My review: CM:SF is the best wargame out there

[Thomm]

Pretty intense screenshot ...

Best regards,

Thomm

[Durruti]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

By the way, Korea would be almost WW II and still something different!

Best regards,

Thomm

Same for the Spanish Civil War! (and more nationalities involved despite the moniker)

Seriously though, I remember the reasons given, way back, for not allowing "total conversion" mods in CM. MP cheating and so forth. But do you really think that would be an issue with this "serious" wargame? People play CM against friends they trust don't they, it's that sort of game? The likes of CC, BF42, HL, etc were all opened up to full modding with far greater dangers and they have only benefitted as far as I can see...

[Durruti]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Durruti,

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />There are certainly plenty of WW2 games of all genres out there (FPS, arcade/RTS, wargames, sims etc.) but I do find it odd that Steve's "point 1" seems to suggest modern combat (especially in the middle east) doesn't have a huge following. Perhaps it's just a biased mis-perception on my part but the game-store shelves seem to heaving with "modern warfare" titles - BF2, COD4: Modern Warfare, Armed Assault, Delta Force, War On Terror, Joint Task Force, CC: The Road to Baghdad, CC: Modern Tactics, Joint Operations etc... Then there are mods like Insurgency for HL2.

FPS games are in a league of their own. Those games are about killing each other, the setting is almost irrelevant. All that is needed is a lot of cool graphics, variety of weapons, interesting tweaks to the well worn genre, etc. and the game will sell like hotcakes. Oh, and having millions of Dollars in advertising and marketing muscle doesn't hurt either So I'd say those games are popular simply because they are good FPS games, not because of the subject matter

Steve </font>

[rune]

Yes it would be a problem, as eventually CMX1 ran into it when one supposedly cracked the file and would cheat to win on ladder games. It would be worse if everyone could go in and change the stats. I remember a lot of the early fps that ran into the same problems with people cheating with weapons, enhancing range and etc. Why do you think games went to punkbuster? Punkbuster is a pain in the butt, but necessary for a lot of people.

If people can cheat, they will cheat.

Rune

[ January 11, 2008, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: rune ]

[GSX]

Originally posted by rune:

Yes it would be a problem, as eventually CMX1 ran into it when one supposedly cracked the file and would cheat to win on ladder games. It would be worse if everyone could go in and change the stats. I remember a lot of the early fps that ran into the same problems with people cheating with weapons, enhancing range and etc. Why do you think games went to punkbuster? Punkbuster is a pain in the butt, but necessary for a lot of people.

If people can cheat, they will cheat.

Rune

Except, in a game that is aimed at single player RTS you would only be cheating yourself surely.

[gautrek]

Originally posted by Melnibone:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by gautrek:

So the different audiences matter not one bit.

Of course they matter. COD 1&2 would have sold bundles more than CMX1 - because of the audience. A million copies of Kane & Lynch have been sold - despite mediocre reviews - because of the audience. </font>

[bruce90]

Seems to me it went something like this...

Battlefront announce new CM game with new engine.WWII gamers(the majority of their customers?),think'Bound to be WWII.What else?'

WWII gamers are happy.

Battlefront say 'No.We are fed up of making WWII games.This is going to be modern combat.We realise that most of you don't want this but if you want our next game this is what it's going to be.Modern warfare fans and other anti WWII people are happy.

WWII gamers think'OK.we'll just bite the bullet and buy it anyway after all it is a Battlefront game so it's bound to be good.' Battlefront are happy.

CMSF comes out with all its' problems.No one is happy.

[hammelman]

COD4 is more about people sticking to a product that has consistently delivered and kept its fan base alive with fast paced games that deliver every time. It was inevitable that people would buy that game in droves regardless of its setting. They actually made a really good decision to change the format to modern as WWII was just getting very tired.

Personally i think BFC made a great decision about changing CM to modern, do i think they should have done a Russian Mod instead of a Syrian Mod? You bet! I think people are irked by this game more because they are just not familiar with the Syrian Army, partly because its basically Russian lite and mentioned above just not familiar.

Its hard to compare the two games, because they appeal to such vastly different audiences. I don't see to many 11 y/o boys with squeaky voices calling everyone a ghey or a h4xor in the forum. Likewise i don't see 40 y/o dudes playing the COD series and getting their knickers in a twist over the fact that a gun sight might not be mounted correctly on his favorite assault weapon.

But remember, although i frequent this forum on a daily basis for ****s and giggles, its just a game. We should be thankful that there is a company that provides it to us. Whether we have issues with the game, thats up to the individual, they should vote with their feet, not with their bad attitudes.

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by bruce90:

Seems to me it went something like this...

Battlefront announce new CM game with new engine.WWII gamers(the majority of their customers?),think'Bound to be WWII.What else?'

WWII gamers are happy.

Battlefront say 'No.We are fed up of making WWII games.This is going to be modern combat.We realise that most of you don't want this but if you want our next game this is what it's going to be.Modern warfare fans and other anti WWII people are happy.

Just because someone likes modern warfare doesn't mean that they are anti-WW2. Likewise, not everyone who is anti-WW2 is likely to be a fan of modern combat simulation.

WWII gamers think'OK.we'll just bite the bullet and buy it anyway after all it is a Battlefront game so it's bound to be good.' Battlefront are happy.

CMSF comes out with all its' problems.No one is happy.

And then fixes them. People are happy.

Excepting:

* People who do not agree with BFC's vision.

* People who are WW2 and anti-everything else.

Addition:

I had my unhappy moment when BFC offered me a place of the Beta team and my computer wasn't up to it.

[ January 12, 2008, 12:03 PM: Message edited by: flamingknives ]

[Battlefront.com]

GSX,

I suppose one could argue that this was bound to happen on a CM-1 forum which was dedicated to ww2 games and populated by gamers who liked the genre. After all for many years they were your core customer.

Right, like I said we weren't surprised by any of this. However, we think of our customers as being wargamers, not WW2 enthusiasts. Sure, many are both but that isn't a good assumption to make. Many have asked us to do Napoleonics or American Civil War, for example. Not an insignificant amount have always asked for a modern day setting (or Cold War).

Possibly it may have been a better idea to start a whole new forum from the conception of CMSF, have stated your intent to make it primarily RTS and made it available to those that had no primary interest in ww2.

First off, CMx2 has nothing in common with RTS games, nor does it have anything in common with FPS games. So I'm not sure where to go with your question because it doesn't make any sense. Well, except for the second part. We did create a new Forum for CM:SF, which is the one you are posting in now When we start discussing WW2 we'll create a new Forum for that one as well.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Cpl Steiner,

I've yet to meet a true wargamer who is only interested in one period, be it modern, WWII, Napoleonic, or whatever. Most wargamers have a deep interest in both history and military technology. In my wargaming career I've played games set in WWII, Napoleonic Europe, the Middle Ages, Hypothetical Future War, and even a few Sci-fi efforts. All periods, past, present and future, have their merits.

Exactly my point I made to GSX just now

dynaman200,

Lots of ASL players are not only locked into WWII, they are locked into ASL. (lots are not as well of course)

There are those types, for sure. I'm positive there are some ASL guys that haven't touched any of the CMx1 games because of that. I don't think it's many, but I am sure there are some. Just like when CMBO came out many Steel Panthers and Close Combat players wanted to have nothing to do with CMBO or its successors. They liked what they already knew and didn't want to try anything different. But I'm sure these types are also small in number.

gautrek ,

He tried to say that no one is interested in modern warfare.But this is blatantly untrue.

Er... no I didn't. I mean sheesh... if we believed nobody had an interest in modern warfare, then we'd be pretty f'n stupid to have spent 3 years making a modern warfare game, right? What I said is that there isn't a strong community of wargamers that wake up every morning wondering about how many MM of armor there is on their T-54Bs or why it was that the M240 Tripod has such an underrated portrayal in wargaming. Partly because we don't have that sort of intensive "society" of modern wargame enthusiasts, we have proportionally less interest in spending hours making scenarios, campaigns, and Mods. It's pretty logical to me.

However, I personally think the big factor for small numbers of scenarios is the fact that they are more difficult to make. In CMx1 you could make a scenario in under an hour. Might not have been very good to start with, but you could do it. That's not something I think is possible for CMx2 until you've made quite a few of them first. It's the typical tradeoff between depth and breadth... CMx1 scenarios had breadth due to their numbers, but IMHO a decent CMx2 scenario is better than even the best of the best of CMx1 scenarios because of the greater depth and control possible with CMx2.

I've seen many surveys of wargamers over the years. I don't have any off the top of my head, but for the American wargamers I seem to recall more than 60% saying their primary interest is WWII, a significant % ranked American Civil War next, very small amounts for Vietnam and Modern, and insignificant amounts for other genres like WWI, Napoleonics, Korea, and others. Surveys I've seen in Europe are almost the same but with Napoleonics taking the place of American Civil War as the #2.

The whole point i was trying to put across and seem to have failed with some people was steve said that people are not as interested in Modern stuff as WWII stuff.

Which if you look at a major title like CoD 1 to CoD 4 shows he is wrong.Thats its nothing else.

I know and am aware that CM1 was never going to sell as well as CoD.But its all relative isn't it.

No, it really isn't. As I said, those other games largely sell based on the game type and marketing, not because of some deep attraction to the subject matter. Yes for sure there is interest in modern warfare, otherwise (as I already said) why the heck would we make a modern warfare game? My point is that there is a reason why the support of CM:SF mods, scenarios, and other things is less than with CMx1 games. Those reasons are found on the previous pages and I stick to them.

Hammelman,

But remember, although i frequent this forum on a daily basis for shits and giggles, its just a game. We should be thankful that there is a company that provides it to us. Whether we have issues with the game, thats up to the individual, they should vote with their feet, not with their bad attitudes.

Thank you

Flamingknives,

And then fixes them. People are happy.

Excepting:

* People who do not agree with BFC's vision.

* People who are WW2 and anti-everything else.

Yes, that is of course our position as well. It's not surprising that I see some of the largest critics of CM:SF stating, very clearly, that they don't like modern warfare and they expected they wouldn't like CM:SF anyway. Which makes me wonder how positive their comments would have been even if we did a carbon copy of CMx1 but with better graphics and few initial bugs. I suspect their level of complaint would be less negative, but still not positive.

I had my unhappy moment when BFC offered me a place of the Beta team and my computer wasn't up to it.

Unhappy for us too Get a newer Mac, would you?

Steve

[ January 12, 2008, 05:10 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[rune]

And amazingly, I see a multi-player option in CMSF. So where did single player rts come from?

Rune

[GSX]

First off, CMx2 has nothing in common with RTS games, nor does it have anything in common with FPS games. So I'm not sure where to go with your question because it doesn't make any sense. Well, except for the second part. We did create a new Forum for CM:SF, which is the one you are posting in now When we start discussing WW2 we'll create a new Forum for that one as well.

Steve

My point being this; if you were up front from the inception of CMSF that it was designed primarily as an RTS game and had stated that in the first post of the first thread, wouldnt that have been better.

Now, I dont consider myself biased either way. I enjoy RTS games, ww2 games, ww3 games, 2d games and even FPS games. Basically I'm easy to plaese as long as the gameplay is there. Sure if given a choice of wargame I will probably migrate to ww2 but its not paramount.

To state that SF has nothing in common with other RTS games cannot be entirely true as the very fact that it is RTS gives it instant commonality. Now where it differs vastly is obvious, there is no traditional mining for resources and building up a force of units and 25 infantrymen can shoot at a tank all day and they wont kill it.

Instead in SF you have to concoct a plan and execute it with the available forces to achieve your given objective within a fixed timescale. Its still real time though and because its much more complicated than other RTS games requires much more micro management.

My whole point is, why didnt you mention this at the start, why did I have to find out after I'd bought the game that the game wasnt built around WEGO?

Which leads me straight into a reply to Rune:

And amazingly, I see a multi-player option in CMSF. So where did single player rts come from?

Rune

In theory you may be right, however, have you tried to PBEM the game? As far as Im aware less than ten games have been completed in 2 seperate communities so far, thats after 6 months. Personally I havent been able to play this against an opponent so far and no one I know has either.

Anyway, the point I'm making here isnt about game playability or game bashing, its simply this:

At some point BF knew that they were designing an RT game and at no point before its release did I see any mention of this whatever, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong though and I will apologise.

[Paper Tiger]

GSX:

"Anyway, the point I'm making here isnt about game playability or game bashing, its simply this:

At some point BF knew that they were designing an RT game and at no point before its release did I see any mention of this whatever, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong though and I will apologise."

In my opinion, it's not primarily RT. WEGO is definitely there but it's a different WEGO system from the CMx1 games. It HAD to be different to allow RT. I don't think you were deceived, perhaps you just don't like the new WEGO. I don't either.

[Lurker765]

It is primarily RT. Steve and the beta testers have stated numerous times that they pretty much only play RT. If the designers and testers play pretty much only one way then that is probably what the game is focused upon. Steve has also stated that they were perfectly willing to drop PBEM if needed. PBEM is WEGO. No WEGO currently exists in multiplayer. Ergo, WEGO is not the focus.

Also, the WEGO stuff has even more bugs than the RT did at release. That also implies that it is not the primary focus of the game. Even now the WEGO playback is incorrect and leaving your men up to their own devices for one minute will end up with a lot of dead Strykers when they bump into one Syrian tank since the Strykers won't attempt to get out of harm's way.

I'm not saying that RT is bad. I am saying that BFC was not up front about this from the beginning and contrary to the prior statement in this thread they did not make this clear to the old customers before they purchased the game.

And while it does indeed have a multiplayer option, that option has not even come close to actually working until patch 1.05 (maybe 1.04, I can't remember). I haven't tried it in 1.05 myself since the low wall bug has stopped my playing again.

Anyway, I am just waiting for a version of the game that I can play that is mostly bug free. The game is close to that point, and then I will be able to see if the future of this series is something that would be fun to play. I immensely enjoyed CMx1 and I hope to have equal amounts of fun with CMSF, but so far it has been a whole lot of frustration.

[rune]

gsx,

Being on the beta team, I have played more multiplayer then anyone else, both pbem and tcp/ip on my home network. So to answer, yes I HAVE played multiple times pbem. That 2 games on mainly WWII sites have been played doesn't surprise me. How many players are there on the web sites for CMSF?

Rune

[Paper Tiger]

Lurker:

a} Steve has also stated that they were perfectly willing to drop PBEM if needed. PBEM is WEGO. No WEGO currently exists in multiplayer. Ergo, WEGO is not the focus.

The reason why they were contemplating leaving it out was because the file sizes one minute of action generates are often in excess of 10MB which is too big for most ISP's. And not everybody has broadband access either. It's not proof of Battlefront ignoring WEGO.

secondly,

b} Even now the WEGO playback is incorrect and leaving your men up to their own devices for one minute will end up with a lot of dead Strykers when they bump into one Syrian tank since the Strykers won't attempt to get out of harm's way.

The reason I don't like WEGO in SF is not because I think it's buggy or sucks. It's because 1 minute is too long to be out of control of your troops. I suspect this SAME WEGO system will work very well when they return to WW2 later. In my opinion, RT is the better of the two systems for playing modern era and not necessarily because it's had less attention than RT.

The reasons why vehicles don't react to threats in the same way as CMx1 is not to do with lack of attention to WEGO players but because of the new relative spotting system.

[GSX]

Originally posted by rune:

gsx,

Being on the beta team, I have played more multiplayer then anyone else, both pbem and tcp/ip on my home network. So to answer, yes I HAVE played multiple times pbem. That 2 games on mainly WWII sites have been played doesn't surprise me. How many players are there on the web sites for CMSF?

Rune

OK mate. You got me there, I forgot the party line is SF is unpopular because its not ww2.

Please give me the links to all of the SF sites that you have as I wouldn't mind joining an SF ladder with more than 6 guys on it.

Cheers

[Melnibone]

Originally posted by GSX:

....I wouldn't mind joining an SF ladder with more than 6 guys on it.

Surely to participate in a ladder you would need the game installed. On 21st December (3 whole weeks ago)you said:

Well Ive yet again uninstalled this game from my PC. No more installations for me now. After 6 months I just cant be arsed with it anymore to be honest.

Did you get a bigger hard drive for Christmas?

[rune]

gsx,

I never said anything of the sort, nor do i do a "party line". My point was and is, you claimed it was a single player rts, and I stated it isn't. That simple. This was aimed at the code not being opened up because people will cheat. Anything else you are reading into it.

Rune

[Lurker765]

Originally posted by Paper Tiger:

Lurker:

a} Steve has also stated that they were perfectly willing to drop PBEM if needed. PBEM is WEGO. No WEGO currently exists in multiplayer. Ergo, WEGO is not the focus.

The reason why they were contemplating leaving it out was because the file sizes one minute of action generates are often in excess of 10MB which is too big for most ISP's. And not everybody has broadband access either. It's not proof of Battlefront ignoring WEGO.

secondly,

b} Even now the WEGO playback is incorrect and leaving your men up to their own devices for one minute will end up with a lot of dead Strykers when they bump into one Syrian tank since the Strykers won't attempt to get out of harm's way.

The reason I don't like WEGO in SF is not because I think it's buggy or sucks. It's because 1 minute is too long to be out of control of your troops. I suspect this SAME WEGO system will work very well when they return to WW2 later. In my opinion, RT is the better of the two systems for playing modern era and not necessarily because it's had less attention than RT.

The reasons why vehicles don't react to threats in the same way as CMx1 is not to do with lack of attention to WEGO players but because of the new relative spotting system.

If WEGO were truly the focus for CMSF then I'm pretty sure they would have found a way around these problems. Why is the turn still one minute long rather than a variable length that the participants could agree on? Or 30 seconds? That would solve the problems of file size and modern being too time compressed.

If WEGO were truly the focus for CMSF then the WEGO playback would not have zombies, wrong ammo counts, etc.

Relative spotting doesn't impact whether a unit backs away from a threat. Once a Stryker opens up with it's .50 cal however it spotted the enemy tank doesn't matter -- it should back up.

I am not saying BFC were wrong to choose RT as their primary focus (I like WEGO better, but they might have needed to reach a larger market of customers), but I am agreeing with the prior poster that RT was their main goal and WEGO was included as long as it didn't have a large time impact on their release. Anything that might take a wee bit too much dev time or would negatively impact RT was either dropped or relatively ignored.

Thus, many CMx1 customers were somewhat mislead into thinking CMSF inherited more from CMx1 than it truly did.

Rune's statement about multiplayer being an option is also true. But the reality is that multiplayer did not work until patch 1.05 which was released months after the game was initially available. If multiplayer were truly the focus then that feature would have been working correctly out of the box and would have also received more attention with every patch release to make sure it was still executing correctly.

I guess my main point out of all this was to agree with the poster that said RT single player was what BFC was trying to make sure worked. The other aspects of the game were given secondary attention. To many CMx1 players WEGO and multiplayer (and multiplayer WEGO) were defining features of CMx1. When CMSF did not have these defining features and they discovered this after they had purchased the game they were upset.

[Battlefront.com]

GSX,

My point being this; if you were up front from the inception of CMSF that it was designed primarily as an RTS game and had stated that in the first post of the first thread, wouldnt that have been better.

Well, this supposes that CM:SF is primarily designed to be played in RealTime, which it most definitely was not. Believe me, if we wanted the game to be that way we would have just skipped over WeGo completely. We could have shaved 6 months off our development schedule, perhaps more.

Now, it is true that CMx2's core engine is RealTime. That's something we've been mentioning every chance we could get over the last 3 years. Not only that, we explained in detail as to why that's the case and the benefits it brings to WeGo play.

To state that SF has nothing in common with other RTS games cannot be entirely true as the very fact that it is RTS gives it instant commonality.

A book by Jackie Collins has a lot of similarities to something written by Stephen Hawkings, but that doesn't make Jackie's books about the nature of the universe in any way I find meaningful

RTS is a very specific genre of games, it isn't a label that can be applied at will any more than American Baseball can be called Cricket. Real Time Strategy games have distinct elements and focus at its core that CM:SF does not have. Having a common element of RealTime and combat is simply not enough, anymore than one of those arcade aircraft shooters could be called a Flight Sim. This is important because when labels are used correctly they help convey key information effectively, but when used improperly they can muck up the works.

GSX, I think Rune put it best when he said:

I never said anything of the sort, nor do i do a "party line". My point was and is, you claimed it was a single player rts, and I stated it isn't. That simple. This was aimed at the code not being opened up because people will cheat. Anything else you are reading into it.

People really do need to keep things straight here Claiming that CM:SF is designed as a single person game and doesn't have functional multiplayer is a lot different than claiming you can't find anybody to play against. The functionality is there, though admittedly with bugs. Though I think people overblow the importance of playback bugs since there is no effect on the game being played at all.

Having said all of that, Lurker765 is not incorrect to say this:

It is primarily RT. Steve and the beta testers have stated numerous times that they pretty much only play RT. If the designers and testers play pretty much only one way then that is probably what the game is focused upon. Steve has also stated that they were perfectly willing to drop PBEM if needed. PBEM is WEGO. No WEGO currently exists in multiplayer. Ergo, WEGO is not the focus.

But then I'm confused because you (Lurker765) then says this:

I am saying that BFC was not up front about this from the beginning and contrary to the prior statement in this thread they did not make this clear to the old customers before they purchased the game.

These seem to be contradictory to me. Your first statement makes it seem to me that you were aware that the emphasis was on getting a RT engine, even if it meant compromises or cut features for WeGo play. Your second statement makes it sound like you weren't. Hence my confusion

Please keep two things separate in your thinking. One is the underlying engine being inherently RealTime, the other being how it is played (RealTime or WeGo). The emphasis of CM:SF's development was to get the underlying engine functioning correctly. The various bugs that we've been squashing are just that... bugs. There are plenty of bugs that affect both methods of play, only a relative few that apply to WeGo only.

The benefits of a RealTime engine were simply too many to ignore, and impossible to shoehorn into an inherently WeGo system. Therefore pretty much everything that ran afoul of RealTime was on the table for cutting if it couldn't be made to work. Or perhaps made to work in the time alloted. We thought we were as clear about that as possible, but obviously the bugs and what not (which we obviously did not plan on) confused things a bit.

More WeGo features people are missing will find their way back into CMx2 as time goes on. It is still our goal to find some way to get TCP/IP WeGo up and running.

If WEGO were truly the focus for CMSF then I'm pretty sure they would have found a way around these problems. Why is the turn still one minute long rather than a variable length that the participants could agree on? Or 30 seconds? That would solve the problems of file size and modern being too time compressed.

In our opinion it would make the game unplayable But we do leave open the possibility of including this feature sometime in the future.

I am not saying BFC were wrong to choose RT as their primary focus (I like WEGO better, but they might have needed to reach a larger market of customers), but I am agreeing with the prior poster that RT was their main goal and WEGO was included as long as it didn't have a large time impact on their release. Anything that might take a wee bit too much dev time or would negatively impact RT was either dropped or relatively ignored.

It is true that we have been willing to sacrifice some WeGo stuff if it interfered with the underlying realtime engine, not necessarily the RealTime play. Remember the distinction I made. As for development time, we could work on CM:SF for another 2-3 years and still not have everything in there that we had intended. Tons of stuff got cut from the game as a whole, so I would not say it's fair to focus on one set of things that got cut and claim special status for them.

Personally I didn't expect that I would play RealTime exclusively. I know a lot of the testers didn't either. For me I didn't have a choice in the beginning because the game started out life (this is natural programming progression) in RealTime only. I got used to it and after WeGo was put in I found it no longer to my personal liking. But we knew a lot of people wouldn't go the RT route so we continued to develop it.

Thus, many CMx1 customers were somewhat mislead into thinking CMSF inherited more from CMx1 than it truly did.

There were many assumptions about what each other would expect or not expect. It is fair to say that neither of us got it right However, we did expect that a lot of CMx1 customers wouldn't like the direction of the game in general and that is a matter of record. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to prepare people for this fact, but it would seem that the people I was talking about thought I was talking to someone else.

I guess my main point out of all this was to agree with the poster that said RT single player was what BFC was trying to make sure worked. The other aspects of the game were given secondary attention.

I do not agree with this. The way I see it is CM:SF, and CMx2 in general, had a tighter focus than CMx1 games did and therefore lots of things were left by the curbside on purpose. Most of them, IMHO, had nothing to do with the RT nature of the game. Some, obviously, did. Some RT features we wanted were also not possible to do either because of technical limitations or development time. So from my perspective lots of things weren't included, though I do agree with you that certain sub-segments of the CMx1 players were affected more than others. We're trying to address the latter the best we can as time goes on.

Steve

[Lurker765]

Steve,

Thanks for the excellant reply.

You mentioned being confused by my comment about the upfront nature of the RT vs WEGO.

After pre-ordering the game I learned most of the changes. Based on the website text concerning the game I was under the impression that WEGO TCP/IP was in.

I also thought that the "play any way you like" text about WEGO meant that CMSF had the same WEGO play I had grown to know and love from CMx1. I was absolutely stunned the first time my Strykers went toe to toe with a tank and didn't back up to behind a building right next to them. With one minute WEGO turns and unit TacAI that seems to be worse than what I had years ago in CMx1 it makes the game nearly unplayable for me in WEGO. I guess by the letter of the law it has WEGO, but if your units don't make reasonable decisions I either scream at the screen or have to play RT. Definitely not what I was expecting from the "play any way you like" advertisements.

While I agree that the WEGO playback bugs do not effect the overall outcome of a game they do have an impact on my enjoyment of it. Watching the replays is something I liked in CMx1. I also learned how the game worked by checking what type of ammo was used per shot, etc. All this has gone away with the replay bugs.

Also, I don't understand how the game would be unplayable from different turn length slices. If the two individuals in the game (or one in solo play) choose a WEGO time slice that they agree on wouldn't that by definition make it more playable for them? If they didn't like that time length they wouldn't use it.

Anyway, it is great hearing your thoughts on these matters. I come back to this forum to get thoughts on the game industry and design, and it is nice when the signal outweighs the noise.

[ January 15, 2008, 07:42 AM: Message edited by: Lurker765 ]

[Melnibone]

Originally posted by Lurker765:

While I agree that the WEGO playback bugs do not effect the overall outcome of a game they do have an impact on my enjoyment of it. Watching the replays is something I liked in CMx1. I also learned how the game worked by checking what type of ammo was used per shot, etc. All this has gone away with the replay bugs.

I agree. The reason I play WEGO is for the replays. The fact they are not "true" replays does reduce the enjoyment\usefulness of them. Will they ever be fixed or is there a technical reason they have to be like they are?

[GSX]

Originally posted by Melnibone:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by GSX:

....I wouldn't mind joining an SF ladder with more than 6 guys on it.

Surely to participate in a ladder you would need the game installed. On 21st December (3 whole weeks ago)you said:

Well Ive yet again uninstalled this game from my PC. No more installations for me now. After 6 months I just cant be arsed with it anymore to be honest.

Did you get a bigger hard drive for Christmas? </font>