J Bennett

There's a lot more shooting going on in most CM games than in most fellas' lives...

If a bout of CM turns out unsatisfactory, you can just reload and have another go. A happy state of affairs that left many of the CM demographic behind many years ago, in the field of venereal combat (rhymes with wombat; who else knows that song, I wonder?).

The whole game is one big double entendre.
 
I mean, you unbutton for a better chance of achieving a penetration...

It's not.
 
Hint...Sieg Heil!
 
Another hint...Cross of Iron
 
Last hint...superdouche x 2 + 12.
 
Mord.

Yes, to pinpoint unspotted ATGs to the exact action spot. Really great...
Chess vs checkers.
Trying to attract checkers players to play chess can only result in losing both in the long term.

CM is WAAAY to complex to be attractive for the masses EVER. It will always be a niche product.
Chess will also NEVER appeal to the masses. NEVER. One could pump up the graphics of chess and make it look like a FPS, but after the initial spike of shallow interest, it will again only be played by chess players who are not interested in explosions and action, but like the challenge of the mind.
The same is with CM. I think the core CM-player was interested in realism above all.

Now what will have the bigger impact on sales: those that like CM more because of hit decals, and therefore will buy the next game, or those disappointed customers who no longer perceive guns as threat after the first shot because of hit decals?
I believe each of a disappointed core customer is a customer who bought all their products - contrary to those who are quickly attracted by shallow visual effects like hit decals and other gimmicks at the cost of degrading realism. Graphical effects attract quickly but the same crowd is also moving on to the next shallow effect in the next game.

But beneath everything the core of the problem seems to be something completely different:
The main game designer plays the game not in the mode the vast majority of wargamers play his products. That's never good, if you develop something and don't know, what your core customers need. There are no ladders, no campaigns, nothing played realtime. One could say: realtime does not exist among the wrgaming community.

The result of this dramatic discrepancy could be observed since CMSF was released.
The spotting problems as a result of keeping the calculation affordances as low as possible to make realtime play possible. Spotting works good enough for realtime but often not good enough for turn based.
And I think this has dramatic consequences for potential new turnbased customers: they try the demo, recognize a strange spotting behaviour and lose interest. The 1:1 representation makes things even worse, since it leaves much less room for imagination than a symbolic representation. So again: 1:1 is attracting the visual oriented player, but if there are discrepances between presented action and results, itdegrades the experience of the customer who is interested in realism.

The majority of realtime customers cannot be attracted, because FPS games offer them the much better quick action and cooler graphics. Additionally the game concept is so extremely different, that 99% will only shake their head. So the core group is lost and the big part of the massese cannot be attracted because it is chess and not checkers.

I will never forget the disastrous relative hotkeys-concept when I tried CMSF the first time. What a punch into the face of WEGO-players that was.
Or the water-effects since CMRT breaking FOW. Sounds from unspotted units? A problem since CMSF. But in combination with hit-decals since engine v3 this problem has been even increased instead to become solved. How easily foxholes can be spotted. Bunkers and trenches breaking FOW. And much more.

I believe all these are results of a design process done from a realtime-player's perspective and therefore many of the problems are only discovered very late in the design process, or even too late after implementation.

Instead that Battlefront had followed their former clear path torwards realism and protected and taken care of their brilliant WEGO-child, they lost this focus and now, with an ageing engine, they are sitting between the chairs, trying to keep new shallow action-customers somehow interested while they lose more and more of realism-focused wargamers which one after the other slowly give up, because the problems persist year after year and game after game and sometimes even become worse.

It's not semantic. A rebuilt is nothing that is secret. You do not admit your logical failure that you brought up a newly set up unit like the 6th army as an absurd argument why 79. VGD was destroyed during Wacht am Rhein.
 
 
What really counts for the soldiers on the tactical level is (and CM is only about that, you know), if the unit is capable to continue fighting.
The 79. VGD division's history shows it kept fighting. So the claim it was destroyed is not only wrong from the operational view, it is even more false from the tactical view. Did the Alliied soldiers that kept fighting it, only do that in their imagination? I hope not.
 
CM is about the level where the bullets fly. That's where the fighting takes place.
 
It shows a very high degree of incompetence if someone uses operational, strategic, political and historical judgements to judge the tactical level. Why? Because high level judgements can be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the reality of tactical combat:
 
Bulge ------dead----missed---wounded----total
Germans  17.236--16.000----14.439-----67.675
Alliies       19.276--21.144-----47.139----87.559
 
And that's numbers for a failed German operation...
Where did the Alliied losses occur? By imagination? By the Luftwaffe?
  Bagration---------dead----missed---wounded----total
German Army---26.397--262.929--109.776----399.102 (Frieser)
Soviet Army----178.507--------------587.308----765.815 (Kriwoschejew)
 
 
To speak in the language of the BFC forum: who on the tactical level might have gotten his teeth's kicked?

1945 has one huge advantage in that it hasn't been done to death, unlike Normandy and the Bulge (admit it!). 
 
Agree about the matchups. Wunderwaffe like the Sturmgewehr always get top billing, but the Allies were no slouches and their units beefed up on automatic weapons as well (e.g. 30 Cals and more BARs at squad level). They also get some terrific new equipment, like the Comet and Pershing, even if the latter was a bit of a white elephant. However the ubiquitousness of the potent-enough 76-mm Sherman was quite enough to tip the balance, especially given rapidly declining German tanker training. Then there's the Birth of Night Vision of course, but I don't know how much of that we'll see in the game.

Hopefully a lot sooner than that since I don't have any interest in a Bulge or any late 44 to end of WWII time periods for that matter. I am hoping they crank these out quickly so the earlier war time periods 40-43, Kursk, Barbarossa, North Africa, France '40 can get some love faster at some point down the road. 
 
CMBS does not help this process however, as it will be getting modules that will take up time BFC's time as well (these however, I do look forward to getting).

Yes but even the best drugs are cut with:   A:  snow that looks like powdered sugar
 
                                                                      B:  snow that looks like talcum powder.
                  
         One vote only please.

You could have presented a few arguments to support the claim, the 79. VGD was destroyed during Wacht am Rhein.  
Aha, the racist hatred of a chauvinist? 
But, but your numbers show still lower losses than Alliied losses...Not bad on the tactical level for a failed operation, isn't it?
As a tactically interested person I can only admire this effectiveness and combat power.

I understand that you try to bring the discussion down by bringing up even German warcrimes to deny their combat power then, because it fits your emotional way to judge things. But I must disappoint you: what deems you fitting as emotionally driven chauvinist is of no significance to me.

Old-banned-Steiner, meet the new-not-yet-banned-Steiner. 
 
(Sigh) It seems some things never change. 

How about snow cut with a much cheaper drug

I'm fairly new here, but I'm starting to understand the stress that Steve and his crew are under, or more accurately, put themselves under. By having the best product of its type in the world, BFC doom themselves to the demands of people who want a perfect simulation. They obviously want perfection- why else would they be here? Alas, perfection is not possible, due to both hardware and manpower constraints. Sure, there's a huge list of awesome additions everyone would like to see, but the BFC staff are Elite Fanatic +2 Leadership, so they are small in number. 

Being poor (my chosen occupation is music) I can't buy every single thing that Steve puts out. I'd like to though. However, during my time here I've learned to accept that things happen the way they happen for a reason. If the Bulge comes out and it doesn't have new snow textures- so what? You might argue that it's important, but reality being what it is... is it?

Recap: I'm broke, and some of you have extra copies. Give them to me :D

Yes but even the best drugs are cut with:   A:  snow that looks like powdered sugar
 
                                                                      B:  snow that looks like talcum powder.
                  
         One vote only please.

Its a person moving in hyperspeed. He's invisible and sounds like a buzz to slow moving earthlings.
 
  Seriously what is wrong with the CMFI snow graphics. I  realize it would be nice for immersion and a realistic appearance
 
  to have lovely looking snow graphics but it seems to me if the "snow effects" are working such as reduced visibility, somewhat
  impeded movement, and maybe troops wearing snow camo etc. are more important.

and I repeat it again - I want to see improved in the new CMB: - Textures of snow - I do not want to look at a copy transferred from CMFI - Sounds (separate ambient for winter) - New volumetric effects - Particle effects - New UI - I do not want to look at is not scratched tank - air bomb hit   fixes, which I'm waiting for 8 years.

I agree, If everyone had  one vote would they vote for:
 
                                     a. Snow that looks like powdered sugar
                                      or
                                     b. Snow that looks like talcum powder   

Well i like both but if I have to choose it is North Africa for me.

I was wondering how long it would take for his inner-Adolf to pull out the poms-poms. This guy just can't help giving himself away. It's like retarded clock work, the same exact MO every...single...time. You'd think after being banned in triplicate he'd figure out a way to suppress it all...but in record time we are graced with yet another one man circle jerk...which I predict will once again end in tears...and blisters. It's downright pathological.
 
 
 
Mord.

I this behaviour according to the forum rules?
Are you a moderator?

LukeFF,
I don't believe that you can improve CM's success with your permanent attacks on customers. The building entering bug, the water fording bug, the QB setup bug and many more. If you would invest more energy in your job as beta tester and less into playing Ghostbusters, maybe you could prevent customers from facing nasty surprises?

But the 79. VGD was not rebuilt after Bulge. Therefore what was fighting afterwards was the same 79. VGD.
 
This can be hardly called "reappear as a Kampfgruppe":
What I know that during Wacht am Rhein the attack on Heiderscheid did not succeed and both sides suffered heavy losses.
After the attack on Heiderscheid had failed, the division was defending at the Braunschweig bridgehead for four more weeks (January).
 
Then in February it planfully begun to retreat (you know, destroyed units and retreating...).
It was during these weeks of retreat in the Mosel valley, where the highest losses reportedly have occured.
 
After the encirclement of Heidelberg and Darmstadt the majority of the division fell into captivity in March, while outside the divisional HQ with remnants formed Kampfgruppe Hummel and continued to fight until mid of April.
 
This does hardly match to the claim it was destroyed during Wacht am Rhein. Which author is claiming that?

It was written that the 79. Volks-Gren.-Div. was not destroyed. Did I miss something in the discussion? Who wrote the 6. Armee was not destroyed?

I cannot help but marvel at how spoiled many players seem to be. But I guess its because I well remember playing board games in the 70's like Richthofens' War, Panzer Blitz, and Tobruk, among many other games.In my wildest dreams I never could have imagined games like the CMx2 series.
But when I see players in the forum lamenting things like how the snow disappoints them I just shake my head sometimes.

I cannot help but marvel at how spoiled many players seem to be. But I guess its because I well remember playing board games in the 70's like Richthofens' War, Panzer Blitz, and Tobruk, among many other games.In my wildest dreams I never could have imagined games like the CMx2 series.
But when I see players in the forum lamenting things like how the snow disappoints them I just shake my head sometimes.

I cannot help but marvel at how spoiled many players seem to be. But I guess its because I well remember playing board games in the 70's like Richthofens' War, Panzer Blitz, and Tobruk, among many other games.In my wildest dreams I never could have imagined games like the CMx2 series.
But when I see players in the forum lamenting things like how the snow disappoints them I just shake my head sometimes.

I cannot help but marvel at how spoiled many players seem to be. But I guess its because I well remember playing board games in the 70's like Richthofens' War, Panzer Blitz, and Tobruk, among many other games.In my wildest dreams I never could have imagined games like the CMx2 series.
But when I see players in the forum lamenting things like how the snow disappoints them I just shake my head sometimes.