

I don't think it's fair to say that the mod is dying or that it's dying because Russian squads can't recrew weapons or whatnot.

We've helped out the EF guys in the past and will continue listen to their team, they're good guys and talented people.

[Zerstörer]

As much as I appreciate support from Thuinder, it doesn't change what people have been posting(aka is the mod deat etc) nor the fact that people ain't playing it online( and I do log on every other night on different times through the day to check).

And that kinda hints that since they're not considered big problems 'by yours trully' its unlikely that we'd see a patch to accomodate these to that effect. Could I be wrong about this? Maybe....maybe not
The fact remains untill such 'solutions' present themselves from relic, we have to get them solved another way
 

[WartyX]

The fact remains that he claims that Relic will continue to listen to us. With enough community support (and help from other mods), we could probably get a good number of things fixed.

[Gerrit 'Lord Rommel' G.]

Perhaps Thunder's response will give the community
the chance to start a petition for implement recrewing and ranked matches with mod factions.

I think this a point we should try;
A community petition for helping the modding community!

Lord Rommel

[Zerstörer]

That's all well and good, when/if that time comes we can take advantage of the fixed issues and improve things further.(as per the response its not like they're unaware of these..)

But we can't just sit and pray for another couple of years while they make up their minds.
Its about fixing things with what is now available to us, so we won't hit bottom and then have to try and crawl all the way back up

[WhiteFlash]

I would take that gesture of thunders seriously and send relic an elaborate letter explaining that the best fix would be to give moders the ability to have more than 4 fully functional factions.

[nbeerbower]

You're right we can't sit back and wait for Relic. Our best idea now is to lightly implement retreat and vet into the Soviets, forget recrewing for now. Recrewing should only become an issue when the Ostheer are ready to be released then we can consider removing the Brits and PE. For now we should add what we can with the Soviets, and if Relic doesn't come around by the time the Ostheer are out about despite our pleading - then we do something drastic like remove OF factions.

[Alexander 'ApeMen' J.]

would it be possible to take PE and UK out, but wehrmacht and americans completely revise again?
I mean that each PE and the UK are involved on a doctrine.
Logically, then, the choice of units strong doctrinal be subject.
So I would prefer this compromise as there will not really disappear something

[GenCrusher]

I partly agree with these changes. But I would suggest another approach by solving issues with the EF version 1.04 (still crashing far too often - specially in multiplayer mode). ONLY when the game runs without problems, you should introduce OH and also the a.m. changes. I rather see Relic's non-response as a wait-and-see tactic because they know for sure what kind of problems there are with the current version of EF. Also, you gotta understand, that Relic is a business and needs to make money. Does anybody have a idea whether they are working on an addition for the CoH game? I would think so, because it makes sense. So, please concentrate on perfecting EF as a--playable-- version, so it does not crash anymore. Thanks.

[Soviet_Justice]

How can this mod be dead if it only today had 1,565 visits on moddb and is ranked nr 4 of 11,591?!

In any case, EF will have one more BIG chance once Ostheer is released. I expect a new record in number of players on coh server once this happens. By then you have enough time to solve the re-crewing issue.

I'm sure that you, the EF team, will know how to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the release of the Ostheer faction!

[BurroDiablo]

I keep my fingers crossed that Relic will one day find the time to help, but Gencrusher's right, they are business and we shouldn't expect them to jump through hoops just to please us.
Thunders post is good news though... although listening doesn't fix problems, it's start... certainly more than most mod teams get