Update on Engine 4 patches

[Bulletpoint]

17 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Fine, I had a quick look and didn't see the date. I always work on the default that Steve doesn't give dates and when he does, there's always wriggle room. Doesn't bother me anyway to be honest, if they say they're working on it then in my experience they are so it'll come out when it comes out.

Thanks, was getting worried it might bother you  Now I feel better

[Wicky]

Beware the IEDs of March....

[Thewood1]

Now that is clever.

[slysniper]

What would you prefer, Released updates that work as thy should or released updates that have errors and no effort to test, correct and fix before giving them to you.

I prefer the first personally and you can rest assured that they are working on and preparing to give you the first option. That is how they do business, they never rush stuff out, they seem to always try and give a release that they feel good about. and believe to be working cleanly.

But making comments here about where is it will not make it happen any quicker, just saying

[Bulletpoint]

26 minutes ago, slysniper said:

What would you prefer, Released updates that work as thy should or released updates that have errors and no effort to test, correct and fix before giving them to you.

I prefer the first personally and you can rest assured that they are working on and preparing to give you the first option. That is how they do business, they never rush stuff out, they seem to always try and give a release that they feel good about. and believe to be working cleanly.

This is a bit ironic since we're waiting for a patch to fix problems introduced in a patch...

There's a middle ground between not testing things at all and then on the other hand testing things for more than two years.

Also, nobody is demanding they release a flawed patch.  But maybe releasing the patch that's has been done for a while and already is in CMSF2 would be nice.

[Heirloom_Tomato]

When they are ready, they will be out is the usual way to look at things.

I hate waiting as much or more than the next guy. It has gotten easier as I have grown older but I still hate it. I drive way too many extra kms on backroads and through small towns to avoid waiting in traffic jams. I'll waste an afternoon driving to pick up something myself rather than wait the three or four days it would take the store to ship it to me. 

I would rather do almost anything than have to wait. So instead of waiting for the patch to come out and not play the game, I play the game. Find an opponent who will agree to play with rules limiting the amount of off map arty and play a pbem match with them. For that matter, play a pbem match and both of you take large quantities of off map arty and blast each other to pieces. The game will treat your troops and his the same. Unless of course you decide to make a DAR and then you can count on the game intentionally screwing with just your side. Right @RockinHarry?

At this point, I would challenge anyone who is impatiently waiting like me to make a 1.5 km x 1.5 km quick battle map based on the area surrounding your house. Use whichever game family you like to play the most. Put your house right in the center of the map and try as hard as you can to get it to look as close to your neighborhood as possible. Make it an attack battle with the player as the attacking force. Pick units for both sides that seem appropriate for what your map looks like. If the using the AI editor is easy for you, setup an active defense and multiple AI plans. If not, take your time and setup the defenders as if you were playing a multiplayer game. Pick your victory conditions, assign the points, write up a quick briefing and your done. A simple scenario, ready to play. 

If everyone who can't wait for the patch makes a simple scenario like this, think of all the new content available to play on once the patch finally does comes out!

[SgtHatred]

1 hour ago, slysniper said:

What would you prefer, Released updates that work as thy should or released updates that have errors and no effort to test, correct and fix before giving them to you.

I prefer the first personally and you can rest assured that they are working on and preparing to give you the first option. That is how they do business, they never rush stuff out, they seem to always try and give a release that they feel good about. and believe to be working cleanly.

But making comments here about where is it will not make it happen any quicker, just saying

When a patch is 2 years in the making I start to question their ability to deliver, regardless of how long they take.

[Combatintman]

1 hour ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

When they are ready, they will be out is the usual way to look at things.

I hate waiting as much or more than the next guy. It has gotten easier as I have grown older but I still hate it. I drive way too many extra kms on backroads and through small towns to avoid waiting in traffic jams. I'll waste an afternoon driving to pick up something myself rather than wait the three or four days it would take the store to ship it to me. 

I would rather do almost anything than have to wait. So instead of waiting for the patch to come out and not play the game, I play the game. Find an opponent who will agree to play with rules limiting the amount of off map arty and play a pbem match with them. For that matter, play a pbem match and both of you take large quantities of off map arty and blast each other to pieces. The game will treat your troops and his the same. Unless of course you decide to make a DAR and then you can count on the game intentionally screwing with just your side. Right @RockinHarry?

At this point, I would challenge anyone who is impatiently waiting like me to make a 1.5 km x 1.5 km quick battle map based on the area surrounding your house. Use whichever game family you like to play the most. Put your house right in the center of the map and try as hard as you can to get it to look as close to your neighborhood as possible. Make it an attack battle with the player as the attacking force. Pick units for both sides that seem appropriate for what your map looks like. If the using the AI editor is easy for you, setup an active defense and multiple AI plans. If not, take your time and setup the defenders as if you were playing a multiplayer game. Pick your victory conditions, assign the points, write up a quick briefing and your done. A simple scenario, ready to play. 

If everyone who can't wait for the patch makes a simple scenario like this, think of all the new content available to play on once the patch finally does comes out!

If I could make a small amendment to (my bold) this excellent suggestion ...

"At this point, I would challenge anyone who is impatiently waiting like me to make a 1.5 km x 1.5 km quick battle map based on the area surrounding your mother-in-law's house, take large quantities of off map arty and blast it to pieces."

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

I would rather do almost anything than have to wait. So instead of waiting for the patch to come out and not play the game, I play the game. Find an opponent who will agree to play with rules limiting the amount of off map arty and play a pbem match with them. For that matter, play a pbem match and both of you take large quantities of off map arty and blast each other to pieces. The game will treat your troops and his the same.

This is possibly the best advice ever offered here on these forums. It certainly is the best post ever on one of these "why are we still waiting for X" threads. How come his post does not have 10, 20 or 200 up votes? My mind boggles.

Was that too snaky? I might have broken my new years resolution.

[Dynaman216]

1 hour ago, IanL said:

This is possibly the best advice ever offered here on these forums. It certainly is the best post ever on one of these "why are we still waiting for X" threads. How come his post does not have 10, 20 or 200 up votes? My mind boggles.

Was that too snaky? I might have broken my new years resolution.

Arty I could live without but in the game I was playing troops jumped out of a trench when being fired on by machine guns - and they were not broken or panicking.  Machine guns in general is something that is hard to play a CM game without.

[BletchleyGeek]

24 minutes ago, Dynaman216 said:

Arty I could live without but in the game I was playing troops jumped out of a trench when being fired on by machine guns - and they were not broken or panicking.  Machine guns in general is something that is hard to play a CM game without.

Don't be so snaky Dynaman, you got plenty of rifles, pistols and sub machine guns to play. Snak just pisses off people and makes them to get entrenched in their initial positions. 

Snak aside, clearly something got longer to solve than Steve assumed. It is clear that there is a lot of work that needs to be done by hand to release patches and games, and perhaps there aren't enough pairs of hand for it. Maybe the feedback on the Rome To Victory campaign came back and wasn't great, maybe there is still some OOB imperfection like Italians having Bazookas because a copy and paste error... who knows.

Yet, as long as there is people grumbling there is people caring. The day that there is only snak left will be a sad day.

Edited March 18, 2019 by BletchleyGeek

[slysniper]

I be pretty concerned if they had been working on the patch all that time, over 2 years and you really think they been working on it all that time.

They been working on things and you know what they are, They gave us CMSF2, with said patch (Why , because that is where they decided to put their focus, why. Because another group of people have been asking for that for many years now also. ) Someone wins, someone loses. 

So if you play that, you see what will be coming when they get it finished. 

Steve said, the updating of the campaigns for CMSF2 and the patches were their next priority. 

So I would suspect the next thing we see will likely be them. (Just a little longer folks)

[Vergeltungswaffe]

After 20 years of them delivering the goods, I have exactly zero worries.

[wadepm]

1 hour ago, Vergeltungswaffe said:

After 20 years of them delivering the goods, I have exactly zero worries.

At some point that will stop being true.  I don't think we are there yet though.  Steve is what, in his early 70s?  He has another good 10 years in him...

[Michael Emrys]

8 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Don't be so snaky Dynaman, you got plenty of rifles, pistols and sub machine guns to play. Snak just pisses off people and makes them to get entrenched in their initial positions. 

Snak aside, clearly something got longer to solve than Steve assumed. It is clear that there is a lot of work that needs to be done by hand to release patches and games, and perhaps there aren't enough pairs of hand for it. Maybe the feedback on the Rome To Victory campaign came back and wasn't great, maybe there is still some OOB imperfection like Italians having Bazookas because a copy and paste error... who knows.

Yet, as long as there is people grumbling there is people caring. The day that there is only snak left will be a sad day.

What the hell is 'snak'? I understand that English is a living language which means that it continues to evolve, but I am far from convinced that its evolution should be in the hands of idiots. Not that I mean to say that BG is an idiot; in most things he has been reasonably sensible. But whoever was responsible for this particular barbarism should be locked up without access to the internet and fed only bread and water until he or she has come face to face with the error of his or her ways.

Michael

[BletchleyGeek]

Quote

But whoever was responsible for this particular barbarism should be locked up without access to the internet and fed only bread and water until he or she has come face to face with the error of his or her ways.

Just look - with attention - up the thread Michael. I was taking the piss. Unless 'snak' is snark in Canadian. 

[Bulletpoint]

-
 

Edited March 19, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[RockinHarry]

16 hours ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

When they are ready, they will be out is the usual way to look at things.

I hate waiting as much or more than the next guy. It has gotten easier as I have grown older but I still hate it. I drive way too many extra kms on backroads and through small towns to avoid waiting in traffic jams. I'll waste an afternoon driving to pick up something myself rather than wait the three or four days it would take the store to ship it to me. 

I would rather do almost anything than have to wait. So instead of waiting for the patch to come out and not play the game, I play the game. Find an opponent who will agree to play with rules limiting the amount of off map arty and play a pbem match with them. For that matter, play a pbem match and both of you take large quantities of off map arty and blast each other to pieces. The game will treat your troops and his the same. Unless of course you decide to make a DAR and then you can count on the game intentionally screwing with just your side. Right @RockinHarry?

Glad you got me ignited for PBEM´ing Matt.  I´m as well rather an impatient type of person, but that doesn´t matter much usually. Have hands full with tons of stuff anyway, so I don´t feel like I have to wait for anything ATM. In current state the game works fine for me close to 100% and in  case of our PBEM I just can blame myself for doing some stupid things.  Now back to work....

[sttp]

15 hours ago, slysniper said:

I be pretty concerned if they had been working on the patch all that time, over 2 years and you really think they been working on it all that time. They been working on things and you know what they are....

Another view is to flip this around and ask why wouldn't they have been working on the patch this whole time?

It's been 2 years and 3 months now since they broke some pretty fundamental parts of their own game -- broken to the point that many people can barely enjoy the typical stock scenario. And not just one title broken, but all of them.

When the issues with v4 were first brought to light, I would have never believed that it'd still be almost literally years before we saw them fixed.

Perhaps Battlefront needs to start actually paying more testers and content creators, in order to get things moving along, instead of relying on the generosity of so many volunteers?

I've defended Battlefront and heaped praise on the game many times over the past 4 to 5 years, but at some point a customer's patience and good will just gets used up.

"Niche market" is no excuse for a fix to the underlying game engine to have taken this long.

[umlaut]

Ikke så meget snak, tak.

[Michael Emrys]

8 hours ago, sttp said:

Perhaps Battlefront needs to start actually paying more testers and content creators, in order to get things moving along, instead of relying on the generosity of so many volunteers?

With what? I sure don't know what BFC's operating budget amounts to, do you? I'm pretty sure they would love to have an additional programmer and half a dozen full time testers along with a dedicated PR specialist. And maybe a corporate yacht while we're at it. I haven't the foggiest myself of where the money to pay for all that would come from...even without the yacht.

Michael

 

[The Steppenwulf]

8 hours ago, sttp said:

Another view is to flip this around and ask why wouldn't they have been working on the patch this whole time?

It's been 2 years and 3 months now since they broke some pretty fundamental parts of their own game -- broken to the point that many people can barely enjoy the typical stock scenario. And not just one title broken, but all of them.

When the issues with v4 were first brought to light, I would have never believed that it'd still be almost literally years before we saw them fixed.

Perhaps Battlefront needs to start actually paying more testers and content creators, in order to get things moving along, instead of relying on the generosity of so many volunteers?

I've defended Battlefront and heaped praise on the game many times over the past 4 to 5 years, but at some point a customer's patience and good will just gets used up.

"Niche market" is no excuse for a fix to the underlying game engine to have taken this long.

I've not touched Normandy for over 18 months now because of a broken game in a stock campaign = broken campaign.

Got to be honest I would never have purchased the rest of the Normandy family if I'd known it would take this long to get the issues fixed. I've played half a campaign of the CF and MG modules as a consequence. Considering the cost of these games it begs some serious questions about value! 

[Frenchy56]

1 hour ago, Michael Emrys said:

With what? I sure don't know what BFC's operating budget amounts to, do you? I'm pretty sure they would love to have an additional programmer and half a dozen full time testers along with a dedicated PR specialist. And maybe a corporate yacht while we're at it. I haven't the foggiest myself of where the money to pay for all that would come from...even without the yacht.

Michael

 

Well, how much money do they have then? I doubt they run on the same economy as monks in an abbey. (I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't far from that however)

BF is already quite lucky to have so many testers free of charge from a solid, yet small community.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Frenchy56

[Warts 'n' all]

Did someone mention "monks in an abbey"? I feel the need to go shopping for some Trappist Ale.

[Michael Emrys]

1 hour ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Did someone mention "monks in an abbey"? I feel the need to go shopping for some Trappist Ale.

You medieval English aristocrats are all the same: drunk as a monk.

Michael