NiceBoat

I don't understand why this argument keeps coming back. I bought the game well before the war. Then the war made me realize how inadequate the simulation was for the era the game was trying to portray. So, back to your comparison, that's like ordering a juicy burger and then learning it was only 50% meat several weeks later. And, just for clarity - yes, it was somewhat enjoyable at the time, but I couldn't shake off the impression that the taste was a bit weird. Now, I do realize that BFC dropped this game like a hot potato because of the war, but unfortunately this means that they left it in a somewhat disappointing state. I still hope it gets updated at some point later, because it has the potential to be for late 2010s what CMSF was for late 2000s. That's really all there is to it. I understand that the real war is beyond the scope of the game and in fact I think the decision to exclude it from official content is both reasonable and perfectly justified. I think one of the biggest problems with CMBS is the fact that drone-corrected artillery became so prolific in the real world in response to the 2014-2015 fighting, at least to an extent. Obviously, this couldn't be anticipated when the game was designed, so there's a big discrepancy here. This discrepancy became really glaring in 2022. I guess you could argue that in the CMBS timeline drones aren't as prolific as they are in the real world because 2014 never happened in CMBS and thus my argument is mostly moot, but I think this makes the game two steps detached from reality and that's just one step too far.

I'm sorry, but CMBS doesn't exactly fill me with positive vibes. I'm really disappointed in the state of this product, and even more disappointed in the fact that this war is being used as an excuse to keep it broken. If CMSF was updated with drones to better depict the 2008 battlefield (because IIRC it didn't have US drones on release), why can't CMBS receive a drone update or a TOE update to better depict a hypothetical 2017 battlefield? The current war has nothing to do with this argument aside from the fact that it proves modern drone use isn't at all like how it was depicted in CMBS. Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, commercial civilian drones became available to the public around 2016, and yet CMBS treats drones as a hi-tech tool that isn't available to AFU. If you're going to accuse me of using an "unnecessary volume of words", at least engage with my argument as it was presented. I think I made a pretty good case why CMBS isn't an accurate depiction of a hypothetical 2017 battlefield, I could really do without the remarks on my delivery. I paid for this game, I have the right to be disgruntled, disappointed, sour, and/or salty. Sorry if you find that offensive.

I mean it isn't really a disaster, it just makes the game less exciting and pretty redundant. Black Sea was an opportunity to introduce a transparent, truely modern battlefield to the series, you could even say the attempt was there, but it just failed to deliver because the real world trends were more significant than BFC anticipated and the counterplay they introduced is just awkward. It's not the end of the world, but it turns CMBS into a green CMSF reskin with less content, APS, and absolutely terrible multiplayer balance. It's also kind of infuriating to play because, again, some of these issues could be fixed with a few notepad edits if in-game TOE were moddable. It's also worth noting that the game is set in 2017, and first Mavic drones appeared on the market in 2016 if I remember correctly, so you need to get really deep into the whole "alternate timeline" argument to make what's represented in the game make sense. Consider this: if you were asked to recommend CMBS to someone, what would you say? "It's a fictional alternate timeline with a war in Ukraine that fails to portray drone-corrected artillery correctly because of weird TOE and funky countermeasures, but hey, at least you get APS"? Keep in mind that while the conflict in CMSF is fictional, the game does a good job representing GWOT-era NATO forces and certain types of OPFOR. CMBS could be similar for post-GWOT years, and if you use the editor it can actually get close, but the amount of effort required to get this kind of experience rolling makes it a very hard sell. I don't really think it's nice of Battlefront to leave their game in such a state regardless of their reasons, especially when the base game costs as much as CMCW and CMSF, which are significantly better at representing their respective eras. Compared to the other modern warfare CM titles, CMBS sticks out like a sore thumb. It's the sick man of the series, and this sucks if you're primarily interested in contemporary tactics.

You're quoting me out of context. They treated all drones as hi-tech gear, as evidenced by the fact only US and RU have access to them in-game. This assumption turned out to be blatantly wrong. And yes, it was likely possible to anticipate that development in 2012-2014, as neither the components nor the technology were prohibitively expensive at that point, although it'd be foolish to hold this against BFC because they're game-makers, not drone market analysts. Still, failing to update the TOE when the kind of warfare CMBS is trying to simulate turned out to be heavily influenced by cheap, readily available drones is something that can be held against them, which is why I'm criticizing them. As it stands, CMBS simply fails as a modern warfare simulator unless you're willing to go the extra mile and create scenarios that dodge this issue. It's literally impossible to have a realistic UA vs RF game in Quick Battle mode because there's no way to get the kind of transparent battlefield that emerged in the real world. You can kind-of, sort-of get it if you play US vs RF, but the force purchases required to achieve that state are downright ridiculous. Now, you could argue that this isn't a big deal, but if you play multiplayer it kind of is. Which is one of the reasons people are complaining here. As a consumer, I'm also flabbergasted by the fact that this issue could've been rectified to some extent by a simple TOE change or a new force selection setting, and maybe the adjustment of the way you can target small drones, but for some reason wasn't. Which is why I said I'm not planning to play CMBS going forward unless this gets fixed (well maybe I will, but definitely not in QB mode) - the game promises to simulate modern combat, but fails to deliver because, again, drones. Unless you put in additional time and effort to design scenarios around the aforementioned issues, in which case it pretty much works. And the fact that it's so close, yet ultimately broken is what's really annoying to me. I shouldn't have to pump out my own scenario pack just to get the kind of simulation I get out of the box in any mode with CMCW or CMSF.

To be honest, even a setting allowing the players to pick mixed Ukrainian/US units in Quick Battles would address at least some of the issues. Why this isn't a thing when it's perfectly possible to do this in the scenario editor is just incomprehensible to me. There is a setting for "Random Blue", why not just "Blue"? If someone doesn't want to use it, just PM your opponent to keep it off. I understand this option wasn't included to make the game... I don't know, more realistic? It is available in the scenario editor and the official campaign features a mixed unit at one point. Besides, Ukraine having some access to Western equipment would make the game more realistic, not less. To make PvP more balanced? We already can adjust force ratios to generate extremely lopsided games, so this wouldn't be a fair argument. It just feels lazy and extremely constraining, as if the devs wanted to limit player freedom in one particular mode for no specific reason. And it really exacerbates all the issues I mentioned in my post above. This game would actually be very interesting to play in QB mode if players were allowed to deploy mixed units. Imagine playing as RF when your opponent has Bulats instead of M1A2s. Just this little change alone would fix like 90% of issues this game currently has when it comes to multiplayer QBs. Maybe we should just start a self-help group that creates the initial Custom Scenario save from unit lists provided by both "Custom QB" players. All it takes is just an additional person that doesn't participate in the game and can be bothered to spare 15 minutes to generate the scenario without participants knowing what the other guy has.

I'll give some feedback, because this issue has been bugging me and I recently tried to play a few CMBS PBEM scenarios and it left a sour taste in my mouth. I don't really enjoy this game because of small things that don't even require Battlefront to change the setting. It's mostly about how they handled drones - Ukraine doesn't have access to them, Americans can't shoot them down, Russians and Ukrainians can unless it's that one expensive US drone - it's all a mess, honestly. And while I salute Battlefront for their clairvoyance, the current events have clearly shown many drones to be cheap consumables that have a huge impact on combat and can't be dealt with in a cost-efficient manner (or sometimes at all). So I'm stuck with a game that can either be a very clumsy simulation of a US vs RF confrontation, or a weird reskin of the Cold War with APS. It's just not interesting to me - CMCW does the 80s better, and I can't explore more modern tactics because the balanced scenarios axe the drone game (both sides are guaranteed to buy SPAA), and the imbalanced scenarios make it so that both sides see everything at all times. Obviously some of this can be worked around with custom scenarios, but it's a lot of effort for things that should've already been included in the game. Especially for multiplayer, which is how I do 90% of my CM anyway. Just to reiterate: the argument isn't based on real vs alternate timeline. The argument is based on the irrefutable fact that Battlefront designed CMBS around a very poor interpretation of drones as something that's hard to produce and very hi-tech. This wasn't true for any "near future" scenario back when the game was released (although it was probably harder to anticipate at that time) and it isn't true now. I'm not asking for additional features, I'm not asking for a setting change, I'm asking for small (but very significant) TOE changes that in hindsight should've been there since 2014. And if it's not too much, add cheap observation drones with less FOV than Zala to simulate something like Mavics. Unless this happens, I'm planning to stick to CMCW for all my modern warfare gameplay.