CM 2.0 Ripoff - wrong payment strategy

[Rocky Balboa]

Well but you also categorically deny any way to call the game from the outside.

If you would add the ability to call the CM binary with a commandline specifying a host and port to connect to then outsiders could roll the opponent finder website any way they liked and they simply call the game with the result. Even better if you wrote the results to disk and the tool picks them up.

Same issue as with map data XML im/export to support external tools to help with map making. It isn't just that you don't have the resources to do fancy tools yourself. You deny even the smallest bit of interface so that others can do it. And other games have demonstrated that this works.

Both of these things could be implemented (and sometimes did) with keyboard/mouse emulation but that is what I rate as a dysfunctional customer/business relationship.

I happen to agree with you on this point wholeheartedly. If BF would allow us to start up the binary with command line options such as ... [save game to load for PBEM] or [ip & port for online MP], then the community could build thier own MP lobby as well as some other features that would enhance the player experience .... I would pay for a 3.0 upgrade just to have this feature alone ....

[Chek]

Please, anyone and everyone will tell you that the controls for the game are clunky at best.

Speak for yourself mate,I find them fluid and intuitive.

[womble]

Please, anyone and everyone will tell you that the controls for the game are clunky at best.

Not denying that. Have complained about it often. I still don't see where movable waypoints are in StarCraft.

Regardless of how big your development team the basics could have been thought out better.

You can't know that, not having been in the meetings where they, for example, junked the idea of fully destructible terrain on whatever grounds. They could have been thought out differently, but given the resources, there will always be compromises and "we'll do that later"s.

Wow really grab a thesaurus, because your obviously and idiot.

Well, that's one in the eye for "obvious" cos I happen to know I'm not an idiot.

That's like saying there's no milk in dairy, no beef in meat.

On the contrary. Tactics are the building blocks of strategy. Tactics are the means by which strategy is executed. The game isn't primarily about the strategy, it's about the tactics you use to win. Nor does it have the pretensions other games have to represent the strategic level of production and resource collection. If meat didn't have beef in it, it'd be the poorer. If there were no milk, dairy would never have been conceived as a concept. The two analogies aren't even analogous to each other. Tactics and strategy are different and lean on one another. Your analogy is as poor as your grasp on the realities of game development. Mostly because you fail to address context.

Also, CM's heart is still beating once a minute. It's a turn based game you can play in real time, not a real time game you can play in turn based. WeGo is the real game, and RT mode is just candy for the twitchers. Hopefully it snared enough extra cash to keep the real game in development.

And in your final attempt at brilliance you completely proved my point. All I want is a basic component found in almost every online game thats been done before.

And you've missed the very basic point that instead of "other games" we have CMBN. And long may that continue to be the case.

Oh yeah, there are plenty of games that don't have any inherent internal matchmaking tools. Hearts of Iron doesn't, to my knowledge. Doesn't have a pause function in MP either; you just play on "real slow", once the action begins.

So if, when, they finally implement an online match making system; I guess Ill just have to be happy sneering about that too.

Nah, you'll be sneering about something else.

And you want to talk about reality? The reality is that if you go buy an online multi player...

[JonS]

Wow really grab a thesaurus, because your obviously and idiot.

That sentence has so much win packed in to just ten words!

And by 'win' I mean 'fail'.

[MikeyD]

Its like Sheldon from 'The Big Bang Theory' has given up his hobby of comic books and model trains and had decided to instead jump into computer wargaming.

[Glukx Ouglouk]

And in your final attempt at brilliance you completely proved my point. All I want is a basic component found in almost every online game thats been done before. So if, when, they finally implement an online match making system; I guess Ill just have to be happy sneering about that too.

And you want to talk about reality? The reality is that if you go buy an online multi player 99.9% of the time it will have a match making lobby. THAT IS REALITY. And there's probably a good amount of customers that don't buy the game. Because like me they read the games forum or as questions; find out there's no online match up system and do not buy the game. Like really, 65 dollars for a game with no match up system?

If you really wanted to talk about reality, you would also mention that those games either:

- sell several orders of magnitude more copies than a CM game can ever hope to sell, allowing the developers to afford many, many times more man-hours of development work than what BFC can spend;

- and/or have much simpler mechanics compared to a serious tactical wargame like the CM series, allowing the devs to spend much more time on the "candy-coating" aspects;

- and/or are simply focused on the multi-player experience first and foremost, so they set their priorities accordingly.

As for the good amount of people who don't buy the game (which, incidentally, means that they are not customers...), the reason why they don't buy the game isn't because it doesn't have a multi-player lobby. They don't buy it because CM games are part of a very niche genre, that very few people care about, unlike popular genres like FPSes, RTSes, RPGs, sports games, and so on.

Its like Sheldon from 'The Big Bang Theory' has given up his hobby of comic books and model trains and had decided to instead jump into computer wargaming.

Unlikely. Sheldon Cooper would probably find the CMx2 interface to be far too user-friendly for his taste.

[Battlefront.com]

Please, anyone and everyone will tell you that the controls for the game are clunky at best.

Actually, there is a thread going on where people are saying just that. Sorry, but you are establishing a track record of confusing opinion for fact and pounding anybody who disagrees with you with abuse. Like this gem:

Wow really grab a thesaurus, because your obviously and idiot. No strategy in tactics, no tactics in strategy? That's like saying there's no milk in dairy, no beef in meat. Your attempt to be clever leaves nothing to say.

This is your first official warning. Continue violating our very simple rules for conduct and you will be banished from this Forum. Your continued attacks on opinions that you do not agree with, while at the same time falsely portraying yourself as being attacked, has gotten very old.

Hit your own reset button or be ejected from here. The choice is completely yours.

And you want to talk about reality? The reality is that if you go buy an online multi player 99.9% of the time it will have a match making lobby.

Perhaps, but we are not an online multiplayer game. We are a primarily single player game with multiplayer options. Does it have all the bells of games which are more focused on online play? No, but then again they don't have tons of stuff that CM has.

I addressed the choices we have to make in a previous thread. If you read it and don't understand it, fine. But you should at least take a crack and seeing things from a perspective other than your own.

Steve

[Vark]

Some of my units are a bit battered, but I can't find any waterfalls, can someone help? I also remember someone said I could produce a tank factory, which bit of the UI do I go to? I'm running out of Pz Iv's and I need a dozen for my next attack in three turns.

Finally, I don't want to be an idiot so can someone show me how to grab a Thesaurus? I can't seem to find any dinosaurs on the TO&E so assume its a random event, created by the near human AI. Oh, and what's this about a lobby? I'm now afraid if BF created it, and I entered it, I'd be, unrealistically, shot in the back by someone I've overlooked, like the other poster said.

One good thing though, I'm writing to Ford expecting that they upgrade my car, because apparently a new model has been released, since I bought mine. I guess my iphone gets automatically upgraded as well, sweet.

[Battlefront.com]

Well, if that is how you see the future then that's good.

The cool thing is how I see the future is how the future is Well, at least with this stuff. I'm still not holding out much hopes of getting a date with Charlize Theron.

You have to understand that some people are jumpy about it because you did both of this before.

Which people? The ones that invent complex conspiracy theories and have predicted us going out of business more times than can be counted? There's no hope for that lot.

The Vista patches for CMx1 did fix technical problems and not only did you charge for them

Of course we charged them. I still find this hilarious that someone playing a game for 8 years can whine so damned much about $5. I sometimes think we shouldn't have done it at all. Few companies would have bothered.

for those customers who were still using CD copy protection check or no copy protection (euro release or whatever it was) it did introduce eLicense. You did change the license on games previously released (and patched) under a different license.

People didn't have to buy it. Completely optional, so no sympathies for people who wanted it but wanted to still use their CD crack to not use the CD. Especially since eLicense meant they didn't have to use either the CD or the CD crack.

And it was charging for technical (OS/driver) fixes.

For an 8 year old game that had long expired technical support. Let me be clear about this... someone who has a problem with this is living in a different world of reality. We have no obligation to support software indefinitely and therefore no obligation to fix anything. We are a for profit company and we already give too much of our time away for less than it's worth.

Phil didn't even backport the fortifications victory count bugfix you had in CMAK to CMBB which IMHO was the worst of the whole affair, even the least little bit of value added missing.

So you would have been happy to pay $5 if we included that fix?

The patch was billed as a Vista fix. Nothing more, nothing less. It worked as advertised. The list of things people wanted that patch to be is irrelevant.

If you plan not to do that again that would go a long way to making people feel more comfortable with your plans.

Do what again? Charge $5 for a fix to a product we hadn't actively supported in many years? Yup, we won't do that again because I can promise you we will never release a patch for any product that is 2 versions less than the current shipping version. Not for free, not for fee.

Well it's the right thing to do if it comes to it. If something is screwed up for "technical" reasons offer both a free patch for just this problem to keep people running and a value added patch for money.

For games that are within a reasonable period of support, certainly. But 8+ year old games? No, we won't be releasing patches for them like we did for CMx1.

Steve

[Redwolf]

So you would have been happy to pay $5 if we included that fix?

I would have happily have payed $20. This whole thing isn't about the money.

I discussed that with Phil at the time. It was very disappointing that not even this code fix which was in CMAK 1.00 was backported to CMBB.

Why? Because for years we heard that the reason why no patch for CMBB is released is that any patch, no matter how trivial and how much the code change has been tested in CMAK, has to go through full QA. That is a fair enough point. But the next thing we know is that there is a patch, and QA, and it's still not in.

Anyway, so you did change the license on people? You don't think that's a PR problem?

[Sixxkiller]

Shocker, I did a Google search on the games you designed and what a "shocker" I didnt find anything.

[sburke]

somebody check the turntable, the record is skipping.

[Michael Emrys]

Please MD, some of these blokes are confused enough already ... Now you'll have them actually looking for health crystals and waterfalls in 2.0

Ah. Then I guess that we had better not mention the Golden Princess who will be yours when you attain the Seventh Level of Nirvana.

Michael

[Sixxkiller]

%^%$ Emry's. You forgot to put SPOILER ALERT.

[ASL Veteran]

My Master of Orion 3 and Wizardry 8 games no longer work on my computer since I've switched to Windows 7. I'm not even sure that my Lords of the Realm 2 will work anymore even though I got an updated version from Great Old Games (GOG). Somebody fix or do sumfink!!

[Steiner14]

Perhaps, but we are not an online multiplayer game. We are a primarily single player game with multiplayer options.

I think that's an understatement. IMO playing the AI means only to discover 10-20% of CM's REAL beauty.

The cool thing is how I see the future is how the future is Well, at least with this stuff. I'm still not holding out much hopes of getting a date with Charlize Theron.

I have heard success in that regard is an exponential function of lenght - of the yacht. And the earlier the release of CMFI, the earlier you can upgrade your yacht...

[Sixxkiller]

Lords of the Realm 2. Somebody fix or do sumfink!!

Whats really funny is that was Steve's game. Since we are all here, you may as well demand that he upgrade it for free for ya.

[Battlefront.com]

I would have happily have payed $20. This whole thing isn't about the money.

If it were about money we wouldn't have done it at all.

As I said, when I see the unreasonable expectations and groundless complaining I think "we shouldn't have bothered" because we didn't do it for money. Fortunately for the rest of the people enjoying the Vista patch, we understand that your position is extreme and not representative of our average customer. We are very determined to make sure we don't allow our decisions to be swayed by people who are determined to be unhappy with us.

I discussed that with Phil at the time. It was very disappointing that not even this code fix which was in CMAK 1.00 was backported to CMBB.

I'm disappointed I haven't become rich from slaving away making wargames while other people in my industry have gotten ungodly rich off of crap games. We all have reasons to be disappointed.

Why? Because for years we heard that the reason why no patch for CMBB is released is that any patch, no matter how trivial and how much the code change has been tested in CMAK, has to go through full QA. That is a fair enough point. But the next thing we know is that there is a patch, and QA, and it's still not in.

We didn't want to complicate QA with gameplay stuff. Plus, this was never intended to be a gameplay patch. Starting to make it one would have only invited more criticism. "You fixed this, why didn't you fix this? You guys suck".

It's a pity that people don't understand that being constantly nasty and negative really takes the incentive out of going above and beyond the call of duty. Oh wait... I forgot we have some sort of duty to forever support a game no matter what. My mistake.

Anyway, so you did change the license on people? You don't think that's a PR problem?

Considering that the only people that I've heard complaining about this are the same people that espouse hatred for everything we do, then buy our games anyway... no, I don't. Even if this tiny minority of disgruntled customers actually put their money where their mouths were and stopped buying our games, we wouldn't notice it in terms of sales.

And we didn't change the license on people. The license for CMx1 customers not using the Vista patch was identical to the day they bought it. If someone opted to voluntarily purchase the Vista patch they, of course, had to use the new DRM system that came with it. Seeing as nobody liked the CD check before, this change in DRM was actually an improvement. Well, unless you were violating the original license by having more two copies installed.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Whats really funny is that was Steve's game. Since we are all here, you may as well demand that he upgrade it for free for ya.

To be clear, this wasn't "mine". I was just the QA Manager on LOTR2. And calls for a patch would be fun to make since the company that made it, Impressions, is dead. But I suppose that's just an excuse for not supporting their stuff forever

Steve

[sburke]

The Vista patches for CMx1 did fix technical problems and not only did you charge for them

Of course we charged them. I still find this hilarious that someone playing a game for 8 years can whine so damned much about $5. I sometimes think we shouldn't have done it at all. Few companies would have bothered.

Steve

Steve - No good deed ever goes unpunished, you should know that by now.

It is much easier to establish your cred by skewing the truth and make yourself out to be the self appointed guardian of all that is good and righteous rather than to actually maybe produce something. (sounds almost like someone is practicing to get in to politics).

I stupidly wasted my time reading that BS thread over at GS "I am beginning to get the feeling BFC doesn't know it's own product". Like listening to a bunch of stoned adolescent teens blathering and complaining about the unfair and bogus rules their parent come up with. God help me what a pathetic bunch. Any thought I had about honesty and integrity went right out the window.

I bought the Vista patch. I can't tell you how happy I was to be able to continue to play CMBB and CMAK a little longer all the while hoping we'd see ww2 again with the CMx2 engine and for $5. I can't even get a good beer for $5. Only a sad sack bunch of idiots sitting in their mom's basement with nothing to do cause they have no job and no money would whine about what they DIDN'T get for that $5.

So Garth, what do you think of the CM Vista patch?

Well Wayne I can't believe they sold a "Vista" patch that has nothing else in it, how was I to know I was spending my money on something that would only be a patch for Vista? Now I'm out gas money for the Gremlin.

By the way there was an inference there that Steve might be egging folks on about attacking those guys. I for one have never heard anything of the sort. I formed my opinion by actually looking at the BS that rates as discussion over there. It reminds me of an old Cheech and Chong record...

“Look like dog s**t ”

“Hmm…smell…”

(sniffing)…”Smell like dog s**t”

“Hmmm…Taste…”

“HUH?”

“TASTE”

(tasting)….”Yuck, taste like dog s**t”

“Hmmmm…Good thing we don’t step in it!”

Unfortunately I went over there and stepped in it.

By the way, by buying the Vista patch wasn't I thereby entitled to a free copy of CMBN?

[miller41]

That sentence has so much win packed in to just ten words!

And by 'win' I mean 'fail'.

This reply is priceless, best laugh i have had all day

[sfhand]

Wow... lots of Twilight Zone stuff on the forum these last couple of days... I'm pretty sure quite a few people did what I did with the vista patch, which is say you'd be willing to pay for it and then get so into CMSF that when the patch materialized you buy it and never end up playing CMAK again (I really should take it off my hard drive), but you are happy to have contributed in your own small way.

Unlike the OP, I think the upgrade idea is a win/win proposition.

[sburke]

Wow... lots of Twilight Zone stuff on the forum these last couple of days... I'm pretty sure quite a few people did what I did with the vista patch, which is say you'd be willing to pay for it and then get so into CMSF that when the patch materialized you buy it and never end up playing CMAK again (I really should take it off my hard drive), but you are happy to have contributed in your own small way.

Unlike the OP, I think the upgrade idea is a win/win proposition.

Maybe he is rethinking his views now that he put his foot in his mouth over $10.. . . nah doubt it. How long ago did the $5 Vista patch come out and Steve is still listening to BS?

I use my CMx1 disks as collectible coasters now.

Yeah son, I remember back in the day when flavor objects were what you snacked on while playing CM.

[Sixxkiller]

To be clear, this wasn't "mine". I was just the QA Manager on LOTR2. And calls for a patch would be fun to make since the company that made it, Impressions, is dead. But I suppose that's just an excuse for not supporting their stuff forever

Steve

I know Steve, I am just trying to fill your inbox with patch requests to go along with the hate mail. You're welcome.

[MikeyD]

How many computer wargame grogs does it take to screw in a lightbuild?