Played through 17 and WTF!! (SIMPLE PATCH ISSUE!!!)

[TheProfessional]

Joel,

Thanks very much for the post. It gives us 'outsiders' a view of the development of the product and more importantly, its own design limitations.

Myself personally, it helps to reset expectations for future patches for the released version. The future is bleak for UV (guess sales are not that strong) but that's ok, wargames have always been a niche market.

I'm thankful that UV saw the light of day.

[willgamer]

Just wanted to jump in to commiserate!

I had a similar experience in scenario #6. As the Allies, I'm pounding the landings at Buna and Gili Gili when the Jap CVs show up. We spot each other. My strikes are cancelled, his (carrier only) strikes get thru fatally striking both carriers with hardly a scratch on any other ship. Game Over!

I've printed and RTFM and RTFPosts on this forum, but it's still a discouraging result because I can't grasp what I'm doing wrong.

The UV vets have (and probably will again) flame away at us noobs who find UV frustratingly opaque. However FWIW, what's so wrong with:

• showing carrier aircraft ranges (with toggle)
• showing on the base screen that the base is in/out of a malaria zone
• showing a percent completion on enginering base construction
• showing the range of enemy LBA (w/toggle)
• showing an enemy TF move radius (based on it's reported composition)
• indicating the number of aircraft a base can support w/o penality

IMHO, this is all stuff that a real commander staff would have assembled for him (whether or not he can multiply a single digit by 50! :rolleyes: )

[Joel Billings]

Myself personally, it helps to reset expectations for future patches for the released version. The future is bleak for "UV (guess sales are not that strong) but that's ok, wargames have always been a niche market.

My comment about risk/reward had to do with the risk of breaking the game (causing worse bugs and anomalies) vs. the reward of actually fixing the problem being worked on. It wasn't intended to imply a financial risk reward, although that clearly goes into decisions to invest time on patches.

I did not intend to imply that the future is financially bleak for UV. I hope that sales will continue strong as the word continues to get out about the overall quality of the game. Grognards will always come up with an unending list of improvements (not serious bugs) for a product. However, since we don't sell ongoing subscriptions to pay for ongoing improvements, I sure hope that people don't expect us to make all of these suggested improvements. If we did, I guarantee that we would go out of business and no other products would ever be completed.

What I was trying to say is that there are some things that we would very much like to fix (and that players have asked for) that we won't be able to fix due to the state of the code. Hope this clarifies my earlier post.

[FAdmiral]

I think in a lot of ways, UV is a spring board for the much larger
WITP being worked on right now. Much stuff we would like to
see won't be available for UV but may be incorporated into WITP.
WITP will be a much better game when released because of the
work, development and player suggestions that went into UV.

JIM BERG, SR.

[TheProfessional]

Joel,

Just to answer your previous post... yes, it does exactly.
My point was just to remind everyone that this is a business (albeit a labor of love) and that given the choice, I'm sure that Matrix Games would rather devote resources to WiTP or future projects than to maintain/improve the existing code base.

It just doesn't bring in revenue and since the game is pretty bug free right now (not perfect but who is?).. it's easy to move onto other exciting projects.

Whatever happens, I'll be grateful for any fixes forthcoming, just watch out for that regression!

Good luck.

[strollen]

Joel

If this computerized wargamingy thinging doesn't work (after all you given it 25 years.) I have a suggestion you could give seminars to companies about how to run a successful support BBS. Vast number of companies could benefit from you teaching them how to provide excellent customer service without bankrupting the company.

This is going to sound a bit snide but really I am truely being complimentary. What really happened here is:

1. Yes, we have a bug it happens rarely.
2. We tried to fix it but couldn't.
3. If we tried to pull off the duct tape to fix the whole engine might break, so it is too risky to fix. Only one guy understands whats going on.
4. We really can't afford to fix cause bug fixes don't pay the bills.
5. Actually when you think about it really isn't a bug it is a feature.

Now when you put my way it sounds pretty slimey. However, when phrased the way you put it. It sounds entirely honest (and I have no reason to doubt that), extremely reasonable and completely logical.

The orginally complainer went away happy and everyone reading the thread thought gee 2by3 really listens to their customers.

Most importantly, it didn't cause Gary any additional work.

I briefly ran Intel on-line support efforts, and I would have paid big money to try and teach this skill to the support folks.

Tell Gary you earned your paycheck today!