where is everyone?

[monkeytart]

i noe this may hav nothing to do with the game, but i must ask: where did all the old people go? like officerpuppy, gelatinous cube, captain crunch, where are they? i haven't seen them post for a while?

[Grandmaster]

they are born again christains , friend they have been take up

[monkeytart]

Originally Posted by Grandmaster

they are born again christains , friend they have been take up

what do u mean

[southpark]

cpt.crunch is still very much in buisness i had a conversation with him

[theenglishdude]

Gelly cubes over in tech so is captain crunch

dunno who officer puppy is but i think iv read posts by him

[sick]

OP is still visiting too.

But hey, if they are "the old people" what am I then.

[Captain.Crunch]

Originally Posted by monkeytart

i noe this may hav nothing to do with the game, but i must ask: where did all the old people go? like officerpuppy, gelatinous cube, captain crunch, where are they? i haven't seen them post for a while?

Well been playing the game of course ‘grin.

[monkeytart]

Originally Posted by sick

OP is still visiting too.

But hey, if they are "the old people" what am I then.

sorry sir! almost forgot about our fellow moders!

[Czar]

Do I count as old people?

Played the Demo.
Did not like the "fight to the last man" thing.

What I really wanted was a game rich in naval warfare.

IG is clearly not that game. I will wait. It will come.

[Queeg]

I've probably posted more here than anyone since the game came out, but I'm definitely not part pf the "old" crowd. But I'd be interested to know what the old crowd thinks about the game as released and the support since.

[Captain.Crunch]

Originally Posted by Czar

Do I count as old people?

Played the Demo.
Did not like the "fight to the last man" thing.

What I really wanted was a game rich in naval warfare.

IG is clearly not that game. I will wait. It will come.

All good things come to those who wait i wanted blood in the game and it soon come.

[Captain.Crunch]

Originally Posted by Queeg

I've probably posted more here than anyone since the game came out, but I'm definitely not part pf the "old" crowd. But I'd be interested to know what the old crowd thinks about the game as released and the support since.

The game is fantastic. Best part is it’s a game you can build on and make even better I have modded my game the way i want it to be. Lots of people here who have done the same and can work together to make the game a++

[Queeg]

Originally Posted by Captain.Crunch

The game is fantastic. Best part is it’s a game you can build on and make even better I have modded my game the way i want it to be. Lots of people here who have done the same and can work together to make the game a++

What mods? I've seen a few uniform changes and a sound mod. But what else is out there for public consumption?

[monkeytart]

in fact (not boasting) i could be counted perhaps as the old ppl..i started playing this game ever since the day it was out. i just joined the forum late......i was too lazy to join........

[Czar]

What do I think?

Go to the "technical discussions forum" and do a search for my first ever post.

It was on "Grand Strategic Warfare and an Expanded Time Period"
(Written months before the game was released)

See if you think my concerns were valid. Feel free to bump the thread to discuss.
(A Developer actually answered that post too.)

I also asked for a restricted public beta test - to find and eliminate many of the problems the game (apparently) has.

Last game I played where the Devs ignored the gamers and released a game which had an excellent concept with poor execution was a game called "Evil Genius". Great game - very poor beta testing as it was waaaay to buggy.

What happened there? The Developer (Elixir) has gone out of business.

Pyro should learn before it is too late.

[@m]

Originally Posted by Czar

Last game I played where the Devs ignored the gamers and released a game which had an excellent concept with poor execution was a game called "Evil Genius". Great game - very poor beta testing as it was waaaay to buggy.

What happened there? The Developer (Elixir) has gone out of business.

Pyro should learn before it is too late.

Hmm I must say that I never encountered any bugs while playing Evil Genius,.. As for going out of business I believe they decided to stop the company and use the money they had left to pay out the staff. Despite the originality of the game it didn't sell as expected and appearantly there was a lack of interest for their other upcoming original titles. Look at Majesco the publisher of Psychonauts they're not doing very well either.

[Czar]

Originally Posted by @m

...

Hi @m! Long time no see.

Well, to me this is an issue of companies losing touch with consumers.

Regarding "Evil Genius" - did you play it patched or unpatched?
THAT is critical.
I played it straight out of the box - what a mess
And that is how games should be judged. This policy of releasing a game and "patching" it later is not only wrong and poor - but in some countries actually breaches the law. Consumers are entitled to get a FINISHED product. That is what we pay for.

I then "patched" Evil Genius and played it again - better but read the Vivendi Forums - still not bug free (Including a 'game killer' that never appeared on my system thankfully!)
Why didn't the game sell well?
Partly because consumers are getting smarter. So many people have been burned by buggy products that many of us will not buy until we have read the forums and seen what is going on.

Which brings us back to IG.

As you know @m I was very active here once. I expressed my concerns - NOT because I thought the developers should do everything my way - because I wanted to help and see IG become a success.

Well, the developers thought we were all wrong.
They had a vision and they were not prepared to accept input (apparently).
You will no doubt disagree? (so here are some examples)
Issue: Ability to speed up and slow down battles. Requested and ignored - PRIOR to retail release. - Now I see it is a 'feature' of the patch.
Issue: Ability to Pause and issue commands. Requested and ignored - PRIOR to retail release. Still an issue.
You know I can list more.

One of the things many of us asked for prior to retail release was that Pyro run a restricted public beta test. Test the game with real gamers.
Get feedback in time to make changes if required.
Pyro (and Eidos) clearly thought they could do a better job 'in house' with 'professionals'.
Well, professionals might be good at spotting technical issues - but play issues are another thing entirely.
As I said back then: Do your professional testers think like a 15 year old boy or a 55 year old grognard?
Besides which, modern games are just to complex to be tested properly by 10 guys working a 40 hour week for 10 weeks (10 x 40 x 10 = 4000 hrs test time)
Where 100 gamers testing for 2 hours a day will achieve that in 4 weeks or less AND they will uncover things the professionals will miss - for free!

It says a lot for the quality of those testers that the most active threads here in the IG forums are the "Bug Reporting", "Help me!" and "It doesn't work" threads.

How the hell this game was ever allowed to go retail without the ability to speed up and slow down battles is completely beyond me.
It reflects badly on both Pyro AND Eidos.

Which brings me to my next point. Have you noticed that games consumers are getting smarter?
They read forums before they buy. They read reviews - player reviews.
Because many of us have been stung by magazine reviews which were so terribly wrong.
(Interesting aside: In Metacritic there is a big gap between Professional and Player reviews? Very big - something odd there. I think this review sums it up though:
http://www.videogamereview.com/cat/p...x.aspx#reviews
Very nice graphics - does not play well.
The reviews at gamerankings sum this up too.
It seems those that like graphics love the game - those that love Napoleonic Warfare hate it.)

And many gamers now understand the difference between Developers and Publishers. But more than that, many gamers now remember companies that have had bad releases.
In the Technical Discussion Forum there is a thread on that.

I can only hope that Pyro and Eidos will both learn from this and in their next release titles to get back in touch with the gamers.
We can work together to produce better games that will sell well - if only they will let us

[theenglishdude]

I second that heartily

[@m]

Originally Posted by Czar

Hi @m! Long time no see.

Hiyas, been mostly lurking here lately

Originally Posted by Czar

Well, to me this is an issue of companies losing touch with consumers.

Regarding "Evil Genius" - did you play it patched or unpatched?
THAT is critical.
I played it straight out of the box - what a mess
And that is how games should be judged. This policy of releasing a game and "patching" it later is not only wrong and poor - but in some countries actually breaches the law. Consumers are entitled to get a FINISHED product. That is what we pay for.

I then "patched" Evil Genius and played it again - better but read the Vivendi Forums - still not bug free (Including a 'game killer' that never appeared on my system thankfully!)
Why didn't the game sell well?
Partly because consumers are getting smarter. So many people have been burned by buggy products that many of us will not buy until we have read the forums and seen what is going on.

I played it out of the box and didn't have a problem, must say I've never encountered much issueses which games besides the odd bug which was usually fixed quickly in a patch. But I think I'm just lucky. I'm aware that this isn't the case for everyone unfortunately. But yes it's understandable that people don't want to buy buggy games, with a good reason too.

As for releasing it and patching it up later I can understand that they don't want to delay a game because of a small bug. Usually bugs are put in to different category's whereas the show stoppers have the highest priority. But yeah a game shouldn't be released if it really has major problems.

Which brings us back to IG.

I think but I'm of course not sure that because of Eidos' financial situation they might have released a few games too soon, in attempt to come out of the debt. Unfortunately this will have had the opposite efffect, if you read around you'll see that there have been a lot of complaints with some of the latest Eidos games (Tombraider Angel Of Darkness (imo they should have concentrated their efforts on other franchises a while ago but then again nobody wants to slaugher the chicken that lays golden eggs), Shellshock '67, Commandos 3,)

Now I suppose it's arguable wether or not IG belongs to that list. I think that depends on what you expected from the game. I really just looked at it as a fun game, but I know that others where looking for much deeper strategy, historical correctness, and much other things.

I do believe it will get better though. The first thing that SCi did (the company that bought Eidos (must say I've never heard of them) was delay all the major games that were planned to come out this year. They delayed Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Commandos Strike Force. So I think it will be better though I can't vouch for it.

As you know @m I was very active here once. I expressed my concerns - NOT because I thought the developers should do everything my way - because I wanted to help and see IG become a success.

Yes I remember and eventually that's were forums are for to discuss the game to give feedback, suggestions etc.

Well, the developers thought we were all wrong.
They had a vision and they were not prepared to accept input (apparently).
You will no doubt disagree? (so here are some examples)

I don't completely disagree. I do not necessarily think they thought you were wrong but I believe that the developer in the first place makes the game for themselves, the way they intended it so I guess you won't find much developers willing to let you touch their baby.

One of the things many of us asked for prior to retail release was that Pyro run a restricted public beta test. Test the game with real gamers.
Get feedback in time to make changes if required.
Pyro (and Eidos) clearly thought they could do a better job 'in house' with 'professionals'.
Well, professionals might be good at spotting technical issues - but play issues are another thing entirely.
As I said back then: Do your professional testers think like a 15 year old boy or a 55 year old grognard?

Yes, I think that decission lies in the hands of Eidos although I'm not sure. I guess they're not comfortable with the idea, but it's a good idea, maybe something for in the future.

Besides which, modern games are just to complex to be tested properly by 10 guys working a 40 hour week for 10 weeks (10 x 40 x 10 = 4000 hrs test time)
Where 100 gamers testing for 2 hours a day will achieve that in 4 weeks or less AND they will uncover things the professionals will miss - for free!

I believe their are much larger teams testing it both at the developer and publisher, publisher then has multiple offices etc. and I guess testing starts earlier but anyway that really irrelevant.

It says a lot for the quality of those testers that the most active threads here in the IG forums are the "Bug Reporting", "Help me!" and "It doesn't work" threads.

Yes I agree, luckely most of the issues can be resolved but unfortunately not all.

Which brings me to my next point. Have you noticed that games consumers are getting smarter?
They read forums before they buy. They read reviews - player reviews.
Because many of us have been stung by magazine reviews which were so terribly wrong.
(Interesting aside: In Metacritic there is a big gap between Professional and Player reviews? Very big - something odd there. I think this review sums it up though:
http://www.videogamereview.com/cat/p...x.aspx#reviews
Very nice graphics - does not play well.
The reviews at gamerankings sum this up too.
It seems those that like graphics love the game - those that love Napoleonic Warfare hate it.)

I must say I too don't really believe all magazine reviews etc. I prefer the reviews of independent and smaller sites rather than let's say Gamespot, IGN/Gamespy.

We can work together to produce better games that will sell well - if only they will let us

I'll hope we'll find it out, but in the good way

[Queeg]

Originally Posted by Czar

I can only hope that Pyro and Eidos will both learn from this and in their next release titles to get back in touch with the gamers.
We can work together to produce better games that will sell well - if only they will let us

That's my only complaint, that Pyro has done nothing foster a sense of community here. Much of what folks want to change about IG could be handled by mods if only Pyro would offer a little help.

[Captain.Crunch]

Originally Posted by Queeg

What mods? I've seen a few uniform changes and a sound mod. But what else is out there for public consumption?

Sounds like you are relying on other people to create mods for your game? Unzip the folder with win rar then get a Spanish translator open the files with notepad and mod parts of the game to your liking it is not hard to learn. I do admit there are things we would like to mod but do not know what files and where the data is located to mod that is annoying I agree……… but if we work together im sure that we can do just about anything to this game without any help from lazy pyro. PM me your msn messenger and I can help you with locating certain files you can mod. Chill we can mod anything we wan't its all there in the game folders.

[officerpuppy]

I am still here. I would like to work on another mod to enable English militia into the game, but personal life is getting the better of me at the moment so I have not had time to sit down and ponder over the matter.

As for "old" I don't know, I did not register sooner because I was still finding out about the game, so when I was 100% sure I was getting the game, I signed up. Though I think the greatest mystery here is what I might call the "first" modder for IG which was some guy by the SN of Brendan *sp* As a matter of fact, his mods for the demo are still up on a fan site, but as for him, he literally disapeard after the game was released. I think he could of gone far with his mods but oh well, we still have a good crew here to work with the game etc.

[sick]

I believe his name was just Berdan. He's not the first modder though, that was me hehe.

Mods can be downloaded from here:
http://www.tafn.info/TAFN/commandos/...=category&id=1

[screamingpalm]

I was part of Berdan's group that was prepared to do quite a bit of modding. After the game released we all just fizzled out and not sure what happened. I had worked on a few skins, but my skills were still new, still they were turning out decent...better than vanilla IG. For me, I played the game for a few days, beat it easily a few times on hard and got bored with sp. There are some things I like about mp (mostly 1v1) but since I cant host games I can't be bothered with sitting around hoping to join a game. This makes the game unplayable for me and I am patiently awaiting Les Grognards which is looking better and better.

[Queeg]

Anxiously awaiting Les Grognards here too. Very nice preview video here.