superfly71 Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Do you really believe your strategy of selling addons for 55 Dollars and making people pay for patches (because let's face it, your great "improvements" are no more than that) will pay off? Take a look at your pathetic MP experience - wake up! It's not 1996 anymore... Getting any better? No? Meh... But heck, expecting your fans to dish out 50 bucks non the less! Oh wait - MP may be in it for CM 3.0 - for another 50$. Lol. You have lost me as customer. And fan. Sorry to say but you are traveling down the wrong road... Building communities works differently. GL to you gentlemen, but you no longer deserve my time or money. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Useless thread is useless. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Warrior Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Ahhh. Wow. I have never paid for a patch. Each to there own though. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mord Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 LOL. I guess he's upset. Mord. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noob Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 It's not 1996 anymore... Well he got that right. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Useless thread is useless. No it isn't. It is actually real helpful in knowing who to add to my ignore list. Then again I don't need to assuming he has already left. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 I believe he may be off on his estimate of the CMBN v2.0 upgrade cost by a factor of ten(?). CMFI of course doesn't need an upgrade at all. Ah well, I'm off to the BMW website to complain that they don't offer me free cars. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Based on your advice we decided to shut down Battlefront and go out of business... we really don't know what we're doing. There are so many others in this business already doing what we're doing, it was getting pretty crowded and our crappy skills were no longer cutting it. We will now go to work for Blizzard and bring you the next version of Warcraft.... or Call of Duty.... or World of Tanks... or Farmville 2: The Revenge of Porky... or... You need to remember that Battlefront is a small company. While a number of customers have voiced the desire for multiplayer, it is pretty hard to execute and it would take quite a bit of time to come up with a good, working system (which may involve some type of server). To be honest I would guess that less than 1% of our customers would actually use the multiplayer feature and even then it would usually be less than 4 people. This isn't a game you're going to find on XBox Live... if that's the type of community you're suggesting we build. You've voiced your displeasure about our games. That's fine, we won't force you to purchase our games with some persuasion from our 'Sicilian Friends'. Obviously you prefer the games made by larger companies. Nothing wrong with that. They definitely have talented programmers and artists and a bit more money to develop the kind of games you prefer. I don't know if Moon has mentioned how much the 2.0 upgrade will cost. I somewhat doubt it will be US$55.00 for the upgrade (though possibly close to it). Part of the reason for the cost is that the upgrade is not just an engine upgrade with a new executable, but ALL of the artwork and 3D models have to be re-done for bump mapping. So that ends up being quite a bit of effort. You can continue to play the games you have and there will be a patch or two for those versions, but future modules will require the 2.0 upgrade. Eventually the 3.0 upgrade may become available with other changes, probably at a time when there are no more forthcoming modules for those games that can be upgraded. Admittedly some of the changes don't sound like much when you're the customer. And yes, we realize that a number of people are disappointed with the multiplayer experience (primarily because it doesn't offer turn-based over the internet - rather than multi-multiplayer that you're speaking of here). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Admittedly some of the changes don't sound like much when you're the customer. Quoting Bill the Cat - Pffffffft speaking as a customer who does take good care that he isn't spending hard earned money on fluff - I LOVE the Version 2 feature list and the enhancements to the graphics for all the models (not just vehicles but everything in the game). You guys don't need to explain anything, it is all in the announcement. If that isn't enough for this guy he's obviously better off spending his money elsewhere. The alternative could have been CMBN became relegated to the bin with CMSF as not having a continued upgrade path and THAT would have been a shame and a loss to me of an investment. whew, that gets me off the hook from any visit from your Sicilian friends right? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Childress Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 GL to you gentlemen Nice. That sweetened the dyspeptic discharge a bit, Mr. 8 Posts guy. You've voiced your displeasure about our games. That's fine, we won't force you to purchase our games with some persuasion from our 'Sicilian Friends'. Why not? Isn't Sicily within spitting distance of Malta? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 ...our 'Sicilian Friends'.... Aha! The motivation for doing Italy "next" becomes clear. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Balboa Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 I think what the OP and others need to realize is that BF is a small company and this is a very small niche market. To be honest there are not very many games out there that I have spent as much time as I have playing this one. No one is forcing anyone to upgrade and you still have what you paid your money for, you can keep playing it for as long as you want without spending another dime. Me personally, I don't mind spending $40.00 every 6 months or so to stay current and to keep adding new content for a game that I really enjoy. What does that come out to monthly? $6-$7 US? Wow I spend that much on a single lunch and some places charge that for a cup of what they call coffee .... Heck I spend ~$80.00 a month for satellite TV and still can't find anything to watch 90% of the time. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Take a look at your pathetic MP experience - wake up! Someone should mention that Combat Mission won several prestigious awards in 2011, including the 2011 Game of the Year community choice award at Wargamer.com (not exactly known as a BFC booster site), and Eurogamer.dk Strategy game of the year. 'Wake up' indeed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzz Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Schrullenhaft .... "shut down Battlefront and go out of business... we really don't know what we're doing.":) Maybe I don't know what I am doing either but I keep coming back as a customer for more Battlefront. I enjoy what this "small business" creates. If anyone finds a "business bottleneck" then don't pay or play but check back occasionally. Battlefront is not going away. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fizou Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Good riddance is all I can say.. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Balboa Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 I believe he may be off on his estimate of the CMBN v2.0 upgrade cost by a factor of ten(?). CMFI of course doesn't need an upgrade at all. Ah well, I'm off to the BMW website to complain that they don't offer me free cars. Maybe you should demand that they give you the 2012 model with all the upgrades for free just because you bought the 2011 model? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 It would be nice to have a look at what the tradeoff of charging for patches is. The money per customer isn't significant (judging from the Vista patches) but a lot of bad blood can develop. It's nice enough to point to being a small company but hey you don't want to make it any smaller, right? It also depends on what the patch contains. Charging for fixing OS issues that shouldn't have been screwed up in the first place looks worse than backporting gameplay. I suggest that if charging for patches does happen it should throw in a couple goodies like vehicles new to the old game. I hope this can be brought in line with the narrow scope of today's CMx2 games. Changing licensing in a patch to something different than what the base game had at that point should also be out. All these things cost customers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vark Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Maybe he'll be back when BF do an Operation Hercules module? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZPB II Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 "Wake up! It's not 1996 anymore..." Hahaha, same can be said to you. All the major developers with the most money on the block are charging stuff like 20 dollars for 4 new maps for Call of Duty. Even a brand new CoD game is a lukewarm rehash of the previous ones with limited new features. 10 dollars for a new character for Mass Effect. 10 euros for a new skin in League of Legends. This is content that is significantly cheaper to develop and they charge more for it than BFC! This is how mainstream developers of today operate and you think that a niche developer with 2 programmers and a reliance on their fanbase for scenarios/campaigns could somehow make do without charging for stuff they make? You are hopelessly delusional. I don't think this community would have liked you anyway. We don't believe in getting games for free. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZPB II Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Also, Redwolf. I believe BFC has stated that there is a marked difference between patches and upgrades. Patches will be free and they will contain the usual bugfixes etc. whereas upgrades will contain brand new features and thus will cost. Since it's new content being added instead of old content being fixed so it works as advertised. Ofcourse it is a grey area but that is the general gist of it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Quoting Bill the Cat - Pffffffft... I thought that Bill the Cat's only observation on life, the universe, and everything was "*kack*" or some variation thereof. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 The money per customer isn't significant (judging from the Vista patches) Opinion, stated as fact. For all you know the profit per customer for the Vista patch might be astronomical. but a lot of bad blood can develop. Opinion again, stated as fact. There are certainly two or three folk with preternaturally blunt axes who've decided to make this a casus belli, but as far as I can tell most folk - those who even cared - were quite happy with the arrangement. Confusing fact with opinion is a logical fallacy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Balboa Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 It would be nice to have a look at what the tradeoff of charging for patches is. The money per customer isn't significant (judging from the Vista patches) but a lot of bad blood can develop. It's nice enough to point to being a small company but hey you don't want to make it any smaller, right? I don't think BF said they were charging for patches. The upgrades they are charging for are new features. A patch would be a fix to an existing part of the game that's not working as intended. I know its a fine line to walk in some situations because we all have an opinion on what should have been included in the original game and we even can question what existing features are working as intended. An example of this is an improvement to an existing feature, is this a fix or an upgrade? At the end of the day we all have to determine perceived value vs $. I trust that BF is making an honest effort to provide value to their customers while at the same time putting together a business model that keeps them in business. If at some point I don't feel like I'm getting adequate value for the $ I'm spending then I'll stop buying. So I respect the OP's right to make that decision even though I don't agree with his rant .. The alternative is BF not being able to stay in business and that would be a sad day indeed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Everything is fine then, isn't it? The alternative is BF not being able to stay in business and that would be a sad day indeed. Regardless of whether this affects this particular issue or not, chasing away customers with what looks like murky business tactics isn't a good way to continue either. Now you are making the step of automatically assuming that charging more means more money for BFC. Which might be true, there is at least one wargame that charges $125 for the base game, plus money for bigger patches, and they are doing very well. Is that what you would want for CMx2? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Everything is fine then, isn't it? I can make my choice. You can make your choice. And BFC, after producing a dozen CM games in 12 years, can make their choice. What could be finer than that? chasing away customers with what looks like murky business tactics isn't a good way to continue either. Once more with opinion masquerading as fact. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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