problem is, a lot of those high-tier commanders were balanced for the AI, not for anything like a competitive game, whereas the people who make fighters concentrate more on the pvp aspect from the start
I mean, some of these bans seem honestly silly. Hachi, sure, totally reasonable since he's literally a superior Colin in pretty much every fashion. Likewise, Sturm was just a superior Kanbei in 2 and I can see why he was banned there. Sensei? I feel like he's fine tbh but I can see it in AW2 when his infantry were on par with Sami and he could get free infantry on top of it. That might be in the realm of ridiculousness. He should be fine in DS though tbh.
The other ones are really just learn to play. Like, Grit, just use recons and b copters and sneak behind his lines and you are pretty much golden. That is probably the most stupid ban of them all, and I'd wager he's banned more because players don't like the camping playstyle than any actual imbalance.
Kanbei and Colin you just need to learn the concept of unit trades. Both require you to think in different ways compared to other commanders, but both have very real downsides to picking them and if you can exploit their weaknesses, you will win. I can understand maybe learning to play against them can be frustrating at first, but frustrating!=broken or overpowered.
As I said before, Sensei is fine in DS. He should either have lost the infantry buff or the ability to get free infantry, and they did the former and tbh he's not unreasonable to play against in that game.
Hell, even Von bolt isn't as bad as Strum was. His units buff is weaker than Kanbei this time around and his only CO power is inferior in every level. I will admit the lack of any weakness besides a ridiculously overpriced super co power and no regular co power might be a little suspect, and I would entertain a ban of him. However, I don't think it's an automatic one like, say, Hachi.
(And if we're going to talk about toxic characters, how the hell is Nell not banned but
Grit is? Nell is effectively a female Kanbei in terms of what luck actually does, except with no drawback besides its all luck based. Luck is something you fundamentally can't learn play against; it's all luck. That's real toxicity, not just "can camp better")
which, I suppose, is better than when companies try to balance things but end up doing it comically badly, like Relic with CoH2..."OKW players have no skill" is basically an article of faith at this point, because Volksgrenadier units are obnoxiously cheap and obnoxiously good and they get quality medium and heavy armor
CoH just happens to be my favorite game, and there is a lot of inaccuracies in the current and historical competitive meta in that paragraph.
Currently, OKW is actually the
worst of the five factions presently in the game. In recent attempts to balance the faction and make it less based on jank (basicilly, trying to clean stuff up like how Volks could vet up way too quickly, along with numerous other things like giving it a real medium tank, switching the tech tree heavily, needing the hell out of kubels, obers, and other units; removing, readding, and re-removing the resource nerf the faction had on launc, etch) Relic actually unintentionally exposed how poorly conceived the entire faction, which really had no unifying theme, connection, or strategy behind really any of its units (Just like the real western front Germans :^) ). It's actually kind of a shame too since OKW was actually bad on WFA launch as well, and it took a good year of rebalancing to actually make it a viable faction, even if the end result was a janky faction that won mostly due to just having better units.
Also OKW has always had bad mediums at the time when they were considered the best faction. At that point, the Panzer IV J was a call in that only came with a preminium commander that, while not bad, was overshadowed by commanders that brought in MG34s (turn out when you make your machine gun team a call in only, players will stick with the commanders that let them use such a core unit in early to mid game firefights), and they really didn't have anything that covered the role of a medium tank. The Panzerjaeger is kind of... bad, since it's more lightly armored than any medium besides the 34/76 iirc, has no turrent, is slow for a medium, and has no anti infantry capabilities worth anything. Since the main point of mediums is to be able to respond to threats anywhere on the map and have a realistic chance of winning, the panzerjaeger fails in pretty much every respect.
For heavies, Panther was and always is overpriced imo, especially when the King Tiger is an intentional I win button (or, continuing the theme, an Exodia). Players do build it, I never really did myself. I did build KTs and having fun wrecking everything,meow ever.
The real strength of OKW was, actually, always in its light and support vehicles. They get really good ones before other factions, and they feature most of the infamous Jank that made OKW so overpowered in the right hands. The Puma's ability to stun any vehicle on just its basic attacks allows it to seriously punch above its weight, making it one of the few non support light vehicles seen through out the entire game. Stuka zu fuss are the best artillery in the game; they're super accurate, have decent cool downs, and the halftrack itself is nimble enough to help it keep out of danger. The Luchs was similarly a great mid game assault vehicle; it's the heaviest light vehicle in the game iirc, but it still is faster than a medium and has a devastating autocannon that tears apart infantry and anything lighter than tanks.
And don't even get me
started on the Kubels in their prime. We don't call them kubeljesus for no reason.
Edit: Also, since the entire reign of OKW happened while there was a bug on infantry vet (models that died and were replaced did not get the veterany bonuses it should had), it actually meant the Volkgrenadiers reign of terror were mostly, but not entirely, placebo.
still, there are an awful lot of aw players who hate ban lists for a variety of reasons, and they've got some good arguments...but then there are people like the ones on AWBW who go considerable lengths to also neutralize things like FPA, so getting rid of ban lists would be difficult to say the least
FPA? I'm not really into this scene so I don't know what that means.
@Commodore: actually, I believe the AI in the SA LP was in the hardest difficulty, which explains why the AI is acting stupid here.
You wouldn't have been in the mountains at all if you attacked from the south, which is my point. Asheville still would have been in your spawn territory, and you might have to have sent one or two units to secure Chattanooga, but otherwise you would have started in the flatlands to begin with.
And, as I kind of wrote SU fanfic since my first IOT nation was in fact NEA, the idea that Albany was the capital of the entire nation might've originated from me.
)
