Is CM dying?

[Freyberg]

I designed a bunch of scenarios for CMBB/AK, nothing spectacular but reasonable. I've been working on one for CMFI-GL, and, though just as much fun, the time required is significantly greater.

Having said that, I second the comment about the Proving Grounds - that was a great site - and MikeyD's "don't let the best be enemy of the good"

[sburke]

Funny thing is, those of us doing Op layer controlled campaigns are across the board creating ahistorical battles. We may be using a game that was historically based, but the moment we roll the die on the Op layer, every following battle is a fictional event. And it is fun as hell. Broadsword just posted a map that is the basis of our fight for Son bridge and it is nothing at all like the historical situation. After that we are looking forward to a fight for Eindhoven that we expect to be every bit as brutal as Arnhem.

If we took the end product and turned it into a campaign I wonder how well it would be received considering none of it is historcal?

If CM is dying it certainly is going out in a blaze of glory as I am having more fun with this game every month that passes. And to think of all that is still to come. Imagine what the engine will look like in 2 years with all the progress we have seen since CMBN was released. The only concern I have is to make sure the computers that are around in 10 years will still run it - that is my retirement goal. Work really gets in the way of my gaming time.

[AlexUK]

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.

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.

The patch now means that I can carry on with your Scottish Corridor campaign Paper Tiger, and it feels like a work of art. Goodness only knows how much time and effort went into these, full of variety and challenge, only missing the bagpipes (force specific musical accompaniment anyone?). I am guilty of some restarts after I got royally smacked, but absolutely loving them.

On a completely different topic, just finished reading Sniper One - an incredible book that I would highly recommend to anyone - a real squaddie level view of the Iraq (reconstruction?) period which was in fact high intensity combat - an absolute classic!!!

[poesel]

I'm not much of a scenario player but the few times I wanted to download something from the repository it was a mayor PITA from a usability standpoint. Presentation, information and search functions are, sorry, just awful.

IMHO feedback would be much better if the repository would be more accessible.

[Nelson 1812]

It would be nice to have an index of scenario's... somewhere, CMMODs works well, in that area. Difficult to find most things here.

I would suggest that most CM2 games take players longer to player (and test) and most do not have the luxury of computers at work, or being retired. Taking that into account many will be playing old scenarios.

What I think may hurt the game is the confusion on modules and patches that may well put people off CM gaming ... hoping this 2.11 will enable all players on different models to battle against each other.

Well at least with version 2.0 or above...

It will be a sad day when we all need a CM degree just to play the game (Just joking).

[Fuser]

I have designed 4 scenarios (including one of the VERY few for CMFI). All them are not historical, and were not meant to be, I just wanted that same feeling we had in CMBB/CMBO, load and play,...I thing I was somehow succesful, but back in the old days it was even easier to create a rather playable scenario, since scenarios where QBs with briefings, tons of MEs that looked and played ..."generic". There were great scenarios of course, but nowadays the bar has risen quite a lot and I suspect most of the people don't even dare to create something to be beaten and criticized...

But that, does not mean that CM is dead, AT ALL

[Paper Tiger]

I'm not much of a scenario player but the few times I wanted to download something from the repository it was a mayor PITA from a usability standpoint. Presentation, information and search functions are, sorry, just awful.

IMHO feedback would be much better if the repository would be more accessible.

You know that you can create a thread here to do that? In fact, that's preferable for me as I rarely ever visit the Repository.

You'll find some guidlines for providing feedback in this thread here

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=106637

this is an old issue.

[Blackcat]

I don't think the game or the community is dying and am pleased to hear from Steve that sales are in line with expectations. However, it must be a bit annoying for a scenario designer not to receive any feedback on his loving crafted creation.

Though I don't download as many scenarios as I once did, this is largely because CMx2 scenarios/campaigns have a greater re-playability coefficient and, with the number of new releases and modules coming out, I haven't got to the end of those provided yet.

I would urge everyone to provide robust, but constructive, feedback to the scenario designers though. For myself I have sworn a great oath that as and when I meet Paper Tiger in the flesh I shall buy him a very large quantity of his favourite drink as a thank you for all the hours of entertainment he has given me. I shall then beat him to death with a haddock in recompense for all the hours of painful frustration his evil genius at positioning defences and creating AI plans has caused me (how does he know what I will do). Don't snigger, GeorgeMC, you are on the list too as are a few others.

Battlefront, and we the players, are very fortunate that the game has attracted such a bunch of talented people who give of their time and creativity to provide us with so many well designed and challenging scenarios. The least we can do is take a few minutes to provide some feedback.

[Vark]

I certainly think the number of posters on the forum has dropped, from the CMBB days, what that says is anyone's guess. I certainly think scenario design is far more involved than those days when I would happily plan and design a quick scenario, for my own use, but CM2 simply takes too long, too involved and is therefore, for me, less enjoyable.

[Michael Emrys]

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

And I notice just the opposite. After a new game or module, there is a flurry of posts, either excitedly reporting some new discovery of how wonderful the game can be or describing a bug that somehow made it past the play testers. Then, after a month or two, the posting rate gradually tapers off.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

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.

Not sure of course what you have in mind, but I wouldn't advise combining the families into one forum. The way it is now, I know where to go to look into a game specific issue. If all game fora were combined, I'd have to sift through a lot more threads to find what I was looking for.

One thing that might help is that a number of threads end up in a CM forum that really should go in the General Forum, but that is a matter of poster self-discipline (what did he say?).

Michael

[Doug Williams]

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.

Judging by the fact that I'm currently playing in two CMBN PBEM tourneys, and have another CMBN and a CMFI casual PBEM going, and I could probably have several other casual games going if only I had the time to do the turns every day, I would say no, CM is not dead.

I rarely download scenarios, because, to be honest, I haven't played half the ones that came with the games. Not enough free time.

IMO, if you want to get the most out of CM, join a club and participate in tourneys and casual games.

[SlowMotion]

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.

If testing scenarios seems to take too much effort it would be great if such maps were made available just as QB maps. There are never too many good QB maps.

[sburke]

If testing scenarios seems to take too much effort it would be great if such maps were made available just as QB maps. There are never too many good QB maps.

Depends on what you mean for QB maps. If you are using for HTH games, you can do that no problem. If however you are playing against the AI that is a whole other kettle of fish. Those have AI plans and the AI plans have to be built to accommodate a range of possible choices. I have done a couple scenarios, but I would still not want to try to create anything for a QB.

[Ranger33]

I took a break from the game simply because I was playing it all the time and got burnt out. Haven't been visiting the forums much over the last few months but I was pleased to see that the long begged for urban combat changes were made.

Now I'm kind of getting a hankering to play again, but I don't have my gaming PC where I am living right now. My laptop has a dedicated video card and Core i5 processor, and can play Battlefield 4 or any other game just fine, but even the smallest CMBN scenario runs like garbage. Might fire it up again and see if new drivers have made any difference...

[SlowMotion]

Depends on what you mean for QB maps. If you are using for HTH games, you can do that no problem. If however you are playing against the AI that is a whole other kettle of fish. Those have AI plans and the AI plans have to be built to accommodate a range of possible choices. I have done a couple scenarios, but I would still not want to try to create anything for a QB.

Yes, I meant H2H QBs. I don't play much against the AI. At least while there are no triggers

[Los]

I too am sitting on a number of scenarios I should upload,e.g. I have two Bulge scenarios in testing (read: playing for fun) for the Bulge mod. I'll try and upload them...plus we have a major operation under way. Playing more CM than ever.

Los

[Combatintman]

Wholeheartedly agree with Umlaut and Paper Tiger about user made scenarios. I haven't leapt to CMBN yet because I still enjoy CMSF but I have put together some scenarios and released them to the Repository. The amount of work involved is huge and, while I have had some great feedback, it is nevertheless disappointing when you get a 2-star rating with no comment as happened on one of my scenarios.

Nevertheless I will continue to plug away with scenario and campaign design because I enjoy it. I rarely go into CMSF now and do anything other than scenario and campaign design or testing them which I hope is good news for the CMSF players out there.

[Ranger33]

So...I just figured out that the reason the game ran so terribly on my laptop was due to it defaulting to my integrated Intel graphics chip instead of the real Nvidia card.....it runs perfectly fine after making the switch manually. I only thought of this because I just had the same problem with the new XCOM expansion.

Fudge! So much time wasted!

Now the dilemma, should I get MG or GL...both?

[MikeyD]

should I get MG or GL...both?

Mountain fighting or city fighting.

[togi]

According to me , both

Regards

[GSX]

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.

CMSF didn't get anything in proportion to the previous CM games. While there is a lot of good stuff out there for CMSF it failed to reach anything like previous efforts.

The reasons for a lack of modern CM content are many I suspect. For one, those guys doing great work previously have been signed up by BF to do operations and missions for new games. Some, like the mad Russian, who made excellent CM scenarios have disappeared. And more tellingly, the system isn't as easy to do as it was formerly. Scenarios are much harder to design today than they were historically.

Compared to previously there is much less user made content and there are far fewer places to get that content, which is a shame. I thing CM has shifted from what it was before to a more single player experience. Also, there just seems to be a lot less people playing multi player out there, which always drove new scenarios and tournaments and stuff.

I'm not sure it's dying though, perhaps just refocusing a wee bit.

[Childress]

I thing CM has shifted from what it was before to a more single player experience. Also, there just seems to be a lot less people playing multi player out there, which always drove new scenarios and tournaments and stuff.

CM2 is, imho, hard. The battles require patience and unremitting concentration. They can prove unexpectedly punitive. As someone who used to do a lot PBEM* with CMBB/AK- and held my own- I judge my skills inadequate to embark on MP. When you struggle to win scenarios in single player, sometimes even those you had tried before and had a general idea of enemy positions, that's a bad sign. I'm not nostalgic for the earlier games- CM2 is superior to those- but the new series requires a different mind set. Is it because the scenarios on offer aspire to be excessively challenging? Maybe, I dunno. Age? Could be. I suspect I'm not alone.

*Probably with some current forum members. But I don't even remember my own nick from 10 years ago. I do recall Treeburst155.

[Battlefront.com]

We believe that quality is more important than quantity. Usually at this point in such a thread someone has already pointed out that the mass of scenarios for CMx1 were crap. That's to be expected when the barrier to uploading a scenario is set so low. You get really unskilled, sloppy work uploaded right alongside the best of the best of the best. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have 10 expertly crafted scenarios to download than 100 where only 10 are worth playing.

As I said already, the number of scenarios is not an indication of gamer interest. That means people are interested in CM even with the lower number of scenarios available. Which clearly indicates to me that large numbers of scenarios uploaded for CMx1 games weren't either necessary or wanted by players.

Steve

[sburke]

I never tried my hand at designing for CMx1. I've done 4 for CMx2, my first in CMFI/GL for BF. Yeah that was the first I'd ever done. It really is not as hard as folks are projecting and that depressing litany of it being so hard is only going to deter people from trying.

If I can do it, anyone out there can. Just give it a shot and stop letting folks tell you how hard it is. Start small, learn the AI and go from there. JonS has done en excellent job of creating a how to guide that wasn't available when I gave it a shot.