Sirocco

If you look at the scenario editor you can trim down a formation, and I wonder whether that's a solution for QB's; not picking units, per se, but dropping them to fit into whatever quantifier makes sense. The solution for the maps if they can no longer be random would be to lock rune in a room and have him pump out a vast number of maps. With CMSF I've played a grand total of two QB's, and got the same map both times.

It will get better. Immediately there will be some fixes, but for CM:WW2 there will be some significant changes. It won't be like CMx1, but it will have more of the feel of it.</font>

No, it wouldn't have made a difference IMHO. The guys that complained the loudest about the demo did what? Bought the full game The row over the demo was you couldn't play it for 8 months. So if anything, the way we did it INCREASED our sales because people couldn't use the demo as if it were a full product. Though personally I think it was a neutral.</font>

Well, I recall the discussion over the CMBB demo, so I know your position on that, but I respectfully disagree. And I still think you missed a trick on how you presented both BB and AK. Perhaps not huge differences in sales terms, but I believe there was scope there for an increase.

Well, we can ask someone else to ask you if that would help. I just have the sense that CMSF is a more personal vision, if you will, than the CMx1 games, and I'm wondering how open to external input Steve and Charles were during testing.

I think that's a critical point.

Wasn't this kind of thing raised during testing, Michael?

CMBB was a great improvement over CMBO. I think it suffered from a poor choice of demo scenarios, but overall it was night and day in terms of how games played out. No more running squads all over the map without them really tiring, for example.

Let me put it this way; what's the subject matter in CMSF? And what will be in the first module? Knowing your target market is the bedrock of doing business. I would be surprised if BFC weren't all over the sales stats.

So given that so many posters here are not American where is Battlefronts' biggest market. The US or the rest of the world? </font>

Whoever disagreed with the point totals, tell them to shut their cake hole. With a more limited scope CMx2 needs a better implementation of QB's.

I feel a significant factor in reduced sales for CMBB and CMAK was simply the subject matter and how it was marketed. Barbarossa to Berlin? What are the first names that come to mind when thinking of the Eastern Front? Stalingrad and Kursk. You capitalise on what is already known. Afrika Korps? Call it The Big Red One and have a picture of a GI coming ashore in North Africa on the cover. With a better pitch I'm sure both those games could have sold significantly more copies.

But Steve said such stats are meaningless today.

If she was cowering she'd have disappeared.

She's clearly found a hull down position, even without a LOS tool.

What sand mod are you using? </font>

What sand mod are you using?

The CMx1 games were full of abstractions. Without daisy-chaining a bunch of PC's it's inevitable. Why not live with them the way we all lived with them in CMx1?

A C&C issue?

As I said, if a teenager picked up CMSF expecting MOH or COD, I don't hold out much hope for it not turning into a return.

FPS teenage crowd? You deduced that from those first screenshots back then? 1:1 represenation doesn't make an FPS, and if a teenager picked up CMSF expecting MOH or COD... You might want to work on your doom laden predictions.

Well of course it's all desert; there's no water in yet. I'm thinking of a small farm based scenario, too, so useful source material.

You can change resolution under Options.

I don't think anyone is suggesting a "sell-out", but you admit yourself the pitch is to a different group of gamers now. I suppose I am guilty of associating RT with less mature gamers, which isn't necessarily true. I just wonder what long term effects that might have on the franchise as a whole. Ruminating, is all. </font>

I don't think for a moment that BFC are looking to pitch their games at a different market. Will CMSF pull in RT people who wouldn't have touched WEGO? Of course it will. But if BFC were to release CMx2WW2 in twelve months time with the engine improvements we're promised the reaction here would be markedly different.