Thanks a lot for replying to most of my statements.
At least 1 of my questions were answered very favorably: I am pleased to hear that I will be able to download a demo for Bftb. Meaning that I will have a 2nd chance to hopefully change my mind based on first hand experience. Looking at screenshots of this game like the one with the panther bring back memories of CC2 and I hope to stand corrected when I have played the demo.
Now let me try a more constructive approach. First of all it was said that demand for campaign is not very high. I disagree with that. Maybe it is correct with the current owners of AA titles. But it was also stated that in spite of an excellent underlying engine, they do not sell well. I believe this is because you miss out on a large part of your potential market. I am in communication with a lot of unhappy gamers which fall exactly in the middle between casual and grognard. These gamers (I count myself one of them) are very displeased with the trends in the gaming industry in general. Thousands of them are hanging out at forums like subsim.com, simhq.com etc and lament about mainstream titles (which they have exclusively bought in the past). I think they are now ready to turn their back on the mainstream market if only the indy scene comes up with the right products. Apart from maturity, complexity and realism these people also want gamey features, i.e. they are concerned about graphics, ease of use, athmosphere, realism options etc. I used to prefer mainstream titles for almost 20 years but 2 like years ago I made the switch and now invest in games from ageod and stardock, and I intend to do so in the future, just not if the products are right out ugly or incomplete.
Let me reiterate something like the Panzer General campaign is not difficult to implement. It is basically just done by loading a string of scenarios in the right order, saving some important statistics and adding introductory screens / cutscenes. Close Combat 2 also had a fantastic campaign system that was based on scripted scenarios. You were basically just racing against time on a stratmap showing your progress and cleverly creating the impression of a much deeper system.
Even if the AA titles would link the scenarios in the simplest form - meaning all you can achieve is gain or lose time - it would still be a big improvement. If no forces were built up or transferred between the scenarios this will still be 1000 times better than a pulldown menu.
There remains one of my questions that was not answered, and that is the one about scenario files. If the PG team is indeed incapable of adding a campaign through lack of resources, why don't you open up your files and let the community fix it in the form of a free campaign application? Think of programs like lowengrins DCG. I also made something similar for the Silent Hunter games (
link .. ), and would be open to have a look at this new engine.
This is what I ultimately hope you will consider in the future: to build up and work closer with your community, and support mods. That way you can have your fans work together with you and for free and let them add features and that dont make sense from a purely business point of view.