My opinion of the main problem of this game : The lack of campaign

[A.E.B]

Hi all

First a big thankyou to Biltong, Seahawk-VFA201 and everyone else involved in the BCR and other CM campaign projects.

I am aware that BF.C has stated that it is not interested in a campaign. The limitations of the CM1 & CM2 engine seem to spell out a BF.C programmed campaign system - and as CMAK uses the CM2 engine, no campaign for it either.

However, I serious think that BF.C should make an effort to make CM3 "campaign friendly", even if they don't produce a campaign system themselves. The reason I think this is that they are not only losing sales, but the campaign issue may threaten the long term viability of CM.

It was interesting to note that Gamespy's top three games of 2002 in the Strategy area (yes, CM isn't a strategy game but there is no tactical simulation subset) was Warcraft III, Medieval Total War & good old CM:BB. Note that both WCIII and MTW both have campaign and force development elements. I have all three games, and I still play MTW as well as CM:BB.

My great fear is that competing game systems will come along and steal a sufficient block of BF.C's market share to make CM3 the last of its line. While we wait until 2004/5 to see what CM3 is like (CMAK is designed to keep us playing CM2 until then), other games may come along and take a sufficient chunk of CM3's sales that it becomes unviable to develop further.

The greatest danger IMHO is a clone with better graphics and a dynamic campaign will come along and attact sufficient players and moders to kill CM. An the worst part is that such a game may well be inferior to CM in terms of realism and gameplay. The technical term for such events is called consumer drift .

Consumers drift away over time. The only way to combat comsumer drift is to bring in a continuous steam of new consumers (CMBO GE anyone?) to replace old consumers, or you have to keep existing consumers by providing them with continuous stimulation. For BF.C's CM, the best method of extending the life of each CM is a campaign .

I have been playing CMBB for 4 months now. When I bought my game I also bought three other copies as gifts. I am now the only person regularly playing CMBB out of the four. The others have played most of the provided senarios and operations, and have become bored and moved on to other games. I don't know what the overall average is, but a 25% retention isn't good. I doubt that my three friends will be buying CMAK (another round of gifts from me???). One of my friends summed up his abandonment of CMBB as " it was just a series of unconnected battles. You never felt that you were achieving anything or getting anywhere ." He is now play StarCraft .

So I hope that CM listens to all this feed back and at least makes CM3 compatable with 3rd Party add on campaign systems. BCR is great, but it is continuously evolving and requires effort to manage and keep up with. I stopped playing BCR after 7 battles as, after a 10 hour work day, it was simply to much effort.

I'd hate to see BF.C go the way of SSI, Dynamix, Looking Glass Studios or any of the other once great gaming houses. How would Matt or Steve go working for EA or Microsoft games??? Make CM3 campaign friendly and they'll never have to find out!

Regards

A.E.B

[Fishu]

It is indeed real sad that theres no campaign engine for a game of this type.