A bit disappointed

[Jäger]

I first heard about this game in the Panzer-Elite forum, later a friend of mine told me about it and he was very enthusiastic about it. So I downloaded the IMO huge demo and tried it out.

I played each scenario once for both sides, then I deleted the demo from my harddrive. Why you ask?

I found it to be really dull. Never once did I panic, never once did I have the feeling “Oh sh!t, oh sh!t OH SH!T”.

I find the ranges that the battles are fought on to be way to hampering, there’s hardly any tactics left on these ranges, just IMHO a slugfest.

I understand that there must be severe programming difficulties to model each soldier, and that it would need a lot of computer juice. But still I find the usage of squads to be both unrealistic and boring. Where is the fun in not being able to see all the blood and gore, where is the fun in not seeing single soldiers breaking and running for cower while his more experienced squad mates stand their ground?

Then there is the problem about a turn-based tactical game. Which I find to be well, boring. There is no fun or realism in being able to have unlimited planing time each 60 seconds. When I play a tactical game such as this I want to be nervous, I want to improvise while my men are dying, not to be able to plan every turn in unlimited time.

I will not buy this game for the reasons above, the reason which I find to be the most hampering, is the turn-based. If the game had been in real-time, with the ability to pause and issue orders, I would have loved the game, I would have complained about the other points above, but I would have loved it.

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Praeterea censeo Carthageniem esse delandem

[Henri]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jäger:

When I play a tactical game such as this I want to be nervous, I want to improvise while my men are dying, not to be able to plan every turn in unlimited time.

I will not buy this game for the reasons above, the reason which I find to be the most hampering, is the turn-based.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Try Quake or Age of Kings, or...anyway, gitdahellouttahere!..

Henri

[mensch]

[pzvg]

[see sig]

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Pzvg

"Confucious say, it is better to remain silent, and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt"

[jackhammer]

Given that you can have multi battalion battles real time is not feasable. There is no way you can possably either keep track of your units or carry out real tactics in "real" time. Also, how can having the ability to give your units orders every 60 seconds ( subject to command delays) not be realistic but having the ability to pause a "real" time game is? Trust me, if this game was real time you'd have to pause it almost as often as 60 seconds anyway. With CM's scale you would be unable to "improvise" if it were real time.

[Mace]

Facts are:

(i)the full CM is an excellent game, it blows the socks off the demo.

(ii) A CM PBEM is the penultimate tactical wargaming experience

(iii) CM is not turn based!

(iv) you're a troll, looking for a flamewar!

Mace

[This message has been edited by Mace (edited 09-05-2000).]

[Guest Michael emrys]

Jäger: Different strokes, get it? Hope you find something you like real well; sincerely.

Michael

[Holdit]

Combat Mission was never intended to be a twitch n' splatter game. The things that matter to the players who comprise the target market for this game are not the things you describe. If you search on the items you mention, you'll find why the CM treatment is more realistic than anything else out there.

If blood n' guts is what you want, stick to Quake or Duke Nukem, or even better, visit your local abbatoir. You're right to delete the CM demo from your hard drive; it's obviously not the game for you. Don't imagine that it will cause any loss of sleep to the designers, though.

Sure, you can play Close Combat, Commandos or Hidden and Dangerous and a whole host of others. By all means enjoy them, just don't kid yourself they're representative of the WW2 combat experience.

One tip, before you waste your bandwidth on a 30mb download, try checking out some reviews of the game first. That should tell you if you'll be getting what you want.

[KiloIndiaAlpha]

Jager,

Like yourself, but with a different game (M1TP2), I felt tension to be lacking. So I tried this simple remedy to help ramp up the immersion, you may want to give it a go.

Buy yourself a tin bucket and place it over your head after cutting a slit in it at eye level, this simulates a vision port on a tank you see. You will now need to enlist the help of your wife/girlfriend/mother. Her role, once you start playing CM, is to creep up behind you with a piece of stout timber and give your head (protected by the bucket) an almighty whack with the piece of wood, she should do this at random intervals whilst trying to keep in step with what she sees on the screen . This will simulate enemy AP shells bouncing off. If she's really keen the severity of the blow can be varied thus accurately simulating different calibre of shells.

Give it a go, it really improved my gaming experience and I'm sure you'll find the games tension increased.

[This message has been edited by KiloIndiaAlpha (edited 09-05-2000).]

[howardb]

I'm sorry you didn't like CM but I think it's extremely bad form to come to our board critisizing "our game". You don't find us flaming Panzer Elite on your board do you? Now if you had something interesting to say I would take it as constructive critisism but this isn't...

[Mikeydz]

Good call Jager...

You didn't like the game.

You didn't buy the game.

Thanks for letting us know.

[Brian Rock]

This is suspiciously troll-like, given Cm is being criticised for not having things that aren't in Panzer Elite, such as individual soldiers and gore. The PzE people usually aren't into that stuff.

Not quite sure what the point of Jäger's post is really...

[Darwin]

Good call KIA

You know hot tar seals up blowtorch holes pretty good, perhaps this could somehow aid in imersion as well...

[PawBroon]

A follow up to the "Slit in a bucket" post (which is a perfect exemple of why one should stay there and read the posts done by some of the guys I'd marry if I was a multithreaded woman).

Now KIA, I did try that and I must confess it didn't improve my gaming experience.

How do you model the difference in vision port size between, an M8 and a Jumbo for exemple?

I tried to override that by having different sized slits cut out of the bucket.

But the wacking was so accurate (my wife DO love your idea BTW) that the bucket keep spinning and I end up being transmogrified from Recon to AFV to something else entirely.

That kind of undocumented fuzzy post will do nothing to allay Jäger concern even if the "Go for the slit, slut!" might trigger an overall changing of his love life.

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Either he's dead or my watch has stopped

[patboivin]

LOL!

I can't stop laughing, good thing I wasn't drinking anything while I read that post.

I have to wipe the tears out of my eyes.

Just picturing someone with a bucket over their head... LOL

It's posts like this that keep me coming back.

[deanco]

Might wanna try Sudden Strike then.

DeanCo--

[piekat]

Tried the tin bucket experiment. My girlfriend was so happy to help me that now i'm in a hospital bed with a suspected skull fracture.

First italian WIA in CM.

This is Virtual Reality at his highest level.

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"Memento Audere Semper" - G. D'Annunzio

[Das Boot]

KIA,

I tried the bucket thing too with both an american and a german bucket, and it has a number of flaws.

The standard american bucket is vastly overrated, as everyone knows the triangular shape of german slits gave them a superior sighting mecanism. Surely BTS should look into this, cause as it is, the american buckets are just too good.

Besides, the tin used in german buckets was of a better quality. Yet when I tried it I penetrated the side of the bucket - even with a gentle whack, whereas the american buckets took several hard top hits without breaking. This is clearly wrong.

[PzKpfw 1]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jäger:

If the game had been in real-time, with the ability to pause and issue orders, I would have loved the game, I would have complained about the other points above, but I would have loved it.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You know I see this all the time from the RTS crowd, they want everything to be RTS & despise turn based games, yet they always add 1 thing that an RTS game must have that puzzles me to these posts:The ability to pause the game to issue orders

Now you find this kind of hard to understand as they hammer turn based games because their turn based & turn based isn't 'realistic'. & it's not realistic for players in TB games to have all this time, to plan & issue orders etc. Yet when they pause & take all the time they want;, to study the map, & issue orders in an RTS games its ok, because its RTS..... Go figure.

Regards, John Waters

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"die verdammte Jabos".

[This message has been edited by PzKpfw 1 (edited 09-05-2000).]

[Spook]

Well done on that point, John. I was going to comment on that RTS "clause" earlier, but your FFE (Fire For Effect) beat me to it.

By & large, Jager, you've put down your stake in saying that you won't buy due to the turn-based structure. OK, it's all fair to state your view here. But if your post was offered in the hope that this game mechanism would change in the future, you'd best not bother. In terms of PBEM compatibility (the most preferred venue of computer wargamers) and "philosophical" views on how much control should be allowed a gamer in this game scale, the turned-based structure has been discussed on this board ad nauseum. Try the search utility to find all kinds of posts on this topic (over the years) if you'd like to read all of the viewpoints and BTS's own offered rationales. But it can be summarized here that the TBS element won't change to RTS, nor should it.

Now commenting on some of your other points:

I found it to be really dull. Never once did I panic, never once did I have the feeling “Oh sh!t, oh sh!t OH SH!T”.

Hmmmm. I've felt that emotion plenty of times when my infantry got caught in an artillery barrage, or ambushed by MG's in open ground. And I could only watch in despair. Oh well, that was just me, I suppose.

I find the ranges that the battles are fought on to be way to hampering, there’s hardly any tactics left on these ranges, just IMHO a slugfest.

The maps in the demo aren't representative to how big maps can be made in CM scenarios for the full game. I know this all too well now, I've recently cranked out five 2X2km maps for the impending CMMC game. THAT was a bit of a chore. As for infantry tactics, one must remember that most infantry small arms and MG's don't reach well beyond 500 meters. So are you suggesting that within this range, tactics aren't applicable? One should certainly develop close-range infantry tactics and combined-arms support if they want their troops & tanks to survive and hold ground.

I understand that there must be severe programming difficulties to model each soldier, and that it would need a lot of computer juice. But still I find the usage of squads to be both unrealistic and boring. Where is the fun in not being able to see all the blood and gore, where is the fun in not seeing single soldiers breaking and running for cower while his more experienced squad mates stand their ground?

You're probably thinking the CC game series here (which can't hack playing more than a company's worth of troops). Here again, choices had to be made to allow people with lower-end PC's to play this game. For me, I can see that "blood & gore" can give a game some more emotional impact, but it hardly is "fun" for me to see. As to showing all of the squad's soldiers on 1:1 scale or having individual "panicked" soldiers milling around, that's also been repeatedly discussed here as to how the cons far outweigh the pros in trying to provide a little extra immersion.

Also think of it this way --- not all casualties to a squad are KIA. Some of the "wounded" can be regarded as panicked men that are gone for the duration of the battle. On all of these matters, try using the search utility again if you desire further information or rationale from BTS.

[Splinty]

Different strokes....I don't get it,I'm normally into real-time games like PzE and I love this game! Jager you're missing out on something good!

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Nicht Schiessen!!

[CavScout]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mace:

Facts are:

(iv) you're a troll, looking for a flamewar!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sometimes I wonder who is really the "troll"... the person giving an opinion that is not popular or the ones who who attack that person for it.

I think calling someone a "troll" for no reason is "trolling" in its own right...

If you think his opinon wrong, state why. His post wasn't mean spirited or inflammatory. It was a statement of why he didn't like the game.

CavScout

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"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

--Bertrand Russell

"God is always with the strongest battalions."

--Frederick the Great

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

--Benjamin Franklin, 1759

"For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-Jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary period, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which is likely to be the more ominous for the Axis--an American decision that this is sport, or that it is business."

--D. W. Brogan, The American Character

[Chupacabra]

CavScout - I think the point is, why would you go to a forum dedicated to a game and say that you thought the game was boring and uninteresting? Since, logically, the people on the board actually like the game, you're not going to do much good except to get people annoyed. It's not as if Steve and Charles will suddenly say, "Good god, he's right! We'll get cracking on that RTS patch right away!"

Put it this way - would you go to, for example, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and start telling them how liquor rocks and sobreity is boring? Well, maybe that was a bad example since some of them would probably agree with you, but you get the idea.

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Soy super bien, soy super super bien, soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super.

[Jäger]

Perhaps I should try and explain myself and my reasons a little bit better.

What I meant by “Blood and Gore” which some people seems to directly relate to hack & slash was, that when soldier is KIA or WIA I want to at this level of games feel like I have really lost a soldier, not just another number. I want the soldiers to scream for their mothers, so that I will know for certain that I have let them down.

If I want number crunching I play TOAW.

Why I don´t like the turn basing, that is because in a fight you do not have unlimited time to think. I want to use my Fingerspitzengefühl, not my head. Try to play a RT game with a human opponent and start pausing every 60 seconds. He will not play with you again.

I never compared Combat Mission to Panzer Elite. It’s like comparing Apples and Macaronis.

I am not a fan of RTS, I have only played Dune II.

I am not a Quaker, I have only played Wolfenstein 3D.

I said my opinions about why I will not buy this game, and why I do not like it. I am not trying to make the programmers change it. I just said my opinion and flaming me or insulting me, will not make me change my mind.

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Praeterea censeo Carthageniem esse delandem

[Abbott]

Ok.