Immobilisation - can BFC be moved on the Issue?

[Fly Pusher]

Originally posted by Lee_DiSantis:

let's not forget about the 1.5% chance that a giant lobster will attack on turn 1.

hope you have some SMAW's!

That, to me, looks much more like a giant Space Crayfish.

Nowhere like as nasty as Lobsters....

But significantly more manuverable than the Space Mussles, Clams and Limpets.

Personally, I find Space Welks offer the best balance.

[Kong]

Once again Steve tries to explain why CM is a classic to those who live in glass bubbles. Maybe the "war is a clean, perfect, precise" crowd should go back to Chess.... well right after they buy a few copies of CM:SF!!

I'm assuming the failure ratio is going up in CM:SF because there is SO much more stuff that can fail. Makes sense to me.

Side Note: Regardless of what type of crustacean it is, anything that size is going to completely ruin ANY scenario!!! BFC FIX or DO SOMEFINK!!!!

[The Coil]

As in the thread on the CMBB forum, the pro-bogging crowd seems to be missing the point of the anti-boggers (full disclosure: I don't have strong opinions on the bogging issue, I'll buy it and play it either way). The point is NOT whether or not boggin is realistic. The point IS that bogging a significant risk into the game that the player can not control/avoid/mitigate in any way. The pro-bogging crowd seems to not want to answer this point, instead advancing several unrelated arguments:

1) It's realistic (everyone agrees to this, on both sides).

2) There's chance involved in every aspect of the game (sure, but the issue isn't the element of chance, but whether or not a player can influence the level of risk involved).

3) Everyone likes bogging.

It seems to me (as a somewhat neutral observer) that it makes a lot of sense to give the user control over the issue. People who like random chance events can toggle "wacky catastrophe mode" on, and have their radio communications interrupted by sunpots and their FO's struck by lightening. People who don't want their company commander to desert mid-battle to be with his Syrian girlfriend can toggle it off. Everyone is happy. As (I believe) JasonC said in the CMBB thread, giving the player more control over the parameters of the game tends to make happier players who play the game more.

Possible reasons to not include such a mode, that occur to me off the top of my head, include:

1) Adding this feature would mean not adding some other, better feature (or be too much trouble to code, or something).

2) We make the games, you just play them, little maggot.

3) We put features in the game only in response to majority opinion, as it is expressed in non-random sampling of really old threads.

There may be other, better reasons that I haven't thought of or that haven't been mentioned. In my mind, the only decent reason is reason #1, some technical limitation. #2 isn't. #3 is just silly (opinions should be weighed, not counted, a wise man once told me).

Anyway, like I said, no strong opinion on the bogging, BUT I see no downside for increased player control of any aspect of the game, as long as it's technically feasible. If a feature gives me a greater ability to customize the game to my own liking, I think the question for me becomes, "why not include it?" Because you don't like the idea that someone else somewhere else in the world might be playing CM with no chance of their tank throwing a track?

[C'Rogers]

The pro-bogging crowd seems to not want to answer this point, instead advancing several unrelated arguments:

You missed one.

The rate of blogging and how it affects the game is grossly exaggerated by some players. As evidenced by those (like myself) who have never seen a bog that didn't make logical sense and felt that there was control over. This meant people's complaints about bogging where about an incredibly minor issue.

[Battlefront.com]

The Coil,

The pro-bogging crowd seems to not want to answer this point, instead advancing several unrelated arguments:

Not at all. It's just that the anti-bogging crowd doesn't like to hear it. And that is "war is chaotic, CM simulates war, therefore it simulates chaos. If you can't get over that, then why not play an RTS or something else less realistic and more predictable?". The anti-bogging crowd tends to not like this line of argument

Possible reasons to not include such a mode, that occur to me off the top of my head, include:

You've missed the most important, most consistently voiced reason to not include such options; CM is about realistic combat behavior, so if you don't want realistic combat behavior then why are you playing CM? That's my reason for not catering to features like this, and since I'm the one designing the game I'd say that makes it the most important line of reasoning That's the thing I object to.

Anyway, like I said, no strong opinion on the bogging, BUT I see no downside for increased player control of any aspect of the game, as long as it's technically feasible.

It's technically feasible, and we might even support a broader realism toggle. Meaning, you can turn down the overall level of realism, not a pick and choose what to toggle on/off. We've had this in the design of CMx2 from the start. So if you don't want to have your tanks bog, fine... turn down the realism and not have your tanks bogged. But you'll also have other features turned down/off as well. If you don't like that, then suck it up and deal with the chance of bogging and have the other stuff working as well.

Steve

[Capt. Toleran]

My 2 cents -- Please keep the bogging. As much as it sucks to have a tank bog where you can't use it, that is reality, and us CM fans love reality above all else. There are plenty of games that sacrifice reality for fun, and that's their perogative. I play CM because it is fun, but for me, it is fun because it is real, and that extra challenge is what makes winning so rewarding. You wouldn't have a hurdle race without hurdles (or ones that were 2 inches off the ground), right?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Kong:

Side Note: Regardless of what type of crustacean it is, anything that size is going to completely ruin ANY scenario!!! BFC FIX or DO SOMEFINK!!!!

I have been authorized to announce that the Pentagon has been working on a Top Secret crash program to develop an armored vehicle based on the chassis of the M1 Abrams that tows a huge vat of drawn butter and can fire it through a modified flame thrower nozzle. Since Space Lobsters and their Crawfish allies are not signitories to the Geneva Convention, the JAG anticipates no legal problems with the use of this weapon.

Michael

[The Coil]

Steve,

I hear what you are saying, but I still think the main issues are being a little oversimplified. Let me attempt to clarify: this is not a debate between those who want CM to be totally predictable (call 'em chess players) and those who want it to be totally unpredictable (call 'em bingo players)(cue bingo grogs rushing to their keyboards to insist bingo takes a considerable amount of skill). Rather, it is a debate about where on the continuum it should be. Some want it to be a little more predictable, some want it a little less. Nobody wants complete predictability or complete randomness - otherwise they'd go play chess or bingo. The want to play CM, because it is a fun game - they would just prefer to play it at a place on the luck/skill continuum that is most fun to them.

In the same way, nobody wants a totally unrealistic game. I don't think many people want a totally realistic game. I, for one, don't want my soldier to keel over from an asthma attack, or see my platoon commander fragged by one of his troops because they had personality conflicts. There is an acceptable level of realism that I find fun in CM, without taking it too far. Other people may have a different idea of what that level is. Some people may like it when the fleem sprocket on their tank fails, others might not. The reality is most people play CM because they like it a lot better than RTS games. I would venture to say most people playing CM would land at the high end of the reality scale. I don't think the goal is total realism.

For instance, choosing the parameters of a quick battle has nothing to do with realism. A 'real' commander doesn't get to choose the size of the map, he doesn't get to choose whether he wants to attack or defend, he doesn't get to pick the weather conditions. These are not 'realistic' options - they are included because they make the game more enjoyable and enhance the game's replayability. If I want to play exclusively meeting engagement quick battles, I can do that, even though they 'hardly ever happened.' If I want to fight 20 Tigers with 100 Stuarts, I can do that (I think). If you don't like it, you can play purely historical scenarios. However, if you went the realistic route, and set the game up so that it only let people play historic scenarios with verifiably realistic force mixes, and didn't let people choose what kind of battle they wanted to play, but just ordered them into combat (real commanders don't get to decide how many points their command is), you'd have a more realistic game, but I bet not many people would want to play it.

Here is my basic point (if anyone is still reading this): we all have a different idea about the 'proper level' of realism that makes the game most fun. The less control you give me over the game, the more I am stuck playing a game that is set to your idea of the 'proper level.' The more control you give me, the more I can adjust it to my own idea of the enjoyable game. I will keep playing CM because it is an unbelievably fun game. I don't want to play bingo or chess or RTS games, because I don't find them as fun. However, if I had more control over more parameters in the game, I could make it even more fun. Someone else has a different idea of fun, let them set things their way. We'll all be happy.

Like I said before, I'm not so much arguing against immobilization as I am arguing for giving players as much control as possible. I think the question really comes down to: are you making the game that you think is the ultimate game, or that I (and your other customers) think is the ultimate game? I think most people playing CM share most of your idea of what the ultimate game should look like, otherwise they would be playing other games. I just want control over those areas where we disagree.

I realize that there are a skillion different options and toggles you could throw in the game, and that's where you as the developer have to make choices. My plea is: give me as much control as you can. In that vein, I think the realism toggle is a great step (although when I turn it off, my tank better not have hit points).

Hope I'm not sounding too critical - I think CM is a great game, just don't want to miss a chance for it to be even better.

[Battlefront.com]

The Coil,

Yeah, like I said I understand the arguments on both sides The fundamental problem is that we, meaning the designers, have to decide what to include and what not to include. Therefore, no matter what, the player is "stuck" playing the game that we create. If they don't like our choices they can go play some other game instead. Therefore, we designers have to be concious that there is choice out there and we had better not alienate customers that we had expected to sell to. Likewise, customers should be concious that we can't sit around all day catering things to their individual wants and desires. So in the end if they don't like our choices, go play something else.

Toggles are a pain in the ass for us to manage. The main problem with them is exactly what you illustrated... there is no one right answer. We could put in 50 toggles and yet have another 100 being requested on top fo the 50. At some point we have to say "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH... PLAY THE DAMNED GAME OR GO AWAY". That's just the way it has to be. The people that can't accept this, and instead DEMAND that we bend the game to their particular pet feature/peave, need a reality check. That's part of my job too

Typically we try to draw a hard line when it comes to realism. If we think it is realistic and relevant, we try to put it into the game. And since it is in the game then we obviously feel it is reasonable to expect people to deal with it. Otherwise (again) they can go play something else more to their liking.

Note that the original thread, and this one, was not about choice but about making everybody play without bogging as a feature at all, or at least greatly reduced. And I quote from Paul AU from the first post of this thread:

I will repeat one salient point: I’m not saying it’s a big problem, but I am saying it’s a problem that doesn’t need to be there.

He is posing that the feature should be removed because, in his opinion, it is a fun killer. This despite the fact that the thread linked to had probably more people saying it was a fun enhancer. Just pointing out that some people feel that if it isn't good for their style of play then it isn't good at all. That holds a lot less water with us than those who want something retained because it makes the game more realistic.

Steve

[Elementalism]

Originally posted by C'Rogers:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />The pro-bogging crowd seems to not want to answer this point, instead advancing several unrelated arguments:

You missed one.

The rate of blogging and how it affects the game is grossly exaggerated by some players. As evidenced by those (like myself) who have never seen a bog that didn't make logical sense and felt that there was control over. This meant people's complaints about bogging where about an incredibly minor issue. </font>

[The Coil]

Steve,

Thanks for your thoughts (and for reading those absurdly long posts). Final thought, and I'll keep it quick. As you noted, for me the issue really isn't immobilization, it's player control vs. developer control.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The fundamental problem is that we, meaning the designers, have to decide what to include and what not to include.

This is undoubtedly true. Anything you chose to put in means something else doesn't make it in, opportunity cost, blah blah blah, etc. For you, it is probably fun to design what is in your view the ideal game. For me, playing your ideal game is a limitation. I want to play my ideal game. Now, you could, justifiably, say to me 'well, go make your own game, then, buddy.' Reality is, you do it better than I could, and 99% of the time I agree with your version of an ideal game. I'm just saying, give me as much control to fiddle with the other 1% as you can, so I can make myself happier playing your game. When it gets to cumbersome/annoying/technically impossible to give me control of something, don't, and I'll have to live with that. But when you give me (and others) more control, we play it more, play it longer, and convince other people to play it. More people playing CM is good, for you, for me, for everyone, even if other people are playing it in a way I personally think is stupid. I think giving the player control is especially important when dealing with deus ex machina-like effects that the player can not act to mitigate, since these are the things that tend to annoy players to the point of not playing a game any longer. 'Nuff said (too much, actually). Steve, thanks for taking the time to hear my concerns - no need to respond further.

[flamingknives]

The player cannot act to mitigate fluke shots either. They're about as likely.

The player can mitigate bogging effects though. Don't take the vehicle, don't take small numbers of vehicles, don't base your plan exclusively around having the vehicle and have a back-up in case the vehicle is lost.

[C'Rogers]

For me, playing your ideal game is a limitation.

I am kind of curious on this issue whether game designers play the games after they design them (other then for testing purposes). Was CMx2 ever interrupted in design because Steve and Charles decided to take a day to just have some fun and play CM:BB?

[Battlefront.com]

C'Rogers,

I'm not sure if Charles has ever played a game of CM against another person, and I know for sure he has probably played less games in total than most of you play in a week 3 years after buying the game. I'm not that much better. I played CMAK once in the last 3 years. It is the game developer's curse... you get into gaming because you love gaming, but then you spend so much time making them that you have no time to play them.

The majority of features in CM are not in there because Charles or I personally want them to be there. The features are there because we feel they are the right thing for our audience. Sometimes we denny features that players want because it violates overarching design goals and/or capabilities, but that's just reality rearing its ugly head.

As we've said all along... we make wargames not wargame kits. Hardly any games out there offer the minutia of controls people request of us, so we don't feel like there is much reason to devote time and resources to such control. If we please most people most of the time with the features we put in, then we've done all we intended on doing. The rest just have to deal with that.

Steve

[Dschugaschwili]

If I understood Steve's posts on the subject of realism correctly, there will be a couple of different realism settings in CMx2, just as there were different fog of war settings in CMx1. I expect the issue of bogging to be included there. And that's perfectly fine with me.

If you want your realism all the way up, don't complain about a bogged tank. Otherwise, turn down the realism. I fully agree with Steve that providing dozens of toggle options is not the right way to go.

Dschugaschwili

[Battlefront.com]

Hey Dschugaschwili, nice to see you again. You been in a detention camp like your namesake, or just busy?

Steve

[Dschugaschwili]

I went into lurker mode a while after CMAK came out. I still play the occasional game of CM, but time is limited and my computer hasn't been upgraded for more than five years.

Besides, as a simple non-grog who doesn't really care about the setting (actually, I would have preferred if you had gone with space lobsters immediately to side-step the discussions about real-world equipment) and doesn't know anything about real weapons my input doesn't seem to be all that important here.

I am somewhat surprised though that you still remember me.

Dschugaschwili

[Battlefront.com]

For some reason I remember a lot of you old hand buggers

Steve

[Paul AU]

“BTW, just for giggles”… Well. Already I can see where this is going. My posts were not “for giggles”. But I see now.

Meaning, "the link Paul finds so overwhelmingly important actually defeats his argument IMHO."

Well. That’s illuminating. (No intelligent person who reads the thread (for giggles) can agree with BFC's position, IMO).

If you think that… then the Topic is closed.

As for “majority”…. No, I think you’re wrong about that, or I wouldn’t have raised the issue. The majority hates the effect I’ve so painstakingly described.

But you’ve shown you really don’t get it. (or don't care, and are ready to ridicule people who bring it up) Or don’t understand the system design fault inherent.

So BFC’s wargames will still be the best around (by a mile), and will still be just a little bit crappier than they need to be. (16 minutes re-coding would fix it).

But BFC could be “blinded by their own personal opinion”, so we (well, “me”, actually) ) must stop trying to help them.

And there was much rejoicing

[flamingknives]

Oooookay.

If I understand that last post right, Paul AU:

* Anyone who disagrees with you is stupid

* You have conducted some kind of poll to determine which is the majority view

* You know more about designing and coding that the BFC team.

So, where do I go to get Paul AU wargames? They must be terribly good.

As relevant bit of experience, lately I've been doing a bit of trials work involving armoured vehicles. In two out of three trials the vehicle has suffered a mechanical breakdown, that took it out of action for an hour or so, and during the third a vehicle threw a track nearby while negotiating a knife-edge.

The two breakdowns occured on flat, smooth and straight roads - you couldn't ask for better surfaces* - and we weren't pushing the vehicles very hard at all. This is with reasonably modern vehicles with good logistics backup.

The point remains that the entire game is based on chance. I can conduct a perfect attack, but chance shots (hits for the enemy, misses for me) can completely turn it on its head. I cannot act to mitigate this, so surely this is every bit as much of a problem as bogging. Could someone explain to me why this is not the case?

*Actually, you could, because hard roads actually set up some severe vibrations. But from a 'bogging' point of view there's little better.

[Paul AU]

“BTW, just for giggles”… Well. Already I can see where this is going. My posts were not “for giggles”. But I see now.

Meaning, "the link Paul finds so overwhelmingly important actually defeats his argument IMHO."

Well. That’s illuminating. (No intelligent person who reads the thread (for giggles) can agree with BFC's position, IMO).

If you think that… then the Topic is closed.

As for “majority”…. No, I think you’re wrong about that, or I wouldn’t have raised the issue. The majority hates the effect I’ve so painstakingly described.

But you’ve shown you really don’t get it. (or don't care, and are ready to ridicule people who bring it up) Or don’t understand the system design fault inherent.

So BFC’s wargames will still be the best around (by a mile), and will still be just a little bit crappier than they need to be. (16 minutes re-coding would fix it).

But BFC could be “blinded by their own personal opinion”, so we (well, “me”, actually) ) must stop trying to help them.

And there was much rejoicing

[Paul AU]

" let's not forget about the 1.5% chance that a giant lobster will attack on turn 1."

Unintentionally making the point, rather well.

2% of games (5%, 10%?) of games are crap on turn 1, because of this.

This can be fixed with 12 minutes of programming.

Do I care, 88% of the the time?

Twelve minutes is less time than I spend setting up.

[ September 30, 2006, 04:49 AM: Message edited by: Paul AU ]

[Paul AU]

Oooooka, flamingknives?

You didn't read the thread either, did you.

[Sirocco]

If the game becomes "crap" when a tank bogs on turn 1, is that also the case if it's knocked out?

[birdstrike]

This whole majority this, majority that thing is of no use at all.

Do we hate bogging? Yes.

We hate it as much as seeing our Shermans getting blasted by a Tiger that shrugs off anything we throw at him. We hate it as much as seeing our Tigers getting immobilized by a Mine where the PSW2 drove though without any problems.

As has been said before, if you center your whole tactic around a single vehicle, you are doomed if it's gone, no matter how it has been taken out. Take more armor with you and it's a whole different ballgame. You lose a tank to an 88, another one gets bogged, one gets its gun damaged, all not nice, but if you got a whole platoon, the single one lost to bogging is hardly notable (and it's not even really lost). Yes, I had scenarios where 3 of my 5 tanks got bogged, but I also had scenarios where out of 10 tanks not a single one bogged down.

I see that you are frustrated by the way the CM1 game engine handles bogging. But while Steve stated the principle of 'bogging' will remain in CM2, you simply cannot suppose that it is handled the same way as in CM1.

I myself would appreciate some hints in the manual as to what behavior could trigger certain 'bogging' effects, like not turning on certain types of ground, or allowing Stryker crews to place their coffee mugs besides the weapons control system .

You have every right to ask fo an option to turn off bogging. But you have no right to demand for one.

There are games that allow customizing gameplay to a high degree and there are games that don't. Flighsims, for example, often include a lot of realism options. Reason being, to allow newbies to slowly accustom themselves with the complex nature of flying an aircraft. Or to compensate for players lacking controller hardware (like pedals, thrust control, etc). And even then some aspects will remain beyond the player's control. For instance, going into a tight turn with your P51 and next time you want to fire, 2 of your 6 MGs are jammed because the cartridges got wedged.

Much of the complexity a player has to deal with in a sim will be handled abstractly by the 'pixeltruppen crew' in CM2. You won't be required to know how to operate a specific vehicle or aircraft. You don't have to worry about how to insert target data into the targeting computer to fire a shot. You won't have to worry about the oil pressure or torque. And you don't need to cope wth the shortcomings of a 8-year old Joystick for avoiding hitting trees in low-level flight. Some options for turning on/off certain aspects in a sim are a necessity to play the game at all, in CMSF they are not. You tell your Bradley where to go and what to attack, that's all. You have no more control over what your crew does in the vehicle as I have as a pilot of where the bullets from the flak shooting at me are going.

As it is, bogging is considered an integral part of gameplay. People make mistakes, especially in a combat situation. They miss a target that should have been a certain kill. They panic when getting shot at by a lone sniper. They drive their tank into a ditch and can't get it out again.

CM2 will include options to make the game easier. It will just not be that much customizable as it 'could' be. Set the game to a lower realism, and voilà, no more bogging. You have to live with some other things turned off as well, but that's how it is.

Why not wait and see how everything plays out in the end? You might even end up enjoying it.