TIMJOT wrote:Tristanjohn,
I believe Mdiehl was refering to Mogami's current WitP Alpha aircombat AAR. Hence his statement that the debate may be moot. Unless you are currently playing with Alpha WitP, I do not see the relevance of your posted AAR, within the context of discussing the current WitP aircombat model. Have you had a chance to looked at Mogami's reports?
Good point, TIMJOT. Now please allow me to explain my reasoning as to why AAR posts from
UV still strike me as something pertinent to this forum's business.
In the main I've received a steady stream of denial in both this forum and the one devoted to
UV with regard to the kinds of results (AARs) most other players of this system experience in PBEM games. After a short while I decided this contradictory feedback could be accounted for only two ways: the reporters either were treating me to sheer nincompoopery or were lying through their teeth. My opinion on this has not changed.
Rationale
There exists a strong element in this forum, within the wargame community at large and throughout life's walks in general which is both stupid of nature and selfish of purpose. This collective is obstructionist and given to anti-intellectual design. If that reads like some crazy horror plot out of Ayn Rand, fine. But that's where it's at.
My purpose here is only to get the game straight, and no matter about the details--for me, this many years down the road, this good end justifies any means. So I don't care if I offend these evil people--they are most certainly evil in my mind--and should others of different stamp and perusasion take collateral offense, as is usually the case and for the reason they're in denial about the very existance of this "evil knot" I speak to, or for the naive reason they believe that just covering their eyes amounts to dealing with "them" or, worst, just don't care and can't be bothered and will kick and scream and try to hurt you if forced to bother, then I say screw them, too.
I'm tired all over from my computer wargames coming to me year after year 1) dumbed down and 2) for all intents and purposes butchered because "well-meaning" know-littles and the Sega set and the "evil knot" and anyone else who lacks reasonably-useable capacity and good intention got their sticky special-interest fingers on the product during development.
Not that I can by my lonesome do much about this, but at least my intention is to try on the theory that once in awhile the altruistic squeaky wheel is greased--not for the reason anyone's worried it might fall off and get lost, mind you, but because they're tired of its uncompromising noise.
But I have to admit, this
WitP project has me worried BIG TIME. I knew it would be an uphill battle coming in just glancing at the
UV manual--bad bad news always when a manual amounts to gibberish, and the
UV is about as bad as I've seen. Within a week of play I'd spotted countless outright errors re ratings and such, and gross inconsistencies within the model's mechanical workings--one function actually working against the next, or a function depicting only part of one combat issue while no corresponding function existied to model the entire "combat truth," etc.; soon I was busy filling a new spiral notebook with my thoughts and impressions on these errors, copious notes on outright omissions and outlines as to how best correct the worst of the blatently-errant modeling of all things World War II in the Pacific in general--and with regard to the latter most especially as it concerned the air module.
Then I arrived here at the Matrix board and was welcomed by the "You're a newbie and we like it this way so just shut up or else" committee. Well, that fazed me not as I expected those people to meet me immediately at the front door--I think of them, when I think of them at all, as our hobby's "red caps." I do admit that when I discovered exactly who's been testing
UV/
WitP my hope for ultimate improvement sustained a blow, and when the head playtester delivered himself to the incredibly stupid opinion a couple weeks ago (I believe this was on the "Spotting" thread, but whatever) that a swell idea for
WitP would be to provide players large maps to mount on their walls at home and mark up with grease pencils in lieu of the game itself providing reasonable sub-displays for the dissemination and analysis of
proper and
useful spotting information . . . then I knew the worse had come to the worst, that the virtual asylum was being run afterall by the crazy inmates.
Now I can't force a change to any of that. But I can point out the more obvious flaws in the simulation and try to explain why these are flaws (in fact with a significant portion of the market this effort of illustration represents an impossibility, due either to simple disinterest in that level of detailed model study and appraisal or a lack of raw intelligence and/or learning capacity to digest the message) and offer, wherever possible, suggestions as to how one might best improve these broken or otherwise dysfunctional parts of the model-- though all the while I realize fully I must do all this
meanwhile the project's principles still resist as strongly as ever any notion whatsoever that the model at base stands in need of fundamental redesign in the first place: always this crowd is in deep denial re the basics.
Make no mistake: this is precisely the initial attitude any direct talk of meaningful change to the simulation in the Matrix forums is greeted with and treated to back at Game Development Central.
Now that's straight, intelligent and based on my 54+ years of life experience, close to the street always, half a century of which has been spent playing and deeply examining these kinds of games, with a full quarter century dilligently devoted to developing, testing and writing professionally about the game systems which go to make up our greater (board and computer) wargame community.
What really gets me about this project
WitP (I couldn't care less about
UV except as it allows me to "preview" what the former title is likely to look like when completed) is that Gary is as good as it gets.
I will repeat that in slightly different form: Gary Grigsby is the best designer of computer-based wargames ever, and is furthermore, in my considered opinion, one of if not
the best designers of recreational software of any brand or stripe since this hobby began twenty-some years ago.
Gary is also the most experienced wargame designer on earth (he and Joel run back to the cradle of commerical computer wargames) and was blessed by God with a tremendous talent for coming up with enjoyable systems for guys like you and I to mess around with in our free time. I doubt there's a computer wargamer anywhere who has not played and enjoyed a Gary Grigsby game. These things are simply the best in the genre (for fun value) and he's designed so many different kinds and types of them as to appeal to virtually the entire potential market, in one manner, shape or form somewhere sometime some way over the years.
If I could fault him it would only be with regard to the historical efficacy of his game sytems, and as I see it Gary only lacks a serious market which
demands from him that more attention be paid to the many various details which comprise his simulated games to improve in this area.
[
NOTE: Save your collective breath. Yes, I realize that no game will ever be perfect; no, I do not accept this universal truth as a rationale for the state I find
UV in.]
There are still people in this forum, TIMJOT, lots of them, more than you could shake a stick at, who will argue to the brink of their graves that there exists no pro-Japanese bias in the
UV game system to begin with. In fact, some of these people are so hopelessly unconscious that they will spin right round and then tell anyone with interest that they
like the pro-Japanese bias that's actually at the core of the model, this for the reason that it tends to "balance play" for them and make the simulation more "enjoyable" for them, all the while they remain ignorant of the realization that they're only contradicting their own denial on that same subject coming in.
These people of course are hopeless and that's one element I speak to. But I also speak to the "well-measning" set of wargamers of average intelligence who for whatever reason just don't wish to be bothered and will simply "tune out" any negative message as they define that which unpleasantly demands of them to
think critically and more unpleasant still
actually act proactively on these matters with the purpose to make the game better. This group, the majority always, would much rather sit in pleasant silence and let others rule the scene and thus effectively decide (badly always) what kind of shape these wargames are eventually to be published in.
That, TIMJOT, is why I continue to harp on matters re
UV. I harp because I know the same people who were not qualified to get
UV right or even close to right (and up to v2.30 at that) are the same people assigned to somehow get
WitP right, and that just ain't gonna happen in anyone's lifetime. These people simply don't know what they're doing. Some of these people mean well, others most certainly do not mean well, but regardless of attitudes and agendas and how the stars are aligned in the collective sense this group does not understand the work well enough to get it straight even should the group
want to--and I don't stand close to being convinced even of that.
The end result of that horrible mix must be yet another historical wargame "failure" by my lights, though always I realize it will arrive as a "fun game to play" because it's by Gary.
But one more time: I'm tired out all over of that formula. I don't want any more "fun games to play," what I do want this time is a fun game to play which is
historically accurate as well, or as historically accurate as Gary is capable to render it.
So sorry, but when I hear that my feedback from
UV is passe somehow I know better. Each and every mistake in
UV is subject to being carried over into
WitP, and even when I hear from Mogami all about how the fatigue has been changed and there are no more double-sweep missions allowed I intuitively cringe before the all-too-ready suspicion that while these mechanics might well indeed have been "changed" there is no guarantee at all they've been
corrected. Because the two are not the same.
That's all.
