CMSF Takes Four Hits by Reviewers in Oct./Nov. Pubs.

[KG_Jag]

Scores of 60 out of 100 from PC Zone UK, PC Gamer UK and Hardcore Gamer Magazine were bad. But worse was a 50 out of 100 mark from PC Gamer in their November issue. It's generated combined score is only 61 at this time.

While certainly less reliable, 44 "users" at metacritic.com have bashed it with an average rating of only 2.2 out of ten as of this posting.

See:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/plat...ockforce#users

[Palantir]

The damage has been done. (Bargain basement prices this soon didn't help).

No matter how many patches BFC puts out to correct it it won't save it now.
Their attempt to draw in the "casual" gamer (= A LOT of game buyers) and hitting them with a substandard edition right off the bat has done its deed. The casual gamer has obviously moved on past CM and won't read about or care about patching a flawed game.

Only previous CM'ers will know about any patches in the future via the forums, and then, only those "few" who bought CMSF will even download them.

And yet, nearly the entire CM community still sits by (We know what BFC can do) and waits for the next WW2 version to appear, which would be greeted with enthusiasm. It's just a sad state of affairs when probably 80% of their base ($$) says they won't buy or have anything to do with the mighty Syrian Army yet they thumb their noses at us and make it anyway. I wonder if anyone over there was truly shocked by the lack of sales?

If it had been a WW2 version everyone would be clamoring for patches to make better, not removing it ASAP from their computers and trashing it like crazy.

[KG_Jag]

Here's an insightful post at the Battlefront forum:

"Posted by Steiner14 (Member # 7324) on September 26, 2007 08:21 AM:

quote: Originally posted by Phillip Culliton:
Exactly. It isn't relevant at all (which, I might add, Sixxkiller, is why I haven't talked about it).

And your point comes back to our discussion regarding BFC's choosing not to devote enough development resources to the game to finish it within their release timeframe. I agree, BFC's decision is extremely relevant to the current state of the game.

I absolutely agree. If you have only one manhour, you can't begin to develop a new rocket.
If i look at certain aspects of the game and compare them, i clearly see, that some things are overmodelled (development time wasted in early stages), while others were obviously treated in a rush (time running out).
This is a clear indicator, that the development process did not estimate the needed manhours properly. As an extreme example: the vehicles show suspension effects, which may be cool for kids, but wargamers don't care about, but the pathfinding is poorer than in CMx1! Can this be true after 4 years of development?!
Since CMBO every player was hoping for the possibility to move vehicles on streets in columns to reduce micromanaging. But therefore we have suspension effects and cages around vehicles with a high polygon count!
Or take the sky: stars are moving on the sky correctly, but units don't find the holes in the walls!

IMO a complete wrong weighting of priorities. And what makes that so severe: the priorities of BFC's customers never lied in such graphical-FX. They invested time in things, no one was asking about.
And on the other hand, the graphics itself is not even up to date.

I suspect, some in the team lost the roots where they were coming from and started to believe, they know everything much better. And because of knowing everything much better - CMx1 was the proove for them - they aimed at complete other targets. But this assumption was already wrong: every wargamer always dreamt about a tactical 3D-environment. The critics were not about the idea, but if it could be done well enough! Because of the major rule for realism: before displaying graphical details unrealistically, no matter how beautiful it may be, it is WAY better not to display it and to symbolize it. Therefore wargamers were sceptical about CMBO initially!

And with CMSF they thought they can do even better and opened the can of worms with a half baken 1:1 representation - a barrel without a floor - and the rest that follows is only a conclusion of doing that.
What the developers expected and what they could achieve simply is not good enough for most wargamers.

And here comes the next aspect into play: the wargaming community was not big enugh anymore. Realtime was the magic word! And the realtime games outthere are not good enough, too. They thought they can do even that much better, too. The result is a strange hermaphrodite, but not CM anymore.

And CMSF makes me very sceptical about the WWII-release, if BFC strictly denies to go back to it's roots: Steve mentioned it too often, that they do not care about the hardcore wargamers anymore. They were a too small market for them. Great, but they sell CMSF for 10$ now and no one is interested in it anymore. If that is the future? I doubt that.

BFC, go back to your roots (means: before showing useless but nice looking graphical things, but tactical garbage, do not show it all), or this can not have a good end."

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=52;t=003060

[KG_Soldier]

Kerry,

I couldn't agree more. Since BFC first announced the setting for CM:SF, I've said I wouldn't buy it until a WWII mod came out. I just don't get it. Well... I do; that is, I understand BFC was going for the big bucks by trying to make a simulation the military would buy. That had to be part of their reasoning, as well as what you said concerning their attempt to reach a "broader" gamer. But only us old dudes care about "real" war games. Very few young men under thirty could give a s#@t about anything not a FPS. I like playing them too (Day of Defeat). It is sad that BFC made the choice they did because they'd have sold as many CM2: Stalingrad or whatever as they have all other CM titles combined. I guess they didn't make enough money off of CM as they wanted.

[KG_Panzerschreck]

We all saw this comming before it happened. But BFC placated to the single player/bells and whistles/ass kisser crowd that constantly sucks up to them on their forums, look where that has gotten them...



They had better start bringing new life to the campaign editor for CMBB fast if they want to save their reputation.