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Exciting news about Battlefront and Slitherine


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45 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Yeah when you read other forums, you see that the biggest gripes other people seem to have about CM have very little to do with graphics, it is usually either 1/ the DRM and activation system, 2/ the pricing and 3/ people butthurt and salty about their interaction on the battlefront forum with Steve. Steam integration should take care of the first two.

And even if the reviews are not stellar, it still means thousands of potential new customers.

Now if we manage to integrate Steve into STEAM I think we have a winner right there - 3rd problem solved. ;)

 

Seen people from other forums see CM crowd as an elitist, closed, militarist, uber pro usa bunch of guys who get hostile easily when someone says something that most often then not triggers them. Something down that line. 

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People on Steam usually only complain about graphics when they feel they've been misled to think the game would look better than it actually does. There was a big argument over Rome: Total War II where they released promo videos that looked way better than the game actually does in action. Also Witcher 3 had a bit of that, where people complained the graphics had been downgraded compared to early footage.

But in the case of Combat Mission, nobody is trying to hide what the game actually looks like. So very few people are going to complain about that.

We have to let go of the idea that people outside of this forum are generally stupid and unreasonable. There are all kinds of gamers on Steam.

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1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

let go of the idea that people outside of this forum are generally stupid and unreasonable. There are all kinds of gamers on Steam.

What? You actually mean that? I always though that us here were the ones that should be fit to rule the world.

I heard that someone already is designing our rings of power and that they are heating up the furnace.

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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

We have to let go of the idea that people outside of this forum are generally stupid and unreasonable. There are all kinds of gamers on Steam.

Oh, I agree with that.  The primary way to get trashed on Steam is to try and compete for the AAA game slots.  This is when there's a few million people actively interested in checking out the New Guy.  And they will likely be merciless if it comes up short of their expectations.  Which, as you rightly said, are often artificially inflated by PR people.  If you have 5% of a customer base totally nuts negative to start with, for every million customers that's 50,000 people who are both disappointed and not shy about expressing their opinions.  That's so much mass of negativity that the other 95% are less likely to try and balance out the complainers.

CM will do better because the audience itself is both more selective and less likely to feel "cheated".  Meaning, people who are interested in spending the time checking out Combat Mission are probably more inclined to be game focused rather than bling focused.  They are more likely to see the value in it.  Because we aren't trying to make it seem like Battlefield 3 or what not, we'll avoid the marketing disappointment aspect.  If we only have, say, 50,000 customers checking it out then there's only 2500 super negative people that have the potential to slam the game.  That isn't a small number in real terms, but in relative Steam terms its a rounding error of a rounding error.

In short... we're not worried.  In the end, it only matters how much money we make.  We already have a solid community to draw from for feedback and support, so for us Steam is all about the money.  Which is why I won't be spending my time there.  Too many other things to do.

Steve

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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

No, but it's an argument that keeps popping up... That the unwashed casual masses of Steam users will carpet-bomb CM with negative reviews, that they will demand that it be dumbed down, etc.

Not so sure. There are a few wargames on there that could have been attacked that way but haven't. Aslong as it's advertised correctly I see no problems myself. Look at GGWar in the East. That wasn't trashed.

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12 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Sorry to disappoint, but I have more important things to do than argue with people on Steam :D

What, come one that's what people want to see. Forget about creating new content or new features that's all very old school. We want a comment war. Next  you will say you don't have a Twitter account.  /s

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6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

People on Steam usually only complain about graphics when they feel they've been misled to think the game would look better than it actually does.

That is a really good point.

 

6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

We have to let go of the idea that people outside of this forum are generally stupid and unreasonable. There are all kinds of gamers on Steam.

Sure, also a good point. To be honest my concern would be too many people giving up on the challenge early and blaming the game. This is not an easy game to play. I know lots of people have complained about the UI but I'm not even talking about that. I mean the game is hard to master. If you have good tactical skill and a reasonable mastery of the order system you can still get your backside handed to you. And getting those first two things takes a lot of play. We all have read (or even authored) a post about how I lost my favourite unit and therefore the game is broken. I personally am done with dealing with that. I hope to spend some time on forums helping new people out but I'll be ignoring those kinds of posts.

My hope is that there will be lots of good questions that we can help with.

I hope BFC finds lots of excited and interested players.

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Any thoughts on Steam Workshop integration?

The heavily limited "modding" capabilities of CM make it an almost perfect candidate. Command Ops 2 and Armored Brigade are using the workshop to great effect and make it simple to download new scenarios.

Edited by com-intern
Edit for clarity
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4 hours ago, IanL said:

To be honest my concern would be too many people giving up on the challenge early and blaming the game. This is not an easy game to play.

Feel free to bash me later if I'm wrong, but I don't think that will happen. I think the kind of players who will be attracted to this game will usually be the kind of people who are interested in history and realism, and who are intelligent enough to realise that they might be doing mistakes if things don't work out the way they hoped for.

At least that's that style of the majority of posts I've read on these forums over the years. I think the idea of the unreasonable player has been exaggerated quite a bit.

As Steve said, niche games are judged by a different standard than the latest and greatest AAA game. And played by very different people.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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50 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I think the kind of players who will be attracted to this game will usually be the kind of people who are interested in history and realism, and who are intelligent enough to realise that they might be doing mistakes if things don't work out the way they hoped for

And this links in with the graphics quality evaluation, also in turn to the GL video posted by Umlaut above.

CM games will do best on steam if marketed cleverly; indicating in 2 minutes flat what the punter is going to get out of it.

That is, specifically, an authentic tactical (and historical) experience. The entire movie spectacular as a marketing approach without an accompanying tactical (and historical) narrative will unfortunately serve these games no justice on a platform where many subscribers do not look more deeply at what a game offers, and instead make trigger purchases based on face value ones in a slick video exemplifying; fast paced action, spectacular visuals, highly immersive audio, general instant gratification. CM or its samey "movie videos" cannot compete with that. Different approach required! 

Edited by The Steppenwulf
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8 minutes ago, The Steppenwulf said:

on a platform where many subscribers do not look more deeply at what a game offers, and instead make trigger purchases based on face value ones in a slick video exemplifying; fast paced action, spectacular visuals, highly immersive audio, general instant gratification. CM or its samey "movie videos" cannot compete with that. Different approach required! 

The people who look for instant gratification won't get attracted to CM no matter what. Who cares. It's not necessary to sell CM to every guy on Steam. Just reaching 1 pct. of the users would bring a flood of money to BFC.

But hey, the decision has been made. No reason for anyone to keep arguing :)

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I've just looked at the Steam page, due date 25 August ... but it lists only PC specs, doesn't seem to have the Mac version? (Or not so far, anyway ...)

 

I would (if possible) link my direct purchase to Steam to play / update it that way, or even consider buying it again ... but not if there's no Mac version!

 

Any info on that aspect?

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55 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

The people who look for instant gratification won't get attracted to CM no matter what. Who cares.

Well everyone evaluates on this basis to some extent or other.  I mean regardless, it's a general advertising principle that you have two minutes as a pitch to sell your product, computer games a salient example. Two minutes of CM 'action' are not playing to CM's strengths as a game. Put simply if you worked in sales and were asked to sell chess, how would you do it!??!! 

Yep I am referring to the 1% (or how many you want %), the figure matters not, the point is simply about maximising the games selling power regardless of how many it reaches. 

Edited by The Steppenwulf
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9 hours ago, c3k said:

Late to the party, but this is great news!

Hope its success exceeds expectations.

+1 to that.  I'm a Slitherine customer and a very long term Steam user.  I have no issues with either.  Combat Mission is however the best of its type by a long way, so I hope this works out well and feeds more money to BFC for development and of course their general good 🙂.  Nice to have such active involvement from Steve and everyone else on the forum as well, hope that continues.

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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

and who are intelligent enough to realise that they might be doing mistakes if things don't work out the way they hoped

That bit is actually the fun part of the game. You plan something and later on realises that your opponent was planning something similar but was a few seconds or minutes quicker than you and you have to try to make something not too bad out of the result.

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11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh, I agree with that.  The primary way to get trashed on Steam is to try and compete for the AAA game slots.  This is when there's a few million people actively interested in checking out the New Guy.  And they will likely be merciless if it comes up short of their expectations.  Which, as you rightly said, are often artificially inflated by PR people.  If you have 5% of a customer base totally nuts negative to start with, for every million customers that's 50,000 people who are both disappointed and not shy about expressing their opinions.  That's so much mass of negativity that the other 95% are less likely to try and balance out the complainers.

CM will do better because the audience itself is both more selective and less likely to feel "cheated".  Meaning, people who are interested in spending the time checking out Combat Mission are probably more inclined to be game focused rather than bling focused.  They are more likely to see the value in it.  Because we aren't trying to make it seem like Battlefield 3 or what not, we'll avoid the marketing disappointment aspect.  If we only have, say, 50,000 customers checking it out then there's only 2500 super negative people that have the potential to slam the game.  That isn't a small number in real terms, but in relative Steam terms its a rounding error of a rounding error.

In short... we're not worried.  In the end, it only matters how much money we make.  We already have a solid community to draw from for feedback and support, so for us Steam is all about the money.  Which is why I won't be spending my time there.  Too many other things to do.

Steve

Just read this one LOL, agree 100%.

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On 8/5/2020 at 7:25 PM, Hister said:

Seen people from other forums see CM crowd as an elitist, closed, militarist, uber pro usa bunch of guys who get hostile easily when someone says something that most often then not triggers them. Something down that line. 

How dare they say that about hardcore wargamers!  That makes me so angry! 😡

😄What exactly do they expect? 

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