Testing WITE

[56ajax]

This game is software, and as a software tester of 25 experience, I can tell you that software is never finished. There are always fixes and enhancements. Did you wait for microsoft to finish their operating system before you bought a computer? This game works out of the box for me without any crashes or hangs. Furthermore, many of the enhancements suggested are outside the scope of the original product so the developers have the moral? right to actually ask for more $$$$. As it stands the game is great fun and excellent value for money. Enjoy....

[Templer_12]

On the other side.
You paid a lot of money for a product that is not free of bugs and errors.
You report to Matrix.
You are the customer, you are the king.
So Matrix take, almost immediately, care of it.

Matrix takes you seriously!

Will you seriously complaining about that? [:(]

[Ketza]

To address one of your points the original DNO "out of the box" actually had the same balance issues that we see in WITE. A good Soviet commander would never make the same mistakes Stalin did and when a good Soviet team played a good Axis team the results were horribly lopsided towards the Soviets. To this day I remember the look on my opponents face when I surrounded all of the 4th PZ group cutting off its supplies with mechanized divisions that I had kept in forts and wiped out all of it in 2 turns... Houserules and later Fire in the East were required to make the game balanced.

A game written by a few people and playtested by a few more can never match the test of hundreds or thousands actually playing it. Bugs, issues and implausuble strategies will come out of the woodwork as the work of a few talented minds are placed to the test by thousands of other talented minds.

The only real way to not be disapointed if you do not understand the concept i just outlined is to wait before you buy games that have already been put through the ringer by the masses.

[pat.casey]

Oddly enough, since I'm one of the advocates that the game, as currently balanced, is "broken", I'm not particularly upset. I've played enough large scale war games in my day to realize that balancing is virtually impossible without a large player base, so expecting a relatively small test team to get it "right" out of the gate is probably not reasonable. I'll be peaved 3 months from now if we still have the same balance problems mind you, but I'm not expecting that.

When you get down to it, even really small war games can be difficult to balance properly. Does anyone remember the original rule set for Ogre with its incredibly overpowered "all gev" defense? They just flat missed that in playtest because it didn't occur to the playtest team that anybody would do that.

That being said, I suspect that what happened here is that most of the playtesting was of summer 1941, since that's probably about as far as you can get if the developers are shipping you a new, incompatible, build every week.

So you test turns 1-10 over and over again with progressively improving builds, but take relatively few games through to the end.

[FredSanford3]

I have a closet full of old AH/SPI titles.  I can come up with criticisms about the gameplay and historical accuracy of every one of them.  Did you know that in Avalon Hill's Panzer Leader, the artillery mechanics are completely backwards- it's better to mass in a hex b/c the firing factors are divided by the number of units in the hex!  Utter Nonsense!  When's Avalon Hill going to fix this!?!?!?  I paid a lot of money for that game you know!
 
Actually, they did 'fix' it in Arab-Israeli Wars, which was the next "patch" of the old Panzerblitz game 'engine'.  But it was something like 3 years after Panzer Leader.  Ahh...the good ol' days...

[bairdlander2]

I know a title of this complexity and detail cannot be relied on beta testers alone(not that they didnt do a good job).I have no problem getting free patches and as time goes on and the dev gets more feedback from us the game will become better.

[bdtj1815]

From Matix's own site "Gary Grigsby’s War in the East represents a truly epic representation of the Second World War on the Eastern Front and is unparalleled in its scale, detail, and ambition! but unfortunately in its original form, which cost me a lot of money, it is flawed as proved by many threads and comments on this forum. All I am saying is that Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

[Ketza]

I loved Panzer Blitz and Tobruk. As a 10 year old Tobruk was a little hard to grasp but I eventually got it.

[pat.casey]

ORIGINAL: bdtj1815

From Matix's own site "Gary Grigsby’s War in the East represents a truly epic representation of the Second World War on the Eastern Front and is unparalleled in its scale, detail, and ambition! but unfortunately in its original form, which cost me a lot of money, it is flawed as proved by many threads and comments on this forum. All I am saying is that Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

By that logic blizzard should never have shipped starcraft II since their playtesters missed the generally overpowered terran side at release and the very specific way a good terran could abuse early reapers as an "i win" against even pro level zerg.

Fact is multi-player games are hard to balance. That's why the standard for developers is to strive to release bug free and as balanced as they can manage and then *plan* for balance patches once a large player base develops.

[Ketza]

ORIGINAL: bdtj1815

From Matix's own site "Gary Grigsby’s War in the East represents a truly epic representation of the Second World War on the Eastern Front and is unparalleled in its scale, detail, and ambition! but unfortunately in its original form, which cost me a lot of money, it is flawed as proved by many threads and comments on this forum. All I am saying is that Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

My wife was a finished product 21 years ago. Well thats what I thought. She has gotten better over time.

[FredSanford3]

ORIGINAL: bdtj1815

From Matix's own site "Gary Grigsby’s War in the East represents a truly epic representation of the Second World War on the Eastern Front and is unparalleled in its scale, detail, and ambition! but unfortunately in its original form, which cost me a lot of money, it is flawed as proved by many threads and comments on this forum. All I am saying is that Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

whatever, man. I bet they'll give you a refund if you email Joel.

[bairdlander2]

ORIGINAL: bdtj1815

Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

If they said that before release no one would have bought it and we would not be able to give feedback,as we have been to the devs since release.I dont know why you dont understand this.Its the same for every piece of software released.Let the customers do the testing.I dont have a problem with it.Its better then them releasing product and saying "go f*** yourselves were not going to do any more work or release any patches".

[randallw]

The only awful ( or should I say significant ) programming problem i've personally perceived is the problem of fighter units not going up to defend air bases.  Other people have commented that AA fire is not decently effective.

Did I ever feel that the game, out of the box, was not a proper product, and should not have been released? No.

[Senno]

ORIGINAL: bdtj1815

From Matix's own site "Gary Grigsby’s War in the East represents a truly epic representation of the Second World War on the Eastern Front and is unparalleled in its scale, detail, and ambition! but unfortunately in its original form, which cost me a lot of money, it is flawed as proved by many threads and comments on this forum. All I am saying is that Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

You've not played any MMO's have you? They are under constant revision and rebalancing, for example. NeverWinter Nights patched quite often, as I recall. And the fact that the game works out of the box on untold numbers of systems, even homemade systems, mitigates against your charge of not finished product.

You are also ignoring the users who disagree that things are severely out of balance, or think that beta 5/6 has corrected some of the percieved flaws with the '41 blizzard.

In short, things may or may not be in perfect balance. But you are asking for a lot if you expect any company to admit they sold you a non-working product. Hello lawsuit in this litigious climate.

I have taken your complaints seriously, but the fact that you start making them on a weekend, tickles the back of my head a bit. If things were so serious, wouldn't a weekday when more official types were about be more reasonable time to file this complaint?

[2ndACR]

ORIGINAL: bdtj1815

From Matix's own site "Gary Grigsby’s War in the East represents a truly epic representation of the Second World War on the Eastern Front and is unparalleled in its scale, detail, and ambition! but unfortunately in its original form, which cost me a lot of money, it is flawed as proved by many threads and comments on this forum. All I am saying is that Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

No, the game was playable right out of the box and stable. We are a vocal and opinionated group. But we also have faith in 2by3 and Matrix. They listen and correct. There is not a single game released that does not have issues in them. The game is even very enjoyable against the AI.

No game company can match the finding issues that a huge fan base can find. Same for the "never thought anyone would try that strategy" that shows up when a game is released. Just a fact of life. Now, that said, if it was ANY other game company than 2by3/Matrix, I would be leery. But I have been around a while, along with a lot of us. The only game of 2by3 I don't own is World at War, but it is just not for me. I have the utmost faith that issues will get resolved, and the game will only get better.

So, how about just sitting back, play the game, find issues, report them and have some faith. Name me one game outside of the Matrix family that has had this many player requests, fixes in this short of time frame? Good luck. I have a slew of games that never got fixed.

[bdtj1815]

Many of you are misrepresenting my comments. I love this game but just think it wrong for a company to sell a game, for a pretty hefty price, and then expect us, "the players", to make it right on a forum. How many people who paid their money, don't visit the forum every day like I do to find the patches, are playing a flawed game? Forget the questions of game balance, but units arriving at the wrong time, UI problems etc. SORRY for £70 I do expect a game of this sort to be up to scratch on release. This is not a console shoot-me-up game.

PS. From a thread above can someone tell me what a "MMO" game is? And to Senno, why is it being a weekend so strange, it is when we have most time, and as Matrix and 2by3 are so amateur I would have thought it is most likely it is when their personnel are available to comment

[Templer_12]

ORIGINAL: Senno

ORIGINAL: bdtj1815

From Matix's own site "Gary Grigsby’s War in the East represents a truly epic representation of the Second World War on the Eastern Front and is unparalleled in its scale, detail, and ambition! but unfortunately in its original form, which cost me a lot of money, it is flawed as proved by many threads and comments on this forum. All I am saying is that Matrix, or 2by3 games, should have have said this is a not fully developed and possibly flawed product on release and asked those of us who bought it to help in its testing, not sold it to us as a "finished product".

You've not played any MMO's have you? They are under constant revision and rebalancing, for example. NeverWinter Nights patched quite often, as I recall. And the fact that the game works out of the box on untold numbers of systems, even homemade systems, mitigates against your charge of not finished product.

You are also ignoring the users who disagree that things are severely out of balance, or think that beta 5/6 has corrected some of the percieved flaws with the '41 blizzard.

In short, things may or may not be in perfect balance. But you are asking for a lot if you expect any company to admit they sold you a non-working product. Hello lawsuit in this litigious climate.

I have taken your complaints seriously, but the fact that you start making them on a weekend, tickles the back of my head a bit. If things were so serious, wouldn't a weekday when more official types were about be more reasonable time to file this complaint?

bdtj1815 sounds British.
Maybe he is out of tea? [8|]

[bairdlander2]

It is what it is and nothing we can do but wait for patches.They are working on them,its not like they are sitting in the tropics drinking margaritas and counting the money we spent.

[2ndACR]

No, not misunderstanding you at all.

A game this complex, will always have some teething problems.

Like I said above, if it was ANY other company, I too would be leery. But this is 2by3 and Matrix we are talking about. We get to talk to the Devs themselves. They are active, support is active.

Unlike alot of other game companies out there. MOO3 anyone?

[Mynok]

Amen. Witp had issues out of the box. 2by3 corrected them over time. They are a responsive developer I have utmost confidence in. Their track record speaks for itself.

In the meantime, I'm having great fun playing it as it is, despite its flaws. How is this a problem? Don't see it.