m0317624
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Posts posted by m0317624
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Its a hard AI problem. There are quite a few vehicles, various types of add on systems on those vehicles, and the angle of the shooter relative to the target. My personal impression is that ARENA will knock down TOW about half the time. I have not done a formal multi hundred shot test, but I am absolutely sure the number isn't zero. Against BMPs of any type 25mm seems very effective out to 1500 or 2000 meters, and is the better choice. From the front at a T-72, or T-90 with ARENA Tow is probably the better choice, but that is not saying its a good one. I have seen 25 mm kills at short range with side shots. If the TOW gets swatted you don't get so much as suppression. 25mm banging off the turret gets their attention and might break something. It would be nice to know how many of the categories the AI can even distinguish or work with?
That's exactly the problem: 25 mm banging off the turret of a T-90 gets its attention, and the very last thing an IFV should want is to get the attention of a MBT. The small chance of breaking some outside equipment on the turret is not worth the massive risk of getting shot at by a 125 mm cannon. In the WW2 titles this was somewhat useful, as the suppressed tank would have trouble spotting, but with modern optics and laser warning receivers it's quite simply suicide that achieves nothing.
From my limited experience about 1/5 of launched TOWs will actually kill a T-90AM, the rest gets spoofed, destroyed or fails to penetrate.
It is a tough call. I played Valley of death a few times in testing. The first time I deployed one bradley platoon on the left out of sight behind the forward treeline with a second in overwatch in the treeline behind them. I then moved my jav teams from the 1st platoon up into the first treeline to hit the Russians. I got a few, but the Russians were able to get a force into the low ground in front of me. They then charged. Smashed through the first treeline where they were annihilated by my overwatch Bradley's with TOWS and some M1s I'd positioned there.
On the right side I put a couple in ambush positions behind the trees. As the Russians passed their positions they got multiple TOWs in the butt end,
In Poking the bear I was able to use TOWs from the Strykers and Hummv as well so overall my experience with TOWs has not been bad. However you have to position them well as that long reach also means they have time to spot and kill you as well.
One thing I have noticed about Valley of death is the spotting can be intermittent as the T90s rush forward affecting TOW acquisition. That might be a possible reason why they aren't firing.
I tried following the briefing, which stated: "best to keep the Russians at long range". A platoon of Bradleys with Javelin teams in overwatch on each flank, ready to take on the Russians before they entered the valley. Spotting was indeed intermittent, which caused some missiles to miss. But this was caused more by the T-90s' smoke launchers thanks to the Bradleys helpfully lasing them (and the Bradleys' smoke launchers from the return fire caused by said lasing) than due to the range.
I ran this part of the scenario 5 times, and each time the Bradleys were far more eager to fire their cannon than their TOWs. Maybe it was the change in Bradley TacAI from patch 1.1 that caused this, if you found it functioning well during testing?
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I've been playing the Valley of Death scenario as the US, and I've come across a major frustration. Without spoiling too much, in this scenario a bunch of Bradleys in hull-down defensive positions under tree cover get rushed at high speed over a few km of open terrain by Russian T-90AMs. Moving at high speed these Russian T-90s lack the optics to spot my well-hidden Bradleys at such long ranges. One would think that a bunch of tanks charging headlong into such a decent defensive position would take some serious losses, but apparently most of my Bradley crews are actually Russian undercover agents hell-bent on committing suicide for the Motherland.
You see, instead of using their rather stealthy (SACLOS means no warning to the target) and effective TOW missile launchers upon spotting a Russian tank at a range of 2 km, most of my Bradley crews insist on firing their 25 mm cannons. Not only do those cannon rounds barely scratch the paintwork on a modern MBT, but aiming a cannon at such long ranges is hard. So my Bradleys happily use their laser rangefinders, at which moment the Russian laser warning receiver will happily point that nice 125 mm cannon straight at my Bradley. And that 125 mm round will do more than scratch the paintwork on a Bradley. Oh, and the Russian tank will also happily fire its smoke launchers now, messing up the aim of the occasional Bradley which did manage to launch a TOW.
This really makes Bradleys near useless in an anti-tank ambush role. In the Valley of Death scenario I've had 8 Bradleys simultaneously engage a column of 10 Russian tanks from excellent ambush positions only for them to mess it up every single time. The end result is always the same: 2-3 dead Bradleys, the rest of the Bradleys retreating under smoke cover because they got lased by the Russian tanks, 2-4 launched TOW missiles, at most one dead Russian tank.
Can we please get some adjustments to IFV targeting logic so they don't consider giving away their position just to scratch the paintwork of a MBT a good idea? Especially not when they have far more suitable weapon systems available to them.
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OK, what about downloads completely aborting - "Network Error"? After a few hours of slow speed. No other internet problems on my end.
Same problem here. Several hours of downloading at ridiculously low speeds and then the download just aborts itself in the last 5 minutes. And now a new download won't even start anymore. At least throw up a torrent or make a dedicated downloader with auto-resume next time, this is a really amateuristic way to make your customers download files of this size.
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The "immature" part was regarding age and not behaviour. I just find a bit strange that someone is freely choosing actually less freedom (this is how i see Steam). No harm or disrespect intended to anyone.
No offence taken if that was your intent, and no offence meant either. But there have been certain commenters in this thread who tried using both the "age" and the "behaviour" interpretation of immature to simply dismiss posts made by the Steam supporters here.
And I don't see Steam as less freedom, at least not in the case of Battlefront. If these games were on Steam, we would no longer be limited to a handful of DRM activations without having to beg BF support for more. We would not have to go through complicated installation and licensing procedures to update our games, it would happen automatically. We would not have to search patches on third-party websites. We would have unlimited downloads of the latest game version at far faster speeds than BF provides and would continue having so even if BF went out of business, while in the current case all CMx2 titles become uninstallable without BF's activation servers. That in my opinion is a lot more freedom than we have today.
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Plus IMHO "no steam no buy" attitude is a feature of really young gamers. I can't imagine a mature CM player who says that.
The comments of that RPS article would prove otherwise. In a quick glance I counted at least 5 different people who used to play CM titles (even the original CMx1 titles), who used to be Battlefront customers, and who are no longer because BF "is a trainwreck", "is run by dinosaurs", "has an atrocious webstore",... (their words). All claim they would gladly become customers again if BF went to Steam. Are you going to dismiss them as immature just because they disagree with you, as so many others have already tried in this thread?
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Pfffffft. I've learned about CM just few years ago. From a friend from my gaming community. Not from BFC site. The more people out there know about the existence of CM, the better. Steam is not only a store, but also a 8 million+ (or what is it now?) gaming community that spreads the word around. That's beside the usual marketing that also does that. Don't want the exposure? Whatever. But this is nonsense, not an argument.
The number of Steam accounts is currently around 65 million, with a daily peak of nearly 8 million online at a single moment. The difference in exposure would be immense.
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Heh, what do you know, "Hi mom!"
That is a very interesting comment page to read through as well at the bottom, its pretty surprising how many of those guys won't buy a game unless theirs a steam code attached, and how many would buy CM if it was on steam.
Obviously that is complete nonsense and those people are clearly figments of our imagination. Steve and his decades of savvy business experience have proven decisively that everyone who will ever be interested in Combat Mission is already buying it from this site.
Good to see Tim Stone butting in on this. His articles also played a pretty major role in convincing Matrix to join Steam.
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Based on your previous posts you would neither understand nor accept the answers I give. You are absolutely convinced you know more than me already. Yet you have (as far as I can tell) zero experience to draw from. It puts me in a pretty tough position to have to prove myself despite my obvious achievements when you don't have to prove yourself at all in spite of zero achievements.
Ah, yet another convenient excuse to dismiss the argument. I don't need to post my achievements here, as my arguments tend to revolve around more than simply saying "I've got years of experience, so I automatically know better than you". I've posted numerous examples of companies overcoming their Steam reluctance and profiting from it, they get dismissed and ignored. I've generally discussed possible low-risk avenues to test out the Steam waters, I get insulted for them. Nobody is demanding you to prove yourself, but if you mingle in a discussion you'll get called out if your argument is nothing more than "I'm automatically right simply because I say so, now everyone else shut up".
What relevance does this have?
The relevant part is that he was forced to eat those words when it proved exactly how much bull**** they really were, just like you'll probably have to do in a few years time.
You are arrogant, abusive, and completely disinterested in an intellectually balanced discussion so you get treated appropriately. Personally, I am glad we have a reputation that tends to discourage people like you posting. You have nothing to offer that has much value to this Forum.
I'd like to see some examples of that "intellectually balanced discussion'" you claim to want here, because you certainly are not providing it. The first page alone contains how many posts simply trying to shut down discussion based on the line "It's been asked before, the answer will eternally be no, so stop talking about it"? I have in his entire thread done nothing but present argument upon argument, doing my very best to ignore the people insulting me for it. And you are right, that does appear to be behaviour you are discouraging on these forums. If it's an echo chamber you want, just come out and say it openly.
Here's another tip for the clever businessman you think you are: it does not reflect well upon a company for its public face to get personally involved in a public discussion like this, no matter who else is involved or what is being said. It reflects even worse on them when the public face actively picks sides with his favourites and revels in them insulting newcomers. No matter how this thread ends, it's pretty obvious to anyone with even the slightest PR experience that it has cost your company money and maybe even customers.
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Lets have some numbers to play with.
current customer base (CCB) is 1000.
Price of CM is $50.
Currently BFC makes 50,000 dollars for each release.
They go to Steam. Now half of their CCB also goes to Steam. price remains the same.
BFC makes $42,500
Lets say they get 100 new users on Steam.
They now make $46,000 because they cannibalized their own user base.
Except there are very easy ways to incentivize the current user base to continue purchasing directly from Battlefront, leading Battlefront's revenue to end up at $53.500 instead of a mere $50.000. (Steam's cut is well-known to be about 30%).
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Which is why we aren't going with Steam
Steve
And the question is again asked, how could going to Steam in addition to your current setup possibly lead to lower sales? But you've ignored pretty much every other question or fact inconvenient for your argument so far, so I don't expect an actual answer to this one either.
My guess is that companies like Slitherine don't have the direct sales strength that we do. There's some evidence to back up this presumption, but since none of us have access to their sales numbers it can't be proven. I can say at one point I did see some Matrix sales numbers and they were very unimpressive. I also have a fairly decent understanding of how Matrix operates as a business internally. Again, that might not be the case with all of their products or their sales in general, just saying that I have some sound reasons for my position.
The point here is that a company like Matrix might require Steam sales to stay in business. Therefore, they have everything to gain by being on Steam and everything to lose by staying off it. We feel the opposite is true for Battlefront.
The hilarious part is that I remember Erik over at Matrix saying pretty much the exact same thing to dismiss Steam a few years ago.
Which is why none of the Steam fanatics pushing the "exposure" fallacy bothered to try and counter his point.
It was countered numerous times in this thread, but once again that was all completely ignored. As are the insults being thrown around by some of the Battlefront fanboys. Guess this forum's reputation for moderator favouritism is as well deserved as its reputation of aggressively attacking unpopular opinions. I can see why I was warned not to bother coming here.
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There are a lot of free to play games on Steam, mods, and the ability to link games through Steam even if you bought them elsewhere. Steam doesn't require that you make them money to be on Steam. I can buy a game off of the Humble Bundle store and then register it to Steam. Steam gets no money from that transaction and probably loses money because they pay for server bandwidth to allow me to download the game.
At this point Steam (Valve) is competing more for mindspace than actual sales.
But in each of those cases the publisher or developer involved is selling something on Steam. Even in the case of f2p titles there typically is some monetary aspect where Steam is getting its cut. Mods are only on Steam for games that can be bought on Steam. Third-party stores selling Steam keys pay Steam somewhere in the process. Battlefront isn't selling anything on Steam, and in your proposal would merely use Steam as a free advertising service to lure customers to their own competing store. Valve gains nothing at all from your proposal, so why would they allow something like that? If Battlefront wants to try this, it'd be a great step in the right direction but I just don't see it happening.
Valve has already long won the competition for mindspace. They've become so big, they rarely bother competing with other online stores anymore which is why third-party stores tend to give better deals on Steam keys than Steam themselves these days. They're in it for the profits now.
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Earlier in this thread somebody (I can't remember who. Please forgive me) posted a new idea. The "Put CM on Steam" debate is done.
What about putting a CM demo on Steam? If Steam were to accept it as a free to play game BF could get the exposure without actually losing any kind of control.
Please tell me if this still is our horse. I think by talking about the demo we can start hitting the pony.
Steve, has this been considered? Would Steam allow a demo, without a full release?
This has never been done before, and gains nothing for Steam themselves, so will likely be impossible. Steam is still a store, they want products to sell. They are not a free advertising company to direct customers to other stores.
Hence my earlier suggestion: put Shock Force on Steam to test the waters. It's got an extensive demo, and its age means it's probably not selling much here on Battlefront anymore. But that suggestion probably got lost between all the insults and white noise generated by certain regulars here.
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Steve has earlier in this very thread pretty much admitted that he does not know the terms or requirements for a current-day Steam partnership, and that their reluctance to partner with Steam is based primarily on their past experiences with Gamersgate and Paradox, dating back to 2007 and earlier. So I would say my assumption is pretty much correct.I don't know if this is the case or not, but your posts come across as having an agenda of some kind. It's all nice to talk about Steam and everything, but seriously ..... perhaps you could step away from the computer for a while and take a few deep breaths before continuing. Making assumptions that Steve doesn't know what he is doing in terms of contracts and agreements between parties is a pretty big stretch considering the ample evidence of what BFC has done in the past. You may have an opinion as to whether such an agreement would be to the benefit of BFC or not, but I think it would probably be a safe assumption to make that Steve, at a minimum, actually understands the details of any agreement that may be struck with Steam. To assume that he hasn't even looked into it at all is probably a misguided and erroneous starting point for this sort of discussion
My agenda is merely twofold: primarily I would like to see this company prosper, since that means more and better games for me to enjoy. Secondly I'm bored and like a good discussion now and then, and some of the people here actually offer that.
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Being outnumbered isn't a problem. Having one's argument constantly ignored in favour of stupid insults is. The arrogance you perceive in my posts is nothing more than a mirror of the arrogance every unpopular opinion is treated to on these forums, as the behaviour of the forum regulars in this thread so aptly demonstrates. At least Steve is willing to engage in actual debate in between his dismissive posts.They have a point though, Steve's got 20 years under his belt, and while most of Mord's post's are a little over the top he is absolutely right about the arrogance. Don't let the rest of his post bother you and instead just focus on making a clear argument without the high and mighty part to it. Tragically this is actually how most of these posts go, person comes in wanting Steam, lists reasons, gets into arguments with everyone and begins with the attitude. Its annoying being out-numbered I get it, especially with some snarky comments thrown in, however you won't get anywhere with telling the owner of the company he has no idea what hes doing!
And just because Steve's company has survived for a few decades does not make his opinions infallible or correct today. The market has changed too much too quickly, and every other gaming developer or publisher that I've seen using the same "decades of experience" argument against Steam has been forced to admit they were wrong once they actually tried it. Battlefront does not appear to be growing despite the general gaming market and indie developers seeing record sales, their games no longer get mentioned in the gaming press, the last third party developer they sold on their store has left them for a more successful competitor (with upcoming Steam release of SC3). They survive, and that is good, but they could be thriving if only they took the same minor risk thousands of other small development studios have taken in the past 5 years.
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The evidence had been posted several times already, but it gets conveniently ignored by the fanboys in favour of such high quality discussion as "lol, what is wrong with you" and "ignore him, he's just soms marketing nerd".Yeah he much is, uh...my previous statements apply to the gentleman merely stating there interest in CM being brought to Steam not telling Steve he doesn't know how to do his job after all these years...
State your points without the arrogance guys and this all goes much better, evidence doesn't hurt much either!
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Well, here's a fact ( on a very minor scale ).
I have about 12-15 friends who are gamers. Roughly 8-10 of those are wargamers. I'd regard 2 of them as hardcore wargamers ( like me ).
I've introduced CM2 to all of them.
Only 1 of the hardcore wargamers took to it. He loves it, the others were all "meh" or "too hard". And that was with me explaining and guiding, doing my best to flatten the learning curve.
Face it - hardcore wargames are a niche within a niche.
PS : the one who liked it - he lives where the internet is ****ty. He would not like it on Steam
And would he have known he liked the game if you hadn't introduced it to him? Because that's what Steam does: it introduces new things to gamers who otherwise would never know those things existed. 1/15 times 65 million is still a hell of a lot of sales.
And having it on Steam wouldn't make any difference to him. With Battlefront, he has to download the game and be online once to activate. With Steam offline mode, he has to download the game and be online once to enable offline mode. Same amount of internet traffic required. And nobody here is asking Battlefront to become Steam exclusive either, so your friend could still simply buy the Battlefront version and be done with it.
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LOL. Man, what is wrong with you?
Mord.
Do you occasionally actually add anything to discussions, or do you just always troll?
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How about this. You are challenging the position of a 22 year industry veteran who believes this yet still makes wargaming his life. How about you provide proof that I'm wrong? To paraphrase you, I've had many people claim the position I stated is wrong and yet nobody ever seems cable of providing even the tiniest scrap of proof to back it up.
Not a scrap? Really? You must have missed the list of developers and publishers I posted on page 1: Matrix Games, Illwinter, Paradox,... All of them started out with the exact same lame excuses as you give: "We are industry veterans with decades of experience, we sell niche games that have no mainstream appeal, therefore our opinion to dismiss Steam is right and you are wrong." And yet all of them are now happily selling on Steam, because as soon as they actually tried it (thanks to customers like me who kept pushing them to), it turned out they had to admit all their decades of "industry experience" were quite simply wrong. The industry has changed radically the past decade, most of your experience is quite simply outdated.
I've already posted my proof. I'm still waiting on your proof that wargames can and will never succeed on Steam.
No, it's real life. Your position, on the other hand, is ludicrous if you think that everybody is a blank slate and can be equally attracted to whatever is thrust in front of them.
Please quote the part where I made this claim, or stop putting ridiculous strawmen into my mouth.
Wargaming has ALWAYS been a niche and ALWAYS will be. Why? For the same reasons the most intelligent news media will always play second fiddle (by a LONG shot) to tabloids. It is why you will never see a chain of restaurants that serves decent, healthy food overtake McDonalds.
Citation required. You are still merely passing your opinion off as fact, without any factual evidence to back it up.
As a businessman I have to work with reality, not wishful thinking. Well, if I want to stay in business anyway.
Any businessman who doesn't think increased exposure will lead to increased revenue is a very poor businessman indeed. As far as the gaming industry is concerned, Steam is reality. And a businessman can either work with reality, or hide from it.
You can have the best opera production in the world available for free, with no dress code, and I bet you'd see the upper crust not go and hardly anybody else would show up. Why? Because opera appeals only to those who like it.
And which opera will sell more tickets to opera lovers, the one that plays in the world's most famous venue with a lot of advertising or the one that's performed in the spare room above a bowling alley in some backwater town?
So catering a very expensive and lavish production for "my benefit" is a STUPID idea.
But the production is getting made anyway, so what's so scary about trying to maximize ticket sales?
People like what they like, they don't like what they don't like. It takes a heck of a lot more than exposure to change the equation. That is not elitism... it's self evident.
To know if you like something, you first have to try it. And step one in that process is knowing about its existence. Right now, very few people even know that games like these even exist, so how can they know whether they will like them?
Again, you don't have the same appreciation for the realities of Steam's business model from our perspective as the developer. You certainly don't have even remotely the same realistic, sound view of the market as we do.
No, but then again I merely pick the side the vast majority of people who do have a sound view of the market have chosen. And unless you think you are perfect and all-knowing and everyone else is just stupid, you should spend a very long time thinking very hard why all those people who know as much or even more about the market as you do are all deciding to do the exact opposite of what you're doing.
But as I've said over and over again... you have NO skin in the game, so it's a very safe thing for you to conclude when you have absolutely nothing to lose. Well, except Battlefront's products since if we go out of business I'm not sure when, or even if, someone will pick up our torch. There are few as resourceful AND stupid as us to make wargames of this quality.
So tell me, what exactly will going to Steam cost you? How exactly will expanding your markets cause you to go out of business? Nobody is asking for you to make different games or cut your prices, the additional cost of making the games Steam-compliant is negligable (and don't try to argue otherwise, there are plenty of developers actually selling on Steam who have disclosed the process) and you can even keep your current online store and its outdated DRM system. So what exactly is the massive risk you'd be taking here?
And if you're wary of throwing your newest title out there, try it out on the older ones first. How much revenue is Shock Force for example still bringing in? Put the entire Shock Force collection on Steam, try it out. Strip out the DRM, price it at $50 or whatever it's in your own store right now, ask Steam to make it a "Daily Deal" or "Weekly Deal" once at 20-50% off for exposure and see how much your revenue skyrockets. If it doesn't work, it's unfortunate and you'll have lost a few days programming work and some money, but it will hardly bankrupt your company and you'll finally have actual proof to support your position the next time this discussion inevitably rears its head. If it works, your company benefits immensely and you can expand your Steam catalogue, your profits and your company. All it takes is for you to abandon your fear and prejudices and take a calculated risk. It's what real and successful businessmen do, and it's what all your competitors are doing.
We have let some others sell our older products. Granted, nobody as big as Steam, but we definitely do have partnerships with others when we think the conditions are good. The sales from those sources tend to be OK to start with and then dwindle down to nothing fairly quickly. We expect the same from Steam, except with a much bigger headache to get it setup and a vastly lower chance of getting any money back from it to justify our expenses.
Ah, so here is where your fear and prejudice comes from. Gamersgate and the Paradox store could barely compete with Steam back in 2007-2008 when you tried this. And Steam has grown massively since then, and made the entry process a lot more convenient for new partners. The idea that your experience on Steam today would be similar to the ones you had on two fringe stores with poor service towards both customer and partner, one of which went bust in favour of Steam soon after, is rather ridiculous. If one-man indie operations can easily handle the Steam acceptance process, so can you.
You're also admitting here that you don't actually know the current Steam acceptance process, and thus your claim that it would be too much work and effort is nothing more than an uneducated guess. Again, not the conduct of a businessman.
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Wargaming appeals to a select few. It will not change by being exposed to more people. All it will do is expose more people to a game they don't want.
Citation required. I often hear this claim being thrown around, yet nobody ever seems to be capable of providing even the tiniest scrap of proof to back it up. The idea that a genre which is about war and combat is somehow only of interest to a tiny group of people, far smaller than the group of those interested in driving a delivery truck or a train for example, is quite simply ludicrous (and often stinks of elitism).
And even if it were true, Steam access would still mean a far greater exposure to those select few and thus increase revenue. Right now you'd still only be reaching the select few of those select few who happen to blunder into this site.
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This thread has gone the way of all the previous Steam threads.....poorly. The common theme is new forum members, who may or may not actually play Combat Mission, come on here and try to convince BFC that they are fools for not having Combat Mission on Steam. Forum members who have been buying the Combat Mission series for many years understandably respond in a negative fashion (whether or not they actually use Steam) to these know-it-all new forum members. The new forum members are offended that anyone dares to question them, and arguments fly. On occasion, BFC (in the form of Steve) will make a post or two describing why they aren't interested in participating in Steam at this time. Eventually, the thread gets locked. In the meantime, the thread gets many views, in the same way that a roadside traffic accident gets gawked at by rubberneckers.
As for me, as I stated earlier, I really don't care if Combat Mission is on Steam or not. I buy games on Steam, and I buy games that aren't on Steam. If I want to buy and play a game, it makes little difference to me if it is on Steam.
Just because some of us haven't wasted entire days of our lives posting thousands of comments on these messageboards does not mean we can't be long-time Battlefront customers. I've played every single CM title (except Afghanistan) since the year they were released. Yet on every forum where the Steam topic rears its head, there is at least one guy like you who dismisses the facts he doesn't like based on nothing more than the post count of those who post them. If anything, you should wonder why so many people who play these games want little interaction with these forums. They don't exactly have a reputation to be proud of on many of the more general gaming sites (at least those few who have even heard of Battlefront).
I don't care about where I buy my games either. My last non-Steam purchase was Elite: Dangerous, and I happily bought it from the developer's own store. My next purchase will be Black Sea, and I'll happily buy it from Battlefront. What I do care about is exposure. A game like Elite: Dangerous doesn't need Steam, it's got plenty of attention in the press and media, even tv ads, and as a result of all that good PR it sells like hotcakes and is guaranteed a future filled with good expansions and enjoyable content for me to buy. Nobody knows Combat Mission. It gets no press, it gets no attention and as a result it gets only a tiny fraction of the sales it could have. Less money means less content, longer waits between new releases, less value for my time and money. A simple Steam launch handled well means exposure, exposure means thousands of new customers, new customers means more money and more money means more Combat Mission for us all to enjoy. As was claimed as a dismissal of Steam by one of the anti-Steam crowd earlier, 99.9% of gamers supposedly aren't even interested in these games. Well, Steam has over 65 million customers: 0.1% of 65 million is still 65.000 customers. Has any Combat Mission title ever even sold that many copies?
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I'm going to guess that it isn't necessarily just a want to or contract whatever discussion within BFC as to whether or not they go onto Steam. I'm guessing there are probably technical issues as well in order for BFC to be able to work with Steam. BFC would probably have to build some sort of a back end way to interact with Steam somehow. That's just a guess on my part though.
There's two forms of Steam integration. The basic one means just selling your game on Steam, and requires nothing more than adding a single layer of standardized Steam code on top of your executable and making sure your patches are easily distributable without customers having to download gigabytes of files they already have. In Battlefront's case the patching system is already becoming compliant and the work that goes into changing the executable is trivial. This also means there is no real seperate code base if you also want to sell a non-Steam version of your game. The vast majority of titles on Steam are sold this way. The only minor problem for Battlefront in this would be having patches dependant on paid "engine upgrades", an already hotly-debated business practice. But there are programming ways to circumvent this issue.
The second form is making your game a Stamworks title. It adds a lot deeper integration with the Steam platform such as cloud saving, Steam matchmaking for MP, achievements, and so on. This requires more significant code changes and basically means Steam is mandatory for the game to run.
I have several Steam games, but I don't know what this means.
Perhaps I can learn something in this thread ?
Many people prefer to have all their games in one place and with one easy-to-launch interface, and Steam is typically most suitable candidate for this. In the bottom right corner of the Steam interface is a button called "Add a Game". Click on it, and one of the options you get is "Add Non-Steam Game". With this you can add any game you didn't buy on Steam, such as Combat Mission, by pointing Steam to the executable. That game then shows up in your Steam game library, you can use the Steam overlay when playing it, chat with your Steam friends from inside the game,... It basically makes the non-Steam game equivalent to the first form of Steam integration explained above.
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Wow, you seem to have a lot of experience. Been around a while, have you?
Before you answer, realize that many of us were buying our first games on 5 1/4" floppies, and that BFC has been successful since, what, 2000?
Am I supposed to be impressed now? I started on 8" ones, so get off my lawn you young whippersnapper.
The marketplace in 2000 was entirely different than the marketplace in 2015. Back then, PC games were still sold in actual physical stores. Nowadays only the very big ones or the ancient relics like Battlefront even bother with printing physical discs. What worked well in 2000 is a recipe for disaster in 2015. Battlefront has survived so far, but they're hardly thriving these days. After all, a company that has to price a small piece of vehicle DLC at $20 in order to even make a profit (and then still drops hints that they likely won't do it again because it wasn't really worth it) isn't exactly screaming "massive success story" to anyone with a bit of business sense.
Over 99.99% of gamers have never even heard of these titles. Thousands of potential customers who'll merrily spend their money elsewhere. There is only one single mainstream gaming source even mentioning the name Battlefront, and that's because they've got an author on staff (Tim Stone) who is a huge fan of the wargaming genre and who, just like many posters here, is constantly urging these antiquated business models to adapt and thrive in the modern gaming market. There is a joke game where you quite literally play a goat that is raking in profits Battlefront can only dream about. Train and farming simulators sell more in a single week on sale than Black Sea will in its entire lifetime. And all thanks to the massive exposure Steam brings. I'd also be quite interested in knowing how much Strategic Command 3 will outsell its predecessors now that it's most likely going to Steam.
Again, I've had this exact same discussion half a dozen times before. I've heard all these arguments before, I've been ignored for it, I've been insulted for it. And every single time I've been proven correct in the end. Paradox, Matrix Games/Slitherine, Illwinter, Longbow Games, ... They all strongly opposed Steam, they all predicted for years that going on Steam would ruin their company, they're all eagerly selling their games on Steam today. This time will be no different, so I really can't be bothered to be drawn into yet another endless debate about it. Either Battlefront will join the modern market in the next few years and we'll merrily enjoy many new Combat Mission games for decades to come, or they will stubbornly and scaredly vanish into obscurity and be replaced by someone else. Those Graviteam guys for example are going to be a really interesting competitor in a few years time, at the rate they are improving and innovating.
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perhaps, perhaps not. Not to be snide, but you don't have skin in the game (nor do I). This isn't just a question for BF of DRM, numbers of sales etc. They HAVE to make the right decision as it is their income and business at stake. They are apparently quite comfortable with their current model so unless you can meet with them and do a presentation to prove what you feel, you will never ever get any traction saying "I think" or "I feel". They won't and can't act on that. Anyone who seriously wants to see BF on Steam, posting here on the forum is pointless. Come up with the numbers and business model argument and contact BF. I doubt they will meet, but you never know. That is the only way they are ever going to reconsider - a serious business proposal not a forum post.
I disagree. I've seen several other developers and publishers make the same claims BF does about Steam. I've seen their forums flooded with countless topics where their customers ask and pressure about Steam, and I've seen countless people like you dismiss those efforts. And in almost every single case I've seen those companies give in to the pressure, join the future and profit immensely from it. I think the only case I've seen where it didn't happen, the company no longer exists.
Again, the choice is Battlefront's. But the people who keep asking for Steam are those who have BF's best interests in mind. And in the end, in my experience Battlefront will have to either bend... or break. Right now, very few gamers have even heard of these games. Obscurity and anonimity are never good for someone trying to sell a product, even though finding a niche might keep them alive for a while.
The dearth of publishers providing their own digital download service these days says everything.
Yes, it says that people realize what a massive amount of money can be made from Steam (by all parties involved) and want their share of the spoils. And the lack of success of these alternative services says even more.
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Wouldn't steam mean having to log on and use an active internet connection each time U want to battle?
It would also mean Battlefront can get rid of its DRM system, saving the money it costs them and saving customers from the frequent problems with activations. It offers customers infinite re-downloading and possible Steam Workshop access for easy access to mods. And Steam has had an off-line mode for many years now.
This topic has been discussed many times before. Those conversations can be searched for.
The short answer is that BF has looked into this very carefully and the cons of being on Steam outweigh the pros. So, there is zero chance CM will be on Steam, unless Steam makes changes to its policies that would alter the pro/con balance.
Yeah yeah, I've heard the same excuses a dozen times before from other companies. And inevitably, once they actually try Steam, it turns out most of the cons were bull****, profits skyrocket and those companies can't get enough of Steam.
Look at Matrix Games. For years they claimed, just like Battlefront does, that their many years of publishing experience and all their sales data proved that going to Steam would only hurt their profits. Customers kept pushing them to Steam however, and now that they actually tried it, it turned out all their data and experience was quite simply wrong. Nearly every new game they publish gets a Steam release these days.
If Battlefront is smart, they'll embrace the future, as so many others have done and profited by. A game like Black Sea would top the Steam sale charts for at least a week, instead of being confined to obscurity on this tiny little corner of the internet. But as so often is being said, most wargaming developers and publishers are scared of both change and success.
Suicidal IFVs
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
And the suicidal tendencies don't seem to be restricted to IFVs either. I've just noticed Humvees eagerly opening up with their machineguns against both tanks and IFVs at long range, once again resulting in nothing more than their immediate deaths.