Sorry if this offends, but....

[goodwoodrw]

The question has to be asked. Was CofG release because it was finished, or because Matrix needed an Origins flag. Playing this potentially great game is getting to the stage where frustrations of consistent crashes & game errors is going to force me away from the game permanently. Games such as WITP and UV were released with bugs and errors, but u could play them without too much irritation. But lets be honest, as much as I have had fun with this game, it aint a finished product. a lot of other product that is placed on the market from other industries, performed as badly as this, you would ask for your money back! perhaps Matrix should review its Beta testing policy.

[Gem35]

what crashes? I have been playing every day and never had one crash yet, before you blame the game software, perhaps you should look into your computer hardware.[:)]

[nukkxx5058]

Same here, never had a crash ... and the game is definitely not too buggy.

[Reg Pither]

I've only had one game-breaking crash. Three times I fought a vital, capital province defending battle and each time both sides routed and the game crashed. I could have used Quick Battle, I suppose, but may well have lost as I was outnumbered. So I just had to abandon the whole game after 10 years of playing. [:(]

[Hanal]

My only crashes occur when I exit the game so I could live with that for now...it seems that the two ways to close the game cause different problems...if I choose exit the game, I get the Plato crash, but if I chose to end game and return to main menu, that causes the game to hang up on the load screen, so I always choose to exit the game as that crach is less severe...either way is not a clean exit but thankfully I am done with my session anyway....

[Hard Sarge]

I changed my Drivers and the detail battle crashes went away (I didn't have the end game crashes)

other then that, I have seen no major problums with the game

I do disagree with the idea or the way that Waste is handled, but that is a design, and not a bug, and they have already said they are working on some ideas to make it more player friendly, so I am happy with that

over, I do not see anything really wrong with the game, areas that could make the game better, yes, and many new ideas or helps have been offered and thought about, so I believe the system is working right

don't always blame the testers, they test what the designers want them to test, and offer there ideas on what they see, if the designer has reasons for doing it his way, instead, it is not the testers fault

( I could tell you some stories about beta testing, but since most people are under NDA agreements, don't think that I really should )

HARD_Sarge

[FirstPappy]

No crashes here either. About 30 hours of playing time. Quick combat only. I think it was released at the right time. The feedback they have been getting for patches could only have come from a general public release. Beta testing can just do so much. If you want an example of a game that was released prematurely, I submit Hearts of Iron. I was a beta tester on that and we pleaded to not have it released before the holidays. We even made up a ficticious character to blame on the forum for releasing it early!

[Reg Pither]

ORIGINAL: Pappy
The feedback they have been getting for patches could only have come from a general public release. Beta testing can just do so much.

I'd have to agree with that. Not every software company has the resources that Microsoft or Blizzard has to playtest games as thoroughly as possible before release. There has to come a point were the bullet has to be bitten and the game put on the market in order to get some money coming in. And I've certainly played many games that were in a worse state than CoG on first release.

[goodwoodrw]

Sorry I must be on the wrong forum. Those of you that haven't a CTD have been very lucky or haven't played many detailed battles. Yes the main guts of the game doesn't crash, but does have many fixable bugs, yes I have upgraded my drivers, but I have and have not had as much trouble with other programs as I have had with CofG. Don't get me wrong, I am great fan of this game, however one of the reasons I bought it was to play detailed battles, sorry whatever you may think, IMHO this part of the game is faulty and is frustrating when you invest considerable time in a battle only to crash, freeze or what ever you want to call it, at the climax of a battle. It has happened more than a dozen times, read the board I'm not Robinson Crusoe. Finally I'm not blaming the Beta Testers, I'm questioning Matrix's policy on releasing games.

[Hanal]

The problem with predicting crashes is that there are so many PC configurations that it is next to impossible to know how a game will react to a particular PC until it is released.....

[goodwoodrw]

JP I don't dispute what your saying, but BFC appear to do well in that area (Predicting errors, machine throw forward) their games are much more stable. Mind you CofG is better than a lot of others

[mogami]

HI, COG does not support WIndows ME and yet I have been playing it crash free from the start. Crash Free? Well I will crash if I click on map info button so I don't do that I manage my forces from the military menu and I have the problem on exit. Funny thing is online games when you exit there is no problem.
So I am running on machine that is not supposed to work and doing fine. I really like this game just the way it is. Only wish I could play with 8 Nations on line.

[AlexT]

NO NO There is that BUG with the (possible) CRASH, when BOTH FORCES have to retreat at the same time.

I had this crash about ten times or so, but already have played around 30 detailed battles. AND IT IS VERY FRUSTRATING WHEN IT IS THE 5 detailed battle in a row, and you haven't been able to save between them, as it isn't possible to do so.

SOMETIMES A WORKAROUND IS, that when you are forced to retreat GIVE THE ORDER TO RETREAT YOURSELF, before this happens, just press retreat ... you still have won, if you performed better than your opponent.

Anyway also have the feeling A GREAT GAME, but still needs a lot of fine tuning and fixes, but than it is the best roundbased strategic game, I have played FOR YEARS !
I really hate this RTS games

So to the DEVS don't give up and I am happy that I have contibuted to that game, as I already have enjoyed it (but also hated it

THX

[Hard Sarge]

it aint a finished product. a lot of other product that is placed on the market from other industries, performed as badly as this, you would ask for your money back! perhaps Matrix should review its Beta testing policy.

Sorry Sir, but that looks like a Rant vs the testers to me

not to be smart, but what drivers are you using (vid card) I got a Gforce 4 6800 GTO using Forceware 7650 drivers and it has been working great for me

got to agree, the game works much better when you can fight the battles you want

hopefully, they can get that dang plato error fixed for everyone

HARD_Sarge

[Cyrano]

For what it's worth: at least 50 hours played here and NO in-game crashes, EVER.

I got the exit error until I stopped exiting straight out from the game map, then it went away.

Regards,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)

[TheRockSal]

Yep...no crashes here either...BUT, I only play quick battles.

Mogami....you could probably get 3-5 West Coasters to play an online game at night after work and if there a few other East Coasters willing to play late, the 8 player game might be doable.

I'm ready for something like that every night.

[Erik Rutins]

We were working towards the Origins deadline, yes, but we did feel that the game was stable and working well when we decided to release it. While we wanted to release for Origins, had we not felt it was ready we would have held it and released it at WBC or GenCon. Origins is not the only convention we are attending this summer. The vast majority of the crashes reported after release and all of the important ones, were not ones we saw before release or saw so rarely that we could not duplicate.

The current beta version seems to have addressed all crash issues reported after release, so that the first patch should be a nice improvement for those still experiencing them.

Unfortunately, as some have mentioned on this thread, PC game development is definitely a challenge in terms of testing and compatibility. We cannot possibly test it on every configuration, nor can we anticipate the problems that exist on some systems before our game is installed. Even multi-billion dollar game publishers like EA still have released games that went through a great deal of testing and still required patching due to unforeseen compatibility or bug issues.

This does not mean in any way that we expect our customers to be testers. It means that we realistically realize that even with diligent testing, we cannot expect that every single bug will have been found, particularly those that are driver-related. If we do not happen to have the right hardware and driver combination on the testing team, such things simply can't be found until someone stumbles on them after release.

With that said, we have a strong record of standing by our games. We listen and respond to customers and work with developers to make sure that when you buy a game from us it is with the understanding that any significant problems that come up will be investigated and if at all possible addressed. On top of that, we encourage our developers to add new features after release and we work with them to gather feedback from customers to decide on many of those improvements. I think that, given the real issues that are raised when developing for the PC platform, this is the best stance that a company can really take.

Regards,

- Erik

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: BASB

Sorry I must be on the wrong forum. Those of you that haven't a CTD have been very lucky or haven't played many detailed battles.

I'm curious why you would state such a thing? Why assume that those who are vocal about the crashes (such as myself) are the ones in the majority? I would think the opposite given that a good number of copies were sold (according to a post by paul vebber who aluded such information) and the number of those people reporting crashes to actually not be too great.

Now this isn't to state that I like or tolerate the crashes, because I don't. However, the overall game still plays well and is quite enjoyable too boot. So I agree with you that the crashes from the mfc error is frustrating, but I differ on how much I let this bother me given that they have stated they think they have fixed the problem in the current patch that's being tested.

One thing you can say about matrix is that when a problem arise, they will bust their humps to try to come up with a fix.

[mogami]

Hi, I'm using Windows ME and the only CTD I've ever had was the info screen because it requires a .DLL file that is not a ME file. (So I always get that crash)
I have never had any other CTD and I fight detailed battles (often 6 in a single turn)

[Naomi]

I am not going to play any blame game, and I did try my best to make myself feel comfortable with what I have of the game. However, this is the first game for which I felt as if I had been beta-testing, as I did encounter (and report) as many bugs as the number of times I have played it. Positively, I have been devoting more time to visiting the forum than clicking the game's icon. Judging by the developers' responsiveness, to say the least, I believe Matrix set great store on customers and must have goodies up their sleeve. *(^,^)*