Stop the charade - abandon WEGO in CMX2 Normandy

Michael Dorosh

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I suggested at another forum that BFC should abandon WEGO in Combat Mission Normandy altogether and spelled out a few reasons why I think so. Hard to make one's self heard wherever their beta testers gather though, as you've identified:

http://forums.gamesquad.com/showthread.php?t=79388

So thought I'd kick it around here for discussion.

My reasons are these:

  • Until late, there was no support for TCP play for WEGO, officially due to technical reasons. Point being that WEGO seemed to be an afterthought from the start.
  • Steve came out on the forum and said he prefers RT to WEGO, and said that if there are technical issues in WEGO play, other playtesters had best inform him about it - he does his testing in RT.
  • Command delays were never implemented in WEGO and they are only as of late being examined for inclusion.
WEGO was the hallmark of the original Combat Mission. Don't get me wrong, I think it is the best way to play a squad-based, company level tactical game. But I don't think the "new" CM really can be called that kind of game, and I think the continued emphasis by Steve on both types of game play is a means of crassly appealing to two disparate market types without fully serving the needs of both types of players.

It was bad enough when you had to try and design scenarios for solo play vs. Axis, solo play vs. Allies, and head to head, and then decide if players should use default set up or random, and tell the player which was best (if you even knew) but now you have all these options regarding RT/WEGO play, and the scenarios are long, and you have all the scripting options (which are a ***** to test because the last time I designed a scenario, there was no easy way to "force" any 1 of the 5 script options in the editor, so you had to delete the 4 you didn't want, or else just play it a bunch of times til you got the result you wanted). It's a nightmare for playtesters, and I suspect a lot of erstwhile designers therefore don't bother. Which is only one minor issue.

Steve keeps talking about keeping the decision making interface lean - you pretty much have to for RT. But if this is going to reduce the number of realistic options such as detailed engineering options when there are finally wire/obstacle/entrenchments, I think this speaks to a greater incentive to realize there is a real schism at play and just acknowledge that as nice as it is to appeal to both RT and WEGO players, it can't go on forever. Eventually you need to decide to have a lean and mean interface, or a detailed decision tree. The pause function is either a nice way to split the difference - or a crutch.

What do you all think? Can you have a game that does both well?
 

Palantir

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If BFC had just dropped the "Combat Missions" family title & given SF a different title it might have helped.

But since it is an RT-system it's clearly not in the "CM-WEGO" family so they should dump it & quit kidding everyone that it is CM. Shoehorning anything in as an afterthought leads to big troubles later.

I suggest a title & note stating clearly what it is-

"Clickfest series: Strike Force & Normandy! Real-time tactical games that you must pause every 5 seconds if you actually want to control your men like you did in Combat Missions, but on a smaller scale & with more problems."
 

GenSplatton

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Beats me. I know if it doesn't have a WEGO option, I won't have any interest in it. So I guess I'll have to see how this plays out.
 

[hirr]Leto

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If BFC had just dropped the "Combat Missions" family title & given SF a different title it might have helped.
Why drop the Combat Mission name when you have developed such an absolutely grand marketing tool to dupe thousands of paying customers and long time Combat Mission X1 fans?

Obviously Steve has taken a few business school classes... but not the ones that teach business ethics.

Cheers!

Leto
 

Kineas

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What do you all think? Can you have a game that does both well?
No. I painfully realized this when playing the CMSF demo 1 year ago.

The different modes make two different genres. Different AI, different command set, different UI required. Not to mention the technical aspects, the differences between a realtime engine and a non-realtime one.

You can package two different engines/games into one bundle of course but I doubt anybody would do that.
 

thewood

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To me, its not WEGO vs. RT. I think its doable. The main issue is how BFC did it. In theory making everything RT, then adding forced 60 sec. pauses, a reliable and reactive TacAI, programmable waypoints, replay that works, etc. can be just as elegant as CM1. BFC didn't do that, and I don't think ever really intended to do it. Steve as much as admitted WEGO was a compromise due to focus on RT for both resources and testing. He outright admitted in an early post that he and more than a few of the beta testers never even played WEGO. It showed. WEGO was a disaster out of the box. It was really unplable until 1.05 or 1.06, when the TacAI was finally cleaned up.

WEGO has gotten to the point it is playable, although 1.10 took some steps backwards on the TacAI.

There is one point that some of the WEGO vs. RT discussion has brought out though. That is the way BFC is testing a fairly complex game. If Steve and the direct reports aren't testing WEGO, who is? Its the beta testers. That means that the WEGO elements aren't really being QA'ed. The majority of the testing is being done by unpaid associates/volunteers that probably have limited QA testing experience. I would also bet that there isn't a rigorous QA plan they are following. That is probably how WEGO ended up in such a sorry state. If the main designers and programmers aren't testing it, its hard for mere beta testers to know what the intent of a specific design decision was.
 

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To be brutally honest here. WEGO works for me in SF. WEGO is needed for PBEM, but I wouldnt play a normal scenario on my own in it unless it were over a certain size.

90% of the guys that but SF wont be asking these questions and as BF want to sell to those guys then what youll get is a good game for that 90% and not a good game for the extra 10%.

Simple but true gents.....


So yes WEGO needs to be in ww2.
 

Michael Dorosh

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To be brutally honest here. WEGO works for me in SF. WEGO is needed for PBEM, but I wouldnt play a normal scenario on my own in it unless it were over a certain size.

90% of the guys that but SF wont be asking these questions and as BF want to sell to those guys then what youll get is a good game for that 90% and not a good game for the extra 10%.

Simple but true gents.....

So yes WEGO needs to be in ww2.
Well, they are working at improving WEGO, with command delays now, so hopefully they pull it together.
 

thewood

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To be brutally honest here. WEGO works for me in SF. WEGO is needed for PBEM, but I wouldnt play a normal scenario on my own in it unless it were over a certain size.

90% of the guys that but SF wont be asking these questions and as BF want to sell to those guys then what youll get is a good game for that 90% and not a good game for the extra 10%.

Simple but true gents.....


So yes WEGO needs to be in ww2.
I agree WEGO works now. Some things are better than CM1, especially being able to chain commands to waypoints. Some things are worse, no true huntcommand, instantaneous response of units to orders, having to watch an entire turn, etc. But that really is only true after 1.08.
 

Redwolf

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Uh, command delays are coming back?

As in wait 180 seconds at the beginning of a 27 minute scenario, when that 180 minute delay is because the route you plotted down a road is so complicated?

No, thanks.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Uh, command delays are coming back?

As in wait 180 seconds at the beginning of a 27 minute scenario, when that 180 minute delay is because the route you plotted down a road is so complicated?

No, thanks.
I didn't like the fact there were no "do-overs" - i.e. you were penalized if you deleted a movement path or order, plotted something new, then decided the original path or order was actually ok and you should have stuck with it. If you went to replot it, you had new command delays imposed - a "redo" button would have been nice.
 

Redwolf

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I didn't like the fact there were no "do-overs" - i.e. you were penalized if you deleted a movement path or order, plotted something new, then decided the original path or order was actually ok and you should have stuck with it. If you went to replot it, you had new command delays imposed - a "redo" button would have been nice.
I think they were severely underengineered.

Apart from what you say, they should penalize you for a one-line spoken command like "move down that road" (even if the road has curves).

Also, there's shouldn't be delay in turn one. My example of 180 seconds delay at the beginning is for a conscript T-34 in early CMBB and it is not made up. And you get it if you had ordered it to move down a curved road.

Given that the game has strict time limits (no "play on" like in TacOps) and the limit is usually 25-30 minutes this just isn't right.
 

Michael Dorosh

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No arguments on any of those points. Of course, this is why we have a second generation game engine.

Artificial game mechanics are just that - artificial. Would be nice to see something else. Sgt. Joch is talking at BFC that "true" command and control would be preferable to command delays. Not sure precisely what he means, but I tend to agree "real stuff" is better than "mechanics" up to the point that it gets ridiculous, anyway. I mean, you can calculate firepower with game mechanics or with real world ballistics and still get the same result. The command delays always seemed clunky for the reasons you indicate. Perhaps more properly instituted they would go down better - but in 1:1 it will be harder to watch each man just sitting there. At least in CMX1 you could accept the fact you weren't really seeing what the game engine was calculating.
 
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Redwolf

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No arguments on any of those points. Of course, this is why we have a second generation game engine.

Artificial game mechanics are just that - artificial. Would be nice to see something else. Sgt. Joch is talking at BFC that "true" command and control would be preferable to command delays. Not sure precisely what he means, but I tend to agree "real stuff" is better than "mechanics" up to the point that it gets ridiculous, anyway. I mean, you can calculate firepower with game mechanics or with real world ballistics and still get the same result. The command delays always seemed clunky for the reasons you indicate. Perhaps more properly instituted they would go down better - but in 1:1 it will be harder to watch each man just sitting there. At least in CMX1 you could accept the fact you weren't really seeing what the game engine was calculating.
Those "true C3 in games" people are usually the same who don't understand what absolute and relative spotting is in existing games. They have that mental image of actual situational awareness like a real commander, but then forget that this would need excessive MicroAI and no game is doing it

The way that BFC implemented command delay in CMBB and CMAK it would have been better to turn it off. In CMBO it was kind of OK.
 

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Without WEGO, I have zero interest in what is being called CM x 2. Kerry is correct. The new engine is so far away from the original CM that it's primary purpose for using the same name is one of marketing only.

A major problem is that because RT is an equal partner (think of RT play as the pigs in Animal Farm) with WEGO, we go backwards in many areas, not the least of which is the size of engagements and forces involved. It is as though Battlefront released CM Small Battles.
 

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If I play on my own I play RT, but Jag your right, you cannot play much over a company sized RT before your brain starts to hurt and you start hitting the Esc key.

WW2 may be a ittle more relaxed though as weapon range and lethality will obviously be reduced....

Im beginning to suspect that the reason BF brought out SF first is to rid the world of CM-1 players so that when ww2 arrives in CM-2 all of us old cm-1 players will have been forgotten about and the game will have died.
 

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Take a look at what BFC is doing.

First they tell us no way is CMx2 going to be fictional.

Second they assure us that it will be a WeGo.

Third they say that they are no longer supporting CMx1.

Then they release CMSF, which is of course fictional and without a working WeGo.

They do stop supporting CMx1 which is a death sentence for it technology wise. Vista is helping greatly to kill CMBB, which is funny since BFC is now actively trying to market CMC.

Now we see them start to move out into the mod, scenario archive arena after six years of very dedicated community support for CMx1. To have the gamers they dropped at the door to pick up where CMx1 left off and give CMx2 a place of it's own. Having the community make the mods and scenarios for free, and give them to BFC for free, so they can charge a nominal fee for the rest of us to get.

hmmmm.....I'll not buy CMx2 for three reasons. I don't like RT, I don't want a game without WeGo and the forces are too small. Then of course there is the issue of them killing CMx2. If they show the kind of product support for CMx2 as they have for CMx1 then CMx2 can be dropped with no support at any time. No matter what their customers think of the idea.

I have some great marketing ideas of my own for BFC..they start with truth in advertising.....

Good Hunting.

MR
 

Redwolf

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They do stop supporting CMx1 which is a death sentence for it technology wise. Vista is helping greatly to kill CMBB, which is funny since BFC is now actively trying to market CMC.
Gotta nitpick on this one. Vista is innocent. What broke CMx1 on DX10 equipped vista boxes is NVidias' drivers.

However, blame should be assigned to BFC for using DX5 for CMx1. DX5 is a mid-1997 area directx version, and I wouldn't know how hard to blame NVidia to slip on compatibility to 10 year old API calls.

Remember that BFC released a game in 2003 (CMAK) that uses this 1997 API. Would have been fine if they had used OpenGL (like John Carmak was praying to people since the mid-nineties), but alas they didn't.

There are a couple more stupidity points such as dropping software mode (would run fine on today's fast machines, at least to answer a PBEM move or so) and the artificial limit to 1600 vertically and 1200 horizontally, respectively.

All artificial decisions, unforced errors like you call them in tennis.
 
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