VADM Halsey Taken Out by the Remove Halsey Code

[Dereck]

It took until January 1945 but I finally got hit by the "Remove Halsey Code" and can no longer find him.

Seems so many people end up losing Halsey it's not funny anymore (like it ever really was).

[benway9]

that's ok, i'm in a CHS game right now, 1.795 as japanese. it seems that a lot of my units from HQ's down to construction battalions are strangely being commanded by a flock of staff officers with 0 (zero) in their attributes columns. i'm spending lots of PP just getting some commanders in there.

also, when i go to change commanders, it seems the list stops at the letter K in the alphabet (hence no yamamoto, yamaguchi etc.) very strange indeed.

[Dereck]

For as "important" as leaders are to the outcome of battles it's disgraceful that this game ever made it out of testing to be released. Pay $80 for a game expecting it to be a working game and end up having a game with so many bugs it never should have been released in the first place. (I know that's going to bring up a bunch of "I love Matrix" replies but the fact is I paid money for a game expecting it to be a working piece of software and end up paying to be a frigging beta tester).

Being in the IT industry I know that no matter the testing some bugs initially slip through but we're talking major aspects of the game which should have been tested more thoroughly before the game was released. And we're also not talking just "some" bugs either ...

[SGT Swanson]

This seams to be the norm in the industry. And it's called....... a DEADLINE. Why they announce a tenitve release date even before the beta testing stage just to drum up hype for a game is beyond me, but they all do it. So, I guess we'll always see patches. Sorry guys, but I even see it at my own work place as well.

[dtravel]

The only way its going to change is if we, the consumers, stop buying all this bug-laden shit!!!

(Sorry, for some reason my cranky pants are set on "extra cranky" today. Probably a bug in the controlling software.)

[Cpt Sherwood]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

The only way its going to change is if we, the consumers, stop buying all this bug-laden shit!!!

(Sorry, for some reason my cranky pants are set on "extra cranky" today. Probably a bug in the controlling software.)

Why be sorry about being cranky, I think we all have reason to be cranky about this.

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: dtravel
Sorry, for some reason my cranky pants are set on "extra cranky" today

Well, it's probably very irritating to have an extra cranky in your pants.

Good post, man. I'm sure you can gather from what I have had to say about this game that I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Here's what I think went wrong with UV/WitP. Matrix was just firing up and looking for a way to get into the profitable side of the computer game business. Pacwar and WiR had a reputation steeped in the Grigsby tradition that would give them "instant credibility," so they recycled them for free distribution in order to get everybody's attention while Grigsby worked his next piece of magic.

Then, everybody stood back in awe and said, "Ooh, Gary, you is so good, we wants you to do whatever you wants with us." Unfortunately, nobody stopped to realize that Grigsby's "great successes" were back in the 8-bit computer days when he had to squeeze what he could out of about 40k (plus what a Commodore 1571 floppy drive could add on the side from a 1.44 mB disk). The grand idea was great: let's create the be-all and end-all of strategic Pacific WWII games, finishing the work begun in PacWar.

The execution left a lot to be desired. If only someone in authority had stepped up and said, "Okay, Gary, show me your project plan. I want to see what the product is you intend to create," things might have worked out differently. There might have been some quality control.

As it turned out, unfortunately, we the consumers got a mess that was beyond Grigsby's capacity to create successfully. I hate to be so critical of someone who once made games that entertained and kept hope alive, but a substantial share of the blame for this - and I can only characterize it as such - failure resides with the designer - and those who didn't have the balls to step up and say, "Gary, we need to take a look at what you're doing here and make sure it's going to work."

I'm not going to criticize once again the poor design "decisions" reflected in the very fabric of the game. I'm not going to review the awful mechanics of combat, search, and logistics built into it. I'm not going to yammer again about the leader bugs and other unfixed faults. Others have debated these points at length. Note, however, that a well-designed game would not have generated such heated discussion. It would have been published, it would have "worked as designed," and we would either have accepted it or not.

The way it is now, for me, it's a matter of "not."

I wish I had something constructive to say, but I've been saying this for years now, and all I get is, "Ah, you always see the glass as half empty," and "I like giving Posterhoosky sh1t because he's such an @$$hole."

I will say this, however. If the leader system from PacWar had been adopted and developed for this game system, we would all be happy (those unfamiliar with it ought to take a look: it's at the strategic level, and decisions about who's leading what actually made sense). If Grigsby had adopted a land combat system from any number of good paper-and-cardboard games, we would all be happy (why we have to suffer from a system that never figured out whether terrain features were hexside or hex internal, I will never know). If the air combat system had just been stated rather than left open to debate, with the myriad oddball changes that have been made as a result, we would all be happy (if F4Fs and Zeroes behave in a certain way in the game, well, that's the game, take it or leave it, and the 16 tons of discussion are for another day when you're older and deeper in debt).

And so it goes. Hi ho. There it is. Woo hoo. Woolly bully. Yeah yeah yeah. Nuts.

[rtrapasso]

And so it goes. Hi ho. There it is. Woo hoo. Woolly bully. Yeah yeah yeah. Nuts.

Ah, come on! Quit mincing words. Tell us how you REALLY feel!!![:D][:D][:D]

[Tom Hunter]

I do begin to wonder if Matrix might have made more money if they had done a better job in th design phase. Now they are stuck patching something that seems to be pretty badly broken on a really fundamental level.

That is never good, because you end up forced to either tell your customers "we built something that will never work right." Or you end up spending gobs of money to preserve your credibility.

[dtravel]

ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

I do begin to wonder if Matrix might have made more money if they had done a better job in th design phase. Now they are stuck patching something that seems to be pretty badly broken on a really fundamental level.

That is never good, because you end up forced to either tell your customers "we built something that will never work right." Or you end up spending gobs of money to preserve your credibility.

As much as Eric and the others at Matrix and 2by3 are going to hate hearing this, as far as I am concerned they have no credibility.

The fact that the program was obviously never tested crippled them. Mr. Frag and his "there are no bugs, you just don't understand the game" bullsh[/i]it killed their credibility utterly. I'm playing the game against the AI now and I probably will for another year. But the game will leave my hard drive relatively quickly (for me). And I will never again buy a product from Matrix, 2by3 or Grisby.

(And I'm disappointed that no one seems to have gotten the cranky pants joke. [:(] )

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: dtravel
(And I'm disappointed that no one seems to have gotten the cranky pants joke. [:(] )

I get it. I just refuse to give you the satisfaction of acknowledging it. Kind of like combat resolution in UV/WitP...

[Black Mamba 1942]

I understand what your are saying dtravel.
You were one of this games most ardent supporters at the start.

I stopped ghosting this forum, some time back, because of Frags contradictory and rediculous interpretations of this games mechanics issues. He was never wrong.
Everything is working as designed.[;)]

When Erik started posting on this forum, I took heart, and hoped that some of the more major issues would be resolved.
Time will tell.[;)]

[Dereck]

I'm not as concerned about the "major" issues as I am just the "basic" issues. There's too many existing bugs to be worried about player-requested enhancements. Fix the known bugs first and hopefully create a somewhat more stable platform to build on.

Right now it's just a house of cards and fixing one thing AND making enhancements only makes something else fall down.

Like the pilot replacement table filling up ... WHY did it take until a few months ago when I brought it up in the forum for this to be found out? If they KNEW they were using a finite array for pilots they should have run tests where they filled it up to just see what would happen but such a test was obviously never done.

[Black Mamba 1942]

I concur dereck.[&o]

Kill the bugs "first"![:D]

[Dereck]

I'd be very happy - ECSTATIC - to be using version 1.30 OR BEFORE but with NO bugs. These "player requested enhancements" are all bogus as far as I'm concerned and just candy put out every now and then so people will say they're getting a good deal and not really mind/notice/care that the basic mechanics of this game don't work.

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

As much as Eric and the others at Matrix and 2by3 are going to hate hearing this, as far as I am concerned they have no credibility.

They already lost a lot of credibility with me when I posted a query WHY after I upgraded to 1.6 I was getting notification of JAPANESE base/airfield upgrades. Mike Woods posted it was always that way which ruined his credibility with me because from the start of my game I kept track of when my bases/airfields upgraded and until going to 1.6 I only received information about MY bases - never Japanese.

[Ron Saueracker]

This is one serious thread.

[Nomad]

Saturday night at work doing inventory, I can do a post or two from here tonight.

dereck, I think the actual response from Mike was that the mouse roll over showed both friendly and enemy port and airfield sizes so they made it so there was notification for all upgrades. Probably made it easier for them to implement. Just sloppy programming.

One thing that does upset me is all the [&o] smileys when Mike Wood posts something he 'fixed' Most of the time he is fixxing things he broke or didn't program right from the begining.

Anyone really read the "many, many" user requested features? A good number of them are to fix things they messed up in the "design" of the game to start with. I really doubt that there was much real design work done for this. It tends to look like they just had a few 100,000 lines of code from old games and they through it together with a very slightly better looking interface. The acutal user interface is about as clunky as they could have made it. There are many times I wonder if they didn't say "if we make the user interface so complex and full of bugs maybe no one will be able to play and then they will not find out how many bugs and bad design decisions there really are in the entire game"

As far as getting rid of the rest of the bugs, I doubt it will actually happen. I mean really, how hard is it to implement a List structure and make it work? That is all a list of pilots is, just a set of List structures. Even if they are still using C( which I think they are ), there are any number of List management programs available. Some are published in open source format. The same with Leaders, a set of List structures. This would be covered in Programming 101( I guess 2x3 games missed that class ) And another bug is the bad replay bug, lets face it, the idea that game settings will affect the replay of a PBEM turn is ridiculous.

As a finaly note, while I am very unhappy with the state of War in the Pacific, it is still probably worth the money I spent on it ( $100.00USD + ), but at times the agravation it casuses is a very high price to pay.

Back to counting pipe fittings. [:@][:D]

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Nomad
Back to counting pipe fittings. [:@][:D]

A-one and a-two and a-

Great post, Nomad. If you ever decide to run for president, you've got my vote (of course, I'm not saying president of WHAT...).

I know it's a case of "the horse is already out of the barn," but I sure wish Matrix would make a concerted effort to zip up its pants on this one.

Have you seen Mike Wood's latest post over on the UV forum? "Well, I'm gonna try fixing the disappearing aircraft thingie, so wish me luck, but I've gotta do it in my spare time 'cause I'm so busy and all alone over here in the skunk works." I doubt that WitP has any higher priority than "if we sandbag it long enough, maybe people will stop b1tching and just run away to find the Grail somewhere else."

Now, there's some customer support fer ya. How soon do you think beta patch 1.795 will turn into a final solution for us $80 plus portable picnic players? Anyone? Anyone?

[Nomad]

Here is an answer from Erik on the beta test sub forum in a thread called "Status of next patch" ( or something like that )

v1.795 beta has some problems. When Mike has some time, we'll need to release another public beta with those fixed before we can feel comfortable with the final release.

Regards,

- Erik

_____________________________

Erik Rutins
Director of Product Development and Business Relations

As you can see, they will be putting out another beta patch "when Mike has some time" I wonder what year that will be in? I am all most glad I do not have internet at home, I have been doing more walking and such, I feel quite a bit better now and my stress level is down.