Armchair General praises Final Blitzkrieg

[borg]

What I only wish for is to have MORE doodads, and perhaps some more exciting structures for troops to get in. I always dreamt of for e.g., having a crash site with a chinook CH-47 or an SU-XX that can serve both as eye candy , and more imp as a defense structure that troops can 'enter' / 'exit' for hiding purposes.

too much comics or wishful thinking ? Maybe.. but I'm a sucker for eye candy to mimic immersive gameplay.

and if one is not enough, we can always have two downed helos  

I'm not saying about any scripted moving helos. Just a structured placed on map. 

 

 

[sburke]

3 hours ago, AstroCat said:

Battlefront is like a grumpy old man yelling get off my lawn at some kids who offered to mow it for free. You know, because it's been that way for 25 years and that's how they like it... fine, it's your lawn,

Nobody here is speaking for BF  If Steve feels like jumping into this he can voice their opinion, but we have gone down this road before.  BF is keenly aware of their market - nobody stays in any business for 25 years while being oblivious to their base.

[Kevin2k]

4 hours ago, AstroCat said:

Seriously you don't think in this market you couldn't grow CM's business?!

There is no easy way IMO. It is like in the Combat Flight Simulation business: I was following the progress of the Strike Fighters series. These games were awesome, though obviously on a small budget and kinda casual. So they released their North Atlantic game in 2012 and almost had to close down because of poor sales versus increased development cost. Go figure, it was the only Jet-era Survey sim on the global market and still it sold poorly.

After that, they climbed back up with mobile games. Now these mobile games suck IMO. The only thing that keeps you playing them is the greed to unlock planes. Yet with those they are doing much better financially. People throw money at it. These people are not the same combat flight sim enthousiasts from before, they are casual gamers that won't ever buy a joystick and have less patience. 

 

[AstroCat]

I didn't say they were "oblivious to their base", you know look... the things I've been suggesting aren't in a vacuum, and just because they've stayed in business doesn't mean they haven't made any mistakes or misjudged the market. I think they are selling themselves short, my opinion is based on my experience and knowledge. They will do what they want and fine go ahead I don't have to agree with it. Seems pretty rough that even making suggestions isn't tolerated in the community without ridicule, that to me is a sign of an insular community in a cyclical closed pattern.

Niche games are flourishing, including war and strategy games... PC gaming is in a new renaissance, thanks a lot to steam and crowdfunding. People are buying joysticks for space sims, a long thought dead niche back again, old school RPGs back in style but with updated engines, etc... heck, War Thunder is doing great and even the latest IL2 games are plugging along fine with new development and releases coming. Hardcore fps games like Squad and even ARMA are very popular and even those would be consider niche games to a certain extent, not for your average COD player. I think they are playing it way too conservative given the current market conditions, but again they'll do what they want I'm just a customer.

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by AstroCat

[Macisle]

6 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

...P.S Graviteam Tactics is lame. The graphics are worse than CM, the effects are silly, the animations are god-awful, the controls are terrible, the UI is alien sandscript, and the wars/battles they cover are extremely obscure and boring, except for the Eastern Front titles. 

That pretty much covers it.

The only game I have ever purchased that I truly regret spending the money on.

It's not like we don't all want improvement in graphics and performance as compared to whatever the cutting edge is. On the graphics front, I did the squeaky wheel thing when CMFB was about to be released--even managed to annoy MikeyD (). However, my effort was only an attempt keep graphics on the priority chart vis-a-vis gameplay.

While always being aware of and giving weight to the reasons why BF has made its choices, since the release of CMFB, my thinking has focussed more on the flipside of comparing CM to other games. Meaning, "What would  you give up to get those cutting edge graphics, superfast frame rates and naturally curving roads?" The Answer: "Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zeeeeeeroooooo."

Those "better" graphics often come at the price of highly reduced unit density, streamlined ballistics and while initially impressive, very canned graphics/animations that don't wear well with repetition. And naturally curving roads...for those, I'd have to give up the current power and ease of the CM Editor. No effing way. Seriously.

And, as a small business owner myself who is very conservative with regards to using outside funds, I totally understand where BF is on things.

To end, I'll just say, think about where we are with CM. I mean, it's AMAZING. As for frame rate, I really don't care much, TBH. I wouldn't give up any fidelity to up the numbers. And, as far as the models and textures go, zoom in and look how close to photo-realistic they can be already (okay, gotta' get the right angle with the shaders, but still...) While pushing towards that goal is slower than we'd like, I mean, think how close we actually are to it right now.

Anyway, it's fine to be the squeaky wheel sometimes, especially if you have a history with the game and a track record of balanced commentary. Just remember to not let your desire for things to hit your ideal cause you jump into the deep end of subjectivety with regards to efforts at construcive criticism.

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Macisle

[Kevin2k]

42 minutes ago, AstroCat said:

Niche games are flourishing, including war and strategy games... PC gaming is in a new renaissance, thanks a lot to steam and crowdfunding. People are buying joysticks for space sims, a long thought dead niche back again, old school RPGs back in style but with updated engines, etc... heck, War Thunder is doing great and even the latest IL2 games are plugging along fine with new development and releases coming. Hardcore fps games like Squad and even ARMA are very popular and even those would be consider niche games to a certain extent, not for your average COD player. I think they are playing it way too conservative given the current market conditions, but again they'll do what they want I'm just a customer.

 

Well, I am not at all worried about PC games popularity in general or niche PC games for that matter. But still, even though the market in general grew a lot over the past decades, Military Sims show a trend of dumbing down, going half fictional, or just closing shop. I cannot get what I want in the current market: I wanted a proper 'close combat' but that development is just painful, I want a new 'Strike Fighters game' but it is in limbo, I want an ArmA without fictional hardware and an 'Iron Front' sequel, I don't ever wanna see a health bar going down 33% when a tank gets a hit. On the other side a new IL-2 exists and DCS is still going, which is appreciated, but they sacrifice variety for graphics detail, so I stick to the original IL-2 and Strike Fighters instead.  There is the Tank Sim Steal Beasts Pro, but it took them such a long time to add ground shadows to their tanks that my confidence was rather low.

In another forum where I discussed some classic Space combat games, it surprised me that these are clearly more popular then Combat flight sims. In addition: Fictional spacecraft cannot be argued about historically, which makes it a lot easier for developers.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Kevin2k

[AstroCat]

I get it, I do... but I don't think anything we have now has to be given up to see some kind of improvements to the overall graphical and aural experience, maybe that has to wait till an engine 3 or 2.5 or whatever. At this point I feel I've done my squeaky wheel part and taken the lumps for it... I've said what I could about a hobby product I have enjoyed through the years and want to see it grow and improve. Heck... I'm even gonna finally buy CMFB, mod it up and see if I can look past the rough parts to get some fun again out of this thing. I am still hoping for a major cmx3 engine improvement (maybe a cmx2.5), steam support, expanding the user base and community, perhaps even crowd funding some fun stuff that would otherwise be too risky, who knows... I'll just have to wait and see.

Edited January 4, 2017 by AstroCat

[Kevin2k]

That I can agree with

[AttorneyAtWar]

1 hour ago, Macisle said:

That pretty much covers it.

The only game I have ever purchased that I truly regret spending the money on.

It's not like we don't all want improvement in graphics and performance as compared to whatever the cutting edge is. On the graphics front, I did the squeaky wheel thing when CMFB was about to be released--even managed to annoy MikeyD (). However, my effort was only an attempt keep graphics on the priority chart vis-a-vis gameplay.

While always being aware of and giving weight to the reasons why BF has made its choices, since the release of CMFB, my thinking has focussed more on the flipside of comparing CM to other games. Meaning, "What would  you give up to get those cutting edge graphics, superfast frame rates and naturally curving roads?" The Answer: "Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zeeeeeeroooooo."

Those "better" graphics often come at the price of highly reduced unit density, streamlined ballistics and while initially impressive, very canned graphics/animations that don't wear well with repetition. And naturally curving roads...for those, I'd have to give up the current power and ease of the CM Editor. No effing way. Seriously.

And, as a small business owner myself who is very conservative with regards to using outside funds, I totally understand where BF is on things.

To end, I'll just say, think about where we are with CM. I mean, it's AMAZING. As for frame rate, I really don't care much, TBH. I wouldn't give up any fidelity to up the numbers. And, as far as the models and textures go, zoom in and look how close to photo-realistic they can be already (okay, gotta' get the right angle with the shaders, but still...) While pushing towards that goal is slower than we'd like, I mean, think how close we actually are to it right now.

Anyway, it's fine to be the squeaky wheel sometimes, especially if you have a history with the game and a track record of balanced commentary. Just remember to not let your desire for things to hit your ideal cause you jump into the deep end of subjectivety with regards to efforts at construcive criticism.

 

You both couldn't be anymore wrong about that game, I recommend going back and playing it for at least 2 hours. Your claims about the graphics are actually hilariously innacurate, especially with the new title.

All I will say on this subject is that people on this forum have no idea how popular WW2 games and strategy games are becoming and if they think Combat Mission wouldn't sell with more exposure than I'm sorry you just don't understand the trend right now. Theres hundreds of people that play IL2 Battle of Stalingrad, IL2 Cliffs of Dover and even 1946 still, many newcomers are from War Thunder which is more on the arcade side but serves as an avenue to more serious study sims like DCS.

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Raptorx7

[Macisle]

8 minutes ago, Raptorx7 said:

You both couldn't be anymore wrong about that game, I recommend going back and playing it for at least 2 hours. Your claims about the graphics are actually hilariously innacurate, especially with the new title.

All I will say on this subject is that people on this forum have no idea how popular WW2 games and strategy games are becoming and if they think Combat Mission wouldn't sell with more exposure than I'm sorry you just don't understand the trend right now. Theres hundreds of people that play IL2 Battle of Stalingrad, IL2 Cliffs of Dover and even 1946 still, many newcomers are from War Thunder which is more on the arcade side but serves as an avenue to more serious study sims like DCS.

 

I wasn't talking about the new title. After experiencing GTOS, I didn't feel the need to buy it. Some of the graphics have improved. The soldiers are a little less comical now. But CM soldier models and textures still look a lot better. They've also done some cool things with shaky camera and soldiers movements when prone and dying. But that's GTOS graphics/animations in a nutshell: a few really nice touches mixed with blah. I genuinely prefer CM graphics overall. Judging by the video of MF I saw, the running animations in that are extremely cheesy.

I do occasionally load up GTOS for a couple of hours. Then I don't play it again for half a year. I am glad it's out there, though. I see it as a potential bridge for people to eventually get into CM. Mainstream WWII interest leads to GT which leads the hardcore to CM.

As for your general comments about the market though, that's the usual line of someone trying to tell BF that they don't know their business. -Not really worth commenting on at this point.

[AttorneyAtWar]

1 minute ago, Macisle said:

I wasn't talking about the new title. After experiencing GTOS, I didn't feel the need to buy it. Some of the graphics have improved. The soldiers are a little less comical now. But CM soldier models and textures still look a lot better. They've also done some cool things with shaky camera and soldiers movements when prone and dying. But that's GTOS graphics/animations in a nutshell: a few really nice touches mixed with blah. I genuinely prefer CM graphics overall. Judging by the video of MF I saw, the running animations in that are extremely cheesy.

I do occasionally load up GTOS for a couple of hours. Then I don't play it again for half a year. I am glad it's out there, though. I see it as a potential bridge for people to eventually get into CM. Mainstream WWII interest leads to GT which leads the hardcore to CM.

As for your general comments about the market though, that's the usual line of someone trying to tell BF that they don't know their business. -Not really worth commenting on at this point.

Ill give you the soldier models definitely, even in Mius they haven't improved much.

 I agree BFC's model has worked for them, I'm not saying Steves an idiot, but this forum is still a bit of its own little world in terms of what people think about strategy games in general, ESPECIALLY World War 2.

[Macisle]

11 minutes ago, Raptorx7 said:

Ill give you the soldier models definitely, even in Mius they haven't improved much.

 I agree BFC's model has worked for them, I'm not saying Steves an idiot, but this forum is still a bit of its own little world in terms of what people think about strategy games in general, ESPECIALLY World War 2.

I think the disconnect people often have comes from them not giving adequate weight to the size of the WWII/WWII Strategy market vs. the actual slice of the market that would get into CM. People who defend BF's viewpoint seem to be in their own little world, but it's really just them accepting Steve's track-record supported analysis of how much of the market can realistically be tapped by BF and what the genuine return on investment is in terms of using company resources to tap that market.

Nothing would please us more than to have the whole WWII market fall in love with CM, give BF a massive revenue stream, and thereby facilitate all the game engine improvements we've been wanting for so long.

But, like I said, it is good for non-troll forum members to let BF know that we still want visual improvements along with gameplay and Editor improvements. There does seem to be new competition out there in terms of games that look great and target a similar level of action as CM. To date, none of them seem to come close in terms of gameplay. However, the visual yardstick cannot be ignored.

So (and BF knows this), gameplay is always number one, but CM can never completely rest in terms of visual and aural presentation either.

[weapon2010]

1 hour ago, Macisle said:

but CM can never completely rest in terms of visual and aural presentation either

 100% agree, and I don't think they are "resting".Remember this engine was released in 2009 and Im guessing development started in 2007, so I don't think its unfair to say this software is 10 years old.Pretty ancient for the computer world.It seems the graphical technological advances in the software gaming market are moving at a much higher speed than CM can produce its games/modules.Its not a knock on BF, its just seems to be fact of the market.That being said, I make this analogy.The movie industry is full of huge box office flops loaded with the latest, greatest CGI special effects, the movie will bust without a great screen play.CM has great screen play, great directors and producers.

Edited January 4, 2017 by weapon2010

[Macisle]

1 hour ago, weapon2010 said:

 100% agree, and I don't think they are "resting".Remember this engine was released in 2009 and Im guessing development started in 2007, so I don't think its unfair to say this software is 10 years old.Pretty ancient for the computer world.It seems the graphical technological advances in the software gaming market are moving at a much higher speed than CM can produce its games/modules.Its not a knock on BF, its just seems to be fact of the market.That being said, I make this analogy.The movie industry is full of huge box office flops loaded with the latest, greatest CGI special effects, the movie will bust without a great screen play.CM has great screen play, great directors and producers.

Tell me about it. I watch little TV and few movies these days because I'm looking for cake and there's so much damn icing out there. My hope is that the novelty phase of CGI will come to an end and a large enough mass of people will return to wanting icing in support of cake, rather than the reverse. The best hope may be in the democratization of media production tools. As each year passes,  the small prodution house/individual-produced content gets better. Production values are already sometimes better than stuff major studios did a couple of decades ago.

It's kind of funny. With the major studios, you get good actors with expensive, top-of-the-line effects, but crappy scripts full of cliches and plot holes. With the small guys, you get increasingly good effects and good content, but untrained actors that don't quite pull things off.

It's going to be an interesting few decades coming up.

[IICptMillerII]

11 hours ago, AstroCat said:

Seems pretty rough that even making suggestions isn't tolerated in the community without ridicule, that to me is a sign of an insular community in a cyclical closed pattern.

Have any of your posts in this thread been deleted? Received and strongly worded letters from moderators for speaking your mind? No? Then your opinions ARE being tolerated. Seriously, this whole idea that if someone disagrees with me then I'm being unjustly criticized and ridiculed and attacked and I need my safe space! Its ludicrous. You are presenting your abrasive opinions, and people are criticizing them. Grow up.

11 hours ago, AstroCat said:

Niche games are flourishing, including war and strategy games... PC gaming is in a new renaissance, thanks a lot to steam and crowdfunding. People are buying joysticks for space sims, a long thought dead niche back again, old school RPGs back in style but with updated engines, etc... heck, War Thunder is doing great and even the latest IL2 games are plugging along fine with new development and releases coming. Hardcore fps games like Squad and even ARMA are very popular and even those would be consider niche games to a certain extent, not for your average COD player.

Nowhere in here do you present any hard facts to back your claims. How many titles has Arma sold? Int he past year? Same for DCS. How do these numbers compare proportionally to larger and smaller "niche" game developers. Where are the hard numbers on that? Until you can provide concrete marketing information and statistics to back any of this up, all your doing is giving your opinion on your perception of reality. Your perception of reality IS NOT reality.

Further, the examples you listed are all examples of what BFC is likely trying to avoid. All those games started out niche with small communities. They then got popular (Arma 2 became a top seller with the release of the DayZ (non-stand alone version) mod as an example) which drew in tons of new players. But heres the thing, those new players wanted nothing to do with the realism aspects of Arma, they just wanted to kill zombies in a large multiplayer sandbox. War Thunder, yeesh not even sure this is worth getting into. All I will say is that the more simulator based side of the game has a tiny player population compared to the arcade side. Why? Because your average person does not want to study and learn about the sim and warfare in general, they just want to press the play button and have some mindless entertainment for a few hours, and they view things like realism and proper tactical know-how as 'unbalanced' and 'not fun' and all number of other things. The last thing I want is to have a bunch of MoW players join CM, only to come on the forums and rant and rave at how their precious uber tiger was killed by a sherman, or how its dumb that infantry don't shoot back when suppressed, etc. 

Niche games are flourishing because they are drastically toned down to appeal to a larger player base.

9 hours ago, Raptorx7 said:

You both couldn't be anymore wrong about that game, I recommend going back and playing it for at least 2 hours. Your claims about the graphics are actually hilariously innacurate, especially with the new title.

All I will say on this subject is that people on this forum have no idea how popular WW2 games and strategy games are becoming and if they think Combat Mission wouldn't sell with more exposure than I'm sorry you just don't understand the trend right now. Theres hundreds of people that play IL2 Battle of Stalingrad, IL2 Cliffs of Dover and even 1946 still, many newcomers are from War Thunder which is more on the arcade side but serves as an avenue to more serious study sims like DCS.

Graphics first:

Graphics are subjective. You say (correct me if I am wrong) that CMFB has bad graphics. I say CMFB has good graphics. They surpass my standards for a simulator. Do I think they could be better? Sure, but what in the world couldn't be improved in some way? If I may be honest, I would much rather see new/better animations than new textures. I find the animations to be the bare minimum. So there, a criticism of the game from me. I also acknowledge that the developers do not have the time to whip up a whole host of new animations, and that there are many here who thing that the animations are fine. The point here is that these things are subjective. You can state that something is wrong with the game if it is a hard fact. An M5 Stuart tank penetrating the front armor of a Tiger II at 1000 meters is a glitch. It shouldn't happen and there are multidudes of resources that prove that this cannot happen in real life, thus should not occur in the game. Good/bad graphics are NOT hard facts, they are subjective. 

As for your comments about other supposedly "niche" games, refer to what I said above.

Edited January 4, 2017 by IICptMillerII

[AstroCat]

I disagree with most of what you have said and you haven't convinced me of anything at all that would change what I think about BF and their direction. I've tried to explain my opinions in a clear and concise way without personally attacking anyone. If it's been too abrasive for you then fine, that's how you feel, it was not my intention. I've been personally ridiculed for this, it's cool though, don't worry the last thing in the world I need is a "safe space". I've said my peace, I really haven't more to add on this issue at this point, and no I'm not going to do a full market analysis and present it on the battlefront game forums. Bottom line, I like the games and the company for a long time, I want them to continue to succeed and grow, I see some issues in the direction they are going so because I care I let them be known, that's really it.

Edited January 4, 2017 by AstroCat

[AttorneyAtWar]

34 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

Graphics are subjective. You say (correct me if I am wrong) that CMFB has bad graphics. I say CMFB has good graphics. They surpass my standards for a simulator. Do I think they could be better? Sure, but what in the world couldn't be improved in some way? If I may be honest, I would much rather see new/better animations than new textures. I find the animations to be the bare minimum. So there, a criticism of the game from me. I also acknowledge that the developers do not have the time to whip up a whole host of new animations, and that there are many here who thing that the animations are fine. The point here is that these things are subjective. You can state that something is wrong with the game if it is a hard fact. An M5 Stuart tank penetrating the front armor of a Tiger II at 1000 meters is a glitch. It shouldn't happen and there are multidudes of resources that prove that this cannot happen in real life, thus should not occur in the game. Good/bad graphics are NOT hard facts, they are subjective. 

As for your comments about other supposedly "niche" games, refer to what I said above.

Graphics aren't subjective if CM is lacking in certain areas like modern AA and atmospheric effects, however it is subjective whether or not people are bothered by them in any game. Most of the games I play my friends affectionately refer to them as "map simulators" like Command Modern air/naval. I only went after that graphics statement because its simply unrepresentative of that game as a whole and if someone were to see be falsely influenced by that comment it wouldn't be fair to the game.

I have never said CMFB has bad graphics, infact I think their fine, the fact of the matter is GTOS and Mius have better graphics. I love CM and i'm not trying to trash it so I'm not sure where you saw me saying its graphics are "bad". My only point in this thread about the current topic is that CM deserves more exposure and would see more success in my opinion because of how mainstream military history/ESPECIALLY WW2 is becoming.

Edited January 4, 2017 by Raptorx7

[IICptMillerII]

22 minutes ago, Raptorx7 said:

Graphics aren't subjective if CM is lacking in certain areas like modern AA and atmospheric effects, however it is subjective whether or not people are bothered by them in any game. Most of the games I play my friends affectionately refer to them as "map simulators" like Command Modern air/naval. I only went after that graphics statement because its simply unrepresentative of that game as a whole and if someone were to see be falsely influenced by that comment it wouldn't be fair to the game.

I have never said CMFB has bad graphics, infact I think their fine, the fact of the matter is GTOS and Mius have better graphics. I love CM and i'm not trying to trash it so I'm not sure where you saw me saying its graphics are "bad". My only point in this thread about the current topic is that CM deserves more exposure and would see more success in my opinion because of how mainstream military history/ESPECIALLY WW2 is becoming.

I misunderstood your point then, my bad. 

My only question to you would be, what defines what current graphics should be? Is there an industry standard across all genres? Just some? Which genre does CM fit into? I personally consider it a simulator so I do not expect it to have the cutting edge in lighting and AA and whatnot. However if you consider it to be in the genre of RTS, more similar to Company of Heroes, then you have a very valid point. For example, there are many top down, map oriented games (John Tiller's newer titles and CMANO as you mentioned (fantastic by the way) to name a few) that completely lack anything that could be considered modern graphics, but this does not diminish them at all because no one really expects top of the line graphics from them.Not arguing, just trying to further make my point that I think a lot of what we expect of the game comes from how we categorize it and how it categorizes itself.

34 minutes ago, AstroCat said:

I disagree with most of what you have said and you haven't convinced me of anything at all that would change what I think about BF and their direction.

Fair enough. We have differing opinions, and thats fine.

34 minutes ago, AstroCat said:

Bottom line, I like the games and the company for a long time, I want them to continue to succeed and grow, I see some issues in the direction they are going so because I care I let them be known, that's really it.

On this we can completely agree.

I'm sure that we could agree on many areas where we personally think the game could do better. I'll again mention that I think the animations need some work. (In fact, the animations are so bad in CMSF I find it hard to go back to. Still love CMSF, especially with all of the units and scenarios it has, but its so archaic compared to what we have now that it takes me out of the experience some. Hoping for an upgraded CMSF or a CMSF2 in the near future!) I can understand being frustrated as well. You've clearly been around for a good while, and if you have been pointing out the same things over and over and they are never addressed, that is very frustrating. My point was that there are better ways to continue to address these things, and that you don't have to make the few flaws with you have the centerpoint of your experience. Or at the very least the centerpoint of everything you post. If you disagree, then that's fine. You have your way and I have mine.   

Edited January 4, 2017 by IICptMillerII

[Rinaldi]

13 hours ago, Raptorx7 said:

You both couldn't be anymore wrong about that game, I recommend going back and playing it for at least 2 hours. Your claims about the graphics are actually hilariously innacurate, especially with the new title.

All I will say on this subject is that people on this forum have no idea how popular WW2 games and strategy games are becoming and if they think Combat Mission wouldn't sell with more exposure than I'm sorry you just don't understand the trend right now. Theres hundreds of people that play IL2 Battle of Stalingrad, IL2 Cliffs of Dover and even 1946 still, many newcomers are from War Thunder which is more on the arcade side but serves as an avenue to more serious study sims like DCS.

 

This.

@||CptMiller|| - I have to disagree with you on this one.

I prefer CM to Graviteam but that in no way discounts Graviteam. Hmmm...complaints about janky UI and animations in one but not the other - almost sounds like a pure subjective opinion to me, because I'm damn sure we just heard the same complaints in CM. As for graphics, I think its laughable to assert Graviteam has poor graphics, poor effects maybe, not not graphics. The graphics are about 5 years ahead of CMs, despite how good looking I think CM is, even I'm willing to cede the obvious.

Graviteam's obscure theaters may be boring to you but it what appealed to me. Another purely subjective point. Especially given the topic we had on these forums not even a month ago where people were throwing out some fairly 'out there' suggestions for titles. If you don't recall, there was very little consensus on what was interesting, so I'm not sure what the ultimate point is with that little dig at Graviteam.

In general and not directed to anyone in particular:

I remember raising one eyebrow, then both, when people decided to die on a hill for arguing against a newer, more accessible distribution platform for CMx2. The same people who shook their fists and cried "confounded DRM system!" and "Windows 10 is literally eating my CM from the inside out!" I have to say I was greatly disappointed with BF in their own opinions on the matter, but its not worth crying into a pillow over. Its their decision to hamstring their ability to shift units if they like to convince themselves they make more money per unit on their 90s era museum piece of a website.

Despite my teeth-gnashing criticisms of BF's handling of their own business their product gets them my patronage again and again, given that I own or have been gifted all of their titles to date. See, you can criticize something and still enjoy it immensely. The trend on these forums however are to simply dismiss someone with legitimate criticisms as immature or poor at the game, and while sometimes it is true, its just as often not. BF rarely needs to weigh in on anything when they have their band of grognards ready to jump on the slightest hint of critical analysis. Despite the disclaimers, speaking on behalf of BF is precisely what you're doing.

Oh and by the by, "been in business for 25 years" is a crappy argument for continuing competency. I've dealt with fellow lawyers who have been in practice for 40 years and have never taken a case to trial, are blissfully incompetent, or are incredibly out of touch and stuck in their ways (an amazing thing to be, given the profession's constant change). Its also an argument that discounts quite a bit of brand loyalty. Quite a few people are probably of the position that they could create many more loyal customers if they branched out a bit. That's not saying BF are poor businessmen, but really point out their competency through other means. A lot of their success has to do with community outreach, visiblity and on-going game support. Things other Dev teams could seek to learn from.

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Rinaldi
Detail, Spelling, Grammar

[IICptMillerII]

1 hour ago, Rinaldi said:

@||CptMiller|| - I have to disagree with you on this one.

I prefer CM to Graviteam but that in no way discounts Graviteam. Hmmm...complaints about janky UI and animations in one but not the other - almost sounds like a pure subjective opinion to me, because I'm damn sure we just heard the same complaints in CM. As for graphics, I think its laughable to assert Graviteam has poor graphics, poor effects maybe, not not graphics. The graphics are about 5 years ahead of CMs, despite how good looking I think CM is, even I'm willing to cede the obvious.

Graviteam's obscure theaters may be boring to you but it what appealed to me. Another purely subjective point. Especially given the topic we had on these forums not even a month ago where people were throwing out some fairly 'out there' suggestions for titles. If you don't recall, there was very little consensus on what was interesting, so I'm not sure what the ultimate point is with that little dig at Graviteam.

These are very fair points. I should have clarified that what I said about the Graviteam games were my opinion,and my opinion only. I do not despise the game. I've tried to play it a few times, and while I did like some things about it (namely some of the particle physics like mud on tracks and bits of armor flying off tanks when hit, not to mention vehicle damage models) the game as a whole never really grew on me. I embellished my general disinterest with the game frankly because many people who tend to make it their life goal here on the BFC forums to bash CM tend to hold the Graviteam games up as some gold standard. "If Graviteam can do it, CM needs to!" or "Graviteam does all of these things, CM doesn't, so CM is bad." Its usually something along those lines anyways. Anyways my intention mainly was to provide a stark contrast and emphasize that a lot of those things I listed come down to individual subjectivity. I concede that I was excessive. 

 

1 hour ago, Rinaldi said:

See, you can criticize something and still enjoy it immensely. The trend on these forums however are to simply dismiss someone with legitimate criticisms as immature or poor at the game, and while sometimes it is true, its just as often not.

Two quick points:

First I just want to clarify that I do have criticisms of the game, as well as more than a few wishlist items. (Co-op PLEASE!)

Second, I'm all for constructive criticisms and the like, and I think you're right that a kind of groupthink "all criticism is bad!" mentality here is not helpful to anyone. I just think that there are better things to complain about than a supposed drastic lack of graphical fidelity, and I think that making it ones personal mission to come onto the forums purely to bash anything new introduced to the CM family of games is ludicrous and should be called out for what it is.  

Edited January 4, 2017 by IICptMillerII

[Rinaldi]

1 hour ago, IICptMillerII said:

I just think that there are better things to complain about than a supposed drastic lack of graphical fidelity 

To this I agree; when it comes to simulators I want my CPU going to everything but graphics first.

Just to show that I understand both sides of the argument too; http://kriegsimulation.blogspot.ca/ recently posted about 4.0 and the comments quite literally left me dumbstruck. People were complaining that the 4.0 update simply did not add enough (note: Not even whining about the payment, just in and of itself that it was a underwhelming patch). It shows that some people can't be taken seriously because their complaints aren't made in good faith. I just like reminding people that many more criticisms, even about things like graphics, can be made in good faith, especially from participating consumers.

[A Canadian Cat]

22 hours ago, weapon2010 said:

We all want that and Im sure BF does as well.

Well said, although I feel more like @||CptMiller|| a lot of the time.

What people don't seem to get is that BFC does listen to feedback - all of it. Sure some people are hard to listen to and some of them are so frustrating that eventually their "feedback" goes "straight to the round bin". What people *really* don't get is the there is a time frame before you see the response to that feedback. For stuff like requests for new commands it can take a three or four years (target briefly, hull down as examples). For stuff like tweaks to the way FOW is handled it might only take one or two years. When simple requests are done on time scales of years changing the engine to make the game shinnier; that my friends is going to take a really long time. Don't show up here years ago and make grand "re-engineer the whole game requests" and then get upset years later when they haven't been done yet. Patience man, patience.

Not to mention knocking legitimate decisions to go with OpenGL and to write their own engine that were solid engineering decisions when they were made 12 years ago by using information available now is just plain silly. Beyond silly. All this time they have been creating great content that we are willing to pay for, which needs to continue for the company to continue and for additional advances to continue.

[SgtHatred]

18 hours ago, Kevin2k said:

There is no easy way IMO. It is like in the Combat Flight Simulation business: I was following the progress of the Strike Fighters series. These games were awesome, though obviously on a small budget and kinda casual. So they released their North Atlantic game in 2012 and almost had to close down because of poor sales versus increased development cost. Go figure, it was the only Jet-era Survey sim on the global market and still it sold poorly.

After that, they climbed back up with mobile games. Now these mobile games suck IMO. The only thing that keeps you playing them is the greed to unlock planes. Yet with those they are doing much better financially. People throw money at it. These people are not the same combat flight sim enthousiasts from before, they are casual gamers that won't ever buy a joystick and have less patience. 

 

I have 8 friends I play flight sims with. All 8 own some form of HOTAS joystick, with 4 people investing in the $500 Thrustmaster Warthog, the 4 warthog owners also own ~$100 - $300 rudder pedals. 5 of us own the ~$150 TrackIR set, and 2 of us have Oculus Rifts specifically for flightsims. We play Warthunder, IL2, and DCS, and with the range of planes we use, I'd say the range in module ownership for DCS means we've each put between $100 and $700 into DCS for modules.

That's 8 people who've put $300-$2000 each into flight sim specific gear (this doesn't include the PC Hardware costs for these resource hungry games). What's the point of me mentioning that? Of the 8, I am the only one who has ever heard of Strike Fighters. No wonder they struggle. If you can't put your product in front of people who are willing to pay for it, you won't get anywhere.

 

[Ron]

9 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

Nowhere in here do you present any hard facts to back your claims. How many titles has Arma sold? Int he past year? Same for DCS. How do these numbers compare proportionally to larger and smaller "niche" game developers. Where are the hard numbers on that? Until you can provide concrete marketing information and statistics to back any of this up, all your doing is giving your opinion on your perception of reality. Your perception of reality IS NOT reality.

Further, the examples you listed are all examples of what BFC is likely trying to avoid. All those games started out niche with small communities. They then got popular (Arma 2 became a top seller with the release of the DayZ (non-stand alone version) mod as an example) which drew in tons of new players. But heres the thing, those new players wanted nothing to do with the realism aspects of Arma, they just wanted to kill zombies in a large multiplayer sandbox. War Thunder, yeesh not even sure this is worth getting into. All I will say is that the more simulator based side of the game has a tiny player population compared to the arcade side. Why? Because your average person does not want to study and learn about the sim and warfare in general, they just want to press the play button and have some mindless entertainment for a few hours, and they view things like realism and proper tactical know-how as 'unbalanced' and 'not fun' and all number of other things. The last thing I want is to have a bunch of MoW players join CM, only to come on the forums and rant and rave at how their precious uber tiger was killed by a sherman, or how its dumb that infantry don't shoot back when suppressed, etc. 

Niche games are flourishing because they are drastically toned down to appeal to a larger player base.

 

Reading through all the verbiage, I think you have nailed it entirely. The original CMBO was such a hit with the wider audience because it was 'dumbed down' and accessible compared to what we have now. Everything since has been towards more, though not exclusively, the simulation side and as a result a more targeted audience and more 'effort' to play. My hat thrown in for opinions is while the graphics and engine could certainly be improved upon, a key to a wider audience would be making the game easier to play, ie Platoon/Company SOPs and Plans, to reduce some of the micromanagement required, which from trying to introduce others to the game has been an issue.

[weapon2010]

1 hour ago, Ron said:

to reduce some of the micromanagement required

 The micromanagement is one of the elements that makes CM so unique, so many decisions need to be made,the total outcome of those hundreds of collective decisions equals  victory or defeat, the thought process that goes behind "the micromanagement" is  Combat Mission to me. 

Edited January 5, 2017 by weapon2010