When?

[Joseignacio]

As for links, it's difficult to send links to threads that have been deleted. You have my word that I had a lot deleted and was banned, I will not be angry if you just don't believe it.

Other testimonies of the horrible behaviour of Patchdox moderators and administrators - including deletion of posts when people complain for example - can be found for instance in the leader website for videogames in Spain ( I mention this one because I am old member of it, but i am sure there are more comments in the Net), including the deletions son that people cannot have "proofs" on how unfair and dictatorial they are. If you can read spanish here are some comments:

http://zonaforo.meristation.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=1285504&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=paradox+foro+foro+paradox+paradox&start=150]

Another comment:

Ya ves, pero es que en los foros ingleses de PAradox es exagerado, si dices algo en contra del régimen te banean... y yo que me siempre he defendido al pc respecto a las consolas por el contenido descargable...

http://zonaforo.meristation.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=1285504&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=paradox+foro+foro+paradox+paradox&start=90

[micheljq]

ORIGINAL: vonpaul

ORIGINAL: bfontes

I see mention of a game called Hearts of Iron III.  Who has played it?  Is it a cool game?

it is broken (check their forums for info on this), maybe when 1.4 is release in February. Until it is fixed a waste of money.

You can purchase Hearts of Iron II - Armageddon, you can have it for 20$ even less and it is not broken. Be sure to install all the updates/patches though.

[Joseignacio]

In this Paradox link you can see also comments in spanish. I must say that the spanish speaking forum is not so heavily censored because of it's lesser importance (they give it even less importance than the number of buyers would concede):
 

  

Quote:[/align]



Originally Posted by ToLoMeO [/align]Injugable, esa es la palabra. Este juego no es ni jugable, ni a la larga divertido por lo poco depurado que esta. Corred, insensatos, y si lo veis en el Fnac no os dejéis sobornar por la caratula, aún le quedan minimo 4 meses para ser jugable.

PD: Desde mi humilde opinión, para jugar al HoI 3 ya teneis el HoI 2 que ahora mismo le da mil vueltas.[/align][/align]SHHHHhhhhhh calla insensato que te van a crucificar.......como te lea Mordred te hara vudu

 
The first poster comments thst it is (was at that stage of patching) unplayable, and the second poster answers: "shut up, you are going to be crucified

[Numdydar]

Thanks for your reply. I use the English forums and was totally unaware that there were forums in different languages. That may be the difference in our experiences. Maybe they just like English speaking people better Just kidding.

I have expressed views that were different from the devs (as have many others) and have not had those experiences you describe which is why I pushed back on your statements. Paradox actually opened a thread asking the community what their top five issues in the HoI3 game were and some of the comments in it were pretty harsh (at least to me). It ran about 30 pages before they closed it. The reason they closed it was NOT due to not wanting to hear any more about issues, but they felt that they had gotten enough feedback and wanted to evaluate it. Again, this causes my experiences to be different from yours.

[Anendrue]

CrussDaddy, I agree with you completely on HOI III and the Paradox forums. I have seen way too many threads deleted over the years. As for HOI III, I remember when they started banning people who were complaining about the shape of the flags (square vs rectangle). Paradox's skin is only paper thin. They push products out the door before they are ready. I've said it before on a lot of software forums. I refuse to pay for the priveledge of beta testing products. Personally HOI (original) was alpha 1.0, HOI II was alpha 2.0, and HOI III is beta 1.0. By the time we get to HOI V we might have a release candidate from Paradox.

The poor quality in software released from Paradox is an example of exactly why I want MWIF to be released when it is ready and not a moment before. That way if it comes out in good shape we can praise it and if not let the comments come out. Therefore, I will not pressure Steve for a quick release.

[Joseignacio]

My point is that the English forum is way more prone to censorship than the spanish one. In fact, I used to post and was banned in the English one.

In the quote of my first post of this page the text means...

"... it's exagerate in the English forums in Paradox, if you say anything against the "Regime" they ban you ..." of course, this post was published in meristation.com, a spanish website.

Experiences can vary depending on how vindicative you are, they want ideas, of course, because they are a free way to improve their games, and they accept some criticism trying to look sensitive, but since their games are unplayable until 6 to 12 months afterwards it's not their policy to have several months of continual complains exposed in their forums, specially when people become more bitter because patch after patch they keep on betatesting the game at home and still cannot play the game they paid months ago.

I despise PatchDox and their selling unended games, for me, they are scamming my money stealing months of playing, and sometimes I never play their games, like Victoria, which was so badly desingned that had no solution apart from redesign and reprogram, but now I was only supporting the point that they delete and ban.

Of course, if you are extremely moderate, maybe you'd never be banned, but try to keep totally cool and not to claim too much, when you feel scammed...

[Numdydar]

Here is my issue with the statements that claim Paradox closes threads that critize thier games, specificly HoI3. Below is a link to a 26 page thread where Paradox asked the community to critize HoI3. There are numerous threads that do the same throughout their forum.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/sho ... p?t=449675

Some of the comments in the thread are pretty harsh about the game. This thread was closed only because they felt they had got all the main issues from the community. Many of these will be addressed in the 1.4 patch. They also offered to refund money if you felt that you had been ripped off. If you PMed one of the moderators, they would help with that process. I bought it pre-order and felt I have gotten my monies worth out of it. Of course my expectations were almost non-existance (as they are with WiF too) so that may explain my happiness with the game compared to others. (My expectations of any game purchase these days are 1) does it have an uninstall feature that works and 2) it did not screw up my computer after installing. Anything after this is a bonus as far as I am concerned, lol).

I am not sure why people expect so much from a $40-$50 game anyway. If it cost $1,000 then my expectations would be much different, lol. If $40 means that much to you where you get so upset you get banned, you probably should not be buying games anyway. I look at any game purchase as 'throwing money away (so does my wife too for that matter lol)' as 80% I only play once, (maybe twice if patched or enhanced) and never touch again. As an example, I paid $50 for Empire TW played it once, got it patched, played it again and have not touched it since because it is very bad imho. Do I feel ripped off? Yes. Do I wish I had never bought it? Yes. Am I so upset I am ranting on the CA forums to the point I get banned? No. I just move on.

So when WiF comes out, I will spend my money, take my chances, hope it turns out good. If not, I will NOT be saying things like 'Matrix must die' or 'Your devs/qa/marketing people <fill in the blank> like some here WILL do I'm sure. I have purchased games from both Matrix and Paradox that fall within my 80% only played once category. So it is not like I have not been disappointed with games from either company. Just a different perspective.

[SamuraiProgrmmr]

The sad thing is that even if the game does exactly what it is advertised to do, someone will step up and complain.

[Anendrue]

The thing is Paradox closes accounts and bans for much much less than the statements you are using as examples. While I have not been banned there or anywhere, ever. Paradox does not believe in freedom of speech. They believe in a "limited" form of expression to include moderate disagreement. It is not a secret that they close threads and ban people consistently. Of course if you do not believe me then do a search on their forums. Oh yeah I forgot they deleted the search capability! So you have to do it in a&nbsp;command line form from the search engine of your choice. It only took a few hundered posts on how do a search before they decided to sticky a how to search post. Read their own Sticky and the responses posted there about its effectiveness.
&nbsp;
Search term at Google
&nbsp;site:forum.paradoxplaza.com deleted thread
&nbsp;Responses 622
Search term at Google
&nbsp;site:forum.paradoxplaza.com closed thread
&nbsp;Responses 1580
&nbsp;
Now then with that said it is their forum and they can do what they want with it. I no longer participate there because their software has been proven consistently to be weak in many areas.
The biggest problem for me is:&nbsp;&nbsp; WWII with a poor to ineffective D-Day = Absolute failure.

[SamuraiProgrmmr]

The right to Free Speech allows us to say what we want. It does not, however, obligate anyone else to aid or subsidize such speech.

The right to Free Speech does not mean that Paradox (or anyone else) is obligated to let someone air thier opinions on Paradox's Forums.

[Anendrue]

ORIGINAL: SamuraiProgrammer

The right to Free Speech allows us to say what we want. It does not, however, obligate anyone else to aid or subsidize such speech.

The right to Free Speech does not mean that Paradox (or anyone else) is obligated to let someone air thier opinions on Paradox's Forums.

I hate to quote myself but I said just as much.
"Now then with that said it is their forum and they can do what they want with it."

[Numdydar]

Ah. Stats. Gotta love them

In the thousands of threads that exist over all Paradox's games, having 622 deleted for who knows what reason seems to be an extreamely small percentage of the total. I wounder how other forums compare to that.

The same applies to the closed threads. The one I linked above is one of those. Closed for a valid reason, not because they did not want to hear what anyone had to say.

The only time I have ever witnessed someone getting banned was because they started a personal attack on a moderator, whould not stop after being warned, got suspended, and finally banned because on their first post back they started up the same attack that got them in trouble in the first place. Very entertaining from an observer perspective

Samurai is spot on with his comments. If you can't make your points without resorting to personal attacks or violating forum rules, then you have already lost the point you were trying to make. Again all this because of a $40 game too. My God what will these people do if they pay $20K for a car that does live up to their expectations, kill someone?

[Anendrue]

I love them too try a search on D-Day on their site. You get 1970 hits. Hmmm, a strategic issue like D-Day gets about the same response as banned and closed accounts. Makes you wonder doesn't it?

[Anendrue]

Forgot to copy this into my post from Notepad.
&nbsp;
I agree that many of the closed and banned accounts are for excessive and ill manned complaints. I do not condone users bad behavior, ill manners, etc... on any forum either there or here. My point is they do close and delete threads, where as most publishers of websites are not so sensative.

[pochepiller]

I was banned from the paradox forum for my complaints about the game (or it was my poor ortograph?) I will be more forgiving about WiF because its the first game. I was dispointed with HOI3 because I like HOI2 very much and feel they regressed. If the developper can't take the heat from customer they should close the all the forum. I hope they will have a more honest approach here, in fact I'm sure they will be more honest and open minded than Parapoche.

[Cheesehead]

I ventured into the HoI games, having purchased and played all three of them. While I think they had some interesting concepts, my biggest problem with the game is the fact that you can only play 1 country at a time. Considering that WWII was made up of a strong alliances, this requires you to rely on the AI to run the countries that cooperate with you. They did have a feature that allowed you to control the military forces of Allied countries, but this feature did not work very well because you could not also control other apects of these countries like Diplomacy, Technology and Production. And it was also quite difficult to actually manage the armies and navies of countries you took control of the military because there we so many bugs that inhibited the interface (click and drag) feature of unit control. So, for example, if you played the US and you invaded German occupied France, you could see that Britain had dozens of divisions and Transports and ships and planes which would be sitting in southern England doing nothing.

Another feature of the game I didn't like was the combat system. You could never know why a combat failed. With WiF, you can see the dice rolls and know why an attack failed or succeeded. Or you get the pleasure of knowing that throwing in HQ support form Eisenhower was the difference between taking the hex. In HoI the combat is very well presented with sounds of shooting in the background and interesting strength bars that show you what is happening. But you don't really know why an attack that should have succeeded failed or vice versa. It's a very similar situation when comparing Madden Football to Strat-O-matic football.

I did have some fun playing the US in the Pacific and Germany because neither situation required the support of Allies. Japan would be fun in that regard as well. But once you need to do some combined action with another country, the game will fail you. I played HoI2 the most. I think the mistake they made with HoI3 was making the game even more detailed. If they simplified it with larger territories and much less detail in every other facet I think they could keep most of the game concept intact but allow for a single person to play an entire side (like in WiF).

Cheers

John

[Ohio Jones]

I think we've strayed sufficiently off-topic here. Any chance we can get the conversation back to Matrix, and MWIF?

For example, I've been very pleased with the fair and honest discussion of ideas and issues in the development of the game so far. Granted, it's prior to release, and who knows - that may change post-release when (if) Matrix takes over more active management of this forum, but I don't expect it to. They seem to recognize that this game exists because of the community that supports it, and they cheese off that community at their own peril, given the niche market for this product... so it seems they've decided to engage us in a constructive and positive dialogue. Good for them. Good for us.

Here's to hoping Steve has more time for his barbershop group very soon!

[killroyishere]

ORIGINAL: Joseignacio

ORIGINAL: CrusssDaddy

Numdydar, that's nice that you are enjoying your time spent with HOI3 and have no problems with it. Congrats on money well spent! Unfortunately, it is a matter of both fact and record that your viewpoint is shared by only a small fraction of the people who have bought and played the game. They are certainly a vocal minority, and aided by the fact that, 1. Paradox has closed accounts/banned threads that were critical of the game and 2. many people are so fed up with Paradox's behavior they have uninstalled the game and quit the forum - thus many critics and their critiques disappear.

About Paradox, I could not agree more, I am one of the former buyers/forum members, who contributed to give ideas/supply info, leaded the spanish translation team (voluntary), made it known in my circles when they were almost unknown, etc.. The slightest critic was inmediately answered with deletions, warnings and bans. There was no other option than to leave the forum.

The $7.49 price was hardly just the Christmas sale. It was onsale for that at D2D long before Christmas sales began. Also a 1/2 price game is far from 1/4th to 1/5th of the retail price tag as well. When prices dip below $10 in just a short time after release the game isn't very good proven 'fact'.

[killroyishere]

having 622 deleted for who knows what reason seems to be an extreamely small percentage of the total. I wounder how other forums compare to that.

Well taking Matrixgames forum into account hardly anywhere close. I can't remember the last time any thread here was deleted and the majority of the time Erik only locks Political and Religious threads, but, he doesn't act anything like the gestapo moderators of Paradox or even Johan himself. Johan is another arrogant dev on the boards there, not professional and acts more like a child than an adult when you critisize his game(s). I also love how you rationalize a deletion of 622 threads as extremely small?! lmao

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: killroyishere

having 622 deleted for who knows what reason seems to be an extreamely small percentage of the total. I wounder how other forums compare to that.

Well taking Matrixgames forum into account hardly anywhere close. I can't remember the last time any thread here was deleted and the majority of the time Erik only locks Political and Religious threads, but, he doesn't act anything like the gestapo moderators of Paradox or even Johan himself. Johan is another arrogant dev on the boards there, not professional and acts more like a child than an adult when you critisize his game(s). I also love how you rationalize a deletion of 622 threads as extremely small?! lmao

As a point of reference, I have been moderator for 4+ years of this forum and I have only deleted threads: (1) which were spam advertising and (2) where the author of the thread asked me to close it (it was created by mistake). I've also edited maybe a half dozen posts that I thought were disrespectful of other forum members. I've found that the vast majority of the forum members are quite civil - though emotions run high at times.