anybody in here???

[macgregor]

This forum appears abandoned. These dusty threads have all been covered with white sheets for some time now. Why is it always the most talented that are always the least motivated? I think this game deserves better from it's dev team. If for no other reason than the salvation of the game community.

[damezzi]

Well said Macgregor

I have to agree. I think this forum needs an active moderator. Someone to bring themes for discussion, even if futile themes (polls and the like). It's not a question of 'I must have a smart argument to post'. I think it's better to have bullshit being said than nothing at all.
If I were a new player and someone told me Matrix has the most active forum for Toaw and then I came here just to see a couple of days without a post...
This game depends on it's community and I think it's not much investment (in terms of effort) to have someone stimulating players participation here.

[golden delicious]

Hmm...? Plenty of posts on the subforums. They tend to be more interesting anyway.

[damezzi]

Hmm...? Plenty of posts on the subforums. They tend to be more interesting anyway.

I agree that there are some posts on the subforums, but they are more specific. More interesting for veterans, but not for new or more casual players. The general discussion forum is the best indicator of activity for any game.

Anyway, if we take the bottom post for the FIRST page of subforums: scenario design - 3 months; war room - more than a year; opponents wanted - 5 months; and so on. Some activity, not plenty of activity.

[damezzi]

Don't understand it as a criticism. I just think that an active moderator could make things much more dynamic. 

[macgregor]

GD is happy and that's his prerogative. I wonder how sales are doing? I haven't played in over 6 months and until the bugs get worked out, let alone new features get worked in, don't intend to. It seems the game was taken over by niche players who want nothing to do with changing it. Maybe that's why GD is so astounded I would think there's a lack of activity. I imagine Ralph feels the same way. I need to accept this reality and move on. Happy gaming GD!

[hellfish6]

Well... the TOAW series is over a decade old now. I don't know of any game that old with a strong following. 

[damezzi]

ORIGINAL: hellfish6

Well... the TOAW series is over a decade old now. I don't know of any game that old with a strong following. 

Well... the TOAW series is over a decade old now. I don't know of any game that old with a strong following.

Civilization, Flight Simulator, Europa Universalis.

All have strong followings. All share the same characteristic of having crossed the border of simply being a good old game to being a classic. They survive mostly because they keep evolving and being the best in what they are supposed to offer. Well, flight simulator is being threatened by X Plane now, but only because a similar product with higher quality is showing, not because of inertia.

Toaw has already the prestige of a classic and still is the best in what it is supposed to offer (even those that prefer other operational wargames must confess that Toaw wins in terms of flexibility). One can throw all this potential away or just make a better use of it.

[macgregor]

Perhaps you're right Hellfish. Though matrix did re-market COW which I liked into this TOAW3 which I paid gladly. Not for a COW clone only that couldn't play COW scenarios like it was and still is now, but for something that had promise to fix all COW's problems and add aspects for which COW was woefully inadequate. Did I dream that? I think I did. I hope Matrix enjoys that 40$.

[Obsolete]

Well, I was also surprised there isn't any more action around here.  I do remember this game being soooo popular back in the day (a decade ago).  I thought for sure with the re-vamping there would be action again in the dusty TOAW groups. 

However, while this game may have been BEST WAR-GAME of 1998, it appears not so anymore.  In fact, doing a search around, I see a lot of the original fans tend to be bashing it now... saying it doesn't hold up to standards of the newer REALISTIC war-engines.  I suppose we could start a whole new debate on that

So, TOAW went from one of the most realistic games, to just a kid's toy.  Well I guess a lot can change in 10 years (graphic wise), but I didn't expect that much in other elements.

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

This forum appears abandoned.

I can agree that more participation by a moderator would be appreciated.

However, and more to the point, since TOAW III was released the current flux of forum activity is just about on par historically with previous patches. Every patch so far has seen great with a great deal of initial forum activity followed by an ebb to the core players, a few intermediate players and a very few new players. This patch has been no exception.

The next patch, which is expected to be a rather comprehensive patch, should follow the same pattern except that the period of maximum forum activity should be longer. Longer, that is, in proportion to the current patch which has fewer changes than what is anticipated for the next patch.

Think that after the next patch we may see quite a bit more discussion about the value of TOAW IV versus another TOAW III patch. But, that’s just a prediction on my part.

Regards, RhinoBones

[hellfish6]

ORIGINAL: damezzi

ORIGINAL: hellfish6

Well... the TOAW series is over a decade old now. I don't know of any game that old with a strong following. 

Well... the TOAW series is over a decade old now. I don't know of any game that old with a strong following.

Civilization, Flight Simulator, Europa Universalis.

All have strong followings. All share the same characteristic of having crossed the border of simply being a good old game to being a classic. They survive mostly because they keep evolving and being the best in what they are supposed to offer. Well, flight simulator is being threatened by X Plane now, but only because a similar product with higher quality is showing, not because of inertia.

Toaw has already the prestige of a classic and still is the best in what it is supposed to offer (even those that prefer other operational wargames must confess that Toaw wins in terms of flexibility). One can throw all this potential away or just make a better use of it.

First, let me say that I love the TOAW series.

That said, you can't compare the life of TOAW series to those of the other series that you mention. Civ, FS, and EU have all gone through multiple iterations over the years - TOAW3, at first glance and in many important respects, is identical to TOAWI and TOAWII (just like COW was damn near identical) from 10 years ago.

I, for one, debated with myself for a long time (1+ year?) before I decided to buy TOAW3 - essentially paying full price (if not more) for a game that I'd already bought three times. If Matrix, whom I have few good experiences with as a customer, had offered TOAW3 for $20, I'd have been first in line (and I bet they'd have made more money at a $20 price point than they have with the existing one).

I can look at Civ4 and see obvious differences and improvements - graphics and gameplay - compared to Civ1, Civ2, and even Civ3. Ditto with FS, and with EU and nearly every other long-lived franchise I can think of (Battlefield, Hearts of Iron, etc).

I'm still hard-pressed to point out any difference between TOAW3 and TOAW:COW. I love the ability to use custom graphics and eqp files... but that's about all I notice, and there were pre-existing tools for COW to edit the database, at least.

I figure with my $50 (or whatever it was) purchase of TOAW3, I was investing in the continued development of the TOAW series.

I hope that someday, in the near future, I'll see the things in TOAW I've been longing for since day 1 waaaaay back in 1998.

As it is, no other game of this scale or scope lets me be creative. I love scenario making, I love database editing, and I'm even learning to love map making (though I wish there was a better way to do it). I love most of the missions that are being put out (though the quality can vary wildly). If it wasn't for the editor, I'd have dropped this game a looooong time ago.

IIRC a year or so ago I thought I read that Norm was at work developing a new TOAW-type game. Maybe that's something to look forward to?

[damezzi]

ORIGINAL: Obsolete

Well, I was also surprised there isn't any more action around here.  I do remember this game being soooo popular back in the day (a decade ago).  I thought for sure with the re-vamping there would be action again in the dusty TOAW groups. 

However, while this game may have been BEST WAR-GAME of 1998, it appears not so anymore.  In fact, doing a search around, I see a lot of the original fans tend to be bashing it now... saying it doesn't hold up to standards of the newer REALISTIC war-engines.  I suppose we could start a whole new debate on that

So, TOAW went from one of the most realistic games, to just a kid's toy.  Well I guess a lot can change in 10 years (graphic wise), but I didn't expect that much in other elements.

Well, I don't really know any realistic wargame.

Sure, first person shooters have become more realistic with the advance of technology, since physical aspects representation an processing capacity have gone (and will continue going) through huge developments.

Games like Toaw, well, the scope is just too broad and the number of variables so big to simulate operational warfare that one must make a compromise, choosing which aspects to represent more accurately. Even so, we will never (at least in the present state of technology) get to a reasonable level of realism.

It's a game and should be treated as a game; a game that is based on a paradigm (boardgames paradigm), which detractors tend to say is obsolete. COTA is more realistic? WitP is more realistic? Perhaps more detailed, since both represent specific period of time and specific theaters, but those are only games, too. Nobody will become ready to command troops after playing them.

I have researched a bit about HPS Decisive Action. It's used as a training tool and people say it's really deep. Ok, perhaps it models aspects which army officials have to deal with in a more detailed oriented way, but that doesn't make it realistic; you won't be able to make predictions of a battle outcome based on the in-game results.

Computers are becoming each time more capable of reproducing some aspects of our physical world, but, let's say Toaw used, instead of some probabilistic calculations, a real simulation of the path of every bullet, obus, bombs etc. And so what? After mixing all that with thousands of other variables you would still come to imprecise results by the simple misuse of one of them.

Toaw represents conflicts on it's own way (Cota in another way and so on). It's sure not best than decisive action if the goal is to teach officials about operational procedures, but for sure people will learn more about history with it than with decisive action. You'll learn more about the specificity of the greek theater with cota than with Toaw, but can learn more about how the greek theater inter-relate with others using Toaw.

The bottom line is that it's not a question of which game will bring the more realistic results... neither will. It's a question of which is more fun to play and which scope interest you the more. All of them are just imprecise representations of conflicts opposing specific forces with different properties on specific circumstances. Which aspects of those conflicts you want to deal with is what matters.

In my personal case, I play Toaw because it can represent a multitude of conflicts (I prefer to learn a little about each conflict than becoming a specialist) and is a lot of fun to play. To play a fun game while learning is great. Also because I got used to the system. In fact we choose a game and go with it; if you go all the way searching for the perfect game you won't stop searching.

The best thing for such a debate would be perhaps to point a game which does what Toaw does in a better way and why it should be considered better. I don't believe someone can come with a valid argument. If we should throw away older paradigms for new ones based on proximity to reality, we should be playing only real time games.

[damezzi]

I can agree that more participation by a moderator would be appreciated.

However, and more to the point, since TOAW III was released the current flux of forum activity is just about on par historically with previous patches. Every patch so far has seen great with a great deal of initial forum activity followed by an ebb to the core players, a few intermediate players and a very few new players. This patch has been no exception.

The next patch, which is expected to be a rather comprehensive patch, should follow the same pattern except that the period of maximum forum activity should be longer. Longer, that is, in proportion to the current patch which has fewer changes than what is anticipated for the next patch.

Think that after the next patch we may see quite a bit more discussion about the value of TOAW IV versus another TOAW III patch. But, that’s just a prediction on my part.

Regards, RhinoBones

What you say makes a lot of sense, of course, but I think there is some lack of interest in promoting the game. Matrix Toaw site presents dead links to reviews, for example. No more than 10 minutes needed to correct this. Perhaps another half hour to find good reviews to point players to.

It's not the case of making a lot of investment. Matrix is a profit focused enterprise and it's nothing wrong with that, so that Toaw is just a title which they seem to hold and support more for it's prestige than for the profit they can make (this is mere supposition, of course); but simple things are simple things. The development team could have someone boosting the forum, updating links, etc. Not more than an half an hour of daily work.

Or, maybe, Toaw isn't even able to pay it's current support costs.

[Obsolete]

You have misunderstood my point entirely.  I am not talking about 3-D shooters, which has an over-flooded market.

Here's a sample of what I'm talking about from an old post.  And as time goes on, TOAW just gets more dated..



I find nothing even remotely sensible about TOAW. I have found it largely unplayable and quite unrealistic.

They seem to have had the brainstorm that they would count all the beans behind the scenes to "relieve" the player of any concern with the actual determining factors in combat power, then expect it to be "accurate" because beans are counted minutely. It isn't, it is hopelessly broken and the incentives it sets up frankly silly.

Attacks are best conducted as mega overstack affairs at about 10 to 1 odds. No, the concentration penalties do not remotely forbid this.

Supply is so uncontrollable, the only way to actually manage it is to deploy some units so far from the action they won't have occasion to draw it. Artillery supply in particular is frankly unbelievable. Air winds up getting used in the first few attacks per turn, then air units have reduced supply state etc.

None of the combined arms relationships of the real weapons are seriously present. Instead, units are bags of diversified combat power, supply and quality dependent to be sure, but not equipment dependent in any serious way.

The much older V4Victory series was better in every way. It also had a few drawbacks in supply depiction, but nothing compared to TOAW, and subject to realistic forms of player control. A few house rules were all it really needed (e.g. not to allow wholesale reassignment of artillery to some HQs then starved of supply, allowing too many combat units to be oversupplied. Also attacks below a threshold forbidden to avoid gaming the fatigue system).

If the operating thesis is that logistic thruput is the real generator of combat power, you can't abstract it and take it entirely out of players' hands and expect a livable game to result. A strategy game has to leave the major determining levers in players' hands.

The contact-withdrawal behaviors are also silly, far too draconian and "tar baby" esque. A Victory Lost gets the right effect much more cleanly by simply having a 2 MP movement penalty for leaving *or entering* a ZOC (and makes them cumulative).

The user interface is so painful that playing a game is a chore, not fun. And that is nothing compared to designing a scenario - much worse.

There is a decided tendency to giantism. When you have abstract units as bags of subelements, what sense does it make to allowed huge stacks of the things, and then attack from every adjacent hex? A cleaner design would have units at most one a hex in typical situations, and better still leave "luft" between them.

Tiller's campaigns on the other hand have the grand tactical giantism problem - they seem to think a game is more interesting and grognardesque if there are 1500 counters per giant scrolling off the screen map. This simply makes them one unplayable and two unrealistic in the coordination the player has over that giant command span.

There are vastly better designs in modern board wargames, and even better ones in many much older board wargames. Instead of learning the art of game design from advances made in past games, what TOAW has done is thrown all of that away to lean on the bean counting of the computer, and then done that badly.

You want a list of the sorts of design innovations a computer operational game should have? It starts with a list of the right board (and computer) wargames to learn from.

To the green fields beyond - mobile vs. static combat, types of artillery fire, simple breakdown rules, exploitation soft ZOCs.

Battle for Stalingrad (John Hill) - attritionist combat, huge terrain effects, continual initiative movement interrupted by enemy reactions

Napoleon at Bay - command initiative system, operational points limits to reflect logistic and command constraints, movement attrition directly tied to stacking (big stack equals slow and straggling), simple but effective bridge destruction and repair and its effects on supply.

Terrible Swift Sword - step losses, simple morale states, command spans, higher level morale through brigade combat effectiveness system based on cumulative losses to a formation, firepower based attritionist combat, classified weapons.

V4V - different supply states for higher HQs, player allocation of budgeted supply among HQs, strong unit quality and combined arms effects, simple replacement procedures, simple fatigue and disruption modeling that penalizes overuse of a few strong units without rotation

A Victory Lost - multiple moves by HQ, in unknown order, initiative system. Soft ZOCs, dramatic movement differences across unit type and quality, river supply effects, unkillable HQs that displace when overrun.

Vietnam (VG) - pursuit based multi-round combat (you *want* to retreat - standing stock still gets you clobbered - can you even retreat fast enough to break contact etc), defensive reaction moves prior to combat resolution, cumulative attrition, political state tracks and influence on them.

Paths of Glory - threshold-attritionist combat, op point activation system, strategic movement, card events and "hand management"

The point is not to have every conceivable bell or whistle, but it is to do some serious game design, pick the aspect or relationship you consider crucial to the type of combat or affair you wish to model, and model it accurately with a few simple systems that put the key variables and decisions about them in the player's hands.

Not hidden under a computational hood, broken and unfixable.

[damezzi]

[/quote]

IIRC a year or so ago I thought I read that Norm was at work developing a new TOAW-type game. Maybe that's something to look forward to?

The problem is: how long would it take to collect the number of scenarios Toaw has available. The best solution to supplant Toaw would be a new Toaw version, after all we can't treat a game engine such as Toaw as an isolate thing. All the scenarios are part of the patrimony of this game and this patrimony is what makes this game great. It's engine can be reproduced; it's patrimony will demand a lot of time to be equaled.

[damezzi]

ORIGINAL: Obsolete

You have misunderstood my point entirely.  I am not talking about 3-D shooters, which has an over-flooded market.

I wasn't talking about shooters too. I only used it as an example of what kind of game have seen this kind of realism boost (favored by technology development) which is far from happening in games like Toaw. The rest of my post talks about Toaw style games.

I know the post you refer to. It's one of the most common links we get when searching for Toaw in google. But it is clearly biased. When I see this kind of hostility I always suspect some further motivation.
I can make such statements about any game I know, mainly if I know the subject of course. I use flight simulator, for example, and could make a post which would make readers not used to it believe it's the worst of it's kind. I could do the same with X Plane.

The same thread you show brings some posts contesting this point of view. So, in the last instance, you have to make your own judgement.

I ask myself why the guy in the post doesn't create the definitive wargame. With so much answers in hand.

[hellfish6]

ORIGINAL: damezzi

IIRC a year or so ago I thought I read that Norm was at work developing a new TOAW-type game. Maybe that's something to look forward to?

The problem is: how long would it take to collect the number of scenarios Toaw has available. The best solution to supplant Toaw would be a new Toaw version, after all we can't treat a game engine such as Toaw as an isolate thing. All the scenarios are part of the patrimony of this game and this patrimony is what makes this game great. It's engine can be reproduced; it's patrimony will demand a lot of time to be equaled.
[/quote]

With the engine changes I'd like to see, I imagine new scenarios would be required.

Scenarios are easy to make... maps are not. As long as the maps are compatible, I think a new engine would make it pretty easy to adapt to.

And if you can't swap maps, then we start from scratch all over again. I don't mind.

[Obsolete]

I'd like to point out a few issues that perhaps would help bring up numbers.  I have to confess I don't play as much TOAW (though I am trying) as I'd like because I find some things so tedius.  For axample, it's great that there is a T & D hotkey, which probably would be the #1 used hotkey and help people save  TON of time and get more playability & interest.  The problem is these hotkeys tend to always shift you to the next unit, and it's just damn tedious to keep scrolling from one screen to another and lose where you are all the time when you just wanted to do something quick and simple.  No, we have to keep using the whole menu for everything, which is just so cumbersome. 

There isn't many video run-throughs I've seen, and the few I have seen show exactly this, the very cumbersom use of the menu system constantly.  This is NOT the way to attract new players, the graphics to be honest are not that great (not that it matters to me), but having a bad interface design can be attrocius.

Of course I have some really nasty gripes about other things too, like why is it every freiken time without warning, that free-bombard shot comes up, and then one of your units ALWAYS decides to move into the new hex, only to totally screw up your whole plans and settings.  Ughhhh... I really am begining to HATE that free-shot thing, it's not a bonus, it's a huge penalty!  Who gave my units an order to move out of their fortified and over-stockpiled position, only to leave it vulnerable to a acounter-attack!??  I never understood this 10 years ago, and thought for sure it would be fixed today.  Anyhow, I'm going to cut off my rants for now....  I just hope some of these issues will be fixed soon, but it's been a decade already...

[Zaratoughda]

OK, for what it's worth... I feel I have been through this whole thing myself and the conclusion I came to was....

Matrix does graphics, but they do NOT do design.

In other words, for TOAW and all the other games that Matrix acquires, you can expect graphic upgrades (at least initially) but no significant upgrades in the game systems.

When they acquired War in Russia, they DID do significant design upgrades, but the people doing that took out the 40% readiness loss at the beginning of the turn, which totally unblanced the game in favor of the Germans and essentially destroyed the game (good thing you can still find WIR 1.1 out there.... can even add the ME WIR graphics which are indeed an improvement).

And, if you think here in TOAW that this is the only place this is happenning, check out some of the forums of the other acquired games (been two years since they acquired Horse and Musket... and nothing).

Moreover, one gets the impression that they make deals with graphics programmers for upgrades where Matrix doesn't have to pay them anything (this is a guess)... with the programmers only getting something if they release something. What this amounts to is the programmer has the Matrix game as his 4th or 5th priority job and if something gets done it gets done, if it doesn't it doesn't. So, the rate at which things gets done, makes a snail look fast.

Really, if the Camo Workshop (amazing the support they are giving winSPww2) had gotten ahold of TOAW instead of Matrix, would be KICKING BUTT like you would not believe right now.

So, IMO, you just gotta take or leave games that Matrix acquires as they are, and if you want something that improves over time, you gotta go with the games being developed by independant design groups. AGEOD, for instance, put out Birth of America and more recently released BoA2, with significant improvements.

Sad, as there is all sorts of great scenerio work being done with TOAW and, I don't expect to ever find anything better on the Franco Prussian War and Seven Weeks War (to just give two examples) but, IMO you would have to be NUTS to believe that the major problems and limitations of TOAW will ever get fixed.

Whatever,

Zaratoughda