Matrix Games Forums

...it's been a while since I saw one at another site, a site visited by people who don't frequent the Matrix forums and therefore might not be aware of FOF (or might know it by its original, pre-patches reputation). If any of you are active at sites like civfanatics, gamerswithjobs, quartertothree, gamesquad, octopusoverlords, etc. you might want to consider creating an AAR over there (and, of course, linking to it from here). It's the best way to get the word out, and getting the word out enables us to continue producing games that are on par with FOF and COG:EE.

Just a thought...

Sure. I'll get one on Gamesquad for sure due to already having an account yet and I'll see about posting on others.

Great! I look forward to it/them.

Our best review was at Gamesquad, but there hasn't been much attention to it in their forums.

I haven't been a regular on this forum for 23 months.

Althought I have been visiting the forums as a guest for the last month or so, as I had a bit of spare cash and was looking for information on a cheap game to purchase(eventually got Democracy)but I didn't log into my old account, as I'd forgotten my password and I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around and didn't search it out.

The reason why I originally came here back in late 06, was because I found a copy of the original World at War, at a games store when on holidays. Naturally I then sought out the Matrix forum to find others that had played the game as well. I then started to love reading the AAR's on it and for some reason I found myself drawn to the FOF AAR's as well. Some great times. [:)]

Well to cut a super long story to a long one, I started reading Mad Russian's AAR and I'm hooked on these AAR's and the forum again. I may have to stick around.....also I'll probably end up buying the bloody game now. [;)]

Thanks for your post.

Well, if you do buy the game, I think it only fair that you write your own AAR. Otherwise, you'll be just like the person who wears clothes to a nudist beach. Or like someone else in another bad metaphor.

getting the word out enables us to continue producing games that are on par with FOF and COG:EE.

Just a thought...


It's a little hard to promote a game that has major bugs that go unpatched for MONTHS.

I think before much promoting can be done the patch needs to prove it works.

From my perspective FoF was left to sit while COG:EE was reworked. That doesn't instill a lot of confidence in supporting a game. Now, there are lots of reasons that can happen. Both games needing bugs fixed is one of them and obviously first come first serve. Having the patch put on hold for months while you're trying to play the game and PBEM's is extremely frustrating and makes gamers, me in particular, wonder why I spent my money on FoF in the first place.

That's just my own opinion.

Just a thought....

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

I think before much promoting can be done the patch needs to prove it works.

The patch works. That's already been proven.

One really needs to have been on the inside of a development team or beta-testing team to understand why delays can sometimes occur that look puzzling to the outside world, but that are not indicative of a lack of support.

HiHi

Gil, dunno if this is the sort of thing you are looking for but here's a link to the AAR/DAR section for ACW at 'the Blitz', all Pre-patch but ... ?

http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/ ... hp?fid=168

If not of use just deleat.

All the Best
Peter

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

I think before much promoting can be done the patch needs to prove it works.

The patch works. That's already been proven.

One really needs to have been on the inside of a development team or beta-testing team to understand why delays can sometimes occur that look puzzling to the outside world, but that are not indicative of a lack of support.

Yes....been there done that. I was never associated with a development team that took more than half a year to patch a bug that kept the game from being played. Now to my knowledge the bugs in FoF were only associated with PBEM. Which is the only way that I played the game. Again, for me personally I paid for a game that was broken and that was left to lay there without attention.

That was a choice that was made by the development team or it took that long to figure out how to fix the bug. The posts in this forum point to the fact that FoF wasn't the high priority.

That means I bought a game that you got around to fixing when you had the time and desire. Not something I would have purchased if I had known how it was going to be supported.

And when was FoF released originally? Was it released as ready to play?

Good Hunting.

MR

[/quote]

From my perspective FoF was left to sit while COG:EE was reworked. That doesn't instill a lot of confidence in supporting a game. Now, there are lots of reasons that can happen. Both games needing bugs fixed is one of them and obviously first come first serve. Having the patch put on hold for months while you're trying to play the game and PBEM's is extremely frustrating and makes gamers, me in particular, wonder why I spent my money on FoF in the first place.

I'm not sure to which bug you're referring, but I know that many, many people were playing FOF PBEM games after release, and we did several extensive PBEM tests before release. There may have been a bug -- the victory point bug, perhaps -- that made you not want to play the game, but I don't think it's fair to say that the game was not playable by PBEM, since many people were happily playing it by PBEM.

The latest FOF patch took months longer than we'd anticipated because while fixing a few things I introduced a new bug that took a long time to find and resolve. The issues involved were subtle and not easy to reproduce. We did have to prioritize COG:EE development over the FOF patch, because it's simply not feasible to suspend active new product development operations.

I understand that from your perspective we weren't doing anything on FOF, but I assure you that was not the case: I made sure there was time in my schedule to work on it every week. It was frustrating for us, as well, that the FOF patch took much longer (and required many more resources) than we had projected.

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

I'm not sure to which bug you're referring, but I know that many, many people were playing FOF PBEM games after release, and we did several extensive PBEM tests before release. There may have been a bug -- the victory point bug, perhaps -- that made you not want to play the game, but I don't think it's fair to say that the game was not playable by PBEM, since many people were happily playing it by PBEM.

There were two bugs. The "attack the city bug" and the National Will bugs are the ones I'm referring to. The "attack the city bug" was identified by my opponent and I in September 2008. If you chose "attack city" the turn could, and most of the time did, crash on you. For the "attack the city bug" you could go back and redo your entire turn, and not pick attack the city, but why have an option that doesn't work? How long would it take to disable that option?

The NW bug had no fix a gamer could easily choose during game play and it ruined any PBEM game strategies. Until it was fixed the PBEM part of the game was unplayable IMO.

Once those bugs were made public there were a fair amount of posts, in this forum, about how gamers wouldn't play PBEM until you fixed them. I would say that qualifies as "fair to say the game was not playable by PBEM". But that's just my opinion and there certainly weren't enough gamers complaining about it to start any riots. The choice was yours how quickly you responded to the bugs that made PBEM inoperable. Maybe you thought most gamers don't play PBEM anyway so there the issue was not pressing. It only affected those that were playing PBEM for the most part and what percentage of FoF gamers play that way?

I don't know.

You say PBEM worked well enough to play and I know it didn't for me. You have every right to believe what you want to about the products you sell.


Read my "An UnCivil War DAR" thread here in the AAR section. Then you tell me if it played well in PBEM. It was broken and you can easily tell it's broken following along with the game play. The Union controlled huge amounts of Confederate territory and yet the Confederates were winning the game and had a huge lead in the National Will. How does that not affect PBEM play?

The latest FOF patch took months longer than we'd anticipated because while fixing a few things I introduced a new bug that took a long time to find and resolve. The issues involved were subtle and not easy to reproduce. We did have to prioritize COG:EE development over the FOF patch, because it's simply not feasible to suspend active new product development operations.

That is often the case with fixing code. You fix one thing only to break something else. Again, I understand that you have to do new product development. In the meantime the I sit with a game for almost a year that won't play.

Another issue that game companies seem to have is that a patch must fix or improve no less than 10,000 issues. That takes a LONG TIME to implement. When you have two bugs that are destroying game play I would think you fix those and patch them as quickly as possible. That allows the game to at least play instead of gathering dust.

It's been almost a year since I've played FoF now. I don't see going back to it after having to wait this long for a patch that allows the game to play. At this point I have yet to play FoF where it plays through correctly. In essence, I wasted my money.

I understand that from your perspective we weren't doing anything on FOF, but I assure you that was not the case: I made sure there was time in my schedule to work on it every week. It was frustrating for us, as well, that the FOF patch took much longer (and required many more resources) than we had projected.

IMO, all that was needed, were comments here in this forum, to that affect. And not updates on how the coding for COG:EE was going and what a great thing that was going to be.

Leaving customers sit in the dark, with a game that doesn't work, for months, would be the last thing I would think you wanted. Especially, when there is an information forum here that you can use to let gamers know what is happening.

As complex as computer games are, there is no way to make a game bug free. Not on the first try for sure. It takes lots of playing to find them all. FoF is not different. What makes the difference in how a lot of gamers determine where to spend their money, and which companies to support, is in how the games are supported once they are sold to the gaming community.

To make matters worse from a developers stand point FoF is 3 games in one. The strategic game, the tactical game and the combined game. Any one of those areas can have bugs that will be extremely important to some segment of the gamers that bought it and not necessarily to the other two segments.

That's just my $.02 worth. You can do patches and new product development any way you like. I'll vote with my wallet as will everybody else, depending on how they perceive the situation individually.

The issue, of course, is that you are judged on the products that you currently have for sale. If they don't work, and the perception is that you're not in any hurry to fix any issues they may have, then why would I buy your next offering?

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

It's been almost a year since I've played FoF now. I don't see going back to it after having to wait this long for a patch that allows the game to play. At this point I have yet to play FoF where it plays through correctly. In essence, I wasted my money.

This rather surprises me. During the period that we were working on the patch you were on a regular basis posting similarly critical comments about the fact that the patch hadn't been released, so I would have expected you to be one of the very first to download the game and start playing. As I've already said, the patch works fine, and you could have been playing FOF for the past few months.

I understand that from your perspective we weren't doing anything on FOF, but I assure you that was not the case: I made sure there was time in my schedule to work on it every week. It was frustrating for us, as well, that the FOF patch took much longer (and required many more resources) than we had projected.

IMO, all that was needed, were comments here in this forum, to that affect. And not updates on how the coding for COG:EE was going and what a great thing that was going to be.

I posted information on what was happening with the patch repeatedly, often in direct response to your posts.

Leaving customers sit in the dark, with a game that doesn't work, for months, would be the last thing I would think you wanted. Especially, when there is an information forum here that you can use to let gamers know what is happening.

Customers were never in the dark. I made clear that we were working on the patch as we were able to, and also announced it pretty much each time that a new build had gone up. And you must have seen those threads, because you were the most active poster in them.

As complex as computer games are, there is no way to make a game bug free. Not on the first try for sure. It takes lots of playing to find them all. FoF is not different. What makes the difference in how a lot of gamers determine where to spend their money, and which companies to support, is in how the games are supported once they are sold to the gaming community.

WCS gives excellent support to customers. Eric has sometimes spent hours helping individual customers to solve problems (including you, I might add). The delay in releasing this patch was regrettable but necessary, but to extrapolate from that delay that our company gives poor support in general is extremely misleading. If you want to judge us on our support, just go look at the Support sub-forum and try to guess how many countless hours Eric and I have spent assisting our customers.

To make matters worse from a developers stand point FoF is 3 games in one. The strategic game, the tactical game and the combined game. Any one of those areas can have bugs that will be extremely important to some segment of the gamers that bought it and not necessarily to the other two segments.

No, it's two games, not three. But the point is irrelevant, since there are no longer any significant known bugs (and the only bug that I know of that we haven't ever been able to fix, the rare cavalry-on-cavalry charge bug, doesn't affect PBEM).

That's just my $.02 worth. You can do patches and new product development any way you like. I'll vote with my wallet as will everybody else, depending on how they perceive the situation individually.

The issue, of course, is that you are judged on the products that you currently have for sale. If they don't work, and the perception is that you're not in any hurry to fix any issues they may have, then why would I buy your next offering?

"Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition" was a nearly flawless release with NO crash issues and few bugs, which were fixed in just a month or two. FOF currently is bug-free (except that cavalry charge business). So while this might have been an issue for FOF many months ago, it's completely pointless now.

(Since this thread has become about the philosophy of patching and providing customer support, it no longer belongs in the AAR sub-forum. Therefore, I have moved it to the Support sub-forum.)

I just want to say that I am running 2 pbem games now, for a total of 7 since the last patch, and the bugs you mentioned Mad Russian are gone. The Pbem system works very well, and one of my opponents and me are now on our 4th game having a blast.

Terje

ORIGINAL: terje439

I just want to say that I am running 2 pbem games now, for a total of 7 since the last patch, and the bugs you mentioned Mad Russian are gone. The Pbem system works very well, and one of my opponents and me are now on our 4th game having a blast.

Terje

GREAT...then it's time to just try the patch and see how well it works.

Is there a patch thread that tells what was fixed? I couldn't find one.

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

It's been almost a year since I've played FoF now. I don't see going back to it after having to wait this long for a patch that allows the game to play. At this point I have yet to play FoF where it plays through correctly. In essence, I wasted my money.

This rather surprises me. During the period that we were working on the patch you were on a regular basis posting similarly critical comments about the fact that the patch hadn't been released, so I would have expected you to be one of the very first to download the game and start playing. As I've already said, the patch works fine, and you could have been playing FOF for the past few months.

I understand that from your perspective we weren't doing anything on FOF, but I assure you that was not the case: I made sure there was time in my schedule to work on it every week. It was frustrating for us, as well, that the FOF patch took much longer (and required many more resources) than we had projected.

IMO, all that was needed, were comments here in this forum, to that affect. And not updates on how the coding for COG:EE was going and what a great thing that was going to be.

I posted information on what was happening with the patch repeatedly, often in direct response to your posts.

Leaving customers sit in the dark, with a game that doesn't work, for months, would be the last thing I would think you wanted. Especially, when there is an information forum here that you can use to let gamers know what is happening.

Customers were never in the dark. I made clear that we were working on the patch as we were able to, and also announced it pretty much each time that a new build had gone up. And you must have seen those threads, because you were the most active poster in them.

As complex as computer games are, there is no way to make a game bug free. Not on the first try for sure. It takes lots of playing to find them all. FoF is not different. What makes the difference in how a lot of gamers determine where to spend their money, and which companies to support, is in how the games are supported once they are sold to the gaming community.

WCS gives excellent support to customers. Eric has sometimes spent hours helping individual customers to solve problems (including you, I might add). The delay in releasing this patch was regrettable but necessary, but to extrapolate from that delay that our company gives poor support in general is extremely misleading. If you want to judge us on our support, just go look at the Support sub-forum and try to guess how many countless hours Eric and I have spent assisting our customers.

To make matters worse from a developers stand point FoF is 3 games in one. The strategic game, the tactical game and the combined game. Any one of those areas can have bugs that will be extremely important to some segment of the gamers that bought it and not necessarily to the other two segments.

No, it's two games, not three. But the point is irrelevant, since there are no longer any significant known bugs (and the only bug that I know of that we haven't ever been able to fix, the rare cavalry-on-cavalry charge bug, doesn't affect PBEM).

That's just my $.02 worth. You can do patches and new product development any way you like. I'll vote with my wallet as will everybody else, depending on how they perceive the situation individually.

The issue, of course, is that you are judged on the products that you currently have for sale. If they don't work, and the perception is that you're not in any hurry to fix any issues they may have, then why would I buy your next offering?

"Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition" was a nearly flawless release with NO crash issues and few bugs, which were fixed in just a month or two. FOF currently is bug-free (except that cavalry charge business). So while this might have been an issue for FOF many months ago, it's completely pointless now.

Thanks for your response. I'm sure the game works just fine now.

I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into FoF. It was a game that I really wanted to like. That said, I can at times be a bit intense in the results of the games I play in my hobby. I guess that comes from having made my own games and played so many others. It's easy to forget that computer games can't be changed in an hour. If I remember correctly, and I may not, WCS only has one programmer. That makes a lot of difference as what can get done and when.

FoF certainly has the potential to be the greatest ACW Grand Strategy game ever offered. That's what I wanted to buy and it's what I thought I got. Your comments say that it is at that point now.

I'll have to down load the patch and see how it works. I discussed this with my gaming opponent from "An UnCivil DAR", just an hour ago, and once we get to a place where we have a gaming opening we may try it again.

As in all things, you can't please everybody all the time. I'll reserve all further comments, about FoF, until I get a chance to play the game with the current patch.

And whether I agree with how you do things, or not, isn't as much an issue as your final result. If, in the end, the game achieves the greatness it is capable of then all roads lead to the same place.

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

ORIGINAL: terje439

I just want to say that I am running 2 pbem games now, for a total of 7 since the last patch, and the bugs you mentioned Mad Russian are gone. The Pbem system works very well, and one of my opponents and me are now on our 4th game having a blast.

Terje

GREAT...then it's time to just try the patch and see how well it works.

Is there a patch thread that tells what was fixed? I couldn't find one.

Good Hunting.

MR

Try this one

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian
Thanks for your response. I'm sure the game works just fine now.

I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into FoF. It was a game that I really wanted to like. That said, I can at times be a bit intense in the results of the games I play in my hobby. I guess that comes from having made my own games and played so many others. It's easy to forget that computer games can't be changed in an hour. If I remember correctly, and I may not, WCS only has one programmer. That makes a lot of difference as what can get done and when.

FoF certainly has the potential to be the greatest ACW Grand Strategy game ever offered. That's what I wanted to buy and it's what I thought I got. Your comments say that it is at that point now.

I'll have to down load the patch and see how it works. I discussed this with my gaming opponent from "An UnCivil DAR", just an hour ago, and once we get to a place where we have a gaming opening we may try it again.

As in all things, you can't please everybody all the time. I'll reserve all further comments, about FoF, until I get a chance to play the game with the current patch.

And whether I agree with how you do things, or not, isn't as much an issue as your final result. If, in the end, the game achieves the greatness it is capable of then all roads lead to the same place.

Good Hunting.

MR

That's great news, that you plan to give the game another shot now that we've (finally!) gotten the patch out. I do hope that you'll like it, and agree that it was worth a wait, even if not the wait.

I hope Mad Russian finds the newly patched game to his liking and that he does another AAR.

It was his AAR that got my attention after my long sabbatical and kept me around these forums and will possibly lead to me actually buying the game, so yeah it'd be nice to see another one from him.

Just out of curiosity, what is the most current patch level? I was surprised to have to hunt to find this.