Charlie901

Not with troops but with vehicles.... I'm not going to have a squad blow a two foot high wall under heavy fire so my M1 can breach it when it could just roll right over it.

Since I've long shelved this title and gone back to CMAK I've come to wonder if the magical 1.05 patch is even going to address some of the glaring issues (which have been stated many times before). I'm begining to come to the conclusion that it would take a major overhall of the engine, to fix these major issues and that a 1.05 patch isn't going to fix this title to where we all expect it to be. B.T.W. One of my biggest gripes is that Armor and AFV's can't breach thin, 2ft walls. What's up with that. :mad: So to get through an urban map I have to zig zag right into an enemy trap even though I know their there waiting for my units to zig zag on by... I feel like a rat in a maze.

Definately not an actual in-game shot!!! The tanks in this sim sadly can't knock down/breach the smallest of walls...Sigh! Instead they run around them like Rats in a Maze...Dooh!!!

I HOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE!!!!! I'm sick and tired of seeing my M1A1's Firing thier MSG's at a building in AREA FIRE mode when an emeny squad has occupied the building and their obviously immune to the MG fire...??? DOH....

Man, With all the time Steve has to spend in here Defending the game, where's he gonna get the time to fix it?

I'd really like to see waypoint ends/points become somewhat movable like in CMx1. I hate laying a WP and not being able to adjust it without deleting it entirely.

One option I'm sorely missing from CMx1 is the ability to select which guns to fire for an armor unit at a target or area fire (main gun or MG). If I'm trying to dislodge some enemy infantry in a building with a 155mm Howitzer, mounted on one of my Strykers, how do I get it to fire HE instead of uselessly raking the building with MG Fire!!! Same goes for Tanks... how do you get them to use their main guns... like HE area firing??? The Target/Target Lite Button seems to make no difference. :mad:

Tried that. It doesn't work!

IS there a way to have a vehicle stop at its last waypoint and automatically face a designed direction....??? I'm trying to use the "FACE" Command at the end WayPoint but my vehicles still face the direction of travel and expose their flanks...(i.e. at a road junction). Is there a way to have a vehicle stop at a WP and rotate to face a direction 45-90 degrees without moving?

This really needs to be added!!!! ASAP!!!

Yup, just give me some SF HEREOS Units that power up for 10x damage, 10x health and 10x Morale for 30sec bursts!!!! If they properly GLOW when powered up it could visually alert the player that they are EXTRA Dangerous...!!! Do this and that USMC Module will be mine!!!

O.K. Fair enough. What about those extremely small, graphical, 4 foot high stone/cinder block thin and low walls, depicted currently on a lot of maps, that your soldiers can hop with a single bound, without even breaking their stride...? Wouldn't it be ridiculous if a tank had to turn it's flank to travel along this wall instead of running over it and got killed in the process??? Especially when the Driver could clearly see that it was a thin, easily, traversable object. Yet I've seen both my and the A.I. tanks refuse to drive over/through such a trivial wall currently in the game. It currently is very limiting to have a 4ft thin map wall that soldiers can hop, become an insurrmountable object, for every tank/AFV and becomes an easy cheat for chokepoints, when you can view the entire map (top down) and these vehicles wouldn't be so limited IRL. Unless I'm wrong and these walls are made to be surmountable and the A.I. just isn't treating them as such?

Sorry if this has been asked before but where is the option for Artillery/CAS in a QB, or does it not exist.

Steve, At least give us the option to punch a hole in a small compound wall... It would make sense to have a tank AFV do it, if under fire and a squad needs another entry/exit point and especially if the Tank/AVF needs the LOS for a clearer field of FIRE!!!

It's a big cheat when you know the A.I. Tanks won't breach a small wall and you can pick them off one by one as they drive through this maze. I'm not stating that we need Uber A.I. algorithims but shouldn't the A.I. at least be smart enough to prioritize, that an enemy Armor unit is on the other side of the wall, waiting for a flank shot, and instead the A.I. will find a direct path to engage the armor unit head on, without having to dive through this maze and expose it's flank like the last tank. At least let a tank puch a hole in a wall without driving completely through it to open a clear LOS to a target.

On a related note I saw and Enemy T-72 shoot it's cannon point blank into a wall at my squad, which was in front and on a 1 story rooftop, the tank kept exploding sheels into this wall when it could have punched a hole in the wall and had a clear field of fire, or reversed slightly and achieved proper elevation, on its Main Gun, to shoot over the wall into my squad.

Pretty funny watching the Tanks in this game zig zag through/between multiple rows of cinderblock walls (<6) foot and expose it's flank/rear when they know a enemy tank is on the other side just waiting. Kinda reminds me of the old PacMan game...LoL. How do you get a tank to punch through a short/small wall and why won't the A.I. do the same!!! [ August 30, 2007, 09:33 AM: Message edited by: Charlie901 ]

Great Point!! Especially about "Core Units" that carry over in a Campaign. Also how about more Campaigns, with many missions, that deal with specific operations on certain fronts instead of trying to be a jack-of-all-trades and do the whole war with a handful of battles....Duh As it stands the original release Campaigns are laughable at best... with several years passing between battles....DoH!!!!

Excellent, especially houses occupied by Infantry and Smoke...this will finally give this game some serious teeth to compete with anything currently out there!!! I'll have to blow the Dust of my Disk now! [ August 30, 2007, 09:24 AM: Message edited by: Charlie901 ]

With the upcomming USMC Mod I was hoping that we could have an option to pick uits in QB's ala a point system again. I really miss this feature as it was the only thing that kept the original CMx1 series on my PC for such an extended period of time. Half the fun of the QB's for me was setting up uneven or oddball faceoffs with mixed units and trying to win under difficult circumstances, especially in Defense. BF please bring this option back....!!! I know it is only my humble opinion out of many but I bought 3 copies (all preordered) of CMSF, so that's gotta count for something!

Oh come on, Steve, this is nothing but denial and evasion. You sound like George W. Bush when asked if he has made any mistakes. I'm going to give CMSF another shot with 1.03 but you cannot go unchallenged with this guff re. bad reviews being about reviewers who "didn't get" the game. Quite obviously, this kind of stubborn, defensive insularity is partly responsible for the lamentable state of the product at the moment. Look, you got bad reviews (and, I regret to say, you deserved them) because: - The game was unfinished When will you understand that it doesn't matter which version the critics played? 1.00 and 1.01 were both critically sub-par for a "finished" retail product. - Advertised features were not implemented. - Preordered hard goods have still not shipped for many people, a month after the game's release date. - The quality of both pathfinding and tacAI were, and still are, absolutely dismal. This is not a matter of opinion. It's a fact. The only variable is the extent to which the player is prepared to work around it. Those with a greater level of tolerance for this are likely to enjoy the game more. That fact doesn't mean BFC does not deserve all the criticism it's been getting for terrible tacAI and pathfinding. Please don't call me out for arrogance again because this is "only my opinion". It's essentially a slightly evolved version of schoolyard rhetoric ("Yeah? Says who?") and I think you are too smart to hide behind this kind of defensive bluster. Of course it's only my opinion; but it is an educated opinion, shared by many and I think it may even be the consensus. The truth is that, with tacAI and pathfinding in the state they are, the game, like many of the reviewers have correctly claimed, cannot be taken seriously. What can you possibly expect when you release a game in which vehicles charge into the enemy FLOT, uncommanded, and/or target a group of infantry a hundred yards away when a T-72 is attacking at fifty yards? Seriously, I think BFC is a valuable independent component of an otherwise corporatized game-design landscape, and I realise that too much negative buzz will have a greater impact on you guys than on a big company that can roll with the punches. However, BFC screwed the pooch in a very big way with this product: you made some bad design decisions, put way too much faith in the capabilities of your tacAI, your laudable desire to eliminate certain abstractions did not enhance gameplay sufficiently, advertised features were not implemented, the game was broken on release, and a combination of all the above with a clunky GUI, hobbled WEGO and feature-stripped QBs merely offers a big fat morsel to the critics. None of the above has anything to do with expectations on my part that everything in CM1 would find its way into CM2. I didn't have any such expectations but how can you be surprised when, having released CMSF in its present state, many if not most CM vets accuse you of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? If the game worked on its own terms there would be no such criticism. Most of the negative points made in the reviews are fully justified from a consumer standpoint and not a function of "not getting it". Again, that argument is both an evasion and a form of head-in-the-sand denial. The game is every bit as flawed as these reviewers point out and the Tom vs Bruce piece was, sadly, right on the money, too. These people do not wish you any harm; it's merely their job to point out the failings of your product and you served up a rich feast. We trust you guys to do your very best to fix it; but please do not insult our intelligence by telling us that it isn't broke or the critics "don't get it". They do. The only difference is that they didn't pay $70 for it. I did, and I'm sticking with it. But I'd be happier if you admitted to having made mistakes instead of merely telling us to "stay the course"; I've heard that before. </font>

Yup!

This is getting ridiculous. Talk about people not listening... sheesh... let me try again: If a bunch of people tell us that they're pissed off that we released the game too early, what value does another person add to the discussion when he just repeats what is already known? Or put yet another way, 50 people look outside and tell me it looks like is going to rain, then a 51st person tells me it looks like it is going to rain. What possible benefit does it have to me to hear another one or two or 50 people tell me it looks like it is going to rain? It is already CLEARLY established that a fair number of people think it is going to rain. Hearing it again brings nothing new to the table, therefore by definition it doesn't mean anything. You are not being patronized, you are simply proving my point. Of what value is this rant of yours? We ALREADY KNOW the issues and have acknowledged them more times than I can count. So can you PLEASE tell me, of what value is it to you, the customer, to repeat something that has already been stated to be understood? The important thing to do is to act on the information we have, which is what we are doing. The v1.02 patch came out within 2 weeks and had a large number of fixes that customers wanted fixed. They had their say, we heard them, we delivered a patch. Version 1.03 is the same way. We hear, we work, we produce. The system is working, so I don't understand the problem unless you think bitching is in and of itself constructive and likely to produce positive results. My experience, both here and in the rest of the real world, is that unconstructive complaining is a waste of time. Like the 5 minutes of my time I wasted explaining this point for something like the 1000th time. You'll have to do much better than that to get banned Steve </font>

No wonder this game is getting an average score of <60% in all the reviews. Maybe the reviewers just don't "Get it".

I think this is an unnecessarily irritable response to a cogent and well-argued post. I'm with Sandy a hundred per cent and I do not believe he is posting in order to assert that "his opinion means more than anyone else's". I believe that, whatever the difficulties with the earlier releases of CMx1 games, BFC always had a very clear conceptual vision. In the case of CMSF, however, I believe that there is a disconnect between the vision and the level of execution needed to realise that vision. In other words, the game cannot live up to its basic concept yet, and nothing in 1.02 disproves this. It is wishful thinking on BFC's part to assume that, with pathfinding and tacAI in their current, lamentable condition, the game can be a decent representation of modern-day MOUT. As I've argued here before, a certain level of imprecision in pathing, tacAI and the following of orders can be imagined away in a WW2 theater as "fog of war", but in modern assymetrical warfare where Bluefor's greatest asset is speed, effective comms and precision of movement and fire, effective tacAI and pathfinding become very, very conspicuous by their absence. I've said it before: BFC should wipe the slate clean and admit to having failed in this respect so that consumer confidence can be rebuilt on a baseline of credibility. Saying "well it has its weaknesses, we admit that, but, really, you guys are expecting too much and/or a different game" is an understandable but stubborn and wrongheaded move by the developers. The game is broken and cannot live up to its stated conceptual goals. For all its teething problems, CMBO did not fail in quite the same way. I understand Steve's argument when it comes to features that consumers expected to be implemented differently, such as WEGO and quick battles, yet, again, there is an atmosphere of denial and spin here: People complain about the implementation of WEGO and QBs not because they are different from what they might be used to but because they are not nearly as much fun or as well executed. WEGO in CMSF is a kludge. I am hoping the game will become playable with another two or three patches and I know the devs are working hard and that their hearts are in the right place. My biggest fear is this: If they were as totally convinced, as they appeared to be on the eve of release, that their product was basically sound and if they continue to believe that consumer complaints are mainly the result of misplaced expectations rather than legitimate responses to the broken condition of the game, then CMSF will never really be fixed because nobody at BFC is prepared to admit that it's broke. I admire your pride in your work, Steve, but the game is broken. </font>