ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl
It's not making me any friends among the development team, but that's okay. I hated being under NDA for all those years, because I continually had to parse my comments and criticism in the spirit of professional courtesy. Well, no more. I'm a civilian, now, and I can call 'em like I see 'em. And frankly, the "hey, we've been doing this for twenty years, so get lost," attitude, hereabouts, isn't gonna cut it.
One thing that I would encourage anyone who is dissatisfied to do is contact David Heath at Matrix Games, and provide him with a polite but pointed piece of your mind as to the soundness of the game that his concern accepted for publishing on behalf of the developer. While the act in itself can't remedy your game issues, perhaps it'll encourage him to be more discriminating in the future.
PoE (aka ivanmoe)
PoE,
As far as I know everyone on the development team has pretty thick skin; doubt you've hurt your standing with anyone (think SSG folks probably like the intensity of your comments... your comments probably wouldn't be so intense if you didn't like the game!). Everything I've seen from SSG shows that they listen to player comments very closely. There were much more heated discussions over how the Korsun Pocket engine worked than yours here!!! All the comments were listened to and changes made that improved the KP game engine. I would be surprised if the same were not true with CAW.
As a tester for SSG there are three categories I address:
1. BUG. The code is not doing what it is susposed to do.
2. Game Design Issue. Many of the concern posts seem to fall here (i.e. concern with the rules used by the game engine). Constructive feedback from players can go a long way toward seeing changes made in future patches.
3. Scenario Design Issues. These come in two varieties: 1) errors made constructing the scenario (i.e. input error in the editor) & 2) design/balance issues. Input errors can be corrected very quickly (either in official patch or by custom player scenario version). Scenario design disagreements have the same two solutions... convince scenario designer there's a better concept or make your own tweaks and release as a custom scenario. I'd be more than glad to post user scenarios on the Run5 section of SSG's website. I'm also more than happy to help with scenario design assistance.
One thing that should not be missed in this discussion: SSG puts everything in the open for their scenarios. You get to see EXACTLY how they set up the scenarios. All the data is available for viewing. So, if you don't like the way a scenario plays, you can make your own adjustments. This is how I became involved with playtesting. Much like some of the concerns about scenario balance here, my thoughts were that the KP version of the Ardennes Offensive could be better. While keeping the same map and set of units, I adjusted them in a way that made sense to me. Lo and behold, the next generation of the Ardennes Offensive scenario (free additional gameset with BiN) incorporated many of these ideas. Everyone can do the same here with CAW; I'm sure constructive comments (i.e. this process is flawed; it should work like this) will be listened to... I don't speak for SSG but I've worked closely with them for several years now... no doubt in my mind that they will incorporate good ideas from players into future updates (you should be shooting for a patch to address CAW concerns AND an expanded battle set along the lines of the old Complete Carriers at War). Just my HO.
Finally, everyone should understand that Gregor, the SSG spokesperson, is on vacation for a couple of weeks (he has posted such here and on the SSG forums). Comments made now may or may not be addressed quickly while he's out.
JSS
Run5 Admin
