Ways to make the game more newbie friendly...

[DarthJames]

...from someone who just bought the Combat Mission Anthology.

1. Improve interface in general.

Reading mission briefings that look like they've been done in notepad may not affect the game, but looks sloppy and unprofessional. And it's not a good first impression for someone loading up the game.

2. Tooltips. And a tutorial that has instructions in the game, not in a PDF file.

Something like the advisor in Rome Total War who will say stuff like: "Deploy your men in the woods to give them a cover bonus" etc. Getting advice as you play is better than working out that a PIAT is useless unless you hold fire till 20m.

3. Abbreviated weapon damage, penetration and tank armour values, ala Blitzkrieg.

By all means keep the realistic values and calculations, and inform the player this, but put up some relativistic values so that someone who's never played a WW2 game before will instantly be able to see that you can't take a Sherman to go head to head with a Tiger. It's all very well having every single model of the Panzer Mk4 modelled, but it means nothing to me unless I have an easy way of comparing them.

That's all for now, and you may disagree, but these are the impressions of someone trying very hard to get into Combat Mission, and noting all the things that could make it a better game (while obviously trying to retain as much realism as possible).

[aka_tom_w]

Many many, NEW players would agree with ALL your points James!

Thanks for posting!

-tom w

[Barrold]

From another thread just down below...

CMx2 will be more newbie friendly. We are planning on a "training campaign" and will invite new players to play the game using a sort of beginner's mode. This means features that normally are newbie hostile, such as Relative Spotting, will be turned down as much as possible or disabled completely. The game will play quite differently and some people will stick with it even after they get the hang of it. Let's not forget that there are people that play CMx1 with Fog of War turned off (yes, it is true!).

Steve

Welcome to the game and the forum.

BDH

[Sailor Malan]

Originally posted by DarthJames:

...from someone who just bought the Combat Mission Anthology....

...so that someone who's never played a WW2 game before will instantly be able to see that you can't take a Sherman to go head to head with a Tiger. It's all very well having every single model of the Panzer Mk4 modelled, but it means nothing to me unless I have an easy way of comparing them.

What, and mean us old grogs have wasted 20 years of our time learning all this, and more (production of Hamsterkampfwagen HkpF 3G2-r1U8 with the under wing MGFF (30mm) in June 1944 anyone?). That would make us merely socially inadequate, and boring. I don't want CMx turning in to modern school with continuous assessment. Bring back 3 hour exams, with really hard questions!

Now: Q1 At what range should a M4A3 engage the rear armour of a Pzkw VIE. Show your working, and write on both sides of the paper.

Seriously, try not to think of CM as a straight game to learn to beat. Think of it as a learning experience. Talk on the forum, ask questions, read, learn , and experiment. No tutorial, however good, is going to teach you everything. It will only ever be a taster. Learning is half the fun.

Good luck, and ask away.

[Salkin]

Originally posted by Sailor Malan:

.....

Seriously, try not to think of CM as a straight game to learn to beat. Think of it as a learning experience. Talk on the forum, ask questions, read, learn , and experiment. No tutorial, however good, is going to teach you everything. It will only ever be a taster. Learning is half the fun.

Good luck, and ask away.

Excellent post Sailor Malan !

This is what I did with CM. I didn't know much about WW2 before CM but after I started playing I bought books and learnt alot simply by browsing these forums. No game before has ever gotten me close to an experience like this.

It's learning by doing , or rather learning while having tons of fun !!!

//Salkin

It's not a game it's an experience

[J Ruddy]

Originally posted by Sailor Malan:

Now: Q1 At what range should a M4A3 engage the rear armour of a Pzkw VIE. Show your working, and write on both sides of the paper.[/QB]

Dang! I left my cheat sheets at home.

Assuming 75mm APC M61 munitions, and the ultimate goal of penetrating the Tiger's 80mm @ approx 90 degree armour, I would have to guesstimate under 100 meters would be ideal.

[ September 15, 2005, 01:44 PM: Message edited by: J Ruddy ]

[Boris Balaban]

Would different levels of the AI help?

A weaker AI would make more mistakes like a green level officer but a stronger AI would be a veteran level officer, less mistakes?

[DarthJames]

Levels of AI would be nice. As a game based on realism, it's actually the only way to change the difficulty without compromising on the basis of the game.

My point is that currently the only way that I can find a tank's full stats is to view them in-battle, and even then they are pretty meaningless to me. If you retain the historical values in engine, but present the newbie player with a set of simple, easily comparable values for everything, then you can ease him to the level where he can look at the historical stats and answer

Q1 At what range should a M4A3 engage the rear armour of a Pzkw VIE. Show your working, and write on both sides of the paper

without any paper at all .

Seriously, try not to think of CM as a straight game to learn to beat. Think of it as a learning experience. Talk on the forum, ask questions, read, learn , and experiment. No tutorial, however good, is going to teach you everything. It will only ever be a taster. Learning is half the fun.

Good luck, and ask away.

I think of all my games as puzzles to beat...

Chatting on the forums is fun and all, but I shouldn't have to in order to in order to understand what is going on. It's like buying Silent Hunter 3, and then having to go ask my Uncle (written a book on it - I mean U-boats)what time delay I should set my torpedoes for on a 1000m target. The information should be readily accessable in game.

My final complaint for CM is that the camera is never in the right place or angle. Either it's 2D to get the big picture and you can't see anything in detail, or you've brought it down to the bird's eye level and something's out of the plane of view. It's also extremely hard to spot small inclines in the terrain.

I know that some/most of this has been replied to already; think of this as a blind test. If you've already addressed what I'm talking about, then you're on to a good thing.

Essentially my suggestions boil down to what I think your already doing. Bring the scale of action down to the company level, pump up the graphics and detail, and then keep tweaking the interface until a reasonably smart person could pick up the game and play instantly (maybe not to win, but at least be able to play).

[Barrold]

I am not sure you are thinking of these games correctly and would suggest a bit more exploration of some small scenarios to flesh out your experience without getting overwhelmed

The first thing to do is get rid of the idea of CM as a puzzle that can be solved. There are no rock, paper, scissors combinations and no scripted missions to overcome.

There is lots of information within the game. Hitting enter while a unit is selected brings up its armor, firepower, and other useful stuff. Targeting a unit provides some feedback on the ability to hit etc.

Lots of other useful tactical information can be located in the forums and in fact, there is an anthology of useful posts.

Lastly, don't create the expectation of winning as the sole reward of the game. CM rewards the application of realistic tactics not memorizing an armor penetration table.

Re-playing the same saved turn can certainly provide completely different results. Realistic ballistics, physics, and accurate modeling of armor thicknesses and shells provide results in such a way that other games just don't.

People play this game for a bunch of reasons and it enjoys the longevity is has by succeeding at what it does.

Each scenario can provide a unique set of challenges based on gaining objectives with insufficient forces or crap units. It is about learning your uber tanks aren't. That quantity is a quality, but misusing your numbers just provides more targets to brew up.

Keep looking. Play some more.

BDH

[aka_tom_w]

one good way to make the game more favourable to newbies might be some form of "handicap" system in the way of

wait for it

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Asynchronous Fog of War settings for the AI and the player.

This could make the AI seem like it was smarter or dumber (or more "hinted" or LESS hinted") depending on which way you want the AI to go.

Realism Grogs may prefer to give the AI a FOW advantage by letting it use (say) Partial FOW while the human player uses the HARDEST or most challenging FOW Relative spotting settings available to him.

OR .... conversely the newer player may choose a more forgiving FOW setting for himself BUT restrict the AI to the HARDEST FOW setting. (sound good? I think so!)

Or something like that....

Bring on the Asynchronous FOW optional settings !!! and please make one of the FOW settings Super UBER Extreme Extra Spicy HARD CORE "realsim" for the diehards and folks that think one day it might actually be fun to use the mythical "Ironman" or Francko's Rules spotting Paradigm. (yeah like that would somehow be fun :confused: or something??)

-tom w

[ September 16, 2005, 05:49 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Battlefront.com]

Welcome DarthJames,

Can't say that I disagree with anything said here. For CMx2, the new engine we're working on, there will be a lot of changes you are looking for. However, part of the problem with a realistic, detailed simulation like this is that folks without a strong background in wargames will likely make up a long list of things that don't conform to the way other games work.

Some of the issues you raise are certainly ones we should address, but others... it's just not possible. For some of these things new players will either just have to get used to them being different than games like Blitzkrieg, or they won't. We'd rather not have that happen, of course, but there is only so much we can do.

As I said in the other thread, we are designing the game to be more friendly to non-wargamers without compromising the simulation in the process. There are lots of things we can do and will do. When we designed CMBO (the first of the series) we didn't expect to get many non-wargamers so such features were not a high priority. Much to our surprise, and pleasure, we did get a lot of interest from non-wargamers. Fortunately the game, on the whole, is quite friendly to gamers. That was, actually, one of the primary design goals (and if you've played other serious wargames you'd know how much we achieved). Now we need to take this a step further.

The main things we have to offer are:

1. A "training" campaign. It won't be as extensive as some others, like Full Spectrum Warrior, but it should be even better than the CMx1 tutorial presentation (which we feel is head and shoulders above other wargames).

2. A "beginner" mode. This toggles things off/on in ways that we feel make the game easier to figure out. This way we can allow new players to enjoy their first experience with the game instead of getting the snot beaten out of them in the first minute of play Yet, since these are options toggled off/on the more advanced players (including those who progress from beginner mode) won't feel their game experience is compromised. CMx1 had such features, but we expect to package them better in CMx2.

3. General UI improvements. We arguably had one of the best UIs in CMx1 for a game of its type. Not satisfied with that, we've gone and made CMx2's a lot clearner, straight forward, and intuitive. Yet it is responsible for a lot more than CMx1's UI.

Well... that's about all I can get into at this point. Just know that we hear you and have already taken your concerns to heart (about 3 years ago ).

Steve

[tar]

Well, I will point out that the CMBB & CMAK armored vehicle pictures added the qualitative color bands to show relative armor strength. I guess if there would be something similar for the gun penetration, that would perhaps satisfy the OP.

As for the tactical tips, it may not be that easy. On the other hand, there is the StratAI which has to do some things. But I agree with the replies that suggest that having some focused training or lesson plan style scenarios would be good. For example, how to attack with infantry. How to defend a town against tanks. How to attack a town with tanks, etc. There have been some of these produced by third parties for the CM series, but trying to have some either in-the-box or downloadable from the BFC website would be nice.

[DarthJames]

Oh by all mean, do not at all compromise on the simulation mechanics of the game. I certainly do not want to see the game change into Blitzkreig. I threw that game up as having a series of gun and armour values that make it instantly possible to see how two units will compare on the battlefield. It might be heresy to the veteran wargamer to abbreviate these values, but doing so in the interface (while of course retaining access to the real information)will do better to ease new players in without feeling overwhelmed with muzzle velocities and armour slopes.

For tac tips, my example would be a tooltip that pop up when you target a tank with riflemen saying "you realise that that won't do anything", or "your unit is currently undetected by the enemy; you may use *THIS* to set it to engage the enemy only once they get close enough for it's firepower to be more effective". Essentially the player does something, and the game tells the player what effect that might have in the next turn.

There is lots of information within the game. Hitting enter while a unit is selected brings up its armor, firepower, and other useful stuff. Targeting a unit provides some feedback on the ability to hit etc.

Hitting enter gives a list of data that is poorly laid out and meaningless to someone who does not already know what it means. The data is important once someone reaches an 'advanced' level in the game, but until then I would say that the player needs to be presented with something a bit simpler, while maintaining the in-game mechanics.

While targeting a unit gives some information, this is useless if I want to see how that information dynamically changes during the turn. It's also time consuming to do when you have many units with multiple possible targets. The game should give up information to the player without the player having to 'work' for it.

When we designed CMBO (the first of the series) we didn't expect to get many non-wargamers so such features were not a high priority. Much to our surprise, and pleasure, we did get a lot of interest from non-wargamers.

I wouldn't be so surprised. The keyword in games these days is 'realism'. You present a game as being realistic and people bored of C&C clones will flock to it.

[aka_tom_w]

"There is lots of information within the game. Hitting enter while a unit is selected brings up its armor, firepower, and other useful stuff. Targeting a unit provides some feedback on the ability to hit etc."

reply:

Hitting enter gives a list of data that is poorly laid out and meaningless to someone who does not already know what it means. The data is important once someone reaches an 'advanced' level in the game, but until then I would say that the player needs to be presented with something a bit simpler, while maintaining the in-game mechanics.

This is a good point

"Hitting enter gives a list of data that is poorly laid out and meaningless to someone who does not already know what it means. The data is important once someone reaches an 'advanced' level in the game,"

I am not sure it will be changed in a big way

I agree with the point and the observation made by DarthJames, his post is very well documented and communicated. All his points are largely correct and do make sense from the POV of someone new to the CM way of presenting and designing games. That's all well and fine....

BUT, I totally agree with Steve when he says, "Some things in the game won't be or can't be changed if we are to keep the game system and the simulation intact." (or words like that?)

Steve says:

"For some of these things new players will either just have to get used to them being different than games like Blitzkrieg, or they won't. "

The entire philosophical concept that the game SHOULD be, best mastered and learned "by the EXPERIENCE of continued playing and replaying of the game" ought NOT be abandoned!

What does this mean to the new player? You need to play the SNOT out of the game to learn BY EXPERIENCE (in the game) what works and what does not. Many new players may not entirely welcome this "fly by the seat of your pants" approach to learning or "beating the game". But for the die hard CM and BFC faithful this really is the way the game should be learned.

BFC motto:

"Learn by doing"

This means you have to play the game A LOT to get a good "feel" for it, and, for most folks here this may not have been something they were comfortable with at first back in the CMBO release days either, BUT the games are SO great you just want to keep playing them and playing them to get better which is the way they were designed.

Why do I say this ??? (because many war gamers are JUST MinMax math quizs that think somehow combat is all about odds and numbers and superior math skills. GUESS WHAT???!!!!

This game LIES to you sometimes! If every time you wanted your tanks to take a shot a another tank you looked up the armour on the other tank and the penetration value on the tank you are shooting with, you might see there are many times when the game TELLS you, there will be no penetration BUT BUT BUT the interface DOES NOT tell you there is a small chance of a penetration at WEAK POINT!!! (on every shot)

This feature SHOULD never be abandoned because it gives some lucky player a "hole in one" shot when there is no other way if they DON"T look at all the stats and just take the DAMN shot!

Hence its NOT all about stats EVEN the ones the game "gives" you if you really think you need them. Some folks may feel different about this but if you play the game enough you can really get a "good feel" for ranges and armour penetrations, AND yes sure I look at the armour thickness of the other tank and I look at the range a penetration values of the tank I am shooting with BUT then I usually just take the shot anyway and hope for the best, M-Kill or G-Kill (gun kill or mobility kill)

Most of us would not want it any other way!

Cheers,

-tom w

[ September 16, 2005, 07:19 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[flamingknives]

I agree with tom w.

If the game tells me what to do all the time, half the initial challenge is gone. I kept playing the two CMBO demo scenarios for months, because I wanted to find out "what happens if I do this?"

My tactics developed from what I learnt, not from the WWII approved tactics guide. When unexpected situations pop up, you can deal with them beter when you're used to working things out as you go.

Last one: RTFM

[ September 16, 2005, 06:20 AM: Message edited by: flamingknives ]

[J Ruddy]

I also agree with Tom.

The game mechanics and user interface should be fairly intuitive and a first timer shouldn't be overwhelmed by too much information or too many clicks.

However, the game shouldn't contain a tutorial on tactics.

So, "This is how you deploy your units." "This is how you check their firepower / penetration values." "This is how you spot for Artillery." "This is Shoot and Scoot" etc... is all GOOD.

"You shouldn't assault the trench with your Clam LPG (Light pearl gun) squad.", "Your 2lb Gun will not defeat the frontal armour of the Space Lobster.", "You are an idiot for isolating your 2nd Gnome Engineer Squad." etc... is all BAD.

[Edit]

I gave this a bit more thought and *maybe* a quick blurb on the roles of different units in a combined arms action could be helpful for newbies.

Start of Battle Quick Tips:

Support Infantry with Armour

Support Armour with Infantry

(that aught to confuse them!)

Use Indirect and Direct HE to Suppress Enemy Infantry

?

[ September 16, 2005, 06:42 AM: Message edited by: J Ruddy ]

[Zalgiris 1410]

I definately concur with Tom W. I also agree with J Ruddy that for newbies all they are really going to need are fairly basic tactical advice at the most.

The only thing that the BFC has to do is basically define all the aspects of UI clearly enough for newbies to begin to play CMx2 and to progress while they are learning from their own experiences. (Especially for those that constitute the non-wargamer market that BFC seems keen to target for greater sales no doubt, and why not I say.)

OTOH I would like to pick up on this quote from Barrold:

Levels of AI would be nice. As a game based on realism, it's actually the only way to change the difficulty without compromising on the basis of the game.

I would like to see this idea of being able to choose different CPU opponents which employ verious qualities of Strat AI in CMx2, this could even include options that allow it to be governed by different tactical tendancies as well.

May be this could be taken to an nth degree and provide an auto-deploy option again with different tactical inclinations that explains a little bit of the tactical reasoning behind the adopted positionings.

I'm not going so far as to demand that this kind of hand holding be developed for the length of the game though, now that would be unreasonable for sure.

[ September 16, 2005, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

However, the game shouldn't contain a tutorial on tactics.

...

"You shouldn't assault the trench with your Clam LPG (Light pearl gun) squad.", "Your 2lb Gun will not defeat the frontal armour of the Space Lobster.", "You are an idiot for isolating your 2nd Gnome Engineer Squad." etc... is all BAD.

I disagree with this. I think a tutorial on tactics would be a very good thing.

Especially if BFC could figure out a way to have in-game events trigger tutorial messages. (sounds really complicated to me, but if they could do it for tutorial scenarios, the events could probably be used on non-tutorial things for any scenario.)

[Battlefront.com]

There is only so much we can do with "tool tips" for tactical guidence. The main reason is that there are too many possibilities for us to possibly manage a system that can hold the player's hand in any meaningful way. RTS games usually don't do this either, but since the pretty much all boil down to "select all your units and rush them at the enemy" it is pretty much the same from game to game.

Whatever we do for new players must be something that is not intrusive on others. If you want to play the game 50 times to learn how best to do something, that's fine (and actually our suggested method!). But if you want to jump start and get the basics figured out in only a few games' worth of play, it would be nice if we could come up with something that would work. We'll see what we can do.

Steve

[Barrold]

I would toss in the example of RTW, (which incidentally is a game whose inability to gain my affection has grown into a genuine contempt) and the advisors it uses.

Now they can be turned off, but after a single use they become a real annoyance. How much effort should be put into something that is only briefly used and then creates annoyance.

On top of that the advisors were only useful for quite generic advice. The seemingly limitless types of situations involved would tend to work against anything useful coming out of a heck of lot of work.

I'd rather have a well-written manual that fully explains functions and effects. Let RTFM be the rallying cry!

BDH

[DarthJames]

Whatever we do for new players must be something that is not intrusive on others. If you want to play the game 50 times to learn how best to do something, that's fine (and actually our suggested method!). But if you want to jump start and get the basics figured out in only a few games' worth of play, it would be nice if we could come up with something that would work. We'll see what we can do.

As far as tooltips go, a simple on/off switch would not be intrusive for someone who didn't want them.

"You shouldn't assault the trench with your Clam LPG (Light pearl gun) squad.", "Your 2lb Gun will not defeat the frontal armour of the Space Lobster.", "You are an idiot for isolating your 2nd Gnome Engineer Squad." etc... is all BAD.

I think that this is a matter of presentation. Obviously the game shouldn't TELL the player what to do. However, for a game with this level of depth, there should be advice available ever time the player encounters something NEW.

For example: The player commands a squad to 'assault' an enemy 75m away. If it's the first time he's used the 'assault' command, a tooltip pops up explaining what it means, and how it should be used over short distances with suppressing fire. If it's been used before, then the game lets him continue. After the turn is over, the squad is understandbly tired. Seeing as this has never happened to the player before, another tooltip pops up explaining that the squad cannot continue to run and needs to rest.

The key is to find the balance between assuming the player knows what he is doing and is intentionally doing something that could be considered counter-intuitive, or whether the player really doesn't have a clue as to what's going on.

Actually getting the tooltips to appear in the right occasions shouldn't be too hard. It's just a matter of linking their triggers to certain player actions:

eg. The player selecting a target with a 1% chance to hit activates the "This won't really do anything, perhaps you should wait until they get closer" message.

The main problem is that sometimes the context of the situation will make the tooltip irrelevant, which is why they should only appear for basic things at the start, as well as to point out things that the player might miss early on (such as fatigue). Advanced tactics should of course be left for the player to discover, although I would suggest some generic 'fix and flank' hints for the manual.

To reduce my entire post to a single sentence:

Tactical help should be confined solely to things that someone playing for the first time may not understand, or might not realise exists in the game, and guides the player in respect to these without need for reference to the manual.

P.S. Having been playing CMAK for a few days now, I'm gradually getting the hang of the interface, and a lot of my original 'complaints' are beginning to seem less valid. I would however contend that I am an over patient person when it comes to this kind of game.

The one thing that still bothers me is the camera system. It's far too hard to correctly percieve how the terrain heights change without going to the lowest height setting, where one looses all sense of perspective in relation to everything else. Hopefully with a new graphics engine this won't be a problem. If it's going to be in 3D, allow the camera to move freely in 3D too!

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

There is only so much we can do with "tool tips" for tactical guidence. The main reason is that there are too many possibilities for us to possibly manage a system that can hold the player's hand in any meaningful way.

I was thinking more of event-driven messages that are defined in a scenario, as opposed to any kind of tactical tool-tip (which I assume you mean something like the pop-up display for hit/kill %). It seems hard to make something event-driven actually work with a game as fluid as CMx1 was, but thinking about the CMAK tutorial scenario, I could envision something like this:

</font>

• Event 1: Turn one Order Phase
  A message appears instucting player to move units towards enemy, but not to crest the hill. Also instructs player to sneak HQ into LOS of sand-bags with 3in mortar in CC</font>
• Event 2: HQ has LOS of sandbags and 3in mortar in CC
  Message pops up instructing player to Area-fire sandbags w/3in Mortar until he sees 4 hits in that area.</font>
• Event 3: 4 hits in Sand-bag area
  Message pops up instructing player to Fast move two vehicles with squads to palm trees and have squads Advance into palm trees</font>
• Event 4: Brit Unit in Palm-Trees
  Message pops up instructing one squad to Fast move into building, while keeping other squad in palm-trees as covering fire.</font>
• Event 5: Brit AFV killed by Gun
  Message pops up explaining that player should have listened to message #1 & #2.</font>

It seems to me like a Herculean task, and I have to agree with Barrold in rather having that development time put into something else. But it would make for a good tactical tutorial, and I imagine scenario designers would love it as well.

[Battlefront.com]

David,

Yes, that sort of thing is probably not too hard to do. The problem with Tool Tips, as I said above, is the list of things to code for is HUGE.

DarthJames, the example you gave of the Assault order. We would have to first figure out what all the "newbie" mistakes are for this order. There are more than one, I am sure. Then we have to insert hooks into the code, complete with trigger parameters, to popup context specific text to warn the user what he is about to do isn't a good idea. Even for one thing, such as Assault, this is a royal pain in the butt to do. Now mutliply this by every order... major pain.

Plus, most of the "dos and don'ts" are context sensitive. A 75m Assault in some situations is the right choice, in others it is a terrible choice. We can't possibly code the game to tell the difference for the user. In other instances it is unit dependent. A 25m Assault by a tired and inexperienced unit is a bad idea, but a 75m assault over open terrain by an experienced unit in good physical condition against a target that is suppressed is probably a good thing to do.

So I can tell you now that tool tips for actions like this is impossible for us to do. The game is too deep and too variable to make such a thing practical. Therefore, it is out. There is already Mouse Help to let you know if targeting something is worth while, so some of this stuff is already in place anyway. It's just there is a big difference between figuring out what the chance of a hit or penetration is a piece of cake compared to most everything else because it is pretty much straight math.

Like I said, there are things we can do to make the game more accessible. But we can not give the RTS/FPS gamers the same safe, predictable, and hand held environment they are used to. It's not because we don't want to, it's because the games are totally different. It's the difference between a non-driver behind the wheel of a gocart on a closed track and instructing him how to get around the track compared to putting the same person behind the wheel of a sports car in downtown city traffic. There is only so much an instructor should be asked to do

Steve

P.S. Dorosh should like my analogy

[Peter Cairns]

Don't tell me Dorosh is actually allowed to drive a car.....

Peter.

[Seanachai]

Originally posted by DarthJames:

...from someone who just bought the Combat Mission Anthology.

1. Improve interface in general.

Reading mission briefings that look like they've been done in notepad may not affect the game, but looks sloppy and unprofessional. And it's not a good first impression for someone loading up the game.

Who cares? Who do you work for, Campbell Metheun? The only thing I hate is when the freaking Scenario designer can't be bothered to catch more than half of the 47 errors in spelling, grammar, and use of the word: Panzervergrottenanstugspiel.

I demand that all Scenario Designers be held to very definite standards of English Usage, and that Berli be forbidden from doing any more scenarios in which it is completely incomprehensible as to what your side is supposed to be doing, and that Rune be forced to give up English all together and learn Finnish, and not do any more scenarios until he's fluent (by the exacting and almost pathological standards of the various 'Let Me Tell You About What My Grandfather Did To Kill Russians' community Finns).

Originally posted by DarthJames:

2. Tooltips. And a tutorial that has instructions in the game, not in a PDF file.

Something like the advisor in Rome Total War who will say stuff like: "Deploy your men in the woods to give them a cover bonus" etc. Getting advice as you play is better than working out that a PIAT is useless unless you hold fire till 20m.

And right after that, we'll all put on dresses and sing 'I Want to Be Loved By You' in the classic Marilyn Monroe style!

And you know nothing about PIATs!

When I first arrived on this Forum, Nancy, I had only the most basic of 'High School Infatuation With WWII' knowledge on which to base my understanding of the Game.

In fact, in my initial play-through of the Demo scenarios, I was actually sneaking my soldiers from 'tree to tree' on the map, because I didn't realize that the graphical representation of each 'tree' didn't mark each particular Norway Pine!

Have you had to worry about that?!

I thought not. Be so good as to put the 'I'd Like an Animated Cut Scene of a Nazi Instructing Me in the Fine Points of Leading Men Into Battle' into the same slit trench that you put the despised and unclean product of your bowels.

Originally posted by DarthJames:

3. Abbreviated weapon damage, penetration and tank armour values, ala Blitzkrieg.

Sounds interesting. Where is this info to be displayed? Still, of everything you've said so far, this makes the most sense to me. Which, ultimately, means it is probably hideously wrong.

Ask anyone about me, if you're in doubt.

Originally posted by DarthJames:

By all means keep the realistic values and calculations, and inform the player this, but put up some relativistic values so that someone who's never played a WW2 game before will instantly be able to see that you can't take a Sherman to go head to head with a Tiger.

The burned hand teaches best, but the brutalized and aching testicles are a lesson that is never forgotten.

'Live and Learn', the saying goes. But 'Live and Die Horribly Because You're So Fecking Half-Witted as to Think a Sherman Can Go Head to Head With a Tiger' is what you learn by actually playing The Game.

Originally posted by DarthJames:

It's all very well having every single model of the Panzer Mk4 modelled, but it means nothing to me unless I have an easy way of comparing them.

Oh, so you want the almost Encyclopedic, and basically inane knowledge of lunatics like Grog Dorosh, or Redwolf reduced to a simple pop-up chart?

Pick a fecking tank, any tank, and see how it freaking well does!

Did you come here to play, or simply to win?

Dear CM Diary: Today, I used the built in 'Select Me the Perfect Tank For a Wednesday In the Park Wearing Taffeta' tool to defeat my Opponent, who had most horribly chosen to use T-34s after Labour Day. I do hope that Ladder Player I met at the Fall Frivolity thought well of my playing! Kiss, kiss, and remember: A PanzerKampfWagon IV, Ausfahrung G is an all-round good tank!

Originally posted by DarthJames:

That's all for now, and you may disagree, but these are the impressions of someone trying very hard to get into Combat Mission, and noting all the things that could make it a better game (while obviously trying to retain as much realism as possible).

By all the gods, if I had you here right now, I'd take an axe-handle and beat you within an inch of your horrible little life. Everything you've proposed (with the single exception of the one thing, which you didn't explain how it might be executed differently than how it's currently executed), left me feeling hollow, sick, and ashamed that we were both inhabiting the same planet, let alone of the same species.

Frankly, it wouldn't hurt if the game were a bit more 'newbie' friendly.

But I'll be goddamned if I'm going to watch a whole puddle of recently decanted poodle urine come in here and...

What the hell was I talking about, again?

Boo was chattering at me. The last thing I remember was thinking: 'Suffer, bitch!'