Immersion and gaming

[c3k]

Gents,

I'm trying to enjoy CMSF. I find that, despite the very many technical, artistic, and thought-provoking achievements in CMSF, I am often frustrated and quit the game.

I just realized that my frustration stems from a suspension of immersion.

In CMx1 I projected what was happening with the three or two man representations of squads. If something occurred which didn't make sense or seem right, I could attribute it to the graphical representation lacking the fidelity to show all the action. A case in point would be a German squad throwing an anti-tank mine about 50-75 meters. (It occurred in a ROW tournement.) Laughing about it (Hey, it destroyed an enemy tank! I'm not sure if my opponent laughed.) I rationalized that it represented a single man breaking off from the squad and executing the attack from a more advantageous position.

In CMSF that is gone.

My men do not follow my commands. Finding a doorway results in split squads and aberrant pathing. That snaps the suspension of disbelief; the imaginative immersion into the situation. I immediately recognize that I'm sitting in front of a computer trying to get a very complex piece of coding to work in a manner which yields expected results. I then realize I could be doing something else, whether useful or another game which pulls me into its world.

"Savegame"; "Quit"; "End".

The immersion factor in this game depends on the fidelity of the TacAI model. This is represented by the actions of the soldiers. When their actions deviate from what would tactically make sense, that immersion ends instantly. Especially so when that deviation has results that cannot be undone; casualties, destroyed vehicles, ordnance expended which cannot be replaced, et cetera.

I will continue to play CMSF. However, playing WeGo, I make savegames prior to executing my orders and again during the playback. That way I have restore points to undo whatever aberrations occur. Also, the savegames will be available should BF.C, or anyone else, ever want to look at them.

I am curious if anyone else has noticed this effect and whether a tentative approach to each scenario, fervently hoping that nothing anomalous will occur, is normal.

Thanks,

Ken

[Cpl Steiner]

c3k,

You are correct in that the added realism of CM:SF brings with it heightened expectations, which can result in frustration when the game handles things poorly.

I've noticed like you that doorways seem to be a particular problem. Rather than stack up right at the entrance and then go directly in, my men seem to move away from the door to a point about 2m directly in front of it, do an about face, and then move back to the door and eventually through it. They look really dumb doing that.

Hopefully these sorts of anomalies will be smoothed out in later iterations of the game engine. It has already come a long way but there is always room for improvement. Let's face it, if it worked the way we all would like it to work, it would be in the PC top 10 games because there would be nothing comparable anywhere. However, such expectations are just unrealistic for a small company like BFC.

[gibsonm]

Not really but I avoid MOUT.

I also play WEGO and save games but more for the AAR perspective (replay to make I don't miss any screenshots, etc.).

I certainly don't re run them though to see what changes could / might happen.

For what its worth is come along way, IMO, from the pre 1.0 betas.

[76mm]

C3K,

I totally agree with you. If I recall correctly, Dorosh started a long thread on this, or a similar topic, a few months ago.

The "why the hell are they doing that?" moments occur with much greater frequency in CMSF, due chiefly to the higher level of graphical detail, but also to the continuing ironing out of TacAI routines (which is understandable).

[Michael Dorosh]

Yep, the thread was called "the The Uncanny Valley." I obviously agree with c3k, and he's articulately identified what quite a few people are experiencing with the new game.

Steve wonders why we want levels of detail in the game, but until such time as there are great levels of detail, the promise of 1:1 rep simply doesn't pay off in any meaningful way. It's an empty promise - sort of like empty calories. All the reams of firepower and ROF stats built in under the hood don't mean anything if, for example, there are only two stock animations for guys running into buildings, and frustrated players see them just standing around doing stupid things a lot of the time.

[ March 29, 2008, 05:17 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[meade95]

Originally posted by c3k:

Gents,

I'm trying to enjoy CMSF. I find that, despite the very many technical, artistic, and thought-provoking achievements in CMSF, I am often frustrated and quit the game.

I just realized that my frustration stems from a suspension of immersion.

In CMx1 I projected what was happening with the three or two man representations of squads. If something occurred which didn't make sense or seem right, I could attribute it to the graphical representation lacking the fidelity to show all the action. A case in point would be a German squad throwing an anti-tank mine about 50-75 meters. (It occurred in a ROW tournement.) Laughing about it (Hey, it destroyed an enemy tank! I'm not sure if my opponent laughed.) I rationalized that it represented a single man breaking off from the squad and executing the attack from a more advantageous position.

In CMSF that is gone.

My men do not follow my commands. Finding a doorway results in split squads and aberrant pathing. That snaps the suspension of disbelief; the imaginative immersion into the situation. I immediately recognize that I'm sitting in front of a computer trying to get a very complex piece of coding to work in a manner which yields expected results. I then realize I could be doing something else, whether useful or another game which pulls me into its world.

"Savegame"; "Quit"; "End".

The immersion factor in this game depends on the fidelity of the TacAI model. This is represented by the actions of the soldiers. When their actions deviate from what would tactically make sense, that immersion ends instantly. Especially so when that deviation has results that cannot be undone; casualties, destroyed vehicles, ordnance expended which cannot be replaced, et cetera.

I will continue to play CMSF. However, playing WeGo, I make savegames prior to executing my orders and again during the playback. That way I have restore points to undo whatever aberrations occur. Also, the savegames will be available should BF.C, or anyone else, ever want to look at them.

I am curious if anyone else has noticed this effect and whether a tentative approach to each scenario, fervently hoping that nothing anomalous will occur, is normal.

Thanks,

Ken

Excellent post - Great explanation to problems and concerns - Hopefully BFC is reading your posts of late -

As a person who justed purchased CMSF (and is waiting for it to arrive...along with my new Rig)....It is posts and concerns like yours...that I know will be mine as well.

Hopefully the TacAI can be tweaked and upgraded via patches in the coming weeks/months -

[vincere]

I don't think I'm experiencing it as much as you guys because I'm a modern setting fan-boy with little in CMSF's league. That said I concur, and generally there's a lot to be said for abstraction. In fact I've found this phenomena in most games and I think some of it is inherent to more detail however good the tac AI becomes- a little like is the book or the film the best debate. There's no substitute for imagination.

Having said all that I don't think the game does it self any favours by hiding so much under the hood. If we had more access to data like the old fire power rating then that would leave less people scratching their heads. For example the data Charles posted about wall penetration %s.

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[c3k]

Adam1, here's a specific example which snapped the feeling of immersion: having restarted a scenario (Al Amarah) several times, I finally learned how to get my men to the crest of the elevated road.

(The repeated restarts are NOT a problem as regards immersion. That's a combination of learning, tactical decision-making and interface shortfalls. The first two are on me; the interface shortfall is on BF.C. I can expand on that in a separate thread.)

Now, back to the "snap" out of immersive gameplay: Having gotten my men, mostly, to the elevated road, I had one more squad I needed to move up. I'd used "quick" to the bottom (sheltered side) then "hunt" to where I thought the crest was. They refused to fire due to blocked LOS. Hmm, they must be too far down the slope. Then the front 2 men were hit by incoming fire - from a location the squad could not hit. "Snap". "Savegame", "Quit", "End".

In another case, I "Slow" moved to tweak the final position of a squad. What did they do? They stood up. Two more casualties. "Savegame", "Quit", "End".

It's the milling around while under fire; it's the looking to the left when the enemy - just spotted - is in front; it's the "blob" formation of a squad which means the front two or three men get hit while the rest don't know what's going on; it's a failure of the TacAI to properly position the 1:1 modelled men.

Regards,

Ken

[76mm]

It's the milling around while under fire; it's the looking to the left when the enemy - just spotted - is in front; it's the "blob" formation of a squad which means the front two or three men get hit while the rest don't know what's going on; it's a failure of the TacAI to properly position the 1:1 modelled men.[/QB]

Great examples. This kind of thing kills interest for me, because as Ken says, it makes it painfully obvious that I'm just struggling to manipulate complex code to get it to do what I want rather than participating in a "battle".

[meade95]

Originally posted by 76mm:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />

It's the milling around while under fire; it's the looking to the left when the enemy - just spotted - is in front; it's the "blob" formation of a squad which means the front two or three men get hit while the rest don't know what's going on; it's a failure of the TacAI to properly position the 1:1 modelled men.

Great examples. This kind of thing kills interest for me, because as Ken says, it makes it painfully obvious that I'm just struggling to manipulate complex code to get it to do what I want rather than participating in a "battle". [/QB]</font>

[Cpl Steiner]

Good points. The problem, it seems to me, is that the 3D is driving the game rather than the game driving the 3D.

Example: In the game "Full Spectrum Warrior", certain parts of the game world were "hot spots" that provided cover if you got your men there. This is a good interface design as it tells you exactly where you need to be to gain a cover advantage from a certain direction. If you moved your team to this position, guess what, the game assumed they were all in cover. It didn't matter if one particular 3D model wasn't quite perfectly behind the covering object - the game rewarded you with the cover bonus regardless. In other words, the game was driving the 3D representation, and not the other way around.

Why BFC didn't go for a similar approach is beyond me.

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[Battlefront.com]

Unlike Dorosh, who is convinced that there is only one way to look at the world (i.e. his), there are two valid points of view to be had here. One sees that the bar that CMBO established should, basically, never be pushed higher. EVER. Well, not until there is the ability to completely, and utterly, simulate the real world in "true 1:1" behavior. Since that is an impossibility for many reasons (i.e. it will NEVER happen in any of our lifetimes), practically speaking this means games 50 years from now should not look any different than CMBO. Personally, I think this is a rather limiting mindset It's also an extremely hypocritical one to hold.

What I mean by hypocritical is that most of the hardcore wargaming community felt, early on, that CMBO was "a joke" because it had crappy 3D graphics. Many thought it was idiotic to not have hexes, others thought the notion of playing anything but IGOYOUGO was an idiotic move for us to make. All these lines of argument are preserved in the archives, even though the original Forum was killed off and the this present one had a big loss of posts. In short, today's defender of CMx1 as being "perfect" was yesterday's critic of it. Some of you guys have extremely selective memories, but we do not

My point here is that CMBO was a move towards the unobtainable "true 1:1" environment. If it wasn't we would have had 2D hexes and graphical chits moving around instead of spending 3 years pushing the envelope. Yes, there were a ton of abstractions, but there were a LOT less than previous games. And those abstractions were not there on purpose but rather due to limitations on hardware and our own development time. Therefore, it is safe to say that if we could have made CMx2 in 1997 we would have.

So, what we really are seeing here is that there are different personal thresholds for abstraction. Some feel that CMBO hit some magical perfect balance of gameplay and realism, thus making any departure from it suboptimal. Others see things on a continuum and in that sense CMx1 was great for its time and place, but it is no more "perfect" than Steel Panthers, Squad Leader, or Tactics were in their respective times.

I don't fault people for saying "I like the more abstracted CMx1 system better than the less abstracted system of CMx2" no more than I faulted the Steel Panthers and ASL guys for rejecting CMBO for the same exact reasons. What I do feel justified in doing, however, is pointing out the hypocritical nature of the argument that CMx2 is somehow flawed because it isn't a perfect representation of the real world. That's just an intellectually pathetic excuse to justify not liking something, rather than being a valid line of reasoning. By the same reasoning CMx1 was a mistake, as was everything else that wasn't as simplistic and abstract as something like Chess. And yes folks, there are still people out there that think of Chess as being the ultimate "wargame" because they employ the same logic.

Now, the counter argument to the notion that CMx2 is more frustrating because it is less abstract is quite simple. And that is less abstraction makes for a more engaging game. Sure, your little pixelated men sometimes don't do what you think they should be doing visually, however in CMx1 they never did when held to the same standards of expectations. Moe, Larry, and Curley would march in lockstep and show absolutely no individuality nor variance. They were, in all senses of the word, graphically insignificant. More engaging than a 2D "chit", perhaps, but in terms of comparison with the real world equally irrelevant. While CMx2 is certainly not perfect, it is undeniably more relevant. And if relevance is what you're really after, then CMx2 has it in spades compared to CMx1. There is nothing "empty" about it.

Again, I am not saying that my point of view is the only way to look at CMx2. Those that do see it the way I do will find the overall experience richer and more rewarding than CMx1's. Those who do not will not, by choice, share that opinion. Since it is a choice then there should be no harm no foul for not seeing eye to eye on this matter. Those who refuse to acknowledge that their narrow point of view is no more, or less, valid than someone else's will never be satisfied with CMx2 and therefore should cease wasting their time and seek something else that is aiming for their style of play. We're not returning to a CMx1 style game system so it really is absolutely pointless to keep harping about the Days of Yor as seen through rose colored glasses.

Steve

[ March 29, 2008, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Battlefront.com]

Cpl Steiner,

Example: In the game "Full Spectrum Warrior", certain parts of the game world were "hot spots" that provided cover if you got your men there. This is a good interface design as it tells you exactly where you need to be to gain a cover advantage from a certain direction. If you moved your team to this position, guess what, the game assumed they were all in cover. It didn't matter if one particular 3D model wasn't quite perfectly behind the covering object - the game rewarded you with the cover bonus regardless. In other words, the game was driving the 3D representation, and not the other way around.

Why BFC didn't go for a similar approach is beyond me.

A valid question for which I'll give you a straight answer:

FSW was one of the only X-Box games I ever owned (I sold off all that junk on eBay not long after) and I played it quite a bit. Charles came over one day and he played it too so he could see what it was like since, at the time, it was all the rage. Our collective opinion, and a strong one at that, was the game sucked ass One of the major reasons was the way it handled terrain. Hence why we didn't move in that direction.

Still, we thought long and hard about making a similar system for CMx2 and rejected it, consciously, as too restrictive. The problem with the system in FSW is that it lent itself very well to the type of game that FSW was... a puzzle based game. All scenario elements were very carefully controlled and therefore the gameplay was as well. There was very little room for the player to diverge from what the scenario designer intended on happening, and more specifically, exactly where the designer intended it to happen. Since this goes well with a puzzle based system, and not a wargame/warsim, we steered clear of it.

Having said all that, there are definite advantages of the FSW system, especially from a coding standpoint. Fewer, more predictable spots within a map means a narrower range of possibilities and therefore reduces the need for all sorts of things, especially TacAI. The reduced set of possibilities means what is coded can be more ridged and specific, which in turn means that it is more likely to work exactly as intended. Note that I said "likely" because I can tell you first hand that I experienced massive levels of frustration because the game wouldn't allow me to interact with the terrain as I wanted to and, according to the visuals, I should have been able to do. And I'm not even talking about the inability to enter buildings, rather things like "I'm getting shot at here and I want to move to cover there, but the system doesn't recognize that spot to move to so I have to choose another one".

Therefore, for me personally I found my level of frustration with the FSW system too much to handle. The "all or nothing" cover aspect was totally unrealistic and, ironically, visually jarring that I put the game down almost exclusively because of it. Having my Squad shoot the HELL out of a couple of guys behind some wooden crates without doing so much as tickle them was bad enough, but then when I tried to flank them they were able to whack my flanking Team as if there was no covering fire at all. Blah... lots of bad memories coming back... thanks Cpl Steiner

CMx2 went in a different direction which offers a much wider, richer tactical environment than FSW. As such it requires more of everything else to go along with it, which in turn increases the complexity of the underlying system, which in turn creates the possibility of "problems" cropping up. I for one would rather CMx2's far more flexible environment and the problems it has to the FSW system. Easy for me to say that, however, since I was in a position to make that choice for CMx2

Steve

[Taki]

So lets hope for less Gamemecanic and TacAI Problems and more "immersion".

I can sign the Experiences the Treatstarter has. THe immersion feeling on CMx1 for now is better to me then CMx2. Reason why is that i got good Imagination and dont get caught by fance Grafics and 1:1 Representation.

On the other hand i believe in you guys (Steve, Charles and the rest of the team) and that you will work hard to make a Game that just only look good but "feels right". There is still a long way to go i guess to get all the imagination i had with cmx1 into grafics in cmx2.

But there is one more thing i have to mention that cuts immersion too:

The Game dont have that Lots of Details with units and their equipment like the Tanks had in ww2 sim. Maybe the reason why is cause of all that modern "1 shoot 1 kill on Ranges on less then 3km" but i got the feeling the ww2 tanks had more strenghtes&weaknesses to exploid or to aviod.

Like big shilouette, weight, pressure on the ground, armourthickness, optics and so on. that make the diffrent on the outcome of a firefight.

I hope that gets better with the ww2 title.

Greetz

Taki

[gibsonm]

Taki,

A lot of that stuff is in fact still classified and not available to the public (often because some bloke is actually using it and doesn't want the bad guy to know these details), whereas details on almost anything from the Second World War is freely available, since anything still surviving is either parked in a museum or rusting on a proving range where the details were discovered.

You can still die fairly easily in an M1 if you don't use it correctly.

[c3k]

Steve,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to this thread.

I'm not sure where or how the impression that this thread is about design choices got started. I wrote the original post when I realized what it was that kept me from staying glued into the game. I used an example from CMx1 since that seems to be a common background.

I like the 1:1 design. I like the graphics. I like the modelling. I like the weapons effects.

Let me quote you from your post, above (parts of the original quote redacted for brevity and to make a point):

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

FSW was one of the only X-Box games I ever owned (I sold off all that junk on eBay not long after) and I played it quite a bit... Our collective opinion, and a strong one at that, was the game sucked ass One of the major reasons was the way it handled terrain... Note that I said "likely" because I can tell you first hand that I experienced massive levels of frustration because the game wouldn't allow me to interact with the terrain as I wanted to and, according to the visuals, I should have been able to do... Steve [/QB]

The important part, "...I experienced massive levels of frustration because the game wouldn't allow me to interact with the terrain as I wanted to and, according to the visuals, I should have been able to do..."

Hmm, this describes CMSF for me.

In CMSF, as I form my unit for an attack, I have high expectations. When I give a "slow" command to creep up to the top of a crest because the enemy is firing from the far side and I need more guns on the line, I don't lose the immersive feeling that I'm actually there if an RPG lands on my men. I do get frustrated when my men STAND UP and then got shot. (Note: savegame Al Amarah 008c 004.)

When I've finally positioned a team in a great location, in shellholes on top of a road, and they are blind because the LOS is drawn from beneath them, that is frustrating.

Nothing about those frustrations is due to the overall design choices in CMSF. It is due to the execution of those design choices. A more detailed design requires higher fidelity modelling. The points where it fails to achieve that higher fidelity are more obvious.

In CMSF you have modelled men at 1:1. (Quite nicely, too.) When they don't do the "right" thing, not necessarily what I ordered, the game's immersion falls apart.

This is not a critique on design choices. It is not a wish for the golden days of CMx1. It is not a complaint about the theater, the scale, the opponents, or the timeframe.

This is one customer's observations of what makes games addictive, fun, and replayable and how that feeling, once formed, evaporates suddenly in the midst of a CMSF scenario.

Thanks,

Ken

[ March 30, 2008, 04:36 AM: Message edited by: c3k ]

[bodkin]

Personaly I find the abstration in CMSF much less of a stretch than CMx1 games. If a squad in CMSF has a member who goes ahead of the intended waypoint and gets his brain blown out by an AKM then I can accept that because no commander ever has full control of his forces.

As the superior commander in CMSF I give orders but suspend my belief of reality after that, I accept some members of squads I'm in charge of don't always do the right thing. That is more realistic than any CMx1 game. However the question was about immersion and without doubt CMSF has a greater 'in game' feeling to it than any of the previous titles.

A three man squad representing twelve does not add to my immersion level.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Unlike Dorosh, who is convinced that there is only one way to look at the world (i.e. his),

Not true, at all.

I don't fault people for saying "I like the more abstracted CMx1 system better than the less abstracted system of CMx2" no more than I faulted the Steel Panthers and ASL guys for rejecting CMBO for the same exact reasons. What I do feel justified in doing, however, is pointing out the hypocritical nature of the argument that CMx2 is somehow flawed because it isn't a perfect representation of the real world.

It would by hypocritical if anyone was making that argument. Um. They're not.

That's just an intellectually pathetic excuse to justify not liking something, rather than being a valid line of reasoning.

It's also possible to dislike something because it is flawed or poorly designed.

By the same reasoning CMx1 was a mistake, as was everything else that wasn't as simplistic and abstract as something like Chess.

CMX1 was a success because of its simplicity. For one, it didn't have a hotkey array where "J" stands for "clear" and "M" stands for "reverse", but I digress...

Now, the counter argument to the notion that CMx2 is more frustrating because it is less abstract is quite simple. And that is less abstraction makes for a more engaging game. Sure, your little pixelated men sometimes don't do what you think they should be doing visually, however in CMx1 they never did when held to the same standards of expectations. Moe, Larry, and Curley would march in lockstep and show absolutely no individuality nor variance. They were, in all senses of the word, graphically insignificant. More engaging than a 2D "chit", perhaps, but in terms of comparison with the real world equally irrelevant. While CMx2 is certainly not perfect, it is undeniably more relevant. And if relevance is what you're really after, then CMx2 has it in spades compared to CMx1. There is nothing "empty" about it.

The soldier drones in CMX2 are more abstracted than in CMX1. Because they represent individual soldiers, you expect more of them, and yet they do less. They all look identical, they have a library of what - a couple dozen motions - walk, run, throw grenade, get wounded, hit the dirt, reload their weapon - and they tend to do everything as if they were underwater (i.e. very slowly). They don't look lifelike, they don't look realistic, and far more importantly, their group behaviour is positively herd-like. They don't look around corners (latest generation FPS have the ability to "lean" around corners, on the other hand), go through windows, they have no ability to throw grenades over walls, say, close assault tanks, take prisoners, send a guy back for ammo (not even in an abstract way), and if you want to get sublime, they don't use hand signals, talk, or in any way visibly communicate with each other. Oh, but don't worry, because that can all be dismissed by saying that there are "abstractions." That's great up to the point the abstractions ruin the fidelity of the modeling.

Again, I am not saying that my point of view is the only way to look at CMx2. Those that do see it the way I do will find the overall experience richer and more rewarding than CMx1's. Those who do not will not, by choice, share that opinion. Since it is a choice then there should be no harm no foul for not seeing eye to eye on this matter. Those who refuse to acknowledge that their narrow point of view is no more, or less, valid than someone else's will never be satisfied with CMx2 and therefore should cease wasting their time and seek something else that is aiming for their style of play. We're not returning to a CMx1 style game system so it really is absolutely pointless to keep harping about the Days of Yor as seen through rose colored glasses.

Steve

The argument isn't that you took a wrong turn with CMX2 so much as weren't able to implement the new direction correctly. Taking a new turn is fine as long as you can get to the destination with a minimum of problems. As was posted before, CMX2 players currently do business in an informational vacuum - the informational relay and user interface is poor compared to CMX1, and it would appear these aspects were sacrificed at the expense of development of under-the-hood elements that no one sees (notice the comments above about invisible or inaccessible firepower ratings, for example).

I can only guess that that is what explains the backtracking to retroactively fit gameplay features since release. And it wasn't about my singular vision, it was about your customer's vision. If that wasn't the case, then you tell me why we now have the spacebar activated menu in the game.

Oh, I'm sure everyone will be happy once the trip is over (I sense another car analogy), but you have to put the car in the driveway before you can announce "Mission Accomplished". Though I know there are one or two of ya in the States who like to hang the banner on the deck of the carrier a little bit early.

But you still have dudes milling about the streets and all the goofy things killing immersion that the first poster has discussed - and you can talk about "superior" engines all you want, the fact remains, saying it till you're blue in the face is only a matter of semantics and it remains only an opinion.

The silly thing is that if you didn't agree with me, you wouldn't insist that you're working on these kinds of things for future releases.

[z1812]

Hi All,

In terms of pathing, infantry and doors I find If I give them a direct movement order from point A to the building then the pathing works much better to take them through the door.

If I want to micromanage their movement paths then I try to end waypoints behind or in cover. The last movement command will take them directly inside the building as above.

Its not perfect but it seems to work reasonably well and it satisfies me.....most of the time.

The odd thing to me concerning immersion is the maps. I still play CMx1 and I find the maps more realistic and immersive. I can't really put my finger on what the difference may be.......something along the lines of the CMx2 maps being too refined. The CMx1 maps seem somehow rougher and so more realistic to me.

Regards John

[Battlefront.com]

c3k,

I'm not sure where or how the impression that this thread is about design choices got started.

Well, let's blame Dorosh then

I like the 1:1 design. I like the graphics. I like the modelling. I like the weapons effects.

Thanks for the clarification. It's a fine line between what you are saying (the game needs some tweaks) vs. Dorosh's hardline "if it isn't perfect, then it's useless" black and white thinking. I'll get into that more when I respond to his post.

In CMSF, as I form my unit for an attack, I have high expectations. When I give a "slow" command to creep up to the top of a crest because the enemy is firing from the far side and I need more guns on the line, I don't lose the immersive feeling that I'm actually there if an RPG lands on my men. I do get frustrated when my men STAND UP and then got shot. (Note: savegame Al Amarah 008c 004.)

This is a bit different then what I was talking about with FSW. In FSW they used the terrain they moved to quite well, as Cpl. Steiner pointed out. The problem is that this was a direct result of extremely restrictive modeling of terrain in terms of quantity, variety, and properties. As I said in my post above, a simplistic model means more consistent and predictable results. But it also means a more simplistic game experience. A lot of people like FSW, but I don't think many wargamers were among them. It was a puzzle game, and a highly abstract one at that. This ties in well with your next point...

Nothing about those frustrations is due to the overall design choices in CMSF. It is due to the execution of those design choices. A more detailed design requires higher fidelity modelling. The points where it fails to achieve that higher fidelity are more obvious.

Correct. CMx2 has a much higher level of fidelity of simulation than FSW or CMx1, for example. It also has a much higher level fidelity of the execution of those elements. The issue is that it isn't "perfect 100% of the time" because there are still levels of abstraction inherent in the system. That's going to be with us for decades. The question is do we stop all progress forward, as Dorosh suggests we do, or do we move the bar upwards yet retain some abstraction? For us sticking with a 10 year old system for the next 10 years is not only a bad idea but it is commercial suicide for us.

In CMSF you have modelled men at 1:1. (Quite nicely, too.) When they don't do the "right" thing, not necessarily what I ordered, the game's immersion falls apart.

I definitely can see why this happens for you, and others. It's natural to want to see near-perfect execution of your orders and to get frustrated when it doesn't happen that way. To some extent we had a lot of this in CMx1 as well, but it was for different reasons like the TacAI moving to the wrong building after getting shot at, stopping while using a Move to Contact in a bad spot, engaging the "wrong" unit when a better one came into view, etc. People either learned to live with these limitations or tossed the game aside for something else.

I think Bodkin put it best:

As the superior commander in CMSF I give orders but suspend my belief of reality after that, I accept some members of squads I'm in charge of don't always do the right thing. That is more realistic than any CMx1 game. However the question was about immersion and without doubt CMSF has a greater 'in game' feeling to it than any of the previous titles.

This is my feeling. I find the flawed representation of the real world in CM:SF far more immersive than the more flawed representation of the real world in CMx1. I'm not just talking about the guys doing what you think they should do, but the entire environment.

A simulation is a holistic experience and if too much emphasis is put on one element vs. the others then an imbalance, in the mind of the player, can easily be created. In CMx1 one could have got way too focused on the fact that you could (at times) shoot at targets that moved behind buildings, that artillery shells would land after 60 seconds was up in places where your guys shouldn't have been if they had been allowed to keep moving, that buildings could have no terrain around them other than Open, all buildings were 1-2 story boxes, etc. etc. not to mention the extremely simplified graphical representation of soldiers, terrain, and to some extent vehicles. Focusing on these things could easily ruin someone's immersion in the game itself.

CM:SF is no different in the sense that the more you focus on the parts you feel are inadequate, the less immersion you'll feel towards the sim as a whole. Since all sims have their shortcomings, flaws, and abstractions it's a matter of personal choice as to where your thresholds for these things break or stay true. Just keep in mind that no matter how many improvements we make to CMx2, you will always be able to break the immersion if your mind goes down that road.

This is one customer's observations of what makes games addictive, fun, and replayable and how that feeling, once formed, evaporates suddenly in the midst of a CMSF scenario.

We had a lot of people that couldn't get into CMx1 because of the soldier representation too, so again it's all about personal preferences. I don't fault you for having a different threshold for this stuff than a player like Bodkin. At least your not arguing that your perspective is the only one to have, quite unlike Dorosh who feels his view of a "perfect game" is the only one. The worst part about it is he is so convinced of his superior position that he doesn't see it for what it is... a bigoted point of view.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Dorosh,

It would by hypocritical if anyone was making that argument. Um. They're not.

Yes, you are. The fact that you can't see this is not surprising to me since you aren't interested in seeing this through someone else's perspective, like Bodkin's post above. You have defined what the game should be and since it doesn't measure up to that definition then you find it to be flawed. Not in a way that is specific to you, or to those who have a similar definition, but rather you wish to impose your definition of "falwed" on everybody else as if your view is the only one that can possibly exist.

This is what the Steel Panthers and Close Combat guys did to CMBO at the time. The Steel Panthers guys hated CMBO because it had a game system that didn't allow them to have hands on everything as it played out (IGOYOUGO), didn't follow old boardgame conventions (especially with treatment of armor), and no dynamic campaign system amongst a litany of criticisms. Close Combat guys hated CMBO because it wasn't realtime or 1:1. Both hated the 3D element of CMBO and claimed, with great passion, that top down 2D was inherently superior. Especially graphically because the CMBO graphics were "cartoonish" and "stupid", especially the "CM Zombies" (as they described the infantry).

You've got this same mindset, including the complete lack of ability to see how someone can differ from your point of view. In your opinion you are correct and everybody else is wrong. Ergo, since CM:SF doesn't do what you want it to do it sucks. End of story, case closed.

I don't have a problem with people not liking CM:SF, but I do have a BIG problem with people that think that nobody should like it because they don't. That's the "pathetic" bit I mentioned in my earlier post.

It's also possible to dislike something because it is flawed or poorly designed.

Sure it is, but it is also possible that it isn't flawed or poorly designed, yet you still don't like it. Or do you think that the Steel Panthers and Close Combat guys who hated CMx1, claiming it to be flawed and poorly designed, are right? Or do you think that their narrow minded concept of what a game should be was correct, and therefore you will revise your love of CMx1 games and reject them as flawed and poorly designed like they claimed?

The soldier drones in CMX2 are more abstracted than in CMX1. Because they represent individual soldiers, you expect more of them, and yet they do less.

You really don't see how off your rocker you are when you say crap like this, do you? The list you made of the "less" they do is "more" than they did in CMx1, yet you sit right there and say the opposite. Cripes, next thing you'll tell me is the world is flat.

They all look identical, they have a library of what - a couple dozen motions - walk, run, throw grenade, get wounded, hit the dirt, reload their weapon - and they tend to do everything as if they were underwater (i.e. very slowly). They don't look lifelike, they don't look realistic, and far more importantly, their group behaviour is positively herd-like. They don't look around corners (latest generation FPS have the ability to "lean" around corners, on the other hand), go through windows, they have no ability to throw grenades over walls, say, close assault tanks, take prisoners, send a guy back for ammo (not even in an abstract way), and if you want to get sublime, they don't use hand signals, talk, or in any way visibly communicate with each other. Oh, but don't worry, because that can all be dismissed by saying that there are "abstractions." That's great up to the point the abstractions ruin the fidelity of the modeling.

Again, you have your definition of where the line of abstraction works and doesn't. You wish to impose one set of standards on CMx2, another on CMx1. As I said, CMx1 and CMx2 are both on a continuum towards the impossible "100% realistic 100% of the time" simulation modeling. Neither one are there and NO GAME EVER WILL GET THERE, at least not in our lifetime. So why do you insist on holding one game (CMx2) to this impossible standard and accept nothing less, yet you are so willing to give CMx1 a complete pass from such scrutiny? This again is what I mean by "pathetic" lines of argument.

You have chosen your own balance of abstraction and graphics, and make paper thin, even inconsistent, lines of argument to justify them. You also completely ignore the parallel arguments that were made against CMBO when it came out even though the arguments made by Steel Panthers and CC guys are nearly IDENTICAL to your own.

Why can't you just admit that this is about personal viewpoint rather than something inherently wrong with CMx2? If you did that we'd have nothing to argue about since I won't argue against someone's personal preferences. I only argue with arrogant SOBs who think that they have some sort of authority to claim what everybody else should, and shouldn't, want in a game.

The argument isn't that you took a wrong turn with CMX2 so much as weren't able to implement the new direction correctly. Taking a new turn is fine as long as you can get to the destination with a minimum of problems. As was posted before, CMX2 players currently do business in an informational vacuum - the informational relay and user interface is poor compared to CMX1, and it would appear these aspects were sacrificed at the expense of development of under-the-hood elements that no one sees (notice the comments above about invisible or inaccessible firepower ratings, for example).

It's "poor" only because you wish to have a spreadsheet game, not a simulation. I'm not saying that we couldn't add some more information to help the player along, and we have since v1.01 came out, but sometimes you guys are asking for things that simply aren't relevant or important to CMx2. Instead you want them because you had them before. We had people asking for all kinds of things for CMBO that we didn't provide, like the thresholds for when a unit routs for example.

Sometimes there is no way to give a simple, boil in the bag answer and that is why it isn't included. "Firepower" is a great example of this... there is no such thing inside the game engine and therefore we can't show what isn't there.

I can only guess that that is what explains the backtracking to retroactively fit gameplay features since release. And it wasn't about my singular vision, it was about your customer's vision. If that wasn't the case, then you tell me why we now have the spacebar activated menu in the game.

Sure, we didn't get everything in the game that everybody wanted. CMx1 had hundreds of features added to it because of user suggestions, so what is your point? That nothing is every perfect and there is always room for improvement? Wow... now THERE is a revelation that I'd never have come up with on my own. I guess we spent 2 years improving the "perfect" CMBO to be CMBB for no real reason.

The silly thing is that if you didn't agree with me, you wouldn't insist that you're working on these kinds of things for future releases.

I agree that there is room for improvement in CM:SF just as there always is with any game system. But that's not your line of argument. You're line of argument is that unless we can do things 100% to your impossible standards then we should revert to CMx1. That's based on your flawed line of reasoning and therefore we do not agree.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

z1812,

The odd thing to me concerning immersion is the maps. I still play CMx1 and I find the maps more realistic and immersive. I can't really put my finger on what the difference may be.......something along the lines of the CMx2 maps being too refined. The CMx1 maps seem somehow rougher and so more realistic to me.

This is not the first time I've heard this, obviously. I don't know what that something is that you can't put your finger on in terms of the realism (hold the thought on the immersive quality for a sec). The terrain in CMx1 was extremely rough, as you say, compared to CMx2. By definition that means it was less realistic. So I'm not sure how it could feel less realistic to you in CMx2. To me, when I see a CMx1 screenshot I feel like I'm looking at a cartoon rendition of the world compared to a more natural feeling I get from CMx2.

Now, as far as immersion... this part of your statement I do understand. C3k explained it very well above. It's very much like the argument that is made about kids toys these days. In the "old days" kids had wooden toys, at best, to play with. For the most part they had to use their imagination for just about everything. Now the toys available to them, physical and especially virtual, are much more "realistic" and therefore require less imagination. Many have argued that this decreases the level of "immersion" in the play itself. The counter argument to this is that it increases "immersion" because the kid doesn't have to spend brain cycles imagining basic stuff.

It's a very complex thing and I for one do not thing "one size fits all". As I've said above, many people rejected CMx1 because it didn't allow them to suspend disbelief. Similarly there are people that reject CMx2 because it doesn't fit their personal tastes in that regard. No harm, no foul there.

Where people like Dorosh run into trouble is that they forget that their point of view is relative to them and not definitive in any meaningful way. If that were the case then people like Dorosh would have to admit that CMx1 was a flawed and miserable experience and nobody should enjoy it just as the Steel Panthers and Close Combat people felt was the case.

Steve