So disappointed after buying the game, only amateur-made campaigns?

[Bulletpoint]

Hello everyone, I just bought the game a couple of days ago, after being blown away by the demo. For many years I have been looking for a game like the good old "Close Combat" series, anyone remember playing those? So when I found out about Combat Mission, I immediately knew I would be hooked.

And for three days straight, I certainly have been! So, please take my criticism below as coming from somebody who actually likes this game a lot, and for that reason is extra disappointed with the actual included campaigns.

Playing through the tutorial missions, I was enjoying the game immensely, but impatient to start the REAL missions. Then, I finally finished the tutorials, and loaded up the first campaign with lots of anticipation. The one about expanding the bridgehead.

It sounded promising, but reading through the briefing... I just couldn't believe my eyes. The campaign was not produced by Battlefront's professionals, but by some beta testing team? Ok.. but let's give it a shot, I thought.

And then I saw the first map in the campaign. After the well-crafted tutorial missions, I had been spoiled with a high quality in the map design. Lots of details, nooks and crannys, convoluted spaces with orchards, bridges, buildings, all coming together to form a labyrinth of tactical potential. But now - I was looking at a child's drawing in comparison. Ruler-straight hedges, enclosing featureless fields, not even a single tree in sight.

Ok, I understand that this is supposed to be a quite realistic game, and that farmland is not always very interesting to look at in real life. But in real life, there are always lots of little signs of human activities, such as tire tracks, piles of logs, an old tractor.. and even in modern intensive farming, there might be the odd shrubbery here and there, a solitary tree left in the middle of the field, a pond or just the portion at the bottom of a slope where water has pooled after some days of rain. In this map, there is hardly any detail at all.

I know the gameplay is most important, but also in this respect the map just fails to interest. I have a massive amounts of tanks to roll forward to the top of the hill, then sit up there blasting everything away before moving the infantry down to mop up. That's not good gameplay. For me, an interesting mission is when I look at a map for the first time and have to think hard to plan my attack, zooming in to little details to see if my troops will be able to squeeze through a hedgerow just before the assault, if there are any windows on the south side of the farm where a defender might fire from, and what about that little stretch of low wall around the perimeter?

Better I stop writing before this post gets too long. It's just rare that I get this disappointed. When I download user-generated content, I know there's a risk the quality will not be as high as the original game. But that's ok, user-generated content is free. In this case, however, I bought and paid for the game, so I expected it to contain at least a couple of long, well-designed campaigns of the same level of quality as the demo. I swear, at first I thought I had installed the game wrong somehow and only had access to some extra bonus content from the community... which would have been fine enough to have, if it had been just that - an extra.

So, the reason I post this is basically that I want to send feedback, and at the same time ask if I am the only one who was disappointed by this?

[lurrp]

Which maps are you referring to? Some of the QB maps are quite bland, but I've found most of the scenarios to be, if not perfect, good enough to "immerse" me in the gameplay. I highly recommend "Huzzar!" and "Cats Chasing Dogs", my two favorite scenarios. See if that changes your mind.

[lurrp]

And now I see that you are referring to campaigns, my bad. Still, try out the scenarios, I think you will enjoy at least a few.

[Holman]

And then I saw the first map in the campaign. After the well-crafted tutorial missions, I had been spoiled with a high quality in the map design. Lots of details, nooks and crannys, convoluted spaces with orchards, bridges, buildings, all coming together to form a labyrinth of tactical potential. But now - I was looking at a child's drawing in comparison. Ruler-straight hedges, enclosing featureless fields, not even a single tree in sight.

I remember thinking that the first map of Courage & Fortitude was kind of bland. Later maps in the campaign are much more interesting.

And I believe you will find the second mission more challenging...

[Pak40]

The first campaign you should tackle as a newcomer should be "Road to Montbourg". The sheer size of the campaign will impress you. The maps are well done and the missions are crafted well also. They wont knock your socks off but they are entertaining you can tell that the designer put a lot of effort into the entire campaign - especially the historical research.

If you have the Commonweath add-on then you will really like the campaign maps in that one - top notch.

BTW, just so you know, BF is a very small independent developer. I think when CMBN was being developed the total "professional" staff was like 4 maybe 5 people. They just don't have the time to develop the scenarios & campaigns themselves. However, they do give the designers a lot of support and for the most part have picked dedicated "beta testers" with as much professionalism and love for wargaming as the actual BF staff. And if you download user made scenarios and campaigns you will find some top notch "professional" work. Ditto for graphic and sound mods.

[Sergei]

And then I saw the first map in the campaign. After the well-crafted tutorial missions, I had been spoiled with a high quality in the map design. Lots of details, nooks and crannys, convoluted spaces with orchards, bridges, buildings, all coming together to form a labyrinth of tactical potential. But now - I was looking at a child's drawing in comparison. Ruler-straight hedges, enclosing featureless fields, not even a single tree in sight.

Just what campaign's opening mission might this have been? I don't recognize that description in any that I have played. :confused:

[Wodin]

erm..people like Paper Tiger make the best campaigns out..it takes alot to make a great campaign and I certainly haven't been disappointed.

[Brindlewolf]

I would give the game a chance.Gameplay is what's important with CM not so much the eye candy.Invest a few hours in the game and you'll find out tactics are quite crucial.This game is the best in it's genre.

I wouldn't knock the guys that do all the scenarios and campaigns,a lot of these guys do this purely out of love for the game and the era.A lot of hardwork and freetime is put in by a lot of these guys and most of the stuff they produce is top notch.A lot of the single player stuff is also replayable due to different ai plans put in by the scenario makers,again time consuming to make.

This game is truly hardcore and top of it's league.You'll either love it in which case your hooked and no other game will come close or you'll simply hate it.There's mods galore for this game also to change appearance,sounds,map textures etc etc.Eye candy this game isn't but then i don't think it was ever supposed to be.

Simply put-give it chance

[Paper Tiger]

With the exception of Normal Dude, who is on BFC's payroll, all the campaigns, missions and QB maps, that ship with the disks are made by so-called amateurs

Try out The Road to Montebourg first. It was designed primarily to be fun to play with a couple of toughies to keep it interesting. If you want it to be a more challenging experience, try the revised version that is on the Repository.

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2082

I'd recommend playing the revised version although it is most definitely designed by an amateur

[ChrisND]

With the exception of Normal Dude, who is on BFC's payroll, all the campaigns, missions and QB maps, that ship with the disks are made by so-called amateurs

It's worth noting that when I made those tutorial campaigns, I was also an amateur. The original concept for them was also drafted by an amateur.

[Paper Tiger]

Of course.

[Blazing 88's]

Hello everyone, I just bought the game a couple of days ago, after being blown away by the demo. For many years I have been looking for a game like the good old "Close Combat" series, anyone remember playing those? So when I found out about Combat Mission, I immediately knew I would be hooked.

And for three days straight, I certainly have been! So, please take my criticism below as coming from somebody who actually likes this game a lot, and for that reason is extra disappointed with the actual included campaigns.

Playing through the tutorial missions, I was enjoying the game immensely, but impatient to start the REAL missions. Then, I finally finished the tutorials, and loaded up the first campaign with lots of anticipation. The one about expanding the bridgehead.

It sounded promising, but reading through the briefing... I just couldn't believe my eyes. The campaign was not produced by Battlefront's professionals, but by some beta testing team? Ok.. but let's give it a shot, I thought.

And then I saw the first map in the campaign. After the well-crafted tutorial missions, I had been spoiled with a high quality in the map design. Lots of details, nooks and crannys, convoluted spaces with orchards, bridges, buildings, all coming together to form a labyrinth of tactical potential. But now - I was looking at a child's drawing in comparison. Ruler-straight hedges, enclosing featureless fields, not even a single tree in sight.

Ok, I understand that this is supposed to be a quite realistic game, and that farmland is not always very interesting to look at in real life. But in real life, there are always lots of little signs of human activities, such as tire tracks, piles of logs, an old tractor.. and even in modern intensive farming, there might be the odd shrubbery here and there, a solitary tree left in the middle of the field, a pond or just the portion at the bottom of a slope where water has pooled after some days of rain. In this map, there is hardly any detail at all.

I know the gameplay is most important, but also in this respect the map just fails to interest. I have a massive amounts of tanks to roll forward to the top of the hill, then sit up there blasting everything away before moving the infantry down to mop up. That's not good gameplay. For me, an interesting mission is when I look at a map for the first time and have to think hard to plan my attack, zooming in to little details to see if my troops will be able to squeeze through a hedgerow just before the assault, if there are any windows on the south side of the farm where a defender might fire from, and what about that little stretch of low wall around the perimeter?

Better I stop writing before this post gets too long. It's just rare that I get this disappointed. When I download user-generated content, I know there's a risk the quality will not be as high as the original game. But that's ok, user-generated content is free. In this case, however, I bought and paid for the game, so I expected it to contain at least a couple of long, well-designed campaigns of the same level of quality as the demo. I swear, at first I thought I had installed the game wrong somehow and only had access to some extra bonus content from the community... which would have been fine enough to have, if it had been just that - an extra.

So, the reason I post this is basically that I want to send feedback, and at the same time ask if I am the only one who was disappointed by this?

Yeah I remember Close Combat. I liked Steel Panthers WaW with the campaign layers (Desert Fox 41, The Lost Battles) included and then Combat Mission CMBB /CMAK a lot more.

After reading your post I have assumed you have not tried CMBB or CMAK (CMx1). I am thinking they would be what you are looking for, for now. Hundreds of scenario's and campaign's are available at the Scenario Depot II. Also CMAK can be modded to CMETO for Western Theater battles if you like that theater. There are still online opponents available at sites like WeBob and such. As well RobO created a excel spreadsheet campaign layer for both CMBB and CMAK, which is excellent.

I remember feeling the same way as you did with Close Combat when I played my first Combat Mission scenario with CMBB back in 2002. It was about Wittmann and his Stug (Wittmann in the East or Wittmann's Iron Cross), the fog (when using WinXP), the rain, the Eastern Front.... I was hooked big time and I am still spinning those titles when I have the Ost Front or NA itch.

Now back to the present. This community will eventually have lots of scenario's and campaigns made for CMx2 engine, CMBN already has quite a collection. CMFI will eventually as well and so on...

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks for the generally positive feedback. I take what you mean, but I do have to chalk this one up to "can't please everybody" category. After all, since we can't please everybody that means SOMEONE has to be a little less enthusiastic about something. Nobody likes it when it is them, obviously

Obviously there is going to be a range of opinions, largely based on personal preferences, but that's natural and unavoidable. If there was such a thing as "perfection" we'd only have one TV show (Firefly, obviously), one type of computer (an Apple product for sure), one smoking hot actress (OK, there is definitely room for more than one), one type of beer (Tripel), etc. You get my point, I think

Generally speaking I say dissatisfaction with the Campaigns and Battles on our CMx2 products is quite low, satisfaction quite high. I've seen more posts than I can count where people have stated, emphatically, that they prefer the game experience now than what they had before in regards to the quality of any one scenario. I'm quite happy with that.

Note that the "amateurs" know 100x more about making maps and scenarios than the paid staff at Battlefront. Excepting the relatively recent addition of Normal Dude. That's because we're busy making the stuff which makes the game possible and have to leave the fun part (i.e. playing) to others. Fortunately highly skilled others. To think of how many hours of Editor time our volunteer team has under the belts... it's mind boggling.

Steve

[Fenris]

A campaign is a series of missions. As everyone is saying I think you're being hasty to judge things based on only one of those missions.

Play the mission and move on.

Come back and let us know what you think when you finish the campaign.

-F

[womble]

I would be very interested to know which campaign first mission had "Ruler-straight hedges, enclosing featureless fields, not even a single tree in sight." That description doesn't match any map I've seen, let alone a campaign first mission. Are you sure you hadn't "ALT-T"ed the trees away?

It's probably also worth pointing out up front that even the campaigns that ship with the game aren't necessarily designed to be attempted by beginners, as they often are in other games. You could be facing some tough tactical challenges from early on.

[tuhhodge]

Whether made by a professional or amateur designer, some maps are awful and others are excellent.

In my experience, a lot of the quick battle maps are awful and I rarely use them, choosing to download from the Repository instead. The QB maps are generally unrealistic and dull.

I live in the UK in Suffolk which has similar countryside to that found in Normandy. We have true bocage and we also have wide open fields. People have be living around here and cultivating the landscape for thousands of years, so the lay of the land bears witness to years of human influence. It is the same in Normandy, even more so in the bocage countryside.

It takes a lot of effort to replicate the true nature of the countryside around here on a game map. QB maps generally don't manage it. Wide open maps with patches of trees? Hmmm. This is not the Russian steppes or in any way similar to the prairie landscapes of North America!

That said, parts of Normandy are wide open, with huge cultivated wheat fields and little cover. Think about the area around Carpiquet west of Caen and south east of the City towards Bourgebus. Allied tanks were decimated in these places and attackers paid the price for attacking across large fields in full view of the enemy. Many of the carefully crafted campaign maps reflect this terrain well.

In summary, the original poster makes some good points, but perhaps people need to be realistic about the terrain in this part of the world. It is varied: both bocage and big fields. Each needs careful attention to reflect reality.

[Brindlewolf]

Large open terrain and bocage.All in campaigns and scenarios in the CW module.

A lot of great maps in that module.

[Bulletpoint]

Thanks everybody for your comments, not least for the BattleFront guys, great to see that you read and replied. If it's a love or hate thing, then I'm definitely in the first group, and when you love something, you feel strongly about it, and sometimes get extra picky.

For the people asking about which map I talked about, it was the first mission in the campaign "Courage and Fortutide". I will go back and give the campaign another chance today.

[James Crowley]

Note that the "amateurs" know 100x more about making maps and scenarios than the paid staff at Battlefront. Excepting the relatively recent addition of Normal Dude. That's because we're busy making the stuff which makes the game possible and have to leave the fun part (i.e. playing) to others. Fortunately highly skilled others. To think of how many hours of Editor time our volunteer team has under the belts... it's mind boggling.

Steve

Without the 'engine' there would be no game to play but, equally, without a regular supply of good quality scenarios and campaigns interest would soon wane (look at the CM: Touch forum for example).

Would paying experienced designers to produce and test these and then offering them as packs not be a win-win situation for all parties.

The designers would have more incentive, other than a few 'thank yous' from grateful users, to put the necessary time and effort into making them.

Users would have a continuing supply of material to feed their 'habit'

And it would be an additional income stream for BFC.

'Simples'

[womble]

For the people asking about which map I talked about, it was the first mission in the campaign "Courage and Fortutide". I will go back and give the campaign another chance today.

Well, you've definitely got something odd going on, since there's a large (and tactically significant) wood in front of the Americans' right flank in that map. Also, the fields, while perhaps devoid of anything but crops, are anything but featureless. Their convex profiles had a very strong effect on my plan for that map, due to their shaping of fields of fire.

You wouldn't be the first fellow who's used Alt-T to toggle trees off and then not turned it back on again, and wondered about something

[Bulletpoint]

Ok, this is very embarassing for me, but ... trees and vegetation were in fact toggled off (!)

When I toggled it back on, I found the quality of the map improved a lot. I now feel like the guy who takes his brand new car to a mechanic because the gas tank is empty.

So, while I haven't yet had the time to sit down and actually play the campaign in full to see how the individual missions are designed, I think it's in order to apologise for coming in here and blaming the map editors, when actually it was my own fault.

I'm really sorry for the "friendly fire", especially for the person who made the map. I will not delete this topic, but go back and add a line about it so other people who might make the same mistake can search online and solve the problem. [EDIT: seems like I cannot edit the original post for technical reasons. If an administrator would like to add a line about my mistake, please do.]

I don't know why the vegetation had been toggled off though. It was late at night, and I had just finished the final tutorial mission, where I had toggled back and forth a bit, but mainly just kept the trees partially off, and I could have sworn that's how I had it when I completed the tutorial. So I assumed they would be on for the next game too.

Could have sworn I tried the tree toggle too, when I saw there were no trees, but seems not. They say lack of sleep is like being drunk - maybe I should learn to go to bed before midnight, eh?

[womble]

Would paying experienced designers to produce and test these and then offering them as packs not be a win-win situation for all parties.

...

And it would be an additional income stream for BFC.

There's no DRM on maps and scenarios, as it stands, which allows anyone to make and publish them. If BFC were to make money out of sold scenarios, there'd have to be either a lot of trust that everyone would pay for them, or some DRM to ensure that they do. That DRM system would have to accommodate DRM-free content too. It would be a bit of a minefield, and would further fragment the game population.

Which isn't to say that a creative solution couldn't be arrived at, just that it's not "Simples".

[Bulletpoint]

By the way, I agree that this game is one where the "pay for extra content" business model could work well.

I have yet to play the included maps with the game (I did play and enjoy "Busting the Bocage" in the demo though), but I could imagine that paying a bit for extra high quality content would be something I would do, if I could be certain that quality would be high, both with regards to map layout for gameplay, lots of AI work, and maybe even extra flavour objects and details to bring the locations to life. I just love attention to detail.

That is not to say amateurs cannot produce high quality, just that in my experience with fan-made content it's been hit or miss. I would pay extra for content with a professional level of polish and fine-tuned gameplay balance and challenge, no matter if it had been designed in a game developer office or by a fan.

[Wodin]

Ok, this is very embarassing for me, but ... trees and vegetation were in fact toggled off (!)

Hehe..we all make mistakes. I must say I was surprised about your comments as I find the campaigns well done. Anyway good to see it was user error rather than it not being good enough for you.

Happy hunting.

PS remember the AI is not upto much if playing QB..if a single player stick to the premade scenarios..there are plenty of ones online aswell as some great campaigns.

[Sergei]

Heh. You'' be really enjoying the second battle in that campaign, I bet