Jump to content

Dissapointed by CMBN


Recommended Posts

Hoolaman, Slysniper and Steiner.

Anecdotes like you provide will never prove anything. It's not even mentioned whether you play RT or WeGo. The reason that's significant is because RT offers no chance to go back and look at the situation more closely. The biggest problems with statements that start "I have seen...." being used to support "It's broken..." arguments is that there is no way of eliminating observer error. That error could range from not knowing (or noticing) that the victorious element in a given duel was vastly more experienced/less suppressed/less damaged/better in some other way than the one it beat, all the way to the confirmation bias of the observer noticing the exception that fulfils their expectations and not noticing all the times it works as they might have expected (which isn't malicious, just the way human brains work).

There are a lot of variables involved. And there's a lot of variation anyway. There was some 'time to spot and fire' tests done between two tanks in the open, presented in a thread the other day, and it was possible for neither tank to spot the other in an entire minute. Other times one spotted the other after a single second. When you have such variability there are always going to be "unexpected" situations cropping up which will catch your eye. Doesn't mean they're wrong.

Conflating spotting in a wood with first shot hit chances without specifying what the vehicles involved were, what the ambient spotting environment for each was (how much help from other units), what the experience/motivation/leadership levels of the crews were, whether either or both were buttoned or not, what 'wood' really means, whether there was any suppression etc etc is no argument that a game is broken. I can certainly see how trying to fire on a target that's moving unpredictably in and out of cover might be more difficult than shooting at a target that's sat still while you move in and out of cover. Or it might not. It would all depend.

There is a strong trend to dismiss people's legitimate complaints on the forum as either them being ignorant or the whole thing being so complex that what they are seeing must be attributed to some other hazily-defined factor that they can't possibly understand. Of course it is mostly very polite and civilised, but there is a bit of a condescending groupthink-y tone to this sort of post.

I know from personal experience that documenting bugs in CM is very time consuming, even just taking screenshots, and the average man on the street is not likely to bother, or if they do they might not do a very good job. That doesn't mean there is no problem. For example in TCP/IP it is almost impossible to document bugs. You can't save, you can't rewind, if you are lucky the problem might persist long enough to take a screenshot, and often you don't even fully notice the circumstances to even give a clue how to reproduce a bug.

I enjoy the game for what it is too, but sometimes it takes someone making some noise to get something done. We can go on all day saying "that's not a problem unless you do statistically significant tests controlling for all variables". But maybe it IS a problem, and who is going to bother testing unless people speak up?

This thread really seems to have run its course IMO...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 303
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I did check out the AP site after your first post. What I found was a game that is very difficult to get if you can acquire it at all and a site that is deader than Salt Lake City's night life. You have got to be kidding me making the comparison. Yeah you may love the game, but to try and compare the two is pretty ridiculous. That isn't a criticsm of AP, just a statement regarding the relative activity of the two communities and the lack of feedback and responses on their forum.

Seriously? How hard did you even look? On both the Developer and Publisher AP pages (Graviteam and Paradox) there are links to Impulse, Gamersgate and Direct2Drive. Don't like Digital? Mail order from Amazon. I assume you had no issues doing that with CMBN.

No MP? Fair enough, but it's also a third the cost of CMBN.

No forum activity? There is activity on the Graviteam and Paradox forum, admittedly not much lately, but the game came out 18 months ago.

A comparative alternative to CMBN was asked for and it was provided. Rather than off-handedly dismiss it without even looking properly, how about you go grab the demo from one of the multitude of places it is available and then comment.

Caveat - Much like CMBN, don't expect to get too far into AP without thoroughly reading the manual.

Edit - Apologies to BFC if this appears as an advertisement for AP, not my intention, but I'll understand if you feel the need to delete.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is a strong trend to dismiss people's legitimate complaints on the forum as either them being ignorant or the whole thing being so complex that what they are seeing must be attributed to some other hazily-defined factor that they can't possibly understand. Of course it is mostly very polite and civilised, but there is a bit of a condescending groupthink-y tone to this sort of post.

I know from personal experience that documenting bugs in CM is very time consuming, even just taking screenshots, and the average man on the street is not likely to bother, or if they do they might not do a very good job. That doesn't mean there is no problem. For example in TCP/IP it is almost impossible to document bugs. You can't save, you can't rewind, if you are lucky the problem might persist long enough to take a screenshot, and often you don't even fully notice the circumstances to even give a clue how to reproduce a bug.

I enjoy the game for what it is too, but sometimes it takes someone making some noise to get something done. We can go on all day saying "that's not a problem unless you do statistically significant tests controlling for all variables". But maybe it IS a problem, and who is going to bother testing unless people speak up?

This thread really seems to have run its course IMO...

I call bullsh@t on this one. Let's take the entire cover issue. Not just walls as was noted but foxholes, trenches, bocage and the like. I personally spent hours..if not tens of hours testing out v 1.00 issues on this one. Being a military engineer it kind of fell into my area of humble expertise.

After hour of testing and re-testing...what did we find? Short walls are an issue (patch incoming) foxholes need a bit of tweaking. This is after many have cried to the heavens that this is sign of the end times for CMBN and that Cover on the whole is "completely broken".

I have never dismissed a legitimate complaint, especially if someone has done their homework. I for one welcome rational discussion, without self absorbed hyperbole, that outlines a complaint. We tend to chase after these.

But when a complaint is delivered in an immature and narrow mainded manner, I for one tune right out.

Now let's also call a spade a spade here. There are some...a very small minority of what I like to call "haterboys". A group of sad individuals who really do not have the games best intentions at heart. They sit in the tall grass and wait. As soon as anything negative come up about CMBN they are usually the first to cry "broken" and outline how BFC is failing their customers.

You can usually tell these guys by the basic fact that when you actually take them on, point for point, they fold or quiet up pretty quickly except to shout as a parting shot how BFC and the "beta-brigade" have wronged them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We're over the 300 post count and have (as is usual) recovered the same ground dozens of times over. Let's sum up this thread:

There are some that have found CM:BN is not perfect. Of those, there are some that equate the flaws with the Earth opening up and swallowing innocent wargamers into the bowls of Hell itself. There are others that think the flaws are minor when the game is looked at as a whole. Especially because the v1.01 patch will address most of the outstanding issues of significance raised here. But trying to say that makes one a Fanboy because it crushes legitimate dissent by those who are maturely, and constructively, bitching and complaining like small children.

But that's just my take on it :D

One last thought which I keep harping on all the time...

There is a strong trend to dismiss people's legitimate complaints on the forum as either them being ignorant or the whole thing being so complex that what they are seeing must be attributed to some other hazily-defined factor that they can't possibly understand. Of course it is mostly very polite and civilised, but there is a bit of a condescending groupthink-y tone to this sort of post.

"Legitimate complaints" are always in the eye of the beholder when the method of complaining is taken into consideration. I don't know why some people can't just spell out what they think is wrong without the drama queen routine. THANKFULLY most posters here don't go for theatrics and instead really try to engage in a meaningful discussion. Which is how we find, quantify, and remedy problems which haven't been dealt with thus far.

I know from personal experience that documenting bugs in CM is very time consuming, even just taking screenshots, and the average man on the street is not likely to bother, or if they do they might not do a very good job.

Absolutely correct. The problem is if we took every complaint as a confirmed problem, we'd never get anything done because we'd be chasing down hundreds, if not thousands, of things that really aren't problems. As a Beta Tester you know how many false starts even seasoned Beta Testers encounter. Which means there is no alternative than to stress test complaints and see which ones survive, then go after those that do with vigor. Call it triage if you like.

I enjoy the game for what it is too, but sometimes it takes someone making some noise to get something done. We can go on all day saying "that's not a problem unless you do statistically significant tests controlling for all variables". But maybe it IS a problem, and who is going to bother testing unless people speak up?

Reverse your logic and instead imagine a Forum, and a development team, that leaps onto every anecdotal "problem" that is reported just because it's reported. Doesn't matter how outlandish it might sound, nor how vaguely it's described... just jump without any thought or critical analysis before spending time on it. Because that's the alternative you're advocating.

Not that people should blindly defend CM when it's gone past the "my brother's best friend onetime said he saw a tank shoot itself" stage of reporting. We need critical thinkers involved, starting with the person making the claim that something is wrong.

I have never dismissed a legitimate complaint, especially if someone has done their homework. I for one welcome rational discussion, without self absorbed hyperbole, that outlines a complaint. We tend to chase after these.

As do most people here. Especially testers. The notion that legitimate concerns are being shot down by blind defenders of CM is a myth. Nobody can point to a thread where this happens, yet the myth continues. Just like Elvis Presley keeps showing up.

Now let's also call a spade a spade here. There are some...a very small minority of what I like to call "haterboys". A group of sad individuals who really do not have the games best intentions at heart. They sit in the tall grass and wait. As soon as anything negative come up about CMBN they are usually the first to cry "broken" and outline how BFC is failing their customers.

Yes, and if you call someone on it you're apparently a "fanboy".

Steve

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...