Why all this aversion when it comes to Hearts of Iron (HOI)?

[EnPeaSea]

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer

I haven't downloaded any of that crud (other than the HoI example) because crud well you know, its crud.

So your theft of HoI was just a moment of personal weakness?

[Hexed Gamer]

I can see you just don't comprehend.

I have no wish to ever purchase anything from Paradox.

I do not care if Paradox is in business tomorrow.

I don't care if people that have bought the game care to upload it to places where it might be downloaded freely.

Is this getting through, or are you that dim?

That I downloaded it was only because I could. Not that I wanted the game. I thought it was dumb while I was downloading it. I thought it was dumb while I was burning it to a cd. I thought it was dumb while installing it. And it was a dumb waste of time playing it.

It would have been even dumber if I had encouraged the company by paying for it though.

[EnPeaSea]

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer

I can see you just don't comprehend.

I have no wish to ever purchase anything from Paradox.

I do not care if Paradox is in business tomorrow.

I don't care if people that have bought the game care to upload it to places where it might be downloaded freely.

Is this getting through, or are you that dim?

That I downloaded it was only because I could. Not that I wanted the game. I thought it was dumb while I was downloading it. I thought it was dumb while I was burning it to a cd. I thought it was dumb while installing it. And it was a dumb waste of time playing it.

It would have been even dumber if I had encouraged the company by paying for it though.

Getting a little defensive huh? [:D]

Thanks for the clarification.

[Pippin]

I say, this is getting to be a most interesting thread...

[Hexed Gamer]

ORIGINAL: EnPeaSea

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer

I can see you just don't comprehend.

I have no wish to ever purchase anything from Paradox.

I do not care if Paradox is in business tomorrow.

I don't care if people that have bought the game care to upload it to places where it might be downloaded freely.

Is this getting through, or are you that dim?

That I downloaded it was only because I could. Not that I wanted the game. I thought it was dumb while I was downloading it. I thought it was dumb while I was burning it to a cd. I thought it was dumb while installing it. And it was a dumb waste of time playing it.

It would have been even dumber if I had encouraged the company by paying for it though.

Getting a little defensive huh? [:D]

Thanks for the clarification.

Defensive? I would have to give a hoot first hehe.
I was just unsure if you realised how little it mattered to me.

The only thing stopping me from giving away the copy is I would never do anything that mean to a fellow wargamer.
I did the smart thing and threw it out

[EricGuitarJames]

ORIGINAL: EnPeaSea

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer

I denied a company to which hasn't a hope in hell of ever getting a sale from me a sale. Well , hmm look at that sentence. Paradox doesn't have a chance in hell of ever getting a sale out of me.

That is hardly a good excuse for theft. [&:] I do not see how a refusal to purchase products from a company equates to a right to steal from them.

Unless you have never recorded a friend's CD, videoed a tv show, or borrowed a video game (all of which are technically illegal unless you have the appropriate licence), one should not start berating others for theft. [:)]

[EnPeaSea]

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer

ORIGINAL: EnPeaSea

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer

I can see you just don't comprehend.

I have no wish to ever purchase anything from Paradox.

I do not care if Paradox is in business tomorrow.

I don't care if people that have bought the game care to upload it to places where it might be downloaded freely.

Is this getting through, or are you that dim?

That I downloaded it was only because I could. Not that I wanted the game. I thought it was dumb while I was downloading it. I thought it was dumb while I was burning it to a cd. I thought it was dumb while installing it. And it was a dumb waste of time playing it.

It would have been even dumber if I had encouraged the company by paying for it though.

Getting a little defensive huh? [:D]

Thanks for the clarification.

Defensive? I would have to give a hoot first hehe.
I was just unsure if you realised how little it mattered to me.

Its ok. Sorry if I came off hostile in my post.


Anyway, to get things a little back on topic. Paradox Entertainment seems to be a contraversial company in the pc strategy gaming community. One side loves HoI. The other hates it. Neither side understands the other. [:D]

[EnPeaSea]

ORIGINAL: EricGuitarJames

ORIGINAL: EnPeaSea

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer

I denied a company to which hasn't a hope in hell of ever getting a sale from me a sale. Well , hmm look at that sentence. Paradox doesn't have a chance in hell of ever getting a sale out of me.

That is hardly a good excuse for theft. [&:] I do not see how a refusal to purchase products from a company equates to a right to steal from them.

Unless you have never recorded a friend's CD, videoed a tv show, or borrowed a video game (all of which are technically illegal unless you have the appropriate licence), one should not start berating others for theft. [:)]

Lucky for me I don't listen to music, own a VCR, or have any friends! [:)]

[JJKettunen]

ORIGINAL: EnPeaSea

Lucky for me I don't listen to music, own a VCR, or have any friends! [:)]

That's the saddest thing I've heard lately.

[Hexed Gamer]

Now granted, I would have to be particularly limited of intellect to go over to Paradox and blather on about their game and how I came to get it.

I have encountered no small number of people that staunchly defend the notion they have NEVER done anything illegal or even questionable in their life.
I find it funny they can say that publicly and expect anyone to actually believe them of course

One of them actually might not have been full of it enough to be real

But we all know you can download nearly anything under the sun.
So it is not like I have said anything radical.

I do know someone though, that never owned a vcr.

[EnPeaSea]

ORIGINAL: Hexed Gamer
I do know someone though, that never owned a vcr.

My parents owned a Betamax VCR. It was a traumatic experience for me.

[Koper]

Ok, after this nice discussion about piracy and stealing...

I see serious difference in design approach that is used in case of the "classic" wargaming and the one used by Paradox.

In wargame designer starts with clear goal - reflect battle/campaign X. And one of the grand measures of the success here is keping the simulation as true to the historical realities as possible. It results in creating highly dedicated system that is specially tuned and adjusted to the needs on the campaign/battle X. If something doesn't fit design concept, or can be used to break historical limits of the scenario, it is usually removed from the game. Additionally, special rules to make game more "historical" are often added...

Paradox starts with different goals. First of all, they don't like to be focused on the exact battle/campaign (although seems like it can change in HoI2 - see demo). They create generic system that is rather far from being tuned for some exact campaign. Paradox games include diplomacy, research, industry and manpower control that can be rarely seen elsewhere - all it for the price of "generic" system instead of "focused" one.

Comparison to Civilization is not that bad, although Paradox games are certainly more ambitious projects in terms of detail and realism - after all, Civilization could be fought with dragons or laser beams and you wouldn't see a difference (Alpha Centauri, anyone?). I can hardly imagine that in case of Paradox products. Even if we say that they are all EU clones (HUGE simplification), each of their games got different mayor "theme" (colonization, industrialization, feudalism, modern war) which makes them really unique.

Comparison to RTS is wrong - honestly, I can barely imagine how Paradox titles CAN look like RTSes even for hardcore wargamer. They lack flashy gfx, they require from player real strategy, not just clickfest and they are way too detailed for comparing them with RTS genre.

Some hate them, some love them. I guess those games are more popular in Europe, as EU series was not really that much popular in USA (not so many fans of european history ) and EU/EU2 is still the best Paradox product.

[Hanal]

"Comparison to RTS is wrong - honestly, I can barely imagine how Paradox titles CAN look like RTSes even for hardcore wargamer. They lack flashy gfx, they require from player real strategy, not just clickfest and they are way too detailed for comparing them with RTS genre."

OK, so we will not use the phrase "Real Time Strategy"......How about "simultaneous movement and combat".... I just do not like roaming around the HOI map keeping an eye on all my armies as they march merrily off to battle, while I fend off the constant pop up messages letting me know this and that, pausing the game constantly to try keeping up with what's going on..It's a personal taste obviously, but I like conducting my campaigns in a measured turn based method...the bottom line is that to each their own and there is no reason to disuade or persuade anyone to play HOI...let the individual make up their own mind....

[Koper]

OK, so we will not use the phrase "Real Time Strategy"......How about "simultaneous movement and combat".... I just do not like roaming around the HOI map keeping an eye on all my armies as they march merrily off to battle, while I fend off the constant pop up messages letting me know this and that, pausing the game constantly to try keeping up with what's going on..It's a personal taste obviously, but I like conducting my campaigns in a measured turn based method...the bottom line is that to each their own and there is no reason to disuade or persuade anyone to play HOI...let the individual make up their own mind....

By RTS I understand something different then just "simultaneous movement and combat".

RTS is basically arcade game that pretends to have some sort of strategic element. Usually this strategic element is reduced to capturing resource sites, some research and assault group composition. HoI is a bit more detailed...

Plus, with all this micromanagement, it can hardly be called "arcade".

[Venom Rising]

Hexed Gamer AKA Les the Sarge is a pirate and a thief.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Venom Rising

Hexed Gamer AKA Les the Sarge is a pirate and a thief.

That can't be Les the Sarge he posted he would never visit this forum agian. [8|]

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: J P Falcon

"Comparison to RTS is wrong - honestly, I can barely imagine how Paradox titles CAN look like RTSes even for hardcore wargamer. They lack flashy gfx, they require from player real strategy, not just clickfest and they are way too detailed for comparing them with RTS genre."

OK, so we will not use the phrase "Real Time Strategy"......How about "simultaneous movement and combat".... I just do not like roaming around the HOI map keeping an eye on all my armies as they march merrily off to battle, while I fend off the constant pop up messages letting me know this and that, pausing the game constantly to try keeping up with what's going on..It's a personal taste obviously, but I like conducting my campaigns in a measured turn based method...the bottom line is that to each their own and there is no reason to disuade or persuade anyone to play HOI...let the individual make up their own mind....

Hey, I can relate to that! My first experience with HOI was extremely frustrating for that reason... 24 popup messages in 60 seconds of play... argh! However, I've discovered (after patching to 106c and CORE) that one can easily fine tune what messages you want to see and those that you don't. Once those are set the messages get manageable and mostly quite informative (especially the historical info and decision point ones). As far as running around the game trying to keep track of what my forces are doing, I use the PAUSE buttone frequently and adjust the speed of the game depending on how much is happening.

It really takes a different mind-set to play these games and I can see how a traditional wargamer can be put off by them and dismiss them without spending more than a few hours on them. I started dozens of HOI games initially and just couldn't get a handle on it. I do owe everyone in this thread for informing me about the patches and the CORE Mods because it really ressurrected the game for me (which I bought at full price in a store, not the bargain bin where I find most of my purchases these days).

Perhaps Paradox can be accused of putting games out too early, but having produced and marketed some business software I can certainly attest that your in-house testing can be totally happy with something and as soon as you ship it, people start breaking it! You just get too close to something and YOU do everything perfectly because you know what you are supposed to be doing and how it works. My program included a disastrous bug that wiped out one of our major client's database on three separate occasions. After months of trying to find the problem, it turned out to be an elderly input clerk who didn't like computers and clicked impatiently on the "Submit" button over and over and over. If she happened to click during a certain precise stage in the re-indexing process, everything got dumped but the record she was adding. A tiny little programming error triggered by somebody doing something we hadn't anticipated.

I remember the time when SPI had to admit that they hadn't tested any of their MONSTER boardgames on WWII past 1942. People invested thousands of hours trying to play these things and then found the mid and end games had some real game balance problems. However, it was imp;ossible for playtesters to play these things through to completion so they spot checked here and there, ran scenarios and so forth. The published game certainly wasn't "finished" and the errata flowed for years, but I never heard them summarily dismissed as "crap".

I respect the effort it takes to produce these games and I'm not going to trash the publishers. Perhaps some will want to hold off on future Paradox purchases and pick them up after the patches (hey, I know some people who take that approach with Matrix games Some will buy on the first day and joyously form a community to search out and fix the bugs and help create the patches. I remember my intial disapointment with Falcon 4.0 but that failed combat flight simulator has been patched and enhanced and modded to the point where it's quite a game. Complex computer simulations really need that kind of support and tweaking. If you aren't prepared to deal with that, then just make it your rule never to buy any new games until the 3rd patch.

And, finally, it is certainly everyone's right to rave and rant all they want, but it's also my right to express the opinion that I find a lot of those rants very tiring and non-productive. Specific and well reasoned critiques are always welcome, but spare me the generic "I bought this game and it's total CRAP and I think the people at XYZ are stupid losers and I'm taking this game off my hard drive and I'm never buying another XYZ game again as long as I live and neither should you" kind of comment.

Yea... I know... it's a fact of life in any online community that you are going to get that... I just seem to be seeing a lot more of it lately and it offends my sense of fairness.

[EricGuitarJames]

ORIGINAL: Venom Rising

Hexed Gamer AKA Les the Sarge is a pirate and a thief.

Girls, stick to the subject at hand [;)]

[Hexed Gamer]

For starters rhondabrwn as a woman you are likely intellectually overqualified for this argument

Second, I reeeeeeeeeally no longer care what people think of Hexed Gamer aka Les the Sarge 9-1 (get the name right if you are so damned clever) or to be more exact the few people who already know how little they mean to me.

So pathetic attempts at name calling are just that pathetic attempts.

You are not important.
You are puny unimportant people on the internet that I will never meet (kinda happy about that).

So enjoy yourselves in the sure comfort of knowing, that whether I chose to come here now barely twice a day or perhaps more or perhaps less, it really doesn't matter what you think.

You are unimportant.
You are puny unimportant people on the internet that I will never meet.

Because when I discarded you, I lost nothing. I Lost nothing as you are nothing. Can't lose what was never there.

And for all those wishing to sob and whine over the harsh cruel words I type, get a grip.

Interesting though, how many people have joined this thread with only single digit sums of posts to their credit eh.

[Koper]

Interesting though, how many people have joined this thread with only single digit sums of posts to their credit eh.

And you feel SOOOO much better, having those 3 digits under your avatar? [8|]

Pathetic...