Is CM dying?

[jkobmadrid]

i didn't see any post about this issue, but lately i see less and less scenarios in the forum. CMFI - havn't seen a new scenario for months. CMMG - no scenarios since the launch, etc etc.

it seems that the community is dying, and the game with it.

i'm sure i'm not the only one who feels it.

[George MC]

Pull!!!!!!

[PanzerMike]

I have made 2 CMBN scenario's the last few months and upoaded them to the repository: In the heat of the morning & King of Oosterbeek.

I will upload another scenario probably next week: Betuwe on fire. I am playtesting and tweaking it. Almost finished.

But sure, more scenario's would be great. Yes, it is harder than it was in CMx1. But it is perfectly doable. Especially with Benpark's and Pete Wenman's master maps. I have used them twice now and I think it is the best thing since sliced bread. And JonS made a wonderful guide to scenario making.

Perhaps people are making scenario's but feel they are not good enough to share with others? If so, don't! Share it. Constructive criticism never killed anybody :-) Why don't you give it a try?

"Ask not, what CM can do for you. But what you can do for CM"

Cheers!

And I disagree: CM is not dying. It keeps getting better and better.

[MikeyD]

This is an affect of QB working a bit 'too' well. Instead of laboring for hours to create the perfect standalone scenario people are just going into QB, selecting the maps and necessary units they want and hitting 'go'. CMSF had a (if I may say so) crappy QB system and they got lots of 3rd party standalone scenarios as a result.

[altipueri]

Er, but surely CMx1 QBs worked even better even quicker and there were squillions of scenarios. One of my copies of CMBO even came with a disk of extra fan made scenarios. CDV Europe, box 2 CDs + with paper (ie made from trees) manual.

[kensal]

I have been working on a scenario for Hill 112 for some months now and once I have finished this hope to do more ( and quicker! )

[Clavicula_Nox]

I'm currently working on a campaign using a mix of quick battle maps and some of my creation; I've never done a full campaign, so it's been a learning process.

[BadgerDog]

I've been getting wacked by better opponents in this game for 10+ years and I'm over 65...

I figure I'll be gone before this great game is ...

Maybe they'll put a virtual plaque up for me someplace on a map when that happens ...

Regards,

Doug

[StkNRdr]

Don't know if sales are keeping up, I certainly hope so. Even though there are many things on the wish list by people the game already has a wealth of content as far I am concerned. Other than that I am really looking forward to the Eastern Front packages.

[Wodin]

i didn't see any post about this issue, but lately i see less and less scenarios in the forum. CMFI - havn't seen a new scenario for months. CMMG - no scenarios since the launch, etc etc.

it seems that the community is dying, and the game with it.

i'm sure i'm not the only one who feels it.

Really!!??

I've seen no drop in forum posts..the same core group of people.

Loads to look forward too..enough new games and modules that people to busy to play\ design user made ones probably.

Your worry for me was an eye opener..hasn't even crossed my mind at all. Everything seems to be ticking over.

CMMG has only just been released..a good scenario cna take ages to make..plus this patch was needed to iron out the issues.

New user made scenarios aren't a measuring stick when we are getting new CM modules etc so often compared to CMx1 days.

[MikeyD]

Another issue for standalone scenarios is CM has 'raised the bar' on scenario design. Back-in-the-day you could make a scenario involving a generic house, a generic inf squad and a generic tank. Now players expect a historical event over real world terrain using historically accurate forces on a specific day. Frankly, I'd like to see some generic "Churchill IV tanks encounter Stugs" scenarios without the burden to precisely reproduce a documented encounter.

[Fenris]

It concerns me too, but judging on fact that the number of staff has been rising over the years they must be doing alright.

As to the other indicators mentioned by the OP. Forums shouldn't be split IMO, there's not enough traffic to warrant it (edit - I don't mean combining WW2 and Modern, would keep that separation). Most places I visit have a simple square bracket with game short name in the subject if a post is one title specific, "[CMBN] Bocage is annoying" for example. Seems a lot less forum traffic in general to the early years. Maybe coz the membership is generally older now?

Might also be because I've found CM2 not quite as easy to get into. I'm the only person out of the half dozen I know who played CM1 who has purchased any CM2 titles. General comment after trying the demo was CM2 is too fiddly/complicated to play in comparison to CM1. Might also have been a good dose of CM fatigue in that crowd though.

On scenarios, from my own experience, creating a scenario is quite involved now.

-F

[Battlefront.com]

Ah... tea leaf reading! It's a fun thing for some, apparently, but it's not very relevant to reality. For example, judging CM's heartbeat by scenarios to download compared to CMx1 games. We were hearing this back in 2007, then in 2008, then in 2009, then... well, you get the picture Yet during this time we've hired more people and released more games than ever before. So a smart person would not wager any money on the notion that scenario counts are in some way indicative of CM's overall health and popularity.

We just released Market Garden. The sales were a little higher than the forecasted predictions based on previous sales patterns. It takes about 6 months to really know how well a product did, but so far no red flags being thrown up. Which means either a lot of people bought Market Garden with no intention to play it, or there's plenty of interesting out there.

As for the Forums... it's always a matter of personal preference whether to have one big Forum or subdivided ones. Each has pros and cons. It's probable that we will reorganize the Forums when the next batch of games comes out. Partly because we'll have 4 Families actively supported, partly because the new Upgrade concept means there's more in common between players of X game and Y game than there has been in the past. But no decisions are made on that yet.

Sooooo... we (Battlefront) are the most directly affected by CM's sales volumes. If we're happy then it's probably pretty certain that sales and interest aren't on the decline.

Steve

[Ted]

When is the IPO?

I'd like to get one of those stocks you can hang on the wall.

[umlaut]

i didn't see any post about this issue, but lately i see less and less scenarios in the forum. CMFI - havn't seen a new scenario for months. CMMG - no scenarios since the launch, etc etc.

it seems that the community is dying, and the game with it.

i'm sure i'm not the only one who feels it.

I cannot speak for other scenario designers, but if you ask me the reason for this is the feedback given to the scenario designers. Or rather: The lack of it.

It has often been said in these discussions that "you should only make scenarios to please yourself, not the community". That is of course entirely true - and this is what I do myself. But what often seems to be overlooked when saying this, is the fact that the gap between making a scenario that is playable for the designer himself and making one that is playable for everyone in the community is actually rather large.

In my experience the time needed to make a scenario ready for release is at least equal to - and in most cases greater than - the time spent on actually designing the scenario itself.

A personal example: I didn´t record the time it took me to design the scenario "Waylaid", but let us say 30 hours. I played the scenario, had fun and decided I wanted to share the fun with other CMBN players. I then spent maybe 40 hours writing briefings, making screen shots and especially making tests with the help of three or four helpful testers. The testing of course involved making changes to the scenario based on the recommendations of the testers. When I felt the scenario was ready for release, I uploaded it to the repository, made a post with a description and screenshots in the Maps and Mods forum and.................

......nothing.

176 downloads from the repository so far. 0 comments or ratings.

The feedback on my other scenarios have been slightly better, but only slightly. In all I have uploaded 3 scenarios that have been download 746 times. In total they have recieved 4 ratings and 5 comments (the majority negative).

How much of an incentive for releasing other scenarios does that create? You guessed it: Zero.

Don´t get me wrong, I will still make scenarios, because I have fun making and playing them. But in the time I spent preparing them for release and testing them, I could have made a completely new scenario from scracth. So why release it, when the effect is like shouting into a void?

After my last release I decided I didn´t bother to release any more scenarios. Since then I have decided to give it one last try.

I am currently working on three scenarios, one of which is nearly ready for release. If the feedback for this one is similar to that for my previous scenarios, I see no reason to go through the hassle of releasing the other two.

[Saferight]

I think umlaut hit it on the head.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I wonder how much of the slowdown in scenario making is simply a result of BFC's accelerated development schedule. A lot of the scenarios put on the Repository for CMBN in the first year after release were made by the same people who made the official scenarios that shipped with the game. Now BFC is working on 2 new games at once (East Front and "Black Sea") while also making modules for CMBN and CMFI. Someone has to create the content for those products.

[Erwin]

umlaut, I looked thru Repository just now and couldn't locate "Waylaid" in CMBN area. Link?

[Jorge MC]

i didn't see any post about this issue, but lately i see less and less scenarios in the forum. CMFI - havn't seen a new scenario for months. CMMG - no scenarios since the launch, etc etc.

it seems that the community is dying, and the game with it.

i'm sure i'm not the only one who feels it.

what I notice is that every time a new module comes out the forums are quiet for couple of weeks.. people playing

[umlaut]

umlaut, I looked thru Repository just now and couldn't locate "Waylaid" in CMBN area. Link?

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2086

Here you go

[SeinfeldRules]

I think the game suffers from a lack of a "Proving Grounds" equivalent for CM2. CM1 had the Proving Grounds and then the Scenario Depot - allowing anyone to build, test and publish a well developed scenario. The Proving Grounds offered designers a large userbase who could give immediate feedback on the website itself for the scenario they just play tested. We don't have anything like that for CM2. The Proving Grounds only covers CM1 and the repository doesn't really deliver the same convenience when it comes to testing a scenario, it's really only for the finished product. Scenario designers are left with either soliciting help from the forum or relying on old friends to do it.

Right now, I probably have 15 or so "maps with troops" for CMFI/CMBN sitting on my hard drive. I call them "maps with troops" because they aren't really scenarios until they're play tested and put through their paces. The maps themselves are 100% completed, but not a single one has been tested. I enjoy the map building process more then anything, creating visually appealing maps (hopefully) with interesting tactical problems (hopefully), but I don't want it to just be a map, I want to make scenarios. Give something to the community. But I also don't want to release anything to the public as a finished product until it's been truly put through its paces, and right now there is no easy or direct way to get constructive feedback on a scenario that needs testing. See umlaut's post above. Honestly, the map making is not that difficult, and if you're doing a human attacker vs AI defender, the AI plans aren't complex either. It's the play testing that is time consuming and is probably what holds people back. I'm sure there are others out there who fiddled with the map editor for a little bit and made something they enjoy, but are hesitant to release it because there is no easy way to test it or solicit feedback to make them better. Just my 2 cents.

[Kenzie]

I'm fairly new to this forum here so I don't know how busy it usually is, but my first thought was that people might just be waiting for the Eastern Front game. That usually seems to be the favorite subject for some reason.

My second thought was that maybe it's a good thing if the forum seems slow, because I've noticed that people usually only seem to make posts if they want to complain about something. I'm not just talking about this forum, but any forum, anywhere. On every forum I've been to, people usually don't reply to a post just to say "I agree," they only reply if they think they can prove someone wrong about something, or if they have some other kind of snarky comment. People usually don't bother to comment about products unless they really love it or they really hate it (usually hate). Maybe there's just a lack of things to complain about in CM nowadays.

How big is the Battlefront team now anyway? It's nice to hear they are doing well.

[Paper Tiger]

There's a lot of food for thought in this thread. I have picked up a few new games in the last few months and at least two of them have a scenario editor which allows folks to make their own. I've looked at them and you need some 3rd-party software like Hexdraw or something to start with. The whole process looks hideously complicated next to BFC's incomparable scenario editor.

With BFC's editor, I can create a map from scratch, with no overlays simply by setting the size of my map and clicking on a terrain/building icon and voila, the wheatfield, forest, barn, whatever appears on the grid. I can make the 'paintbrush larger to paint large areas of the map quickly. Roads and walls take seconds to place. Elevations are a bit harder to do but they're not that difficult and once you've learned how to place them, that's it. The most fiddly/worst part is placing bridges across a river.

Go on. Try it. It really is very easy to create a basic map in a few minutes, a something a bit more interesting in an hour. To create a realistic looking one is much more work but it's doable with practice. And you can open up an existing map in the editor to see how the designer of your favourite map made his, how he places flavour objects to make it look real, etc.

OBs for your mission can be created with one or two clicks per side. More are necessary for getting the details just right, but it's not difficult to populate your new map with a battaion for each side with one click per side.

Personally, I think that the real killer is crafting good AI for your creation. (I looked and saw that 'Waylaid' is for H2H play only) Since most of the guys here play H2H, you shouldn't worry about AI as it's not necessary.

And then, after all your efforts, you put your creation up on the repository and you get:

a) absolutely no feedback whatsoever. Or,

you get something back that's just so negative and unhelpful that it makes you wonder why you bothered.

New designers are best off starting with something fictional. True, you now have a guide that can help you to create the ultimate uber-grog historical re-enactment type of scenario for sure but IMHO, starting small and non-groggy is the best way to start. That's how I started out. 'In Harm's Way' was my first mission and I cringe with embarrassment now when I open it up in the editor but that's how it begins. Fortunately, the community was incredibly supportive at that time and I received plenty of positive feedback that inspired me to go on to take on more and more ambitious creative projects. How differently it might have all turned out if I'd gotten some sarky, sneering feedback instead. Maybe the WW2 crowd is less forgiving than the CMSF crowd though?

How many of you really want to play fictional scenarios played on fictional maps? I remember somebody posting something about creating a later-war Sealion campaign and one member of the community took a huge dump on it because it was fictional. I think that curtailed that potential designer's ambitions quite effectively.

If the community wants more content designed by the community, I suggest you nurture it and help it to grow instead of bashing it and quoting Darwin at the poor fledgling designer when he gets discouraged.

[Lt Belenko]

At jkobmadrid - no it's not dying for all the reasons Steve said. 4 games, more employees etc,.

Two other points that were made in the thread go hand in hand. Umlaut talked about the time spent yet zero comments. And Seinfeld Rules talking about the lack of The Proving Grounds type site.

Comments with some constructive input are very helpful and provide an ego boost to the designers. I probably provided 10-15 reviews back at the Proving Grounds, yet I continuously saw posts there saying "150 downloads and zero comments. WTF guys? Feedback please". Bottomline: The feedback issue is not new.

Me? I only play QBs against one friend. So I disqualify myself from the lack of feedback complaint.

[MikeyD]

One advantage of CMSF was the scenario designer wasn't burdened by 'historical documentation'. If you wanted Challenger tanks trading fire with T72s 25km south of Damascus on July 10 you just did it and created your backstory to justify it. These days 'CMBN purists' are liable to take a scenario maker to task for using a StuH in Holland on September 25 because there's no documentary evidence of StuH equipped units in that particular area on that particular day. Its ironic that the obsessive push for historical authenticity has frightened off 3rd party scenario designers and pushed everyone into playing QBs - the least historically authentic form of gameplay we got. What's that old saying? Don't let 'best' be the enemy of 'good'. A well crafted 'semi-historical' 3rd party scenario is better than cherry-picking units to an arbitrary points total on a randomly selected QB map.