The Project

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Company of Heroes 2 is an action focused, real-time strategy game released on PC. Sequel to the highest rated RTS of all time, Company of Heroes 2 takes players to the eastern front of World War II. The campaign allows players to take control of Soviet army to battle back the invading Nazi forces. Additional expansions add the U.S. and British Forces, showcasing some of the most iconic battles in history on multiple fronts of the war.

COH2’s action-focused, tactical gameplay combined with it’s deep, strategic choices blends the action and strategy genres into a unique and unforgettable experience. The use of combined arms, combat awareness, strategy, and tactical choices can turn the tide of battle from defeat to victory at any given moment. Every battle in COH2 tells a unique story through it’s deep and rich emergent gameplay and the variety of impactful choices a player can make each time they play.

My Role

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I joined the Company of Heroes 2 team shortly before the release of the game’s final major expansion, The British Forces, and the beginning of Relic’s first major effort at games as a service.

After a year of working as a Community Manager on the project, I transitioned into a balance design role. Using my connections and influence in COH2’s community, I helped form a private community balance team to help guide and test balance changes for multiple seasonal balance updates.

Over the course of just over a year, I delivered 5 major seasonal balance updates and multiple smaller, targeted balance changes and bug fixes. These updates helped build community sentiment and confidence and assisted in the growth of COH2’s eSports and grassroots tournament scene.

Balance

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When I joined the project in a balance design role, Company of Heroes 2 had been live for four years with all four of its factions well defined. All major expansions and content updates had been released and the game’s direction was focused on Games-as-a-Service and building engagement and community sentiment through continued balance updates, bug fixing and, in-game store content releases..

Community Balance Team

To help compensate for limited resources and a significantly reduced live ops team, I created a Community Balance team. Top-skilled players and modders were hand selected from the community to form a volunteer, balance design team to assist with providing balance feedback and playtesting a multitude of balance and gameplay changes for seasonal and ad-hoc updates.

Running and working with this external team was critical in delivering over five major seasonal balance updates and numerous smaller gameplay and content updates, alongside countless bug fixes over the course of my time on the project.

Seasonal Balance Preview Mod

A critical and extremely successful initiative I championed was the creation of a Seasonal Balance Preview Mod. This mod encapsulated all the proposed balance changes for the upcoming seasonal balance update and would run for three to four months prior to the game’s official update. Players were able to see all of the proposed balance changes and intended gameplay direction and meta for the upcoming release months in advance. Not only that, they could playtest the changes, and provide direct, hands-on feedback.

This allowed balance team and myself to iterate quickly, with no risk of breaking the game at large, update to the mod could be made weekly. Rapid iteration and real-time community feedback helped the team validate and prove out ideas, identify over/under powered metas, use telemetry to gather critical data, and smooth out the majority of bugs and balance concerns well in advance of the changes being released to the competitive PvP matchmaking game mode.

Results

Over the course of just over a year, I was able to deliver 5 major seasonal balance updates, numerous ad hoc balance and bug fixes, and multiple paid DLC content releases to the in-game store. Directly involving the community significantly increased engagement and improved retention. When players felt they had a say and were contributing to the success of the game, they became significantly more invested.

Releasing the seasonal balance mod for multiple months leading up to its official release, collecting feedback and iterating along the way, dramatically improved the quality of the changes and the bug count, requiring little to no hotfixes post release. This all resulted in an increase in grassroots tournaments that fostered into a minor eSports scene ran by the community with multiple in-person and online tournaments with significant cash prizes. Total monthly active users also increased over this time, building confidence in the game’s core and competitive players.