Is This Game Playable Yet?

[timewalker03]

yep we are the testers. excellent point. wish I would have thought of that myself!

[borner]

to the comment:   The map and counters in the screen shots for the past 10 years should have shown that BUT we might have been wrong in these additions and certain assumptions we made.......
 
Forgive me, but at the time I had not spent very much time in the forums. As such, I bought this product as it was MARKETED! I have great respect for you and your effort Marshall, but I take great exception to this comment. I take it to imply that I should have gone through and read the threads before buying the product, so I knew what I was getting. If I missed something about the differences being pointed out on the game webpage, my apologies. Overall, I feel these are somewhat minor, but please do not. In the future apparently the moral of the story is not to only read what this company says about a game, but to cross reference this with the forum conversations. Thankfully I have been reading the WiF threads, so by this train of thought, I should know what to expect....
 
 

[timewalker03]

The moral to the story is not so great product, Consumers fault for not researching enough. Does that about sum it up?

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: timewalker03

The moral to the story is not so great product, Consumers fault for not researching enough. Does that about sum it up?

The only issue I have is this: Matrix refuses to say they goof, period. They will come out and say "Oh, we realize the game is not quite right BUT if you were a good consumer you would have done your research."

There is always a BUT with this company. There's an underlying flaw in that business model.

I realize I'm a negative nealy (or whatever) and I should just shut up, mind my business, thank Marshall and Matrix for even bothering to make this into a PC game, take what I get and like it without question. The bottom line is that the game doesn't bother me NEARLY as much as the constant BUTs from Matrix.

The game will be fixed (eventually, and maybe it will even turn out great, I don't know) but Matrix will still feel like it's the consumers fault for not doing enough research. Trust me, I want to believe, it's just hard with that sort of PR.

[timewalker03]

The sad thing neverman is this will not change. If you do not worship what Marshall has done then some people on here will berate you because they think it will hurt Marshall's feelings. If you question the practices of the company Erik will show you the error of youor ways and then place blame on you for buying the game without adequate research. What some will tell you is this game is a niche game or you are not as hardcore a wargamer as they are. This game was six years in development and I followed it from 2002 to today, and I scratch my head and have to ask this is it? Now that this is the product out on the market i have to ask what is taking so long to get patches out to fix specific problems. It should be once a month with as many fixes they can make in a month. Then I begin to realize the actual problem. One programmer, two or three official play testers, and a company that may not care as much as we think and seems to only reply when a correction to their image is needed. I do realize the game is being supported but to what level of standards. I would like to see the games success, but the way it is being handled seems a lot sketchy to me.

[iamspamus]

So, why are you guys still here in the forums. If your thought is "Matrix sucks and their games are a lie." or something like that, then what are you hoping to accomplish? Are you just venting? Nothing else to do? We get it your not happy. Why are you still here and still posting? Do you think that it's gonna get any better? If so, how about some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism to help it along. If not, what do you think "Nyah, nyah. You guys did it wrong" is going to to?

Jason

[Spartan07]

Hi,

I am really a bit tired of all the complaining people do about this game. I am involved in two games at the moment one of which we are two game years into. Apart from one or two hicups we have progressed following upgrades and patches from the very first day of release. At this point it leaves me chewing the keyboard waiting for the next turn to arrive. My enforced peace with France is just about to run out playing Austria and I cant wait to see what the Son of a B***H will get up to this time:)

In reality I think mant people are enjoying the game and getting on with it. They are not the ones posting negative propoganda here every few minutes when they get bored.

Matrix have shown fantastic committment to this product and have promised to continuing doing so. In reality guys this isnt a Playstation 3 game. We as a gaming community are asking people to provide us with something that is not as commercially rewarding as other genre. Because of their interest they do it. To be honest I would pay the same again just to have something like this available. Whine all the time and these sort of titles may disappear for ever.

Isnt it time we realise we are in this for the love of the period, the game and the history. If we had waited until this game was perfect we still would nit be playing.

So I congratulate Matrix for what they have done so far and I believe they will continue to refine this game and produce other great titles for people with our peculiar taste in gaming. They are to be supported.

Now back to my game and rant over. No offence intended to anyone and all constructive feedback I am sure is welcomed.

[iamspamus]

Yeah, Nego!

I just wonder what the point of all the whining is. If it is to get something done, then that's fine. Let's get it done, but just the same ol' rant of "Matrix sucks", is getting a bit old.

Just my $.02.

On another note, I'll get the 1.04beta and put it on the computer tonight. Yippee.

Jason

[DavidTheGreat]

It saddens me to see what became of EiA, a few years ago i posted a thread with the question if the project was hijacked bij some EiH fanatics, it seems it has been. This has kept me from buying the already not so cheap, game.
Would it not have been wiser to stick to the original and made the EIH stuff optional insted of the other way arround ?
If someone buys this game under the assumption that he buys a pc version of the boardgame, i can understand that he would feel cheated.

[borner]

I am pleased that the two of you feel you got your money's worth out of this product. This thread is here for those of us who disagree, to have an outlet to express that, and get some feedback from Matrix.
 
As for your two games that are going well... I hope that remains the case. However, when you have a corps disappear, a minor change status, an Ottoman empire that does not function correctly, or any of the other bugs that have been talked about here, we will see if your feelings change. Personally I do not think I have gone as far as "Matrix S*cks", but to tell me that I should have read through the forums before buying this game is plain wrong!

[Erik Rutins]

Ok, one last try because it seems like what I posted is being exaggerated. I did not say "you have to read the forums before you buy the game". I said "if you see a feature point or something in the brief description that raises a question for you, you should check the forums". In general, I think reading the forums of a game you are interested in is a good idea, but no it is not required. The forums are here for more detailed discussion and feedback/interaction with customers, which is actually something that a lot of companies completely avoid.

I want to be clear that I understand that a few of you feel that we mislead you. I can understand that while disagreeing with the premise that we deliberately tried to do so. I know that we did not _intend_ to mislead. I know that the feature point I mentioned was intended to note the EIH changes and that's been there from the first day of release. If we are guilty of anything it may be that we assumed that point was clear enough, given the years of development and discussion and public disclosure of changes. I regret if a customer came along only after release, did not understand that feature point, did not read the forum and now feels that we deceived them.

The fact remains that this is the officially licensed EIA adaptation, with ADG's blessing both before and after release. We understand that some customers are not happy with the EIH rules that were included. As a result, we are planning to create a "classic EIA" scenario as soon as priorities in bug fixing and general game performance have been addressed. That's the plan and we'll get there as soon as we can. I'm not sure what else we can do at this point. I'm not here stonewalling you, I'm saying that I hear you and we've added something to our development plan to address your concerns, it just can't be at the top of the list yet.

If you want to keep griping or venting, feel free, but at this point I'm not sure there's anything else I can really add to the discussion.

Regards,

- Erik

[Jimmer]

ORIGINAL: David The Great

It saddens me to see what became of EiA, a few years ago i posted a thread with the question if the project was hijacked bij some EiH fanatics, it seems it has been. This has kept me from buying the already not so cheap, game.
Would it not have been wiser to stick to the original and made the EIH stuff optional insted of the other way arround ?
If someone buys this game under the assumption that he buys a pc version of the boardgame, i can understand that he would feel cheated.

Matrix mis-estimated the target demographic for the game. Since there was a large majority of EiH people on the forums, Matrix naturally made the assumption that the buyers of the game would lean heavily in the EiH direction as well.

This assumption proved flawed, because a significant majority of the people who wound up buying the released version were, in fact, EiA fans. For example, I had never heard of EiH until after I bought the game.

But, there's another piece to this puzzle that the EiA-only fans seem not willing to accept: EiA CANNOT be done as both a PBEM game and full EiA. True EiA would require hundreds of emails going back and forth every game month. The diplomacy phase alone would require no less than 63 independent steps (9 steps times 7 players). And I'm being generous with some of those and only counting 4.1 through 4.9 as separate, when several of the sub-steps might also require independent steps. The naval phase would require that at each change of areas by an at-war fleet, all enemy fleets in range would have to report whether they wanted to intercept or not. Worse than that, even fleets at peace could wind up being intercepted if traveling with enemy corps on board.

Could this be done with "standing orders"? Sure, but then it's NOT EiA. It's a simplified EiA. When I played GB, I made decisions based on which enemy fleets were moving at the time, and what my assessment of the future value of stopping them or letting them go is FOR THAT FLEET. It changed pretty much any time ANY fleet moved, not just the one that was moving now.

Some simplification MUST be done, or the game would have been unplayable. EiA simply could not be done, from a very practical perspective. Whatever was to come out of Matrix was bound to be some kind of hybrid EiA. Matrix simply chose EiH's model, since (according to the many voices at the time -- see the old forum threads) those players thought their model would be the easiest to implement and play.

To Matrix, I imagine, it seemed logical at the time to go with EiH. There was a very clear majority of people speaking out about the virtues of EiH. Could those voices have been merely "squeaky wheels"? Perhaps. But they WERE the voices speaking.

Now, I want to point out that the pro-EiA crowd DID post back then. But, they were heavily outnumbered (or, at least, out-posted, anyhow). What would I do?

[Tanan Fujiwara]

OK Mr. Rutins, I'll try to be as constructive and honest as I can get on this one...
 
First, to the people that just say to stop the whining and complaining and to stop coming to this forum I'll just say that it is quite rude to tell other people what they should or shouldn't do... I was brought up to respect other thoughts and opinions, even if I don't agree with them, so that's all I have to say about that...
 
Second, Matrix does deserve a lot of recognition, for starters they've got an open forum were peoples thoughts can be openly expresed without fear of being banded... and you usually get a quick response from them too (even when our thoughts aren't nice), that's one of the main reasons I keep coming back to the this forum, to express my opinion, which is what a forum is all about really (if someone doesn't understand that they have an attitude problem)... Also, it is the only gaming company that still works on strategy games and boardgame adaptations, nowdays this is really hard to find... that is why I feel strongly dissapointed when things like this happen to a greatgame with amazing possibilities!!!
 
Third, it is true that I have exaggerated my response Mr. Rutins, but I think that you will agree with me that the advertisement of this game on its web we could call it a bit vague... and that if a product raises questions it isn't reaching the public in the best of ways. About this bullet:
 
"Includes some enhanced rules and play options added over the years by Empires in Arms players"
 
It doesn't say "...from Empires in Harms players", in fact it is not mentioned anywhere that the game has many rules and settings from EiH. So any experienced player would be let to believe that a part from having all of the optional rules from the basic rulebook, it would have the official rules and options published by AH or the Australian Design Group in the General magazine or other official addendums, but nothing from EiH, which is not part of EiA but a compleate game onto itself based on EiA.
 
Third, I have nothing agaisn't EiH (just think it swamps the game a bit), actually I have played it once and I play EiA with official enhancements and other house rules (the 1796 campaign is my favourite and I really like the "official" EiA advanced naval rules), so implementing EiH in a computer game seems more than reasonable. My complaint here is that this game is neither EiH nor EiA, but a bizarre mix in between that doesn't give real credit to any of them.
 
Finally, this game was sold as a quality product (not only because of the price...) and it certaintly isn't... it was sold as having an AI and you will have to agree with me on this one Mr. Rutins that its still a joke... it was advertised in the forums as the definite pbem tool and it hasn't lived to its expectations... it was sold to the public (so I would believe that that means a final prduct) and we got something that came quite close to a beta product... so yes, I whine and whimper, because I haven't lost faith compleately in this game or other Matrix Games products. It is sad really, because I had high hopes on Matrix, but the truth is that this is not the only forum in matrix where people complain about their games, specifically AI and faithfull adaptations...
 
My best
 
 

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Jimmer


But, there's another piece to this puzzle that the EiA-only fans seem not willing to accept: EiA CANNOT be done as both a PBEM game and full EiA. True EiA would require hundreds of emails going back and forth every game month. The diplomacy phase alone would require no less than 63 independent steps (9 steps times 7 players). And I'm being generous with some of those and only counting 4.1 through 4.9 as separate, when several of the sub-steps might also require independent steps. The naval phase would require that at each change of areas by an at-war fleet, all enemy fleets in range would have to report whether they wanted to intercept or not. Worse than that, even fleets at peace could wind up being intercepted if traveling with enemy corps on board.

This is wrong for 1 simple reason, you are overlooking what Matrix COULD have done: IP play.

Now, for all those Matrix people who don't know what IP play means, it stands for Internet Play, I know, I know, that wang fangle crazy futuristic technologies, but the internet is a great place and maybe one day Matrix will discover it.

As far as Tanan goes, I simply couldn't have said it better or agree anymore than I already do!

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Tanan Fujiwara
Third, it is true that I have exaggerated my response Mr. Rutins, but I think that you will agree with me that the advertisement of this game on its web we could call it a bit vague... and that if a product raises questions it isn't reaching the public in the best of ways. About this bullet:

"Includes some enhanced rules and play options added over the years by Empires in Arms players"

It doesn't say "...from Empires in Harms players", in fact it is not mentioned anywhere that the game has many rules and settings from EiH. So any experienced player would be let to believe that a part from having all of the optional rules from the basic rulebook, it would have the official rules and options published by AH or the Australian Design Group in the General magazine or other official addendums, but nothing from EiH, which is not part of EiA but a compleate game onto itself based on EiA.

Ok, thanks for the specific feedback on this point. I've just changed it on our games page and store page to read:

"Includes many enhanced rules and play options added over the years by "Empires in Harms" players"

Hopefully that will be more clear. I also moved that up to #2 on the features list so that it would be more obvious.

Finally, this game was sold as a quality product (not only because of the price...) and it certaintly isn't... it was sold as having an AI and you will have to agree with me on this one Mr. Rutins that its still a joke... it was advertised in the forums as the definite pbem tool and it hasn't lived to its expectations... it was sold to the public (so I would believe that that means a final prduct) and we got something that came quite close to a beta product... so yes, I whine and whimper, because I haven't lost faith compleately in this game or other Matrix Games products. It is sad really, because I had high hopes on Matrix, but the truth is that this is not the only forum in matrix where people complain about their games, specifically AI and faithfull adaptations...

I am very disappointed in the number of bugs and other issues that came up after release. This whole series of events was discussed previously in other threads and I can only say that we screwed up. We have not had another release in the last five years that had this many issues. What we can do at this point, which we are doing, is to keep development going until things are sorted up. I think at the v1.04.05 level, the game is working a lot better in most respects than it did at release and Marshall is doing a good job following up on issues and fixing them, with the help of Delatbabel as test coordinator. Our plan is to continue to work on EIA and part of that plan is to implement a "Classic EIA" scenario as soon as we can, for those that were upset about the inclusion of EIH.

Regards,

- Erik

[Jimmer]

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: Jimmer


But, there's another piece to this puzzle that the EiA-only fans seem not willing to accept: EiA CANNOT be done as both a PBEM game and full EiA. True EiA would require hundreds of emails going back and forth every game month. The diplomacy phase alone would require no less than 63 independent steps (9 steps times 7 players). And I'm being generous with some of those and only counting 4.1 through 4.9 as separate, when several of the sub-steps might also require independent steps. The naval phase would require that at each change of areas by an at-war fleet, all enemy fleets in range would have to report whether they wanted to intercept or not. Worse than that, even fleets at peace could wind up being intercepted if traveling with enemy corps on board.

This is wrong for 1 simple reason, you are overlooking what Matrix COULD have done: IP play.

I've highlighted in red the part you obviously missed. I'll stand by my statement as written.

It can be argued whether PBEM was the right choice, but they DID make it, and with overwhelming support by the expected user community (at the time).

I wasn't on the forums then, but my understanding is that Matrix was looking at another 2 years of development to put out full TCP/IP play. The users "loudly" requested (demanded?) that Matrix release the PBEM version first. I did go back and read some of these comments, and I have to say I can't fault Matrix for going the path they chose. They went with what their customers were asking for. Unfortunately, they found that they had a skewed customer base.

[timewalker03]

Erik I have a question for you. Why do you keep calling it as adding a classic scenario? Does that mean it will be an 1805 Classic campaign, or just an implamentation of the classic rules? Why not just add the classic rules as rule options and leave it at that. The things that would change and here are a few examples are the map would change some as it has added countries now. The naval rules would change quite a bit and may be the most dramatic change there is. Also I think a robust enhancement to the AI is needed before anything else. Most fixes have been to fix PBEM. Now is the time to give the AI a major boost and let the PBEM people wait a bit. Just my opinion on that.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: timewalker03
Erik I have a question for you. Why do you keep calling it as adding a classic scenario? Does that mean it will be an 1805 Classic campaign, or just an implamentation of the classic rules? Why not just add the classic rules as rule options and leave it at that. The things that would change and here are a few examples are the map would change some as it has added countries now. The naval rules would change quite a bit and may be the most dramatic change there is.

My understanding from discussions with Marshall is that the quickest and safest way to implement "Classic EIA" is as a separate scenario once we have completed the work required for the scenario editing tools. I'm not sure yet just how far we will be able to go in the first step, but it is pretty high up on our list of goals.

Also I think a robust enhancement to the AI is needed before anything else. Most fixes have been to fix PBEM. Now is the time to give the AI a major boost and let the PBEM people wait a bit. Just my opinion on that.

I agree. In fact, I think the v1.04.05 build does include some AI enhancements, have you tried that in solo play yet? The AI is one of our top three priorities and often in the #1 spot.

Regards,

- Erik

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: Tanan Fujiwara
Third, it is true that I have exaggerated my response Mr. Rutins, but I think that you will agree with me that the advertisement of this game on its web we could call it a bit vague... and that if a product raises questions it isn't reaching the public in the best of ways. About this bullet:

"Includes some enhanced rules and play options added over the years by Empires in Arms players"

It doesn't say "...from Empires in Harms players", in fact it is not mentioned anywhere that the game has many rules and settings from EiH. So any experienced player would be let to believe that a part from having all of the optional rules from the basic rulebook, it would have the official rules and options published by AH or the Australian Design Group in the General magazine or other official addendums, but nothing from EiH, which is not part of EiA but a compleate game onto itself based on EiA.

Ok, thanks for the specific feedback on this point. I've just changed it on our games page and store page to read:

"Includes many enhanced rules and play options added over the years by "Empires in Harms" players"

Hopefully that will be more clear. I also moved that up to #2 on the features list so that it would be more obvious.

Finally, this game was sold as a quality product (not only because of the price...) and it certaintly isn't... it was sold as having an AI and you will have to agree with me on this one Mr. Rutins that its still a joke... it was advertised in the forums as the definite pbem tool and it hasn't lived to its expectations... it was sold to the public (so I would believe that that means a final prduct) and we got something that came quite close to a beta product... so yes, I whine and whimper, because I haven't lost faith compleately in this game or other Matrix Games products. It is sad really, because I had high hopes on Matrix, but the truth is that this is not the only forum in matrix where people complain about their games, specifically AI and faithfull adaptations...

I am very disappointed in the number of bugs and other issues that came up after release. This whole series of events was discussed previously in other threads and I can only say that we screwed up. We have not had another release in the last five years that had this many issues. What we can do at this point, which we are doing, is to keep development going until things are sorted up. I think at the v1.04.05 level, the game is working a lot better in most respects than it did at release and Marshall is doing a good job following up on issues and fixing them, with the help of Delatbabel as test coordinator. Our plan is to continue to work on EIA and part of that plan is to implement a "Classic EIA" scenario as soon as we can, for those that were upset about the inclusion of EIH.

Regards,

- Erik

Thank you Erik for a great post! This is pretty much all I think we wanted to hear:
1. Matrix apologize without BUTs
2. Fix the game page so that it is more accurate for newcomers (this actually helps you more than us, since it doesn't help us at all)

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

I've highlighted in red the part you obviously missed. I'll stand by my statement as written.

It can be argued whether PBEM was the right choice, but they DID make it, and with overwhelming support by the expected user community (at the time).

I wasn't on the forums then, but my understanding is that Matrix was looking at another 2 years of development to put out full TCP/IP play. The users "loudly" requested (demanded?) that Matrix release the PBEM version first. I did go back and read some of these comments, and I have to say I can't fault Matrix for going the path they chose. They went with what their customers were asking for. Unfortunately, they found that they had a skewed customer base.

You were making an argument that it was not possible for Matrix to do "classic EiA" because of PBEM. My point is that they didn't have to do PBEM, they could have just done TCP/IP instead, or a hybrid (the best and most obvious choice really).

Jimmer, I read your whole post. My point was this: Matrix wasn't stuck doing PBEM, they could have done anything they wanted, so COULD THEY HAVE IMPLEMENTED EMPIRES IN ARMS DOWN TO A TEE????

The answer: YES THEY COULD HAVE. Did they choose not to? YES THEY DID.

EDIT: I guess what a lot of people here who think I complain/whine too much don't understand is that I was here back then and I was screaming my lungs out for EiA and TCP/IP, both of which got ignored.