Why was the interface not developed further?

[Battlefront.com]

Perfectly understandable to me. I guess to model one soldier and his equipment in CMBN takes the same amount of work like creating all the different soldier models in CMBB, which were essentially just reskins of the same model with different helmets. As graphics improve, so does the amount of work and time required to create those graphics.

Definitely true, but also the data behind the graphics is vastly more complex. Back in CMx1 days, for example, there were no "soldiers" at all. Just an accounting for what weapons a unit had. Everything else was abstracted. Now I have to individually code each and every soldier type (there's a couple hundred permutations) for things like what the primary weapon is, how many rounds of ammo, if he's carrying something like a tripod, how many and what type of grenades, what AT weapons he might have if any, are binoculars present, etc., etc.

In addition to that the TO&E itself is a lot more complex and less abstracted, which means there's all kinds of variables to set and manage. Nearly all of which are never seen by the player directly, but never-the-less have an impact on the gameplay.

And let's not even think about the dozens of new things needed for each vehicle model, by both artist and code based data. Back in CMBO and (to a lesser extent) CMBB *I* made the the models and textures. As well as designing, testing, and managing the Forum. Ah, those were days of simplicity

Basically we looked at the end of CMx1 and decided that we should go with more depth instead of breadth. We think most people will play CM:BN just as long, and probably even more happily, than CMBO. Even without Modules. The guys that are still playing CMx1 games now might disagree, but they are a minority and also got their money's worth out of the game years ago so have no legitimate reason for complaint about the new way of doing things.

Steve

[Fly Pusher]

I was really looking forward to CMBN having been left behind on CMBB when Mac support was dropped many years ago.

However, I must admit that I was pretty disappointed when I downloaded the Demo. I'm sure its a wonderful game but I just havent got the time to deal with getting my head round the UI. It just doesnt work at a level of intuitiveness that I need.

Time has moved on, family and kids have arrived and career is making greater demands. I gave this an hour or two but its just not doing it for me. I'm struggling to make basic things happen when I want to be playing and having fun and I just cant invest 10h of 'me time' to get to a point where things start to work.

So I'm afraid that I will not be buying this time....

Maybe I'll have a chance to try again when I retire !

[Battlefront.com]

Sorry to hear that, but "intuitive" is unfortunately a relative thing. I'd say most people have minor quibbles with the UI and are getting the behavior they want out of it very quickly. Others are having some difficulty, but eventually figure out how to use it instead of fight it. Some, obviously, give up before they get there. We had the same spread of customer responses to CMx1 too. While we certainly can do some things better (and are planning on doing just that), we'll always have this sort of range of customer reactions. Our only hope is we can shift more towards being satisfied with it instead of dissatisfied.

Steve