Removing Features in latest service release for pro edition ?

[DBeves]

Mmmmm....

Starts last post on this page ... not sure I like this ..

http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=4065.1920

[JPL19]

Have to agree . . .

No good excuse or reasoning for removing feature or content.

Joe L.

[mikmykWS]

Yeah sorry guys. I see Dimitris already responded to this.

I hope you recognize though that we've given new features with every update. I think the next one after this you'll definitely be pretty happy.

Thanks

Mike

[DBeves]

So you are giving the same frankly unbelievable answer over here as you are over there ?

[Stardog765]

I love this game but I have to agree here, that is just a smack in the face to everyone who has supported this game since release.
I understand your reasoning but that doesn't make it right. To pull a feature no matter how much used or not JUST so you have bullet point to show your "professional" customers see look it is worth what we are charging you.

Very uncool and as much as I love the game and will always play it going forward I will have to think twice about buying the new LIVE scenario and any further content you deem worthy to sell us lowly "commercial" customers.

Sorry if that sounds negative but that is just the taste it leaves in my mouth and for the price I paid for this game I figure I am entitled to voice that opinion.

[Dysta]

While out of unit editing option and other Pro features aren't welcoming to modders, especially for someone who love playing alternative history, Sci-Fi or even fantasy based scenarios, I agree it's exactly what CMANO designed for.

I wouldn't like to see this game becoming that fallacy because of the ability to mod the game out of the dimension of military simulation. And besides, adding real-life based units and features require frequent searches, which is way more challenging than just adding aliens or dragons in whatever abilities they could just imagine.

As for the replay, well, I don't use it much either, I'd prefer video streaming and save multiple parts of the game to tell them I am actually playing it, not some meaningless time-lapse or showcase demonstrations.

[Randomizer]

...that is just a smack in the face to everyone who has supported this game since release.

What colossal arrogance and phoney entitlement, you certainly don't speak for me and my face has not been smacked by the developers in the least. The faux outrage here and over at Grogheads is face-palming pathetic and the whiners should just go back to Harpoon.

-C

[HalfLifeExpert]

Yeah, I totally agree Randomizer. Of all of CMANO's features, I found the recording the least useful. There was nothing I could learn from recording that I couldn't learn from close attentiveness and the message log. And the fact that the record files took up so much HDD space put me off from using it as well.

And no Stardog, you do not speak for me ether, I supported the Devs by buying each DLC since I got the game, and even though I haven't played the new content that much, I am very happy to have supported them. You are entitled to your opinion, but do not claim that you speak for the majority, because you do not.

The recording feature wasn't that useful, and Dimitris is right that you rarely, if ever hear it talked about, professionals who can probably afford plenty of HDD space might find more use for it.

Recording you gameplay to be played back in the program was hardly the biggest selling point of CMANO. People bought it for the highly realistic military simulation and the vast databases, and all off that is still there.

[temkc5]

I have love this serious game from the start 2013 and always will

Keep up the great work Dev team

[TheCabal]

It's not like that there are more alternatives.. it's should I stay or should I go then for the guys over at Grogheads.

[gregor40]

Just a tip. Do not let your business modell loose you the customer base. Unless your PE is your target business. Players can accept that some functionalities are specific to PE, but do not take away the bone from the dog.

EDIT: I don't care about the recording functionality. But I fear for other functionalities.

[cdcool]

ORIGINAL: gregor40

Just a tip. Do not let your business modell loose you the customer base. Unless your PE is your target business. Players can accept that some functionalities are specific to PE, but do not take away the bone from the dog.

EDIT: I don't care about the recording functionality. But I fear for other functionalities.

well said!

[Zaslon]

I don't care about the recording functionality. But I fear for other functionalities.

I agree. I don't use the recorder but...
...there is a problem because in the product page, the recorder is listed as a feature.

Keep up the outstanding work guys. A little mistake (controversial decision) is very timy with all the updates you bring us since 2013!

P.S.
Interesting comment in Grogheads by Staggerwing.

All I can think is that the some country's 'professional' military such as the People's Liberation Army-Navy Store has started buying up the commercial/hobby game to train it's personnel instead of springing for the military-grade sim version costing thousands more and this is the response.

[8|] So, maybe all decisions have reasons....

[Dysta]

ORIGINAL: Zaslon

P.S.
Interesting comment in Grogheads

All I can think is that the some country's 'professional' military such as the People's Liberation Army-Navy Store has started buying up the commercial/hobby game to train it's personnel instead of springing for the military-grade sim version costing thousands more and this is the response.

You are correct. Many amateurs in China are actually very fond on CMANO, and they made one of a scenario in attempt to sink Liaoning Carrier by US recently. Sparked hundreds of redirects and thousand replies all over military fan communities.

I think the sudden sold-spike from China did worry both Steam and DoD.

EDIT: Here's one of the topic from Chinese military forum, they felt very stressful just by managing Liaoning CSG in game, the other said Nimitz could be worse.

[Stardog765]

Well first of all you guys might want to read more carefully, I never said that I speak for you what I said was " that is just a smack in the face to everyone who has supported this game since release"
I did not say I was speaking for anyone or that anyone else endorsed my feelings on the subject but that is what I think. So calm down, no one is trying to speak for you. I am speaking strictly for myself but from my point of view that IS how it seems. You don't have to agree with me, I really couldn't care less but as being a long time full on supporter of everything these guys have done and put out I felt I had a right to at least voice my opinion on the matter. Or is it just that opinions only matter here if the collective mind agrees with you?

I didn't make that post to just bash the devs, like I said I have loved this game since it came out and still do but this sudden change of how they are going to do business, putting the commercial customers against the pro customers I have seen before with ESims and it causes a lot of problems and this is just the beginning if this is the road they are going down by pulling features out no matter little used. That wasn't the point.

[kevinkins]

People's Liberation Army-Navy Store has started buying up the commercial/hobby game to train it's personnel instead of springing for the military-grade sim version costing thousands more and this is the response.

Oy vey. Knowing a few thousand dollars per copy deters a nation the size of China should make us all sleep sounder tonight.

[cdcool]

ORIGINAL: Stardog765

Well first of all you guys might want to read more carefully, I never said that I speak for you what I said was " that is just a smack in the face to everyone who has supported this game since release"
I did not say I was speaking for anyone or that anyone else endorsed my feelings on the subject but that is what I think. So calm down, no one is trying to speak for you. I am speaking strictly for myself but from my point of view that IS how it seems. You don't have to agree with me, I really couldn't care less but as being a long time full on supporter of everything these guys have done and put out I felt I had a right to at least voice my opinion on the matter. Or is it just that opinions only matter here if the collective mind agrees with you?

I didn't make that post to just bash the devs, like I said I have loved this game since it came out and still do but this sudden change of how they are going to do business, putting the commercial customers against the pro customers I have seen before with ESims and it causes a lot of problems and this is just the beginning if this is the road they are going down by pulling features out no matter little used. That wasn't the point.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion

[Stardog765]

I appreciate that. Thats all I was stating.

[Demetrious]

ORIGINAL: HalfLifeExpert
And the fact that the record files took up so much HDD space put me off from using it as well.

This is the key point. Translation: the feature isn't complete, and requires more development. More development means more man-hours means more money. And commercial customers didn't much use it, while professional customers quite liked/needed it.

There's also a slew of reasons not to leave in the implementation as-is; ongoing changes to the code elsewhere would quickly "break" the feature, since it's not being actively maintained/updated for the commercial branch, it's bad form to leave a half-complete and officially abandoned feature in your program, etc. As Dimitris mentioned on that other forum that was linked, "several features were lined up for this fate," i.e. not enough developmentbux to keep truckin' on all features, so they had to pick one for "pro-only," i.e. where compensation would at least match the effort invested. Naturally they picked a feature that only the pros seem to want, which is definitely the right call.

What I'm driving at is, the devteam's not stealing away already-finished features to incentivize the pro version - they're moving a half-finished feature to the branch it should've been in from the start, basically. From everything I've seen it's consistent with Warfare Sims behavior as a company, too. They are in it to make a living, (as they must,) but I don't know if it's fair to say they're in it for the money. If you're in it for the money you go make Battlefield 7 - Revengence, not SON OF HARPOON - THE WARSIMS STRIKE BACK. Wargaming sims, well, uh... there's just not that much disposable income to chase, there. More than a few milsim games started life as a government targeted program that was later repackaged as a commercial game; CMANO is rather rare for making the leap in the opposite direction, and for good reason - only the government or major defense contractors reliably shell out for this kind of thing. This devteam really has a personal investment in making a good sim. On three separate occasions I found bugs that I suspected might be quirks related to abstractions - where rigorous simulation of this or that was papered over a bit. These are perfectly acceptable; tabletop wargames use them freely to keep the workload down, and yet they still accurately simulate real-world results enough that some pen-and-paper wargames are still used by the military for quick think-tanking. Computer game devs utilize them when it will similarly not impact actual results, and the man-hours to code "proper" simulation of it are unjustified by the meager enhancements they might bring.

All three times, the devs took one look at it, said "oh dear, that should be fully-functioning simulation, it's a bug, lemme get on that." They don't really embrace "abstractions." (I still can't believe someone took the time to code in the THAAD missile's Energy Management Steering Maneuver.) The most abstract-y thing is ground vehicles, which mainly exist as targets because they're the furthest away from the program's focus - and even that seems to be slated for a future re-work. Someone was asking about counter-battery radar a few days ago and the answer was "that's not modeled yet, but if you need it now there's always bespoke development." That sums up their approach to development; won't takes a distant backseat to can't, and their pro services are almost by definition as much service as packaged product. That's the nature of that kind of thing; when a big company (like BAE) wants to use the software as an analysis tool, they're going to have a laundry list of specific features needed to test their specific concepts, and they'll also have a slew of classified/proprietary data to be used in refining the model. That latter point is a problem unto itself; things like comms jamming are currently absent because all the data needed to simulate it is classified as all hell. With data in hand from a "pro" customer that's no problem, but implementing it in the commercial branch isn't easy if you care about accuracy (and they do.) Then, and only then, do the devs turn to acceptable abstractions. The implementation of the "generational" system for adjusting effectiveness of jammers versus radars based on comparative tech age is a perfect example; it's the kind of thing most wargames use all over the place, but the devs only used because 90% of the details needed to properly simulate it are simply classified and unavailable. So features designed for the "pro" branch are only unavailable to us because someone has to make a design decision about how best to abstract it so it's simple, robust, yet produces broadly accurate results, and that kind of thing is very hard. Hell, Mr. Bridge even says as much at the end of this interview, relating to the comms thing. Or just look at the effort spent on runway repair - they could've slapped together a simple equation centered on "average runway repair time as offered in repair kit brochures," weighed it by the damage amount, added a penalty if the munition was specifically anti-runway and then randomized it a bit. Would've taken ten minutes. And as an abstraction, it would've been fine. But instead they told us "this is rather complicated, we're working on it" and went digging for a while. The final result probably took the same amount of time to code, but it was the background research and design decisions that ensured the results were accurate.

So tl;dr, I really, really wouldn't sweat things like this, because the evidence overwhelmingly points to the dev team being on our side. They are wargame nerds - they are us, and they care about this thing they're putting their names on, and it really does show. The "pro" version is going to make these guys bank, and that bank will keep the commercial branch in development bux (again, as Mr. Bridge points out in that interview.) The only thing holding them back seems to be the lack of a twenty-fifth hour in the day and cash to pay for it.

So yeah, don't you worry. I once had my (public) doubts about them - and apologized to Sunburn personally when the next update fixed literally everything I'd bitched about and then some. And I never played it before WRA and Lua were a thing. So if anyone has doubts, just sit tight - they're not gonna outlive the next big update. [:)]

[HalfLifeExpert]

Very well said Demetrious.