Multiplayer Vision

Overview

As a franchise, Company of Heroes has always appealed to singleplayer and multiplayer fans alike. Players looking to test their competitive mettle or just hang out with friends and stomp the AI have kept coming back to CoH because the multiplayer has always offered a unique experience. Has that experience always been perfect? No. But do we intended to modernize and improve our multiplayer experience over CoH 3’s lifespan? Absolutely.

When approaching the multiplayer experience, we have a few key goals: 

• Deliver on a better multiplayer flow to get players into the action faster
• Focus on a quality start-to-finish multiplayer experience for CoH 3's launch 
• Build foundations for us to quickly adapt balance 
• Continually improve multiplayer features and gameplay 
• Add depth while keeping the multiplayer meta fresh 
• Foster healthy player matches

Experience 

Along with the traditional modes players expect from CoH (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 – both PVP and PVE), we’re looking to explore both Unranked and Ranked queues. This will provide players the chance to practice new strategies and tactics in Unranked before jumping into Ranked for a more competitive experience. 

In addition to these standard modes, we’ll of course have the returning Custom Game mode which gives players more flexibility around setting up teams and picking victory conditions. We’re also exploring additional play modes that we could incorporate down the road. We would love to hear what kinds of game modes you want to see, so keep those ideas coming! 

Matchmaking 

This is one of the more critical components of the multiplayer experience. For players to have fun, we need to get them into matches quickly and with similarly skilled players. Those two key features are ones we have already been hard at work on improving over our past titles in the franchise. When we match players in a queue for CoH 3, we plan to do so based on several factors: the mode selected, region, skill score, latency and also player reputation score.  

Out of those matchmaking factors, player skill score is one of the more important ones in ensuring matches are fun for all participants. Currently we’re looking at how that skill score is determined, how it is calculated in different modes and playlists, and how it impacts matchmaking.  

Leaderboards and ranks are also an important piece of that puzzle. What good is a fancy score if you can’t show it off? Additionally, we’re also exploring a secondary, seasonal rank. This obviously draws a lot of inspiration from other modern competitive games. We won't necessarily use these titles, but think along the lines of Bronze, Silver, Gold – Division 1-3, etc. These would reset on a regular cadence, with players then engaging in placement matches to get an initial rank for the season and then fight their way to the top.  

Strategic Depth 

We also want to give players a chance to strategize before even entering their match. These are all currently drafted ideas, and nothing is set in stone. With that being said, we are investigating a pre-match selection screen. This would afford players the chance to choose what factions and Battlegroups they would like before even going into a game. This could also potentially include a ban/veto system allowing players to have greater depth and strategy for pre-match countering and discussion.  

Positive Experiences 

With Company of Heroes 3, we are hoping to update and include several quality-of-life upgrades. Many of these systems are being built brand new from the ground up and are still works in progress. This includes an in-game reporting system and more robust social systems. We know that CoH 1 and CoH 2 lacked some functionality to avoid chat abuse and disruptive players, and those things we are hoping to rectify with more modern systems. Similarly, we’re building technologies to automate moderation and to curb problematic player behaviors without stumbling on false positives that would punish innocent players. We also want to make the reporting process seamless and easy across the play experience and to ensure we are fostering a healthy and fun experience for all our players. We would love to hear your thoughts on how we could accomplish this and what systems you have seen in other titles that have worked well.

That’s just a quick overview of what’s in our planning documents and where we hope to get to with the multiplayer experience for CoH 3. We still have a long time to build out these features as we work to provide you the best experience we possibly can. As we near launch we’ll be able to provide more details and share the cool things that we have planned. Keep your feedback and ideas coming!

So far CoH 1 has been the best of the 3 so far. CoH 2 got to far in depth that it wasnt as fun although had some good items in it. With CoH 3 when doing the skirmish mode, since couldnt ever get a multiply player going, it seemed the AI was always over powering as you get a point captured with the slow build of troops you have, 2 to 3 opposing forces running over the first 2 points you managed to take. By the time you get a few more troops built then their armor just rolls right over the little you could get put together. Then you have the troop fire from your side that does little in damage from cover while they get killed by troops in the open. I would say look at CoH 1 as to the simple aspect of the game play and enhance it with the new items of CoH3 and then you would have a game that people would enjoy more.

I had played a match against a friend and felt it was a blast! Very much reminds me of the old CoH1 which I loved.

I feel like the height advantage shouldn't completely remove cover bonus, but lower the tier of the cover bonus by one. So green cover to yellow, yellow to none, and none either staying the same or negative even. It's not like being a foot higher than someone gives your bullets no clip against a stone wall. I don't know how much height plays into it very much since it's pretty finicky, but those are just my thoughts for now.

As somebody who did play a lot of competitive games and who went to competitions in real life I would like to see a good implementation of the ranked system.

StarCraft 2 for example gives a player more or less skill points (mmr) depending on who he wins against. If he wins against a much better player, he wins more skill points than the standard and also, the losing player who has more skill points loses more than usually. This ranked system also has divisions (Bronze 1/2/3, Silver 1/2/3 and so on until Master and Grandmaster), each of this divisions having tops of 100 each (for example, there could be 40000 Silver players and each of this player should be placed in a top of 100, so 400 tops in this case).

I would like the rank and the skill points to be visible in game menu while viewing somebody's profile, in lobby and even in the loading screen, so everything could be more transparent.

Adding the options to change your battlegroups and to ban battlegroups in the lobby before the game would be very nice (idk, X bans for each player, depending on how many battlegroups there are).

As for the reporting system, I think a mute option is enough for flamers (disable chat for yourself, mute one player and so on), but for those who do attack your base intentionally I think there is a much needed reporting system because the mute option can deal with a flamer, but what can somebody do when one teammate attacks his base?

So good so farm. For balance the game: Tanks need higher unit cap. At the Moment its to easy to spam Tanks and have to many at the same time.

Also it would be nice if you spawn near your friends or choose an spawn side. If you play with 1 firend in COH on a 4on4 and your mate spawn not close to you its kinda stupid... because you want to play with your friend and not with a random guy near to you.

a few tips i would give.
- Use the heigth system exclusively to buff a unit, not to nerf another one, make the unit on the hill have more accuracy, not the others having less, otherwise it would make the the hills in my eyes extremely unbalanced. you would want the hill to buff the unit on it, not counter every unit that isnt on it.

-  give people high controll over upgrades, its something i have already seen but it can be better, an example of this is the coh2 rifle pack for grenadiers that would remove their longe range rifle grenades, splitting such upgrades into 2 allows more flexibility for the player.

- Ask for feedback on specific things, it is surprising how well some dedicated people would just test an unit for hours and hours just to get it to feel right, in depth interviews and questionaires are also things i experienced people like to fill in for games they enjoy.

- Love your game as much as i love it :D

Hi John

for different game modes I'd love to see a return of Operation Stonewall where players work together to defeat  waves of AI units.

Regarding your intentions to modernize and improve our multiplayer experience; will there be any changes to the replay system?

What I really hope for is an online replay archive so I can study top players, and that guy who always beats me on the ladder (plus as a content creator I can easier find some juicy games to cast)

Will we also be able to rewind replays? It would be handy if we could easier study a play we or our opponent did.

As much as I enjoy these games, I feel like it's a lot of the same from CoH and CoH2. Is there any chance we will see an expansion into the Pacific Theater at some point? U.S. Marines vs. Japanese forces with some amphibious craft would be exciting and new. Regardless, I'm looking forward to playing more and seeing some balance changes (German forces feel a little weak at the moment, imo).  

One thing I would love to see come back is the "Stonewall" and "Assault" game modes from the first game to add more options for players like myself you tend to stick to more casual play and compstomp matches.

Some things regarding the stat sheet that you get at the end of a game (and some stuff regarding replays)

The amount of manpower lost for reinforcement and the amount of manpower damage incurred for each squad, for example pathfinders having killed 30 gren models and lost 15 models during the course of a game and the total manpower inflicted/recived in that regard. As it would be a much more effective way of gauging a units combat effectiveness overall.

The ability to see where each player is watching and clicking in a replay, helps you study and understand the perspective of what they were doing during the course of a game, 

Rewinding obviously

Effective income during a certain time of the game, for example being able to see total army+ its income per minute at say 7 min into the match, would help see and understand the amount of units affecting the popcap. (ie i saw he made 4 rifles, look in replay his mp upkeep is 230 and so i keep that in mind for the next game as it helps me understand what his vehicle and tech timings being).

I really liked Operation Panzerkrieg, Aussault and Stonewall as a kind of variety, not as a main play mode.

Automatch: It would be good to be able to be in a lobby before each game to know which map is being played, to be able to change battle groups and factions (random is also an option (battle group remains from the last time the faction was played)) and to be able to see the opposing factions with their rank. A kind of veto system for battle groups would have its appeal, but could lead to a special battle group only getting vetoes all the time. It would be possible that a battle group may not be vetoed twice in a row (i.e. 2 consecutive games). In addition, it would be cool to be able to easily adapt the units as in CoH1 (e.g. Panzer 4 with the short instead of the long cannon because the map has many houses, etc.).

Tournament mode: It would be excellent if the community itself could create tournaments in the game. It would have to be specified what the participation conditions are (best rank in the last X weeks must be at least Y, before each own game the player must be online at least Z minutes before, or a noobs-only tournament). You could then see the tournament brackets in the game and streamers can register for specific games who intend to cast this game (it would be cool if they could provide the twitch link in the game).

Matchmaking: I can't judge to what extent a seasional matchmaking improves the match quality, but I think it creates a new incentive to make an effort. That would be good in this respect.

Social behaviour: Chat should be easy to hide for the whole game via a hotkey. VoIP could be useful, but should be just as easy to turn off.


One more note: Please no Denglish (mix of German and English) in the voice lines. From my German point of view, I think it's terrible. It would be better to stay in one language. I would like it if the voice lines are either all in the language of the game (if supported) or each faction speaks in its own language (maybe one of the two can be selected via the options?).