Michael Dorosh
der Spieß des Forums
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A new "why does Shock Force suck" thread at BFC:
My favourite part is where Thomm displays his inability to count to three, but nothing new for my least-favourite beta tester.
Other highlights are a non-responsive response from Jon Sowden in the form of a pronounciamento that doesn't actually tell anyone anything but is tailored to dissuade people from continuing to post in the topic. Luckily the tactic hasn't worked.
Thomm doesn't toe the company line too well, though - he's calling for two things that BFC has explained away previously, and actually make sense to me.
a) he complains about the inability to place smoke grenades. Actually, I think he's right here - BFC explained this away with reference to their World War II title, saying they weren't used much in 1939-45. They are obviously used much more today. However,
b) he complains the Syrian squad can't be split. Steve has said this is a tactical drawback. I think Steve may be right - it does give the Syrians the only real bit of flavour in the game as far as making one squad some sort of differentiation and making them not just a U.S. Army squad wearing different clothes, but actually making them play differently.
Maybe Thomm is only voicing things poorly, however, as I agree conceptually that individuals or pairs should be able to split off from squads to accomplish tasks - either automatically, via the AI (to avoid the need to "babysit" them), or by the player - stuff like scouting (hey, Leto - run up to the steeple and see if you can spot any tanks on the next hill!), or acquiring stuff (Redwolf, run back to the track and grab the Javelin!) - or even just simulating guard duty. This is stuff entire half-squads wouldn't do.
There are some interesting points raised that again highlight the lack of depth to the simulation.
Granularity of the rubble - it's all or nothing at this stage. You get one big gob of it falling in place when you shatter a building. Or not. You don't have small piles, you don't have falling rubble, or stuff that scatters. You can't drive through it, your vehicle drivers always know it is impassable, so you can't get stuck. In real life, a driver won't always know these things - sometimes a couple of two-by-fours and a piece of tin is just garbage, sometimes it is hiding a drop into a cellar. Is this necessary for a game? No, and at this stage in the CMX2 development, it would be chrome to include it, but something to think about. I would expect CM: Normandy to make some improvements going forward though - certainly an improvement to the animation of a collapsing building - even the shock wave of CM:BO was better than what they have now (oops, living in the past again).
Other good stuff in the thread also. They do tend to crop up with astonishing regularity, don't they, these "what are we missing" ones.
Ken hits it on the head quite well as to the whole game. So much goes on under the hood, that you reach the point of just ignoring it, and it's almost like a shell game:
My favourite part is where Thomm displays his inability to count to three, but nothing new for my least-favourite beta tester.
Other highlights are a non-responsive response from Jon Sowden in the form of a pronounciamento that doesn't actually tell anyone anything but is tailored to dissuade people from continuing to post in the topic. Luckily the tactic hasn't worked.
Thomm doesn't toe the company line too well, though - he's calling for two things that BFC has explained away previously, and actually make sense to me.
a) he complains about the inability to place smoke grenades. Actually, I think he's right here - BFC explained this away with reference to their World War II title, saying they weren't used much in 1939-45. They are obviously used much more today. However,
b) he complains the Syrian squad can't be split. Steve has said this is a tactical drawback. I think Steve may be right - it does give the Syrians the only real bit of flavour in the game as far as making one squad some sort of differentiation and making them not just a U.S. Army squad wearing different clothes, but actually making them play differently.
Maybe Thomm is only voicing things poorly, however, as I agree conceptually that individuals or pairs should be able to split off from squads to accomplish tasks - either automatically, via the AI (to avoid the need to "babysit" them), or by the player - stuff like scouting (hey, Leto - run up to the steeple and see if you can spot any tanks on the next hill!), or acquiring stuff (Redwolf, run back to the track and grab the Javelin!) - or even just simulating guard duty. This is stuff entire half-squads wouldn't do.
There are some interesting points raised that again highlight the lack of depth to the simulation.
Granularity of the rubble - it's all or nothing at this stage. You get one big gob of it falling in place when you shatter a building. Or not. You don't have small piles, you don't have falling rubble, or stuff that scatters. You can't drive through it, your vehicle drivers always know it is impassable, so you can't get stuck. In real life, a driver won't always know these things - sometimes a couple of two-by-fours and a piece of tin is just garbage, sometimes it is hiding a drop into a cellar. Is this necessary for a game? No, and at this stage in the CMX2 development, it would be chrome to include it, but something to think about. I would expect CM: Normandy to make some improvements going forward though - certainly an improvement to the animation of a collapsing building - even the shock wave of CM:BO was better than what they have now (oops, living in the past again).
Other good stuff in the thread also. They do tend to crop up with astonishing regularity, don't they, these "what are we missing" ones.
Ken hits it on the head quite well as to the whole game. So much goes on under the hood, that you reach the point of just ignoring it, and it's almost like a shell game:
You could probably draw up an entire list of stuff that is in CMX2 that gets bragged up in the literature, but which can be safely ignored since the player has no influence on it, has no need to know about it, and it really doesn't influence the decision making anyway. I mean, the stars in the sky are astrologically accurate, there is allegedly real-world ballistics data in play, the U.S. soldiers have those little computers, etc. but when it comes time to click and click and click in RT, so little of it seems to matter in the decision tree of playing the game it's really just window dressing in the PR campaign of selling the game. At least they didn't mention the rack and pinion steering in the Syrian land rover or the air conditioning in the Humvee...
