Is CM dying?

[Steiner14]

Hi all,
ofcourse the question can easily be answered by long time players who grow older with CM.

But in all earnest: a company can not survive without many new, fresh customers. But when I visit the Battlefront forums, the Blitz or FGM, I don't see many new players. My impression is, the community is shrinking.

I recently checked the BFC-forum post numbers: CMx1 had MUCH more posts in the same time as CMx2 has.

Don't get me wrong: I really like CMx2, and IMO CMRT is the best of the series yet.
BUT: if I ask myself, from the point of a normal customer, who was not convinced yet, I don't see much improvement with RT.

Every ittle improvement of the engine seems to take ages.

They make water effects - and then these effects are visible to both sides and have no FOW.

They make tank-riders (how many YEARS took that?) and they stick on the tank until the last man has been shot to pieces.

They made it possible, that the user assigns number keys for certain units, to navigate more quickly - a great idea - but this assignment is not saved with the turnfile. Absolutely useless for WEGOers.

And that brings up another point: how was the realtime-play hailed? Now, how many realtime-fans are left? BFC itself is increasing the map sizes. Not possible to play large battles in realtime.
Where are the masses, that play CMx2 realtime? Where are the realtime-ladders? It seems that the developer was not playing the game the way, which the vast majority of the wargamers plays that game: WEGO. And if I think back, how less love did WEGO receive from the developers with the first CMSF release? Steve spammed the forums that was the mode how CMx2 should be played now. Realtime had so many advantages over WEGO. He has become quite silent about it over the years.

Or take another example: the game is difficult for newbies and has a steep learning curve. Ok, nothing a complex software can be blamed for. But they are not capable to implement some kind of interactive feedback for years?
The after action report: scenario designers either spoil info on historic battles prior, or no info at all. No text after the battle.

There are so many areas that could be improved to make the entry for NEW players more pleasant, to make the game more attractive, but they are deaf. Or incompetent.

Has anyone tried the new mouse controls yet? They are more or less useless.

Or lets take the cover arcs. In CMx1 only the borders were drawn. In CMx2 the whole area is colored which looks UGLY as hell, when you watch the replay and have the unit selected.
And where is the key modifier for half circles after so many years?
Another example, how the developer ignores the needs for the WEGO players.
Where is the possibity to click paths to select a unit? A must have. Not possible after so many years.

Full battle replay?
Multi-multiplayer? Or at least 2-vs-2? Not even for WEGO PBEM!
A scaleable interface? Or at least two sizes?
Campaigns that carry over the destructions on the map?
At least a few seconds replay for trealtime players? How incompetent must a designer be, to develop a new game engine based on realtime, but it's not capable to offer a replay possibility of at least a few seconds, ALTHOUGH the huge success of CMx1 was BECAUSE of the watching the action? How many of us WEGOers enjoy the replays like movies?

Or that they developed CMx2 WITHOUT moveable waypoints? Took them years to correct that.

I have the impression, they throw out title after title, lots of content, but the engine development lacks. Quantity over quality.

Does anyone remember the disaster with the hailed relative command keys? And making that even the STANDARD mode?

While writing this rant I have been asking myself, what is the real benefit of CMRT? And the ONLY thing that really stands out as big improvement is AI-triggers. In one year of development time of the engine?
Everything else IMO are minor improvements, for new customers probably not even worth to mention.
The Eastern front itself is fantastic, but it's only the content.

Has anyone recognized, that there was a significant number of customers being blocked because of their incredible security system? Many years ago I had the same problem - they just blocked the whole provider.
And how do they react? Change the provider! I had heard this five years ago already.

I have NEVER experienced any problems with another online shop, being blocked as customer, because of a crappy and incompetent security system. And that persists for years?


Or how do they care about the community? Their "repository" page is a bad joke. Remember the difference when "Madmatt" cared for the community?
If you search certain mods, all games are preselected! And this for years! And they do not allow mods bigger than IIRC 75 MB!
"Green As Jade" carries this traffic load with his private depot-webpage anyway... This fact alone makes me angry. It's shameless.

And last but not least the BFC-forum. It has turned into a strange kind of incestuous self declared "experts" forum, disgustingly politically "correct", extreme leftist like the US mainstream media, not at all refelcting the plurality of the wargamer community and in combination with beta-testers that defend every shortcoming in the worst fanboy mindset, is a place only to visit only to know what is going on around the game, but to avoid to participate in.

The beta-testers: am I the only one wiht the impression that the majority of active forum members are beta testers? That's another example how they use the community to throw out content after content, instead to improve the game engine substantially, while they turn beta testers into fanboys.
And their forum is the most active that even exists! All the national forums, that existed in CMx1 times: long gone.
I have the impression, despite the huge amount of content they throw out, the CM-community is shrinking.

They promised a faster development with the new model. But I don't see a fast development of the engine. It's slow as a slug. But content is thrown out faster than one can play.
And I don't see, with such a development pace, how they would attract MORE customers. I believe the amount of customers, since now the Eastern Front is there and attracted a big segment, because it was not covered yet, will dramatically shrink for future releases, IF they keep this development pace.
For example I don't know, if I would buy the Ardennenoffensive-family. Because the minor engine improvements become available for older titles anyway.
I also don't play CM because of a maximum amount of houses or units to play with. I play it because of quality over quantity. And if the engine does not improve substantially, I see no reason anymore to buy every title.

What do you think about it?

[Herr Klopek]

My two cents....

Until someone makes a better playing squad level wargame I will be supporting Battlefront for many years to come.

The community may be small but it is still not hard to find good playing partners.

:)

[kineas]

It's 2007 all over again...

CM died with the CMx1 series what I consider the best tactical wargame ever made.

CMx2? Meh.... it keeps BFC afloat, that's all.

[enigma6584]

It's 2007 all over again...

CM died with the CMx1 series what I consider the best tactical wargame ever made.

CMx2? Meh.... it keeps BFC afloat, that's all.

Their sales numbers say otherwise.

---

My two cents....

Until someone makes a better playing squad level wargame I will be supporting Battlefront for many years to come.

The community may be small but it is still not hard to find good playing partners.

:)

I agree. I've never had problem finding PBEM players. As someone else said, this is indeed a "niche" market. We should be so lucky to have someone actually catering to this particular hobby.

[Steiner14]

Ofcourse, because they offer a multitude of titles. But my impression is, they sell to an ever shrinking customer base.
Or do you have the impression the CM-community is growing?

[Steiner14]

Oh, to continue my rant, just another awful experience from the past came to mind: fortifications and bunkers.

For almost three days I had developed and set up a brilliant defense on a huge mountain in CMFI (Ramparts of the Palikoi). I checked LOS like crazy. The best setup I had ever built. Then I hit go and when I received my turn, all the bunkers had sunken into the slopes and were blind!

Every bunker or trench on a slope can be identified from the opponent because it creates an imprint in the terrain. Since this experience I avoid any battles with heavy fortifications on slopes.

This happened with engine version v2.0. Now we are at v3.0 and this problem still has not been solved. In CMx1 we heard, things were so difficult to develop, because of the engine. With the new engine things would become much, much better. Well, there is the new engine and they again can't fix very important things. And don't tell me, that nobody could forsee, that trenches and bunkers would be needed in CMx2 and that they should be under FOW...

[Hedgehog]

For me CM+1 was and is great gameing, CM+2 you can't deny the graphics and movement of forces are much much better, yes the game does want some understanding with the movement of equipment which does put a lot of players of, my self I never thought I would get involved with the new BF games and it did take me a while to catch on, but I kept going back to them and can now say they are the only games I play ......I think for players who are tempted just keep dabbling at them and the change I am sure will come

[daisy]

The CM2 games are not without their issues /problems. Nor do I think BFC is perfect. Their attitude towards loyal paying customers is appalling at times.

I sometimes stop playing for months at a time as I get too frustrated.

But I always come back. That means I am either stupid or the CM2 family are good games.

Talk is cheap and developing a game engine as complex as CM2 certainly takes time, effort, dedication and a lot of money.

Instead of complaining and bitching about CM2 the complainers and whiners should rather sit down and build their own game. Incorporating all of the features they want will of course be easy as they have told BFC on many occasions as to how their games should be made and designed and how easy it is to build a perfect game.Then the complainers and whiners will also be able to crank out a new game every month and a new module every second week. Easy peasy really.

[Steiner14]

Oprinions: Is the CMx2 community bigger or smaller compared to CMx1 times?

[kineas]

I was unable to make the jump to CMx2 and I don't regret it. The wargaming niche is resurging, plenty of good games around. Of course if one likes the CMx2 series that's all fine. But few fans of the old series migrated to the new.

CMx1 (CMBB) was released in 2002. Even in 2006 the community was huge, on the Blitz and on several other sites. Not to mention the BFC forums, just search for the old topics. You can't even compare the two games. Just look at the number of PBEM games reported on the blitz.

There's nothing wrong in it if you prefer CMx2 to CMx1, these are games after all. But CMx1 was a classic, a novelty and of course it's hard to beat that in popularity.