Annual look at the year to come - 2023

[Aragorn2002]

19 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

This is the first time I ever walked away from one of these bones threads feeling really unappreciated, looked down at, laughed at, etc.

Maybe only the UK MOD type customers get the smiles and go out for a beer at the pub? When they ask for something, they have the money to pay for it I guess.

COME ON POWERBALL!!!

 

 

 

 

NOBODY laughs at you, Phil. You are the King of mods and without you I wouldn't have had such a good time with CM.

[Sequoia]

Yeah and without you, we'd likely never have gotten the Schwimwagen.

[kohlenklau]

27 minutes ago, Sequoia said:

Schwimwagen.

oh man, I musta burned out my Santa Steve list with that I guess

[Vacillator]

4 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

I musta burned out Steve I guess

Okay a bit of editing there.  Anyway Phil, you know I'm your biggest fan (but not in an Eminem way) and we both try for snippets of good news on early war stuff.  Let's keep trying, you never know.  I'm not expecting anything, so I won't be disappointed.

In the meantime I'm engaging the Soviets again on the Eastern Front but it's 1945, what am I doing?

[Aragorn2002]

18 hours ago, Vacillator said:

Okay a bit of editing there.  Anyway Phil, you know I'm your biggest fan (but not in an Eminem way) and we both try for snippets of good news on early war stuff.  Let's keep trying, you never know.  I'm not expecting anything, so I won't be disappointed.

In the meantime I'm engaging the Soviets again on the Eastern Front but it's 1945, what am I doing?

Killing Russians. There are worse ways to spend your time.

[Battlefront.com]

22 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

This is the first time I ever walked away from one of these bones threads feeling really unappreciated, looked down at, laughed at, etc.

 

I'm sorry you feel that you feel I'm lumping you in with the unreasonable gaggle of customers that believe we should cater everything we do for their individual and conflicting wants without any consideration for the wants of others or limitations on our development resources.  I certainly don't put you in that camp.

Steve

[kohlenklau]

51 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I certainly don't put you in that camp.

OK, thanks Steve. I had made a lot of pitches and proposals and requests and recommendations. Onward and upward.

JUST IN CASE YOU DON'T GET AROUND THE FORUMS MUCH...I (with the help of many talented fellow forumites) have used your fine product(s) and the inherent "modability" you graciously installed to do the below:

CMRT WINTER MOD

CMRT KHOLM MOD

CMRT FINN MOD

CMRT BARBAROSSA MOD

CMRT ROMANIANS MOD

CMRT ITALY CSIR MOD

CMRT WARSAW UPRISING MOD

CMRT HUNGARIANS MOD

CMFI KRETA MOD

CMFI AFRIKA CMAK2 MOD

CMFI PARTISANS MOD

CMRT SPANISH BLUE DIVISION MOD (IN PROGRESS)

Best wishes, Phil

Edited February 4, 2023 by kohlenklau

[Aragorn2002]

19 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

OK, thanks Steve. I had made a lot of pitches and proposals and requests and recommendations. Onward and upward.

JUST IN CASE YOU DON'T GET AROUND THE FORUMS MUCH...I (with the help of many talented fellow forumites) have used your fine product(s) and the inherent "modability" you graciously installed to do the below:

CMRT FINN MOD

CMRT BARBAROSSA MOD

CMRT ROMANIANS MOD

CMRT ITALY CSIR MOD

CMRT WARSAW UPRISING MOD

CMRT HUNGARIANS MOD

CMFI KRETA MOD

CMFI AFRIKA CMAK2 MOD

CMFI PARTISANS MOD

CMRT SPANISH BLUE DIVISION MOD (IN PROGRESS)

Best wishes, Phil

Don't forget the superb winter mod for CMRT, that enabled us winter battles and helped to bear the endless wait for FR. 

[kohlenklau]

10 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Don't forget the

Dang, oh yeah, that was after my 2015 heart attack. 7 years ago. Time speeds by.

I edited my post to add it in and also the CMRT Kholm Mod.

Modding is the game within a game. It has been a blast and I have worked with so many talented guys. If just had a few little things from BFC we could take it to a higher level. Little things to me but an excessive deviation off course to BFC. Such is life.

Edited February 4, 2023 by kohlenklau

[CarlXII]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

 with the unreasonable gaggle of customers that believe we should cater everything we do for their individual and conflicting wants without any consideration for the wants of others or limitations on our development resources. 

I'm sorry ! but that just not true. Very few people around here demand that you should exclusivly concentrate on adding features or fixing bugs that they personally considder to be the most important. 

That comment is getting pretty tiersome and old.

What frustrates some people around here is that pretty much NO ONE has gotten what they want...almost NONE of the suggestions/request that have been put forward here have seen much progress in the last couple of years.

Combine that with BFCs own stated goals that meets with delay after delay and problem after problem you have to be able to understand that some people gets frustrated about the slow progress in recent years.

They are not only not getting what they personally want the most...They are seeing pretty much no progress at all. That's whats frustrating and dissapointing.

Hopefully that will change with this annonced shift in priorities.

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, CarlXII said:

I'm sorry ! but that just not true. Very few people around here demand that you should exclusivly concentrate on adding features or fixing bugs that they personally considder to be the most important. 

That comment is getting pretty tiersome and old.

What frustrates some people around here is that pretty much NO ONE has gotten what they want...almost NONE of the suggestions/request that have been put forward here have seen much progress in the last couple of years.'

Combine that with BFCs own stated goals that meets with delay after delay and problem after problem you have to be able to understand that some people gets frustrated about the slow progress in recent years.

They are not only not getting what they personally want the most...They are seeing pretty much no progress at all. That's whats frustrating and dissapointing.

Hopefully that will change with this annonced shift in priorities.

Aaaaaand, you're proving my point.

We spent years focused on the game mechanics at the expense of content.  People complained about that.  We struck a balance for a long time, then moved into focusing on content over features.  And we have released a lot of content since then.  So if you define "progress" as content, there's been a lot of progress.  Since you define "progress" as features, you don't see it that way and you are expressing your unhappiness about that.  All well and fine, but in doing so you are dismissing what other people want as not important because it's not what you personally want.  At the same time you are criticizing us for giving other people what they want instead of what you want.

I'm sure you don't see it that way, which again is my point.

Now, even if we switched back to making game engine improvements I have a feeling you wouldn't be happy with whatever we did.  I've already seen people criticize us for focusing on game performance improvements over game feature improvements.  The frustrating thing from our standpoint is that every time time someone says "I think this is what Battlefront needs to do", the next person chimes in "I agree!" and then lists a completely different bunch of things they think are the most important.  Since we can't do 1000 different improvements over a number of years, this means any time we release something there will be howls of complaints that we didn't do the other things.

I've doing this a long time.  Long enough to know my customers better than some of them know themselves.

Steve

[HerrTom]

I'm sure dealing with us is a pain, but from my perspective you guys might have a little communication problem. From the 2022 prospective, only the CMCW patch released, and in July (and again in November!). And that was aimed at early February. I certainly appreciate the September update but it was radio silence until then. Then radio silence until now.

CMBS just got a patch that fixed one major bug in the game, which is pretty great too. I haven't had a chance to test it yet but the patch notes haven't mentioned the at least year old AT6 bug (also in CW which patched twice this year with no dice) and armored vehicles and their subsystems are still immune to artillery save for direct hits, which we've known about since at least 2014. I know these are maybe my big bugbears but you can't argue that having such long lasting bugs is a good look? We also have no idea if you even know about them. We post on the forum and occasionally get a volunteer tester to ask about it and then it gets forgotten about until maybe next year it gets fixed.

Finally, and I don't mean to be rude, but you say you spent recent time on content: what content? I guess you mean CMCW (the best game you've released, and I'm genuinely grateful you you guys!) But that was in 2021.

Overall I think we might be less cantankerous if instead of getting official word when the deadlines go whooshing by months later, a word sooner might make us happier than otherwise.

Anyway, I finally caught COVID and am grumpy so I apologize if I come across the wrong way! I wish everyone here the best and am looking forward to 2023!

[Grey_Fox]

Further to @HerrTom's point, am I right in thinking that the sights on the LAV-AT in SF2 is still broken, several years after release?

Edited February 5, 2023 by Grey_Fox

[WimO]

I also appreciate Kohlenklau's work.

[Redwolf]

There certainly is a communication problem about bug tracking. The Gill ATGM in CMSF2 is also unfixed in the new patch, although it is completely broken.

I vividly remember Elvis asking once "which bugs?", while at the same time (buried in semi-random threads) reports of such bugs were in the minds of people. The mechanism of catching the attention of a beta tester who can then transport that to the official bug tracker is obviously not working.

Given how expensive it is to make a patch release such opportunities shouldn't be slandered. 

[JM Stuff]

1 hour ago, WimO said:

I also appreciate Kohlenklau's work.

Agree Phill, Uncle Koh @kohlenklau let us always discover news things, news theater of operations, and news vehicles added with a compatible Scen Camp, so I am very happy that we have here, and waiting impatiently to the early war job.

Cheers

[The Steppenwulf]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

People complained about that.  We struck a balance for a long time, then moved into focusing on content over features.  And we have released a lot of content since then.  So if you define "progress" as content, there's been a lot of progress. 

Since I purchased BN in 2010, it's seemed pretty clear that Combat Mission franchise was focused predominantly on producing content; one only has to look at the setup and shape (i.e. skill sets) of the BF dev team to perceive that content development WAS the commercial emphasis - since at least that point in time - and was NOT shaped by customer's views. But I'd love to hear about any market research data that BF has ever carried out that demonstrates that there was ever such a decision point (I mean perhaps it was before I discovered CM - entirely possible). 

Nonetheless, moving beyond this with a constructive point; would it be useful for BF to undertake some market research,(e.g. a formal forum poll) with their customer base. Not only might BF find such information useful but it might end a lot of the grumbling about 'development priorities' in the future. Maybe there's a core problem in that nobody feels that the relationship between BF and the customer is the two-way listening exercise that it could be. 

Let's be clear I prefer features over content but I'm not complaining about whatever BF develops. The way I see it is that BF are either interested in what the customer is thinking and they shape priorities to that (which would be great for the feature/s I'd like to see), OR BF do what the hell they want because they are simply relying on their own commercial acumen (for better, for worse). It's your livelihood at stake!

But in this I'd warn that pretending that it's the former priority, when it's really only (and has ever been) the latter, might be interpreted as a tad disingenuous, which would not be helpful in maintaining good customer relations.

[kohlenklau]

The elephant in the room:

I mean no disrespect in going down this path of conjecture. I always got to have some humor in it as well.

I think the bottleneck is Charles. All the talk of limited development time and opportunity must be a code (pardon the pun) for Charles having a real full-time career/job elsewhere from BFC in the coding industry. ANYTHING that involves Charles for BFC must stack up like flights coming into Chicago airport. When does the poor guy have to all of sudden crank it all out? One weekend a month? A few hours on Sunday morning while Mrs. Charles makes the pancakes? Maybe the code is so "Charles" that nobody else can go in there or they will eff it up. He must be in his early to mid 60's by now. Somebody said they saw him in the Ukraine thread. Wow. How many man-hours can the guy plop down on Kohlenklau's desires. The survey says...Goose egg!

The introduction of any new content is also harnessed or enslaved to Charles' availability because of the patch being a code and DRM concerns I guess. Back a few pages I TRIED to propose a place holder CM Early War with no real content by BFC...but as somebody reminded me, that is STILL Charles' involved.

The big money military/government contracts are the priority. Charles and Steve maybe fly to shake hands and press the flesh with DC beltway, London or someday Kiev contracting and procurement officials. Give a dog and pony show and blow away the competition. High Fives all the way back home on business class. It would make a great Hollywood movie. Russell Crowe as Steve? Woody Harrelson as Charles? I am not a casting professional.

Somewhere in there maybe some trickle down economics occurs and the "little people" get some of the results in new "features" that UK MOD or whoever wanted. <<Flares over the battlefield anybody? Or is that all a thing of the past?>>

One weekend a month or so and Charles is available annually for about 20 man-days of total effort. Basically 4 regular weeks of production effort. He has a list of things to do and attacks them the best he can. Then interspersed in those spread out over a year 20 man-days is the testing by BETA guys to see if it is ok. Or they waive that and send it out as a release and hit a snag here and there.

Charles' REAL job has some paid time off and Mrs. Charles had big plans for them all to go to the Bahamas and here is Charles with this proposal..<raise your hand if you ever had to do this one!> Go on ahead honey, I will just do these few things for Steve and fly down to join you...Hotel Suite has that couch for you to sleep on Charles. Mrs Charles can hear the keys late night clacking on your work laptop...

Steve is the CEO of BFC and must make all these ugly decisions on what Charles does for those 20 man-days. Steve also has to be the frontman and take the heat Harry Truman style. Every year Steve sends Charles a 1099 for his taxes! File now and get your refund before April.

 

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by kohlenklau

[Codreanu]

Any hope of getting the AMD drivers issue patched, maybe along with the next engine update?

[ncc1701e]

9 hours ago, Redwolf said:

There certainly is a communication problem about bug tracking. The Gill ATGM in CMSF2 is also unfixed in the new patch, although it is completely broken.

Certainly and hence the frustration. Maybe in 2024, I'll come back to see if another CMSF2 patch was released to solve the Gill and add few additional rounds for the Syrian Airborne & Special Forces. And oh, if a bug is closed-design intent, just say it.

 

[Battlefront.com]

8 hours ago, The Steppenwulf said:

Since I purchased BN in 2010, it's seemed pretty clear that Combat Mission franchise was focused predominantly on producing content; one only has to look at the setup and shape (i.e. skill sets) of the BF dev team to perceive that content development WAS the commercial emphasis - since at least that point in time - and was NOT shaped by customer's views. But I'd love to hear about any market research data that BF has ever carried out that demonstrates that there was ever such a decision point (I mean perhaps it was before I discovered CM - entirely possible). 

And another example of what I've been talking about.  You have just stated that nobody wanted us to expand the content and you know this for a fact.  What market research data do you have to back up this claim?

Here's all the market research I need... we would not be in business for 20+ years in an industry that chews up and spits out companies, even billion Dollar ones, on a regular basis if we did not listen to our customers and make sound decisions about delivering to them what they want. 

8 hours ago, The Steppenwulf said:

Nonetheless, moving beyond this with a constructive point; would it be useful for BF to undertake some market research,(e.g. a formal forum poll) with their customer base. Not only might BF find such information useful but it might end a lot of the grumbling about 'development priorities' in the future. Maybe there's a core problem in that nobody feels that the relationship between BF and the customer is the two-way listening exercise that it could be.

Again with the grand presumptions that you know more than we do.  Hey, maybe our research would show that the loudest voices here represent our customer base the least?  Every consider that?

8 hours ago, The Steppenwulf said:

Let's be clear I prefer features over content but I'm not complaining about whatever BF develops. The way I see it is that BF are either interested in what the customer is thinking and they shape priorities to that (which would be great for the feature/s I'd like to see), OR BF do what the hell they want because they are simply relying on their own commercial acumen (for better, for worse). It's your livelihood at stake!

Wow.  I don't think you understand how the free market works.  Let me explain it to you in simple terms... if we don't make something customers want, they won't buy it.  If they don't buy it, we go out of business.  Conversely, if we do make something customers want, they will buy it.  If they buy it, we stay in business.

I suppose it is theoretically possible for us to NOT listen to customers and still somehow deliver what they want, therefore staying in business, but I personally don't think that's really possible.  Therefore, the conclusion that any sensible person would draw from this fairly simple dynamic is that we must be listening to what customers want and are delivering products that the majority want to buy.  If you have an alternative economic theory that would explain how a small niche company can stay in business for decades while at the same time not delivering products that people want to buy, I'm all ears.  You might even win a Nobel prize in economics.

8 hours ago, The Steppenwulf said:

But in this I'd warn that pretending that it's the former priority, when it's really only (and has ever been) the latter, might be interpreted as a tad disingenuous, which would not be helpful in maintaining good customer relations.

The alternative possibility is that some customers are so self absorbed that they misconstrue their personal interests for what the majority of customers are looking for.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, Codreanu said:

Any hope of getting the AMD drivers issue patched, maybe along with the next engine update?

We are still looking into what we can do about it, but so far it seems it is an AMD problem with their support for older OpenGL features.  We've seen some evidence that newer AMD drivers have addressed some of the previous problems, though not completely.

Upgrade 5 is designed to address issues like this.

Steve

[JM Stuff]

sorry wrong post !

Edited February 6, 2023 by JM Stuff

[Battlefront.com]

13 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

The elephant in the room:

I mean no disrespect in going down this path of conjecture. I always got to have some humor in it as well.

I think the bottleneck is Charles. All the talk of limited development time and opportunity must be a code (pardon the pun) for Charles having a real full-time career/job elsewhere from BFC in the coding industry. ANYTHING that involves Charles for BFC must stack up like flights coming into Chicago airport. When does the poor guy have to all of sudden crank it all out? One weekend a month? A few hours on Sunday morning while Mrs. Charles makes the pancakes? Maybe the code is so "Charles" that nobody else can go in there or they will eff it up. He must be in his early to mid 60's by now. Somebody said they saw him in the Ukraine thread. Wow. How many man-hours can the guy plop down on Kohlenklau's desires. The survey says...Goose egg!

The introduction of any new content is also harnessed or enslaved to Charles' availability because of the patch being a code and DRM concerns I guess. Back a few pages I TRIED to propose a place holder CM Early War with no real content by BFC...but as somebody reminded me, that is STILL Charles' involved.

The big money military/government contracts are the priority. Charles and Steve maybe fly to shake hands and press the flesh with DC beltway, London or someday Kiev contracting and procurement officials. Give a dog and pony show and blow away the competition. High Fives all the way back home on business class. It would make a great Hollywood movie. Russell Crowe as Steve? Woody Harrelson as Charles? I am not a casting professional.

Somewhere in there maybe some trickle down economics occurs and the "little people" get some of the results in new "features" that UK MOD or whoever wanted. <<Flares over the battlefield anybody? Or is that all a thing of the past?>>

One weekend a month or so and Charles is available annually for about 20 man-days of total effort. Basically 4 regular weeks of production effort. He has a list of things to do and attacks them the best he can. Then interspersed in those spread out over a year 20 man-days is the testing by BETA guys to see if it is ok. Or they waive that and send it out as a release and hit a snag here and there.

Charles' REAL job has some paid time off and Mrs. Charles had big plans for them all to go to the Bahamas and here is Charles with this proposal..<raise your hand if you ever had to do this one!> Go on ahead honey, I will just do these few things for Steve and fly down to join you...Hotel Suite has that couch for you to sleep on Charles. Mrs Charles can hear the keys late night clacking on your work laptop...

Steve is the CEO of BFC and must make all these ugly decisions on what Charles does for those 20 man-days. Steve also has to be the frontman and take the heat Harry Truman style. Every year Steve sends Charles a 1099 for his taxes! File now and get your refund before April.

 

 

Er, well, attempts at humor put aside, none of the conjecture was anywhere near the mark except that at some point Charles has to have his fingers in something for it to become a part of the game.  That's just the way it is.  So when he is busy doing something then everything else has to wait.  We are constantly assessing prioritization and he's pretty adept at switching gears quickly when needs arise.

I will remind you that for 20+ years we have said that we have absolutely no interest, conceptually or financially, to open up the game engine to fundamental modification by third parties.  This has nothing to do with Charles' available time, though the fact that prepping the game engine to be accessible would take a considerable amount of his time would certainly be another nail in the coffin if it wasn't already buried 6' under ground.  Increasing access or ease of modifying existing items is also not a priority for us as it takes time that we would rather spend on other tasks.

Steve

[MikeyD]

Heh heh, I'm reminded of an old college friend (back last century) who had opinions on EVERYTHING. He told me about how he once found himself sitting at a table with the editor of 'Consumer Reports' magazine, whereupon he proceeded to spend the evening telling the editor AAAAAAALLL the things wrong with his magazine and exactly what he needed to do to fix it. I'm sure the editor appreciated a pimply faced 19 year old with black horn rim glasses and a polyester shirt bending his ear on the correct way to run a magazine that had been in business since 1938.