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Dissapointed by CMBN


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Well, if firing from short halts and new commands is too big a feature to be implemented in a free patch, then charge us $15 or something to have these new features retroactively applied to CMBN when they are implemented in new modules. If you don't want to pay the $15 (or whatever) for the "uber patch", you don't have to. Does anyone on here seriously consider $15 (for example) to be a lot of money given the enjoyment we are getting out of this? That's the monthly fee for most online MMO games.

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Forumites may get a jolt of perspective from this amusing column: Ignorance is Bliss, by Tim Stone.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/20/heavily-engaged-ignorance-is-bliss/#more-62713

It's odd that "historical knowledge" is assumed to apply only to the history of objects simulated in games and not to games themselves. Given that, its no wonder the graph hits a sweet spot at moderate knowledge. If you include a knowledge of the history of games, there's a trend toward the pleasure end of the spectrum that goes up rendering more knowledge more pleasurable.

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Agree, but please don't make another game install, if possible! My vote is for a single CM install covering all fronts, years and armies (all upgrades/patches and modules integrated)!

Only in this way you can... conquer the World!;)

Then we wouldn't get to play this CM:worldwide for another 3 years or so. :(

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The engine is terrific, it even has a few things CM does not - illumination flares; unit-formations; headlights; using your tanks to shunt wrecks outta the way etc.

It's problem is that there is no MP, and the AI is absolutely God-awful; it takes a battle or two, then you realize there is unlikely to be any reasonably accurate tactical developments and un-install. Perhaps that's why their forum is a ghost-town, if no-one is playing, there isn't anyone to complain :D

"God-awful" AI in Achtung Panzer Operation Star? I don't know what games from the future are you playing, but AI in this game is one of the best of it's kind, it actually rewards the lack of multiplayer (and the work on MP in Achtung Panzer is ongoing! - see the lates patch to Operation Star, which will be released in english sooner or later). So arm yourself in humility, take a russian dictionary, find & buy AP OS, patch it to latest version and come back here with apologies ;)

And the truth is - this game (AP) has very shi*** promotion, not everyone knows about it, and I hope that this will change, because it's pure joy for old CM fan.

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Please, please, PLEASE stop claiming that CMx1 has a "short halt" behavior in it. As many people have already tried to explain to you, IT DOES NOT. Sometimes, if you're lucky, HUNT could yield that behavior under limited circumstances. What were they?

1. The enemy was destroyed or moved out of LOS

2. There was no other enemy to engage while stopped

This is absolutely, unequivocally, NOT firing from "short halts". In fact, there was a couple of lengthy threads from the CMBO days pointing this fact out and demanding that we add "short halt" behavior.

I don't care about the semantics of what a "short halt" is, I just care about the behavior that I see in the game. In CMBB my tanks would (when using the Hunt command) drive, halt, shoot, kill the threat, then continue driving. When my tanks would stop they would be very likely to hit on their first or second shot. When my tanks don't stop (moving on Normal, Fast) they would be very unlikely to hit. This is the type of behavior I think most everyone expects, and what seems to be missing from CMBN.

Good to hear that it's being worked on. Hopefully we'll see the changes before too long, because I think it would drastically change how the game plays out.

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Then we wouldn't get to play this CM:worldwide for another 3 years or so.

What's the point? If BF publishes Modules as Addon to one and the same program (including patches and upgrades to the exec) wouldn't take the same time as if they'll release (and develop) a standalone game? Maybe even less...

I would certainly prefer to have an integrated simulator where I can add Armies and Maps...

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well.. to go back to the start of this thread, I must sadly say I agree.

CMBN is a huge dissapointment. :-(

Expectations were realy high for this, waiting for a quantum leap in tactical games... and see it crumble...

My issues are;

1) LOS How can it be that you see an enemy unit but the unit spotting it can not fire at it? LOS in general are confusing and unexplainable.

2) Units & vehicles not included due to time issues from battlefront. Seriously???

That says BF chose to not include units and vehicles because it was to much work or to hard and they might included it later... Not cool BF!!!

3) Graphics and terrain properties of the maps. Building collapsing like a house of cards, Building not providing cover, walls not giving any protection, bulletproof trees, road graphics poor, lack of obvious terrain features in Normandie such as sunken roads, viniards and terrain removed from previous games such as burning buildings, ruins/demolished buildings.

4) The attitude of many forum members, where any hint of complaint or being sceptical is attacked with comments as "dont play then", "wait for the patches that will fix everything" (what kind of ridiculous argument is that?? either the game is ready with some minor problems or it isn't), the common belief that CMBN is gospel and critiscism is bad and should be attacked and BF's launch of a poor product should be excused, defended and accepted.... Also, the realy good argument that didn't you play the demo before you bought the game? (at the same time knowing it is a demo and not the final product that would be with issues solved from the demo.) Finally, the argument refering to other games, such as CMSF, how is it possible to refer to another game defending CMBN, how can anyone assume that if you get CMBN, you will have played previous BF games. This is not a requiremnt in any way. All this creating a poor enviroment for discussions and not realy the best way to encourage more people to buy and play the game.

5) The attitude and responses from beta testers and staffmembers from BF where the go completelly balistic of critisized. (for examples, read the threads, I do not have the time to list them here).

6) How a scenario designer can't comment on feedback for scenarios on BF website.

I, together with several of my PBEM opponents that have bought the game will most probably not play the game anymore and stay well clear of BF products, (with or without mods and/or patches) and not even close to the entertainment value of CMBBB and CMAK.

Best regards,

Fredrik

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I, together with several of my PBEM opponents that have bought the game will most probably not play the game anymore and stay well clear of BF products, (with or without mods and/or patches) and not even close to the entertainment value of CMBBB and CMAK.

Best regards,

Fredrik

That's certainly the rational choice. After all, CMBB and CMAK still play the way they always have and if you enjoy those games better than CMBN why would you continue to play CMBN? It makes no sense.

Oh, and I assume you mean you will stay well clear of future BF products since CMBB and CMAK are still BF products.

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... and not even close to the entertainment value of CMBBB and CMAK.

Best regards,

Fredrik

Yes, I agree with Fredrik. I've spent hundreds of hours playing CMBO/CMBB and always enjoyed them.

After the initial "first play" euphoria of CMBN wore off (couple days) I began to get a bad feeling that there were to many game design and/or coding problems (bugs) for me to ignore. At first I blamed myself for not being up to the mental athleticism that CMBN seemed to require. I even took the advice of BF-Steve and quit playing CMBN based on his suggestion that some people just can't play it (lacked the needed skills, I suppose?). However, I kept at it anyway and continued to read the forum daily in hopes of gaining the needed skill sets to be a better CMBN sim dude. Well, the outcome of my daily forum visits hasn't made me a better player, but it did help me get over feeling that I wasn't able to cut the CMBN mustard.

I need to have a sense that a tactical sim, like CMBN, is a cut above the COH game crowd in terms of coding reliability and accuracy of tactical AI. I felt that BFC offered this kind of "quality" because they always baked their cakes slowly and monitored the oven often. I think that from all that I've read here that it's quite obvious that CMBN wasn't polished enough before its initial release. I don't call for out of the box perfection, but I do expect obvious AI design issues, such as the OP has identified here, to be caught and corrected during routine alpha/beta test phases. Please BF, quit dancing around these problems with a bunch of esoteric gobbledygook. Produce a beta patch quickly so more of us can get on with playing the game and having some much needed (and missed) CM fun again. :)

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well.. to go back to the start of this thread, I must sadly say I agree.

CMBN is a huge dissapointment. :-(

Expectations were realy high for this, waiting for a quantum leap in tactical games... and see it crumble...

Your list of gripes seem rather petty to me, so if that's all it takes to "crush" your desire to play... well... it does make me wonder.

1) LOS How can it be that you see an enemy unit but the unit spotting it can not fire at it? LOS in general are confusing and unexplainable.

It's called Relative Spotting and it is explained in the manual. It's one of the biggest, most important improvements in CMx2. If you don't understand it then of course it's going to cause problems for your gameplay.

2) Units & vehicles not included due to time issues from battlefront. Seriously???

No, they weren't included because we're done with giving away our time for no compensation. Especially to unreasonable customers. The other choice was to raise the price to $125. We think the route we've taken is far more reasonable.

3) Graphics and terrain properties of the maps. Building collapsing like a house of cards, Building not providing cover, walls not giving any protection, bulletproof trees, road graphics poor, lack of obvious terrain features in Normandie such as sunken roads, viniards and terrain removed from previous games such as burning buildings, ruins/demolished buildings.

If you want to see the glass as half empty, there's nothing I can do to change your mind. There's far more terrain types, far more realistically simulated and visually displayed, than any previous CMx1 game. But again... if you want to focus on the things you don't like then that's your choice.

v1.01 addresses wall protection and aiming problems associated with trees.

4) The attitude of many forum members, where any hint of complaint or being sceptical is attacked with comments as "dont play then", "wait for the patches that will fix everything" (what kind of ridiculous argument is that?? either the game is ready with some minor problems or it isn't), the common belief that CMBN is gospel and critiscism is bad and should be attacked and BF's launch of a poor product should be excused, defended and accepted....

A tired refrain that holds no water. Well, at least when the criticism is reasonable and intended to be productive. Bitch fests, with flying accusations and hyperbole, are really pointless. So the answer "don't play then" makes perfect sense. Just like if you keep hitting yourself in the head with a hammer my suggestion would be if you don't like it to stop hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. Personally, I hit nails with it and find the hammer not all that bad of a tool.

All this creating a poor enviroment for discussions and not realy the best way to encourage more people to buy and play the game.

Your attitude doesn't encourage us to make more games, so I think you're evening things out quite nicely.

5) The attitude and responses from beta testers and staffmembers from BF where the go completelly balistic of critisized. (for examples, read the threads, I do not have the time to list them here).

Never seen that before. Got a thread to link to?

6) How a scenario designer can't comment on feedback for scenarios on BF website.

Don't even know what to do with this one.

I, together with several of my PBEM opponents that have bought the game will most probably not play the game anymore and stay well clear of BF products, (with or without mods and/or patches) and not even close to the entertainment value of CMBBB and CMAK.

Each to his own. Glad you enjoyed our previous games, sorry you don't any more. Thankfully we've never been fools enough to think we can please everybody all the time, every time. Obviously you aren't amongst the pleased and that's not a problem for us.

Steve

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It's been mentioned that the patch is in release candidate status, so it is unlikely to be far off.

I personally could never go back to playing CMBB after CMBN. Infantry squads only filling a 1m x 1m space is too 1990s for me.

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I need to have a sense that a tactical sim, like CMBN, is a cut above the COH game crowd in terms of coding reliability and accuracy of tactical AI.

If you do not feel CM:BN, with it's rather minor (but still significant) bugs, is not a cut above COH... please email me with your name and I'll be happy to offer you a full refund. And disable your copy of CM:BN. Quite frankly, I don't want anybody to feel compelled to suffer through what they perceive as a barely tolerable RTS game made by people who wouldn't know a historical fact if it came up and smacked them upside the head.

I felt that BFC offered this kind of "quality" because they always baked their cakes slowly and monitored the oven often. I think that from all that I've read here that it's quite obvious that CMBN wasn't polished enough before its initial release.

You have your perceptions, we have ours. Of course our perception is based on the dozens of patches we had to release for previous CM games, yours is apparently forgetting all the things that were in need of fixing for CMx1 games.

I don't call for out of the box perfection, but I do expect obvious AI design issues, such as the OP has identified here, to be caught and corrected during routine alpha/beta test phases.

These two sentiments do not work together very well. What bugs do customers notice in the first few weeks or months are anything BUT "obvious"? Honestly, do you really think a couple of dozen people can spot everything thousands of people can spot? Do you understand for every one problem you guys have found the testers prevented you from seeing hundreds of others?

Please BF, quit dancing around these problems with a bunch of esoteric gobbledygook.

Working with customers to identify where real problems are (not imaginary ones) and then telling you that they've been fixed for v1.01 is "esoteric gobbledygook"?

Produce a beta patch quickly so more of us can get on with playing the game and having some much needed (and missed) CM fun again. :)

Honestly, if you REALLY think the way you write you should never play CM:BN again. Even patched. It will never be good enough for you. On the other hand, if you're overstating your points/feelings for dramatic effect, then might I suggest not doing that? It serves no productive purpose.

Steve

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If I were to lodge a complaint about CMBN in general it would not be that the game doesn't work, but rather that figuring out how the game works is difficult at times.

The UI is functional once you get the hang of it, but getting to that point is not as easy as it should be. For example, being able to click on the C2 display to go to the HQ unit it represents is great, but I had been playing the game for several weeks before I discovered I could do this, because the UI doesn't make use of some basic UI conventions that have been standard for years, such as tooltips or highlighting clickable items when they are moused over. At the very least this should be in the manual, but I have not seen it in the relevant sections.

Compounding the UI issue is the fact that some game mechanics have quirks or limitations that are not documented and are therefore confusing to the player. Ammo sharing is a great idea and the manual states that it works for units in the same formation, but it takes experimentation to discover that the "formation" in question is only the same platoon, or in some cases the same section. It's counter-intuitive that units cannot share ammo with units from another platoon, so this fact should be spelled out explicitly. Adding to the confusion is the UI adding the unit's own ammo to what is available to be shared from other units into a single number so it can be difficult or impossible to know how much ammo any one unit really has.

It's possible for FOs and HQs to call in fire support from units to which they have no C2. This seems to be some kind of engine limitation. No biggie. I think most people can accept that this is a game and it can't represent reality 100% of the time. But these things need to be documented and explained somewhere, if not in the UI then at least in the manual. Leaving the player to ponder if this is a feature or a bug until some kindly beta tester explains it on the forum is less than optimal.

CMBN offers the player more tactical options and deeper gameplay than CMx1. This does add some complexity to the gameplay, but I don't think it requires a massive amount of brainpower to understand. Anyone who can understand real-world tactics is capable of playing and enjoying CMBN. What it does require is a lot of patience and persistence to understand the UI and undocumented game mechanics.

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